Lindsey Graham to announce 2016 decision June 1 in hometown

U.S. Sen. Lindsey Graham said he will announce whether he’s running for president June 1 in Central, S.C., where the Republican grew up.

Graham, who last week said he is “99.9 percent sure” he will run, confirmed the date on CBS This Morning. He would be the first South Carolina native to run for president since Greenville-native Jesse Jackson ran in 1988.

Asked whether the other candidates’ foreign policy stances are driving him to run, Graham said, “I’m running because of what you see on television. I’m running because I think the world is falling apart. I’ve been more right than wrong on foreign policy.

“It’s not the fault of others or the lack of this or that that makes me want to run,” Graham continued. “It’s my ability in my own mind to be a good commander-in-chief.”

Graham has said that his military service and foreign policy experience would give him an advantage if terrorism and national security remain top concerns in voters’ minds.

Asked about the Iraq invasion in the wake of the 9/11 attacks, Graham said, “I think the question is, did we make a blunder here to create the problems that we now see? If we’d have left Iraq alone, would we be OK?

“(W)ould I have launched a ground invasion? Probably not. I’d probably had another approach to Saddam (Hussein). But that’s yesterday’s thinking. What do we do today and tomorrow and the day after? We have to reset Iraq.”

Many invasion supporters at the time based their decision on intelligence that Iraq’s leader Hussein had weapons of mass destruction, which proved false.

“Hussein was shooting at our airplanes, he was denying (United Nations) inspectors access to sites, he was gassing his own people,” Graham said. “He needed to go. But if I knew the intelligence was faulty, I would have reconfigured.”

Discussing news that the Iraqi city of Ramadi fell to the Islamic State, Graham said that the United States needed about 10,000 troops to support and train Iraqi security forces.

The third-term senator also touted his willingness to work across the aisle.

"The reason I had six primary opponents in my last election (in 2014) is that I've been accused of working with Democrats too much. In my view, Democrats and Republicans work together too little, and I would try to change that if I got to be president, and when it came to radical Islam, I would go after them before they come back again.”

This story was originally published May 18, 2015 at 6:23 AM with the headline "Lindsey Graham to announce 2016 decision June 1 in hometown."