What Pass's For Informed Foreign Policy Discourse In America: On Iraq

What follows is a transcript of the Sunday America news program Meet The Press. Here's some background on some of the participants for the discussion on then current situation in Iraq.

Peter King is a Republican member of the House of Representatives from Long Island New York. What you don't know is that Peter King helped the IRA raise funds for their operations.

When it comes to matters of national security, Rep. Peter King (R-N.Y.) has never been accused of holding back. So when the political world suffered a collective freak-out over leaked diplomatic cables late last year, King, the top Republican on the House homeland security committee, naturally led the charge. In a letter to Attorney General Eric Holder, King warned that WikiLeaks' release of the classified documents amounted to supporting terrorism.

But according to experts in counterterrorism law, if the tough-on-terror policies King trumpets today had taken effect a few decades earlier, King himself might have been subject to prosecution. Over parts of three decades, from his days as an aspiring politician in Long Island through his early years in Congress, King was one of the nation's most outspoken supporters of the Irish Republican Army and a prolific fundraiser for the Irish Northern Aid Committee (NorAid), allegedly the IRA's American fundraising arm. The IRA waged a paramilitary campaign against the British presence in Northern Ireland for decades before peace accords were signed in 1998. Part of that effort included bombings and shootings that resulted in civilian deaths in England and Northern Ireland. During the period of King's involvement, the US government accused both NorAid and the IRA of links to terrorism.

“In the post-9/11 world you cannot give him the benefit of the doubt. As a result of our going into Iraq, not only is Saddam Hussein gone, but Qaddafi has given up his weapons of mass destruction and tremendous progress is being made in Iraq.”
“We went into Iraq because Saddam Hussein refused to account for his weapons of mass destruction, consistently violated UN resolutions and in a post-9/11 world no American president could afford to give Saddam Hussein the benefit of the doubt.”

Paul Wolfowitz is the former Under Secretary for Defense during the Bush administration and one the architects of President Bush's policy for Iraq.

There has been a good deal of comment — some of it quite outlandish — about what our postwar requirements might be in Iraq. Some of the higher end predictions we have been hearing recently, such as the notion that it will take several hundred thousand U.S. troops to provide stability in post-Saddam Iraq, are wildly off the mark. It is hard to conceive that it would take more forces to provide stability in post-Saddam Iraq than it would take to conduct the war itself and to secure the surrender of Saddam's security forces and his army — hard to imagine.

Ahead of and shortly after the US invasion of Iraq in 2003, a number of officials, including former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and his deputy Paul Wolfowitz suggested the war could be done on the cheap and that it would largely pay for itself. In October 2003, Rumsfeld told a press conference about President Bush's request for $21 billion for Iraq and Afghan reconstruction that "the $20 billion the president requested is not intended to cover all of Iraq's needs. The bulk of the funds for Iraq's reconstruction will come from Iraqis -- from oil revenues, recovered assets, international trade, direct foreign investment, as well as some contributions we've already received and hope to receive from the international community." In March 2003, Mr. Wolfowitz told Congress that "we're really dealing with a country that could finance its own reconstruction." In April 2003, the Pentagon said the war would cost about $2 billion a month, and in July of that year Rumsfeld increased that estimate to $4 billion.

DAVID GREGORY:

Senator Joe Manchin of West Virginia, thanks so much for your time this morning. I appreciate it. This crisis in Iraq leaves an obvious question, which is how did we possibly get here after the incredible sacrifice of our forces and commitment by this country in Iraq. I'm joined for perspective by David Ignatius of The Washington Post. He's covered Iraq extensively throughout his career. Dexter Filkins of The New Yorker, author of The Forever War, about his experiences covering the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Paul Wolfowitz, who served as deputy security of Defense during the Second Iraq War under President Bush. And from New York, Republican Congressman Peter King of New York, former chair of the House Homeland Security Committee. Welcome to all of you. David Ignatius, I think again Americans are looking at this saying, "A decade of conflict in Iraq. How has it come to this point where any gains won seem to be evaporating. And the threat of a terrorist state actually arising in Iraq seems all too real."

DAVID IGNATIUS:

Well, as we sensed in your interview with Governor Romney, there's more than enough blame to go around. And this is a crisis that's so severe that the blame game in our domestic politics I think is unfortunate. I'm always reminded of something that Prince Turki, who was the head of Saudi intelligence said to me about five years ago.

And he said, "I hope you Americans will be as careful in how you get out of Iraq as you were uncareful in how you got in." And unfortunately, as I look at this, we were wrong on both ends. We came in and knocked the pegs out from under the way that society had been governed, and we left before new stability mechanisms were in place. And we're seeing the consequences of that today. Iraqi government basically is collapsing.

DAVID GREGORY:

Paul Wolfowitz, as part of the Bush administration, were you and others culpable of underestimating the level of sectarian violence, warfare in the country that creates the potential for this kind of terrorist state to develop today?

