The Hand-off: Toward Iraqi Sovereignty

May 14, 2004

Unedited transcript prepared from a tape recording

9:15 a.m.	Registration
9:30	Panelists:	Thomas Donnelly, AEI
		Richard Perle, AEI
		Danielle Pletka, AEI
		Michael Rubin, AEI
11:00	Adjournment

Proceedings:
MS. PLETKA:  It's nice to see you all again.  This morning we're going to be an all-AEI panel, which is not something we do very often.  But we thought that given the proximity of hand-over of political sovereignty--and one might even say the hand-over has already happened--but given the proximity of the official date of the hand-over, June 30th, we would like to have a couple of events and just talk a little bit about not only the situation on the ground as we see it inside Iraq, but also the political situation as we see it looking from Washington--how we're working with our allies, what we can look forward to in the coming weeks and possibly in the coming months, how Iraq is, if I can use the phrase, turning out.

And what we're going to do is divide ourselves up a little bit.  I'm going to be moderating.  We're going to start with Michael Rubin--all of you know, I think--who is a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute.  He spent--Michael, did you spend almost a year?

MR. RUBIN:  Let's just say it was eight months.

MS. PLETKA:  Eight months.  Eight happy months with the Coalition Provisional Authority and with the Office of the Secretary of Defense.

We also have Richard Perle, who's a resident fellow here at the American Enterprise Institute--again, needs no introduction, I think.  And my colleague Tom Donnelly, who is a resident scholar as well at the American Enterprise Institute--or are you a fellow, Tom?  Fellow?  Scholar?  In national security and defense studies.  Tom has a monograph forthcoming on the military and strategic questions relating to the war.

We're going to also divide up our subject matter a little bit.  Michael is going to talk a little bit about what's going right, but also about prospects for elections.  This is something that can't be thought about enough, can't be argued about enough, and he has a lot to say which I think is enormously important.  We're then going to go to Tom, who's going to talk a little bit about the strategic situation in Iraq and the tactical military situation as well.  And finally, Richard will talk a little bit about the political environment in Washington, Baghdad, and I'm assuming also he's going to talk a little bit on Najaf.

So without further ado--we'll then move to questions after that, at the end of the process.  Michael, won't you start?

MR. RUBIN:  I may be a little bit slow on the uptake because I just got off the plane not too long ago and am a bit jet-lagged.

At any rate, when I first went into Iraq about four years ago, into Iraqi Kurdistan, I heard a joke which I was recently reminded of when some Iraqis--as [inaudible] jokes circulate, I was told it again, about how Saddam Hussein had gone hunting one day with two bodyguards.  A bird flew overhead.  One of the bodyguards took a gun, shot the bird, and it fell down dead.  A few more minutes passed, another bird flew overhead, the other bodyguard took the gun and shot the bird and it fell down dead.  A few more minutes passed, another bird flew overhead, and Saddam Hussein took his revolver and emptied it at the bird and it flew off into the distance.  And the blood drained from both bodyguards' faces.  One started shaking, the other one stammered out, "It's a miracle, Mr. President.  We've never seen dead birds fly before."

The point of that joke is that under Saddam Hussein, if you told it you would be killed.  And it's important to have this in context when we look back over the past year and see where we were and where we are now.

There is a lot of bad news in Iraq that's often broadcast on the media.  Cameras don't lie, but they also seldom give the full perspective.  A few issues which contextualize this--I mean, we can get into the he said/she said reporting about which stories are being covered and that sort of thing, but a few more objective indicators of what's going on, I think, are instructive.

According to The Guardian newspaper from Britain, which is hardly a pro-American or pro-Bush administration newspaper, back, I think, in August 2002, there was a report that one out of every six Iraqis fled Iraq under the time of Saddam Hussein.  It's an amazing proportion and an amazing figure.  The point being, oftentimes we hear that Iraq is a quagmire.  And the one issue which I'm constantly reminded of is if Iraq is as bad as often portrayed by journalists and by pundits who have never been to Iraq--or if they have, haven't spent much time there--then the question is where are the refugees?  Because today, the refugees aren't leaving Iraq; they're returning to Iraq.  And oftentimes, as many of you know from extensive travels across the world trouble spots and so forth, when countries are in as bad a situation as sometimes journalists pretend they are, then you'd expect a refugee flow.  But Iraqis are voting with their feet, and what Iraqis are saying is oftentimes different from what the pundits and international politicians are saying.

Likewise with the currency.  The Iraqi currency is free-floating from the days that Saddam Hussein started, basically, photocopying the stuff.  It was released, I believe, October 15, 2003.  The old Saddam dinars were replaced by the Bremer dinars.  They've been free-floating and the currency keeps strengthening.  It's gone from 2,000 Iraqi dinar to the dollar--back in January, I went to a currency auction in Basra, on the street; it was trading at 1,100 dinar to the dollar.  And now it's evened off at around 1,430.  Even through all the bad news of April and so forth, currencies don't strengthen; free-floating currencies don't strengthen if people don't have confidence in the future.

Likewise, anyone who's traveled around Karbala, anyone who's traveled around Kirkuk, Baghdad, has seen any number of signs of significant investments in Iraq.  And again, these are Iraqis in this case voting with their pocketbooks--restaurants opening up, hotels, boutiques, that sort of thing.  That's progress happening despite us rather than necessarily because of any specific issue that USAID is doing.  The reason it's happening is because we liberated Iraq.  But Iraqis tend not to want to invest hundreds of thousands of dollars into new stores and so forth if they don't have confidence in the future, and that's one of the issues that is going well.

That said, there are some real decisions on the front burner now that aren't getting a lot of attention because Washington in this era of political cannibalism much prefers to have their recriminations of what's going wrong and assigning blame, all the while ignoring some of the real issues which are moving forward, which are going to have profound impact on Iraqi society.

