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Tavis: Richard Haass is president of the Council on Foreign Relations. During President Bush's first term, he served as principal advisor to then Secretary of State Colin Powell. He was also senior director of Near-East affairs under President Bush 41. His most recent book is now out in paperback. It's called 'The Opportunity, America's Moment to Alter History's Course.' He joins us tonight from New York. Mr. Haass, nice to have you here, sir.

Richard Haass: Thank you for having me.

Tavis: Let me start, if I might, with some news of today. First of all, we all know President Bush went to the Pentagon today, met with Pentagon officials. He said in a brief press conference that whatever we're going to hear from him with regard to the Iraq Study Group isn't going to come for a few weeks. Let me start with that first bit of news. The president did, in fact, go to the Pentagon today, and made it clear that whatever we're going to hear from him will include a foreign policy component. Your thoughts?

Haass: Yeah, I think what's happening is the administration is finding out that putting together a strategy is taking longer than they thought. In part, there's no terribly good options. Also, almost every idea anyone can think of has, has clear drawbacks, or people pushing against it. Plus you've also now got a new Secretary Of Defense coming on board, and the president very much wants him to participate in this deliberation. That's why I think essentially all this is being pushed off till some time in January.

Tavis: Before I move specifically to the Iraq Study Group, it's impossible to talk about the president going to the Pentagon without discussing the other news of today, which is that we now hear that there will be an official request of more troops in Iraq and Afghanistan. How do you read that, and secondly, how should the American people read that?

Haass: Well, the fact that there's a request for more troops for Afghanistan, I actually welcome. I wish we had had more troops there some time ago. We've been doing it light all the way along, and one of the reasons things there are deteriorating is there simply isn't enough of a foreign troop presence to help this struggling government deal with all the challenges that they face.

In the case of Iraq, it's a harder case to make. It's not clear, quite honestly, that 10 or 20 or 30,000 more troops will really make a difference. That said, there is an argument the president's hearing from a lot of people that we need the troops to essentially give us some more time until all the training and all the advising kicks in. And there's also possibly a political argument here.

There's some who are saying, 'We'll try with some more troops. It probably won't make a difference, but it's important that we show that. It's important that we show we, the United States, have done everything possible to make things work. And then if they still don't work, then it's clear that the lion's share of the burden belongs on the shoulders of the Iraqis and not on ourselves.'

Tavis: But to your latter point, we need to show that we did everything we could to try to make it work. You know better than I do that to your earlier point, 20, 30,000 troops, we hear from sources who know best, is not gonna make a difference. Here you are, a former Bush official, suggesting to me your own concerns about whether or not that might do the trick.

I've read numbers as high as 300,000 to really put down this insurgency. To really put down this insurgency, the kind of thing that John McCain, presumptive Republican candidate, and others have been saying, who support this view, that, 'We need to put down this insurgency.' What's the point, then, of sending 20, 30,000 more troops if we know, pardon my English, that ain't gonna do the job?

Haass: Well, know is a little bit strong. People suggest it might do it, others suggest it won't. Quite honestly, I share, I think, a good deal of your skepticism, but none of us know for sure it won't do the job. So I think the reason is, in some ways, also to take away the argument. There are those who are saying this is all that's necessary. Well, let's try it. And if it doesn't work, then I think it makes it less difficult for the president to contemplate other options.

Right now, he's reluctant to let go of the idea that this is still going to succeed, and all that's missing is a little more American effort. Well, if that's the case, there's many people who are saying, 'Well, let's give it the extra effort. It probably won't succeed, but then at least the president will be prepared to face a reality that he's not yet prepared to accept.'

Tavis: Let me suggest this to you, and I mean this with all sincerity and with great respect. And this is not to cast aspersion on you, but to the American people I suspect watching right now, certainly to this one television interviewer, that sounds utterly ridiculous. It sound ridiculous to me to suggest - not you, I'm saying for those who believe this to suggest that we ought to spend more taxpayer money to send another 20,000 troops to Iraq to see if it might work so that we then can finally convince the only guy in Washington who thinks that this thing can succeed that we can still succeed. As a taxpayer, why shouldn't I be outraged by that very suggestion?

Haass: Well, the reason you shouldn't be outraged is that it might work, and because the costs and the consequences of failure are widely assumed, and I think correctly assumed, to be extraordinarily large.

Tavis: But that's if you assume that we haven't already failed.

Haass: Well, I think we're failing. I don't think we've necessarily failed. I'm not ready to say there's zero chance this can work. I think, again, the odds are against it. More important, I'm not the president. The President of the United States believes there's still a good chance it can work. He's going to make the decision to give it a last effort. And again, I don't think either of us can assume this has no chance of succeeding, though again I'm not gonna sit here and say I'm confident this is gonna work.

If you're asking me, somewhere in six months or so, the United States is gonna find that despite an increase in troops, if in fact we send them, the situation on the ground is continuing to unravel, and that essentially, no amount of American effort at this point is going to really turn things around. That the Iraqis simply don't have the political consensus, they simply don't have the military discipline to make this work.

