paul wolfowitz is former deputy secretary of defense under george w. bush and then president of the world bank. two former state department policy planning directors, richard haass, now the president of the council on foreign relations, and ann marie slaughter back at princeton university. joining me from washington, "the new york times" foreign affairs columnist, tom friedman. welcome. tom, let me start with you. you talk to a lot of people in the region. what is your sense about whether assad can hold on? so far he has defied many expectations and has held on. >> well, fareed, you know, i think it's the nature of these kind of regimes that they're strong, they're strong, they're strong until they around and then they go quickly. we just don't know when that moment will be. but the reason he has held on up till now is because he clearly has support. support of the minority that he represents. first of all, his own sect, an offshoot of shias, about 12% of the syrian population, and then christians who basically fear a sunni/muslim majority taking power

wolfowitz, richard haass, anne marie slaughter, and tom friedman., let's talk about iran for a second outside of the syrian context. what do you think is going to happen -- obama was able to defuse the issue of possible war with iran by saying i am -- i really take this threat seriously. i'm going to press and press them as hard as possible, containment is not an option. we will not live with an iranian nuclear program that could become a weapons program. and so at this point, either the iranians have to surrender completely, i think, or president obama faces a problem. in other words, he's kicked the can down the road, but it's going to come back soon. >> i think the iranians are very good at reading power and the global power scene. i think they've taken the measure of the world right now. and they don't think that -- that anyone's going to force them to give up their nuclear program. i think they realize that israel would be very, very wary of undertaking a military action before the american election or at a time that it could tip the global eco

secretary wolfowitz talked about world war ii as an example. what are things you can do that are short of a war and what should we do better diplomatic, economic informational and not just military and how deep those on the table? those are policy decisions, those are not power decisions and the consequence i believe my experience has been people way those considerations very deliberately and the policies they come up with. i can't get any more details in that statement. >> with bloomberg news to what extent have al qaeda or any non-state actors acquired the expertise to move into destructive cyberattack against the united states were the west general or the close at all and what would be some of the ingredients. they are a viable threat in that realm and qualify that with the reason the book is so important to get to and it's with a? schaenman if you look at that and say this was pretty easy to back to the conduct some of these exploits, the ability to get on the machine and exploit it if it is that easy we look at the bar of entrants into our

first, what secretary wolfowitz brought out, i think s absolutely important for our nation. cyber legislation. i think it's important that we talk about this. now, i'm not here to talk about any specific piece of legislation, but i do think it's important that we as a nation look at this and say what do we need for our country. and how do we do that. and let's put all the facts on the table as we talk about this from civil liberties and privacy. i think it's important that we talk about that, to protecting this country from a cyber attack. how are we going to do that? um, you know, we just finished up the fourth of july, and i had the privilege and honor of hosting 14 young children at my house, my grandchildren. and when you look at these kids between the age of 1 and 10, the average age, i guess, if you use the distribution method would be about 3. they all have ipods, little dss, they're all tremendously smart in this area. you know, you think about it, they are connected to the web when they start. they can run these things down to a battery, and they'll just plug it in,

brilliantly of how the neocons particularly cheney and then bush taking it up he accepted cheney and wolfowitz and the others that had this language about democratization we are going to force democratization. wondered reading it do you think that is what motivated them as opposed to the more traditional assumptions of ny in the country that they were motivated primarily by issues of expansion of oil in iraq that the democratization frame was how they were going to sell it to the american people. >> guest: you are raising a very important point. in fact i would -- these are the least people i expect to talk about the promotion and the accreditation. that is my own view. the big point for me because we don't have -- it was a social engineering project to be one it is and into real pressure to the project and they argue the united states was in power and should not shy away from the power. and this was an area iraq was the weakest. few civilians know the reason the intervene often the weakest would go into iraq and it is a very weak regime collapses dominance in iran, syria mr. president would g

but if you look at robert zoellick, richard haus, richard armitage, paul wolfowitz, none of them seem centrally involved. and what these insiders tell me is that it shows. that romney does not have the kind of senior, serious people who would tell him, for example, when you're going to london, never say anything even remotely critical of them. for example, when you go to poland, don't make a polish joke. when you go to israel -- you want to be as bland as possible so that the focus just on how statesman like you are. >> let's talk about americans here. let me throw up this number. nbc "wall street journal" poll. they prefer president obama over mitt romney when it comes to foreign policy, but when you sort of look at the rest of the world, and i know that's your focus each and every sunday morning, i keep thinking back, i remember the pictures in 2008. president obama, you know, he takes his trip abroad. you see the crowds. this was berlin. so, clearly the president is popular abroad, but here's what i want to know from yo. so what? what does that overseas popularity do for our countr

