By David Swanson
Congressman Jim McDermott became involved in politics through his opposition to the Vietnam war. He came to Washington 17 years ago hoping to create national health coverage. Instead he's spent much of his time opposing new wars and war crimes. McDermott's record on matters of peace and war is unsurpassed in the Congress. On the matter of impeachment, however, he has lost all interest - as has every incumbent Democrat since Leader Nancy Pelosi decreed that impeachment should be "off the table."
I sat down with Congressman McDermott on Monday to discuss the Iraq War and the possibilities for peace. He offered insights and lessons from history that we would all do well to bear in mind.
DEPLETED URANIUM
McDermott sponsored a bill to create a study of the effects of depleted uranium (HR 2410). The bill recently passed the House, but has yet to become law. McDermott explained:
"If we can get it through and get it passed, we will establish a study in the Department of Defense to look at depleted uranium...and not done by the Department of Defense but done by an independent source. The Department of Defense has been rather categorical in their denial that there is any problem. But depending on how you look for something you may never find it....And what I want is for them to look at the long-term effects, not the short-term effects. Because if you look at depleted uranium in the urine, for instance, you may not find any. May be in and out. But those particles that have lodged themselves either in the lymph glands or in the gonads may ultimately turn out to be cancerous and lead to all kinds of problems that appear to be pretty obvious in Iraq.
"When I was in Iraq in September of 2001, I went down to southern Iraq, to Basra, where we dumped 300 tons of this depleted uranium in the original Road of Death and I was taken to a hospital where I was shown children with leukemia where they had, I mean, the pediatrician had tried to do some rather rudimentary epidemiological work and showed that there was about a 600 percent increase from 1990 to 2001 when I got there from 1991 when the bombing occurred. A ten year period. There was also an epidemic of children born with serious malformations, no eyes, no ears, really gross kinds of malformations. Not little things like, you know, that, obviously malformations, but these are major ones. It got to be to the point where mothers at the time of birth would say, 'Is the child normal?' rather than, 'Is it a boy or girl?'
"So, having seen that I thought, these people have been living and walking around in this dust for the last ten years, and we've got soldiers who are walking around inhaling this stuff, and to me it is the worst form of disrespect for our troops to not care what happens to them after the war. You know, it's easy to, you can make a lot of noise about armament, you know, Humvees under-armored and body armor and stuff like that, but these long-term effects are the ones that are really going to be the problems. And was really from my experience in the Vietnam thing where I saw the guys who had been sprayed with Agent Orange but didn't have the effects until much later that made me say, 'This is not something we should play around with.' But the military likes the weapon so much that they are very reluctant to look hard at it as to what its ultimate effect might be.
"So this was a study, this was a study that we hope will at least lay the groundwork so we know where these people are today and as time goes on if problems develop we'll have a basis for making a judgment. One of the things about Agent Orange was they denied it and denied it and denied it and denied it. I don't actually remember when they finally began to take seriously that they were having effects from this spray. And unfortunately they lost 15 or 20 years of good data. So, I'm a doctor, a scientist at heart and when I look at something like that I'm not sure what I'm seeing, but I've got a suspicion and it's worth observing and doing a careful study and making sure we have the basic evidence.
Swanson Is there a Senate bill and a sponsor in the Senate and timing on that?
McDermott: Yes. There was a bill put in by Sen. Cantwell, and Joe Lieberman has agreed to sign on, and it passed over there. So we, we have . . .
Swanson: It has passed both houses?
McDermott: It was not a bill. It was actually an amendment that was put on a bill. So it's, it's, yes, the concept has passed both houses. Now the questions is does it make it through a conference committee and up to the President's desk.
CONFERENCE COMMITTEES
Swanson: We saw recently what happened with the language on no permanent bases in the emergency supplemental bill. Is that not blatantly against the rules of Congress to take something out in a conference committee that has passed in both houses?
McDermott: It used to be.
Swanson: It used to be.
McDermott: That was one of the rules, the understood rules of the conference committee. If an issue had passed in both houses, that was the end of it. It stayed in the bill.
