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June 22, 2006

Special Report Roundtable - June 22

FOX News Special Report With Brit Hume

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

ASHTON CARTER, FMR. ASST. DEFENSE SECRETARY: The idea is to recommend to President Bush that he tell the North Koreans that if they prepare an intercontinental missile for launch, that he will order the U.S. military to destroy the missile on its launch pad rather than let it be tested, because such a test can give them the information they need to build a whole fleet of missiles at that and aim them at us.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

HUME: That man, who was the assistant secretary -- an assistant secretary of defense in the Clinton administration along with former Clinton defense Secretary William Perry proposed that idea in the "Washington Post" today. Some analytical observations on it now from Mort Kondracke, executive editor of "Roll Call"; Mara Liasson national political correspondent of National Public Radio; and the syndicated columnist, Charles Krauthammer, FOX News contributors all.

Well, what about this idea? You know, while it's coming from -- it came today in the form of an op-ed from Ashton Carter and Bill Perry, there are other people who think that it would be a good to -- if North Korea doesn't get it together to go ahead and do that. What about it?

MORT KONDRACKE, "ROLL CALL": Well, you know, these are the people who got snookered in 1994 by the North Koreans when they went over and made a deal that the North Koreans wouldn't develop nuclear weapons which they proceeded to do in secret. These are the same people who have been arguing the preemptive war is horrible, should never be engaged in. They are the same people who slow-walked national missile defense all during the Clinton administration, and now what they want to do is to have a preemptive strike against North Korea, which is an active war, and who knows, Kim Jong il is just nuts enough that he might send his Army plunging down into South Korea in which millions of people could get killed. I mean, this is not something you do over a weekend at an op-ed piece. You know, there is no preparation for this idea. And it strikes me as an act of panic, frankly. There are other ways to go about this using the Chinese to muscle the North Koreans and to get them to stop and stuff like that that ought to be pursued before we go to war over this.

MARA LIASSON, NATIONAL PUBLIC RADIO: Well first of all, those avenues are being pursued and so far they haven't gotten the North Koreans to budge.

HUME: But the North Koreans haven't done it yet, either.

LIASSON: No, they haven't done it yet. I think what -- I heard Ashton Carter on the radio this morning, I mean, he was acknowledging that his efforts and the Clinton administration's efforts on diplomacy didn't get the results that they wanted over time...

HUME: So now he wants the Bush administration to get tough.

LIASSON: Well yeah. And, you know, maybe he realizes what he did didn't work and wants to try something new. I think this is an interesting idea. I don't know if it's the idea that should be adopted, but the point is the United States has been struggling with its allies to figure out a way to get North Korea to, N. 1, give up its nuclear weapons program, but also not launch this missile. And you know, it's going to be -- right now the only thing they've come up with is the secretary of state has said we're going to respond, we'll consider this action provocative. Respond with what? More isolation to the most isolated regime in the world?

CHARLES KRAUTHAMMER, SYNDICATED COLUMNIST: You know, democrats have way of getting extremely hawkish after they have left office. As Mort indicated, these guys we're in office. Now we're in a post 9/11 world with wars going on all over the place with Americans involved with a lot of isolation for the United States. These guys are recommending a strike which undoubtedly will start a war and it would be the wrong war, the wrong place, the wrong time. Ten years ago before 9/11, when these guys were in power, North Koreans had a very -- an embryonic nuclear program, that would have been the time to go after and attack and not negotiate the lousy agreement that the Clinton administration did, which essentially gave them a blank check. But that wasn't done. And what we have now is a situation in which launching to this attack would be an attack on a nuclear power. This has never happened before, we've never done this, attacked a nuclear country. And the dangers are enormous. And it isn't as if this development of the missile is new.

The North Koreans have been working on three-stage missiles for years. They tested one a few years ago, it was not a success and they're going to test it again and we know it's part of a long progression, so it isn't as if it came upon us suddenly. The other issue here is that if we had worked hard on a nuclear -- on a missile defense system and not lost a decade in the 90's when democrats opposed it on principle because of a ridiculously obsolete treaty, the ABM Treaty, we might have been in position today to actually shoot it down after its launch, which is not an act of war, it's an act of defense and would have revolutionized the military affairs by essentially disarming the North Koreans and Iranian and who will be threatening the world with nukes and on ballistic missiles.

LIASSON: What do you we think should do?

KRAUTHAMMER: Develop our missile defense system.

LIASSON: No, I mean about this?

KRAUTHAMMER: You've got to swallow it. Right now we are not in a position to do anything about it.

HUME: Well, is it clear that the.

KRAUTHAMMER: The North Koreans have to be deterred. You cannot launch a war against them.

HUME: Well, they've been leaned on by us to whatever extent we're able to do it, they're also being leaned on by the Chinese about whom one presumes they care more than they care about us, at least in terms of what we think. Is it clear to you that that's failing? Is it clear to everybody at this desk that it's failing?

KRAUTHAMMER: It does. The North Koreans have been leaned on and resisted all that in leaning. Up until now.

HUME: I know but.

KONDRACKE: The Chinese have a lot more power than they've exercised yet. I mean, they can basically close North Korea down and the Chinese will have an incentive for two reasons -- the Japanese, one, are already involved in our missile defense system. The Japanese press is loaded with stories about how they're going to buy interceptors from us and get fully up to speed on nuclear missile defense.

