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Peter G. Peterson: Good evening all. On behalf of your board of directors I want to welcome you. This is normally the annual dinner meeting of the board. But we thought this subject and these two speakers are so extraordinary that all the members ought to have a chance to come here.

Now, under the featured event this evening, you know, we…one of the innovations that we started a few years ago was the whole idea of debates. What we’ve learned is that the human condition is such that when one is presenting the case for his or her position, our recall for the arguments against our position is a bit selective. On the other hand, ones’ opponents are happy to point out the weaknesses and omissions. Tonight we have two distinguished experts on one of the crucial, indeed hot, issues of our time: what to do about Iraq. Our indisputable and indispensable leader, Les Gelb, is going to lead that effort. So again, Les, thank you so much, and Richard and Leon, thank you for honoring us this evening. Thank you all.

Leslie H. Gelb: Good evening. Good evening. Welcome to the January dinner of the council’s board of directors, and to our debate on Iraq policy.

Tonight, we’re going to have a debate on what should be United States policy toward Iraq. And our two debaters are simply two of the smartest, most knowledgeable people on the subject, and I would say foreign policy generally, Richard Perle and Leon Fuerth. More about them in a moment.

I would like to inform the audience that this evening we will be joined by Council members on the Council website and by CNN listeners on the CNN website. In fact, we already had in something like 1,700 questions from people who intend to watch us on CNN even before they’ve heard what they’d like to disagree with. (Laughter) I’d like to inform the audience, obviously, that this will be on the record. More and more, we like to bring council events to you of this nature, bring them to the general public and do them on the record.

A few years ago this desire on our part to have more debates, and public debates, was fostered and made possible through the good works of Home Box Office, and particularly by two of our members from Home Box Office, Jeff Bewkes and Richard Plepler. And I’d like you to join me in thanking them.

Let me say just a bit more about our speakers, who really are well known to any and all of us who follow and care about foreign affairs. Richard Perle began his career in this business really as a principle aid to one of the most influential United States senators during the cold war era, Henry M. Scoop Jackson of Washington. Richard moved on and up through the ranks of Washington because of the power of his mind. He was an assistant secretary of defense in the Reagan administration. He’s now a resident fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, and at least of equal importance, he’s chairman of the defense science policy board, one of the most influential outside groups dealing with Pentagon and US national security policy.

Leon Fuerth, very similar, and similarly impressive record, also on the democratic sides of things. Both of these men started life as democrats. Leon, a nonpartisan democrat, is a career foreign service officer. Then moving to the House of Representatives to work for Les Aspen, and them moving on to the Senate to work for Senator Al Gore. He then moved with Senator Gore to the White House and was Vice President Gore’s national security advisor. He is now a visiting professor at George Washington University in Washington.

Some months ago when Richard Haass, State Department’s director of policy planning, spoke to us here, I said that Richard was among the top 30 or 40 best strategic thinkers in the Bush administration. (Laughter) These gentlemen are at least the equal thereof. (Laughter) We are very lucky to have them tonight. Leon, will you begin?

Leon S. Fuerth: Well, it’s not a misspent life after all if I can see this many friends (Laughter) in the audience. What should our policy towards Iraq be? Well, my first impulse is to begin by simply saying that a lunge is not the same thing as a policy or a strategy. Our policy, and here I think is probably deep agreement between myself and Richard, is we need to get rid of Saddam Hussein, but we need to get rid of him at a time that we have prepared under conditions that we have set in motion. That is not something that can be done by simply pivoting out of Afghanistan and moving on to the attack in Iraq.

An immediate attack in Iraq, in my opinion, is infeasible for many reasons. But even if it were, I would submit to you that it would be the wrong move strategically for the United States to make at this moment. We have Saddam Hussein’s address, and dangerous as he is, we can deal with him on the instant if we have reason to. We need to keep our eyes focused on where the threat now is. What delivered the blow against us that has started the war on terrorism in this administration was delivered by a terrorist network, not a state, but a non-state system, one of several in the world, globally dispersed, organized in a fashion that takes advantage of the network of the Internet, and of everything that that means in terms of flattened organizational systems, of a ease of communication for those who wish to attack and of the difficulty for those who need to defend.

We needed to keep in mind that what happened in New York and in Washington was plotted in Germany, that the money for it traversed the world, that the people who carried it out traversed the world, that they were trained in the United States. That’s a network. It didn’t come out of Baghdad, it didn’t come out of Tehran, it came out of something independent of governments like that, a networked terrorist organization. We are in a race against time to prevent such organizations from being able to carry out the next attack on the United States, this time with a weapon of mass destruction. It doesn’t have to be a nuclear bomb, there are other things that are available and imaginable for such networks. And that is the great fear.

So in addition to the attack on us let us also remember that this network planned and carried out the attack on our embassies in Africa, had planned and carried out the attack on our naval ship in Yemen, had attempted to carry out a major attack at the time of the millennium, which was foiled, and had planned to carry out attacks on a whole series of US aircraft over the Pacific with the planning centered on an activist in the Philippines. This is a global network, and the fight against it must be global and must be sustained by a global coalition of those who can see that their own interests are engaged, as our ours.

This does not mean that we should simply hope that Saddam Hussein keeps out of trouble. In the meantime, there are plenty of things that we can do to make sure that he is occupied with defending himself from those things that we need set in motion. In time, maybe the Iraqi National Congress could become an effective force. For anybody who has dealt with it at this time, I don’t think that is now. In time, there might be an internal opposition, but I don’t believe that that is the case now. We would need to work at it. In time, the United States can, by hammering away at the need for a return to very draconian inspection rules began to prepare people’s thinking for a move that we might ultimately make when the moment is ripe to demand those rules or to demand the right to take action in our own self defense under the existing UN security resolutions.