OPPOSING WAR
Swanson: I was telling your staff earlier that United for Peace and Justice has a chart on the website of all anti-war votes and co-sponsorships of bills and a list of all members of Congress. And it's a checkerboard. Almost nobody is on everything. They are on half of the bills but not the other half. You are on every single one. You have all the right votes; all the right co-sponsorships. Why is that such a rarity when majority opinion is where it is, much less Democratic party base opinion is where it is? And you are in a state with, you would think, heavy influence from the military-industrial complex, Boeing, among others. How are you able to support anti-war positions, and why are so many not able to?
McDermott: Well, I can only speak for myself. I really can't speak for other people. But I would say I got into politics. I was a physician. Had no interest in politics. I didn't want to do this. But I got turned on by the Vietnam war. And like many, I mean, you know, there - David Bonior, John Kerry, and others - we got hooked up with politics as a way of trying to prevent that kind of stuff. So when I came to Congress I didn't come as a kid. I came as somebody with a long history. I had been in the state legislature for 17 years. People knew who I was. And when I came here, of course, the last thing I thought I'd ever be doing was spending my time dealing with Iraq and Kuwait and El Salvador and all the stuff I've been involved in. I mean, I came here in 1989 to get, to be involved in developing a national health plan. That's what I wanted to do. But when this war stuff started, I didn't, to me it was just, you know, if this is what's going to, if I'm going to lose, then I thank you and go home. But I'm not going to stand here and participate in allowing this to happen in a way that is so reminiscent of the Vietnam thing and how we got etched into it deeper and deeper and deeper until we were in up over our necks. And I, I just, for me it was never much of a question. And my district, I'm fortunate in that I have a district that has been supportive by and large. And, uh, but in this instance I am reflecting my own views as much as the views of my district. Because I, there are, there are things obviously you think about, well what does my district think, what's good for the state, what's good for the country and all that. There are some things you think and these are, this, the war thing is an issue I believe that is wrong and immoral and is going to come to no good end. And so for me it was a personal thing.
AN IRAQI PEACE PLAN
Swanson: How do you think it will come to an end? There is, there is this plan proposed now by the prime minister in Iraq that I for one expected to include a date for withdrawal. It apparently does not. From what I read in the press I have the distinct impression that the Republicans have been advised that this is a good plan to support. It won't include any date for withdrawal. But I'm hearing a lot of strong opposition from Democrats around the question of amnesty. What is this plan, where did it come from, and what is your position?
McDermott: Done a lot of thinking about that. In fact I'm going to go over and do that on the floor tonight. I um, I remember the election of 1968 when Richard Nixon said he had a secret plan to end the war, and all the hoopla and all the hype leading up to the election. Secret plan to end the war. He got in office and we went on for four more years. Everything you hear on Capitol Hill today is related to the 2006 election. The Republicans are absolutely apoplectic that they might lose power. And they will say one thing to one group and another thing to another group and they are going to be all over the map. And the reason a list-, an attentive, thoughtful human being in America today can't figure out what is going on is because they are intending to confuse and get us through this election. They want to give some people the impression that we're going to pull out the troops, and they want to give other people the impression that we are going to stay the course. And they've got the country so divided on this, and so confused on what's the best way to go. I mean, you've got Casey talking about it on one TV station when you've got Cheney on another one saying it would be the absolute worst thing to be doing this. I mean at the very same hour, practically speaking. Plus you've got Maliki out there giving - the new Prime Minister of Iraq - saying here's our 24 points of amnesty. Now you know he didn't come out there, he didn't come out there with that all by himself.
Swanson: No.
McDermott: He's been negotiating, and the ambassador, the American ambassador's been involved in that. I mean, we're up to our armpits in that thing. And so, then we come out - and the President says nothing. So, you know. What are we supposed to believe? The president is saying, "When they stand up, we'll stand down." Well, they said, "We're ready to stand up. Let's have this amnesty thing. Bring the Sunnis in. Let's set a timetable and start down the road, and we'll take over." And you don't hear hurry from the White House and so then you start wondering, Maybe they don't want to leave.
Swanson: I get the impression they don't.
McDermott: I don't think you have to be overly smart to get that impression.
