NOVAK:   Military planners are making plans to react strongly to the increased violence in Iraq over the past week. And that includes options for additional troops. That's a big difference between George W. Bush and John Kerry. The Democratic candidate can sit on the sidelines and kibitz. The president has to take action. In the CROSSFIRE today, Tom Andrews, national director of the Win Without War Coalition, former Democratic congressman from Maine, along with Bob Walker, former Republican congressman from the state of Pennsylvania. 
BEGALA:   Gentlemen, good to see you both again. 
WALKER:   Thank you. 
ANDREWS:   Thank you. 
BEGALA:   Congressman Walker, the news of the day is that will General Abizaid, our commander in the field, may be asking -- has asked aides -- to look at options over the next 48 hours for bringing in more troops. This follows on the heels of yesterday, Republican Senator Richard Lugar saying that, yes, maybe in fact we need more troops. Let me bring you back in time. This debate was held before the invasion. And General Eric Shinseki, a distinguished Army officer, the Army chief of staff, testified to Congress that it would take an awful lot of troops to successfully occupy. Here is General Shinseki. 
GENERAL ERIC SHINSEKI, ARMY CHIEF OF STAFF:   I would say that what's been mobilized to this point, something on the order of several hundred thousand soldiers, are probably, you know, a figure that would be required. 
BEGALA:   Now, General Shinseki not only has four stars and served with great honor in combat in Vietnam. He ran the peacekeeping occupation force in Bosnia. Now, instead of taking his advice, here's what the Bush administration did. They sent out some professor who never finished the Boy Scouts, a guy named Wolfowitz, who insulted General Shinseki with this comment. Here's Paul Wolfowitz. 
PAUL WOLFOWITZ, DEPUTY DEFENSE SECRETARY:   Some of the higher-end predictions that we have been hearing recently, such as the notion that it will take several hundred thousand U.S. troops to provide stability in post-Saddam Iraq, are wildly off the mark. 
BEGALA:   Well, of course, we know they were right on the mark. Shouldn't Paul Wolfowitz apologize to General Shinseki? 
WALKER:   Well, we have our own four-star general in the administration, too, in Colin Powell, who also gave some good advice along the way. And I think that Paul Wolfowitz and Colin Powell probably agree on what should be done. Now, given that, though, I think it's also important to listen to the commanders in the field. And the commanders in the field have said that if they need more troops, they will ask for them. So far they haven't seen that need. And so therefore, it seems to me that one of the lessons we should have learned along the way is, let's trust the men who are in command and who are in the field and doing their job. 
BEGALA:   But they should have treated General Shinseki with more respect. He was right and Wolfowitz was wrong. Shouldn't there be accountability for policy-makers who put our troops in harm's way without sufficient force protection? 
WALKER:   Well, that's your an assertion, that one's right and one's wrong. At the present time, our commanders in the field are taking the steps necessary to deal with violence in Iraq.  I think we ought to trust the people who are the ground, who are in the field, and who are trying to make certain that they keep the soldiers secure and that they set up a situation where we can in fact over a period of the next few months hand over more of the governance of that country to the Iraqis. 
NOVAK:   Tom Andrews. 
ANDREWS:   But, Bob, they are working for the commander in chief, who is running for reelection. I served on the Armed Services Committee. And what the generals are going to tell you in public is going to be quite different from what they are going to tell you in private. And they're always going to be following the lead in this case of the Bush administration or they're going to end up like General Shinseki in losing their job. 
WALKER:   Colin Powell is not any longer in uniform. Colin Powell can give advice without having to have those kinds of concerns. 
NOVAK:   Tom, just as a little truth squad here, when he said that, he had already resigned. 
BEGALA:   He hadn't resigned. He got pushed out. 
NOVAK:   No, no, no, no, I'm sorry. He had already been -- was leaving when he said that. He didn't -- as you imply, you know that, he didn't say it and then got pushed out. 
ANDREWS:   He was... 
NOVAK:   He was gone when he said that. 
ANDREWS:   Perhaps he was going to be going somewhere. 
NOVAK:   It was announced. 
ANDREWS:   He was in office. 
NOVAK:   Let's have some facts. 
BEGALA:   He was pushed out. 
NOVAK:   The facts -- the fact had been -- I mean, I hate it when we just make up these things, because he had already -- he was already leaving. He was a lame duck when he said that. 
WALKER:   I'm amazed to hear you arguing against civilian control of the military. I thought that was an 
NOVAK:   When we have atrocities by these barbarians in Iraq, it's very interesting that the president and his officials have attacked the barbarians. And the Democrats have attacked the president. So I would like you to listen to the president and tell me, just tell me after -- listen to him first and then I'll ask you the question. 
