One Year Later: An Update on Iraq

March 17, 2004

Transcript prepared from a tape recording

Proceedings:
MS. RAHIM:  I apologize for the impromptu nature of my talk. I will be brief and then I’ll answer questions also.

First of all, I do want to emphasize what Dany said, and that is that since May – between May and late November – I should tell you that I spent most of my time in Iraq, with only very brief interruptions. So for seven months I was steeped in Iraq and what was going on in Iraq, and this is a very important experience which really informs my view of what the situation is.

Before going any further, I want to say that on the anniversary of – or, almost the anniversary of – the removal of Saddam Hussein’s regime and the launch of the war, the Iraqi nation is very grateful for the Bush administration and for the U.S. and the Coalition’s efforts to liberate the Iraqi people from a dictatorship that had stifled Iraq for 35 years.

The Iraqi people could not have done it.  They needed salvation, and they could not have done it without the assistance of the U.S. and its coalition partners.  So thank you.  And we, all of us, 25 million Iraqis appreciate it.

 The other thing that I should tell you is that we Iraqis still need the continuing support of the United States and the coalition on numerous fronts--political support, diplomatic support, military support, security, financial support.  We are in need of that today and we will continue to need it for a very long time to come.

 Iraq is now a fragile country politically.  We are surrounded by neighbors who may or may not wish us well.  We are building a nation that is going to be, we hope, unique in the region because it is going to be democratic, it is going to be pluralistic, it's going to be federated, it will have responsible government, human rights and civil liberties and all those good things that the countries in the region aspire to but haven't quite achieved.  We want to do it.  We want to do it first.  This is not necessarily something that all our neighbors look forward to.  We need U.S. support, we need coalition support for a long period.  And we will work very closely with the United States in order to forge a long-term partnership.

 I refer to the fact that I was in Iraq between May and November.  I then came here as the representative of the Iraqi Governing Council to the U.S. and I spent a continuous period between the end of November and the middle of February in the U.S.  Of course, it is not only my job but also driven by my interest to watch the news coverage of Iraq in the U.S. media and in other media.  And I can tell you that the news coverage gives an extraordinarily one-sided view of the situation in Iraq.  Even I, by the end of my 10-week continuous period here, was beginning to think that Baghdad had turned into a Wild West country--that people were shooting each other in the streets, that nobody dared go out, that there was a general feeling of fear and foreboding in all the people and that the country, really, was not functioning.

 And I decided that I absolutely needed to go back to get a reality check.  I did indeed go back for a couple of weeks, and the reality is nothing like what you see on television.  Now, I understand that the media--and there's plenty of media here--really look for an event.  And the more dramatic the event, the more it has blood and gore, the more it has shoot-outs and so on, the more interesting it is for the media.  And I perfectly understand that.

 But that is not the story of what is going on in Iraq.  I went there and I realized what I had known in November but forgotten, that this was actually a country that was working.  And I mean that both in the figurative and the literal sense.  People lived normal lives.  People had jobs in the ministries that they went to, people had jobs in offices and corporations that they went to.  Students went to universities.  Younger kids went to school. People went out shopping.  They visited each other, they went to restaurants, they went to clubs.  They stayed out late at night.  I was actually, in the first few days, I was rather flabbergasted because we would be invited out and we would stay out till midnight.  And in the first few days, I was very anxious--how could we possibly do this?  This is supposed to be a dangerous country.
 Indeed, the Iraqi people are doing everything that people in a normal country do.  Are there dangers?  Yes, of course.  If one were a prominent figure, one is probably targeted.  Also one could be at the wrong place at the wrong time.  But these were the exceptions and not the rule of life.  It is very difficult to impart to you.  And I know that the news doesn't help the sense of normalcy in day-to-day life of Iraqis in Baghdad and in other places.  Yes, of course there's danger.  But so is there danger in living in Madrid, as we recently saw.  There is now danger in living in France because terrorists are threatening the French government and the French nation with terrorist activities.  Iraqis live with that knowledge that there is terrorism in their country.  But they also lead normal and active and productive lives.

 I also realized something that we had forgotten here, that the standard of living has risen enormously in Iraq.  People now earn multiple times what they earned under the Saddam Hussein regime.  We have a very high unemployment indeed, but that is changing.  And the more foreign companies come in or Iraqi companies come in, the more that the donor countries, including the U.S., allocate funds to specific projects and these projects begin to be implemented, the less and less unemployment we have.  But those people, the growing numbers of people who do have jobs now have decent salaries that help them not only live, but live at a better standard of living.

 I usually measure by the very ordinary people that I come into contact with--people like shopkeepers, taxi drivers, people who work in small jobs in the myriad companies that have sprung up--and I can tell you that even those simple people, who probably didn't have a telephone at home in the best of times under the Saddam regime, now are buying cell phones that cost $200-300 to purchase and $40 a month to operate.  These are substantial sums by any standards for Iraq, and yet more and more ordinary people are buying those.  Satellite dishes, which were forbidden and punishable with at least six months in prison under Saddam, proliferate.  If you fly over Iraq, the area that surrounds the airport, the rooftops are covered with satellite dishes.

 So we are beginning to see prosperity in Iraq.  And the advantage of my having stayed from May until the end of November is that I am conscious of the evolution.  And it is the sense of evolution in the country that the news does not capture.  Occasionally you do actually get an article in the press that looks at the progression, but I think the biggest story in Iraq is the evolution from the fall of the regime until my recent visit in March.

 I should also mention something which is very dear to my heart, and that is the vibrancy of civil society in Iraq.  We have hundreds of NGOs that have been set up.  In fact, they seem to be springing up every day, including hundreds of women's organizations.  And that is a very big story in Iraq because there was no such thing as civil society.  This was a totalitarian regime that penetrated into even the most private recesses of people's lives.  Now people are free to organize and to advocate and to carry out their own programs and so on.  I think this is a wonderful thing, and this is the kind of democracy that we are looking for.

