‘Meet the Press’ transcript for Sept. 9, 2007

MR. RUSSERT:  Is this national police force--25,000 strong, 85 percent Shia, as you said—are they being used, in effect, as a hit squad, as a, as a goon squad, as a, as a state militia to, to enforce sectarian rigidity?

MR. RAMSEY:  Well, that certainly have been some of the allegations made against the national police.  Whether or not that’s true, whether or not it’s perception, it could be somewhere in the middle.  We really don’t know that. But, to give you an example, they want to create a new brigade of national police in the area of Samarra.  The national police leadership recommended that the force be comprised of 55 percent Shia, 45 percent Sunni.  It went down to the ministry of interior, which we found to be highly dysfunctional and sectarian, and the recommendation coming from the office of the commander in chief was that it be 99 percent Shia and 1 percent Sunni.  So the sectarian nature of the national police is what’s holding them back, and it’s a, it’s a huge problem.  It’s not going to go away.

MR. RUSSERT:  But the national government, Prime Minister Maliki’s in charge of this.  He’s in charge of the ministry.  Why, why is he doing this, unless this is what he wants?

MR. RAMSEY:  Ultimately, it’s going to be the Iraqi government and, and coalition force leaders that will make a final decision around this.  We put together a group to look at this made up of five police chiefs, 150 years of experience, 40 of which served as police chiefs.  We know what we’re looking at, and we were appalled at what we saw.  And it’s not to say there isn’t good training and the Iraqi police service isn’t, isn’t moving along at a, at a fairly decent rate.  But the national police is very problematic, and they can’t deploy much outside of Baghdad in the southern provinces of Iraq.

MR. RUSSERT:  General Jones, you talk about the American footprint, about being perceived as an occupier.  And, as I read your report, you seem to be suggesting a, a downsizing, a, a reconfiguration, a redeployment.  Is that what you’re asking for?

GEN. JONES:  In, in general, we think that the, the notion that we’re not going to be there forever is—flies in the face of what we see on the ground. It is a massive footprint.  We, we do—we have occupied Saddam Hussein’s former palaces.  That in itself sends a, a mixed message to, to the Iraqis. We believe that the, the idea of transition should be captured more centrally and focused with greater focus to, to give the, the direction and the progress on a measured rate about how we’re going to hand things over to Iraqis and on what time frame.  And, and we think that we are arriving at a strategic point where, with the ability of the Iraqi army and the—hopefully the police force to take over the internal problems of Iraq, that we can—the commanders can take another look at how we use our forces, what their mission set is, what they do, and that will, that will contribute to a force reshaping and rebalancing.

MR. RUSSERT:  And perhaps the...

GEN. JONES:  Which could be a reduction of forces.

MR. RUSSERT:  ...of American troops.

GEN. JONES:  Of course, yeah.  MR. RUSSERT:  I think the central issue that I took from your commission report, other than disbanding of the national police force, was this idea of what is causing the violence.  And number two, can you have security without political reconciliation?  And I’m going to quote from The Washington Post, because I think they summarize it quite well:  “Although the administration has said repeatedly that security improvements will create ‘breathing space’ for Iraqi sectarian and political forces to move” towards “national reconciliation, the commission turns that equation on its head, saying that long-term security advances are impossible without political progress. Despite all that remains to be done on the military front, the commission says, ‘the single most important event that could immediately and favorably affect Iraq’s direction and security is political reconciliation.  Sustained progress within the Iraqi Security Forces depends on such a political agreement.’”

Now, bluntly, the president has been saying we need to have security on the ground before we can have political reconciliation.  And you’re saying, your commission, “No, no, no.  You need to have political reconciliation.  You need to have the Shiites and the Sunnis to put their guns down, put their arms down and come together as a country before we could ever possibly secure the nation.” Fair?

GEN. JONES:  Fair.  Our, our report started out with that assertion, and it closed with that assertion, that that is, that is the most important thing. Obviously both—you want both.  But if, if we were to pick one or the other, which one is more critical, we think the reconciliation is absolutely the key to measurable and rapid progress.  I think once you have that the, the, what’s likely to happen in Iraq is very encouraging.

MR. RUSSERT:  But if you have someone, Chief, who says, “No, the national police force shouldn’t be 55-45 Shia-Sunni, it should be 99-to-1 Shia,” what message is that telling you about political reconciliation?

