QUESTION: Madame Secretary, thanks for joining us.
SECRETARY RICE: Pleasure to be with you, Jim.
QUESTION: You and others argue that the outcome in Iraq is critical to U.S. interests and that we should, at a minimum, give it one more try. Listening to the grilling you got on Capitol Hill yesterday, I didn't get the impression that everyone shares that view.
SECRETARY RICE: Well, everyone says that success in Iraq is critical. Everyone says that failure would be a disaster. But frankly, Jim, I don't hear many alternatives other than the President's on the table for how we try and get success in what, according to the Baker-Hamilton Study Group, according to many in Congress, is a critical issue for the United States. And so I think the President's put forward the best plan to help us secure Baghdad, help the Iraqis secure Baghdad, and to be successful there.
But it's obviously critical to us. It's -- we don't want Iraq to be a center for terrorism, for al-Qaida, or a place that Iran can have its influence without challenge. It really doesn't make any sense for American interests. It would be a disaster for American interests.
QUESTION: Now the President said this week that the Iraqis are saying they will be able to take over security in all Iraqi provinces by November. Now if that works -- and that's a big if, but if that works, that sounds exactly like the kinds of conditions we're looking for to reduce the U.S. presence.
SECRETARY RICE: Precisely. We've always wanted to reduce the American presence. That's been the idea from the very beginning. But when we say conditions-based, we have to be a part of creating those conditions. The Iraqis are being trained. Their forces are taking over provinces around the country. They're doing it quite well. And by November, they hope to be in control of all the provinces, including in control of Baghdad, and that would be a major change and of course, then American forces would be able to be reduced.
QUESTION: Do you see this new plan as the sort of last best chance, as one Republican put it to me recently, to create the conditions that we're talking about and to allow the U.S. to reduce its presence without leaving a mess behind? I mean, how much faith do you have that this will actually work?
SECRETARY RICE: Well, I don't know -- I don't like to talk about last chances, but I do think it is the best chance that we have to help the Iraqis create the conditions, particularly in Baghdad, which has become the center of this sectarian violence, so that they can move on with their political process. As they do that, as we improve their security forces and they begin to step up, then I don't think there's any doubt that American forces can begin to withdraw.
The fact is, though, withdrawal without creating those conditions is really going to produce chaos. And talking about an over-the-horizon force to be able to then come back into chaos, I think, is really not a very wise policy.
QUESTION: A lot of the skepticism here -- you hear it on Capitol Hill, you see it in opinion polls -- is based on the rather poor performance of the Maliki government in fashioning some sort of secure atmosphere for a political reconciliation. Why should we believe that he is going to be better this time than he has in previous times? And does he understand how thin American patience is with him at this point? What do you tell him when you talk to him?
SECRETARY RICE: Well, there is -- it's very clear to him, I think, that American patience is thin. The President has said it to him. We've said it to any number of Iraqi leaders. It's not thin with Maliki. It's not even thin with the government there. It's thin with the conditions, with the circumstances.
And the Iraqis have to understand, and I think they do understand, that they are the ones who hold the key to ending the sectarian violence, albeit with our help, but really unless they make the decision to make the difficult decisions that they must to be evenhanded, to take on Shia death squads just as they would take on Sunni death squads, then this is not going to succeed. They have a lot at stake too. The Iraqi people have lost patience.
Maliki said to the President the Iraqi people are fed up and he's right. The American people want us to be supportive in a success, but not when Iraqis are not making difficult decisions. And so I think they understand the consequences. They're quite dire for these Iraqi leaders if they don't succeed.
QUESTION: A lot of critics here in Congress and elsewhere say that the U.S. should begin to withdraw troops to demonstrate to the Iraqis that the U.S. won't always be there. Do the Iraqis have that understanding? And how straightforward are you and others when they talk to Iraqi officials?
SECRETARY RICE: Well, we are very straightforward when we talk to Iraqi officials about the issue of America's patience, America's forces there, about the desire to have them get on with their political process so that America can begin to withdraw. In fact, I said to them at one point, Jim, that this has, of course, gotten worse as Americans watch Iraqis killing Iraqis. Because while we understand fighting al-Qaida, while we understand fighting Saddamists, while we even understand insurgency, Iraqis killing Iraqis is something that Americans really don't understand.
To be fair to them, this sectarian violence was set off deliberately by Zarqawi and al-Qaida in Iraq to stoke exactly the kind of civil conflict that has emerged. And so this too was a part of al-Qaida's plan. But only they can decide what kind of country they're going to have. Only they can take on the extremists, the death squads that are killing innocent Iraqis. We can help them, but it requires a political decision on the part of this Iraqi Government and I think they've made that decision.
QUESTION: It's been an article of faith among many of the critics that the entire military hierarchy, with one or two exceptions, opposed an increase in troops, though I see in a major newspaper today a report that General Casey himself was proposing an increase, but one about half as large as the President approved.
What is the truth of this? What has been the debate among all the officials in the Administration, including military officials, about an increase in troops?
SECRETARY RICE: The military officials, the ones who are closest to the ground -- for instance, this is General Casey's plan. Let's remember that he's really been the one working with the Iraqis. It's an Iraqi plan with General Casey as our person who's really worked it with them. And General Casey is the one who thought that there needed to be an augmentation of Iraqi forces if they were going to take on Baghdad now.