I was disappointed to read that on June 4th, Carina Perelli, the U.N. elections specialist, announced, basically in contradiction to what most Iraqis felt, that elections would be done by party slate, proportions throughout the entire country, rather than single-member constituencies.  Basically, political parties would put together party lists and run throughout the whole country.  And in explaining her logic, Perelli, who as late as March was talking about how Iraqis look toward political parties--some polls have indicated that only 3 percent of Iraqis--this was reported in the Washington Post--only 3 percent of Iraqis actually have favorable impressions of political parties.  Most favor specific individual politicians, technocratic politicians, local leaders.

At any rate, Carina Perelli said at a press conference from the Green Zone in Baghdad that she would go with the party slate system because under the time of Saddam Hussein, communities were scattered throughout the country, and this would allow communities to vote as one.

The problem with this is that--it's actually a bit condescending to the Iraqis.  The problem is that Iraq isn't as communal as some outside bureaucrats like to think.  And to set up a system where that encourages people to vote strictly on the lines of ethnicity or sectarian practice, rather than on local political issues, basically puts us down the slippery slope of a Lebanon model.  And that's not somewhere we want to be.

Likewise, doing this prior to the formation of a national assembly, which is going to be charged with writing the constitution, is also short-sighted.  I mean, basically we're trading short-term expediency and the ease of just having one ballot for long-term stability.  I'm reminded of what Hadi Modarresi said in Karbala in an interview last March--I think he's from some group he calls the Islamic Action Front or some such thing--to the effect of, I mean, "we want party slates because that's democracy, because that way the Shia can tell the Sunni once and for all how to act."  And that's not necessarily what we want.

I would strongly argue--and it's not too late to reverse this, especially if we want to listen to the Iraqis and have the Iraqis do this rather than some unelected U.N. bureaucrat--to go toward the single-member constituencies.  It's kind of ironic that U.S. policy is going this direction, the direction of the party slates, when even USAID reports from places like the Dominican Republic cite the party slate system as an impediment to democracy.  And it seems that it undercuts the president's stated objectives of what he wants to achieve in Iraq.

At any rate, in single-member constituencies, they fully represent Iraq's ethnic and sectarian diversity.  In Iraqi Kurdistan, for example, most everyone who would be elected would probably be an Iraqi Kurd, except for in areas where the Yazidi live, in small concentrations around Lalesh and Shahan [?] and other areas, where likely local leaders would turn out people that look like them.  Likewise in a place like Fallujah.  Fallujah would be represented in all likelihood, if you had single-member constituencies, by Sunni Arabs, although 10 percent of Fallujah is, of course, Kurdish.  Tall Afar, which is about an hour's drive west of Mosul.  It's a town of around 160,000 people, 95 percent of which are Turkman Shia.  Well, in all likelihood, in a party slate system, they won't be represented.  They're not going to meet the threshold.  But if you had local elections, they would be.

When it comes to issues of tolerance--I mean, democracy's about tolerance and compromise and accountability, not just elections.  And when you have a system that removes the accountability, what you end up having is you remove the checks and balances that prevent radicalism.  And all across the board, Iraqi politicians are popular in their home constituencies.  Abdul Aziz Hakim, [inaudible] Supreme Council, is popular in Najaf.  Ahmed Chalabi remains very popular in Khadamiyah [ph].  Rajaa al-Khuzai, who's championed the rights of women, remains very popular in Diwaniyah.

The only people that wouldn't benefit from having single-member constituencies would be in the case of Abdul Aziz Hakim or others, some of the uncharismatic, unpopular hangers-on.  And Muqtada al-Sadr is going to have--and his lieutenants would have a very hard time getting elected if they have to actually address men and women in neighborhoods, as opposed to across the country.  Because it's easy to talk about the extremes of Suriyah law and so forth if you don't have to tell the men why their wives and daughters are no longer going to be allowed to work and bring in income and if they don't have to face the women who they're trying to disenfranchise.

At any rate, it's one of those looming issues, which has--I mean, as I see it, it's the key to the future of Iraq whether we're going to have a slippery slope towards a Lebanon model or whether we are going to actually have a moderate, tolerant democracy.  Hopefully, there's still time to salvage this, but unfortunately, with Carina Perelli's putting it in the hand of a U.N. advisor named Carlos Valenzuela, whose most recent achievement on his resume is being a special advisor to the Palestinians on elections, I mean, I can't very much be too hopeful for the future if it's not corrected.

I'll stop there and defer.

MS. PLETKA:  Actually, I want to use my position as moderator just to interject and say, you know, one thing you didn't mention--and I think for many people questions of proportional representation are rather mysterious because it's a system so alien to our own.  And in fact the shining example of a proportional representation system is in Israel, where the question at the center isn't as important, but certainly has made for a dysfunctional national politics over the last half a century.

MR. RUBIN:  I would agree that the one achievement of the proportional representation in Israel is it's the one issue which has really unified Israelis under the consensus that it doesn't work.

[Laughter.]

MR. DONNELLY:  Well, just so I can make a wisecrack about proportional representation--it is known in the United States.  It's known as Loni Guinierism.

My task is to talk a bit about the tactical military and, I think, the broader strategic situation in Iraq as we find it in the last couple of months.  And it's been, actually, a fairly remarkably--particularly in the last couple of weeks--fairly quiet period in terms of the extent of fighting.  And it is, actually, even the period prior to that, when there was greater fighting in Fallujah and Najaf and areas around Najaf, it did at least have a salutary effect in clarifying who the enemies were and how really diffuse they are.

There have been commentators and pundits who have been trying desperately to conjure a nationwide insurgency or existence over the last year, and I think the last couple of weeks and last couple of months ought to have driven the final nail into that, if not hope, then fantasy.  And while we have, both in Fallujah and in [inaudible] and Najaf, perhaps not reached the perfect solution, there's a lot to recommend both solutions.

Just to go through them very quickly, there's a very fine, although not entirely comprehensive, piece by Robert Kaplan in The Atlantic, which I would commend to anybody, regarding the attack on Fallujah.  There are a couple of things worth noting about Fallujah.  One was the fairly small Marine contingent that conducted the assault that had some inherent problems in it, in that it allowed some of the resistance to hold on longer than perhaps it would have otherwise.  But by the same token, even despite the fairly small force sent to assault Fallujah, it was sort of on the verge of pretty significant success when the Iraqis themselves intervened to try to resolve the situation without further bloodshed.  And even though there are reasons to question whether that's the perfect outcome, that outcome also, I would say, does represent a step forward in that it is essentially an Iraqi-on-Iraqi solution.  And even if it's imperfect, it has that to recommend it.