AMNESTY
Swanson: Do you think to end the war, amnesty for those who did not attack civilians or otherwise engage in war crimes and who commit to nonviolent, law-abiding behavior in the future makes sense? Or do you think no amnesty for anybody?
McDermott: I've done a lot of talking to Arabs about the whole question of honor and how you are going to bring this thing to an end. And to think that you can bring this thing to an end without some kind of amnesty proposal or some working it out in any peaceful way in my view is, is just a pipe dream, because these are people who are used to resolving things rather violently, and if you want to stop the violence, then somehow you've got to say, "Look, what happened before is then and now is now and let's, we're going to move forward as a country." And if you want to go and try and sort out who shot civilians and who shot Americans and who didn't shoot anybody and all, I mean, they are all mixed together in prisons and you know, you simply are, it's not going to come to an end. I mean, amnesty is a very difficult thing. In South Africa it took a Truth and Reconciliation Commission a long time to sort that out. And in Northern Ireland there was plenty of problems there. And they are still going through it now in Chile. And a lot of places in the world where there has been a lot of violence, sorting out - - Rwanda, how do you sort out? And so, you can, again, the man's made a proposal. OK. Rather than condemning it as we have, let's talk about how you're going to, how would you work it out. Someone start talking about it.
Swanson: Yeah.
McDermott: My, my, a proposal I put on the table a long time ago which I, it came out of a trip I made last year when I went to Israel. I went with Israel Policy Forum and St. Mark's Cathedral in Seattle. We went, a group of Jews and Christians on this trip. And before we went there I went for three days to Jordan to visit a friend of mine who used to be water minister, he was the water minister in the Jordanian government. He's the guy that negotiated the water treaty between Israel and Jordan. So, he understands Middle-eastern politics. And I asked him, I said, "You know, please, because there are a million refugees from Iraq in Amman," I said, "Please get some of your friends, your real old-timey friends from Iraq. Sit down. I want to sit and talk with them about how we can get out of this thing." And they said, "Well, it can be done, it can be done. But it can't be done because of the way your government feels. That is, they don't want to relinquish control of Iraq." They said, "If you want to do that, you can do in, in this situation what happens among Arabs. First you declare a hudna, a cease-fire, and then you all sit down together and come to an Atwa." And they gave me the example of two villages where a brother and sister from one village married a brother and sister from the other village. And the women went home with the men to the village. So, you know, one village she goes home and this woman is a good Arab wife and suddenly got three kids, three boys. And the other woman goes, no children. And people over here say, "Well, you got a bad deal. I mean that village tricked us. And blah, blah, blah, blah blah, blah." And she gets so upset she kills herself by throwing herself into the well. This village now says, "You killed one of our women." And they decide to come and seek revenge.
Swanson: Sure.
McDermott: And hudna - and then they all sat down and they came to the agreement that this village would give $20,000 to this village. There would be no contact between these villages, 6 kilometers apart, no contact for 20 years. At the end of 20 years if there had been no problems the $20,000 would be given back. The, there is no signing of any agreement. This is a shake hands and have a cup of coffee kind of agreement. And they know and they know what will happen if somebody breaks it. And that, the Iraqi who told me this story said, "You know, I was young enough that I was old enough to be there 20 years later. They called me and said they were going to go and have this ceremony to bring the $20,000 back." He said, "Three years later one of the boys married a girl from the other village." He said, "We settle things that way. We don't call them peace treaties or peace agreements because there is no such thing as peace. It is always an arrangement." And what anybody looking, they said, anybody looking at Iraq would say you have to have at the table the Shia Persians and the Shia Arabs. You've got to have the Sunni. You've got to have the Kurds. You've got to have the Turkmen. You've got to have all these people, and then they have to work out an arrangement how it's going to work.
Swanson: Uh-huh.
