Issue 269

The major national newspapers and most broadcast outlets failed even to report Thursday’s stunning testimony by former national security adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.

Brzezinski, national security adviser to President Jimmy Carter, is among the most prominent figures within the US foreign policy establishment. He delivered a scathing critique of the war in Iraq and warned that the policy of the Bush administration was leading inevitably to a military confrontation with Iran which would have disastrous consequences for US imperialism.

Most significant and disturbing was Brzezinski’s suggestion that the Bush administration might manufacture a pretext to justify a military attack on Iran. Presenting what he called a “plausible scenario for a military collision with Iran,” Brzezinski laid out the following series of events: “Iraqi failure to meet the benchmarks, followed by accusations of Iranian responsibility for the failure, then by some provocation in Iraq or a terrorist act in the US blamed on Iran, culminating in, quote/unquote, ‘defensive’ US military action against Iran...” [Emphasis added].

Thus Brzezinski opined that a US military attack on Iran would be an aggressive action, presented as though it were a defensive response to alleged Iranian provocations, and came close to suggesting, without explicitly stating as much, that the White House was capable of manufacturing or allowing a terrorist attack within the US to provide a casus belli for war.

It is self-evident that such testimony at an open congressional hearing from someone with decades of experience in the US foreign policy establishment and the closest ties to the military and intelligence apparatus is not only newsworthy, but of the most immense and grave import. Any objective and conscientious newspaper or news channel would consider it an obligation to inform the public of such a development.

Yet neither the New York Times nor the Washington Post carried so much as a news brief on Brzezinski’s testimony in their Friday editions. Nor did USA Today or the Wall Street Journal. All of these publications, of course, have well-staffed Washington bureaus and regularly cover congressional hearings—especially those dealing with such burning political questions as the war in Iraq.

There is no innocent explanation for their decision to suppress this story. The Washington Post on Thursday published a large page-two column and photo on Henry Kissinger’s appearance the previous day before the same Senate committee. The former secretary of state under Richard Nixon gave testimony that was generally supportive of the Bush administration’s war policy.

Moreover, the Post’s web edition carried an Associated Press report on Brzezinski’s appearance. That article introduced subtle but significant changes to Brzezinski’s speculative scenario of the road to war with Iran which had the effect of underplaying the sharpness and urgency of Brzezinski’s critique of the Bush administration. It omitted the suggestion that a terrorist attack within the US could become the justification for war, and it removed the quotation marks from Brzezinski’s talk of a “defensive” war against Iran.

The World Socialist Web Site on Friday telephoned the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Wall Street Journal and USA Today to ask for an explanation for their failure to report Brzezinski’s testimony. None of the newspapers returned our calls.

As for the television news outlets, the “News Hour with Jim Lehrer” on PBS showed a clip of Brzezinski laying out his war scenario before the Senate committee, without making any comment. “NBC Nightly News” ignored the story entirely.

The suppression of this damning critique of the Iraq war, the conspiratorial methods of the Bush administration, and its drive to an even wider war in the Middle East is one more demonstration of the corrupt and reactionary character of the American mass media. It indicates that the establishment media is preparing once again, as in the run-up to the invasion of Iraq, to serve as a sounding board for the administration’s war propaganda and lies.

Global Research Articles by Barry Grey

Source: Global Research,

Zbigniew Brzezinski: Transcript of Testimony to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee

Global Research, February 25, 2007

Federal News Service - 2007-02-01

Editor's Note

We bring to the attention of our readers the complete transcript of Dr. Zbigniew Brzezinski's statement to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, as well as the transcript of the debate.

It is important to note that Brzezinski acknowledges US military ambitions with regard to Iran and the possibility that the Bush administration could choose to trigger a war pretext incident which would then justify a ”defensive" war on Iran.

