Iraq: What Lies Ahead

March 25, 2003

UNCORRECTED TRANSCRIPT

8:15 a.m.	Registration
8:30	Military Operations Analysis:	Thomas Donnelly, AEI resident defense and national security fellow
		Michael Vickers, military analyst at the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments
9:00	Briefing:	Michael Ledeen, AEI resident scholar, on the regional balance of power
		Richard Perle, AEI resident fellow and chairman of the Defense Policy Board, on diplomacy and the future
		Danielle Pletka, AEI's vice president for foreign and defense policy studies, on progress for planning for post-Saddam Iraq
		James Woolsey, former director of the Central Intelligence Agency, on the role of intelligence in the war in Iraq
10:30	Adjournment

Proceedings:

MR. DONNELLY: My name is Tom Donnelly. Mike Vickers and I are going to do a very brief update and summary of where we are on the battlefield, and then after a short break, we'll have our usual policy panel.

I am going to ask Mike to make some opening comments. Then we'll attempt to do a brief map exercise. We'll save a few minutes at the end for questions, but just to remind you, this is going to be a two-part exercise. We're going to try to get through our portion within a half-hour, change panels, and then we'll have another hour or so after that. So, Michael, to you.

MR. VICKERS: Thank you, Tom, and good morning.

I've been asked to make a few preliminary comments on the battle for Baghdad, and the first comment I'd like to make is that a big portion of the battle for Baghdad will likely take place outside the capital, probably about 50 miles or so south, and in a line running, as Tom will show on the map, from Karbala in the west to Al-Kut in the east, where we have two primary Republican Guard divisions, Medina near Karbala and the Baghdad division near Al-Kut.

Saddam seems to be sending even some additional Republican Guard troops, probably Special Republican Guard, to reinforce these front-line positions, giving some evidence that he sees this as a decisive battle and emboldened, perhaps, by the success or partial success yesterday of driving off some of the 11th aviation regiment attack.

Now, a couple points to keep in mind about this battle south of Baghdad. One, a lot of Saddam's defenses are still oriented to the north. There are several Republican Guard divisions in and north of Baghdad and in Takrit and up to Kirkuk, though they're not really in the fight at all. They're just subjected to airpower strikes, and they can't really move. They don't have operational mobility, or they'll get even more devastated by airpower.

Second, in defending this area south of Baghdad, which is wooded and urban and in some areas concentrated around Shi'ite holy sites in Karbala, the forces are quite dispersed, and it's not clear they have a very strong continuous line of operations or that they've sealed their flanks around Razaza Lake to the west of Karbala. As I understand it right now, cavalry elements from the 3rd Infantry Division are probing those flanks, and the combination of the 101st Airborne and Reserve, the Marine Expeditionary Force advancing on Al-Kut, the 3rd Infantry Division on Karbala, they have the potential option of doing either an envelopment, flanking these forces, or penetrating these dispersed lines. And so it seems to me the Iraqis are in a fairly difficult position.

The air campaign has shifted fairly dramatically in the last couple days. When the air campaign began on Friday night, almost all of the targets were preplanned, you know, targets in Baghdad and elsewhere. Now, about 80 percent are in support of the ground defensive, and particularly in this area of southern Baghdad.

Now, what happens after this battle for the south? Well, then, a key decision will be made whether to enter Baghdad or not sometime later this week or early next week, and the forces within Baghdad are basically the Special Republican Guard, the special security organization, and Saddam's Fedayeen, the paramilitary forces that we've seen doing some of these guerrilla tactics in the south. These are fierce loyalists, but they're not heavy formations. Only the Special Republican Guard of that whole group is really organized as military units.

A final point I'd like to make in anticipation of some questions is, first, what might happen in Baghdad. You know, Saddam may be in private residences. There are some reports that he has moved to Takrit, although I think that's been discounted. There's been a report recently that there have been trenches dug around the Iraqi Museum of Antiquities, and one can only guess what this purpose is. I mean, do you light it on fire and try to instigate a clash of civilizations and blame it on the war? Or, you know, Lord knows what's in their mind. But it's an interesting development.

A final point is there have been some questions raised about force structure. Does the U.S. have adequate force structure? The 4th Infantry Division was originally slated to go to Turkey and attack from the north and is now making its way around to the south and won't be in a position to deploy until about--into Iraq until about the middle of April. Had that force been deployed in Turkey, we would, of course, have had a much more vigorous northern front, but it really wouldn't affect this battle in the south shaping up toward Baghdad.

Additional forces might help with the mopping-up strategy that we have in the south right now, but, again, the key element of the strategy is really to decapitate in Baghdad and then expecting the rest of the south essentially to fall. There are about a thousand or so defenders in Basra. The British are basically laying siege and doing sporadic attacks. But the assumption is that they will wither on the vine once Baghdad falls.

Tom?

MR. DONNELLY: Thanks. I'm going to stand up and do my staff officer impression, and I'll try to get through the sequence of maps pretty quickly. But I will be just gilding the lily that Mike...

It's on? Okay. We're catching up to C-SPAN, but not CNN.

So here's Iraq, and we're going to go through a couple of zoom-ins to give a clearer feel for what Mike was talking about. We should not forget the south. The reports are that Umm Qasr, the port, is essentially cleared to get humanitarian supplies in, and that should have the first ship dock within 48 hours or so. We've made some similar announcement previously. Let's hope it's true this time. And, of course, Basra is sealed off, but there are still pockets of resistance, the Fedayeen and other sort of leave-behinds from the regime.

It's also worth remembering that Basra is a Shi'ite city, essentially, rose up against the regime in 1991, and has had to have extra reinforcements sent down from Baghdad simply to keep the lid on these people. So it's not surprising that there's a larger structure there that we're going to have to root out, and probably the good news from a campaign perspective is that we haven't stopped in order to mop up every little pocket before proceeding on to the main action. So we probably should be obviously concerned about the humanitarian situation, be concerned that we get this city secure completely as soon as possible, but we need not be in a rush from a military standpoint in order to do that. The rush has much more to do with getting to Baghdad, and we've essentially already achieved that.

Let's go to our next bit.

Moving north there’s this outer ring of Republican Guard, two-division heavy forces that extends the line from Al-Kut to Karbala. And here's what Mike was talking about, the lake that we're testing the flank of. If we can envelop this formation, and it's a little bit hard to know exactly, as Mike says, how they're arrayed. They're dispersed.

The Iraqis have a choice between staying together in order to fight as a unit and fight in a concentrated way, in which case they're much more susceptible to airpower and could be decimated that way, or to disperse to try to ride out the air attacks, which makes them much more vulnerable to closer-in air support, attacks from the Apaches and from ground attacks. So they're really facing a dilemma in how to defend this outer ring.

If it's true that Special Republican Guard and regime loyals have been sent forth, that's also probably an indication that Saddam is not too sure of the command structure there. One of the jobs that these guys will have to do is to point a gun at commanders' heads to make sure that they fight the way the regime wants them to.

Just to sort of recap the maneuver from Nasiriyah, the 3rd ID, along with a lot of Apache attack helicopters, has swung on the west bank of the river to (?) position to do this. The Apache attacks are coming out of a forward operating base just south of Najaf. Again, that's a region that we have long known about and a place that we planned to put a forward operating base, even in 1991.

One thing that I do not know is exactly what the disposition of the 101st Airborne is. They are--some elements are still obviously in Kuwait, but they can get into not so much this fight, but into the maneuver to surround Baghdad pretty quickly still.

Also, one thing that press reports have kind of missed is the progress of the Marines and the British heavy forces up toward Al-Kut. So we have the possibility of a larger force either enveloping the line or smashing through it. But, again, essentially one fight and one day's road march from being up on the outskirts of Baghdad.

Again, what the condition of organized large-scale forces is in the inner ring around Baghdad is a little bit hard to know, but Mike is quite right that they're likely to be less organized than more organized, and it could be, if it is a fight, perhaps really just a larger version of the kind of fighting that we've seen in Basra and not a Stalingrad-like street-by-street, slug-it-out, really bloody and brutal sort of situation.

Also, obviously if the regime wants to go out in just a blaze of ugliness or glory, we have to think that the employment of chemical weapons is a possibility in that environment with, again, the people who will suffer most being the innocent civilians less than our soldiers, who can operate in that.

A final point. There's been a lot of press reporting this morning about the weather and the smoke. Mike can comment on any of this, but I would say that that's much more injurious to the Iraqi ability to fight than it is to our ability to fight. It's a little bit like putting a sack over your head and trying to defend yourself. So as difficult as it is to fly a helicopter in a sandstorm, it's much easier to do so with an American helicopter and using American target acquisition and navigation capabilities than it is for the Iraqis. This is having the effect of further blinding Iraqi units and, again, making it a little bit tougher for us, but much more tough for them.

Mike, anything you'd like to add before we go to questions?

MR. DONNELLY: Okay. I'm going to sit down, and we've only got about ten minutes before we go to the next panel, so maybe just a question or two.

