{"id":24170,"date":"2007-01-11T01:01:01","date_gmt":"2011-05-19T06:10:21","guid":{"rendered":""},"modified":"2011-05-19T06:10:21","modified_gmt":"2011-05-19T06:10:21","slug":"tony_snow","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/admin.rushlimbaugh.com\/daily\/2007\/01\/11\/tony_snow\/","title":{"rendered":"Tony Snow"},"content":{"rendered":"
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RUSH: As promised, we have Tony Snow, the White House press secretary, on the phone with us. Tony, how you doing today?<\/p>\n

SNOW: Hey, Rush, how are you?<\/p>\n

RUSH: Well, I couldn\u2019t be better. I\u2019m doing well and I hope you are, too. Let me start with a series of questions that I know a lot of people have and then you can take it from there. Why did it take so long to recognize the problems admitted to last night? Why were these terrorist neighborhoods that were cleared not secured, and instead abandoned allowing terrorists to return as we moved on to other places? Why did it take so long to recognize the need for more troops, on and on and on, and what happened to bring about last night\u2019s speech?<\/p>\n

SNOW: Okay, a couple of things happened. The main thing that happened was you had an explosion of sectarian violence primarily in Baghdad, but in other parts of the country as well, and it really began to pick up during the months of August, September, October. As recently as June, you had congressional delegations going to Iraq feeling pretty confident that things were moving in the right direction. You had an election, you had a democratically elected government, and people were coming back saying, &ldquo;You know what? We think you may be able to be taking troops out of Iraq by the end of the year.&rdquo; As a matter of fact, you may recall, Rush, that in some of my press conferences during the summer, reporters were saying, ‘We hear that you\u2019re going to draw down to less than a hundred thousand troops, we hear it\u2019s going to be 90–‘ remember those conversations? Those are a reflection of the fact that at the time, people thought, okay, things are moving in the right direction. <\/p>\n

It became clear during the summer that the Samarra mosque bombing way back in February had ignited the kind of sectarian passions that had been laying dormant for a long time, and the level of violence took off and took off rapidly. There had been a couple of attempts to try to build a coordinated effort to create peace in Baghdad. They\u2019re called Operation Forward Together 1 and 2. In the second one the Iraqis promised to provide six police brigades. They provided two. There were not enough boots on the ground. The US approach at the time was, let\u2019s train up the Iraqis, let\u2019s put \u2019em in the lead, our guys will come in during the day, at night we\u2019ll return them to barracks and we\u2019ll try to clear and hold neighborhoods. Well, what ended up happening is we did not have enough people there. So we could go and clear out a neighborhood, that wasn\u2019t a problem, but our guys would go home at night, you wouldn\u2019t have enough Iraqi forces to stay there and keep the area subdued so that you could go in and build businesses and so on. <\/p>\n

So what would happen is neighborhoods would be quiet for a while, the forces would leave and they\u2019d get rowdy again. So the president and a lot of key advisors were really pretty quick to pick up on it, said we need to figure out what\u2019s going on here and we need to fix it. That led to a series of deliberations that really began late in the summer, and during the fall the president said, he basically said, &ldquo;I want everybody who\u2019s involved in this, from the intel to the defense sides, to take a good, hard look at it, and let\u2019s figure out the way to fix this problem.&rdquo; Because what we want to end up with is a democratic Iraq that can stand up on its own, and also can help fight the terrorists side by side with us, without American forces having to be there. That\u2019s how the president got into it.<\/p>\n

So what ended up happening was, in Baghdad, didn\u2019t have enough boots on the ground, and furthermore sometimes when our guys were going after bad guys, you\u2019d get a phone call from a politician who would say, &ldquo;Nope, we don\u2019t want you to do it, back off,&rdquo; or, &ldquo;you captured a bad guy, you know what, family is friends of ours, let \u2019em go.&rdquo; You can\u2019t do that. It\u2019s not only demoralizing to troops, but the people in the neighborhoods, it sends them a message that law enforcement isn\u2019t credible, people are going after me, I guess I\u2019m going to have to pick sides. I think I\u2019ll go with the Mahdi army or I think I\u2019ll go with the criminal gang or I think I\u2019ll go with some Saddam rejectionist because those guys got guns and they can protect me. Those are the choices people were forced to make because the law enforcement wasn\u2019t working, so you gotta make the law enforcement effective.<\/p>\n

RUSH: Well, no question about that. Is the number of troops we\u2019re sending sufficient to get this done now?<\/p>\n

SNOW: Yeah. Look, the president isn\u2019t going to be suggesting an insufficient number of troops. Gotta keep in mind how this one works, which is the Iraqis got to send the troops first. So what we\u2019re talking about is a commitment of 50,000 or more Iraqis within Baghdad, supplemented by 30 or more thousand Americans, including the 20,000 who are going to be in there, and there\u2019s the possibility of supplementary forces from time to time coming in to do special missions. The point here is that you may have 70 or 80,000 forces within Baghdad proper to deal with the business of building peace there. That\u2019s a pretty credible and sizable force, but the other thing that\u2019s going on now is that you\u2019re going to have people there 24\/7. <\/p>\n