a week or so before wolfowitz had been on the border issue is muchore excited to meet me. the woman told that the care ane osth env was totch erl. anat pgrof so tover of the newspaper. he's a sweet boy, she said. the marine dad walked away. the woman looked at me and said i'm happy for him his sun has a small wound. longho yor le i a l d oul n b deof disparities marines and their families are suffering. during my war i did spend a short time at the entry point of the lead atthe end where the somirroanw andeae wahos tahargn hs end, the utter ruin of families. may i hug you, the woman asked? yes, of course. i felt awkward but i couldn't say no. she hugged me tight and gried me fr a mor oe hd enansaven, strong. of course i was none of these things that she would nevehong her son while he still upright she wept into my shoulder. the lyonnesse had lost her falythe on darkened come icecap melted. how uld o e edtmes a while liam the erotic way her face full of tears. she was attractive and that high school library in wo high considered, handsome and sturdy and she possessed the o

he was not the initiator but he accepted cheney and wolfowitz and the others who have this language aboutdemocratization and we were going to forced democratization. and i wondered in reading it, do you think that is really what motivated them as opposed to the more traditional assumptions of many in this country that they were really motivated primarily by issues of power expansion and oil in iraq, that the democratization frame was how they were going to sell it to the american people? >> guest: you are raising an important point. in fact these are the least people expect to talk about democracy and democratization. that is my own view. i think the big int for me as a historian is we don't have the evidence yet. it was a social initiating process. to be blunt, a project that neoconservatives argued that the united states should not shy away from being part. this was an area that was the weakest wing -- weakest wing. iraq was the weakest of the links. iraq was a very weak regime, collapses. mr. president he will go down in history as the president that basically remain to the middle east

tom friedman, paul wolfowitz, richard haas, anne marie slaughter on syria, iran, mitt romney, and presidenthe world's leading economists, paul krugman and ken rogoff, go head to head on the most important economic matters of our time. the economy, the fiscal cliff, the euro and much more. >>> also, why in the world does the united states find itself number one on a top-10 list with yemen, iraq, and serbia? i'll explain. >>> but first, here's my take. mitt romney has picked a bad time to launch an attack on barack obama's foreign policy. as he was speaking to the annual gathering of the veterans of foreign wars this week, charging obama with weakness, betrayal, and man dacity. there's a new poll on. handling foreign policy, americans prefer obama to romney by a whopping 15 points. romney's principal charge against obama is that he has angered america's allies and emboldened its enemies. >> shabby treatment of one of our finest friends. >> well, it turn out again that there's some recently released data that contradicts the claim. the pew foundation released one of its global surveys in june,

first, what the secretary wolfowitz brought up i think is absolutely important for the nation. i think it's important we talk about this. i'm not here to talk about any specific piece of legislation but i do think it's important that we as a nation look at this and say what do we need for the country and how do we do that? with all the facts on the table as we talk about this from the civil liberties and privacy. i think it's important we talk about that to protect the country from the cyberattack how are we going to do that? we just finished up the fourth of july, and i had the privilege and honor of hosting 14 young children at my house, my grandchildren. when you look between the ages one and ten the average age i guess if you use this would be about three. they all have the ipod games they're tremendously smart. they are connected to the web when the smart. they can run these things down to a battery and just plug in and keep on going. just plug in and i can keep on going. it's amazing what is queen of tennis world. think about the opportunity that we have. in the year 2000

deputy secretary of defense wolfowitz basically said the information on cole is stale. and they had an attitude of we're forward looking not backward acting. and consequently, uss cole became a footnote in history. they ignored it. they moved on as a new administration. it had been an act of war. we had watched the clinton administration do nothing, literally waiting until the day before the inauguration of a new to release the port end of the attack. the new administration took over, could have made a decision to take a new direction and do something about this act of war and did nothing. 11 months after the attack on the uss cole, the nation would pay a tragic price. i will tell you, we will never answer, be able to answer, the question on whether the attack on uss cole in responding to it would have tipped our hand in the intelligence world so that we might know whether or not 9/11 was in progress and what was going on. but i guarantee you, doing nothing in summons to the attack attack -- in response to attack sealed our fate. >> october 18, 2000. an event at pier 12

