Guests: Raghida Dergham, Sam Donaldson, Kitty Kay, David Brooks

CHRIS MATTHEWS, host:

The second Gulf War. What will it take to win?

Announcer: :This is a special edition of the CHRIS MATTHEWS SHOW: Attack on Iraq.

MATTHEWS: :Hi, I'm Chris Matthews. Welcome to this special edition of the show.

Firepower in fury as America attacks Iraq, launching its first war pre-emption. We'll get at the key questions about Operation Iraqi Freedom, and we'll ask how do you measure the success of this new war? Does taking out Saddam Hussein end it? Is it essential to find biological, chemical or nuclear weapons? Will a major terrorist attack against America be more or less likely? And what effect will this war have in Iraq and throughout the Mideast? We'll get to all of that.

Then with Americans in harm's way, I'll have some thoughts on sacrifice and our nation's timeless values. Let's go inside.

CHRIS MATTHEWS, host:

Sam Donaldson is the longtime ABC News corespondent. Katty Kay covers Washington for the British Broadcasting Company. David Brooks from the Weekly Standard is a contributor to "The News Hour" on PBS. And Raghida Dergham is the senior diplomatic correspondent for the Pan-Arab newspaper Al-Hayat.

Sam, let's step back, look at how the war began and how we'd like it to end. How important is it for us to get rid of Saddam Hussein and all his bunch, and is that enough?

Mr. SAM DONALDSON (ABC News): :That, was always George W. Bush's main goal: First, kill Saddam not just get rid of him. Kill him, and remove the people around him. After that would come finding weapons of mass destruction, taking Iraq and making it a model democracy and bringing peace to the region. But the first: Go kill Saddam.

MATTHEWS: :David, how much of this is more far-reaching than simply a clique around Saddam Hussein and to go out and reach out into all the Ba'athist Party people that make up his power clique?

Mr. DAVID BROOKS (Weekly Standard Magazine): :You don't need to take out the whole bureaucracy. The Ba'ath ideology is--outside of Saddam is mostly dead, but you need to take out the Tikrit mafia. These are the people who are running the rape camps. These are the people who are running the torture chambers. We need to take those people out. You don't seem to need to take ov--out the whole bureaucracy.

MATTHEWS: :How many people are we talking about, basically, by the end of this war, getting out of that picture politically and punishing in some way?

Mr. BROOKS: :I don't know how many people. I'm just afraid we're getting...

MATTHEWS: :Thousands?

Mr. BROOKS: :...I'm afraid we're getting into a situation where we set the bar for success so high, the place has got to look like Wisconsin in a week. To me, this guy has been torturing his people, killing people for years and years. You take out--you take him out you've already got a victory.

MATTHEWS: :Is there a mentality we're trying to get rid of as well, this sort of anti-Western, hard-nosed? Raghida, is there part of that there? We're trying to get rid of a point of view towards Israel, towards the--towards the West, towards Islam. Are we trying to do that?

Ms. RAGHIDA DERGHAM (Al-Hayat Daily): :Well, it looks like, first stop Iraq, and this is, as you mentioned earlier, part of that pre-emptive doctrine. Where will it take us? Will it--will there be Syria next? What will happen to even countries who are assisting us? We do not know. But it's clear to me right now that Iraq is first, `Stop and we will see what happens later.' I think if they can out the regime of Saddam Hussein, it is an interim measure or step towards something else we don't know.

Ms. KATTY KAY (Washington Correspondent British Broadcasting Company):: This...

MATTHEWS: :Katty, go ahead.

Ms. KAY: :...this problem of regime change is something that the Britons have--British parliament has tried to backpedal America on because it's a word; it's a phrase that does suggest the dark side of this new doctrine of pre-emptive action.

MATTHEWS: :Hero--heroism.

Ms. KAY: :It suggests--it suggests CIA coups...

MATTHEWS: :How do we soften that as we--as we begin this war and we end this war? Looking ahead, how would we like the toppling of Saddam to occur so that it seems less like our idea and more like the idea that is shared by the people of Iraq?