 However, what we still need in Iraq is support for this democracy.  We do have support, in terms of financial support, for physically rebuilding Iraq.  There's plenty of money for nuts and bolts and for bricks and mortar.  What we need more of is support for this emerging democratic culture that is being created in Iraq.  It's not easy.  We have not had a democratic culture for at least 35 years and, I would argue, for 50 years.  We did have something like that before 1958, but it has been eroded and, certainly under Saddam Hussein, it was stifled.

 We need to rebuild that democratic culture, because you cannot have democratic government unless you have a vibrant civil society which believes in democracy and which clings to democratic values so that it is the appropriate check to government in case government wants to deviate from the democratic principles that are outlined in a future constitution.

 And the last point I want to make is about the Transitional Administrative Law.  It is an extraordinary achievement that we now have an interim basic law that is the most progressive in the Arab world--I won't say the Middle East, but country in the Arab world.  If you think back a year ago, early March 2003, what were the Iraqis living under?  They were living under a dictatorship where political life was nonexistent, political dialogue was punishable with death, where there was no political diversity, no political discourse.  There were no politics in Iraq in early March 2003.  There were no political parties.  There was no discourse whatsoever.  And certainly Iraqis were not able to participate in defining their future.

 Less than a year later, we have gone through a process of political dialogue, political negotiation in which a wide array of individuals and parties and political groups have participated.  The transitional law was not the creation of one person or one political party.  It was a law that was forged by committee.  This is not something that one usually applauds, but in the case of Iraq it was very important for it to be created by a large group, diverse group, that has different political views, different political values, perhaps, and that was able to sit down over a period of eight to 10 weeks and negotiated and debate and haggle in a manner that is truly indicative of an emerging acceptance of democracy.

 The transitional law that we have is a product of that intense political debate and negotiation.  Nobody left feeling they had gotten 100 percent of what they wanted, and nobody left feeling they got zero.  We all accepted that this should not be a zero sum game; it should not be winner take all; that everybody must have a buy-in, must have a vested interest in this transitional law.
 And yet, we did come up with a transitional law which is, I think, a model for the region.  I am particularly, as Danni mentioned, I have been a very strong advocate of human rights and civil liberties and democracy, and what I like most about that law is that section, that long section, which guarantees basic human rights and basic civil rights to the Iraqi people.

 This was a success of Iraqis that was truly unthinkable a year ago.  Whatever difficulties we have had and whatever problems we will face--and we will face them--I do not pretend that there will be no obstacles in our way.  But whatever those obstacles are and whatever those challenges, we Iraqis have achieved an enormous amount of success so far.  And we would like the world to acknowledge that success.  And we want the world to support us in that success.  And at the forefront, we want the U.S. to be our partner.

 Thank you.
 [Applause.]

 MS. PLETKA:  Rend would you mind taking a couple of questions?

 MS. RAHIM:  Not at all.

 MS. PLETKA:  And if everybody would be kind enough to keep your question in the form of a question, and brief.  Identify yourself first, please, and your affiliation.  And if you would also just be kind enough to wait for the mike.

 QUESTION:  Hi.  [Inaudible] from Al-Jazeera TV.  Thank you, Madame Representative, for coming here.

 You criticized the media, as I understood, for their coverage of the situation, actually security situation there is now in Iraq.  But a group of Iraqi women that were here last week, they spoke at Woodrow Wilson Center, and they were talking about the security situation and that it was bad and that now also Iraqi women are eating from the trash, as what Dr. Rajal Hosai [sp] said, and that they have no shelter now.

 So could you please explain this kind of irony between what you just said and what they said there?

 MS. RAHIM:  I don't want to pretend that everything is perfect in Iraq.  And I'm glad you asked this question.  We have a tremendous amount of poverty.  A great deal more needs to be done.  What I'm saying is that we have achieved a great deal.  And if you had looked at Iraq in February 2003, and look at it today, you have to measure the change and not simply take a snapshot and say it is terrible because of all the things that still need to be done.

 And this is my argument.  The media tends to take a snapshot.  And I think the true story in Iraq is the story of evolution toward something which is increasingly better.  Do we need more work?  Yes.  Do we need more security?  You bet.  Are there still people who need to be helped?  Of course there are.  But that is not to discredit and discount the gains that we have made.

 I hope that answers the question.

 QUESTION:  Bill Tucker.  I'm the senior advisor and Washington representative for the Iraqi American Chamber of Commerce.  And we're planning a DBX conference in Baghdad, as you know, in April.  I just returned from Korea, where I was encouraging a number of Korean companies to attend the conference.  But I continually am asked is it safe and is it secure.  I understand there are over 200 companies that are already registered for the conference, but I would like for your comment on the security to attend the conference for executives and for businessmen.

 MS. RAHIM:  I certainly can't judge for other companies what they should do.  Everybody has to assess their own level of comfort with the security.  So that's one point.

 My view--and I have helped organize conferences in Iraq.  The most recent one was in late February, actually.  And we had a number of people come from overseas, from Europe and the United States.  I was asked in early February whether we should go ahead and hold the conference in Baghdad or perhaps hold it in Amman.  And my answer was, It is important to hold it in Baghdad.  If people don't feel secure enough, they shouldn't come.

 One of the reasons I think it is important to hold these events inside Iraq is because Iraqis need to feel a confirmation by the outside world that they are in fact a country that is returning to a state of normalcy, that the people outside Iraq, the companies, the countries and so on, do support them in that effort.  And it is a vote of confidence in the country.

 I personally am opposed to conferences outside Iraq.  And those who feel insecure should not come.

 QUESTION:  My name is Sayed Erekat from Al-Quds newspaper.  Thank you, Madam Ambassador.  I wanted to ask you, there was a report published yesterday, I think, in the Christian Science Monitor saying that the Iraqi opposition deliberately fabricated intelligence to the administration and to the media to push the goal for war.  That's one.