McDermott: And everybody has to be satisfied and if that happens they can have peace. They don't want to kill each other. They don't want, they don't want their families killed or the other families killed. But there has to be, everybody has to be there. Now they had one of those down in Cairo, but it was engineered by us and they said it can't be engineered by you. It has to be engineered either by the Saudis or the Egyptians. And they can, they, because then it will not be seen as America controlling. Because as long as it is seen as American controlling, it will not work. And our problem in Iraq is that we simply don't perceive the people that we are dealing with as what they are. I mean, we want them to be like us and we think that if we just show them they will be like us. Well, I mean, they've been living 1000 years or 2000 years that way. Why would you think that your system was so much better that you could just kind of walk in, drop it on the table and they'd say, "Oh, God. This is just what we've been waiting for!"
Swanson: Yep.
YUGOSLAVIA
McDermott: So, our problems with this whole business around the peace things that are going on now is that I think fundamentally we don't want to give up control. That's what the Iraqis said. And there were people there from every group. I mean, you know, they said, "It's not religion." They said, "It's as much Arab and Persian as it is anything else." I mean, Iran is Persian, and that obviously means Shia, but there are Shia who are also Arabs. So, you know, it's not - and yesterday in the NY Times they had the map. People say, "Well, let's just divide it up in three pieces." Well, it ain't that easy when people are living together as they are in Baghdad. You just can't . . .
Swanson: divide houses and families . . .
McDermott: Right. And, ethnic cleansing is certainly, I mean, let's drive all of them out of here. It will be our city. Well, OK, but that is a pretty bloody way to get to it. And we saw in, I mean, if we didn't learn in the Balkans I don't know where the hell we're going to learn it.
Swanson: Yeah.
McDermott: Because we saw what happened when the Croats and the Slovenians, the Serbians and the Montenegrans and the Bosnians and I mean the whole thing was simply because we didn't understand what we were into.
KEY POINT IN A PLAN IS ENDING THE OCCUPATION
Swanson. So if there is a plan now that leaves the US in control but brings something in the direction of a halfway step towards peace that starts to talk about negotiations and amnesty and so forth, is it possible to support that sort of plan while urging more, or do you have to . . . .
McDermott: I think all of us would support anything that looks like it might work. But I have to say I have serious reservations. I mean, I just talked to my friend again in Iraq, rather in Amman. And he sent me an email. There's an article in the Seattle paper called, "It's Tribal," meaning it's not, this was I think last Sunday, it's not religious. It's tribal. Well, I sent that to him and I said, "What do you think of this?" He said, "Well, you know, it's not bad for a start. But," he said, "this is way more complicated than the author really understands." And he said that the fundamental thing is that as long as you are on my land this is not going to be resolved. And he said you can see that in Palestine and you can see it in Iraq.
Swanson: Yep.
McDermott: You are an occupier. And as long as you occupy my land, then I am going to fight. So as long as the United States - that's why Jack Murtha's, the best part of his plan is strategic redeployment. Let's pull out to the periphery. Let's get down into Kuwait. We can send our troops down to Kuwait. If there is something we want to go and do we can do it from there. Or maybe we can, maybe even the Kurds would allow us to have some troops up there. I mean, who knows. But if we don't pull out, we will still be occupiers.
Swanson: Yeah.
McDermott: And he said, "It's that fundamental." And he said, "It's not going to be resolved with us sitting there, running it."
Swanson: Yes.
McDermott: Because nobody believes that it isn't the American's running it. And that's why that Atwa can't be set up by the Americans and run by the Americans or, I mean, that's what we did in, you know, we did the same, we tried to do this in a culturally sensitive way in . . . You may remember in Afghanistan. They put together a... It's the same concept, I mean that's an Atwa among the Afghanis. Well, we selected who went! And you see what we've got there. We have Karzai losing support now in the polls, and hardly more than Mayor of Kabul, while you have the war lords running the country and the Taliban coming back. I mean, so if, I mean, the British history on Afghanistan is pretty clear. We're not going to be able to run it. The Brits got beaten twice there, and we're going to go out the same way.
Swanson: Yeah.
McDermott: But we've shifted it over onto NATO now. We're going to kind of use them as a sort of a surrogate because there's really nothing over there. But in Iraq we're not going to put the NATO in there. We're going to keep the control of ourselves. And they put out the word that they are going to keep 50,000 troops. That's what's confusing. On the one hand they say we're going to keep 50,000 people there and probably for 15 years. Is this withdrawal? Problem with withdrawing 100,000, yeah, but you've got 50,000 sitting there . .
