CNN Wolf Blitzer Reports

The following is an excerpt from the original Fox News transcript:

First of all, Porter Goss, good idea for the president to be thinking about naming him the next director?

JAMES WOOLSEY, FORMER CIA DIRECTOR: Porter would be a superb director of central intelligence.
If anybody can get through a relatively quick confirmation hearing, I think it would be him, although it’s likely to be drawn out, given how close it is to the election. John McLaughlin is excellent, too, who is out there as acting, the career man, who’s an analyst…

BLITZER: When you were at the CIA, the director of the CIA, during the Clinton administration, did you know this Anonymous?

WOOLSEY: No, and I still don’t. I had an e-mail exchange with Anonymous nearly three years ago because he sent me his first book to do a publisher blurb on it. Although there was much in it that was fascinating and I liked, he said the same thing that he said here on camera, which was that he admired people like Osama bin Laden because they were dedicated.

He even compared them to the American founding fathers and said the American founding fathers were dedicated. So is Osama bin Laden, and that sort of shows something. I find that truly bizarre…
BLITZER: And I think you probably strongly disagree with his suggestion that the war in Iraq was doing exactly what Osama bin Laden wanted, playing into his hands, undermining what he regarded as the major threat, the war on terror.

WOOLSEY: Yes, I disagree with that, but I must say, I think that’s a reasonable argument that reasonable people can have…

WOOLSEY: Regional — well, election for a parliament, but elections where things are peaceful, which is a substantial share of the country, in the south and in the Kurdish areas, largely in the Shiite areas and in the Kurdish areas. And then if the Sunnis in Fallujah can’t keep themselves in order, they don’t get to hold an election yet.

BLITZER: Can they hold elections when 100 people a day are being killed? At least today, 100 people were killed.

WOOLSEY: I think they can hold them in large shares of the country. And I think the sooner the better…

BLITZER: You heard General George Casey, who is going to be replacing General Ricardo Sanchez, the U.S. commander on the ground in Iraq, saying that the U.S. has probably underestimated the extent of the insurgency, the opposition.

WOOLSEY: I think that’s right, but I think the basic mistake that was made, was made back when they first went in, actually in the late ’90s.

BLITZER …Is there light at the end of the tunnel?

WOOLSEY: It’s worthwhile if we win. If we back out, if we cut and run, it would be better that we never had tried, because it will radically encourage terrorism against the United States and Western Europe, here, in Europe, and all sorts of places. It makes us look weak.