In Washington, Iraqi PM Focuses on Security Steps

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• MARGARET WARNER:

  When bombs go off in Baghdad and other cities in Iraq, it is now Iraqi soldiers, not American forces, who rush to the scene. The handoff was a major milestone in returning control of Iraq to the people who live there, while keeping 130,000 U.S. troops in the background for now.

  But when Iraqis celebrated the June 30th withdrawal of U.S. forces from the cities, U.S. officials were stunned to hear Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki tout the milestone on television by likening it to the Iraqi revolt against the British military occupation in 1920.

  REND AL-RAHIM FRANCKE, former Iraqi ambassador to the U.S.: He wants to bolster his position by taking an ultra sort of hard line, the movement of U.S. troops.

• MARGARET WARNER:

  Rend Francke, a former Iraqi ambassador to the U.S., says Maliki is playing to a domestic political audience in advance of next January's presidential election.

• REND AL-RAHIM FRANCKE:

  It's important to show that he is the strong man of Iraq who is ridding Iraq of occupation troops, getting rid of the occupiers, getting them out of the cities, and restoring sovereignty to Iraq, and giving the Iraqi army and the Iraqi security forces full control over the country as a measure of sovereignty.

• MARGARET WARNER:

  Christopher Hill is the new U.S. ambassador in Iraq.

  CHRISTOPHER HILL, U.S. ambassador to Iraq: I think, if you're an American and you've seen what our troops go through every day, the fact that we've lost thousands of lives, that aspect of Iraq domestic politics is, frankly, a little hard to take for a lot of Americans.

  But in so doing, why was he doing it? He was trying to tell the public: This is an important victory. And like all great victories, there will be sacrifice. And we need to steel ourselves, we need to brace ourselves for the sacrifice to follow.