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July 05, 2006

Special Report Roundtable - July 5

FOX News Special Report With Brit Hume

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

BUSH: We want to send -- continue to send a clear message that there is a better way forward for the leader of North Korea. It's hard to understand his intentions. It's hard to understand why he would not only fire one missile that failed, but five others.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

HUME: Some analytical observations on this issue now from Fred Barnes, executive editor of the "Weekly Standard"; Mara Liasson, national political correspondent of National Public Radio; and the syndicated columnist, Charles Krauthammer, FOX News contributors all.

Well, Fred, the president wants to know why -- why -- why this man did this. Why'd he do it?

FRED BARNES, "WEEKLY STANDARD": With all due respect to the president, it's not hard to understand. He wants to be a military power, he's already a nuclear power, we don't know whether he's weaponized those nuclear weapon. He wants to stand up on the Fourth of July to Americans and other, he wants to throw his weight around, be a big shot, all those things, at the expense of others.

Now, you know, to call it a provocation, barely covers it and, you know, what was -- were some of the answers or remedies that people were offering today, somebody said, well we need a special envoy to North Korea, or, gee, this really shows we need one-on-one talks. You know, you have all that stuff, and then you get around, you know, the farthest thing you get to the military option. Well, there's something in between there that they -- I think the Bush administration needs to push or play. It's the China card.

China's the only country that has leverage with North Korea. It's the only country on which the North Koreans rely on, are dependent on. The Chinese have not helped at all. They've enjoyed seeing North Korea, you know, tweak America and the Chinese do fear a split up on the Korean peninsula or having South Korea take over, you know, capitalist, pro- western government on the peninsula, but the Chinese can't stand by anymore.

I think President Bush needs to make a top priority of his administration, telling the Chinese they have to act now. The Japanese -- wait a minute -- the Japanese are about to go nuclear for sure, I mean, all these rockets landed in the Sea of Japan, they have to act. And this can't be done, you know, sending in assistant secretary Christopher Hill there doesn't do any good, the president needs to do this himself with China.

HUME: Mara.

MARA LIASSON, NATIONAL PUBLIC RADIO: Well, Chris Hill is on his way to China, that's the first stop he's making. Playing the China card is a great idea, but it's not so easy. The president can't just demand that China do something and he's been trying to get China to do something for a long time. The United States has wanted the Chinese to take the lead and to do something to get North Korea to stand down on this. I do agree with Fred that North Korea wants, not only to become a nuclear power, which it already is, but to continue to develop its military technologies. I don't think they're doing this so that Washington will give them something and then they'll give up their weapons programs. I think they want to continue.

CHARLES KRAUTHAMMER, SYNDICATED COLUMNIST: The fact is that there's nothing that we can do and the impatience has been shown over the last couple of weeks. Japan announced that one of its reactions; it will be suspending ferry service for six months. Boy, that's a tough is sanction. And two weeks ago at the summit in Vienna, the chancellor of Austria announced that the European Union would issue a strong statement if the North Koreans actually did this. And of course it's been done.

Nothing is going to happen at the Security Council, China and Russia will block sanctions. The fact is that once you acquire nukes, you can't have anything done against you. You can preempt an Iraq or an Iran who are trying to acquire, but once it happens, all you can do is deterrence and what we really ought to do is to develop -- is to show the world that we might have developed an anti-missile system that could shoot it down.

HUME: Well, what about the Japanese become nuclear power? China doesn't want that development. And is Fred right that the Japanese are likely to opt for that?

KRAUTHAMMER: I think ultimately Japan will, if not because of these provocations, but ultimately with China, North Korea, maybe Iran an others, a nuclear Japan, which is a strong power with a history and a great economy, is not going to remain impotent and disarmed. It will develop nuclear weapons. But it's not as if Japan's going to do it overnight, which would scare China. Ultimately China is worried about Japan and Japan could force China's hand on this in intervening with the North Koreans, but for now, I think nothing is going to happen.

HUME: No sanctions imposed by the United Nations?

KRAUTHAMMER: They'll be useless. It'll be symbolic and it'll be worthless.

LIASSON: I don't know what sanctions you could impose that really would matter, this is an isolated country that's -- much of its population is near starvation already.

BARNES: Be hard to be more isolated.

LIASSON: Yeah, yeah, but look I think that.

HUME: You could make an argument it's less isolated tonight than it has been given all the focus on it.

LIASSON: Giving all the attention it's getting. Look but, the United States has a policy of deterrence. That's the policy before this launch, I guess that's the only policy afterwards.

KRAUTHAMMER: Deterrence will hold, but if we have a missile that could shoot down any missile North Korea could succeed with, and it failed in the launch today, that would wipe out the entire program and essentially disarm the North Koreans.

HUME: Well, we're all worked up about this, but the launch was a fiasco. It fell out of the sky in less than a minute.

(CROSSTALK)

LIASSON: Well, at some point they're going to learn. Wait, at some point they're going to get better.

HUME: I know that. I understand that, but how far along are they really if they can't get a missile to stay in the air less than a minute.

