NEW YORK -- Congressman Charles Rangel of Harlem endorsed General Wesley Clark this week for the Democratic nomination for president. The general and Rangel were cheered by a crowd of Clark supporters. In 33 years in Washington, Rangel has been tough, blunt and tenacious in fighting for legislation to prevent drug abuse, provide affordable housing and jobs. While praising Clark, Rangel referred scornfully to an event earlier in the week in Harlem when former Vice President Al Gore endorsed Howard Dean for president. The congressman accused the Dean campaign of taking black voters for granted.

Announcer: From Studio 6B in Rockefeller Center, this is a presentation from News Channel 4, Gabe Pressman's NEWS FORUM. Now your host, senior correspondent Gabe Pressman.

PRESSMAN: Good morning, Congressman Rangel, and welcome. General Wesley Clark said he supported affirmative action in the armed forces at the rally in which you and other African-American leaders endorsed him for the Democratic nomination for president. He said, `I've fought for it. I've fought with African-Americans. I've served under African-Americans. I'm proud to have been there.' Do you think he's going to get the African-American vote?

Rep. RANGEL: I really think so, but not for all of those reasons that he stated. I--I don't think black folks go to sleep at night wondering about what his affirmative action program was in the Army. One of the reasons I think that African-Americans is going to support Wesley Clark is because they believe that he can clean President Bush's clock, that he can beat him in November, and that he is a real war hero and he doesn't have to just make believe and get into uniforms and give high fives to the military. And he's a decent guy, and I think he'll serve us well.

PRESSMAN: After both of these men had appeared in Harlem, we did a little informal poll. We didn't find too many people who were highly supportive of either one.

Rep. RANGEL: I don't think Americans have gotten enthusiastic about any of our candidates, including African-Americans, but I think it's a little early. You know, as I was talking to you earlier--I don't fully understand the significance of all these caucuses and primaries, and we got nine or 10 candidates and you put them all up. And, you know, even--even with you, I know I have a limited amount of time, but it's only you and me. But if there were 10 of us up here, I have to figure I'll get two minutes to say this, 30 seconds for this. And it's hard for people to focus on a candidate that they like. But one thing is clear: After Iowa, after New Hampshire and after South Carolina, we're not going to have nine candidates. And I truly believe when we get down to two or three candidates, that's when Americans and Democrats will focus, and that's when I think people will evaluate who can best beat George Bush. And I'm pretty confident it's going to be General Clark.

PRESSMAN: You think it'll narrow down to General Clark and--and Dean and who else?

Rep. RANGEL: Probably Gephardt.

PRESSMAN: And the rest of them will be gone.

Rep. RANGEL: It--it has to be. They tell me it depends what Edwards does; if he doesn't come out first in South Carolina, it's all over for him. If Kerry doesn't come out first in New Hampshire, it's all over for him. But whether or not it's February--it's definitely going to be March. And--and it doesn't make any difference...

PRESSMAN: March 2nd is the New York and the California primaries.

Rep. RANGEL: Yes.

PRESSMAN: Yeah.

Rep. RANGEL: But all I'm saying is all I want is for General Clark to at least be number three in all of the scenarios. And he keeps inching up. You know, he came up way ha--high, then he came down, and now he's inching up. And the only other candidate that goes up is Dean. The rest of them are going down.

PRESSMAN: The Reverend Al Sharpton is also a candidate. He's from Harlem, or at least he's from the African-American community of New York. And he said this week that he intended to put his political organization, his machinery, to work against the re-election of those who abandon him. That includes you, I guess.

Rep. RANGEL: Well, I did read the same article, but I'm in touch with Reverend Sharpton because his office is not that far from mine, or Bill Clinton's, for that matter. And I haven't heard this type of retaliatory statements from Reverend Sharpton.

PRESSMAN: And you don't feel--you--you don't feel intimidated by it.

