MTP Transcript for Feb. 18, 2007

SEN. REED: Thank you.

SEN. HAGEL: Thanks, Tim.

MR. RUSSERT: Coming next, he has covered this war for four years, sometimes with some very close calls. War correspondent for NBC News, Richard Engel, on what it’s like to live and work in Iraq. He is next only on MEET THE PRESS.

(Announcements)

MR. RUSSERT: And we’re back. Richard Engel, nice to have you home for a few weeks here.

MR. RICHARD ENGEL: Thanks very much. Good to be here.

MR. RUSSERT: The Americans are going to have a surge, more troops. We hear a lot of conflicting reports. They’re going to go after the Shiite militias, the Sunni militias, but that there’s the sense that some of these may go underground, play possum, and just wait for this operation to end, and hopefully for—in their minds—for the American troops to leave and then re-emerge and start all over again. What’s your...

MR. ENGEL: That’s exactly what’s happening. The Shiite movement, in particular, has gone underground. There’ve been very specific orders by Sadr, who himself has gone into hiding. There’s conflicting reports about his own location. The U.S. military says he’s in Iran or apparently out of the country. His organization says that, “No, he’s still in Iraq, but is in hiding.” And there’s a very specific reason that he’s doing this. They’re—part of this new security plan, which is already under way, is to eliminate some of the rogue elements from Sadr’s militia. And he doesn’t want to be around while this is happening. So he’s trying to lay low while his allies in the Shiite government, with U.S. forces, take away some of the more extremist elements in Sadr’s own militia. That way, he doesn’t have to get blamed for a purging of his own organization.

MR. RUSSERT: Based on your experience, and you’ve lived there for four years, a year from now, what will we see going on in Iraq?

MR. ENGEL: A year from now? I think you’ll have the Shiites in control of Baghdad. There’s a major power struggle with Shiites coming across from the east, moving into the west. I think they will consolidate that control. And the U.S. forces will have declared victory, and will have been moved out to the Anbar province, and will end up fighting al-Qaeda in Anbar. So you’ll have a situation where there will be a more stable, but very Shiite partisan government in control of Baghdad, and the U.S. fighting al-Qaeda in, in western Iraq. So both sides get to declare victory. The government says there is more stability and a representative of a democratically elected government, and the U.S. administration gets to say, “We’re still fighting the war on terrorism; we’re still fighting al-Qaeda.”

MR. RUSSERT: What happens to the Sunnis?

MR. ENGEL: The Sunnis, I think, are in a very difficult situation. They are fundamentally—have a failed state on their hands. And I think, no matter how much success there is in Iraq in the south and in the north, if you have even a small failed state in the center of the country, it will be a serious, serious problem for decades, that will plague this entire region.

MR. RUSSERT: How much influence does Iran have on Iraq, the Iraqi government?

MR. ENGEL: Tremendous amount of influence. I mean, most of the senior Iraqi politicians spent time in Iran, have close relations with Iran. Look at al-Hakim, the most empowerful political figure in Iraq, aside from the prime minister. He has a very close relations with Iran and wants to form a Shiite southern state that would have an economic alliance with Iran. So right now it is—it is by far the most influential nation across Iraq, outside of the U.S., and really wants to replace the United States as the main power broker in Iraq.

MR. RUSSERT: What is Iran building in southern Iraq?

MR. ENGEL: Iraq—the U.S. reconstruction project has effectively failed in, in—across most of Iraq, particularly in Baghdad. It just hasn’t taken place. Iran is proposing an alternate, to say Iran will provide all of the reconstruction that never happened under the very expensive but not very productive U.S. efforts. So wants to build an airport in Najaf to link Shiites from Iran so they can visit the Shiite holy sites in central Iraq. So not only airports but train stations and pipelines, and has an entire economic reform project and, and benefits project that it wants to bring to Iraq.

MR. RUSSERT: You tell me that if you want to reserve a hotel room in a southern Iraq hotel...

MR. ENGEL: Call in Farsi. Yeah. They will ask, when you make reservations in Najaf or Karbala, they’ll answer the phone in Farsi, they will quote you the price...

