MTP Transcript for Mar. 11, 2007

MR. KHALILZAD: Well, there is no question that there are people here in Iraq who have a negative evaluation of our performance so far. And we do admit that we have made mistakes. But I believe that the majority of the leaders of Iraq, the political blocs, would like the Americans to stay at the present time. Even among Sunnis, there is a change in attitude. They see us now as playing a positive role in terms of controlling or trying to control the sectarian violence here. But there is no question that the majority of Iraqis ultimately would like us to leave, and there is a—there is a mixed evaluation of our overall performance here in the—in the course of the last several years.

MR. RUSSERT: The next meeting will take place in Turkey in April, and the secretary of state, Dr. Condoleezza Rice, will be present?

MR. KHALILZAD: Well, that’s a Turkish proposal, to host a meeting in April. The minister of foreign affairs of Iraq will consult with the other neighbors at the ministerial level, and, if he gets an agreement from them, such a meeting could take place or is likely to take place in April. But that’s subject to, to an agreement by the neighbors. That was not decided today, since the ministers were not there.

MR. RUSSERT: Mr. Ambassador, thank you very much for sharing your views.

Coming next, our roundtable, Michael Beschloss, presidential historian;

Michael Duffy of Time magazine; Ted Koppel of the Discovery Channel; and Dana Priest of The Washington Post. They are all next right here on MEET THE PRESS.

(Announcements)

MR. RUSSERT: Insights and analysis from our roundtable after this brief station break.

(Announcements)

MR. RUSSERT: And we are back. Welcome all.

Ted Koppel, the meeting in Iraq—the Iranians, Syrian, Iraqis, U.S—what should we think about it?

MR. TED KOPPEL: Had to happen. I, I, I made a little note here of something that Ambassador Khalilzad said to you a moment ago. He said the region will not be stable until Iraq is stabilized. It’s the one thing nobody talks about. Everyone is concerned about the United States being in the middle of a civil war inside Iraq, but they forget about the fact that, if U.S. troops were to pull out of Iraq, that civil war could become a regional war between the Sunnis and Shia. And the region, just in case anyone has forgotten, is the Persian Gulf, where we get most of our oil and, you and I have talked about his before, natural gas. So the idea of pulling out of there and letting the region—I mean, letting the national civil war expand into a regional civil war, something the United States cannot allow to happen.

MR. RUSSERT: Michael Beschloss, we have a long history of presidents saying, “I will not talk to those people. I will not negotiate with those people, unless”—and now we see we’re sitting down with the Iranians, not talking about their nuclear program, but we’re having a dialogue with them.

MR. MICHAEL BESCHLOSS: Absolutely. And, you know, one thing that struck me about your interview with Ambassador Khalilzad was when you were—when, when he made the point that “I’ve been authorized by the president to talk to Iranians for at least a year.” You know, George Bush, as you remember just after the Iran Study Group reported in, one of the things they said was, “Let’s talk to Iranians, others in the area.” He made a big point of suggesting to Americans, “interesting report, but I’m not going to change in response to Baker and Hamilton.” In a way, that’s happening now, but the president and the ambassador are still making the point, “We’re doing this on our own. We’re not doing this in response to what someone else said.”

MR. RUSSERT: Dana Priest, you talked to folks in our military, folks in our intelligence communities. What do they tell you about Iraq, and what do they think we should be doing and where it’s going?

MS. DANA PRIEST: Well, most of the generals, I think, welcome this sort of engagement with the neighbors. They’re the first to say, always, and it’s as if we don’t listen to them, “You cannot get out of this just by the military. You need a political solution.” Well, the political solution can only come with, with neighbors involved. And I think this is the plan B that people keep saying is not there militarily. This is the plan B. And so I think there’s a welcoming. Of course, you have the issue of Iran’s involvement with supplying explosives and training, but that’s part—and I—it’s not unusual that you will see them putting heat on Iran right now for that issue, because that is important to get rid of that and to get their cooperation. And I think the administration will be both pulling them in but also hammering them in the—in any way they can to make sure that they stay in.

