Leave your feedback Share Copy URL https://www.pbs.org/newshour/show/presidents-baghdad-trip-sparks-u-s-iraq-policy-debate Email Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Pinterest Tumblr Share on Facebook Share on Twitter Transcript President Bush Wednesday hailed efforts to build a democratic Iraq, but called for "patience" as U.S. troops continue to fight the war on terror. Analysts Zbigniew Brzezinski and Walter Russell Mead discuss the direction of U.S. foreign policy. Read the Full Transcript Notice: Transcripts are machine and human generated and lightly edited for accuracy. They may contain errors. JIM LEHRER: And now reaction to what the president said about Iraq from two analysts who have been with us since the war began: former National Security Adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski, he's now a counselor at the Center for Strategic and International Studies; and Walter Russell Mead, the Henry Kissinger Senior Fellow for U.S. Foreign Policy at the Council on Foreign Relations, author of "Special Providence: American Policy and How it Changed the World."I talked to them earlier today.Gentlemen, welcome.Dr. Brzezinski, the president ended his news conference saying, "Going to war in Iraq was worth it. It was necessary, and it will succeed." Do you agree?ZBIGNIEW BRZEZINSKI, Former National Security Adviser to President Carter: No, I do not. I don't think it was worth it. I don't think it is succeeding, and I think we ought to think very seriously as to how we can extract still some degree of success from what, obviously, has been a major misadventure. JIM LEHRER: You did not hear the president say anything today that gave you confidence that success was still possible under his way of doing it? ZBIGNIEW BRZEZINSKI: Well, the president opened his press conference by make a statement, which I suspect most Americans didn't quite fully interpret correctly. This is what he said: "I have just returned from Baghdad. I was inspired to be able to visit the capital of a free and democratic Iraq."Now, this is what the president actually visited. This is an aerial map of Baghdad and, within it, the viewers can see a small spot. That is the so-called Green Zone, a fortified American fortress housing the American embassy, the American high command, and all the major institutions of the Iraqi, as he said, free and democratic government, in an American fortress.This is worse than in the bad days of Vietnam, when the South Vietnamese regime was still operating from its own palaces, had its own army and so forth. We do not have in Iraq a free and democratic government that is functioning.