Ambassador Ryan Crocker Interview with the Washington Post

March 14, 2008

QUESTION:  One thing we’d like to do is to kind of lead you off in a slightly less newsy fashion.  And that's to say that we are putting together a package for the anniversary that will include short pieces about a number of luminaries, yourself included, if you want to play ball with this.  And, you know, all the way from former Secretary Rumsfeld to -- to -- I can't remember the list.

And the thrust here is to try to get you to kind of look backward and forward at the same time and to take in what has happened here over the five-year stretch since the invasion and how that sets us up for the future.  If you want to talk about that in personal terms, we would be even more delighted, I mean, just in what your work here has been like. 

And, you know, so for a question, maybe you could answer what Iraq has taught you as a diplomat?

AMBASSADOR CROCKER:  Well, I've as you know spent most of an incredibly long career now in this part of the world, including a couple years here at Iraq, back at the time Saddam assumed the presidency, '78 to '80.  Iraq has always been the outlier in the region.  It really has been ever since the fall of the monarchy in 1958.  It has been the bad boy, the spoiler, whether it's Iran-Iraq war, the invasion of Kuwait, the threat to Saudi Arabia, the war of the car bombs with Syria in the '70s.  Iraq has -- and its extremely rocky relationship with the West and the U.S. in particular, again, throughout almost all of this, Iraq has been something that -- that we in the region have had to wrestle with, clearly.

I just go through that because, you know, again, where I sit today, I'm maybe a little more mindful than most of, you know, Iraq's long reach back and the problems it has posed for the region.  It is now a challenge -- it remains a challenge but clearly a challenge of a very different nature.  And looking back at clearly a tumultuous five years, it continues to seem to me that this phase of the Iraq story is still in the early stages of telling itself.

With respect to the U.S., U.S. interests, the U.S. role, I really do think that all that has happened so far notwithstanding, what we may be most affected by and most remembered for in the world is not what's happened in these five years but it's what's going to happen, it's what's going to happen in the future.  And in the most basic and critical terms, whether Iraq is able to get to a point of sustainable security, security defined very broadly, obviously, in terms of security on the streets, but also political and economic security within the institutional construct that has been already set out and is, like everything else here, still very much under development.

If it does, then for, again, the first time really in a 50-plus year stretch, you would have an Iraq that is an anchor for stability in the region, rather than what has largely been the opposite, both pre- and post '03.

QUESTION:  Just to press you on that a little bit, if that is what emerges, have the past five years been a -- in terms of Iraq -- been a cost worth paying?

AMBASSADOR CROCKER:  Well, defining cost in an enterprise like this is a complicated business.  I think you have to factor in the cost of what you have if Iraq doesn't get to that point and particularly again what the cost would be -- a great deal is said rightly about the cost so far, human and materiel.  But how do you calculate the cost of a dramatically failed Iraq?  Because that has to be part of it, too.  And for me, at least, the cost of that would be so immense for all of us it is very important that we do all that we reasonably can to see that that is not where this comes out.

QUESTION:  Can you be more specific about what you're talking about, about the costs?  What do you perceive if this does not work?

AMBASSADOR CROCKER:  I am always a little bit careful of that.  I -- you know, you can rustle up some nightmare scenarios.  And forgive me for reaching back and -- we'll give you a few extra minutes at the end to compensate.  I think my coming of age in this business and in the region were the years I spent in Lebanon '81 to '84.  And there were some decisions taken there, sort of summer of '81 to summer of '82, that more than troubled me, they frightened me.  Because I could see that, boy, some really bad things could happen here.

But I had no clue, say, sitting there, the turn of the year, '81 to '82, what the next couple years were going to bring in Lebanon and the region.  A total failure of imagination to come up with things like the creation of Hezbollah, the bombing of first the embassy and then the Marine barracks and our departure from Lebanon and the conclusions that I believe were drawn in Damascus and Teheran that affect the Middle East to this day.  There is no way I could foresee that.