"A plausible scenario for a military collision with Iran involves Iraqi failure to meet the benchmarks, followed by accusations of Iranian responsibility for the failure, then by some provocation in Iraq or a terrorist act in the United States blamed on Iran, culminating in a quote-unquote "defensive" U.S. military action against Iran that plunges a lonely America into a spreading and deepening quagmire, eventually ranging across Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan and Pakistan.

Indeed, a mythical historical narrative to justify the case for such a protracted and potential expanding war is already being articulated. Initially justified by false claims about WMDs in Iraq, the war is now being redefined as the decisive ideological struggle of our time, reminiscent of the earlier collisions with Nazism and Stalinism. In that context, Islamist extremism and al Qaeda are presented as the equivalents of the threat posed by Nazi Germany and then Soviet Russia, and 9/11 as the equivalent of the Pearl Harbor attack which precipitated America's involvement in World War II.

This simplistic and demagogic narrative overlooks the fact that Nazism was based on the military power of the industrially most advanced European state, and that Stalinism was able to mobilize not only the resources of the victorious and militarily powerful Soviet Union but also had worldwide appeal through its Marxist doctrine".

Brzezinski tacitly acknowledges that the "war on terrorism" is bogus . He points at length at the fabricated pretext for waging war on Iraq and cites the controversial Downing Street Memo.

In the present context, Brzezinski's statement, from within the Washington establishment, is a breath of fresh air; while it upholds the basic tenets of US foreign policy, it constitutes a voice of moderation in relation to the Neoconservative agenda.

Carefully read both his opening address but also the discussion, where he points to the politically corrupt nature of the Bush administration and how fake intelligence was used as a pretext to wage war on Iraq.

If you do not have time to go through the entire transcript, read the highlights below.

Michel Chossudovsky, Global Research, 24 February 2007

Highlights of Dr Brzezinski's statements

Al Qaeda is an isolated fundamentalist, Islamist aberration, most Iraqis are engaged in strife because of the American occupation, which destroyed the Iraqi state, while Iran, though gaining in regional influence, is itself politically divided, economically and militarily weak. To argue that America is already at war in a region with a wider Islamic threat of which Iran is the epicenter is to promote a self-fulfilling prophecy.

...no country in the world -- no country in the world -- shares the Manichean delusions that the administration so passionately articulates. And the result, sad to say, is growing political isolation of and pervasive popular antagonism towards the U.S. global posture.

Iran and Syria have no reason, however, to help the United States consolidate a permanent regional hegemony. It is ironic, however, that both Iran and Syria have lately called for a regional dialogue, exploiting thereby the self-defeating character of the largely passive and mainly sloganeering U.S. diplomacy. A serious regional dialogue, promoted directly or indirectly by the United States, could be buttressed at some point by a wider circle of consultations involving other powers with a stake in the region's stability, such as the EU, China, Japan, India and Russia.

Escalating the war as a consequence of protracting it is hardly an attractive option for the United States, because before too long, as I say in my statement, we could be facing a 20-year-long involvement not only in Iraq but Iran, Afghanistan and Pakistan.

[Real Reasons behind the War]

I have no idea what his [ president Bush] initiative objective was because the motives he provided for the action proved to be entirely erroneous, and if they were the real motives, then the whole campaign was based on false assumptions.

Now, if there were hidden motives, I can imagine potentially several. One would be to gain American domination over the region's oil, to put it very simplistically. Another could be to help maximize Israel's security by removing a powerful Arab state. Another one could have been to simply get rid of an obnoxious regime with which the United States had accounts to settle going back to '91 and the alleged assassination attempt against President Bush Sr. There could be a variety of motives.

[Escalation]

My horror scenario is that if we simply stay put this will continue, and then the dynamic of the conflict will produce an escalating situation in which Iraqi failure to meet the benchmarks will be blamed on the Iranians. There'll be, then, some clashes, collisions, and the war expands.

But basically, escalation, accusations, some incidents -- there have already been some incidents between us and the Iranians. There are some allegations that the Iranians are responsible for certain acts -- allegations but not facts. And that would spark, simply, a collision. It could even be in some fashion provoked.

