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Skriven 2006-10-24 23:31:26 av Whitehouse Press (1:3634/12.0)
Ärende: Press Release (0610246) for Tue, 2006 Oct 24
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Interview of the Vice President by Juan Williams, National Public Radio
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For Immediate Release
October 24, 2006

Interview of the Vice President by Juan Williams, National Public Radio
The Vice President's West Wing Office

Q As you've been traveling around the country this campaign season, you've
been making a case for why Iraq matters. Here I quote, you saying, "The
terrorists want to seize control of a country in the Middle East so they
have a base for launching attacks. . . they've declared their intention to
arm themselves with weapons of mass destruction, to destroy Israel, and to
cause mass death here in the United States."

If the threat is that serious, why not send hundreds of thousands of troops
to defeat them?

THE VICE PRESIDENT: Well, the problem we're faced with out there is --
obviously, there have been problems in Afghanistan, problems in Pakistan,
problems in Iraq, problems in Saudi Arabia, and the key to success is
getting the locals into the fight on the right side. That means both from
the standpoint of political systems in Afghanistan and Iraq where we've had
to stand up new governments, get them to take on responsibility for their
own governance. It also means training and equipping their own forces.

In the final analysis, the U.S. cannot take on direct military
responsibility for all of those countries. It would not be sound policy or
sound strategy. What we can do is help them get up and running so they can
do it themselves. So we're working now on sending up 70,000 Afghan
nationals in the new Afghan National Army. We're working on what -- 325,000
is our target for the security forces inside Iraq. We obviously cooperate
in places like Pakistan where we work with the Pakistani intelligence
services against the target.

It depends, country by country, on what you do, but ultimately the
struggle, if you will, with the more radical elements of Islam, represented
by al Qaeda, can only be one if you can, in fact, get a substantial portion
of the Islamic world actively in the fight against the extremists.

Q But I was talking about Iraq specifically. Why not put a larger force on
the ground?

THE VICE PRESIDENT: Well, because the judgment has been up until now that
the key for us in Iraq is to get the Iraqis into the fight. And we've got
140,000 roughly troops there now, U.S. and coalition forces, and we've
worked very aggressively to stand up, and we're -- I think George Casey
said today, we're about 75 percent of the way there in terms of getting an
Iraqi force that's able to provide for their own security.

The sooner we do that, the sooner we can reduce our own presence and turn
things over to them. But that's -- you know, it's a tough process. It's
difficult right now. A key to it, lots of times, is getting American
personnel embedded in those Iraqi units so that they fight alongside them,
and we're able to impart training, and knowledge, and experience, and so
forth to their units.

They're doing better all the time. They've still got a long way to go
before they'll be in a position where they can take over prime
responsibility themselves.

Q Do you think you're getting good advice, good estimates from the generals
who tell you that they have enough men on the ground and women on the
ground to get the job done?

THE VICE PRESIDENT: I think we get honest advice from them. I think George
Casey gives it to us straight in terms of what he thinks he needs, and that
if he thinks he needs more troops, we'll send him more. We have, in fact,
beefed him up on a couple of occasions in connections with holding
elections, for example, or moving in a brigade we had positioned in Kuwait
and sending it up into Iraq to help, or recent adjustments we made in terms
of putting more troops, U.S troops into Baghdad to help with the Baghdad
security problem.

So we'll give him whatever resources he thinks he needs. And my experience
with George Casey is he's a first class officer, and he tells us what he
wants. When you put American forces over there on the ground, there's all
the support mechanism and so forth that goes with them. It costs a lot of
money, relative for example, to say, having Iraqi forces up and trained.

And so the sooner we can get everything turned over to the Iraqis, the
better off we'll be. That's our ultimate strategic objective, but you can't
do it right away because they're not sufficiently trained and equipped yet
to do it. A lot of their units are, but they're still got a long way to go
before they'll be up to the full strength, as well as taking lead
responsibility.

Q But given what you say about the threat that's posed by the chaos in Iraq
and the continuing, in fact, rising death tolls we've seen, you've got to
wonder if the generals are telling you the right information about what
they need, or whether they're simply trying to limit (inaudible) you
consider --

THE VICE PRESIDENT: No, I -- I spent some time as Secretary of Defense
myself, Juan. The men that we've got serving at the upper levels of the
U.S. military today I think are some absolutely outstanding individuals.
George Casey, John Abizaid sort of have the lead responsibilities in Iraq
and for that region -- are outstanding officers. They know the region very
well. Abizaid even speaks the language. They are, I think, very good
advisors to the President, and they're the guys on the ground who have to,
in fact, execute on the policy. And so I think --

Q -- want to hear?

THE VICE PRESIDENT: No.

Q Same thing with intelligence, with CIA and with the relationship and the
quality of intelligence that you're getting here.

THE VICE PRESIDENT: Well, the quality of -- intelligence is a different
proposition. It's rarely 100 percent in terms of accuracy. And obviously
there were problems with intelligence in Iraq early on -- had problems back
in '90 and '91. I can remember, when I was Secretary of Defense and the
run-up to Desert Storm. We got estimates on the extent of the Iraqi nuclear
program at the time that underestimated how robust the program was and how
far along they were.

You never get perfect intelligence. Once in a while, they'll be -- the
events of World War II that led up to the Battle of Midway, when you know
exactly where the enemy is and when they're going to be there. But that's
rare. And especially in these kinds of circumstances, you're working with
the best you can do. We get a lot better intelligence now, I think, that
we're inside Iraq, that we've got a lot of people on the ground. The Iraqis
have got an intelligence service stood up themselves.

