MR. RUSSERT: And we are back. Congressman John Murtha, welcome back to MEET THE PRESS.

REP. JOHN MURTHA, (D-Pa.): Thank you.

MR. RUSSERT: Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld in today's Washington Post has written an article, "What We've Gained in Three Years in Iraq." What do you, John Murtha, believe we have gained after three years in Iraq?

REP. MURTHA: Well, let me say first, Tim, this is President Bush's war. When he went into the war, he, he went against the advice of his father and the whole administration. He went against the advice of many of his military commanders. He went in without—with inadequate force for the transition to peace and then he had no exit strategy, so it's their war. And what, what they're trying to do is paint it as if there's progress in order to be able to get out. What I see is not enough electricity, only 10 hours a day. I see not enough water, only 30 percent of the people have clean water. I, I see inadequate oil production. All those things were supposed to be part of, of getting this war under control. They have mishandled it, mischaracterized it.

Now, for instance, they said not long we're going to have 75 percent of the country controlled by Iraqis. Well, I, I flew for an hour and 15 minutes over desert, wasn't a soul—and that's, that's the territory I guess they're talking about because in the Sunni Triangle, which is 40 percent of, of the country, the incidents have increased, unemployment's 60 percent; in Anbar Province, the province that I visited, unemployment is 90 percent. So I don't see the progress that they're portraying and I don't understand how they can continue to say that and the American public understands that and we understand it.

MR. RUSSERT: Secretary Rumsfeld in his article says this: "Turning our backs on postwar Iraq today would be the modern equivalent of handing postwar Germany back to the Nazis."

REP. MURTHA: Well, it was two and a half years ago I wrote to him, and I said, "Mr. President, you only have a few months to get things straightened out. We need more troops over there and, and you need to train the Iraqis sooner. You, you need to energize," meaning you need to start the process of getting people working, "and, and you need to internationalize. You need to go to, to the other countries and get them to support us." Seven months later, I got a reply back from the assistant secretary of defense. Now that's frustrating that, that I would get an answer back that long. The last letter I sent to him, saying that I was disappointed in, in what was going on, two weeks later I got a letter back from another assistant secretary of defense.

So, so I'm, I'm disappointed the way this war has been run, I, I—the biggest thing is the rhetoric. They keep saying we're going, we're going to have victory, we're going to stay for the end. It's, it's open-ended. They can't be open-ended. We have to give the Iraqis the incentive. They met the other day for a half-hour. I, I mean you got to say to them, "OK, Iraqis, this is your country, you got your elections, you didn't elect the people we like but you elected who you want. What—you've got to take over your country."

MR. RUSSERT: The president picks up the phone and calls you up, and says "Jack, come on down. You voted for this war, you now think it was a mistake, but we're in a fix. And if I get out right away, we could leave behind a civil war, we could leave behind a haven for terrorism. Tell me specifically Mr. Murtha, what should I do today?"

REP. MURTHA: Here, here's what you should do, Mr. President. First of all, you should fire all the people who are responsible for that, which gives you international credibility.

MR. RUSSERT: Including his secretary of defense?

REP. MURTHA: Well, he, he should—well, let's say he should offer his resignation, because he certainly...

MR. RUSSERT: And it's sure to be accepted?

REP. MURTHA: I would accept it, that's exactly right.

MR. RUSSERT: What about the vice president?

REP. MURTHA: Well, you can't fire the vice president, so I think he'll, he'll have to handle this himself.

MR. RUSSERT: Should he offer his resignation?

REP. MURTHA: Yeah. Well, certainly the vice president has been the primary force in running, running this war, and many of the mischaracterizations have come about. You and I talked before the show about some of the things he said on your show, right before the war started. None of them turned out to be true. This is why the American public is so upset.

OK, I say fire some people, that's the first thing.

MR. RUSSERT: Who should he fire?

REP. MURTHA: Well, he, he, he's got to make that decision himself. Anybody that's been responsible, first of all, for the intelligence-gathering; second of all, for the characterization; and third of all, for the maintaining and running the war. For instance, from the national security office down to the secretary of defense's office. I mean he's got to make that decision.

But then, then, then we go to, to how do we get our troops out of there? You redeploy to the periphery so that we, if we have to, we can go back in. The terrorism—there was no terrorism in Iraq before we went there. None. There was no connection with al-Qaida, there was no connection with, with terrorism in Iraq itself. So we went in and they keep saying terrorism, and, and we're diverting ourself away from terrorism. That's the thing that probably worries me the most.

