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DR. GINGRICH: Let me say, first of all, that those of you who are here have a handout and that that handout is also available at aei.org and at newt.org, for people who'd like to get a copy of it.

I want to start, before I get into the text of the handout, by just saying I want to emphasize that what I'm talking about today is not about personalities, which is how this city translates all arguments. But, in fact, it's about effectiveness and about candidly facing the facts. There are two world views in conflict about foreign policy. One world view is a world view of process, politeness and accommodation. The other world view is a world view of facts, values and outcomes.

President Bush clearly represents the latter world view, with his focus on facts, values and outcomes. The State Department, as an institution, and the Foreign Service, as a culture, clearly represents the former, with a focus on process, politeness and accommodation.

Let me just give you two examples from the early phase of the Bush administration.

When I go out and talk to American audiences and I say Libya chairs the U.N. Human Rights Commission, audiences get it almost immediately. How can you have Qadhafi as a dictator sending somebody to represent human rights and chairing a commission? It's an absurdity. It is a, on the face of it, if you value facts, values and outcomes, it's ridiculous. It's a commentary on the U.N. being messed up.

But if you represent a world view of process, politeness and accommodation, the correct answer is they won the vote. Who are we to judge a dictator being in charge of a Human Rights Commission? That would, after all, that our values somehow were better than Qadhafi's. Now, obviously, President Bush represents the side that says, yes, you're right. Our values are better than Qadhafi's. But what's the second part of the conversation?

Second example. When the United States was ambushed and, for the first time in history, knocked off of the Human Rights Commission, everybody who focused on facts, values and outcomes understood exactly what had happened. I happened to see former Secretaries of State George Schultz and Henry Kissinger a few days later in a private meeting, and they were both quite vivid about their understanding because they both come out of a school of facts, values and outcomes, and they both said the consequences would have been horrendous, particularly with regard to one country--France. But, of course, if you believe in process, politeness and accommodation, the vote was held, it was a little bit unfortunate. We're not quite sure how it occurred. The State Department announced it was surprised, and nothing happened which I think is a key stage in why the French felt so bold in trying to defeat U.S. policy over the last seven months.

So within this framework of these two world views, let me comment now on where we find ourselves after the victory in Iraq. Because the last seven months have involved six months of diplomatic failure and one month of military success. The first days after military victory indicate the pattern of diplomatic failure is beginning once again and threatens to undo the effects of military victory, and that's why I chose to speak out at this time as strongly as I am speaking.

The diplomatic high point of the United States was President Bush's speech at the United Nations General Assembly on September 12, 2002. At that point, the case had been made emphatically by the President that the burden was on the U.N.'s Security Council. The Iraqi dictatorship had violated U.N. resolutions for 12 years. It was the United Nations that was under scrutiny because it as obvious that the regime of Saddam Hussein had failed. As President Bush said, it was time to choose between a world of fear and a world of progress.

The State Department took the President's strong position and negotiated a resolution that shifted from verification to inspection. This was done, in part, because of internal State Department politics, because verification would have put the policy in the hands of people who disagreed with the Bureau of Near Eastern Affairs' propensity for appeasing dictators and propping up corrupt regimes.

The State Department then accepted Hans Blix as chief inspector, even though he was clearly opposed to war and determined to buy time and find excuses for Saddam. The State Department then accepted Blix's refusal to hire back any of the experienced inspectors, thus, further drawing out the process.

The process was turned from verifying Iraqi compliance, in which case the burden was on Saddam, and Iraq had clearly failed, to pursuing United Nations' inspections, in which case the burden was on the United States.

From President Bush's clear choice between two worlds, the State Department had descended into a murky game in which the players were deceptive and the rules were stacked against the United States. The State Department's Communications Program failed during these five months to such a degree that 95 percent of the Turkish people opposed the American position.

This fit in with a pattern of State Department communications failures, as a result of which the South Korean people regarded the United States as more dangerous than North Korea and a vast majority of French and German citizens favored policies that opposed the United States.

As the State Department remained ineffective and incoherent, the French launched a worldwide campaign to undermine the American position and make the replacement of the Saddam dictatorship very difficult. This included twisting Turkish arms to block a vote in favor of the United States using Turkish soil to create a Northern front and the French appealing to other members of the Security Council to block a second resolution.

Despite a pathetic public campaign of hand-wringing and desperation, the State Department publicly failed to gain even a majority of votes on the U.N. Security Council for a second resolution. Opposing America and a world of progress had somehow become less attractive and more difficult than helping America eliminate the fear of Saddam's wicked regime. It's important to remember where we were the day before the war.

