Governor gets aggressive, takes rival presidential candidates to task on Iraq

Could it be that early morning is the best time for Gov. Bill Richardson to debate?

At Sunday’s ABC News debate at Drake University in Des Moines, Iowa, Richardson not only avoided any serious gaffes and non sequiturs but also jumped in and engaged the other candidates over the war in Iraq. He interjected himself without being called upon by the moderator, and along the way he landed a couple of applause lines.

Richardson even poked a little fun at himself for his previous verbal blunders.

“I’m making, at this rate, about one mistake a week,” he said. “And, you know, I make a lot of misstatements. I’m not the scripted candidate. But I think when the chips are down, when the time comes to get hostages out from Saddam Hussein or persuade the North Koreans to reduce their nuclear arsenal, or bring back the remains of American servicemen, I perform.”

From the beginning of the 90-minute debate, it was clear Richardson was going to be more aggressive than he has at previous debates.

In some of those events, Richardson wasn’t heard from until 20 minutes into the show. But on Sunday, he jumped in just six minutes into the debate. The question was whether Barack Obama was too inexperienced to be president.

“You know, I think that Sen. Obama does represent change,” Richardson said the moment Sen. Joe Biden finished his answer. “Sen. Clinton has experience. Change and experience: With me, you get both. ... We’re going to need change to become energy independent. We’re going to need experience to deal with foreign leaders, as I have.”

The debate began at 7 a.m. MDT but wasn’t aired in New Mexico until 4 p.m.

Richardson was in dire need of a good debate showing following his previous week. Most of the news about Richardson in recent days concerned his “misstatement” in a gay-rights candidate forum that homosexuality is a choice, and that one of his campaign aides in Nevada was wanted for writing bad checks and had managed a legal brothel, where the aide, who has since resigned, had been accused of underpaying the prostitutes.

The governor, who is in a firm fourth-place position in Iowa polls, still is faced with the handicap that most of the media attention centered around the front-runners, Obama, Sen. Hillary Clinton and former Sen. John Edwards. For instance, on his Sunday morning show CNN’s Wolf Blitzer discussed the debate with surrogates from the Clinton, Obama and Edwards campaigns, making no mention of Richardson or the other “lower-tier” candidates.

In the last few weeks, Richardson has spent the majority of his time campaigning in Iowa, which is the first state to hold a presidential caucus.

Richardson’s proposal to immediately remove all troops from Iraq — leaving no residual troops behind — was the basis of a question by moderator George Stephanopoulos.

The other candidates disagreed with Richardson about how quickly the troops could be removed.

At one point, Richardson directly challenged Clinton and Biden.

“With all due respect, I’d like to ask Sen. Clinton, Sen. Biden, you’re saying you’re going to leave residual troops behind. I don’t know, is it 25,000, 50,000, 75,000?” Richardson said. “You’re also saying, I think, Sen. Clinton, that all combat troops should come out. Now, for the noncombat troops, how are they going to protect themselves? My point is that by taking them all out, all our troops are no longer targets. And then al-Qaida and the insurgents, both that see American troops as their prey, will now turn on each other.”

Clinton never got the chance to answer him. Biden repeated his belief that Iraq should be partitioned into three major areas separating Sunnis, Shiites and Kurds.

Richardson said security expert Anthony Cordesman and “many generals” agree with him that troops could be completely withdrawn from Iraq in six to eight months.

According to an Associated Press story last week, Cordesman — a former director of intelligence assessment at the Pentagon who has served as Sen. John McCain’s security adviser and now works as a security analyst for ABC News — said it would take a year or longer to “safely withdraw all U.S. troops, contractors and equipment from Iraq and phase out U.S. bases there.”

Cordesman said the U.S. could get out even sooner if it chose to destroy equipment and facilities, the wire service said. “At the same time, Cordesman said phasing down U.S. forces in Iraq was no guarantee casualties would decline unless those who remained were not left in forward bases where they could be targeted easily.”

Contact Steve Terrell at 986-3037 or sterrell@sfnewmexican.com.