 And the second, you mentioned the Arab countries that may not wish you well.  Could you mention those to us?  And during the upcoming summit, do you feel like you will be welcomed as a full member and an active member in the upcoming Arab summit conference in Tunis, Tunisia?  Thank you.

 MS. RAHIM:  Let me answer the last one first.  It's the easiest.  In fact, the foreign minister of Iraq, Mr. Hoshiyar Zibari, participated as a full member, a full and recognized member of the meeting of Arab foreign ministers that was held in Cairo in March.  And that was held specifically to prepare for the Arab summit in Tunis, I believe, at the end of this month.  So there is no question that Iraq is now a full-fledged, acknowledged--and respected, I might add--member of the Arab League.

 As to the--by the way, I did not specify Arab countries when I said that some of our "neighbors."  And in any case, I'm not going to answer that question.

 Going on to the first question, I have really, and I'm not trying to dodge this, but I have really no insight into intelligence matters.  The Iraq Foundation that I headed at the time did not get involved in any intelligence matters.  And there are people who often said, you know, aren't you afraid of leaks from the Iraq Foundation?  I said, We have no classified information.  In fact, everything we have and everything we do, the more everyone knows about it, the happier I am.  So we were not in the intelligence business.

 But I do want to make this comment.  I represent Iraq here.  And if I may speak on behalf of Iraqis--nobody's voted for me, but as a representative I feel a license to do so.  For 25 million Iraqis, the removal of Saddam Hussein was a humanitarian intervention.  Iraqis needed salvation, needed to be saved from a murderous totalitarian regime that we can now show, we can now demonstrate killed hundreds of thousands of Iraqis.  And that is not including in the wars.  If you add the wars, we are talking about millions.  This was a case of a nation that was so severely oppressed that we can only compare the regime to Hitler and Stalin.

 So my view is that Iraq needed that intervention on humanitarian grounds.  And we are very happy to get rid of Saddam Hussein.

 QUESTION:  Michelle Kellerman with National Public Radio.  You talked about this interim constitution as a major milestone, yet in June the U.S. is going to be handing off power to some sort of interim government.  It's not clear yet what that's going to look like.  I wonder if you can reflect a little bit about the past year and how many changes the U.S. government's plans have gone through about this political transition.  Do you think the U.S. went in with, sort of, too rosy assumptions on how easy it was going to be to get a government in place?  Or was there just not enough planning of how to do it?

 MS. RAHIM:  That's why I say the real story in Iraq is the story of evolution, including the evolution of both the U.S., or the coalition, understanding of the situation and, I want to add, the evolution of the understanding of Iraqis of how things are going to develop politically.  I think we--I can't say we went in with rosy ideas or not because different Iraqis and different Americans, indeed, approached it with different understandings and different ideas.  And there was perhaps no consensus on how things would develop.

 There is no harm in changing one's plans to meet the realities on the ground as they develop.  Do we wish that we had a blueprint that we went in with on April 9th and everything had worked according to that blueprint?  Of course.  Things would have been easier. However, on the other hand, is it better to have had that blueprint and, in the face of develops, insisted on the blueprint regardless of the consequences?  I think that would have been wrong.  Being flexible and being able to adapt to a developing situation is, I think, the proper way to do it.

 QUESTION:  Was there a blueprint?

 MS. RAHIM:  Was there a blueprint?  That's not for me to answer.  Certainly we have had to look at the situation as it developed, and adjust.  But I think that's smarter than being rigid and saying, no, this is the idea that we came with, or this is the law that we made at the beginning, or this is what we decreed back in April or back in May and, by God, we're here to stick with it regardless of how damaging it is.

 QUESTION:  My name is Fernando [inaudible] from a Brazilian newspaper, Folha de Sao Paulo.

 Despite the progress that you are saying is happening in Iraq, there is a lot of anti-American sentiment and [inaudible] still.  I'd like to ask if you think that this evolution is going to change that, and why it's so high, this sentiment against America there if you're saying that things are improving because of the Americans.

 MS. RAHIM:  First of all, the region around us was very skeptical about Iraq eight, nine months ago.  And initially--this refers back to the question about the Arab League.  Initially the countries in the region were reluctant to recognize the Iraqi Governing Council.  They were reluctant to endorse and acknowledge what has happened in Iraq.  And yet gradually, over the months, there has been a greater and greater acceptance.  And the members of the Governing Council, since the fall, have been able to visit countries in the region not in their individual capacity, but in an official capacity.  They have increasingly participated in regional meetings at an official level.

 And in March, at the Arab League meeting, there was an extraordinary statement that was issued by the Arab League that recognized the Governing Council, that endorsed and approved of the transitional law that had just been signed, that supported the transfer of sovereignty to Iraqis on June 30th, that condemned the past regime, and that called for a tribunal for those in the old regime that committed crimes against the Iraqi people.  If this is not a growing support and a growing endorsement of the developments in Iraq, I can't imagine what is.

 MS. PLETKA:  We'll take two more questions and then liberate Ambassador Rahim.

 QUESTION:  Alat Bayimi [sp] from the Council on American-Islamic Relations, CAIR.
 After the terrorist attacks that happened on the day of Ashoura, the holiday of Ashoura two weeks ago, some writers, like Jim Hoagland from the Washington Post, were trying to suggest that what happened was a sign of a civil war, or a civil war was in Islam, a religious war between Sunnis and Shia.  I want to ask you about this line of thinking.  Do you think it helps the new Iraq?  First, is it correct?  Is there a civil religious war within Iraq?  And if this line of thinking helps the new Iraq.  Thank you.

 [Off microphone, inaudible.]

 QUESTION:  Portraying what is happening in Iraq as a religious war between Sunnis and Shiites.

 MS. RAHIM:  You know, it seems that a lot of people would be sort of gratified to see civil war in Iraq--a lot of people outside Iraq.  I can tell you that there are no signs of ethnic or sectarian conflict in Iraq. 

