"Turkey at the Crossroads"
Monday, September 22, 2003
LUNCHEON KEYNOTE
Transcript prepared from a tape recording
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MR. Lachman: What I am wanting to do is to move on to the next stage of our session today. We're very fortunate to have--is that any better? We're very fortunate to have as our lunchtime speaker Richard Perle, who is probably well-known to all of you.
Richard Perle is a scholar at the American Enterprise Institute. Before that, Richard Perle served during the 1980s as Assistant Secretary of Defense for International Security Policy in the United States. He was also Chairman of the NATO High-Level Defense Group, and currently he is on the Defense Policy Board. Mr. Perle's expertise extends very widely, but he does have a keen interest in Middle East affairs, and Mr. Perle is going to address us in what I'm sure is going to be a very interesting discussion.
But before I call Mr. Perle to the podium, I was just wanting to acknowledge Mr. Kerakimech (ph) of the (?) group. We're fortunate to have him with us, and we are grateful that you have come along. Mr. Kerakimech is pretty much an example of a Turkish success story, and I think it very much follows up the discussion that we had this morning of the need for entrepreneurship in Turkey, having converted a family business into a truly large international conglomerate that is so important to the Turkish economy. It's an example that could very well be emulated and give us some encouragement for Turkey's future.
Just with those few words, I'd ask Richard Perle to address us.
[Applause.]
MR. PERLE: Thank you. Thank you very much indeed.
Could I simply add to what you've just heard? We are honored to have the support and friendship of an industrial group that has shown the way in Turkey, modern business practices across a large variety of activities, operating in many countries in the world, and with enormous effectiveness and skill. So we thank you very much indeed for your support and congratulate you on the great success you've achieved.
I want to say a little bit about some very immediate issues, a little bit about the United States and Turkey, of course, in the aftermath of the liberation of Iraq, a little bit about the situation in Iraq, and then something about the war on terrorism, which is now the central preoccupation of the Government of the United States, is likely to remain the central concern of any American government, whether a continuation of this administration or a successor from the other party, because I believe that the impact of September 11 on American policy, while understood in this country, for the most part is poorly understood outside the United States, and it leads often to a failure to appreciate the driving concerns of the American administration and the American people. But first a word about Turkey and the United States.
I think we missed an important opportunity to collaborate in the liberation of Iraq, and I regret that. And I believe there are a number of Turks who regret it as well. I watched that situation develop, as I know many others in this room did, with a sense that if we were communicating better and more effectively, we could almost certainly have sorted out the issues that, in the end, became an obstacle to collaboration.
I think it was in part the newness of the Turkish Government and its lack of experience in handling crises. You get better at crises when you have more of them. And this was probably the first political crisis of that new government. And that distinguishes the failure of Turkey to work with us from the failure of some others to work with us who knew exactly what they were doing, who had no claim to crisis that would excuse their failure to work with us or even their opposition.
And so while it will take a long time to rebuild the relations with some countries, I don't think that is the case with Turkey, and I think we have already--we are already looking at those events through a rearview mirror. And that's a good thing.
It's a pity that Turkey wasn't alongside us going into Iraq, not least of all because there are such important Turkish interests next door. I think it might have been different if it had been understood in Turkey that this was a war that would be over in three weeks with hardly any casualties, hardly any Iraqi casualties. But the specter of war was widely misunderstood in Turkey and, for that matter, around the world. People expected large numbers of casualties, if not on the American side, on the Iraqi side. And what we saw in that conflict was in many ways the first modern war, the first war in which weapons of extraordinary precision were used in a manner that reflected the ability to distinguish targets.
We've had smart weapons for some time now, but finally the doctrine for the use of smart weapons has caught up with the technology, and this war was planned and executed in a way that was intended--as it should have been since it was a war of liberation--to minimize the damage that would be done to Iraqis, to Iraq's ability to rebuild itself after that war, which is why the bridges were still standing when the war was over. It is why the power stations were not attacked. It is why the basic infrastructure was carefully protected.
There is a great deal to do in Iraq, and I will come to that in a moment, but very little damage from the military action that liberated 25 million people after three decades of tyranny. So we've seen what can be done, and there were undoubtedly those who feared a very different kind of war, and so it's perhaps understandable that the polls were so heavily weighted against military action. Had people understood what was coming, we might have seen a different result.