More decisive, quite obviously, was the conflict with the Mahdi army, Muqtada al-Sadr's militia, which pretty clearly is on the ropes.  Sadr's decision to become a politician last Friday certainly reflects--it may reflect a greater level of maturity on his part, but more likely it represents the fact that his forces have been pretty well decimated over the six weeks or so of fighting in Najaf and Kufah.  It's really quite striking to note that the local residents had no objection whatsoever to American forces driving tanks through cemeteries or operating pretty close to mosques, and that the tactics on the part of Sadr's forces to use the local populace and the most holy Shia religious sites as shields did nothing to endear them to the local population or, indeed, more broadly across Iraq.

It's worth also just noting that the question of outside terrorists in Iraq still remains a bit of a mystery, but perhaps most notable for its weakness.  Probably both the Sunni and Shia insurgents are getting assistance in terms of finances from outside the country.  But again, when you take a step back from the day's casualty lists or the headlines, you have to admit that it doesn't add up to a really significant movement by any stretch of the imagination.

And it's at least worth noting that, certainly in the last week or so, the focus of al Qaeda attention seems to have turned more directly toward Saudi Arabia in an attempt to kill both Saudis and Americans there.  And if that does have the effect of making the Saudis come to their senses and, you know, try to begin to reclaim the mistake of 25 years ago in terms of coddling their most radical elements, that will be a significant step forward.

To speak very briefly about the broader strategic picture, it seems to me there are also a couple of developments worth noting.  First of all, the situation in Iraq, as Michael pretty, I think, forcefully argues.  But the fact that we're even having a debate about the nature of Iraqi democracy is a tremendous benchmark of where we've come in the last 15 months or so.  I think Michael's critique is exactly on point, that it is a crucial strategic question going forward as to what the nature of a system of representation is.  But, you know, compared to where we were 15 months ago, it's a huge step forward.  And it does represent, I think, a pretty unquestionable consensus that the majority of Iraqis themselves are invested in trying to build something for the future.

And most importantly, if we take Prime Minister Allawi's--and particularly the new Iraqi president, who was on television a couple of times this week, made very clear--and was here for the Reagan funeral--that the naturally emerging leadership in Iraq--again, the transitional government isn't perfect and no doubt the government that emerges after elections is going to be imperfect even if a more direct representational system is adopted.  But clearly, to succeed as a leader in Iraq, on Iraqi terms, you have to be actually remarkably forthcoming about the requirement for a long-term strategic partnership with the United States.

This is real politics.  These are the kinds of choices that real Iraqi leaders--not dictators, not, you know, fundamentalist ideologues--are going to have to make and are making quite sensibly.  That doesn't mean that there's going to be an imperial garrison throughout Iraq until the end of time, but it does suggest that, even after the elections, even after a constitution is written, even if we enjoy huge success internally in Iraq, that Iraqis understand that the--and these were words used by the Iraqi president on both his television interviews yesterday--that they understand the need for a strategic partnership with the United States, one that's totally consistent with Iraqi sovereignty, but by the same token represents a commonality of strategic interests between the United States and Iraq.

And it's really remarkable how reporters persist in asking the wrong questions about this.  The question most frequently asked over the weekend of both the president and Secretary Powell and others is what happens if the Iraqis tell us to leave.  Well, of course, in that situation, then probably--if they're serious about it if they don't want us there--then probably we'll have to leave.  But by the same token, there's almost no likelihood that any foreseeable Iraqi leader is going to be asking that question.  The more serious question to ask is what is the nature of this partnership.  And you can see even from today's headlines that those are the questions that the American government and the emerging Iraqi leadership is turning its attention to.

So, you know, one way or another this process is going forward.  The majority of Iraqis are deeply invested in it.  The United States, despite its doubts, you know, and despite the political debate that Richard will talk about, certainly this administration remains firmly behind it.  And if you take John Kerry at his word, he also may be in search of a different set of tools for trying to build a democratic Iraq.  But so far, you know, he hasn't actually said outright that he's ready to pull out.

Just finally to talk about the international strategy of this.  One further feature that is remarkable and also seems to be a surprise to most reporters is that the so-called international community, and the United Nations in particular, really is a bit player in this.  Ambassador Brahimi sort of stalked off at the conclusion of the process of naming the transitional government kind of with a sour expression that he wasn't able to dictate to Iraqis who was going to be the Iraqi leader.  Neither was Ambassador Bremer.  And further, we've seen in the past week that the U.N. role of supposedly giving legitimacy to this process is almost entirely disconnected from the facts on the ground in Iraq.

And finally, not surprisingly, at the Sea Island summit, the G8 meeting, the likelihood that there will be serious international participation and even, really--embarrassingly for the rest of the world and for France, I would say, in particular--the question of debt forgiveness remains kind of a black mark on the ledger of the Europeans.  So we don't expect to get any serious military help in terms of continuing to provide direct aid to the transitional government or to the securing of the transitional process in Iraq, and it's even debatable that NATO will do anything in terms of training Iraqi security forces.  That is actually something where NATO might make a significant contribution, but it seems pretty unclear at this point that that's going to happen.

Which again sort of leaves us back with the same fundamentals that we had at the beginning of this process, or certainly since we last met to discuss these issues.  And that is in terms of the international support or the outside support for the process of change in Iraq is entirely down to the United States, Great Britain, and those very few allies who are making a serious military contribution.  The rest of the world is, as Michael suggests in terms of the United Nations, continuing to be a drag on the process and a roadblock to what Americans, certainly, would regard as genuine democracy in Iraq.  And those who are not, you know, at least a drag on the process are peripheral to the process.