Ms. KAY: :Well, of course, ideally you have something happening from within, which is why last week we had a little bit of a pause before we had the shock and awe.

MATTHEWS: :Right.

Ms. KAY: :They wanted to see if they could choke the regime and have something happening from within, which made it look less imperialist, made it look less like the US was trying to impose its will because this is what the rest of the world is really frightened about.

Mr. DONALDSON: :She's exactly right, and this is only the first step.

Ms. DERGHAM: :We would require...

Mr. DONALDSON: :Listen to George W. Bush, if you want to know what he's going to do. Listen to the axis of evil. First, stop Iraq, Iran, North Korea. They were supposed to take a number and wait. He thought nuclear blackmail was here, so he didn't wait. But it will be his turn. We're going to go into this next election cycle with the commander in chief still at war, I assure you.

MATTHEWS: :With other countries that are targeted. Let's go to David. Let's talk about something that is so preliminary in this whole fight. Before we get started, we talked about the question of Iraqi's weapons of mass destruction. Do we have to catch him red-handed? Do we have to find a large cache of weapons to shows that we were right all along, that he has lots of dangerous materials?

Mr. BROOKS: :I think first we have to show happy Iraqis. If you show people feeling liberated, then already you've got a big moral victory. I think down the road you have to show that the toxins, the ricin, the anthrax. And to me, the most interesting moment is going to come when we interview those nuclear scientists.

Ms. KAY: :Yeah, but...

Mr. BROOKS: :When we finally get to say--for them to tell us what was going on and we may find they were further along than we thought they were as we did in 1991.

Ms. KAY: :But the question--the question of the chemical and the nuclear and the biological weapons is: What is going to satisfy the international community?

MATTHEWS: :Right.

Ms. KAY: :Are the French ever going to be satisfied with what they find?

MATTHEWS: :What will sat--let's be honest here. If we show labels from France that some of this nuclear material that you've talked about a moment ago came from France, if we show giant quantities of--of sarin gas, of anthrax, isn't that enough to the world we were right, Katty?

Ms. KAY: :There was an article in The Guardian, Britain's main left-wing paper, on Friday morning saying even if they find chemical and biological weapons that's not still proof they were going to use them.

Mr. BROOKS: :Well, let's get...

Ms. KAY: :And there's still a skepticism there.

Mr. BROOKS: :...let's get into some psychology here, especially vis-a-vis Europe. If we're successful, the European psychology, the resentments could grow. That doesn't mean they're going to love us all of a sudden. They're going to resent us more if we're more successful.

Mr. DONALDSON: :(Unintelligible)

MATTHEWS: :But to the open-minded, what do we have to show, Raghida? What do we have to show to the Arab world in terms of weapons of mass destruction?

Ms. DERGHAM: :What--if you really want the Arab world to come along on this issue of weapons of mass destructions, show them that you really will have to have Israel in the balance because they will say, `Wait a minute. To rule out and to make sure what--what a war against a whole country and occupation of a country because of whatever is left of weapons of mass destruction or scientists.' They feel that if the United States is--really means business with weapons of mass destruction, it's not through wars only. It's through convincing Israel as well not to have--not to have...

Mr. DONALDSON: :Let's face it...

Ms. DERGHAM: :...it any more.

Mr. DONALDSON: :...let's face it, do you think this administration cares what the rest of the world thinks? As long as we believe it was in our national interest, security interest, to strike Iraq, how could the president say, `Well, you know, now that we've done it--whether we find the weapons or don't find the weapons--we hope you like it. We think we were right, and we're going to do this.'

Ms. KAY: :No, you do catch some--for the afterwar, for the reconstruction, I think America does care to some extent. There are already overtones being made towards the United Nations to get involved in a post-war Iraq. This reconstruction...

Mr. BROOKS: :That's only because they want to use...

Ms. KAY: :...is going to take a very long time. It--look, they say there's a democracy in Afghanistan. Karzai's lucky to be alive.

Mr. DONALDSON: :The president says that; the secretary of state says that. We have to work with the UN, but his principle backers of Capitol Hill and elsewhere are saying, `No!'