Swanson. Right.
McDermott: . . . fully armed in Fortress America called the Green Zone or the embassy. I mean, it just doesn't pass the laugh test. . . .
Swanson: Yep.
McDermott: . . . for an Arab. And our unwillingness to admit that we are dealing with a situation where we can use overwhelming force, but we make enemies that just won't quit. And so, you turn your back, you're done. I mean there's no place where our soldiers are safe.
Swanson: Yeah.
McDermott: And I don't want to put those kids that are out on my picture in the front of the office, I don't want them to be in that situation, but that's what they are in. I want to get them home out of that, so I would support anything, but I am dubious when we are not honest about whether we want out. And if we want out, then we give up control, and we want control of the oil.
Swanson: Uh-huh.
IT'S ABOUT THE OIL
McDermott: If nothing else, if the Iraqis tomorrow would say you can have all the oil, you can control the oil, and just give us the money, give us some money now and then. We'd take it. And we don't want to control Anbar province, or you know. All we want is the pipelines.
WHAT ABOUT ACCOUNTABILITY AND IMPEACHMENT?
Swanson: You know, I just walked over here from a Senate Office building where Senators Dorgan and Bingaman, and Feinstein and Reid were holding a hearing, so-called hearing, Democratic hearing, on pre-war intelligence. And they had in experts from the State Department and the CIA and the assistant to Secretary of State Powell and so on testifying, rather similar to the hearing that we did over a year ago with Congressman Conyers and yourself and others in the basement of the Capitol. And they are making the case that this was known what a disaster this would be, that it was known that the weapons of mass destruction and the ties to 9/11 were lies, that the intelligence was there but was ignored or shoved aside, that other intelligence was twisted and politicized, and so on. I know that you are co-sponsoring Congressman Conyer's bill House Resolution 635 that would start an investigation and even make recommendations on impeachment. How far do you think accountability should go here? Is there a question whether impeachable offenses have been committed?
McDermott: At this point, the most important thing is to get us out of there and get our troops out. I am not interested in wasting or spending time, I won't say wasting, but spending time on impeachment, because what I want is one way or another to set in process some way to get the troops home. And we can waste a lot of time and energy on trying to do, you know, who knew what when, I mean, yeah, OK. What the question now is what do we do now to get us out of the situation we are in. And frankly, I mean, I have been one who has called for Rumsfeld being replaced. I mean, if this guy was a coach, he'd be gone. He wouldn't be coaching in the National Football League or the National Basketball League. I mean, just everything he's done is wrong.
Swanson: And the next coach would know that he had to win or he'd be gone.
McDermott: Right. And the next one would know that his job was to get us out of this thing. And one of the problems is how you save face. I mean there's a whole bunch of stuff. And I'm more interested in pursuing how we get a peace conference going, how we get a peace plan, and how we get some consensus in our caucus. Unfortunately we still have, you know, 40-some people. I mean, we're up to 153, that's the good news. But we've still got a whole bunch of people on our side who are still either afraid politically, or I don't know. I mean some of them I know truly do believe that there is a way that this can come out well. I wish I believed that. I just frankly do not believe it. I didn't believe it from the beginning.
Swanson: Right.
McDermott: But, but, and in some ways, I mean, there is no pleasure in being right about that. I mean, see, vengeance or, I mean that doesn't do very much for the kids that are going over there tomorrow and have to die.
Swanson: Uh-uh.
McDermott: And so I'm interested not in, you know, in whatever who, when, what, as much as I am interested in who is doing what now. I mean the question that troubles me is, Who is guiding this confusing planning where Casey is going out one place saying one thing, and out comes Condoleeza Rice another place, and here comes Cheney over here and then up jumps Maliki with his ideas. I mean, who is putting it together? Where are they doing this?
[Last year, at the Downing Street Memo hearing, Congressman McDermott WAS interested in who had done what when. Here's a video clip.]
Swanson: Yeah.
McDermott: Because at this point, I mean, Rumsfeld says, you know, I'm in charge and we're staying the course. Well, it isn't staying the course when you've got Casey standing up saying, well we're going to have to get out.
