TV Spotlight: Washington Week

Gwen Ifill is the moderator of Washington Week and the latest broadcast began airing Friday. Monday at the Washington Week website you will be able to find transcripts and video. Podcasts are already available. A few technical and information bits.



We (Ava and C.I.) mention the show in this week's TV commentary and there's one section we want to highlight here. Speaking are Ifill, ABC News' Martha Raddatz, The Washington Post's Dan Baltz and The New York Times' Peter Baker.:

Gwen Ifill: And then, Martha, we get to today, in which he goes to Camp Lejeune and he says 'we are -- I'm going to keep another campaign promise. I said we were going to be out of Iraq in sixteen months, well, maybe eighteen months, and then he says

Martha Raddatz: Or nineteen.

Gwen Ifill: Or nineteen. 50,000 troops are going to stay behind. But they'll be gone by 2011. Is any of this possible?

Martha Raddatz: I, well, I think first of all you've got to look at his language. Certainly, they're going to start the draw down. And what I've been told is in the next six months, they'll only have eight to ten thousand soldiers and Marines leaving Iraq. The bulk of the draw down that he promised will start in probably January and February and then you'll have 80,000 troops pulling out of Iraq from January to August. That would leave 50,000 troops. The thing I would quibble with is they will no longer have combat missions. Look at what the mission will be. And General Ray Odierno sent a letter out to the troops today saying essentially their goals would be "training Iraqi security forces, conducting coordinated counterterrorism mission and protecting our ongoing civilian and military efforts within Iraq." I don't really know how you do that without combat troops and frankly all of the US forces are trained combat troops.


Martha Raddatz: Now the 2011 he talked about today? Even Secretary Gates said today, 'Well it's hypothetical, but you could renegotiate the Status Of Forces Agreement. I think they will probably have some sort of reserve force even after 2011 but it will be up to the Iraqis to renegotiate that Status Of Forces Agreement. Barack Obama was very firm today saying they will all be out of there but Secretary Gates said today, 'My own view would be that we should be prepared that we should have some modest size presence for training and helping them with their new equipment and providing, perhaps, intelligence support and so on beyond that. And the thing that we all have to remember is that if they have any kind of force in there they have to have force protection which means more and more military people.

Dan Baltz: And what's the size of that residual 'residual' force after after 2011 --

Martha Raddatz: Modest size? No, I mean, I think before the Status Of Forces Agreement was signed Secretary Gates talked about the South Korea model. We have about 28,000 troops in South Korea and they've been there a very, very long time. And they've drawn down somewhat. But, I mean, there are people who predict that you have to be there a decade. I mean look at Bosnia. We had a -- we had a presence there and there wasn't even in fighting when we went in. There was already a peace accord when we went in. The war -- as much as he wants to say the war is ending, we are going to make a step to end the war -- it's really not up to us to end that war. We may be ending our involvement in that war but that war could very well go on.

Peter Baker: What about the reaction in Washington to this plan? You had uh-uh, as he said, he's completing his campaign promise, give or take a few months, he is back loading the withdrawals and leaving a residual force as he talked about on the campaign trail. Are the Republicans up in arms the way they were a year ago with this idea?

Martha Raddatz: The Republicans certainly don't seem to be up in arms. The Democrats? You had a few complaints from the Hill today, the Democrats saying 'We don't want to leave a force of 50,000.' He said 35 to 50,000 but my bet is it's going to be 50,000 for that same reason -- force protection, as well. But I -- I think

Gwen Ifill: Actually can we stop it there for a moment because it was curious to listen to John McCain who of course ran against Barack Obama much, much on this issue on the floor today at the Senate .

John McCain (on the floor of the Senate): I am cautiously optimistic that the plan as laid out by the president can lead to success.





We highlight a portion of the above in this week's commentary but there just wasn't room for all of the above. We think it's an important section and wanted to note it in full.



We mentioned the podcasts of Washington Week before but reader Joyce must have missed that. Ty advises us she wrote to complain about how long it took her to download the podcast via iTunes for the video of Washington Week ("HOURS!!!!").



If you are on dial up or wireless, it will take a bit of time to download the video of Washington Week. It will move more quickly if that is the only thing you are downloading at that time. The video version contains an extra half-hour and that might be one reason to download it. Another reason would be that the video contains Closed Captioning. For those who don't need or enjoy Closed Captioning, we would encourage to download the audio which we managed to do in less than ten minutes in the airport Saturday morning (wireless). Even dial up can download the audio version -- it will take longer, but dial up users can download it.



For those with problems downloading, we would remind that Monday afternoon the video is posted at the website (along with the transcript) which streams easily and doesn't require any downloading time.



Ty said two people e-mailed about the webcast extra? It's approximately five minutes and fifty-one seconds and entitled "Your Questions." Gwen poses questions viewers ask to Peter Baker, Dan Baltz and Martha Raddatz. The deficit, the Iraq withdrawal, etc. You can download that quickly on broadband (yes), wireless or dial up. (It's so brief that dial up users should be able to download this quicker than the audio podcast.)


For podcasting, there is a code at Washington Week in their podcast instructions which you can grab if you're using Lemmon or another podcast catcher. You'll just grab it and paste it in to subscriptions in Lemmon or whatever. If you're using iTunes, don't worry about the code. Pull up your iTunes, click on TV, click on PBS (or search "PBS" in iTunes search feature) and you'll see Washington Week and simply click on it. There is no charge for either the video or audio podcast (or for any extras like "Your Questions").