This morning, spoke with former Secretary of the Navy James Webb, a candidate for the Democratic senatorial nomination in the commonwealth of Virginia (we of course would also welcome a conversation with the other leading Democrat in the race, Harris Miller).

Webb and I spoke about a number of topics, including the War in Iraq, the use of civilian contractors, why Webb -- who served under Ronald Reagan -- is running as a Democrat, and why he believes the blogosphere should get involved in the race. You can listen to the interview here (warning: a 19.0 megabyte mp3) or read the rush transcript below.

Jonathan Singer: Is President Bush, and perhaps more importantly the Republican Senate, doing enough to protect America’s national security today?

James Webb: Well I think that from 9/11 forward, they’ve made fundamental mistakes that not only have not increased our security but have caused us to be intensely disliked around the world, unnecessarily.

If you go back to after 9/11, when President Bush stood up and said “in the war against international terrorism, you’re either with us or against us,” I think a lot of people agreed with that, but when they started going after Iraq, it was a totally thing. And I think that they squandered an historic opportunity to really galvanize most of the responsible people around the world so that we could focus on the real problems. By going into Iraq, they created hostility, insulted countries that had been our allies for a long time – unnecessarily insulted them – and created a lot more potential dislike and terrorist incidences than if they’d handled it the other way.

Singer: Now let’s move forward to a hypothetical January 2007. You’ve just been sworn is as George Allen’s replacement in the United States Senate. How does this change the Senate’s outlook towards Iraq?

Webb: Not only myself, but I think what we really need in the Congress is people who are willing to lead affirmatively, to come up with solutions, and to stand up to the executive overreach. Since 9/11, particularly, we’ve seen abuses of Presidential authority that are almost historic in their dimensions. We can take one issue or another issue, but when you connect the boxes on them, one of the strongest conclusions you have to reach is that the Congress is not standing up to the administration, to the Presidential overreach.

And it’s not simply one-party rule; it’s the Congress itself having lost its notion of its own prerogatives. I was a committee counsel in the Congress for four years – 1977 to 1981 – when the Democratic Party was in the White House and controlled the Congress, but at that time, the people who were in the Congress had a real sense of history and of their constitutional prerogatives, and they did not defer to the administration simply because they were in the same party. One of the four themes that I’m running on is the notion that Congress has to reassert itself, and you would see me doing that.

Singer: Let me come at kind of come at this from a different angle. President Bush yesterday insinuated that we, America, will be in Iraq at least through the end of his administration and it will be up to a future President to decide whether to stay in or out. Is that the right place to be, or does the Senate need to put pressure on President Bush to begin extricating the troops from Iraq?

Webb: This is something that I warned about well before we went into Iraq. I think I wrote the first article in a major newspaper warning that this was going to happen. In September of 2002, I wrote a piece, an editorial, in The Washington Post basically saying that the issue was not Weapons of Mass Destruction, the issue was that if we became an occupying force there that our people would become terrorist targets, and the people in the administration who were pushing for the War in Iraq deliberately did not have an exit strategy. I think we’re seeing that even more clearly, just in the last couple of weeks when the administration releases this report that indicates that they want to continue a policy of preventive war, rather than preventive attacks – I’m going to get to that in a minute – and also what he said yesterday about future Presidents, I think he said it in the plural, would be responsible for deciding when we leave Iraq.

This administration has never said specifically that we have no long term aspirations for occupying Iraq, and I think that they have to say that clearly, and I will be calling on them to say that clearly during this campaign.

This is not simply an issue of Presidential power, it’s an issue of the nation’s commitment, so Congress is at least an equal player, in terms of deciding how long we should be there.

Singer: Let me ask you one final military/foreign affairs related question before we move on to some domestic and political issues. At the time you were Navy Secretary, correct me if I’m wrong, the United States military relied significantly less on high-paid contractors, private corporations, to meet its infrastructure needs, both during war and during peace. How has this change affected the military, and is it something you’d like to see continued or the trend reversed?