Mr. BROOKS: :No, I don't--I don't agree with that because most people and most Republicans understand we're going to have terror in our childrens' lives, in our grandchildrens' lives unless there's some sense of normalcy in the Middle East. It doesn't have to be glo--glorious democracy, but there has to be people leading normal lives.

MATTHEWS: :I think we have to show--I think we have to show some things.

Mr. DONALDSON: :On whose terms?

MATTHEWS: :Let--let's move on to the question, the big question, of building a new Iraq. Let's talk about the occupation of Iraq. Here's what President Bush says about the US staying in the country of Iraq.

President GEORGE W. BUSH: :We have no ambition in Iraq except to remove a threat and restore control of that country to its own people.

MATTHEWS: :Yes?

Ms. DERGHAM: :I want to take a hit on this one. First of all, we are going to be occupying, and that is David's point, the cheering Iraq, because we will have cheering Iraq as they are eager to get rid of the tyranny of Saddam Hussein. Point taken. But occupation: How long, to do what? We're going to have a number of troops staying in Iraq along Iraq-Iranian border, and that's another element we should be paying attention to.

Mr. DONALDSON: :Let me ask you a question.

Ms. DERGHAM: :Go ahead.

Mr. DONALDSON: :They may cheer the fact that they're free from Saddam. Do they cheer each other? The Shiites, the Kurds, the Sunnis? Do they all get together at an ecumenical table and say, `I'm glad we're one country?'

Ms. DERGHAM: :Which brings me to the other point, and I'm glad you brought it up, Sam. The idea that there will be a unified Iraq is a declared goal by the administration, but it is not a guaranteed outcome. We do not know. And finally, my last--last point here is that invasion of Iraq and the occupation of Iraq is a theory that was put together before President Bush took office. If you read The Wall Street Journal on Friday, it's an amazing look into what brought about this mind-set. It spoke of 1996 notes and recommendations, 1998 signature that say basically it's about what--we need--we need Iraq to really protect Israel. I'm not so sure it's about American...(unintelligible).

Mr. BROOKS: :No, that--listen, in 1998, '99...

Ms. DERGHAM: :This is in the--this is finally-- in The Wall Street Journal Friday.

Mr. BROOKS: :I read the piece.

Ms. DERGHAM: :Read it, and it is clearly there, finally.

Mr. BROOKS: :In 1998, '99, senators said we have to have regime change in Iraq. In 1998, Bill Clinton said we have to have regime change in Iraq. This was no small conspiracy to help Israel. It was a widespread policy in the mid-'90s, and for 12 years Americans--this was no secret--Americans of left and right thinking Saddam was a permanent menace to this country and, `Should we take him our or should we not?' It was not a small conspiracy.

Ms. KAY: :And the skepticism, I think, in Europe particularly is: Is the commitment to the long term, to after taking Saddam Hussein out, going to be as long as the concern was before he went out? There--it takes decades, not years and months, to build a democracy. You have to have an independent judiciary. You have to have an independent civil service, and I think there's a lot of skepticism in Britain as well in the rest of Europe that America is not committed to that.

MATTHEWS: :And--and there's--I'm sorry. Let's be honest here. We don't want Jeffersonian democracy, do we? We want something that's moderate. We want a country that's user-friendly in terms of oil and is good enough to the West to along with us. Mubarak would be fine. King Abdullah would be fine. King Mohammed VI would be fine.

Mr. DONALDSON: :No.

Mr. BROOKS: :No, not good enough.

Mr. DONALDSON: :That's what the president says. The president says we want democracy in the--his vision is democracy and peace in the region. Yes, there will be a collateral benefit to Israel. I--I agree, though, it was not Israel that drove the policy. It was not a cabal here that drove the policy. They'll benefit. But the question is: Can we bring democracy to the entire Middle East? My answer is I don't think so, certainly not in my lifetime.

MATTHEWS: :Can we do moderation, though, Katty?

Ms. KAY: :I think if you could bring it, do you have the commitment to stick it out? I think that's the big question.

