ut oh ... yet ANOTHER report that there's definite progress in Iraq ... this time it's from a NY Tim

HH: Pleased to welcome back to the Hugh Hewitt Show John Burns of the

New York Times. Mr. Burns, welcome, it's been about six months since

we spoke, and I gather you're in Baghdad today?

JB: I am indeed.

HH: How long have you been back in Baghdad?

JB: About three months. We take long rotations here, and then we

reward ourselves with nice long breaks back home in the United States,

or in my case, in the United Kingdom.

HH: Well, there are three things I want to cover with you today, Mr.

Burns. Where are we now in Iraq, in your view? Secondly, where Iraq

might be in a couple of years, depending on a couple of developments

that the United States might enact? And then finally, in hindsight,

what we did right and what we did wrong over the last four years. But

let's start with what you see in Baghdad today. Is the surge working?

JB: I think there's no doubt that those extra 30,000 American troops

are making a difference. They're definitely making a difference in

Baghdad. Some of the crucial indicators of the war, metrics as the

American command calls them, have moved in a positive direction from

the American, and dare I say the Iraqi point of view, fewer car bombs,

fewer bombs in general, lower levels of civilian casualties, quite

remarkably lower levels of civilian casualties. And add in what they

call the Baghdad belts, that's to say the approaches to Baghdad,

particularly in Diyala Province to the northeast, to in the area south

of Baghdad in Babil Province, and to the west of Baghdad in Anbar

Province, there's no doubt that al Qaeda has taken something of a

beating.

HH: Now when General Petraeus returns in September to make his report,

do you expect Petraeus to be completely candid with the American

people about the good news and the bad news in Iraq?

JB: I think there's no doubt that he'll be candid. As a matter of

fact, every time I've spoken to him about it, he talks about the need

to be forthright, and as he puts it, he said we're not going to be

putting lipstick on a pig. I think that's a fairly, that's military

jargon which most Americans will understand. David Petraeus is a man

who's had a remarkably distinguished military career, and he is very

clear that he thinks his responsibilities lie not to the White House

alone, but to the White House and the Congress conjointly, and through

them to the American people. I don't think that this is just a

profession, a claim. I think he really intends that, and he's been

very careful not to make commitments at the moment as to what he's

going to say, though we may guess it. And I think he's going to say

that the surge is having its effects, it hasn't turned the tide of the

war, there's been too little time for it, and I think he and

Ambassador Crocker, who will be his partner in that September report,

are going to say one thing very clearly, and that is a quick, early

withdrawal of American troops of the kind that is being argued by

Nancy Pelosi, for example, would very likely lead to catastrophic

levels of violence here. And in that, General Petraeus and Ambassador

Crocker will be saying something which is pretty broadly shared by

people who live and work here, I have to say. The removal of American

troops would very likely, we believe from all indications, lead to

much higher, and indeed potentially cataclysmic levels of violence,

beyond anything we've seen to date.

HH: Mr. Burns, some anti-war critics have begun to attack General

Petraeus as being not credible and not trustworthy for a variety of

reasons, one he gave me an interview, he's given other people

interviews that they consider to be partisan, whatever. Do you believe

he'll be as trustworthy as anyone else speaking on the war?

JB: I do. I can only speak for my own personal experience, and there

definitely was in the, in the Vietnam war, there was a failure of

senior generals and the joint chiefs of staff to speak frankly about

the Vietnam war early enough. There has definitely been some

Pollyannaish character to the reporting of some of the generals here

over the past three or four years, although in my own view, knowing

virtually all of those generals, I don't think that that was out of

fealty to the White House or Mr. Rumsfeld. It's a difficult and

complex question which we really don't have time to discuss here. But

to speak of General Petraeus in particular, General Petraeus is 54

years old. Let's look at this just simply as a matter of career,

beyond the matter of principle on which I think we could also say we

could expect him to make a forthright report. At 54, General Petraeus

is a young four star general, who could expect to have as much as ten

more years in the military. And he has every reason to give a

forthright and frank report on this. And he says, and he says this

insistently, that he will give a forthright, straightforward report,

and if the people in Washington don't like it, then they can find

somebody else who will give his forthright, straightforward report. He

is not without options on a personal basis, General Petraeus, and I

think he, from everything I've learned from him, sees both a

professional, in the first place, and personal imperative to state the

truth as he sees it about this war.

HH: Speaking more broadly now, in the American higher command, is

there optimism that the surge, given enough time, will bring the kind

of stability to Iraq that we all hope it achieves?

JB: You know, optimism is a word which is rarely used around here. The

word they would use is realism. You have to look at what the plan is.

The plan is that with the surge, aimed primarily at al Qaeda, who are

responsible for most of the spectacular attacks, the major suicide

bombings, for example, that have driven the sectarian warfare here,

the belief is, or the hope is, that with the surge, they can knock al

Qaeda back, they can clear areas which have been virtually sanctuaries

for al Qaeda, northeast, south, west and northwest of Baghdad, and in

Baghdad itself, and then have Iraqi troops move in behind them. The

problem here is time. How much time does the U.S. military have now,

according to the American political timetable, to accomplish this? I

think most generals would say, indeed have said, most serving current

generals here have said that a drawdown, which took American troops

from the 160,00 level they're at now quickly down to 100,000 or 80,000

over the next, shall we say, year to eighteen months, that's too fast.

If you do that, I think they would say, though they don't put it quite

this frankly, that this war will be lost for sure. Given a little bit

more time, they think that it is realistic to think that the Iraqi

forces can move in behind them, and can take over the principal

responsibilities for the war. The problem is, of course, that American

generals have been saying this now for four years, and as we know, the

Congress is beginning to run out of patience with that. But I think

that they have a good plan now, at least if there is any plan that

could save the situation here, any plan that could bring a reasonably

successful end to the American enterprise here, it's probably the plan

they have right now.

HH: Now John Burns, a military historian was writing this week that he

fears a Tet-like offensive by al Qaeda's fighters, as well as perhaps

radical Shiia militias prior to the Petraeus report. Have you heard

warnings or concerns about such a thing?

JB: (pause) Hello?

HH: Yes, Mr. Burns, maybe you didn't hear that.

JB: Sorry, you were breaking up quite badly, as you have been at

several points during our discussion.

HH: Okay, I'll try it again. A military historian wrote this week that

he fears a Tet-like offensive by al Qaeda and radical Shiia fighters

in the next weeks running up to the September report. Have you heard

warnings about that, concerns about that kind of...

JB: Yeah, it's not an original thought. As a matter of fact, it's a

thought we've heard expressed by General Petraeus and other commanders

here, and you don't have to be a crystal ball gazer or a seer to

understand the risks in that. Indeed, there have been one or two

attempts to pull off exactly that. The fear has been among the

generals here that a major, spectacular attack, aimed for example at

the Green Zone, the government and military command complex in the

center of Baghdad, of the kinds that was mounted during the Tet

offensive when, as you'll recall, Viet Cong or North Vietnamese troops

got right inside the American embassy. That kind of attack would have

an...whatever its consequences here, would have an enormous impact and

possibly fatal impact from the American military point of view on the

balance of opinion in the Congress. You'll forgive me, I have American

attack helicopters flying overhead right now over our compound here in

Baghdad.

HH: Sure.

JB: There was one attempt already to pull off an attack of that kind.

It was not on the Green Zone, but on an American military base

southwest of Baghdad, when a truck loaded with 12,000 pounds of high

explosives, that's by quick calculation, we're talking about more than

five tons of high explosives, got very close to what they call the

wire of an American base in which there were several hundred American

troops. A wary gunner in a watchtower, an American gunner, spotted the

truck, and killed or fired at the driver, who got out of the truck

wearing a suicide vest, as it happens, and the truck did not explode.

Had it exploded, there could have been a repeat of what happened in

Lebanon in 1982, when as you will recall, a truck bombing of the

Marine barracks residential complex near Beiruit airport killed, as I

recall, 249 Marines, and speeded Ronald Reagan in his decision to pull

American Marines out of Beirut. So yes, there is a definite concern

about that, and there has been a tightening of what the American

military calls force protection, that is to say I guess self-

evidently, the efforts that the force spends to protect itself in

respect of that threat.

HH: When we spoke in February, you told us about the killing that had

been underway in Adamiya, one of the places where sectarian violence

in Baghdad had really flared in October. What's your assessment of the

Shiia on Sunni violence level in Baghdad six months into the surge?

JB: It is reduced, and it's reduced primarily, as far as we can see,

because of the increment, and I'm talking here of a virtual doubling

of American troop strength in Baghdad, to speak only the neighborhood

in which the New York Times operates here, the Rusafa neighborhood on

the east side of the Tigris River, we here now have American troops

quartered about a half a mile away from us for the first time in three

years. So when you put American boots on the ground, you definitely

have an inhibiting effect on this, and we've seen that in falling

levels of sectarian violence. Where you don't have American boots on

the ground inside Baghdad, you see higher levels of sectarian

violence. So I would that on the whole, the situation is somewhat

better than it was, which is exactly what you would have expected by

introducing a significant increase of American combat troops.

HH: John Burns, that means it's down, but is there any kind of

movement that you can see that would suggest that when, that the

Iraqis are coming to their own conclusion that they've go to work

through other means than violence, is there a lowering of the hatred

level there in Baghdad?

JB: Well, of course, that would be what the American military would

call the most crucial metric of all. If we could see that, then we

would begin to see the end of the war. Now the fact is that the Iraqi

people are, of course, exhausted with the violence. The question is at

what point does that begin to translate into the kind of stepping up

that would make a change in the warfare, specifically the flow of

intelligence to the Iraqi and American militaries here, which would

enable them to go after the people who are primarily responsible,

whether it's Shiite death squads or its suicide bombers, mostly Sunni

suicide bombers. The intelligence flow, we're told, is a good deal

better, very much better than it was. This is an intelligence driven

war, but the American military will tell you that they still don't

have enough of it. They have quite a good flow of intelligence, which

has allowed them to have some spectacular successes, including one

just last night in Karbala, southwest of Baghdad, the holy city where

they went after a Shiite militia death squad leader. And this happens

virtually every night, usually special forces operations, American

led. They've have some success with that. So that's really the key

metric. When the Iraqi people's exhaustion with this war begins to

express itself in a full flow of intelligence to the Iraqi and

American military, then you will see real progress in the war. Up

until now, it's much better, but it's still, according to the American

military, still not nearly enough to make it a crucial difference.

HH: Now another metric is what the political elite of a country says

off the record. And you have those conversations with the Maliki

government, with the opposition, with the people in parliament, etc.

What do you hear from those conversations, John Burns? Are they

beginning to think that it is possible to see a functioning government

and a multi-party system that relies on other than guns?

JB: No, I would say that's probably the most depressing or

discouraging aspect of the entire situation. I think it's probably

fair to say that the Iraqi political leaders, Sunni, Shiia, Kurd in

the main, are somewhat further apart now than they were six months

ago. In other words, the Bush administration's hope that the military

surge would be accompanied by what they called a political surge, a

movement towards some sort of national reconciliation, uniting around

a kind of national compact, that has simply not occurred. Indeed, the

gulf between the Shiite and Sunni leaders in the government is

probably wider than it has ever been. There's a great deal of

recrimination. There's hardly a day when the Sunnis do not, as they

did again today, threaten to withdraw from the government altogether.

There's virtually no progress on the key benchmarks, as the Bush

administration calls them, matters like a comprehensive oil law that

will settle the issue of how oil revenues, which account for 90% of

government revenues here, will in future be divided and spent between

the various communities, and many other issues, eighteen of them,

benchmarks identified by the Congress, there's very little progress on

those benchmarks. Where there is some progress is at the grass roots

level, some progress, though we're beginning to see tribal leaders, in

particular, in some of the most heavily congested war areas, beginning

to stand up and say they've had enough of it, and to volunteer to put

forth their young men, either to join the Iraqi police or army, or to

join in tribal auxiliaries, or levees if you will. That's probably the

most encouraging political sign. But at the Baghdad level,

unfortunately, the United States still does not have an effective

political partner.

HH: One of the arguments for those favoring a timeline for withdrawal

that's written in stone is that it will oblige the Iraqi political

class to get serious about such things as the oil revenue division. Do

you believe that's an accurate argument?

JB: Well, you would think it would be so, wouldn't you, that the

threat of withdrawal of American troops, and the risk of a slide into

catastrophic levels of violence, much higher than we've already seen,

would impel the Iraqi leadership to move forward. But there's a

conundrum here. There's a paradox. That's to say the more that the

Democrats in the Congress lead the push for an early withdrawal, the

more Iraqi political leaders, particularly the Shiite political

leaders, but the Sunnis as well, and the Kurds, are inclined to think

that this is going to be settled, eventually, in an outright civil

war, in consequence of which they are very, very unlikely or

reluctant, at present, to make major concessions. They're much more

inclined to kind of hunker down. So in effect, the threats from

Washington about a withdrawal, which we might have hoped would have

brought about greater political cooperation in face of the threat that

would ensue from that to the entire political establishment here, has

had, as best we can gauge it, much more the opposite effect, of an

effect that persuading people well, if the Americans are going,

there's absolutely no...and we're going to have to settle this by a

civil war, why should we make concessions on that matter right now?

For example, to give you only one isolated exception, why should the

Shiite leadership, in their view, make major concessions about

widening the entry point for former Baathists into the government,

into the senior levels of the military leadership, that's to say

bringing in high ranking Sunnis into the government and the army and

the police, who themselves, the Sunnis, are in the main former

stalwarts of Saddam's regime. Why would the Shiites do that if they

believe that in the end, they're going to have to fight a civil war?

This is not to reprove people in the Congress who think that the

United States has spent enough blood and treasure here. It's just a

reality that that's the way this debate seems to be being read by many

Iraqi politicians.

HH: Would a, John Burns, a contrary approach yield the also

counterintuitive result that if Congress and the United States said

we're there for two or three more years at this level, would that

assist the political settlement, in your view, coming about?

JB: Unfortunately, I think the answer to that is probably not, and

that's something that General Casey and General Petraeus and

Ambassador Crocker now, General Petraeus' partner, if you will, are

very wary of. They understand that there has to be something of a fire

lit under the feet of the Iraqi leaders. It's a paradox, it's a

conundrum, which is almost impossible to resolve. Now I think the last

thing that you need is an Iraqi leadership which is already inclined

to passivity on the matters, the questions that seem to matter most in

terms of a national reconciliation here, the last thing they need is

to be told, in effect, the deadline has been moved back three years. I

would guess the way, if you will, to vector all of this would be to

find some sort of solution, indeed it was the benchmark solution,

which would say to them if you come together and you work on these

benchmarks, then you will continue to have our support. But it seems

to me that the mood in Congress has moved beyond that. The mood in

Congress, as I read it from here, at least those who are leading the

push for the withdrawal, are not much interested anymore in

incremental progress by the Iraqi government. They've come to the

conclusion that this war is lost, that no foreseeable movement by the

Iraqi leaders will be enough to justify the continued investment of

lives and dollars here by the United States, and that it's time to

pull out. And of course, you can make a strong argument to that

effect.

HH: Do you believe that, John Burns, that the war is lost?

JB: No, I don't, actually. I think the war is close to lost, but I

don't think that all hope is extinguished, and I do think, as do many

of my colleagues in the media here, that an accelerated early

withdrawal, something which reduced American troops, even if they were

placed in large bases out in the desert to, say, something like

60-80,000 over a period of six to nine months, and in effect, leaving

the fighting in the cities and the approaches to the cities to the

Iraqis, I think the result of that would, in effect, be a rapid, a

rapid progress towards an all-out civil war. And the people who are

urging that kind of a drawdown, I think, have to take that into

account. That's not to say, I have to say, that that should be enough

to inhibit those politicians who make that argument, because they

could very well ask if that's true, can those who argue for a

continued high level of American military involvement here assure us

that we wouldn't come to the same point three or four years, and

perhaps four or five thousand American soldiers killed later? In other

words, we might only be putting off the evil day. It seems to me

that's where this discussion really has to focus. Can those who argue

for staying here, can they offer any reasonable hope that three, two,

three, four years out, the risk of a decline into cataclysmic civil

war would be any less? If the answer is no they can't, then it seems

to me that strengthens the argument of those who say well, we might as

well withdraw fairly quickly now.

HH: Now you've reported some very tough places, Sarajevo, Afghanistan

under the Taliban, and after the liberation from the Taliban, and

you've won Pulitzers for that. When you say cataclysmic civil war,

what do you mean in terms of what you've seen before? What kind of

violence do you imagine would break out after precipitous withdrawal?

JB: Well, let's look at what's happened already as a benchmark. Nobody

really knows how many people have died here, but I would guess that in

terms of the civilian population, it's probably not less than

100-150,000, and it could be higher than that. I don't think it's as

high as the 700,000 that some estimates have suggested, but I think

it's, and I know for a fact, that the sort of figures that were being

discussed amongst senior American officials here, as a potential,

should there be an early withdrawal and a progress to an all-out civil

war, they're talking about the possibility of as many as a million

Iraqis dying. Now of course, that is suppositional. It's entirely

hypothetical. How could we possibly know? But I think you couldn't

rule out that possibility. And the question then arises, catastrophic

as the effect on Iraq and the region would be, you know, what would be

the effect on American credibility in the world, American power in the

world, and America's sense of itself? These are extremely difficult

issues to resolve, and I can't say, sitting here in Baghdad, that I

have any particular wisdom about what the right course would be. And

fortunately, as a reporter, I'm not paid money to offer that kind of

wisdom, only to observe what I see. And there are days when I thank

God that I'm not sitting in the United States Senate or the United

States House of Representatives, with the responsibility of putting

the ballot in the box on this.

HH: In his recent speech in Charleston, President Bush argued that to

withdraw would be to empower al Qaeda in Anbar Province, and to allow

them to set up a base there. What do you make of that projection, John

Burns?

JB: Well, I think it's self-evident. Whatever we may make of the

original intent of coming here, if the United States did not have a

problem with Islamic extremism in Iraq before 2003, it certainly does

now. You only have to look at the pronouncements of Mr. bin Laden and

Mr. Zawahiri, his deputy, to see that they regard Iraq now as being,

if you will, the front line of the Islamic militant battle against the

West. And so if American troops were withdrawn, I think that there

would be a very serious risk that large parts of this country will

fall under the sway of al Qaeda linked groups. Now we could debate

what that exactly means. Al Qaeda's a holding company. Does that mean

that Mr. bin Laden would be able to direct affairs in Afghanistan? No,

I don't think he would. I don't think he does now. But it would mean

that Islamic extremists who bear the worst intent towards the United

States would have a base similar to the base they had in Afghanistan

before 9/11 from which to operate, and I think it's very likely that

they would then begin to want to expatriate their hatred of the United

States in some way or another. In fact, it's already the case, that

there are parts of Iraq which are under the sway of groups that swear

allegiance to al Qaeda. And just to speak of one of them, the city of

Sumarra, where I was yesterday, it's about sixty miles north of

Baghdad, is definitely under the sway of al Qaeda right now. And that

would likely get very much worse in the event of an accelerated

withdrawal. So I don't think it's purely propaganda, political

propaganda on the part of the Bush administration to say that there

would be a major al Qaeda problem here. It seems to me it's absolutely

self-evident that there would be.

