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July 04, 2006

Special Report Roundtable - July 4

FOX News Special Report With Brit Hume

WILSON: Before we begin with our panel, chief White House correspondent, Bret Baier standing by with an update on that North Korean missile situation.

Hello Bret.

BAIER: Hi Brian. Senior administration officials point out first, that there was no immediate threat to the United States with these missile launches today. There were three as of this afternoon from North Korea. One about 2:30 Eastern Time, the next on about 3:00. Those were basically scud missiles, unguided missiles that landed in the Sea of Japan. Now the third missile fire was the Taep'o-dong 2 missiles. That happened about 4:00 Eastern Time according to administration officials. This is the missile that intelligence officials say if it worked properly this three stage missile could reach U.S. soil with a light pay load. However, we're told by administration officials that the missile firing essentially failed about 35 seconds after it left the launch pad. This missile did not take off as the North Koreans had promised it would.

Now this is seen according to this administration as a provocation by the North Koreans. They say there are urgent consultations with allies in the region. In fact, the assistant secretary of state Chris Hill will be heading to the region tomorrow to continue negotiations on this. The White House is saying that all six parties in the six-party talks, the other five involved, are going to be moving forward to see what will be done next to North Korea -- Brian.

WILSON: Bret Baier, thank you very much. It's topic one with our panel. Joining us for analytical observations Fred Barnes the executive editor of "Weekly Standard"; Jeff Birnbaum, columnist with the "Washington Post"; and Bill Sammon, senior White House correspondent for the "Washington Examiner." FOX News contributor all.

Well, we had, as I said at the beginning of the show, two scuds and a dud. But the dud is the one we said you better not launch and it appears the North Koreans have disregarded us in that.

What do you have to say about that -- Fred.

FRED BARNES, "WEEKLY STANDARD": Well, it's dud that will be helpful, the knowledge learned by the North Koreans will be helpful to them. How long was it in the air, 40 second or something like that? They'll be getting -- they got all kinds of electronic feedback and so on. So it'll help them build missile, a three stage missile that can reach Long Beach or San Diego or somewhere in California. So it is dangerous. So say it posed no immediate threat is right, but it does pose a threat. It's very serious.

You always have to remember who we're dealing with here in North Korea. We know-- I mean you have a mad man willing to starve his own people, he starved several million of the, now he has a nuclear weapon and he's moving along toward getting an operational intercontinental missile that can reach the United States. He's someone who cannot be trusted, he breaks whatever treaties he wants to including an earlier one with the United States. And China, this one country that would have some leverage with North Korea, doesn't seem to want to exercise that leverage. So it's very, very difficult situation.

WILSON: Jeffrey?

JEFFREY BIRNBAUM, "WASHINGTON POST": Well, we need to watch to see what happens next. I think Japan and the United States are the hard-liners in the six countries that are pushing here. They would like, I think, to impose some sort of sanction, economic or food sanctions in particular, that may be happening. But there is a counter weight to all of this need to punish North Korea for doing exactly the opposite of what we asked them to do. And that is that there are also talks to try to prevent them from enriching uranium for nuclear weapons. And the United States and all six countries are going to have to weigh whether sanctioning North Korea for sending out a dud like this is more important than continuing to negotiate with them to prevent them from developing nuclear weapons.

BILL SAMMON, "WASHINGTON EXAMINER": Well, negotiations obviously have been dealt a setback. I mean this comes at a time when we're trying to move forward with the six-party talks and instead they're pulling this in your face, provocative defiant step of launching this missile when we obviously told them we don't want them to do it. We've obviously told them we want them to declare to the world what their intentions were in advance, and so forth and they didn't do it. So that's bad. But on the other hand when you think about the bad set of circumstances, this actually isn't the worst outcome possible. I mean, first of all, it didn't hit anybody, OK? I think we have to remind ourselves, this thing -- you know, there could have been a worse scenario and secondly, it failed. I mean, even though it was a test launch, it failed in something like 40 seconds. In that respect, I think it's somewhat embarrassing to the North Koreans and it defuses at least the immediate problem of having this loaded, fully fueled long-range missile sitting on a launch pad and we weren't sure if it had a pay load on top of it. We weren't sure if it was a test launch. We now know that that part of this crisis is over. Is it a setback to our dealings with North Korea? Yes. But at least the immediate threat is off the launch pad.

BARNES: I don't know how it could be a setback to dealings that weren't going anywhere in the first place. I mean how do you set them back? Talking about sanctions that would isolate North Korea. How can any country in the universe be more isolated than North Korea already is? I mean, look, that doesn't do any good either. The truth is, I'm not advocating this, but you have to consider it -- you have to consider a military option. And remember the Iranians are watching. You know, we're trying to pressure them into not creating nuclear weapons. If we tolerate what the North Koreans are doing it can only encourage the Iranians.

WILSON: Jeffrey, it couldn't have been more in your face. I mean it's the Fourth of July, an important American holiday. Somebody observed that it happened almost exactly at the same time we were launching our shuttle.

