(This is not a legal transcript. Bloomberg LP cannot guarantee its accuracy.)

AL HUNT: Virginia Senator John Warner is a respected Republican voice on national security matters. So when he called on President Bush to begin withdrawing troops from Iraq, it was a sharp rebuke to the president’s policy from a traditional supporter. And it came just a day after Bush invoked the chaotic end of the Vietnam War to argue against the withdrawal from Iraq.

With us here to discuss this is Zbigniew Brzezinski, President Carter’s former national security advisor and a counselor at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. Dr. Brzezinski, thanks for joining us. The president –

ZBIGNIEW BRZEZINSKI: Good to be with you.

MR. HUNT: The president told the VFW this week that a free Iraq was within reach and noted that even some Democratic lawmakers have come back saying the surge is making progress.

MR. BRZEZINSKI: Well, surge, it may be making some progress in some suburbs of Baghdad, but I don’t think anyone claims that it marks the turning point in what is clearly a failure. And the president’s speech itself was an admission of a colossal failure, a colossal failure. Four-and-a-half years after his invasion of Iraq, he’s now saying that if we withdraw, Iraq ends up like Vietnam or even worse

MR. HUNT: Was the Vietnam analogy an inappropriate one or just an irrelevant one now?

MR. BRZEZINSKI: I don’t think it’s entirely appropriate because in the case of Vietnam, we actually were out for two years before the South Vietnamese government collapsed. But what is more troubling is an analogy between Vietnam and Iraq that is quite fundamental and it is that in both cases the United States was trying to wage a war on a part-time basis that for the people involved, the Vietnamese or the Iraqis, was fundamentally a colonial war. And to win that kind of a war, the power that is waging it has to wage it across the board: national mobilization, massive effort, enormous deployment of troops, and a brutal determination to prevail. And neither then nor now does the American public favor that because the American public has common sense.

MR. HUNT: In that larger context then, would you argue that the widely advertised General Petraeus report in a couple weeks is really not very relevant?

MR. BRZEZINSKI: Well, I would recommend that people read the report he delivered, I believe in 2004 or 2005, which was claiming at the time that we were making significant progress and that we were doing quite well.

MR. HUNT: In your new book, “Second Chance,” you posit that America has an opportunity to recover from the Iraq debacle over the next several years. Other than getting out of Iraq, what are the main challenges?

MR. BRZEZINSKI: Well, first of all, it is a question: how do we get out? I don’t advocate simply packing our bags and just clearing out. I think we have to bite the bullet on two issues that the president has been unwilling to bite. Namely, we have to go the Iraq leaders and say flatly and unambiguously, we intend to leave, let’s talk together – I emphasize together – about setting a date, and then simultaneously tell all of the neighbors of Iraq that we have decided to leave, that we are setting the date for departure with Iraqis, and that it is now in their interest to start consulting together with us about creating a framework of security upon our departure. But that requires a decision to leave and the president, I think, wants to bequeath the war to his successor.

And as long that war goes, we’re going to be tied, handcuffed, in dealing with foreign affairs. Our relations with China, with Russia are deteriorating. We’re despised worldwide and therefore the president really is historically at fault here.

MR. HUNT: Let’s go to the current race for president. Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama, as you know, have had several recent dustups over issues like whether the U.S. should act unilaterally if there were proven intelligence of al Qaeda in Pakistan, whether nuclear weapons should be taken off the table, and that thing. What’s your take on these arguments over foreign policy between these two leading candidates?

MR. BRZEZINSKI: I think Obama is clearly more effective and has the upper hand. He has a sense of what is historically relevant and what is needed from the United States in relationship to the world. He recognizes that the challenges, a new face, a new sense of direction, a new definition of America’s role in the world.

The senator from New York talks in very conventional terms and I don’t think the country needs to go back to what we had eight years ago. I think there is a need for a fundamental rethinking of how we conduct world affairs and Obama seems to me to have both the guts and the intelligence to address that issue and to change the nature of America’s relationship with the world.

MR. HUNT: And how about the other argument that whether you – the issue of talking to bad guys, the Iranians, North Koreans, and Hugo Chavez, do you believe that direct talks with unsavory characters rewards bad behavior or is just simply realpolitik?

MR. BRZEZINKSI: I can’t understand people who claim that that is the case because what it in effect means that you only talk to people who agree with you. We negotiated with the Soviets throughout the years of the Cold War when there was always the possibility of a nuclear war with them. We negotiated with the Chinese. More recently, we have negotiated with the North Koreans. So what’s the hang-up about negotiating with the Syrians or with the Iranians and so forth?

What Condi Rice says on this subject, mainly that we can’t negotiate with them because they don’t agree with us, is sheer nonsense. It’s really the reputation, the abandonment of intelligent diplomacy.

MR. HUNT: Dr. Brzezinksi, let me ask you a final question. You’ve made quite clear that you prefer Barack Obama in 2008. Are you talking to him about foreign policy right now, does he consult with you?

MR. BRZEZINSKI: Oh, I don’t think I would call myself a person that he consults with. I have known him, I’ve talked to him, but he talks to a lot of people and I’m sure that a lot of people are closer to him than I am. But I do feel fundamentally very deeply that we have gotten ourselves into a jam and that if America is to prosper and if our leadership is to be respected and trusted again, we really need a dramatic new departure. And I sort of sense that Senator Obama has that grasp, that fundamental understanding.

MR. HUNT: And therefore is ready, despite a lack of experience, to be president of the United States?

MR. BRZEZINSKI: Well, what kind of experience that was really relevant did Governor Clinton had before he became president? Being a former First Lady doesn’t prepare you to be president. President Truman didn’t have much experience before he came to office. Neither did John Kennedy. It’s basically a fundamental grasp of what is the nature of our era that is essential here, that is at stake

MR. HUNT: Zbigniew Brzezinski, thank you very much for an interesting conversation. When we return, the lazy, hazy, crazy days of summer have been no vacation for Ben Bernanke. Reports from Washington and London after the break.

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