Swanson: Right.
McDermott: And we've got a plan, we've got a plan to get out. Well, when? What is this plan? Where is it? Who? So, I am much more interested in that.
CAN CONGRESS END THE WAR IF IT TRIES?
Swanson: But if we picked up another 60 Congress members, if Congress were to pass, say, Congressman McGovern's bill - cut off funding, that's it, end the war - would that end the war? I mean, we've seen Congress pass a law saying you can't torture and the President signed it and said, "Yep, this means I can torture." Congress has passed a law saying you can't spy without court authorization - the president goes ahead and spies. There are apparently operations begun in Iran. I don't know that Congress has ever authorized that. If Congress ends the war, does the war end?
McDermott: If we cut off the funds, it will be pretty hard for them to continue this operation. I, whatever the black operations are that are going on in the rest of the world, I don't know. I worry about that a lot but I don't know how to get a handle on that. Uh, I think that the issue of, uh, I mean there are things to be looked at here that I think where there are some real accountability questions. The issues of misspent money and torture and then some, and not - putting out the new Army manual without the Geneva Conventions in them. I mean, that was just laying on my desk, it was just reported in the press.
Swanson: Right.
McDermott: I mean we are making some fundamental moves that we are going to have to go back and rebuild a lot of stuff if we are now training people and not telling them about the Geneva Conventions. We're free to do whatever we want to people. We are no better than the people we're fighting. I mean, we may think we are because we go to church on Christmas and New Years or Christmas and Easter, but if our behavior in the field is no different, then we have lost the whole moral high ground. But one thing we always had, the thing that the world looked us for, I mean, they look to us for, I mean, they look to us for, you know, to enforce human rights violations or to prevent them.
Swanson: Yeah.
McDermott: And in Guantanamo is, I mean, we don't think of it as a gulag, but our main, you know, we've got to do some pretty fast dancing to figure out how to describe it in any other way than a prison camp that has no end . We put people in and they are forgotten. There is no way to get out. Uh, so when you, when you, when you start saying that we live by one set of rules and you have to live by another set, you are in real danger.
Swanson: So what should citizens be doing? What should the peace movement be doing? What should people be doing who don't like the direction we are headed?
McDermott: Well, (phone call interruption) I've got something I've got to do here. Um, what should citizens be doing?
Swanson: You've worked with activist groups like ours and with bands like Anti-Flag and so on, I don't know what other creative outreach you've done, but what is useful? What should people do?
IT'S ABOUT THE ELECTIONS
McDermott: Get involved with campaigns to change the agenda. If we don't , if we don't win one house this time, the next two years are going to be awful, just going to be awful. And my view is this election is a referendum on the President. And nothing else matters except getting the gavels back into the hands of Democrats, whether you are talking in the Senate or you're talking in the House or both. Because that is the only way we can set the agenda. Because when you have the gavel, you set the agenda. And the president is setting the agenda and Congress is rubberstamping everything he wants. And the only way out of that. So from my point of view the only thing really at this point is to unelect some people.
Swanson: Right.
McDermott: And it's not easy because the problem is that people are, people say, "I hate the Congress but I like our Congressman. He's a good guy. He's really a good man." No! You want more of Bush, you vote for him.
Swanson: Right.
McDermott: You've got to vote against so and so.
A DEMOCRATIC FUTURE
Swanson: But Bush will still be here even if there is a Democratic majority. I don't know if he'll start vetoing or if he'll keep doing the signing statements, but . .
McDermott: At that point the boat begins to turn. Because once you've got the agenda and we can actually have hearings and put in legislation and hang amendments and do things that are, I mean, my depleted uranium amendment will become law.
Swanson. Yes.
McDermott: There will be a lot of things that will happen if we get the agenda back. And the problem is, no it isn't going to turn as fast as we want. I mean this guy has done a lot of damage. And he will still do some, but he's going to have to be, but he's going to get into much, tougher, tougher situations. When he has people calling his Defense Secretary up and publicly bringing them out and people talking about who is making these contracts and what are they making them for and all the stuff that is going on right now that is totally submerged.
