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August 03, 2006

Special Report Roundtable - August 3

FOX News Special Report With Brit Hume

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

CLINTON: We hear a lot of happy talk and rosy scenarios, but because of the administration's strategic blunders and frankly, the record of incompetence in executing, you are presiding over a failed policy. Given your track record, Secretary Rumsfeld, why should we believe your assurances now?

RUMSFELD: My goodness.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

WALLACE: That was Senator Hillary Clinton and Defense Secretary Rumsfeld in a battle of political heavyweights on Capitol Hill today. Time now to hear from the judges at ringside, Fred Barnes, executive editor of the "Weekly Standard"; Mara Liasson, national political correspondent for National Public Radio; and the syndicated columnist, Charles Krauthammer, FOX News contributors all.

Well, there was a lot of substance in the hearing and we're going to get to that in a moment, but let's first deal with the theatrics because that's what we do.

Fred, as a ringside observer, who got the best of that exchange?

FRED BARNES, "WEEKLY STANDARD": There were a lot of blows landed and I'd have to say Hillary Clinton probably did because it's easy for her to be on offense from where she is as a senator. She's not accountable for anything that happens in Iraq. We know now, I think, what she wanted and insisted on having that hearing in the morning. Rumsfeld just wanted to talk in a closed door meeting in the afternoon, but she insisted he be there in the morning, in public, because she had things to say that were not just aimed at him, but where aimed at the national audience that she wanted heard.

Look, he did fine. He wasn't knocked out, but for -- and what's interesting, Chris, is that she used to be one of his strongest supporters early in the war, of course she voted for the war, and early in the war about making sure there was enough funding for anything that he thought was needed in the Iraq effort, now that she's running for president, she's not one of his strongest supporters.

WALLACE: Now, Mara, in fairness to Senator Clinton, where a lot of democrats has democrats supported the war authorization in October 2002 now say they regrets that vote, John Kerry.

MARA LIASSON, NATIONAL PUBLIC RADIO: She has never said that.

WALLACE: She has never said that. On the other hand.

LIASSON: But, on the other hand she is quite critical of the way the administration is handling the war. And I think, when you look at those numbers that you showed earlier in the program of Joe Lieberman trailing by 13 points in his democratic primary, somebody who has never, ever criticized the handling of the war, has been a real booster, I think she understands how you can be a democrat who voted for the war, but still stayed right with the democratic base, which is to acknowledge, and I think there is tremendous amount of evidence to point to that this war is going quite badly and as a matter of fact, General Abizaid, who also testified said something that I don't think I heard from somebody that high ranking until now, which is that it could very well devolve into a civil war and that the sectarian violence now is worse than the insurgency.

WALLACE: Well, lets get into that, Charles, because there was a lot of substance, I think, in the hearing today. And it primarily coming from the generals, as Mara mentioned, General Abizaid, the top commander from U.S. forces in the Middle East, said the sectarian violence in Baghdad is as bad as he's ever seen it and -- and he said "if," if it doesn't stop could devolve into a civil war.

CHARLES KRAUTHAMMER, SYNDICATED COLUMNIST: I think that's true, I think al Maliki, the prime minister who was here, recognizes that, they understand they have a shortened window in which to show the flag. And I think what's going to be necessary is to use the Iraqi army. Look, part of this discontent comes from a telegram, the last one sent by the British ambassador in Baghdad.

WALLACE: Funny that you mentioned that. Let me just put that up on the screen. Thank you for saying that.

KRAUTHAMMER: I'm prompted.

WALLACE: Here it is, we're ready if we can see that. There it goes. This was the outgoing British ambassador to Iraq who sent this cable back to white hall and it was promptly leaked. He wrote:

"The prospect of a low intensity civil war and a de facto division of Iraq is probably more likely at this stage than a successful and substantial transition to a stable democracy."

Mr. Krauthammer, continue your thought.

KRAUTHAMMER: Well, what he says in the rest of that cable is that the major problem, as he sees it, is Moqtada al Sadr. People speak of a civil war in generalities. It's not as if you have all Sunnis against all Shiites and general bloodletting. You've got gangs, criminal gangs, and militias and Moqtada al Sadr, who's the Shiite radical, a client of Iran, Patey spoke about him as becoming the equivalent of Hezbollah in Lebanon, an Iranian subsidiary, armed and destabilizing the government.

I think what the role of our troops and especially the Iraqi army is to go after him. And Clinton was talking about a lot of the errors that were made in the past and I think a lot of them are bogus, the claims of error are bogus, but there was one major and when Moqtada al Sadr, we had the insurgency in Najaf, which he lost, we him surrounded and we did not take him out and I think a lot of American commanders regret leaving him in place because he is the cancer in the Shiite government.

WALLACE: Fred, when you look at the Maliki government has been in place now for I think it's almost 11 weeks. We remember a month ago when Maliki and the U.S. announces "operation forward together" where they were going to get control over Baghdad, if anything, things are worse than ever. How pessimistic should we be about the situation in Iraq right now?

BARNES: Well, I don't know that we should we be that pessimistic. We certainly should watch Baghdad. Look, they have to take Baghdad, the government. You can't govern in your capital city unless you -- unless your capital is secure. Baghdad's not a 1/4 of the population and, you're right, that first operation announced by Maliki, things got worse.

Americans who came back from there said things were worse. There was more violence and less security. So they've announced a new plan, the difference is there are going to be a lot more American troops there.