So this remains very much an endeavor driven by Iraqis, Americans, British, and the serious coalition members.  I think that's where we find ourselves and where we will continue to find ourselves for the next year, making slow but pretty steady progress but, again, left with a basically unchanged strategic situation where the rest of the world is indifferent at best and the people who really have an interest in building a different Iraq--the Iraqi people themselves, the Americans, and the British, and a few others--will be left with the really hard work that faces us.

MS. PLETKA:  Thank you, Tom.

Richard?

MR. PERLE:  I think I would have neglected to say anything on the subject of NATO assisting in Iraq if Tom had not mentioned it.  Which prompts me to say I can't imagine why we would want NATO to assist in training Iraqis.  As individual nations, we already have significant help from the Italians, from the British, from the Poles, and others.  But do we really want the French training Iraqi security forces?  The most notable accomplishment of French security in recent years was the sinking of the Rainbow Warrior.  I'm not sure there's a great deal to contribute there.  Do we want Germans training the Iraqi security forces, with their great tradition?  I think we're well out of that morass.  And I think it was foolish to contemplate that we would get any significant help from NATO, and even more foolish to desire it.  But that isn't what I came here to say today.

How many of you are familiar with the name Zuhair al-Maliky?  Anybody?  He's a man of no consequence, except he sits in Baghdad issuing arrest warrants for people who have for many years been fighting to liberate Iraq from Saddam Hussein.  So I think you ought to know something about him.

He has the title of chief investigative judge of the Central Criminal Court of Iraq, which is an impressive-sounding title.  The Central Criminal Court of Iraq, CCCI for short, was created by none other than our very own Jerry Bremer.  And Mr. al-Maliky was appointed by Jerry Bremer and made a judge, despite the fact that he has no judicial experience, and perhaps in recognition of the fact that he was a translator for the Coalition Provisional Authority until he was elevated into the position of chief investigative judge of the Central Criminal Court of Iraq.

In that capacity, as I indicated, he has been issuing arrest warrants for a great many people without anything that could be called probable cause, as far as I can tell.  Or if there is probable cause, it hasn't been stated in a way that could be properly examined or investigated.  According to reliable reports, his notion of due process includes threats to the counsel representing some of the accused, that if they continue to press the concerns of their clients, they themselves can find themselves under investigation by the Central Criminal Court of Iraq.

It was a little bit awkward propelling into that position a man with no judicial experience, since the order establishing the court required that judges on that court--let alone the chief judge--should have five years of judicial experience.  An order to that effect was promulgated on the 18th of June 2003.  And when it became clear that Mr. al-Maliky didn't meet the requirement, that order was amended.  A revised and amended order was issued on April 22, 2004, by Ambassador Bremer, which dropped the requirement for prior judicial experience.

I mention all of this because it would be a tragedy indeed if we had fought to liberate Iraq only to bring Saddam's style of justice back to that country.  Now happily, Mr. Bremer will be leaving shortly and the Iraqis will have to make decisions about whether they wish to continue an institution like the Central Criminal Court of Iraq.  And I hope that they will have gained enough of a sense of proper judicial practice so that they will disband that court before it can do any more damage.

The damage it has done is to wage a campaign against the Iraqi National Congress and against Ahmed Chalabi, who many of you who have been at prior AEI events have had an opportunity to hear from.  It is clearly an abusive campaign of intimidation.  It is clearly politically motivated.  It follows decisions taken, sadly, in this government to marginalize Dr. Chalabi.  But a decision to marginalize unleashed the most vicious opponents of the Iraqi National Congress--the Central Intelligence Agency, which has never liked the INC and has its own preferred methods and candidates, and parts of the Department of State.

I say all of this remorsefully because we are in the process of depriving, or seeking to deprive, the people of Iraq of a man of great effectiveness and vision, who deserves nothing more than a chance to appeal to his fellow Iraqis to play a role in the construction of a secular and democratic Iraq, which has been his goal and ambition all his life.  I rather suspect that he will emerge despite this campaign if intimidation.  But it's a shameful campaign.  And I've been struck by how little people have inquired into the basis for it.

So let me say a word about the other half of this campaign of intimidation, which is the suggestion promulgated in a whispering campaign out of the CIA, the message carried often by former intelligence officials, at the CIA in some cases, at the Defense Intelligence Agency, and in the FBI, and that is a campaign that has at its core the suggestion that Dr. Chalabi was found out to have been advising the government of Iran in a manner hostile to American interests.  I've seen the suggestion, for example, that he informed the Iranians that codes that they had been using had been compromised by us and therefore they ought not to use those codes.

As far as I can tell, there has been hardly any scrutiny by a willing press corps of these charges.  Hardly any questioning, for example, along the following lines--and I just throw out a few questions that it would be worth asking:

Is it possible that, if messages were intercepted to this effect, is it possible that those messages were deliberately transmitted so that we would receive them, with a view to alienating the United States from the Iraqi National Congress?

Are the goals and objectives of the Iraqi National Congress consistent with those of the mullahs in Iran, and might the mullahs in Iran have a reason for wishing to see the INC marginalized and Ahmed Chalabi isolated?

What do we know about the other messages that appeared in the channels that may have brought us this information?  Were these channels from which we obtained actionable intelligence?  Indeed, has there been a serious counter-intelligence examination of these messages, and if so, who did it and when?

To the best of my knowledge, there's been no serious analysis of this intelligence.  Which raises the possibility that, if in fact what is going on--and I don't know, I can only raise the question--if what in fact is going on is a deliberate campaign by the Iranians to produce a rift between the Iraqi National Congress and the United States, and if that has been done by allowing us to read messages that would cause us to take a disparaging view of Dr. Chalabi, what other messages in that channel need to be reexamined?  There is a very substantial counter-intelligence issue here and, to the best of my knowledge, it is not being examined.  And if it is not being properly examined, it is yet another demonstration of the woeful incompetence of elements of our intelligence community.

So I raise these issues in the hope that some of you who are here today in the press will ask some probing questions.  That normally is thought of, by the press at least, as central to its responsibility.