Long prologue to say that I can certainly tick off some of the things that I think would be likely, which would be a spiraling back into major sectarian violence.  But very likely on an even larger scale, because we would not have the option of, you know, of the surge on a scale that this time around could bring in the neighbors in a more direct way.  Iran, Turkey, the Arabs in some form.  Al Qaeda would obviously seek to regain its purchase here.  You can have lots of interesting discussions on what al Qaeda is really seeking and it's probably a lot of things.  But I believe that fundamental to al Qaeda's aims is to have a lasting base within the Arab world.  And that they will – it’s one of the reasons I think they are fighting so hard here.  They would definitely make every effort to get it back and this time, I'm not sure I'd see the mechanism whereby they could be dislodged again.  So we might be faced with an enduring, significant al Qaeda presence here, possibly in conditions that would allow them to, out of Iraq, concentrate on strategic planning.

But again, you know, I'm not going to sit here and say: and by God these things are going to happen.  I don't know.  But my own experience has taught me that when you are dealing with issues of this magnitude, it's probably more a question of what you're unable to imagine than what you are.

And again, you know, just coming back to the first point on what could happen in terms of intracommunal violence, I -- all of you are too young to remember but the images of Carantina in Beirut.  That was the Shia enclave in east Beirut that was, over time, in '76, laid siege to, reduced and eliminated, with enormous loss of life and the images were appalling.  Tal Zaatar also, the Palestinian camps in east Beirut, the siege of Tal Zaatar is something -- Americans have forgotten about it decades ago.  Believe me, Arabs  remember it.

You know, the potential is here, when you look at the map of Beirut, if Carantina and Tal Zaatar were ugly, you know, what if it was the battle for Adamia?  I don't know what the population of Adamia is, the Sunni population of Adamia is now, but that's a lot of people.  And I'm not saying there is going to be a battle of Adamia under any circumstances.  But it's the kinds of things that I think you've got to wrap your mind around.

QUESTION:  What do you see as the trajectory we're on now in terms of security and, I guess, political progress?  Are you feeling more comfortable each day you're here now?  Are things improving or --

AMBASSADOR CROCKER:  First, I've been here a year.  I never feel comfortable.  I've got a very long list of things to worry about.  But all of that said, I think things are on a generally positive trajectory.  As I said in September, you know, the slope is not great but I think the line is in the right direction.

In March, I think the angle of that slope has increased a bit.  Still in the right direction.  I think there are more positives now, certainly, than in September really at every level.  Security, obviously, but also politically and economically.  I mean, it is, I think, still very fragile, certainly not what I would call sustainable security by any means but moving in the right direction.

QUESTION:  In some of the charts we were given yesterday, though, just do show in the last few months a kind of a plateau.  There was a steep decline in the levels of violence, this sort of thing, and a plateau or even a little rising in some of the indicators.  I mean, is that --

AMBASSADOR CROCKER:  Yes.  I mean, we all see the -- I see the same charts.  The challenge obviously is to find a way to continue to drive down the persistent violence, because it has flattened.  I don't know what the uptick we're seeing now necessarily means.

QUESTION:  I guess my question would be: do you think we're at a level where violence is low enough where Iraqi politicians can make the progress we've been asking them to make for a long time?

AMBASSADOR CROCKER:  Yes, I do think we've got an environment now where again; political, economic spheres, things can now move in a way that you simply couldn't before.  As you know, the Iraqis are -- they are widely known in the region as -- and always have been, as being the toughest guys on the block.  Certainly a problem during the Saddam years.  It's a problem when some of the tough guys are on the side of the fight against us.  But it's also what may ultimately be the salvation of this whole endeavor that Iraqis carry on under circumstances which much of the rest of the world might throw up their hands and flee for safer climes.  So, you know, I think that even when you have a really bad episode like that twin bombing in Karradah last week, you don't have an immediate chain reaction of counterviolence or a big uptick in angry people going out and taking it out -- it didn't happen at all, at all, at all.  And the political discourse carries on.

So I think we may have reached the point where, you know, we can expect to see Iraq's leaders grapple with increasingly complex issues.  That's what they say they can do, that's certainly the way we're pushing them.  I do think that if this level of security can be sustained, there's a good chance of it.

