MTP Transcript for Nov. 25

GEN. BARRY McCAFFREY: Well, I think I’d go under the question by saying, Tim, that if we fail in our mission in Iraq, the consequences to the American people and our allies will be severe. I don’t think—you know, this whole “go long, go, go big, go home” is sort of nonsense. We’re not going home. We’re not going to be big because we have an inadequately sized Army and Marine Corps, Special Ops, to carry out this mission. What we’re going to do is try and—I think Congressman Hunter was right on the mark. We’ve got to get the Iraqi army and police better equipped, better trained and into the fight. And I think we’ve got 24 months. The next two candidates to the presidency are going to walk away from this war if it still looks this bad.

MR. RUSSERT: But haven’t we been saying that, General McCaffrey, that we have three months, six months, and now, to ask another two years. Do you think the American people will be that patient?

GEN. McCAFFREY: Well, I think General Abizaid in his—in a recent congressional testimony, is right on the money. I—my guess is next four to six months are crucial. If Maliki’s government cannot gain the allegiance of their security forces, cannot find some way to mute the power of the militias—which are, I might add, are—you know, we start talking as if there were two or three militias and one Sunni insurgency. In fact, it’s now splintering. There’s as many as 23 separate militias in Baghdad alone. So the Maliki government’s under the gun, and I think the president’s visit on, on Monday is going to be a very crucial dialogue between the two of them.  They have to govern or we can’t sustain a counterinsurgency campaign in the urban areas of Iraq.

MR. RUSSERT: Here’s the problem with that. This is the cover of Newsweek magazine entitled “The Most Dangerous Man in Iraq,” Moqtada al-Sadr, and according to The Washington Post, “One lawmaker allied with ... anti-American cleric Moqtada al-Sadr ... said he and others would withdraw their support from [Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri] al-Maliki unless he cancels a scheduled meeting next week with President Bush in protest of the decaying security situation. ... Sadr’s support is critical to Maliki’s government.”

So General Downing, here’s Mr. Sadr saying, “If the prime minister of Iraq meets with the president of the United States, my support for the Iraqi government is gone.”

GEN. WAYNE DOWNING: Well, Prime Minister Maliki is the key guy, and really, Tim, the Iraqis are the key people. We can sit here and talk among ourselves about all the different things that we can do. All the different options, all the different things that, that we can do to make the Iraqis stronger. But ultimately, it’s going to be up to them to make the choices to either do or not do what has to be done. Prime Minister Maliki probably could, could cut 90 percent of the violence out if he could sit down and get all the different people together in Iraq and come to some very, very fundamental political decisions. Not military decisions, not security decisions, but political decisions. I don’t know if he can do this or if he’s not the right man to do this. But ultimately, Tim, this is going to be up to the Iraqis and not up to us Americans.

MR. RUSSERT: But is Prime Minister Maliki afraid of Mr. Sadr? Why doesn’t he go in and just take apart his Shiite militia? Congressman Hunter:

REP. HUNTER: Well, well, Tim, I, I think the Shiite militia is going to stay in place, and I don’t think there’s a way to disarm it. It’s, it’s a, it’s a—considered to be a counterweight by a lot of the Shiite communities to the, to the Sunni community. And that, that, that militia is going to stay in place.

I think you’re—I’ll repeat what I’ve always said about this piece of the world. You’re always going to have bombs going off in Iraq. And if money and resources could keep bombs from going off, they wouldn’t be going off in Israel. Against that backdrop of, of strife and ethnic divides and all the other things that we have that make Iraq, we have a government which is in place, which was embraced enthusiastically by the Iraqi people. There has been no alternative or substitute government offered to that. So, this isn’t—a car bomb or a suicide bomber doesn’t constitute a substitute government. So against this backdrop of violence, which will continue, I think, for a long time, as long as there’s this, this deep friction and divide between Sunnis and Shiites, that government, I think, is going to be able to remain in place.

The key is, are we going to be able to stand up an Iraqi military that’s capable of defending this fragile government? And that’s the second step that we’ve taken for, for 60 years. Across this globe, we have taken—had a three-step process to bring freedom to parts of the world. We stand up a free government, you stand up a military that’s capable of protecting it. Last thing you do is the Americans leave. Right now we’re on number two. And, and we’ve got of the 114 Iraqi battalions that we, the Americans, have trained and equipped, a lot of them are in peaceful areas of Iraq and they’re not being deployed. So let’s move them into the tough areas, make them saddle up, get them into battle, get them into operations. I think you’re going to see military leaders rise to the top who are efficient, who are competent, and who do respond to the civilian government, which is a key link here. But I think we’re going to have to do that against the backdrop of these militias staying in place. You’re never going to completely disarm the militias. I think it’s a bridge too far.

MR. RUSSERT: Here is the latest from Newsweek, the headline and the cover I showed you. “More than anyone, Sadr personifies the dilemma Washington faces:

If American troops leave Iraq quickly, militia leaders like Sadr will be unleashed as never before, and full-scale civil war could follow. But the longer the American occupation lasts, the less popular America gets - and the more popular Sadr and his ilk become.” What do you do?

REP. SKELTON: We just do what I suggested. We do our very best to train them up so they can stand up by themselves. At the end of the day, this is not going to be a military decision, Tim. It’s going to be a political decision. Maliki’s going to have to bite the bullet, do the best he can to pull everybody together to make sure that Iraq stays together. He told me, when several of us had breakfast with him not long ago, that he was most concerned about the militias, and he wanted to disarm them. I don’t see how he can do that, but he can—I think—get them to work together. At least I would hope so. That’s the only out for him politically, is for them to work together so they can govern together, so that the military that he has, being better-trained by us, can control the sectarian violence, which, by the way, has overlaid all of the insurgency and the terrorism that’s over there.

MR. RUSSERT: You keep using the words “sectarian violence.” Is it a civil war, in all honesty?

REP. SKELTON: You know, it depends on what you call a civil war.

MR. RUSSERT: Well, what do you think?

REP. SKELTON: Scholars will say no. I will say yes, because the violence is, is so heavy. In true civil wars, Tim, there’s a political goal. There is a way to stop it and shake hands and put an end to it. The sectarian violence, the only purpose is to kill each other. The Sunnis are killing the Shiites, the Shiites killing the Sunnis, and among themselves. But insofar as peace and decorum is concerned, it’s a civil war in, in my book.

MR. RUSSERT: General McCaffrey, we had thought that the goal of Iraq was eliminate the weapons of mass destruction, and that proved not to be the case.  Then, obviously, a whole notion of a democracy in the Middle East, the shining example in, in that country. In all honesty and candor, what are we going to leave behind in Iraq?

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