[WMD and the Downing Street Memo}

Let me draw your attention to something that your staff should give you, and I think this might be of interest to some other members of this committee. And that's a report in The New York Times dated March 27, 2006. It's a long report on a private meeting between the president and Prime Minister Blair two months before the war, based on a memorandum of conversation prepared by the British official present at this meeting.

And in it, according to this account, the president is cited as saying that he's concerned that there may not be weapons of mass destruction found in Iraq and that there must be some consideration given to finding a different basis for undertaking the military action. And I'll just read you what this memo allegedly says, according to The New York Times.

The memo stated, "The president and the prime minister acknowledged that no unconventional weapons had been found inside Iraq."

This is two months before the war.

"Faced with the possibility of not finding any before the planned invasion, Mr. Bush talked about several ways to provoke a confrontation."

And he described, then, several ways in which this could be done, and I won't go into that. I don't know how accurate these ways were. They're quite sensational, at least one of them.

And if one is of the view that one is dealing with an implacable enemy that has to be removed, that course of action may, under certain circumstances, be appealing.

I'm afraid if the situation in Iraq continues deteriorating, and if Iran is perceived as in some fashion involved or responsible -- or the potential beneficiary thereof -- that temptation could arise.

February 1, 2007 Thursday

SECTION: CAPITOL HILL HEARING

HEARING OF THE SENATE COMMITTEE ON FOREIGN RELATIONS;

SECURING AMERICA'S INTERESTS IN IRAQ:

CHAIRED BY: SENATOR JOSEPH R. BIDEN (D-DE);

WITNESSES:

BRENT SCOWCROFT, NATIONAL SECURITY ADVISER; PRESIDENT, THE SCOWCROFT GROUP;

DR. ZBIGNIEW BRZEZINSKI, FORMER NATIONAL SECURITY ADVISER; COUNSELOR AND TRUSTEE, CENTER FOR STRATEGIC AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES;

[Opening Statements by Senators Biden and Lugar]

SEN. BIDEN: The meeting will come to order.

Mr. Chairman, before we begin the hearing, I'd like to make a very brief comment on Senator Warner's resolution on Iraq.

Three weeks ago before this committee, Secretary Rice presented the president's plan for Iraq. Its main feature is to send more American troops into Baghdad in the middle of what I believe to be a sectarian war. The reaction on this committee from Republicans and Democrats alike ranged from profound skepticism -- at least skepticism -- profound skepticism to outright opposition throughout this committee, and that pretty much reflected the reaction across the country.

Senators Hagel, Levin and Snowe and I wrote a resolution to give senators a way to vote what their voices were saying. I believe we -- that was the quickest way, most effective way, to get the president to reconsider the course he's on and demonstrate to him that his policy has little support across the board in this body.

After we introduced our resolution, Senator Warner came forward with his. The bottom line of our resolution is the same as Senator Warner's. The president's -- Mr. President, don't send more troops in the middle of a civil war.

There was one critical difference. As originally written, Senator Warner's resolution left open the possibility of increasing the overall number of troops in Baghdad as well as in Iraq overall. We believed -- the sponsors of my resolution -- that that would send the wrong message. We ought to be drawing down and redeploying within Iraq rather than ramping up to make clear to the Iraqi leaders that they must begin to make the hard compromises necessary for the political solution virtually everyone acknowledge is needed to bring this conflict to a somewhat successful end.

We approached Senator Warner, my co-sponsors and I, several times to try to work out our differences, and I'm very pleased that last night we succeeded in doing just that. The language of the Warner resolution removed -- the language that Senator Warner removed from his resolution removed the possibility that it can be read as calling for more troops in Iraq. With that change, I am pleased to support Senator Warner's resolution.

When I first spoke out against the president's planned surge before the New Year, I made it clear that I hoped to build a bipartisan opposition to his plan because this is the best way to have him reconsider, and that's exactly what we have done. We'll see what happens on the floor, but that's exactly what we have done with the Biden-Levin-Hagel-Snowe and the Warner-Nelson, et cetera, resolution now, all of us joining Senator Warner as amended.