We face now a very large challenge in Iraq in the aftermath of this war. But I want to tell you that things in Iraq are a good deal better than you would believe if you were dependent on the press reporting that is coming from Iraq, and even more if you were dependent on commentators who were not in Iraq discussing the situation as they imagine it to be. Every incident in which an American is killed or a bomb is detonated is reported.
What is not reported is the positive side of the picture in Iraq, the fact, for example, that every Iraqi student, from kindergarten through university, is now in a classroom--unless he prefers to be elsewhere--and schools are open. It is rather more than you can say for France these days where a teachers' strike has threatened yet another academic year.
In towns and villages across the country, city councils have been established, and for the first time the people of Iraq at the local level are making decisions that affect their destiny on the basis of the will of those citizens and not at the dictate of Saddam Hussein.
We've pretty much now restored electrical power to pre-war levels and have done that despite the acts of sabotage, desperate acts of sabotage that are intended to assure that we will not succeed, acts of sabotage undertaken by the bitter-end remnant of Saddam Hussein's regime.
These are the people who are known to their neighbors for their participation in his reign of terror, the people who got up in the morning and went to their jobs in the prisons, who administered torture. And when this is unquestionably over, they will either face a trial or in some cases, if found first by the families of the victims, they are in mortal jeopardy. And they know it. So they have nothing to lose. And they have some support from some of the money that was siphoned off from the Iraqi people over three decades. And so that's not surprising.
There are criminals in the streets of Iraq as well. Saddam opened the prisons. I think any urban area would be afflicted in the way Baghdad has been afflicted if the prisons were emptied.
And, finally, there are outsiders who understand that a success, an undeniable success in Iraq--that is, the establishment of a decent regime and some hope for the future on the part of Iraqis--is a threat to their regimes, which allow no public participation in the decisions of government. Iraq is surrounded, with the exception of Turkey, by dictatorships, and those dictators have no interest whatsoever in demonstrating that the fruits of democracy can be brought to neighboring Iraq. And so they will do what they can to destroy the prospects of the Iraqi people for success.
We haven't done everything perfectly. We've been much too slow to empower Iraqis to give them responsibility for their own future and their own destiny. And that's regrettable. I think if we communicated more effectively with the Iraqis, if we understood them better, if we listened more carefully to what they have to say, we would be far more confident about their ability to manage their own affairs. They will need our help, of course, but they are far more capable than many bureaucrats believe. And so the sooner we turn over the critical functions of government to the people of Iraq, the better.
This should not be confused with certain proposals advanced by the French and others, and I want to draw an important distinction. When the French talk about returning sovereignty to the Iraqis, what they have in mind is a massive international intervention in the affairs of Iraq that will keep the international community there forever. Forever. The UN doesn't go home. It puts down bureaucratic roots and it does not relinquish them easily.
It would be a great mistake to internationalize the future of Iraq. The sooner Iraq is turned over to Iraqis, the better. And so I think we are quite right, the administration is quite right to treat warily the suggestions from the French and others that an infusion of an international bureaucracy is the right way to nurture the development of Iraq.
The war on terror was overdue on September 11. Prior to September 11, there were a number of acts of terror, to which the American response was feeble, at best. And we all know the list: Khobar Towers, a planned assassination of a former American President, the Cole, the embassies in East Africa, and the like. And the response in every case was either symbolic or in some cases we regarded acts of terror as violations of the law and not acts of war.
The result was certainly to embolden the terrorists. And, indeed, we know from what the terrorists have said to one another that they considered after each successful act of terror that they were advancing toward their ultimate purpose.
That ultimate purpose--and we should be under no illusion about this--is the destruction of the United States, which they see as the principal obstacle to their vision of a world governed by Islamic law. This is a war against radical Islam. And we need to be clear about that. If we're not clear about it, we will dissipate what energy we need for this war in looking elsewhere. The heart of the problem is radical Islam and a view of the world with which there can be no possible compromise.
We've begun to mobilize to fight that war. It's probably fair to ask whether our institutions are up to the task. And, unfortunately, we weren't prepared for this war, and so the institutions are not optimized for fighting it. I think we've done remarkably well under the circumstances. As an open society, it's easy to come to this country. It's easy to move around in this country once one gets here. It's easy to get lost in the United States. We have never exerted and will not now exert the kind of control over our citizens that could enhance our security, but at a price that is too high to pay. So we have to find other ways to protect ourselves.
