Thomas Ricks is a Pulitzer Prize winning correspondent for The Washington Post and he is Dean of the America Military Correspondence. He has spent part of his childhood in Afghanistan and after graduating from Yale, won a fellowship for study in the Far East. As a reporter he has covered US military operations in Bosnia, in Somalia, in Haiti and in the Middle East. His book Fiasco was number one on the bestseller list from the very start, The New York Times bestseller list and it sparked an impassioned and important debate across the country. In fact it was discussed everywhere from the Senate floor to op-ed pieces in newspapers across across our country and in fact across the world. So please join me in welcoming Thomas Ricks Thank you very much for that kind introduction. It's terrific to be in San Francisco especially because I was in Dallas last week. But I do have some good news; they are beginning to get it. In my talks down there people were saying, you mean this Iraq thing that George did isn't really working out. I said that's right. And they say, you mean the media was telling us the truth about what's going on in Iraq and the administration got it wrong. And I said that's right, and they are having another think down there in Dallas. What I'd like to do is to talk fairly quickly about 15 to 20 minutes and then get into your questions which I think are always the more interesting part of this sort of event. But before I begin talking, I just want to ask do we have any veterans here tonight of Iraq or Afghanistan? If so would you put up your hand please? One, two, three could we have a round applause for them? Thank you for your service. Okay, where are we in Iraq now? There has been a lot of fuzzy talk about progress without lot of distinction made about what sort of progress. Sometimes I feel that progress in Iraq is like the horizon, it's always there but it never gets any closer. Every indication is that the so called surge, properly termed a counter offensive, is having some small success tactically in parts of Baghdad. It's having some improvement on security in Baghdad. That's not to say that parts of Baghdad are safe, it's just that better than they were in 2006, which is not a particularly high hurdle. We are talking here about circles of hell, which circle or hell are you in? The seventh, eighth, six or so on. But that's often the nature of the discussion when it comes to things in Iraq, how bad is it? The important thing about surge though is the President announced it in January, explicitly, with the intention the strategic goal of achieving national political reconciliation and the military the surge was the military operation that was intended to create a breathing space in which national political reconciliation could occur among Iraqi leaders. At this point there is no sign of that occurring and actually the evidence to the contrary is that the Iraqi government appears to be falling apart as more and more groups pull out of the ruling coalition or start boycotting cabinet meetings with the effect that they can't have the quorum necessary to forward any legislation. It means essentially the Iraqi government has grounded to a halt. So what next? Everybody is waiting for General Petraeus. In six weeks General Petraeus comes back to Washington and along with Ambassador Crocker testifies in front of the Congress. My guess and its just a guess, is that his testimony will be interesting, but not dispositive. That is I don't think it's really going to change the debate in Iraq. I think what he will do is put lipstick on a pig. He will come back and say, don't pay any attention to the benchmarks that were laid down in January, pay attention to these other things and they are genuine trends. The switching allegiance of tribes in Anbar province and in some other provinces away from Al Qaeda and at least temporarily arriving at deals of convenience with the Americans and fighting alongside the Americans, and this includes people who have killed American troops. That's a significant change. It actually is what you need in almost every counter insurgency, is that kind of deal that's how you put down the insurgency. There are real questions though about how sustainable that trend is. And also whether it might end up simply adding fuel to the fire of the future full blown civil war. The Shiite politicians are profoundly worried about this that we are cutting deals with their enemies. One Shiite politician recently said, "Baby crocodiles are cute, but you can't keep adult crocodiles in your house." And they worry that these deals we are cutting with insurgent groups and tribes is creating a whole bunch of baby alligators out there, that are going to grow up and start biting each other as the US draws down its presence in Iraq. The most interesting thing to watch in Congress right now and especially in September will be the 21 Republican Senators who come up for reelection next year. They are terrified. When you ask them and I asked one of them, what's going to be like if you have to campaign next year with Iraq like it is now, their faces turn white. I don't think they are going to bolt entirely though, may be they will start distinct themselves and from the Bush Administration but I don't think you are going to see the Republicans get together with the Democrats and actually pull the plug on the war. Why? Because I think the Democrats are terrified of getting tagged with ending this war as they were tagged with ending the Vietnam War and were distrusted by a large part of the country on national security issues for decades afterwards. So I actually think September will be like Macbeth, full of sound and fury, but signifying nothing. On Iraq I think the beginning of wisdom is to understand that there are no good answers left. We have frittered away a lot of time and a lot of good answers in Iraq. At this point we have been fighting in Iraq a year longer almost then we fought in World War II as a nation. We have much left to show for it. We need to start talking about what the least bad answer is and how we get to it. As one general said to me in Iraq last May "Just because you invade a country stupidly doesn't mean that you should leave it stupidly." So I think we need to start thinking about mitigation strategies. How can we lessen the damage done? How we can lessen the chances of a full blowing civil war following on our heels in Iraq? And I do think that will probably be the lasting contribution from General Petraeus's testimony next month. I expect he will try to force the debate towards considering consequences of possible courses of action. What is the consequence of a complete pull out? What is the consequence of moving to some sort of containment strategy? What are the possible consequences of partitioning the country, which I think of as breaking up the country and selling it of the parts. I suspect what we will do, as America often does, is moon walk into a new policy, looking like we are moving forward and actually