 If you go back to the Zarqawi letter--and I trust that most of you have read it or read excerpts of it or synopses of it--there certainly are people outside Iraq who want to derail Iraq's progress towards democracy, towards pluralism, towards openness to the outside world.  They think that this is a threat to them.  And they have decided that since this kind of progress is going ahead anyway and irrespective of their objections to it, that the best course they can have is to try and inflame and instigate civil war in Iraq.  And these outsiders, judging by Zarqawi's letters, are pledging to be instruments for creating civil conflict in Iraq.

 Now, the events of Ashoura in Karbala and [inaudible] were certainly not the only attacks that perhaps were aimed at inflaming civil conflict.  You have to remember that in August, there were bombs in Najaf that killed over 200 people, including Bakr al-Hakim.  While I was in Baghdad, a senior Sunni personality, and a sheikh, a Sunni sheikh, was assassinated in his home.  In February, there was an explosion in Erbil that killed more than 100 Kurds.

 One could certainly see those events as part of a series of efforts to instigate civil war, either on an ethnic basis or a sectarian basis.  And I think that the one thing that has emerged is that Iraqis refuse to fall for these traps.  After each one of those efforts, Iraqis have come together.  And in the event of Ashoura, both Sunnis and Shia, clerics and laymen, have issued statements condemning those events and saying that Iraqi solidarity will prevail.

 So this is perhaps a little long-winded answer as to whether it's useful to frame it in those terms.  I don't think it is, but people will do it anyway.

 QUESTION:  I'm [inaudible], and [inaudible] is my newspaper, Italian newspaper.
 Please, could you address the subject of elections.  How urgent, how important is it in the process that you describe?  And the second point is Israel.  What about the relation with Israel?  Could it be a very innovative step in the Arab world to have a different kind of relationship with Israel?  How do you foresee that?  Thank you.

 MS. RAHIM:  Everybody wants elections.  I mean, elections are a marker on the path to democracy.  The problem is that elections do not equal democracy.  And we have to disentangle that issue.  We have to pass it, if you want.  But certainly there can be-- In other words, democracy is a necessary but insufficient condition for democracy.

 Now, the transitional law, recognizing that elections are a marker, has said that we will actually have national elections in Iraq either in December of this year or January of 2005.  And I can assure you that all the Iraqi population looks forward to it.

 You know, the issue of elections has to be seen in historic perspective.  Iraqis--economically there's something called pent-up demand.  If you have been deprived of a commodity for a long period of time, then there is pent-up demand for that commodity.  Everybody wants it when it goes on the market.  I remember when PlayStation 2 came on the market.

 There his pent-up demand for self-expression in Iraq, through all kinds of vehicles.  The NGOs are a part of this.  The number of political organizations that have sprung up in Iraq, and political parties, is part of that pent-up demand.  The fact that we have over 150 newspapers and weekly publications is part of the pent-up demand for self-expression and participation.  Elections certainly are.

 We will have elections in December or January, and I think that there are now even as we speak kind of arrangements and preparations being made to prepare for elections.  And I should also mention that there are local elections going on now.  This has been covered, fortunately, in the press, in the Washington Post, and I believe I heard something on NPR yesterday or the day before.  There are elections for local councils and so on that are going on throughout Iraq.  And I think that is the way to go.

 One of the things that I regret, and I think one of the mistakes of the CPA, of the coalition, is not to hold--to hold off on local elections for all this time.  I don't want to pretend, by the way, that there have not been mistakes made by the coalition, but that is a subject of another meeting and another conversation.  But if I were to point to one of the defects of the system we have had so far and one of the shortcomings or the wrong decisions of the CPA, I would point to their reluctance--or maybe it wasn't reluctance; maybe they just didn't think about it--for having local elections, which are much more manageable, which really give people a sense of participation and a stake locally.  They feel--it's a local empowerment.  And I think this is where we should have started, local empowerment.

 Anyway, it's happening now and it's going to be a stepped-up effort leading up to national elections in December or January.

 The other question was on Israel.  First of all, I have to tell you that I think all Iraqis want peace in the region.  We are a nation that has suffered from prolonged wars, and we, better than anybody else, know the consequences of wars.  Today we also know the consequences of suicide attacks, terrorism, and so on and so forth.  The Iraqis will want peace in the region and I think Iraq will be a contributor to peace in the region.  I cannot prejudge what an elected government is going to want to do and the modalities and so on, but my conviction is that Iraq will be a strong contributor to peace.

 MS. PLETKA:  And thank you very much.

 [Applause.]

MS. PLETKA:  What we're going to do now is return to our panel interruptus, with Reuel, who is going to speak for about five minutes.  And then we'll move on down the line and back to Q&A.  And thank you, everybody, for your indulgence, and to Rend, too.

 MR. GERECHT:  Okay, I'll be very pithy.  I remain reasonably optimistic.  I think things are going more or less okay inside of Iraq.  I think, though, the Bush administration and the Coalition Provisional Authority have obviously made many, many mistakes, some of them serious.  They have displayed the one required quality, that is, flexibility.  I should say two required qualities--flexibility and self-criticism.  They've realized, however fitfully, however reluctantly, that when they've made serious errors, they need to correct them.

 I would say that the two most serious errors the Bush administration made, one was the flirtation with the idea of keeping the Sunni officer corps and keeping the Iraqi army intact.  I think that would have been a catastrophic mistake.  It would have lost the Shia and the Kurds to us.  They realized, Ambassador Bremer realized that was a bad decision and would have been the wrong decision, and they decided to abolish the Sunni officer corps and the army.  I think that was a decision that is, without doubt, Ambassador Bremer's finest decision of his tenure there.

 The other was the choice to go with the non-elected transitional caucuses.  That had a lot of support in the Bush administration, particularly a lot of support in the CPA in Baghdad.  When Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani made a counterargument, they realized, again somewhat reluctantly, that his counterargument was better.  And they abandoned that idea and decided that they had to go for direct elections.  Now there is obviously a problem.  We don't know what the interim government is really going to look like.  A senior member of the National Security Council is over there right now having discussions with the CPA and the Iraqi Governing Council.  I'm quite certain that they are going to come up with something.  It may not be perfect the first time through.  It may not be right the second time through.  But certainly by the third or fourth time, I think, they'll probably get it right.