QUESTION:  I was struck in your list enumerating the possible downside risks, that you didn't mention the fracturing of the country.  You talked about intracommunal violence but not a breakup.  Is that -- do you not see the danger of that?

AMBASSADOR CROCKER:  Well, that could be an abstraction, almost, that wouldn't in itself have a lot of meaning in the context of what would actually be going on on the ground.  If you're meaning a -- you're meaning as a sort of a legal or juridical breakup --

QUESTION:  I'm thinking first of all a Kurdish spinoff.

AMBASSADOR CROCKER:  Well, that's, I think, we're thinking the same things.  When I talked about a Turkish -- the Turks coming in, it would be --

QUESTION:  As a result -- as a response to that?

AMBASSADOR CROCKER:  It would be because of that kind of development.  You know, for all of the artificiality of their creation, state boundaries in this part of the world have a remarkable endurance. I'm just not sure that the legal boundaries would have much meaning in those cases anymore.

QUESTION:  I persist in being fascinated by Kurds, having spent three months in Sulaimaniya and elsewhere right as the war was beginning.  What do you make of the Kurdish experiment?  You know, the oil deals, their own army, the relative tolerance, at least on the KDP side, for the PKK, and that seems to be against everybody's interests.  What are they getting away with?

AMBASSADOR CROCKER:  Well, everything about Iraq is complicated and this is a very complicated issue, too.  I was up there on Wednesday in Irbil and -- very interesting day, because this was the convening of the Arab Parliamentary Union's annual gathering.  And, of course, the first thing that struck me since I hadn't been up there for a couple of months, is you've got the Iraqi flag everywhere now, the modified Iraqi flag.

And then just being at the event and talking to the Arab representatives, a number of whom I've come to know over the years, you know, it’s the first major Arab gathering in Iraq since 2003.  And a lot of conversation about: well, it's time that we Arabs got involved again with our Iraqi brother.  And, what I didn't expect, I guess, going up for that, the kind of the subtext was Kurdistan as part of the Iraqi state.  Massoud was there as well as President Talibani.  The Kurds were very proud to be the hosts for this and to have that engagement with the Arabs and very happy to do it in an Iraqi context.  They were -- as you know, they were actively engaged to find a solution on the flag issue that worked for everybody.  In part so that this could go forward.

So you know, I -- I have been around the Kurdish issue a long time, too.  And the dream may be in the hearts of Kurds everywhere for an independent Kurdish state.  My pretty strong sense is that the Kurds of Iraq realize that their future is -- lies within a federal Iraq.  That dreams are great to dream, but reality as it is is a pretty good thing against the backdrop of their history.  And I see them, you know, again like the flag compromise, looking for ways to make this work.

On the oil, frankly I think the contracts have been a problem.  I also think they're not going to get them where it is they really want to go.  Given the fact that the super giant fields in the south are what provides the real input for Iraq's budgets, that 17 percent that the Kurds have been getting of the overall budget allocation is what's really important to them.  And an oil industry in Iraq that is steadily increasing production steadily increases their revenues.

But you are not going to get that until you get to comprehensive hydrocarbon legislation because you are not going to get the majors in here without those kinds of legal protections.  So the hydrocarbon package is -- you know, is tough for all sorts of reasons.  But I think you're going to see the Iraqis, all Iraqis including Kurds, return to this and keep returning to it until they finally hammer something out.

QUESTION:  What did you make of the showdown over the budget where the Prime Minister said you can't have 17 percent and the Kurds won the day?

AMBASSADOR CROCKER:  Politics.  You know, were you here then?  I mean, that was fun.  Well, it would have been fun if maybe I had been doing your job, kind of being mixed up in the middle of it, but it was sure fascinating as the pieces of that deal were put together between the provincial powers, amnesty and budget.  You know, all kinds of deals, counter-deals, collapsed deals, threats, walkouts, alliances, realignments, it is the first time, I think, that the National Assembly has really kind of worked as -- the Council of Representatives has worked as a council of representatives.  Which is what makes me again cautiously optimistic that even though there is substantial violence we are now at a level where people can not be totally consumed by it and get into some of these deals.

