[Update: Joe Bodell's interview, see below]

I wanted Bob Kerrey to be President in 1992. The Senator and Vietnam war hero sounded to me like the best Democrat. I'd come to the conclusion that he also represented my views the best of the available candidates. Plus, he seemed to deal with the pressures of the Presidential race quite well. When the press discovered he was dating actress Debra Winger, he famously quipped that she'd "swept me of my foot." Kerrey had lost the bottom of one leg to the Vietnam war.

Kerrey served in the Navy SEALs from 1966 to 1969 earning the Medal of Honor for his valor in the battle in which a grenade took his leg. After rehabilitating, he ran a chain of restaurants and fitness centers until he entered politics in 1982. He ran for Governor of Nebraska and won. He served one term and ran for Senate in 1988 beating the incumbent by 15%. He served two terms in Congress. He met Al Franken in 1994. Kerrey was dating former Saturday Night write Sarah Paley (now his wife) and she introduced him to Al. Al helped on his 1994 Senate race and they've remained friends since then.

In 2001 he became President of The New School in New York City. He was rumored to be interested in opposing NYC Mayor Michael Bloomberg in 2005 and now with Sen. Chuck Hagel (R-NE) declaring that he'll retire from the Senate, he's been rumored to be interested in running for the Senate again.

“I have decided I will not leave The New School to become a candidate for the United States Senate in Nebraska. The reason is simple enough: For my family and me now is not the time for me to re-enter politics as a candidate,” he said in a statement.
(Wall Street Journal)

I can understand why. He's living in Manhattan and President of a college. I can imagine that he has a pretty comfortable lifestyle in what I consider the greatest city on the planet. He'd have to return to the pressures and constant fundraising of Senatorial politics. He'd have to reestablish residency in Nebraska and move to Washington, DC. "You understand," he replied when I queried if this was why he wasn't running.

Former Senator Bob Kerrey came to Minnesota Saturday for a Vets for Franken rally in Saint Paul. I met Sen. Kerrey at a coffee shop (a lousy national chain) near the airport. We had a wide-ranging and interesting conversation. I gained a little insight into the Mukasey nomination, the battered-wife syndrome currently affecting the Senate, Sen. Jim Webb and Washington pundits.

Torture and Mukasey

I began by asking how this nation has come to a stage where we can have an Attorney General who is not really very good on torture. An AG refuses to answer if he thinks waterboarding is illegal. Would he comment on Michael Mukasey's nomination?

"It's complicated by the fact that if he were to say waterboarding is illegal, he would have to prosecute members of the Bush Administration," Kerrey replied. "At least we got to question Mukasey. The Interim AG is worse. If Democrats blocked Mukasey, we'd just keep Paul Clement as Interim AG.

"The problem is the President's view of torture and it's bigger than Mukasey. It's permissive and has allowed us to get to this point. The President never understood that this is a war of values and we've subverted our own. The world hasn't looked at what the President has said, they've looked at our actions. What have we done? We've done exactly what the terrorists have wanted us to do. The terrorists want the Patriot Act, indescriminate detention of Arabs, Abu Ghraib, Americans arguing over whether or not torture is wrong and various other distractions."

"All of these things have taken our focus off of the larger, long-term problem of terrorists in Afghanistan."

The Iraq War

I asked what he thought it would take to get us out of Iraq.

"I think we're heading out," he replied. He must've seen the look of WTF on my face and explained further. "With the decline in violence and the worsening of Afghanistan and Pakistan, I think that Iraq has a more stable government than Afghanistan and Pakistan." I still must've looked puzzled so he continued. He explained that Afghanistan and Pakistan were larger and worse problems than Iraq in the long-term. I queried about the 30,000 that Petreaus claims will be leaving by next summer -- weren't they just the troops that were part of the escalation whose tours were ending? No, he thinks that many more than that will be coming out, possibly the vast majority. He thinks we should allow the Iraqis to figure things out themselves. If they request any lingering presence, then and only then do we keep troops there. However, it cannot be a decision made by the Bush Administration that we're going to keep troops in Iraq. He thinks this will happen next summer or at least start.

He then talked about how we need to focus more on Iran. And not as in attack them. We have a common goal in that Afghanistan is a huge problem for both of us. They share a border, our real war on terrorism is there. We need negotiation not saber-rattling.

Battered wife syndrome in the Senate

As a former Senator I asked his insight into what many of us on the left are characterizing as battered wife syndrome being exhibited in the Senate. Specifically, the MoveOn.org/Petraus controversy.

"First of all," began Kerrey. "I don't understand their motivation for claiming our top General betrayed us? I thought that was a stupid move politically. Betrayal is a big, loaded word."

