HUME: Let me ask you first about Iraq. From what I've read of your trip, it sounds like your account is similar to others about there being progress on the military front in particular, correct?

PENCE: Well, I think there's been significant progress on the ground, but the fight is far from over.

I was part of a six-member bipartisan delegation that began in the northern region, the Kurdish region of Iraq. We met with officials there, saw the situation on the ground, spent time in Baghdad, and then got out to al-Anbar province, walked the streets of Haditha.

And I have to tell you, I was there a year ago in Anbar province and in Baghdad, and you can see both in the statistics and you can feel among Iraqis and among our own soldiers that there has been significant, if fragile, progress toward security and stability in Iraq, thanks to the surge and thanks, Brit, to extraordinary cooperation by Sunnis in the last year.

HUME: Well, let me ask, everyone says this about progress having been clear and demonstrable but fragile. Now, you've had a change of heart on the part of a lot of Sunnis. You noted that particularly in Anbar. You see that elsewhere as well.

And you see, as others have, an increasing ability of the Iraqis to fend for themselves. Why, then, is the progress said to be so fragile?

PENCE: Well, I think it's fragile — as the Kurdish prime minister told me over lunch, I think it's seen as fragile because while the enemy has been in many respects largely beaten back in the center part of the country and in al-Anbar province, as we saw in grim detail in the car bombing and suicide bombing in Baghdad this week, this is still a lethal enemy that will use deadly force to upend the progress of stability and democracy in this country.

And I have to tell you, I did run into anxiety among many Iraqi officials about talk of a precipitous American withdrawal from Iraq.

Several Iraqi leaders with whom we spoke with and, frankly, regular Iraqis on the street see the vital and critical importance of a durable American presence, at least in the near term.

And people understand the American soldier, combined with the cooperation of Sunni and Shia Arabs in this country, is the pathway toward stability and a successful free and democratic Iraq.