The question hasn't ever been how to get enough troops. The question has been everybody has wanted that to be filled by Iraqi troops. But when Maliki said he needed to take on Baghdad now, they took a hard look. They said, you know the problem is Iraqi troops really aren't going to be ready for something like this until the summer. The Baghdad stabilization can't wait until the summer. So how do we bridge? And it became necessary then to have an augmentation of American forces in order to be able to carry out a fully resourced Baghdad security plan now. The generals are the ones who made that determination, and Generals Casey, Abizaid and others really do support this plan because they see it too as the best chance for stabilization.
QUESTION: I know you don't want to put hard timelines on things, but that sounds like this was conceived as a temporary surge.
SECRETARY RICE: It was indeed conceived as a temporary surge to do a very specific mission concerning sectarian violence in Baghdad with the Iraqis in the lead. I keep hearing and I heard a lot yesterday, well, you're sending Americans into civil war. There's some image somehow that Sunnis and Shia are running down the streets of Baghdad killing each other because they're Sunnis and Shia. This is an organized campaign by extremist Sunni and Shia, some of them coming from the militias, to go into neighborhoods to kill the men and send the women into exile. This is something that can be dealt with by the Iraqi Government if they are willing to make difficult decisions and if we help them with enough forces not just to clear a neighborhood of criminal and violent elements but also then to hold the territory so that economic development can take place.
QUESTION: You're going overseas today to talk to a number of Middle Eastern governments. What is their view about how our role in Iraq and the debate over whether and when to leave?
SECRETARY RICE: I'll tell you the thing that I hear most often from our allies is we want to know that you're committed to Iraq, we want you to know -- we want to know that you're committed to a unified Iraq that is going to be stable and that you're not going to leave and leave a mess in this neighborhood. That's what they're concerned about. They're not concerned about how many troops it takes. They're not concerned about how long we have to stay. Obviously, everybody would like to see the Iraqis completely in control as fast as possible. But their biggest concern is are we going to stay committed to the cause that we began.
QUESTION: The President did admit mistakes this week. Everybody, I think, has admitted there were a lot of mistakes made. Clearly, at this point, those governments don't seem interested in mistakes; they seem more interested in what happens from here on out.
SECRETARY RICE: That's right. They're very interested -- these governments -- in how this turns out because this is, after all, their neighborhood. And from their point of view, the worst thing would be for the United States to prematurely end its commitment in Iraq, to have Iran to have an open field in Iraq to extend its influence, to increase its assertiveness and to push Iranian influence into the Arab world.
QUESTION: Are people in the region worried about the Iranians?
SECRETARY RICE: The people in the region are extremely worried about Iranian assertiveness and the future of Iranian assertiveness. It was no accident that not too long after the Iranians trumpeted their nuclear capability the Gulf states talked about their need for nuclear capability. They didn't say nuclear weapons, but they talked about the need for nuclear technology.
The Iranians are making life very difficult for a lot of our friends in the region through Hezbollah and Hamas and support for extremists. They threaten to really destabilize the region. Our friends know it. They want Iran to be -- Iran's assertiveness and Iran's aggressiveness to be arrested and they think that the United States is the only country in the world that can do that.
QUESTION: Almost everyone of every political stripe here in the U.S. believes that Iran is causing lots of problems inside Iraq. There was a lot of talk about this week even from critics of the Iraq war. What can the U.S. do about that?
SECRETARY RICE: Well, the United States has a multifaceted approach to Iran that I think is starting to have an effect. First of all, on the nuclear side we're going to continue to resist their efforts to get a nuclear weapon. We obviously are doing it through the UN but, Jim, we're not just dependent on the resolution that was passed in the UN. We're pressing for financial measures. We have ourselves sanctioned a few Iranian banks and that's having a kind of chilling effect on investment and assets, the ability of the Iranians to move their assets freely in the international financial system.
The President made very clearly that we are going to go after Iranian networks operating in Iraq that are engaging in activities that threaten our troops. He also made clear that we're going to defend our interests in the Persian Gulf, as American Presidents have done for decades now. And the additional carrier strike group I think is a very important signal that we can and will defend our interests. And we're helping our friends to improve their defensive capability with air defense and the like because Iran has got to be resisted.
Now, at the same time, we're reaching out to the Iranian people. We've had a delegation of medical personnel here. They had a wonderful trip, went down to Atlanta to the CDC, seeing how America does these health matters. But we also have the American wrestling team going to Iran fairly soon. So we're going to continue to reach out to the Iranian people, a great people, a people that shouldn't be isolated. But we have to be very tough with Iran and make life difficult for them if they're not going to adhere to international norms.
QUESTION: You're suggesting there's some relation with the Iranian people, if not the Iranian leaders?
SECRETARY RICE: Precisely. The Iranian people are people who want to be friendly with the United States and we want to be friendly with them. But the Iranian regime, the Iranian Government, is making very bad choices and we have to resist those choices.
QUESTION: One last question for you. Senator Barbara Boxer yesterday was talking about who pays the price for Iraq, and she was saying I won't pay the price because my children are too old to serve. And then she said you're not going to pay a particular price, as I understand it, with an immediate family.
SECRETARY RICE: And I guess that means I don't have kids. Was that the purpose of that?
QUESTION: I think -- and I'm not sure -- it came up at the White House today and spokesman Tony Snow described it as one giant leap backwards for feminism. How did you take that?
SECRETARY RICE: Well, at the time I just found it a bit confusing, frankly. But in retrospect, gee, I thought single women had come further than that, that the only question is, are you making good decisions because you have kids.
QUESTION: Okay. Madame Secretary, thank you very much for joining us.
SECRETARY RICE: Thank you.
2007/30