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Length: 8:35
JOHN ROBERTS: General David Patraeus met the media
this week and warned that military force alone can't
end the violence. But is Iraq and the region for that
matter, ready for a political solution? CNN's Michael
Ware is in Baghdad this week, in New York, Rajiv
Chandrasekaran. He's the former Baghdad bureau chief
for "The Washington Post," also author of "Imperial
Life in the Emerald City, Inside Iraq's Green Zone."
And here in Washington CNN's military analyst
Brigadier General James "Spider" Marks, U.S. Army
retired.
Michael Ware, this conference that Iraq invited
people to, including the United States, Iran and
Syria, do you think that that's going anywhere?
There's another meeting that's to come up in a couple
more weeks involving the ministers. Do you see this
as being the start of a process that could bring
stability to Iraq?
MICHAEL WARE, CNN CORRESPONDENT: No, not
particularly. I mean, there's absolutely no incentive
whatsoever for the winners of this conflict so far
regionally, certainly most particularly Iran, to take
their foot off the accelerator. Essentially, what's
America prepared to offer Iran to help stabilize the
region rather than destabilize it? And I think at
this point in time, America's not prepared to pay the
price.
And let's not get overblown about this so-called
conference this week. This is a meeting of
bureaucrats. This is deputy foreign ministers and
others getting together. It's a meeting for a
meeting. And if Ambassador Khalilzad's appearance is
to mean anything, then, you know, it really puts it
out of context.
ROBERTS: All right. Well, perhaps -- maybe it's the
first step down the road to some sort of progress.
But at the same time, there was tremendous violence
this week, much of it against Ashura pilgrims. More
than a hundred were killed in a suicide bombing at
Ashura and at his first press conference since taking
over the command of U.S. forces on the ground,
General David Petraeus on said Thursday said that he
expected that violence was going to increase. Take a
listen to this.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
GEN. DAVID PATRAEUS, U.S. COMMANDER IN IRAQ: There
have been violent, sensational attacks. Schools,
health clinics and marketplaces have all been
attacked. Car bombs have targeted hundreds of
innocent Iraqis and in recent days, Shia pilgrims
were killed in a barbaric manner by thugs with no
soul.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
ROBERTS: But Rajeev, at the same time, David Patraeus
also pointed to some good news, saying that sectarian
violence, those death squad killings that we have
seen so much of in Baghdad over the last year have
been reduced somewhat. A little bit of good news, a
lot of bad news, what do you make of all this?
RAJIV CHANDRASEKARAN, THE WASHINGTON POST: I think
like many things in Iraq, it's sort of a mixed bag.
But I think what we've seen from the reduction in
sectarian violence isn't necessarily because of
operations that are being conducted by the additional
U.S. forces that are pouring into Baghdad at this
point. It's because Shiite militia leaders, most
notably Muqtada al Sadr, have made a calculated
decision to pull their people back from the brink,
not to engage with the American forces. And I think a
calculated move to sort of have the American forces
focus more on the Sunni insurgents. I think they're
trying to wait it out.
I think what was also interesting from Patraeus's
comments this week is that he had made some reference
to perhaps suggesting that the Mahdi army, Sadr's
militia, could see some sort of future as an
auxiliary security force in that country, suggesting
that he may not be trying to essentially kill or
capture all of them but trying to work with them and
trying to perhaps co-opt them into some new security
structure.
ROBERTS: He certainly did indicate that in the press
conference that in order to get some kind of
political solution, that people who have been
attacking the Iraqi government or Americans may need
to be brought into that process.
General Marks, General Patraeus also said the troop
levels are going to have to stay high through the
fall and perhaps into 2008. Are we already seeing an
increase in the mission here before it even gets
going?
BRIG. GEN JAMES MARKS, U.S. ARMY (RET): No, I
wouldn't say that. I would say what David is saying
is, that it's far too early to draw an assessment in
terms of what he's going to need in the aggregate.
He's only got two of the initial five brigades in
Baghdad right now. So through about May or June is
when you'll have that increase and then you've got to
sustain it. So he's making a very fair assessment
that he's going to need that force through the end of
the year. But you got to keep delivering.
ROBERTS: But he's talking about an extra 2500, 2600
now. Might that climb to 5,000 or 8,000 or another
10,000 by next year?