MR. : [inaudible]

MR. DONNELLY: I'm not sure that Saddam hasn't already been removed. What exactly he's doing at this point is impossible to tell. They clearly had this as their overall plan. It is almost a self-executing plan. You know, you decapitate the regime and it's like a headless corpse. It twitches, and it twitches violently. But whether Saddam is giving regular orders to units in the field is just impossible to know.

Yes?

MR. : [inaudible].

MR. DONNELLY: Michael --

MR. VICKERS: Well, Basra seems to be reasonably lightly defended, about 1,000 troops or so, with some tanks and artillery pieces. And the reason for the restraint so far is that it's judged that this could be done at any time, but also because these defenders are really in residential areas. And so it's trying to put pressure on them and minimize the effect on the city. But as you said, the British really have overwhelming force advantage in Basra, and as political conditions change in Iraq, circumstances will move more and more in our favor. But I've heard the same reports that they're getting ready to go in.

MR. : [inaudible].

MR. VICKERS: I mean, it can. That's really the same situation that we'll face in Baghdad, in a sense, that it's not resistance on a large scale. It's a combination of not wanting to inflict more damage than necessary on those urban areas and, you know, what's the appropriate strategy. I mean, yes, as long as there is, you know, the higher levels of resistance, the Special Republican Guard or the SSO that I talked about in Baghdad or this contingent in Basra, you know, the number of casualties would probably be higher. But, you know, the outcome really is not. It's are there ways--can you do it better?

MR. DONNELLY: And just a brief footnote. It's not like the British military doesn't have centuries' worth of experience in conducting stability operations. Any current British soldier who's been in the Balkans or in Northern Ireland has a pretty good idea of how ugly this kind of engagement can be. So these guys are hugely experienced, and I cannot think of any forces that could perform very much better.

Yes, sir, in the back?

MR. : [inaudible]

MR. DONNELLY: Mike, why don't you go first?

MR. VICKERS: Well, the north right now is essentially a holding action. There have been some light forces put in. There are special forces working with Kurdish opposition. There are diplomatic activities underway to try to restrain Turkey from moving in. But most of it is an airpower campaign right now because we don't have heavy forces in the north, and the north is even essentially, I think, lower priority, if you will, than actions in the south, you know, since we have lines of communications in the south.

But one would expect after the battle of Baghdad to put more and more forces into the north, and particularly to cut off those Republican Guard divisions that are deployed in the north from Kirkuk to Takrit to the northern approaches to Baghdad from falling back into the city.

MR. DONNELLY: One thing I would ask actually--one thing that I'm interested in is what the situation is in Tikrit, if that could potentially be kind of a final holdout, if not for Saddam himself, then for last elements in the regime.

Obviously, we will not be able to deal with that by large-scale ground maneuver forces until the Baghdad fight is complete. And the lack of larger forces in the north would be--would make it a problem for us to isolate Tikrit on the ground from the north. So, again, we don't know, there is no reporting coming out of there, so what the situation is in Tikrit is unknowable, but it's a smaller but still pretty significant question mark, I would say.

Just two quickies left. Yes, ma'am, right there?

MS. : What has to happen before the coalition forces are ready to make the move on Baghdad, do you think? And how soon might that take place?

MR. VICKERS: Well, I think the first thing that has to happen is this battle in the south, I mean, since that seems to be the main line of defense. And that will likely occur over the next few days.

Then I think sometime later this week, or sort of weekend, early next week, U.S. forces will be in a position to invest Baghdad, should they choose to do so, and that will really be the critical decision, whether to bring in additional forces, whether to block Baghdad in the north, which is, I suspect, what they'll do. Tom mentioned the 101st. But if we did wait for additional forces to come in, you would essentially have--see a much larger time frame than we have in Basra right now; along the earlier question, you would essentially have a pause of two to three weeks or so.

So I don't think that is that likely at this point. I think U.S. forces may be in Baghdad next week.

MR. DONNELLY: And there may be something in the middle in which we sort of gather ourselves after eliminating this outer shield of Republican Guard, consolidate the forces, reinforce them, block Baghdad, issue sort of a final "come out with your hands up" ultimatum to whoever is left in Baghdad, but not, you know, let it go on for weeks and weeks until we can get a larger force still. So it might be, say, something in the middle, like a week or ten days before that final assault on Baghdad might kick off.

Again, a lot of this will depend on what the diehards inside Baghdad decided to do.

And a final question in the back, sir?

MR. : Wouldn't it [inaudible] Infantry Division had been permitted to go south? They're the most technologically advanced division we have. Aren't you underestimating the importance of the Turkish decision not to permit our troops--

MR. DONNELLY: Again, I would agree with Mike's point earlier that the point of operations in the north was first and foremost to secure the north, to secure the oil fields, to prevent the Kurds and Turks from coming to blows, even, you know, sort of in an unintended way. So it would have taken some time, anyway, and it would have been hard for the 4th ID to play as major a role as the forces in the south. But they may have been able to support an attack, and the advantages that the 4th ID enjoys over the 3rd ID are significant but not, you know, huge. They're still fighting with M1 tanks and M2, M3 Bradleys. They have more sophisticated communications and other kind of gear on them, and they can--you know, they're better able to network, but we're talking about, I would say, a capability that is not decisive, just simply additive at that point.

Michael?

MR. VICKERS: Yes, I think the gap between the 3rd ID and 4th is even perhaps less than that. But I don't think the 4th ID was really ever envisioned as the Baghdad force. And while, yes, I think it is a blow not to have a major two-front attack or an offensive attack in the north with ground forces--which could prolong the war in the north a bit. But, you know, it depends what happens to the regime--the regime starts to unravel. This isn't simply about military operations. There's, you know, a lot of psychology involved.

But it seems to have also had some effect. I mean, it's kind of peculiar. Saddam, this student of diplomacy, looking at the Turks for quite a while, and not redeploying his forces from the north. He has a lot of forces sitting empty in the north, and so it's almost as if the bombing attack on the first night--it may not have killed Saddam, might have injured him, might not have injured him at all. But it certainly seems to have made him run to ground. And so if your goal is to inhibit communications and command and control to the Iraqi Army, the attacks seem to have had that effect in Baghdad. And the same thing, the presence of a northern option seems to have caused Saddam to keep a lot of forces in the north where they're not doing at any good.

MR. DONNELLY: I'm told by my producer that we have a chance for a couple more questions. I believe there was somebody down towards the front. Very quickly, please.

MR. : Would we be in a better position tactically if we had employed an armored division in addition? Or is this going to take a little longer in the--

MR. DONNELLY: Well, 3rd ID is an armored division.

MR. : Well, but it's a mechanized infantry division.

MR. DONNELLY: So it has five battalions of tanks instead of six battalions of tanks. We're really talking marginal difference here. It's got--one unit we also have not seen, I don't know exactly where it is, is the 3rd Armored Cavalry Regiment. That would be another 100-plus tanks that we could bring to bear.

We've got ample firepower to do this job, and our ability to attack with attack helicopters and with fixed-wing aircraft, we can do essentially close air support with strategic bombers at this point. So we do not lack for firepower.

Michael?

MR. VICKERS: I don't think--again, we still have the option of bringing reinforcing forces, as I say, a decision that we'll face perhaps sometime the end of this week or early next week.

Prior to the war, I think the confidence levels of the 1st Marine Expeditionary Force commander and 3rd ID commander, that they could do Baghdad essentially on their own. And part of the reason for that confidence, I believe, is the way the defenses are deployed. There really isn't a lot of heavy resistance within Baghdad that, say, additional shock power would help.

The benefit of additional forces, I think, as was the earlier question about the 4th ID in the north, would make mopping-up operations in the south go faster, should they need to be done. I mean, again, it remains to be seen what happens in the next few weeks, politically as well as militarily. But more forces in the south would have aided with Nasiriyah and Basra and all these other areas.

MR. DONNELLY: One footnote about that. One way in which a larger force might have helped is simply to give the human beings involved a little bit of a break. There's an interesting column by Ralph Peters in the Post today--I don't agree with every aspect of it, but, look, both from pilots to the soldiers on the ground, these guys have been in fairly constant action for six days now, and even with a good rest pattern, which every commander insists upon, these guys are getting pretty worn out probably just, you know, staying awake. And this could be moments where people make mistakes.

But, on the other hand, to have move a large force into battle would itself have delayed the--essentially we began the campaign in the exploitation mode. That's kind of backwards, but it gives us the option where we are now to continue the fight if we so choose. And there would have been no way to conduct a passage of lines and maintain the momentum that we've seen over the past six days. So there wouldn't have been an easy answer to that question, surely.

Thank you all for your forbearance, and see you next time.

[Pause.]

MS. PLETKA: If everybody would just give us two minutes, we will have our universe seated, and we'll get started.

[Pause.]

MS. PLETKA: Good morning, again, everybody. I'm sorry about the delay. Richard Perle will be here in a minute. He's just caught up on the phone. But why don't we go ahead and start in any case, and we're following on Tom Donnelly and Mike Vickers' military briefing.

