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July 14, 2006

Special Report Roundtable - July 14

FOX News Special Report With Brit Hume

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

BASHAR JA-AFARI, SYRIAN AMBASSADOR TO THE U.N.: The problem is how to solve the Arab-Israeli conflict as a whole. It's not about capturing a soldier in Gaza and capturing another two soldiers -- other two soldiers in South Lebanon. It is about solving a conflict which endures since 60 years.

DAN GILLERMAN, ISRAELI AMBASSADOR TO THE U.N.: You know deep in your heart that if you could, you would be sitting here right next to me right now because you know that we are doing the right thing and that if we succeed, Lebanon will be the beneficiary.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

ANGLE: That's the Israeli ambassador to the U.N. speaking directly, there, to the Lebanese ambassador to the U.N. Now some analytical observations from Fred Barnes, executive editor of "Weekly Standard"; Mort Kondracke executive director of "Roll Call"; and Nina Easton, Washington bureau chief for "Fortune" magazine, FOX News contributors all.

OK, we heard two statements there let's take them one at a time. First, you have or secondly you heard the Israeli ambassador there and he - - you had an Israeli general also commenting on their attacks on Hezbollah today. As we reported earlier they hit the Hezbollah headquarters, also the home of the head of Hezbollah in Lebanon and one Israeli general said that they wanted to put Hezbollah out of business.

Nina, this appears to be deepening and at the moment there doesn't appear to be any natural stopping place for this as both sides say -- they seem to say they are in it for the long haul.

NINA EASTON, "FORTUNE" MAGAZINE: Well what's interesting I think we saw these statements coming out of the administration, the Bush saying that Israel has a right to defend itself, Condi Rice saying well let's not go over the top. But, I think it goes to the point that they see some method in what we see as madness maybe in this Israeli attack and that is that Israel is going after Hezbollah, it's going after -- it's bombing the airport to interrupt arm supplies, trying to cut off the south from the north and trying to isolate this terrorist organization which has upended any possibility right now of democracy in that area.

ANGLE: To sort of tighten the noose, Mort, on Hezbollah's strong holds and then obviously, it would appear go after them.

MORT KONDRACKE, "ROLL CALL": Right. I mean this has not escalated as far as it could go. So far, the Israelis have hit Hamas and Gaza. They've been hitting Hezbollah targets in Lebanon, and they have been hitting Lebanese targets in Lebanon. What they have not done is go to the source, as you might say. They have not gone to Syria and they have not gone to Iran, which are the two sponsors of Hezbollah. That would be -- that -- we're headed there in the way of a regional war where, you know, everybody is then involved and so on. So, so far the Israelis have limited their attacks and what they're clearly trying to do is goad the Lebanese, the Christians and the -- and the Sunnis and Druze, the majority of the Lebanese into cracking down on Hezbollah and trying to bring it under control. Hezbollah is a state within a state. It's an armed militia.

(CROSSTALK)

ANGLE: .Hijack Lebanon.

KONDRACKE: Yeah, exactly. And it can make war on other countries independent of what the state wants to do.

ANGLE: Without other Lebanese politicians having had a role.

KONDRACKE: Right.

ANGLE: Fred, let me ask you about what the Syrian ambassador said, he talked about the problem not being captured soldiers, but this long- standing Israeli problem. He seems to be saying that now might be the time to fix what they see as the Israeli problem. What do you make of that?

FRED BARNES, "WEEKLY STANDARD": Well, I would say he's totally wrong. He's completely mischaracterized what's going on here. And I think -- and my colleague at the "Weekly Standard," Bill Kristol has written about this in the editorial coming out in the next issue. It's a war between Islamists and Israel. I mean, look who's -- a raid against Israel it's Iran and its client state, Syria, and Hezbollah and Hamas which are funded and beholden to those two countries and they're the ones that are attacking Israel. And, in effect, -- I mean their chief enemy is not really Israel it's the United States. Iran is thumbing its nose at the Europeans and the United States that want them to answer this offer not to -- you know, incentives not to create nuclear weapons and they've gone on the offensive.

ANGLE: Now, why do you think, at this point, Hezbollah at whose ever insistence, you know, whether it's Iran or Syria, why would they pick now to pick a fight with the Israelis?

BARNES: Well, there are a number of reasons. I know Mort thinks they are doing it in order to change the subject, which they had, from Iran's pursuit of nuclear weapons, which is a big issue. I think it may be that, but it's more than that.

Look, the Islamic extremists have been losing. They lost Iraq, they lost Afghanistan, they're on the run all over Europe and other places, they haven't been able to have another successful attack on the United States. Now they are fighting back, they didn't roll over and it shows. The other interesting thing is that Islamic extremist, while the Sunnis and the Shiite branches may hate each other, when they have a common enemy, they'll join together.

