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Length: 13:29
WOLF BLITZER: The
question on everyone's mind right now is when will
the Iraqi government be able to stand up and stop the
violence so that U.S. troops can start to stand down?
Joining us now to discuss this and more, our guests:
on the ground in Baghdad, CNN's own Michael Ware; in
Washington, David Ignatius, he's an international
affairs columnist for the Washington Post; and here
in New York, Richard Haass. He's president of the
Council on Foreign Relations.
Gentlemen, thanks to all of you for coming in, and
I'll start the discussion with a report that General
Barry McCaffrey, retired U.S. Army four-star general,
released this week following another visit to Iraq.
Among other things, he said this: "Although we have
arrested 120,000 insurgents and killed some huge
number of enemy combatants, perhaps 20,000 plus, the
armed insurgents, militias and al Qaeda in Iraq,
without fail, apparently regenerate both leadership
cadres and foot soldiers. Their sophistication,
numbers and lethality go up, not down, as they incur
these staggering battle losses."
Michael Ware, first to you since you're there in
Iraq. Is General McCaffrey correct, bottom line?
MICHAEL WARE, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Oh, absolutely. And
it's been this way ever since 2003. Indeed, we've
seen through the course of this war, since the fall
of Saddam's regime in April '03, the insurgency not
just mutate and transform, but grow in complexity,
grow in sophistication and grow in breadth as more
and more international players became involved.
And this was a trend that was emerging by the end of
the summer of '03. So to say that this is continuing
and goes on is of no surprise. A distinguishing
feature of this insurgency has been its unbelievable
ability to regenerate.
BLITZER: All right. I want to play for Richard Haass
what Senator John McCain said at a news conference in
Baghdad today. Listen to this, Richard.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
SEN. JOHN MCCAIN, R-ARIZ.: Things are better and
there are encouraging signs. I have been here many
years, many times over the years. Never have I been
able to drive from the airport, never have I been
able to go out into the city as I was today.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
BLITZER: All right. Clearly a much more upbeat
assessment of things, while still very serious, are
moving, at least he says, in the right direction.
RICHARD HAASS, COUNCIL ON FOREIGN RELATIONS: Well,
the bottom line is, Wolf, they're both right.
Depending upon where you are in Iraq, you can see
very different things. So right around Baghdad where
the surge has been heaviest, yes, there's been what
you might call some microimprovement. But take a step
back. Look at the country as a whole. No, there
hasn't been.
What you are still seeing is a country that's more
sectarian than national. When these people get up
every morning and they look in the mirror, they see
themselves more as Sunnis and Shia and Kurds than
they do as Iraqis. National forces are still thin and
weak.
So Senator McCain is probably right in terms of the
specific areas he's seen. But I'm sorry to say, I
don't think it's right. I think Barry McCaffrey is
probably correct when he talks about what you might
call the strategic direction of the country which,
unfortunately, is still going in the wrong direction.
BLITZER: Where you do stand, David Ignatius, on this,
I guess, bottom line question of whether things are
moving in the right or wrong direction in Iraq?
DAVID IGNATIUS, WASHINGTON POST: I think it's too
early to make a serious assessment of whether the
surge is working. I think our discussion in the last
couple of minutes has illustrated the paradox of the
surge. There is no question in my mind that as we put
more troops into Baghdad for a Baghdad security plan,
we will be able to stabilize or give the appearance
of stability in those neighborhoods.
I was in Baghdad last August with General Abizaid,
the then-CENTCOM commander, doing what Senator McCain
did today in his tour of neighborhoods that have been
secured by U.S. troops. And, yes, we are the toughest
militia in Iraq. We can beat out everybody out of
these neighborhoods for a little while.
But that's not the same thing as having stability
through the country, making progress toward a
political solution. The problem with the surge is,
you surge, you stabilize the area, but the rest of
the country and the political dynamics remain
unchanged. I still don't hear anything that really
speaks to that.
BLITZER: Well, what about the fact, Michael Ware,
that Senator McCain and his VIP delegation could
actually drive in from the Baghdad Airport to the
international zone, the so-called Green Zone -- the
secure part, relatively speaking, of the Iraqi
capital -- and then go out on a tour of some
marketplaces? What, if anything, does that say to
you?