We've got a lot of people obviously working that account as well, too, but
you still -- lots of times, you're in the business of judgments, of
assessments, of doing the best you can with the available information. And
lots of times, the enemy may be especially difficult to penetrate in terms
of getting any human intelligence from it. And they do everything they can
to obscure what their plans and intentions are so we can't find out. So --
but we're getting -- I think we're getting -- I would say we're
significantly better today than we were, say, before 9/11 in terms of the
quality of our intelligence on these targets.

Q There was a story about you sending coordinates over to David Kay about
where to look for weapons of mass destruction. I saw that, I thought, is it
the case that you think you have intelligence -- separate sources of
intelligence, as opposed to what's coming through Central Intelligence,
established intelligence --

THE VICE PRESIDENT: Yes, I didn't send any coordinates. Somebody on the
staff may have been in touch with him. But I wasn't in the habit of calling
David Kay at 3:00 a.m. in the morning to give him coordinates that -- where
he needed to go look.

There may have been a request come in through a congressional office or
something like that, that somebody had heard from somebody, or somebody
suggested that there were weapons hidden in a particular spot, then that
would have been passed on to the appropriate people to check it out, that
kind of thing. But I have not been involved in making those kinds of calls.

Q You accused the Democrats of self-defeating pessimism. The whole question
about what is cut and run, given the conversations that are taking place
here at the White House (inaudible) have you redefined what that means, cut
and run?

THE VICE PRESIDENT: Well, I would define it in terms of what the strategy
is of our opponents, and that -- keep in mind, and I think General Casey
made this point this morning in his briefing -- we've never been defeated
in a stand-up fight in Iraq in over three years. What the enemy is banking
on is that they can break our will, that the American people don't have the
stomach for the fight.

And Osama bin Laden has believed this for years. He goes back and cites the
experience of Beirut in 1983, where after we lost 240-some people, we then
withdrew from Beirut and so forth. He cites these examples to validate his
strategy. And when we see the Democratic Party recommending that we
withdraw from Iraq, that we say, oh, it's too tough, we better pack it in
and come home, that basically is validating the al Qaeda strategy. It says,
yes, Osama bin Laden is right, the American people don't have the stomach
for the fight.

We can't afford to let that happen. And, in fact, our success in place like
Afghanistan and Pakistan and Saudi Arabia I think is put in jeopardy if, in
fact, we don't get the job done in Iraq. If you're Hamid Karzai in
Afghanistan and you put your life on the line every day just going to work
as the President of Afghanistan, given that there's still Taliban activity
there and so forth, if he looks over and sees that the Americans don't have
the stomach for the fight and decide to bail out on the Iraq proposition,
what's that say to him? Can he count on us in Afghanistan, will we stay the
course in Afghanistan? Are we willing to, in fact, follow through on our
commitments and complete the mission?

So there's a lot riding on this, and the notion that somehow we can
separate out Iraq from all of the other activity that's involved in the
region, I just think is a foolish one. You don't have that luxury that, in
fact, if we were to do that, all we would do is reinforce the basic al
Qaeda strategy and probably incur even more attacks.

Q So what do you do in terms of benchmarks or timetables? What is the
consequence, what's the stake at the end in terms of the U.S. putting
pressure on the Maliki government?

THE VICE PRESIDENT: It's got to be conditions-based, in terms of what we do
with respect to how long we have to stay. I don't think you can just set an
artificial timetable. I think, in fact, with respect to the Maliki
government, it's very important we make the point to them repeatedly that
both politically and from a security standpoint, they've got major
responsibilities here. They've got to deal with the political situation
themselves. We can't really do that for them. We can help, and we can try
to facilitate. They've only been in business six months. That's as long as
Maliki's been prime minister.

And so I think we have to be a little bit understanding here that these are
extraordinary circumstances they're trying to operate under, and they do
have a very difficult assignment. But it also -- we have to make it clear
to them, just like we do everybody else out there, to the Afghans, as well,
too, ultimately you're responsible for your own country. You've got to
control the sovereign territory of Iraq. You've got to be able to guarantee
that it's not a safe haven for terrorists, and provide for the security
your people need in order to be able to go on with their daily lives, and
that means you've got to reach political decisions and judgments, as well
as engage in creating the kinds of armed forces that you're going to need
to be able to defend the nation. That's our objective.

Q One last question, do you think -- this business about last throes of the
insurgency, do you think they're in the last throes now?

THE VICE PRESIDENT: I can't say that. I made it clear earlier that I would
have expected that the political process we set in motion, the three
national elections and so forth would have resulted in a lower level of
violence than we're seeing today. It hasn't happened yet. I can't say that
we're over the hump in terms of violence, no.

Q Okay, in terms of civil war, would you call it that?

THE VICE PRESIDENT: No, I don't think it's a civil war. You've got a united
government, a unity government in place. You've got united military forces
in terms of the army, and to some extent the security force. When I think
civil war, I think Antietam, Gettysburg. I don't think we're there yet. But
there's no question there's a lot of sectarian violence, a lot of Shia on
Sunni violence.

Al Qaeda's strategy after all was to go in and try to provoke exactly that
kind of thing, and they obviously have had some success. But I also think
six months this government has been in business; it's been a little over
three years since we went in and took down the Taliban -- Saddam Hussein's
regime; and we've made a lot of progress. We still have a long way to go.
Nobody should underestimate how difficult it is, but just because it's
difficult doesn't mean we shouldn't do it. We need to do it. We have to do
it.

Q What about people that suggest partition (inaudible) partition is an idea
that you would consider?

THE VICE PRESIDENT: I'm going to leave it right there. Okay?

Q Thank you, Mr. Vice President.

END
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