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June 12, 2006

Special Report Roundtable - June 12

FOX News Special Report With Brit Hume

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

GEORGE W. BUSH, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: Whatever we do, will be -- will be based upon, uh, the conditions on the ground, and whatever we do, will be toward a strategy of victory. And so, this is a process of getting to know the, uh, understand the Iraqi capabilities, particularly the command and control structure, and what are knee -- what we need to do to help them, uh, achieve victory.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

HUME: That was President Bush briefing reporters, sort of, at Camp David after his daylong strategy session dubbed by many a war council there, today. It continues tomorrow as well by many. Now some analytical observation from Fred Barnes, executive editor of the "Weekly Standard"; Mort Kondracke, executive editor of "Roll Call"; and Mara Liasson, national political correspondent of National Public Radio, FOX News contributors, all.

Well, Mara, what'd you make of this today, based on what we know?

MARA LIASSON, NATIONAL PUBLIC RADIO: Well, I think that, you know, this makes a lot of sense on a lot of levels, just on a substantive level. Administration officials have been quoted anonymously saying this is the last best chance to get a grip on the situation there. So, it makes sense that they should all, especially after a new Iraqi government, or at least the cabinet has been completed and you have this great victory or achievement of getting rid of Zarqawi to see where, where they're at and what they can do and what they can do better to get some kind of security back in that country. I think politically it makes sense because there's the president focusing, talking about a plan for victory and that's what a lot of people have begun to doubt that he had.

MORT KONDRACKE, "ROLL CALL": Well, you know, both in Iraq and from the commanders you get this impression that everything is moving in the direction of withdrawal, even the new national security advisor of the Iraqi government said this yesterday, I guess, that troops will be down to 100,000 by the end of this year and maybe all out next year. General Casey has sort of indicated that withdrawal is the name of the game and all that. The one person that you never hear any such statement from, fortunately, is President Bush.

HUME: Or Rumsfeld.

KONDRACKE: Yeah. Well, but you know, but people -- there's some suspicion that Rumsfeld is also in favor of withdrawals or at least not offensives and so far the troops have largely been confined to bases. I mean, they get killed by IEDs traveling from place to place, but they're not out there in combat.

But, President Bush said today that we intend to do is to help the Iraqi government bring security to neighborhoods in Baghdad and Basra. Now, that is a good sign. That suggests that, at least one more time, we're going -- we might be going on the offensive in order to clear out the bad guys out of the capital city and the chief city in the South and that we're not going to just hunker down.

FRED BARNES, "WEEKLY STANDARD": I too was struck by exactly that same sentence but more by something else. You know, there was an expert panel that was called in that spoke for several hours and was really.

HUNE: Outsiders.

BARNES: Outsiders. I'll tell you who they were. Robert Kaplan, who's a writer who's written about, particularly about American forces in Iraq, written very favorably about them, in particular. Elliott Cohen -- and President Bush has read his book -- Elliott Cohen of the Center for Strategic and International Studies here in Washington who's written a book about commanders in chief and that they have to often overturn, or the great ones like Lincoln and Churchill, have overturned the decisions and the advice of generals. President Bush has read that book. Fred Cagen (ph) of the American Enterprise Institute, who has written in the "Weekly Standard," actually, a piece on a plan of a counterinsurgency offensive that should start right now, he was on the panel, and then a man named Mick Vickers who's with another think tank in town.

Now, I think that these people where -- it sounds to me like they were handpicked by the president. I think he's probably read Fred Cagen's (ph) article and I know he's read those other two books. If you were planning have a pull-out, a reduction of troops, and anything but staying and winning and mounting a counter -- a very strong counteroffensive you wouldn't have these people here -- a counterinsurgency. So, I think the fact that they were there, and President Bush questioned them intently, is by far the most encouraging thing.

HUME: Mara suggestion -- last best chance which suggests a failing mission.

(CROSSTALK)

BARNES: (UNINTELLIGIBLE) said six months.

LIASSON: Yeah.

HUME: To -- or?

