MR. BROKAW: All right. Well, let me show you what the USA Today said in its editorial, and then we'll move on to Afghanistan. This is what USA Today had to say about your position on the surge. "Why can't Obama bring himself to acknowledge the surge worked better than he and other skeptics thought that it would?" That's a conditioned response on their part. "What does that stubbornness say about the kind of president that he would be?"

SEN. OBAMA: Well, listen. I, I actually think that there's no doubt that the violence has gone down more than any of us anticipated, including President Bush and John McCain. If you, if you would--if you had talked to them and, and said, "You know what? We're going to bring down violence to the levels that we have," I think--I, I, I suspect USA Today's own editorial board wouldn't have anticipated that. That's not a, that's not a hard thing to acknowledge, that the situations have improved more rapidly than we had anticipated. That doesn't change the broader strategic questions that we've got to deal with.

MR. BROKAW: Here is some of the perception that you're working against based on the latest NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll about your qualifications to be a commander in chief. Let's share with our viewers now that poll. Knowledge and experience, Senator McCain ahead of you by a factor of more than 2-to-1. Would he be a good commander-in-chief, again, 2-to-1, 53 to 25 percent. And then there is this as well, which is an important question that we asked our audience. "Who's the riskier choice" to be the president with two wars and an economic meltdown going on at home? Senator McCain does much better in that poll than you do. Does that surprise you?

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SEN. OBAMA: No, because, let's say we had reversed--or rephrased the question. Let's say the question had been, "Who's more likely to bring about change in the country?" I suspect I would beat Senator McCain handily. Or another way we could have phrased it was, "Who's more likely to maintain the status quo?" Well, John McCain would have won that poll handily. The fact is is that our campaign has been based on the idea that we need to fundamentally change how we do business, both domestically and internationally; that we should have a different kind of foreign policy we are deploying all of America's power, not just our military, but also our diplomatic, economic, cultural, political power; that domestically, we've got to promote not just trickle-down economics, but bottom-up economic growth and reinvest in, for example, the clean energy sector. All those things--anytime you're bringing about big change, there are some risks involved. But it's important, I think, to note that, in that poll, I'm also leading. And, and so what that indicates is that the American people are ready for change. But, as I've said before, this is a big leap for people. You know, I don't look like previous commanders in chief. I've been on the national scene a relatively short time. John McCain's been out there for 25 years. It's not surprising that people would be more familiar with him. But the fact that we are in the position we are in right now--very competitive in this race--indicates the degree to which people recognize we can't keep on doing the same things and somehow expect a different outcome.

MR. BROKAW: Let's talk about Afghanistan. That war, as you've emphasized a lot in the past week or so, that war's been going on since shortly after 9/11. This was your first trip. You're a member the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. I know schoolteachers and NGO volunteers

SEN. OBAMA: Right.

MR. BROKAW: ...who go there on a regular basis. How is it possible that, as a candidate for president of the United States and a member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, is making his first trip to what you call the central front in the war on terror?

SEN. OBAMA: Well, look, the, the fact is, is that I've been busy also working on issues like Iraq, on nuclear proliferation. There are a whole range of issues that we've got to deal with. But my assessment of Afghanistan has not been incorrect, it's been correct. And I haven't just been talking about it in the last week, I've been talking about it for a year and a half. When I gave a speech about Afghanistan towards the beginning of this campaign, I said we are going to need more troops in Afghanistan. We've got to work with Pakistan to make sure that they're taking seriously the incursions by terrorists into Afghanistan from Pakistan, that we've got to develop a strategy to encourage economic development both in Afghanistan and Pakistan. So I, I think that, if you look at my assessment of the situation there, it's been accurate. In fact, John McCain and others have moved in my direction on that critical issue.

MR. BROKAW: You want to add two brigades of American troops to the fighting force in Afghanistan.

SEN. OBAMA: Right.

MR. BROKAW: Now, you've just been meeting this week with French President Sarkozy and the German Chancellor Merkel. She is prepared to add another 1,000 German troops, but that'll take their contingent up to only 4500. And both independent military analysts and certainly the Pentagon believes that the Germans are not doing their fair share of the fighting. They want to stay in the north; the hot zone is in the south.

SEN. OBAMA: Right.

MR. BROKAW: Did you bring that up with her?

SEN. OBAMA: I did. Look...

MR. BROKAW: And what was her response?

SEN. OBAMA: We've got NATO troops who are doing terrific. Some of them are in the direct line of fire. The British, they're fighting.

MR. BROKAW: And the Canadians.

SEN. OBAMA: The French, they're fighting. The Canadians, they're fighting. The Dutch are, are fighting and, and involved in very difficult work. Countries like Germany are doing important functions in Afghanistan, and it's not as if there's not work to do in the north. But what is true is the rules of engagement that have been set up are ones that constrain them. I think that Chancellor Merkel is very serious about Afghanistan. I think she is doing as much as she can, given her politics in her country right now. Part of the reason that I wanted to give a speech in Berlin is to--and speak directly to the German people is to remind them of the historic alliance that has been formed post World War II that served as the cornerstone of our mutual security. And this is the first effort by NATO outside of the European theater. We can't afford for it to fail. And, and my hope is, is that if the German people get a sense that this is--Afghanistan is very different than Iraq, that this is a war that we needed to fight. These people attacked a NATO member, killed 3,000 civilians, that they are plotting to kill more of us, and...