BUSH:   We will stay the course. We will do what is right. We will make sure that a free Iraq emerges, not only for our own security, but for the sake of free peoples everywhere. A free Iraq will make the world more peaceful. A free Iraq will make America more secure. We will not be shaken by thugs and terrorists. 
BEGALA:   Tell me what you disagree with in that statement. 
ANDREWS:   What I disagree with is, the president says, we're going to stay the course. What he won't tell us is what that course is. We have less than three months to go before this handover and it took the chairman, the Republican chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, to come before a national television audience yesterday to say, will the president please tell us who we're going to transfer authority to. There is no coherent plan. And you'd think that, if you set a deadline, June 30, you would think through exactly what you're going to do, why June 30 makes sense, and proceed accordingly, unless the plan was less about Iraq than about American politics. And I think that's exactly the problem we're facing here, Bob...    ... is that you've got these barbarians taking advantage of the fact that we've got an arbitrary deadline tagged by virtue of an American election and they're going to do everything they can to kill Americans leading up to June 30. 
NOVAK:   Isn't it true what we're really about, what we're really talking about, is a handover of sovereignty with keeping American forces there? We kept American forces in Europe and Germany and Japan for years after the sovereignty was turned over. 
ANDREWS:   Who are we turning it over to? What entity are we turning it over to    And are we going to give sovereignty to the United Nations, as the secretary-general has asked? 
NOVAK:   Well, I don't answer the questions here. You answer them, Mr. Andrews.    Do you think France and Germany -- Do you think France and Germany are willing to send troops to there maintain order? Somebody has to maintain order? Do you think they're going to? 
ANDREWS:   Yes, they will if we... 
NOVAK:   Yes or no. 
ANDREWS:   They will if we become credible. 
WALKER:   Oh, please. 
ANDREWS:   If we become credible. And we're not credible as long as we are going to continue the course we're in right now. 
BEGALA:   Let's come to the point that Tom made, which is, what is the plan? Our president -- this is some months ago -- but he said a truly remarkable thing on another day when many soldiers were attacked by these barbarians. Here's what the president of the United States said. 
BUSH:   The more successful we are on the ground, the more these killers will react. 
BEGALA:   So these attacks are a sign of our success. Of course, we didn't lose a single soldier occupying Japan or Germany to attacks by barbarians. 
WALKER:   That's wrong. 
BEGALA:   So this is our plan? We sit there as sitting ducks? 
WALKER:   We had soldiers killed at the end of World War II after the war was over. 
BEGALA:   No, not by Germans    We had car accidents and such. 
NOVAK:   Yes, they were. Yes, they were. 
WALKER:   Yes, they were. 
NOVAK:   Oh, yes, absolutely. 
BEGALA:   Certainly not 601, which is how many we've lost so far in Mr. Bush's war. 
WALKER:   Well, instead of focusing on some of the negative, let's focus on some of the positive things that have happened there. The positive thing is the fact they actually sat down and put together a document among themselves to move toward governing. It took our forefathers nearly two decades to begin to pull together their government after the Declaration of Independence was signed. These things are hard and so on. And that country is moving pretty aggressively to try to find a way to govern themselves. We ought to be supporting that...    ... rather than sitting on the side and carping at it. 
BEGALA:   The fact is, I don't care what kind of constitution Iraq has. I care about 600 Americans who are dead, when our president says attacks against them are a sign of success. If they were attacking, would we be failing? 
WALKER:   I care what kind of government the Iraqis have. I think freedom in Iraq is a very important part of our security. I think that having a Middle East that begins to respond because there is a free country operating under new standards 
NOVAK:   Wait a minute. Wait a minute. Wait a minute. I want to ask you the question. Do you worry about Iraq going back to the kind of totalitarianism under Saddam Hussein? Do you think that's a 
ANDREWS:   I'll tell you what I worry about, Bob. 
NOVAK:   No, I'm asking you if you worry about that. 
ANDREWS:   Yes. Let me tell you. Let me tell you what I'm worried about. I'm worried about the fact that this administration took a fiction, something that was false, that Iraq 
NOVAK:   You won't answer my question. 
ANDREWS:   I am. 
NOVAK:   You're attacking them. I said... 
ANDREWS:   That Iraq was a witch's brew of terrorism and they made it a reality. That's what I worry about. 
NOVAK:   You won't answer the question. 
ANDREWS:   That's what I worry about. And that's what we all should be worried about. 
NOVAK:   OK. Up next in "Rapid Fire," we'll ask our guests if it's time for U.S. troops to withdraw from Iraq. And the latest on efforts to arrest a Muslim cleric has been labeled an outlaw by the U.S.-led coalition. Wolf Blitzer reports just ahead.
