Call to Action: Let's ask that John Kerry's Iraq Plan be covered on PBS!

JIM LEHRER: You said several weeks ago you no longer had confidence in Defense Secretary Rumsfeld. Has anything happened to change that?

SEN. JOHN McCAIN: No. But I am not in any way attempting to confront or conflict with Secretary Rumsfeld because as long as he enjoys the confidence of the president, he will be there, and I need to work with him and the other people in the Pentagon to try to help when this conflict that is so important. I think it's more important than the Vietnam conflict.

JIM LEHRER: More important than Vietnam. In what way?

SEN. JOHN McCAIN: Well, when we left Vietnam and came home and Ho Chi Minh or his followers didn't come after us.

I think if we lose here, you're going to see a factionalization of Iraq and the kind of training and place where Muslim extremism flourishes. And I think if you look at bin Laden's statements and Zarqawi's and others that they will be coming after us.

JIM LEHRER: You know as well as anyone what the opinion polls show about the American people's feelings about the whole Iraq enterprise at this point. They are down on it, and they are losing support for it. What's the cause of that? Why don't they get it, what you just said?

SEN. JOHN McCAIN: I think there are several reasons. One, of course, is heightened expectations and continued predictions of good news, thing were going to get better after they voted the first time, things were going to get better after they captured Saddam, things were going to get better, instead of giving a more hardened and realistic viewpoint and outlook say, look, it's going to be long, tough, very difficult, but explaining why we can win.

So I think dashed expectations are one, and two are American casualties which are almost one in the same. When they see the crawl across the bottom line of their television screen of people dying, and I'm sure that there's someone watching say, well, we lost 58,000 in the Vietnam War, it is just not the same. It's just not the same. So that's eroded it.

And also in the minds of many Americans there's no clear cut design for a victory/withdrawal. And I said emphatically today, if you withdraw before you have a secure environment, that's a recipe for disaster.

JIM LEHRER: So you have no second thoughts at all about the wisdom of going to war?

SEN. JOHN McCAIN: I have second thoughts every time I hear of a brave young soldier of ours from Arizona who gives his or her life -- every single time.