MR. BROKAW: And terrorists were living in Germany.

SEN. OBAMA: ...and terrorists were living in Germany, and we've got to take this seriously, then hopefully we can give the political space to, to Chancellor Merkel to do more than they're doing right now.

MR. BROKAW: The U.S. secretary of Defense, Robert Gates, apparently has sent a pretty sharp letter to the Germans, saying, "You've got to do more."

SEN. OBAMA: Right.

MR. BROKAW: She complain about that?

SEN. OBAMA: She did not complain about it. I, I was very impressed with Chancellor Merkel and her, her understanding of the situation. She takes it very seriously. And you know what? She also takes seriously the notion that a country like Germany has to participate in burden sharing when it comes to our key security issues. President Sarkozy in France feels the same way. Gordon Brown here in England feels the same way. Part of the problem that we've had is that because of the unpopularity of the war in Iraq, we have seen European voters very turned off with participation in coalitions generally, and that's impacted their ability to move troops into Afghanistan. This is not just my assessment, Secretary Gates had a similar assessment a while back. And so what we want to do is to refocus attention, say that, you know, "We've got to be careful in terms of how we drawdown troops in Iraq, but America's going to make these commitments in Afghanistan. We need your help, we need your cooperation. And if we do, then we can finish the job and all of us will be safer."

MR. BROKAW: And the troops that you take out of Iraq, those that don't go to Afghanistan, will they stay in the region and protect Saudi oil fields and the idea that there could be another resurgence of the insurgency in Iraq? And where will they be deployed?

SEN. OBAMA: Well, these are issues, obviously, that you'd have to work through with the commanders. I have committed to making sure that we've got a residual force that can do a couple of things. We can provide logistical support, intelligence support. Training for Iraqi troops is still going to be critical. They are now at a point where they are taking the lead in actions, but they are not completely independent of us, and we've got to make sure that that oversight, overwatch role continues. And we've got to have a counterterrorism, a counterinsurgency strike force in the region. Where it's most effectively deployed, I think, is a decision that would be made in consultation with the, with the generals. How large that force might be, I think, is also something that we would want to consult with folks on the ground about, as well as the Iraqi government. But...

MR. BROKAW: And what countries would accept it.

SEN. OBAMA: And what countries are going to be interested in having them. But I think that if we have played our cards right in the coming months then you're going to see countries like Iraq, like Afghanistan, like Kuwait--those countries are going to be much more comfortable with our troop presence if they feel that they've been consulted and that there's not the prospect of a long-term occupation or permanent bases in Iraq.

MR. BROKAW: Senator, you can't talk about Afghanistan without talking about Pakistan. Here's what you told Time magazine recently about additional assistance. We've already spent $10 billion with the Pakistanis, they've not made a dent in the Taliban. You said, "We should condition some assistance to Pakistan on their action to take the fight to the terrorists within their borders. And if we have actionable intelligence about high-level al-Qaeda targets, we must act if Pakistan will not or cannot." Let me take the first half of that statement. That seems, to me, to be a fairly tepid statement, "We'll condition some assistance." What does that mean?

SEN. OBAMA: Well, I--it's not tepid at all, it's very concrete. We give money to Pakistan, much of it in the form of military aid. I would argue that too much of it has been in the form of just military aid and not enough of it has been in the form of building schools and building infrastructure in the country to help develop and give opportunity to the Pakistani people.

MR. BROKAW: But how...

SEN. OBAMA: And--but, but...

MR. BROKAW: How, how do we measure that then? Then how do we know when they're not going after them? They say, as they have repeatedly, "We've been doing the best we can."

SEN. OBAMA: Oh, well, my assessment is different, our intelligence assessments are different, our military commanders' assessments are different. The fact is, is that if you've got training camps in Pakistani territory where these folks are operating with--without any worry that they are going to be broken up or that strikes are going to take place--we know where these folks are. You know, I was--I would talk to commanders and, and U.S. forces that could identify where there are training camps that are taking place. We have provided significant amounts of military aid, but much of it has been conventional military aid that is used by Pakistan because they're worried about India or they're involved in disputes about Kashmir. And the point that I've made is, is that if we are going to provide military assistance to Pakistan, we should at least expect that that money is effectively deployed to deal with what is the most important security threat that we face. That only makes sense. On the other hand, we've also got to make sure that we're reaching out to the Pakistani government and helping them to provide a better life for their people.

MR. BROKAW: I'm sure you heard the same thing that I have heard every time I've gone to Pakistan. Got about 150 million people there. The estimates are as many as 50 percent of them are sympathetic to the terrorists. If the United States makes a unilateral attack, it'll set off a conflagration within Pakistan. That's part of the reason that Musharraf played it the way that he did.

CONTINUED

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