INTERVIEW TRANSCRIPT

C-SPAN’S “NEWSMAKERS”

Guest: Ambassador David Satterfield, State Department’s Iraq Coordinator

Reporters: Anne Gearan, Associated Press &

Glen Kessler, Washington Post

Moderator: C-SPAN

TAPE DATE: Wednesday, June 20, 2007

AIR DATE/TIME: SUNDAY, June 24, 2007 at 10 a.m. and 6 p.m. ET

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PETER SLEN, HOST, NEWSMAKERS: And today on NEWSMAKERS, an update on U.S. policy in Iraq.

Joining us is the State Department’s Iraq coordinator, Ambassador David Satterfield. Here to question him, Anne Gearan of the Associated Press and Glenn Kessler of the “Washington Post.” Anne Gearan, first question.

ANNE GEARAN, DIPLOMATIC CORRESPONDENT, ASSOCIATED PRESS: Mr. Ambassador, the Pentagon today released a report confirming what had been sort of apparent for some time about the increase in frequency and efficiency, or lethality, of the attacks on the Green Zone.

You were just there quite recently. What is your view of whether the Green Zone is actually safe? And as you prepare to move into a new embassy in a few months, how concerned are you that that embassy will indeed be a safe place for embassy personnel to work?

DAVID SATTERFIELD, STATE DEPARTMENT IRAQ COORDINATOR: Anne, we’re obviously very concerned about the increased accuracy and lethality of the weapons being used against our facilities, not just in Baghdad – the Green Zone, the embassy complex – but also our various missions, the PRTs, the regional reconstruction teams located throughout the country, particularly in Basra.

They’ve been subject to indirect fire attacks, rockets and mortars, for some time. But we have seen the accuracy increase.

And I think there’s very little doubt that the reason for that increased accuracy is the provision of more modern and, in some cases, more advanced weaponry by Iran to the groups that are involved in making those attacks, and the provision of better training – again, by Iran – to those groups.

This is a concern. It is a concern we have raised directly in Ambassador Crocker’s initial discussions with the Iranians as something that will need to be addressed.

With respect to the safety of our personnel in Iraq – U.S. government personnel and the Iraqis who work with us – this is obviously a priority for us, and has been and will continue to be.

The new embassy compound being built in Baghdad is designed with a variety of threats in mind, including the threat from indirect fire.

There is no perfect resolution to security. This is a war zone. But we are doing everything in our power to ensure that the personnel who are in Iraq today, and those who will serve there in the years to come, will be as safe as possible.

GEARAN: The Green Zone, though, always seemed – not always, but at least for the last couple of years – seemed like something of a haven.

You didn’t have to wear flak jackets to walk around. You could see people jogging and, to the extent possible, having something of a semblance of a normal existence inside those walls.

Do you still think it is a haven?

SATTERFIELD: Well, you will recall that several years ago there were lethal bomb attacks that took place within the international zone, within the Green Zone. Obviously, we have always taken precautions within that area.

But there is no question, as I noted earlier, that indirect fire attacks on our facilities – including facilities located within the international zone – have increased, and increased significantly, over the course of the past six months.

GLENN KESSLER, DIPLOMATIC CORRESPONDENT, “WASHINGTON POST”: So, you’re saying it’s no longer a haven? Is that what you’re trying to say?

SATTERFIELD: We’ve never characterized it as a haven. Those are other’s words, not ours.

It is an area which we and our Iraqi security partners seek to make as secure as possible, to facilitate the conduct not just of Iraqi government activities, but also of our activities, the activities of international organizations and other diplomatic missions.

But I would not use, now or in the past, words like haven.

KESSLER: I see.

You know, I believe the figure is that about 20 percent of the Foreign Service has now served in Iraq.

At what point are you going to – is the State Department – going to have to actually do directed assignments to get people to go to Iraq?

