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August 15, 2006

Special Report Roundtable - August 15

FOX News Special Report With Brit Hume

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

MAHMOUD AHMADINEJAD, IRANIAN PRESIDENT (through translator): With god's help, Hezbollah was able to topple U.S.-led plans for the region and hoisted the banner of victory in Lebanon.

BASHAR AL-ASSAD, SYRIAN PRESIDENT (through translator): We tell them that you were humiliated in the recent battles in Lebanon and future generations in Arab world are going to be able to find a way to defeat Israel.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

ANGLE: Well, there you have the leaders of Syria and Iran giving their versions of what happened in the conflict between Israel and Lebanon, uh, Hezbollah, rather. Now some political observations from Fred Barnes, executive director or the "Weekly Standard"; Mort Kondracke, executor editor of "Roll Call"; and the syndicated columnist, Charles Krauthammer, FOX NEWS contributors all.

Fred, one of the interesting things about what Assad said was that he talked about Arabs being able to defeat Israel in the future, suggesting that they're looking forward to the next opportunity.

FRED BARNES, "WEEKLY STANDARD": Yeah, I wouldn't expect it from Syria, though. The last time they got involved with militarily with Israel, they got spanked badly, their air force was depleted, let me say, and Israel didn't lose a plane. You know, look, who wins in this battle between Israel and Hezbollah, it depends and I boldly declare that it depends. It depends -- and it depends on this -- it depends on whether the U.N. resolution that calls for disarming Hezbollah, and I want to know who it is, we know it's not going to be the Lebanese army, they say no, and so I don't know who it would be, and this additional force now, we know, the other 15,000 troops that are coming in, they won't be there for a year, so...

ANGLE: Well, as long as a year.

BARNES: As long as a year, but any case, it doesn't look like they're going to disarm Hezbollah, so that's one thing. Is Hezbollah going to be disarmed or not as the thing calls for and are we -- and if they are will they -- any sort of rearming or allowing them to go back in old fortifications be denied? Now, that's what success depends on if this resolution means anything. I doubt if either of those are going to happen.

ANGLE: Well, let me mention something you alluded to. The Lebanese defense minister said today that Lebanese forces are not going to disarm Hezbollah. Let's hear what he had to say.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

ELIAS EL MOR, LEBANESE DEFENSE MINISTER (through translator): If they want from the Lebanese government and their army to conduct a mission, Israel failed to do it, it's unacceptable.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

ANGLE: Charles, so I thought that the -- that one of the main points in the U.N. resolution was that Hezbollah was to be disarmed and that the Lebanese army was going to do it with assistance from the U.N. peacekeepers.

CHARLES KRAUTHAMMER, SYNDICATED COLUMNIST: Well look, there's a lot at stake here and it looks as if the promises that were made to Israel at the time of the cease-fire are slipping away here. And I think it's the responsibility of the United States and France and others who insisted on the cessation of hostilities and the reason this is important, it's not just Israel's security which is at stake, it's the future of Lebanon. Israel can defend itself. Yes, it didn't have a victory, but it was not essentially defeated and there was no invasion that could hold its own. But Lebanon's at stake here. It claims to be the victim always. But it's going to allow Hezbollah to maintain this state within a state, which it knows will provoke a war and then it goes crying to the international community and says, we got attacked.

This is an opportunity, given to the Lebanese. The majority of Lebanese who got Syria out there, to act on its own, but what it needs is the backing of an international force. What's distressing is that Kofi Annan has said it will take months and that we had our ambassador in the U.N., John Bolton was asked about the force and he said, well, that's the job of the secretariat of Annan's office. Well, that office is not known for efficiency or integrity or competence or neutrality. So we have to be working really hard to get the French and the others in there quickly, otherwise it will be a debacle for the United States and Lebanon, itself.

ANGLE: Mort.

MORT KONDRACKE, "ROLL CALL": And Bolton said he'd talk to the French ambassador there and the French, who you thought were going to be part of this force and would be the fighters in the force, are indicating that they may not be there. Further more, the secretariat's choice of the implementer for all of this is Mark Malloch-Brown, who said a couple of weeks ago that it would be counterproductive to refer to Hezbollah as a terrorist organization, even though it blew up the Israeli embassy in Argentina and a Jewish culture center in Argentina and was responsible for blowing up our air force facility at Kobart Towers. If that's not a terrorist organization, I don't know what is.

So look, Charles is right, I mean, this is not exactly a defeat for Israel, on the other hand, in terms of propaganda and the general perception and the claims that are being made about it, I mean, Ehud Olmert is perceived to be a goat here, and Nasrallah is being proclaimed as a hero. And now in addition to everything else, he's going to rebuild using Iranian money, you know, what got destroyed because of his use of Iranian money to launch the war against Israel.

ANGLE: Well now, the terms of the cease-fire were that Hezbollah would be disarmed and that there would be an arms embargo that would keep Hezbollah from being rearmed by the Iranians through Syria. It now appears that the terms of the cease-fire are falling apart.