BARNES: Or we're never going to get a stable Iraq in the -- in the -- I guess, the near future.

KONDRACKE: Yeah, and we're heading into an election. The polls -- the polls -- he got a little bit of a boost out of the Zarqawi killing last week, but not much. And the danger is that if we don't show results, I meant the Iraqis don't show results in six months, that the will of the American people may be sapped. I mean, it's flowing away.

BARNES: The press will change too. If they can start -- reporters are not free to move around the city and I think that has colored some of the negativity of the reporting. If they can, if the capital city, which after all, has about a quarter of the entire Iraqi population, if it's made free of the insurgents, I think that will change some of the coverage coming from Iraq, as well, and should.

LIASSON: Yeah, and I think it's not just insurgents, all though the insurgents and the sectarian violence are up and kind of mixed together, but I also think it has to do with ordinary Iraqis being able to move around in their own city and not being afraid of being killed if they're a Sunni or a Shia.

KONDRACKE: I know that we're going to talk about democrats in the next segment, but Harry Reid said today that Americans deserve an exit plan. You know, and I was thinking to myself, well, why don't we just publish it for the insurgency. You know? I mean, why don't we just hand the insurgents what our plan is? I mean, if that's not stupid, I don't know what is. I mean.

(CROSSTALK)

HUME: There wasn't much discussion about troops at all. There wasn't any suggestion that they were going to need more.

LIASSON: Or less.

HUME: Which Casey said over the weekend on "FOX News Sunday" that he thought was an unlikely thing to happen and there wasn't a suggestion of when they were leaving, in fact you heard the same thing from the president about, you know, it will be conditions based, which is what we've heard all along.

BARNES: Yeah, but they need -- look, the administration needs to stop talking on any basis whatsoever about withdrawals, because the press -- it just feeds the press. Brit, the first question to President Bush today, when he came out, was about with drawing troops. I just saw this, Matt Lauer previewing the Camp David summit this morning on the "Today" show, said, people around the country are wondering are U.S. troops coming home any time soon? Democrats in the media are entirely obsessed with that.

KONDRACKE: But even the current strategy, those people -- those experts up there are criticizing the current strategy which is not to be out fighting. The Iraqis aren't able to do this by themselves, they need help from the Americans who know what they're doing and we have to get in there and help them clean out the capital.

HUME: Well, we said we'd be talking about the democrats in the second panel. A group of liberals who were in town for a conference had their key speaker, Harry Reid. We'll talk about him, them, and their conference, next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

HARRY REID (D); SENATE MINORITY LEADER: We don't have a bully puppet (SIC) but we do have you. We need you to be our megaphone. Democrats may be in the minority in Congress but we speak for the majority of Americans and I believe that. Don't you?

(APPLAUSE)

(END VIDEO CLIP)

HUME: That was Harry Reid over the weekend at the conference staged by the very popular and successful liberal political web site "Daily Kos" and it attracted quite a crowd and attracted Harry Reid and then he came back to Washington and there was another conference of liberal activist, here in Washington today, called the Take Back America conference, he spoke there as well. We had a report on that earlier in the program. We also have a new poll out today, as we mentioned earlier, showing that Hillary Clinton is not the most popular choice of Iowa democrats at the moment who -- for their caucus, John Edwards is by a tidy margin. And, so what about the democrats and where they are now on the war and much else -- Maura.

LIASSON: Well, it was interesting, they had these two back-to-back, you know, progressive meetings. I was at the one this morning, at the session this morning, and we heard Bob Borosage, who's a long-time left- wing leader, talk about this is our time, and looks what's happened, poll rating -- the president's poll ratings have dropped and Tom delay is gone, and Abramoff's in jail and this is our time and then after he finished, Stan Greenberg, the democratic pollster stood up and said, well, you know, I would have thought that as the republican's problems mounted, our stock would rise and that hasn't happened. And I thought it was a sobering view of the data that Greenberg delivered saying this is a tremendous opportunity for democrats, and at one point he said it's a great opportunity if only anyone knew what democrats stood for. Now, that was said slightly tongue in cheek, but I think it kind of explains...