We have with us today the Honorable James Woolsey, former Director of Central Intelligence. Wait, Jim, I'm pulling out your full bio here. Also, he's a vice president and an officer at Booz Allen Hamilton since July of 2002, and an officer in the firm's Global Assurance Practice. He was previously a partner at Shea & Gardner in Washington, D.C., and Director of Central Intelligence from 1993 to 1995. His full bio is on the sheet attached.

Michael Ledeen, known to all of us, is a resident scholar in the Freedom Chair at the American Enterprise Institute. He is an expert in contemporary history, international affairs, Middle East affairs, and pretty much everything else, I think.

Richard Perle, the absent Richard Perle, is a resident fellow at AEI and co-chairman of Hollinger Digital. He is also the Chairman of the Defense Policy Board.

And I, contrary to advertisement, am not going to be speaking. I'm going to be moderating because that's what I like to do best.

So, without much further ado, I'd actually like to--I'll not say anything but make two comments.

One is that I just came back from overseas, and it's really remarkable. There are two different wars being fought: the war that's covered in Europe and the war that's covered in America. And you wouldn't think that they were the same war.

The war that's being covered in Europe, in France, Germany, and Austria, we're losing. We're killing a lot of civilians. Bombs are not precision-guided. The embedded reporters are being constrained in their reporting. And things are going very badly for us.

Here in the United States, things seem to be a little bit different, but I do think it's important to understand that there are some--there's very, very different reporting going on about the course of events in this war than what we see here in the United States. And understanding the roots of those differences is perhaps to understand the divide that exists between us and Europe.

The other thing that I'd like to mention is an e-mail I got last night from a friend who's talking to people in southern Iraq. And I think both Michael and Jim may be talking a little bit about the Shi'ites in Iraq. But one of the things that that e-mail said was that the Iraqis can't understand why there aren't any Iraqi opposition traveling with the U.S. military, because if they were there, they were speaking Arabic, if they were locals, there would be a lot better communication between the U.S. military and the locals on the ground. And I think that's something for us to think about. Perhaps we wouldn't be making the kind of mistakes that were made about the 51st in assuming that a major was a general, that someone who wasn't a commander was a commander, if we had some Iraqi opposition figures along with the military. So it is something we're thinking about, and that's my two cents.

And, with that, I'm going to turn to Michael first, and I think we'll go around the table, assuming that Richard shows up. Michael, would you start? We'll take questions after the end. Thanks.

MR. LEDEEN: I think probably when all is over, the battle for Basra will be nothing as compared with the battle over the INC. And it's a great question, and I have posed it several times because it has never seemed to me smart to have made the battle for Iraq almost entirely a military battle when there were so many political elements operating in our favor and which we could, and I thought should, have deployed. And in the war against terror masters, I argued that we should have used the north and south no-fly zones as free Iraq zones, recognized the Iraqi opposition as the legitimate government of the country, urged the Iraqi people to run away from Saddam and live like normal people under a normal government. And I think we'd be in much better shape.

So then we would have gone into Iraq as defending a legitimate democratic government and liberating the rest of the country. And I don't know how well discipline would have held within the regime under those circumstances. I think it probably would have been less efficient.

I just want to make three quick points. The first is that the discipline about which a lot of people have been surprised, the discipline of some of the military forces, reminds us that Stalin really is the model for Saddam's Iraq, because it's a basic Stalinist method to put political commissars inside military units to guarantee loyalty and no defectors and so forth. And if you want a good update on this, go back and watch "The Hunt for Red October" again, where Sean Connery is almost killed by a KGB commissar.

Second is that terror and Saddam are one and the same thing, that the various people who tried to make this distinction were making a distinction without a difference. Because as we now see, the methods used against us are a combination of sort of standard military practice and terrorist techniques. All the various things that we're encountering in Iraq which are emphasized to greater and lesser extents, depending on which network you watch and which newspaper you read, are textbook methods.

We knew starting in the 1980s that anytime Hezbollah staged a terrorist attack, their terrorists would immediately retreat to an area where they were surrounded by nuns, doctors, and children. Israel found in the Lebanese war in 1982 that PLO forces often fired on Israeli troops from inside mosques, from the courtyards of hospitals and infirmaries and day-care centers and so forth.

The business of people waving white flags and then suddenly turning out to have guns hidden inside the flags, people in civilian clothing carrying out military or paramilitary operations--all of that is right out of the Hezbollah and Islamic Jihad manual. It's been going on for years, at least 20 years. And so the kind of thing we're facing is old and should not surprise anyone, and it's a bit annoying to see that it seems to have surprised at least some of our military people. But this is ongoing.

And I want to raise one question to which I have no answer, but it fascinates me, given my proclivities to see state-sponsored terrorists all over the place. Why is it being assumed that the people who surrendered are the same people who reappeared carrying out terrorist actions against us? Is there any reason to believe that? Or is it just some people disappeared and then other people appeared, and the kind of Occam's Razor approach required us to say that they were the same people? Why shouldn't they be different people?

Why shouldn't we assume that the people who said they were surrendering and going home really surrendered and went home? Has anybody checked? Do we have any names?

And why shouldn't we assume that the people who are attacking us now are part of the various Hezbollah, Al Qaeda and so forth forces that we know were infiltrated into Iraq from both Syria and Iran before the war started and why I pose it as a question.

Third and finally is the Shi'ite question, since Dani provoked me. Iraq is a country with a Shi'ite majority, but not all Shi'ites are the same. Iraqi Shi'ites are different from Iranian Shi'ites. And a great deal of the political battle in Iraq and for the future of Iraq will be waged for the loyalty of Iraqi Shi'ites.

At least at the moment, so far as I know, the Iraqi Shi'ites have no love for Iranian Shi'ites, and Iraqi Shi'ites could very well be enlisted to preserve the country from subversion and terrorism coming from across the border.

If, on the other hand, we decide in keeping with some of the unfortunate stereotypes that have dominated government thinking here for many years that all Shi'ites are the same, Shi'ites and Sunnis can't cooperate over anything, but all Shi'ites inevitably cooperate among one another, then we may risk committing grievous political errors in the future and in the near future.

MS. PLETKA: Thank you, Michael, very much.

Richard, would you go next?

MR. PERLE: I am grateful. This means I don't have to go up and explain what's going on in Iraq.

I'd like to make three or four points, and I commend for those of you who haven't seen it Richard Cohen's piece on the op-ed page of the Washington Post today, the point of which is that we will be judged not only by the outcome of this war but by the manner in which we fight this war. And he then appropriately observes the lengths to which American forces have gone to fight this war in a way that minimizes the loss of life, including the loss of Iraqi lives, including even the loss of the lives of Iraqi military personnel. And I know Michael has been talking about this, but our troops in the field have exposed themselves to risk and I fear some have died out of a concern to accept surrenders rather than do what many would do, including the Iraqis, which is simply shoot anyone within range.

You will have noticed that when it was believed, wrongly, that there were downed airmen along the banks of the Tigris River, the Iraqis set fire to the grass in which they thought they were hiding, obviously to burn them alive, which is not only contrary to all the rules of war but an indication of the nature of this regime, setting fire and shooting into the area where they thought downed airmen might be.

But I want to address just a few of the issues that have arisen in the voluminous commentary that we are all seeing in the media. Why are U.S. forces not being greeted as liberators, as some of us had long suggested they would be?

First of all, I think there have been a number of instances in which American forces and coalition forces have indeed been greeted as liberators. We have chosen not to go into the cities in order not to impede rapid movement toward Baghdad. I happen to think that's the right strategy. If we were to proceed in such a manner that we would first secure each and every one of the populated areas along the way, it would slow us down significantly. And the war plan does not call for accepting delays of that kind, so it is perfectly understandable that our forces have advanced in the way that they have.

One result of that is you have not had a situation in which it would be possible, except for those instances that we have seen, for large numbers of people in urban areas to express their belief that they have been liberated. Just be patient. When this war is over, we will have the full sense of how Iraqis feel about the war and the -- [Side A ends].

-- and liberation.

What should we make of the stiff resistance? "Stiff resistance" is not my term, but it's the standard term I'm hearing now on television and elsewhere. I'm seeing the same reports you are, and it seems to me that this stiff resistance amounts to pockets of resistance here and there, but it is nothing that could be described as a cohesive and coordinated resistance.

There will be resistance in further engagements. No one ever said that there would not. But the magnitude of the resistance is entirely consistent with the view that this will be a short war and end in a decisive result.

Why have there not been mass surrenders? And, Michael, you may have addressed this before I came into the room. My understanding is that Iraqi military units are choosing not to fight by returning to their homes and laying down their arms. That from their point of view may have some benefits with respect to surrender, but the practical effect is exactly the same as surrender. If they cease to be an organized fighting force, if they've returned to their homes, if they have abandoned the field of battle, that amounts to surrender. And the fact that coalition forces have advanced as far as they have suggests very substantial withdrawal from the battlefield or the equipment of surrender.

