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Tavis: Christopher Shays, Republican of Connecticut, is a long-serving member of Congress and an influential member of the Government Reform Committee, where he serves as chairman of the Subcommittee on National Security. In that capacity, he was the first U.S. congressman to enter Iraq after the war had began and recently returned from his eighth trip to the region. He joins us tonight from Washington. Congressman, nice to have you on, sir.

Christopher Shays: Tavis, really nice to be on your program.

Tavis: Glad to have you here. I started the program a moment ago by mentioning that we are getting some confusing and conflicting messages about what's going on in Iraq. As I mentioned, the vice president said last week that the insurgency was in its last throes. Secretary Rumsfeld says that it may go on for years. I could go on and on and on, between Condi Rice, Secretary of State, and Rumsfeld, the Defense Department, and Chaney in the White House and--I could go on and on and on with members of Congress trying to figure this out. Tell me why that we're getting so many confusing messages about what's happening in Iraq. You've been there eight times now.

Shays: Well, one is that their definition of terms and what they mean when they say what they say, but I think our biggest problem has been that we haven't seen the kind of candor that we need to see from the administration. You're not gonna ever see Mr. Rumsfeld apologize. You're never gonna see him acknowledge where we've made mistakes. There is no administration in time of war that doesn't make mistakes, but I think it's important for people to know where we went wrong so then they can evaluate really how well we're doing today, and let me illustrate. When I went in in April of 2003, I saw one condition. When I went in in August, I saw it not as good, and when I went in December of that year, I thought it was even worse. There was a reason. We disbanded their army. We disbanded their police. We disbanded their border patrol. We disbanded their government, um, and we left this huge void, which we were not capable of filling. And when I was traveling with nongovernment organizations throughout Iraq, outside the umbrella of the military, Iraqis, not knowing I was a member of Congress, but thought I was evaluating these problems, said, "Why are you putting my father, my uncle out of work? Why can't he serve in the army?" And they said, "Let us guard the hospitals," and so on, and that was really poignant for me, because the first death we had in the Fourth Congressional District was a soldier who was guarding a hospital, and to this day, I think if only an Iraqi had guarded that hospital, that Iraqi probably wouldn't have been killed. There would have probably been a whole different way of dealing with us had we started out that way.

Tavis: When you said a moment ago that in times of war, no administration, certainly not this one, is going to come out and admit the mistakes it makes-- Although everyone knows that none of us is perfect. We're not human and divine. We're just human. Mistakes are made. Nobody wants to admit 'em. Let me ask you whether or not--

Shays: But let me just say, I think other administrations have. I don't think Abraham Lincoln ever claimed that everything they did was right. I think, you know, we've made some mistakes. I'm getting a new general here, we're gonna do something here, and I--That's all. I just think that acknowledging our--This is my bottom-line point. We were at one point. We went way deep in a hole, and now we're getting out of that hole. If you realize how deep the hole was that we dug, you'd say, "My God, we're making a lot of progress."

Tavis: Let me ask you--I'm glad you jumped in and offered that clarification. Let me ask, though, the clarification notwithstanding, whether or not there is more value, greater value, that is to say, in acknowledging mistakes later, after a certain point in time than acknowledging mistakes now, and I'm only asking that because I can hear in the back of my brain the administration saying that if we acknowledge mistakes while we're in this, it fuels the insurgency, yada-yada-yada-yada-yada, so if they ever do acknowledge it, it may come in a book somewhere down the road, but you don't want to put this stuff out in the discourse while we're in the middle of fighting this war on terrorism. I don't want to speak for them, but how do you respond to some kind of thought like that?

Shays: Well, I'll tell you this. When I went to visit with the Iraqi trainees and police in Jordan--They were being trained in Jordan. They--I spoke to about 200 of them. They looked very angry at me, and I thought, you know, here is this guy talking to them. It's their country, and here we are. We've disrupted it tremendously, and I started out by saying, you know, "We've made some real mistakes. Many of you have told us we never should've disbanded the army, the police, or the border patrol, and we did, and that was a mistake," and their heads nodded, and they started to smile, and they started to listen to me, and I had credibility with them, and I just think that honesty brings credibility, and from credibility, you have conviction. But if people aren't believing the president, if they think that everything he's saying now is a spin, then he loses his capability to persuade.

Tavis: So he's giving a big speech tomorrow--giving a big speech tomorrow at Fort Bragg on Tuesday. What are we to make of whatever he's going to say? Are we going to get more spin in this speech from your perspective?