All across the planet, it was easier to oppose the side of freedom and prop up the side of tyranny, terrorism and torture. That is a stunning diplomatic defeat and communications defeat of the first order.

Fortunately, the Defense Department was capable of overcoming losing access to Turkey, losing public opinion support in Europe and the Middle East and turned those disadvantages into a stunning victory, working in concert with our British allies and with support largely secured by CENTCOM and the Department of Defense among the Gulf States.

Had General Franks of CENTCOM and the Defense Department been as ineffective at diplomacy as the State Department, which is supposedly in charge of diplomacy, Kuwait would not have been available, the Saudi air base would not have been available, and the Jordanian passage of Special Forces would not have been available, and the war would have been stunningly more difficult, although technically possible.

The military delivered diplomatically, and then the military delivered militarily in a stunning four-week campaign and General Frank's second major victory in a remarkable career.

Now, the State Department is back at work pursuing policies that will clearly throw away all of the fruits of hard-won victory.

First, the concept of the American secretary of State going to Damascus to meet with a terrorist-supporting, secret police-wielding dictator is ludicrous. The United States military has created an opportunity to apply genuine economic, diplomatic and political pressure on Syria. The current Syrian dictatorship openly hosts seven terrorist offices in downtown Damascus in public, with recognized addresses. You can get off the airplane, get in the cab, and give them the address, and they take you to the terrorist offices.

The current Syrian dictatorship is still developing chemical weapons of mass destruction and will not allow inspections. The current Syrian dictatorship is still occupying Lebanon, to the disadvantage of peace in the region, and is still transmitting weapons and support for Hezbollah in Southern Lebanon, where there are over 11,000 rockets and missiles aimed at Israel.

And by the way, as recently as last night, I saw a reference in the news that the Syrian dictatorship had lied to the deputy British foreign minister in saying they weren't able to stop people from leaving Syria to go to Iraq to fight. The notion that this dictatorship is not capable of controlling its country, when it is a totalitarian system, is an absurdity, and the fact that they would lie directly to the British tells you how arrogant they still are, despite the results in Iraq.

This is a time for America to demand changes in Damascus before a visit is even considered. The visit should be a reward for public change, not an appeal to weak, economically depressed dictatorship. And those of you who have studied foreign policy, will remember the Clinton administration tradition of well over 20 visits to Damascus by the secretary of State, none of which produced any change.

Second, the State Department invention of a quartet for Israeli-Palestinian peace negotiations defies everything the United States has learned about France, Russia and the United Nations. After the bitter lessons of the last five months, it is unimaginable that the United States would voluntarily accept a system in which the United Nations, the European Union and Russia could routinely outvote President Bush's positions by 3 to 1 or 4 to zero, if the State Department voted its cultural beliefs against the president's policies.

This is a deliberate and systematic effort to undermine the president's policies procedurally by ensuring they will consistently be watered down and distorted by the other three members. Let me be very clear here. The president has said Arafat is unacceptable. None of the other three partners in the quartet believe that.

The European Union will not even audit the money it gives Arafat because it doesn't want to learn how much corruption there is. For us to invite them into a quartet is an absolute defeat before the process even begins, and this is worse than the U.N.'s inspection process. It is a clear disaster for American diplomacy.

Third, the people the State Department has sent to Iraq so far represent the worst instincts of the Bureau of Near Eastern Affairs. They were promoting a culture of propping up dictators, coddling the corrupt, and ignoring the secret police. They have a constituency of Middle Eastern governments deeply opposed to democracy in Iraq. Their instinct is to create weak Iraqi government that will not threaten the Syrian, Iranian, Saudi and other dictatorial neighbors. This is the exact opposite of the president's stated goals.

Fourth, the announcement that someone from the Agency for International Development would work to help reconstruct Iraq was a further sign that nothing has been learned. As of two weeks ago, not one mile of road had been paved in Afghanistan. This is a stunning bureaucratic failure.

For a country whose genius with the Corps of Engineers or with the private sector could have paved all of those roads in one summer, to not have paved one mile of road is an astonishing achievement of incompetence by the bureaucracy of the Agency for International Development.

This absolute failure of American entrepreneurial effort was a direct result of the State Department blocking the Corps of Engineers from being directly involved. There is no reason to believe AID will be any better in Iraq than the disaster it has been in Afghanistan. As one AID official to the Post, "Afghans need to understand the lengthy bureaucratic processes of AID and not become impatient." That was a direct quote in the Post.

