MTP Transcript for Dec. 3

MR. RUSSERT: The problem, Mr. Hadley, is this, the president the next day at the meeting said this about Mr. Maliki, “He’s been in power for six months, and I’ve been able to watch a leader emerge. ... He’s the right guy for Iraq.” The president’s saying he’s the right guy for Iraq, and the day before, there’s a memo that says he may—from you—that he may be ignorant of what’s going on, or that he may not have the capability of leading the country. How can it be both, and why don’t you think the American people are confused when the president’s top foreign policy adviser questions the ability of the Iraqi prime minister, and then the president says “He’s the right guy”?

MR. HADLEY: That memo was written early in the review process, in the first week of November as a result of a trip I took. We have been making assessments in a variety of agencies to try and answer the questions I posed in that memo. And what the president did, and one of the reasons it was so important for him to go to sit down with Mr. Maliki is to make a—to come to his own conclusions, and he reached those conclusions and announced it at the meeting—after the meeting over there.

MR. RUSSERT: So, in two weeks, Mr. Maliki is no longer ignorant and is now capable and the right guy?

MR. HADLEY: He needs to get better information. We’ve talked about that, he understands that. He needs to perform better, his government needs to perform better. If you listen to Prime Minister Maliki, that’s what he says. He’s not satisfied with the performance to date. And that’s one of the reasons they talked about how they can increase the performance of this government. But the good news is it is a unity government coming out of an election in which 12 million Iraqis voted, and it is committing to taking more responsibility. That is the good news. And what we need to do is to help that government succeed by building that capacity.

MR. RUSSERT: I listened very carefully to Prime Minister Maliki, and this is what he said, “Be assured that the Iraqi forces and the security forces have reached a good level of competency and efficiency to protect Iraq as a country and to protect its people.” Competency and efficiency? Thousands have died in the last few months; he wants more help. How can he possibly say his forces have reached competency and efficiency? If they have, then we could get out.

MR. HADLEY: Well, he also said that the—they will try—that his goal is to be able to take responsibility for the security of his country middle of next year, so obviously he’s not ready to do it today. He said he was not ready today. He set the goal of middle of next year. And one of the things he did was...

MR. RUSSERT: Is that doable?

MR. HADLEY: He—one of the things he did was brief the president on his plan for achieving that objective, which involves accelerating, training, equipping, transfer of responsibility. Our commanders have looked at that plan, they think it is ambitious. We were—we’re going to do everything we can to try and help him achieve those goals, but I think, as Prime Minister Maliki has said, he’s not ready yet. He acknowledged that. But he has a goal for Iraqis to take responsibility for security in Iraq, that’s a good thing, and we need to try and help him achieve that goal.

MR. RUSSERT: One of—the president says on Thursday that raised some eyebrows here in this country was this:

(Videotape, Thursday):

PRES. BUSH: This business about graceful exit just simply has no realism to it at all.

(End videotape)

MR. RUSSERT: What’s unrealistic about a graceful exit from Iraq?

MR. HADLEY: I think what the president was doing in that comment is they began to see—press, Tim, about how the Baker-Hamilton Commission was just going to be cover for an American withdrawal, almost regardless of what was happening on the ground. And the president needed, and felt he needed to stop that right there. That isn’t graceful withdrawal, that’s cut and run. And, of course, as the president’s said, cut and run is not his cup of tea.

What, what we think needs to happen, what we think the Iraqis want to happen, and the American people want to happen is for success in Iraq, a government that is democratic, that can defend itself, govern itself as an ally in the war on terror. Because if we do not have that, what we have is a situation of chaos in Iraq where it will become a bastion and a safe haven for terrorists who will destabilize the region and plan against the United States. That’s not what we want.

I think what you, you will find is the American people understand we need to succeed in Iraq. Their concern is whether we have a plan for success. That’s why the president has conducted this review, that’s why he’s listening to all sources to develop a way ahead in Iraq. It’s what the American people expect, and it’s what the men and women in uniform who are taking great risks for this country deserve. And that’s what the president is committed to do.

MR. RUSSERT: Republican former speaker Newt Gingrinch made this observation, and let me share it with you and our, our viewers. He said, “Unless the Bush administration admits that the war in Iraq is a ‘failure,’ it will never develop a strategy to leave the country successfully.”

MR. HADLEY: The, the—we have not failed in Iraq. We will fail in Iraq if we pull of—out of our troops now, before we’re in a position to help the Iraqis to succeed. If we succeed in Iraq, it will make the country safer. They—the, the consequences of failure are too dire. At the same time, what the American people need to know is that the president understands we need to have a way forward in Iraq that is more successful. That’s what he wants, that’s what the Iraqi government wants, that’s what this review process is all about.

MR. RUSSERT: But in terms of trying to bring the country together, to bring Democrats—who now control Congress—to the table, could the president step forward and say, “I acknowledge we were wrong about WMD, we were wrong about troop levels, we were wrong about the length of the war, we were wrong about the cost of the war, we were wrong about the financing of the war, we were wrong about the level of sectarian violence, we were wrong about being greeted as liberators. We made some fundamental misjudgments, and they were wrong, but now we’re all in this together”? Could he do that?

MR. HADLEY: He’s done a lot of that. He’s acknowledged that...

MR. RUSSERT: All those mistakes?

MR. HADLEY: He has acknowledged that—for example, that there were not stockpiles of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.

MR. RUSSERT: How about troop levels?

MR. HADLEY: He’s, he’s acknowledged that, that in terms of troops we need to be building Iraqi forces to provide greater security. You know, Tim, people forget that, that we had hoped to have 150,000 to 200,000 Iraqi army forces to help in the security proposition, and those forces melted away at the close of the war. We have been trying to build Iraqi security forces, because when we go to the Iraqis and say “How about more forces?” the answer of the Iraqis has been “We do need more forces, but they need—we need Iraqi security forces.” And that’s why one of the major efforts of the administration has been to train and equip and increase the competence of Iraqi security forces, because Iraqis want Iraqis to be responsible for security and chart the way forward.

So the president has acknowledged that there are things that have not gone the way we had hoped, that we need to make some changes. We’ve been making some changes. He’s acknowledged we need to make a reassessment, given the new situation on the ground. That’s the process we’re engaged in now.

MR. RUSSERT: Whenever the administration seems to be having trouble with Iraq, in terms of its message, al-Qaeda comes front and center. This was the president on Tuesday talking about al-Qaeda in Iraq.

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