Analysis of President Bush's Speech on Iraq

Copyright © 2006 National Public Radio®. For personal, noncommercial use only. See Terms of Use. For other uses, prior permission required.

ROBERT SIEGEL, host:

Joining us now to talk about what the president said today about Iraq is Anthony Cordesman, of the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, D.C. Anthony Cordesman, the picture that the president painted was pretty upbeat. A great deal of progress has been made in terms of the Iraqi security forces and in terms of the political situation. First of all, in general, do you agree?

Professor ANTHONY CORDESMAN (Arleigh A. Burke Chair in Strategy, Center for Strategic and International Studies): I think there has been progress in some aspects of the Iraqi security forces. It's been offset by problems in other aspects and other branches. In terms of the political situation, it is still very, very uncertain. There is a risk of much more intense civil conflict.

SIEGEL: President Bush talked at some length about the response of the Iraqi security forces to the outbreak of violence after the bombing of the shrine in Samarra. As he described it, it was an ordeal under fire for Iraqis, who showed their mettle. He said it was the Iraqi security forces, not coalition forces, that stepped in to restore order. As he described it, they held, they did their job. Do you have any independent sense of how well those forces did?

Professor CORDESMAN: Well, talking to people from Iraq, talking to people who've been observers there, I think much of what the president said is absolutely correct. If you only look at the Iraqi army and the key battalions within the ministry of interior security forces, they did take over the mission of providing security. U.S. forces did not attempt to get between the Iraqi people and their targets after the bombing of the Mosque of the Golden Dome. And in many areas the regular forces did well.

The problem is that if you look at the police, at the overall structure of security, often many of the forces stood aside, and the forces that did come in from the army and ministry of interior in many cases really weren't trained to deal with mob violence or group violence.

SIEGEL: Well, when the president says this shows that the Iraqi police are in need of more training, and that that's on the agenda, is he understating the problem with the Iraqi police?

Professor CORDESMAN: I think he's understating it very severely. The fact is that the U.S. was forced to change the whole organization of the advisory effort for the police and the ministry of interior in October 2005. So the force that provides day-to-day security within Iraq is a force which by and large can't perform its mission, and where we've had to almost totally reorganize our aid effort and advisory effort in ways which can't take hold until much later this year.

SIEGEL: Before I let you go, the reason that we are talking with you, and one reason that President Bush was talking about Iraq today is that it's three years, this week it'll be three years since the war in Iraq began. At the three-year mark, can you try to think back to what you foresaw in 2003? Has this been an extremely disappointing military effort? Are we doing much worse than you thought we'd be doing three years ago when it began? Is it pretty well unfolding as you might've expected?

Professor CORDESMAN: I don't think it's been a disappointing military effort. But the fact is, we drove Saddam from power without having any plan as to what we were going to tell the Iraqi people, without having any plan to create an effective government, without having a plan to recreate Iraqi forces, and without any plan for economic recovery and development. If we look at success today, the political process is remarkably unstable and uncertain. It can move forward or it can move toward civil war. Our economic aid effort has spent tens of billions of dollars with very, very limited results. And if you look at public opinion polls in Iraq, many Iraqis still seriously distrust the United States and really don't know what our goals are. That's nnot much by way of success for three years of effort.

SIEGEL: Tony Cordesman, thank you very much for talking with us once again.

Professor CORDESMAN: Thank you.

SIEGEL: Anthony Cordesman holds the Arleigh Burke Chair in Strategy at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington D.C.

Copyright © 2006 National Public Radio®. All rights reserved. No quotes from the materials contained herein may be used in any media without attribution to National Public Radio. This transcript is provided for personal, noncommercial use only, pursuant to our Terms of Use. Any other use requires NPR's prior permission. Visit our permissions page for further information.

NPR transcripts are created on a rush deadline by a contractor for NPR, and accuracy and availability may vary. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Please be aware that the authoritative record of NPR's programming is the audio.