Some people may suggest that they have left the battlefield only to return as guerrillas later. You can't rule out that there will be some of that activity, but nothing on the scale of the withdrawals from the battlefield. Most Iraqis, as many of us have long suggested, are not prepared to fight for Saddam.

Coalition objectives in the early stages of this war are now crystal clear, and I just want to comment on a couple of those.

We went to great lengths to secure oil fields. This was done with one interest in mind, and that is the future of the Iraqi people and the capacity of the Iraqi nation to rebuild itself under a new and decent regime. We could have been indifferent that. We were not. We risked American lives to secure those oil fields. We have secured them for the people of Iraq, and that argument about our motives with respect to oil will be settled when this war is over and it is clear to everyone that that oil belongs to the people of Iraq and will be produced for the people of Iraq.

Secondly, we went to great lengths to secure Umm Qasr. There were two principal reasons for doing that. The first is that we feared an environmental catastrophe of Saddam Hussein opened the valves on pipelines that could have gushed into the Gulf. He did a great deal of environmental damage in the last Gulf War, and we were concerned to stop that. Most Americans don't live in the Gulf or vacation in the Gulf. This was done in the interests of Iraqis and others who live in the Gulf and at considerable risk to American forces and coalition forces. And, secondly, we were well aware of the need to have a port through which humanitarian assistance could flow. That is the port of choice for this purpose, and it was considered a vital part of the conduct of this war from the beginning that we provide sustenance to the Iraqi people during the war.

Those are the only points I wish to make, in a sense, an elaboration of the theme that the conduct of this war by this nation and its coalition partners is something of which we can be enormously proud.

MS. PLETKA: Jim? The fate of the man whose name begins with W.

MR. WOOLSEY: Right. Well, I see I'm supposed to talk about the role of intelligence in the war in Iraq, and I am going to say a few words about that, but not intelligence in the narrow sense but in its broadest sense, namely, doing all this in a wise manner as distinct from an unwise one.

First of all, I do think that the vote in the Turkish parliament which kept the 4th Division from opening the second front in the north, was substantial and important and has slowed things down. And Michael has a piece coming out about this tomorrow, but those who were involved in promoting that, just as those who are involved in shipping GPS jammers to the Iraqis during the middle of the war, I think should have a great deal to answer for in the days to come.

In my judgment, we will still prevail. Certainly, the Fedayeen and the fighting in the south in the cities is something that we wish were not occurring. But I think that the U.S. and British armed forces, and Australians, will get the job done--perhaps not as quickly as we might have hoped if we'd had a two-pronged attack going on, Baghdad and the Takriti heartland, rather than one.

But what I want to say a word about is 1942. 1942 was not, until the end, a particularly happy year in World War II, but Roosevelt and Churchill found the time, almost immediately after the United States entered World War II, to draft the Atlantic Charter. And World War II was fought for the freedom of the people of the Atlantic community, and the people of Europe knew that, just as they had known that World War I was fought for Wilson's 14 Points, and I might say, after Antietam, the people in the American South knew that the American Civil War was being fought for the freedom of individuals, not for a narrower political objective.

And certainly Harry Truman, John Kennedy, Ronald Reagan, I think, probably above all, made quite clear during the Cold War that the Cold War was a war of freedom against tyranny. And we won it in no small measure because we convinced the Sakharovs and the Walesas and the Havels and the Solidarities that we were on their side and this was, as the Civil War had been, as World War I was, as World War II was, a war of freedom against tyranny.

The key thing from the point of view of prevailing, I think, in Iraq and beyond is to keep everyone focused on that. And certainly we have our French and Russian friends--and these days I suppose I must use the term "friend" advisedly--saying rather intensely that this is in the Americans' eyes a war about oil. Actually, as Colin Powell has pointed out in any of our military and other victories of the 20th century, we have at most asked for a few acres in Normandy to bury our dead in. We didn't seize Volkswagen and Mercedes when we conquered Germany, and we're not going to seize the Iraqi oil fields for the benefit of American consumers. If we wanted to have cheap oil, it would have been very easy. You just relax the sanctions on Saddam and let him pump it.

This is not a war for oil. This is a war for freedom. And certainly one aspect of the freedom is denying to a regime such as Saddam Hussein's, with its proven record of using weapons of mass destruction, the certainty of having them, and its ties of one kind or another to terrorist groups, denying them those weapons that they can use for purposes of terror. But that is all part and parcel of the notion that we have to keep in the front of everybody's mind, that this war and further efforts, whether by military means or not, in the Middle East are essentially a long-term war, and that's why I like Eliot Cohen's formulation that this is World War IV--World War III having been the Cold War--that this is a war for freedom against tyranny.

I think that what is current in a lot of discussion about this is the notion, especially in Europe but to some extent in this country: You crazy Americans, there you go being idealistic again. Everybody knows that Arabs can't run democracies.

I think there is only one word for that notion, and that word is "racist."

Now, it is true that of the 22 Arab states, none is a democracy. Several are well governed and have substantial civil liberties, but none is a democracy.

I'm the new Chairman of the Board of Freedom House, and we put out a report every year on the state of democracy in the world. What's interesting is that although at the time of World War I there were about 10 or 12 democracies in the world--it was a world largely of kingdoms and empires and colonies and dictatorships of different kinds--today there are 121, over 62 percent of the world's governments, 89 free, according to Freedom House, another 30 or so partly free, like, say, Russia.

But, nonetheless, going from a dozen to over 120 democracies in the lifetime of many individuals still living, some 80 years or so, is an amazing thing. The world has never seen anything like that before. And that development was one where all along the way the smart money, the highly sophisticated individuals said, X will never be able to be a democracy. And you can fill in the blanks: Germany, Japan, those with an Asian culture, states that are predominantly Catholic, and so on and so on.

But, you know, along the way, although we've made our compromises, some of them wise, some of them unwise, one way or another, together with our allies and with people like Sakharov and Walesa and Havel, the world has in those 80-plus years gone from a dozen or so to 121 democracies, and each time the smart money said the Germans will never be able to figure out to run a democracy, the Japanese will never be able to figure out, nobody with an Asian culture background can figure it out because they're not from Northern Europe, Catholic countries won't be able to figure it out. Every single time that smart money has been wrong--not always wrong in the short run, but, you know, somehow over the years, not only in Germany and Japan but the Taiwanese, the Filipinos, the Thais, the Mongolians, the Russians--remember a few years ago it was said they missed the Renaissance, they missed the Reformation, they missed the Enlightenment, how in the world could they ever run a democracy? Well, it's not a perfect one, but they're learning.

This takes time. It takes effort. And I think it ultimately will be successful. The problem is certainly not Islam. The majority of the world's Muslims live in democracies. If you add together the populations, the Muslim population of India with that of Indonesia and Bangladesh, Turkey, and other Muslim states, the substantial majority of the world's 1.2 billion Muslims live in democracies.

There is a special problem with the Middle East having to do with its history, having to do with the influence of the Wahabis from Saudi Arabia, the Islamists, their first cousins, and remaining fascist regimes--the Ba'athist regimes of Iraq and Syria. But Europe looked pretty bad 70, 80 years ago, too.

So I think that the key thing from the point of view of prevailing here is that we keep everyone focused on the fact that although they are sometimes pesky and they sometimes disagree with you--Turkey, Russia, France--democracies tend not to make war on one another. And they also tend not to be very good hosts for terrorism and threats to use weapons of mass destruction. That comes basically from the rogue states, the terrorist-allied states. And that needs to change, and we are going to have to be involved for the next, I think, several decades in helping change the face of the Middle East. And the key alliance here, just as it was in the Cold War, over and above our military power,the key alliance is going to be with the moderate and sensible and reasonable Muslims who constitute the vast major of the world's Muslims and their understanding that we are on their side, just as we were on the side of the people of Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union in the Cold War.

This will take time. It will take effort, and there will be some cloudy days. We may be in the middle of a cloudy day right now. But we need to think the way Roosevelt and Churchill did in 1942.

Thank you.

MS. PLETKA: Thank you very much.

Excuse my voice. We're going to go to questions. I wanted to mention that no lesser authority than Le Monde yesterday in its editorial announced that this war was not about petroleum and that anybody who thought so was incorrect. So now we have it. We know it must be true.

MR. WOOLSEY: We've won.

MS. PLETKA: When Le Monde and the New York Times and the Washington Post agree, we know the world is in sync. You know, we've been doing these briefings for quite some time now, "The Road to War," and now that we're at war, and one of the conclusions that I think you could say that we've come to with all of our guests, both behind the dais and in the audience, is that the shape of the war will determine the shape of the peace. It seems very much a theme. And somehow, strangely, in the questioning that has developed since the beginning of the war, that seems to have been forgotten.

In fact, I don't know whether you addressed this, Tom, at all in your presentation earlier, but a lot of the questions that we hear are: How is the fact that the war is going slowly or badly going to affect all the planning for post-Saddam Iraq? The war has been going on for less than a week, and if you think about it from the perspective of shaping the future of Iraq, and you think that we have refused, our forces have refused to be drawn into fighting house to house where Iraqi military have chosen to hide themselves, have chosen to avoid neighborhoods, have chosen to avoid civilian targets, and are instead bypassing them not just for military reasons but also for very sound political reasons, then you recognize that the shape of the future of Iraq, in fact, looks a lot better for that rather than a lot worse.

