"The president ought to be ashamed"

What's your take on the situation in Iraq?

One word: Disaster. And when the secretary of defense puts out a memo to his top staff and says we don't have the metrics to determine whether we're winning or losing the war on terrorism? If the secretary of defense does not understand that we're losing our rear end in Iraq in order to save our face, he ought quit being secretary of defense. Because all you have to do is ask any Pfc. out there. They're sitting ducks with targets on their backs; they're getting blown up. The question more and more is, for what? And, when are we coming home?

The president is trying to find a reason, now that there's no weapons of mass destruction, no yellow cake coming from Niger, no connection with al-Qaida and no immediate threat to the United States, we now have a war of choice. I'm telling you we're in a mess. It's a disaster.

If the pattern holds for the rest of the month, we'll have 100 U.S. soldiers killed during November.

We've lost more youngsters killed in Iraq in less than a year than we lost during the first three years of the Vietnam War. And people say there's no Vietnam analogy?

Do you regret your vote last fall in favor of the resolution authorizing war?

I do. Because I sensed it was a political ploy rather than a ploy to genuinely protect the United States. It was just an attempt to get any resolution passed so the administration could say, just like Lyndon Johnson [with Vietnam], 'We got the approval of Congress.' And then, just like Lyndon Johnson, they went ahead and did whatever they wanted to do; massive buildup, putting the military on thin political ice, getting a bunch of kids killed.

You were up for reelection at the time and you felt a pressure to vote yes?

Yes. They did this purposefully. I will say to you that I did think that it was worth a shot to give the president of the United States the authority to go to the United Nations and try to put together a coalition to try to find out if there were weapons of mass destruction. And if there were weapons of mass destruction, to destroy them.

Of course what I did not know was that the White House had the 1992 Cheney-Wolfowitz war plan on the front burner. I knew they wanted regime change. But I did not know that the Cheney-Wolfowitz war plan was what they were going to do with and that they hadn't figured out a plan B.

I know you're a supporter of Sen. John Kerry.

I am yes, a big supporter.

Do you think his vote last fall in favor of war has hurt him?

Yes, it's cost him. But he and I were trying to do the right thing and give the president of the United State the benefit of the doubt. After all, the vice president stood up at the VFW convention and said Iraq is building nuclear weapons. It was all part of cherry-picking the intelligence and boosting the case for war in Iraq, which they'd already decided to do. They were just looking for reasons. They kept saying there was a connection between Saddam Hussein and al-Qaida. And the president said it's all about terrorism and the war on terrorism. Everybody in the administration was selling this used car. The problem is all the wheels have fallen off the car and we've got a lemon. Looking back, yeah, I regret that vote. I gave the president of the United States the benefit of the doubt. He took it as a blank check. I feel like I have been duped, I don't mind telling you. But the deal with Iraq was obvious. [White House political strategist] Karl Rove and those guys knew that all of a sudden the president's numbers shot up, so the Cheney-Wolfowitz plan fit with Karl Rove's plan; perpetual war keeps the president's numbers up and we'll cover over any attack on the president and any other issue. So they put that front and center and used it as a hammer. They even put me up there with Osama bin Laden and all that kind of stuff, and said I voted against Homeland Security when I was really one of the authors of the Homeland Security bills. So you can see how they used it as a hammer over members of Congress who were running.

And now we've got an absolute disaster on our hands. And now the president's numbers are falling and they don't know what to do about it. So the ground truth has overtaken the political B.S. and now the real truth of the war, the cost of the war, is coming out. The American people, one thing I know is, they do not fight wars of attrition well. And as Thomas Paine once said, "Time makes more converts than reason." As time goes on, this war will not be resolved.

Now, how does this relate to the 9/11 commission? If you slow-walk the 9/11 commission and keep kicking this can down the road, and keep making deals and denying access, within a year they'll have the election out of the way. So it's election-driven.

What should the U.S. now do to improve the situation in Iraq?

You've got to go back and do what you didn't do in the first place. You didn't put together a U.N. coalition, you didn't get the vote of the National Security Council. You didn't bring along your NATO allies. As a matter of fact, all of Europe is laughing at us and the president is going into the teeth of 100,000 demonstrators against our transatlantic ally, the only one we've got left, Britain. This is a disaster.

Do we need more troops in Iraq?

No, no, no. You've got a have an exit strategy. You've got to make this a U.N protectorate with our NATO allies taking up the political and economic restoration of Iraq and we have to command our troops and withdraw our forces. We've got to give up our oil fields.

You've got to pull out. Don't try to make it the 51st state. That's what the White House was trying to do; they're trying to make Iraq the 51st state. The dream of Cheney and Wolfowitz was you create a base of operations in Iraq and then you attack Syria and Iran. I'm serious. You think this is nuts. It is nuts in the case of this particular cost of blood and treasure that the American people are finding out and they're going south on this big time.

When you were in the Senate you were known as a moderate Democrat; you voted in favor of the Bush tax cuts. It's clear your perception of the White House has changed dramatically.

Yeah, they lied to me. I know they lied flat-out about any connection to al-Qaida. Now al-Qaida is teaming up with Saddam loyalists and are doing what? Targeting Americans. They do have a target in common now and that's the 130,000 U.S. soldiers out there. And we lost two more yesterday.

What was your reaction when you saw President Bush landing on the deck of the USS Abraham Lincoln in May to give a victory speech of sorts?

I'll tell you the truth. I thought, "Oh my God." A man who deliberately got out of going to Vietnam by hiding out in the National Guard and who did not even complete his National Guard tour of duty, now walks onto an aircraft carrier in a flight suit with helmet under his arm, as if he's Tom Cruise in "Top Gun," and "Mission Accomplished."

What do you think now?

The president ought to be ashamed because real soldiers are out there fighting and dying for a disastrous policy that he created. I'm telling you this is serious business. And that has now all been acknowledged as a sham. We're in a helluva mess. And the worst part is the kids are getting killed every damn day, that's what gets me.

I want to ask you about Democrats in the South. They just won the Louisiana governor's race, but the weeks earlier had not been good for Democrats in Mississippi and Kentucky. There's lot of concerns in Democratic circles that the South is essentially gone, which could relegate Democrats almost to a permanent minority party. As someone who won lots of elections in the South, what do you think Democrats have to do to win statewide elections?

I think these states have their own peculiarities of local issues. In Georgia, with the president being 70 percent popular and coming in targeting me as hostile to national security, putting me up there with Osama bin Laden, and raising millions of dollars, and Karl Rove pumping in millions of dollars to [former Georgia GOP chief] Ralph Reed down there, and using Georgia as a test case for voter turnout and capturing the white male anger, the backlash at the governor for taking the Confederate banner off the state flag, that was powerful and it took out me and the governor.

When you mobilize the entire Republican apparatus and you energize it with race and the good ole boys in the South, that's tough to beat. That's the Nixon 1968 "Southern strategy." And the Republicans have adopted the Southern strategy.

Meanwhile, the Florida seat is open now. Bob Graham said to heck with it and I understand that. And we'll see how Florida pans out. With Jeb Bush as governor it'd be tough to get a Democrat there. Georgia has an open seat and you're probably looking at a Republican taking that.

Democrats in the South have to do a better job organizing themselves and not take things for granted. I think we in Georgia took for granted that our base would be organized. It's now obvious the Republicans have set a new standard with Ralph Reed and Karl Rove in charge, they nationalize local elections.

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