Does The U.S. Need More Help In Iraq; More Troops?
HUNT: Welcome back. Five hours before the bus bombing in Israel, a truck bomb smashed the United Nations complex in Baghdad, killing 22, including the senior U.N. official in Iraq.</s>KOFI ANNAN, U.N. SECRETARY GENERAL: We must carry on. We must also return to our mission with keen determination to succeed.</s>HUNT: Does this mean that the U.S. needs help in Iraq?</s>BUSH: We do need and welcome more foreign troops into Iraq, and there will be more foreign troops into Iraq. I've always said the United Nations ought to have a vital role, and they were playing a vital role in Iraq.</s>HUNT: Kate, is the Bush administration willing to surrender any control over the Iraqi occupation in order to get more support from others?</s>O'BEIRNE: Well, Al, it seems to me whether or not there are going to be major tradeoffs in order to get those troops will depend on how badly needed the troops were. General Abizaid was here this week briefing in Washington. He's, of course, the commander in Iraq. And he explains that he doesn't need more troops, even U.S. troops. He wants a different kind of troop. He wants lighter, more agile forces, like the 82nd, rather than the heavy Army divisions. He also said his number one need is intelligence, and presumably they're beefing that up. It certainly wouldn't help. It was thought that to internationalize the occupation force would really be a major help with respect to our enemies in Iraq. Well, that was proven untrue this week. If the U.N. was attacked, people only there, they're not occupiers, they're not oppressors, only there to help the Iraqi people. So internationalizing the force doesn't seem to appease our enemies in Iraq. An infidel is an infidel is an infidel.</s>HUNT: But Ron, I mean, seems this administration is being incredibly stubborn, it's saying they're not acknowledging that they underestimated the scope of the problem, and many people say we do need not only better but more forces.</s>BROWNSTEIN: Well, if to change direction would impose the most immediate short-term pain, because it would</s>NOVAK: But the problem with that is that the French and the Germans, but particularly the French, are so nasty, they just want to stick our nose into it and demand U.N. control. We're not going to give them control of 130,000 American troops. So it's a real conundrum...</s>HUNT: But Bob, the Turks</s>NOVAK: Well, that is -- I mean, the Turkish...</s>NOVAK: ... that is more satisfactory than under a U.N. control.</s>NOVAK: Well,</s>O'BEIRNE: Well, we're fighting a guerrilla war, though, in Iraq...</s>O'BEIRNE: ... which is certainly not the case in Bosnia.</s>MEEHAN: I am, yes.</s>HUNT: What do you expect to find, and will you be able to see everything you want to see?</s>MEEHAN: Well, I hope so. I'm going with 10 other members...</s>MEEHAN: ... of Congress, and I think, given the fact that we're spending a billion dollars a week there, $4 billion a month, and estimates are going up, I think we have to get more troops there. I think General Shinseki was correct when he said several thousand -- several hundred thousand troops is probably what we're going to need in order to get stability and peace and rebuild Iraq. Paul Wolfowitz and others, including the vice president, criticized him for that. I think he was probably right. I hope they're not American troops, I hope that similar to Kosovo and Bosnia, where we have about 20 percent of the troops, or even Afghanistan, where we have about 50 percent of the troops, we have to get more countries involved in this. It looks to me is that it's getting -- it's going to get worse before it gets better.</s>HUNT: Bob, let me ask you another question about authority. The American, the head of the American mission over there, Jerry Bremer, this week says the Iraqis have to take more responsibility. The provisional government came back and said, You got to give us more authority, then. Is that feasible?</s>NOVAK: I don't think it can happen.</s>O'BEIRNE: ... the priority...</s>HUNT: I think that would be a disaster...</s>O'BEIRNE: ... the priority...</s>HUNT: ...</s>O'BEIRNE: ... for the, for the coalition forces, rather than foreign troops, is Iraqi troops. And what the Iraqis have to appreciate is, which they now know, of course, if we cooperate with the Americans, we could get killed, because that, of course, is the agenda of the jihadists in Iraq. But if we don't, there won't be any reconstruction, and we won't take things into our own hands in the short term, and that's a major choice the Iraqi people have to make.</s>HUNT: Kate, you alone had the last word in this segment. Next on CAPITAL GANG, is the Terminator coming out on top in California?