This morning it's the brilliant one.
You are correct! Thanks for letting me know about this appearance.
MR. RUSSERT: Let me go back to Iraq and give each of you a chance, in the closing minutes.
Speaker Gingrich, if we set a firm date for withdrawal of U.S. troops in Iraq, what happens?
MR. GINGRICH: I believe we send a signal to enemies to wait patiently and destroy the country as soon as we leave. I believe we send a signal to our own troops to cease patrolling and do everything you can not to be the last person killed on behalf of something that Congress has decried will be a defeat. I think we send a signal to our allies around the world that were unreliable. And I think that we have dramatically expanded the excitement and incentives of the terrorists, both in the Iranian-funded Shia wing and in the Saudi-funded Sunni wing of al-Qaeda. And I think youll see a dramatic upsurge. And a simple way to measure this, watch what our enemies say. If this Congress passes a definitive end of American involvement, every enemy we have on the planet will exalt, and every terrorist group on the planet will claim its an enormous victory, and they will increase their recruiting. And as New Jersey should just have taught us, they dont plan to stop in Baghdad. They are coming here as soon as they can get here.
MR. RUSSERT: Can you respond to that?
SEN. DODD: Yeah, Iin fact, I think just the opposite. I think the very things youre talking about, you have the opposite reaction here. I think the world is waiting for the United States to lead again with bold leadership in the country. Its deeply worried about security, deeply worried about global terrorism, and looks onover this landscape of the world, says only one country can lead, its the United States. The Chinese arent going to do it, the Russians arent going to do it, the Indians arent going to do it, not in the foreseeable future. Its going to be the United States.
Were bogged down in a situation here where were losing credibility, were losing our moral value. The great moral reputation of the United States has suffered terribly as a result of this. Thats a critical element and was critical in building the relationships that allowed us to develop the kind of international cooperation absolutely essential if youre going to deal with global terrorism. So my view is here, its time for us to say that theres a new mission here, a new direction, a change in course here that will allow, I think, the possibility of Iraqis to decide they want to be a country. Allow us to encourage the moderate Arab states in the region to assume greater responsibility for their neighborhood than they presently are. I think the real opportunity, if you engage not as anot as an end, but as a means to deal with the Iranian-Syrian issue, as we finally did in North Korea, you open up the, the perspective herethe prospects, rather, of a wider, better set of alternatives for the United States and our allies around the world. That, at least, is a real opportunity. The status quo and escalating this conflict in Iraq on the assumption theres a military solution, I think has been disproven and discredited by most major people whove looked at this, and I think theyre right.