BARNES: Well, it'll be a lot farther along next time as a result of what they learned from this. You know, we had a lot of failures with strategic defense initiative as well. Did they stop because the first one didn't work?

HUME: I'm not saying they stopped.

BARNES: Well of course, I know, but look, in the first place, Japan - - Japan could no nuclear very, very quickly, not overnight, but very quickly since they already have all the nuclear materials, and secondly, the China card, I agree, Mara, that the U.S. has tried to get China to act against North Korea, but not at the presidential level, not President Bush making it a condition of good relations with the United States that they move on North Korea.

HUME: When we come back, does the current situation in Gaza mean Israel's withdrawal from there is a failure? We'll look into that next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

MARK REGEV, ISRAELI FOREIGN MIN. SPOKESMAN: We didn't leave Gaza last year to go back this year. The terrorists forced us to do it. And I would express my concern at some governments who are very quick to criticize Israel and have very little to say about the ongoing terrorist activity.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

HUME: Of course he's talking about the terrorist activity that he says that caused Israel to react as it has in Gaza. Back with our panel. So Fred, what about the Israeli reaction, what about the world's reaction to what Israel has done?

BARNES: Well, the world's reaction is probably going to get worse because I suspect that what Hamas is doing here is going to try to hang on as long as it can and there will be.

HUME: Hang on to what?

BARNES: Hang on to Gaza, hang on to this prisoner until obviously Israel, there with its military, will ultimately kill some people and maybe women and children and then Europe will get all steamed up and there'll be pressure on Israel and, look, Dennis Ross had a good piece that I read somewhere, you know, the former envoy over there, he said.

HUME: FOX News contributor.

BARNES: FOX News contributor, as well. He says, you can always count on Hamas to do the wrong thing, I mean, not the thing that they should be doing, and that's obviously that's what they're not going to do. They're not going to arrange some easy exit for Israel, that's for sure. But remember one thing, and I think Charles may have written about this, and that is, when they turned over Gaza, normally when you turn over you deoccupy some territory, you know, you'd think there would be a peaceful relationship. The Palestinians were shooting missiles at them the day the Israelis pulled out. and it also shows once again, if we didn't know it, that this idea that Hamas, once they get in power, you know. they're going -- they'll moderate, they'll have -- their concerns will be, you know water and electricity and food and education for the Palestinian people. Hogwash! All they want to do is destroy Israel.

LIASSON: Clearly Hamas hasn't moderated, the question is, will they kind of collapse of their own weight and will another more -- different kind of government be installed there.

HUME: But what about a way out of the current impasse?

LIASSON: Well, that's tough to see. I don't think that the Israeli's are reoccupying Gaza, they certainly have an incursion and they're there in parts of that territory, but the reason -- I think it's going to make pulling out of the West Bank harder, there's no doubt about that, it already was a controversial plan, although I think the logic to giving up occupied territories is very strong and it's a logic that's been voted on and proved by Israeli citizens. I mean, it's the logic of demographics and that's not going to change.

KRAUTHAMMER: But Hamas has actually escalated by actually attacking a town of Ashkelon, it's a major port for Israel -- with rockets, two of them hit today. It would be as if you had a terrorist in Mexico raining rockets into San Diego. These Israelis are going to respond by, in fact, reoccupying the northern part of Gaza. That will mean the rocket attack will not be able to -- a future one, would not hit Ashkelon. That's probably going to happen in the next day or two. And ironically, the Israelis are going to be sending their tanks into the ruins of the settlements that Israel just evacuated a year ago.

But the problem here is not the withdrawal. I think that was the right move. Gaza is untenable, the settlements were outposts which were not holdable. The mistake was in not imposing deterrents on the day Israel left. When you're in Gaza, you can preempt an attack, if you're out, as Israel was for a year, you have to deter it. When the first rocket attack was made into Israel, after Israel withdrew, it should have responded with unrelenting artillery which would make parts of the Gaza area uninhabitable. And the idea would be if you're going to make our towns uninhabitable with random rockets, we're going to make yours uninhabitable. That did not happen.

HUME: Targeted rockets?

KRAUTHAMMER: Targeted -- the Gazans are deliberately hitting cities inside of Israel -- towns inside of Israel. Israel should have responded in kind, by -- not by attacking the civilian, but by evacuating towns and saying it's going to be uninhabitable, it's going to be a fire zone. Israel did not -- would do any of this and as a result, the rocket because -- rocket attacks became the norm and that's why you ended up with the kidnapping and that's why today you have an attack on a major city in Israel. Israel has to reestablish a deterrents with this incursion and by declaring any attacks in the future are going to be responded.

HUME: So you don't think the Gaza withdrawal, then, has failed? You think it had to happen?

KRAUTHAMMER: It had to happen, but the post-withdrawal policy has been a disaster.

BARNES: You know, but I don't think it proves, though, the logic of giving up occupied territories when you have -- when you have -- when you see what's happened in Gaza. I mean, you're going to give up the West Bank and then have a short rocket trip for the Palestinians into Jerusalem and Tel Aviv and other cities like that? Maybe Israel does need to do a lot more than they need, but I think the logic of giving up occupied territories was certainly destroyed in Gaza.

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