‘Meet the Press’ transcript for Dec. 2, 2007

MR. TIM RUSSERT:  Our issues this Sunday:  the war in Iraq.  Is the military surge working?  Can there be political reconciliation?  This decorated Vietnam Veteran, former secretary of the Navy and now United States senator from Virginia returned yesterday from his first visit to the war zone.  And this morning Democrat Jim Webb is our guest.

Then, the Republicans square off in Florida, the Democrats in Iowa.  Bill Clinton creates a stir with this comment:

(Videotape)

FMR. PRES. BILL CLINTON:  Even though I approved of Afghanistan and opposed Iraq from the beginning...

(End videotape)

MR. RUSSERT:  And Oprah prepares to stump for Obama.  Insights and analysis from David Brody of the Christian Broadcasting Network, David Gregory of NBC News, Michele Norris of National Public Radio and Eugene Robinson of The Washington Post.

And in our MEET THE PRESS MINUTE, former Congressman Henry Hyde, who steered the impeachment proceedings against President Clinton, died this week at the age of 83.  Nine years ago he reflected on his role right here on MEET THE PRESS.

But first, Senator Jim Webb of Virginia has just returned from his first trip to Iraq.

Senator Webb, welcome home and welcome back to MEET THE PRESS.

SEN. JIM WEBB (D-VA):  Well, nice to be with you again.

MR. RUSSERT:  Iraq, is the military surge working?

SEN. WEBB:  I think this is—that’s a very complicated question in its—in its connotations, and I’d like to take a few minutes and, and go through it, if, if I may.

MR. RUSSERT:  Please.

SEN. WEBB:  There are certain elements in Iraq that I think have benefited from the surge, and I think there are other elements that have had their own momentum.  And I think it’s important to make those distinctions.  There are a lot of pieces in, in motion over there.  I would look at four different components that have come together to give us an interval here, a very important interval, where hopefully we can move forward with some of the overarching diplomatic approaches that I and some other people have been advocating for a long time.

The first element is al-Anbar.  And this is a—this is a piece—the awakening, the Sunni awakening, which has been used by the administration as evidence of the fact that the surge is working.  This was happening before the surge began, well before the surge began, and it would have been happening even if there wasn’t a surge.  There are three different pieces that were in motion out there in al-Anbar.  My son was there fighting as a Marine while this was going on more than a year ago.  You had al-Qaeda, who had not been operating in Iraq until our invasion, that had developed something of an alliance with the Sunni insurgency, and they overplayed their hand.  They badly overplayed their hand before the, the surge was announced.  They were assassinating tribal leaders in the areas.  And the Sunni leadership made a deal.  They decided that, at least for the moment, the al-Qaeda situation was worse for them than the American occupation, and they have moved toward us.  And in that environment, we have, for the moment, a, a, a sense of calm.  We have a lot of people who were in the insurgency who are now Iraqi police in the streets in Ramadi, where, where this—where the centerpiece of this took place.  Short term, that’s good for us.  Long term, it could be the same sort of thing that we saw with Osama bin Laden when he was working with us against the Soviets in Afghanistan early on, until that changed.  So it’s, it’s a, a temporary situation that could benefit us, but, but not necessarily will.

The second situation is the rift in the Shia.  And we had a period of calm because Sadr, who is the most aligned with Iran, has cut, basically, a six-month deal here where he’s looking at the Maliki government.  The events of this last week, with respect to this proposal that the Maliki government and the Bush administration had moved forward for long-term reconciliation with the security implications in it have apparently offended the Sadrists. We got to, we got to look at that.  Short term, we’ve got a period of calm, the military’s been able take advantage of that.  Long term, different situation.

The third is the elements of international terrorism.  International terrorism is a fluid environment.  Right now we’ve done a good job.  The American military has done a good job taking advantage of the situation with respect to terrorism in Iraq, but the most dangerous area for international terrorism right now is the fragility of the situation in Pakistan and the events that’re going on in the Afghani-Pakistan border.  Coalition casualties are actually up in Afghanistan.  I think this reflects a movement of international terrorism.

The fourth piece is what’s happening up in the Kurdish areas.  We have a situation, as you know, where the, the Turkish parliament itself has authorized action inside Iraqi territory.  One can only imagine what people here would be saying if it was the Iranian parliament that had been authorizing Iranian action inside Iraqi territory.  But I think this has been a bit of a wake-up call for the Kurds, who have been pretty much independent. They realized that they need to be working with the Iraqi government and with the Americans to forestall some of that sort of situation.

So those components have come together, they have coupled with the fact that wherever the American military has gone they have done their job tactically, whether it was the initial invasion or now, and they have given us this moment.  And I think Secretary Negroponte spoke yesterday of having this, this interval as well.  We need to take advantage of this in a regional way, not simply an Iraq way.

MR. RUSSERT:  The Washington Post wrote an editorial last month, and let me share it and see if you agree with it or disagree.