HH: Now given that you covered Afghanistan from the Taliban era, would

they have a greater lethality anchored in Iraq than they did when they

were anchored in Afghanistan, John Burns, al Qaeda I mean?

JB: I'm sorry, I missed that. Do you want to repeat that?

HH: Sure.

JB: I understood you were asking me about the lethality of the Taliban

in Afghanistan.

HH: No, I was asking when al Qaeda was in Afghanistan under the

Taliban regime, they obviously developed potential and capabilities

and operational abilities that resulted in 9/11. If they anchored

themselves in a lawless Iraq, would their lethality towards the United

States be even greater or lesser than it was when they were in Taliban

Afghanistan?

JB: I would say it would probably be greater, and for these reasons.

Let's remember that the Afghanistan, that was a sanctuary for al Qaeda

and bin Laden, is a very, very underdeveloped, I dare say primitive

country. Iraq is not. Iraq is a country that had and potentially still

has a major industrial base, it has among Middle Eastern countries one

of the most highly educated corps of scientists and engineers, people

who were on their way, certainly in the early 1990's, to developing

nuclear weapons, even if that program, as we now know, fell by the

wayside after the first Gulf War. Many of these people have left, but

would some of them come back? You would then have to add to that the

fact that this is an oil country, which even in the situation of a

civil war, is exporting billions of dollars of oil to the world, and

could potentially export much more. So I would say add to that the

question of geography. We're a thousand miles closer here in Baghdad

to Western Europe and the United States than Mr. bin Laden and his

followers were when they were in Afghanistan. So I think yes, it could

be a serious problem. Whether that problem can be overcome in any

foreseeable or acceptable period of time here, I don't know. If we

knew the answer to that, we'd be well on our way to deciding whether

or not it's worth staying here. But I think to deny that there is such

a problem, or even simply to blame it on the Bush administration...

(Call dropped. End of Part 1)

HH: Mr. Burns, sorry, we dropped you there as you were...I just need

about ten more minutes if I can hold you for that long.

JB: Yeah, sure.

HH: Great. You were talking about that al Qaeda is real in Anbar, and

they would pose problems for us, and it's not a Bush administration

figment, I think you were saying.

JB: I'm not sure where we...you still had me on the line when I was

talking about why Iraq is different to Afghanistan?

HH: Yeah, but...I got most of that...

JB: Yes.

HH: And you were, when you got cut off, you were saying that this is

not made up by the Bush administration.

JB: So you know, we can all exhaust ourselves with questions of

political accountability for this, and whether the Bush

administration, post 9/11, made a huge mistake in moving on from an

uncompleted war in Afghanistan to Iraq. But it seems to me that

perhaps instead of exhausting our energies on that, it would be better

to look at the situation as it actually is, set aside for time being,

or for history, who is responsible for it, and come to some

conclusions about what is best to do about it. And that would have to

start from a recognition that it is a really serious problem. And then

the question is what, if anything, can be done about it? Will leaving

American troops here only exacerbate the problem, and exhaust the

United States? Or would it hold out the prospect that the United

States and its Iraqi partners could actually begin to knock al Qaeda

back? That's a very complex question, and as I said earlier, I

consider it one of my great blessings that it's my job to report on

these things and not to decide on them.

HH: It's extraordinarily well put. A couple of metrics, though. When I

interviewed General Petraeus last week, he was reluctant to talk in

terms of the number of al Qaeda or foreign terrorists killed in the

last six months of the surge. What do you think that number is? How

many al Qaeda are being killed by the surge?

JB: I would say the figure is in the hundreds.

HH: High hundreds or low hundreds?

JB: I would say it's probably something in the nature of three to five

hundred, cumulatively, since the surge began. Now I've not got that

figure from the American military. I'm simply pulling together various

estimates we've had from various parts of this offensive as to the

people that they have killed. Now of course, that figure isn't very

helpful. You need to know are these people, you know, 17 and 18 year

old recruits who have been paid $50 dollars to go and put a roadside

bomb somewhere where it can blow up an American humvee? Or are they

hard core? How many of the hard core have they got? I think they've

had some success, and they've probably taken off the streets several

dozen senior al Qaeda in Iraq linked terrorists. And that has to be

significant. The problem is, as General Rick Lynch of the 3rd Infantry

Division, who is presently in charge of the surge operations on the

southern approaches to Baghdad has said, al Qaeda in Iraq is a hydra.

It is a many headed monster which seems to be able to regenerate its

heads when they're cut off. And that's been the case for a very long

time, as General Lynch knows. He was the command spokesman in his

previous assignment here. And many was the time wherein I attended

briefings by General Lynch in that role, where he produced charts

indicating how many first, second and third tier al Qaeda operatives

had been killed or captured. And that was three years ago. So you

know, it seems that no matter how many are killed or captured, this

thing managed to regenerate.

HH: Now John Burns, some argue that withdrawal will stop the momentum

for al Qaeda's recruitment, that we are, our presence there is, in

fact, breeding terrorists. Do you agree with that?

JB: Well, I think there's no doubt that there's some element of truth

to that. But I don't think that that alone is keeping or sustaining

the al Qaeda presence here. As a matter of fact, if you talk, if you

look at what's happened in Anbar, for example, the tribal sheiks in

Anbar who have shifted their position on this war, and in effect now

put themselves in an alliance with the United States and Iraqi forces

against al Qaeda, they're doing that partly because of al Qaeda's

brutality, but also because of their fears for what this might portend

beyond an American presence. In short, whilst they've got American

troops here, they're very happy to have them go after al Qaeda,

because most Iraqis, and certainly most tribal sheiks, do not want to

live in an Islamic caliphate of the kind that Mr. Zarqawi, who was

killed a little over a year ago in an American bombing strike, the

former leader of al Qaeda in Iraq, declared his intentions. As a

matter of fact, the principal al Qaeda front operation here now calls

it the Islamic state of Iraq. It's pretty clear what those people

intend. This, for all the religiosity we have seen in the past three

or four years, was under Saddam Hussein, and remains a strongly

secular society. Most Iraqis, most Iraqis, crave in their lives much

of the same things that Americans do. They want to see economic

progress. They want to see a degree of liberty. Of course they want

also to preserve and protect their religion. But they do not want to

live in a Taliban state.

HH: Mr. Burns, what is Iran's role right now? What is, as you

understand it, the game that they're playing? What did they want to

happen there?

JB: Well, it's very difficult to read it, and I know that American

officials who are dealing with this are absolutely perplexed. You

would think that Iran would have, as much as any state in the region,

an interest in stability in Iraq, and an interest in sustaining the

first Shiite co-religionist, if you will, government in Iraq in

hundreds of years. But what they're actually doing is they are

definitely, according to the intelligence that the American military

passes to us, they are fueling, if you will, this country on its way

to a civil war, and they are certainly responsible for providing the

weapons technology and actual weapons in the form of what are known as

explosively formed penetrators. That's a particularly powerful form of

bomb that have killed now scores of American troops. So how do we

understand all of this? In two ways. Number one, Iran, as you know, is

a country divided against itself. It has ayatollahs, extremist

ayatollahs in many respects, who are in overall charge of the

government. It has other ayatollahs who are more moderate. You have

Islamic guards who are extremists, and you have a force, the Quds

force, which is an elite force which appears to be the force that the

ayatollahs, the extremist ayatollahs in Iran are using to, if you

will, fuel the war in Iraq by funneling not just weapons and weapons

technology and money, but actual agents into Iraq, according to what

the American military has told, as they've captured some of them, to

actually direct Shiite extremist activities, including death squads,

including in February of this year, as I recall, an attack in the city

of Karbala about 80 miles southwest of Baghdad, in which American

soldiers, you'll forgive me here, but my recollection is that there

five of them, were abducted and killed by people wearing fake American

military uniforms, and driving fake American military vehicles. This

was an operation, so the American military tells us, which was

conceived, directed, financed by the Iranian Quds force. So what is

Iran up to here? It looks very much as though their interest in

striking back at the great Satan, the United States, humiliating if

they can the United States in Iraq, matters more to them on balance

than creating a stable Shiite led government in Baghdad.

HH: When you talk with American military and diplomatic personnel

there, John Burns, do they foresee some sort of military clash between

Iran and the United States?

JB: No, I think it's fair to say they don't. They would say, of

course, that they will do whatever they are directed by the president

and Congress of the United States to do. But from everything I know of

the American military commanders here, the last thing they want is any

kind of military engagement with Iran, and for one very obvious

reason. They have their hands absolutely full here. They have an army

which is stretched to the point of exhaustion. I read the other day

somewhere that something like 70% of the armored vehicles in the

United States armed forces are now in Iraq. One indication of that is

that if there were a rapid withdrawal, or helter skelter withdrawal,

you'd have an army, an United States Army which would be stripped of

much of its fighting vehicles. So do they want another war on their

hands? They absolutely do not. They want to do the best job they an

possibly do here, and they want to get home. How often do you hear

American generals and American officers say that? Nobody wants to come

home more than we do.

HH: And do you expect, though, that the nuclear ambitions of Iran will

lead the Bush administration, do you hear people speculating about

strikes on the nuclear facilities?

JB: You know, that's way, as the military here likes to say, out of

may lane. Though I'm sitting here in Baghdad, probably only about an

hour's flying time west of Tehran, and although I have been in Iran a

number of times under the rule of the ayatollahs, I find that one

extremely difficult to contemplate. But I do think that there are some

things that are easy to state about this, and I think everybody who

bothers to acquaint himself to the realities would understand it, that

a proliferation of nuclear weapons in this region would be an

extremely, extremely dangerous thing. And the proliferation of nuclear

weapons to Iran would have a particular danger, because of the

hostility of the ayatollahs to the West in the first place, and to the

state of Israel in the second, and especially a president of Iran who

has declared that it is his desire, his intent, to wipe Israel off the

face of the map. So clearly, you know, an unstable policy like Iran

acquiring nuclear weapons would be a development of the most

frightened proportions. What can you do about that? Is it too late? Is

the genie dropped out of the bottle? I was in India and Pakistan when

those two countries tested nuclear weapons, and in effect, became

nuclear weapons states, and I remember very well the sanctions that

were placed on India and Pakistan in the immediate aftermath of those

weapons tests in 1998, and how now, less than 10 years later, the

United States is in harness with both those countries, and most of the

sanctions then imposed have been withdrawn. So it's difficult, is it

not, to develop a coherent policy here in which some states, even if

they are a lot more responsible we may judge than Iran are allowed to

acquire nuclear weapons and others are not. I don't pretend to have

any answers to this, although I will say is, as I say to my children

who are now well into their 20's, I think they're growing up into a

world a lot more dangerous than I did, and I grew up into the world of

the Cold War. And we thought that was dangerous enough.

HH: I want to wrap up by asking you just that kind of a question. When

you're sitting around and having a drink with your friends or your

wife or your kids, and you're an Englishman, and you know, what Gordon

Brown has said in the last couple of weeks, and MI5 says you've got

2,000 jihadists running around London, what do you think the world's

going to look like in ten years? What's the best case and the worst

case out there, as you contemplate all the different moving parts in

this clash of jihadist Islamist extremism and the West?

JB: I have to say I find it...and everything not to say quite

frightening, and you know, I've learned one thing in my 30 years

working for an American newspaper, and thus acquiring some kind of

understanding, I hope, about the United States, and that is the can do

spirit, that the only useful thing to do in the face of this kind of

threat is to ask yourself what can we do about it? America has a

genius, in my view, for not sitting down and moping about its forlorn

state, but of actually doing something about it. And we will see the

United States do something about this. I think that our focus needs to

be on what is it that is within our control? There's only so much that

you can accomplish by force of arms. I was with General Nixon, who's

command of American troops in North Iraq yesterday, and he said you

know, we haven't advanced our security one little bit by killing

people here. He meant, of course, that what you have to do is try and

change hearts and minds. I think there are limits to what you can do

with force of arms. We know that now. And we have to look at various

aspects of American and Western policy in the world, and see where we

can change that. And the most obvious place to change it would be in

bringing some kind of peace between the Arabs and the Israelis,

between the Israelis and the Palestinians. And God knows that's a

difficult enough problem. But I think if we could start there, and

broaden out beyond that, then we would begin to have an answer to

Islamic extremism.

HH: Do you think Hamas and Hezbollah, though, are at all inclined to

want that with Israel, John Burns?

JB: Say again?

HH: Do you think that Hamas and Hezbollah, Hamas in Gaza, Hezbollah in

the north, in Lebanon, are at all inclined to want co-existence,

peaceful with Israel?

JB: Well, that's certainly an open question. And again, I have to

plead that that's outside my lane. I worked in those two countries,

Israel and Lebanon, and in the West Bank and Gaza, and I can't claim

to have any inside knowledge any more, I would say, than most of the

people who are listening to your program. I think the answer would be

that of course, these aren't the most extreme elements, Islamic

extreme elements, probably do not want peace. But my sense is that we

should work from one observable fact there as elsewhere, and that is

that most people, most people, including most Palestinians, most

Iraqis, do not want to live in Terminator world. They want, broadly

speaking, the same things that we do. As long as that's the case, as

long as that's the case, a policy that reaches out to those people

will be a policy that brings us some hope.

HH: Let's conclude by asking you about the American military, the

trooper, and the Marines who are...you know, the privates and the

corporals and the sergeants there. There was a piece in the New

Republic last week by a Scott Thomas Beauchamp. Have you had a chance

to read that, or read about the controversy, John Burns?

JB: I did not, no. Tell me about it.

HH: Well, he attributed to himself, and to his fellow troopers, a

cruelty and indifference to cruelty that shocked a lot of people, and

now there's an investigation into whether or not his observations were

in fact truthful, and we don't know the answer to that. But when you

observe the American troops, A) how are their morale, and B) what do

they think about this war, and about the Iraqi people at the level of

the people doing the hardest fighting?

JB: Look, war is a brutalizing thing. It is an ugly thing. My own

father was a fighter pilot during World War II. And when I went out to

cover wars around the world, he cautioned me about being too quick and

ready in my judgments. He said unless you've fought a war, you don't

know what it does to people. And he was speaking for an air force, the

Royal Air Force, which firebombed Dresden and Hamburg, and killed more

people, as I recall in those two cities, than were killed in the

atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. So that's my first response

to that, that if there has been brutality by American troops here,

that would be nothing new in war. As for the morale of American

troops, I think I can give you an answer to that, because I was only,

a couple of days ago, in an American fort, in effect, a control base

on the edge of the city of Samarra, which is as lawless and as al

Qaeda dominated a place as you will find in Iraq, as I mentioned

earlier, about sixty miles north of Baghdad, the place where a Shiite

shrine was bombed in February of 2006 with catastrophic effects in

terms of a tidal wave of sectarian violence between Sunni and Shiia

across the country. So there I was with a platoon of American troops,

led by a young man who was about a captain, who was about to receive a

silver star for bravery in a battle inside Samarra. And I asked him

what do you and the thirty men who were standing in line waiting for

the silver star ceremony with him, what are you fighting for here? And

I can tell you one thing, they're not fighting for any grand mission.

The days of that are gone. They don't spend their hours keenly

watching CNN and Fox News for the latest twists and turns in the

debate in Congress. They watch movies, they watch WWF, they watch

NASCAR. And when you ask them what you're fighting for, they'll tell

you they're fighting for the man to the left of them, the man to the

right of them, they're fighting to get home safely. They're fighting

for the unit, they're fighting to protect and save themselves.

HH: And do they appreciate the Congressional debate? And when you talk

to them, and their officers, do they think it's helpful to what

they're trying to do?

JB: Well, if you talk to most of the fighting men, the enlisted men,

they're really not very much concerned about that. They're concerned

about, in the case of the unit that I was talking to, they came here

on a twelve month hitch, they've done twelve months, they were

extended to fifteen, so they have another three months to go, and

their minds are fixed on those last three months, on getting through

those last three months, and getting out. If you talk to officers in

command headquarters around country, people who have had more time,

and who are not at the sharp end of this war, yes, of course, they do

follow the debate in Congress, and I would say the predominant

opinion, not if by an means the exclusive opinion, because there are

all the shades of opinion that you find in the United States, you'll

find here in the American armed forces. But I would say the

predominant opinion appears to be, at least amongst the middle to

senior levels of the officer corps here, that we came here, we paid a

very high price, 3,600 men killed, 26 or 27,000 men, women wounded,

let's see if we can't accomplish something here. They certainly do not

like the idea of, to put it in the pejorative, cutting and running.

They think that they can still make a crucial difference, they think

it's worth persisting here, they would just like a little bit more

time. But they recognize, and this is undeniable, when you talk to

most of these officers, they understand how the United States system

works, and they understand what the Congress of the United States is

elected to do. And they will accept, of course they will accept,

whatever decision is made. They understand, because they're paying the

price, they are...you know, I was in a unit headquarters in Camp Spiker

north of Tikrit for the last three days, and as we walked to the

helicopter to fly back to Baghdad yesterday morning, we paused before

the memorial board. And this is for the 82nd Airborne Division, one of

the most famous units in the United States Army, now at about the

twelve month mark of a fifteen month deployment, with something in the

nature of 20,000 men, and that board has 56 names on it of men killed

here in Iraq. And the average age, they told me, was as I recall about

21 years old. And you look at those faces and those dog tags staring

out at you from the memorial wall, and you'd have to be, have ice

water in your veins not to ask yourself is this worth it. Is what's

going to be accomplished or not accomplished here worth the lives of

these young men? I don't have a ready answer to that. And I think the

wise thing to do is frankly to show some modesty in respect to that

question. And I ask myself when I looked at those faces, what would

they be saying to us now? Having given their lives for this, what

would they want? Some of them, no doubt, I think would say get out of

this place now. Others, as one would, might suspect, would say I went

to Iraq knowing I could pay this price. Having paid the price, I would

like to see the mission accomplished. As I've said before, thank God

that it's not my responsibility to make the finite decisions on this.