I would also note that we have to prepare homeland defense against the moment when we take on a state actor. We have to prepare it in any event. But the point is that this task is not one that will be accomplished in six weeks or six months. It is a very serious reorganization of a large part of the nation’s defense and legal system.

Some may say that we should simply be philosophical about what can be done to the United States despite our best efforts in organizing such a defense. In a way I would suggest that that advice be applied to those who want to build a missile defense. But if you don’t want to be philosophical about defending against missiles, we don’t want to be philosophical and resigned about defending against terrorism. It is a top priority and we should have it better in hand before we decide to take on a state actor.

I would say finally that this is not a matter for indefinite postponement, that is to reckon with Saddam Hussein. If it is postponed indefinitely it will go away. A moment does have to be picked. But now, exactly now, coming out of Afghanistan, is not the right moment. Taking on the terrorist network is the right thing to do at this time.

LG: Thank you. Richard Perle.

Richard N. Perle: In 1981, the Israeli government made a difficult decision. They decided to launch an air strike against a French-built reactor in Iraq at a place called Syric(?), because they knew that if they didn’t act then, that reactor would be loaded with fuel and they would be prevented by the radiological damage that would result in a subsequent attack from taking action that the world would tolerate. They concluded that they could wait no longer. Reluctantly and controversially a divided cabinet faced a difficult decision and destroyed that reactor. Had they not done so, in all likelihood, Saddam Hussein would today have nuclear weapons.

He’s still attempting to acquire nuclear weapons but through a different technology. No one can say with certainty when he will achieve that result. It could be a year or two or five, or tomorrow. But he is relentless in his pursuit of nuclear weapons. In the meantime, he possesses chemical and biological weapons, and alone in the world has used chemical weapons against civilians, his own civilian population, as well as against Iranian troops in the war between Iraq and Iran.

He is a man whose loathing for the United States is undisguised, a man who presides over a reign of terror, despised within his own country, moving his military forces, constantly changing his command, constantly because he knows that given the manner in which he has ruled, the internal opposition to him is a threat. And he is a threat to us. The experience of anthrax delivered through the postal system has made it very clear that weapons of mass destruction, although not used in this case on a mass scale, can be delivered anonymously. The deterrents on which we have always depended cannot be made effective in those circumstances.

So we have Saddam Hussein, who Leon agrees we need to get rid of, he’s just not sure he wants to do it right now, building nuclear weapons, in possession of chemical and biological weapons, in contact with networks of terror, including the very network that Leon has referred to. And we, like the Israelis in 1981, have a choice. We can wait until the time is ripe. Leon would wait. How long, I don’t know. Maybe it’ll come out in the course of the discussion. We can wait and hope that he does not do things that we know he is capable of doing. For example, distributing biological weapons to Al Qaeda or other terrorists.

I think the risks of waiting are too great and the benefits of removing Saddam sooner rather than later are so substantial, not only in dealing effectively with that threat, but potentially in transforming the relationship between the United States and the Middle East, that is a risk worth taking. I believe it can be done by working with the opposition, the internal opposition to Saddam Hussein. It’s all very well for Leon to say that the Iraqi National Congress, an umbrella group of opponents to Saddam, is not ready. For eight years nothing was done to make them ready in his administration. And for the first year of the Bush administration nothing has been done to make them ready. And I have the feeling that nothing will be done to make them ready until we face the decision that the removal of Saddam Hussein is imperative. At that point, we will set in motion what it takes to make them ready.

What does it mean to make them ready? It means to give them political support, it means to train members of the opposition in basic skills like designating targets with laser devices, so that if and when we decide to move against Saddam, in our own self interest and to protect this country, we have allies on the ground. We have military technology today, particularly precision bombing, that gives good reason to believe that a combination of some trained forces on the ground, and we should get started on that now, and American precision bombing can remove the threat that Saddam Hussein represents. I don’t want us to wait too long as we did in dealing with Osama bin Laden. We knew there was a threat there and we deferred action. As it turns out, we deferred action beyond the point of which bin Laden chose to strike. I don’t want to see us repeat that mistake with respect to Saddam Hussein.

LG: Thank you very much, Richard. Rebuttal, beginning with Leon Fuerth.

LF: Yes, Richard says that Saddam Hussein is malevolent and dangerous and I agree. But he presents Saddam Hussein as if this is the core of the issue. Crack that and it’s all over. It so happens that Iran has perhaps the best international terrorist network going, and knows how to use it, to persuade the United States that grappling with Iran might cause us some egregious injuries. But I think…I have not yet heard whether or not we should march on to Tehran after we finish Baghdad.

He says the risks of waiting are too great, but he minimizes persistently the risks of premature, unprepared action. Says we should work with the INC. I had the INC in a meeting with the vice president of the United States for two days. I no sooner got back to London than they sent me a dispatch saying they had split. Now, the INC consists of gentlemen who have taken their lives in their hands by publicly opposing Saddam Hussein, but it does not consist of people who have yet demonstrated the slightest ability to operate as the sharp spear point of an operation on the ground. Maybe they could be trained. But not in a couple of weeks. And not in a couple of months. You wouldn’t want to bet the foreign policy of the United States and its regional policy and standing, on the INC and their ability to operate miraculously in concert with American air power.