One way, and the way that is inevitably going to cause differences between the United States and other countries, even friends of the United States, is to put such pressure on the terrorists that they are fugitives every moment of every day; that is to say, to deprive them of the sanctuary that they enjoyed when they operated freely, for example, in Afghanistan; when they could visit Baghdad for medical care and other support; when they could open offices in Damascus and elsewhere. The list of countries is not large, but the countries that have given sanctuary and support to terrorists are now in this President's conception on the side of the terrorists, and they will have to face the consequences.
This does not make many of our friends comfortable. We've become accustomed to a view of what is right and proper in international affairs in which only an invasion across a national border is regarded as unacceptable behavior. Support for terrorism, what goes on within the confines of one's national borders, are considered off limits, an inappropriate subject for international intervention. That has to change. The threats for which the international institutions that we have now were designed are the threats of the 20th century. And we're now living in the 21st century, and the threats are very different.
Without ever crossing a border until it is too late to do anything about it, terrorists can operate within a country, planning, organizing, and perhaps ultimately acting on plots to kill Americans, potentially large numbers of Americans, utilizing potentially weapons of mass destruction. And nowhere in that chain of events do our current concepts of international regulation and discipline come to bear.
So some of our friends and some of our allies are having trouble recognizing that we now feel it necessary to act, sometimes independently because we don't have an international structure, but it gives us an opportunity to protect ourselves through the instruments of international law and international practice.
Maybe we're in a transition period. Maybe we'll modernize the United Nations. Maybe we'll update our concepts of what constitutes a threat to which it is appropriate to respond. But until that happens, I suppose we will be accused from time to time of acting unilaterally.
But what's the alternative? Another September 11? A September 11 carried out next time, as it may well be, by a weapon of mass destruction in which the fatalities are not in the thousands but in the tens or even hundreds of thousands? No government, no American government--and forget about what you're hearing from a long list of Democratic candidates. This is election politics. No government can afford to ignore the magnitude of the threat we face.
If you sit in the White House, you are getting reports daily based on interrogations at Guantanamo based on documents unearthed in Afghanistan, documents found in Iraq, intercepted conversations. And it all adds up to one thing: There are some thousands of people who, if given an opportunity to use a weapon of mass destruction for the purpose of killing Americans, there are thousands of people who will do it, and they will do it without remorse. And so no American President, from either party, from any administration, can fail to take the most effective measures that we can devise to deal with it. And if that means complications in our diplomacy because other countries don't feel the same sense of danger that we do, so be it.
It, in fact, would be unreasonable to expect--to expect anyone in any other country to be as concerned and preoccupied as Americans must be. And it is probably unreasonable, therefore, to expect a degree of support that we're unlikely to achieve. So we will have to do what we must do in order to protect ourselves.
We do have friends and we do have allied. And, by and large, we get a lot of help. A lot of it isn't talked about. A lot of it is in the areas of intelligence, policing. But even some of our critics are, in fact, helpful. And in some places in the world, the Arab world in particular, some of our critics are consistently helpful. They just don't want the world to know they're being helpful.
Turkey is one of the friends of the United States that we've always been able to count on, a long history of working closely together. We had a small glitch in the relationship. We're past that now, and I expect we can go back to working closely together. That has already begun, and I see no lasting obstacle to that collaboration. And it's helpful when Americans and Turks can come together on occasions like this to discuss these matters.
Prospects in Turkey are looking very bright. Do you remember the predictions about how awful it would be for the Turkish economy if we went to war with Iraq? Anybody notice a change in the Turkish economy since this war? Is it worse? Better? It looks to me to be a lot better and the prospects to be a lot better.
It was an absurd and unnatural situation for Iraq to be isolated and sanctioned as it was and for anyone to think that was in the interest of any of Turkey's neighbors. I never understood how anyone could have thought that there was anything but a brighter future with Saddam Hussein out of the way. Well, now he's out of the way. And if we meet again next year at about this time, I expect there will be a really thriving trade in the region, and we will see rapid economic development, not only in Iraq but in Turkey, working closely with Iraq.
So the problems that affect Americans and Turks are, I think, largely behind us. The problems in Iraq are ahead of us, but we're doing better than people think. And a year from now, I'll be very surprised if there is not some grand square in Baghdad that is named after President Bush. There is no doubt that, with the exception of a very small number of people close to a vicious regime, the people of Iraq have been liberated and they understand that they've been liberated. And it is getting easier every day for Iraqis to express that sense of liberation.
Thanks.
[Applause.]
MR. PERLE: I've been asked to take questions, which, of course, I'm happy to do.