BARNES: Those are the big two that I was talking about it. And if they don't -- if they aren't going -- well, I would say they're falling apart in about a day or two, you know, not over time. They're instantly falling apart, which I think is very, very discouraging. And look, the issue all along has been if Israel doesn't disarm Hezbollah, who is going to do it? I don't see any hands raised.

KRAUTHAMMER: But it's a test of the Bush administration because after all, it was the one who assured the world that there would be disarmament, there would be teeth in this, it wasn't chapter seven, but it was the equivalent of chapter seven, i.e. enforcement by the U.N., and what's at stake is the American policy, the Democracy project, because Lebanon was a key victory in that, the eviction of the Syrians, the emergence of a pro- Western government, it's in danger of being swallowed by Hezbollah. Hezbollah's not going to be a state within a state, it's going to be a state if not disarmed, it will actually dominate and take over Lebanon.

ANGLE: One very quick thing, if I could, Charles. One of the interesting things here is that Hezbollah starts a war with Iranian money. Now they're going to use Iranian money to help people rebuild their homes and even giving people up to a year's free rent. It sounds like Iran and Hezbollah are winning the hearts and minds in the post-conflict.

KRAUTHAMMER: It's a win-win strategy that terrorists are good at. We destroy and we rebuild. And that's the modus operandi and they get a lot of support when they do that. Military support, public support and the support of people whose homes they're going to rebuild.

ANGLE: OK. All right, when we come back with the panel, Democratic Chairman Howard Dean and other Democrats say continuing terrorist plots are President Bush's fault. Terrorism as a political football, next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

GEORGE W. BUSH, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: America is safer than it has been, but it's not yet safe. The enemy has got an advantage when it comes to attacking our homeland. They got to be right one time and we got to be right 100 percent of the time to protect the American people.

HOWARD DEAN, DEMOCRATIC NATL. CMTE CHMN: Osama bin Laden is still running around in Northwest Pakistan evidently able to try to convince people they ought to blow up American airplanes. And we are bogged down spending half a trillion dollars in Iraq.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

ANGLE: OK. We're back with our panel. Gentlemen, if that is the argument that we have after successfully foiling a terrorist plot, I'd hate to hear what people would say if one actually occurred.

KONDRACKE: Absolutely. You know, it really is dispiriting. Here we are in the midst of a long war in which the enemy has acknowledged that what it wants to do is to spread its ideology over half the world. I mean, there's no bones about it, what al Qaeda and company are up to. And we are standing here -- we've had our Pearl Harbor on 9/11, we know what we're facing. We just got a threat of -- which we happened to foil, or thank heavens that the Brits happened to foil, and what are we doing? We're attacking each other. Paul Krugman of the "New York Times" reached the bottom, I think, when he wrote yesterday "we now know that from the beginning the Bush administration and its allies in Congress saw the terrorist threat not as a problem to be solved, but as a political opportunity to be exploited." You know, as though.

ANGLE: From the outset?

KONDRACKE: Yeah, from the outset. In other words that this -- it is -- this whole thing is ripping the country apart and I've got to say that the Republicans contribute to it by saying what is arguably true. I think it is true, that Democrats are weaker on terrorism than Republicans are, but they make it sound as though somehow the Democrats are cheering for al Qaeda, which is not the case. But I mean, you know, when it comes down to it, look, before my colleagues pounce on the point, I will acknowledge that when it was a question of National Security Agency intercepts or financial transfers and stuff like that, that the Democrats were reacting in horror as though George Bush was a greater danger to American liberty than Saddam -- than al Qaeda.

KRAUTHAMMER: Howard Dean's statement that we just heard is a perfect example of the Democrats' liberal approach to any issue which is, here we go, and we foiled a terrorist plot and we foiled every one since 9/11, we've gone half the decade without an attack. And the Democratic argument against it is that we would have achieved the same result, but spent half a trillion more doing it. Liberals measure everything whether it's education or helping (INAUDIBLE) inputs, how much did you spend on teachers, how much did you spend on this, how much did you spend on Homeland Security? It's not inputs, it's outputs, it's the result, and we've had a good result, what's lacking is not spending, what's lacking is intelligence and it's improving over the half decade. We penetrate cells now as we have not and as we did not on 9/11, and that is the key. It's not in spending the money.

ANGLE: It's a political year, Fred, so obviously these things are going to become part of the discourse, but you have Republicans saying "terrorism, terrorism" and you have Democrats saying, "Iraq, Iraq." Is that what we're going to hear between now and November?

BARNES: I hope so. Those are the biggest issues, why shouldn't they argue about those rather than some issues that are not as important? Those are the overriding issues in the world facing America and I hope they talk about them. And the problem for Democrats talk about fear being sewed, the fear -- yeah they fear -- they fear that they're going to get skunked again on this issue as they were in 2002 and 2004 and now they're fighting back. But it's hard to get over, what Mort mentioned, it's hard to get over -- look, the chief -- Charles mentioned, the chief tools in the war on terror are things like NSA eavesdropping, that banking program where they looked at the bank transfers, the Patriot Act and Democrats, their response to those, their take on those is essentially negative. That -- you know, it's hard to make the case that you're tougher on terrorism than Bush when you want to minimize the use of those tools.

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