MTP Transcript for Jan. 7, 2007

MR. HARWOOD:  And, Tim, one of the interesting things within the Democratic primary field of 2008 is even though Democratic leaders say, “We’re against a surge,” they say, “We’re not going to cut off money.” But as Democrats compete for primary votes, are—is one of the Democratic senators in this race going to stand up and propose a funding cutoff?  Hillary Clinton, because she voted for the war, Barack Obama, we’ll see how, how hot that pressure gets.

MR. RUSSERT:  Every major candidate for president—Obama said he would oppose the war from the beginning, but Edwards and Kerry and Biden, all who had voted for it, said they were sorry.  Senator Clinton hasn’t gone that far.

MR. HARWOOD:  She’s been very cautious.  If you’re the first woman with a real shot at becoming president, you’ve got to watch your national security bona fides very carefully, and I think she’s going to be loathe to appear to be flip-flopping on this issue.

MR. RUSSERT:  Michael Gordon, you said that the Pentagon, military people, are not monolithic.  What’s the sense in that building about the surge?  Do they believe that it has a reasonable chance of success or failure?

MR. GORDON:  I think there’s divided views on this.  I think General Petraeus is for it, I think General Ordierno, who we haven’t mentioned, but who’s the number two commander now in Iraq, is very much for it.  I think the chiefs are willing to go along with it, but they’re obviously concerned about the effect on their services.  And I think there are some people on the ground in Baghdad, at least when I was there in October, at the battalion level and below who see some merit on—in it.  So I think the military’s divided.  But remember, President Bush did listen to his generals over the past year and a half, and he did as—implement the strategy that General Casey advocated, and it didn’t work.  So I think that there’s a sense that, you know, a new approach might be needed.  And at least when they put forward this strategy, they’re going to have a commander who’s actually believes in this strategy.

MR. RUSSERT:  Is there a sense that 20,000 or 30,000 more troops could, in fact, stabilize Baghdad?

MR. GORDON:  Well, I think it—I think, first of all, troops can only be part of a solution.  And I think when President Bush lays out his plan, it’s going to have an economic component for job creation.  It’s going to have a political component.  But, you know, we only have 15,000 troops now in this city of six million who are involved in this operation to try to stabilize Baghdad.  So 20,000 is doubling that force.  It’s not inconsequential.  But I think a lot, ultimately, will depend on the Iraqi government, whether it—whether it’s prepared to rise above its sectarian kind of caste, and its Shiite caste, and I think that really remains to be seen.  That’s hard to predict.

MR. RUSSERT:  When does the Pentagon say, “Mr.  President, this is just not going to happen.  The Iraqis are not stepping up and taking responsibility”?

MR. GORDON:  That’s not a call for the Pentagon to make, that’s a call for the White House and the president to make based on, you know, really, I think the next—well, I think one way to look at it is the next six months or eight months, we’re going to put this counterinsurgency doctrine to the test, probably for the first time in Baghdad, and we’re going to put the Maliki government to the test.  Remains to be seen whether it’ll pass this test.

MR. RUSSERT:  Judy.

MS. WOODRUFF:  Tim, I was going to say, you know, I think a lot of us, all of us, and the administration, talking about this have gotten hung up on this term “surge.” What we’re really looking at here are two difficult choices, and that’s why it’s taken the administration so long.  Number one, it’s either a major escalation along the lines of what we saw back in Vietnam 40 years ago, where you send in—the numbers are different, but a major escalation, 30,000, 50,000 troops like what John McCain wants, open-ended commitment, two to five years.  Or you do something much smaller, 10,000, 15,000, maybe 20,000, but they’re only there for six months or a year.  Very few people think that’s going to work.  So the challenge for the administration is to prove how—somebody said to me, it’s like putting a fist in a sink full of water, leaving it there for a few minutes and taking it out.  How do you, how do you guarantee that things are going to be different when you take your fist out of the water?

MR. RUSSERT:  John Harwood, I want to share David Broder’s thinking, The Washington Post column the other day.  He writes this:  “In reality, Bush’s ability to act on his own is severely limited.  ...  At most, he can suggest what he would like to do, but he is dependent on others to actually do it.  ...” Here, at home, the limitations on his freedom of action are tight.

“The new Congress ...  is not the same passive body that approved his decision to go to war and allowed him a free hand in managing or mismanaging the aftermath.

“When the White House speculates about increasing the number of U.S.  troops in Iraq for some indefinite period, it goes directly against the expressed policy wishes of the new Democratic majority and its most influential members.  ...  As commander in chief, the president can order more troops into the war zone, but such a step would undoubtedly provoke the most angry domestic debate of his term.”

This is the first time we’re going to have true oversight, robust congressional hearings chaired by Joe Biden, who just announced for president, saying he’s filing his exploratory committee this very month.  What does that portend for the president?

MR. HARWOOD:  Well, I think the president’s going to have tremendous PR flack to face, but not a funding cutoff.  I think Democrats, in the—at the end of the day, even if some of the presidential candidates—I raised that possibility before—end up endorsing that step, the Democratic Congress does not want to do that.  And unless something dramatically deteriorates even from where it is now, they’re not going to be compelled to do it.  So you’re going to have a very unfavorable environment, not just for President Bush but for all the Republican senators up in 2008.  Republicans across the board are very, very worried that things are only getting worse for them politically.  When you talk to Republican members of the House, they say, “George Bush bet his presidency on Iraq and we lost.” And they’re worried that their losses are going to increase in 2008.

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