I want somebody in the Secretary of Defense office who has enough credibility to sell our military on the idea that we’re really going to be serious about making progress on those other elements of security that have been neglected under the Bush administration. I want also that Secretary of Defense to be someone who has the confidence of mid-rank officers and troops on the ground that their interests are being looked after. That they are not just being sent into missions based on ideology or based on preconceived notions, but that somebody is their advocate.

One of the things that has happened during the course of this campaign is that you meet remarkable young men and women who have been doing everything that we’ve asked of them, made enormous sacrifices and oftentimes they don’t feel as if those in the higher ranks are thinking about them, certainly don’t feel as if they are being thought about after they leave.”

Q. In your book, you refer to your January 2006 visit to Iraq, I think that’s the last time you were there. Why….

A. Given how important this is, why haven’t I gone back?

Q. If you think of all the things that have happened since January ’06, there was the bombing of the mosque in Samara, the rise of the sectarian violence, the replacement of General Casey with General Petraeus, the introduction of the so-called surge strategy, this whole business of Anbar and the rise of the tribes and working with former insurgents has all emerged since then. There’s been enormous changes there, although it’s still an extremely difficult situation. Why haven’t you returned, given the centrality of this issue to the campaign?

A. I’ll be honest with you. Part of it is that my schedule is such that the trips would be one or two days and would be centered primarily around the Green Zone. We might take a helicopter and drop in for a moment somewhere and then come back out. There hasn’t been the sense that the information that I was going to be getting there was going to be significantly different than the information that I’m getting here. But it is something that what I know I have missed form the trips there is the interaction with the troops. So I’m seeing the troops here, but I haven’t seen the troops in Iraq in quite some time and I think that’s something that we’d like to make happen.

Q. Does that mean you’re going back to Iraq?

A. I suspect we will be going back. It probably won’t be before Iowa, realistically speaking.

Q. Obviously, there is an enormous desire among Democratic base to pull American forces out of Iraq...On the other hand, no one wants to give Al Qaeda in Iraq any kind of a free hand. But I wonder as you think through this mission, how realistic it really is to posit a counter terrorism capability for Iraq, outside of Iraq and to have such a small force? ....One is an intelligence issue. The way the U.S. military gathers intelligence about Al Qaeda now is really being in and around the country with the population. It’s a means of deriving human intelligence and if you don’t have that, you’re essentially relying entirely on the Iraqis or ....reconnaissance systems from above, so it limits your access to intelligence. Certainly, it limits your responsiveness if you’re not in the country. And also, when they do counter terrorism in Iraq now, it’s not simply an operation by special operations forces.....If you think back to the Democratic critique of the Bush administration’s performance in Afghanistan, when bin Laden got away, that was a mission when we relied entirely on special operations forces and local forces and didn’t have sufficient troops to capture anyone or cordon an area off, which makes me wonder how effective a counterterrorism mission can be without a conventional capability in country. Lastly, if there is progress toward political accommodation, you are going to assume the role of training the Iraqi military to some extent, which means you’re going to have a substantial number of trainers in and among these Iraqi forces….