former deputy director of defense paul wolfowitz has also echoed the administration' admis warning that a siberia tack has the potential of causing -- that a cyber attack has the potential of causing devastation on the level of 9/11. "i hope we don't have to wait for something like 9/11 before people realize harass vulnerable." stewart baker has compared the threat to the catastrophic effects of hurricane katrina. "we must begin now to protect our critical infrastructure from attack and so far we have done little," baker said. "we are all living in a digital new orleans. no one really wants to spend the money reinforcing the levees, but the alternative is works and it is bearing down on us at speed." former n.s. adirector and c.i.a. director michael haydn has said, "we have entered into a new phase of conflict where we use a cyber weapon to create physical destruction and in this case physical destruction in someone else's critical infrastructure." former republican officials have also noted the cybersecurity gap in the private sector due to this market failure. the marketplace, former

secretary wolfowitz talked about world war ii as an example. what are the things you can do that are short of a war? what things should we do that are diplomatic, economic, informational, and not just military? how you put those on the table? those are policy decisions, not our decisions. the consequence, in my experience, has been that people way those considerations -- weigh those considerations deliberately, and as a consequence the policies they come up with use of that. i cannot go more into detail than that general statement, being a general. [laughter] >> tony with bloomberg news. to what extent has al qaeda or non-state actors acquire the expertise to move into destructive cyber attacks against united states or the last -- the west in general. what would be some of the ingredients they need for it becoming a viable threat in their ron? >> i do not personally believe they are a viable threat in that from now. let me qualify that. the reason i think that is so important to get to is that, when you look at that, you say, well, this is pret

former national security officials, including michael chertoff, michael mcconnell, paul wolfowitz, michael hayden, have written that the cyber threat is imminent and represents one of the most serious challenges to our national security since the onset of the nuclear age 60 years ago. they have urged us to protect the infrastructure that controls our electricity, water and sewer, nuclear plants, communications backbone, energy pipelines and financial networks with appropriate cybersecurity standards. similarly, in a letter to our colleague, senator john mccain, general keith alexander, the commander of u.s. cyber command and the director of the national security agency wrote -- "given d.o.d. re reliance on certain core critical infrastructure to execute its mission as well as the importance of the nation's critical infrastructure to our national and economic security overall, legislation is also needed to ensure that infrastructure is sufficiently hardened and resilient." mr. president, the threats to our infrastructure are not hypothetical. they are already occurring. for example, while m

director of national intelligence admiral mike mcconnell, former bush deputy defense secretary paul wolfowitz, former n.s.a. and c.i.a. director general michael hayden, former vice chair of the joint chiefs of staff marine general jim cartwright and former deputy defense secretary william lynn. and i quote from the letter -- "we write -- quite an impressive group, clearly bipartisan, nonpartisan. we write to encourage you to bring cybersecurity legislation to the floor as soon as possible. given the time left in this legislative session, any upcoming election this -- and the upcoming election this fall, we are concerned that the window of opportunity to pass legislation that is in our view critically necessary to protect our national and economic security is quickly disappearing. these security leaders went on to say infrastructure that controls our electricity, water, sewer, nuclear plants, communications backbone, energy pipelines and financial networks must be acquired to meet appropriate cybersecurity standards. we carry the burden of knowing -- it's really chilling -- we carry the burden

but it also includes people like paul wolfowitz, not exactly a liberal activist the last time that i checked, but certainly one who commands great respect for his knowledge in this area. i am amazed that we are letting the clock tick down when we know it is not a matter of ifs there is going to be a cyber attack on this country, it is a matter of when. madam president, let me just very briefly address another issue. is there some opposition among the business community to this bill? yes, there is. but there is also a great deal of support from the business community. we have, for example, a letter from the mdia, which represents 1,750 defense firms. we have letters of endorsement from cisco and oracle, from the silicon valley leadership group, from the business software alliance, from symantec, from e.m.c. corporation, from the center for a new american security, from -- endorsements from individuals in the previous administration like general hayden, like mike mcconnell, asa hutchinson, there are many, many supporters for this bill. and it's not surprising, because they know how imp