Brian Schweitzer in Sunday Political Talk Show interviews during 2013-2015

On War & Peace: No reason to stay in Afghanistan after 12 years of war

SCHWEITZER: Well, the Europeans are right. We have had 12 years of war. For the last 11 years, you can't find anybody left in America who can tell you, why are we still in Afghanistan? Al Qaeda attacked us. They're not in Afghanistan. We're fighting somebody called the Taliban. They live in caves in the Stone Age. Why are we still there?

Q: Because we promised we would stay there.

SCHWEITZER: Who did we promise? We promised Karzai, who is a crook, and his brother is the biggest drug smuggler on the planet.

Q: If we leave them to go back to the same cycle that led to 9/11--

SCHWEITZER: Perpetual war in the Middle East!

On War & Peace: Attacking Iraq was a mistake that empowered al Qaeda

SCHWEITZER: I lived in Saudi Arabia during the '80s when we were supporting Saddam Hussein, who was fighting Iran, the people that we know are the most dangerous actors in the neighborhood. When we went into Iraq, al Qaeda didn't function there. We destabilized Iraq. We threw Saddam Hussein out, who was a bad guy, like a lot of other people in the Middle East, and now we have al Qaeda. It's our problem. We broke the china. Most people in Washington DC did not live in the Middle East. I lived in Libya & Saudi Arabia. I watched Iraq fight that war with Iran. I knew that we were supporting Iraq during that war. And now we've created a vacuum in Iraq. Those people who supported that Iraqi war didn't understand the politics of the Mideast. Al Qaeda wasn't there. Iraq hadn't attacked us. We made a very big mistake there. It cost us a lot of blood and a lot of treasure. And we ought not make those mistakes in the future.

On Health Care: ObamaCare should control costs more & have more flexibility

Schweitzer would like to create a state-run system that borrows from the program used in Saskatchewan. He said the Canadian province controls cost by negotiating drug prices and limiting non-emergency procedures such as MRIs. Schweitzer said the province's demographics and economy are similar to Montana in several ways, yet its residents live longer while spending far less on health care.

On Health Care: Medicare for all makes more sense than ObamaCare

During the health care debate two years ago, only the most liberal lawmakers were calling for some form of the doomed proposals for "Medicare for all." But Schweitzer continues to argue that a program like that makes much more sense than the one signed into law by President Barack Obama. The governor told a regional director of the Department of Health and Human Services that Congress has designed a "pack of crap" that gives away far too much to the pharmaceutical industry.

Schweitzer said Montanans with private insurance could drop that coverage if they choose and buy into the state-run plan at a cheaper rate. He envisioned a system that would cover, with copays for service, all the uninsured in Montana.