‘Meet the Press’ transcript for Aug. 26, 2007

MR. RUSSERT:  So what do you do?  If, in fact, you stop the surge, you could erase some of the gains you’ve made.  And yet, we do not have the capacity to continue the surge because of the strain on our military.

MR. GORDON:  Well, the surge will run its course, and then, as Tom said, we’ll begin to reduce our forces.  There’s no question we’re going to reduce our forces, and it’s going to be more than 5,000 next year.  The issues is at what pace these forces are reduced, what their mission is—no one likes to talk about the mission, they simply talk about the numbers game—and how this is connected up with the politics of Iraq.

MR. RUSSERT:  Richard Engel, is an all-out civil war inevitable in Iraq?

MR. ENGEL:  Absolutely.  It is going on right now, but it’s just contained. You have so many American forces that are keeping the lid on this civil war, but Iraqis are, are fighting.  And you pull them back, it’s just going to come right up to the forefront.

And going back to, to their points, if you pull back the troops, the troops themselves are going to be furious.  They have done so much and worked so hard and sacrificed so much that if you start pulling them back because of political debates and domestic pressure in the United States, they’re going to be livid.  They’re not going to thank the Americans, and they’re probably going to end up blaming Democrats, who said, “We never got a chance to complete the mission and all of our hard work hasn’t been accomplished.” So I think there’s a real risk if you draw them—draw the troops down and don’t give them a new mission that they’re going to feel that they were just used and, and, and manipulated.

MR. RUSSERT:  A new mission.  Tom Ricks, you write this:  “If Iraq does” not “descend into a full-out civil war”—“If Iraq does descend into a full-out civil war, U.S. government efforts may turn to shaping a new policy of containment that seeks to prevent the country’s conflict from flaring into a regional one.  The question then, perhaps to be debated later this year but certainly by the 2008 presidential election, will be whether the Americans are taking on yet another open-ended and ultimately impossible mission.”

MR. RICKS:  I think probably where we’ll wind up is with what one recent think tank study called the three nos:  moving to goals of basically no genocide; no safe haven for al-Qaeda; and no regional war, no expansion of the war outside of Iraq.  Much less ambitious than the Bush administration’s original goals of liberation and democratizing the Middle East, but still a considerable mission that would have us with many, many troops in Iraq and the region for many years.

MR. RUSSERT:  And tolerating a civil war, in effect.

MR. ENGEL:  That’s the problem.  The troops are going to be sitting on their bases, no longer patrolling as much, and they’re going to be watching massacres happening right off the base, and they’re going to be really angry about it, because they’re going to feel responsible.  Now they’re out on patrol.  The only thing that gets them going is they see one particular neighborhood, they can help an old woman or a family and effect change.  If they’re just told “Stay in your bases to be a tripwire so that Iran doesn’t take over, but don’t listen to all of the civil war going on around you,” it’s going to be a very uncomfortable position for them.

MR. RUSSERT:  Michael:

MR. GORDON:  Just going back to my original point.  The most important initiative going on in Iraq now is this effort to build reconciliation, as it were, from the ground up, instead of the top down, to enable these Sunni groups and try to get them to work with the government.  That’s become really, I think, the centerpiece of the plan, more so than these benchmarks, which are more discussed in Washington than in Baghdad.  And I think the success or failure of that over the next three or four months will determine the shape of the war in Iraq.

MR. RUSSERT:  Can a prime minister, Maliki or his successor, work with those Sunni groups that you’re describing and still maintain an allegiance or rapport with the Shiite militia leader Sadr?

MR. GORDON:  Well, they already are working with these groups, because there’s a government of Iraq reconciliation committee that’s working with a panel established by General Petraeus and Ambassador Crocker, and they’ve sort of accepted these groups in Anbar, they’ve approved some names for the Abu Ghraib region.  The question is, the closer this comes to Baghdad, the more nervous the government becomes about these Sunni groups, and they see them not only as a means of proposing security, but as a potential threat to a Shiite-dominated government.  So there’s institutions to work with these groups.  The question is will this really be a general alliance, a genuine alliance between the government and these groups?