I mentioned that I understood their motivation, they were trying to point out what a political figure Petreaus actually was.

"Right, but how many people knew that?" he countered. "99% of NY Times readers don't know that Petreaus authored that 2004 op-ed about the Iraq War. It was a content mistake by going after him in that way. They could have done it differently."

I took the conversation in a slightly different direction by asking why we Democrats had such a hard time getting anything done in the Senate and standing up to the Republicans.

"Right now the Senate is 49-49-2," he explained. "[Senator Joe] Lieberman votes Republican, [Independent Senator Bernie] Sanders votes with us." I mentioned that we have Democratic Senators like Ben Nelson (D?-NE) who consistently votes Republican. He nodded agreement. "So its obviously divided and one Senator can throw it off plus the Republicans have the White House."

"It comes down to there is no one coherent strategy on Iraq. Sen. Feingold has one way, Biden another, Dodd his own, etc. It's not like the minimum wage, where we all knew it needed to go up. And it did. On Iraq there are too many competing strategies of exactly how to get out of Iraq. The delicate balance and competing strategies is why we're seeing some of the behavior we are seeing in the Senate."

Washington pundits

Since he'd been a Senator and Presidential candidate, I asked what he thought about all the Washington pundits who are advising the Democratic politicians into the ground.

"The public is so fickle," he replied. "Its so dangerous to try and ride the wave of public opinion. We can change our minds so quickly. I can say that now as a member of the public. We buy something then want to return in a couple of weeks because its a piece of crap."

"Whenever a politician follows the advice of these pundits, they take credit for the idea if it turns out to be good advice. However, if the advice results in bad publicity or it wasn't a good idea to begin with, its completely the politicians fault."

I remarked "what a great racket -- they can never be wrong!" Sen. Kerrey nodded.

Sen. Jim Webb

I asked about his friend Senator James Webb (D-VA).

"He's doing great," he said. I agreed, Webb has been a rock star in the Senate. "Did you know he writes his own speeches and bills? He's a lawyer, too, and he's so thorough. His questioning of Petreaus was brilliant. He had no notes, but spoke clearly and asked his question directly. He's so different than many of the other Senators in that regard and I think its obvious." I agreed again.

When he questioned Petraeus he disputed that the progress in Al Anbar was because of the surge. He noted that his son's Marine battalion did much more to stabilize Al Anbar by going block by block than any troops who were part of the surge. He then asked if Petraeus thought it was a problem that most troops only got 9 months home between deployments of a year or even more? Petraeus agreed that it was a problem. Webb then went on to reintroduce his Dwell-Time amendment to the Defense bill to give troops at least one year home for every year deployed. Here's the transcript of Webb's testimony.

SEN. JIM WEBB, D-VA.: Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Gentlemen, welcome to mile 25. I have been with you all the way, but you have been running a lot harder than I have.

I would like to make just to two comments about some of the testimony that preceded me and then try to get two questions.

First, to echo something that Senator Clinton said, as a result of a question that was posed by Senator McCain, I think it's important to point out for the historical record that the situation in Al Anbar did turn around before the surge began. I mentioned this in the Committee on Foreign Relations, but I think it's important to mention it here.

Also, it is a matter of, on the one hand, personal loyalty. My son is an infantry Marine; was in the 1st battalion, 6th Marines, and through that period the last four months of last year, particular, they were knocking back Ramadi block by block and street by street.

I think, number one, they deserve credit. Number two, you don't want your staff to have to throw hands with the 1st Battalion, 6th Marines if somebody was trying to take credit for what they did.

The second is when we talk about consequences of failure, Ambassador, I, you know, sadly point out that so many of these consequences were people such as myself, General Zinni, General Scowcroft, were trying to point out as the predictable consequences of an invasions. We have basically scrambled the egg here and we're all struggling to try to find a way to bring the United States out of this in a way that will bring further stability to the region. But I think it's fair to point that out.

And I want to renew briefly, General Petraeus, my comments that I began at the end of the Foreign Relations Committee hearing about this dwell time situation.

You can see how divided we still are here in trying to come to grips with a policy. And as we continue this debate, I just very strongly believe that we need to put some sort of a safety net under our troops.

The one inarguable result of this policy has been the disruption of the rotational cycles of deployment, when we accelerated the deployment cycles.

And the policy has resulted in extended tours, 15-month deployments, and also an acceleration of other situations like stop- loss -- and on the Marine Corps side the going into the pool of the IRR in a way that they have not done in previous years.

