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September 21, 2006

Special Report Roundtable - September 21

FOX News Special Report With Brit Hume

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

SEN. JOHN MCCAIN, (R) AZ: The agreement that we've entered into gives the president the tools he needs to continue to fight the war on terror. And bring these evil people to justice.

I also believe that it's consistent with the standards under the Detainee Treatment Act, and there is no doubt that the integrity and letter and spirit of the Geneva Conventions have been preserved.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

HUME: And so John McCain says that in effect that the CIA will be able to go forward with the aggressive questioning, which the president said has become a particularly and especially useful tool in the war on terror because the information gleaned from those they deem as high value targets or suspects.

Now some analytical thoughts from Fred Barnes, executive editor of "The Weekly Standard," Mort Kondracke, executive editor of "Roll Call" and Mara Liasson, national political correspondent of National Public Radio. Fox News contributors all. What happened here Mara in your judgment?

MARA LIASSON, NPR: Well, I think both parties decided the only way this was a true standoff, the president did not have the votes to pass his own version of this and they came to a compromise where the White House claims that it can continue this program.

Certainly you heard John McCain saying that the program can continue but that there won't be an explicit rewriting or reinterpreting of common Article Three of the Geneva Conventions. Now you could argue it's still clarified under the war crimes act under this compromise but I think this is a true compromise in that both parties can say that they got what they were after.

MORT KONDRACKE, "ROLL CALL": And I think one thing the president won was the permission to write an executive order that spells out techniques other than grave breaches of common Article Three, which is maiming and murder and that kind of stuff. That will be allowed. So it gives the president a considerable amount of discretion.

HUME: Didn't he have that before explicitly?

KODNRACKE: Explicitly he did not. He could do what he wanted before the Hamdan decision, the Hamdan decision made common Article Three the standard. And so somehow .

HUME: Vague though it was.

KONDRACKE: Yes. Some way around this. So he gets a grant of permission from the Congress. They are working through -- instead of redefining common Article Three, explicitly they are working through the war crimes statute which had to be amended anyway, and that's what the Graham and McCain people want so it's a deal that I think it allows -- the important thing is it allows the program to go forward, which was what was in jeopardy, and therefore I think the president wins on that point.

FRED BARNES, "WEEKLY STANDARD": I think he basically wins overall and the Republicans win. It's interesting to see what the Democrats do now. If they were expecting to have John McCain and John Warner and Lindsay Graham and Susan Collins as cover to oppose the president, they don't have that anymore. So we'll see where they stand and I really don't know what they're going to do.

But I think it's clear, that the pressure exerted by the White House and the president so adamant in his speeches that if that's really what prevailed, McCain was offered concessions last week and turned them down. I'm not sure exactly what they were. Obviously this was hurting him politically. Look, I'm not implying there was some political motive in his caving here, but I think basically the president got more than his opponents did. And Republican critics.

HUME: I've had a hard time understanding exactly what Senator McCain was getting at but it seemed to me what concerned Senator McCain was the attempt to define explicitly what was permissible and not permissible under common Article Three now that the Supreme Court said you have to apply common Article Three to captured terrorists, that any attempt to clarify that attempt would appear to be a redefining of it and he didn't want to do anything that would give the world the idea that we were rewriting the rules.

KONDRACKE: That's right.

HUME: On the other hand, so what apparently has happened here is some vehicle has been discovered with Senator McCain thinks will not give rise to that indication?

KONDRACKE: Yes. That seems to be exactly what was agreed to.

HUME: But it all seems to me to be .

KONDRACKE: There's one other point. In this thing, important that no foreign interpretation of common Article Three will be applicable to Americans under this deal. That only American law and this executive order will apply, and you can't have these European Court of Human Rights deciding what American law is. That's important.

LIASSON: Look, the program is going to continue, and as the Fred said that was one of the president's goals but that was not what this was fought over. In other words, John McCain was not trying to shut down this program of CIA prisons.

BARNES: Well, he tried to but the CIA said what he wanted would do that. I believe the CIA knows what they can and can't do.

LIASSON: But in terms of politics of this, that wasn't what the split was about.

HUME: Well the question always became whether -- Senator McCain said last week for example, that General Hayden, the head of the CIA was trying to protect his reputation at the expense of the country's.