And the second difference, supposedly, we'll see if it happens or not, is that the Iraqi troops, which didn't get tough the last time, will get tough this time. We'll know by the end of the year. It has to work by the end of the year or this new Iraqi government will have failed.

WALLACE: All right, we have to take a break here. But when we come back, Hezbollah's leader makes an offer and threat. We'll discuss both, next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

HASSAN NASARALLAH HEZBOLLAH LEADER: (SPEAKING FOREIGN LANGUAGE)

(END VIDEO CLIP)

WALLACE: That's Hezbollah leader Sheik Hassan Nasrallah on Arab television today making an offer and a threat to the Israelis. And we're back now with our panel to discuss both.

Mara, in his speech today, Nasrallah threatened to fire rockets into Tel Aviv if the Israelis continue to fire rockets, missiles into downtown Beirut. On the other hand, he said that he would stop shooting rockets if Israel does. What do you make of the carrot and the stick?

LIASSON: I think that that's what he'd like the aerial bombardment to stop. As a matter of fact, he showed as evidence he's still in control and he -- Hezbollah actually did have a brief lull for 48 hours when the Israeli bombardment also had decreased. But look, right now, I think you'd have to say that Hezbollah at least has the P.R. advantage.

The Lebanese government is now speaking favorably of Hezbollah, they almost seem like they don't see any difference between them and Hezbollah. He also said something I thought was interesting and he said, "It was good we allowed the Israelis to advance so we could have face-to-face fighting." I don't think they actually did that on purpose. But, look, Hezbollah is clearly taking a lot of losses, a lot of rocket launchers and rockets are being destroyed. They clearly have been pushed back. The question is, if as Israel says it will be impossible to destroy them and they are going to be left standing, and armed at the end of this conflict, whenever it ends, that's still going to be considered a victory for them.

WALLACE: Do you agree with that, Fred.

BARNES: Well not necessarily. And one, I think it shows -- I mean -- look -- the Israelis have restricted their bombing in Beirut to Hezbollah sites. Now, they wiped out that small section of town earlier where Hezbollah was, where its command and control center was, where they all lived, and now they've moved somewhere else and I assume the Israelis have hit that. They're not massive bombing them. This is not Dresden where there's saturation bombing or anything like, they've hitting Hezbollah headquarters and locations and it's hurt Hezbollah. I'm not sure whether they're enough -- whether Hezbollah has enough long-range weapons left to hit Tel Aviv. No, that's easy for me to say, I'm sitting here in Washington, I'm not in Israel. I suspect that the Israelis are going to call his bluff and should.

WALLACE: But Charles, I think the general, the conventional wisdom, if you will, immediately after the Israelis struck back was that Nasrallah had very badly miscalculated that he had not expected the Israelis to come back after the taking of the two Israeli soldiers hostage and that in fact had overstepped his bounds, I think there's -- maybe it's equally wrong -- conventional wisdom now that Nasrallah and Hezbollah have, in fact, been in power to gain stature from the fact they've been able to stand up for the Israeli war machine for three weeks. Do you agree with that?

KRAUTHAMMER: Well, he did miscalculate, the wisdom is correct; he did not expect the massive Israeli reaction. What surprised everyone, I think, is how indecisive and slow Israel was in launching a ground offensive. The cabinet had decided a week ago to reject the general's demand of a widened offensive and then the cabinet reversed course. So it's been indecisive, but now Israel's on the ground in force, Hezbollah is hurting. That's why he offered to cease-fire if Israel does. Iran has called for a cessation of hostilities.

You only do that if you're losing. He's losing a lot on the ground now. He's losing territory, he's losing his entire infrastructure in South Lebanon and he knows that at the end of the day, Hezbollah will not have a toehold on the Israeli frontier which it had for six years, and that's a big loss.

So, I think they're worried about Israel might even go all the way to the Litani River, which is a big push, larger incursion than Israel actually had when it left in 2000. So what they're looking at is a big strategic defeat with yes, a few tactical and public relation successes along the way, but in the end, that's not going to hold up.

WALLACE: Mara, let's talk about this diplomatic situation. And moves day by day by day, but now we're hearing about the idea of two resolutions, one resolution probably by early next week which would call for a cease- fire and then a second resolution, which might take some time after that, before the international force goes into place. Is that something that makes sense?

LIASSON: Well, it's -- I don't know because the players, that are going to be party to this, the Israelis and Hezbollah, Israel says that it's not going to leave or stop until there's an international force in place to basically come into the vacuum that it's created in Southern Lebanon. And Hezbollah is not going to agree to be disarmed and the Lebanese government isn't even saying that Hezbollah should be disarmed at this point. So, without the agreement of those two parties, I don't really understand how all this will work and we still haven't gotten the details about exactly what is the mandate of this force, this international force. They're going to have to be able to use force. They're not going to be able to keep a peace, because there's not going to be one to keep. They're going to have to make a peace...

WALLACE: We got about 30 seconds left, Fred, did.

BARNES: Here is the key thing; Charles suggested exactly what it is. Hezbollah has been pushed back, maybe pushed back even north of the Litani River, Israeli defense officials are talking about that and there is no way that the Israelis are going to let them come back anywhere near their border and they're an army that now, Hezbollah is an army now that has really had, almost its entire infrastructure degraded, their large weapons destroyed and that's it.

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