and then secretary cheney and brent scowcroft and others said if you intervene in iraq, it will break, into sunni and kurdish and shia pieces and we'll never be able to put it back together again. they were right. and when the next president bush contemplated in 2003 going into iraq, some of us said that again. if you invade iraq, it will break into three pieces as soon as you leave. and that's essentially what has happened. and we should never have gone in the first place. and the situation we face now is directly because we went in. >> so when you heard dick cheney's recent editorial, his writing along with his daughter, i was curious to hear your response to his really blistering attack on the obama administration and their foreign policy. >> dick cheney is a discredited hypocrite. he knew in 1991 that it was a mistake to go in. and that was the only time he has ever been right about iraq. why anybody would listen to dick cheney on iraq is beyond me. >> you also said at one point, which i found interesting is what we're seeing essentially is al qaeda fighting iran. something you sa

there was -- we see in the records that robert and brent scowcroft were all thinking about how do we translate perestroika and the unpredictability of where it may lead into concrete ways. after all, nobody could have anticipated how quickly and how the soviets and gorbachev, in particular, would allow eastern europe to go in the fall. i do not think they were missing in action. in the end, even if they were, i am not sure what the effect ultimately was. what the long-term effect was. other than that gorbachev was frustrated. in terms of as to why you should buy the book, it is the story of individuals. these people were not gods or saints. they struggled very hard. they made lots of mistakes. gorbachev is somebody that i walk away with amazement about. he really believed in the notions of new world order. he calls for it in december of 1988. he believes in perestroika. he says to bush in malta in 1989 that they need perestroika. they say that they do not think he has much of an idea of how to proceed. and yet, these ideas and slogans let him to act in ways that were very good. and,

in fact, president bush and brent scowcroft wrote in the book "a world transformed," that they were fearfulout in '91, that we would have ended up occupying it just as we have been occupying it for the last 11 years. and it would not have been in our interests to do so. we would have ended up with a mess that we are in. that was one of the reasons we did not go to baghdad. another reason we didn't go to baghdad is we wanted to have iraq remain as a bullwork against iranian aggressiveness. >> and in this op-ed, sir, you also write that airstrikes and military advisers, almost a humpy-dumpty effect, that they're not going to put iraq back together again, so what options will make a difference? >> well, i think there's two parts of this. one is the internal part, which is the iraqi part. and it's incumbent upon the government to reach out and embrace the diverse ethnicities that make up iraq, if they ever hope to keep it as a unitary state. my thought is we should be strictly focused on decapitating isis and let the iraqis work out the political agreements themselves. we could be helpful in th

bush and brent scowcroft, the former national security adviser to gerald ford and george h.w. bush.raqi government that they are open to air strikes, u.s. air strikes. what should the u.s. do? >> the president should take this very seriously. this is a big challenge for the united states of america. obviously it's a huge challenge for the iraqi government and their stability. i hope that he will exercise prudence. i think he has to understand that there are many, many moving parts and many ramifications to what happens over there. you've got the sunni shia split, the curds, the turkish, the syrians all paying attention to what's happening. i hope he will seek wise counsel from wise people that really understand the region. i hope he will also recognize this insurgency is very, very dangerous. they are not afraid to attack america. they want to attack america wherever they can. they want to attack our interests. i think they're looking the take advantage of this situation and they built up too much momentum. i think in part because president obama did not do what he should have done

covered the tiananmen square protest stories as well as president bush's national security advisor brent scowcroft. coming up, we look at the release of sergeant bowe bergdahl in exchange fb five taliban detainees. then the director of the al qaeda and taliban monitoring team speaks about his report on the rise of fighters in syria since the start of the war. after that, alan gomez on recent reports finding that thousands of imgrant children are coming across the border unaccompanied by patients or relatives. plus your phone calls, facebook comments and tweet. "washington journal" live thursday at 7:00 a.m. eastern on c-span. next, a senate banking subcommittee holds a hearing on student loan interest rates and how they're impacting the u.s. economy. ohio senator brown recently introduced a bill to allow students with outstanding student loans to refinance at a lower interest rate being offered to new borrowers. this is an hour. >> the committee will come to order. thank you for coming back and being of assistance to us. about a decade ago we began to see the warning signs of problems in the housi