Leon Panetta

It's not as if they can overnight become Jeffersonian democracies.

That just doesn't work that way.

Well, one of the ideas was that maybe we should divide up Iraq into a Sunni area, a Shia area, and a Kurdish area.

Right.

And I remember when I went there, both as CIA director and Secretary of Defense, I said, you know, what about that idea?

And the Sunnis didn't like it, the Shias didn't like it, the Kurds didn't like it.

They said, we have a country, we want to keep it a country, and we want to be able to try to work our way through this.

And that's the problem.

The problem is, I think the structure is there.

I think the desire is there to keep a country together.

But very frankly, in order for that to happen, like every country, you need the leadership

that will in fact take the risks necessary in order to govern.

And frankly, if you look at Washington, we have a problem in terms of taking the risks necessary to get things done for this country.

John, you know what the biggest security threat right now to the country is?

Is the dysfunction in Washington.

because the fact is the parties are not willing to work together in order to solve the problems facing this country.

And so they've kind of given up.

They've given up on dealing with budgets.

They've given up on immigration reform.

They've given up on trade legislation.