MS. : I have a question. I was reading [inaudible] a few days ago in the New York Times, and he said that the emphasis on our Ahmed Chelabi was too much. In fact, they tried to work with other Iraqis and build a post-war Iraq. But a great emphasis [inaudible] in Ahmed Chelabi, who is in exile. Did you read that article? What are your thoughts on that article?
MR. PERLE: The question was about Ahmed Chelabi and reference was to an article which I haven't read. But let me just say that the Iraqi people must choose their next government, their leaders. If they choose Ahmed Chelabi, I think they will have a very bright future.
I've known Ahmed Chelabi for more than a dozen years. He is a man, in my experience, of absolute integrity and courage, and he would be a great Iraqi leader.
I read stories all the time about how he has the backing of the Pentagon. Some of us who are connected one way or another to the Pentagon who know him have a high regard for him. But he doesn't have the backing of the Pentagon. Whatever he is able to accomplish in Iraq will be on the strength of his own abilities, his character, his intelligence, and his commitment to the freedom of the people of Iraq.
I can't imagine a leader who more fully embodies the values that caused the Americans to believe we should liberate Iraq. He believes in democracy. He believes in individual freedom. He's a Shia who does not want a theocracy in Iraq. And it pains me to see some officials of this government make disparaging remarks about him. For the most part, the disparagement comes from people who don't know him, who have never met him, and it's based on jealousies and in some cases embarrassment. Chelabi was right over many years when they were wrong.
So it's been troubling to see the disparagement of this great man. But I have complete confidence that his qualities will lead him into a position of leadership in Iraq.
MR. : Thank you, Richard. As always, when it comes to Iraq, I agree with virtually everything you had to say. But I want to ask you about something you didn't talk about in your presentation, and that has to do with Iraq's presumptive possession of weapons of mass destruction.
That was not, as you know, the sole justification for the war against Iraq, but it was certainly the primary justification. And yet several months after the liberation of Iraq, none of these weapons have been found.
On the one hand, it's almost impossible to believe that Saddam didn't have them. On the other hand, since we've now presumably had access to dozens if not hundreds of Iraqi scientists and technicians who were presumably in a position to know about these programs, the fact that no information has become public indicating that they were, in fact, in possession of chemical and biological weapons and working to produce more suggests that we haven't received credible intelligence confirming that assumption.
So I guess I have two questions. The first is: What do you make of the curious absence of intelligence about the fate of these weapons? And, secondly, if it turns out that, in fact, Iraq didn't have these weapons and hasn't had them for some time, with the benefit of hindsight, if one had known that before we went to war against Iraq, if we had been confident that Saddam had relinquished these weapons several years ago, would you still have favored the war? And if so, why?
MR. PERLE: Well, thanks, Steve.
To begin with the last part of the question, I would have favored the war. I think we were right to liberate that country, with or without weapons of mass destruction.
I don't know anyone who did not believe that Saddam possessed weapons of mass destruction, including the United Nations, including Hans Blix, including all the previous inspectors. We know that he had them at one time because he used them. He used them against Kurdish villages. He used them in the war against Iran. We know he had a nuclear program. We know that there was research into biological weapons. All of that was thoroughly documented.
The United Nations inspectors actually prepared a P&L statement that indicated his holdings, things that were known to have been produced, in some cases acknowledged to have been produced. And when we tried to determine what had happened to those holdings and ask Saddam to document the destruction that the Iraqis claimed, they didn't do so. They chose not to say, as they might well have, yes, we had so much anthrax, but on this date at this place a crew headed by Rashid destroyed it under orders, and here's the documentation.
I mean, as Hans Blix himself said, nerve gas is not marmalade. You don't toss it around. You don't treat it without careful controls. So there should have been documentation of the disposition of weapons of mass destruction that we knew to have been created, and there was none.
Now I see Blix propounding the theory that Saddam wanted us to believe he had weapons of mass destruction, even though he didn't. Well, that's--nobody can say at this point that that isn't possible, but it's an extraordinary thing if he allowed this war to take shape when he could easily have provided evidence that would have been exculpatory with respect to weapons of mass destruction.
But I think it's very important to look back to where we were before this war. We had a policy of isolating Iraq that we called "containment." It was based on sanctions that followed the cease-fire in 1991 after the war. Those sanctions were collapsing. There was massive violation. Across the Syrian border, a pipeline was transporting a billion dollars a year worth of oil, an out-and-out violation of the sanctions.
