‘Meet the Press’ transcript for June 10, 2007

MR. TIM RUSSERT:  Our issues this Sunday:  February 5^th, 2003, then Secretary of State Colin Powell goes before the United Nations to lay out the case against Saddam Hussein.  Much of it turns out to be based on faulty intelligence.  Four years later, what does he think about the war in Iraq? We’ll ask him.  Our guest retired General Colin Powell.

Then, as she seeks the Democratic nomination for president, new books emerge about her life and career.  With us, the authors of “Her Way:  The Hopes and Ambitions of Hillary Rodham Clinton.” New York Times reporters Jeff Gerth and Don Van Natta Jr.

But first, joining us now is the man who served first as chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, then secretary of state.

Retired General Colin Powell, welcome.

GEN. COLIN POWELL (RET.):  Good morning, Tim.  How are you?

MR. RUSSERT:  Before we talk about Iraq, I want to bring you back 10 years to Philadelphia.  Here you are with four presidents in attendance:  former President Bush, President Clinton, Vice President Gore, President Carter. This is when you announced the formation of America’s Promise:  Alliance For Youth.  What have you achieved in 10 years?

GEN. POWELL:  We’ve created a great organization called America’s Promise, which has become one the leading organizations, an umbrella organization for youth serving programs throughout the country.  And in that 10-year period, we have created communities of promise, universities of promise.  We have mobilized the corporate sector.  We have assisted in, in leveraging up the ability of youth-serving organizations to get more resources.  For example, in 1997 the Boys and Girls Clubs of America had 1500 clubs throughout America.  I think as a result of their effort, but with our support in providing an umbrella to it overall, we now have 4,000 Boys and Girls Clubs.  We have two million more kids who have mentors.  We have millions more kids who have acquired health care because, I think, America’s Promise has served as sort of the leading edge of the youth movement.  We have millions of kids who are still in need, however.

And now, to celebrate our tenth anniversary, we want to go for an even bigger goal to try to touch the lives of 15 million kids over the next five years with those same basic things that we were talking about 10 years ago:  Make sure that every child has responsible, caring adults in his or her life, in their life; make sure that every child has a safe place in which to learn to grow; every child has a healthy start in life and access to health care; every child is getting the education that they need to become a useful citizen; and finally, make sure that every child gets an opportunity to give back, to serve the community.

And the focus in this next part, this next phase in America’s Promise life is going to be on getting health care coverage for our kids through C—CCHIP, SCHIP, the children’s health insurance program, and also to make sure that schools become the center of gravity of youth service.  You build a school, how do you connect it to a Boys and Girls Club?  How do you connect it to a Big Brothers and Big Sisters program?  How do you put other youth-serving programs attached to that school?  Because that’s where the kids are most of the day.  And we also want to make sure that, as part of our movement forward with America’s Promise, that we give youngsters the opportunity to serve, especially in middle school.  At that age, start teaching these kids that is a part of being a responsible citizen to help and serve others.  And by so doing, they get a better understanding of who they and what they are and what may be in store for them in life.

MR. RUSSERT:  We’re going to talk a lot more about that on our Web site after the show.  Let me turn now to something that—a little bleaker, and that’s the war in Iraq.  We have lost 3,484 soldiers; 25,830 injured or wounded; 70,000 Iraqis killed; $350 billion spent.  Is the war in Iraq worth the price we’ve paid?

GEN. POWELL:  We won’t know for a while yet because the war in Iraq is not yet over.  It is an extremely difficult situation.  I have characterized it as a civil war even though the administration does not call it that.  And the reason I call it a civil war is I think that allows you to see clearly what we’re facing.  We’re facing groups that are now fighting each other:  Sunnis vs. Shias, Shias vs. Shias, Sunni vs. al-Qaeda.  And it is a civil war. The current strategy to deal with it, called a surge—the military surge, our part of the surge under General Petraeus—the only thing it can do is put a heavier lid on this boiling pot of civil war stew.  That’s only one part of the overall surge.  The other two parts of the surge, building up Iraqi forces, military and police forces, so that they can take over responsibility for security and getting the Iraqi political leadership to understate—undertake reconciliation efforts and to do something to turn out the fire.  And so General Petraeus is moving ahead with his part of it, but he’s the one who’s been saying all along there is no military solution to this problem.  The solution has to emerge from the other two legs, the Iraqi political actions and reconciliation, and building up the Iraqi security and police forces.  And those two legs are not, are not going well.  That, that part of strategy is not going well.  And that, I think, is the real challenge that we’re facing.  These three elements are not in synchronization.  And it’s one thing to send over 30,000 additional troops, but if the other two legs—Iraqi political reconciliation and the buildup of the Iraqi forces—are not synchronized with that, then it’s questionable as to how well it’s going to be able to do.  Will it, will it succeed?

But if, at the end of the day, when this civil war resolves itself, as every civil war eventually does resolve itself, one way or the other, and we see a government emerge that does represent the interests of its people, then maybe that’s the best success we can hope for, even though it might not be a government that looks exactly like, you know, a government we have—would have designed back here in Washington, D.C., or we would have designed in Philadelphia based on Jeffersonian principles.  And so it’s a tough road ahead, but increasingly the burden has to rest on the Iraqis and not on the American troops.

MR. RUSSERT:  At the end of December of last year, you were at Robert Morris University, and you predicted that we’d have a significant drawdown of troops in early 2007.  That hasn’t happened.