There is here a view that it’s all going to be very simple. Nothing is ever that simple. It’s a basic rule of planning to expect complications. The joint chiefs will tell you that. The question is whether or not the president should overrule the joint chiefs and go for fast action, a sharp pivot, a couple of months at most, and on to the war with Iraq. And a quick conclusion, I doubt that will work. I think the stakes, risks, are extremely high. If [it does not work], I don’t hear plan B.

RNP: Leon would have you believe that Iran is at least a great a threat as Iraq, but I didn’t hear him recommending that we take action against Iran. Indeed, I don’t think he’s prepared to take action against any state, which is why he’s put the emphasis on the non-state network. Let me suggest to you that the non-state network he’s talking about had its roots in Afghanistan where thousands of people were trained, where the most proficient and effective prospects were identified and selected. It is no accident that the people who carried out those acts passed through those training camps in Afghanistan.

If we are going to win the war against terror, which Leon’s suggestion, be the emphasis of American policy, we must take that war to the states that harbor and support terrorists. If terrorists are fugitives, if they have to sleep in a different location every night, if they are hunted wherever they attempt to put down roots, we will have a decent chance of defeating terrorism. But if we shy away from taking on the states that support them, states like Iraq, they will continue to enjoy the benefits of sanctuary and the problem for an open society will be unmanageable.

Leon says it’s not simple to go after Saddam. Of course, it isn’t simple. He’s for homeland defense, and let me tell you, that isn’t simple either, Leon. An open society like ours has, I’m sorry to say, poor prospects in making this country impermeable to terrorists. We have to take the war to them because of our inability to prevent them from bringing it to us.

Now, Leon commented on the Iraqi National Congress. It’s five years since the Congress of the United States urged the executive branch to begin to work seriously with the Iraqi National Congress. And for five years, the administration refused to do so. Leon’s administration didn’t spend the money that Congress allocated. Nothing was done to forge the opposition to Saddam into a potential, effective force with whom we could work.

The Northern Alliance wasn’t much before we went in there either. The focus should be on what we can create when we set out to do it. I’m not saying that we should launch a campaign against Saddam tomorrow, or a month from now or two months from now, what I am saying is that it is essential that we make the decision and choose a strategy for the removal of Saddam Hussein. I believe that if we accept Leon’s counsel, we’ll be discussing this a year from now and two years from now and three years from now and we will never have taken those initial steps, because basically Leon doesn’t want to take the risks. I submit to you that while there are risks, the risks of doing nothing, the risks of waiting and leaving it to Saddam to decide whether and when he will take action against us, is far more dangerous.

LG: Again, let me welcome people joining us by webcast, on the Council on Foreign Relations website, on CNN Worldwide, to a debate of the Council on Foreign Relations on what should be US policy toward Iraq. On my right is Leon Fuerth, my left side, Richard Perle. First question to you, Richard.

The public opinion polls in the United States show huge support for going after Saddam Hussein. And right now, hit him hard militarily. And just at meetings here at the Council on Foreign Relations, listening to individual members, I would say there’s a substantial majority [that] favors the same thing. Tell me why we don’t hear so much for that policy line abroad. Why is it when we talk to private leaders or our counterparts abroad they’re so opposed to the prospect of military action against Saddam?

RNP: Well, as Les knows well, there are private views and there are public views on matters like this, and frequently they are not the same. A number of the governments who privately express our position to action against Saddam, who publicly express our position, privately would be delighted if we were to undertake a serious operation against Saddam, what most countries, particularly in the region, fear most is a halfhearted or ineffective action against Saddam, which leaves a very dangerous and angry neighbor and no resolution in sight.

But there’s another answer to this question. None of the countries who express reservations are threatened in the way we are threatened. You cannot on the one hand maintain that the United States is the only superpower and on the other hand fail to draw the distinction between our situation and the situations of all other countries. We were the target on September 11th, not the French. The French have a different way of dealing with Saddam. The Russians have yet another way, not so dissimilar from the French, of dealing with Saddam. And most of our European allies do not feel menaced or threatened by Saddam Hussein. But Saddam has made no secret of how he feels about us. So I don’t think we can take an opinion poll on this and fail to recognize that our situation is fundamentally different from that of any other country, and particularly some of our close allies in Europe.

LG: Leon, you see the situation abroad that way as well?

LF: You’re asking countries like Turkey and the Saudis, upon whom we depend logistically to bet the farm on the success of this operation. You’re asking…you’re basically expecting other leaders around the world to accept our disregard of their opinions and still provide us with at least some modicum of support in the campaign against terrorism. I think this is essentially not a realistic way to sustain a coalition that I believe we absolutely do need. Since I agree that we should get rid of Saddam Hussein, and since I don’t agree that it should be put off indefinitely, what I am talking about is preparing a realistic path towards that goal, one that we can present to others and then proceed. But I don’t believe that preparing an American oligopoly is the right way to organize it.

RNP: I take it, Leon, that in the course of preparation you would be willing to recommend that this administration do something that your administration chose not to do, and that is begin to spend the money that Congress has allocated for support for the Iraqi opposition.

LF: If memory serves, the Congress under Republican control allocated $90 million…

RNP: Ninety-seven.

LF:…$97 million, which it expected the Clinton administration to spend on the INC, which for most of my time in government apparently consisted of about eight individuals in London. Okay? If memory serves, in addition to the problems the State Department had during my day with accountability in the INC the State Department in your day, in this administration’s day, is also reporting difficulties in figuring out where small amounts of that money have gone.

RNP: I don’t think the INC is ready for prime time. I do believe that with time and a lot of effort they might become so. But they aren’t anywhere near there yet. This theology about the INC has been absurd from the beginning.