Shays: Well, I mean, I think a lot of it won't be spin, but I think people will think it's spin because of that lack of humility, particularly on the part of Defense Secretary Rumsfeld, but I think he will say that we have seen a tremendous success in training new police, new border patrol, new military, that that has been a success, that they are now out fighting, they have the equip--outside fighting, they have the equipment that they need, and that we're--every day, we're training more and more of them, and they're assuming more of the responsibility. I think he can say that with a tremendous amount of credibility. I think he can say that the elections are huge, that when women were telling their husbands and their sons and their fathers they need to come out and vote and, if they weren't gonna come out and vote, they were going to vote without them. And you saw, really, almost a flawless election. When you see the Shiahs and the Kurds reaching out to the Sunnis and recognizing that they need them--Now the Sunnis are having a hard time joining--And let me just make this point. The problem for the Sunnis is they had 100% of the control. They think if they compromise 50%, then they should be allowed 50% of the control. They don't realize they're only 20% of the population, and so that's where the hang-up is. I mean, the Sunnis think they are willing to compromise, but they're not willing to compromise enough, in my judgment, based on their population.

Tavis: One of the reasons, as you know, the president is giving this big speech tomorrow about Iraq is because it coincides with the date of the one-year anniversary of us turning over--the U.S., that is, turning over sovereignty, giving back sovereignty to the Iraqi government. That's the reason. That's the background, the backstory, as they'd say, for a speech like this. As you mentioned earlier, though, or intimated earlier, the president's poll numbers are way down with regard to what Americans think and believe about the insurgency and whether or not it's growing or dying. That said, what does it mean from your vantage point, that we turned this over a year ago? So what? What does it mean?

Shays: Well, first off, turning--That was the most important decision that the president made. When in June of last year we said Iraqis will now control, we took away from Defense the interaction with the government. They still had the interaction with the military. We gave it to the State Department. Negroponte became our person. Mr. Bremer left. That was a very significant change, and people almost instantly recognized that Iraqis were now making these decisions, so that part was huge, and had we not done that, we'd be in a much worse condition today if we hadn't done that.

Tavis: How do we deal with the fact, the reality in fact, that so much of the insurgency is actually geared toward Iraqis, not even Americans there? There are a number of Iraqis who are rising up against other Iraqis to make whatever points they want to make. What's the U.S. do about that reality?

Shays: Well, I mean, one of the horrible things is that we didn't train--Besides disbanding the police and the border patrol and the military, we didn't train them soon enough. We were slow in starting that process, and then we didn't give them the armament. I mean, I--I don't cry often, but I weeped when these insurgents got into a police station and went room to room and knocked off policemen who we didn't even arm. And so, you know, we're starting to see that kind of thing happen, and thank God. I don't think I answered your question, though. Your question was something a little different. What was your--

Tavis: No. That's fair. That's fair enough. That's fair enough. That's a decent answer. I want to move, though, 'cause my time is limited here. Let me move to--Let me move to one of the other countries that the president put in this axis of evil. As you well know, just days ago, Iran elected a new president, whose name I can't pronounce just yet, but I'm working on it--Heh heh. But Iran has a new president now who is rather conservative, religiously speaking. How do you view what's about to happen in Iran, since this is, again, one of the countries that President Bush lists on his axis of evil?

Shays: Well, first off, it is--comes as close as we can see out there to a democracy, and that's very important, and the Iranians have the right to elect whomever they want. What I think is huge in the Middle East, though, is that you saw elections in the West Bank, you see elections in Israel, you saw elections in Iraq, and now you're seeing people saying in Egypt and in Saudi Arabia, "Why can't we have elections?" Then you're seeing people power in Lebanon responding to the United States focus on democracy, telling the Syrians that they have to lea--take their troops out, and you've seen that. I mean, these are stories that the president needs to be talking about tomorrow.

Tavis: Let me ask you a question--In a quick 45 seconds here, like or loathe Christopher Shays, one of the things that everybody has to admit is you are one of the most independent-thinking members in all of Congress. What's the price you pay for that routinely?

Shays: I pay very little price in terms of my effectiveness, but, you know, I might not become a chairman of a committee, so it's a personal price, but it's not a price in terms of my doing my job.

Tavis: Is it worth it?

Shays: Oh, absolutely. No, you know, I use what I call my "community meeting" test. If I can't justify something to my community meeting, I'd better--in a community meeting, I better not do it, and if my inaction can't be justified, I better take action, and it's a great guidepost, and it makes me feel centered and it connects me to my district.

Tavis: Well, Christopher Shays, I'm always glad to have you on the program. Thank you for coming on. Thanks for the insight. I appreciate it.

Shays: Thank you so much.

Tavis: All the best to you. Up next on this program, actor Isaiah Washington from the hit medical drama "Grey's Anatomy." I love the show on ABC. You've checked it out, so we'll talk to Isaiah in just a second and get some information from him on how he just recently discovered his African roots in specific detail. A conversation with Isaiah Washington in a moment. Stay with us.