FOX "Fox News Sunday with Chris Wallace" - Transcript: Iraq War

Interview

WALLACE: Conor Powell, reporting from the Middle East -- Conor, thanks for that.

Where does all this lead the U.S.?

Let's bring in the chair of the House Intelligence Committee, Mike Rogers.

Chairman, welcome back to "Fox News Sunday.'

REP. MIKE ROGERS, R-Mich., CHAIRMAN, INTELLIGENCE COMMITTEE: Thanks so much. Happy Father's Day.

WALLACE: Thank you. Same to you. President Obama said Friday that he intends to review military options for, quote, "several days", before deciding what to do. And then he says it's contingent on Prime Minister Maliki reaching out to the other sectarian factions inside Iraq.

Let's watch.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

BARACK OBAMA, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: The United States is not simply going to involve itself in a military action in the absence of a political plan by the Iraqis that gives us some assurance that they're prepared to work together.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

WALLACE: With ISIS moving so fast, do we have several days for him to review options and he said basically it was contingent on Maliki reaching out. If Maliki does not reach out to the Kurds and to the Sunnis and decides to stick with the Shia base, what does the U.S. do then?

ROGERS: Well, again, leadership is important. Absence of leadership and decisiveness is important in this. It's too late to have long, political reconciliation meetings that will last weeks or months to try to get through even the finest points of difference.

You have an al Qaeda army on the move. This isn't just Sunnis versus Shias. This is an al Qaeda-minded group that is using all of the tactics of brutality to subdue Mosul and Tikrit and other places.

This is as dangerous as it gets. Why? We have thousands of Westerners and Americans in both the eastern Syria and Iraq who have Western passports. This is like --

WALLACE: You're talking about members of ISIS?

ROGERS: Well, they're showing up to fight extremists, and so some are --

WALLACE: With the extremists?

ROGERS: Exactly.

WALLACE: Yes.

ROGERS: They're fighting with Al-Nusra in Syria or ISIS, and they will go with winners. So, this is what's so dangerous.

At some point, even ISIS was saying, and this got into the dispute with al Qaeda leadership, we want to do external operations and, by the way, we know we have these Westerners who have come to jihadist Disneyland in eastern Syria that we can further radicalize, train, and send back to Europe and send back to the United States. And that's significant, Chris, because we've had our first American used in a suicide bombing in Syria. More to come on that.

WALLACE: Let's break this down because it is complicated, Chairman. What are you saying that the U.S. should do?

ROGERS: Well, two things. One, we need to reengage our Arab League partners. They have forgotten in this -- what is really lack of decision. By the way, without those decisions, you enable the ecosystem of terrorism to living well.

WALLACE: Military sense?

ROGERS: Yes.

WALLACE: The aircraft carrier Bush.

Should the president get involved, should we launch military strikes against ISIS?

ROGERS: We need to do something to stop their momentum. I think you can do it two ways, one with our Arab League partners, they have willing for almost three years to get engaged in a more robust way. But they need certain things, the U.S. can bring to the table, command and control, intelligence packages and more accurate targeting.

That is all somewhat missing in this equation. So, now, you have an al Qaeda army that, by the way, we believe now has two helicopters, which means they can move al Qaeda army folks around the battlefield. We've never seen this before.

So, yes, we have to engage with our Arab League partners. I would do a two-front strategy as far as making sure we do disruption activities in Syria with al Qaeda elements in eastern Syria, as well as in Iraq.

WALLACE: President Obama says that the danger is, if we get involved, if we go back into Iraq, and clearly, he doesn't want to do so, and you've got the sectarian split, if there has been no political reconciliation, all we're doing is taking on one side in a civil war.

ROGERS: This is Al Qaeda. Again, this whole notion it's Sunni versus Shia is wrong. Not every Sunni has joined al Qaeda. We have an al Qaeda problem. That's what we have today, in a scale that we've never seen before. That's our problem.

Remember, when we didn't do anything after 1993, the World Trade bombing, it led them to the 1998 eastern African embassy bombing, U.S. embassies in Africa, killed hundreds. Then, USS Cole killed U.S. sailors in Yemen, less than a year, after no action -- they're saying, well, this is really not our fight -- we had 9/11, killed 3,000 Americans.

This is an Al Qaeda-inspired group that certainly has al Qaeda ties, that now has the capability to tap people with Western passports to send them back to Europe and the United States for terrorist activity. That's a problem for us.

WALLACE: You have talked a little bit about the Arab League and that the U.S. could be on the sidelines. Forgive me, leading from behind, if you will. Should the U.S. be directly involved in should we be sending Tomahawk cruise missiles, jet fighter, off our assets in the Persian Gulf?

ROGERS: Well, if we learn anything, you can't fire missiles and then turn around and come home. It has to be a coordinated effort. That's why you have to have the Arab League with you. They have the capability and Special Forces and other things to impact certain parts of the battlefield. We should use that. We should help them do that. And that does not mean U.S. troops on the ground.

And, yes, if air strikes turn around the ability for an al Qaeda army to march and gain more safe haven -- remember this is all about gaining safe haven which puts them on the path to their caliphate.

WALLACE: If that would make a difference.

ROGERS: If it would make a difference. We can't wait days and weeks and months to scratch our heads in some political reconciliation process. We have to ask one single question. Is al Qaeda holding land the size of Indiana a problem for the United States?