MARKS: I couldn't speculate but that additional troop
strength right now primarily goes to some enablers,
some increased intelligence folks, some other types
of enabling forces that you would see on the ground
to include military police. You've got to have an
increase in military police for training and for
handling a lot of the bad guys that you're now
rounding up.
ROBERTS: I want to drill down just a little bit on
what Rajiv was talking about a second ago in terms of
the Mahdi militia. On Monday, Jennifer Eccleston
reported that for the first time in a long time, U.S.
troops were on patrol in Sadr City. Here's part of
her report.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
JENNIFER ECCLESTON, CNN CORRESPONDENT: U.S. and Iraq
forces, police and army, conduct door-to-door
operations, a major sweep in the Shia bastion. Al
Sadr and his Mahdi commanders are thought to have
fled the area, their foot soldiers keeping a low
profile, avoiding a confrontation with U.S. troops
for now.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
ROBERTS: Michael Ware, you've spent a lot of time
with Mahdi militia members. What do you think is
going on? Are they just laying low for now or could
this really be a sea change in things on the ground
there?
WARE: It's no sea change, John, at all. I mean,
indeed, what we're hearing, the intelligence we're
getting from the Mahdi army militia itself, from
talking to its cell leaders and mid-ranking company
commanders and from talking to U.S. military
intelligence is that it's clear that this is a
classic guerrilla tactic. They're pulling back.
They're waiting to see what their enemy does. There's
a lot politically on the table. They're capitalizing
on this. I mean, there's been some disruption of
Muqtada's network. There's been hundreds of arrests.
Not many of them meaningful, but nonetheless, the
leadership ranks have also been penetrated by some of
these arrests. Meanwhile, you have Muqtada backing
Iran, according to western military intelligence,
while thousands of American troops enter his
stronghold unopposed. It's clear a deal's been cut.
ROBERTS: General Marks, it seems that a result of
this is that a lot of these militia members, a lot of
these insurgents are moving to other areas like
Diyala province and they're causing tremendous havoc
there. Does the United States have enough forces on
the ground, even with this surge to contain a spread
of sectarian violence?
MARKS: The real question is not necessarily do you
have enough force to go after all those other troops
or the other bad guys that have been displaced. You
don't want to spend a lot of time and energy chasing
bad guys. You'll chase your tail. You'll do exactly
what they want you to do. They'll drag you into a
hole. You've got to establish what is the center of
gravity. That's been defined as Baghdad. That's where
the focus has to be. So it's okay right now for them
to go elsewhere. It's kind of what the intended
outcome would be, so you can focus where you need to
focus.
ROBERTS: As General Petraeus tries to get a handle on
the violence on the ground, this past week in
Congress, Democrats came up with a couple more
measures to try to end the war. They would bring
troops out sometime between March of 2008 and the end
of that year. Here are some of the back and forth
earlier this week.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
REP. NANCY PELOSI (D) HOUSE SPEAKER: By July of 2007,
if progress is not demonstrated, if the president
cannot certify that progress is made, we begin the
redeployment of our troops out of a combat role in
Iraq.
REP. JOHN BOEHNER (R) MINORITY LEADER: The Democrats
are using the critical troop funding bill to
micromanage the war on terror, undermining our
generals on the ground and slowly choking off
resources for our troops.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
ROBERTS: Rajiv, what do you make of this whole
process here? Is this just political grandstanding?
CHANDRASEKARAN: No, I think the Democrats are serious
in wanting to see a meaningful shift in the United
States war policy in Iraq. But they are still not of
one mind on how to make this happen. The compromise
that Nancy Pelosi seems to have reached with members
of her own party is a watered-down approach from what
party liberals have wanted and it faces a tough road
ahead. It's not clear that this sort of approach will
make it through the Senate. In fact, there are a lot
of indications that it won't, that the Senate version
will be far more watered down and the president has
also made it clear this week that he intends to veto
a supplemental spending bill that would impose the
restrictions that the Democrats want to place on it.
ROBERTS: It was pretty interesting, Rajiv, to see
right after Nancy Pelosi came out with that, that the
progressive wing of the party came out to denounce
it. It's like Will Rogers said, I belong to no
organized party, I'm a Democrat. Michael Ware, Rajiv
Chandrasekaran, General Marks, thanks very
much.