SATTERFIELD: We have had an extraordinary turnout of volunteers to serve in that country. And as you know, 15 to 20 percent of the entire Foreign Service – about 11,500 people total, that’s the Foreign Service – have worked either in Afghanistan or in Iraq over the course of the past three years. That’s an exceptional amount of turnover through the service.

We will have another assignment cycle beginning very, very shortly, next month, for those going to Iraq in 2008, going to Afghanistan in 2008.

I believe we will be able to meet our requirements of getting the right people – not just the right numbers, but the right people with the right skill sets – into both of those countries through the current personnel processes.

KESSLER: So, you don’t think that it’ll be – the directed assignments – necessary in the coming years?

SATTERFIELD: It is very much our hope, the secretary’s hope and that of our Foreign Service personnel system, that we can once more staff these two posts the right way on volunteer staffing basis.

KESSLER: Can I just follow up, one last thing?

There was a management review that was recently done of the embassy, in which it recommended that there be almost a doubling of the number of political officers, a doubling of the economic officers.

You were the number two in the embassy until recently. Why hasn’t that – why wasn’t that undertaken before?

SATTERFIELD: We did undertake a staffing review. When I first came to post in the summer of 2005 – Ambassador Khalilzad followed shortly thereafter – we did conduct an in-depth staffing review, and we adjusted significantly the staffing as it existed at that time.

What you are seeing now is another review as a new management team comes in, a new ambassador. There’s a new commanding general. There is a new security strategy enunciated by the president.

And it is quite appropriate that we look at whether our civilian staffing and our mission in Baghdad – but more broadly, the civilian staffing in Iraq as a whole – is sufficient, needs to be increased, needs to be changed.

You know we have doubled the number of our Provincial Reconstruction Teams over the course of the last several months. That is a demonstration both of the need for adjustment of our posture, of our footprint in the country on the civilian side. It’s a reflection of the change of military strategy there.

And I dare say there will be continued reviews of staff structures and personnel, to make sure that we have the right team, adequate to the task, as we confront the challenges of Iraq at this moment.

KESSLER: So, that increase of people was not necessary before? Is that what you’re saying?

SATTERFIELD: We assessed our personnel requirements in 2005. We believed they were appropriate to the overall posturing of the U.S., our strategic mission there at that time.

That mission has changed, and changed significantly with the president’s “new way forward” policy. We’re adjusting again. We’ll adjust in the future.

GEARAN: Didn’t Secretary Rice’s cable yesterday essentially say that there would have to be directed assignments, if more people didn’t step up over the next few months?

SATTERFIELD: The Foreign Service has stepped up over the course of the last three years. We believe they will continue to step up.

Our ultimate commitment is to ensuring that our missions in Iraq and Afghanistan – and our other critical-threat, hardship posts – are staffed correctly. We will take whatever steps are necessary to ensure that that does happen. We hope it can be done through the volunteer process.

GEARAN: Do you think that – when you say that you are continuing to get large numbers of qualified people and hope that you can continue to do that – I mean, do you have to promise people something that they’re not being promised now, in order to make a year of living under – in difficult circumstances, away from their families – an attractive enough proposition that you’re going to get sufficient talented people to do it?

SATTERFIELD: In fact, the compensation package has remained unchanged over the course, largely, of the last year.

Where we’ve made changes are in ways to accommodate individuals’ families, to make it easier for them to leave families at posts of current assignment, go to Iraq, go to Afghanistan, have their families remain in school, in employment at the posts that they were leaving, so that they can come back and resume a more normal life without the disruption of having to move their families back to Washington or to another post.

It’s those kinds of adjustments which we’ve made and which we will continue to make. But the basic compensation package is really not the issue here.

We believe it’s fundamentally a desire to serve that has motivated most of the officers who have served there and that will continue to motivate most of the officers coming.

SLEN: This is NEWSMAKERS with Ambassador David Satterfield, who is with the State Department. He is the Iraqi coordinator for the State Department.

The reporters questioning him, Anne Gearan of the Associated Press, Glenn Kessler, “Washington Post.”

Next question.

