Rick Santorum, Bob Casey and Tim Russert on Meet the Press:

MR. RUSSERT: But, but stay on Iraq, Senator.

SEN. SANTORUM: I’m coming back to it. But we can’t—you can’t ignore the fact that we are, we are fighting this war on multi-fronts, and Iraq is simply a front. And Iran, which is, which is the principal stoker of this, this Shia/Sunni sectarian violence, would love nothing more to see than the Iraqi democracy fail because of that. This is a tactic of Iran to disrupt the—our, our efforts in Iraq by, in fact, trying to defeat the Sunnis. So there’s, there’s no question, this is a very complex war.

But understand, at the, at the heart of this war is Iran. Iran is the, is, is the problem here. Iran is the one that’s causing most of the problems in, in Iraq. It is causing most of the problems, obviously, with Israel today. It is, it is the one funding these organizations. And is the, is the country that we need to focus on in this war against Islamic fascism.

MR. RUSSERT: So Iran now has more influence in Iraq than they did before Saddam Hussein?

SEN. SANTORUM: Just understand.

MR. RUSSERT: Is that true?

SEN. SANTORUM: I would say that they have influence in, in, in a free country where you have an opportunity to express yourself, if you will. Yes. You can probably do more...

SEN. SANTORUM: ...in that country than they would within a dic—a totalitarian regime. ....

MR. RUSSERT: Senator Santorum, leading up to the war. In October of 2002, this is what Rick Santorum said, “Saddam Hussein’s regime, is a serious and grave danger to the safety of the American people.” “Given the threat posed to he world by his weapons of mass destruction programs...” Would you now acknowledge that that was not correct?

SEN. SANTORUM: What I would say is that we have found weapons of mass destruction, they were older weapons, but we have found chemical weapons. The report was just released not too long ago that, that said that there were over 500 chemical weapons found in Iraq.

MR. RUSSERT: Senator, the president has accepted the report of his two task force and said, “That the chief weapons inspector has issued his report. Iraq did not have the weapons our intelligence believed were there.”

SEN. SANTORUM: Well, there were all sorts of weapons that our intelligence believed were there. They thought that they were new weapons. So far we, we did not—we have not found any new weapons. But we have found old weapons, weapons from the Iran/Iraq conflict, and we found over 500 and the report says that there were more.

SEN. SANTORUM: That’s the—that’s a fact.

MR. RUSSERT: Was Saddam a serious and grave danger to America?

SEN. SANTORUM: I believe that Iraq was a serious and grave danger to America. I believe...

MR. RUSSERT: Based on what?

SEN. SANTORUM: Well, based on the fact that they were working—and we have certainly lots of information about the fact that they were working with other terrorist organizations, including al-Qaeda, and that they were, in fact—had camps that they were—while they were training Baathists, they were also training terrorists to be used. The...

MR. RUSSERT: President Bush said that Iraq had “nothing to do with September 11th.” Do you agree with that?

SEN. SANTORUM: As far as we know, that’s, that’s the case. ...

This excerpt interesting too.

MR. RUSSERT: Let me pursue that, because when President Clinton took troops into Kosovo, this is what you [Santorum] said. “President Clinton is once again releasing American military might on a foreign country with an ill defined objective and no exit strategy. He is yet to tell Congress how much this operation will cost. And, he has not informed our nation’s Armed Forces about how long they will be away from home.”

Do you believe you should have the same standard for President Bush? He should give a defined objective, he should give an exit strategy, he should give a cost, and he should give a timeline for Iraq, just as you were demanding President Clinton give for Kosovo?

SEN. SANTORUM: No. Because, because Kosovo and, and Slobodan Milosevic were never a security threat to the United State of America. No way. There—I mean, it wasn’t even close.

MR. RUSSERT: But these are men and women at war.

SEN. SANTORUM: We had, we had—excuse me—we had no business, in my opinion—and I felt this today—we had no business going in—into that area. We had no national security interest. We are up against an enemy that every single day in the streets of Iran they’re out talking about how they want to destroy the United States, how they want to wipe Israel off the face of the earth. We can sit back and say they’re not a real threat, we can sit back and play games and, and, and pick apart the administration’s strategy, or we can focus... ....

MR. RUSSERT: ...but what is wrong with asking—what is wrong with asking for a defined objective, an exit strategy, a cost estimate and a timeline? [...]

SEN. SANTORUM: And again, I go back to Iran. What—a big problem I have with this administration is it hasn’t been tough enough on Iran. It should not have let Khatemi come into this country and be at Harvard today. It should not have negotiated with the Iranians on their nuclear program. They’re stringing us along and they’re going to continue to string us along. We need to pass the Iran Freedom of Support Act, my bill that I introduced two years ago. I offered that on the floor of the United States Senate.

MR. RUSSERT: Should we launch a military attack against Iran?

SEN. SANTORUM: No, I think what we have is an opportunity—and again, my bill says this—to go after them by using pro-democracy forces within Iran, also pro-democracy forces outside, and to do something to crack down on that regime with additional sanctions. That’s the one-two punch. The administration so far has opposed me on that.

Beyond the to-the-right of the White House themes of WMD in Iraq and the hint that perhaps the truth is still out there on Saddam's role in 9/11, Santorum's language on an Iran strategy at the end here is interesting. Not we will "support" Iran's pro democracy forces, or we will "fund" or "train" or "assist" the pro-democracy forces, as unwelcome as even those statements may be to actual dissident forces suffering the regime's wrath in Iran, but we will "use" the pro-democracy forces, in and out of Iran. "We will go after them [the regime] by using pro-democracy forces within Iran," Santorum says. And keep in mind what Newt Gingrich, who is a member of the Defense Policy Board, said earlier this week.

Posted by Laura at September 3, 2006 10:42 PM