You know, the Iraqi Council of Representatives is going to be a pretty lively affair.  The speaker up in Irbil had a lot of fun pointing out to his colleagues that, unlike most of them, he presided over a parliament that actually mattered.  So, you know, we'll see when they get back into session, because now they've got to figure out what they do with provincial powers after Adil Abd al-Mahdi’s veto.  And then, you know, there is an electoral law that is being developed and you've got the election process moving ahead.  There's going to be a lot that's going on.

QUESTION:  One issue we wanted to ask about is we had heard from some other American officials earlier that during this time when the budget debate was a little more contentious, when it was going on and they saw this as -- a dynamic emerging that was no longer as much a Sunni-Shia tension in this country as a Arab-Kurd rift and I wanted to see what you feel about that.

AMBASSADOR CROCKER:  Yeah, there clearly was a period in which, you know, that was how a lot of people were defining the dynamic; we may have been a little too quick to hang a label on this.  You know, I think again it’s politics.  You know, that said, there is a persistent -- reasonably persistent sense of, you know, well, the Kurds are overreaching, you know, they want all the cake and they want to eat it and have it and so forth and so on.  Well, so does everybody else.

But actually fissures, shifting alliances, I mean, you still have the so-called gang of four: the two principal Shia parties, the two Kurdish parties, and they continued periodic meetings throughout this whole process.  Then you have the agreement signed between the Islamic party and the two Kurdish parties at the end of the year.  Which, you know, they've set up some subcommittees working on Ninawa and so forth, so that's there.  At one point, I think it's less now but still there, kind of a Kurdish non-Dawa Shia meeting of the minds against Dawa and the Prime Minister. So it's all kind of -- depends on the issue --

QUESTION:  But you don't think their participation in the government is fragile right now?  There is a (inaudible) they would boycott the way the Sunnis have or something like that?

AMBASSADOR CROCKER:  No.  Not right now, I don't see it.  Anything can happen, but that's not -- that's not at all the direction that I see right now.  Those kinds of tensions were much higher, I think --

QUESTION:  A few months ago?

AMBASSADOR CROCKER:  Yeah, in December.

QUESTION:  I just want to circle back on dreams are nice to dream, because that's been the refrain on this topic for many years.  And under the -- you know, while people are saying that, there's a lot happening on the ground that actually goes toward building the dream.  And I guess I'm -- the question is where -- at what point does the central government or maybe even the United States feel like it has to blow the whistle on the Kurds and get them to stop actually building the dream on the ground even though they say that they're only dreaming?

AMBASSADOR CROCKER:  Well, again, it's Iraq, all of Iraq, not just Iraqi Kurdistan.  It's a constant push, pull, prod, do more of this, do less of that, cut that out entirely.  I mean, that's just the way it is.

You know, with respect though, to the Kurds, I think they are within the lines here.  I don't know if you had a chance to talk to some of the national-level leaders here, but you hear some very pragmatic things.  Such as, oh, say that somehow we could become independent without triggering a major military response, which is highly unlikely that they could avoid that, in their own assessment.  Then what?  Then you've got this little, land-locked state with four distinctly hostile neighbors: Iraq, Iran, Turkey and Syria.  And, yeah, they would be real hostile under those circumstances.

So how do you export, how do you import, how do you move?  This is not what I am saying; this is what I've had Kurds tell me.  That they would get starved out in very short order, assuming that they lasted long enough to get starved out.

So, you know, I also think that the Turkish actions were a reminder that it's good to have the strategic depth of the rest of the Iraqi state.  I was in Istanbul for that neighbors’ conference in early November when passions were running really high.  And I remember Prime Minister Maliki making a strong public defense on the sovereignty of Iraq and the need to deal with these issues by peaceful means and no one should resort to force, so forth and so on.  No, I think the Kurds took some real comfort in that.

QUESTION:  Can you give us a sense of what you're likely to tell Congress?