BIRNBAUM: That's right. And I don't think that's a coincidence, really. The Fourth of July part in particular. The shuttle might have just been an added public relations bonus for North Korea and a deficit for us. I don't think that there's serious consideration of a military action. Though, Bill Clinton's defense secretary, William Perry, did recommend it in an op/ed piece. I think that sanctions like energy, food in particular, as you point out the North Koreans are starved for food. If clamping down on them a little bit more, that is more likely. But I don't think the U.S. or any of the other nations can afford to do nothing. I think something.

SAMMON: If we do a military action the fear is not they're going to strike us. The fear is they're going to launch a short range nuke at Seoul which is right across the border or at the border.

BIRNBAUM: They would have done it already.

SAMMON: Well, but if we launch -- if we try a military option, I'm saying that's how they would respond and the danger is to our allies, not necessarily to California.

BARNES: The idea would be to take out the facilities so they couldn't respond.

WILSON: Let's move on. When we come back with our panel, President Bush says the U.S. will accept nothing less than complete victory in Iraq. That's our next topic. Back in a moment.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

BUSH: Imo (SIC) make you this promise. I'm not going to allow the sacrifice of 2,527 troops who died in Iraq to be in vain by pulling out before the job is done.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

WILSON: The president earlier today down in North Carolina. Before we move on to our panel, there are new developments regarding what the North Koreans are up to. We have just learned and confirmed there are -- were a fourth, fifth and sixth missile launch today by the North Koreans. The Fourth was a scud, the fifth and the sixth just launch add few moments ago were no-dong missiles, so the North Koreans, very active today.

You know, I want to talk to the panel about the president's speech today. Normally Bill Sammon, as I was saying during commercial break, president gives a Fourth of July speech, it's wave the flag, what a great country it is. This was a serious policy speech.

SAMMON: Yeah it's normally a perfunctory speech, this was a 30-minute policy speech where he talked about a couple things. One, I think he tried, as you saw in that clip there, he is trying to press his advantage on the argument over whether troops should be withdrawn on a specific timetable. As you know, every democratic proposal in Congress, both in the House and Senate that's even talked about a timetable for withdrawal has been shot down by the republican controlled chambers of Congress. And so I think Bush senses that's a good argument for him to be making and so he was replaying that again today.

But I also think that he -- if you listen to that speech, he was talking about how the momentum of the war has started to swing in the favor of the Americans in recent weeks. Especially since Zarqawi's death. Talked about the, you know, hundreds of raids that we've conducted on safe houses, picked up hundreds of terrorists. We've killed a bunch more. We've picked up a lot of intelligence, caches of weapons and so on and so forth. And so after months and months of things going badly in Iraq, there's a sense that maybe the momentum is starting to swing our way. And I think the president is sort of doing a little-- wouldn't want to say victory lap, but he was relishing that a bit today.

WILSON: Jeffrey?

BIRNBAUM: Well, I think what the president is trying to do with the longer speech is to give the impression that things are turning in our favor. Now, there are pieces of evidence that suggest that, and you mentioned several of them. But I think there has been, since the Zarqawi death, in particular a concerted public relations effort on the part of the White House and the Defense Department to tout the better news that's coming out of that region in a way that, I guess, maybe the previous White House under Andy Card did not. And in that way try to improve the president's standing in the polls. And I think that's worked.

WILSON: Fred, The thing that was interesting about this speech is that he embraced the bad news. Talked about how many soldiers had been killed, but then turned the corner and said yeah, we cannot sacrifice these people then not complete the job.

BARNES: Right said he wouldn't allow them have to die in vain. And he did -- following up on what Bill said, he really is trying to seize this particular time. He talked about a moment of vulnerability for the enemy, meaning the insurgency and the terrorists. And I hope he is right. You need to make progress, because-- I agree that we've made advances. On the other hand, the insurgency is still able to come up with some rather dramatic incidents of killing people. You know when they bombed the golden mosque a little while ago -- the president -- I want to add one other thing. The president said this idea of supporting the troops. He mentioned this Defense Department Web site called Americasupportsyou.mil that has all these -- I just happen to learn about this last week -- it has all these different programs if anybody wants to support the troops or Iraqi people they can learn about them there. The president had a, as he mentioned, meeting with all those people last week including Gary Sinise the actor, you know "CSI: New York" who has a program that supports school supplies for Iraqi children. I mean, there's a lot to choose from if you want to support the effort in Iraq.

BIRNBAUM: I don't think there's any question, but if you compare American's view of the war in Iraq and the war against terrorism this Fourth of July compared to last Fourth of July, the president and his policies are in a much better position. And that I think is worth talking an extra 15 minutes on the Fourth of July.

SAMMON: He even talked about it, a year ago today Iraqis didn't have a government, you know, a permanent government. They didn't have a prime minister, they didn't have a lot of things and if you look at the progress that's been made in twelve months, it's quite dramatic.

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