LIASSON: I think that was probably an unfortunate comment.

HUME: Certainly one would think it seemed at least for a moment in time that Senator McCain was not actively concerned about whether or not the CIA could go forward with this aggressive program.

LIASSON: But he said all along that he said he thinks the program should continue and disagreement allows ...

BARNES: The issue wasn't all the legal language and graffiti and all that stuff. The issue was simply this. Will the interrogation program of high value terrorists continue or not? Now both McCain and the president say it will under the stuff they've done.

HUME: When we come back with our panel, New York had a couple interesting visitors this week. Hugo Chavez and the Iranian leader Ahmadinejad. How did they do? Well, we'll talk about that next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

REP. CHARLES RANGEL, (D) NY: You don't come into my country. You don't come into my congressional district and you don't condemn my president.

REP. NANCY PELOSI, (D) CA: And he demeaned Venezuela. I think that he, Hugo Chavez fancies himself a modern day Simon Bolivar. But all he is is an everyday thug.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

HUME: That was some of the Democratic Party reaction to Hugo Chavez' speech at the UN and in other venues in which he said that President Bush was the devil and assorted other things, accused him of genocide last night and so on.

That wasn't all the Democratic reaction. Senator Harkin said he found complaints like those from Chavez understandable, frustration understandable, with the Bush administration's foreign policy. But it all raises the question. How did these two dillies, Chavez and Ahmadinejad, who are certainly different types of characters than you normally see at the UN, at least in terms of their behavior, their dress, their whole demeanor. How did they do? Mara, what do you think?

LIASSON: Clearly their remarks have been roundly condemned. Hugo Chavez in particular who was more intemperate of the two but I think they have quite different roles in terms of the United States. Iran's president has a real problem. He has a nuclear program that we seem at this point we seem powerless to stop and Hugo Chavez doesn't really pose a huge problem to the United States right now.

HUME: What about the effect -- clearly they knew what they were doing and made themselves available in a number of venues which they might not previously had done and there was a clear belief on the part of these men that that they had a message to communicate and doing so in New York to the various audiences before which they appeared would help them. Did it in your judgment?

KONDRACKE: I don't think it did.

HUME: Why not?

KONDRACKE: There is no increase in sympathy within the United States for either one of them. So far as I can see. And this meeting at the Council on Foreign Relations

HUME: Tell us about that.

KONDRACKE: Ahmadinejad went to the Council on Foreign Relations .

HUME: Which is the principal forum of the American foreign relations establishment?

KONDRACKE: And a lot of people thought the council shouldn't have invited him. He did get a going over by various foreign policy experts who came away kind of stunned that he is a formidable character. But I think they may have the sense that he is an adversary that we have to take seriously. I don't think they were .

HUME: But did they think he is somebody we can deal with?

KONDRACKE: No. I think he did himself harm. I think they think that he's a tough guy, that he's going to be hard to deal with and that negotiating with him one-on-one is not going to be an easy task. In other words, if he was trying to get us into one-on-one negotiations aside from what the Bush administration wants to do, I don't think he's succeeded.

BARNES: This is a more liberal than not foreign policy group and if they come away thinking that you are impossible to deal with and that you are unresponsive and he went around talking about in his speech and elsewhere how about the Holocaust didn't happen and he did not make a god impression. He made a scary impression.

On the other hand, Chavez is just a clown. My favorite thing is after waving around Noam Chomsky's book, I think he said today that he wished .

HUME: He was still alive.

BARNES: He's sorry he didn't meet Chomsky before he died. And he's still alive. He's just a clown with a bunch of oil, who actually is guilty of everything he accuses the United States of.

HUME: Is there a political effect in this country by the appearance of these two men at this juncture in this political season?

BARNES: I think it was smart for the Democrats, and I don't doubt their sincerity, particularly Charlie Rangel's in attacking Chavez, Chavez in particular, because I don't think they have done many smart thanks, Democrats have in recent months. It was smart politically and it was morally.

HUME: You think it was smart and if so why?

KONDRACKE: The charge is these people are irretrievable lefties, especially Nancy Pelosi, who is the main victim of the charge, said he's a thug. That's tough.

HUME: Anybody gain or lose? Quickly.

LIASSON: Democrats and Republicans in this? No. Democrats did the right thing. It was an easy call, actually.

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