My heart goes out, as it does to those soldiers out there in the 120

degree heat of the Iraqi desert fighting this sometimes impossible

war, my heart also goes out to those 400 plus members of the United

States Congress and the 100 members of the Senate who have to decide

this thing. I don't think in my lifetime there has been an issue of

public policy quite as vexed as this.

HH: You know, John Burns, I'm imposing on you, and I apologize. It's

just so fascinating and it's deeply, I think, informative, so I want

to just ask you about those quiet conversations with your Iraqi

friends, the people who serve the Bureau, who you've become friends

with over your many years in Baghdad. What do they think is going to

happen here? How fearful are they of the future?

JB: Very fearful, very fearful indeed. We've had much reason in the

New York Times bureau in Baghdad in the past two weeks, more reason

than usual, to thing about this, because we lost one of our Iraqi

reporter/interpreters, killed two weeks ago today on his way to work

in Baghdad, executed, in effect, in a professional manner which left

little doubt that the people who were doing it were in one way

involved with the insurgency. I don't think it was a purely criminal

enterprise. The young man who died was 23 years old, and full of life,

and full of love for America, and full of hope for his own future. So

we have talked more than we normally would about this question. I

would say the prevailing opinion amongst the Iraqis I know best is

they are very scared, very scared. They wonder whether they will live

out each day. With, almost without exception, they are all hoping to

get out of Iraq, to get to Jordan or Syria, or beyond that to the

United States, Australia, the United Kingdom. That's becoming an

increasingly difficult venture for them. Their lives are filled with

fear, and with very little hope. And when they contemplate the

possible early withdrawal of American troops, of course, in the main,

not exclusively, some feel that it's better that Iraqis settle this

amongst themselves. But in the main, those Iraqis feel that a

withdrawal of American troops would very much increase the level of

danger that they and their families face.

HH: Can we abandon, John Burns, can we abandon these Iraqis the way we

abandoned the Cambodians to Pol Pot or the South Vietnamese to the

North? I mean, doesn't that strike you as something we simply cannot

do?

JB: Well, if you ask me that as a personal matter, as somebody who has

spent five years here and made many friends here, and come to admire

greatly the Iraqis for their, their fortitude in enduring these

miseries, it fills me with dread to think that they would be left to

face the consequences of all of this without our, and I mean, by the

way, American and not only American but British support as well. The

British are much closer to the exit as far as I can tell than American

troops are. So I am filled with dread about that, and wish that I

could give these young Iraqis more encouragement than I can. And

frankly, the best advice, and I think the most wise advice that

anybody could give an Iraqi faced with that situation would be that if

he could get his family to safety now, it would probably be a wise

thing to do. Easier said than done. Visas are extremely difficult to

get even for neighboring Arab countries. And very few of these people

have any savings at all...in 2003, at a time when doctors in Iraq were

earning $3 dollars a month. Most of them, speaking of the people that

we employ, are supporting not just themselves and their own families,

but whole extended families, and their salaries are exhausted, very

often, before the month is through. So to contemplate them moving a

family, even their nuclear families out of this country, even if they

can get the visas, is extremely difficult. It's a completely

nightmarish situation for them, and obviously, I would that however we

in the West resolve this, we don't forget them.

HH: Asking, I've asked you this before, and I'll ask it again to exit,

knowing what we know now, would you have counseled the invasion to

occur in '03?

JB: Well, let me answer the question in a slightly different way. I

think that people like myself, who were here before the overthrow of

Saddam, were absolutely mesmerized, and I'm even inclined to say

obsessed with one aspect of this society, and that was the terror that

Saddam Hussein inflicted on his own people, and that I think we

thought, I know I thought, that the overthrow of Saddam Hussein would

bring an end to that terror, and would bring hope for the first time

in a generation to Iraqis. I think those of us who felt that should

have studied harder, and tried to acquaint ourselves more with the

history of this country, and realized that beneath the carapace of

terror laid a deeply fractured, deeply dysfunctional society in which

Sunni, Shiia and Kurds have been locked together, and held in some

relative stability only by at the point of a gun. Had we known all

that, had we fully weighed all of that, I think that we might have

reckoned then that ghastly as the terror of Saddam Hussein was, there

was something even more ghastly that could ensure. I personally am too

close to this now to be able to make any kind of judgment about that,

and I think the judgment will depend on events yet to unfold. But I

think that journalists, we who file mostly for 24 hour deadlines, need

to learn a lesson, and I'm talking about myself, as much as anybody

else here, and that we need to think very carefully when we're cast

into situations like this, and we become the messengers, if you will,

the tribunes of the Western world, to write more about those sorts of

things, the fractured society that lay beneath that carapace of

terror, than just the terror itself.

HH: Was there any way, is it possible, do you think on that

reflection, that however hard the last four years have been, was there

any other way to get past Saddam? Or was it, and is there a

possibility in your mind that it will all be worth it in the end?

JB: I guess the judgment on that will probably be something like 20-25

years out from now.

HH: Yeah.

JB: ...the judgment that the Iraqi people will have to make. Right now,

the remarkable thing is not that so many Iraqis look back on Saddam's

time with a sense of yearning, but that so many other Iraqis, namely

Shiite Iraqis and Kurdish Iraqis, who were his principal victims,

continue to believe that his overthrow was for the best. What

history's judgment about this will be extremely difficult to tell. But

one thing we can be sure of is that it will have cost enormous numbers

of lives, and it makes you wonder, looking back to the period of 2003

and before...

(Call dropped - End of Part 2)

JB: John Burns...

HH: Mr. Burns, I'm just calling back, it's Hugh Hewitt, to say thank

you for the hour. It's been fascinating, we'll play it in its entirety

on Monday, and I hope in a few more months, we can get you back to do

it again. It's riveting radio.

JB: Well, thank you very much, and I enjoyed the chat.

HH: Thank you, John Burns.

JB: Bye bye.

HH: Bye bye.

End of interview.

http://hughhewitt.townhall.com/Transcript_Page.aspx?ContentGuid=5bdb3520-d829-4fdb-a2bc-6611d80faba4

On Jul 31, 9:21 am, GonzoTrader <GonzoTra...@101click.com> wrote:

> HH: Pleased to welcome back to the Hugh Hewitt Show John Burns of the

> New York Times. Mr. Burns, welcome, it's been about six months since

> we spoke, and I gather you're in Baghdad today?

>

> JB: I am indeed.

>

> HH: How long have you been back in Baghdad?

>

> JB: About three months. We take long rotations here, and then we

> reward ourselves with nice long breaks back home in the United States,

> or in my case, in the United Kingdom.

>

> HH: Well, there are three things I want to cover with you today, Mr.

> Burns. Where are we now in Iraq, in your view? Secondly, where Iraq

> might be in a couple of years, depending on a couple of developments

> that the United States might enact? And then finally, in hindsight,

> what we did right and what we did wrong over the last four years. But

> let's start with what you see in Baghdad today. Is the surge working?

>

> JB: I think there's no doubt that those extra 30,000 American troops

> are making a difference. They're definitely making a difference in

> Baghdad. Some of the crucial indicators of the war, metrics as the

> American command calls them, have moved in a positive direction from

> the American, and dare I say the Iraqi point of view, fewer car bombs,

> fewer bombs in general, lower levels of civilian casualties, quite

> remarkably lower levels of civilian casualties. And add in what they

> call the Baghdad belts, that's to say the approaches to Baghdad,

> particularly in Diyala Province to the northeast, to in the area south

> of Baghdad in Babil Province, and to the west of Baghdad in Anbar

> Province, there's no doubt that al Qaeda has taken something of a

> beating.

>

> HH: Now when General Petraeus returns in September to make his report,

> do you expect Petraeus to be completely candid with the American

> people about the good news and the bad news in Iraq?

>

> JB: I think there's no doubt that he'll be candid. As a matter of

> fact, every time I've spoken to him about it, he talks about the need

> to be forthright, and as he puts it, he said we're not going to be

> putting lipstick on a pig. I think that's a fairly, that's military

> jargon which most Americans will understand. David Petraeus is a man

> who's had a remarkably distinguished military career, and he is very

> clear that he thinks his responsibilities lie not to the White House

> alone, but to the White House and the Congress conjointly, and through

> them to the American people. I don't think that this is just a

> profession, a claim. I think he really intends that, and he's been

> very careful not to make commitments at the moment as to what he's

> going to say, though we may guess it. And I think he's going to say

> that the surge is having its effects, it hasn't turned the tide of the

> war, there's been too little time for it, and I think he and

> Ambassador Crocker, who will be his partner in that September report,

> are going to say one thing very clearly, and that is a quick, early

> withdrawal of American troops of the kind that is being argued by

> Nancy Pelosi, for example, would very likely lead to catastrophic

> levels of violence here. And in that, General Petraeus and Ambassador

> Crocker will be saying something which is pretty broadly shared by

> people who live and work here, I have to say. The removal of American

> troops would very likely, we believe from all indications, lead to

> much higher, and indeed potentially cataclysmic levels of violence,

> beyond anything we've seen to date.

>

> HH: Mr. Burns, some anti-war critics have begun to attack General

> Petraeus as being not credible and not trustworthy for a variety of

> reasons, one he gave me an interview, he's given other people

> interviews that they consider to be partisan, whatever. Do you believe

> he'll be as trustworthy as anyone else speaking on the war?

>

> JB: I do. I can only speak for my own personal experience, and there

> definitely was in the, in the Vietnam war, there was a failure of

> senior generals and the joint chiefs of staff to speak frankly about

> the Vietnam war early enough. There has definitely been some

> Pollyannaish character to the reporting of some of the generals here

> over the past three or four years, although in my own view, knowing

> virtually all of those generals, I don't think that that was out of

> fealty to the White House or Mr. Rumsfeld. It's a difficult and

> complex question which we really don't have time to discuss here. But

> to speak of General Petraeus in particular, General Petraeus is 54

> years old. Let's look at this just simply as a matter of career,

> beyond the matter of principle on which I think we could also say we

> could expect him to make a forthright report. At 54, General Petraeus

> is a young four star general, who could expect to have as much as ten

> more years in the military. And he has every reason to give a

> forthright and frank report on this. And he says, and he says this

> insistently, that he will give a forthright, straightforward report,

> and if the people in Washington don't like it, then they can find

> somebody else who will give his forthright, straightforward report. He

> is not without options on a personal basis, General Petraeus, and I

> think he, from everything I've learned from him, sees both a

> professional, in the first place, and personal imperative to state the

> truth as he sees it about this war.

>

> HH: Speaking more broadly now, in the American higher command, is

> there optimism that the surge, given enough time, will bring the kind

> of stability to Iraq that we all hope it achieves?

>

> JB: You know, optimism is a word which is rarely used around here. The

> word they would use is realism. You have to look at what the plan is.

> The plan is that with the surge, aimed primarily at al Qaeda, who are

> responsible for most of the spectacular attacks, the major suicide

> bombings, for example, that have driven the sectarian warfare here,

> the belief is, or the hope is, that with the surge, they can knock al

> Qaeda back, they can clear areas which have been virtually sanctuaries

> for al Qaeda, northeast, south, west and northwest of Baghdad, and in

> Baghdad itself, and then have Iraqi troops move in behind them. The

> problem here is time. How much time does the U.S. military have now,

> according to the American political timetable, to accomplish this? I

> think most generals would say, indeed have said, most serving current

> generals here have said that a drawdown, which took American troops

> from the 160,00 level they're at now quickly down to 100,000 or 80,000

> over the next, shall we say, year to eighteen months, that's too fast.

> If you do that, I think they would say, though they don't put it quite

> this frankly, that this war will be lost for sure. Given a little bit

> more time, they think that it is realistic to think that the Iraqi

> forces can move in behind them, and can take over the principal

> responsibilities for the war. The problem is, of course, that American

> generals have been saying this now for four years, and as we know, the

> Congress is beginning to run out of patience with that. But I think

> that they have a good plan now, at least if there is any plan that

> could save the situation here, any plan that could bring a reasonably

> successful end to the American enterprise here, it's probably the plan

> they have right now.

>

> HH: Now John Burns, a military historian was writing this week that he

> fears a Tet-like offensive by al Qaeda's fighters, as well as perhaps

> radical Shiia militias prior to the Petraeus report. Have you heard

> warnings or concerns about such a thing?

>

> JB: (pause) Hello?

>

> HH: Yes, Mr. Burns, maybe you didn't hear that.

>

> JB: Sorry, you were breaking up quite badly, as you have been at

> several points during our discussion.

>

> HH: Okay, I'll try it again. A military historian wrote this week that

> he fears a Tet-like offensive by al Qaeda and radical Shiia fighters

> in the next weeks running up to the September report. Have you heard

> warnings about that, concerns about that kind of...

>

> JB: Yeah, it's not an original thought. As a matter of fact, it's a

> thought we've heard expressed by General Petraeus and other commanders

> here, and you don't have to be a crystal ball gazer or a seer to

> understand the risks in that. Indeed, there have been one or two

> attempts to pull off exactly that. The fear has been among the

> generals here that a major, spectacular attack, aimed for example at

> the Green Zone, the government and military command complex in the

> center of Baghdad, of the kinds that was mounted during the Tet

> offensive when, as you'll recall, Viet Cong or North Vietnamese troops

> got right inside the American embassy. That kind of attack would have

> an...whatever its consequences here, would have an enormous impact and

> possibly fatal impact from the American military point of view on the

> balance of opinion in the Congress. You'll forgive me, I have American

> attack helicopters flying overhead right now over our compound here in

> Baghdad.

>

> HH: Sure.

>

> JB: There was one attempt already to pull off an attack of that kind.

> It was not on the Green Zone, but on an American military base

> southwest of Baghdad, when a truck loaded with 12,000 pounds of high

> explosives, that's by quick calculation, we're talking about more than

> five tons of high explosives, got very close to what they call the

> wire of an American base in which there were several hundred American

> troops. A wary gunner in a watchtower, an American gunner, spotted the

> truck, and killed or fired at the driver, who got out of the truck

> wearing a suicide vest, as it happens, and the truck did not explode.

> Had it exploded, there could have been a repeat of what happened in

> Lebanon in 1982, when as you will recall, a truck bombing of the

> Marine barracks residential complex near Beiruit airport killed, as I

> recall, 249 Marines, and speeded Ronald Reagan in his decision to pull

> American Marines out of Beirut. So yes, there is a definite concern

> about that, and there has been a tightening of what the American

> military calls force protection, that is to say I guess self-

> evidently, the efforts that the force spends to protect itself in

> respect of that threat.

>

> HH: When we spoke in February, you told us about the killing that had

> been underway in Adamiya, one of the places where sectarian violence

> in Baghdad had really flared in October. What's your assessment of the

> Shiia on Sunni violence level in Baghdad six months into the surge?

>

> JB: It is reduced, and it's reduced primarily, as far as we can see,

> because of the increment, and I'm talking here of a virtual doubling

> of American troop strength in Baghdad, to speak only the neighborhood

> in which the New York Times operates here, the Rusafa neighborhood on

> the east side of the Tigris River, we here now have American troops

> quartered about a half a mile away from us for the first time in three

> years. So when you put American boots on the ground, you definitely

> have an inhibiting effect on this, and we've seen that in falling

> levels of sectarian violence. Where you don't have American boots on

> the ground inside Baghdad, you see higher levels of sectarian

> violence. So I would that on the whole, the situation is somewhat

> better than it was, which is exactly what you would have expected by

> introducing a significant increase of American combat troops.

>

> HH: John Burns, that means it's down, but is there any kind of

> movement that you can see that would suggest that when, that the

> Iraqis are coming to their own conclusion that they've go to work

> through other means than violence, is there a lowering of the hatred

> level there in Baghdad?

>

> JB: Well, of course, that would be what the American military would

> call the most crucial metric of all. If we could see that, then we

> would begin to see the end of the war. Now the fact is that the Iraqi

> people are, of course, exhausted with the violence. The question is at

> what point does that begin to translate into the kind of stepping up

> that would make a change in the warfare, specifically the flow of

> intelligence to the Iraqi and American militaries here, which would

> enable them to go after the people who are primarily responsible,

> whether it's Shiite death squads or its suicide bombers, mostly Sunni

> suicide bombers. The intelligence flow, we're told, is a good deal

> better, very much better than it was. This is an intelligence driven

> war, but the American military will tell you that they still don't

> have enough of it. They have quite a good flow of intelligence, which

> has allowed them to have some spectacular successes, including one

> just last night in Karbala, southwest of Baghdad, the holy city where

> they went after a Shiite militia death squad leader. And this happens

> virtually every night, usually special forces operations, American

> led. They've have some success with that. So that's really the key

> metric. When the Iraqi people's exhaustion with this war begins to

> express itself in a full flow of intelligence to the Iraqi and

> American military, then you will see real progress in the war. Up

> until now, it's much better, but it's still, according to the American

> military, still not nearly enough to make it a crucial difference.

>

> HH: Now another metric is what the political elite of a country says

> off the record. And you have those conversations with the Maliki

> government, with the opposition, with the people in parliament, etc.

> What do you hear from those conversations, John Burns? Are they

> beginning to think that it is possible to see a functioning government

> and a multi-party system that relies on other than guns?

>

> JB: No, I would say that's probably the most depressing or

> discouraging aspect of the entire situation. I think it's probably

> fair to say that the Iraqi political leaders, Sunni, Shiia, Kurd in

> the main, are somewhat further apart now than they were six months

> ago. In other words, the Bush administration's hope that the military

> surge would be accompanied by what they called a political surge, a

> movement towards some sort of national reconciliation, uniting around

> a kind of national compact, that has simply not occurred. Indeed, the

> gulf between the Shiite and Sunni leaders in the government is

> probably wider than it has ever been. There's a great deal of

> recrimination. There's hardly a day when the Sunnis do not, as they

> did again today, threaten to withdraw from the government altogether.

> There's virtually no progress on the key benchmarks, as the Bush

> administration calls them, matters like a comprehensive oil law that

> will settle the issue of how oil revenues, which account for 90% of

> government revenues here, will in future be divided and spent between

> the various communities, and many other issues, eighteen of them,

> benchmarks identified by the Congress, there's very little progress on

> those benchmarks. Where there is some progress is at the grass roots

> level, some progress, though we're beginning to see tribal leaders, in

> particular, in some of the most heavily congested war areas, beginning

> to stand up and say they've had enough of it, and to volunteer to put

> forth their young men, either to join the Iraqi police or army, or to

> join in tribal auxiliaries, or levees if you will. That's probably the

> most encouraging political sign. But at the Baghdad level,

> unfortunately, the United States still does not have an effective

> political partner.