WARE: Well, it speaks, unfortunately, to the naivete
of the congressional delegation and it touches upon
what David has just said. The fact that they were
able to drive from the airport has been done by
American representatives for years now. That is not
new.
The fact that they were able to stroll through a
marketplace that was heavily secured by American
convoys and air assets and Iraqi troops bristling all
around them has been done and done and done before. I
myself, like David, have walked the streets with
American generals. It speaks of nothing except the
appearance on the surface.
And whilst the surge is having an impact on certain
types of violence and needs to be supported,
nonetheless, the underlying dynamics behind this war,
undercutting this war, are not being addressed, which
is why we are now seeing America cutting deals with
the Baathists while we are seeing the prime minister
cutting deals with Muqtada al-Sadr, the militia
leader.
BLITZER: And, Richard Haass, I want to read another
excerpt from General McCaffrey's report because it
does speak to the problems in Iraq right now. "There
is no function of government that operates
effectively across the nation: not health care, not
justice, not education, not transportation, not labor
and commerce, not electricity, not oil production.
There is no province in the country in which the
government has dominance."
There are, what, 18 provinces in Iraq and the usual
assessment is that things are going relatively well
in 14, 15 of them. There are a few that things aren't
so well. He says that the situation is bad in all of
those provinces.
HAASS: Well, it's not bad in the north. The Kurdish
areas are remarkably stable. They're economically
booming. But there the credit essentially goes to the
Kurdish people and the Kurdish leadership.
BLITZER: But that was happening even before Saddam
Hussein went down when the U.S. was flying those
no-fly zones in the northern part of Iraq.
HAASS: Right. You haven't had the federal government
have sway in the north now for over a decade. The
south, again, the federal government is weak. It's
really a Shia stronghold. Sharia law is quite strong.
What most people talk about when they talk about
Iraq, as you know, is the center, Baghdad and west.
That's where you have the most mixed populations.
That's where the situation is worse. And, again, one
is not really seeing structural or systematic
progress there. That's the reason that one has to be
somewhat bearish when one thinks about what Iraq is
going to look like six months or six years from now.
BLITZER: And I'm going to take a break, but David
Ignatius, just weigh in on that last point.
IGNATIUS: You know, I think that we are still at a
moment of blockage. What's most striking about the
last year is we have really tried to reach out to the
Sunnis, hoping to get to the insurgency and contain
it and we have failed. That was the policy of our
ambassador, Khalilzad. We really worked hard at it.
It didn't produce any results.
BLITZER: All right. We're going to take a quick
break. We have a lot more to talk about with our
panel, including we're going to get their reaction to
what we heard from King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia this
week. He suggested that the U.S. was engaged in what
he said was an "illegitimate foreign occupation" of
Iraq. What is King Abdullah up to? What's going on on
that front?
We're going to also pick their brains on what's
happening in the stand-off between Britain and Iran.
A lot more coming up with our panel.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
BLITZER: Welcome back to "Late Edition." I'm Wolf
Blitzer reporting today from New York.
We are talking with three guests: CNN's Michael Ware
in Baghdad; Washington Post columnist David Ignatius;
and Richard Haass, the president of the Council on
Foreign Relations. He's here in New York.
Richard, let me start with you and read to you what
King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia, a good U.S. ally over
these years, said on Wednesday at the Arab Summit in
Riyadh. "In our beloved Iraq, the bloods among
brothers are shed in the shadow of the illegitimate
foreign occupation and the repulsive sectarianism
threatens a civil war."
Were you surprised he branded the U.S. military
occupation of Iraq, what he said was an illegitimate
foreign occupation?
HAASS: Surprised is probably not strong enough. It's
outrageous, in part because it's not illegitimate.
We're there at the invitation of the Iraqi
government. This is not an occupation in the sense of
anything that's enforced.
More important, the Saudis know full well that they
want us there, and they have been one of those who
have been cheerleading against Congress and others
who have been seen to somehow have been pulling out
the rug and leading the United States to a hasty
withdrawal.