Now, we have a real opportunity for the Senate to speak clearly. Every senator will be given a chance to vote on whether he or she supports or disagrees with the president's plan as outlined by Secretary Rice. The president does not listen to -- and assuming that the majority is where I believe it is, with Senator Warner and myself and others -- if the majority of the Congress and the majority of the American people speak loudly, it's very difficult, I think, for the president to totally dismiss that. But this is an important first step.

Before we begin, let me make clear that our purpose from the outset was to get as much consensus as we could on the president's overall plan and that's why I am delighted to join and work off of Senator Warner's resolution, which quite frankly, is even a more powerful statement than, quote, a "Biden resolution" coming from one of the leading Republicans in the United States Senate.

And today marks the final day of our initial series of hearings. I remind our members what they already know: that this committee will, as under my friend and former chairman and future chairman of this committee -- because we've been here for changes, an awful lot of changes back and forth over the years -- that we will continue to engage in aggressive oversight in the coming weeks, in the coming months and throughout this year.

We are joined this morning by two very distinguished former national security advisers. First, we'll hear from General Brent Scowcroft, and later we'll hear from Dr. Zbigniew Brzezinski. They are among the best strategic thinkers in America and we're honored that they're here to join us.

And without further ado, I will put in the record, since I did not know I was going to -- that we would have worked out a compromise with Senator Warner last night -- rather than read the remainder of my statement, I'll ask unanimous consent to be placed in the record, and welcome you, General. It's truly an honor to have you here. You're one of the most respected men in this country, and I will now yield to my colleague, Senator Lugar.

SEN. RICHARD G. LUGAR (R-IN): Well, thank you very much, Mr. Chairman.

I thank you for holding this hearing and I welcome our distinguished former national security advisers.

This is, by our count, the 14th meeting of this committee on Iraq since the committee began its series of hearings on January the 9th. And just parenthetically, Mr. Chairman, I congratulate you, your staff, for working so well with our staff in a bipartisan way on bringing before the committee and, therefore, before the Senate and the American people, a galaxy of remarkable people, both American and Iraqi, who have addressed this issue, with profit to all of us.

These bipartisan hearings have given us the opportunity to engage administration officials, intelligence analysts, academic experts, former national security leaders, Iraqi representatives and retired military generals on strategy in Iraq and the broader Middle East, and this process has provided members a foundation for oversight as well as an opportunity to conduct a dialogue with each other.

On Tuesday, our committee hosted Secretary of State James Baker and Representative Lee Hamilton, the co-chairs of the Iraq Study Group. Both witnesses voiced the need to move Iraq policy beyond the politics of the moment.

Even if Congress and the president cannot agree on a policy in Iraq in the coming months, we have to find a way to reach a consensus on the United States' role in the Middle East.

Yesterday, Secretary of State Henry Kissinger recalled a half century of U.S. involvement in the Middle East. He argued that this history was not accidental. We have been heavily involved in the region because we have enduring interests at stake and these are interests that are vital to our country. Protecting those interests cannot be relegated to a political timeline. We may make tactical decisions about the deployment or withdrawal of forces in Iraq, but we must plan for a strong strategic posture in the region for years to come.

Both the president and Congress must be thinking about what follows our current dispute over the president's troop surge. Many members have expressed frustration with White House consultations on Iraq. I've counseled the president that his administration must put much more effort into consulting with Congress on Iraq, on the Middle East, on national security issues in general. Congress has responsibility in this process. We don't owe the president our unquestioning agreement but we do owe him and the American people our constructive engagement.

I appreciated the administration wants a chance to make its Baghdad strategy work and therefore is not enthusiastic about talking about Plan B. Similarly, opponents in Congress are intensely focused on expressing disapproval of the president's plan through nonbinding resolutions. But when the current dispute over the president's Baghdad plan has reached a conclusion, we will still have to come to grips with how we are to sustain our position in the Middle East.