Secondly, it happens to be a fact I just learned from a Congressman who's deep into this who says that next to the United States, Japan has more plutonium on hand than any other country in the world and could go nuclear in a sense of having nuclear weapons to counter the North Koreans in a minute. The Chinese don't want that. So this kind of threat conceivably could get the Chinese off the dime to go after the North Koreans and say uh-uh, buddy, you know, you're a starving power, you're really going to starve if you keep on with this. I mean, the Chinese are our card here.

HUME: Final word, Mara?

LIASSON: No, I think the Chinese could have done that by now and have decided that they don't want North Korea to starve any more than it is for their own interests.

KONDRACKE: Well, they don't want the Japanese to go nuclear.

HUME: Next on SPECIAL REPORT House members respond to claims they're stalling on immigration reform. The all-stars on that next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DENNIS HASTERT (R), HOUSE SPEAKER: The American people need to know what's in the bill, and we need to hear from them directly about it. Our goal is to write a bill in a conference report that protects the American people, and we can send an immigration bill to the president this year.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

HUME: Well, yeah, yeah, you could do that as Speaker Hastert suggests, but there's this little complication, that is that normally when the House passes a bill and then the Senate passes one, or vice versa, the two sides get together and meet over their two respective bills. Now the House wants to go around the country and have hearings on the Senate bill. And now they're all saying, you heard Speaker Hastert say it and other House leaders are saying it, too, no, no, we want a bill by the end of the year. But do they want a bill by November? That's the question.

What about the state of play on this? This getting -- this is kind of interesting -- Mara.

LIASSON: Yeah, well this is interesting, they don't really want a bill and this -- what's in "the" bill that Hastert was talking about.

HUME: You say they don't want a bill by November?

LIASSON: Yeah, well, I don't -- they don't want a bill by -- I would say that the consensus on the House republican side is they don't want a bill by November and they'd rather have no bill.

HUME: This is immigration reform.

LIASSON: This is immigration reform, because the only bill that they would accept is one that has no path to legalization -- to citizenship, which is something the Senate bill includes and the Senate couldn't pass something that doesn't have that because they need democratic votes.

HUME: But why, then, does it -- I mean, what are the political calculations that say we're better off with no -- any bill that passed would definitely have a lot of tough new enforcement in it. So, it'd be tough new enforcement but they might have to swallow at least a guest worker program. What is the political calculation that says it's better to have no bill than to.

LIASSON: Because it's better not to put something before the House republicans that are so divisive and there are a lot of House republicans who don't want the guest worker provisions and who says a guest worker provision with no path to legalization could get through the Senate? I mean, I think that.

HUME: Suppose it passed the House, though, or the compromise passed the House, would they be worse of having passed it?

LIASSON: The compromise that included a path to legalization? I don't think it could get passed by the House. I don't think they can get that compromise.

HUME: So, if they defeated it, it's better to have no bill than a defeated bill.

LIASSON: N. Better to have no bill than a defeated bill.

HUME: Why?

LIASSON: Because, better to have -- because, if you defeat a bill and you're certainly dealing a blow to the president who wants comprehensive immigration reform this year. I think the House is betting that it's better to just not to have it come up and not have to vote on it before November, so they can go home and campaign against amnesty, but not have something very divisive because as Speaker Hastert has said he's not going to bring something up that doesn't have the majority of support from the republicans.

HUME: Are we dead here? Is immigration reform dead?

KONDRACKE: I think we're dead. I mean, theoretically if there was goodwill involved here you could work through -- OK, we're constructively examining the Senate bill and will try to fix it, right? They don't want to fix it, the want to expose it.

HUME: They want to nix it.

KONDRACKE: Exactly. And the Senate, and meanwhile Arlen Specter, the Judiciary Committee chairman is going to have counter hearings around the country to promote his bill.

(CROSSTALK)

LIASSON: And he said he came up with the idea in the shower this morning.

KONDRACKE: You know, this is.

LIASSON: This is a great fratricidal battle, that's what this is.

KONDRACKE: Right, exactly.

HUME: Charles, let's talk about the -- let's assume we get no bill. In your judgment, you've been skeptical about whether there should be a bill and whether any bill could work. Is no bill better?

KRAUTHAMMER: Yes. In the short run, the calculation for republicans in the short run, you win by being tough on immigration in this election of 2006. The president and Rove are looking at the longer run of a growing Hispanic population, who's going to enlist it, can the republicans capture it, and in that perspective it's a negative if you kill the president's plan, but not in the short run. And look, House members always look at the short run because elections are always around the corner. And as you say, look, I think these hearings are a god idea. I'm a heretic on this. I don't understand why, if we've had an issue, a broken immigration policy for 30 years, you got to fix it in three months by ramming through a compromise.

LIASSON: Wait.

KRAUTHAMMER: Why not have -- why not have a year of discussing it, having hearings, the Congress is split and the republicans are split, the leadership is split. Let's have a year of hearings and let's.

HUME: Haven't they been working this thought, for a year at lease?

KRAUTHAMMER: Let's have elections on this. It's an election year. Let's have, as we had in the Duke Cunningham district in which his successor ran hard on immigration, why not have it in a democracy a year of discussing it, have elections, see how it stands and then have a resolution next year. What's so wrong about that?

LIASSON: Because we're not talking about having hearings where both sides of the issue are aired. The House republican's hearings are really designed to be rallies against the Senate bill.

KRAUTHAMMER: Specter will have hearings which will rally against the House bill and incidentally, when Specter announced his hearings, as you say, he thought it up in the shower, it's a detail I wish he hadn't added.

HUME: We promise, folks, that we do not have any pictures of Arlen Specter in the shower and if we did, we would not show them to you.

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