That is exactly the wrong attitude and helps explain why the State Department should be transformed, but AID should be abolished. These continuing failures and refusal to learn about new realities compels the Bush administration to take on transforming the State Department as its next urgent mission.

The president called for transforming the Defense Department in his 1999 Citadel address and, "keeping the peace by redefining war on our terms." Secretary Rumsfeld has been implementing the president's plan, and the success can be seen in Afghanistan and in Iraq.

The president called for reorganizing Homeland Security in 2002, and Secretary Ridge has begun that difficult, but vital, job.

It is now time for the president to call for the equivalent of a Goldwater-Nickles reform bill for the State Department and redefine peace on our terms. America cannot lead the world with a broken instrument of diplomacy. America cannot lead the world in an age of democracy and 24-hour television with a broken instrument of international communications.

America cannot help develop a vibrant world of entrepreneurial progress, where countries grow into safety, health, prosperity and freedom for their people with a broken bureaucracy of red tape and excuses.

The House and Senate Committees on International Relations should hold exhaustive hearings on the requirements of diplomatic and communications leadership in the 21st century. The House and Senate Committee should examine critically what would be needed to help countries grow into safety, health, prosperity and freedom for their people.

The president should appoint a small working group to report back within six months and should prepare to propose for a transformation of the diplomatic communications and assistance elements of the United States.

Without bold, dramatic change of the State Department, the United States will soon find itself on the defensive everywhere, except militarily. In the long run, that is a very dangerous position for the world's leading democracy to be in, indeed. In the long run, that is an unsustainable position.

Our ability to lead is more communications-, diplomatic- and assistance-based than military. People have always admired us more than feared us. The collapse of the State Department as an effective instrument puts all of this at risk. We must learn the transforming lessons of the last six months and apply them to create a more effective State Department.

[Applause.]

MS. PLETKA: Okay, everybody, we're going to go to questions now. If you would do me the favor of not pontificating, identifying yourself, asking the question, and if you would wait for the microphone.

MS. LABOTT: Thank you. Elise Labott with CNN.

Mr. Gingrich, do you think that the diplomatic failures, in part, that you attribute solely to the State Department could be, in part, due to the policies themselves of the administration, which have been widely unpopular around the world, and which many, not necessarily Iraq, but which many countries have cited as one of the reasons that the U.S. never made it to the Human Rights Commission and was voted off?

And aren't you concerned that without engaging countries on some of these problems that you cite, America will stick to its values and morals, but might be isolated and have no ability to change these policies around the world?

Thank you.

DR. GINGRICH: Well, I guess I'm a little puzzled by your question from this standpoint: I think that when people are asked if you support torture, they say, no. If they're asked, do you support terrorism, they say, no. Yet somehow we were unable to communicate in Europe, for example, the nature of Saddam Hussein's regime, and the issue became President Bush, rather than Dictator Saddam. Now, that's I think a communications issue, not a policy issue.

I would say, for example, that an effective State Department would currently have a program by which Iraqis who had survived the torture, Iraqis who had witnessed their families being tortured were on tour in Europe, talking and being witnesses to the correctness of the American position. I don't think this is necessarily an overnight argument.

As to our losing our position on the Human Rights Commission, that occurred early in 2001 and was a deliberate ambush by the French, and I don't think French opposition, and I don't think President Chirac and French opposition to the United States has anything to do with communications.

I think this is a deliberate strategy by France to create a countervailing force in the world, and we need to deal with it as an honest, deliberate strategy, and as the most powerful nation in the world, we need to orchestrate an appropriate response to being challenged.

I think communications is a part of that response, but I'm not certain which of the president's policies we should give up. Opposing terrorism? No, I'd rather have a debate. Being against dictatorships that torture people? I'd rather have a debate. Being against Arafat, who is both corrupt and a terrorist? I'd rather have a debate.

So my argument is that our policies are really right, but that we need to be dramatically more aggressive and effective in communicating them.

Let me just close with this point about the Middle East. You're going to hear lots of governments in the Middle East say the United States should get out of Iraq quickly, and they mean it sincerely. They are dictatorships. They would be very comfortable if Iraq would slide back into a dictatorship presided over by a general because that's their model. Some of them are dictatorships, and now we're moving into a second generation of family dictatorship.

The last thing they want is for the United States to stay in Iraq long enough to create a genuine democracy, to create a country like, let's say, Germany and Japan, to take two other American success stories, or South Korea. Those are very frightening if you are a dictatorship because they suddenly set for your people a standard of power, a standard of opportunity, a standard of openness that shatters your dictatorship.