“The evidence is now overwhelming that the ‘surge’ of U.S. military forces in Iraq this year has been, in purely military terms, a remarkable success.  By every metric used to measure the war—total attacks, U.S. casualties, Iraqi casualties, suicide bombings, roadside bombs—there” have—“has been an enormous improvement since January.  U.S. commanders report that al-Qaeda has been cleared from large areas it once controlled and” “its remaining forces in Iraq are reeling.

“Markets in Baghdad are reopening, and the curfew is being eased; the huge refugee flow out of the country has begun to reverse itself.  Credit for these achievements belongs in large part to U.S. soldiers in Iraq, who took on a tremendously challenging new counterterrorism strategy and made it work; to General David Petraeus, the architect of that strategy; and to President Bush, for making the decision to launch the surge against the advice of most of Congress and the country’s foreign policy elite.”

SEN. WEBB:  Well, that’s The Washington Post.  You know, they have strongly editorialized in favor of this war from, from the beginning.  And as I just said, there are a lot of moving parts in play.  I don’t want to take anything away from the performance of the United States military tactically when they’ve been put into a situation.  But there are a lot of other pieces to this, and al-Anbar is a classic example.  And I just said to you exactly what I said to General Petraeus in September when he was testifying, and I reiterated to him when he was over there.  I think if General Petraeus—unless, unless General Petraeus wants to enter the realm of politics, he should be the first to, to acknowledge the situation in al-Anbar preceded the surge.

MR. RUSSERT:  But should President Bush receive credit for undertaking the surge in other areas?

SEN. WEBB:  What I said the night that the surge was announced is what I continue to believe, and that is that it was a tactical adjustment; it didn’t change the overarching strategy of what we were trying to do.  We should express our gratitude for the quality of our fighting people when they’ve been sent into these situations.  But there are three components in terms of a national strategy when—as it relates to Iraq.

The first is the military component.  They have gone again and again to our military, and our military has always met the expectations.  The second are the components inside Iraq, and, with respect to the surge, I think we should remember, there are a couple of objectives that President Bush laid out in February when he announced this surge.  One was that the Iraqi government would’ve taken over all the provinces of Iraq by now, by the end of the year. The second was that there were going to put $10 billion of their own money into local reconstruction.  I met with the special inspector general’s office in Baghdad when I was there, and the representative of that office told me that, from her best estimate, that number was probably 25 percent, maybe to 40 percent of the money that the Iraqi government said they were going to put into these projects.  They’ve got the money.  They clearly have the money. Their oil revenues are, are going strong.  Oil’s now $100 a barrel.  They have not put the money out.  The goal now for total control by the Iraqis in Iraq is next July.  But that’s one piece, the Maliki government and meeting those standards.

And then the biggest piece, the one that has not been met, the one that this administration has to step up and accept responsibility for, is the failure for the last five years to match the quality of our military performance with robust regional diplomacy.  The Baker-Hamiltion Commission recommended a year ago that we, we begin immediately.  We, we saw last week the first step toward something of that sort with the Annapolis Conference on the Palestinian-Israeli situation.  That could have been done five years ago.  But that’s the only way that we’re going to be able to take advantage of the, the quality of work that our military people have done, and we’re still waiting.

MR. RUSSERT:  Does the Maliki government have the capability of bringing about a political reconciliation at the national level?

SEN. WEBB:  I think that’s a really tough question, and it’s always been a tough question.  When I, when I look at Iraq, I, I see a lot of what I saw in Beirut when I was a there journal—as a journalist in 1983.  You had a very weak central government surrounded by strong, armed tribal factions, each of which has their own agenda.  And the question is whether the central government can compel certain actions.  But there’s two ways that we need to look at that.  One is that we have given them the underpinnings, and we’ve now called them on this.  They have to be able to step forward.  But the other is, as the deputy prime minister mentioned to me when I was there—he’s a, he’s a Kurd—he basically said, “Every country in this”—and this is his words—“Every country in this region has a dog in this fight.” And I said, “That’s a lot of dogs.” And the question is how you can bring these countries to the table in a constructive way.  That’s, that’s the way you’re going to be able to, to, to make the change or the, the changes we’re trying to help bring about with the domestic government work, and we haven’t been doing that.  We need to get them on the table overtly.

MR. RUSSERT:  As you well know, funding for the war is a big issue in the Senate.  Every major Democratic candidate for president has opposed funding for the war except Joe Biden.  The president on Thursday called on Congress to continue funding the war.  Here’s what the president said:

(Videotape)

PRES. GEORGE W. BUSH:  Pentagon officials have warned Congress that the continued delay in funding our troops will soon begin to have a damaging impact on the operations of this department.  The warning has been laid out for the United States Congress to hear.

(End videotape)

MR. RUSSERT:  You talked about this small opportunity, this small window. Should the Congress continue to fund the war in Iraq?

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