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He was revered by some, feared by many in the old Iraq. Of course, Saddam Hussein will soon be in the legal custody of Iraq’s new interim government. It’s clearly a sign of some of the dramatic changes unfolding in that country.

Joining us now to talk a little bit more about the future of Iraq, the political fallout, perhaps here in the United States and more, two guests: Eleana Gordon with the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies; Philip Gordon, no relation, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution.

Gordon and Gordon, but no relation as far as we know, is that right?

PHILIP GORDON, BROOKINGS INSTITUTION: No relation. No law firm.

BLITZER: Eleana, are you upbeat about what’s happening in Iraq right now?

ELEANA GORDON, FOUNDATION FOR THE DEFENSE OF DEMOCRACIES: I’m cautiously optimistic. I think there’s every reason to believe that a government of Iraqis that are accountable for Iraqis and represent Iraqis are going to do a better job than the coalition, which was unelected and really was accountable to Washington, D.C., and was torn by interests in Washington.

We all know that the infighting between the State Department and the Department of Defense was paying — there was a heavy toll in Iraq and people were feeling that.

BLITZER: What do you think, Phil?

P. GORDON: I’m not particularly upbeat. I mean, I think it’s going to be a real challenge. The transfer of sovereignty is an important step. It’s a move in the right direction.

There are a few sprouts of things to be positive about, like the popularity of Mr. Allawi, for example. But on the whole we shouldn’t underestimate the challenges to the head, even after the transfer of sovereignty.

There’s going to be more violence and most importantly, I think it’s going to be hard to pull off these election that we’re all looking to.

BLITZER: The elections are scheduled for next January. We’re going to get into some of that, but I want both of you to listen to what the president, President Bush said earlier today wrapping up the NATO summit in Istanbul, Turkey.

And he made a point of speaking about the importance of democracy taking hold in Iraq and the potential ramifications for the rest of the region.

Listen to this.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

GEORGE W. BUSH, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: Democracy, by definition, must be chosen and defended by the people themselves. The future of freedom in the Islamic world will be determined by the citizens of Islamic nations, not by outsiders.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BLITZER: Eleana, you work for the Center for the Defense of Democracies. Is this realistic, this notion that there can be democracy in the Middle East? Doesn’t necessarily have a rich history there.

E. GORDON: I’d like to know what the alternative is in a country like Iraq, where you have so many different ethnic groups. The only alternative I can think of is someone like Saddam Hussein again, who was not just a benign dictator; he was a tyrant.

And the reason you needed such tyrant — tyranny is because groups are so large that for any group to dominate the other, it has to apply ruthless force.

I think the Iraqis are at a point in their history where there’s only one or two options: to go back to something like Saddam Hussein, which is intolerable and is a failure, or the other is for them to find their way to democracy.

BLITZER: I’ve heard in recent weeks a lot of experts making the comparison.

Remember Yugoslavia. Remember what held Yugoslavia together, President Tito? He had an iron fist. He kept all of the parts of Yugoslavia — Serbia, Kosovo, Bosnia, Herzegovina, all of those various, Croatia — all of those provinces together because he was a dictator. He could do it. Once he fell it all fell apart.

How worried, Eleana, are you now that Saddam Hussein held it all together with a — with a ruthless grip as well, as we all know. But now that he’s gone, how worried are you that the Sunnies and the Shiah and the Kurds, all of them could just create their separate little enclaves?

E. GORDON: It’s a real risk. Well, the fact that they might create separate enclaves may or may not be a problem. I mean, do these…

BLITZER: Separate countries?

E. GORDON: We should consider that, if that may be one of the options and people have called that as a possibility, it may be the breakup of Iraq. And if it’s…

BLITZER: Most people in the region think that would be a disaster.

E. GORDON: A break up will not — Well, Turkey has started to consider it a possibility. I don’t think we have to get to that point yet. Federalism is an option we should consider first.

And let’s remember that the Iraqis right now, and this government that’s in place right now, does not want civil war, and they have committed to federalism. And that is the path they’re going to go towards.

And if we could foster local elections. This is something I think that’s important, rather than the party list that we’ve been promoting. Local interests can override ethnic divisions.

BLITZER: All right. Philip, go ahead.

