Here's the video of Fred Thompson on Fox News' Hannity & Colmes show Monday night. And here's the transcript. The section where Thompson discusses Harry Reid and the war in Iraq is below:
HANNITY: The biggest battle we have is this war on terror, this battle in Iraq. We have a really deep divide in the country. Senator Reid says the war is lost. We still have to finish the job there. Where do you stand in general on the war on terror and, more specifically, in Iraq, and on the divide surrounding Iraq?
THOMPSON: Well, let's talk about Senator Reid for a moment. Right before I came over here, I was sitting outside, getting a bite to eat, before we did our interview. A young woman came up and asked if she could sit down and talk to me a minute. Her name was Koeller (ph). She worked over at Morgan Stanley, but she had gone to West Point, and she had been a captain in the Army, and she was at the DMZ in South Korea at the time of 9/11.
I asked her what she thought about this. She said, "How in the world can anyone, any one of our leaders, declare war, declare that the war has been lost when we've got troops in the field? My friends are over there in the field. I know what they think about this."
And, of course, it's just like all other Americans think. The very idea that they would do this and undercut our efforts over there is unprecedented. And it's not only unprecedented; it's awful politics.
We should not be fearful of these people politically. We just need to concentrate on what's right. What is right? We need to take advantage of any opportunity we've got down there. I've got a lot of faith in Petraeus. I knew him when he was at Fort Campbell when I was in the Senate. He tells me we've got a shot? We've got to take that shot.
We also have to keep in mind, though, there's going to be a day after Iraq. And whether we leave there under our own terms or not, it's still going to be a very dangerous world. If we leave there under bad circumstances, we're going to have a haven down there for terrorists. The whole area, I'm afraid, will become nuclearized.
The Sunni countries are looking at what Iran is doing. And if we can't help with stability in that part of the world, they're going to help themselves, and they're going to go nuclear, in terms of weaponry and the ability to counteract what Iran's doing. The whole region is up for grabs.
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