Leave your feedback Share Copy URL https://www.pbs.org/newshour/show/senators-discuss-new-iraq-military-strategy Email Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Pinterest Tumblr Share on Facebook Share on Twitter Transcript President Bush unveiled a new Iraq stragey that emphasizes security by increasing the number of U.S. troops in the region. Senator Jim Webb, D-Va., and Senatory John Thune, R-S.D., discuss the ramifications of the President's new plan. Read the Full Transcript Notice: Transcripts are machine and human generated and lightly edited for accuracy. They may contain errors. GWEN IFILL: Start with you, Senator Thune. Thank you both for joining us. We just heard the president lay out what he said is the path to victory but we heard Senator Durbin call it a path to escalation. Which would you say it is and do you think the president's plan can work?SEN. JOHN THUNE, (R) SD: Well, I think we have to give it a chance, Gwen. Clearly what we're doing there hasn't been working. Obviously since February of last year when the golden mosque in Samarra was bombed, the sectarian violence has gotten out of control. There has been a lot of killing and clearly to get that under control we are going to have to take a different direction here and I think what the president laid out tonight is something obviously that we are going to have an opportunity to react to on the Senate Armed Services Committee on Friday because there will be – there will be hearings held but he has put a plan forward that gets the Iraqis more into the fight and that is something that we have maintained all along. In order for us to be successful we have to have more involvement by the Iraqi military, the political leadership in that country has to be willing to take on al-Sadr and the militias and the president's speech tonight I think has laid out a plan that involves the Iraqis, puts them in the lead and hopefully will enable us to get to where we are ending the sectarian violence there and allow this government to stand up and function.