AMBASSADOR CROCKER:  No.

QUESTION:  Okay.  Could you -- we were actually just talking about what you see as Sadr's ambitions at this point and whether you see a solidification or a fraying of his ceasefire or where that's going?

AMBASSADOR CROCKER:  That's a really great question, because again, things to look at moving forward, that's a big one.  His message to the faithful last week, you know, that he was going to be devoting his time to his religious studies and looked to his followers to show appropriate responsibility in managing the affairs of the movement, not exactly a surprise in terms of his behavior.  Because the whole year I've been here, he's been in Iran, essentially. I would not invite you to draw any connection between those two things.

He has been distant from his own movement.  Now he has kind of made that public and official.  And it is going to be very interesting to see now what effect that has on the various elements and individuals who make up the movement.  I don't know what it's going to be but I would expect it's going to be something, and you may see jockeying going on by various figures to try to assume a dominant role in all of this.

However it plays out, it's going to be very important for Iraq's future.

QUESTION:  Are you talking about people within the organization or outside of the organization?

AMBASSADOR CROCKER:  Well, it will be both.  But my particular reference was within the organization.

The Sadr trend really speaks to something pretty important in Iraq.  You saw that when Muhammad Sadiq al-Sadr founded this movement in the '90s.  You know, Saddam and his armies and services notwithstanding, that really caught fire because it, you know, it sort of spoke to an Iraqi nationalist, Arab nationalist, populist sentiment.

You know, sorry to keep coming back to Lebanon, but it's relevant.  Very much as Imam Musa Sadr did in Lebanon in the late 1970s, when the Harakat al-Mahrumin, the Movement of the Deprived, became the Amal Movement and then of course was also the movement out of which Hezbollah grew.  And, you know, for those who thought -- who were opposed to Saddam, didn't like the Iranians much either, found the Dawa party maybe just a little too intellectual, you know, this really just galvanized them.

And the force of that spirit, we certainly saw, you know, in 2003, 2004 here.  You know, now it's a little less clear.  You know, the son of Mohammed Sadiq al-Sadr, who kind of was raising Arab-ism against Iran, and now Moqtada is in Iran, what kind of signal does that send around?  But yet that sentiment is still there.

There are a lot of Shia who do not feel they are part of the process.  They don't identify with Dawa or the Supreme Council, may not think they've got a flag to follow right now.  But, again, something may emerge.  So it's going to be important.

QUESTION:  Is it clear to you that he wants to be a political leader or will he be content to be a cleric?

AMBASSADOR CROCKER:  You know, I cannot begin to speak to the motives of someone I've never met and he is obviously a complicated individual.  It may be that he's simply thinking extremely long term.

QUESTION:  Right.

AMBASSADOR CROCKER:  He wants to have unimpeachable religious credentials and then step back into the political arena with that greater weight.  It may be that he is simply opting out of it.  Maybe he hasn't decided or doesn't know.

But for someone who is actively focused on politics to sort of exile himself for a pretty important year --

QUESTION:  Do you think that's hurt his movement or helped it?

AMBASSADOR CROCKER:  Well, it's -- I don't think it's helped it in the sense -- I just think there is a sort of a groping for direction, where are we going here?  But that said, he did announce the ceasefire.  He did renew it.  I think that's a recognition of political reality.  One thing that's -- you know, the Sunni awakening, of course, has been the big, the big story.  But it's interesting to me how, you know, after the Shabania attacks in Karbala at the end of August, it was just a few days after that that he announced a ceasefire.  And the popular reaction against Jaish al-Mahdi which clearly precipitated this ceasefire announcement, you know, was striking.  We just had southern Shia saying, enough, you know, we do not want this.

QUESTION:  Yeah, were you surprised by the renewal or not surprised?