KESSLER: If we could go to talk about the political situation in Iraq.

What makes you think that the Iraqi government is capable of producing anything that you would hope they would produce by September?

SATTERFIELD: Well, the Iraqi government, the Iraqi political leadership, faces a very significant challenge. And the challenge isn’t coming from us. It’s coming from the Iraqi people themselves.

The benchmarks that have been talked about so much here are benchmarks which the Iraqi government, which their political leadership has put out as necessary to move forward a process of political reconciliation, of economic opportunity for the Iraqi people.

And that’s the test they have to make. It’s a very challenging test.

The circumstances in Iraq right now, exacerbated by external factors, certainly complicate the very difficult task of coming to agreement, coming to consensus on issues like de-Baathification reform, constitutional revisions, national hydrocarbon law, how one handles the issue of militias and armed groups through a coherent amnesty and demobilization, disarmament and re-integration program.

These are very tough issues. And the circumstances in Iraq today for contemplating them, for coming to resolution, make them even harder.

KESSLER: Right. But there is this discussion about the difference between the Washington, D.C., clock and the Baghdad clock. The Washington, D.C., clock is ticking towards September.

Is there anything that you see that suggests that the Baghdad clock will get in tune with that D.C. clock and accomplish something – even the oil law, which is more than a year late – by September? Something that the administration can point to and say, these guys have actually accomplished something we’ve asked them to do?

SATTERFIELD: The existence of different clocks is certainly something which all of those we deal with on the Iraqi side and the region understand.

Are they going to move? Are they going to take the necessary steps? Are those steps going to be enough to create a sense of a national political consensus or reconciliation process moving forward? We think it’s essential that they do.

Will we see progress? Well, certainly, on hydrocarbons we do expect progress. You’ve heard that from us for a number of months now.

But we really do believe that this critical package of hydrocarbon measures can move forward, and can move forward in the very near future. But more has to be done than that.

And I would go beyond the issue of the pieces of reconciliation to talk about what must underlie them. And it is a national will, a national consensus, a common sense – not just amongst government players, but the political leaderships behind them – of how Iraqis are to live together and work together towards the future.

GEARAN: On the oil law, particularly, the U.N. and Secretary Rice and others have said, well, the Iraqis have told me that they’re just about to do it, I mean, going back months. And I notice that the last couple of times the secretary has been asked about it, she hasn’t given any sort of optimism that it’ll be very quick.

But what does it – you know, what does it say to Americans and to Iraqis when they look at that and think, here’s this thing that everybody has said, and our leaders are telling the Americans that we can get done. And we can’t get it done.

SATTERFIELD: I’ll tell you what passage of a hydrocarbon law would mean and what it would say.

It would say that Iraqis of different ethnic groups, different political, different sectarian orientations, are able to come together on something that is critical to the national life of the country, to make compromises, to reach agreement.

And failure to move forward a hydrocarbon law will say quite the opposite, that at the end of the day – even on an issue vital to Iraq’s future as a nation and the future of every community within Iraq – sectarian, ethnic and individual agendas triumphed over national interests.

Now, that would be a very bad outcome and a very bad judgment – a judgment that would be made not just by Americans, but by Iraqis about their leadership. We hope that will not be the case. We see every possibility that a hydrocarbon law – a good hydrocarbon law – can be agreed upon and can be agreed upon shortly.

KESSLER: So, if we were to invite you here in September, and they have not passed this hydrocarbon law, would you come in here and say it was indeed a failure?

SATTERFIELD: What I would say is that the Iraqis have sent a signal to their own people, as well as to the region and to the United States, that on an issue essential to the future of the country, they were not able to come together. And that would be a very bad message indeed.

GEARAN: I assume you’ve given that same message, or others have …

SATTERFIELD: We have been …

GEARAN: … given that same message to the Iraqis.

SATTERFIELD: And we have been very blunt and at very senior levels on the critical nature for Iraq’s sake, for the sake of our ability to sustain the kind of presence, the kind of undertakings that we believe are essential for U.S. interests and Iraqi interests in that country, to move forward these pieces of the national reconciliation process.