So that's my last editorial--well, I won't say last, but almost my last editorial comment. We'll go to questions now. Please wait for the microphone, identify yourself, and please, make sure that your question is a question and not a speech. Thank you.

Please?

MR. : Thank you. Welcome back, Danielle. Nijar Shamdeen (ph), Kurdistan Regional Government, KDP, Iraq. Speaking about focus, speaking about intelligence, and speaking about war and peace, what in your opinion, Mr. Woolsey, has been done with regards to collecting enough intelligence to prevent Saddam from attacking or doing a pre-emptive attack, chemical or biological, on the front, the front--well, the northern front, sorry, where now the Kurds have also joined and the Kurdish people in the north are very petrified and scared? Thank you.

MR. WOOLSEY: Given Saddam's history of having used chemical weapons against the Kurds at Halabja and otherwise, I certainly can't blame them for being worried. I think we all are.

Certainly the kabuki that was gone through with respect to UN inspections in which some of our friends in the Security Council pronounced themselves uncertain as to whether Saddam had chemical and bacteriological weapons was just that. Everybody knows that he has chemical and bacteriological weapons left over from the '90s, if not in continued production in massive amounts, and Colin Powell made the case very effectively before the Security Council.

I think this has probably been just about the top priority, along with leadership identification and location and the like, of uss intelligence for the last number of months, zeroing in on sites from which particularly chemical or bacteriological weapons may be dispersed.

Storage is important, and one needs to find them as soon as possible, but in some ways even more important is methods to dispense them--unmanned aerial vehicles, artillery and the like. And my hunch is that with respect to the focus of a number of the air attacks, what has been concentrated on in part has been anyplace where a dispensing mechanism--artillery, UAVs, et cetera--might be located.

Of course, one needs to exert some caution in actually attacking sites where chemical or bacteriological weapons are, lest you disperse them by the attack. And this creates a serious and demanding situation.

I think Saddam would not hesitate at all to use chemical or, for that matter, bacteriological weapons against Iraqis, Kurds, and Shi'ites, and against allied forces. And if he could pull it off, I think he would not hesitate at all to provide bacteriological weapons, which are a lot more easily carried and more lethal per unit weight, substantially. I think he would not hesitate to use bacteriological weapons via terrorist groups more widely than in the Middle East, including in Europe, or Britain especially, or here.

I think that one big concern is that he has for years, we know, been working in his program on, among other things, the genetic modification of bacteriological agents to make them resistant to vaccines and antibiotics, and some of the bacteriological agents that the Iraqis have weaponized are of long-term duration before they have effect. The most hideous in some ways is aflatoxin. No other country in the world has ever even considered weaponizing aflatoxin because its only effect is long-term creation of liver cancer, particularly in children. So it might keep a lieutenant from becoming a colonel, but it is not of any battlefield utility even in the mid-run whatsoever.

Some of these types of bacteriological agents are ones that in a way I guess I'm more worried about even than the chemicals, which at least--or are often of relatively limited local effect. And if he does not control the air, as he did over Halabja, if he does not have artillery in place that can deliver the weapons, if he doesn't have the unmanned aerial vehicles, then I think the effect of chemical weapons use could be substantially restricted by the right types of attacks. But terrorist use of bacteriological weapons is another matter entirely, and that I think is potentially very troubling.

MR. LEDEEN: Plus there's this wonderful sandstorm which everybody is complaining about because it grounds Apache helicopters, but it also makes it very hard to use chemical weapons. It gives us a chance to rest and prepare and not worry too much that we're going to get those things.

MR. PERLE: And don't forget, unless I'm mistaken, President Chirac has said that if Saddam uses chemical weapons, France will enter the war. So he may well be deterred.

MR. : Well, then we'll be safe, right?

MR. : Yeah. He didn't say which side he was going to enter the war on.

[Blank spot on tape.]

MS. PLETKA: Down here on the left, and then we'll move over this way. Don't worry. I can see you.

MR. : I have a very bland question. Gentlemen, for all three of you, where do you see the level of acceptance of U.S. society in terms of casualties, not only on the U.S. side but as well on the Iraqi side, and in terms of duration of the operation? Thank you.

MR. PERLE: The--

[Inaudible/simultaneous comments from audience.]

MS. PLETKA: I'm sorry. Just a moment.

[Pause.]

MS. PLETKA: Okay. You asked your question. Would you repeat it, actually?

MR. LEDEEN: The question was what level of casualties will the American public digest, and George Will had a lot to say about that this morning. He said, you know, if the Civil War had been on television, we might well have two countries here today if all that bloodshed and so forth had been shown.

I think it all depends how the war goes, and I think the level of casualties is secondary. I mean, it may sound like an odd thing to say. But all the great scholars who have studied American character have come to the conclusion that we are a warlike people and that we love war. And one of my favorite comments on American character, which is Patton's speech at the beginning of the movie, where he says, "Americans love war. We love fighting. We've always fought. We enjoy it. We're good at it," and so forth.

What we hate is not casualties but losing. And if the war goes well and if the American public has the conviction that we're being well led and that our people are fighting well and that we're winning, I don't think casualties are going to be the issue.

If the American public gets the idea that we're doing poorly, that we're badly led, that the war plan is inferior, that we're being outmaneuvered, outwitted, and our guys are dying on behalf of a losing cause, then they will turn against it, and that's the usual rule.

MR. WOOLSEY: I agree, and I think that what mattered in this regard was September 11th. This country's mood and attitude changed fundamentally that day, I think, just as it did December 7, 1941. Walter Russell Mead of the Council on Foreign Relations in New York has a wonderful book out called "Special Providence." It's an ironic take of a quote from Bismarck that the Lord God has special providence for fools, drunkards, and the United States of America.

Mead is using it ironically because he says it's not really special providence. We've done reasonably well over two and a quarter centuries of defense and foreign policy because--it's too elaborate to go into here, but he has several schools of thought that have come together at key points in America's dealing with the outside world, Wilsonian, Hamiltonian, Jeffersonian. And the interesting one in the context of September 11 is Jacksonian. And Mead by that means Andrew Jackson because he says Jackson was quite clearly, as a duelist, as an Indian fighter, as victor in the Battle of New Orleans, as President, an individual who, once he decided someone was an enemy, was ruthless in totally destroying them.

And that side of the American way of making war hadn't really been seen since the mid-1940s. Korea was limited. Vietnam was limited and drawn out. And we had not been directly attacked. But we were September 11th. And out there, I think, in the hinterland there are tens of millions of Americans who know that fundamentally the President is right in tying the idea of fighting terrorism, particularly the terrorism that came here and attacked us, with the idea of dealing with Saddam Hussein and the rogue regimes of the Middle East. Whatever the details of who was involved in precisely what planning of which particular operation, the links are sufficiently clearly there, that one is fighting terrorism when one fights Saddam.

And so I personally believe that there is a very high level of tolerance for doing whatever is necessary to win this as long as, I think, Michael's conditions are observed.

MS. PLETKA: Actually, I'd like to say something because none of you said it and I'm going to say it on your behalf. The gentleman from the Kurdish Regional Government, you know, it's not American style to hold up posters and put people on TV like Saddam does. But if we wanted to, we could take the pictures from 1988 of Halabja mothers--it's hard for me to even--it's hard for me to even say it--of mothers and babies dead like this. We could take the satellite photos of southern Iraq--excuse me. I'm just getting over a strep throat as well. We could take the satellite photos that I know that my colleagues have seen of southern Iraq where 65 percent of the country's Shi'ites live and show you the photos from 1972, from 1982, and from 1995. And I actually have them in my office if anybody would like to see them, because they show the systematic environmental destruction of the Shi'ite heartland.

This was a concerted campaign by Saddam Hussein to drain the marshlands, not because they were unpleasant or unattractive, but because they were the habitat of a group in his country that he wanted to repress. There is not a chance in hell that any U.S. military campaign, no matter how harsh, could kill as many people as Saddam killed in those years. And it's very important that we have that perspective. This isn't about a week or a month or six months or 10 or 12 years. This is about this campaign versus the last 30 years of Ba'ath tyranny. And I think it's important to remember that.

Did I say what you wanted to say?

MS. PLETKA: Just quickly.

MR. : I think now the time has come to educate those demonstrators to focus on the real thing rather than just make it like a picnic. Thank you.

MS. PLETKA: Okay. This lady right here?

MS. PAGE: I'm Susan Page with USA Today. Mr. Perle, you said in your remarks that everything that's happened so far in the war is still consistent with a short war. And I wondered--of course, it's impossible to be precise, but if you could give us some idea of what you mean by a short war.

And, also, there's been some criticism that the public and some commentators have been taken aback by the course of the war over the past week because not enough was done beforehand by President Bush and supporters of taking action, you know, to prepare the public for how difficult it was likely to be. And I was wondering if you could respond whether you think that criticism is fair.

