MR. TIM RUSSERT: Our issues this Sunday: Abu Musab al-Zarqawi is dead.What does this mean for Iraq, especially the 135,000 American troops still on the ground? We’ll ask NBC News analyst and retired General Barry McCaffrey.

Then, 1,000 political activists and readers of the liberal blogs hold a convention in Las Vegas, strategizing and listening to Democratic luminaries. What role will the blogosphere and the Internet play in the 2006 midterm elections and the 2008 race for the White House? With us, the founder of the Daily Kos and host of the YearlyKos Convention, Markos Moulitsas; and from National Review Online, Byron York.

And which issues will frame this year’s congressional election? With us, Jonathan Alter, senior editor and columnist for Newsweek magazine; and Amy Walter, senior editor of The Cook Political Report.

Then in our MEET THE PRESS MINUTE, Senator Robert Byrd makes history tomorrow in the U.S. Senate. We’ll look back at his first MEET THE PRESS appearance.

MR. RUSSERT: But first, General George Casey, commander of American forces in Iraq, was our announced guest this morning, but his appearance was canceled by the Pentagon for what they say was a scheduling problem. But with us to discuss the war in Iraq and the death of Zarqawi is NBC military analyst, retired General Barry McCaffrey.

Welcome.

GEN. BARRY McCAFFREY: Good to be here, Tim.

MR. RUSSERT: Before I get to Iraq, let me just talk about the three suicides in Guantanamo prison, alleged terrorists. What do you make of that, and how will that play around the world?

GEN. McCAFFREY: Well, Tim, I, I’ve looked at our detention facilities in both Afghanistan and Iraq. I think the problems of the first year—we had some real serious difficulties complying with, I think, our own national and international law—are gone. Firm, humane, professional way of handling it.

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Guantanamo’s a special case. It’s become a huge political problem for us, in the Gulf region in particular. I don’t know how we get out of this. Some of these people are extremely dangerous. This was an act of political warfare by the three people that committed suicide, the same as a suicide bomber in downtown Baghdad. But we got a challenge trying to think our way through how to close down Guantanamo in the next two or three years and get these people into some other judicial system.

MR. RUSSERT: You think it will be closed eventually.

GEN. McCAFFREY: Oh, yeah. I think right now the payoff in propaganda for the international jihadists is, is enormous. But the question is how do we back our way out of it?

MR. RUSSERT: The death of Zarqawi. Is that a turning point in the war in Iraq or an interesting but not very significant event long-term?

GEN. McCAFFREY: Well, we can’t ever ignore good news. This fellow was ferociously dangerous. He raised a lot of money for them. He was very good at information operations. It’s a great blessing to the Iraqi people. He was slaughtering Shiite civilians by the thousands, literally.

Having said that, look, al-Qaeda in Iraq has turned mostly Iraqi Sunni Muslim. Lieutenant General Stan McChrystal and these special operations air-land-sea forces have decimated their ranks, not just in Iraq, but in Afghanistan. So I think the foreign jihadists were a terrible factor for the Iraqi people to deal with, but not the problem we’re working, which is how do you tamp down an incipient civil war and get Mr. Maliki and his Cabinet to create some governing mechanism?

MR. RUSSERT: You said this to Time magazine: “We are in trouble in Iraq. Our forces can’t sustain this pace, and I’m afraid the American people are walking away from this war.” Explain.

GEN. McCAFFREY: Well, if we had 10 years to work the issue, there’s a 99 percent probability we’ll achieve our objective. But I don’t think we’ve got that much time. So it seems to me, in the next couple years prior to Mr. Bush leaving office, it has to appear to the American people this thing is working. And therein lies the risk. Because—so we’ve got to hurriedly transfer security arrangements to a force that’s ill-equipped, the Iraqi security forces, and is yet probably inadequate to stand on their own.

Plus, I think the United States Army and Marine Corps, and elements of the Air Force—C-17 lift, special operations command—cannot maintain this pace of deployment. But we’ve got to draw down, and pretty soon, maybe 50 to 100,000 troops by next summer. But otherwise, we risk breaking the force.

MR. RUSSERT: Who has the strongest force right now, the more capable military force, the Sunni and Shiite militias, or the national Iraqi Army?

GEN. McCAFFREY: Oh, I think the national Iraqi Army, as badly equipped as they are. And I, you know, I made the argument on the Hill in the last week, we’ve got to do better. But they’ll be 300,000 by the end of the summer. The Mahdi and Badr militias, probably 100,000 people, the Sunni insurgents, who knows the number? I carry around in my head 15,000 or so. So the Iraqi security forces, to include the police, are a real factor. This guy, Lieutenant General Marty Dempsey’s done a superb job equipping and training them. But the problem is, you know, we’ve got to defend the electrical system, the oil industry, you got to protect the people. So the other side has—clearly has the initiative, and factional fighting is now the biggest problem an Iraqi mother has to deal with.

MR. RUSSERT: You made an observation about some of our allies who are beginning to leave, and this is what the Dallas Morning News reported: “It’s a civil war. The allies are going to leave. By next Christmas, we’re there alone. It’s over. We’re coming out. The American people are willing to sustain combat operations in the face of death. They are not willing to take the steady drain of casualties without a chance of achieving victory.”

GEN. McCAFFREY: Well, it’s, you know, that’s a classic problem. Our—we require a long-term strategy to deal with the so-called long war with foreign jihadists. In the case of Iraq, though, we’re losing basically a battalion a month killed and wounded. It’s probably $10 billion dollars a month to prosecute this conflict. Many of us think it’s worth it, and we hope to achieve a satisfactory outcome. But I think we’re time-constrained. We ought to understand this. Our allies think Afghanistan is a good war to be engaged in. They think Iraq’s a problem. So I think we’re going to see most of them leave in the coming 12 months.

MR. RUSSERT: The New York Times reported this in terms of troop withdrawals. “Senior administration and military officials now acknowledge that there is little chance the United States can reach the milestone of reducing American troop levels in Iraq to 100,000 by December, a goal that earlier in the year had seemed within reach. ...

“Military planners in Iraq and at the Pentagon have been refining troop-rotation proposals that, in the best case, would reduce levels to 110,000 to 120,000 troops by the end of December from current levels of 130,000.” You think trying to maintain 110,000, 120,000 by the end of this year is not doable.

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