Mr. RUSSERT: Was this a political necessity as well as a diplomatic necessity?

MR. MICHAEL DUFFY: Those are the two factors, exactly. Since the Iraq Study Group came out, Tim, public support for the administration’s approach in Iraq has continued to fall. At the same time, Washington’s allies have signaled in every way they can, “We’re out of here.” The Brits have begun a partial pullout. Our moderate Arab friends have said, “You must engage on all fronts.” And so on both of those pressures, you know, about two weeks ago, Condoleezza Rice went to Capitol Hill, and someone had pointed out to all these different diplomatic initiatives they’re making with North Korea and now with—now with Iran, and someone said, “Congratulations, that’s great,” And she said, “Well, we are listening.” And I thought that was—just the three words, “We are listening.”

Mr. RUSSERT: A profound change.

MR. DUFFY: A profound—a huge course correction just in about six, seven weeks.

MR. RUSSERT: Tom Friedman wrote a column Wednesday, and he wrote it this way: “From the start, the Bush team has tried to keep the Iraq war ‘off the books’ both financially and emotionally. As Larry Diamond of Stanford’s Hoover Institution said to me,” America’s “‘not at war. The U.S.’” Army’s “‘at war.’ The rest of us are just watching, or just ignoring, while the whole fight is carried on by 150,000 soldiers and their families.”

Michael Beschloss, one, do you agree with that? And, two, how does that compare with other wars that we’ve been involved with, certainly, in this century?

MR. BESCHLOSS: I think it is true, and it’s like the wars the presidents have fought, really, since World War II. You know, Tim, one thing that, really, I feel strongly about, presidents these days, when they want to fight a war, they don’t do what the Constitution tells them to. They don’t go to Congress and say, “Give me a declaration of war.” No president has done that since F.D.R. in 1941. And, in the meantime, we’ve had an awful lot of wars, including Vietnam, Korea and Iraq. And I think the result has been that presidents have been able to keep the noise level down. We often don’t have a full debate before the war begins. And the result is, I think, these wars are not fought as well as they would be if a president did what the Constitution says, which is go to Congress, have a big debate, let the public understand what this might mean, what it might cost them. And the result, I think, would be that wars are fought more effectively and the public would be more willing to be with a president over the long run.

MR. RUSSERT: Ted Koppel, you are tonight airing on the Discovery Channel a special called “Our Children’s Children’s War.” “The long war,” as you called—call it repeatedly, that this war on terror is much more than just Iraq, and it’s going to go on for a long time.

MR. TED KOPPEL: It could go on—I mean, General Abizaid, with whom I spoke, talks in terms of generations. And if you think about two things, that’s not so hard to imagine. Number one, the Cold War, after all, lasted 50 years. We didn’t know it when we began it. We didn’t know it—we didn’t know how long it was going to be when we were in the middle of it, but it lasted half a century.

If you look back at the elements of the war against terrorism, that war was going on and has been going on for the past 24 years. We just didn’t connect the dots. Twenty-four years ago, the, the precursors of Hezbollah blew up the U.S. Marine barracks in Beirut, Lebanon. That was 1983, 241 Americans killed. In the interim, between then and now, you had two attacks on the World Trade Center, you had the blowing up of Khobar Towers in Saudi Arabia, you had the attempt to blow up the, the U.S.S. Cole, you had the bombing of the two U.S. embassies in East Africa. This war’s already been going on for 24 years. We were just a little bit slow to recognize it.

MR. RUSSERT: Let me show you an exchange you had with General Abizaid. He was then the head of the U.S. Central Command, now retired, and he talks about something about—which is fascinating to me—how the—that long war will be fought after we are done with Iraq and Afghanistan. Let’s watch.

(Videotape of “Our Children’s Children’s War”)

MR. KOPPEL: The model of U.S. troops training indigenous forces in north Africa and then sending small units of Americans trained in special operations to fight alongside them in places like Somalia...

Unidentified Soldier #1: What are some things that went right?

Unidentified Soldier #2: (Foreign language spoken)

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