>

> HH: One of the arguments for those favoring a timeline for withdrawal

> that's written in stone is that it will oblige the Iraqi political

> class to get serious about such things as the oil revenue division. Do

> you believe that's an accurate argument?

>

> JB: Well, you would think it would be so, wouldn't you, that the

> threat of withdrawal of American troops, and the risk of a slide into

> catastrophic levels of violence, much higher than we've already seen,

> would impel the Iraqi leadership to move forward. But there's a

> conundrum here. There's a paradox. That's to say the more that the

> Democrats in the Congress lead the push for an early withdrawal, the

> more Iraqi political leaders, particularly the Shiite political

> leaders, but the Sunnis as well, and the Kurds, are inclined to think

> that this is going to be settled, eventually, in an outright civil

> war, in consequence of which they are very, very unlikely or

> reluctant, at present, to make major concessions. They're much more

> inclined to kind of hunker down. So in effect, the threats from

> Washington about a withdrawal, which we might have hoped would have

> brought about greater political cooperation in face of the threat that

> would ensue from that to the entire political establishment here, has

> had, as best we can gauge it, much more the opposite effect, of an

> effect that persuading people well, if the Americans are going,

> there's absolutely no...and we're going to have to settle this by a

> civil war, why should we make concessions on that matter right now?

> For example, to give you only one isolated exception, why should the

> Shiite leadership, in their view, make major concessions about

> widening the entry point for former Baathists into the government,

> into the senior levels of the military leadership, that's to say

> bringing in high ranking Sunnis into the government and the army and

> the police, who themselves, the Sunnis, are in the main former

> stalwarts of Saddam's regime. Why would the Shiites do that if they

> believe that in the end, they're going to have to fight a civil war?

> This is not to reprove people in the Congress who think that the

> United States has spent enough blood and treasure here. It's just a

> reality that that's the way this debate seems to be being read by many

> Iraqi politicians.

>

> HH: Would a, John Burns, a contrary approach yield the also

> counterintuitive result that if Congress and the United States said

> we're there for two or three more years at this level, would that

> assist the political settlement, in your view, coming about?

>

> JB: Unfortunately, I think the answer to that is probably not, and

> that's something that General Casey and General Petraeus and

> Ambassador Crocker now, General Petraeus' partner, if you will, are

> very wary of. They understand that there has to be something of a fire

> lit under the feet of the Iraqi leaders. It's a paradox, it's a

> conundrum, which is almost impossible to resolve. Now I think the last

> thing that you need is an Iraqi leadership which is already inclined

> to passivity on the matters, the questions that seem to matter most in

> terms of a national reconciliation here, the last thing they need is

> to be told, in effect, the deadline has been moved back three years. I

> would guess the way, if you will, to vector all of this would be to

> find some sort of solution, indeed it was the benchmark solution,

> which would say to them if you come together and you work on these

> benchmarks, then you will continue to have our support. But it seems

> to me that the mood in Congress has moved beyond that. The mood in

> Congress, as I read it from here, at least those who are leading the

> push for the withdrawal, are not much interested anymore in

> incremental progress by the Iraqi government. They've come to the

> conclusion that this war is lost, that no foreseeable movement by the

> Iraqi leaders will be enough to justify the continued investment of

> lives and dollars here by the United States, and that it's time to

> pull out. And of course, you can make a strong argument to that

> effect.

>

> HH: Do you believe that, John Burns, that the war is lost?

>

> JB: No, I don't, actually. I think the war is close to lost, but I

> don't think that all hope is extinguished, and I do think, as do many

> of my colleagues in the media here, that an accelerated early

> withdrawal, something which reduced American troops, even if they were

> placed in large bases out in the desert to, say, something like

> 60-80,000 over a period of six to nine months, and in effect, leaving

> the fighting in the cities and the approaches to the cities to the

> Iraqis, I think the result of that would, in effect, be a rapid, a

> rapid progress towards an all-out civil war. And the people who are

> urging that kind of a drawdown, I think, have to take that into

> account. That's not to say, I have to say, that that should be enough

> to inhibit those politicians who make that argument, because they

> could very well ask if that's true, can those who argue for a

> continued high level of American military involvement here assure us

> that we wouldn't come to the same point three or four years, and

> perhaps four or five thousand American soldiers killed later? In other

> words, we might only be putting off the evil day. It seems to me

> that's where this discussion really has to focus. Can those who argue

> for staying here, can they offer any reasonable hope that three, two,

> three, four years out, the risk of a decline into cataclysmic civil

> war would be any less? If the answer is no they can't, then it seems

> to me that strengthens the argument of those who say well, we might as

> well withdraw fairly quickly now.

>

> HH: Now you've reported some very tough places, Sarajevo, Afghanistan

> under the Taliban, and after the liberation from the Taliban, and

> you've won Pulitzers for that. When you say cataclysmic civil war,

> what do you mean in terms of what you've seen before? What kind of

> violence do you imagine would break out after precipitous withdrawal?

>

> JB: Well, let's look at what's happened already as a benchmark. Nobody

> really knows how many people have died here, but I would guess that in

> terms of the civilian population, it's probably not less than

> 100-150,000, and it could be higher than that. I don't think it's as

> high as the 700,000 that some estimates have suggested, but I think

> it's, and I know for a fact, that the sort of figures that were being

> discussed amongst senior American officials here, as a potential,

> should there be an early withdrawal and a progress to an all-out civil

> war, they're talking about the possibility of as many as a million

> Iraqis dying. Now of course, that is suppositional. It's entirely

> hypothetical. How could we possibly know? But I think you couldn't

> rule out that possibility. And the question then arises, catastrophic

> as the effect on Iraq and the region would be, you know, what would be

> the effect on American credibility in the world, American power in the

> world, and America's sense of itself? These are extremely difficult

> issues to resolve, and I can't say, sitting here in Baghdad, that I

> have any particular wisdom about what the right course would be. And

> fortunately, as a reporter, I'm not paid money to offer that kind of

> wisdom, only to observe what I see. And there are days when I thank

> God that I'm not sitting in the United States Senate or the United

> States House of Representatives, with the responsibility of putting

> the ballot in the box on this.

>

> HH: In his recent speech in Charleston, President Bush argued that to

> withdraw would be to empower al Qaeda in Anbar Province, and to allow

> them to set up a base there. What do you make of that projection, John

> Burns?

>

> JB: Well, I think it's self-evident. Whatever we may make of the

> original intent of coming here, if the United States did not have a

> problem with Islamic extremism in Iraq before 2003, it certainly does

> now. You only have to look at the pronouncements of Mr. bin Laden and

> Mr. Zawahiri, his deputy, to see that they regard Iraq now as being,

> if you will, the front line of the Islamic militant battle against the

> West. And so if American troops were withdrawn, I think that there

> would be a very serious risk that large parts of this country will

> fall under the sway of al Qaeda linked groups. Now we could debate

> what that exactly means. Al Qaeda's a holding company. Does that mean

> that Mr. bin Laden would be able to direct affairs in Afghanistan? No,

> I don't think he would. I don't think he does now. But it would mean

> that Islamic extremists who bear the worst intent towards the United

> States would have a base similar to the base they had in Afghanistan

> before 9/11 from which to operate, and I think it's very likely that

> they would then begin to want to expatriate their hatred of the United

> States in some way or another. In fact, it's already the case, that

> there are parts of Iraq which are under the sway of groups that swear

> allegiance to al Qaeda. And just to speak of one of them, the city of

> Sumarra, where I was yesterday, it's about sixty miles north of

> Baghdad, is definitely under the sway of al Qaeda right now. And that

> would likely get very much worse in the event of an accelerated

> withdrawal. So I don't think it's purely propaganda, political

> propaganda on the part of the Bush administration to say that there

> would be a major al Qaeda problem here. It seems to me it's absolutely

> self-evident that there would be.

>

> HH: Now given that you covered Afghanistan from the Taliban era, would

> they have a greater lethality anchored in Iraq than they did when they

> were anchored in Afghanistan, John Burns, al Qaeda I mean?

>

> JB: I'm sorry, I missed that. Do you want to repeat that?

>

> HH: Sure.

>

> JB: I understood you were asking me about the lethality of the Taliban

> in Afghanistan.

>

> HH: No, I was asking when al Qaeda was in Afghanistan under the

> Taliban regime, they obviously developed potential and capabilities

> and operational abilities that resulted in 9/11. If they anchored

> themselves in a lawless Iraq, would their lethality towards the United

> States be even greater or lesser than it was when they were in Taliban

> Afghanistan?

>

> JB: I would say it would probably be greater, and for these reasons.

> Let's remember that the Afghanistan, that was a sanctuary for al Qaeda

> and bin Laden, is a very, very underdeveloped, I dare say primitive

> country. Iraq is not. Iraq is a country that had and potentially still

> has a major industrial base, it has among Middle Eastern countries one

> of the most highly educated corps of scientists and engineers, people

> who were on their way, certainly in the early 1990's, to developing

> nuclear weapons, even if that program, as we now know, fell by the

> wayside after the first Gulf War. Many of these people have left, but

> would some of them come back? You would then have to add to that the

> fact that this is an oil country, which even in the situation of a

> civil war, is exporting billions of dollars of oil to the world, and

> could potentially export much more. So I would say add to that the

> question of geography. We're a thousand miles closer here in Baghdad

> to Western Europe and the United States than Mr. bin Laden and his

> followers were when they were in Afghanistan. So I think yes, it could

> be a serious problem. Whether that problem can be overcome in any

> foreseeable or acceptable period of time here, I don't know. If we

> knew the answer to that, we'd be well on our way to deciding whether

> or not it's worth staying here. But I think to deny that there is such

> a problem, or even simply to blame it on the Bush administration...

>

> (Call dropped. End of Part 1)

>

> HH: Mr. Burns, sorry, we dropped you there as you were...I just need

> about ten more minutes if I can hold you for that long.

>

> JB: Yeah, sure.

>

> HH: Great. You were talking about that al Qaeda is real in Anbar, and

> they would pose problems for us, and it's not a Bush administration

> figment, I think you were saying.

>

> JB: I'm not sure where we...you still had me on the line when I was

> talking about why Iraq is different to Afghanistan?

>

> HH: Yeah, but...I got most of that...

>

> JB: Yes.

>

> HH: And you were, when you got cut off, you were saying that this is

> not made up by the Bush administration.

>

> JB: So you know, we can all exhaust ourselves with questions of

> political accountability for this, and whether the Bush

> administration, post 9/11, made a huge mistake in moving on from an

> uncompleted war in Afghanistan to Iraq. But it seems to me that

> perhaps instead of exhausting our energies on that, it would be better

> to look at the situation as it actually is, set aside for time being,

> or for history, who is responsible for it, and come to some

> conclusions about what is best to do about it. And that would have to

> start from a recognition that it is a really serious problem. And then

> the question is what, if anything, can be done about it? Will leaving

> American troops here only exacerbate the problem, and exhaust the

> United States? Or would it hold out the prospect that the United

> States and its Iraqi partners could actually begin to knock al Qaeda

> back? That's a very complex question, and as I said earlier, I

> consider it one of my great blessings that it's my job to report on

> these things and not to decide on them.

>

> HH: It's extraordinarily well put. A couple of metrics, though. When I

> interviewed General Petraeus last week, he was reluctant to talk in

> terms of the number of al Qaeda or foreign terrorists killed in the

> last six months of the surge. What do you think that number is? How

> many al Qaeda are being killed by the surge?

>

> JB: I would say the figure is in the hundreds.

>

> HH: High hundreds or low hundreds?

>

> JB: I would say it's probably something in the nature of three to five

> hundred, cumulatively, since the surge began. Now I've not got that

> figure from the American military. I'm simply pulling together various

> estimates we've had from various parts of this offensive as to the

> people that they have killed. Now of course, that figure isn't very

> helpful. You need to know are these people, you know, 17 and 18 year

> old recruits who have been paid $50 dollars to go and put a roadside

> bomb somewhere where it can blow up an American humvee? Or are they

> hard core? How many of the hard core have they got? I think they've

> had some success, and they've probably taken off the streets several

> dozen senior al Qaeda in Iraq linked terrorists. And that has to be

> significant. The problem is, as General Rick Lynch of the 3rd Infantry

> Division, who is presently in charge of the surge operations on the

> southern approaches to Baghdad has said, al Qaeda in Iraq is a hydra.

> It is a many headed monster which seems to be able to regenerate its

> heads when they're cut off. And that's been the case for a very long

> time, as General Lynch knows. He was the command spokesman in his

> previous assignment here. And many was the time wherein I attended

> briefings by General Lynch in that role, where he produced charts

> indicating how many first, second and third tier al Qaeda operatives

> had been killed or captured. And that was three years ago. So you

> know, it seems that no matter how many are killed or captured, this

> thing managed to regenerate.

>

> HH: Now John Burns, some argue that withdrawal will stop the momentum

> for al Qaeda's recruitment, that we are, our presence there is, in

> fact, breeding terrorists. Do you agree with that?

>

> JB: Well, I think there's no doubt that there's some element of truth

> to that. But I don't think that that alone is keeping or sustaining

> the al Qaeda presence here. As a matter of fact, if you talk, if you

> look at what's happened in Anbar, for example, the tribal sheiks in

> Anbar who have shifted their position on this war, and in effect now

> put themselves in an alliance with the United States and Iraqi forces

> against al Qaeda, they're doing that partly because of al Qaeda's

> brutality, but also because of their fears for what this might portend

> beyond an American presence. In short, whilst they've got American

> troops here, they're very happy to have them go after al Qaeda,

> because most Iraqis, and certainly most tribal sheiks, do not want to

> live in an Islamic caliphate of the kind that Mr. Zarqawi, who was

> killed a little over a year ago in an American bombing strike, the

> former leader of al Qaeda in Iraq, declared his intentions. As a

> matter of fact, the principal al Qaeda front operation here now calls

> it the Islamic state of Iraq. It's pretty clear what those people

> intend. This, for all the religiosity we have seen in the past three

> or four years, was under Saddam Hussein, and remains a strongly

> secular society. Most Iraqis, most Iraqis, crave in their lives much

> of the same things that Americans do. They want to see economic

> progress. They want to see a degree of liberty. Of course they want

> also to preserve and protect their religion. But they do not want to

> live in a Taliban state.

>

> HH: Mr. Burns, what is Iran's role right now? What is, as you

> understand it, the game that they're playing? What did they want to

> happen there?

>

> JB: Well, it's very difficult to read it, and I know that American

> officials who are dealing with this are absolutely perplexed. You

> would think that Iran would have, as much as any state in the region,

> an interest in stability in Iraq, and an interest in sustaining the

> first Shiite co-religionist, if you will, government in Iraq in

> hundreds of years. But what they're actually doing is they are

> definitely, according to the intelligence that the American military

> passes to us, they are fueling, if you will, this country on its way

> to a civil war, and they are certainly responsible for providing the

> weapons technology and actual weapons in the form of what are known as

> explosively formed penetrators. That's a particularly powerful form of

> bomb that have killed now scores of American troops. So how do we

> understand all of this? In two ways. Number one, Iran, as you know, is

> a country divided against itself. It has ayatollahs, extremist

> ayatollahs in many respects, who are in overall charge of the

> government. It has other ayatollahs who are more moderate. You have

> Islamic guards who are extremists, and you have a force, the Quds

> force, which is an elite force which appears to be the force that the

> ayatollahs, the extremist ayatollahs in Iran are using to, if you

> will, fuel the war in Iraq by funneling not just weapons and weapons

> technology and money, but actual agents into Iraq, according to what

> the American military has told, as they've captured some of them, to

> actually direct Shiite extremist activities, including death squads,

> including in February of this year, as I recall, an attack in the city

> of Karbala about 80 miles southwest of Baghdad, in which American

> soldiers, you'll forgive me here, but my recollection is that there

> five of them, were abducted and killed by people wearing fake American

> military uniforms, and driving fake American military vehicles. This

> was an operation, so the American military tells us, which was

> conceived, directed, financed by the Iranian Quds force. So what is

> Iran up to here? It looks very much as though their interest in

> striking back at the great Satan, the United States, humiliating if

> they can the United States in Iraq, matters more to them on balance

> than creating a stable Shiite led government in Baghdad.

>

> HH: When you talk with American military and diplomatic personnel

> there, John Burns, do they foresee some sort of military clash between

> Iran and the United States?

>

> JB: No, I think it's fair to say they don't. They would say, of

> course, that they will do whatever they are directed by the president

> and Congress of the United States to do. But from everything I know of

> the American military commanders here, the last thing they want is any

> kind of military engagement with Iran, and for one very obvious

> reason. They have their hands absolutely full here. They have an army

> which is stretched to the point of exhaustion. I read the other day

> somewhere that something like 70% of the armored vehicles in the

> United States armed forces are now in Iraq. One indication of that is

> that if there were a rapid withdrawal, or helter skelter withdrawal,

> you'd have an army, an United States Army which would be stripped of

> much of its fighting vehicles. So do they want another war on their

> hands? They absolutely do not. They want to do the best job they an

> possibly do here, and they want to get home. How often do you hear

> American generals and American officers say that? Nobody wants to come

> home more than we do.

>

> HH: And do you expect, though, that the nuclear ambitions of Iran will

> lead the Bush administration, do you hear people speculating about

> strikes on the nuclear facilities?

>

> JB: You know, that's way, as the military here likes to say, out of

> may lane. Though I'm sitting here in Baghdad, probably only about an

> hour's flying time west of Tehran, and although I have been in Iran a

> number of times under the rule of the ayatollahs, I find that one

> extremely difficult to contemplate. But I do think that there are some

> things that are easy to state about this, and I think everybody who

> bothers to acquaint himself to the realities would understand it, that

> a proliferation of nuclear weapons in this region would be an

> extremely, extremely dangerous thing. And the proliferation of nuclear

> weapons to Iran would have a particular danger, because of the

> hostility of the ayatollahs to the West in the first place, and to the

> state of Israel in the second, and especially a president of Iran who

> has declared that it is his desire, his intent, to wipe Israel off the

> face of the map. So clearly, you know, an unstable policy like Iran

> acquiring nuclear weapons would be a development of the most

> frightened proportions. What can you do about that? Is it too late? Is

> the genie dropped out of the bottle? I was in India and Pakistan when

> those two countries tested nuclear weapons, and in effect, became

> nuclear weapons states, and I remember very well the sanctions that

> were placed on India and Pakistan in the immediate aftermath of those

> weapons tests in 1998, and how now, less than 10 years later, the

> United States is in harness with both those countries, and most of the

> sanctions then imposed have been withdrawn. So it's difficult, is it

> not, to develop a coherent policy here in which some states, even if

> they are a lot more responsible we may judge than Iran are allowed to

> acquire nuclear weapons and others are not. I don't pretend to have

> any answers to this, although I will say is, as I say to my children

> who are now well into their 20's, I think they're growing up into a

> world a lot more dangerous than I did, and I grew up into the world of

> the Cold War. And we thought that was dangerous enough.