Webb: That’s a really good question. It’s something that people don’t really focus on. I did a lot of manpower work when I was younger, both before I got to the Pentagon, when I was in the Congress, and then in the Pentagon before I became Secretary of the Navy.

When we say we have 135,000 American military people in Iraq right now, if you take a look at how much of the support, combat service support, private security functions are being done by these so-called “civilians” – they’re quasi-military units – you would probably have to say that in reality we have the equivalent of 200,000 American military people in Iraq.

One of the reasons that this is being done is because there are in-strength limitations on the services. In other words, you can’t go over in the Congress and fund more than a certain number of people in the Army, in the Marine Corps, etc. So these functions that are basically military functions and in many cases are being done by former military people, have to come from outside of the in-strength numbers.

This is not healthy, first of all because the country doesn’t understand the enormity of the commitment, second of all because it’s extremely costly. I’ll give you one example. You can take a recon marine, a marine who’s in a reconnaissance battalion, who probably makes at the most $20,000 a year, and they’ve been able to walk out of that and go over and make $180,000 a year in some cases working for these contractors. Well that’s still being paid by the American taxpayer in the end. And then the third reason that it’s not a good policy is that there really are no legal controls on these people. When these people shoot a civilian in Iraq or conduct themselves in a way where they should be subjected to criminal sanctions or disciplinary action, who does it? I’ve asked people involved if civilian contractors have ever been disciplined, and I’m still looking for an example as to when they have. And that has a negative impact in places where they impact on people that they’re around. It’s a very troubling phenomenon and it’s being driven by artificial budget numbers where we’re not being honest about the extent of our commitment.

Singer: Let’s move to some domestic issues. It seems to me that a great number of progressives like what they’re hearing from you on kind of the international issues and the War in Iraq, but looking specifically at domestic issues, until recently you were a registered Republican and you served in a Republican administration. What would you say to these activists who are also concerned that you will become another Zell Miller, in other words a Republican in Democratic clothing?

Webb: Well I’ve never been a registered Republican.

Singer: Sorry about that.

Webb: I’ve certainly worked with Republicans. I think that serving in the Reagan administration with the issues I was working is something I have no regrets. In fact I’m very proud of having worked with the President who basically brought an end to the Cold War and rehabilitated the dignity of the military, and those were the issues I was working on.

I was essentially a Democrat – I wasn’t active, I’ve never run for office at all – but I was essentially a Democrat until 1976. Having come back from Vietnam and been wounded and seeing the way that the Democratic Party was sort of excluding, in many cases, the people who had served there, and the positions that it had taken on the war and on amnesty for draft evaders and that sort of thing, I was like a lot of people who just felt like they did not want people with our background in the Democratic Party and that the party’s positions on national security at that time were pretty weak, and the Republican Party was strong.

But again, like a lot of people, I was never comfortable with the Republican Party’s positions on social issues, particularly. And when you look at what’s happened since 9/11, the Republican Party has lost its moral authority also on national security issues. So they’re wrong on national security, they have always been too extreme on social issues, they have lost the bubble it terms of fiscal issues – it’s kind of amazing that it was the Democratic Party that was opposing extending the debt last week – and they have engaged in abuses of Presidential authority, so there’s just no room over there for a lot of people who went over there on the national security issues.

If people are wondering what I would be like, if they’re wondering am I really a Democrat, whatever that means, I think I’ve been pretty clear on how I feel on issues. And every bit as important to me, in terms of why I’m doing this, is the notion of social unfairness in this country, and that’s economic unfairness – we need to get back to more representation for the people at the bottom, working people at the bottom – and also on issues of social justice. Those are issues that are very important to me.

Singer: My apologies for calling you a registered Republican.

[Laughter]

Webb: That’s okay. There’s no registration in Virginia either way.

Singer: A couple of issue questions. Where do you stand on a woman’s right to choose? Or perhaps more importantly, you’re in the Senate starting in January 2007 in this hypothetical, and President Bush nominates someone who overtly or even hints at a pledge to overturn Roe v. Wade, do you vote yay or nay on the Senate floor?