MR. RUSSERT:  What do you think?

MR. GORDON:  Well, I, I, I just did a magazine article for The New York Times on this for next week, and I think it’s beginning to—I think the effort with the groups is pretty impressive, but I think that I actually don’t know what’s going to happen.  I know, I know that General Petraeus and Ambassador Crocker are staking a lot on this.  I think it’s in the early phases.  I think it’s too soon to write it off.

MR. RUSSERT:  Tom Ricks, you write this, and we’ll end on a literary note. “Shakespeare’s tragedies have five acts, and I fear we have not yet seen the beginning of Act IV.” What’s Act IV and V?

MR. RICKS:  Well, Act III is the Petraeus phase.  Act IV, I think, would be the spreading of the war, the next phase, maybe the post-American phase.  And Act V will be the regional consequences.  I think the point is Iraq, I think, is going to be much more difficult for this country than the Vietnam War was.

MR. RUSSERT:  Why?

MR. RICKS:  Because we could walk away from Vietnam.  And it was bad for the Cambodians, bad for many Vietnamese, but we could wash our hands of it.  I think Iraq is not going to be so easy to get out of.  We have stepped into something in the middle of a economically vital region for the entire world.

MR. RUSSERT:  Richard Engel, you wrote a book called “Fist in the Hornet’s Nest,” describing the invasion of Iraq.  What do you see as Act V?

MR. ENGEL:  I think, ultimately, they’re—if they—if we stay on this current plan, you’re going to have a series of governments, eventually American troops are going to get pulled back to bases.  They’ll be left there.  There’ll be a civil war going on with the—in the country.  It will divide naturally up into these three to five mini states, and the American troops will be mostly forgotten about.  Because if they’re sitting around on the bases, the debate won’t be so intense here in the U.S., and I think they’ll be there for 10, 15 years.

MR. RUSSERT:  Michael Gordon:

MR. GORDON:  I think we’ll have a substantial number of forces in Iraq through the life of the Bush administration.  And I agree with the point that Iraq is more difficult and more complicated than Vietnam because, unlike Vietnam, we have no one to lose to, so to speak.  There’s no North Vietnamese government that can come in and establish control of that region and, “OK, we’re out of there, but the place is, is orderly and, and controlled.” If we leave the chaotic situation and it becomes much more chaotic and the civil war intensifies, then that’s really the dilemma for the United States.

MR. RUSSERT:  Tom Ricks, is there any good solution?

MR. RICKS:  No, I think that’s the beginning of where we should be in the debate now is to understand there are no good solutions, and if we can all come together and discuss and say, “Yes, there are bad risks associated with every possible policy; let’s get beyond that and talk together as a nation about how we can at least minimize or mitigate the damage done.”

MR. RUSSERT:  It’s tough to do during a presidential campaign.

MR. ENGEL:  I think there’s always been solutions, by the way.  And it should have done—taken place the day after Baghdad fell.  Iran was scared to death. The army that Iran had fought, Saddam Hussein’s army, was obliterated in three weeks.  They would have talked.  We didn’t want to talk.  We told them, “Shut up or you’re next,” and it was the wrong message.  And I still think there’s an opportunity to talk, to rearrange the, the political situation on the ground.

MR. RUSSERT:  To be continued.  Richard Engel, be safe on your return to Iraq.  Michael Gordon, “Cobra II.” Tom Ricks, “Fiasco.” Thank you both.

Coming next, cancer survivor Lance Armstrong wants to know what the presidential candidates will do about one issue:  fighting cancer.  He’s our guest next right here on MEET THE PRESS.

(Announcements)

MR. RUSSERT:  And we are back.

Lance Armstrong, welcome to MEET THE PRESS.

MR. LANCE ARMSTRONG:  Thank you.

MR. RUSSERT:  The numbers are staggering.  As I prepared to talk to you, one out of three Americans will be diagnosed sometime in their lifetime with cancer.

MR. ARMSTRONG:  Mm-hmm.

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