At yesterday's hearing, I noted that Secretary Rice had taken steps to shift the emphasis of U.S. Middle East policy toward countering the challenges posed by Iran. Under this new approach, the United States would organize regional players -- Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Egypt, Turkey, the Gulf states and others -- behind a program of containing Iran's disruptive agenda in the region. This would be one of the most consequential regional alignments in recent diplomatic history, and such a realignment has relevance for stabilizing Iraq and bringing security to other areas of conflict in the region, including Lebanon and the Palestinian territories.

Moderate states in the Middle East are concerned by Iran's aggressiveness and by the possibility of sectarian conflict beyond Iraq's borders. They recognize the United States is an indispensable counterweight to Iran, and a source of stability. The United States has growing leverage to enlist greater support for our objectives inside Iraq and throughout the region. In this context, the president's current Iraq plan should not be seen as an end game, but rather as one element in a larger Middle East struggle that is in its early stages.

The president should be reaching out to the Congress in an effort to construct a consensus on how we will protect our broader strategic interests regardless of what happens in Baghdad in the next several months. Without such preparation, I'm concerned that our domestic political disputes or frustration over the failure of the Iraq government to meet benchmarks will precipitate an exit from vital areas and missions in the Middle East.

We need to be preparing for how we will array U.S. forces in the region to defend oil assets, target terrorist enclaves, deter adventurism by Iran, provide a buffer against regional sectarian conflict and generally reassure friendly governments the United States is committed to Middle East security.

We look forward to the insights that will be brought to us by our distinguished witnesses this morning on the strategic and political dynamics involved in our Middle East policy.

I thank you very much, Mr. Chairman.

SEN. BIDEN: Thank you very much, Senator.

....

[Testimony of General Brent Scowcroft]

RECESS

SEN. LUGAR: (Sounds gavel.) The committee is called to order. We welcome Dr. Brzezinski , a wonderful friend of the committee for this very important appearance today. And our situation is such that we've asked Dr. Brzezinski to present an opening statement, and he will do that, and then we will proceed to questions.

I think senators know that we're heading toward roll call votes at noon or shortly thereafter, and therefore we'll begin immediately, given the chairman's instructions.

Dr. Brzezinski, we're delighted to have you. And would you please proceed?

MR. BRZEZINSKI: Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Thank you indeed.

Your hearings come at a critical juncture in the U.S. war of choice in Iraq, and I commend you and Senator Biden for scheduling them.

In my view, it is time for the White House to come to terms with two central realities. First, the war in Iraq is a historic strategic and moral calamity undertaken under false assumptions. It is undermining America's global legitimacy. Its collateral civilian casualties, as well as some abuses, are tarnishing America's moral credentials. Driven by Manichean impulses and imperial hubris, it is intensifying regional instability.

Secondly, only a political strategy that is historically relevant rather than reminiscent of colonial tutelage can provide the needed framework for a tolerable resolution of both the war in Iraq and intensifying regional tensions.

If the United States continues to be bogged down in protracted, bloody involvement in Iraq -- and I emphasize what I am about to say -- the final destination on this downhill track is likely to be a head-on conflict with Iran, and with much of the world of Islam at large.

A plausible scenario for a military collision with Iran involves Iraqi failure to meet the benchmarks, followed by accusations of Iranian responsibility for the failure, then by some provocation in Iraq or a terrorist act in the United States blamed on Iran, culminating in a quote-unquote "defensive" U.S. military action against Iran that plunges a lonely America into a spreading and deepening quagmire, eventually ranging across Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan and Pakistan.

In contrast, most Muslims are not embracing Islamic fundamentalism. Al Qaeda is an isolated fundamentalist, Islamist aberration, most Iraqis are engaged in strife because of the American occupation, which destroyed the Iraqi state, while Iran, though gaining in regional influence, is itself politically divided, economically and militarily weak. To argue that America is already at war in a region with a wider Islamic threat of which Iran is the epicenter is to promote a self-fulfilling prophecy.