LG: So can I repeat my question then, would you recommend that this administration spend the money so that they will one day be ready for prime time?

LF: I believe that the administration should try to do what we attempted to do. And that is to work with the INC to describe a gradually-expanding program of competencies for which they should be trained, and to give them an effort, to see if they can exceed…excel by doing things, and to expand what we are willing to do with them based on confidence they shall have learned, step by step. But I don’t believe in allocating 93 million bucks and demanding that the sitting administration spend it all on a small and not-well-organized group.

RNP: Well, let me just suggest that the potential of the United States when it supports an opposition in a situation like Iraq, where Saddam has ruled as we know Saddam has ruled, the potential for us to get behind the opposition is very considerable. And your obfuscation notwithstanding, the fact is that your administration chose to do little or nothing with the INC, and if it were up to you we would never do anything serious with the INC. The INC is not [just] individuals, it is an umbrella organization that has at various times represented a third of the country in the north and a good fraction of the country in the south, and we have one missed opportunity after another over the last decade.

So as we stand here today, we have not begun to forget that opposition. Now, you say you just want to get ready and I think you’re going to wait forever.

LF: I think that’s an ad hominem argument. I’ve been trying to strip from it elements of reason debate and I can’t find any. (Laughter) You have no idea, Richard, what I would or wouldn’t do, and you never will since I’m not going to be in a position to carry it out. (Laughter) I will say…

RNP: That’s why I asked you what you would recommend, Leon, and I can’t get a straight answer.

LF: Well, that wasn’t the point made. As for what I’d recommend, you won’t know that either because I’m not in the councils where recommendations matter and talk is cheap. What I’m trying to say is that the INC is a weak organization at this time, not ready to carry the burden you’re talking about, and not in any way to be analogized, even to the Northern Alliance, which was an on-the-ground fighting force, of some tenacity. This is quite different.

LG: Let me see if I can pursue this discussion from a different angle. But quite frankly, after hearing that there are eight or nine leaders in the INC at 93 million a pop, I would like to join forces with them. (Laughter) Richard Perle, the INC, what I hear over the years from our intelligence officials is that it is a very weak, divided organization. Are you saying, A, that they’re wrong, or B, that there are other councils in the intelligence community? Do you have other information? Where does it come from? Why can we rely on it?

RNP: Well, I think they’re wrong but I think it’s worse than that. Of course, the INC without support from the United States, without a realistic prospect of putting together a campaign that can remove Saddam, is bound to be weak. It’s inevitable that it is weak. The question is can it be made strong? The question is, is there a leadership there and is there an opposition to Saddam that is sufficiently deep-rooted so that with some outside support it can take hold? And I think the answer remains to be tested. I believe that they have that potential. I wish that the Clinton administration had chosen to test that potential by spending some of the money that Congress allocated. It chose not to do so. I hope this administration will correct that by getting behind the INC.

But the only way we’re ever going to find out is if we being the process. Which is why I kept asking, pleading with Leon to recommend that we get started, and he refused to do so.

LF: Gee, I thought I had actually outlined how we could get started. But what I’m not recommending is that we jump to the conclusion that having started we can be calling the shots in Baghdad in a couple of weeks or a couple of months.

LG: Let me direct this question to Leon Fuerth, and have an exchange, and then open it up to you all. Leon, you know far better than almost everybody in this audience Iraq’s capacities with weapons of mass destruction. They probably have chemical weapons right now that are deliverable. They either have or could easily have biological weapons, and they’re quite capable of developing nuclear weapons or dirty bombs or weapons of that ilk. How can we afford to just wait, given his clear animosity to the United States and that kind of capability?

LF: I am not advocating that we simply wait. I am advocating that we build a case for the action that we will eventually have to take. But that in the meantime, it is not particularly difficult or unimaginable for terrorist networks having nothing to do with Baghdad to acquire quite effective weapons of mass destruction. And I believe that our attention should remain focused on that, because among other things we don’t have the address of the international terrorist groups. We have Baghdad’s address at least and we know what to do in case we feel that they are preparing to take action against us with any of these systems.

I would add one other thing, and that is when I was in the government what I was most acutely aware of is what I didn’t know about where they were, or how much they had managed to hide, or at what rate that might proceed to reconstitute. I do believe that [Saddam] will bend every effort to pick up where he left off before the war and where the inspectors left him. But I have the same fears about the people who brought down the international…the World Trade Center. And I am afraid that our choice here is either keep our eye on the ball or lunge for Iraq right now because that’s a convenient strategic goal, and lose the kind of international sport we will need to deal with the terror networks, which are just as capable of lobbing a biological weapon into our midst as Saddam Hussein is.

LG: Richard, in addition to whatever you want to say in response, let me just give you a twist of the same question. If Saddam really believes we’re coming after him, this is, let’s say…becomes the strong rhetoric of the administration and the clear political choice of the American people, what incentive does he have to forebear? Why shouldn’t he come after us right away?

RNP: Well, he may come after us right away anyway. You’re arguing that he…that we in fact are deterring him from action by not taking action, that the discussion of possible imminent action will cause him to act preemptively. I can’t tell you whether Saddam will choose to act or not. But if we can’t take action against him, out of the fear that the…anticipation of doing so, would cause him to act, then we are already deterred from dealing with Saddam. If we leave Saddam in place, having gone after the Taliban, and I suppose, Yemen or Sudan or whatever small fry is under consideration as an alternative to dealing with Saddam, we will be saying to the world that our threshold for dealing with terrorism is limited to the small countries, that a country like Iraq can maintain relations with terrorists and build weapons of mass destruction and we will not take action against them.

