Mr. Secretary, when you look at your career, what definition of yourself would you give? Do you feel more that you are a politician, or still a military man? I will always be a soldier: my approach to problems, my approach to life, the way I look at issues, is really through the eyes of a soldier. People remember me as a national security advisor, as Secretary of State, as Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, but I’m basically an infantry officer. For the first 25 or 30 years of my adult life, of my career, that’s what I did, as a brigade commander, as a corps commander, commander of all the army troops in the United States. So I consider myself to be a soldier, and the warmest memories I have of my public life were the days when I was a soldier and commanding troops. It doesn’t mean that I can’t be a good diplomat and also enjoy being a diplomat. I’m not sure I like the word politician. Yes, I was in politics, yes, I know a lot about politics, but I don’t think I’m a politician. I will accept diplomat and I will accept soldier, and only reluctantly will I agree to being called a politician. How did you adapt to political life? The army teaches you to adapt to any situation, any opportunity. When I went into the White House, and then started to get other assignments that took me out of the army and into more political positions, I never stopped being who I was. I was a soldier who was trained to analyze a situation - to weigh the opportunities and the risks, make an analysis, and come to a conclusion. Some people have said about me, “He’s not an ideologue, he’s not a philosopher, he’s a problem-solver.” I’ve been taught as a soldier to see any situation I have been put into as a problem to be solved. It doesn’t mean that I don’t have views. I might even have very strong views about a particular subject, strong political or philosophical views. But basically I’m a problem-solver, that was what I was trained to do. Do you see politics as a battlefield? Yes it is, perhaps the most vicious battlefield of all. It is a clash of opposing ideas. It is a clash of opposing personalities. It is a clash between two forces that are trying to win a battle, and the battle is for the opinion of the people. On August 1, 1990, Saddam Hussein decided to invade Kuwait. What did you think at that time? Did you favor military intervention? We had sufficient warning that afternoon to suggest that what they were doing was for real. It happened later that evening, Washington time. Over the next few days we met frequently with the National Security Council and President Bush, to decide what to do. My position was: as we are thinking what our options are, let’s be sure we understand what we are getting into. Let’s make sure that if we are going to get involved in this conflict we do it well. Some people have said that I was a restraining influence in the first day or two. True. What I said to my political leaders is, “Is the problem the defense of Saudi Arabia, which could be at risk? Or is the challenge going to be reversing the invasion? And if we do that, is that all we’re going to do, or are we going to do more in Iraq?” And it all resolved itself within a period of 72 hours. The invasion took place, a day or two went by, and we all met at Camp David with President Bush, his political advisors, General Schwarzkopf and others. We said, “Mr. President, we have contingency plans, and this is what we would do. First, since we don’t have any troops there now, and it takes a long time to build up troops, the first mission would be to put troops on the ground quickly in order to make sure that Iraq knows that it better not come south into Saudi Arabia. So the first mission will be to put enough force down on the ground and in the air and in the sea to protect Saudi Arabia and the other countries in that part of the world. Once we have done that, the question we will come to you to answer is, Do we then go on the attack? That will take more time to prepare the troops. These are the options that we have for you, here’s how we would defend Saudi Arabia, and if you decide that you can’t wait for UN action, if you want to kick the Iraqi army out of Kuwait, this is how we would do it. We presented that to him 48 hours after the invasion, and that is exactly the way it unfolded over the next seven or eight months. In November, when we had sent enough troops to protect Saudi Arabia, I came back from visiting with General Schwarzkopf and I said to the president, “Mr. President, we’ve accomplished the first mission. Saudi Arabia is secure. There’s nothing the Iraqis can do that we can’t stop. Now, if sanctions don’t work and you want to kick the Iraqi army out of Kuwait, we would like to add another 200,000 soldiers.” Everybody gasped. Then I briefed on a map how we would do it, where the troops would go, and President Bush listened carefully - Mr. Cheney was there, Mr. Scowcroft was there, Secretary of State Baker was there - and after I finished my briefing, President Bush said, “I approve it, let’s do it.” And we did it. We added another 200,000 troops, and in January, when Iraq did not respond to sanctions, did not respond to the call of the international community, we attacked, with the great coalition. It’s hard to think now that we had Syrian troops, we had Egyptian troops, we had Gulf troops, the Russians supported us. We had a great coalition, but that coalition rested on the premise that we were going to kick the Iraqis out of Kuwait and that we were not going to Baghdad. A lot of controversy arose later as to whether we should have gone to Baghdad, but there was never any discussion