Tavis: I hear your answer. Let me go back to your time as an advisor to Colin Powell. There are a lot of people, obviously, who feel that the real problem here is that we got into something we shouldn't have been in in the first place, and we got in but didn't have a strategy to exit. Got in, but didn't know how to get out. That seems abundantly clear to me and other folk right about now.

But that said, let me raise this issue with you of preemptive war, the so-called Bush Doctrine, where if we think you have something, if we think you're gonna do something to us, we hit you first. That is a doctrine that has not yet, as I see it, been debated in Congress. Shouldn't the American people have something to say about that, number one, and number two, if we don't, what does it portend for us as a country down the road if this Bush Doctrine becomes the way we engage the world for years to come?

Haass: Well, it's not clear to me we are going to engage the world this way for years to come. This experiment in Iraq has obviously proven to be pretty expensive, by any measure of the word expensive. In human life, in military terms, in economic terms. So the idea that this is gonna become a model or a recipe for what we do around the rest of the world, I would think, is probably unlikely.

Second of all, the Congress did have a chance. What's so interesting to me is when the administration went to Congress and essentially put Iraq policy to a vote, it got tremendous support from Democrats and Republicans alike. I think in the aftermath of 9/11, to be blunt, a lot of people who had doubts put those doubts aside because they were worried about somehow appearing to look weak in the aftermath of this massive terrorist attack.

Tavis: But that was also, Mr. Haass, wouldn't you admit, though, in part as it should have been? Because they believed the intelligence that their president was presenting to them.

Haass: Well, I think not everybody but most of us believed that Iraq did possess some weapons of mass destruction, chemical and biological weapons. The administration never made a plausible case or a persuasive case that Iraq was in any way connected to what happened on 9/11. And I believe when Congress voted essentially to authorize the intervention in Iraq, it wasn't based upon that Iraq had a terrorist link.

It was much more connected to weapons of mass destruction, or a general view that somehow, this would go well, and that if Iraq went well, it would help transform the entire region of the Middle East. Needless to say, that proved to have been fundamentally wrong.

Tavis: Finally, the Iraq Study Group. You've been writing about this, and talking about it, and giving speeches about it. I don't need to ask a question. Just go.

Haass: Well, I think the analysis of the group is quite powerful, and I think that's had its biggest impact. It's been devastating. It's essentially been devastating, going back to something you said before, that essentially, 'We're failing there, and that more of the same, more of current policy, is not gonna work.' Where I think the group's been much less successful is persuading people about what we should be doing.

And what you're seeing now within the administration and much more broadly is a big debate about how we go about this politically, do we side with one or another's side inside Iraq, or do we simply try to get all the people of Iraq to work together? Do we bring in the Iranians and the Syrians? Do we increase troops, do we decrease them, do we change their mission?

I think all of that is up for grabs. But the real impact, I believe, of the study group is it's essentially changed the debate. You can no longer say things are going fine, and six more months of doing exactly the same thing is gonna bring success. No one in Washington is arguing that anymore.

Tavis: So finally finally, this news today in 'The New York Times' regarding Iran and Syria. The president said very clearly, 'I'm not gonna talk to these people.' In this press conference today, he suggested that whatever he comes forth with, when he comes, is going to have a global approach to this. Our friends, our allies, are gonna have to get engaged.

He stopped, as you know, short of saying that, 'I've changed my mind about talking to Iran and Syria.' But this news is disturbing, yes, that Saudi Arabia has told the White House through Mr. Cheney of a possibility where things might not go the way we want them to go where these countries are concerned.

Haass: Well, on the question of Iran and Syria, I simply disagree with the president. I think we should be willing to talk to them. I can't guarantee it'll work, but it may, and it's not as though the current situation looks great by ignoring to them. What the Saudis are doing is essentially sending a powerful warning. They're saying, 'If you Americans simply pull the plug and walk away, or if you Americans decide to support the Shi'a majority and essentially go against the Sunni minority, we, the Saudis, and others are going to help our Sunni brothers.'

So what you're looking at, potentially, is not simply a civil war inside Iraq, but a regional war. And I think what the Saudis have done is done the proverbial shot across America's bow and said, 'You had better think twice before you leave the Sunni minority inside Iraq to its fate. 'Cause we will get involved.' And obviously then if they get involved, some of Iraq's other neighbors will get involved.

Tavis: Fair to say, then, this situation just went from bad to worse?

Haass: As they say about the Middle East, sometimes things get worse before they get even worse. So yes.

Tavis: (Laugh) Richard Haass. No laughing matter here, my chuckle notwithstanding. Richard Haass, president of the Council on Foreign Relations. Mr. Haass, nice to have you on the program, sir.

Haass: Thank you for having me.

Tavis: My pleasure. Up next, actor Anthony Mackie. Stay with us.