By the way, with respect to Judge al-Maliky, the head of the union of judges of Iraq, a distinguished individual, has finally spoken out on this subject and has stated flatly that he believes the Central Criminal Court of Iraq to be unconstitutional, illegal, if you will, under Iraqi law and practice.  And the establishment of it and the way in which it was established probably violates the Geneva Convention.  We're big into examining the Geneva Convention these days.  The establishment of this court should be looked at against that measure.

Just a couple of other points.  The great mistakes of history have often turned on bad judgment about people.  Chamberlain didn't really comprehend Adolf Hitler.  President Carter didn't have a clue about the Ayatollah Khomeni.  The New York Times thought that Fidel Castro was a social reformer.  I was woefully wrong about Anwar Sadat, who I thought was a small-time little dictator and turned out to be a great man.  And I think we're in the process now of making a mistake, a very large mistake, about Ahmed Chalabi, which is why I'm taking advantage of this opportunity to say that, having looked closely at the charges against him and the circumstances in which he finds himself, my confidence in his integrity and the honorableness of his intentions and his sustained belief in secular democracy in Iraq is undiminished.  And frankly, it wouldn't matter to me if all the whisperers at the CIA were of one mind on this, or even the highest levels of our own government.

MS. PLETKA:  We're going to turn to questions.  But actually, Richard, you raised a point in my mind about great mistakes of history.  We've made great mistakes of history when we rely on individuals and not on systems of government as well.  And that's one of the mistakes we're making in Iraq by thinking that if we pick the right man--in this case, Iyad Allawi--that somehow he will lead us into the right system.

We made a similar mistake in picking Yasser Arafat and working to bolster him as a negotiator with the Israelis.  And we used the Palestinian legal system in a similar way--in a similarly unethical way, I would add--when--I remember when Al Gore went and applauded the Palestinian security courts for getting rid of the opponents of Arafat in an expeditious manner, never understanding that those self-same courts would be used to kill collaborators and things like that, and were in fact antithetical to the better interests of the Palestinians.

So we don't always learn from our mistakes.  The question is do we ever learn from our mistakes, I guess.

With that comment, let me open the floor to questions.  If you would be kind enough to identify yourselves, your organization, and put your statement in the form of a question.  And if it's addressed to someone in particular, please do say so.  Also, you will need to wait for the microphone.

QUESTION:  [No sound.]

MS. PLETKA:  Did everyone hear that question, or do you want me to repeat it?  Are you good?  Good.

MR. RUBIN:  On of the things that most worried me was when I would go to the market in Sadr city, you can get almost anything on the market in Sadr City--fake manifests, fake drivers licenses, Iraqi passports, Palestinian passports, Iranian passports.  And these aren't passports coming off of a counterfeiter's printing press.  These are a limited number of real passports.  And the price of Iraqi passports kept increasing, and the price of Iranian passports kept decreasing.  That's basic supply and demand.  The borders have not been effectively sealed.  In some cases, that's because we're relying on the goodwill of governments, like Syria or like Iran or like Saudi Arabia, which in many cases is like trusting the arsonist to help put out a fire.

It's one of those issues which could be--that needs to be addressed.  The external security of Iraq very much needs to be addressed, and that's why there is a role for coalition forces to remain in Iraq.  I mean, sovereignty and the presence of troops are two different issues, unless, of course, you want to imply that Korea, Japan, Turkey, Italy, Germany, and so forth aren't sovereign countries because they host American troops.  What's needed, of course, is a status of forces agreement.  But it is a major problem.

A couple of other examples.  The Syrian border was marked by a coil of barbed wire in certain places around Jabal Shinjah [ph].  And you could see tire tracks going across that border.  Driving back from that area, the Iraqi border patrol, about 20 kilometers into the country, tried to wave me over, but when you flash your Blockbuster card it's possible to get through without stopping and without speaking.

Likewise, when I was coming from Jordan, on the Jordanian side, of course, went through the whole process of having my visa checked in the computer, although no one checked my baggage.  But on the Iraqi side, where American troops were present--I was in a taxi with perhaps six, seven other people--no one checked my passport, checked to make sure that the passport matched the face; no one checked any of the bags; no one checked--and American soldiers were inside--checked to make sure that there was no one else in the car.  I was asked for $50 to waive the mandatory AIDS test, which, given that I was in the middle of a desert with no electricity and so forth, I decided it would be a wise thing to just pay the $50, although the Pentagon hasn't reimbursed me for it--bribe.

But, I mean, all in all, external security is a real problem that needs to be addressed.  One of the other issues--and I'm not a military tactician, so I'll defer to Tom on this--is that one of the advantages the U.S. military has which the Iraqis at this point is the mobility factor.  And Iraq isn't in chaos.  When the headlines scream "Fallujah, it's a Sunni uprising," the question remains, then, of course, well, how come you don't see it in Ramadi, Tikrit, Samada, Balat, Hed-hed, Bakuba, and so forth?  The fact of the matter is you have a series of local problems and the Americans have the mobility to put out the fires when they occur.  The Iraqis don't necessarily have that mobility right now.  That's one of the key impediments to address.

In summary, where do I think things are going to go after June 30th?  Look, it's in the interest of anti-democratic forces who can't win legitimacy through a ballot box to test.  I do think you're going to see a spike in violence in July, as people test the new government.  You're going to see a spike in violence in late October as people try to influence the American elections, given the fact that such things worked in Spain.  And you're going to see a spike in violence before the Iraqi elections next January.

That said, I think you're going to see steady progress made in Iraq.  At the worst, things will continue sort of the way they are now, because this isn't happening in a vacuum.  This is happening oftentimes with Saudi Arabia, Syria, and Iran turning on and off pressure, facilitating or not facilitating infiltrations.  Many of the neighboring countries, including Jordan, wanted us to succeed militarily in Iraq and fell politically, but none of the neighboring countries wants to see Iraq descend into chaos, and they're going to continue interfering with Iraq.