Mr. President, let's go back to fighting the war on terrorism. Let, let's reduce our presence in Iraq, let's start to rebuild the Army, because the Army's broken as far as I'm concerned. And the military commanders know this.

I talk to the military commanders all the time. I know what's going on in the military. And, and most of the military in Iraq, 70 percent of our troops say we want out of there, and 42 percent say they don't know what their mission is for heaven's sake.

MR. RUSSERT: Does the Pentagon support what you're saying?

REP. MURTHA: Well, the Pentagon doesn't support it publicly, obviously, because of what happened to General Shinseki.

MR. RUSSERT: Have they told you privately?

REP. MURTHA: Oh, absolutely. I mean, so many of them have said, "Keep saying the truth, keep telling the truth." All kinds of military commanders have said that to—they know. They don't even have to tell me.

And the troops in the field are the ones that I feel so confident—I go to the hospitals, I see—I saw this one young fellow the other day who had been in a coma for almost a year, and his mother's sitting beside him, and I thought of the long-lasting impact on these, these young people who have been involved in this war and how it'll impact at least 8500 of them, and, and emotionally maybe 50,000 of these troops will be affected. So the price of this war has been very high, and, and we've gotten to a point where there's no alternative.

At first, if we'd acted quickly—it's just like Katrina. If he'd have acted quickly, he'd have made some progress. If he'd have kept the, the military, the Sunni military there, he, he had been all right to get it under control. But when he didn't do that, he lost control. We, we weren't liberators anymore, we became occupiers, and so 80 percent of the people want us out of there. That, that's the simple answer.

MR. RUSSERT: The administration will say yes, maybe there's no direct link between 9/11 and Saddam Hussein, but there were contacts between the Iraqis and al-Qaida.

REP. MURTHA: Oh, well, come on. I mean, that, that's just an excuse to try to justify the war. They've changed their position six times on, on this war, why we went to war, and the public's not buying it any longer. The public doesn't want rhetoric. They want this president to go back to the White House, they want this president to sit down with the leaders of the world and the leaders in the United States, some of the former commanders, not call the secretaries of defense—and you know, after I made my statement, they called in 13 or 14 former secretaries of defense and, and, and state and so forth. They gave them each a minute or two to talk to them. That's not what I'm talking about. You've got to get some people in that know what they're talking about and let them get some advice privately about what's going on and what should be done. They've got thousands of people in the White House, hundreds of thousands of people in the Pentagon. In the Congress, we've got a small staff where we have an obligation if we disagree with the president—my, my obligation is not to the president of the United States. My obligation is to the public, my obligation is to the Constitution and to the country and to the troops.

MR. RUSSERT: If we got out quickly and left behind a blood bath, what would we do? Just watch the slaughter?

REP. MURTHA: Look, what, what happens if we stay there? Let, let me tell you, a year from now, just like I said when I got—when I came back from Vietnam. A month later—now imagine this—a month later they have an election and, and we lose 38,000 people seven years later. I mean, the six-year interim, interim period between 1967 and 1972 we lose 38,000 people. So a year from now, you can be sit—you've heard what they've said, over and over again, how well it's going. Incidents have increased, unemployment is 60 percent, oil production—all the things that I measure. When they say on, on the television or send us a letter telling us how well things are going, I said to the staff, go look at the economics statistics, tell me what the unemployment level, tell me the water production, tell me the oil production, tell me the electricity production, tell me the unemployment figures, and then we'll know whether we're making progress. Tell me the incidents. I mean, they—their measurement of the brigades is back and forth. They'll say the brigades one month is 90 people, now there's less than one brigade that can operate independently.

Let's take Operation Swarmer. Now, they said a lot of Iraqis, more than half of them were Iraqis. American helicopters, American planning, American logistics, American artillery, American medical evacuation—everything was American. I mean, they don't—the American people see it. They see these American helicopters. Do you think they fool the Americans when they say that? And one of the commanders said 75 percent of the country is going to be under control of the Iraqis and 75 percent of it is desert? I mean, give me a break. That's part of the problem.