AMBASSADOR CROCKER:  I was, I don't want to sound like I have the ability to predict anything, including tomorrow's weather, but I would have been surprised if it was not renewed.  I think you've got a political climate here that is maybe part of a virtuous spiral, if you want to be so bold, that does not favor violence.  And again, when you take away one part of it, the -- you know, when the Sunnis turned on al Qaeda, you know, then the Shia feel far less threatened and then Jaish al-Mahdi and its related organizations becomes much less necessary and then you can get a reaction like you saw, I think, from Shia after the Shabania.  The challenge is just to keep it moving in the right way.

QUESTION:  Maybe you can help me understand something.  I've spent -- I have limited vision here.  I've spent the past year pretty much in eastern Baghdad going around with soldiers and watching them get banged up pretty good, all Shia.

If when I talk to the commanders there now and ask them why, if things are better, they think things are better, they say well, it's because of the surge.  And if I talk to soldiers, every soldier pretty much says the same thing which is: that's nonsense, it all has to do with al-Sadr.  So I've got these two extremes.

AMBASSADOR CROCKER:  You're talking about our commanders and our soldiers?

QUESTION:  Yeah, yeah, yeah.  So the commanders say it's the surge, it's working.  The soldiers say, that's nonsense, you know, we're still getting blown up and banged up and it's just because of the ceasefire.  So I don't know, maybe you can guide me through this a little bit?

AMBASSADOR CROCKER:  Boy, is that a sucker question.

QUESTION:  Well, it's an honest question.  I don't know how to answer it.

AMBASSADOR CROCKER:  Look, again, it's complicated.  I think it's both of those factors and probably some others that may be less direct or even less obvious.  You know, unquestionably in my view, the surge has made a huge difference.  I do not think you would have had the Sunni flip without it.  You know, remember, there were efforts back a couple three years ago on the part of some of the tribes to turn against al Qaeda and they got just nailed. 

Well, again, it's a combination of a lot of things.  You've had a few more years of al Qaeda excesses against the Sunnis.  It always helps in these conflicts if your enemy makes a lot of bad mistakes and al Qaeda certainly did in wearing out its welcome, so that contributed.  But I do not think you would have had anything of the speed and skill that we saw in Anbar and into Baghdad if it wasn't their knowledge, there and in the city, that we had their backs.  That, you know, they were not going up against al Qaeda alone; we were there.

QUESTION:  Now, flip it to the other side of the --

AMBASSADOR CROCKER:  I'm getting there, because it goes back to my point on the Shabania.  I think that then the other side sees that: well, this surge thing has put al Qaeda, our arch enemy, very much on the defensive, we're not under the kind of threat from them or from the Sunnis who harbored them, because they're in a different place, I'm not at all sure that we're going to invite them over for tea any time soon and maybe don't trust them an inch over the longer run.  But right now, this is a much less threatening dynamic. 

Because again, the Sadr ceasefire I don't think came about because he just woke up one morning and decided he wanted to have a ceasefire.  I think he recognized that he was running out of popular support for continuing Jaish al-Mahdi violence, again, directed against whomever.

QUESTION:  Including violence not against Iraqis but against American troops?

AMBASSADOR CROCKER:  Clearly, that's come down too.  So, yeah.  I think -- so these things are all interrelated.  And plus, look, the Iraqis who have hung on here -- you know, I don't talk to as many as you do, I'm sure -- but it's pretty consistent, Shia or Sunni, just about every single person I've talked to going around town is: we're sick of this, you know, we want a decent life.  We want the schools to be open, we want the power to work, we want job opportunities, we don't want any more threats to our security and our families' securities.  We want life to be better for us and mainly we want it to be better for our children.

That's part of this, too.  And, you know, maybe you've got to go through some period of real bad times to get to the point where people say: no, we're just not going to do this anymore and we're not going to support the people who are doing it.  It's not because we love the Americans; we just see the chance here for a life that's going to be a whole lot better than it was the last couple years.  So it's probably all those things.

QUESTION:  If you -- it's fair to say that through the three main components of the reduction of violence; the ceasefire, the Sunni flip -- which is a fun new term I've just learned today, it's so much easier to explain than the awakening, but anyway -- and the surge, right?  Now, the surge is partly out the door, it's going to be completely out the door by the middle of July.