Just one final note--this is one of the criticisms I was hearing from Iraqis after the inauguration of the interim governing council.  There's a feeling that Lakhdar Brahimi, whose daughter, of course, is engaged to the brother of King Abdullah of Jordan, was trying to represent all the neighboring countries at the expense of the Iraqis themselves.  For example, people have described Iyad Allawi's appointment as basically the result of a Jordanian coup d'etat--in Baghdad.  They've described Ghazi al-Yawar, who's doing a fine job so far, as being an olive branch for the Saudis.  [Flip tape.]

MR. RUBIN:  --the Republic of Iran, and so forth.  It's one of those issues that remains.

MR. DONNELLY:  I won't gild Michael's comments too terribly much, but I just want to say more broadly that the notion that you can have sort of a blitzkrieg counter-insurgency campaign is counter-intuitive, to put it mildly.  The lower-level things that Michael is talking about--securing the borders, preventing small acts of violence inside Iraq--is just inherently going to take a heck of a long time.  And in fact, if you're talking about a perfect solution, it's indistinguishable from a broader regional solution.  As Michael rightly says, the problem is in Damascus more than it is in Baghdad--and we were talking about elements that infiltrate.

But in terms of the insurgencies inside Iraq, these--again, if you can take a step back from the daily headlines--seem quite less impressive than the headlines would make them sound.  You know, tabulating an order of battle for the Mahdi army is next to impossible, probably very difficult for Mr. Sadr himself to do.  But again, I would just say that his conversion from, you know, sort of religious figure and general into pretend politician doesn't reflect the fact that his insurgency has been enjoying a lot of military success.

And again, it's unclear exactly what the situation in Fallujah is, but Michael quite rightly points out that Fallujah is only one town in the infamous Sunni Triangle, and the rest of them have been relatively quite.  And of course, again, except for genuine acts of terrorism elsewhere around the country, you know, the broad security situation is certainly good enough for Iraqis to make a pretty serious bet that their future lies in the future rather than in a return to the past.

QUESTION:  Max Singer from Hudson Institute.  A question for Richard Perle.

I wondered if you could compare this Central Criminal Court of Iraq with the "military tribunal" that convicted Ahmed Chalabi in Jordan.

MR. PERLE:  It's actually a good question because they have a lot in common--both of them wholly illegitimate, in my view.  As I understand it, the judgment against Dr. Chalabi in Jordan was the product of a tribunal that consisted of a single military officer who arrived at a "guilty" conclusion in a complicated banking matter after about a week on the job.

He had been preceded by another military tribunal that worked for several months and produced thousands of pages of documents and, in the end, declined to take any action because they didn't find a basis for action.  The man who headed that tribunal was fired and he was replaced by the man who ultimately rendered this famous judgment against Dr. Chalabi.

If this was Jordanian justice, there's no Jordanian justice.  I believe it was a political act in Jordan.  I've been told that by some very senior Jordanians--very senior Jordanians.  For reasons having to do with a conception of Jordan's own national interests now, the Jordanian government has found it convenient to repeat these allegations, which I believe to be false and malicious.

QUESTION:  Thank you.  Ashok Sanjinha [ph] from the Indian Embassy.  One question for Michael Rubin.

Michael, you have said that the United Nations has given a particular type of plan for conducting elections that is representation rather than individual constituencies.  Can you say a few more words, because a few weeks ago the U.N. organizers, Carina Perelli had said we are very much on time and everything is moving according to schedule.  So the fact that there is a shortage of time could not really be--or difficulty involved with single constituency elections could not really be the reasons.  So what do you think are the reasons behind putting forward such a plan?

And one small question, if I could, for Thomas Donnelly.  You said that the Muqtada al-Sadr's army has been decimated.  But their capacity to create destruction, havoc, killing, whether in the sub-city or in Karbala, that doesn't seem to have come down at all.  Because when you saw the peace marchers and the sort of reaction and response from the Sadr supporters, that was very valiant and very effective in putting them down.

Thank you.

MR. RUBIN:  I'll keep the answer really brief.  I don't understand what's motivating Perelli.  It's very instructive.  You can find the text of her press conference on the CPA Web site from June 4th.  Some excerpts were carried, I think, in an Associated Press article which was picked up, among others, by the New York Times.  However, if you look at the Washington Post I believe from May 3rd or 4th, she was talking about unpopular political parties were and seemed to imply that she would be going the other way.

There are a couple of issues here.  First of all, oftentimes with regard to the United Nations, it's not the internal desires of the Iraqis that matter, but it's the influence of other countries surrounding, because the United Nations tries to please all sorts of constituencies.  That's point 1.

Point 2, you have the issue of quotas for women.  She, in her June 4th press conference, was talking about that one out of every three names on the list had to be female, to try to arrive at a 25 percent quota.  This is one of those disconnects which occur between Iraqis and, in many cases, Western feminist organizations because the object--I mean, it's laudable to try to have diversity, and frankly, left to their own devices, as in Iraqi Kurdistan, you would have some degree of diversity because Iraq tends to be a very secular country in this regard.  The February disagreements with regard to Resolution 137, which would have placed family issues in Islamic courts rather than civil courts, really energized Iraqi women.  And interestingly enough, Rajaa al-Khuzai was yelled at by one of Bremer's aides for raising problems with Resolution 137, fearing that it could skew the timeline.

That said, you can fill quotas with both forward-looking Iraqi women who value diversity and you can fill them with Salafis.  I don't know.  You have to ask the United Nations.  It's something that journalists and diplomats should pay a lot more attention to.  Unfortunately, with the state of journalism today, if the story is sourced to a real person rather than an unnamed intelligence source, it more often than not is just ignored.

MR. DONNELLY:  Yeah, I'll save my comments about sourcing for later.

But, look, I would just disagree with your assessment of what's happened vis-a-vis the Mahdi army.  Look, first of all, six weeks ago we had armed semi-organized bands of this army holding people in Najaf and elsewhere hostage and holding religious sites hostage.  A lot of those guys are dead or--and disbanded.  So what happened this past week or so would be almost impossible to even imagine.

Look, the violence is lamentable.  The Sadr forces are still out there in some strength.  I'm not saying they're eradicated entirely, I'm just saying that their military capacity has been vastly reduced.  If this was essentially, at least initially, an Iraqi-on-Iraqi confrontation, that's something that wouldn't have happened six weeks ago either.  The local residents would have been far too intimidated to even have challenged these guys on the street.

