BLITZER: Al Franken, he presumably is suggesting that Senator Kennedy is giving aid and comfort to the enemy right now.
AL FRANKEN, RADIO TALK SHOW HOST: Well, first of all, I just want to say how sad I am about what is happening today. I was -- I was in Iraq a couple months ago and my heart goes out to the families of the troops that we lost today.
There's so much to say about this. We had James Fallows on yesterday, who wrote a piece in "The Atlantic Monthly" about how this administration, specifically Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz and Cheney, ignored, willfully ignored, all the preparation that was done for a post- invasion Iraq, including making fun of General -- humiliating General Shinseki, who said we should be sending several hundred thousand troops, including Rumsfeld, when the looting started, saying, like, the people are free to, in a free society, to do bad things, to loot and to do crime. And they aren't.
And we have done this so badly. Whether or not you are for or against what we did, I think what -- what -- what Senator Kennedy is saying is that we have lost a tremendous amount of credibility around the country, because it is clear that we were misleading the world about weapons of mass destruction. And it's clear that Colin Powell at the U.N. said things that just weren't true.
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BLITZER: Let Michael respond.
GRAHAM: I just have a question, Al. And, by the way, Al, thank you for going and entertaining the troops. They had a great time.
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FRANKEN: My honor. It's my honor.
GRAHAM: But don't -- when you hear a Democrat -- I hate to say Democrats -- when you hear people on your team say Vietnam, aren't they saying a war you can't win and a war that is wrong? Isn't that what it's shorthand for? FRANKEN: Well, I think it's saying that it's a quagmire. And I think that that's something that Dick Cheney said in 1991 when he was asked why they didn't go into Baghdad after the Persian Gulf War. And he used that word. He said that we would be going into a quagmire because it's an artificial country. Now...
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GRAHAM: I'm sorry.
But to call Iraq a Vietnam, when we never made it to Hanoi and we were in Baghdad in, what, two weeks, when we have taken the whole country, when we're fighting fringe fighters, in fact, when we're fighting the extremist Shias that the other Shias fear and, according to the reports I've seen, are trying us, please, take this wack job, Sadr, out, that's hardly a quagmire. We're just fighting bad guys. You do understand that people die in wars, that bad things happen. It's not a picnic.
FRANKEN: I understand that.
What I'm saying is, is that people on your side have been saying from the beginning of this war that things are going very well. I remember Brit Hume going on Fox on his "Special Report" saying that it's less dangerous to be a soldier in Iraq than to be a resident of California, because California has 6.6 murders day and, in Iraq, we are only losing 1.7 troops. That was obscene.
And that's the kind of -- and I think that you have to have a little bit of understanding and more sophisticated understanding of what we've done wrong. And there is so much hubris on the part of this administration. And I think that does parallel to the hubris that we had in Vietnam. And whether -- right now, we're well above 600. This administration will not show caskets coming back.
I think there is -- this is something that is very serious.
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FRANKEN: And I don't think it's something that you start off by saying, I don't like hearing from the senator from the distilleries or whatever that joke was. This is not that kind of matter.
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FRANKEN: These are troops that I visited. And I would not be a human being if I were not furious at this administration for their lack of preparation and for their arrogance in the way that they did this invasion.
GRAHAM: And I think that's legitimate, but I also am outraged at the defeatism that is coming from Ted Kennedy saying our guys can't win. And you guys are always throwing cold water on the troops themselves, saying this task is beyond them.
It's one year. We've taken the whole country. We're accomplishing amazing things, along with the bad news. Don't throw out the good news with the bad. That's what I hear you doing.
FRANKEN: Well, I have supported our troops. I have been there. I've been on four USO tours. And I don't know
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GRAHAM: But can they win? Do you think they can win? I think they can win. Do you think they can win?
FRANKEN: We have to. The problem is...
GRAHAM: Excellent.
FRANKEN: I think what Ted Kennedy said is right. We need international cooperation. You don't get international cooperation by going to the U.N. and saying that there is definitely a nuclear program being made by Saddam, when there is not.
GRAHAM: And you don't get peace...
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FRANKEN: You don't get international cooperation when you lie about weapons of mass destruction. And we need to
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GRAHAM: President Bush did not lie. That is an outrageous charge. You know it. But you don't get peace by going to the U.N. Ask people in Kosovo. Ask people in Iraq today or
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FRANKEN: In Kosovo, by the way -- by the way, in Kosovo, Trent Lott and Tom DeLay and Senator Lugar, whom I respect a lot, were tearing into President Clinton, while we had troops in harm's way. And your buddy Sean Hannity was doing the same thing, saying that the president didn't have the moral authority and didn't have the ability to conduct that war and that we were running out of ammunition. He said that.
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FRANKEN: And you are not -- and so you guys got to remember that when we were fighting in Kosovo, you guys were doing the same thing.
GRAHAM: And we were rescuing people from the ineptitude of the U.N.
And, by the way, when you're raising moral authority, Ted Kennedy and Bill Clinton are about the two worst people you can bring up, Al. Just a tip from my side of the radio.
BLITZER: Let me just wrap this up.
First to you, Al Franken. How is Iraq, in your opinion, going to play out in the political campaign over the next several months?
FRANKEN: Well, I don't think that the president will be showing footage of him landing on the aircraft carrier in the flight suit underneath the "Mission Accomplished" banner, for one.
And I just think that -- I hope that we aren't seeing what we're seeing in this last week anymore. But I think this is -- will work to the president's disadvantage.