P. GORDON: I think we need to be realistic and we need to be patient. It’s precisely because of the different ethnic groups and the unevenly divided resources, with oil in some places and not in others, that it’s going to be enormously difficult to get anything resembling a democracy in Iraq.

I do agree with the basic premise that we have no choice but to you move in that direction. But I think that expectations have been too high. The war was oversold as a step towards transforming the Middle East, imposing democracy on the Middle East.

And we go — you know, it’s been a year now since the fall of Saddam Hussein. It’s going to take a long time. It’s taken our own country more than 200 years.

BLITZER: But it’s still possible, all of those positive developments could happen in Iraq. This new leadership in Iraq, Prime Minister Allawi, President al-Yawer, these men seem to committed, at least in what they’re saying, to those concepts.

P. GORDON: I think that’s right, and that’s why I think this is an important step. It’s long overdue, in fact, to have Iraqis out in front. And Prime Minister Allawi talking about one of his first steps was to name an electoral commission and try to put this in place.

That has to be the goal. But again, we need to be realistic in our expectations. I mean, Turkey was also mentioned a minute ago. Turkey has been fighting and struggling. It’s probably the most democratic country in the Muslim world, but it’s been struggling for 80 years to try to set up a model.

And still there are issues of minority rights and ethnic rights and the role of the military. And some people think Turkey still governs with too much of an iron fist through the military. So that’s 80 years after a process, with western support and all the rest.

So let’s not thank that, you know, from now until December of next year, we’re going to turn this around. We do need to be patient.

BLITZER: He’s right on that, right?

E. GORDON: That we need to be patient?

BLITZER: Yes.

E. GORDON: Absolutely.

BLITZER: That you can’t just have a democracy overnight. This is going to take a long time?

E. GORDON: Absolutely. And I’d actually add to a point Philip made, which is our rhetoric. I think we really made a mistake because we have staked the credibility of the United States on the promotion of democracy in Iraq.

The whole Middle East and the Arab and Islamic world is watching us now. And there will be a gap, unfortunately, between our rhetoric and the reality.

I think we should have focused much more on building democracy, spending money on democracy education. We did not do enough. Doing far more at the grassroots level to hold local elections and maybe talk a little bit less about it.

But now our credibility is as much at stake as it was when we were at U.N. talking about the U.N. resolutions we needed to enforce when Saddam was still in power.

BLITZER: Eleana, hold your fire. I want to just take a quick break.

Philip, stand by.

We’re going to take a quick break. Much more with Eleana Gordon and Philip Gordon. No relation between these two, although they could look like they might be related but they’re not. After a short break.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BLITZER: The interim government takes political control in Iraq, but that’s just the beginning. What must happen next before elections can take place? More about that right after the break.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

BUSH: Some on both sides of the Atlantic question whether the NATO alliance still has a great purpose. To find that purpose, they only need to open their eyes. The dangers are in plain sight. The only question is whether we will confront them or look away and pay a terrible cost.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BLITZER: The president of the United States speaking earlier, wrapping up the NATO summit in Istanbul, Turkey. He’s now on his way back to the United States.

Welcome back to our program.

We’re talking about the future of Iraq with my two guests, Eleana Gordon with the Foundation for the Defense of Democracy; and Philip Gordon, a senior fellow of the Brookings Institution, also the author of “Allies at War: America, Europe and the Crisis Over Iraq.” It’s a new book that came out right now. Very, very timely.

Philip, you just heard the president challenging NATO to do something or become irrelevant. They’re doing something: training Iraqi troops. We’re not sure where, when, how, how significant this is. But a lot of people suggesting, you know what? This is really a bare bones kind of gesture on the part of NATO.

P. GORDON: It was pretty bare bones. I think the president was right to challenge the allies. They do need to step up and we need more support from the allies.

But it’s premature, I think, to sort of announce that we’ve turned the corner with the allies; we’ve put the crisis behind us; and they’ve stepped up to the plate; and they’ve decided to begin helping us train Iraqi security forces.

I think that’s a welcome development. But it’s too soon to say we’ve turned the corner. The fact of the matter is the allies really weren’t willing to step up as we wanted them to.

You know, a couple of months ago we were still hoping that they would provide new troops for Iraq and that NATO would take over. Perhaps the secretary helping the polls in Iraq and relieve more debt and provide more money. And all of that.