I then go on, Mr. Chairman, to compare the posture of the United States insofar as negotiations are concerned and in some ways reminiscent of the moralistic self-ostracism that the United States practiced in the early 1950s towards Communist Chinese, but for the sake of time I will not read this passage.

Let me end this introductory remark before advocating some policy by noting that practically no country in the world -- no country in the world -- shares the Manichean delusions that the administration so passionately articulates. And the result, sad to say, is growing political isolation of and pervasive popular antagonism towards the U.S. global posture.

I think it is obvious, therefore, that our international interest calls for a significant change in direction. There is, in fact, consensus in America in favor of a change, a consensus the war was a mistake. It is a fact that leading Republicans have spoken out and expressed profound reservations regarding the administration's policy. Again, I simply invoke here the views of former President Gerald Ford, former Secretary of State Baker, former National Security Adviser Scowcroft and several of your colleagues, Mr. Chairman, including Warner, Hagel, Smith, among others.

And hence the urgent need today for a strategy that seeks to create a political framework for a resolution of the problems posed both by the U.S. occupation of Iraq and by the ensuing civil and sectarian conflict. Ending the occupation and shaping a regional security dialogue should be the mutually reinforcing goals of such a strategy, but both goals will take time to be accomplished and require genuinely serious U.S. commitment.

The quest to achieve these goals should involve four steps . First, the United States should reaffirm explicitly and unambiguously its determination to leave Iraq in a reasonably short period of time.

Let me comment.

Ambiguity regarding the duration of the occupation in fact encourages unwillingness to compromise and intensifies the underlying civil strife. Moreover, such a public declaration is needed to allay fears in the Middle East of a new and enduring American imperial hegemony. Right or wrong, many view the establishment of such a hegemony as the primary reason for the American intervention in a region only recently free of colonial domination. That perception should be discredited from the highest U.S. level. Perhaps the U.S. Congress could do so by a joint resolution.

Second, the United States should announce that it is undertaking talks with the Iraqi leaders to jointly set with them a date by which U.S. military disengagement should be completed and the resulting setting of such a date should be announced as a joint decision. In the meantime, the U.S. should avoid military escalation.

Comment, briefly:

It is necessary to engage all the Iraqi leaders, including those who do not reside within the Green Zone, in a serious discussion regarding the proposed and jointly defined date for U.S. military disengagement, because the very dialogue itself will help to identify the authentic Iraqi leaders which the self-confidence and capacity to stand on their own legs without U.S. military protection. Only Iraqi leaders who can exercise real power beyond the Green Zone can eventually reach a genuine Iraqi accommodation. The painful reality is that much of this current Iraqi regime, characterized by the administration as representative of the Iraqi people, defines itself largely by its physical location: the four square-mile-large U.S. fortress within Baghdad, protected by a wall in places 15 feet thick, manned by heavily armed U.S. military, popularly known as the Green Zone.

Third, the United States should issue jointly, with appropriate Iraqi leaders, or perhaps let the Iraqi leaders issue an invitation to all neighbors of Iraq and perhaps some other Muslim countries such as Egypt, Morocco, Algeria and Pakistan, to engage in a dialogue regarding how best to enhance stability in Iraq in conjunction with U.S. military disengagement and to participate eventually in a conference regarding regional stability.

Brief comment:

The United States and the Iraqi leadership need to engage Iraq's neighbors in a serious discussion regarding the region's security problems, but such discussions cannot be undertaken while the U.S. is perceived as an occupier for an indefinite duration. In fact, I would argue, Mr. Chairman, that the setting of a date for departure would trigger a much higher probability of an effective regional dialogue because all of the countries in the region do not want to see an escalating disintegration in the region as a whole.

Fourth, and finally, concurrently the United States should activate a credible and energetic effort to finally reach an Israeli- Palestinian peace, making it clear in the process as to what the basic parameters of such a final accommodation ought to involve.