 The interim constitution is a good document.  Again, I'm not terribly crazy one way or the other over the contents of that document.  It may be a great progressive document.  I'm somewhat skeptical of its transcendent value.  But what is important is the extent to which all of the Iraqis concerned, everyone in that country, including the primary power players and, I would mention this in particular, the ayatollahs, particularly Sistani of Najaf, believed this was an important document.  So they viewed it seriously, and that's what you want to see.  And I'm sure coming to the constituent assembly we will see a very healthy rancorous, angry debate, and that's all for the good.

 And I would say, again, I want to go back to the Zarqawi letter.  I mean, I think that's a very important document.  Let's assume that it is true.  I think all of us now believe that it is an original document.  It tells you a lot.  I mean, it tells you that, one, the Bush administration, the CPA have done more things right than they have wrong.  Because that letter certainly is a letter of pessimism.

 If the forces that oppose us in Iraq had been capable and bright, we would never have seen an ending to the bombings that began last August.  And certainly, bombing us in the Shia sections was the intelligent thing to do, going after Americans there, going after the Shia there.  That is the way you break America's will, that is the way that you put the Shia into a very tense relationship with the Americans.  That didn't happen.  We've had more violence down there, but we really haven't seen constant attacks, the types that could shatter this entire enterprise.

 And the letter also points out that, with the arrival of a more representative system, as it moves toward greater democracy, that the possibilities and hopes of bin Ladinism, which is certainly what the Zarqawi letter is about, die.  Now, it may not die quickly, but it is eventually going to die.  They cannot survive in a system which is representative.

 And that brings us back to the other factor, and that's the Sunni issue.  As time goes by, it becomes more and more apparent that we're probably not looking at a Sunni insurrection.  It hasn't happened, it hasn't yet been sparked.  And bin Ladinism cannot survive, the guerrilla campaign cannot survive unless it has deep roots and traction inside the Sunni Arab population in Iraq.  And though you obviously have a difference of opinion in that community, that difference of opinion has not been translated into, I think, a sustained, really broad guerrilla campaign that supports terrorism yet.  This may change, but it's not there.

 I would also, very quickly, add that we've had problems, obviously, with the Iranians, the Syrians, and the Saudis.  These individuals are not innocent in their views or their actions inside of Iraq.  But it could be a lot worse.  And a lot of different reasons why that hasn't happened, and I think we have to monitor their behavior quite closely.  But worst case scenarios haven't happened, and again, I remain reasonably optimistic that they won't.

 I'll stop there.

  MS. PLETKA:  Richard, we turn to you.

 MR. PERLE:  What I would like to do in the five minutes is answer a couple of the questions that the ambassador either could not answer or was compelled by diplomatic convention to answer in a way different than I would answer.

 The correspondent from Al-Quds asked whether it was true that Iraqi exiles had provided false intelligence, misleading, deceptive intelligence.  And the ambassador said she had no knowledge of that.  There are a great many other people who have no knowledge of that who have not shown the ambassador's restraint in not expressing an opinion on the subject.  Some of them are in this room.

 The simple truth is that it is a lie to suggest that the INC, the Iraqi National Congress, which assisted some people in leaving Iraq who were then interrogated by U.S. intelligence officials, provided false information.  And certainly it is a lie that there was a deliberate effort to provide false information.  In the intelligence business, not everything that is observed and reported turns out to be true, and there isn't an intelligence officer alive who doesn't know and understand that.  Which is why the intelligence profession considers that it possesses the skills of trade craft.  So it asks questions and conducts interrogations in a way that is intended to determine what the truth is.

 If they fail to do that, it is their fault.  The fact that the Iraqi National Congress presented for interrogation individuals whose information may not have been correct--and I'm not even prepared to accept that, because I don't have any direct knowledge of that--does not lead to the conclusion that there were lies.  The suggestion that there were is politically motivated.  And it's malicious.  And it continues in extraordinary places, including among senators on the Senate Intelligence Committee, and it is widely but wrongly reported in the press that there was a campaign to mislead the American people.  It's simply a lie.

 The correspondent from Al-Jazeera has observed that there's poverty in Iraq.  Of course there is.  How could there be anything else?  Look at the way in which the Iraqi economy has been managed since Saddam Hussein took power.  Look at the palaces and then look at the women who were forced to eat from refuse, and you can see the source of the poverty.  The idea that poverty should have been eliminated in the months since the liberation of Iraq is, of course, absurd.  And the poverty would have gone on as long as Saddam Hussein was there, and it probably would have gone to his sons after that and it would have gone on for as far as the eye can see.  There is now a decent chance that a decent Iraqi government can cope with poverty and take action to end it.

 The Al-Quds correspondent also wanted to know if Iraq would be welcomed at an Arab summit and by the Arab League.  Let me say that one of the most disgusting chapters in recent history was the way in which the Arab world tolerated Saddam Hussein.  Did anyone raise the question of whether Tariq Aziz would be welcome?  It's unbelievable that there could be a question about the legitimacy of an Iraqi government that is moving toward democracy, that has replaced one of the most brutal and sadistic dictatorships on earth.  Where was the Arab League?  Where was my friend Amre Moussa?  Where was the Egyptian government?  Where was the Jordanian government?  Where were the Arab governments when Saddam Hussein was murdering tens of thousands of people, hundreds of thousands of people?  They were silent.  They didn't lift a finger.  The United States has paid a heavy price for the liberation of Iraq, and it's something of which we can be and must be proud.  And yet we see the most astonishing carping, including still in the Arab world.

