Among those joining us, exclusively, former Democratic presidential candidate and decorated Vietnam veteran, Senator John Kerry, and Republican Senator John McCain, war hero and former White House hopeful himself. Their views and much more, next, on LARRY KING LIVE.
Continuing with reactions now in the aftermath of President Bush's address to the nation from Ft. Bragg. Bob Costas sitting in tonight for Larry King.
Senator John Kerry's time is short. We will go right to him. He joins us from our Washington bureau. He is of course, the former Democratic presidential candidate, a member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. This morning, in "The New York Times," he authored an op-ed piece called "The Speech the President Should Give."
Senator Kerry, did President Bush give anything like the speech you would have liked to have seen him give tonight?
SEN. JOHN KERRY (D), MASSACHUSETTS: Not quite, no. I think the president had an opportunity tonight to really speak more of the truth of what has happened in Iraq and where we need to go.
Let me give you an example. Really, tonight, we heard sort of transformation into the third most significant rationale for the war itself. The first, of course, was weapons of mass destruction. The second was democracy. And now tonight, it's to combat the hotbed of terrorism.
But most Americans are aware that the hotbed of terrorism never existed in Iraq until we got there, and it has in fact grown increasingly as we are there. So the question tonight is not the speech itself. The question is really, did the president lay out a policy that is going to guarantee that our troops are as safe as they could be and that we're doing all that is possible to be able to have a success?
I believe there is much more that I laid out today. The training, the use of our neighbors, the border security, the transformation of the Sunni political reconciliation. All of these things could be done more rapidly and more effectively.
COSTAS: If you had been elected president last November, by this point what would President John Kerry have done in Iraq?
KERRY: Well, I laid out -- you know, I don't want to get in -- I mean, I think that's not quite the way to go at it. What I said continually is that you have to put the training on a wartime footing.
I visited Iraq in January. I visited with the leaders of the region, and I was really dumbfounded to listen to the king of Jordan or the president of Egypt or the chancellor of Germany or the president of France all say that they were prepared to do more in terms of assisting in the training, but they couldn't understand why the administration hadn't taken them up on it.
We now have a requirement that all of that training be in country, in Iraq. That is a huge stumbling block to be able to produce the number of troops and the level of training necessary to protect our troops as rapidly as possible.
We could do more with respect to the Sunni neighbors. They have a huge stake in the outcome and the success of what happens in Iraq. But many of them feel they're not consulted with. Many of them feel they're not part of a larger process. I think there is much more that we can do on a more active basis. All of us want to succeed. And I think the president did not lay out the full measure of those things that he will embrace.
And maybe he will do it in the weeks ahead. Maybe tonight he stood his ground, and we'll see a transformation. But I think a lot of people in America are looking for less talk about the progress and more talk about what we're specifically going to do to be able to be successful in creating stability and bring our troops home.
COSTAS: In the aftermaths of 9/11, did Democrats, yourself included, do a poor job of playing the role of the loyal opposition? Were they too docile and too compliant, and did they fail to ask the skeptical questions and raise the objections they should have in the run-up to war?
KERRY: Many of the questions were raised, but not enough. I plead guilty. And I think a lot of people in the party would. But I think a lot of Americans would.
The fact is that we all were unified. I think this is really important in light of Karl Rove's comments the other day. We were all unified as Americans. I mean, I will never forget sitting in a leadership meeting in the Capitol a little after 9:00, when this loud explosion took place off our right side, and we looked out and saw this plume of black smoke coming from the Pentagon, and we almost simultaneously received word that the White House was evacuating and we should evacuate.
And I'll never forget the emotions heading out of the Capitol and turning to a friend and saying, "we're at war." That was our emotion that was shared by all Americans. And we banded together. All members of the Senate present voted unanimously to give the president whatever he needed and to use force to retaliate. We all agreed we should go to Afghanistan.
I think questions were raised, however, when the president began to raise the specter of going into Iraq. But he guaranteed us in going to the United Nations and going through an inspections process, that we would go to war as a last resort. I think everybody would say today we did not do that, and the war was morphed from the war of weapons of mass destruction into democracy, and now, as I said, into the third rationale.
And I think a lot of Americans are very uneasy about the current way in which the president keeps talking in the same language.
Take the training of troops tonight. He says they're 167,000. He said there are a lesser number prepared to fight. Well, it's about less than 3,000. There are 10,000 to 15,000 that might be able to do something with us.
I think two years after the invasion, Americans have a right to expect a higher level of accomplishment, and a higher level of safety and security.
COSTAS: You know all about the fog of war. Representative Chris Shays will be on this program later, has made several trips to Iraq, and he contends that the significant progress, the successes of Bush policy are being lost amid the day-to-day reports from the war zone. Is that a valid point? I mean, no one thinks that Iraq is going to be Switzerland, but Saddam is gone. There is a democracy of some kind in place. The vast majority of the Kurds in the north and a substantial majority of the Shiites in the south would probably say they're better off than they were just a couple of years ago. Is Bush getting an unfair shake here?
KERRY: To some degree, I think that's true. And I've said that publicly. We've made progress. There's no question we have made some progress.
But the measure here is not whether or not you've made some progress. The measure is, are you doing all that's necessary and appropriate and available in order to provide the best policy for our troops?
You know, the president said tonight that what we can do on July 4th is fly the flag and honor the troops. Well, every American that I know of flies the flag on July 4th and we always honor our troops. The question of honoring the troops, it seems to me, is to provide them with the best protection possible. And when you don't address the borders that are sieves, when you don't deal with this training issue, to provide adequate transformation on a rapid basis, we're not doing all that is possible.
When you underfund the VA by a billion dollars and try to hide it, you're not doing all that's necessary to honor the troops.
So, I think Americans are smart. They know how to measure this. And, increasingly, as they're beginning to become aware of the gaps in the performance from the promise, people want to demand more. We owe those troops more. We owe the American people more.
Yes, there is progress, but the measure is, again, to do the best that we can do. And I think a lot of people feel we're failing to do that.
COSTAS: We have less than a minute here, Senator. In hearings with Defense Secretary Rumsfeld last week, your fellow Democratic senator from Massachusetts, Ted Kennedy, said that Iraq is becoming, quote, "seemingly an intractable quagmire." Quagmire, that's that Vietnam-era word that you know much about. Was that over the top, or was it close to accurate?
KERRY: No, I don't believe it is that yet today. But it could become that if we don't make the right choices. And the key, what I laid out today, were a series of steps on the border, the inclusion of the neighbors in the region, the building of a stronger regional security plan, the training of troops, the investment -- not of the donor countries. It's not just donors we're looking for. It's investment from various businesses other than Halliburton.
There's a very significant amount that we could do with respect to border security, and there is more we could do in the region in the long run to reduce the potential of radicals joining in to the jihadist movement.
A lot of those things have been left on the table, and I think what Americans, again, want is the effort to best honor the troops by providing them with the maximum set of options possible.
We can do better. We owe them the leadership that's equal to their sacrifice. And I think we have yet to provide that.
COSTAS: Senator Kerry, thank you for your time tonight.
KERRY: Thank you.