MR. RUSSERT: The Iranian language?

MR. ENGEL: The Iranian language. They’ll quote you the price in toman. They—it is very much an Iranian—part of the Iranian sphere of influence.

MR. RUSSERT: You are home to work on a one-hour documentary which will run on MSNBC on March 21^st, the fourth anniversary of the war. In offering this proposal to NBC, you wrote something and I want to share it with our viewers and come back and talk about it. These are Richard Engel’s words.

“As Iraq has changed, I have changed. The war has cost me my marriage. I’ve had friends killed and kidnapped, survived bombings and attempts on my life. I have seen Iraqis freed from the numbing, terrifying fetters of totalitarianism, and had their lives destroyed by the religious bigotry, ignorance, greed and opportunism unleashed by this war. It has changed my outlook. Violence and cruelty now seem, to me, to come easily to mankind; a new belief that disturbs me. But I am also more appreciative of how quickly life can turn for the better, or for the worse.”

This war has had a profound impact on you, hasn’t it?

MR. ENGEL: It has been my life for the last four years, and I’ve had many friends who’ve had, you know, terrible things happen to them, Iraqis, and part of the, part of the purpose of this documentary is to show some of the stories that we’ve been living ourselves through, and to try and show—internalize a little bit what it, hat it has been like for me. And one of the stories I want to talk about is my Iraqi—one of my best friends there, whose father was kidnapped and he remains missing, and it’s just a very human story. He goes every day to what I think must be the worst place on the planet. It’s the main morgue in Baghdad and he sifts through the hundreds of bodies that are in terrible state of decay. These are only unidentified bodies that are brought to the morgue and he’s searching for his father, and he’s told me, “I don’t even know if I saw him I would be able to recognize him because the bodies are so badly decomposing.” And these kind of stories just, we’ve come across so many, and after four years they do have an impact. I think he, he—this young man is starting to lose his hair, I think he’s losing his mind. It’s an entire country suffering from post-traumatic stress. So our own experiences, I think, also reflect to a degree what the country has, has gone through.

MR. RUSSERT: Criticism that the American press corps ignore the good news and only covers the bad news.

MR. ENGEL: I’ve heard that criticism a lot and I think we’re going to hear it a lot more over the next year, because there’s tremendous incentive for both the U.S. administration and the Iraqi government to declare a lot of success. It’s clear that the Iraqis want the—this war to start winding down. The American people seem to want that as well, so the easiest way is to just declare success, “everything is going very well.” It makes everyone feel good and it seems like you’re having a lot of progress. The reality is that there have been moments of progress, but in general, I think over the last four years, it has not gone very well. The region is very unstable. People in Iraq are not being attracted to this new democracy; instead, they’re fleeing in the millions into—spilling over into other countries. And now it’s becoming a major refugee crisis as Jordan and Syria are starting to turn people away and don’t want the Iraqis any more. So I think in general we’re going to hear more of this criticism. But if you read and you look back at the record that the media has put forward of the war over the last four years, I think it’s been fairly accurate.

MR. RUSSERT: Have you yourself had some close calls?

MR. ENGEL: Yeah, no more than most people, but I’ve just been there for a long time, so two attempted kidnappings and our bureau’s been bombed twice, and I’ve had three hotel rooms destroyed, and had friends killed and other colleagues kidnapped and just over time, things start to add up. You know, if you are there for a very long time and you roll the dice everyday, sometime the—your number might come up. But I’ve been very lucky so far. Other colleagues at—at CBS and ABC...

MR. RUSSERT: ABC.

MR. ENGEL: ...have been seriously injured or, or killed.

MR. RUSSERT: Well, we thank you for being there, and we thank you for coming here today and sharing this and we hope and pray for your safety, now and forever, Richard Engel. Thanks very much. March 21^st, the documentary, four years experience of your extraordinary reporting out of Iraq. Richard, thank you.

MR. ENGEL: Thank you for having me.

MR. RUSSERT: And say hello to your mom.

MR. ENGEL: I will do.

MR. RUSSERT: That’s all for today. We’ll be back next week. If it’s Sunday, it’s MEET THE PRESS.

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