MR. RUSSERT: Ken Mehlman, the chairman of the Republican Party, gave a speech last week, and this is what he said: "And do these Democrat leaders really think we would be safer by cutting and running in Iraq? Of course, they don't call it cutting and running. They call it, 'strategic redeployment,'" talking about your phrase. "The Democrats are great at this game. Before it was 'strategic redeployment,' it was 'exit strategy.' ... Would you buy a used car from this party? They say one thing come election time, but their records show that they mean—and will do—another. They were for the Iraq war before they were against it."

REP. MURTHA: The majority of Democrats voted against the Iraq war.

MR. RUSSERT: In the House, but not in the Senate.

REP. MURTHA: In the House, in the House, 120 voted against it. But now, the, the, the problem is, that doesn't win the war. That, that's what happens. Every time—when I spoke out, the American public was for this war when I first spoke out. The majority of the public was for it. They were ahead of us, but, but they began to recognize this was rhetoric. You can't win this with rhetoric. What the Republican chairman has no impact on me or anybody else as far as I'm concerned. This should not be political. When I go by the graveyard over there at Arlington, it doesn't say Democrat or Republican, it says American. When I look at the graveyards, the veterans graveyards all over the world, it doesn't say Democrat or Republican, it says American. That's what we're looking at. We're looking at the mission for America, trying to get our troops redeployed so that they can live a normal life.

MR. RUSSERT: David Ignatius of The Washington Post has written a few columns from Iraq and here's his latest. "There has been so much bad news out of Iraq lately that you have to pinch yourself when good things seem to be happening. But there are unmistakable signs here this week that Iraq's political leaders are taking the first tentative steps toward forming a broad government of national unity that could reverse the country's downward slide. ... For a change, pessimism isn't necessarily the right bet for Iraq." What if we got out quickly, prematurely, and in fact, you were wrong. The Iraqis did get it together and by the end of this year, had a national government, had a robust military, was able to take on the insurgency, and emerged as a forceful democracy?

REP. MURTHA: Tim, I haven't been wrong yet. I, I put—take that back, when I voted for this war I was wrong. After that, I recognized I had to make a change in direction. I had, I had to make some, some strategic and tactical decisions which were entirely contrary to the way I normally operate. Normally, behind the scenes, you can get these kind of things straightened out. But when you have an, an administration that's so isolated, insulated from the public, insulated from reality—this is not a rhetorical war, you have to make progress, and none of the things that I measure are progress. So our troops are caught in a civil war. Forty-two percent of them don't even know what their mission is, and 70 percent want out of there.

Now, is it going to be a civil war? It's already a civil war. Twenty-five thousand Iraqis are fighting with each other inside the country, the best estimates I see, less than 1,000 al-Qaida. The minute it's over, they'll, they'll fight with each other, somebody will win, just like we did in our civil war, and they'll lose a lot less people than we did in our civil war, and they'll settle it themselves. I, I would like to be optimistic about it, but the figures don't show it that way.

MR. RUSSERT: Some in the administration say the media is distorting the good news that's coming out of Iraq.

REP. MURTHA: Well, they said the same thing about Vietnam. They said the same thing over and over and over about Vietnam. They said, "We're winning the war in Vietnam." That—you could go back and get quotes from Vietnam, and you'd see the same kind of, of, of reports, "The media's the one that's distorting; everything's going fine in Vietnam." Well, everything's not going fine in Iraq. They have to realize that. When the whole world is against you, when our, our international reputation has been diminished so substantially, when all the countries in the, in the region say, "We'd be better off without us being in Iraq," when the people themselves in Iraq say it, and American people say it, I mean who is right?

MR. RUSSERT: Despite all this, all these difficulties, look how the American people view the two parties. Which party do you trust to do a better job with Iraq? In January, 47 percent said the Democrats; 40 percent said the Republicans. Now it's 42/42. And this: Who has a clear plan for handling Iraq? Yes, Bush administration has a clear plan, 34; no, 65. Democrats in Congress: 24 yes; 70 no. Why are the Democrats at a lower trust level than Republicans on the war?

REP. MURTHA: Well, let me tell you this, Tim. He'll find out in November where the trust level is. He'll find out if he doesn't change course, if he doesn't change direction, the Republicans in Congress will get a rude awakening and they know it. They see the unhappiness of the American people.

MR. RUSSERT: Will these midterm elections be a referendum on the war?

REP. MURTHA: It will be a referendum on the war and Katrina and the medical—the drug problem in, in Medicare, all those things, but mainly the war itself, because the rhetoric has not matched the outcome of the war.