GEARAN: Have you made that argument to them as sort of in correlation with the surge and the Washington clock, to use that phrase, that’s ticking towards September?

Like, look. You guys have to do something, you know, politically at the same time …

SATTERFIELD: We certainly have …

GEARAN: … that you have this …

SATTERFIELD: Look at what the purpose of the surge is.

General Casey, General Petraeus now, have made very clear that military measures alone, however successfully executed, cannot bring about lasting stability or security, whether in Baghdad or outside.

The purpose of the surge is to create a better environment, a more secure environment, stable environment, lowered sectarian violence, to allow a political process to move forward.

But it’s a window. It’s an opportunity which Iraqi leaders must take. We can’t do that for them.

GEARAN: So I assume that also means you’ve been (INAUDIBLE) against a lengthy vacation for the Iraqi legislature in the summer.

SATTERFIELD: Indeed we have. There is work to be done by Iraq’s political leaders, by the government and by the legislature.

KESSLER: I had meant to actually try to add up how many trips by senior officials have been made in recent months, or at least in the past year.

Do you – I mean, and you were just there with the deputy secretary – do you get any sense that the Maliki government is actually, you know, responding to these frequent visits?

SATTERFIELD: Yes, I do.

KESSLER: Can you point to some specific things?

SATTERFIELD: Certainly.

The prime minister, his team, the cabinet officials and the presidency council officials, the vice presidents, President Talabani, with whom we speak, have indeed tried to move forward many of these issues.

They are all of them engaged – literally, at this moment, today – working on the hydrocarbon package. It’s been the subject of quite intense efforts by the prime minister, by the vice presidents, by the Kurdish leadership.

We were engaged last week with them. Our embassy has been engaged throughout the day today to move this forward.

We do see an understanding that progress must be made. These are difficult issues, and we understand that. Compromises are never easy on issues like this. But compromises need to be made for the sake of the Iraqi nation.

We do see a recognition of what must be done, but we now need to see action.

GEARAN: We haven’t heard as much in the last six months or so about al-Maliki himself and his attributes and will as a leader.

Do you think that argument has been settled, that he really is a person who can get this done in the view of the American government and his Iraqi partners?

SATTERFIELD: He has articulated a national agenda, an agenda which we support, an agenda which we believe is meritorious of regional support.

The issue is not what has been articulated. It’s whether action is going to be taken to fulfill it.

And that is not just a challenge for one man, for Prime Minister Maliki, or any prime minister along. It’s a challenge for the political structures in Iraq, governmental and legislative. It’s a challenge for the political leaderships inside and outside the government.

They alone are the ones who are going to have to make a decision on whether they wish to move forward on these questions or not. It is not just an issue of one man.

We do think Prime Minister Maliki has been, and can continue to be, an effective national leader. And I would only point out his actions in the immediate aftermath of the second bombing at the Samarra shrine complex last week.

That was a national leadership doing the right thing. A comprehensive and rapid set of calls for restraint, of an understanding the terror targeted all Iraqis, not just of one sect or one party. That was the right message. That was a national message.

And it shows how well the Iraqi leadership can work when they are challenged. But more has to be done.

KESSLER: I mean, I understand you’re trying to be positive about the prime minister. But hasn’t he been a disappointment in many instances to U.S. officials?

SATTERFIELD: The prime minister is the democratically chosen prime minister of Iraq.

We believe that the agenda he’s articulated is an agenda that merits support, that he and beyond him, the other personalities in governments, the political leaderships behind them, must move.

It is not just a question of one man. It’s a question of its structure. It’s a question of a national political will and consensus that has to be formed and then has to be executed.

KESSLER: Right. And is he actually capable of summoning all those different groups together? I mean, isn’t that part of the – been part of the problem for the past year?