Brief comment:

The United States needs to convince the region that the United States is committed, both to Israel's enduring security and to fairness for the Palestinians, who have waited for more than 40 years now for their own separate state. Only an external and activist intervention can promote the long-delayed settlement, for the record shows that the Israelis and the Palestinians will never do so on their own. Without such a settlement, both nationalist and fundamentalist passions in the region will in the longer run doom any Arab regime which is perceived as supportive of U.S. regional hegemony.

After World War II, the United States prevailed in the defense of democracy in Europe because it successfully pursued a long-term political strategy of uniting its friends and dividing its enemies, instead of dividing our friends and uniting our enemies, while soberly deterring aggression without initiating hostilities, all the while, also, exploring the possibility of negotiating arrangements.

Today, America's global leadership is being tested in the Middle East. A similarly wise strategy of genuinely constructive political engagement is now urgently needed. It is time for the Congress to assert itself.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

SEN. BIDEN: Thank you very much.

MR. BRZEZINSKI: And welcome, Mr. Chairman.

SEN. BIDEN: Great.

I read as -- I commended your testimony this morning to my colleague who was about to read it and has read it. I apologize for being absent for a moment. I had to be on the floor.

As usual, you are direct, cogent and insightful, and I appreciate your availability to the committee and also availability to a number of us individually that seek your advice.

We just heard from a man we all regard well, one of your successors, who cautioned that, if we were to "leave," quote-unquote, Iraq there would be these dire consequences. I read with incredible interest your paragraph on Page 1 of your testimony, saying "If the United States continued to be bogged down in a protracted, bloody involvement in Iraq, the final destination on this downhill track is likely to be a head-on conflict with Iran and much of the world of Islam at large."

Now, the two -- the argument the president is making is, the conflict with Islam intensifies if we withdraw. You're making the argument that continuing to be bogged down here is more likely to result in that outcome. Could you expand on that for me?

MR. BRZEZINSKI: Conflict, by its very nature, is not self- containable. It either diminishes because one side has prevailed or because there's an accommodation, or it escalates. If we could prevail militarily and in a decisive fashion, even though I opposed the war, there would be a strong case to be made for it. But I think we know by now that to prevail we will need to have 500,000 troops in Iraq, wage the war with unlimited brutality, and altogether crush that society because it would intensify probably its resistance. So that's a no-starter.

So it's in our interest to isolate the conflicts and to terminate them. And we have to exploit -- at least try to exploit -- the political possibility, the political option.

Now in the end, I cannot dogmatically argue that it is certain to succeed, but if we don't try, we know we'll never have had the chance --

SEN. BIDEN: You seem to be arguing that if we stay on this particular course we're on now, it will not succeed. You're confident the present course will not succeed.

MR. BRZEZINSKI: Well, I think every indicator over the last three or so years indicates that. The situation is worsening, hostility towards the United States is intensifying, our isolation worldwide is both being perpetuated and in some respects becoming more culturally grounded. Look at the public opinion polls. I think we have to take a hard look at what the options are.

Now, I realize there are risks in a strategy in which the goal is to find an alternative outcome than a military victory. But at the same time, we shouldn't become prisoners of apocalyptic and horrific scenarios, in some respects reminiscent of those which were described and drawn in the latter phases of the Vietnamese war and which did not take place.

I'm not sure that if we were to disengage from Iraq that the consequence is this kind of horrific set of dominoes falling all over the Middle East. Moreover -- and please note this carefully -- in my statement, I'm not saying we should unilaterally disengagement.

SEN. BIDEN: I understand that.

MR. BRZEZINSKI: We should work with the Iraqis on setting a date and use that as a trigger for an international conference of Iraq's neighbors, because I don't believe, if you look carefully at the interests of Saudi Arabia or Jordan or Syria or Iran, that they have a stake, an interest in making the explosion get out of hand.

SEN. BIDEN: Well, quite frankly --

MR. BRZEZINSKI: They're volatile regimes.