MR. PERLE: Well, when I say a short war--and I'm not going to hazard a guess. I don't know whether Tom Donnelly did so in his earlier briefing this morning. But the last Gulf War began with five weeks--was it?--or six weeks of intensive bombing, followed by a rapid 100-hour ground operation. We are now on day six of this war. The Six-Day War was thought to be something of a miracle, and it was in a much smaller theater.

So I think short continues to be my guess. I can't tell you exactly how many days or how many weeks. But by historical standards, this will be a short war, made longer by the care that we are taking to preserve life to the maximum extent that we can.

As for preparation, I think what we've seen in the last 72 hours is surprise expressed by commentators who must have--I think we can infer from the surprise that they were not appropriately aware of what an operation like this would entail. As I said, the resistance has not been cohesive or organized. It's been in pockets. It has depended largely on the exploitation of violations of the rules of law, soldiers in civilian uniforms, soldiers staging ambushes in which they present themselves for surrender as civilians for surrender, soldiers hiding in civilian areas, military forces deployed in civilian areas where they could only be attacked with decisive power at the risk of surrounding civilian lives.

There is nothing unexpected here except we are seeing dramatically the way in which the Iraqi side is fighting this war.

MR. : Could I just add one (?)-ical point since we're scholars here? That is, a lot of the surprise is due to the ignorance of the commentators, and that is, nobody studies military history so nobody knows what a war looks like, and everybody--you know, the complaint I always make is that nobody knows what a revolution looks like because everybody thinks that the Hollywood versions of the storming of the Bastille constitute what a revolution really is.

So when you see a real revolution, you don't recognize it. Nobody knows what--nobody has any context in which to put, in which to evaluate this thing. And then, of course, the other is the dreadful obligation of filling 24 hours a day with words and pictures, which would drive anybody crazy.

MS. PLETKA: I'm looking for a microphone. This lady back here, please?

MS. SIMON: Sue Simon, Capital Insights Group. I have a question about the intelligence of what we might know about the regime and what's going on in Baghdad. We seemed when the war started to have a sense of where the top leadership was and a good shot at them, and now it seems as if, at least from the media's perspective, we don't really know where they are or what's going on in Baghdad. And perhaps maybe we do and it's just not coming through to the public? Or perhaps you could tell us the nature of our intelligence inside Baghdad.

MR. WOOLSEY: Well, I noted, when someone decided to talk to the press back in 1998 and to say that, gee, isn't it interesting, we're listening in on bin Laden's satellite telephone, and then that source went away, that the way one should handle particularly signals intercepts and any kind of agent reports about things like leadership location or any of these extremely sensitive issues in the war on terrorism or now, is the way that the product of the Enigma code breaking was handled by the British in World War II and the way we handled the product of our code breaking of the Japanese codes--namely, very, very few people knew anything at all about even the possibility that such intelligence might exist.

And if I were DCI still, I think my advice to the President would be to take what are called the bigot lists--it's from "to Gibraltar" backwards; it's not what it sounds like--the lists of people who have access to intelligence on some of these really sensitive source information and to cut back the access list by approximately 99.9 percent. Military officials who are involved in immediate operations, such as retargeting F-111s to hit a specific bunker, have a need to know. The President and a few other people have a need to know, and that is about it.

And if we did that, I think we would have a much better confidence that those who were fighting the war and the President and his immediate advisers had the intelligence they needed, but we wouldn't have a bureaucracy of people who like to feel self-important by giving background briefings to the press saying, Hey, here's how we knew where Saddam was, oops, wrong on that, well, I didn't tell you about that agent, maybe it was our listening in on such-and-such a link.

I would cut back the access lists 99.9 percent so that nobody could talk about things like that, if at all possible.

MS. PLETKA: Okay. The microphone.

MS. SWEET: Hi. Lynne Sweet (ph) from the Chicago Sun Times. Given what you said, then, is the information that's already out there about the targeting of the bunker that revealed that we must have had either human or electronic intelligence, how damaging is that at this point?

MR. WOOLSEY: If I knew--and I don't--what the source of any of that information was, what I would try to do would be to find some way to mislead you.

MS. PLETKA: The gentleman here? And then we'll go to the back.

MR. HAYDEN: Brian Hayden (ph). There's been some discussion about efforts to encourage democracy, and I believe Mr. Woolsey characterized it as a fight for freedom against tyranny. How do you respond to the critics who say there may be a credibility problem due to our support of the governments of Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Pakistan?

MR. WOOLSEY: I'll say a quick word, and then Richard and Michael I'm sure have thoughts on this, too.

In World War II, we were allied for three years and eight months with history's greatest murderer--Joseph Stalin--because we had a more immediate problem--Adolf Hitler. And along the way, during World War II and the Cold War, we made common cause here and there with Franco, with Salazar, with Chiang Kai-shek, with various South Korean dictators, got a long a bit with Pinochet, and so on.

And if you look at those countries today--Spain, Portugal, Taiwan, South Korea, Chile--they're all democracies. I don't think we took our eye off--Russia. I don't think we took our eye off the ball over the long run, but we made some tactical compromises. Sometimes those tactical compromises were absolutely essential and right, even allying with Stalin. Sometimes they were stupid. Sometimes they illustrate the proposition of Churchill's that the Americans always do the right thing but, unfortunately, only after they've exhausted all other possibilities.

But whether they were smart compromises or stupid compromises, we have, in part by forging temporary alliances with some dictators here and there, overall helped move the world, as I said, from about a dozen democracies 80 some years ago to over 120 today. So our strategic approach hasn't been too bad even though tactically from time to time one can fault these. But I don't think in tactical terms one can ever say one would only form close working relationships with other democracies. We're in a fight. We've got to win.

MR. PERLE: I agree entirely with what Jim has just had to say. But let me say that our interest in democracy is, in fact, in part an interest in our own security. Democracies do not start aggressive wars. We've seen how difficult it is to gather support even for a just war in this democracy and in the democracies of our European friends and allies. We benefit enormously, Americans are more secure, when the world is more democratic. Nowhere, I think, is this more likely to prove true than in the Middle East, because you now have in that region a number of dictatorships, and dictatorships start wars. They start wars in part to remain in power in their own country. They need external enemies in order to continue to exert authoritarian control over their own population.

So the more we can do to bring self-government to that region and to other countries in the world, the safer we are going to be.

Now, Jim is right that on the way to that long-term objective, there are inevitably compromises where short-term security requirements come into play, and they're regrettable. No one is happy about having to make those compromises. And some of our most serious mistakes have been to cling longer than was necessary to temporary alliances, and Saddam Hussein is one of them. He was the lesser of the evils as this government saw it during the war between Iraq and Iran. But there was no excuse for tilting toward Saddam Hussein for a day longer than was absolutely necessary, and I regret to say that wasn't the policy of the government at the time.

All I can say about the future is that those who say we are hypocritical because we have sometimes associated ourselves with dictatorial regimes should look to the future.

Now, with respect to countries in the region that are now dictatorial, we are doing a lot--not enough, in my view--to remonstrate with those governments, to urge them to move in a direction of more representative government, to pressure them, if you will. But if the suggestion is that a readiness to use force against Saddam Hussein in the interest of freeing the Iraqi people somehow imposes a requirement that we use military force against every other non-democratic regime, I think that is just a silly argument. And I know people make it, and I'm not suggesting you did. You didn't. But it sets a standard that is, I think, tendentious and disingenuous and not a real argument.

There are things we can do and there are things we can't do, and we're not going to make war on the world for democracy. That has never been the view of those of us who believe deeply in trying to bring democracy to the Middle East. But we should be using all the instruments of American influence to accomplish that purpose, and most of those instruments are not military.

MR. LEDEEN: I just have one quick addition. I think we've made some serious mistakes about supporting dictatorships along the way, and I think we've even done it sometimes not out of tactical necessity but out of baser motives and so forth.

However, the great thing about the United States is that even when the government makes terrible mistakes, as it has, as all governments do, it generally proves to be short-lived. There's self-correcting mechanism, and you should notice that historically the United States, unlike many other countries, has been an extremely unreliable ally of dictators. And I can give you people to go interview, some alive, some dead--you're not from the Washington Post, right? So you can't interview dead people. But the--but, I mean, you can go talk to people from the Shah of Iran to Marcos to baby Doc to--you know, name it. It's a very long list of people who thought, who relied on the friendship of the United States and decided that, you know, they were so important to us that we were going to stand by them always. And we don't because the American people have limited patience for alliances with dictators.

MS. PLETKA: The seance is in your office right after this.

Next question? Actually, if you could take that gentleman in the back, please, standing up.

MR. MARSHALL: Josh Marshall of the Hill, the Washington Monthly. This question is for Mr. Woolsey and Mr. Perle. You made the analogy before to our alliance with the Soviet Union during World War II, and obviously not only during--you know, not only did we sort of switch that alliance, obviously, after the fall of the Third Reich, but even before, there were many people who saw it even then as, you know, just a momentary tactical alliance.