SATTERFIELD: The problem really is whether there is a single national consensus, national will, that transcends particularist agendas, however you want to define them – individual, personal, sectarian, intra-sectarian, ethnic or intra-ethnic – to advance Iraq’s interests, as opposed to the particular concerns of one group or one individual.

Prime Minister Maliki has a national vision. He needs support. He needs support from within Iraq. He needs support from outside Iraq, and not just from us, but from the broader international community and from the region.

GEARAN: The longer the sectarian violence continues, though, I mean, does that make it seem to you that that national consensus either is failing to come together or is, if it was ever there, is coming apart?

SATTERFIELD: Well, sectarian violence is absolutely poisonous to the political process, to the sense of cohesiveness of communities of nationhood in Iraq. It is why we intervened in the way we did in January, with the president’s “new way forward,” to address this downward spiral of ever-increasing sectarian violence, sectarian division in Baghdad, which is the political center of gravity for the country.

It needs to be reversed. Many of the trends have been halted and reversed – forced expulsions, sectarian executions in Baghdad. But more needs to be done. And military measures, kinetic steps alone aren’t enough. You’ve got to have a political process move forward.

KESSLER: Just to move north a little bit, there’s a referendum scheduled for later this year. It’s up in Kirkuk. Now, that has the potential of potentially tearing apart the country.

Once you get – if you get this hydrocarbon law and other things done, should that referendum take place?

SATTERFIELD: At the end of the day, how the issue of Kirkuk is resolved is a question for Iraqis. The constitution lays out a course for resolution, in terms of procedures.

Iraqis alone are going to have to decide how and when they proceed. But we have made our views clear – clear to the Kurdish leadership, clear to the Turkish government, clear to other parties.

And that is that, on the question of Kirkuk, as on so many other national issues in Iraq, a process that is based upon consensus by all concerned, not unilateral steps, a process which advances rather than sets back the cause of national unity and reconciliation and contributes to a reduction of tension, not an increase in tension – that is the type of process and resolution which the United States would support and would hope will move forward.

And I believe, Glenn, that is a message that is well understood by and will be acted upon by the Kurdish leadership.

KESSLER: So, does that mean a referendum is considered a unilateral step or a consensus-building step?

SATTERFIELD: It could be either. We want to see it happen in a way that reflects consensus, that builds national unity and that contributes to a reduction of tension.

And again, I believe that the Kurdish leadership understands this and is going to act in accordance with that view.

KESSLER: And so, what does that mean? How do you make that referendum or consensus-building step?

What should they do – what steps do you expect them to take to make it a …

SATTERFIELD: There will have to be adequate preparation on the ground in advance to ensure that when a referendum is held, it is held in a context of political developments that produce a result that all concerned can accept as legitimate and as contributing to unity rather than to division. We think that can happen.

The timing of when it happens is something which Iraqis are going to have to decide upon. But we believe they will reflect upon this in a very careful fashion.

GEARAN: To return to the surge and the benchmarks for a moment, you were talking about what your tests will be for the oil law, and what it will say if the legislature is able to pass it.

If neither that law nor the other benchmarks – any of the other benchmarks are met before Petraeus gives his report in September, will you consider the surge to have been a failure?

SATTERFIELD: We certainly hope that benchmarks will be met over the course of the weeks and months ahead, that there will be a positive progress to report – tangible progress to report – on the political reconciliation agenda, as well as on the economic agenda – budget execution moving forward, provision of funding from the central government, the provinces moving forward.

And on that score, we were very impressed by the fund transfers that have taken place so far from Baghdad to the provinces. This is something that is very new, very positive. It’s working. More will need to be done, but you have a beginning being made.

We hope that progress on all of these fronts will take place, and we hope continued progress on security will take place, as well. But I’m not going to prejudice or engage in speculation on what will or will not be the content of Ambassador Crocker’s or Dave Petraeus’ judgments.

SLEN: Time for one more question each.

KESSLER: If I could just talk about the Iranian meeting that was – I think you participated in last month.