The only way we’re going to defeat terrorism in my view is when there is no state that is prepared to give sanctuary to terrorists, when terrorists cannot sleep at night. And you are in effect granting, or potentially granting... sanctuary to terrorists in Iraq and in other large countries, and I haven’t heard a recommendation on Iran either, that is the very essence of the struggle against terrorists. We will not deal with terrorism one at a time with homeland defense. We are an open society and we cannot effectively protect our borders if we can only deal with individual terrorists. We have to deprive them of the support that is essential to them. Iraq now gives that support to terrorists and will go on doing so.

LF: I do not know that Iraq is in fact so central an actor in what has been going on among the international terrorist networks. Perhaps you’re privy to something that I am not. But on the other hand, while you’re a member of a board of advisors for Secretary Rumsfeld, I sometimes also provide advice for which clearances are needed and I haven’t seen this kind of information. So I don’t know for sure, although you seem to know, that in removing Saddam Hussein from the scene, solves our problem in totem. I think what it tends to do is eliminate an important geopolitical threat, I believe that Henry Kissinger has it exactly right, but I don’t believe that it necessarily brings down the international network of terrorists, which is out there and competent to do great evil to the United States with or without Saddam Hussein.

We essentially are in agreement that he’s got to go, notwithstanding your efforts to make it appear that because I wish to prepare the way I wish not to do so at all.

RNP: But Leon, you make it sound as though there’s a mutual exclusivity here.

LG: One second, before you go on, Richard. And you consider the international terrorist network a more imminent threat to the United States than you do the threat from Iraq?

LF: I think we’ve just had a demonstration of it.

RNP: We can walk and chew gum, Leon. We can deal with both. In fact, it would be foolish to say that we can only deal with one threat and not the other, particularly when they’re linked. You say you’ve seen no evidence of involvement of Saddam with terrorist networks. I just submit what’s in the public domain.

In Prague, a meeting took place between an Iraqi intelligence agent involved in terrorist planning and Mohammed Atta. We were lucky in detecting that event, and in fact the event was observed but only reported long after Atta’s photograph appeared and the Czech intelligence officer who had observed the event said that that’s the man who met with the Iraqi intelligence officer in Prague. There is other evidence of a similar nature, there have been other meetings, there are terrorists living in Baghdad today who are in communication with precisely the network that you want to eliminate.

LF: I would not be surprised if there are contacts between these networks. Of course it is dangerous for either of us to go too far in this direction beyond what the public record provides. So let me veer away from that discussion of what information there is or isn’t in the newspapers and so on, and instead simply say that I believe that the foundation for dealing with Saddam Hussein is not in place, needs to be put in place very carefully, will take time to do, can be done, and in the meantime international networks have already done us a grievous piece of damage, are in a position to do more, need to be dealt with, and then I think we face a choice. If we go after Saddam Hussein I believe we risk losing the support of others in the world, support that is necessary for dealing what has emerged as the primary threat at the moment.

LG: Gentlemen, you have a chance to come back further in rebuttal at the end, in your concluding remarks. Let me begin the question and answer period with a question from one of our CNN webcast viewers. This is Mr. Paul Smith of Alabama.

QUESTION: If Saddam Hussein were removed from power, who or what faction would be likely to take his place? Given the political dynamic of the region, is there a concern that one or more surrounding countries might become a problem if Saddam Hussein is removed?

LG: I think what they viewer is getting at here is we dealt with the problem in Afghanistan, now Iran is moving into the western part of Afghanistan and making it into a whole new kind of problem. So who would take his place? What’s our ability to affect this?

RNP: Let me just say our ability to affect the post- Saddam situation in Iraq will depend importantly whether we are the instrument by which Saddam is brought down. He could die a natural death tomorrow, there could be a coup tomorrow. We have every interest in involving ourselves with the opposition to Saddam Hussein in order to try to influence the kind of government that emerges at the end of that process. One of the reasons why I would support, and believe we should long ago have begun to support, the Iraqi National Congress is because its manifesto rejects weapons of mass destruction, urges the peace process in the Middle East, and expresses values very close to our own.

But if we continue to wait and leave circumstances to evolve as they will, the likelihood that we will be able to shape a decent government after Saddam is much less than if we involve ourselves now and deliberately in working with the kind of opposition that would produce a decent post-Saddam government.

LF: I think the questioner has a very good point. And there is the possibility of a chaotic [unintelligible] after he falls. And Dick is right, if we’re in there we stand a better chance of being able to influence it. But I think it would be more instructive to talk about our objectives in the aftermath, because we ought to be clear about what they should be.

Inevitably, we’ll be wanting to work with the Kurds. But the Kurds are not a monolith, they are two factions which often are in contest with each other, and often are played off by Tehran and Baghdad against each other and so on. Okay? We have to make sure that the kinds of assistance we give them do not convince them that the path is opening towards a Kurdish independent state, because that would raise havoc with the Turks and with others in the region. We have to hold it as our objective that there should be a free and loose federal government of some kind of which gives full play to the rights of the major ethnic groupings within the State of Iraq.

Whether or not the INC can mature into the leadership required for this remains to be seen and tested. The question is can we devise a series of opportunities for them to grow, to exercise responsibility and to be tested so that they might be better ready for that task when the day comes?

LG: Thank you, Leon Fuerth. Thank you, Richard Perle. We will move now to questions from our audience here, our Council on Foreign Relations members.