The other countries that come to mind in this case who might be the Soviet Union, I assume would be Saudi Arabia, other countries like that. So could either of you give a time frame to, when Iraq is democratized, what our relations will be with Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Pakistan, et cetera?

MR. WOOLSEY: Well, Saudi Arabia is a very complex country. Many of our current problems I think derive from the extraordinary influence of the Wahabi sect, which has been allied with the House of Sauds since the 18th century. And the Wahabis are pretty much on a parallel, I think, within Islam with Torquemada and the Dominicans around him who ran the Spanish Inquisition in the late 15th and early 16th century. Torquemada hated all Jews, Muslims, and Christians who weren't like him and he liked to burn people. The Wahabis hate all Jews, Christians, and Muslims who aren't like them, and they like to lop off heads and stone but, you know, close enough for government work.

I think that one really disastrous thing happened for the peace and stability of the region and the world when essentially in 1979, following the Shah's fall and the takeover by Khomeini and the Shi'ite religious extremists in Iran, and the seizure of the great mosque in Mecca by religious extremists in Saudi Arabia, the Saudis sort of--the Royal Family sort of forged a Faustian bargain with the Wahabis, basically here's all the money in the world you could ever --

[Tape 1, side 2 ends, begin tape 2.] -- 1977-78, when I was on behalf of the U.S. Navy Department doing some work in Saudi Arabia. I think it would be very hard to find those types of relationships with most Saudis, even military and so forth today, that had been the sort that existed before '79.

There are stories here and there from time to time in the press about the possibility of reform movements within the Royal Family in Saudi Arabia to begin to cut back on some of the Wahabi influence. I hope they're true. I don't know. But although the current situation, in terms of wealthy Saudis funding terrorism, in terms of the hatred spread by the Wahabi sect and the Wahabi communication system to Imams, including those here in the United States, is really a terrible thing. I think there is at least some chance that change within the Royal Family could produce a different type of evolution in Saudi Arabia at some point. How soon, I don't know. And whether the reformers conceivably could win or not, I don't know. I think that's all up for grabs.

MR. : Well, I agree with that. I think the task of discouraging the continuing funding of this extremism from Saudi Arabia is an urgent task because in all the discussion about the root causes of terrorism, the one that it seems to me gets the least attention but is probably the most important certainly in the near term is the substantial amount of money that is available for extremist indoctrination through madrasas and other institutions. That's where the most fanatical suicidal terrorists are coming. And they are being funded by people who, to give them the benefit of the doubt, did not realize what the consequences of that funding ultimately would prove to be, but by now can be in no doubt about the danger that that funding causes.

And we have, I believe, every right to insist that those flows cease, and not gradually over time, but immediately. And I hope that in the aftermath of this war we will insist upon that in every way we know how.

With respect to Egypt and other countries in the region, I think we need to use, as I was saying earlier, all of the instruments of influence available to us in a measured way to move in the direction of more representative government. I don't think that means bringing every government down overnight, even if we were able to do it, but I think it does mean a strategy, a sustained objective to which we devote coherent resources.

MS. MAGELL: Mr. Woolsey, this is Ava Magell [ph] with Turkey's IHA News Agency. I know you thought Turkey was, Turkey would play actually a key role in an operation against Iraq, but things just didn't work as planned. And now there is this agreement about Northern Iraq, whether Turkey should enter or what happens if Turkey enters. Could you comment on that?

And what do you think would happen if Turkey enters in Northern Iraq, if Turkey sends additional troops to Northern Iraq?

And, Mr. Perle, if you want to talk about it too? Thank you.

MR. WOOLSEY: I see no reason why Turkey should send forces into Northern Iraq. I think that the American forces that will be there together with indigenous forces are perfectly capable of keeping order. I regard myself as a long-time friend of Turkey and admire Turkish democracy. Turkey made the choice it made by a narrow vote in its parliament,not to assist the U.S. essentially in any way, some over flights recently, but that's all, in the campaign in the North. I think Turkey made its choice, and Turkey should now live with it. I do not think under any circumstances Turkey should be sending forces into Northern Iraq.

MS. MAGELL: [Off microphone, inaudible.]

MR. WOOLSEY: What happens if they send forces in spite of the U.S. statements?

I don't know. I think it could provoke--let's put it this way--extraordinary tension between Turkey and the United States, and I think that would be a great shame.

MR. PERLE: If I could add. Turkey is concerned about a situation so close to Turkish territory that they have feared might get out of control, either massive refugee flows or in the violence of a war, unpredictable behavior. That is not an unjustified concern, and it is a concern that has been discussed among Americans, Turks, Kurds, over a long period of time. And I think that those concerns are satisfied by the way in which the current situation has evolved and by the statements of the Kurds themselves, and by American officials.

The fear of massive refugee flows has not materialized, and I think that's in part because there are not American forces in Northern Iraq. So no one can ever be sure, but I don't think the contingent question you asked will turn out to be the case. I don't think there will be a concern that would cause Turkey to send in forces, and therefore, I don't think Turkey will send in forces in any aggressive way. I never thought Turkey was going to operate in an aggressive way in the North, and I don't think they will now.

MR. LEDEEN: I'd just like to point out again, as we did last time we were together, that we're living through one of the most fascinating moments of history. It's rare that we can look at the world and see it ready to pivot, because of the tectonic plates that were set in motion at the end of the Cold War are still moving. And all kinds of things that we've taken for granted for a very long time can no longer be taken for granted. Old alliances are falling apart. New friendships are being made. Countries that never played a role before are starting to play roles. Countries that played roles for a long time are ceasing to do it.

I really think that once every day or two one should try very hard, at least intellectually, to step back from all the details in which we're immersed, and look at the amazing movement of things on planet earth right now, diplomatically, militarily, strategically and so forth. No one would have dreamed of raising the real possibility that the United States and Turkey might find themselves at war in the year 2003, and yet it is imaginable if people do crazy things, and they may do crazy things because people are behaving in unpredictable ways. No one would have imagined that the United States could and maybe should consider France and Germany to be strategic enemies, and yet they have behaved now for several months as if they were strategic enemies.

And so the entire structure of American policy and strategic thinking is going to have to undergo a really dramatic reconsideration. The answers are unknown to even the most brilliant person, but it's good to keep reminding ourselves that the fact exists, and that we have to keep striving to try to understand where these movements are leading.

MR. PERLE: I think I wouldn't have added, except listening to Mike. I regret, as many friends of Turkey do, the decision that was made by the Turkish Parliament. I'd look closely at how that controversy evolved in Turkey. I think if that vote were to have been taken again immediately when it was understood what had happened, it might have come out differently, and all the indications are that the government was as surprised as it could be that the vote had failed.

There are a lot of reasons for that, and maybe one day we should have a separate session sort of reassessing them. There is going to be a lot of reassessing to do after this war. But I don't believe that the long-term and close relationship between the United States and Turkey has or should be changed in any way, despite the regret over this incident. And I refer to it as an "incident" because I think there was so much miscalculation all around with a new government, that the vote did not reflect the enduring interests of the Turkish Nation.

MR. MINSHARIF: Hamad Minsharif [ph] from Middle East Adviser Group.

As you mentioned, Mr. Woolsey, everybody's looking for democracy in the Middle East, but I am Egyptian, and no doubt if we have free election tomorrow will bring anti-American Government and more extreme Islamists to office. How is United States Government going to deal with such democratic elected unfriendly regimes in such a country like Egypt or Saudi Arabia?

MR. WOOLSEY: Well, then perhaps the election should be day after tomorrow.

[Laughter.]

MR. WOOLSEY: I don't think that the United States should be pushing the idea that as bin Laden has put it, I believe, at least indirectly, what we should have is one vote once, and then he and God will rule together. This is not what one means by democracy.

What one means is establishing a process whereby it is safe over time to oppose and lose. And that has to do with a panoply of individual rights, freedom of press, and elections, and not a one-time event in which a group comes to power whose decision is to rule autocratically. Germany really made the decision, when it chose Hitler as Chancellor under the Weimar Republic, to abandon democracy. Hitler got about a third of the vote in that election. But he came to power in part through the operation of a democratic process in a sense, but it was not a process that he meant to continue. He didn't want to be able to lose an election later and go back to being a painter. This was never his idea.

And it would not be the idea, as you characterize it I think, of those who might win an election--I'll take the hypothetical--today in Egypt. Therefore, I think one needs perhaps some time to work to encourage elements that have been present in Egypt here and there for many years, of pointing toward open society and democracy, but they've been combated by other elements who are quite hostile to those ideas.

So it seems to me it illustrates something that Richard alluded to, which is that this is a very long process, measured in years. In Europe it's taken a number of decades to move all of Europe except Belarus and Ukraine now to democracy, and most of it is not done by force of arms. I think probably as we've gone from a dozen to 120 plus democracies in those 80-some years, the numbers of countries that the United States anyway has turned from dictatorship to democracy by force of arms can almost be counted on one hand: Germany, Japan, Italy, Panama, Grenada, maybe one of two others. All the others have been through influence of one kind or another, encouraging the Sakharovs, working with the trade unions, helping with the free press, giving advice, giving trade benefits. It's take time. And some countries it took decades, others it took years, others it happened more quickly. I think we have to have a long view of this, not a short one.