 Public Radio wants to know did we plan well enough.  Did Public Radio ever organize and interview and the interviewer failed to turn up?  Never had a surprise?  Never found that a blueprint couldn't be executed exactly?  The administration planned as well as it could plan under circumstances of uncertainty.  It is a lie to suggest that there was no planning and it is a lie to suggest that the planning reflected an unduly rosy view of how difficult this challenge would be.  It's all over the press that the administration failed to plan.  This was not a routine operation.

 This was not the sort of thing that we do repetitively and where we can learn from experience, but in a very short period of time we've learned a great deal, and the adaptability, which others have stressed, has been really extraordinary, discovering that something isn't working and trying something else that might work.  The people who have been responsible for this deserve enormous credit for it.

 Our Brazilian correspondent wants to know why is there anti-American sentiment in the Arab world?

 Part of the problem may be the way in which citizens in Arab countries live and the way in which they get their news.  They don't get it through a free press because there is no free press in the Arab world.  They get it often on Fridays at the mosques, which in many countries are dominated by radical Islamists who have their own vision for a future world in which all of us infidels are forced to live according to their values and their laws and their traditions.  If that's your principal source of news, you may fail to understand what's going on in the rest of the world.

 Is the anti-American sentiment a product of American policies that have been hurtful and damaging to the citizens of those countries?  Well, if you're going to make that case I suppose you'd have to say we've been too close to some of those dictatorships.  And yet, when those of us who have been urging for years now that we make some effort to bring democracy to the Arab world we're derided for that by the left, extraordinarily enough.

 Finally, Rend was very eloquent on the refusal of Iraqis to be driven, provoked into a civil war, and it is extraordinary how bravely they've resisted that.  Despite all the predictions before the invasion that civil war would be the inevitable result.

 The Iraqis have bravely refused to be stampeded.  The Spanish electorate, sadly, has not, and it's a great tragedy that a Spanish socialist leader, a socialist leader, a man of the left, would stand up and say that Iraq is a tragedy, a disaster, that the people of Iraq are worse off today than they were under Saddam Hussein.  It's an extraordinary political combination when a socialist would-be prime minister expresses remorse at the passing of a fascist regime.
 [Applause.]

 MS. PLETKA:  Over to you, Tom.

 MR. DONNELLY:  If I didn't feel like an afterthought before, I certainly do now.
 I'm going to confine my remarks to kind of a strategic and military analysis of the war that began a year ago, and try to answer questions directly, the direct question of whether we're winning.  I think we are winning.  We are winning pretty decisively, and I think we're pretty close to sort of having won completely for a lot of the reasons that the previous panelists have floated.

 First of all, the United States has obtained its strategic objectives almost without exception.  Saddam is gone.  A new democratic government is coming.  And the region is far less threatening to the United States than it was a year ago.  Our enemies, plural in Iraq, have entirely failed to obtain their strategic objectives.  As the previous panelists have pointed out, they've entirely failed to shake American willpower, which is perhaps the greatest weakness that we might have faced; and secondly, they've entirely failed to provoke civil war in Iraq.

 Where they have enjoyed some unfortunate success is in driving a wedge between the United States and its European allies.  Luckily, that's a strategic secondary importance, and far less important than the question of American determination, of American military capacity, and of the Iraqi people to stay the course in Iraq.

 Finally, just to be extraordinarily brief, the adaptability that people talk about has not only obtained at the level of Secretary Rumsfeld and the senior leadership of the Bush administration, it's very much also obtained on the part of the army and the marine corps, and the military in the field.

 As we look back over the second phase of the war, the counter-insurgency campaign that began about a month after the major combat operation ended, again, in retrospect, that has gone remarkably well.  The initial attacks on Americans, again have failed to obtain their strategic purpose, and the numbers of American casualties are far fewer than they used to be, and the effectiveness of the opposition has been reduced to a much lower level.

 This was due initially to a series of large sweeps that preempted any nationwide organization to the resistance, and has been followed up in the last six months or so with more traditional anti-guerilla counter-insurgency operations as our intelligence has improved and as our low-level tactics have adapted to the nature of the war.

 When that initial switch happened and the attacks on Americans failed, that's when the opposition, not surprisingly, began to attack Iraqis, began to bomb the UN, began to bomb the nations and those militaries and those allies who were willing to accept the change in Iraq.  For the most part, and again most importantly, when it comes to the solidarity of the Iraqi people and the inability to inspire the nightmare civil war that everybody anticipated, that part of the insurgency operation has again failed pretty dramatically in Iraq, for all its difficulties, is quite clearly headed towards a transfer of power, return or sovereignty towards some form of democratic elections, which the Iraqi people themselves are battling out, and again, the amount of dust raised by that is almost a measure of success.

 When you take a step back from the headlines of the day and you take a more strategic view of what's happened over the past year, the United States and its coalition allies and its Iraqi allies, have endured really quite a remarkable string of successes, again as Richard emphasized, not without cost in blood and treasure and not without the prospect of additional loss of life, and additional expenditure of treasure.  But the question about whether we are winning or enmeshed in a quagmire I think has been pretty decisively answers, and just again, from a strategic and military standpoint, the performance of our forces in the field, of this administration, and even whatever administration will follow, either a second Bush administration or a John Kerry administration, the groundwork for success is laid in Iraq.  Decisions have been made over the past year that even a change of parties in the United States is not likely to undo.

 The commitment, the American commitment to completing the victory in Iraq seems, as Karlyn suggested, pretty unshakable, and there's a reason to believe that however long it takes that the complete victory, which includes the political reconstruction of, as all of the panelists observed, one of the most obnoxious and violent regimes of the past 25 years will mark a remarkable transformation in the politics of the region.  If that ain't winning, I don't know what is.

 MS. PLETKA:  Thank you very much, Tom.
 [Applause.]

 MS. PLETKA:  We're running a little late as I know everybody has observed, but I don't want to end without leaving time for a few questions.  And so if we can go to questions and answers, if you would please wait for the microphone and identify yourself, and also to whom your question is directed.  I hope I can keep our panelists for a couple more minutes.  The gentleman here in the blue shirt.