Mr. DONALDSON: :What are you talking about? Dollars, lives? What kind of commitment?

Ms. KAY: :And sticking power. I think there is a sense...

Mr. DONALDSON: :Ho Chi Minh said we were short of breath.

MATTHEWS: :Wouldn't we be happy with Mubarak? Guys, couldn't we all be happy with a guy like Mubarak, who's a bit of repressive, a bit of a strong man...

Mr. DONALDSON: :A bit?

MATTHEWS: :...but he's on our side? David:

Mr. BROOKS: :I wouldn't really be. What I want to--I care about the 22-year-old young man. Does he have a chance to lead a normal life, to grow and develop so he doesn't have to go to the mosque and learn terrorism? And I'm not sure under Mubarak, where he doesn't own his country because some dictator or tyrant owns, or really a leader without--an undemocratic leader owns the country. He doesn't own his country, so then he gets tempted by terrorism.

MATTHEWS: :Finish your point, David. What's the vision, ideal vision?

Mr. BROOKS: :The vision is some sort of democracy, not central like ours, but some sort over the long term. And remember, for the first 80 years of our democracy, one set of Americans owned another set. So it takes a long time.

MATTHEWS: :Right.

Mr. BROOKS: :But some...

MATTHEWS: :Give me a role model.

Mr. BROOKS: :Well, I don't know. Turkey! Turkey's not always a helpful democracy, but it's a help--it's a democracy.

Ms. DERGHAM: :Let's remember, we're going to have military rule first. I don't know if you want to call this democracy. We are going to occupy, and then we are going to install a military rule. Now, this is to me not democracy.

MATTHEWS: :When does it get hot? How long can we stay there without getting really hot in terms of the people resenting us?

Ms. DERGHAM: :If we adopt policy, again, in terms of what is for the Middle East altogether, if we are very brave and go to both Israelis and Arabs and say, `Here's a fair deal,' I think it would help us reshape our presence in the region. If we go on pa--you know, sort of papering over this idea and this whole issue, I think we're going to be in very difficult times.

MATTHEWS: :Does the president have the troops politically, financially in terms of the budget here at home and the American people, for a year or two good stand where we really help build a new country there?

Mr. DONALDSON: :Maybe a year or two. We're doing it in Afghanistan, of course, at the same time. But beyond that, it's going to take much more than a year or two.

Ms. KAY: :Uh-huh.

Mr. DONALDSON: :I don't know that we have the staying power. I just started saying a moment ago Ho Chi Minh used to say that Americans were short of breath, meaning we had this great power, but we didn't have long-distance running sprint.

Mr. BROOKS: :But I guess I would counter 50 years in Korea, 50 years in Europe. We do stick around.

MATTHEWS: :You know what? We're going to talk about something that still scares a lot of us. That's terrorism. I'll be right back to talk about that and the threat against us.

Will this Iraq war help or hurt us on that front? We'll talk about it.

Before we go to break, let's take a look at this extraordinary collection of faces. These are our troops in the war. The names say it all Tim Lynch, Ashley Kazniak, William Childress, Shayla Zapata. This is America. Be right back.

Announcer: :The CHRIS MATTHEWS SHOW is brought to you by...

MATTHEWS: :Welcome back.

Let's get right to this whole question of this Iraq war leading to more democracy throughout the Mideast. There's a recent Zogby poll showing Arab attitudes about Americans. Just look at these numbers.

Saudi Arabia, last year, 87 percent had a negative view of the United States. Now, that's 97 percent who don't like us. Only three in 100 people have a positive view of us.

Jordan, it was 61 percent last year. Now it's 81 percent negative.

Raghida, can you feel that uptake in anger against the United States in the last year?

Ms. DERGHAM: :Yes.

MATTHEWS: :In that part of the world.