MR. RUSSERT: Would the Democrats recapture control of both Houses?

REP. MURTHA: I, I think definitely the House. Now, whether they will in the Senate or not—but if you go back to '74, you'll see a big change in what happened there.

MR. RUSSERT: After Watergate.

REP. MURTHA: After Watergate. I was one of the first ones elected during a special election. That fall, there were 43 incumbents got defeated; 36 were Republicans. There were 13 Republicans retired. We won every single seat. The American public is not going to be fooled by, by what, what's happening in Iraq, and the rhetoric will not—he's got to get back in his office and start to talk to people and find out what's going on. It's not—to go out and make speeches to the American public's not going to win this war.

MR. RUSSERT: Do you expect an October surprise from the administration dealing with the war?

REP. MURTHA: I'll tell you what they're going to try to do. They're trying to do this right now. They're trying to blame the military, they're trying, they're trying to put the whole onus on the military for what happened in Iraq, and then they're going to say, "Well, we're, we're going to have a plan for withdrawal." You heard it already, you've heard them say, "OK, here's the goal for withdrawal." A benchmark, they call it. Just like they called the insurgency "dead end kids," then they call it sectarian violence—it's a civil war. And, and they—they're trying to find—"The brigades are going to be better, they can take over 75 percent of the country, we can start the withdrawal."

Now, I don't know how many they'll withdraw, but here's the problem with the plan they have vs. my plan. My plan is redeploy as quickly as possible to protect our troops. Their plan is you draw out the withdrawal, which means you've got less troops on the ground that are more vulnerable to attack, because the IEDs and the convoys are the ones where—are being attacked. So I'm, I'm convinced that, that my, my plan is the only plan that, that will work and protect the American troops.

MR. RUSSERT: But you expect by November there'll be significant troop withdrawals?

REP. MURTHA: I expect them to announce significant withdrawals. And I think—I, I say there'll be withdrawals. But there'll be—for instance, you'll see in the spring they'll start to announce withdrawal and you will see what they call benchmarks, what everybody else calls a timetable. But I tell you, we have to convince the Iraqis—we have to say to the Iraqis, "This is your war, this is no longer our war. This—you've got an elected government, this is up to you now to settle this thing." And then we've got to say, say to them, "You start to work this out yourself. We're going to, we're going to redeploy our troops as quickly as possible."

MR. RUSSERT: Americans are overwhelmingly against immediate withdrawal; 30 say yes; 66 say no.

REP. MURTHA: Well, it depends on what you mean by immediate withdrawal. I, I say we, we should say to them, "OK, Iraqi government, here—here's your incentive. We're going to start to redeploy our troops as quickly as we can." And when I say as quickly as we can, I, I don't know what the timetable should be. Six months, seven months, something like—we could do it in six months. And I think we'd be better off, the troops would be better off, the country'd be better off, we better off financially and human resourcewise.

MR. RUSSERT: If the president decided that military action in Iran was necessary, should he come to Congress first?

REP. MURTHA: He—there's no way he's going to take military action in Iran.

Iran is, is three times as big geographically, there's 58 million people vs. 26 million people in, in Iraq, and, and there's no way. A fanatical government—I mean, the, the president of the United States does not have a military option. He can say he has a military option; he does not have a military option.

MR. RUSSERT: But he should come to Congress if he is...

REP. MURTHA: Oh, absolutely. As a matter of fact, we, we have allowed our, our influence, our, our separation from, from the president to be—in the last couple of presidents when it goes to war. The, the Congress is the only one that can authorize to go to war. He has to come to Congress before he does anything, let alone go to war.

MR. RUSSERT: Senator Russ Feingold, Democrat from Wisconsin, said the president should be censured for eavesdropping on telephone and computers of—by Americans. Would you support such a censure?

REP. MURTHA: Well, if it were illegal, it, it's certainly something we have to look at. I, I think there's—I, I don't know enough about the issue. Even though we have complete responsibility for, for oversight and, and funding, funding it. I had a briefing the other day, I'm satisfied the safeguards that are in place are significant, but we have to look at whether it's illegal or not. I, I'm hesitant to say the president ought to be censured before a committee looks at it and really investigates it and comes up with some real conclusions.

MR. RUSSERT: Congressman John Murtha, we thank you for sharing your views.

REP. MURTHA: Nice to be here, Tim.

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