Rep. RANGEL: Well, I suppose any elected official is concerned if a large part of their constituency was disturbed, but I haven't--he just knows how to reach me, and I know how to reach him, and we haven't had a problem.

PRESSMAN: Why haven't you supported him?

Rep. RANGEL: Because I want so badly to get rid of George Bush, and I--no matter how much anyone admires and respects Reverend Sharpton, I don't think anyone is getting ready to go to the inauguration. I think at best that Reverend Sharpton serves the function of making certain that the concerns of the poor, white and black, are in those debates. And if anyone walks on the stage and they see him, they know that it's going to come up. They might as well bring it up themselves. And so I think he serves a good purpose in a Democratic primary: to make certain those issues are on the table.

PRESSMAN: Why have you so vehemently opposed Howard Dean? Isn't he the only one of the nine candidates, or contenders, who has been against the war consistently from the beginning?

Rep. RANGEL: I don't think I have vehemently opposed him. As a matter of fact, I'd like to give him credit for having the...

PRESSMAN: May--maybe `vehemently' is the wrong adverb.

Rep. RANGEL: I like to give him...

PRESSMAN: Yeah.

Rep. RANGEL: ...credit for having the courage to break this mold, that you can't be critical of the president of the United States or you have to be fearful of Ashcroft. And there is no question that once he got out there and Americans, and especially Democrats, supported him, and--then the other candidates finally figured it was all right to do it. I'd like to point out, however, that this was before General Clark entered the race. And I--I think some of my remarks about Dean and--and--and Al Gore may have been misinterpreted because I was more confused than angry as to why either one of them would come to Harlem. It's not as though they have been regular visitors of Harlem or that they were invited by a church or that--you know, why the form of--I had not even known where Al Gore...

PRESSMAN: You don't think they were pandering to the black voters?

Rep. RANGEL: I don't mind pandering. I wish it was, if there were some black folks invited, you know? It was as though they got off at the wrong subway stop. It just didn't make any sense at all. And people were speculating, well, maybe it was Bill Clinton, maybe it was Sharpton, maybe it was Rangel, but it just didn't make any sense since neither one of them are from Harlem or are frequent visitors to Harlem.

PRESSMAN: Well, Mr. Clark is not from Harlem or a frequent visitor there.

Rep. RANGEL: Guess who he's with?

PRESSMAN: He's with you.

Rep. RANGEL: So, I mean, what I'm saying is we had the Harlem...

PRESSMAN: But it--I--I went to both gatherings, and the--there were very few African-Americans in either audience, either the Dean audience or the Clark audience.

Rep. RANGEL: Well, look, the Clark people, they--they came up first and took all the darn seats. You saw all the people in the back when you came in. They were so enthusiastic. And--and I'm partially responsible for it because I was at a fund-raiser for Clark the evening before, and I announced what we were doing.

PRESSMAN: Right. And everybody came.

Rep. RANGEL: And before I could--everyone came.

PRESSMAN: Bo--Bob Herbert in The New York Times says the Democratic Party's circular firing squad has assembled. He means that all of you, the ca--the candidates, especially, are going to shoot each other down and--and make it that much easier for the president to get re-elected. How do you feel about that idea, that there's a collective suicide mission?

Rep. RANGEL: They say that all the time about Democrats. I guess to a certain extent, they're right. We certainly don't have a lot discipline.

PRESSMAN: I've heard Democrats say it about themselves.

Rep. RANGEL: I'm about to say it. But so what? We're diversified. We don't walk in lockstep. We're exciting. And--and you don't know what we're going to do next. And--and before this is over--you see people fighting today, and--and I think the one thing that will bring Democrats together is George W. Bush. He'll bring us united come s--November.

PRESSMAN: Herbert said in his column that there are cackles of glee coming from the White House because the Democrats are fighting each other.