Have the Iranians taken any steps, that you had requested, since that meeting?

SATTERFIELD: Well, I was not present with Ambassador Crocker in the meetings which took place in Baghdad.

KESSLER: That’s right.

SATTERFIELD: I was with President Sharm al-Sheikh.

KESSLER: But maybe you could update us …

SATTERFIELD: We have not …

KESSLER: … on the Crocker …

SATTERFIELD: We have not seen – we have not seen the tangible steps in terms of an Iranian halt to the training, to the provision of weaponry, including explosively formed projectiles being used against our forces, against allied forces, against innocent Iraqis. And that is the critical step that needs to be done.

KESSLER: And what should be the U.S. response to that?

SATTERFIELD: We have made very clear to the Iranian government that this is the touchstone that will be required, that will have to be assessed, in terms of progress that might take place on any other issue regarding Iraq that we may wish to address.

We have got to see Iran perform on this issue. We have not, to-date.

GEARAN: I have sort of a general question.

What makes you think at this point that the United States is winning in Iraq? And could you give some specifics?

SATTERFIELD: We believe that we have had a material and a positive impact on the security environment and the level of sectarian violence in Baghdad. We have had, in terms of the work that is being done with tribal elements, in Anbar province and now emerging elsewhere around Baghdad, a material effect on the security environment as far as the al Qaeda threat goes, in terms of re-establishing the ability of local governments to begin resuming its affairs in areas that were enormously troubled.

I was in Ramadi with the deputy secretary last week. Anyone who has been to that area over the course of the last three years would not recognize the situation in Ramadi, and must of western Anbar today.

It is a night-and-day transformation, in terms of an area of extraordinary violence and instability moving towards not just stability, but a return to the kind of things, the kinds of activities that have to take place for normal life to be resumed.

Now, there’s still a long way to go. But it is a very significant transformation has occurred as a result of tribal actions, as a result of our engagement with elements on the ground. That’s positive. More needs to be done.

But I do see indications of positive progress being made. I will not understate the magnitude of the challenge that Iraqis confront and that we confront on the political side, on the economic side and on the security side. They are considerable.

But I also would not understate the progress being made. That’s significant, as well.

SLEN: And finally, Ambassador Satterfield, are there provisional plans ready in case the British pull out of Iraq – Gordon Brown assuming the prime ministership next week?

SATTERFIELD: We have no understanding or indication that the United Kingdom will pull out of Iraq. Chancellor Brown has made clear his own commitment to Iraq and the importance of Iraq and success there to the interests of the United Kingdom, as well as the broader international community.

We work closely with the British government – have and will continue to do so, in a military sense and in a political sense.

SLEN: Ambassador David Satterfield has been our guest on NEWSMAKERS. He is the State Department’s Iraq coordinator.

Thank you, sir.

SATTERFIELD: Thank you.

(BREAK)

SLEN: And we are back with our reporters – Anne Gearan of the Associated Press and Glenn Kessler of the “Washington Post.”

Three issues that you both spent a lot of time on – and I want to take these in order.

Number one, Iran. Did you hear anything from Ambassador Satterfield that was new or stronger about U.S. policy towards Iran?

GEARAN: He pretty definitively said that Iran hasn’t come through at all in any of the U.S. requests, which has been sort of the way they’ve been leaning. But he just said no, I mean, they haven’t come up with anything.

KESSLER: Yes. It was very, very blunt. I mean, it was clear that they had this meeting. It was made – was considered a big deal at the time.

But it seems to have accounted for nothing, at least from the U.S. policy point of view.

GEARAN: So, the Iranians would say the same thing.

KESSLER: Right.

GEARAN: I mean, the things that they asked of the United States they haven’t gotten either. So, at this point, it looks like having the meeting was the accomplishment, but that there won’t – at least no one expects in the short term that the meeting itself will produce particular accomplishments.

SLEN: So, what does that mean? What’s the next step?

KESSLER: With – between the U.S. and Iran?

SLEN: Right.