>

> HH: I want to wrap up by asking you just that kind of a question. When

> you're sitting around and having a drink with your friends or your

> wife or your kids, and you're an Englishman, and you know, what Gordon

> Brown has said in the last couple of weeks, and MI5 says you've got

> 2,000 jihadists running around London, what do you think the world's

> going to look like in ten years? What's the best case and the worst

> case out there, as you contemplate all the different moving parts in

> this clash of jihadist Islamist extremism and the West?

>

> JB: I have to say I find it...and everything not to say quite

> frightening, and you know, I've learned one thing in my 30 years

> working for an American newspaper, and thus acquiring some kind of

> understanding, I hope, about the United States, and that is the can do

> spirit, that the only useful thing to do in the face of this kind of

> threat is to ask yourself what can we do about it? America has a

> genius, in my view, for not sitting down and moping about its forlorn

> state, but of actually doing something about it. And we will see the

> United States do something about this. I think that our focus needs to

> be on what is it that is within our control? There's only so much that

> you can accomplish by force of arms. I was with General Nixon, who's

> command of American troops in North Iraq yesterday, and he said you

> know, we haven't advanced our security one little bit by killing

> people here. He meant, of course, that what you have to do is try and

> change hearts and minds. I think there are limits to what you can do

> with force of arms. We know that now. And we have to look at various

> aspects of American and Western policy in the world, and see where we

> can change that. And the most obvious place to change it would be in

> bringing some kind of peace between the Arabs and the Israelis,

> between the Israelis and the Palestinians. And God knows that's a

> difficult enough problem. But I think if we could start there, and

> broaden out beyond that, then we would begin to have an answer to

> Islamic extremism.

>

> HH: Do you think Hamas and Hezbollah, though, are at all inclined to

> want that with Israel, John Burns?

>

> JB: Say again?

>

> HH: Do you think that Hamas and Hezbollah, Hamas in Gaza, Hezbollah in

> the north, in Lebanon, are at all inclined to want co-existence,

> peaceful with Israel?

>

> JB: Well, that's certainly an open question. And again, I have to

> plead that that's outside my lane. I worked in those two countries,

> Israel and Lebanon, and in the West Bank and Gaza, and I can't claim

> to have any inside knowledge any more, I would say, than most of the

> people who are listening to your program. I think the answer would be

> that of course, these aren't the most extreme elements, Islamic

> extreme elements, probably do not want peace. But my sense is that we

> should work from one observable fact there as elsewhere, and that is

> that most people, most people, including most Palestinians, most

> Iraqis, do not want to live in Terminator world. They want, broadly

> speaking, the same things that we do. As long as that's the case, as

> long as that's the case, a policy that reaches out to those people

> will be a policy that brings us some hope.

>

> HH: Let's conclude by asking you about the American military, the

> trooper, and the Marines who are...you know, the privates and the

> corporals and the sergeants there. There was a piece in the New

> Republic last week by a Scott Thomas Beauchamp. Have you had a chance

> to read that, or read about the controversy, John Burns?

>

> JB: I did not, no. Tell me about it.

>

> HH: Well, he attributed to himself, and to his fellow troopers, a

> cruelty and indifference to cruelty that shocked a lot of people, and

> now there's an investigation into whether or not his observations were

> in fact truthful, and we don't know the answer to that. But when you

> observe the American troops, A) how are their morale, and B) what do

> they think about this war, and about the Iraqi people at the level of

> the people doing the hardest fighting?

>

> JB: Look, war is a brutalizing thing. It is an ugly thing. My own

> father was a fighter pilot during World War II. And when I went out to

> cover wars around the world, he cautioned me about being too quick and

> ready in my judgments. He said unless you've fought a war, you don't

> know what it does to people. And he was speaking for an air force, the

> Royal Air Force, which firebombed Dresden and Hamburg, and killed more

> people, as I recall in those two cities, than were killed in the

> atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. So that's my first response

> to that, that if there has been brutality by American troops here,

> that would be nothing new in war. As for the morale of American

> troops, I think I can give you an answer to that, because I was only,

> a couple of days ago, in an American fort, in effect, a control base

> on the edge of the city of Samarra, which is as lawless and as al

> Qaeda dominated a place as you will find in Iraq, as I mentioned

> earlier, about sixty miles north of Baghdad, the place where a Shiite

> shrine was bombed in February of 2006 with catastrophic effects in

> terms of a tidal wave of sectarian violence between Sunni and Shiia

> across the country. So there I was with a platoon of American troops,

> led by a young man who was about a captain, who was about to receive a

> silver star for bravery in a battle inside Samarra. And I asked him

> what do you and the thirty men who were standing in line waiting for

> the silver star ceremony with him, what are you fighting for here? And

> I can tell you one thing, they're not fighting for any grand mission.

> The days of that are gone. They don't spend their hours keenly

> watching CNN and Fox News for the latest twists and turns in the

> debate in Congress. They watch movies, they watch WWF, they watch

> NASCAR. And when you ask them what you're fighting for, they'll tell

> you they're fighting for the man to the left of them, the man to the

> right of them, they're fighting to get home safely. They're fighting

> for the unit, they're fighting to protect and save themselves.

>

> HH: And do they appreciate the Congressional debate? And when you talk

> to them, and their officers, do they think it's helpful to what

> they're trying to do?

>

> JB: Well, if you talk to most of the fighting men, the enlisted men,

> they're really not very much concerned about that. They're concerned

> about, in the case of the unit that I was talking to, they came here

> on a twelve month hitch, they've done twelve months, they were

> extended to fifteen, so they have another three months to go, and

> their minds are fixed on those last three months, on getting through

> those last three months, and getting out. If you talk to officers in

> command headquarters around country, people who have had more time,

> and who are not at the sharp end of this war, yes, of course, they do

> follow the debate in Congress, and I would say the predominant

> opinion, not if by an means the exclusive opinion, because there are

> all the shades of opinion that you find in the United States, you'll

> find here in the American armed forces. But I would say the

> predominant opinion appears to be, at least amongst the middle to

> senior levels of the officer corps here, that we came here, we paid a

> very high price, 3,600 men killed, 26 or 27,000 men, women wounded,

> let's see if we can't accomplish something here. They certainly do not

> like the idea of, to put it in the pejorative, cutting and running.

> They think that they can still make a crucial difference, they think

> it's worth persisting here, they would just like a little bit more

> time. But they recognize, and this is undeniable, when you talk to

> most of these officers, they understand how the United States system

> works, and they understand what the Congress of the United States is

> elected to do. And they will accept, of course they will accept,

> whatever decision is made. They understand, because they're paying the

> price, they are...you know, I was in a unit headquarters in Camp Spiker

> north of Tikrit for the last three days, and as we walked to the

> helicopter to fly back to Baghdad yesterday morning, we paused before

> the memorial board. And this is for the 82nd Airborne Division, one of

> the most famous units in the United States Army, now at about the

> twelve month mark of a fifteen month deployment, with something in the

> nature of 20,000 men, and that board has 56 names on it of men killed

> here in Iraq. And the average age, they told me, was as I recall about

> 21 years old. And you look at those faces and those dog tags staring

> out at you from the memorial wall, and you'd have to be, have ice

> water in your veins not to ask yourself is this worth it. Is what's

> going to be accomplished or not accomplished here worth the lives of

> these young men? I don't have a ready answer to that. And I think the

> wise thing to do is frankly to show some modesty in respect to that

> question. And I ask myself when I looked at those faces, what would

> they be saying to us now? Having given their lives for this, what

> would they want? Some of them, no doubt, I think would say get out of

> this place now. Others, as one would, might suspect, would say I went

> to Iraq knowing I could pay this price. Having paid the price, I would

> like to see the mission accomplished. As I've said before, thank God

> that it's not my responsibility to make the finite decisions on this.

> My heart goes out, as it does to those soldiers out there in the 120

> degree heat of the Iraqi desert fighting this sometimes impossible

> war, my heart also goes out to those 400 plus members of the United

> States Congress and the 100 members of the Senate who have to decide

> this thing. I don't think in my lifetime there has been an issue of

> public policy quite as vexed as this.

>

> HH: You know, John Burns, I'm imposing on you, and I apologize. It's

> just so fascinating and it's deeply, I think, informative, so I want

> to just ask you about those quiet conversations with your Iraqi

> friends, the people who serve the Bureau, who you've become friends

> with over your many years in Baghdad. What do they think is going to

> happen here? How fearful are they of the future?

>

> JB: Very fearful, very fearful indeed. We've had much reason in the

> New York Times bureau in Baghdad in the past two weeks, more reason

> than usual, to thing about this, because we lost one of our Iraqi

> reporter/interpreters, killed two weeks ago today on his way to work

> in Baghdad, executed, in effect, in a professional manner which left

> little doubt that the people who were doing it were in one way

> involved with the insurgency. I don't think it was a purely criminal

> enterprise. The young man who died was 23 years old, and full of life,

> and full of love for America, and full of hope for his own future. So

> we have talked more than we normally would about this question. I

> would say the prevailing opinion amongst the Iraqis I know best is

> they are very scared, very scared. They wonder whether they will live

> out each day. With, almost without exception, they are all hoping to

> get out of Iraq, to get to Jordan or Syria, or beyond that to the

> United States, Australia, the United Kingdom. That's becoming an

> increasingly difficult venture for them. Their lives are filled with

> fear, and with very little hope. And when they contemplate the

> possible early withdrawal of American troops, of course, in the main,

> not exclusively, some feel that it's better that Iraqis settle this

> amongst themselves. But in the main, those Iraqis feel that a

> withdrawal of American troops would very much increase the level of

> danger that they and their families face.

>

> HH: Can we abandon, John Burns, can we abandon these Iraqis the way we

> abandoned the Cambodians to Pol Pot or the South Vietnamese to the

> North? I mean, doesn't that strike you as something we simply cannot

> do?

>

> JB: Well, if you ask me that as a personal matter, as somebody who has

> spent five years here and made many friends here, and come to admire

> greatly the Iraqis for their, their fortitude in enduring these

> miseries, it fills me with dread to think that they would be left to

> face the consequences of all of this without our, and I mean, by the

> way, American and not only American but British support as well. The

> British are much closer to the exit as far as I can tell than American

> troops are. So I am filled with dread about that, and wish that I

> could give these young Iraqis more encouragement than I can. And

> frankly, the best advice, and I think the most wise advice that

> anybody could give an Iraqi faced with that situation would be that if

> he could get his family to safety now, it would probably be a wise

> thing to do. Easier said than done. Visas are extremely difficult to

> get even for neighboring Arab countries. And very few of these people

> have any savings at all...in 2003, at a time when doctors in Iraq were

> earning $3 dollars a month. Most of them, speaking of the people that

> we employ, are supporting not just themselves and their own families,

> but whole extended families, and their salaries are exhausted, very

> often, before the month is through. So to contemplate them moving a

> family, even their nuclear families out of this country, even if they

> can get the visas, is extremely difficult. It's a completely

> nightmarish situation for them, and obviously, I would that however we

> in the West resolve this, we don't forget them.

>

> HH: Asking, I've asked you this before, and I'll ask it again to exit,

> knowing what we know now, would you have counseled the invasion to

> occur in '03?

>

> JB: Well, let me answer the question in a slightly different way. I

> think that people like myself, who were here before the overthrow of

> Saddam, were absolutely mesmerized, and I'm even inclined to say

> obsessed with one aspect of this society, and that was the terror that

> Saddam Hussein inflicted on his own people, and that I think we

> thought, I know I thought, that the overthrow of Saddam Hussein would

> bring an end to that terror, and would bring hope for the first time

> in a generation to Iraqis. I think those of us who felt that should

> have studied harder, and tried to acquaint ourselves more with the

> history of this country, and realized that beneath the carapace of

> terror laid a deeply fractured, deeply dysfunctional society in which

> Sunni, Shiia and Kurds have been locked together, and held in some

> relative stability only by at the point of a gun. Had we known all

> that, had we fully weighed all of that, I think that we might have

> reckoned then that ghastly as the terror of Saddam Hussein was, there

> was something even more ghastly that could ensure. I personally am too

> close to this now to be able to make any kind of judgment about that,

> and I think the judgment will depend on events yet to unfold. But I

> think that journalists, we who file mostly for 24 hour deadlines, need

> to learn a lesson, and I'm talking about myself, as much as anybody

> else here, and that we need to think very carefully when we're cast

> into situations like this, and we become the messengers, if you will,

> the tribunes of the Western world, to write more about those sorts of

> things, the fractured society that lay beneath that carapace of

> terror, than just the terror itself.

>

> HH: Was there any way, is it possible, do you think on that

> reflection, that however hard the last four years have been, was there

> any other way to get past Saddam? Or was it, and is there a

> possibility in your mind that it will all be worth it in the end?

>

> JB: I guess the judgment on that will probably be something like 20-25

> years out from now.

>

> HH: Yeah.

>

> JB: ...the judgment that the Iraqi people will have to make. Right now,

> the remarkable thing is not that so many Iraqis look back on Saddam's

> time with a sense of yearning, but that so many other Iraqis, namely

> Shiite Iraqis and Kurdish Iraqis, who were his principal victims,

> continue to believe that his overthrow was for the best. What

> history's judgment about this will be extremely difficult to tell. But

> one thing we can be sure of is that it will have cost enormous numbers

> of lives, and it makes you wonder, looking back to the period of 2003

> and before...

>

> (Call dropped - End of Part 2)

>

> JB: John Burns...

>

> HH: Mr. Burns, I'm just calling back, it's Hugh Hewitt, to say thank

> you for the hour. It's been fascinating, we'll play it in its entirety

> on Monday, and I hope in a few more months, we can get you back to do

> it again. It's riveting radio.

>

> JB: Well, thank you very much, and I enjoyed the chat.

>

> HH: Thank you, John Burns.

>

> JB: Bye bye.

>

> HH: Bye bye.

>

> End of interview.

>

> http://hughhewitt.townhall.com/Transcript_Page.aspx?ContentGuid=5bdb3...

What part are you not getting? Petraeus' job is to try to quell

secterian vilolence while the Iraqi gov't gets its shit together. If

you hadn't noticed, theyre on VACATION and have shown ZERO progress.

Beside the fact that July historically has been the month with the

least amount of US troop deaths...of course, this year we had the MOST

troop deaths of any July since we started the invasion...that's

progress?

What do you think will happen after we leave? Sunni / Shia are just

going to stop fighting after 1400 years? Iran / Saudi Arabia are just

going to stop supporting their Sunni or Shia bretheren in Iraq? How

fucking stupid are you?

On Jul 31, 11:21 am, GonzoTrader <GonzoTra...@101click.com> wrote:

> HH: Pleased to welcome back to the Hugh Hewitt Show John Burns of the

> New York Times. Mr. Burns, welcome, it's been about six months since

> we spoke, and I gather you're in Baghdad today?

>

> JB: I am indeed.

>

The Quicksand is much thicker here. Let's build a house!

Hugh Hewitt "The Cowardly Lion". So now you're using wimps to defend your

positions ?

"GonzoTrader" <GonzoTrader@101click.com> wrote in message

news:1185898865.618734.84080@l70g2000hse.googlegroups.com...

>

> HH: Pleased to welcome back to the Hugh Hewitt Show

On Jul 31, 9:21 am, GonzoTrader <GonzoTra...@101click.com> wrote:

> HH: Pleased to welcome back to the Hugh Hewitt Show John Burns of the

> New York Times. Mr. Burns, welcome, it's been about six months since

> we spoke, and I gather you're in Baghdad today?

Many Iraqis believe the dramatic escalation in U.S. military use of

air power is a sign of defeat for the occupation forces on the ground.

U.S. Air Force and Navy aircraft dropped five times as many bombs in

Iraq during the first six months of this year as over the first half

of 2006, according to official information.

They dropped 437 bombs and missiles in Iraq in the first half of 2007,

compared to 86 in the first half of 2006. This is also three times

more than in the second half of 2006, according to Air Force data. The

Air Force has also been expanding its air bases in Iraq and adding

entire squadrons. It is now preparing to use a new robotic fighter

known as the Reaper. The Reaper is a hunter-killer drone that can be

operated by remote control from thousands of miles away.

"We find it strange that the big strategists of the U.S. military have

actually failed in finding solutions on the ground and are now back to

air raids that kill more civilians than militants," former Iraqi army

brigadier-general Ahmed Issa told IPS. "On the other hand, they are

giving away the land to local forces that they know are incapable of

facing the militants, who will grab the first chance of U.S.

withdrawal to bases to hit back and hold the ground again."

"Going back to air raids is an alarming sign of defeat," Salim Rahman,

an Iraqi political analyst from Baghdad told IPS. "To bombard an area

only means that it is in the hands of the enemy."

On Jul 31, 11:21 am, GonzoTrader <GonzoTra...@101click.com> wrote:

> HH: Pleased to welcome back to the Hugh Hewitt Show John Burns of the

> New York Times. Mr. Burns, welcome, it's been about six months since

> we spoke, and I gather you're in Baghdad today?

>

> JB: I am indeed.

>

> HH: How long have you been back in Baghdad?

>

> JB: About three months. We take long rotations here, and then we

> reward ourselves with nice long breaks back home in the United States,

> or in my case, in the United Kingdom.

>

> HH: Well, there are three things I want to cover with you today, Mr.

> Burns. Where are we now in Iraq, in your view? Secondly, where Iraq

> might be in a couple of years, depending on a couple of developments

> that the United States might enact? And then finally, in hindsight,

> what we did right and what we did wrong over the last four years. But

> let's start with what you see in Baghdad today. Is the surge working?

>

> JB: I think there's no doubt that those extra 30,000 American troops

> are making a difference. They're definitely making a difference in

> Baghdad. Some of the crucial indicators of the war, metrics as the

> American command calls them, have moved in a positive direction from

> the American, and dare I say the Iraqi point of view, fewer car bombs,

> fewer bombs in general, lower levels of civilian casualties, quite

> remarkably lower levels of civilian casualties. And add in what they

> call the Baghdad belts, that's to say the approaches to Baghdad,

> particularly in Diyala Province to the northeast, to in the area south

> of Baghdad in Babil Province, and to the west of Baghdad in Anbar

> Province, there's no doubt that al Qaeda has taken something of a

> beating.

>

> HH: Now when General Petraeus returns in September to make his report,

> do you expect Petraeus to be completely candid with the American

> people about the good news and the bad news in Iraq?