MR. RAMSEY:  It’s telling you that it’s a long way to go, is what it’s telling you.  And that’s one of the reasons why we made the recommendation. The Iraqi police service is doing fairly well.  They’re underequipped.  There are not enough trainers in Iraq in order to be able to bring them up to speed, to be able to fill that vacuum once the military starts to step back a bit. That’s where the focus ought to be.  With the national police we not only recommended they be disbanded, but we also said they ought to be remissioned, to reform with a different function that will be less sectarian in nature, take some of those people after they’re properly vetted, put them in the army, the others into the Iraqi police service.  But they need to be refocused, because currently they are not performing at an effective level.  And if what you want is a police force rooted in democratic principles, the national police missed the mark.

MR. RUSSERT:  What’s the most surprising thing you found when you were in Iraq for the last three weeks?

MR. RAMSEY:  Well, there were two things.  One was the widespread dislike of the national police.  But the most encouraging thing was the level of training.  When we visited training centers for the Iraqi police service, I was very impressed.  And the quality of the people that we have brought to train and the Iraqi instructors was really, really good.  So there’s a lot of potential there.

MR. RUSSERT:  General Jones, you’re known as a straight shooter.  Just separate all the garbage away for the American people.  What should they be thinking about Iraq?  That we’re going to need to be there for three, four, five years in order to secure the country?

GEN. JONES:  Well, I—it may be that it’ll take that long a period of time in, in order to do that.  But that doesn’t mean that, that, that there’ll be—the level of fighting will be, will be the same.

MR. RUSSERT:  Or the level of troops.

GEN. JONES:  Or the level of troops.  We are still in the Balkans, for example.  The Balkans are relatively peaceful.  So we’ll get to that point. Our point is that you can, you can accelerate that with political reconciliation.  But the strategic interests of the United States in the region are very, very high.  And I’m not talking about just oil, I’m talking about being perceived to have been successful here against this, this fundamental battle against terrorism.  If we are perceived to fail, I think you’re going to see terrorism expand, and I think that the stability of the Gulf region is going to be brought into question.  I think the long-term strategic interests really argue for that kind of dialogue and not so much being focused the—day-to-day on the tactics of the situation.

MR. RUSSERT:  And yet, if the Iraqis are incapable of reconciling politically, there’s nothing we can really do for them.

GEN. JONES:  That’s correct.  But, but our sense, in Iraq, is that most of the Iraqis that we talked to, both in the civilian sector, military sector, seem to want to achieve that and want a, a—an independent and whole Iraq that is capable of functioning up to its potential.  This is an enormously wealthy nation.  It can—if it can, if it can move past this point in time—logic would indicate that it could, that it can and that it will—then it will come together pretty, pretty quickly.  And strategically, especially against the, the rise of, of Iran, which is very concerning—and Iran is a major player in attempting to destabilize and split Iraq right now—these are the strategic goals that we have to keep our eye on.

MR. RUSSERT:  General James Jones, former Police Chief Charles Ramsey, thank you for joining us and sharing your views.

GEN. JONES:  Thank you very much.

MR. RAMSEY:  Thank you, sir.

MR. RUSSERT:  Coming next, Senator Joe Biden just back from Iraq.  What did he see?  What did he learn?  And can the Democrats change the course of the war in Congress?  We’ll ask him.  Then the very latest on Senator Fred Thompson.  He’s in the race.  Senator Larry Craig, is he out of the Senate? Bill and Hillary, Oprah and Barack, the campaign for the White House in full throttle.  Our political roundtable coming up right here on MEET THE PRESS.

(Announcements)

MR. RUSSERT:  Senator Joe Biden went to Iraq this week.  We’ll get his report.  Then our political roundtable after this brief station break.

(Announcements)

MR. RUSSERT:  And we’re back.

Joe Biden, welcome back.  Welcome back from Iraq.  What did you see, hear, learn?

SEN. JOSEPH BIDEN (D-DE):  Well, what I saw, heard, learned is a little bit what you heard from a general just a moment ago.  There was a big disconnect between the truth of the matter and the reality.  I mean, the truth of the matter is that, that the—America’s—this administration’s policy and the surge are a failure, and that the surge, which was supposed to stop sectarian violence and—long enough to give political reconciliation, there’s been no political reconciliation.  The reality is that we’re supposed to, as you said, stand up American—or stand up the Iraqis so the Americans could stand down. We’ve been hearing that for five years.  We’re nowhere near being able to do that.

The reality is that, although there has been some mild progress on the security front, there is, in fact, no, no real security in Baghdad and/or in Anbar province, where I was, dealing with the most serious problem, sectarian violence.  Sectarian violence is as strong and as solid and as serious a problem as it was before the surge started.

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