Rep. RANGEL: Well, I got a little doll that I keep on my desk. I push a button--it's a doll of George W. Bush. And it's some of the remarks that he makes that are just insane. I think when you take a look at the--at the war and the way it's going, you take a--a--and you listen carefully to how incoherent George Bush is, and you see the number of people--notwithstanding the improvement in the economy, we got nine million people without jobs and without hope. I think at the end of the day, they have nothing to be gleeful about, no matter who our candidate is.

PRESSMAN: And what do you think the major issues are going to be, jobs and the war?

Rep. RANGEL: You know, people don't like talking about the war. People don't like talking about the number of friends that this great country has lost in the last couple of years. May not--they may not liking talking about it, but they have to think about it. And even though, under this cockamamy system that we got, which is not a draft, and where the poorest of the blacks and the whites and the--and the Hispanics are the ones that are sent to fight the nation's war, there's no patriotism about this war. There's no stars in people's windows saying, `I got a son that's fighting for justice and democracy there.' And we don't have any friends in the Middle East, as the president would have us to believe.

PRESSMAN: I remember those flags from World War II.

Rep. RANGEL: And that's what makes me think about it...

PRESSMAN: Yeah.

Rep. RANGEL: ...that no matter what injustices we had in the United States, people fought because they knew in this country you could find justice. You had the--the Dr. Martin Luther Kings and the Adam Powells and the A. Philip Randolphs. But what are we fighting for here? Are we bringing democracy in the Middle East? When last did you ha--did you hear anyone ask us to bring democracy in the Middle East? The president said a couple of days ago, he's got to bring it to the region. Does--do the Saudis know we gotta bring it to the region? Did he check with the Iranians and--and--and--and the other countries there? What--what is this insanity that America has this mandate to bring liberty wherever we want it? And whatever happened to Osama bin Laden? Wasn't that the reason we were there in the first place?

PRESSMAN: Yeah, but what--was it good to--to leave Saddam Hussein in power so he could slaughter his own people?

Rep. RANGEL: No. I'll give you a list--since you hear--supporting Rumsfeld--of the people who are scoundrels, who are bums, and so we'll bomb every country that we find a bum if--just because these people are repugnant to everything that the United States believe in. Since when did we say that we declare war against this country?

PRESSMAN: Let's talk about the draft after this.

Rep. RANGEL: Let's do that.

(Announcements)

PRESSMAN: (Joined in progress) ...with Congressman Charles Rangel.

Mr. Rangel, before we get on to the draft, you were saying during the station break that a lot of what's happened has been preordained.

Rep. RANGEL: Gabe, I'm an old infantryman and you're an old Navy man, and we know that when that flag goes up, we just salute it because we know if our nation's in trouble, all of our dreams for ourselves and our kids and our--and our grandkids are in this country. But this is the first time in our nation's history where this administration decided it was going to strike against a country that was not a threat to the United States. But at--but that the decision was made before 9/11 that we were going to take out Saddam Hussein. And...

PRESSMAN: What evidence do you have of that?

Rep. RANGEL: Well, there was papers that have been written by secretary--Deputy Secretary of Defense Werfowitz...

PRESSMAN: Wolfowitz.

Rep. RANGEL: ...Wolfowitz. Wolfowitz. Cheney was involved. Bill Kristol was involved, and most other people involved are now a part of the administration. And they make it abundantly clear that a part of our national policy was a pre-emptive strike specifically against Saddam Hussein, and this was before 9/11. Now you know and I know that the American people associated our strike against Saddam Hussein as a retaliatory thing against `We've been struck by terrorists.'

PRESSMAN: So you're...

Rep. RANGEL: There's no connection.

PRESSMAN: You're saying that the--that--why? Why did they--they plan to strike Saddam Hussein?

Rep. RANGEL: Because they can't--they couldn't get a hand of the terrorists, and they thought that he represented a symbol against terrorism. If you take him out, then the rest of the country's supposed to see that we mean business, and that would slow down the--the--the--the--the terrorists that are coming out of Saudi Arabia.

