Rudy Giuliani on Larry King VIDEO

Rudy Giuliani on Larry King VIDEO and TEXT Transcript

Are you running or not?

GIULIANI: Yes, I'm running. Sure.

KING: Oh, you are.

Have you -- when would you -- do you make an official announcement or is this it -- here, right now?

GIULIANI: I guess you do...

KING: You just said, "I'm running." GIULIANI: I guess you do one of these things where you do it four times or five times in a day so that I can, you know, get on your show and about five others.

KING: So you're running?

GIULIANI: Yes, I'm running.

KING: Final -- what led to the decision?

GIULIANI: I think I can make a difference. I believe that the country needs leadership. I think that we're going through a war on terror -- or a terrorist war against us, which maybe is a better way to describe it. We've got lots of problems that we have to tackle and resolve. We need fiscal discipline. We need better education. We need energy independence. There's so many things that we haven't sort of tackled.

I mean one of the things I do is...

KING: Tackle things.

GIULIANI: Tackle things, yes. Lead. Try to get things done. Try to improve...

KING: It takes a lot of chutzpah, though, doesn't it, to say...

GIULIANI: Yes.

KING: ... I'm the best?

That's what you're saying.

GIULIANI: Yes, it does. And very humbling. And it takes a long time to come to a conclusion that with all your imperfections and all the things, you know, that we all are, none of us -- none of us do everything well and none of us are perfect. You have to say to yourself is this something that I can do?

And for a kid from Brooklyn, sometimes you wake up in the morning and say gee...

KING: Is this really --

GIULIANI: ... is this really happening?

And then sometimes you wake up and say I can do this. (UNINTELLIGIBLE).

KING: Let's get to some issues.

A leading industrialist, a friend of mine, said if the United States were a corporation, based on the Iraq War, everyone at the top would be fired.

How would you comment on that? And that -- in other words meaning it ain't going right.

GIULIANI: Yes, but that would have been true -- he would have said the same thing about the Civil War and Abraham Lincoln would have been fired. And he might have said the same thing at the Battle of the Bulge and Roosevelt, Eisenhower, Marshall -- all would have been fired. And...

KING: So you're confident this is all going to turn around?

GIULIANI: Oh, no. No.

KING: Because those -- they turned around.

GIULIANI: No, no. I'm not confident it's all going to turn around.

Who knows that?

I mean, you never know that in the middle of a war. I'm confident that we have to try to make a turnaround, and we just can't walk out and that it is critical to us that things get to the point in Iraq that we have some degree of stability and not the way they are now. Because if we leave it the way it is now and we run out, then we're going to face further difficulties in the future. Then we're going to lose more lives in the future.

And I'll tell you who tells me that -- a lot of people that have been there. I was just in San Diego speaking to sailors and Marines that have been in Iraq. That's what they tell me. They tell me look, this is a volunteer army -- you want to take our advice? Our advice is give us a chance to try to stabilize that place, otherwise we know what's going to happen. Two years from now you're going to send us back because there's going to be a major war in this area.

KING: But what do you do to change it? Are 20,000 troops going to change it?

GIULIANI: I think you've got to change the whole strategy, which I hope they did. I mean I hope -- I hope -- the whole strategy has to be a strategy of not just pacifying places, but holding them, and holding them for some period of time.

It reminds me a little, on a much bigger scale, of what I had to do to reduce crime in New York City. We had to not just go into neighborhoods and make them safe -- which the city had been doing for years. But the city had been going in there, making them safe and then leaving -- and then going to another place, make that and leave. Another place -- make it safe, leave.

We've got to go, make it safe in the areas, the districts of Baghdad, and then stay there for a period of time and stabilize it and allow people to have their kids go to school. And we have -- you know, there was a real doubt as to whether we could do this, nation building?

KING: Yes.

When are we going to do it?

GIULIANI: Well, we weren't going to do it and we weren't sure we could do it, and this is a real hard thing to learn how to do. And it's very different than what the military used to have to do in the past -- or America.

But right now, if we don't do a better job of stabilizing Iraq -- and not just for the benefit of the Iraqi people, for the benefit of our people -- then we have -- then we have a country where Iran has got a major, major ability to expand their activities.

KING: Would you...

GIULIANI: Two Shiite countries right next to each other, slaughtering, you know, where one group, at least, is slaughtering Sunnis.

KING: Would you agree, Mr. Mayor, if they had to do this all over again, go back years, no one would vote for the Iraq War? A hundred to nothing, probably, in the Senate? No WMD --

GIULIANI: Yes, I guess...

KING: No?

GIULIANI: But I'm not sure that explains to us what's right about us. You know, the idea of taking out Saddam Hussein was one that was premised on the fact that he invaded Kuwait, that he used chemical weapons, that he had billions of dollars at his disposal, which he used to support various parts of this Islamic terrorist movement.

KING: You're not saying you'd do it again?