The fact that they'll still come out and rough them up suggests that there's still work to be done.  But the problem is qualitatively different than it was, you know, two months ago.  Again, that's just the way the facts seem to fit together to me.

QUESTION:  I'm Francis Brook.  I work for Dr. Chalabi in the Iraqi National Congress--have for a long time--so I have strong opinions about this.  But I'm not on the panel.  I just want to ask a couple of questions of Mr. Donnelly.

Mr. Donnelly, you've talked about the emergence of indigenous Iraqi leadership and seem to equate that with this new government.  Having been there while it was formed, it's hard to see exactly what the Iraqi involvement in that government was.  And having known Iyad Allawi for a very long time, it's hard to characterize him as emerging indigenous Iraqi leadership.  In fact, of the only people that have been mentioned out here who are emerging indigenous leadership, Muqtada al-Sadr would be your leading candidate, who has gained considerable popular-- That's just a separate issue.

You said, though, that 15 months we've done well.  And I guess I would say over 12 months we've done almost nothing.  And I would ask you directly, why couldn't we have created this exact same government June, a year ago, when Ambassador Bremer first arrived on the scene?  What political progress has been made?  And to the extent that any political progress has been made, hasn't it been to empower radicals such as Muqtada al-Sadr, however limited you may believe their influence to be?

I can tell you, I was in Najaf, I was in the shrine. I'm the only American that can make that claim.  And there is a great capacity of 13- to 30-year-old young men who are prepared to pick up RPGs and machine guns.  Now, they may or may not be ready to do that right this second, but the idea that that's not out there--they sure were pointing them at me.

So if you could just address those points, I would appreciate it.

MR. DONNELLY:  You raise a lot of good questions.  Look, this is a country awash in AKs and RPGs, and will be for, you know, decades to come.  And it's also a country like a lot of other countries in the region that are awash in unemployed 13- to 30-year-old males.  So again, I don't want to diminish the dangers that arise from the intersection of those phenomena.

But again, I'm just trying to measure progress relatively.  I've been, actually, thinking over the weekend why we couldn't have done this a year ago.  And I'll just leave that as an unanswered question, but a very good question.

And look, just, again, relative to what seemed in the offing with a dictat by Brahimi a couple of months ago, again I would just say this is something like relative progress.  It's not perfect.  Prime Minister Allawi brings a lot of baggage with him, as does the president, who, you know--what I'm praising him for is his appearance on television.  It's just nice to have an Iraqi face speaking to Americans, explaining the positive Iraqi view.  That's been entirely missing just as a measure of a public diplomacy campaign over the past year.  And if neither of those guys is perfect, I do think it is at least a pretty significant step forward, better than I would have anticipated a couple of months ago.

Maybe not--you know, look, the big progress that we've made the past few months, most of that came in the first three months.  We have done nothing remotely resembling the achievement of removing Saddam.  That's still the centerpiece of our effort, and if we got that quickly, we shouldn't devalue it.

But again, as I said in my last comments, this is inherently going to--the process of winning the counter-insurgency war and reconstructing Iraq is bound to be a long-term one and we should, I think, be modestly positive about almost any step still at this point that involves Iraqis in the process.  These sort of strongman types are going to be an element in Iraqi politics for the foreseeable future.

Again, they're not our best partners.  When they say strategic partnership, you know, I worry that that means we keep, as Richard said, more moderate-looking but essentially still fairly thuggish types in power, so we have to be realistic about it.  But again, "two cheers for Iraqi democracy thus far" is about as far as I'm willing to go.

MS. PLETKA:  Richard?

MR. PERLE:  Francis, I think we should have, right after Baghdad fell, handed the keys to the Iraqis.  Instead, we chose an occupation--well-meaning, well-intentioned, but an occupation nevertheless.  And the approval that Americans and coalition forces had when they liberated Iraq deteriorated over time into first neutrality and ultimately rather widespread hostility.  Which is not surprising.  Occupations are seldom admirable from the point of view of the occupied.

So I think it was a political mistake of enormous proportions, made worse by the way in which it was handled.  Which is to say, despite the existence of an Iraqi governing council, Ambassador Bremer--who I think rather liked the viceroy's position--would not allow the Iraqis to do much of anything and then turned around and complained that the Iraqis on the governing council had no constituency.  Well, it's hard to get enthusiastic about people who are not permitted to take even the most basic actions representing their country.

MS. PLETKA:  Francis, I'm sorry-- [sound loss].  It's extraordinarily tempting for us, especially those who have talked about the importance of Iraqi sovereignty, to look back and see the mistakes of the last year.  And I think that those mistakes were serious and that we are paying a very high price for them, not only in Iraq but internationally.

But one of the most important things, now that we have come to our senses, perhaps, and done what we might as easily have done a year ago, is actually to turn around and look forward and try and ensure that the lot that has been handed to the Iraqi people--and I think we should make no mistake about that; this was not a democratic choice, this is not a representative choice; this is for the most part a group of, dare I say it, exiles that are currently running Iraq--is to ensure that the interim period is not used by those who have been empowered to consolidate power in a way that is antithetical not only to our own interests but the interests of the Iraqi people.

And so even though we here spend a great deal of time looking back at some of the mistakes that have been made--and we should learn the lessons of those mistakes--it is even more important, perhaps, for the future and for the success of such enterprises should they ever come again, to make sure that the democratic process actually takes hold in Iraq, that we don't end up with Interim Prime Minister Allawi and Permanent Prime Minister Allawi, and Interim President al-Yawar and Permanent President al-Yawar, because that would genuinely be a disservice to the Iraqi people.

MR. BROOK:  If I could, I've tried to avoid the personal on this just a little bit, but I might mention that we would feel a lot more sanguine about that, Dani, if we weren't being persecuted by the Central Criminal Court of Iraq.  There is an arrest warrant out for me, and there certainly is a persecution campaign on Dr. Chalabi.  If he can run freely from now till December as a free Iraqi, say what he wants, go where he wants, no one would not support this government.  But we are very nervous that it's not going to be a free political environment.