 QUESTION:  Garrett Mitchell from the Mitchell Report.  This would really have been a question for probably Rend Rahim.  I'm going to presume that perhaps Reuel Gerecht might be able to respond to it.  It takes us down the road a little bit and makes a series of assumptions that the handoff goes well, that elections go well, that somewhere between best-case scenario and reasonably best-case scenario takes place.  Further, imagine that two years from now American Enterprise Institute holds a conference in Baghdad.  This is really getting at the question sort of what are the emerging domestic political issues.  What are the Iraqis going to be arguing about amongst themselves?

 MR. GERECHT:  I think we're all be arguing about those things that most everybody in democratic societies argue over.  I think they're going to be arguing over economics.  They're going to be arguing over, still arguing over the extent to which they practice democracy and politics.  They're going to be arguing about the structure of their political system.  I think it's naive to believe that in two years that the political system inside of Iraq is going to be firm and solid.  I think there is going to be a lot of alteration.  I think they'll be arguing about issues of federalism.  I don't think that will be solved within two years.  I think that will be still a very vivid issue.  They will be arguing about the extent to which Islam is appropriate in politics.  They will be arguing about morality, ethics.  I mean, you name it, they will be arguing about it, which is good.

 MS. PLETKA:  You see me shuffling through my papers and it's because I saw in this poll a great question about who should--whether Iraq should be run by religious leaders or democratically elected leaders, and it was overwhelming that Iraq should be a democracy and not a religiously oriented country, and that it should not be run by religious leaders, which I think also answers the subtext of your question.
 This gentleman here.

 QUESTION:  Thank you.  David Halton from Canadian Broadcasting Corporation.  I was wondering if I could ask the panel, perhaps beginning with Mr. Perle, to reflect on the impact of the war in either strengthening or weakening Islamic terrorism.  We have seen a number of major attacks obviously since the war began.  Can you make a compelling case that the invasion has made the U.S. and the world safer from terrorism?

 MR. PERLE:  I believe it has made the U.S. and others safer from terrorism, and for several reasons.  One is that as long as Saddam Hussein was in power you had a country whose leadership could act as it wished, and the leadership was Saddam himself.  He had a history of weapons of mass destruction.  He had a history of involvement with terrorists, including--and the evidence on this gets stronger with every new revelation--with al Qaeda and related institutions.  It was simply a question of managing the risks involved.  We could not know--there was no way to know--when he might choose to dispense a chemical or a biological weapon to a terrorist organization.  Some people were content to live with that threat and hope for the best.  After September 11 we lost our tolerance for threats of that magnitude.  So I believe we're much safer because one potential source of the most catastrophic act of terror has been removed.

 But there's a reason beyond that, and that is, had we failed to take Saddam Hussein out, had we accepted the continuous defeat that he was delivering to the United Nations by failing to carry out his obligations under the cease-fire agreement and a number of resolutions, we would have been saying to the world that we will take on terrorism except when it's difficult.  We won't accept the--we'll go after the Taliban in Afghanistan, but we won't go after Saddam Hussein, and I think that would have been an enormous encouragement to terrorists, that they'd found the level or risk that we were prepared to take in order to protect ourselves, and indeed, I think that we fell into the dangerous and vulnerable situation we found ourselves in before September 11 by a chronic failure to respond adequately to previous acts of terror and to previous known and identified threats.

 So we had to act against Saddam, in my view.

 PANELIST:  Can I make one quick comment?  I would just say it's worthwhile for us to remember that bin Ladenism rose to prominence, maturity during the Clinton years.  And during the Clinton years the United States was actively engaged in the peace process.  Everybody had hope that better times were around the block.  The Clinton administration--at least I think its own officials would like to say--believe more in multilateralism.  They were engaged constantly with signing and creating treaties, that the Clinton administration, to its credit, was trying to save Bosnia and Muslims in the heart. of Europe.

 Yet during this same time, bin Ladenism was gaining strength in numbers.  I mean you do not have a quick pivot point, but what you can say, I think, quite clearly, is that the central tenet of bin Ladenism, that is, who is the strongest horse now, has been challenged.  The United States has shown quite clearly that it's going to take this threat, it's going to take it head on.

 And I would agree completely with Richard.  If in fact we had allowed Saddam Hussein to get out of the box--and if we all remember back in 2000 the French and the Russians and the Germans were very close to being successful in in fact getting Saddam Hussein out of the box--and I think it's very clear that that would have been fuel, jet fuel to bin Ladenism, not the reverse.

 MR. PERLE:  Could I just add--I should have mentioned the first time around--you've seen what has happened now in Libya.  I don't know anyone who believes that Muammar Qadhafi would have come out with a white flag if we had not gone after Saddam Hussein, and indeed, I don't think it's coincidental that the American readiness to confront threats persuaded him that he better come out with a white flag or he was going to be next.

 PANELIST:  I don't understand why people have a hard time understanding the connection between terrorism and the failing political structure in the greater Middle East.  That was certainly one of the things that the President made clearest after September 11th, I think, one of the wisest things he said.  Since the war in Iraq he's gone on to say that our past policies of trying to achieve a kind of sterility of the graveyard in the region has actually not simply been a moral failing but been a strategic failing, that it has not brought us peace or any lasting stability.
 So when we talk about terrorists as non-state actors or somehow divorced from the politics of the region, I think that's fundamentally to misunderstand what's going on.

 MS. PLETKA:  Gentlemen, thank you.

 QUESTION:  Ali Fafavi [ph], Near East Policy Research.  First of all let me make a brief comment on the--

 MS. PLETKA:  If you could just ask your question.

 QUESTION:  Certainly, yes.

 MS. PLETKA:  Thank you.

 QUESTION:  I remember 25 years ago when the Iranian people overthrew the Shah, if you asked Iranians whether they would want a fundamentalist regime or not, over one majority would say they want a secular government.  Which brings me to the question that I have, and I'd like Mr. Perle and Mr. Gerecht to respond, because I guess they wouldn't have any diplomatic considerations in responding.

