Always a Bridesmaid?

You once called Slobodan Milosevic a war criminal to his face. You also told Dick Cheney that, were he not a constitutional officer, the president should fire him. So when it comes to the mistakes made in Iraq, why should impeachment of President Bush be off the table?
It shouldn’t be. But impeachment like everything else is a matter of priorities and responsibility. In order to move on impeachment now, we would be put in a position at a very, very delicate time in our nation’s history, of having necessarily to take our eye off the ball on a host of other things that will have longer-lasting impact on the security of this country. As a practical matter, it sucks all the oxygen out of the air. We would effectively be paralyzed for the next six months or longer. … The alternative, and it’s taken me time to think through, I think we should be acquiring and accumulating all the data that is appropriate for possibly bringing criminal charges against members of this administration at a later date.

When, right after 9/11, you heard of Richard Perle’s plan to drop 17,000 paratroopers into Baghdad in one night, capture or kill Saddam, and then wipe out his Republican Guard, why didn’t you spread the word that people were ginning up some interesting ideas about invading Iraq?
No. 1: at the time I was told in confidence. No. 2: he made it clear he was actually trying to solicit my support as a “muscular Democrat”—whatever the hell that meant—for the notion. It was clear that it hadn’t been decided yet. It was a policy pushed by, I assume, Richard and others. In going back to that period, I allude to that, without mentioning him. … I do have to take responsibility for miscalculating the degree to which this president was capable of taking the wrong advice and being incompetent. I never thought he would choose the route that he chose. And once, having chosen it, to go ahead with such little thought as to what would happen when he moved.

Before President Bush’s first trip to Europe—both in life and in office—you wrote that he jokingly yelled at Colin Powell, “Remember to pack clean underwear?” What’s that about?
This is the same kind of thing that [former Treasury secretary] Paul O’Neill talked about in the Ron Suskind book [“The Price of Loyalty”]. O’Neill made the case that the president is a bully and bullies always give you nicknames. They want to demonstrate that they’re in charge and calling the shots. This was the president’s way of saying, “Colin, I’m your boss.” And all Powell could do was smile in front of everyone and say, “You see how I’m treated, Senator.” I find it all somewhat degrading.

Which Republican in the current field scares you the most?
I could tell you off the record but it sounds too presumptuous to answer something like that. Plus, I think we can beat them all.

What about Rudy Giuliani? Couldn’t he put more states in play than any other Republican?
No. Giuliani’s signature position on national security is the place he’s most vulnerable, based on how little he actually knows about foreign policy.

Would you feel unfulfilled in your career if, as some observers are predicting, you ended up not as president but as secretary of State under the next Democratic president?
I promise you, I don’t want to be secretary of State. If I did, this is certainly not the best way to go about it. I’m going to be taking sharper and sharper exceptions with my colleagues. And it won’t be easy to then turn around and ask to be secretary of State. The truth is, I will be upset only if I don’t say what I think during this campaign. I can die a happy man not hearing “Hail to the Chief.”

© 2007