kind of moving backwards, not even realizing where we are going. And kind of wind up with the policy some where aiming at containment, certainly not aiming at positive goals, liberation and democracy, but more aiming at negative goals. And this will be a policy one person that I know calls the "three no's." That our goals in Iraq essentially will be no genocide, no safe haven for Al Qaeda and no regional war. Now those are still ambitious goals. They going to take a lot of blood and treasure from this country to achieve and they may not be achievable. So what's how is this going to play out over the next year? I see two courses on troop levels. The first one; if things go unexpectedly well, say if an Iraqi political breakthrough occurs, if the level of violence goes down, then next spring will likely bring the beginning of the US troop brought down in Iraq. You will see 5,000 thousand troops cut a month, for several months and probably by sometime at 2009 will be down to somewhere about 80,000 to 100,000 troops. The other course is this; if things go badly about as they are now or worse and I can give you a whole bunch of nightmares, what happens if an Iraqi unit turns on its American advisors and slaughters them? What happens if that starts spreading? If things go worse then next spring will likely bring the beginning of the US troop draw down and probably by sometime in 2009 it will be down to around 80,000 to a 100,000 troops. Why the same outcome? Because the simple fact is that there are no more troops available. When you ask about this at the Pentagon they tell you, we are out of troops. This results from decisions made by the Bush administration several years ago not to rapidly expand the size of the US military even as they launched what they called a global war on terror. You could force troops to go to 18 month tours of duty in Iraq. That likely would break the morale and General Petraeus has already said he is not going to do it. The only other way to keep troop numbers up would be to alert guard and reserve units and those alerts have not gone out. So troop levels are going to come down. And I think we need to worry about the strain on the US Military. The longer they are out in there in that grinder the more damage would be done to the US Military. I was really struck on I had breakfast with a young captain in Iraq real scholar, first in her class at West Point and I said what are your plans, and she said, I plan to get out. And I said, why. She said, because I no longer have faith in our government. We are losing the best and the brightest at a large chunks of our military, the captains, the experienced sergeants, these are the leaders that we need in the military. That actually remind me of a line in a poem by William Butler Yeats "The best lack all conviction, while the worst are full of passionate intensity." And when I look at the morale of truth it's actually surprisingly good at five years into this thing. But I do see frustration growing in our officer core and that kind of dwindling of conviction, the sense that I am just out here beating my head against the wall. Then they come back for 12 months and they wonder, was it worth it, losing those buddies out there. And this is an enormously cohesive force we have out there; this is an all volunteer force. So when they lose the guy next to them, it's not some anonymous draftee who just showed up, this is probably somebody they've known for a couple of years, may be live next door to back at Fort Bragg or Fort Benning of Quantico, know the wife, saw the first baby come home, saw him blown up in front of their eyes. So the real question is how quickly will the troop levels come down in Iraq in 2008 2009? And more importantly what would be the mission of the troops left behind the residual force? I think it will be those three no's. No genocide, no regional war, no safe haven for Al Qaeda. But even that is going to be extremely messy. How do you prevent a regional war while you probably going to have to deal with refugee flows? You got to keep those refugees from flowing out of Iraq and destabilizing the entire region. There already are a million Iraqi refugees in Jordan and probably another million in Syria. Okay so what do you do? You set up catchments areas along to borders, you put up refugee camps. American troupes guard them. That begins to feel to me like the next generation PLO camps. And that's some lousy mission to hand to US troops. Even worse as partition it might wind up, it sounds appealing but you might wind up with three mini civil wars instead of one big one. Already in Southern Iraq right now, the British have pulled back and essentially an intra Shiite civil war is breaking out between factions down there. It's not about religion. It's not about the Americans. It's not even about the British. They are hoarding at one little base. It's about control of oil and the oil exports at Al Basra. This leads me to three final points. First this is rapidly not George Bush's war anymore. It's rapidly becoming a war for the next president. President Bush has made most of the decisions he is going to make on this war. Second, the next president is not going to be able to get out of Iraq quickly in my opinion. I would not be surprised if we still have combat troops in Iraq at the end of the next president's first term and I really wouldn't be surprised if we still have combat troops at the end of the next president's second term. When I was writing this book 'Fiasco' sometimes I would look out of the window at these little kindergartners who would walk up everyday from the elementary near my house to a day care center and I would think one of those kids is going to fight and die in Iraq. I think the point to take here is that Iraq is becoming a bigger strategic problem for this country than the Vietnam War was. We could walk away from Vietnam, if you are a Cambodian it was bad, if you were an American ally of the the enemies' ally of the Americans it was bad, you were sent after re education camp. But this country could walk away from Vietnam and wash its hands off it. I don't think we would be able to walk away from Iraq, even if we pulled out of Iraq tomorrow morning by magic, we would be living with the consequences from many many years to come. Third finally I think it would not end well however it ends. I mentioned Shakespeare earlier and I really am serious about this. I think we need to understand that Iraq is a tragedy. I think we need to remember as well that tragedy is Shakespearean tragedies have five acts and I suspect we are only in act three. Rosencrantz & Guildenstern are still alive. One of them is the Iraqi prime minister. And act four is going to be messy and act five is going to be even messier. I don't know what they are going to be. But I don't think they are going to be pleasant times to watch. And now you can see why Jon Stewart called me Little Miss Sunshine. That takes care of my prepared remarks and now let's turns to the questions
member. 
