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James Baker.

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"Talking to people is not appeasement if you know what you're doing and you're a good, hard-nosed negotiator. There ought to be nothing wrong with diplomacy."

President Bush asked you back in April to advise him on Iraq.

Well, he didn't really formally ask me. What happened was that a number of members of Congress had been petitioning the administration to support the idea of fresh eyes on Iraq. The congressional types and some of the think tanks said, "This is something we talked to the Secretaries of State and Defense about, and they think it's a good thing that we ought to do." As I always do, I said, "That's wonderful, but I want him to look me in the eye and tell me he wants me to do this." We're doing it with the approval of the administration and with the administration's stated intention to cooperate with us, which means that we have access to information, documents, people, and travel.

Have you done much advising so far?

No, we're still in the process of interviewing people. We have various expert working groups--on the strategic environment considerations, the political considerations, the economic considerations, and the military and security considerations.

Obviously there's some sense of urgency. The longer this goes on, the more of our sons and daughters who die. It seems like this is the sort of thing you'd want to do as fast as possible.

In order for it to be credible, we're not bringing out any reports until after the election, because we do not want it to seem to be political. We said we expected to issue a report within a year, and the year is up around April 1. We'll probably come in before that.

You've been to this dance before, having advised previous presidents at war. What's your view of the situation in Iraq?

If we're able to achieve the goals the administration originally articulated, it will have been worth it. If we're not, there are serious costs to American interests in terms of the lives of brave young men and women and of our diplomatic standing on military, economic, and political issues. As we sit here today, I think most everybody understands the tremendous cost to America's reputation and stature of just picking up and pulling out.

A number of columnists, including David Binder, of the Washington Post, and Thomas Friedman, of the New York Times, have written recently something to the effect that even if you accept that withdrawing is a mistake, the prospect of achieving our original goal is so small that continuing to remain for the sake of staying the course amounts to throwing good lives after good lives.

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