There were days when there were 20 kilometers of heavy trucks lined up at the Jordanian border waiting to cross into Iraq, and there were even long lines at the Turkish border. So the sanctions--and Iran was marketing Iraqi oil and cooperating in other ways. So as a practical matter, the sanctions had become exceedingly porous. But as a juridical matter, they were more and more difficult to sustain because the impression had been created that the people of Iraq were suffering as a result of the sanctions, even though the Oil for Food Program could have provided relief that Saddam never allowed to be provided.
The Russians, the French were opposed to continuing the sanctions. It was simply a matter of time before those sanctions would have collapsed.
And what would have been the result of that? A victory by Saddam Hussein over the West, and the political ramifications of that for the region, for the war on terror, were simply unacceptable. We could not allow Saddam to escape the last vestiges of containment.
So I think we would have had to act under any circumstances. But I find it very hard to believe that had we abandoned the sanctions and allowed Saddam to go back to business as usual that we would not have found weapons of mass destruction in Iraq's future. And I believe that when David Kay finishes his work that we will know a lot more about those programs, and we will be able to document the fact that he had weapons of mass destruction and may even now have some.
MS. : Mr. Perle, I would like to ask you about the prospect of decision of the Turkish parliament on sending troops to Iraq. As you know, there are concerns in Iraq coming from several parties, not only the Kurds but also some Arabs. There are concerns and objections to the presence of Turkish troops on their soil.
I would like to ask you what you think of these concerns, and do you think the desperate need for additional troops would justify those concerns and objections be overridden?
MR. PERLE: Well, I can give you a personal opinion that differs, I suspect, with that of the administration on this. I don't believe that we need additional troops in Iraq. In fact, I think it would be a mistake to send additional troops to Iraq. What we need to do is turn the security function over to Iraqis as soon as possible, and if we send--if we internationalize this and bring in large numbers of outside troops, it will probably delay the date at which we ask the Iraqis to take responsibility for their own security.
They will need help. They can't do it entirely by themselves, so Americans would have to work alongside them. But I don't believe the problem is too few soldiers in uniform.
Now, the administration would welcome some outside help, partly as a symbol of international collaboration in this enterprise, and I think that would be the good thing. And it might offer some modest relief to American forces, and that would be a good thing. But I don't believe that it is essential or vital that additional military forces be sent to Iraq.
MR. : Supposing Turkish parliament rejects the motion again, how would that influence Turkish-American relations?
MR. PERLE: I'm sorry. I didn't hear the--could you ask it again?
MR. : The motion to send troops to Iraq, let's suppose it's rejected by the parliament in Turkey. How would that influence Turkish-American relations?
MR. PERLE: Well, I suspect, as I'm sure you do, that headlines that Turkey says no to the U.S. will not be helpful to U.S.-Turkish relations, despite the private view you've just heard that we don't need additional forces. I'm not saying it would be a good thing if Turkey sent additional forces. What I'm at pains to say is I don't think it is essential to success in the mission in Iraq that additional forces be sent. This is not a life-or-death matter, in my view. But I think it will probably be damaging.
MR. : Mr. Perle, my name is Arsinol (?) from Ankara University. I would like to ask about something that you did not comment on, which is Iran. I think my supposition is that Syria will ultimately be scared or coerced into towing the line, and now Turkey seems to be back in the bag, if I may say so. But Iran troubles us over there, and I'm sure it does the Americans as well.
What is to be done, if anything, with Iran? What's going on there? What I read in the paper is very confusing.
MR. PERLE: Well, Iran is obviously a very large problem for us. The Iranians are determined to build nuclear weapons. They support terrorism on a big scale. They are probably the single most important supporter of terrorism. And they believe in a state in which a few mullahs dictate every aspect of people's lives. So by every measure, the place is objectionable and dangerous.
It must by now be clear to everyone that if the people of Iran were free to choose a government, it would not include the people who, in fact, are governing them. It might include some people who have been elected to parliament, but it certainly would not include the mullahs, who are, in fact, the effective government in Iran. And my own view is that, out of sympathy as well as self-interest, we should be supporting those Iranians who want to free their country from the heavy hand of the mullahs. And others should be doing the same.
We've been very timid in this respect--much too timid, in my view, and I don't understand why we have been so timid. We don't even do simple things like broadcast effectively into Iran. A few hours a week. A few hours a week. We should be broadcasting 24 hours a day, just the news so that the people of Iran can judge their own situation. They go to great lengths to do that. They run risks to listen to things they're not permitted to listen to, and we ought to be helping them.