QUESTION:  Hannah Strange, United Press International.

I've got a couple of quick questions.  The first question:  Given the recent attacks on a couple of members of the newly appointed government in Iraq, what are the security steps that are going to be taken to protect the members of the government, and what could potentially the problems that would arise if the attacks continue?

The second question is regarding the U.N. role.  You've all been quite critical of the U.N. role in Iraq, but to the international community it does seem, to an extent, that the Coalition Provisional Authority has kind of had to run back to the U.N. now and say, okay, we do need you in there.  I would just like to know, particularly from Richard Perle, if I may, what exactly do you see the U.N. role in Iraq as, and why do we need the U.N. involved in Iraq now?

MR. PERLE:  Well, I'm not one of those who believe we do need the U.N.  And the test for the U.N. now, the most immediate test, turns on the issue that Michael raised of the electoral structure that is put in place by the U.N., which is its single most important function between now and the Iraqi elections.  And if they inflict on the people of Iraq a party list system, it will guarantee ethnic and sectarian and religious divisions in the country with what I fear will be disastrous consequences.

So the idea that an Italian bureaucrat should consign the Iraqis to that future is very troubling.  I hope she will listen to what the Iraqis want and think hard about what's in the best interest of the Iraqis.

With all due respect to the international community, it sat by while Saddam Hussein brutalized his own people.  Its interest in Iraq is an interest that arose with the liberation of Iraq.  And I don't share the view that legitimacy in Iraqi terms is conferred by the U.N. bureaucracy of the members of the Security Council or anyone other than the Iraqis themselves.

MR. RUBIN:  I'm just going to briefly respond to the first issue on security.  I'm not a security expert, but generally the Iraqis have been complaining for quite some time that they need to--they know about Iraqi security better than we do.  They point out that many of the assassinations have been at American checkpoints.  And when you have situations in Fallujah, for example, with General Jassem Mohammed Salah being put forward, well, we thought he was hunky-dory, but the Iraqis, as soon as they saw him, said this is a guy that had personally executed people in Karbala and then got transferred and promoted to lead an ethnic cleansing campaign in Kirkuk.

And basically, in this one, what do we need to do to better security?  The answer's probably devolve some more responsibility to the Iraqis because they know what they're doing much more, given the societal background, their language ability, and so forth.

MR. DONNELLY:  Real briefly, it's just really striking how the international community and the U.N. existed in an entirely parallel but unconnected universe to things that are going on in Iraq.  Richard's point about the election process is worth elaborating and pushing because if it doesn't reflect something that the Iraqi people want to have, then it just simply won't work.  Ambassador Brahimi's plan for Iraq was essentially rejected by Iraqis.  Again, it's not perfect the way it is, but the ability of the U.N. to dictate to Iraq is almost nil.

QUESTION:  Rob Warren [ph], consultant.

Would you please evaluate the Kurdish response to the interim government?  They are unsettled over the transitional constitution.  Might they break from this collective responsibility to govern the country?

MR. RUBIN:  I've been very much troubled by what I've read the last couple of weeks.  The reason I've been troubled is, in the negotiations for the transitional administrative law, it was negotiated for hours by a body that represented 80 to 90 percent of the Iraqi political trends.  The Kurds stepped back from their maximalist demands and compromised.  And by undermining that compromise at the United Nations, the United States and--I mean, basically Washington has sent the signal that if you're stupid enough to compromise, then we're going to bash you.

And what we've sent--the signal is that we are not going to reward responsibility.  And that's a dangerous message to send.  Many Kurds when you talk to them--I mean, political--there's a discrepancy between the political leadership and the ordinary people.  The political leadership of the Iraqi Kurds--and, first of all, they're handicapped by their continued lack of unity at this point in time, but also they recognize that if they were to go independent, they would have absolutely no protection from the interference of any of the neighboring states.  They see at this point in time that they have more interest in being tied to a representative democratic Iraq.  The problem is, as Carina Perelli encourages sectarianism, that this calculation may change.

But, I mean, shame on Foggy Bottom for making a compromise on the Kurdish compromise, because that just sends the signal, Never again compromise.

QUESTION:  Jeffrey Winograd [?] from Focus Israel newsletter.  I would like to ask two questions, if I could squeeze them in.

One, how do you account--

MS. PLETKA:  No, ask one question.

QUESTION:  Okay, then here's the question.  After everything is said and done, it would seem that the president of the United States is the person responsible if there is confusion, lack of cohesive policy.  How do you evaluate the president's role, and can you give any recommendations for what he should be doing?

MS. PLETKA:  Jeffrey, who do you want to answer that question?

QUESTION:  Richard [inaudible].

MS. PLETKA:  Richard, you get the easy one.

MR. PERLE:  Thank you for the honor.  Of course, ultimately presidents have to take responsibility for the policies of their administration.  Obviously, no president can deal with every issue of detail that the government is involved in.  So the question is, at what level is it appropriate to assign responsibility?  And I think a great many of the decisions that deserve to be debated and that, in my view, are wrong have not come from direct presidential orders but are settled through an inter-agency process that doesn't always produce cohesion, doesn't always produce coherence, and places an undue emphasis on consensus.

I've lived through several inter-agency processes, including most significantly in the Reagan administration.  And President Reagan did nothing to interfere with the clash of advice that came to him, because he believed--and, I think, rightly--that when different opinions and arguments were placed in front of him, it was his responsibility to make the decisions and he felt competent and able to make those decisions, and he did.  And by and large, I think he made the right decisions on the big issues.

In this administration, by contrast, too many decisions are made too far below the president's level in the interest of sparing the president the need to decide controversial matters, which I think is a misplaced administration of the inter-agency process.

MS. PLETKA:  With that, and an apology to our friend from the Jordanian Embassy who, I know, wants to ask a question but I also have a sense is going to take quite awhile.  Don't hesitate to come up afterwards, though.

Let me thank everybody in the audience and our panel as well.  And with that, we conclude. Thank you.