Ms. DERGHAM: :They felt that President Bush has really not paid attention to the ills of the region. Now let me say something very important first. I think the Arab regimes themselves have not risen to the challenge immediately after September 11 and to reform as they should have internally, so that we do have democracy, or at least processes of democracies. But on top of that, there was a--we don't see it in American media, but daily in the Arab media they see Palestinians being killed by the Israelis, and they are angry with American policies. The Arabs want--most of them want a change in the status quo. I'm talking about the peoples; I'm not talking about the governments. The governments want to stay forever. But a lot of the young generation just wants out with most of these regimes. The trouble is: How do you do reform? By chaos and by military operations? And there is no trust of the American foreign policy.

MATTHEWS: :Let me ask you all a question. David, respond to this point, because I'm trying to bring it home to regular people who watch this show. They're not Middle East experts. They're not from that part of the world. They don't think about it that much.

You're a kid. You're 23 years old, and you're in Cairo or Jakarta, the Islamic world. You're trying to decide what to do with your life, and you're smart. I want to go to Michigan State or a school like it in the United States and learn--and get my masters in engineering. I want to make it, either in the United States or back home here, or I want to go join al-Qaeda and kill Americans. On that scale, I'm worried that those kids are moving more towards the al-Qaeda and this war's maybe going to encourage that. What do you think?

Mr. BROOKS: :Well, I think, you know, it's complicated.

MATTHEWS: :Could it encourage it?

Mr. BROOKS: :But if you look at the people who--who flew the planes September 11th, the problem was they went to European universities. They went to Belgium. They were rejected by European society. They got angry. They took it out on us. So it's a very complicated psychological process.

I would say the good news is that in the last couple of weeks or months, in Egypt and Saudi Arabia and a bunch of the other Middle Eastern nations there have been gesture by the regimes towards some sort of democratic reform. And it's opportunistic, sure, and it's very modest, but there is a sense, I think, they feel the winds are blowing toward democracy and they'd better be on the right side.

MATTHEWS: :Sam, as an American, do you think--you've been watching this for a long time, this world news event as it goes on here--that this concern about what they feel towards us didn't matter till they started to try to kill us? In fact, they killed 3,000 of us. Do you sense that this war's going to help or discourage the attitude that they have toward us?

Mr. DONALDSON: :You know, I can't tell. Let's talk about how Americans' attitude might change. We're going to do this quickly, I think, and I hope with minimum casualties.

MATTHEWS: :The war.

Mr. DONALDSON: :The war. And whether we can restore democracy's another thing. Well, Americans, though, say, `All right, we won. We're the big dog. we can do anything we want or now say we did it for a purpose. We'll have to explain it to the world, the decent respect of the opinion of mankind,' as Thomas Jefferson said in our Declaration. And I hope the answer is that Americans will realize that even though we can win and we have this power, we should use it judiciously and we should explain it.

MATTHEWS: :Katty.

Ms. KAY: :A new cynicism about American policy is higher than it is in the Middle East, and I think the big difference between the Middle East and to some extent Europe and America's view of how to handle the Iraqi problem is that people in the Middle East and in Europe, to some extent, say you have to deal with the Arab-Israeli problem and bring it up as a roadmap to peace as the last-ditch effort to try and get dramatic support. It hasn't convinced people.

Mr. DONALDSON: :I don't know that President Bush...

Ms. KAY: :It hasn't convinced people that this administration is--is committed in the long run to that problem.

Mr. DONALDSON: :Colin Powell--Colin Powell brought President Bush to the Rose Garden last April when there was the incursion, you know, by the--by the Israeli government, and he sounded--and very evenhanded both sides, `Withdraw, Prime Minister Sharon,' and, you know, `Arafat, you've got to,' all of that. But since then, the signals this administration's always sent have not been signals of being evenhanded but signals of backing the Israeli policy.

Ms. KAY: :Evenhanded...

Mr. BROOKS: :But that's because you know they can't--Arafat's not going to make peace. But there have been some positive gestures there. The prime minister of Palestine, I mean, he's...

Ms. DERGHAM: :But Sam is talking about for the last year what has been done. You're talking about last week, what happened by appointment of Abu Mazen as prime minister. What happened is that Arabs have been paid lip service, and this administration adopted fully the logic of Ariel Sharon in practice...