>

> JB: I think there's no doubt that he'll be candid. As a matter of

> fact, every time I've spoken to him about it, he talks about the need

> to be forthright, and as he puts it, he said we're not going to be

> putting lipstick on a pig. I think that's a fairly, that's military

> jargon which most Americans will understand. David Petraeus is a man

> who's had a remarkably distinguished military career, and he is very

> clear that he thinks his responsibilities lie not to the White House

> alone, but to the White House and the Congress conjointly, and through

> them to the American people. I don't think that this is just a

> profession, a claim. I think he really intends that, and he's been

> very careful not to make commitments at the moment as to what he's

> going to say, though we may guess it. And I think he's going to say

> that the surge is having its effects, it hasn't turned the tide of the

> war, there's been too little time for it, and I think he and

> Ambassador Crocker, who will be his partner in that September report,

> are going to say one thing very clearly, and that is a quick, early

> withdrawal of American troops of the kind that is being argued by

> Nancy Pelosi, for example, would very likely lead to catastrophic

> levels of violence here. And in that, General Petraeus and Ambassador

> Crocker will be saying something which is pretty broadly shared by

> people who live and work here, I have to say. The removal of American

> troops would very likely, we believe from all indications, lead to

> much higher, and indeed potentially cataclysmic levels of violence,

> beyond anything we've seen to date.

>

> HH: Mr. Burns, some anti-war critics have begun to attack General

> Petraeus as being not credible and not trustworthy for a variety of

> reasons, one he gave me an interview, he's given other people

> interviews that they consider to be partisan, whatever. Do you believe

> he'll be as trustworthy as anyone else speaking on the war?

>

> JB: I do. I can only speak for my own personal experience, and there

> definitely was in the, in the Vietnam war, there was a failure of

> senior generals and the joint chiefs of staff to speak frankly about

> the Vietnam war early enough. There has definitely been some

> Pollyannaish character to the reporting of some of the generals here

> over the past three or four years, although in my own view, knowing

> virtually all of those generals, I don't think that that was out of

> fealty to the White House or Mr. Rumsfeld. It's a difficult and

> complex question which we really don't have time to discuss here. But

> to speak of General Petraeus in particular, General Petraeus is 54

> years old. Let's look at this just simply as a matter of career,

> beyond the matter of principle on which I think we could also say we

> could expect him to make a forthright report. At 54, General Petraeus

> is a young four star general, who could expect to have as much as ten

> more years in the military. And he has every reason to give a

> forthright and frank report on this. And he says, and he says this

> insistently, that he will give a forthright, straightforward report,

> and if the people in Washington don't like it, then they can find

> somebody else who will give his forthright, straightforward report. He

> is not without options on a personal basis, General Petraeus, and I

> think he, from everything I've learned from him, sees both a

> professional, in the first place, and personal imperative to state the

> truth as he sees it about this war.

>

> HH: Speaking more broadly now, in the American higher command, is

> there optimism that the surge, given enough time, will bring the kind

> of stability to Iraq that we all hope it achieves?

>

> JB: You know, optimism is a word which is rarely used around here. The

> word they would use is realism. You have to look at what the plan is.

> The plan is that with the surge, aimed primarily at al Qaeda, who are

> responsible for most of the spectacular attacks, the major suicide

> bombings, for example, that have driven the sectarian warfare here,

> the belief is, or the hope is, that with the surge, they can knock al

> Qaeda back, they can clear areas which have been virtually sanctuaries

> for al Qaeda, northeast, south, west and northwest of Baghdad, and in

> Baghdad itself, and then have Iraqi troops move in behind them. The

> problem here is time. How much time does the U.S. military have now,

> according to the American political timetable, to accomplish this? I

> think most generals would say, indeed have said, most serving current

> generals here have said that a drawdown, which took American troops

> from the 160,00 level they're at now quickly down to 100,000 or 80,000

> over the next, shall we say, year to eighteen months, that's too fast.

> If you do that, I think they would say, though they don't put it quite

> this frankly, that this war will be lost for sure. Given a little bit

> more time, they think that it is realistic to think that the Iraqi

> forces can move in behind them, and can take over the principal

> responsibilities for the war. The problem is, of course, that American

> generals have been saying this now for four years, and as we know, the

> Congress is beginning to run out of patience with that. But I think

> that they have a good plan now, at least if there is any plan that

> could save the situation here, any plan that could bring a reasonably

> successful end to the American enterprise here, it's probably the plan

> they have right now.

>

> HH: Now John Burns, a military historian was writing this week that he

> fears a Tet-like offensive by al Qaeda's fighters, as well as perhaps

> radical Shiia militias prior to the Petraeus report. Have you heard

> warnings or concerns about such a thing?

>

> JB: (pause) Hello?

>

> HH: Yes, Mr. Burns, maybe you didn't hear that.

>

> JB: Sorry, you were breaking up quite badly, as you have been at

> several points during our discussion.

>

> HH: Okay, I'll try it again. A military historian wrote this week that

> he fears a Tet-like offensive by al Qaeda and radical Shiia fighters

> in the next weeks running up to the September report. Have you heard

> warnings about that, concerns about that kind of...

>

> JB: Yeah, it's not an original thought. As a matter of fact, it's a

> thought we've heard expressed by General Petraeus and other commanders

> here, and you don't have to be a crystal ball gazer or a seer to

> understand the risks in that. Indeed, there have been one or two

> attempts to pull off exactly that. The fear has been among the

> generals here that a major, spectacular attack, aimed for example at

> the Green Zone, the government and military command complex in the

> center of Baghdad, of the kinds that was mounted during the Tet

> offensive when, as you'll recall, Viet Cong or North Vietnamese troops

> got right inside the American embassy. That kind of attack would have

> an...whatever its consequences here, would have an enormous impact and

> possibly fatal impact from the American military point of view on the

> balance of opinion in the Congress. You'll forgive me, I have American

> attack helicopters flying overhead right now over our compound here in

> Baghdad.

>

> HH: Sure.

>

> JB: There was one attempt already to pull off an attack of that kind.

> It was not on the Green Zone, but on an American military base

> southwest of Baghdad, when a truck loaded with 12,000 pounds of high

> explosives, that's by quick calculation, we're talking about more than

> five tons of high explosives, got very close to what they call the

> wire of an American base in which there were several hundred American

> troops. A wary gunner in a watchtower, an American gunner, spotted the

> truck, and killed or fired at the driver, who got out of the truck

> wearing a suicide vest, as it happens, and the truck did not explode.

> Had it exploded, there could have been a repeat of what happened in

> Lebanon in 1982, when as you will recall, a truck bombing of the

> Marine barracks residential complex near Beiruit airport killed, as I

> recall, 249 Marines, and speeded Ronald Reagan in his decision to pull

> American Marines out of Beirut. So yes, there is a definite concern

> about that, and there has been a tightening of what the American

> military calls force protection, that is to say I guess self-

> evidently, the efforts that the force spends to protect ...

>

> read more

On Jul 31, 11:21 am, GonzoTrader <GonzoTra...@101click.com> wrote:

> HH: Pleased to welcome back to the Hugh Hewitt Show John Burns of the

> New York Times. Mr. Burns, welcome, it's been about six months since

> we spoke, and I gather you're in Baghdad today?

>

>

> read more

"neoconis_ignoramus" <bellamacina@verizon.net> wrote in message

news:1185899375.328132.53960@z24g2000prh.googlegroups.com...

> On Jul 31, 9:21 am, GonzoTrader <GonzoTra...@101click.com> wrote:

>> HH: Pleased to welcome back to the Hugh Hewitt Show John Burns of the

>> New York Times. Mr. Burns, welcome, it's been about six months since

>> we spoke, and I gather you're in Baghdad today?

>>

>> JB: I am indeed.

>>

>> HH: How long have you been back in Baghdad?

>>

>> JB: About three months. We take long rotations here, and then we

>> reward ourselves with nice long breaks back home in the United States,

>> or in my case, in the United Kingdom.

>>

>> HH: Well, there are three things I want to cover with you today, Mr.

>> Burns. Where are we now in Iraq, in your view? Secondly, where Iraq

>> might be in a couple of years, depending on a couple of developments

>> that the United States might enact? And then finally, in hindsight,

>> what we did right and what we did wrong over the last four years. But

>> let's start with what you see in Baghdad today. Is the surge working?

>>

>> JB: I think there's no doubt that those extra 30,000 American troops

>> are making a difference. They're definitely making a difference in

>> Baghdad. Some of the crucial indicators of the war, metrics as the

>> American command calls them, have moved in a positive direction from

>> the American, and dare I say the Iraqi point of view, fewer car bombs,

>> fewer bombs in general, lower levels of civilian casualties, quite

>> remarkably lower levels of civilian casualties. And add in what they

>> call the Baghdad belts, that's to say the approaches to Baghdad,

>> particularly in Diyala Province to the northeast, to in the area south

>> of Baghdad in Babil Province, and to the west of Baghdad in Anbar

>> Province, there's no doubt that al Qaeda has taken something of a

>> beating.

>>

>> HH: Now when General Petraeus returns in September to make his report,

>> do you expect Petraeus to be completely candid with the American

>> people about the good news and the bad news in Iraq?

>>

>> JB: I think there's no doubt that he'll be candid. As a matter of

>> fact, every time I've spoken to him about it, he talks about the need

>> to be forthright, and as he puts it, he said we're not going to be

>> putting lipstick on a pig. I think that's a fairly, that's military

>> jargon which most Americans will understand. David Petraeus is a man

>> who's had a remarkably distinguished military career, and he is very

>> clear that he thinks his responsibilities lie not to the White House

>> alone, but to the White House and the Congress conjointly, and through

>> them to the American people. I don't think that this is just a

>> profession, a claim. I think he really intends that, and he's been

>> very careful not to make commitments at the moment as to what he's

>> going to say, though we may guess it. And I think he's going to say

>> that the surge is having its effects, it hasn't turned the tide of the

>> war, there's been too little time for it, and I think he and

>> Ambassador Crocker, who will be his partner in that September report,

>> are going to say one thing very clearly, and that is a quick, early

>> withdrawal of American troops of the kind that is being argued by

>> Nancy Pelosi, for example, would very likely lead to catastrophic

>> levels of violence here. And in that, General Petraeus and Ambassador

>> Crocker will be saying something which is pretty broadly shared by

>> people who live and work here, I have to say. The removal of American

>> troops would very likely, we believe from all indications, lead to

>> much higher, and indeed potentially cataclysmic levels of violence,

>> beyond anything we've seen to date.

>>

>> HH: Mr. Burns, some anti-war critics have begun to attack General

>> Petraeus as being not credible and not trustworthy for a variety of

>> reasons, one he gave me an interview, he's given other people

>> interviews that they consider to be partisan, whatever. Do you believe

>> he'll be as trustworthy as anyone else speaking on the war?

>>

>> JB: I do. I can only speak for my own personal experience, and there

>> definitely was in the, in the Vietnam war, there was a failure of

>> senior generals and the joint chiefs of staff to speak frankly about

>> the Vietnam war early enough. There has definitely been some

>> Pollyannaish character to the reporting of some of the generals here

>> over the past three or four years, although in my own view, knowing

>> virtually all of those generals, I don't think that that was out of

>> fealty to the White House or Mr. Rumsfeld. It's a difficult and

>> complex question which we really don't have time to discuss here. But

>> to speak of General Petraeus in particular, General Petraeus is 54

>> years old. Let's look at this just simply as a matter of career,

>> beyond the matter of principle on which I think we could also say we

>> could expect him to make a forthright report. At 54, General Petraeus

>> is a young four star general, who could expect to have as much as ten

>> more years in the military. And he has every reason to give a

>> forthright and frank report on this. And he says, and he says this

>> insistently, that he will give a forthright, straightforward report,

>> and if the people in Washington don't like it, then they can find

>> somebody else who will give his forthright, straightforward report. He

>> is not without options on a personal basis, General Petraeus, and I

>> think he, from everything I've learned from him, sees both a

>> professional, in the first place, and personal imperative to state the

>> truth as he sees it about this war.

>>

>> HH: Speaking more broadly now, in the American higher command, is

>> there optimism that the surge, given enough time, will bring the kind

>> of stability to Iraq that we all hope it achieves?

>>

>> JB: You know, optimism is a word which is rarely used around here. The

>> word they would use is realism. You have to look at what the plan is.

>> The plan is that with the surge, aimed primarily at al Qaeda, who are

>> responsible for most of the spectacular attacks, the major suicide

>> bombings, for example, that have driven the sectarian warfare here,

>> the belief is, or the hope is, that with the surge, they can knock al

>> Qaeda back, they can clear areas which have been virtually sanctuaries

>> for al Qaeda, northeast, south, west and northwest of Baghdad, and in

>> Baghdad itself, and then have Iraqi troops move in behind them. The

>> problem here is time. How much time does the U.S. military have now,

>> according to the American political timetable, to accomplish this? I

>> think most generals would say, indeed have said, most serving current

>> generals here have said that a drawdown, which took American troops

>> from the 160,00 level they're at now quickly down to 100,000 or 80,000

>> over the next, shall we say, year to eighteen months, that's too fast.

>> If you do that, I think they would say, though they don't put it quite

>> this frankly, that this war will be lost for sure. Given a little bit

>> more time, they think that it is realistic to think that the Iraqi

>> forces can move in behind them, and can take over the principal

>> responsibilities for the war. The problem is, of course, that American

>> generals have been saying this now for four years, and as we know, the

>> Congress is beginning to run out of patience with that. But I think

>> that they have a good plan now, at least if there is any plan that

>> could save the situation here, any plan that could bring a reasonably

>> successful end to the American enterprise here, it's probably the plan

>> they have right now.

>>

>> HH: Now John Burns, a military historian was writing this week that he

>> fears a Tet-like offensive by al Qaeda's fighters, as well as perhaps

>> radical Shiia militias prior to the Petraeus report. Have you heard

>> warnings or concerns about such a thing?

>>

>> JB: (pause) Hello?

>>

>> HH: Yes, Mr. Burns, maybe you didn't hear that.

>>

>> JB: Sorry, you were breaking up quite badly, as you have been at

>> several points during our discussion.

>>

>> HH: Okay, I'll try it again. A military historian wrote this week that

>> he fears a Tet-like offensive by al Qaeda and radical Shiia fighters

>> in the next weeks running up to the September report. Have you heard

>> warnings about that, concerns about that kind of...

>>

>> JB: Yeah, it's not an original thought. As a matter of fact, it's a

>> thought we've heard expressed by General Petraeus and other commanders

>> here, and you don't have to be a crystal ball gazer or a seer to

>> understand the risks in that. Indeed, there have been one or two

>> attempts to pull off exactly that. The fear has been among the

>> generals here that a major, spectacular attack, aimed for example at

>> the Green Zone, the government and military command complex in the

>> center of Baghdad, of the kinds that was mounted during the Tet

>> offensive when, as you'll recall, Viet Cong or North Vietnamese troops

>> got right inside the American embassy. That kind of attack would have

>> an...whatever its consequences here, would have an enormous impact and

>> possibly fatal impact from the American military point of view on the

>> balance of opinion in the Congress. You'll forgive me, I have American

>> attack helicopters flying overhead right now over our compound here in

>> Baghdad.

>>

>> HH: Sure.

>>

>> JB: There was one attempt already to pull off an attack of that kind.

>> It was not on the Green Zone, but on an American military base

>> southwest of Baghdad, when a truck loaded with 12,000 pounds of high

>> explosives, that's by quick calculation, we're talking about more than

>> five tons of high explosives, got very close to what they call the

>> wire of an American base in which there were several hundred American

>> troops. A wary gunner in a watchtower, an American gunner, spotted the

>> truck, and killed or fired at the driver, who got out of the truck

>> wearing a suicide vest, as it happens, and the truck did not explode.

>> Had it exploded, there could have been a repeat of what happened in

>> Lebanon in 1982, when as you will recall, a truck bombing of the

>> Marine barracks residential complex near Beiruit airport killed, as I

>> recall, 249 Marines, and speeded Ronald Reagan in his decision to pull

>> American Marines out of Beirut. So yes, there is a definite concern

>> about that, and there has been a tightening of what the American

>> military calls force protection, that is to say I guess self-

>> evidently, the efforts that the force spends to protect itself in

>> respect of that threat.

>>

>> HH: When we spoke in February, you told us about the killing that had

>> been underway in Adamiya, one of the places where sectarian violence

>> in Baghdad had really flared in October. What's your assessment of the

>> Shiia on Sunni violence level in Baghdad six months into the surge?

>>

>> JB: It is reduced, and it's reduced primarily, as far as we can see,

>> because of the increment, and I'm talking here of a virtual doubling

>> of American troop strength in Baghdad, to speak only the neighborhood

>> in which the New York Times operates here, the Rusafa neighborhood on

>> the east side of the Tigris River, we here now have American troops

>> quartered about a half a mile away from us for the first time in three

>> years. So when you put American boots on the ground, you definitely

>> have an inhibiting effect on this, and we've seen that in falling

>> levels of sectarian violence. Where you don't have American boots on

>> the ground inside Baghdad, you see higher levels of sectarian

>> violence. So I would that on the whole, the situation is somewhat

>> better than it was, which is exactly what you would have expected by

>> introducing a significant increase of American combat troops.

>>

>> HH: John Burns, that means it's down, but is there any kind of

>> movement that you can see that would suggest that when, that the

>> Iraqis are coming to their own conclusion that they've go to work

>> through other means than violence, is there a lowering of the hatred

>> level there in Baghdad?

>>

>> JB: Well, of course, that would be what the American military would

>> call the most crucial metric of all. If we could see that, then we

>> would begin to see the end of the war. Now the fact is that the Iraqi

>> people are, of course, exhausted with the violence. The question is at

>> what point does that begin to translate into the kind of stepping up

>> that would make a change in the warfare, specifically the flow of

>> intelligence to the Iraqi and American militaries here, which would

>> enable them to go after the people who are primarily responsible,

>> whether it's Shiite death squads or its suicide bombers, mostly Sunni

>> suicide bombers. The intelligence flow, we're told, is a good deal

>> better, very much better than it was. This is an intelligence driven

>> war, but the American military will tell you that they still don't

>> have enough of it. They have quite a good flow of intelligence, which

>> has allowed them to have some spectacular successes, including one

>> just last night in Karbala, southwest of Baghdad, the holy city where

>> they went after a Shiite militia death squad leader. And this happens

>> virtually every night, usually special forces operations, American

>> led. They've have some success with that. So that's really the key

>> metric. When the Iraqi people's exhaustion with this war begins to

>> express itself in a full flow of intelligence to the Iraqi and

>> American military, then you will see real progress in the war. Up

>> until now, it's much better, but it's still, according to the American

>> military, still not nearly enough to make it a crucial difference.