So when you watch the conversations, and you have the dictator of Egypt, the dictator of Saudi Arabia, the dictator of Syria explain to you how much they want us to leave, it would be nice if you reported it that way. Because if you simply say the Syrian dictator, it's somehow different than the Syrian president, and you begin to understand what the real game is.

MR. : --Kagiana [ph], Middle East Broadcast Center.

Mr. Gingrich, you've put forth some very bold ideas, one that would probably take different personnel in order to implement them. If you were advising the president, would you say Secretary of State Colin Powell needs to be replaced and by whom?

DR. GINGRICH: No, I think Secretary Powell is an extraordinary figure. I think he's a very effective advocate, but I think he is currently presiding over an institution that's broken. I think had Secretary Powell had an effective Near Eastern Bureau they would have said to him, you know, don't consider going to Syria until you get something out of the Syrian Government.

After all, the effort of the 1990s was absurd, and at one point an American secretary of State actually sat on the runway for four hours, and the dictator wouldn't even allow him to come into the city.

And I think if you would have had somebody from the Near Eastern Bureau suggesting to Secretary Powell that the long record of trying to appease the Assad dictatorship is not very encouraging. So I think the question is structural and institutional. It's not personality. And I think Secretary Powell, as an individual, is probably as effective a person as you could get, but the instrument under him is, in fact, I think clearly decisively broken.

MR. DAOUD: My name is Hala Daoud [ph]. I'm from Egyptian newspaper Al Haram, and my question is for Mr. Gingrich.

Just mentioning that you are saying that it's only dictatorships in the Arab World that oppose your presence in Iraq. You mentioned Egypt, Saudi Arabia, and the rest, while there was a recent study by Pew Institute Research which said that even in Turkey, you know, and you mentioned it yourself, 95 percent of the people oppose your presence in Iraq or oppose the war, and the same for other Arab countries, and the same all over the world.

I mean, don't you think really that you're just basically not seeing the amount of, you know, disagreement that it has on the international level, and it's not just by people who oppose your values. These are real kind of requests. You know, people are afraid of the United States going into Iraq, and then into Syria, and then into any other country. So I just wonder if your views are seeing the people as well as the governments.

Thank you.

DR. GINGRICH: First of all, as you point out, I did suggest to you that having 95 percent of the Turkish people in a poll oppose our policies, one would normally assume it was either a sign that we were totally out of touch with the world, which is I think the interpretation of some people, or a sign that we had dramatically failed to communicate anything.

I think with a reasonable communications plan, that would have been in the 35- or 40-percent approval level. It may not have been a majority, but we would have a substantial minority of the Turkish people who said, yeah, this is the right thing to do for the people next door who are suffering from torture, and who are connected to terrorism, and who are doing things that are harmful, in the long run, to Turkey.

Second, as you point out, in the dictatorships, where you've had government-run and government-censored media, there is a surprising level of anti-Americanism. There was a study done that if you turned to Iran, as Charles was pointing out, in places like Iran, any polling which has been done indicates dramatically more pro-American feeling than among countries such as Egypt, which has gotten billions of dollars from us, but whose dictatorial government doesn't create any civil space and which has a media which is vehemently anti-American in many ways.

So I would start and say that part of the State Department's obligation has to be to pretty aggressively state-owned publications that are systematically and methodically anti-American and [audio break] to governments that supposedly like us, that, you know, paying for a newspaper or a TV channel that systematically vehemently communicates anti-Americanism every day, if you are an ally of the United States, has to be looked at questionably.

This is not about a free press. I mean I don't think, in the short run, this is going to be an easy struggle. Somebody mentioned triumphalism, and I think my speech is the opposite of triumphalism. What I'm trying to suggest is that we have to get under control our ability to communicate both diplomatically and in open media in order to be able to survive as a leading country because you can't just use military force.

And so I would say that you're simply repeating the challenge, unless you believe that the world--and this is a question that would be useful to pose to people. Do you truly believe the world would be better off today if Saddam was still in power, if people were still being killed and tortured, if they still had ties to terrorists, if the branch of al Qaeda was still in Northeastern Iraq, if the terror facility at Salman Paq was still there with its airplane to train hijackers, if in fact the chemical weapons or the chemical and materials they found last night were once again being turned into weapons with the absence of the U.N. inspectors? Would the world be better today if Saddam was still a dictator?