You\u2019ve got an Iraqi brigade, that\u2019s 3,000 or more, in each of nine districts, you\u2019ve got a US battalion, 600 or so that are working with them, and they\u2019re there 24\/7. They\u2019re going door-to-door building confidence but they\u2019re also going door-to-door if they have to, going after the bad guys. This is not something that is being crafted by political considerations. The president asked the military guys — by the way, everybody talks about the generals who opposed this. The generals created this. The generals are the ones who said, what troops do we need to fulfill the mission, and you ended up with the five brigade plan that the president laid out for Baghdad, plus an additional 4,000 Marines for Anbar province.<\/p>\n

RUSH: Okay, a couple more things. I don\u2019t want to put you in an uncomfortable position here, but you are the White House spokesman.<\/p>\n

SNOW: Yes, sir.<\/p>\n

RUSH: You\u2019ve got an ongoing effort here by the Democrats to symbolically defund this particular surge or reinforcements, and it\u2019s going to be symbolic because they\u2019re never going to get 60 votes in the Senate to approve of the defunding. Tony, that\u2019s going to lead them to hearings, they\u2019re going to have investigations and hearings, and that\u2019s where the real war in this country is going to be fought. I mentioned this in the first hour, I sincerely hope that the Republicans and whoever testifies before these hearings that the Democrats are going to call, both the House and the Senate, don\u2019t go wimp on us. I hope they understand what they\u2019re up against and don\u2019t go defensive. I hope they are able to stay on offense and I hope you guys — I don\u2019t mean to sound this way, but I hope everybody there understands what\u2019s ahead here in these hearings and how important they\u2019re going to be into shaping public opinion about this.<\/p>\n

SNOW: There are two parts to it. Rush, we absolutely understand. You know, people who say that they oppose this and that they want to use financial measures, they gotta answer a question, which is what is it going to be like, because this is going to be part of what they call supplemental request. This is a supplemental request for ongoing military operations. What they\u2019re going to have to do is they\u2019re going to have to cut off all military funding. So do they really want to say to the people that they say they support, you know what, we\u2019ve just cut off your ammunition, your fuel, your food, your clothing, your support —<\/p>\n

RUSH: No, they\u2019re not going to do it. This is going to be symbolic, they\u2019re threatening to, but you know they can\u2019t do it —<\/p>\n

SNOW: Well, if you\u2019re doing a symbolic resolution, the other thing you\u2019ve gotta ask yourself is do you really think troops are going to say, &ldquo;Man, I\u2019m really glad they did that.&rdquo; If you\u2019re supporting the troops, what message does that send to the troops and what message does it send to the enemy?<\/p>\n

RUSH: I wouldn\u2019t be surprised if they don\u2019t even do their resolution because they\u2019re going to realize that. They\u2019re going to do everything they can to damage this war effort in their hearings, and —<\/p>\n

SNOW: Well, but the thing is, Democrats now, you know, I\u2019ve been in a lot of meetings with Democrats who say, &ldquo;Look, we believe in success in Iraq.&rdquo; Okay, so take that as your baseline. Then the question is, &ldquo;If you believe in success, and you don\u2019t like the plan, let\u2019s hear yours.&rdquo;<\/p>\n

RUSH: They\u2019re not going to do that. They don\u2019t have one — we saw their plan in the nineties, Tony, it\u2019s do nothing. Their plan leads to 3,000 Americans dying in two hours.<\/p>\n

SNOW: Well, again, there\u2019s a burden of proof on both sides. We understand that everybody is going to be watching, and there\u2019s a lot of skepticism about the Iraqis. The president\u2019s already laid his cards on the table. This is what he thinks is necessary to succeed in Iraq. And if people have better ideas, it\u2019s time to put \u2019em on the table.<\/p>\n

RUSH: Let me tell you something, I know you can\u2019t respond to this, I\u2019m not asking you to, but the Democrats we\u2019re talking about here are not interested in victory. I can\u2019t find any evidence from anything any of them except Lieberman have said, that they\u2019re interested in any success there, much less victory. One more thing before I have to let you go and that\u2019s Iraq and Syria. The president said more about Iraq and Syria last night than he has, there was some gulping in the throats of Drive-By Media and Democrats last night when he did this. What\u2019s that about?<\/p>\n

SNOW: Well, I think it\u2019s pretty obvious. Iran is busy trying to destabilize the government in Iraq, and the Syrians are not being helpful, either. There are supplies moving from Syria into Anbar province, we\u2019re going to cut those off, that\u2019s part of the military operation, and the Iranians, we\u2019ve had a number of Iranian officials who have now been apprehended in Iraq, apparently trying to aid and abet those who are trying to kill Americans and destabilize the government. And furthermore they\u2019ve been sending in some fairly advanced weaponry, new kinds of IEDs that are incredibly fatal. So the question, we have got to make it clear to them that there\u2019s going to be a price to be paid. Now, this does not mean that we\u2019re going to be rolling troops into Iran, but it doesn\u2019t mean that we don\u2019t have ways of making it clear to them that this is unacceptable. And the other thing that\u2019s interesting, Rush —<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

RUSH: As promised, we have Tony Snow, the White House press secretary, on the phone with us. Tony, how you doing today? SNOW: Hey, Rush, how are you? RUSH: Well, I couldn\u2019t be better. I\u2019m doing well and I hope you are, too. 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