>>

>> HH: Now another metric is what the political elite of a country says

>> off the record. And you have those conversations with the Maliki

>> government, with the opposition, with the people in parliament, etc.

>> What do you hear from those conversations, John Burns? Are they

>> beginning to think that it is possible to see a functioning government

>> and a multi-party system that relies on other than guns?

>>

>> JB: No, I would say that's probably the most depressing or

>> discouraging aspect of the entire situation. I think it's probably

>> fair to say that the Iraqi political leaders, Sunni, Shiia, Kurd in

>> the main, are somewhat further apart now than they were six months

>> ago. In other words, the Bush administration's hope that the military

>> surge would be accompanied by what they called a political surge, a

>> movement towards some sort of national reconciliation, uniting around

>> a kind of national compact, that has simply not occurred. Indeed, the

>> gulf between the Shiite and Sunni leaders in the government is

>> probably wider than it has ever been. There's a great deal of

>> recrimination. There's hardly a day when the Sunnis do not, as they

>> did again today, threaten to withdraw from the government altogether.

>> There's virtually no progress on the key benchmarks, as the Bush

>> administration calls them, matters like a comprehensive oil law that

>> will settle the issue of how oil revenues, which account for 90% of

>> government revenues here, will in future be divided and spent between

>> the various communities, and many other issues, eighteen of them,

>> benchmarks identified by the Congress, there's very little progress on

>> those benchmarks. Where there is some progress is at the grass roots

>> level, some progress, though we're beginning to see tribal leaders, in

>> particular, in some of the most heavily congested war areas, beginning

>> to stand up and say they've had enough of it, and to volunteer to put

>> forth their young men, either to join the Iraqi police or army, or to

>> join in tribal auxiliaries, or levees if you will. That's probably the

>> most encouraging political sign. But at the Baghdad level,

>> unfortunately, the United States still does not have an effective

>> political partner.

>>

>> HH: One of the arguments for those favoring a timeline for withdrawal

>> that's written in stone is that it will oblige the Iraqi political

>> class to get serious about such things as the oil revenue division. Do

>> you believe that's an accurate argument?

>>

>> JB: Well, you would think it would be so, wouldn't you, that the

>> threat of withdrawal of American troops, and the risk of a slide into

>> catastrophic levels of violence, much higher than we've already seen,

>> would impel the Iraqi leadership to move forward. But there's a

>> conundrum here. There's a paradox. That's to say the more that the

>> Democrats in the Congress lead the push for an early withdrawal, the

>> more Iraqi political leaders, particularly the Shiite political

>> leaders, but the Sunnis as well, and the Kurds, are inclined to think

>> that this is going to be settled, eventually, in an outright civil

>> war, in consequence of which they are very, very unlikely or

>> reluctant, at present, to make major concessions. They're much more

>> inclined to kind of hunker down. So in effect, the threats from

>> Washington about a withdrawal, which we might have hoped would have

>> brought about greater political cooperation in face of the threat that

>> would ensue from that to the entire political establishment here, has

>> had, as best we can gauge it, much more the opposite effect, of an

>> effect that persuading people well, if the Americans are going,

>> there's absolutely no...and we're going to have to settle this by a

>> civil war, why should we make concessions on that matter right now?

>> For example, to give you only one isolated exception, why should the

>> Shiite leadership, in their view, make major concessions about

>> widening the entry point for former Baathists into the government,

>> into the senior levels of the military leadership, that's to say

>> bringing in high ranking Sunnis into the government and the army and

>> the police, who themselves, the Sunnis, are in the main former

>> stalwarts of Saddam's regime. Why would the Shiites do that if they

>> believe that in the end, they're going to have to fight a civil war?

>> This is not to reprove people in the Congress who think that the

>> United States has spent enough blood and treasure here. It's just a

>> reality that that's the way this debate seems to be being read by many

>> Iraqi politicians.

>>

>> HH: Would a, John Burns, a contrary approach yield the also

>> counterintuitive result that if Congress and the United States said

>> we're there for two or three more years at this level, would that

>> assist the political settlement, in your view, coming about?

>>

>> JB: Unfortunately, I think the answer to that is probably not, and

>> that's something that General Casey and General Petraeus and

>> Ambassador Crocker now, General Petraeus' partner, if you will, are

>> very wary of. They understand that there has to be something of a fire

>> lit under the feet of the Iraqi leaders. It's a paradox, it's a

>> conundrum, which is almost impossible to resolve. Now I think the last

>> thing that you need is an Iraqi leadership which is already inclined

>> to passivity on the matters, the questions that seem to matter most in

>> terms of a national reconciliation here, the last thing they need is

>> to be told, in effect, the deadline has been moved back three years. I

>> would guess the way, if you will, to vector all of this would be to

>> find some sort of solution, indeed it was the benchmark solution,

>> which would say to them if you come together and you work on these

>> benchmarks, then you will continue to have our support. But it seems

>> to me that the mood in Congress has moved beyond that. The mood in

>> Congress, as I read it from here, at least those who are leading the

>> push for the withdrawal, are not much interested anymore in

>> incremental progress by the Iraqi government. They've come to the

>> conclusion that this war is lost, that no foreseeable movement by the

>> Iraqi leaders will be enough to justify the continued investment of

>> lives and dollars here by the United States, and that it's time to

>> pull out. And of course, you can make a strong argument to that

>> effect.

>>

>> HH: Do you believe that, John Burns, that the war is lost?

>>

>> JB: No, I don't, actually. I think the war is close to lost, but I

>> don't think that all hope is extinguished, and I do think, as do many

>> of my colleagues in the media here, that an accelerated early

>> withdrawal, something which reduced American troops, even if they were

>> placed in large bases out in the desert to, say, something like

>> 60-80,000 over a period of six to nine months, and in effect, leaving

>> the fighting in the cities and the approaches to the cities to the

>> Iraqis, I think the result of that would, in effect, be a rapid, a

>> rapid progress towards an all-out civil war. And the people who are

>> urging that kind of a drawdown, I think, have to take that into

>> account. That's not to say, I have to say, that that should be enough

>> to inhibit those politicians who make that argument, because they

>> could very well ask if that's true, can those who argue for a

>> continued high level of American military involvement here assure us

>> that we wouldn't come to the same point three or four years, and

>> perhaps four or five thousand American soldiers killed later? In other

>> words, we might only be putting off the evil day. It seems to me

>> that's where this discussion really has to focus. Can those who argue

>> for staying here, can they offer any reasonable hope that three, two,

>> three, four years out, the risk of a decline into cataclysmic civil

>> war would be any less? If the answer is no they can't, then it seems

>> to me that strengthens the argument of those who say well, we might as

>> well withdraw fairly quickly now.

>>

>> HH: Now you've reported some very tough places, Sarajevo, Afghanistan

>> under the Taliban, and after the liberation from the Taliban, and

>> you've won Pulitzers for that. When you say cataclysmic civil war,

>> what do you mean in terms of what you've seen before? What kind of

>> violence do you imagine would break out after precipitous withdrawal?

>>

>> JB: Well, let's look at what's happened already as a benchmark. Nobody

>> really knows how many people have died here, but I would guess that in

>> terms of the civilian population, it's probably not less than

>> 100-150,000, and it could be higher than that. I don't think it's as

>> high as the 700,000 that some estimates have suggested, but I think

>> it's, and I know for a fact, that the sort of figures that were being

>> discussed amongst senior American officials here, as a potential,

>> should there be an early withdrawal and a progress to an all-out civil

>> war, they're talking about the possibility of as many as a million

>> Iraqis dying. Now of course, that is suppositional. It's entirely

>> hypothetical. How could we possibly know? But I think you couldn't

>> rule out that possibility. And the question then arises, catastrophic

>> as the effect on Iraq and the region would be, you know, what would be

>> the effect on American credibility in the world, American power in the

>> world, and America's sense of itself? These are extremely difficult

>> issues to resolve, and I can't say, sitting here in Baghdad, that I

>> have any particular wisdom about what the right course would be. And

>> fortunately, as a reporter, I'm not paid money to offer that kind of

>> wisdom, only to observe what I see. And there are days when I thank

>> God that I'm not sitting in the United States Senate or the United

>> States House of Representatives, with the responsibility of putting

>> the ballot in the box on this.

>>

>> HH: In his recent speech in Charleston, President Bush argued that to

>> withdraw would be to empower al Qaeda in Anbar Province, and to allow

>> them to set up a base there. What do you make of that projection, John

>> Burns?

>>

>> JB: Well, I think it's self-evident. Whatever we may make of the

>> original intent of coming here, if the United States did not have a

>> problem with Islamic extremism in Iraq before 2003, it certainly does

>> now. You only have to look at the pronouncements of Mr. bin Laden and

>> Mr. Zawahiri, his deputy, to see that they regard Iraq now as being,

>> if you will, the front line of the Islamic militant battle against the

>> West. And so if American troops were withdrawn, I think that there

>> would be a very serious risk that large parts of this country will

>> fall under the sway of al Qaeda linked groups. Now we could debate

>> what that exactly means. Al Qaeda's a holding company. Does that mean

>> that Mr. bin Laden would be able to direct affairs in Afghanistan? No,

>> I don't think he would. I don't think he does now. But it would mean

>> that Islamic extremists who bear the worst intent towards the United

>> States would have a base similar to the base they had in Afghanistan

>> before 9/11 from which to operate, and I think it's very likely that

>> they would then begin to want to expatriate their hatred of the United

>> States in some way or another. In fact, it's already the case, that

>> there are parts of Iraq which are under the sway of groups that swear

>> allegiance to al Qaeda. And just to speak of one of them, the city of

>> Sumarra, where I was yesterday, it's about sixty miles north of

>> Baghdad, is definitely under the sway of al Qaeda right now. And that

>> would likely get very much worse in the event of an accelerated

>> withdrawal. So I don't think it's purely propaganda, political

>> propaganda on the part of the Bush administration to say that there

>> would be a major al Qaeda problem here. It seems to me it's absolutely

>> self-evident that there would be.

>>

>> HH: Now given that you covered Afghanistan from the Taliban era, would

>> they have a greater lethality anchored in Iraq than they did when they

>> were anchored in Afghanistan, John Burns, al Qaeda I mean?

>>

>> JB: I'm sorry, I missed that. Do you want to repeat that?

>>

>> HH: Sure.

>>

>> JB: I understood you were asking me about the lethality of the Taliban

>> in Afghanistan.

>>

>> HH: No, I was asking when al Qaeda was in Afghanistan under the

>> Taliban regime, they obviously developed potential and capabilities

>> and operational abilities that resulted in 9/11. If they anchored

>> themselves in a lawless Iraq, would their lethality towards the United

>> States be even greater or lesser than it was when they were in Taliban

>> Afghanistan?

>>

>> JB: I would say it would probably be greater, and for these reasons.

>> Let's remember that the Afghanistan, that was a sanctuary for al Qaeda

>> and bin Laden, is a very, very underdeveloped, I dare say primitive

>> country. Iraq is not. Iraq is a country that had and potentially still

>> has a major industrial base, it has among Middle Eastern countries one

>> of the most highly educated corps of scientists and engineers, people

>> who were on their way, certainly in the early 1990's, to developing

>> nuclear weapons, even if that program, as we now know, fell by the

>> wayside after the first Gulf War. Many of these people have left, but

>> would some of them come back? You would then have to add to that the

>> fact that this is an oil country, which even in the situation of a

>> civil war, is exporting billions of dollars of oil to the world, and

>> could potentially export much more. So I would say add to that the

>> question of geography. We're a thousand miles closer here in Baghdad

>> to Western Europe and the United States than Mr. bin Laden and his

>> followers were when they were in Afghanistan. So I think yes, it could

>> be a serious problem. Whether that problem can be overcome in any

>> foreseeable or acceptable period of time here, I don't know. If we

>> knew the answer to that, we'd be well on our way to deciding whether

>> or not it's worth staying here. But I think to deny that there is such

>> a problem, or even simply to blame it on the Bush administration...

>>

>> (Call dropped. End of Part 1)

>>

>> HH: Mr. Burns, sorry, we dropped you there as you were...I just need

>> about ten more minutes if I can hold you for that long.

>>

>> JB: Yeah, sure.

>>

>> HH: Great. You were talking about that al Qaeda is real in Anbar, and

>> they would pose problems for us, and it's not a Bush administration

>> figment, I think you were saying.

>>

>> JB: I'm not sure where we...you still had me on the line when I was

>> talking about why Iraq is different to Afghanistan?

>>

>> HH: Yeah, but...I got most of that...

>>

>> JB: Yes.

>>

>> HH: And you were, when you got cut off, you were saying that this is

>> not made up by the Bush administration.

>>

>> JB: So you know, we can all exhaust ourselves with questions of

>> political accountability for this, and whether the Bush

>> administration, post 9/11, made a huge mistake in moving on from an

>> uncompleted war in Afghanistan to Iraq. But it seems to me that

>> perhaps instead of exhausting our energies on that, it would be better

>> to look at the situation as it actually is, set aside for time being,

>> or for history, who is responsible for it, and come to some

>> conclusions about what is best to do about it. And that would have to

>> start from a recognition that it is a really serious problem. And then

>> the question is what, if anything, can be done about it? Will leaving

>> American troops here only exacerbate the problem, and exhaust the

>> United States? Or would it hold out the prospect that the United

>> States and its Iraqi partners could actually begin to knock al Qaeda

>> back? That's a very complex question, and as I said earlier, I

>> consider it one of my great blessings that it's my job to report on

>> these things and not to decide on them.

>>

>> HH: It's extraordinarily well put. A couple of metrics, though. When I

>> interviewed General Petraeus last week, he was reluctant to talk in

>> terms of the number of al Qaeda or foreign terrorists killed in the

>> last six months of the surge. What do you think that number is? How

>> many al Qaeda are being killed by the surge?

>>

>> JB: I would say the figure is in the hundreds.

>>

>> HH: High hundreds or low hundreds?

>>

>> JB: I would say it's probably something in the nature of three to five

>> hundred, cumulatively, since the surge began. Now I've not got that

>> figure from the American military. I'm simply pulling together various

>> estimates we've had from various parts of this offensive as to the

>> people that they have killed. Now of course, that figure isn't very

>> helpful. You need to know are these people, you know, 17 and 18 year

>> old recruits who have been paid $50 dollars to go and put a roadside

>> bomb somewhere where it can blow up an American humvee? Or are they

>> hard core? How many of the hard core have they got? I think they've

>> had some success, and they've probably taken off the streets several

>> dozen senior al Qaeda in Iraq linked terrorists. And that has to be

>> significant. The problem is, as General Rick Lynch of the 3rd Infantry

>> Division, who is presently in charge of the surge operations on the

>> southern approaches to Baghdad has said, al Qaeda in Iraq is a hydra.

>> It is a many headed monster which seems to be able to regenerate its

>> heads when they're cut off. And that's been the case for a very long

>> time, as General Lynch knows. He was the command spokesman in his

>> previous assignment here. And many was the time wherein I attended

>> briefings by General Lynch in that role, where he produced charts

>> indicating how many first, second and third tier al Qaeda operatives

>> had been killed or captured. And that was three years ago. So you

>> know, it seems that no matter how many are killed or captured, this

>> thing managed to regenerate.

>>

>> HH: Now John Burns, some argue that withdrawal will stop the momentum

>> for al Qaeda's recruitment, that we are, our presence there is, in

>> fact, breeding terrorists. Do you agree with that?

>>

>> JB: Well, I think there's no doubt that there's some element of truth

>> to that. But I don't think that that alone is keeping or sustaining

>> the al Qaeda presence here. As a matter of fact, if you talk, if you

>> look at what's happened in Anbar, for example, the tribal sheiks in

>> Anbar who have shifted their position on this war, and in effect now

>> put themselves in an alliance with the United States and Iraqi forces

>> against al Qaeda, they're doing that partly because of al Qaeda's

>> brutality, but also because of their fears for what this might portend

>> beyond an American presence. In short, whilst they've got American

>> troops here, they're very happy to have them go after al Qaeda,

>> because most Iraqis, and certainly most tribal sheiks, do not want to

>> live in an Islamic caliphate of the kind that Mr. Zarqawi, who was

>> killed a little over a year ago in an American bombing strike, the

>> former leader of al Qaeda in Iraq, declared his intentions. As a

>> matter of fact, the principal al Qaeda front operation here now calls

>> it the Islamic state of Iraq. It's pretty clear what those people

>> intend. This, for all the religiosity we have seen in the past three

>> or four years, was under Saddam Hussein, and remains a strongly

>> secular society. Most Iraqis, most Iraqis, crave in their lives much

>> of the same things that Americans do. They want to see economic

>> progress. They want to see a degree of liberty. Of course they want

>> also to preserve and protect their religion. But they do not want to

>> live in a Taliban state.

>>

>> HH: Mr. Burns, what is Iran's role right now? What is, as you

>> understand it, the game that they're playing? What did they want to

>> happen there?

>>

>> JB: Well, it's very difficult to read it, and I know that American

>> officials who are dealing with this are absolutely perplexed. You

>> would think that Iran would have, as much as any state in the region,

>> an interest in stability in Iraq, and an interest in sustaining the

>> first Shiite co-religionist, if you will, government in Iraq in

>> hundreds of years. But what they're actually doing is they are

>> definitely, according to the intelligence that the American military

>> passes to us, they are fueling, if you will, this country on its way

>> to a civil war, and they are certainly responsible for providing the

>> weapons technology and actual weapons in the form of what are known as

>> explosively formed penetrators. That's a particularly powerful form of

>> bomb that have killed now scores of American troops. So how do we

>> understand all of this? In two ways. Number one, Iran, as you know, is

>> a country divided against itself. It has ayatollahs, extremist

>> ayatollahs in many respects, who are in overall charge of the

>> government. It has other ayatollahs who are more moderate. You have

>> Islamic guards who are extremists, and you have a force, the Quds

>> force, which is an elite force which appears to be the force that the

>> ayatollahs, the extremist ayatollahs in Iran are using to, if you

>> will, fuel the war in Iraq by funneling not just weapons and weapons

>> technology and money, but actual agents into Iraq, according to what

>> the American military has told, as they've captured some of them, to

>> actually direct Shiite extremist activities, including death squads,

>> including in February of this year, as I recall, an attack in the city

>> of Karbala about 80 miles southwest of Baghdad, in which American

>> soldiers, you'll forgive me here, but my recollection is that there

>> five of them, were abducted and killed by people wearing fake American

>> military uniforms, and driving fake American military vehicles. This

>> was an operation, so the American military tells us, which was

>> conceived, directed, financed by the Iranian Quds force. So what is

>> Iran up to here? It looks very much as though their interest in

>> striking back at the great Satan, the United States, humiliating if

>> they can the United States in Iraq, matters more to them on balance

>> than creating a stable Shiite led government in Baghdad.