Well, it certainly was when they were in Afghanistan and had time to plan the 9/11 event, and I guarantee you, this is a problem that we will have to face and we're either going to face it in New York City or we're going to face it here.

Now, again, doesn't mean troops, doesn't mean the same kind of fight. It means you have to have a coordinated effort but it has to be disrupted through tempo, meaning you can't fire and release. You have to fire and continue the pressure so that you can dismantle and empower other Arab militaries to be successful.

WALLACE: So, when the president talks, as he did, and you heard the clip, and he talked about it a lot on Friday, about all of this being contingent on political reconciliation inside Iraq, is that a condition or is that an excuse not to act?

ROGERS: Well, it's certainly appears to be an excuse. There's no way you're going to get reconciliation. The reason that Maliki is doing what he's doing, once the U.S. pulled out he realized he didn't have many friends in the neighborhood and he tried to consolidate his power with the Shias. That was a mistake. We could debate that for years to come, if that was -- I do think it was a serious mistake, but we helped condition his behavior.

Right now, the threat is to the United States and to our European allies, and a rising al Qaeda army. These are not monkey bar terrorists out in the desert somewhere planning some very low-level attack. These are sophisticated, command and controlled, seasoned combat veterans who understand the value of terrorism operations external to the region, meaning Europe and the United States. That is about as dangerous a recipe as you can put together.

And for us to say, maybe somebody else needs to deal with that -- we will deal with it. It's just a matter of what it looks like.

WALLACE: Iran. Lot of talk, Hassan Rouhani, the president of Iran, talking yesterday about well, we'll get involved and maybe we'll work with the U.S.

Any problems with you are us working alongside Iran against ISIS?

ROGERS: I wouldn't fall in that trap. The longer you wait for this discussion -- remember the Quds force was in Iraq and participated --

WALLACE: That's an elite Iranian force, part of the Revolutionary Guard?

ROGERS: Yes, yes.

So, Iran has been in Iraq for years. We know that. We know what their capabilities are.

I think it's a mistake. It would mean really a failure of U.S. leadership if we can't put the Arab League together to fight this problem that they know is in their best interests and the U.S. best interest to quell this Al Qaeda rising army.

WALLACE: Your -- as chairman of House Intelligence, you get briefed all the time. What is your best information, the situation on the ground right now? Is ISIS continuing to advance? Have the Shiite militias that have been called by the Grand Ayatollah Sistani to fight a war against the Sunnis? Is Baghdad vulnerable or not?

ROGERS: I think Baghdad is vulnerable. It appears they've halted their attack on Baghdad and now, we're trying -- they being ISIS. Now, trying to consolidate their wins in Mosul and Tikrit own other places, build in their defenses and they're doing it by sheer terror, summary executions. They've already implemented Sharia law, told women not to come out of your houses, all of that through fear.

So, it's interesting that they would stop and rebuild like you'd watch a normal army do when you watch your army get stretched that thin with your logistical base. So, either, (a), they've run out of fuel and equipment, which we don't think they did, or (b), more concerning, they started thinking about the ramifications of getting bogged down into a fight inside the city of Baghdad because the Shia militias are going to protect their home turf. That is an interesting development, and even more concerning if you think that they have learned from their past mistakes about overreaching -- really concerning.

WALLACE: I want to just put up -- Bob, if you could put up that map again that shows the reach of the area that they know control, which as you say is an area about the size of Indiana, all the way from northwestern Syria, across to northern Iraq, to the gates of Baghdad. Forget about Baghdad. Forget about southern Iraq, that is a safe haven, a base of operations as we see stretching from Illinois all the way to Virginia.

How do you take that out? That -- I mean, this could make what al Qaeda had in Pakistan look like a tea party.

ROGERS: Exactly, and that's my concern, and why you have to be decisive in your strikes.

This isn't a frontal assault on a military. This is very targeted military strikes to provide disruption activities from (a), further expansion, and (b), their ability to recruit, train and finance. All of those are important.

We've used very similar tactics to a large degree of success on Al Qaeda leadership, if you apply that same -- and it's bigger. It's more complicated. You're going to have to have more partners, by the way, who are willing to do this.

WALLACE: How long is that -- that's a real campaign, though. We're talking about --

ROGERS: This is not going to go away. Neither is Al Qaeda. This is very proof why a sustained campaign against al Qaeda cannot go away until we have decided, not what they have decided.

WALLACE: So, are we talking weeks? Months? Years?

ROGERS: I don't think you can put a time line on it. It depends on how effective we are, depends how effective we can make our Arab League partners in this fight. But here is the other challenge. We neglected Syria for three years, said not our fight, don't worry about it. We watched pooling of al Qaeda in a way we've never seen before.

Indecision caused this now ability for them to get healed, to get financed, to get trained and launch this military strike, certainly appears to be a military strike into Iraq. It puts a whole different discussion on what we're going to do in Syria as well, and just arming moderates at this point is three years ago, we're going to have to have a refocused strategy how we deal with those rising extremists in eastern Syria. Which means, what do you do with Assad? Tough question. And then what we do to disrupt their activities in Iraq.

We have to do this or we're going to pay a horrible price for it, and so are our European allies.

WALLACE: Chairman Rogers, thank you.

ROGERS: Yes.

WALLACE: Thanks for coming in today.

ROGERS: Thanks.

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