Webb: I don’t believe in answering hypotheticals, because they can get very complicated, but I do support Roe v. Wade.

Singer: Okay. [The] President and the Republican Congress passed the Medicare prescription drug bill, which by almost any means or measures has been a failure of implementation and design. If you’re sent to the United States Senate, would you like to see changes made to it, or do you think it really just needs to be better implemented?

Webb: As someone who spent four years as a committee counsel, it would not be smart for me to take a position on a bill I have not read very carefully, but in general, I think we have to move toward the idea that every American deserves to have medical care. And it’s not simply people on the very bottom who are having a problem here, it’s a lot of working people aren’t able to afford medical insurance and this sort of thing. It’s probably the most complicated… We’ve seen a number of studies that have come back with nothing. It’s so complicated that I can’t sit here and give you a formula, but it’s something that I do care a lot about.

Singer: You brought up the federal deficit, the federal debt more specifically. If the Senate brings up tax measures, would you, let’s say, be in favor of cutting taxes, or would you not want to deal with taxes one way or another, or would you in fact be willing to raise taxes, perhaps on the 1 or 2 percent?

Webb: I think the difficulty we have right now is you can’t spend $400 billion on a war and potentially $2 trillion on a war and say that you’re going to keep stimulating the economy with the tax cuts that are now in place.

Where the tax cuts are benefiting a broad range of people, and one example that immediately comes to my mind is the capital gains tax, which benefits a lot of people, when you’re selling your home, etc., I would be inclined to support that. When they benefit a smaller number of people – you know, for instance, the tax cuts that come up for renewal in ’08 – I would want to take a very hard to look at that.

You can’t… someone, as my friend Mark Shields, I think it was, said, this is the first war we’ve ever fought where you haven’t drafted anyone and you haven’t raised taxes, so who’s really paying here. Somehow we’ve got to confront the American people with the expense of this adventure and what we’re doing.

Singer: One final issues question before we get to politics. Are you content with the military’s “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy?

Webb: I favor civil unions, but I think, in terms of the military, that that’s a policy that’s working.

Singer: Why you and not Harris Miller for the Democratic nomination for the Senate?

Webb: People are going to have to make up their own minds about that. I know what I’m bringing, I know what I want to do. The reason I’m doing this is because I don’t see leaders. I think that’s one thing I’ve been able to do in my life is think hard and creatively about issues and take stands and fight.

Singer: Is there something you could boil it down to for people who are less familiar with your candidacy and his candidacy?

Webb: I haven’t really paid that much attention to Harris Miller’s candidacy. We’re running two different kinds of campaigns. I’m very specific on four themes we’re running on, and the overarching reason I’m running is we need real leaders. We need positive, affirmative leaders who aren’t afraid to take positions, and I’ve always done that in everything that I’ve done.

Singer: Last question. Is there anything you’d like to say specifically to members of the progressive blogosphere to get them more involved in your campaign?

Webb: I have really been gratified by the encouragement and the support I have gotten from the blogs, from the blogosphere, for the most part. The great worry that I have, if you want to think about this, you’ve probably already heard it, is that Karl Rove has already said that one of the two major strategies that they are going to use this year is to get into the blogs, to work the blogs hard, and the danger on the blogs is that somebody like myself can never defend themselves from false statements. There’s no accountability on the blogs. I think that’s one of the reasons that Karl Rove wants to use them. They can make accusations, charges, etc. that you can’t hold the person accountable and you spend the rest of your life trying to defend yourself.

To this point, I think there’s been – when this has happened – there’s been really good energy from people in the blogs that actually throw the actual facts back out, and I’ll never be able to do that.

The only thing I can say is I’m trying to do this from the bottom up. I’m trying to run a campaign where I will have intellectual independence, to be able to keep intellectual independence if I’m elected. Everybody else has a lobbyist in Washington, how about the average person?

Singer: Terrific. Well good luck in your campaign and thanks for joining me this morning.

Webb: Thank you.