MR. : If I could just add a point. I know this isn't an argument that you were seeking to make with this question, but I think we have to be very careful not to slide into the accepting the idea that because the democratic process may produce an elected government that we don't like, we should associate with those who resist movement in the direction of democracy, that we should accept dictatorships because we fear the alternative through the democratic process.

And in this I'm reminded of the argument of Natan Sharansky, who at the beginning of the Oslo process took issue with a remark by many Israeli officials, which was something to the effect, "Well, we may actually get something done here because Arafat doesn't have a Supreme Court and Arafat doesn't have to answer in a democratic forum," in short, the argument that it was in Israel's interest to have a dictatorship on the other side of the bargaining table and a dictatorship that would deal with acts of terror by means that would not be respected in any democratic society.

I think it is, over the long term, a tragic mistake to believe that our interest lies in associating with dictators. How we nurture the development of representative government in countries that are now dictatorships goes to Jim's question about whether we are encouraging the development of democratic institutions that will survive a first election, or whether we are plunging headlong into a situation where the first election is also the last election, and the interests of democracy are not really served. So these are questions of judgment, and every case is different. But it's a great mistake to accept the idea that we should welcome dictatorships because they don't entail the risk that a government that we don't like will come to power.

MR. : I mean the United States, certainly over the years, should have done an awful lot more in sitting on friendly tyrants and encouraging them to liberalize, and making it clear that it was only a matter of time before America would abandon them if they could not demonstrate clear movement toward democratization. So I mean we owe that to our allies. If Egypt thinks for one minute that we will go on indefinitely sustaining a government which is--what shall I call it-- autocratic, they're wrong, because the American public won't put up with it. It's only a matter of time before Congress explodes and says, "Why are we giving all these billions of dollars to this rotting corrupt government?"

I mean that's just the way it is because that's what America is. And a lot of these debates in a way are interesting, but they're beside the point, because America is automatically by our very nature drawn to support democrats and drawn to fight tyrants. And that is why the war that we are fighting against terrorism is an old-fashioned war of freedom against tyranny, as Jim quite rightly said.

MS. PLETKA: This will be our last question. The lady in the back there, who's nodding at me with the pencil in her hand.

MS. HOUGH: Priscilla Hough [ph] with Channel News Asia. My question is about cost. The President is about to submit his supplemental. Is this something, is the war something that the U.S. or the global economy can afford? When is it going to get too expensive?

MR. WOOLSEY: I'll try that. This is a $10 trillion economy. The defense budget has skyrocketed from 300 to around $350 billion. That is, gone from 3 to 3-1/2 percent of gross national product.

In the Kennedy Administration before Vietnam the defense budget was 8 percent of the gross national product. In today's terms, as a share of GNP, and that's the only reasonable way to measure what the country is sacrificing, that would be an $800 billion defense budget. So with any remotely doubled or trebled or exaggerated calculations of what this war might cost, we are nowhere within hailing distance of the level of national commitment that we were making in 1962-63 now.

In World War II in the peak year, 1944, the United States was spending 37 percent of its GNP on defense. That would be, in today's terms, a $3,700,000,000 defense budget. Yet the nation survived. People didn't buy new cars, but they did eat all right. People went to work. People got through 1941 through 1945, and the economy came booming back right after the war.

So if you ask the question: could the United States consider sacrifices of the range of even World War II's level today, I think the answer is the threat here, given the combination of weapons of mass destruction and terrorism, is on a part in some sense, and in some senses more frightening because weapons of mass destruction could be used in the United States, whereas that was most unlikely in 1941 to '45. But we are nowhere even near the Kennedy Administration level of commitment, much less a World War II level of commitment, and I think that the estimates of what is needed so far are well within any reasonable assessment of what this country could do.

I must say I think psychologically this may not be the best time for a tax cut, but that's another issue.

MR. PERLE: As on every other occasion this morning, I agree with Jim, but would just add one point. This is a costly war. There's no question about it. The costs of not taking this action now would be vastly higher in my view.

If we were not acting now against Saddam Hussein, what would we have to anticipate? We would have to anticipate, I think, looking at the political situation that existed prior to this war, we would have to look at dwindling support for sanctions, which were already actively opposed by Russia and France, with the almost certain ultimate result that the sanctions would have been lifted and Saddam Hussein would have achieved a political victory of enormous proportions. That would almost certainly have been followed by the rearmament of Iraq with much greater freedom than it has had up until now, and even under the constraints of the current embargo it has managed to do things that pose a threat to us.

It would have meant Saddam in continuing control of Iraq with his weapons of mass destruction, and the danger would have become intolerable in time, and I believe that a number of things that Saddam might have done would have imposed on us costs far greater than the costs that we're going to bear now, not only the economic costs, but the human costs. Lives will be saved as a result of this action.

MS. PLETKA: I've been prevailed on to take one last question. This gentleman.

MR. LAMBROSCHINI: [Inaudible] with Le Figaro. I have one question or a double question. How do you explain that France became, as Michael Ledeen said, a strategic enemy, and how do you see the future of the relationship between the U.S. and France? What kind of retribution if any do you see on the part of the U.S. with both France and a number of countries in Europe?

MR. PERLE: France is a great democracy, and I wouldn't be surprised if the retribution takes the form of the people of France who believe in democracy and who believe in human rights, recoiling from a government that has essentially taken the position that Saddam Hussein should remain in power, because that has been the position of President Chirac. And when this war is over and the issues are clarified, none of us should be surprised if French sentiment reverts to the mean, which is to say strong French support for democratic institutions, and abhorrence at what will be seen about the regime of Saddam Hussein.

President Chirac's relationship to Saddam Hussein is an extraordinary one. And there was a documentary on France Television the other day that detailed this involvement. And I think in the fullness of time the French people will regret that in their name the French Government took the position that it took. And so for the longer term, I think France will continue to be a friend of the United States.

Now, there are elements within France in the political elite who are seeking to build the European Union in opposition to the United States as a counterweight to the United States, and we will see how deep the support for that view is. I think in the end it is not in the French or European interest to try to constitute the European Union on that basis, but that's a debate that I expect will follow this war.

MR. WOOLSEY: I wanted just one quick word. I grew sufficiently concerned about the development of hostile American views toward France as a nation and the French people as a result of the current huge disagreements between the American and French Governments. I wrote a piece in the Wall Street Journal a few weeks ago that talked about French and German heroes, and the ridiculous notion that keeps getting circulated on the Internet that France has never successfully defended Paris. I mean someone tell that to Galliani in the courageous defense of Paris in 1914.

There's a lot of angry nonsense that is careening around. But I have to say that President Chirac 's public attacks on countries in Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union, emerging from tyranny now, and having taken a different view than his with respect to helping the United States and Britain free the Iraqi people, his threats to keep them out of the European Union and his actions in holding up the provision of aid from NATO to Turkey when Turkey was under threat of attack, and as Michael has a piece tomorrow, I don't want to steal his thunder, but we'll see what France's effect might have been on this vote in Turkey.

If one looks at some of the actions that the French Government has been taking over the course of the last few months, I would have to say, in my judgment, the anger in this country is reaching extraordinary degrees. It is far more than the rather long-term rather constant feuding and fussing we have with our French friends. In many ways over 225 years France and the United States have been engaged in sort of a long-term slightly unhappy marriage, in which he complains about her cooking and she complains about his relatives, and then when some real crisis comes up, the family pulls together. It's been like that since Washington and Rochambeau were feuding, and then Lafayette led the decisive charge at the battle that won American independence and more Frenchmen than Americans died in the Battle of Yorktown. It's been going on like this, one of us helping another for a long, long time, but with this undercurrent of feuding. I'm not quite sure why. It just is that kind of a marriage.

But this is something different. What is happening out there in the bowling alleys and the courthouses and the people sitting around the kitchen table out there in the United States is real anger, real anger at the Chirac Government's stance and actions. And I think the damage could be substantial and lasting. How it will play out and what this country will do as a result, I don't know.

MR. LEDEEN: And it's justified anger, because the French Government has behaved in such a way--Jim and Richard are too diplomatic to say it. The French Government has behaved in a way to sabotage American military interests in a time of war in a way calculated to cost American lives. And this kind of thing is not going to heal quickly, and it has nothing to do with bowling alleys. It has to do with the disgusting and outrageous behavior of the French Government, and it's going to take a very long time to heal, and I doubt if it can ever be healed so long as Jacques Chirac is President of France. And I say it with regret.

MS. PLETKA: Having just made into La Figaro, I think.

[Laughter.]

MS. PLETKA: Thank you all very much, and my apologies to those who I did not get to, and we'll hopefully see you all next week.

Thank you.

[End of Black Coffee Briefing.]