of it, there was no UN authorization, no authorization from the American Congress. President Bush never intended to do that. It is false to say we should have gone to Baghdad then. A lot of people still don’t understand why President Bush refused to overthrow Saddam Hussein. The simple reason was that it was never the goal; the goal was to free Kuwait. People forget about the kind of coalition that was put together and the kind of UN authorization we had. The Congressional resolutions to support the president were passed with a fairly narrow vote, and that also was just to kick the Iraqi army out of Kuwait. There was never any plan to undertake a major invasion of Iraq, to seize Baghdad and overthrow Saddam Hussein. We hoped that he would be overthrown by his own people because of his failure. That did not happen. But people have to remember that at the time there was great concern about casualties, that ten thousand Americans would die, maybe hundreds of thousands. Everybody was quite cautious. And suddenly when the war went very well, and the casualty rate was very low, all kinds of civilian warriors showed up saying, “Go to Baghdad!” But that was never the political goal or the military plan. The first President Bush believes to this day, as do all of us who were in his cabinet and administration, that that was the correct decision at that time. It seems that you could have been elected president in 1996. Why did you not run? Well, I have to push back on your suggestion that I could have been elected. It’s up to the people to decide. Popularity and political popularity are two different things, and I was never tested with respect to political popularity. I had a high personality rating, but as one commentator said, “Let’s see what happens when he really gets out there and has to talk about the environment and affirmative action and the economy and tax cuts and all those other issues.” I gave it some thought for an intense period of time, about a month. I had never had any political ambition. I had never declared a political party, because I was a professional soldier and soldiers don’t talk about politics. Now I wasn’t a soldier anymore, I had written a book, and people were pushing me to make a decision about politics and I had to think about it. But finally I took a hard look at who I am and what I am, and I spoke to my family, particularly my wife, and I came to the conclusion that should have been obvious in the beginning, that I do not have the genes necessary to be a politician. I’m still a soldier, still an infantry officer. In 2002 you were not in favor of war. In February 2003, when you delivered a speech proving the necessity of going to war, did you think that this war was justified, or did you ever think that it was not? We thought, and I thought, that it was justified. First of all, I always like to avoid a war. In the summer of 2002 there was a lot of contingency planning underway in case of a war. I said to the president that he needed to take this issue to the United Nations, because they are the offended party, and it is going to be a difficult war if it comes. And I famously said to him, If we break this country - with an invasion - we will own it, we will be responsible and with significant consequences politically, militarily, economically. We ought to try to avoid the war. The president agreed, and we took it to the United Nations in September of 2002. But I knew and the president knew that if the UN did not solve this problem in a clear and decisive way, so that the world could be reassured that Saddam Hussein was not trying to develop weapons of mass destruction and that he would behave better on the world stage with respect to the sanctions and with respect to taking care of the Iraqi people, we might have to fight a war. So when I persuaded the president, or encouraged the president, to take it to the UN, I knew that that might not work, that we might have to fight a war. And if we had to fight a war then I would be supportive of that war. … [W]hen I went before the United Nations on February 5, 2003, with the briefing that has now become so famous, I was presenting the best judgment of the intelligence community. … [T]he British intelligence agencies and others thought there was a powerful case that he had the intention of having such weapons, he had the capability of having such weapons, and the general conclusion was that he had such weapons. It turned out later, after the war, that he did not have any stockpiles of these weapons. When you look back at this period, do you have at any time a feeling that you were being manipulated? I realized that my view was somewhat different from those of my colleagues in the administration who felt more strongly that a conflict was going to be necessary in this area, whereas I was trying to avoid it. But I wouldn’t ever think or say that I was being manipulated. I had a different point of view on certain issues, on how many troops should be sent, on how the aftermath of the war should be conducted, and I presented my views. But I have never forgotten that I was not elected president. Mr. Bush was elected president, and he is the one charged with responsibility for foreign policy by the American people. My job was to give him my best advice, to debate with my colleagues on the different issues that were out there, but ultimately I served the president, and he’s the one who makes the decisions. No, I don’t feel I was manipulated. There were some issues in which I prevailed, and some issues in which I did not prevail. Thinking back on this period, do you have any regrets? I regret that we were not able