PAUL WOLFOWITZ:

Look, you used the word sectarian, so did Richard Engel. This is more than just those obscure, Shia/Sunni conflict. This is Al Qaeda. And Al Qaeda is not on the road to defeat, Al Qaeda is on the march. Not just in Iraq, in Syria, and Libya. And we have real enemies of the United States. And what we should be looking for are friends.

I think when we stick with our friends, and those friends are not always perfect, believe me. But we stuck with the Kurds through 20 years. Northern Iraq, Kurdistan's a success story. We stuck with South Korea for 60 years. South Korea is a miracle story. But if we had walked away from South Korea in 1953, that country was a basket--

(OVERTALK)

DAVID GREGORY:

But Dexter Filkins, Nouri al-Maliki is more than just not our friend at this point. He is not fulfilling the fundamental promise of our intervention in Iraq, is he? Which is to forge a democratic, multiethnic country that he would preside over.

DEXTER FILKINS:

Look, I mean, the dynamics in Iraq, the dynamics that they're driving this threat of basically, at the front of that is Nouri al-Maliki. He has since the day that we left there in December 2011, he has done virtually everything he could to alienate the other people in Iraqi society, the Sunnis and the Kurds. And so what we're seeing essentially is a consequence of his extreme sectarian policy.

DAVID GREGORY:

Peter King, if you look at this from the vantage point of a terrorist threat to the United States, let's look at the map. First the map of what we're talking about, Iraq in Syria. And then you look at this section in red, which is the approximate area of control of ISIS that extends beyond Iraq into Syria.

This is a breeding ground for terrorists, Al Qaeda and offshoot of Al Qaeda, arguably more extreme, if that's possible, than Al Qaeda. With the kind of fighters, 10,000 foreign fighters with designs on attacking the United States. How do you view it then in terms of what we ought to do?

REP. PETER KING:

That is a very real concern. There's no doubt that ISIS looks upon itself as an Iraq/Syria power and it definitely has talked with the United States going back to 2011 when it was just Al Qaeda and Iraq before the Syrian component had even kicked in. We captured a number of their officers in the United States, attempting to carry out an attack in Fort Knox.

So clearly, if they can get good sanctuary in their Northeastern Syria, in Iraq, this makes it, in effect, a privileged sanctuary to attack the United States apart from the destabilization they can do throughout the Middle East, especially the countries such as Jordan and to Israel. And that also of course increases the power of Iran as far as being an influence in that region.

DAVID GREGORY:

So the obvious question is, if this is a huge step, David, how do we deal with it? I mean, intervention seems unlikely. But what responsibility does the president face and feel to prevent extremists from taking loot in an area that is even worse perhaps than Afghanistan before the 9/11 attacks.

DAVID IGNATIUS:

In the short run, it's crucial to stop ISIS before it takes Baghdad or any more territory in Iraq. That seems to be happening, although it's not happening thanks to the government of Maliki. It seems to be happening thanks to Shiite militias, perhaps intervention from Iranian forces, and the call of the Ayatollah Sistani for a religious fight.

We need to move soon to having platforms in Iraq to go after the worst of the worst. These ISIS terrorists who will begin to move to external operations. And one of the things that U.S. counterterrorism officials are worried most about is that as Al Qaeda morphs and creates these offshoots like ISIS, these groups will begin to compete for street cred, if you will, to show who's toughest. And the way you'll show you're the toughest on the block is by hitting America. And so we really have to worry about and be prepared for that.

DAVID GREGORY:

So Peter King, to you in a moment, Paul Wolfowitz, what do you do then, as a policy matter now to stop this?

PAUL WOLFOWITZ:

Look, it's a complicated situation in which you don’t just come up with, "We're going to bomb this, we're going to do that." I think a fundamental point which was brought onto us in 1990 when the Saudis agreed to everyone's surprise to allow American troops into Saudi Arabia after Iraq invaded Kuwait.

They said to us, "If this were the United States of Jimmy Carter or of Ronald Reagan, that walked away after a few American casualties, we would not have said yes. We believe President Bush is serious." We have to convince people in that region, Kurds, Iraqis that Maliki is a big part of the problem.

He's not a leader of Iraq. We need to find people there. And most importantly, I would say, in Syria, where U.S. policy and absence over the last two years has sent a signal of lack of seriousness throughout the region. I would do something in Syria. It's a bad situation. It's now dominated by Assad and by ISIS. We should be trying to keep--

(OVERTALK)

DAVID GREGORY:

We keep turning back to the idea that somehow military intervention, Dexter, is somehow going to make the situation better. We have a lot of experience of U.S. Forces in Iraq failing to produce the kind of outcome that you thought was going to materialize.

DEXTER FILKINS:

Right, well, there's plenty of options short of military intervention. I don't think you're going to see boots on the ground in Syria or Iraq. But there's a lot that the White House is considering right now. In Iraq, it's probably something like airstrikes against ISIS. And in Syria, it's probably time, very late in the game, to arm the more moderate elements of the Syrian opposition, who can basically take on not only Assad, but also the extremist groups like ISIS and Al-Nusra.

DAVID GREGORY:

All right. I'm going to leave it there. Thank you all very much for your time this morning.