And the fact is they haven’t been willing to do that, most of them. The Brits and a few others are helping.

But mostly, to be honest, relations with the United States are still so bad, and President Bush is still so unpopular in Europe, that these — the European leaders just weren’t willing to do that right now.

I think the overall assessment of the summit and, indeed, this whole month of summits that we just had with Europeans, is that they’re waiting until November. They want to see how our election comes out before they step up.

BLITZER: You keep hearing Europeans. I was in France for the 60th anniversary of the D-Day invasion. And you keep hearing people in Europe say — all of our reporters are monitoring this and all of the print media, as well.

People say, “We love America; we hate Bush.” And that’s a problem for the politicians, for the Jacques Chiracs, the Gerhard Schroeders, who may be thinking about moving closer to the Bush administration, but they have a political problem back home.

E. GORDON: But they could exercise leadership like Tony Blair and just move ahead. That’s what leadership is.

I also think that it’s nice to say they love Americans, they hate Bush. But if you actually look at the caricatures in the media and the intellectual elites, how they portray the United States, there is a condescension of the American character, the Americans that are like these big adolescents who have too much power and not enough wisdom.

This is a very old stereotype of the United States, and we saw under Reagan, the same thing. It’s not entirely a new phenomenon, and it’s a little more complex with Bush.

BLITZER: But the criticism of President Bush is that he failed to do what his father did going into the first Gulf War. He put together an enormous coalition, including all of the Europeans, including Syria and Egypt. Arab countries were involved as well, and that this president failed to do that.

E. GORDON: I think there are a lot of criticisms that can be leveled at his diplomatic skills and the style, the tone that we use towards Europe.

But fundamentally we were — we did have differences of opinion on how to proceed. And there was a point where we had to decide what to do. If you go back to that second U.N. resolution, we felt that our credibility was at stake, that we had sent an ultimatum to Saddam Hussein and that we couldn’t afford not to act upon it.

And if France wasn’t willing to go along and Russia wasn’t willing to go along, at some point we had to make a decision.

BLITZER: Philip, you want to respond?

P. GORDON: Well, I think at the end of day it’s true. If the United States needs to go to war to protect the security, it needs to do that whether France and others on the Security Council agree.

That said, I do agree that the diplomacy of the Bush administration was lacking. We went to the U.N., but we went to the U.N. basically saying, “We’re going to do this. We’re going to decide for ourselves. Whatever you think, we’re going to do it.”

We went to the U.N. about a week after senior officials, including the vice president, had basically said that the alternative to war, inspections, was worse than nothing.

We then treated those allies who questioned the war, like France and Germany, with contempt. In other words, they didn’t — this was disloyalty and they had no — we accused them of pursuing commercial interests and all of the rest, when in fact as we’ve seen over the past year they had some sound reasons for worrying about how difficult it would be on occupy Iraq afterward.

So you know, it’s not surprising that they’re not exactly willing to crawl back and bail us out now, given the way that we went about the war.

BLITZER: I want to share with our viewers who may have not seen “The New York Times” this morning. There’s a new “New York Times”/CBS poll. Some interesting numbers as far as the president’s job approval ratings right now. Look that this.

Forty-two percent say they approve of the way the president is handling his job. Fifty-one percent say they disapprove.

As far as John Kerry is concerned, look at this. Twenty-nine percent say they have a favorable impression, opinion of John Kerry; 35 percent, unfavorable. Undecided, 36. A lot of Americans simply don’t have an opinion of John Kerry yet.

And as for as who they will vote for in November is concerned, right now it’s still very, very close. Forty-three percent for Bush; 42 percent for Kerry; 5 percent for Ralph Nader. That Nader factor must be oh, so worrying for John Kerry.

A quick — a quick answer.

E. GORDON: I can’t comment on Nader, but I’d say Americans are frustrated with President Bush, and they’re letting him know that. But we still have a ways to go to the election. But they’re sending clear signals.

BLITZER: Very tight race right now, and a lot of uncertainty still.

Philip Gordon, Eleana Gordon. No relation to both of you. You look like you could be cousins. We’ll take a break. Thanks for joining us.

E. GORDON: Thank you.

BLITZER: We’ll be right back.