GIULIANI: I would remove Saddam Hussein again. I just hope we'd do it better and we'd do it in a different way.

KING: But what do you say to the...

GIULIANI: ... that we do the nation building part or the hand off to the Iraqis or the rebuilding of the Iraqis -- here are the things that I learned from it. Not -- take out Saddam Hussein in a second again. I think the world is much better off without Saddam Hussein than with him. And I think maybe some of the confusion doesn't lead us to really see that. Here's what I would change. Do it with more troops.

KING: Which was recommended and turned down.

GIULIANI: ... maybe 100,000, 150,000 more. I would do it in a way in which we didn't disband the army, which we've learned. This is all -- you know, this is all Monday morning quarterbacking, but you Monday morning quarterback in order to play the next game better, right? Monday morning quarterbacks who just want to criticize is cheap stuff. Monday morning quarterbacking so that next Saturday or Sunday you can play better is absolutely right.

I would -- I would have us not disband the army. You wouldn't de-Baathify. See, de-Baathify sounds like the right thing to do because you're getting rid of all the old Saddam guys. But that meant getting rid of the entire civil service. The country had no infrastructure.

KING: So are you -- are you -- who do you blame?

GIULIANI: So you learn from these things.

KING: Do you blame Rumsfeld?

GIULIANI: No, I don't blame anybody.

KING: You don't blame any -- somebody's got to...

GIULIANI: No, no, no. You don't do it that way.

KING: Nobody's to blame?

GIULIANI: You don't do it that way. That's why you don't make progress. Just like I don't blame people for not figuring out September 11 before it happened. What I do is, I kind of look at what happened, so you learn for the future.

KING: But there were mistakes.

GIULIANI: Of course there were mistakes. Lincoln made mistakes. Roosevelt made mistakes. Eisenhower made mistakes. The Battle of the Bulge was the biggest intelligence failure in American military history, much bigger than any in Vietnam or now. We didn't know that the Soviets were moving 400,000 or 500,000 troops. We missed it.

KING: Shouldn't they be blamed for not explaining it well enough?

GIULIANI: Learn from it. Learn from it. Don't blame them.

KING: How about the American public is so against it, have they done a bad job in explaining?

GIULIANI: Maybe, maybe, you know. Yes, maybe they didn't do that.

KING: Would you communicate better?

GIULIANI: I don't know. I hope -- I hope I would. I mean, you know, I hope -- I hope that I would learn from the mistakes that were made in this situation.

KING: Such as? GIULIANI: Just as the mistakes I made when I was mayor, I tried to learn from them. If I get to be president of the United States, I probably won't make the same mistakes, because I will have learned from them. I'll probably make different ones.

KING: Now how is...

GIULIANI: And then the next one will learn from the ones that I made. And I would say that about Bill Clinton or George Bush. This job is so difficult that you've got to have humility about it and you have to understand how to look at the past not in a way in which you cast blame, but you learn from it.

KING: The House is apparently about to vote -- and will vote, apparently -- to say that this 20,000 troops is a mistake.

Now, an important question, do you hold those who vote for that as helping the enemy?

GIULIANI: No, I hold them as...

KING: Because some say that.

GIULIANI: OK. There's a...

KING: You don't?

GIULIANI: I mean, there's -- you can look at the practical and common sense conclusion of it anyway you want. But there's something more important than that.

We have a right of free speech in this country and we elect people to make decisions.

Here's what I would prefer to see them do, though, if you ask me what's my view on that. The non-binding resolution thing gets me more than are you for it or against it. I have tremendous respect for the people who feel that we either made a mistake going to war, who voted against the war, who now have come to the conclusion, changed their minds -- they have every right to that -- that it's wrong. You should, in a dynamic situation, keep questioning.

What I don't like is the idea of a non-binding resolution.

KING: Because?

GIULIANI: Because there's no decision.

KING: But it's a -- making a -- it's a statement.

GIULIANI: Yes, but that's what you do. That's what Tim Russert does. That's what Rush Limbaugh does. That's what you guys do, you make comments. We pay them to make decisions, not just to make comments. We pay them to decide. The United States Congress does declarations, the war, that's the...

KING: So are you telling them if you feel that way, withhold funds, if that's the way you feel?

GIULIANI: Well, the ones I -- the ones that I think have a better understanding of what their responsibility is and are willing to take a risk are the ones who are saying we've got to hold back the funds, we've got to vote against the war or we're for the war.

KING: So...

GIULIANI: And maybe it's because I, you know, I ran a government and I tend to be a decisive person. I like decisions. And I think one of the things wrong with Washington is they don't want to make tough decisions anymore.

KING: You know, if you're...

GIULIANI: Non-binding resolution about Iraq; no decision on immigration; no decision on Social Security reform; no decision on what to do about energy independence; no decision. No decision.

You know why that happens?

Because it's unpopular. CNN LARRY KING LIVE, Interview With Rudy Giuliani and CNN LARRY KING LIVE

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