to get Iraq and Saddam Hussein to understand the seriousness of the problem. Frankly, he probably took comfort from the French position and the German position and the position of several others, and thought that as long as France and Germany and Russia and a few others felt so strongly against the war, then the war could be avoided. He misread the situation … The war in Iraq has had consequences not just in the Middle East but also in the US, for instance the reactions to the pictures from Abu Ghraib that we saw. How did you react to that? It was terrible. It was disgraceful conduct on the part of some of our soldiers, and we have paid a very high price for Abu Ghraib in terms of world opinion, particularly in the Muslim world. A lot of people also have been able to hide behind what happened in Abu Ghraib, covering their own misdeeds by saying, “Don’t talk about what we do, look at what you did in Abu Ghraib.” But you also saw the American judicial system come into play, and these people were held accountable and sent to trial, trials the whole world could see, and then punished. Some of them are in jail. There are still questions about the policies that might have encouraged that, and our political system will deal with that, the American people will respond to that. But Abu Ghraib was a terrible blight on public opinion about America. When you look at Iraq today, how does the soldier that you are react to the situation? The situation has become far more complex and difficult in the last year. We were initially fighting a guerrilla war in 2003. Then it became a war against insurgent forces, when the Sunnis really got themselves organized. Then last year, with the bombing of the Golden Mosque, it turned into sect-on-sect, and they began fighting each other, Sunnis versus Shi’ites, Shi’ites versus Shi’ites. And over the past year that war has intensified to the point where I have characterized it as a civil war in my own mind, though it’s debatable whether it is or it isn’t. It doesn’t make any difference what label you put on it, what you have now is sectarian conflict which has created a very unstable situation throughout the whole country. Even in the south, where people think there’s not that much violence taking place, it is not under the centralized control of the government. Tribes, ayatollahs, corruption, smuggling - it is not stable even in the south. Only the north, the Kurdish part of the country, is stable. I find this a very difficult situation in which to put US troops, because they’re being asked now not only to fight insurgents and chase terrorists but to stabilize the country, particularly the Baghdad area, so that the Iraqi government can put in place military and police forces that can take over from US and coalition troops and establish security throughout the country. Any strategy the US or its coalition partners might come up with rests on whatever Iraqi strategy exists to create a political structure that is bringing the people back together again. The political structure must be able to create a military force that is loyal to the political structure. The force that is most difficult to create is the police force, a police force that will keep order on every corner. It is the police force that is in the greatest danger of becoming corrupt or of turning into armed militias. … As a veteran of the Vietnam War, do you think Iraq is the new Vietnam? I never make these kinds of comparisons. Vietnam was 35, 40 years ago. It’s a different war, a different people, a different time. I think we should just examine Iraq as Iraq. You can always draw lessons from history, whether it’s Vietnam or Korea or the Second World War. You can go back to the classic scholars, Clausewitz or Sun Tzu. But it is better not to try to drag the past into the present and fit one model into another. Examine Iraq as the problem that is Iraq, but don’t try to make those kinds of comparisons. One reason President Bush declared war on Iraq was to impose democracy on the country. But isn’t it up to the people to choose democracy? Of course, and I think that President Bush would agree with that, and he would not agree with the statement that he wanted to impose democracy. You can’t really impose democracy. In the case of Afghanistan we got rid of a terrible regime, the Taliban, and the people are now trying to create a democratic system. They’ve elected their own president, their own legislature, and they would be doing fine if it wasn’t for the Taliban and for the drug lords who are coming back. In Iraq we gave them the opportunity for democracy, we helped them write a constitution. They have elected their own legislature, they have held a referendum on the constitution, and they have done other things that are democratic in nature. What’s keeping them from becoming more democratic are, first, thugs left over from the Saddam Hussein regime, terrorists who have come to make trouble, and then this sectarian conflict they are having. If you could get all that under control then you might find that the Iraqis are very interested in breeding a strong democracy, as they have demonstrated they are in recent years. So it is not something you impose on people, it’s something you give people the opportunity to develop. One problem in that part of the world and in other parts of the world is that democracy can’t just be a political philosophy. There have to be institutions. … but I also always talk about reform. You have to reform yourself in order to create the institutions of democracy, because democracy has to rest on the rule of law.

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