HOW DO YOU AVOID IMPEACHMENT?
Swanson: If the Democrats have a majority, though, the Judiciary Committee will do investigations, and if they do any investigations the impeachable offenses are already public knowledge. You know, "I will not obey FISA" and so forth. So . . .
McDermott: That may, you know, that may be the direction they go. But I don't think that, I mean, that should not be the goal - to impeach George Bush. That, I mean, what have you got then? What have you done? You have suffered through seven years of this guy. It will take a year to do that. So we're going to talk about this is going to be the last year of his election. And at that point it is irrelevant. It really is irrelevant. Not that the, that the unimpeachable, or the impeachable offense occurred. They should be unearthed and we should look at how we can prevent them from happening in the future. Uh, the punishment, or the, you know, the public, whatever people would like to do who see, I mean my district is filled with people who want to impeach. I understand the impulse. But the thing is at the end of the day, all right, you've impeached him. Now what do you? Cheney is president of the United States? What is that? What good is that? Tell me what good it is? (Laughs)
Swanson: Well, I'm not sure how you could have a real investigation of one of those two without incriminating the other. But imagine you could, . . .
McDermott: But the problem, yeah, but see - the issue is not those two guys now. They have made their mark in history. Our question is how do we put this country back together after them. And look at everything they have done from setting energy policy in the office of the Vice President and fighting it all the way up to the top of the Supreme Court and keeping it secret, even who was in the meeting. Even though we know Ken Lay was there, a few others of these scoundrels. The question is how do you make it so that can't happen again?
Swanson: Well, I've talked to a lot of people who think that some accountability in the form perhaps of impeachment works to prevent that happening again. My impression from many, many people and speaking for myself is it's not just vengeance or anger or desire to see George Bush suffer . . . I would be happy . . .
McDermott: You know the country watched an impeachment. It was a circus.
Swanson: It was?
McDermott: It was. It was a circus. We don't need a circus. What we need is a serious examination of what is going on. It would take all the energy out of everything else that needs to be done.
Swanson: Nixon left before it even happened.
McDermott: Nixon was in what, six months? Eight months? Six months, I guess? From the time he was inaugurated, he was out. And you know, that was different time, different issue, different set of circumstances. We're now, we've suffered from six years of this guy and four years of a war. Longer than we spent in the Second World War on this thing. And this guy has wasted our resources and destroyed us economically and all the rest of it. And spending all our time and energy on a circus around an impeachment is not as important to me as making sure we shore up some things. I've got to go do something else here.
Swanson: I appreciate your time. Thank you very much!
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AUDIO OF THIS INTERVIEW IS AVAILABLE HERE:
This wma file has been compressed to 2.67 MB by Peter Bricel. This mp3 file has been compressed to 5.11 MB by Tim Goodrich.
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Congressman McDermott spoke on the floor Monday evening and again, briefly, Tuesday morning. Here are his prepared remarks for Tuesday:
Rep. Jim McDermott (D-WA)
Remarks
Floor of the House of Representatives
1-Minute
Iraq Timetable
June 27, 2006
Mr. Speaker:
On Sunday, Iraq's Prime Minister unveiled a 24 point plan that includes a timetable for U.S. withdrawal.
Last week, the U.S. military's top commander in Iraq briefed the President and top Republicans about a plan to significantly reduce the number of U.S. soldiers in Iraq.
For months, Democrats have been calling for a new direction, including a timetable to redeploy U.S. soldiers out of harm's way.
And, the American people have been saying it is time for a new direction that protects U.S. interests by protecting U.S. soldiers.
The Iraqi people, the American people, and U.S. commanders all say the same thing: it is time for a timetable.
And the President still says the same thing. Stay the course.
Mr. Speaker, Democrats were wrong. The President's favorite phrase - stay the course - is not a slogan. It is a direct order for Republican Members of Congress to deny their better judgment, disregard their concerned constituents, and defy top U.S. military commanders.
The President is off course, and until there is a mid-term course correction, America will remain misled and misguided in Iraq, and U.S. soldiers will bear the brunt of the President's failures.
Thank you.