Now, if you believe that, then U.S. policies were wrong. But if, on the other hand, you believe the world is, in fact, slightly better today to have a chance to create a free Iraq, despite the efforts of Iran, despite the efforts of others, then you have to say, okay, why have we not been able to communicate that correctness better, rather than is the policy itself wrong?

(other speakers different questions)

DR. GINGRICH: Before we go, let me just build on one thing that Charles mentioned because I want you to understand the contrast. If the United States ends up managing the sale of oil for the Iraqi people, we have an absolute obligation to do it in a transparent, accountable and open manner. Now, I suggest to the reporters here today call the U.N. and ask them about the billions of dollars the U.N. has managed in the Oil for Food program, ask them who the money was paid to. Ask them which countries have profited. Ask them which things were approved by Kofi Annan, including, for example, Russian television equipment and other things and just go look at the list.

The fact is the United Nations runs the Iraqi program in a totally secret manner with no accountability and no transparency. The United States would bend over backwards in the opposite direction to ensure that the money was spent for the Iraqi people and not diverted to the United States. But in the double standard, it is America that will be questioned and the United Nations that will be ignored.

MR. FARGHALI: My name is Nassir Farghali [ph] from Abu Dhabi Television.

We heard a lot being said today about the Middle East. I want to hear Mr. Gingrich [audio break] to an old, widely spread and circulated argument in the Middle East, which is the American double standards. We heard him today mention, for instance, the Syrian chemical weapons capabilities. What about the Israeli [audio break] capabilities? Does he have anything to say about this?

We heard him mention Saudi Arabia, Syria and Egypt [audio break]. Would he include [audio break], would he include Kuwait and Qatar, for instance?

That's it. Thank you.

DR. GINGRICH: Well, I think definitionally, although there have been some steps taken by some of the Gulf states towards free elections, they still have a long way to go. My only comment on possession of weapons of mass destruction would be that whether or not Israel has them--and everyone agrees they do have them--they clearly have refused to use them, and they clearly exist for the purpose of deterrence.

And I think it's fairly hard, if you read, for example, Saddam's speeches, to believe that he was trying to acquire weapons of mass destruction for deterrence purposes and, in fact, Ambassador Richard Butler, who was the Australian, who was the head of the inspections for the U.N. in the late '90s in his memoir makes very clear that he believes Saddam was trying to get weapons of mass destruction to use them.

I would finally point out that where the Syrians and the Iraqis each had a dictatorship that destroyed an entire city, in Saddam's case using chemical weapons, in the Syrian case using conventional weapons, I think that's a different standard of aggressiveness against human beings than we would normally [audio break] for.

Finally, in terms of double standards, I think President Bush has moved exactly in the right direction by emphasizing that we have a commitment to helping the Palestinian people achieve an opportunity to have freedom and dignity and to create a genuine state, and I think, in that sense, that President Bush has moved the United States more dramatically in favor of helping the Palestinian people than any American president up to this point.

I also would just point out that it's interesting that you didn't suggest that maybe the Iranian Government should announce it's not interested in wiping out Israel. That would be a step towards a more peaceful region, and it goes back to the one-sided nature of the moral standard in which some people in some countries can say the most destructive, vicious and unbelievable things, and it's just accepted, and then we move on to the next topic.

So it would seem to me one step towards asking the Israelis to eventually not have nuclear weapons would be for Iran to recognize Israel, for Iran to say we are not going to try to wipe them out. But I think it's just interesting that that half of the debate can't even occur in most of the Middle East because it is unthinkable to suggest that Iran or other countries would behave as though they were going to be civilized neighbors.

MR. : [?], visiting Austrian journalist. I am most impressed by the quality of discussion and also by some degree of naivete concerning the future. -- And if you look at the situation in awarding contracts, major contracts without a tender to major companies, Halliburton, Bechtel, which are direct or indirectly connected with major political figures, I don't want to mention names, it also doesn't help the credibility gap.

DR. GINGRICH: Let me just also comment that in terms of cynicism and sincerity, I would be much more impressed by press concerns about Bechtel if the press would go and get the billions, and billions and billions of dollars of contracts that the United Nations let over the years under the Oil for Food program and had some accountability of who got the money, and what were the deals, and how was it done.

But I find it interesting that when the U.N. spends literally billions of dollars over a 12-year-period with zero public accountability, that's fine. When the United States spends its own money in an expeditious way to hire a firm which has a worldwide reputation for being effective, that's somehow troubling.

I just think sincerity would be a little more indicated by some evenness on how we have accountability.

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