HUME: Was there laughter?

LIASSON: Oh, yeah, there was definitely laughter, there was definitely laughter. The Democratic Party is full of passion, it's full of anger, it's primed for a takeover of something, but it has yet to actually, of course, elect anybody yet. It didn't win the special election and the other elections are five months away. Tomorrow, at the same liberal conference, Mrs. Clinton -- Hillary Clinton will be speaking and I expect she'll get a less than enthusiastic reception.

KONDRACKE: After -- I was at that conference too and they -- there are two themes, it's take back America, but it's also take back the Democratic Party. There is a lot fratricide going on and potential fratricide going on in the Democratic Party. Following Stan Greenberg was Katrina Vanden Heuvel, who's the editor of "The Nation," which is the -- you know, the famous left-wing magazine. And what she kept touting, the people on the left like Marcie Winograd who ran against Jane Harman and Ned Lamont, who's running against Joe Lieberman and she was attacking -- there's a new -- a new idea going around among democrats called, the "common good," well this maybe -- this maybe akin to the Democratic Leadership Council. Democratic Leadership Council is this centrist organization and all, you know, all the libs -- the left libs think that this is an anathema because they are free traders, you know, or they use to be free traders. And so you know, you've got this polarization, you've got the fact that John Murtha is coming out already, they haven't even won the election, John Murtha's already making a -- making a play against Steny Hoyer, you've got Nancy.

HUME: To be leader.

(CROSSTALK)

KONDRACKE: To be leader. As the speaker. Yeah, assuming that Nancy -- and then you've got -- even -- even Nancy Pelosi on the left. Nancy Pelosi, she's a pull-out of Iraq now, but you have to her left the John Conyers gang who want to impeach President Bush if they ever get back in. So, you know, this is all fragmented.

HUME: You should know, by the way Mort, that John Conyers has said that he would not immediately try to impeach President Bush after he got -- if they got back in power, and he became chairman of the Judiciary Committee. He would investigate -- he would have hearings first.

BARNES: Yeah, right. You know, there is a way to take back America. Win elections. That's all you have to do. Win elections. And I did not go to this left-wing conference today. I watched the U.S.-Czech Republic soccer game which was a disaster. The U.S. played a horrible game. In any case, I hope they come back against Italy.

But Harry Reid was ridiculous. I mean, he doesn't even know who these -- what the left-wing bloggers, that he was speaking to, do. I don't think he ever reads them. You know what they do? They trash the Democratic Party day and night. They trashed them in California 50 when they lost. They're trying to drive the party even further -- even further to the left. They're not out there to help the Democratic Party to be Harry Reid's megaphone. That is not what they see as their task. You know, Mike Marone (ph) has had the most penetrating analysis of all these bloggers and why it helps republicans and conservative. The left-wing bloggers trash the Democratic Party. The right-wing broggers trash the mainstream media.

KONDRACKE: Oh that.

BARNES: It's win-win.

KONDRACKE: The left-wing bloggers are trashing the democratic establishment and Katrina Vanden Heuvel said that the Bush administration is conservative it's extremist, but the democratic establishment is afraid of its shadow. I mean, they want policy and rhetoric to be far left. I mean.

BARNES: You know, what they really like -- you know what those people like? They like anger. They're all Deaniacs, they love Howard Dean. Do you know how many primaries he won? Remember that? How many he won? One, in Vermont. Only one, in 204. But you know, they don't seem to have a sense of politics of winning and losing and so on and they're pushing...

(CROSSTALK)

HUME: Quickly, then why are -- why are the democrats so, pay (inaudible) to them?

LIASSON: Because they are a very loud chorus. They actually -- they are a force, now, we don't know if they can elect anybody, they can raise money, but the democrats are trying to get this tiger by the tail and tame it a bit to turn it into yet another.

HUME: Source of energy.

LIASSON: Source of energy or block in it's own coalition and we don't.

(CROSSTALK)

HUME: And get out the vote drive.

LIASSON: And it's unclear if they can do that.

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