QUESTION I’m Harrison Golden. I’d like to ask both speakers if they would for a moment change the terms of the debate. Both of them agree that the INC isn’t ready to be an effective opposition. Both of them agree that at some point Saddam Hussein has got to be taken out. Why does the template of Afghanistan in 2002 and 2001 need to apply in Iraq? After all, in 1990 and 1991, despite the patina of coalition, the United States pursued the campaign virtually unilaterally militarily. Why can’t that apply now too?

LG: Thank you.

RNP: It certainly can apply, and in my judgment, almost certainly would apply, and in fact that’s what’s happened in Afghanistan. With the exception of a little help from the British we have been largely alone internationally in Afghanistan. We’ve worked with the Northern Alliance, which contrary to Leon’s suggestions was clinging perilously to a tiny slice of the Panjshir Valley unable to move, hopelessly ineffective until we arrived on the scene.

So I’m very much in favor of our being prepared to move unilaterally if we must. As a practical matter, we will end up doing the heavy lifting anyway. But the coalition that we refer to has contributed very little in Afghanistan. While we welcome the verbal support and the locking up of a bank account here and there, we shouldn’t kid ourselves, it is the United States that is fighting terrorism and doing 90 percent of the work.

LF: I know, Richard. There are ways of accepting from other countries what they can do and blending that into what we can do, even if the mix is pretty heavily in our favor. The alternative is to emphasize that they’re good for nothing and we don’t really give a damn what they offer us, and we’ll go it alone, and we’re probably better off without them because they’re impediments.

That’s only a slight overstatement of your attitude, and what it guarantees us is that the other governments of the world will say that if that is your attitude, go your way, because we’re not following you. And then the question is, do you really think that we can through military power alone prevail over the longer term against a rest of the world which is either hostile or indifferent?

RNP: Excuse me, what does it mean to say they will tell us to go our own way? Does it mean that the Italians will stop blocking bank accounts? Does it mean that the Germans will stop sharing intelligence? Does it mean that the government in the Philippines will be less interested in apprehending terrorists? What exactly does it mean? Does it mean that if we don’t act with the approval of all members of the coalition we will suffer as a result?

LF: Cooperation with us carries a degree of political risk for the leaders who engage in it. And if we carry ourselves in such a way as to suggest that we don’t really value or depend upon that cooperation, we can do without it, then I think that other leaders would just assume relax their diligence. On paper, it will appear that they are cooperating. In reality the kinds of signals that need to go out from the top to the bureaucracy will stop going out, and the flow of cooperation will dwindle.

LG: Just to expedite, a question here, a question all the way back there, one from council member viewing our webcast, one question from here.

QUESTION: I’m Kenneth Bialthon(?). I’d like to test further the notion of the so-called coalition by asking about the role of Israel in the event we should initiate an attack against Iraq. Last time in the gulf war Israel initiated an effort to protect itself from the scuds that came from Iraq and was discouraged from doing so by the United States government for fears of destroying the coalition, and Israel did not participate. If we should take the initiative and move against Iraq, and whether or not Iraq then would move against Israel at the time, what do you think would or should or could be the role of Israel, if any, in the system, and would that destroy our precious coalition?

LG: Thank you, Ken. Richard, why don’t you begin?

RNP: Ken, I’m really glad you put that question. The situations are so entirely different that the response would be entirely different. In 1991, we thought it was necessary to take half a million Americans to fight in Iraq for the liberation of Kuwait. We amassed 1,600 aircraft in the region, short-range aircraft that had to be within striking range. So we needed, we couldn’t have gotten along without, nearby real estate, which meant the coalition was fundamental. This is an entirely different situation. And we talk about the coalition today as though it were essential to effective operations as it was in 1991.

No one is proposing that we move massive numbers of Americans to the Gulf, no one is suggesting that we need hundreds of aircraft based close to Iraq. And so the conditions of the coalition are entirely different. The fear of losing coalition support should be seen in that light. So I would expect that the Israelis, who would be at risk in the context of a conflict with Iraq, would play their full role in protecting themselves and we would do nothing to discourage that.

LF: That’s a mouthful, because if Iraq used a weapon of mass destruction against Israel, if I read you correctly, then we should do nothing to discourage the next step and the next step and the next step. The right of retaliation, of self defense, is clearly available to every country, especially to the one whose existence is endangered the way Israel is. This is a very casual doctrine, as expressed here I think.

The key point here, I believe, is whether the United States positions itself as the leader of a coalition of states or as a modern-day version of the Roman Empire which deals with trouble on the outskirts by sending out a legion or two to handle the problem. The issue is among other things do we have any sense of destination for ourselves that we share with the rest of the world, or is our present enterprise meant to be self sealing? Deal with this problem and return to the agenda of the present administration.

We would do well towards the end of this discussion to ask what happens even beyond Iraq. Where America leadership really proposes to take the rest of the world? Are we taking them somewhere along with us, or leaving them off somewhere as impediments at the first moment? Those are important fundamental issues of attitude which will affect policy for a long time beyond Iraq.

LG: Thank you. Hand all the way in the back.

QUESTION: I’m David Greenway from the Boston Globe. Do you think, either one or both, do you think that we should follow President Bush’s suggestion that we get inspectors back into the country? And if you agree, how do we do it?

LG: Leon, why don’t you begin this time?

LF: Okay. I certainly believe that President Bush was right to demand the return of inspection to Iraq. I also believe that that is a drumbeat that we should pick up, because the rest of the world understands without inspections there, Saddam Hussein is free to do God knows what at whatever pace he can muster. I also believe that it’s in this area where the United States should insert a twist. That is to make it clear that we are on an extremely short lease, a hair trigger, when it comes to any interference with the operation of these teams. But if they are denied access to a location, a location can cease to exist. At our pleasure.