KONDRACKE: I disagree with that. I think that the Islamic extremists think they're on the march and Iranians definitely think they're on the march and they have all kinds of reasons to think so because the -- nobody's doing anything to them, right? They're developing nuclear weapons, they're free to basically give the finger to the world and say we're going to go on and do it.

Meanwhile, Hamas won the election in Palestine; they're now part of the government. Hezbollah is part of the government in Lebanon. Lebanon can't do anything to them. And, you know, I think the Israelis, I mean, the Iranians probably stimulated this as another way of advancing their case.

EASTON: I think that the administration is on the defense here, they banked the legacy of this administration on building democracies in the Middle East and what they've come up with against is this Hamas-Hezbollah- Syrian-Iranian axis.

ANGLE: OK, when we come back with the panel Valerie Plame and her husband speak out on their lawsuit against the vice president and others. What does it all mean? Next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

VALERIE PLAME WILSON, FMR. CIA OFFICIAL: I feel strongly, and justice demands, that those who acted so harmfully against our national security must answer for their shameful conduct in court.

JOSEPH WILSON, FMR. U.S. AMBASSADOR TO IRAQ: We are under no allusions about how tough this fight will be, but we believe the time has come to use their official positions to exact personal revenge accountable and responsible for their actions.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

ANGLE: Joe Wilson and Valerie Plame Wilson talking about their lawsuit today at the Press Club. To extract revenge -- now, there are two explanations for what happened here. The explanation that they have and are suing over is that the administration didn't like what Joe Wilson was saying about their case on Iraqi weapons of mass destruction, so they sought out to take revenge by outing his wife as a CIA employee.

First, I went back through the indictment of Scooter Libby today and there are lots of conversations that are mentioned about administration officials and about Valerie Plame having a role in sending her husband on the mission to Niger to look uranium sales and that sort of thing. There is not a single reference to her job being classified or any officials having discussed her as a classified employee of the CIA. Some people at the CIA are classified, some are not. It seems it would depend on officials knowing that she was classified for their story to actually get any traction -- Nina.

EASTON: I think that's right. I mean, if you look at the -- if you would listen to the Novak version, the Robert Novak version of events, he was the one teasing out the question of whether she was a -- teasing who she was and why he ended up going on this trip.

ANGLE: No one actually gave him her name.

EASTON: And he looked up -- as we know now, looked up in "Who's Who" and so forth. The other thing is Fitzgerald did have an opportunity to look into this question of whether a law was violated by the leak of a classified -- a leak of a secret agent's name.

ANGLE: Right.

EASTON: It's interesting, though, this couple has a very strange relationship to publicity.

(LAUGHTER)

EASTON: Because on one hand there's a lot of concern about keeping...

KONDRACKE: They want it. They want it. They want it.

EASTON: .undercover. Today we had the press conference where, by the way, in case your viewers want to know it's www.wilsonsupport.org, you can go to if you want to contribute to the legal fund for Joe Wilson.

ANGLE: So that they can sue the administration.

EASTON: So that they can sue the administration. But you know, they both have book deals. They were both in "Vanity Fair," she has talked about her children, who, by the way in her lawsuit who is concerned about the safety of her children. They're the toast of the town on -- in the liberal sort of party circuit. And so, you have to wonder what the sort of underlying motivation of the lawsuit is, particularly coming this week after the Novak comments.

ANGLE: Now, Mort, one of the interesting things here is their explanation is it was all about revenge, whereas it seems, as Nina was suggesting, that the other explanation was that people like Bob Novak were saying to officials, so what idiot had the bright idea of sending a known critic of the administration on a sensitive diplomatic mission and they all say no, no, we didn't do it the CIA did it, you know his wife works there. Now, those are two entirely different stories.

KONDRACKE: Yeah. Well, look, if the Novak story is completely correct, then this was an inadvertent leak that was not a planned leak. If you look at some of the backwards and forwards that was going on with Scooter Libby, for example, telling Judy Miller of the "New York Times," which never got published, it was the Novak story that outed her, but nonetheless, you know, Scooter Libby says now Judy, you can't identify me as an administration official, identify me as a former Hill staffer and he told -- he told.

ANGLE: Trying to conceal.

KONDRACKE: Yeah.

ANGLE: Let me get Fred in because we're running out of time.

BARNES: Let me advise people if you want to go to a website that will tell you the truth about what really happened with Joe Wilson, go to the weeklystandard.com and get Matt Continetti's piece from July 26, 2004. And you'll get the real story. Even Mort should read it.

KONDRACKE: I did read it.

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