SEN. BIDEN: That's -- unless I'm missing something -- that was pretty much the consensus of most of the witnesses that we've had in the last four weeks, and that is they have an interest in it not exploding.

You echo the comments made yesterday and the day before and throughout this hearing process about Iran when you say, I agree -- you say, Iran is, quote, "politically divided and economically and militarily weak."

Now the question is, if that is true, and I think we overlook how politically divided it is and overlook how economically -- at what economic difficulty it's in -- we seem to be building it up to be, you know, 20 feet tall and that this is the new superpower in the region. As a matter of fact, some have used that phrase.

Give me your assessment of the present threat that Iran poses in the region and what you think, if you can, if you will, what a continued protracted American presence in Iraq will do to impact on that assessment, whether they grow weaker, stronger, et cetera.

MR. BRZEZINSKI: I think some form of American presence in Iraq is going to be a fact, assuming even a political settlement. But it will not be the same as a militarily occupation and a political hegemony imposed by a militarily successful campaign.

I think that kind of presence, Iran has no choice but to --

SEN. BIDEN: Do you think that was the objective of the -- of this administration initially?

MR. BRZEZINSKI: I have no idea what his initiative objective was because the motives he provided for the action proved to be entirely erroneous, and if they were the real motives, then the whole campaign was based on false assumptions.

SEN. BIDEN: It's unfair to ask you to be a soothsayer. I apologize.

MR. BRZEZINSKI: Now, if there were hidden motives, I can imagine potentially several. One would be to gain American domination over the region's oil, to put it very simplistically. Another could be to help maximize Israel's security by removing a powerful Arab state. Another one could have been to simply get rid of an obnoxious regime with which the United States had accounts to settle going back to '91 and the alleged assassination attempt against President Bush Sr. There could be a variety of motives.

But the official motives were WMDs.

SEN. BIDEN: If you complete the notion about -- I interrupted you -- Iran, is the basis of your concluding that it is politically divided, economically and militarily weak. Can you expand on that slightly?

MR. BRZEZINSKI: It is economically weak because it is an economy that hasn't been thriving and it's one-dimensional and it's relatively isolated. It's politically divided in the sense that, in my judgment, the mullahs are Iran's past and not its future and that its fundamentalist regime is not very popular -- (inaudible) -- particularly with the younger generation, much of which is very pro- American.

But sadly, it is also more united nationalistically, in part because of our attitude towards Iran, which has been exceedingly hostile and which has gelled together a kind of residual national sentiment, particularly in support of the nuclear program. And I think our policy has unintentionally -- I hope unintentionally; maybe it was devilishly clever -- but I think unintentionally helped Ahmadinejad consolidate himself in power and exercise a degree of influence which actually his position doesn't justify.

You know, most Americans, when they say President Ahmadinejad, they think he's the equivalent of President Bush. He's not. He's roughly a third-level official who doesn't even control the militarily resources of the country.

SEN. BIDEN: That's an important point to make. I think the vast majority of Americans would think he controls the security apparatus.

MR. BRZEZINSKI: Yeah. And he doesn't.

SEN. BIDEN: Well, I thank you very much.

Senator Lugar?

SEN. LUGAR: Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Dr. Brzezinski, just to follow through on that question of the chairman, you've called for U.S. military disengagement and -- but, however, this would be jointly set with the Iraqi leadership and the time of that.

Now, as I just heard you speaking, this would not necessarily mean or it could be that in these talks with the Iraqi leaders they decide that there should be some United States military presence in Iraq for an indefinite future. Is that a contingency of these talks?

And there's military disengagement -- it means out of the nine districts in Baghdad or -- and there are, really, very few other fronts where there are conventional battles going on. But what I'm wondering is, as we engage in the talks with the Iraqi leadership, if it would not come at least into their minds that they don't want the United States to depart altogether from Iraq, nor in fact if we were to get into the second part of your thought, and that is having got into these talks, or even gotten into a date or a time frame, the other countries might very well come.

Source: Global Research,

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