KESSLER: We – the United States and Iran continue a proxy war, with the Middle East as its battlefield, essentially.

GEARAN: And at the same time, there will be some attempt to reach out to Iran. The Bush administration understands that it’s the cardinal relationship in the Middle East, the worst one and yet also the one with the most at stake.

And they will try, on some level – and possibly not very hard – to make that better, if there’s any window at all.

KESSLER: Right. But I mean, part of the history of the Bush administration with Iran is that they’ve never quite gotten as far as some would argue they could, in order to reach out to the Iranians.

They only go so far. It’s never enough for the Iranians. And so, the two are basically in their own separate tracks.

SLEN: Issue number two, the oil law. We spent a lot of time talking about that.

KESSLER: Right. And he made it clear that they’ve basically laid that down as a marker for the Iranian government. And if they can’t make this simple, basic test, which they should have done months ago, then all bets are off.

GEARAN: He brought it up. I thought that was interesting, and didn’t wait to be asked about it.

SLEN: And why is that interesting?

GEARAN: Well, they have, for a long time – “they” being the administration – for a long time pointed to the oil law as an example of both the difficulty of political reconciliation, but also the sincere effort to do so.

I mean, there were all kinds of meetings. There were draft laws. There were – look, you know, there were indications along the way that the oil law actually was going somewhere.

And it has not been passed. And they have sort of stopped talking about it recently. And the fact that he brought it up and pointed to it as potentially an example of considerable success.

Or – again, he said it himself – the flip side of that is, if they fall down on the oil law, it will absolutely be considered a great failure, I thought was significant. And he said he’s told the Iraqis that themselves.

KESSLER: Right. Well, and the way the game is played with State Department officials is, you know, we can ask our questions, but if they bring something up, it means that there’s a message that he wants to bring across.

And he sounded relatively confident that they, maybe on that last trip with the deputy secretary of state, they saw the glimmerings of something there that these guys would be able to accomplish, which they could point to.

Now, it’s months late, but it’s something, because this administration is looking for anything to point to that is a harbinger of success.

SLEN: OK. We have 30 seconds left.

State Department staffing came up.

KESSLER: Right. Well, the problem is, you know, they’re running out of diplomats to send to Iraq. They need more and more. And it’s very clear that within months, if not a year, State Department Foreign Service officers will have to be sent to Iraq, whether or not they sign up.

GEARAN: And there’s another question there, too, which is, how effective can you be if you’re only serving for a year and you have six weeks on and two weeks off, or whatever they do, and then it’s time to train up somebody else. But you can’t ask people to stay much longer than that in a hardship post, living behind barricades with your family somewhere else.

SLEN: Ambassador Satterfield is a career Foreign Service officer, expert in the Middle East. Does he have Condoleezza Rice’s ear?

KESSLER: Yes.

GEARAN: He does, yes.

KESSLER: Definitely. He’s one of the top diplomats they have there. You could see it in the way he answered our questions. He’s very smooth. He’s known as the “walking talking point.”

GEARAN: The “human talking point.”

KESSLER: The “human talking point.”

GEARAN: Yes.

She chose him for that post, and he meets with her frequently. She wanted somebody who knows the region, knew the embassy, which he did, and has sort of the ear of Arab diplomats, as well. And he generally does.

SLEN: And finally, is the State Department playing second banana to the Defense Department at this point over there?

GEARAN: Effectively they have to. I mean, you know, the …

KESSLER: It’s troops.

GEARAN: The long-term success in Iraq will probably be determined by State Department diplomats and other people not wearing a uniform, but they need the Pentagon to make room for them. And the short-term success is going to be judged on what goes bang and what doesn’t go bang.

And so, yes, I mean, the State Department is kind of waiting for that opening.

KESSLER: Yes, you just look at the numbers – 1,000 diplomats versus 150,000 troops.

SLEN: Glenn Kessler is with the “Washington Post.” Anne Gearan is with the Associated Press. Thank you both.

END