GEN. POWELL:  It hasn’t happened.  A different choice was made by the president.  The president received advice from his military advisers last fall that said do not send more troops.  General Abizaid went before the Congress, the, the commander of Central Command, and said he had consulted with all his division commanders in Iraq and all of the senior commanders, and none of them wanted to send additional troops.  They thought the strategy at that point should be to put the burden on the Iraqis to resolve what I call a civil war. They didn’t call it civil war, but I think that’s what it is.  And in the course of the fall, the Baker-Hamilton Commission came up with their report, which said a temporary surge might be useful, but, as a way to getting to a different kind of strategy, which is to pull back from direct confrontation in places like Baghdad and provide a security net around it and let the Iraqis deal with the civil war, and our focus should be on training the Iraqis to do that.  Not pulling out.  We’re not going to walk away from this problem, Tim. Even if we wanted to, we’re not going to walk away.  So cut and run is not, is not anybody’s option.  It can’t be an option.  The question is are we doing it in the best possible way?  Are we delaying the inevitable conclusion of this civil war that ultimately will be fought out between Sunnis and Shias, Shias and Shias, Sunnis and al-Qaeda?

You know, al-Qaeda is relatively small percentage of this overall problem, but a very violent percentage.  As the national intelligence estimate characterizes al-Qaeda, it says they are the accelerant.  They have the most effective bombs, the, the more vicious soldiers that are on the battlefield in this civil war.  And so they have to be dealt with.  But it is not just an al-Qaeda problem, it’s much bigger than that.  It is a sectarian conflict that I choose to call a civil war.

MR. RUSSERT:  In light of the fact that the president fired his secretary of defense, fired his chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, has now taken line responsibility for the war away from his national security adviser and given it to a war czar in the White House, isn’t that an acknowledgement that the war has been, if not a mistake, terribly managed?

GEN. POWELL:  I think it is acknowledgement that the president is not satisfied with the way in which the war has been managed.  Now, you can, you can move the deck chairs around, and you can bring in new people and you can change the organizational arrangements, but, ultimately, the president has the responsibility.  I didn’t think the war was a mistake at the time we entered into it.  It was a war that I would have preferred to avoid, and I said to the president in August of 2002, “Let’s take this to the UN and try to solve it, because there are consequences, both unintended and intended, associated with entering into a conflict with Iraq that are going to be difficult.  We break it, we’re going to own it.  We’re going to be liberators, we’re also going to be occupiers.” And the president did that, he took it to the UN.  But he did not get a satisfactory solution from the UN, and he made a decision to use military force, and I supported him in that.  But I think we have handled the aftermath of the fall of Baghdad in, in a very ineffective way.

MR. RUSSERT:  In light of the fact that we did not find the weapons of mass destruction, the president still describes the war as a war of choice—war of necessity, rather than choice.  Vice President Cheney said we would do the same thing all over again.  Knowing what you know today, would you do the same thing all over again?

GEN. POWELL:  If we knew today—or knew then what we know today, that there were no weapons of mass destruction, I would’ve had nothing to take to the United Nations.  The national intelligence estimate, which was the basis of my presentation and, by the way, was the basis of the intimation that was given to the Congress that caused them to vote a resolution of support four months before my UN presentation, we rested our case on the existence of weapons of mass destruction that were a threat to us and could be given to terrorists, making it another kind of threat to us.  I think without that weapons of mass destruction case, the justification would not have been there, even though Hussein was a terrible person, human rights abuses abounded, he was cheating on the UN food, Oil for Food program.  But I think it is doubtful that without the weapons of mass destruction case, the president and Congress and the United Nations and those who joined us in the conflict—the British, the Italians, the Spanish, the Australians—would’ve found a persuasive enough case to support a decision to go to war.

MR. RUSSERT:  Prior to the war, Walter Pincus wrote that you were provided, the president was provided some information from the CIA.  Let me read it here.  “On August 13^th, 2003, the CIA completed a classified, six-page intelligence analysis that described the worst scenarios that could arise after a U.S.-led removal of Saddam Hussein:  anarchy and territorial breakup in Iraq, a surge of global terrorism,” “a deepening of Islamic antipathy toward the United States.

“According to then-CIA director George Tenet, it was relegated to the back of a thick briefing book handed out to President Bush’s national security team for a meeting on September 7^th, 2002, at Camp David where the Iraq war was topic A.” Do you remember that?

GEN. POWELL:  I don’t remember specifically that book, but I’m sure it exists. But a week earlier, the 5^th of August 2002, the president and I, with Dr. Rice present, had a conversation that touched on many of the likely outcomes and the realization that it would probably tie up a significant percentage of our armed forces for a long period of time, it would cost a great deal, we’re getting inside of a sectarian conflict that we would have to keep a lid on, and we would have to get Iraqis up and moving as quickly as possible in order to hand the responsibility off to them.  And so I don’t think any of us were unaware of the kinds of problems that we might face.  I certainly was not unaware, and I was informed by my own thinking, as well as CIA documentation, not just the one Mr. Pincus makes reference to.  But all along the way, those who had experience in this part of the world and those that had experience in war understood that we were taking on something that was going to be a major burden to us for many years, and I think the president was well aware of that. And my, my judgment is that we didn’t prepare ourselves well enough for the kinds of challenges that occurred in the aftermath of the fall of Baghdad.

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