Mr. BROOKS: :No. No, because they came out...

Ms. DERGHAM: :...on the ground. That's what happened.

Mr. BROOKS: :...forcibly against the occupied territories.

Ms. DERGHAM: :But one--but one other point I want to make...

MATTHEWS: :Let David respond--let David respond to that.

Mr. BROOKS: :Well, they came out forcefully against the settlements. Bush more than any other president...

Ms. DERGHAM: :Where, where? Show me where?

Mr. BROOKS: :...and the other thing he's given lately.

MATTHEWS: :Well, he's said it in every speech he's given lately.

Ms. DERGHAM: :What difference did it make?

MATTHEWS: :He says no more settlement activities. He said it twice in the last week.

Ms. DERGHAM: :Did--did he ever succeed?

Mr. DONALDSON: :Yes, he said no more settlement activity in the new sense. He hasn't said, `Withdraw.'

Ms. DERGHAM: :Only after progress. He said it was conditional what--once progress is made. He didn't put his foot down and say, `No settlements, and I mean it.'

MATTHEWS: :OK.

Mr. BROOKS: :But...

MATTHEWS: :Well, on these two fronts, let's talk about the war and some of the Middle East. Is it all part of a picture, this war, because Bush has said he wants a two-state solution? He's dramatically said so. I haven't heard any previous president say that. He wants a legitimate, viable, credible Palestinian state. That's a strong statement, Raghida, and you're saying he doesn't get any credibility.

Ms. DERGHAM: :And I'm saying he got a lot of credibility when he's pronounced this in April like Sam was saying. Thereafter, there was noting done about it.

MATTHEWS: :He just said it last week.

Ms. DERGHAM: :No--no--no. April last year.

MATTHEWS: :OK, he said it again last week.

Ms. DERGHAM: :April last year.

MATTHEWS: :Let's talk about this war, and we've got to get--I want to bottom-line this war. Are we going to see more terrorism as a result of this war? Is it going to cause more kids to join, recruit al-Qaeda, that kind of thing?

Mr. DONALDSON: :I don't know. I can't read the...(unintelligible)...mind. We fortunately haven't had another terrorist attack like 9/11.

MATTHEWS: :Right.

Mr. DONALDSON: :We still could, we're warned. We're on high alert here. The airports, all the way we lead our lives.

MATTHEWS: :Less or more after this in the long-term?

Ms. KAY: :If the Arab-Israeli problem is dealt with effectively for both sides, I think you will see less.

MATTHEWS: :So really two things: Win this war and effectively change the situation there. David:

Mr. BROOKS: :Yeah, I'd agree with that. Listen, you're talking about our grandkids here, what our children and grandchildren, are they going to face...

MATTHEWS: :Long term.

Mr. BROOKS: :...a dysfunctional region or not?

Mr. DONALDSON: :But--but--but...

MATTHEWS: :Raghida, last word.

Ms. DERGHAM: :Yes, to add what they said, I worry about our kids, American kids, in the future because I think we're going to be prisoners of our might if we do not sober up and stop the arrogance.

MATTHEWS: :I like what Sam said about a little magnanimity in victory. Anyway, thanks for a great round. That was Churchill, by the way. Sam, Katty, David, Raghida.

Coming up next, some unforgettable words about American values and those who actually go to battle. Stick with me.

MATTHEWS: :We love getting your e-mails. Keep them coming.

Commentary: Gettysburg Address, photos of US troops

CHRIS MATTHEWS, host: Four score and seven years ago, our fathers brought forth on this continent a new nation, conceived in liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.

Now we're engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation or any nation so conceived and so dedicated can long endure. We are met on a great battlefield of that war. We've come to dedicate a portion of that field as a final resting place for those who here gave their lives, that that nation might live. And it is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this.

But in a larger sense, we cannot dedicate, we cannot consecrate, we cannot hallow this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here have consecrated it far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note or long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here.

It is for us, the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be dedicated to the great task remaining before us, that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion, that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain, but this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom and the government of the people, by the people, for the people shall not perish from the earth.

End