And on a personal note, my number two daughter's long-time boyfriend, seven years, actually when I was an embedded journalist in Afghanistan in '04, I was able to get up to where his unit was, one of the nine stops that I made, did four years in the Marine Corps, infantry (inaudible), two tours in Afghanistan, out a year and a half, finally got a good job, last Friday he gets the news he's been recalled, he's going back to Iraq.

This is the kind of situation that people up here really aren't seeing because of the bifurcation that began back in Vietnam between the people who are making policy and the people whop are carrying it out, quite frankly. And I'm really glad to see so many members of this committee have been able to go on a CODEL and come over, and even if it's just a brief period of time, see what the United States military looks like, even see what a combat environment looks like.

But we need some advocates up here for a situation that is really having a dramatic impact on the men and women who are having to go through these repeated cycles.

I was out of the room when Senator Nelson of Florida asked about this. I am told, General, that he -- your response to him was that this is more a matter for a chief of staff of the Army in terms of dwell time. Is that correct?

PETRAEUS: Senator, I, again, am very concerned about the strain on and sacrifice of our soldiers. Obviously what a commander in the field wants is soldiers who have had maximum time between deployments. They'll obviously perform better, they'll have had more time to prepare presumably and be ready to go in a way -- rejuvenated in a way that they would not if it has been a shorter dwell time.

So, again, I very much want that, and I stated that, I believe, at that time; I certainly did earlier today.

What I meant by that is, again, I'm just not any -- been away from the Army sufficiently that I just don't have a feel for what that kind of policy would mean to the Army. It has a responsibility as a force provider. And I, again, don't know what that would do in that sense to the Army. And that's why I said it's just one I think I have to defer to the chief of staff of the Army having said that I'd love to, again, have some experience in this myself in the past six years, I think it's coming up on four of those six.

So I am all for maximum dwell time.

WEBB: Right. Well, I think I related to you a conversation I had had with the chief of staff Army where, when the tours went to 15 months, where his comment to me was that he is feeding the strategy.

So somewhere in here we need to find a balance. And that's the reason I introduced the amendment that I did. There are times, perhaps, when the Congress needs to weigh in and kind of be a referee.

The other question I wanted to be able to get in with the ambassador, it's something that I've thought a lot about and I would like to get your perceptions on.

I was a journalist in Beirut in the 1980s. You spent a long time there. I spent some time there, not in any way the sort that you did.

But I see a lot of similarities in the situation. From the Lebanon in the 1980's and the Iraq of today, although Iraq is sort of macrocosmic. But with the notion of a weak central government that can't get its feet on the ground and very strong-arm militias around that are not going to obey the edicts that come out of them. We had a, you know, a very bad situation there. We did lead.

What do you draw from this, in terms of how we're trying to fix the situation in Iraq?

CROCKER: Well, it's a great question, Senator, and certainly something that preoccupied my mind. I spent a total of six years in Lebanon, two different tours. And neither of them at really great times, given levels of violence.

You don't want to overstate the similarities, or at least I certainly don't. Iraq is a -- you know, a vastly bigger country, substantially greater strategic importance, I would argue. There are some other important differences, too, just in terms of internal conditions, that Lebanon was, without question, an all-out civil war in the late '70s, early '80s.

The army, as you recall, split and disintegrated. With all of the problems in Iraq, we're not seeing something to that level. In fact, it's kind of the opposite. Security forces actually expanding and improving, even as they're engaged in a fight and many aspects of that fight against other Iraqis. But they're hanging together.

One element of similarity that we have to keep in mind, because our adversaries most certainly are, and that is the roles of Iran and Syria. Iran and Syria came together, as you recall, to engage in Lebanon in the early '80s. They worked together to create Hezbollah in 1982, for example.

And they're still working together in Lebanon. Damascus airport, just as it channels foreign fighters into Iraq, also serves as a main supply hub for supplies going to Hezbollah from Iran.

So we need to look at it in those terms, because, certainly, in Tehran and Damascus, the coordination and the cooperation that they have brought to bear in Lebanon, in somewhat different ways they're also bringing to bear in Iraq.

WEBB: Well, my time is up. And in 30 seconds, one event that sticks in my mind, and I was there when it happened, was when the United States picked a side, even though it was the Lebanese army -- when we supported the Lebanese army in the Battle of Sug el Gharb with naval guns, then all of the other factions decided that we were fair game. And that could be argued that that led to the destruction of the building at the airport and the deaths of 241 Marines.

It's very difficult when you get involved in a five-sided argument.

Thank you.
(Washington Post)

[Update]

Check out Joe Bodell's interview which includes a vid from The Uptake.