Can you risk losing the benefits that this effort has achieved by having a further drawdown of the American forces anytime soon?

AMBASSADOR CROCKER:  You know, as you know, the drawdown is on track, troops are moving even as we speak, to be down to basically pre-surge levels by July.  Now, that will be a real interesting moment.  July 2008, numbers of troops roughly what they were January 2007.  So you have equivalency there.

Then look at conditions in the country, July 2008 versus January 2007.  That gives you some measure of what the surge and all the other factors; some directly related, some indirectly related, some maybe not related, but what all of it together has actually meant.  Same number of troops, so what's the difference in conditions?  And I hope very much and expect very much that it will be at least as substantial as it is today.

Certainly then a moment, it would seem to me, for some consolidation and reflection on where you go next.  Because that to me, that time in July when we are back to pre-surge levels, that's when you can say: this is what the surge has done, this is what we're sustaining right now, let's really think through where we go next and when we go there.

QUESTION:  How long do you expect that moment will be?

AMBASSADOR CROCKER:  I couldn't begin to tell you.  And I'm not being cute here; I just -- because, you know, in trying to make these judgments -- you know, it's been called battlefield geometry, it's really political military calculus -- because it's not simply assessing what the conditions are in a place where we are in terms of sectarian tensions, capabilities of the Iraqi forces, availability of services and employment opportunities.  It's all of that, but then you have to try and think through and how does it all change when we're not there, because it will change.  People will, you know, we're going to -- our absence can be as substantial as our presence.  The various parties are going to reposition and we have to try and be able to think through how they're likely to do that.

So, you know, it's that process that -- where I think the emphasis has to be, not in saying that we can do it in 10, 30 or 60 days.  This will be a really important baseline to me, at least.  This is where 18 months got you.  Same number of troops, this is the change in conditions.  What does that then tell you about where you go next?

QUESTION:  I'm sorry if I'm asking the same question you just asked -- I might have missed something.  But what's an appropriate amount of time for you to figure out the answer to that question?

AMBASSADOR CROCKER:  I can't give you --

QUESTION:  Is that what you were just saying?

AMBASSADOR CROCKER:  Yes --

QUESTION:  I'll ask you another easy one, just as we pack up and get out of here.  Who killed Imad Mugniyah?

AMBASSADOR CROCKER:  Actually, I have no idea.  But as someone that he tried to kill, because I was in the embassy on April 18, 1983, if there ever was a sonofabitch who deserved killing, it was him.

QUESTION:  No thoughts on who pulled that off, car bomb in the middle of Damascus?

AMBASSADOR CROCKER:  Yeah, and what, a couple hundred yards from Syrian military intelligence headquarters?  I could -- I could and do speculate.  My wife, who is here with me and was with me in the embassy in Beirut on April 18, 1983, we have a lot of fun with that in the evenings.  But, you know, I really don't know.

QUESTION:  Just couldn't resist, sorry.  Got an alibi?

QUESTION:  It always comes back to Lebanon.

AMBASSADOR CROCKER:  And, you know, look, I mean, it comes back to Lebanon in a very major way.  It comes back to what happened in Lebanon in '81 and '82.  I mean, what you got today, not just in Lebanon;  Syria, Iran, Israel, the Palestinian Territories, a lot of things got set in motion with (inaudible).

QUESTION:  What was the historical precedent for Lebanon, then?  Let's go back (inaudible)?  Like if we were having this conversation then, what would the precedent setter be?

AMBASSADOR CROCKER:  For --

QUESTION:  In other words, if we were in Lebanon right now, this period but then, and we were having a discussion and say, well, it goes back -- pay attention to this to understand this moment in Lebanon, what would that precedent be?

AMBASSADOR CROCKER:  Well, my answer to that would be that you don't have to look back very far, you don't have to roam around very much.  You'd simply look back five years and stay in Lebanon.  You know, the -- how 1975 developed, what caused that civil war to begin, and then how the players reacted, particularly Syria and then subsequently Iran after the '79 revolution.  That would have been a near rather than far history lesson.  And, you know, we actually discussed it some at the time.

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