I think in the end that situation will resolve itself. I think in the end the people of Iran will change their government. They'll change their leadership. It's just a question of when and whether it is a relatively peaceful transition. And we should do what we can to accelerate what is going to happen anyway.
MR. : My name is Murat Varga (ph). Nice to see you here again. Sir, I have one question. When you mentioned about Iraq sooner--Iraq to be returned to Iraqis, that's all the international community wants at once. And we are kind of against a massive international intervention. But in this case, when you leave things to the hands of the Iraqis and if they come up with a constitution like that of Iran's, the first line starting that Iraq is a religious state, as in the case of Iran, and the constitution law and order will be done under Shia regime.
Is there--I think there may be some kind of risk in that type of process, so this constitution thing is a very, very serious step to take, I think.
MR. PERLE: The constitution is absolutely essential, vital. It will determine the future of Iraq, and it must be a constitution that offers freedom to all the people of Iraq. And it is not freedom if people who do not wish to be governed by a majority that oppresses a minority are unable to be protected. So it must be a constitution that offers individual liberty and the protection of minorities. And I think it will be. We need to encourage that process, accelerate that process, to be sure.
So I think there is no inconsistency between the idea of moving as rapidly as possible to place authority in the hands of the Iraqis and making sure that a constitution evolves that protects the basic rights of all Iraqis.
MR. : Mr. Perle, anti-Americanism is growing all over the world. So what's your comment on that? What are the reasons? How can United States think about to deal with this problem?
MR. PERLE: Well, you're quite right there is a surge of anti-Americanism, and I think there are many reasons. Some of them are simple jealousy. The anti-Americanism is often a product of the relationship between our government and governments that are themselves unpopular.
In the Middle East, for example, the places where the anti-Americanism is greatest are the places where we are closest to dictatorial governments. We're unpopular in Saudi Arabia. Do you think that has something to do with the fact that we're close to the Saudi Government and lots of Saudis resent that and object to it? In Iran, we're pretty popular. Maybe that's because we have nothing good to say about the way Iran is now governed. So that's part of it.
Part of it is the natural resistance to the superpower. It's sort of understandable. One thing is clear: that if we have to choose between anti-Americanism and relinquishing the measures necessary to protect ourselves, we're going to live with anti-Americanism.
MR. : Mr. Perle, you mentioned the doctrine of smart weapons, also liberation and the need to liberate people from the grip of dictatorship as a source of security against terrorism and so on. Does that suggest that--and to act unilaterally, you said that we have a right to act unilaterally. Does that mean that this liberation war should move on the road to Syria and Iran and Libya and maybe Zimbabwe and so on?
MR. PERLE: No, I don't think that a military response is always necessary or always useful or always appropriate or always the preferred strategy. Let me be clear about the relationship between democracy and our own security.
Democratic countries, by and large, do not allow terrorists to operate freely on their territory. It is also true that some dictatorships restrain terrorists, but a lot less reliably. They often cut deals with terrorists.
I wouldn't be shocked to discover that there was a quite understanding between the Saudi royal family and -- [tape ends].
-- the United States in which they agreed to behave themselves in Saudi Arabia, and the Saudis agreed to ignore their activities.
That's not the sort of behavior that we would expect from most democracies. So, by and large, if the world were made up entirely of democracies, I think we would be a great deal more secure.
Now, how do we encourage democracy? There are a lot of ways to encourage it. The least preferred method is by toppling a dictatorship that stands in the way of democracy. Iraq was a unique situation, and I don't know anyone who's proposing that we launch wars to achieve democratic reform.
If Iraq is the success that I'm confident it will be--and we've got to give it a little while. It's absurd, the idea that you can judge an upheaval of the magnitude of Iraq in a hundred days. If Iraq turns out to be the success I'm confident it will be, I think others in the region will look at Iraq and say, Why can't we rid ourselves of a regime that's rather similar in some ways to the Iraqi regime? So the precedential effect of liberating Iraq may assist in bringing about democratic reform elsewhere.
Thank you for being so attentive.
[Applause.]
MR. : I'm sorry to have had to interrupt that, but we have another session on Turkish foreign policy that is a little bit overdue. I think we really have to thank Richard Perle, both for his insights, which are, as usual, extremely on the mark, but also for being so generous in time and taking so many questions.
Thank you.
[End of Luncheon Keynote.]