>>

>> HH: When you talk with American military and diplomatic personnel

>> there, John Burns, do they foresee some sort of military clash between

>> Iran and the United States?

>>

>> JB: No, I think it's fair to say they don't. They would say, of

>> course, that they will do whatever they are directed by the president

>> and Congress of the United States to do. But from everything I know of

>> the American military commanders here, the last thing they want is any

>> kind of military engagement with Iran, and for one very obvious

>> reason. They have their hands absolutely full here. They have an army

>> which is stretched to the point of exhaustion. I read the other day

>> somewhere that something like 70% of the armored vehicles in the

>> United States armed forces are now in Iraq. One indication of that is

>> that if there were a rapid withdrawal, or helter skelter withdrawal,

>> you'd have an army, an United States Army which would be stripped of

>> much of its fighting vehicles. So do they want another war on their

>> hands? They absolutely do not. They want to do the best job they an

>> possibly do here, and they want to get home. How often do you hear

>> American generals and American officers say that? Nobody wants to come

>> home more than we do.

>>

>> HH: And do you expect, though, that the nuclear ambitions of Iran will

>> lead the Bush administration, do you hear people speculating about

>> strikes on the nuclear facilities?

>>

>> JB: You know, that's way, as the military here likes to say, out of

>> may lane. Though I'm sitting here in Baghdad, probably only about an

>> hour's flying time west of Tehran, and although I have been in Iran a

>> number of times under the rule of the ayatollahs, I find that one

>> extremely difficult to contemplate. But I do think that there are some

>> things that are easy to state about this, and I think everybody who

>> bothers to acquaint himself to the realities would understand it, that

>> a proliferation of nuclear weapons in this region would be an

>> extremely, extremely dangerous thing. And the proliferation of nuclear

>> weapons to Iran would have a particular danger, because of the

>> hostility of the ayatollahs to the West in the first place, and to the

>> state of Israel in the second, and especially a president of Iran who

>> has declared that it is his desire, his intent, to wipe Israel off the

>> face of the map. So clearly, you know, an unstable policy like Iran

>> acquiring nuclear weapons would be a development of the most

>> frightened proportions. What can you do about that? Is it too late? Is

>> the genie dropped out of the bottle? I was in India and Pakistan when

>> those two countries tested nuclear weapons, and in effect, became

>> nuclear weapons states, and I remember very well the sanctions that

>> were placed on India and Pakistan in the immediate aftermath of those

>> weapons tests in 1998, and how now, less than 10 years later, the

>> United States is in harness with both those countries, and most of the

>> sanctions then imposed have been withdrawn. So it's difficult, is it

>> not, to develop a coherent policy here in which some states, even if

>> they are a lot more responsible we may judge than Iran are allowed to

>> acquire nuclear weapons and others are not. I don't pretend to have

>> any answers to this, although I will say is, as I say to my children

>> who are now well into their 20's, I think they're growing up into a

>> world a lot more dangerous than I did, and I grew up into the world of

>> the Cold War. And we thought that was dangerous enough.

>>

>> HH: I want to wrap up by asking you just that kind of a question. When

>> you're sitting around and having a drink with your friends or your

>> wife or your kids, and you're an Englishman, and you know, what Gordon

>> Brown has said in the last couple of weeks, and MI5 says you've got

>> 2,000 jihadists running around London, what do you think the world's

>> going to look like in ten years? What's the best case and the worst

>> case out there, as you contemplate all the different moving parts in

>> this clash of jihadist Islamist extremism and the West?

>>

>> JB: I have to say I find it...and everything not to say quite

>> frightening, and you know, I've learned one thing in my 30 years

>> working for an American newspaper, and thus acquiring some kind of

>> understanding, I hope, about the United States, and that is the can do

>> spirit, that the only useful thing to do in the face of this kind of

>> threat is to ask yourself what can we do about it? America has a

>> genius, in my view, for not sitting down and moping about its forlorn

>> state, but of actually doing something about it. And we will see the

>> United States do something about this. I think that our focus needs to

>> be on what is it that is within our control? There's only so much that

>> you can accomplish by force of arms. I was with General Nixon, who's

>> command of American troops in North Iraq yesterday, and he said you

>> know, we haven't advanced our security one little bit by killing

>> people here. He meant, of course, that what you have to do is try and

>> change hearts and minds. I think there are limits to what you can do

>> with force of arms. We know that now. And we have to look at various

>> aspects of American and Western policy in the world, and see where we

>> can change that. And the most obvious place to change it would be in

>> bringing some kind of peace between the Arabs and the Israelis,

>> between the Israelis and the Palestinians. And God knows that's a

>> difficult enough problem. But I think if we could start there, and

>> broaden out beyond that, then we would begin to have an answer to

>> Islamic extremism.

>>

>> HH: Do you think Hamas and Hezbollah, though, are at all inclined to

>> want that with Israel, John Burns?

>>

>> JB: Say again?

>>

>> HH: Do you think that Hamas and Hezbollah, Hamas in Gaza, Hezbollah in

>> the north, in Lebanon, are at all inclined to want co-existence,

>> peaceful with Israel?

>>

>> JB: Well, that's certainly an open question. And again, I have to

>> plead that that's outside my lane. I worked in those two countries,

>> Israel and Lebanon, and in the West Bank and Gaza, and I can't claim

>> to have any inside knowledge any more, I would say, than most of the

>> people who are listening to your program. I think the answer would be

>> that of course, these aren't the most extreme elements, Islamic

>> extreme elements, probably do not want peace. But my sense is that we

>> should work from one observable fact there as elsewhere, and that is

>> that most people, most people, including most Palestinians, most

>> Iraqis, do not want to live in Terminator world. They want, broadly

>> speaking, the same things that we do. As long as that's the case, as

>> long as that's the case, a policy that reaches out to those people

>> will be a policy that brings us some hope.

>>

>> HH: Let's conclude by asking you about the American military, the

>> trooper, and the Marines who are...you know, the privates and the

>> corporals and the sergeants there. There was a piece in the New

>> Republic last week by a Scott Thomas Beauchamp. Have you had a chance

>> to read that, or read about the controversy, John Burns?

>>

>> JB: I did not, no. Tell me about it.

>>

>> HH: Well, he attributed to himself, and to his fellow troopers, a

>> cruelty and indifference to cruelty that shocked a lot of people, and

>> now there's an investigation into whether or not his observations were

>> in fact truthful, and we don't know the answer to that. But when you

>> observe the American troops, A) how are their morale, and B) what do

>> they think about this war, and about the Iraqi people at the level of

>> the people doing the hardest fighting?

>>

>> JB: Look, war is a brutalizing thing. It is an ugly thing. My own

>> father was a fighter pilot during World War II. And when I went out to

>> cover wars around the world, he cautioned me about being too quick and

>> ready in my judgments. He said unless you've fought a war, you don't

>> know what it does to people. And he was speaking for an air force, the

>> Royal Air Force, which firebombed Dresden and Hamburg, and killed more

>> people, as I recall in those two cities, than were killed in the

>> atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. So that's my first response

>> to that, that if there has been brutality by American troops here,

>> that would be nothing new in war. As for the morale of American

>> troops, I think I can give you an answer to that, because I was only,

>> a couple of days ago, in an American fort, in effect, a control base

>> on the edge of the city of Samarra, which is as lawless and as al

>> Qaeda dominated a place as you will find in Iraq, as I mentioned

>> earlier, about sixty miles north of Baghdad, the place where a Shiite

>> shrine was bombed in February of 2006 with catastrophic effects in

>> terms of a tidal wave of sectarian violence between Sunni and Shiia

>> across the country. So there I was with a platoon of American troops,

>> led by a young man who was about a captain, who was about to receive a

>> silver star for bravery in a battle inside Samarra. And I asked him

>> what do you and the thirty men who were standing in line waiting for

>> the silver star ceremony with him, what are you fighting for here? And

>> I can tell you one thing, they're not fighting for any grand mission.

>> The days of that are gone. They don't spend their hours keenly

>> watching CNN and Fox News for the latest twists and turns in the

>> debate in Congress. They watch movies, they watch WWF, they watch

>> NASCAR. And when you ask them what you're fighting for, they'll tell

>> you they're fighting for the man to the left of them, the man to the

>> right of them, they're fighting to get home safely. They're fighting

>> for the unit, they're fighting to protect and save themselves.

>>

>> HH: And do they appreciate the Congressional debate? And when you talk

>> to them, and their officers, do they think it's helpful to what

>> they're trying to do?

>>

>> JB: Well, if you talk to most of the fighting men, the enlisted men,

>> they're really not very much concerned about that. They're concerned

>> about, in the case of the unit that I was talking to, they came here

>> on a twelve month hitch, they've done twelve months, they were

>> extended to fifteen, so they have another three months to go, and

>> their minds are fixed on those last three months, on getting through

>> those last three months, and getting out. If you talk to officers in

>> command headquarters around country, people who have had more time,

>> and who are not at the sharp end of this war, yes, of course, they do

>> follow the debate in Congress, and I would say the predominant

>> opinion, not if by an means the exclusive opinion, because there are

>> all the shades of opinion that you find in the United States, you'll

>> find here in the American armed forces. But I would say the

>> predominant opinion appears to be, at least amongst the middle to

>> senior levels of the officer corps here, that we came here, we paid a

>> very high price, 3,600 men killed, 26 or 27,000 men, women wounded,

>> let's see if we can't accomplish something here. They certainly do not

>> like the idea of, to put it in the pejorative, cutting and running.

>> They think that they can still make a crucial difference, they think

>> it's worth persisting here, they would just like a little bit more

>> time. But they recognize, and this is undeniable, when you talk to

>> most of these officers, they understand how the United States system

>> works, and they understand what the Congress of the United States is

>> elected to do. And they will accept, of course they will accept,

>> whatever decision is made. They understand, because they're paying the

>> price, they are...you know, I was in a unit headquarters in Camp Spiker

>> north of Tikrit for the last three days, and as we walked to the

>> helicopter to fly back to Baghdad yesterday morning, we paused before

>> the memorial board. And this is for the 82nd Airborne Division, one of

>> the most famous units in the United States Army, now at about the

>> twelve month mark of a fifteen month deployment, with something in the

>> nature of 20,000 men, and that board has 56 names on it of men killed

>> here in Iraq. And the average age, they told me, was as I recall about

>> 21 years old. And you look at those faces and those dog tags staring

>> out at you from the memorial wall, and you'd have to be, have ice

>> water in your veins not to ask yourself is this worth it. Is what's

>> going to be accomplished or not accomplished here worth the lives of

>> these young men? I don't have a ready answer to that. And I think the

>> wise thing to do is frankly to show some modesty in respect to that

>> question. And I ask myself when I looked at those faces, what would

>> they be saying to us now? Having given their lives for this, what

>> would they want? Some of them, no doubt, I think would say get out of

>> this place now. Others, as one would, might suspect, would say I went

>> to Iraq knowing I could pay this price. Having paid the price, I would

>> like to see the mission accomplished. As I've said before, thank God

>> that it's not my responsibility to make the finite decisions on this.

>> My heart goes out, as it does to those soldiers out there in the 120

>> degree heat of the Iraqi desert fighting this sometimes impossible

>> war, my heart also goes out to those 400 plus members of the United

>> States Congress and the 100 members of the Senate who have to decide

>> this thing. I don't think in my lifetime there has been an issue of

>> public policy quite as vexed as this.

>>

>> HH: You know, John Burns, I'm imposing on you, and I apologize. It's

>> just so fascinating and it's deeply, I think, informative, so I want

>> to just ask you about those quiet conversations with your Iraqi

>> friends, the people who serve the Bureau, who you've become friends

>> with over your many years in Baghdad. What do they think is going to

>> happen here? How fearful are they of the future?

>>

>> JB: Very fearful, very fearful indeed. We've had much reason in the

>> New York Times bureau in Baghdad in the past two weeks, more reason

>> than usual, to thing about this, because we lost one of our Iraqi

>> reporter/interpreters, killed two weeks ago today on his way to work

>> in Baghdad, executed, in effect, in a professional manner which left

>> little doubt that the people who were doing it were in one way

>> involved with the insurgency. I don't think it was a purely criminal

>> enterprise. The young man who died was 23 years old, and full of life,

>> and full of love for America, and full of hope for his own future. So

>> we have talked more than we normally would about this question. I

>> would say the prevailing opinion amongst the Iraqis I know best is

>> they are very scared, very scared. They wonder whether they will live

>> out each day. With, almost without exception, they are all hoping to

>> get out of Iraq, to get to Jordan or Syria, or beyond that to the

>> United States, Australia, the United Kingdom. That's becoming an

>> increasingly difficult venture for them. Their lives are filled with

>> fear, and with very little hope. And when they contemplate the

>> possible early withdrawal of American troops, of course, in the main,

>> not exclusively, some feel that it's better that Iraqis settle this

>> amongst themselves. But in the main, those Iraqis feel that a

>> withdrawal of American troops would very much increase the level of

>> danger that they and their families face.

>>

>> HH: Can we abandon, John Burns, can we abandon these Iraqis the way we

>> abandoned the Cambodians to Pol Pot or the South Vietnamese to the

>> North? I mean, doesn't that strike you as something we simply cannot

>> do?

>>

>> JB: Well, if you ask me that as a personal matter, as somebody who has

>> spent five years here and made many friends here, and come to admire

>> greatly the Iraqis for their, their fortitude in enduring these

>> miseries, it fills me with dread to think that they would be left to

>> face the consequences of all of this without our, and I mean, by the

>> way, American and not only American but British support as well. The

>> British are much closer to the exit as far as I can tell than American

>> troops are. So I am filled with dread about that, and wish that I

>> could give these young Iraqis more encouragement than I can. And

>> frankly, the best advice, and I think the most wise advice that

>> anybody could give an Iraqi faced with that situation would be that if

>> he could get his family to safety now, it would probably be a wise

>> thing to do. Easier said than done. Visas are extremely difficult to

>> get even for neighboring Arab countries. And very few of these people

>> have any savings at all...in 2003, at a time when doctors in Iraq were

>> earning $3 dollars a month. Most of them, speaking of the people that

>> we employ, are supporting not just themselves and their own families,

>> but whole extended families, and their salaries are exhausted, very

>> often, before the month is through. So to contemplate them moving a

>> family, even their nuclear families out of this country, even if they

>> can get the visas, is extremely difficult. It's a completely

>> nightmarish situation for them, and obviously, I would that however we

>> in the West resolve this, we don't forget them.

>>

>> HH: Asking, I've asked you this before, and I'll ask it again to exit,

>> knowing what we know now, would you have counseled the invasion to

>> occur in '03?

>>

>> JB: Well, let me answer the question in a slightly different way. I

>> think that people like myself, who were here before the overthrow of

>> Saddam, were absolutely mesmerized, and I'm even inclined to say

>> obsessed with one aspect of this society, and that was the terror that

>> Saddam Hussein inflicted on his own people, and that I think we

>> thought, I know I thought, that the overthrow of Saddam Hussein would

>> bring an end to that terror, and would bring hope for the first time

>> in a generation to Iraqis. I think those of us who felt that should

>> have studied harder, and tried to acquaint ourselves more with the

>> history of this country, and realized that beneath the carapace of

>> terror laid a deeply fractured, deeply dysfunctional society in which

>> Sunni, Shiia and Kurds have been locked together, and held in some

>> relative stability only by at the point of a gun. Had we known all

>> that, had we fully weighed all of that, I think that we might have

>> reckoned then that ghastly as the terror of Saddam Hussein was, there

>> was something even more ghastly that could ensure. I personally am too

>> close to this now to be able to make any kind of judgment about that,

>> and I think the judgment will depend on events yet to unfold. But I

>> think that journalists, we who file mostly for 24 hour deadlines, need

>> to learn a lesson, and I'm talking about myself, as much as anybody

>> else here, and that we need to think very carefully when we're cast

>> into situations like this, and we become the messengers, if you will,

>> the tribunes of the Western world, to write more about those sorts of

>> things, the fractured society that lay beneath that carapace of

>> terror, than just the terror itself.

>>

>> HH: Was there any way, is it possible, do you think on that

>> reflection, that however hard the last four years have been, was there

>> any other way to get past Saddam? Or was it, and is there a

>> possibility in your mind that it will all be worth it in the end?

>>

>> JB: I guess the judgment on that will probably be something like 20-25

>> years out from now.

>>

>> HH: Yeah.

>>

>> JB: ...the judgment that the Iraqi people will have to make. Right now,

>> the remarkable thing is not that so many Iraqis look back on Saddam's

>> time with a sense of yearning, but that so many other Iraqis, namely

>> Shiite Iraqis and Kurdish Iraqis, who were his principal victims,

>> continue to believe that his overthrow was for the best. What

>> history's judgment about this will be extremely difficult to tell. But

>> one thing we can be sure of is that it will have cost enormous numbers

>> of lives, and it makes you wonder, looking back to the period of 2003

>> and before...

>>

>> (Call dropped - End of Part 2)

>>

>> JB: John Burns...

>>

>> HH: Mr. Burns, I'm just calling back, it's Hugh Hewitt, to say thank

>> you for the hour. It's been fascinating, we'll play it in its entirety

>> on Monday, and I hope in a few more months, we can get you back to do

>> it again. It's riveting radio.

>>

>> JB: Well, thank you very much, and I enjoyed the chat.

>>

>> HH: Thank you, John Burns.

>>

>> JB: Bye bye.

>>

>> HH: Bye bye.

>>

>> End of interview.

>>

>> http://hughhewitt.townhall.com/Transcript_Page.aspx?ContentGuid=5bdb3...

>

>

> What part are you not getting? Petraeus' job is to try to quell

> secterian vilolence while the Iraqi gov't gets its shit together. If

> you hadn't noticed, theyre on VACATION and have shown ZERO progress.

> Beside the fact that July historically has been the month with the

> least amount of US troop deaths...of course, this year we had the MOST

> troop deaths of any July since we started the invasion...that's

> progress?

>

> What do you think will happen after we leave? Sunni / Shia are just

> going to stop fighting after 1400 years? Iran / Saudi Arabia are just

> going to stop supporting their Sunni or Shia bretheren in Iraq? How

> fucking stupid are you?

>

He's smarter than most potatoes.