PRESSMAN: So--so you're--so you're saying that the whole attack on Saddam Hussein and on Iraq was based on a sham?

Rep. RANGEL: I'm saying that it was the distortion of the facts. You know, we are relying on intellig--even now, if you listen to President Bush and his gang, they will tell you that we had intelligent information to show that they had weapons of mass destruction and that they were trying to get uranium. And we knew that en--evidence was bad. We knew what they had was bad. But they said that the British believed it, so what the devil, the president included it in his State of the Union speech. This is fraud no matter how you look at it. It was misleading the American people. If the American people and, therefore, the Congress and those who supported the war knew that Saddam Saddein was not connected with 9/11, knew that there was no weapons of mass destruction, s--knew that there was no connection with al-Qaeda, do you think for one minute they would have authorized the bombing of--of Iran...

PRESSMAN: What about...

Rep. RANGEL: ...I mean Iraq?

PRESSMAN: What about the draft? You've alluded to it in the past, and you say that we need a draft in this country. What do you mean by that?

Rep. RANGEL: I mean that if people were more associated with those that were losing their lives or being put in harm's way, we would be a little more careful about where we declared war and who we would send overseas. You know, 40 percent of the troops that are going to be in Iraq are going to be citizen soldiers, some of them as old as 58 years old, going overseas. I almost cried to see those from my community--I mean, parents and grandparents going overseas to be sitting ducks. Were they trained for this type of thing? Heck, no.

PRESSMAN: What are these, Reservists?

Rep. RANGEL: Reserv--no, no, these were...

PRESSMAN: National Guard?

Rep. RANGEL: ...the National Guard.

PRESSMAN: National Guard.

Rep. RANGEL: It's even worse when you get to the Reservists because these are people that only know one weekend a month or two--two weeks away. I mean, they're prepared to be fighting terrorists? They don't even know what they look like, what country they come from.

PRESSMAN: Do you think that minority people, blacks and Latinos, are particularly overrepresented in the armed forces?

Rep. RANGEL: You know, I used to say that, and then I got a call from Senator Fritz Hollings. He said, `What about my rednecks? You better include them because it's the poor whites in the rural areas as well.' Who would be signing up for the military except those who, like me when I signed up, felt that I could do better economically in the military?

PRESSMAN: So you want a draft? You want to bring back selective service, something we haven't had...

Rep. RANGEL: Yes. And also you have to realize there would be 34 million young people that would be eligible, but it would only be just a small fraction, a million of them, that would actually have to go to the military. But a great opportunity for our young people to get to know more about their country--not necessarily in fighting and killing, but in education and hospitals, at the seaports and the airports. I mean, to have a sense that if we're going to be the world's biggest economic and military power, you don't have to show this strength always by invading a country. You can show it by love of a country and being a beacon for justice and helping this country become all that she can be. I think you can do that with a draft.

PRESSMAN: You think the blacks and Latinos at present are taking an unfair burden of the defense of the United States?

Rep. RANGEL: If you take a look and see where they're coming from, you'll find that 46 percent of the killed in action are coming from white rural areas and the majority of the others are coming from the inner cities, and they're black and they're Hispanics. Who would sign up to go into the military?

PRESSMAN: Say that this the height of injustice?

Rep. RANGEL: It--it shows the lack of economic power of the people who are signing up. They're signing up because they figure they can get a better job, they can get education benefits. The education benefits now are something like $25,000. This is how they're recruiting people. But the recruitment is going down, not up.

PRESSMAN: A lot of people, including your constituents, are confused about the meaning of the Medicare bill. Is it a muddle?