I do not know whether Saddam Hussein will ever consent to the readmission of inspectors with mandate to operate on very draconian terms. His refusal to do so should be part of a continuously campaign to be used against him to prepare the world for the action that we should take.

RNP: I hope no one would consider it unfair or ad hominem if I make the observation that the inspectors were shown the door during Leon’s administration. Indeed, I think one of the reasons for Saddam’s growing strength in the region is the fact that he defied the United States and the western coalition and got away with it. I don’t believe inspections will add to our security. I don’t believe we will find anything because the database that had once been established has been destroyed. And it is the proverbial needle in a haystack, and Saddam controls the haystack. He controls the rules of engagement. What has been negotiated for a possible resumption of inspections is a much less robust inspection machine than we had before. And Hans Blicks(?) is no Richard Butler. So I think the prospects of meeting our security requirements by sending inspectors in are nugatory and it would be a great mistake to insist on the return of the inspectors. Because if Saddam were shrew enough to take us up on it, it might make it more difficult for us to act in other respects.

QUESTION/LG Thank you. Question now from one of our council members in Texas, John Berndt, who is the retired president of Spring International. In a way, you’ve dealt with this, gentlemen, but it is the very critical issue of priorities who you go after first and whether we can, as Richard Perle said a moment ago, walk and chew gum at the same time. So Mr. Berndt asks you to press on a little further on the relative priority of getting Saddam versus going after the Al Qaeda and related terrorist networks around the world. Can we walk and chew gum at the same time, or do we have to decide to mainly do one and then mainly do the other?

LF: I think that is walking and chewing gum at the same time, actually. That’s the ability to modulate the intensity of what you are doing and to design a rate of progress for it and to try to carry that out. As opposed to a binary approach in which you conclude that you’ve got to do one thing immediately regardless of its consequences or the other.

RNP: I don’t think we can do one or the other. I don’t think we can defeat the terror networks with which Leon is rightly concerned if we leave one of the patron saints of terror networks unscathed and free to continue support for terrorism. Not least of all because it suggests that you can support terror and get away with it, and that’s how we got into the situation we’re in now.

Again, I don’t think it is unfair or ad hominem to observe that beginning with Khobar towers, the destruction of our embassies in Africa, the attack on the Cole, an assassination plot against a former president of the United States, the expulsion of inspectors, in all of those acts the United States did essentially nothing. And so no one should have been surprised that the terrorists were emboldened to plot larger and larger schemes, and the result of that is September 11th. The failure to act decisively and energetically against terror when it first began to manifest itself contributed ultimately to a chain of events of which the destruction of the World Trade Center was the most recent.

LF: Should this president decide to act on your course, I’m inclined to believe that he would have the support of most democrats. When the last president chose to make a fairly heavy response against Iraq, he was accused in the midst of that action of letting the tail wag the dog to conceal other problems. I wish retroactively that we could have called upon the same spirit of support that I think you can rely upon in the future should circumstances be reversed.

LG: Question from here.

QUESTION: I’m Mort Zuckerman with US News and World Report. Leon, you appropriately argue that we should go after the terrorist network on the theory that we have to get them before they get us. But since that is not going to be a war that is going to be manifested in terms of the taking over of a country as we did in Afghanistan to a degree, and that war will be in the shadows, what criteria would you use to conclude, both privately or within the council, the government, and publicly to ensure public support, that that war has somehow or other come to a point…the war against Al Qaeda and the terrorist networks has come to a point where you can then turn, by your approach, on Iraq? At what point can we therefore imagine that stage two, that you say you are in favor of, would somehow or other be in a position to proceed?

LF: I want to emphasize that I am not proposing that we prosecute a war against a terrorist network to some point of completion before we turn our hand to Saddam Hussein. I also agree with Dick. And that is unless a decision is made about the end game of our plan, the end game won’t occur. I’m afraid to tell you that I’m not sure there ever will be a time that we can tell ourselves that the war against international terrorist networks has been decisively concluded. It will continue successfully manifested by the absence of disaster each and every day.

I am not sure what the criteria are for measuring whether or not we have permanently set this aside unless it is a kind of mathematical interim(?) of a level of terrorist in a variety of countries around the world. And whether or not it cooperates with us, other governments have managed to suppress those elements of terrorist systems that are present on their soil to the point where they are no longer a menace domestically to them, most likely therefore not a menace to us.

LG: Last question, from here, please, the middle.

QUESTION Jacob Weisberg, Slate Magazine. It seems to me an important question in this debate is the extent to which Saddam is rational in the sense that he will refrain from attacking us in a way that would cause us to remove him from power. I’d like to hear each of you comment on the extent to which conventional deterrents protects us now from an attack by Saddam Hussein.

RNP: I tried to suggest earlier, and let me make it more precise, Saddam has available to him the option of empowering anonymous terrorists to do great damage in this country. There’s a great deal of evidence that suggests he would be immensely pleased if damage were in fact done. So working deterrents against an anonymous threat is extraordinarily difficult.

Suppose a significant quantity, a few pounds, of anthrax were released over this city from a tall building. Suppose we suspected that Saddam was behind it, and suppose the terrorists who did it committed suicide in the course of it. Could we then act, and how?

We might have the option of a brutal attack against civilians in Baghdad, which hardly seems to me an appropriate or an effective way of protecting the United States. Which is why I think it’s essential that we get ahead of the problem, since he has the capacity to do something like that, and conventional deterrents cannot be made effective.