 And that is:  given that Iraq's neighbor to the east, Iran, has had for many decades, going back to the days of the Shah, its own designs for Iraq, what is there in your opinion that would prevent them from derailing the democratic process in that country once the United States hands over power to the Iraqi Government, especially in light of the fact that the Iranians have already sent in thousands of their agents to that country, and of course, trying to bring about the fundamentalist regime in that government, and also in light of the fact that many members of the IGC lived in Iran and were under the patronage of the Iranian fundamentalists for almost two decades?  Thank you.

 MR. PERLE:  On questions related to Iran, I'd defer to Reuel except to say that of course the Iranian Government would like to produce a failure in Iraq in their own interest, not least of all because success in Iraq will lead millions of Iranians to say, why can't we have some of that?  And indeed, millions of Iranians are already demanding change, and there will be change in Iran.  I think despite the efforts of the corrupt rulers who run that country, they are more likely to be a victim of events in Iraq than able to inflict victimization on the Iraqis.

 MR. GERECHT:  Yeah.  I would agree.  The clerical regime has been naughty in Iran.  I think it could be a good deal naughtier.  You can expect them to cause trouble in the future.  I think it's a serious mistake to believe that the Arab shi'a in Iraq are the puppets of the Iranians.  It's just simply not true.  It's a mistake to believe that with Ayatollah Sistani, who was born in Iran.  It's a mistake to believe that with a good many other clerics in Iraq who in fact were also born in Iran or have Iranian parents.

 There is a world of difference between those two social orders, and I think the Iranians are going to have--the clerical regime is going to have a very difficult time implementing its will and its designs inside of Iraq.

 MS. PLETKA:  In the middle.

 QUESTION:  Mr. Perle, before the war in Iraq--I'm sorry, Clay Swisher--a lot of people expressed concerns that the problems in the Middle East lie with the Arab-Israeli conflict foremost, and later on down that list is Iraq.  Do you think that your critics would find your compassion for Arab freedom more compelling if you were to support a liberation of the Palestinians and an end to Israeli occupation, and a total Israeli withdraw to the June 4, '67 lines?

 MR. PERLE:  No.  No, I don't think my critics would be in any way mollified.
 [Laughter.]

 MR. PERLE:  They've been at it too long.  They have too much invested in criticizing me to pay much attention.

 I wish I knew how to solve the dispute between Israelis and Palestinians, and clearly, neither the Israelis nor the Palestinians have figured out how to do that.  I think our President got it right June 24th, a year ago, when he put the proposition forward that we would support a Palestinian state, provided that state was democratic in character, renounced terrorism and was incorrupt.  None of those conditions have been achieved, sadly.  Yassir Arafat, who is corrupt, and a terrorist, remains the dominant power among Palestinians, and I don't think he's ever going to make peace.

 So while peace is devoutly to be wished, we have yet to discover a formula by which to do it, although I think the President's idea is the right idea.

 PANELIST:  If I could make just one comment about just strategic myopia that attends the Israeli-Palestinian debate.  Imaging for a moment that peace is obtained between the Israelis and the Palestinians, under whatever circumstances.  Would that have removed Saddam Hussein from power or made him less of a danger?  No.  Would it have made the Saudi Government less willing to export and fund radical mosques and madrassas around the world?  No.  Would it have brought civil liberties to Egypt or Syria?  No.  Would it have changed the opinions of the mullahs in Iran or induced them to give up, say, their nuclear program?  No.
 As tragic as the fighting between Israelis and Palestinians is, as a simple matter of the political order and danger of the region, it has got to be regarded as about fourth or fifth down the list.  And American policy that obsesses over solving this problem is certainly going to miss the dangers that are far greater and far more likely to come back and kill Americans in the long run.

 MS. PLETKA:  [Inaudible.]

 QUESTION:  [Inaudible] a brief statement.  Thanks to the Spanish Government, more people are going to die.  Is it possible to know where immediately?

 PANELIST:  You mean where al Qaeda or Islamic militant groups?  No, I don't think it is.  I mean it's going to be interesting to watch the way this evolves in Europe because certainly the French, who have been, let's just say, our most effective antagonists over Iraq, probably understand better than anyone else in Europe that the Islamic militancy that we see in Europe is generated in Europe.  It is a European problem, it is a European disease, and they have been fearful of it since the mid 1990s, when the bombing started in France.  I don't see an easy answer for this.  The problems of the Muslim communities in Europe are real, the problems of assimilation.  It's very difficult for the Europeans.

 You have a fairly sizeable group of young, embittered Muslim men in Europe, who are essentially European but do not feel part of the European experiment.  So I don't know how they're going to deal with that.  Obviously, they're going to put more police on the streets and engage in tactics that we wouldn't here in the United States, but I don't that in the long term is going to solve it.

 MS. PLETKA:  I'm not going to take any more questions from the audience, but I am going to ask a last question myself of Karlyn, because I want to know.

 Karlyn, you were here for the presentation by the Spanish Ambassador.  The issue of Spain has come up, and you've talked a lot about American public opinion.  This is almost an unanswerable question so don't yell at me afterwards.  Do you get any guidance from the kinds of numbers that you've seen over the last couple of years since September 11th about what the potential impact would be on American public opinion were there an attack here close to an election?

 MS. BOWMAN:  I wish I could answer that question, but I can't.  I do not know what would happen.  I do not know how Americans would react, whether they'd rally behind the President or whether they would blame the administration the way that they certainly haven't at any point since 9-11.  It's just a very difficult question to answer.  Nothing in the numbers I think give us much of a clue.

 MS. PLETKA:  You haven't seen any precedent that would indicate that automatically blame would devolve to whoever was sitting in power?

 MS. BOWMAN:  I haven't seen any precedent like that.  Sorry.

 MS. PLETKA:  No, no.  I wanted to know.

 Thank you all very much for your indulgence with the time, and thank you to our panelists so much for their indulgence.  It was terrific.
 [Applause.]