CNN Live Event/Special - Transcript

CNN LIVE EVENT/SPECIAL 20:00

HEADLINE: President Bush Addresses Nation, World

GUESTS: Chuck Hagel, Joe Biden

BYLINE: Paula Zahn, Aaron Brown, John King, Nic Robertson, Christiana Amanpour, Jamie McIntyre, Jonathon Carl, Wolf Blitzer, Bill Schneider

HIGHLIGHT:
Four months after the President declared an end to major combat, Iraq remains a dangerous and costly mission. Is the public support declining? Will Congress stay the course? Will US allies around the world sign on to help rebuild Iraq? And as the September 11 anniversary approaches, is the US winning the war on terrorism?

ZAHN: We're joined now by a Democratic colleague now, Senator Joe Biden. Welcome, sir. Good to have you with us this evening.

SEN. JOSEPH BIDEN (D), DELAWARE: Hi, Paula. He's a great Republican, by the way.

ZAHN: I think people probably don't understand the nature of your relationship, colleagues that go way, way back there.

Let's talk a little bit about one thing noticeably absent from this speech, and that was a direct reference to any ongoing search for weapons of mass destruction. Were you disappointed by that?

BIDEN: No, I'm not, because the truth of the matter is that we're almost beyond that. Whether we were right to go in or not on weapons of mass destruction, things are so out of kilter now that we have to internationalize this, we have to secure Iraq for our own safety's sake, and I think the president put the right emphasis in leveling with the American people.

It's going to cost tens of billions of dollars and require well over 100,000 troops for some time. And the big thing he did, Paula, he finally rejected the advice of the neoconservatives, Mr. Cheney and Rumsfeld and others, and he's going to the United Nations, which was inevitable.

I wish we had done it earlier, but I give him credit for doing it now. Now I hope our French and German and other allies step up to the ball and are as magnanimous in acknowledging what we have to do now as the president was.

ZAHN: Senator Biden, do you think Congress is going to come up with the $87 billion the president's asking for?

BIDEN: I think it absolutely has to come up with it. We have no choice. We may have to consider doing something—now, look, I think the American people are ready to sacrifice to win, and I think if we went back to the American people and said, "Look, the very wealthiest among us, we're going to postpone your tax cut for a year or two to pay for this," I think they would embrace it.

I think they would do it. I don't know whether that's the way we're going to do it. But we're either going to make the deficit close to $600 billion, or we're not going to spend this money, and we have no choice.

We must—we must—keep this commitment in Iraq. It's going to be hard. I will support him, I will support spending that money, and I hope we decide that there's other ways to pay for it, as well as just adding to the deficit.

ZAHN: Well, we appreciate your joining us very much here this evening, Senator Biden.

BIDEN: Thank you very much, Paula. I appreciate it.