LF: Let me ask a question before you get into your concluding remarks. This is taking your discussion, taking the public discussion, right down to the point of actual war, of combat against Saddam. Let’s say that we have committed ourselves, take a very strong stand, make clear we’re going to go ahead with military action, and let’s further say that that does result in support from the key nation we would need to launch military action, mainly Turkey and Saudi Arabia, and at that moment, where we’ve organized this and mobilized this, Saddam says, and I think we have to assume this is what’s going to happen, Saddam says, I have the capability to launch missiles with chemical and biological warheads against the gulf states, Saudi Arabia, and Israel, and if I’m attacked I’m going to go ahead and destroy as many people in those countries as possible, just as you’re opposing to kill the Iraqi people.

What if it comes down to that, what do we do?

RNP: I’m not sure we would need Saudi Arabia, and the scenario you’ve just painted (Laughter) is a reason for not attempting to enlist the Saudis, because they’re close. Israel is in a special situation. Israel is menaced by Saddam in a way that most Israelis understand and there is no risk less way of dealing with Saddam, and Leon wants to get to Saddam eventually anyway. So the question is when do you face that dilemma and not whether you face it.

The key it seems to me is to design a strategy that more or less immediately separates Saddam from those of his troops who would be expected to carry out a mission of that nature. I believe that there’s a reasonable prospect that we can do that, although no one can give you a guarantee that he could not successfully launch a weapon of mass destruction within the ranges of his present missile force.

LF: If he succeeded in launching such a strike and this…you present the question in its most awful form, then there is a doctrine of proportionate response. And if these are weapons of mass destruction then what comes to mind is the phrase, Return Baghdad to the status of desert. That would be a horrible tragedy for the people of Iraq who have already suffered so greatly with this man. But it might be sufficient to deter Saddam Hussein from taking a final, fatal step.

Now, it may be the case that Richard would urge that we ought to try to get him off the scene fast before he can do this. But I think he’s also argued that he could already be able to do it. And so we face that dilemma even now. And so the question I’m asking is would it not be better for us to try to prevent a newest threat on the scene, one that’s already hurt us terribly, from becoming the first to use a weapon of mass destruction and not postpone Saddam Hussein to the end of time, but to simply make sure that we take him at the point of best advantage. And there is risk with this course, but there’s also risk with Richard’s.

LG: Thank you. We will now have concluding remarks. By prior agreement, Richard Perle will begin for three minutes and Leon Fuerth will end with three minutes.

RNP: Let me begin by saying the good news is that after all of the debate Leon agrees that we have to remove Saddam, it’s simply a question of when. He’s created the impression that the difference in time between us is substantial. I hope that isn’t so, because I think with every passing day the risk is greater. I want to zero in on just three points.

Leon created the impression that in dealing with the coalition, and I believe concern about the coalition is at the heart of much of the reservation about going after Saddam, he’s created the impression that our choices are either gratuitously to insult our coalition partners or to attribute to them a degree of importance that I think is wholly unjustified.

For purposes of fighting terror the things that we are asking most of our coalition partners to do are things that it is very much in their interest to do. And I think they will go on giving us that sort of assistance to the extent that it is in their interest, and whether we choose to take action against Saddam will not discourage them from pursuing those interests. And in fact a successful campaign against Saddam, like the successful campaign against the Taliban, would so enormously strengthen the American positions of leadership within the coalition, that we would emerge not with a fractured coalition, but a much stronger coalition than the one we have now.

We have today, despite reservations, despite concerns, despite apprehensions about the risks, an extraordinary degree of public support for robust action against Saddam. We should take that action when we’re ready, and if we need some weeks or months to prepare, we should certainly do that. But public opinion is ephemeral and the support that is there today may not be there a year from now or two years from now.

And indeed without continuing signs of success in the war against terror, there is a danger that the freedom the president would have today with broad support among democrats, as Leon says, among the general public, as the poll results that have been distributed to you suggest, the president today has the freedom to take that action. He may not have it tomorrow. So time is of the essence. Let’s take the time we need, but let’s not delay until it’s too late.

LG: Thank you, Richard Perle. Leon Fuerth.

LF: Richard is a very skilled debater, but my position is not one to which he reduced me in the course of this discussion, it’s the one I walked in with. (Laughter) And that is that we should deal with the set of terrorists who are at present the most menacing while getting ready to deal with Saddam Hussein in good time, and under terms that we have prepared.

I do believe that in the end it begins to boil down to a list of things that need to be put into position and credible periods of time in which to get them done. When you say weeks or months, I can’t find that credible. There is more to be done, the path ahead is not as uncluttered, not as simple as you make out, this is not an argument for remaining immobilized, it is an argument for arming carefully and preparing carefully, and in the meantime for acting rapidly and decisively to deal with the manifestation of the terrorist threat that has damaged us so badly at this point, and which is still in a position to damage us again.

I think that we can manage both of these things, but I think if we make a mistake in the phasing, and we go after Saddam Hussein because he’s unfinished business from the first Bush administration and you’d like to get it off the books, we will damage our capacity to accomplish our immediate goal of dealing with international terror, of which we really do need a willing coalition of other states.

LG: If Saddam Hussein tuned in to CNN.com this evening (Laughter), he should not take any comfort whatsoever from the positions of either Richard Perle or Leon Fuerth. I take comfort, however, in having such finely strung minds, the quality of our foreign policy community in this country, come here and argue this terrifically difficult question for us and for the country. Join me in thanking them.