The Saudis know full well that could lead to not only
a more intense civil war, but possibly a regional war
which they would be, in some ways, in the thick of.
They don't want us to leave. They want the United
States to essentially try to leave Iraq in a somewhat
more stable way. So clearly, the king and others are
playing to the domestic and regional galleries. But
it's unfortunate because it makes it that much more
difficult for the United States to retain the
domestic and international support that it wants.
BLITZER: Do you do understand what the Saudi game in
Iraq right now, David Ignatius, is?
IGNATIUS: Well, it's a little confusing. I think
Richard had it about right. You can't really expect
King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia to be more supportive
in public of the U.S. presence in Iraq than
Democratic members of Congress. He does have to guard
his flank in the Arab world.
The Arab world is very, very angry at the United
States. We really have to underline that. When you
travel in that part of the world -- I've been going
out there for over 25 years. I've never seen a mood
like this. And King Abdullah's comments reflect that.
I do think, because he doesn't want the U.S. to leave
in a hurry, calling our presence there illegitimate
was kind of nonsensical, but I think it is a
reflection of the realities of Arab politics now.
BLITZER: Michael, you've done some brilliant
reporting on what's going on on the ground in Iraq,
and you've actually seen some sort of Saudi role
there. Practically speaking, what are they doing?
Because, clearly, they are concerned about the Shia
and any alliance the Shia majority in Iraq would have
with Iran.
WARE: Yeah, well, essentially Saudi Arabia, like many
of America's important Arab allies, feel that they've
been completely sold short and left in the lurch by
Washington as a result of the invasion of Iraq and,
more importantly, the construction of the particular
type of state that we see.
Here are America's friends in the region sitting
back, watching America bring this new system into one
of its neighbors, and they see this new system called
democracy deliver power into the hands of those
America's allies see as the greatest threat to the
region: Iran and Iran's friends and allies and
proxies in Iraq.
They see America emboldening everybody's enemy and
they've been scratching their heads about it. They
screamed about it before the invasion. They've been
screaming about it ever since, so there is support
for the Sunnis here. At the moment, it's covert. At
some point, it's going to have to step up.
BLITZER: Let's talk about the stand-off right now
between Britain and Iran over those 15 British
sailors and marines that were taken in the northern
Persian Gulf.
There's a lot of concern, Richard, that this could
escalate, the situation could get a lot worse, and
that the whole issue of oil exports and the price per
barrel could be affected.
Listen to Senator Joe Biden. He was earlier today on
Fox. I want you to you hear what he had to say.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
SEN. JOSEPH R. BIDEN JR., D-DEL.: I think you
continue to ratchet up, get the entire world to
ratchet up further the pressure on Iran, but I think
quietly you have to be preparing to be able to deal
with Iranian oil and be prepared to, down the road,
make the kind of -- take the kind of action that
would cut off their importation of refined oil and
affect their export of crude oil.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
BLITZER: Now, if Iran's export of crude oil is
affected, that could dramatically increase the price
per barrel.
HAASS: Probably in the short run, but not that much
over time. Iran exports somewhere between
two-and-a-half million barrels a day, maybe three --
a little bit more than that -- percent of the world's
oil right now.
There's probably not much spare capacity in the
system, so I think right now in 2007, we are in
better shape. Though you are basically right; there
would be a short-term price spike. But we're
basically in better shape than we were a couple of
years ago.
But I think what the senator is talking about is
interesting, the idea of some sort of pressure on
Iran also to get at roughly half of their gasoline
that they import. They don't have refining capacity.
That's one of the Achilles' heels of that regime.
What we need to do is keep this combination of
diplomacy and mounting pressure on them.
And also, one other thing, Wolf, is not to allow this
hostage situation to divert us from the real issue,
which is Iran's development of a uranium enrichment
capacity which down the road would, obviously, put
them in a position to make nuclear weapons. That's
ultimately far more important. I don't mean to be
insensitive, but it's ultimately the most important
question vis-a-vis Iran.
BLITZER: We're going to have to leave it right there.
Good discussion, Richard Haass. Thanks for coming in
here in New York. David Ignatius of the Washington
Post, our own Michael Ware in Baghdad, appreciate it
very much.