GLENN BECK PROGRAM
BEGIN TRANSCRIPT

GLENN: I said on television don't adjust your set, somebody in the media is about to give you good news out of Iraq and I hope we're going to give you a little bit more. General Myers is with us, former joint chiefs of staff. Hello, General. How are you, sir?

GENERAL MYERS: I'm good, Glenn. How are you?

GLENN: I'm very good. Can you give us any more news on the surgery?

GENERAL MYERS: Well, I think a lot of it has been reported but, you know, from a military sense, the surge is working but the President also announced -- I mean, it's having a positive effect in most parts of the country, in Baghdad, in al-Anbar province which as everybody knows is I think where a lot of Sunni insurgents hung their hat, one of the basis for Al-Queda in Iraq is out that way. It is -- I talked to a Marine, a former Marine, regimental commander who just came back from Iraq whose son is still over there and he said, you know, I haven't heard a gunshot over here for a month or more. Well, to be in Fallujah and not hear a gunshot is a really big deal. And so I think the military part of the surge is working, but the President also talked about political progress and economic progress and, of course, I think on the political front there has not been as much progress has people had hoped. We'll see what Ambassador Ryan Crocker says when he comes back with his report along with General Petraeus. But it's the Iraqi government cabinet that needs to work the issue and the energy distribution of wealth issue and if those get worked, then there's real, real hope for success here.

GLENN: General Myers, here's the thing. Everybody's trying to paint Americans as antiwar and we're not as long as it's a just war. We're anti losing wars and it seems to me with the surge being a real sign of it that, you know, we tried to -- we tried to bring people into the fold and say, hey, let's make them a part of the solution, et cetera, et cetera, and it seems to me that we're now shooting the bad guys in the head and we're also getting -- we're also getting help now from the Iraqi people because they have seen the nature of this enemy.

GENERAL MYERS: Well, you suspect at some time, at some point the Iraqi people would say enough as their own sons and daughters and husbands and wives and relatives and friends are blown up by indiscriminate acts of violence. They say, wait a minute, we're one of the wealthiest countries in the world. We have this tremendous oil wealth. We've got good human capital, we've got more water than most places in the Middle East. We have two rivers and a very fertile valley for our agriculture. You know, why can't we make a go of this. And I think that's right. I think the Iraqi people are -- and that's what happened in al-Anbar. I mean, folks that were insurgents have said, wait a minute, we're tired of being intimidated by the foreign fighters; we're going to help you.

GLENN: That's what I wanted to ask you because it's not Iraqi, this is not a civil war. This is influence from Saudi influence and people from Saudi Arabia and people from Iran coming in and making this a bloodbath.

GENERAL MYERS: Well, that's part of I. I mean, there is a party that is Iraqi, of course. There are former regime elements that think they are going to go back to Saddam days. There is the sectarian violence Sunni that has really since February '06, the bombing of the mosque in Samarra has really flared up.

GLENN: Yeah, but you don't believe that was Iraqi influence alone, do you?

GENERAL MYERS: Oh, no, that was Al-Queda. I think it's pretty well proven that was Al-Queda that blew up the mosque in Samarra for civil unrest. It's a complex picture but, you know, success will be when you have progress on security, on the political front, on the economic front, and I think the one that's lagging right now is the progress in the political, on the political front.

GLENN: You know, the media is doing everything they can to -- I mean just find a way to tear this all apart again, and I'm not a fan, General, of the way this war -- I was a huge fan of the way this war was fought at the beginning and then I felt that we just -- you know, when we weren't killing al-Sadr, I didn't understand it and it felt like we were -- I don't know if you've read Marcus Luttrell's book, but I don't like the fact that we send our family members and my family members out into Iraq and then we tie their hands, but it seems as though we are untying their hands and that is very good news, especially with the kind of people that we are dealing with. Why is it that we never get any coverage of who these people are and the kind of tactics that they use?

GENERAL MYERS: Well, these are -- the people that are willing to commit jihad to kill others to get their way and have the impact they want to have are ruthless. I mean, they'll kill women and children, and have, just indiscriminately. Just like 9/11. 9/11 was the great example of the ruthlessness and the murder they're willing, and the mayhem they're willing to create to hopefully in their view get to their vision of what the world ought to look like, which would be everybody believing in their very violent extreme view of Islam. And it's not the true Islam but it's their view of it. And it's a real scourge on our Earth, not just in Iraq.

GLENN: The President has been getting all kinds of heats for making comparisons to the Khmer Rouge and the slaughter after we pulled out of Vietnam and now the economies is now saying, oh, look, he did say it was another Vietnam. What he's saying is -- and correct me if I'm wrong -- as a scholar of military history, correct me if I'm wrong. What he was saying was it's not a quagmire, but if we make the same mistakes and we don't finish the job and we show weakness and leave the area, I believe he says the Khmer Rouge, I believe it -- I mean, a more recent example is it's going to be Darfur in that region, is it not?

GENERAL MYERS: Well, yeah, I think as the President was saying, he was talking about our withdrawal from Vietnam and the aftermath and that was his point.

GLENN: Right.

GENERAL MYERS: As I read his speech. And clearly there would be not only tragedy inside Iraq but I think there would be broader regional tragedy and potential tragedy that would probably make us a lot less secure world given that so much of our energy comes out of that region. I mean, can you imagine how Saudi Arabia and the rest of the Gulf states, Jordan and Egypt would view more Iranian influence in Iraq, getting closer to them, Iran with nuclear aspirations. Would that mean that Saudi Arabia would then go acquire nuclear weapons? You can envision scenarios that would be very, very destabilizing. I'm not saying they are going to come true but very destabilizing in a part of the world that the rest of the world counts on for its energy resources and for our economy. So that would not be a good scenario. Plus just the human tragedy that would occur in Iraq and surrounding areas.

GLENN: One last question for you, and let me just switch gears. I've talked to a lot of people. All these Russian experts, and they all say, oh, don't worry about it; it's just Putin being Putin. What exactly does Putin have to do before we start taking him seriously? I mean, these new flights that they are now doing where we have Great Britain and the United States scrambling our jets, is this concerning at all or is this just politics in your book?

GENERAL MYERS: It's -- you know, I'm still trying to figure it out in my own mind. It looks like it's, you know, Back to the Future in a way. I mean, why are -- why is a Serb country may have gone like the Cold War's still on because to us it doesn't -- we're way past that, and I think it probably reflects some frustration on once being a superpower and no longer have that kind of influence.

GLENN: Sure.

GENERAL MYERS: But, you know, there are lots of areas where the United States and Russia can cooperate, lots of areas. They have a big threat from violent extremism just as the United States does, and it's a lot closer to them. It's all along their southern border. We could cooperate on that. We could cooperate on missile defense radars. I think there's been some interest in that lately. I mean, there's lots of ways we can cooperate and my view is that through continued cooperation, you know, behavior that seems a little irrational will go away.

GLENN: General Richard Myers, thank you very much for your service to the country, sir, and thank you for talking to us.

GENERAL MYERS: Thank you.

GLENN: Best of luck. Bye-bye.

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