Rep. RANGEL: The Republicans know exactly what they wanted to do, and I think more and more seniors--first of all, with all of this debate, and we had to do it in the middle of the night and they kept the vote open from 3:00 to 6:00 in the morning because this was so urgent that they completed this bill. Guess when it takes into effect. Can you tell your audience when it takes into effect? Two thousand six. So what do you between now and 2006? They got to issue a discount coupon. Well, how much will it be worth? We don't know. Who's going to issue it? The pharmaceuticals. Well, then who is going to really compete against Medicare, which is a federal program designed to help old folks? Well, they gotta set up private organizations. Well, where do they come from? We don't know. Well, how are you going to fund it? Fourteen billion dollars, taxpayers' money. And what do they do? They will buy prescription drugs and they would offer programs for senior citizens...

PRESSMAN: The bottom line is will senior citizens be better off?

Rep. RANGEL: Well, first of all, they want to close down the Medicare system. It's just like saying you and I have a regular store that we've been servicing the public for years and years and years, and people want to put us out of business. So what do they do? They bring in another store, they invest money in this store, they cut their prices, they run us out of business, and then they can knock off the other store. They want Social--Social Security's next. And Newt Gingrich is one of the most honest conservatives there are. He wanted Medicare, and he says that we're getting rid of that. Social Security is next.

PRESSMAN: Let's come back and talk about some personal things after this.

(Announcements)

PRESSMAN: Back with Congressman Rangel. Wanted to ask you a couple of personal things, but you said that Social Security itself is in jeopardy. Really? Now?

Rep. RANGEL: The money that people are paying, which is a checkoff that they pay for the Social Security Trust Fund, is being spent every day. And when you combine that with the tremendous tax cuts that they've put in, there's not going to be that much money. And in 10 years, there's going to be 40 million people eligible for Social Security. They're either going to have to cut the benefits or raise the taxes for the system to be viable.

PRESSMAN: You've been accused of being in the `gang of four' in your earlier life? What was the `gang of four?'

Rep. RANGEL: It was former Mayor David Dinkins; former bar president and a candidate for mayor, Percy Sutton; and former Deputy Mayor Basil Patterson. And what happened, we were falsely accused of derailing somebody of their ambitions to become mayor. And we were at the meeting. None of us said anything. But the headlines was the `gang of four' was supposed to be derogatory. But since it ended up that we became best friends for life, we now call ourselves the `gang of four.'

PRESSMAN: Now you originally--you took on an immensely popular leader, you beat him badly--Adam Clayton Powell Jr., the pastor of the Abyssinian Baptist Church. Did you feel any sympathy for Powell after he went down?

Rep. RANGEL: You know, I never knew Adam Clayton Powell, and I never even said that I took him on. As a matter of fact, my wife and I went to Bimany in trying to encourage him to come back to Harlem. I was so satisfied practicing law and being in the New York State Assembly, and I always considered Washington, DC, to be the South...

PRESSMAN: Nineteen...

Rep. RANGEL: Nineteen...

PRESSMAN: In 1970, it was.

Rep. RANGEL: I considered it to be South, and I didn't want to go south. But when Adam Powell refused to come back to the district and we had no representative in Washington, I knew if it wasn't me, it was going to be someone else that would be unfriendly to me because I was relatively new in politics. And so I never considered myself as having beaten him, but I do know that I replaced him.

And let me tell you this. He was in for 26 years. At the end of next year, I will be in for 34 years. I don't think in the history of the Congress has only two people served for 60 years consecutively in the Congress.

PRESSMAN: You have two kids, Steven and Alicia, your wife Alma. Do you have any grandchildren yet?

Rep. RANGEL: You bet your life. I told my daughter, if I had thought she was going to make me so happy, I'd have treated her better when she was a kid. Man, that really--they said that what it should be, you should get the grandkids first before your regular kids.

PRESSMAN: How many do you have?

Rep. RANGEL: I have one, and I expect another grandson early next year.

PRESSMAN: Thank you, Congressman Rangel.

Rep. RANGEL: Thank you.

PRESSMAN: Thank you very much for joining us this morning. Gabe Pressman. Good day.