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December 06, 2006

Special Report Roundtable - December 6

FOX News Special Report With Brit Hume

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

LEE HAMILTON, IRAQ STUDY GROUP CO-CHMN: If the recommendations that we have made are effectively implemented, there is at least a chance that you can see established a stable government in Iraq and stability in the region. The task ahead of us is daunting, very, very difficult, and we recognize that, but it is not by any means lost.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

HUME: And with that kind of talk, the two chairmen, the co- chairman of the Iraq Study Group, James Baker and Lee Hamilton -- Mr. Hamilton you saw there -- issue today, their long-awaited report and held a round of media encounters that would've made most politicians furious with envy.

Some analytical observations now from Fred Barnes executive editor of the Weekly Standard; Morton Kondracke, executive editor of Roll Call; and Mara Liasson, national political correspondent of National Public Radio -- all are FOX NEWS contributors, all have had an opportunity to look over this document.

Mara, is this a major new -- taken together, does this document constitute recommendations of a major new departure in Iraq?

MARA LIASSON, NATIONAL PUBLIC RADIO: I don't know if the recommendations are a major new departure because many of them have been reported elsewhere, some of them were even on Donald Rumsfeld list, the memo that he released. I think what's important is this, that this was a bipartisan group.

HUME: Well let's just -- how about a major departure, whether they're new or not? Are these radical new steps -- major -- different.

LIASSON: Not all of them are, embedding new trainers in Iraqi units -- that's been talked about before. I think all together, this adds to the menu of things that the president is going to be considering. Some of them are -- you've heard elsewhere, but I do think it did say in pretty glaring terms how difficult and deteriorating the situation is, how urgent it is, and how important it is to do something different. Now, exactly what that is, they've got 79 recommendations and other people have other ones but this notion you can ramp-up the imbedded trainers somehow draw down troops.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

HUME: Right, they're talking about getting down by sometime 16 months out. Roughly 16 months out.

LIASSON: By 2008. Yeah.

HUME: You could get down to half the number of troops you have in there now and in the meantime you would pull U.S. forces back from the major combat roles and have more of them, more deeply involved in a training role, imbedding them within Iraqi units to a much greater extent than ever before.

LIASSON: However, they also say that the specific timetable should be left to the U.S. commanders and any of it could be aborted if the security situation doesn't warrant it. So they're clearly not completely and utterly confident that this can be done.

MORT KONDRACKE, ROLL CALL: Yeah look, this was a consensus, bipartisan report of a lot of different ideas that have been sort of mushed together in a new way and in a lot of cases it was splitting the difference. They are not saying we are going to be defeated in Iraq. They are not saying we're going for victory, we're going for success. They did not say we should have precipitous withdrawal of American troops.

HUME: But they identified exactly the same goal, though, as the president and say consciously that they're adopted -- that they accept his goal.

KONDRACKE: Right, by different means. So, they're not doing the big troop increase that john McCain and I, frankly, had hoped they would, but that may be politically impossible to do.

HUME: They suggested it's militarily impossible, that we simply couldn't mount that. Do you agree with that?

KONDRACKE: Well, you know, I've heard that again and again and again, so often that the -- and the military.

HUME: Have you ever heard it from the military? But have you heard it from the military?

KONDRACKE: I've never heard them say they favor being.

HUME: No, but have you ever heard them ever say they couldn't do it?

KONDRACKE: Well, you know, that's the implication that they can't do it.

LIASSON: Abizaid seemed to suggest that they.

KONDRACKE: And, you know, so what they're doing -- and I think that the troop deployment issue is kind of clever in that you would lower American casualties, you would keep a substantial logistics and training and intelligence and air presence in Iraq for, you know, for a long period, and you'd try to train up the Iraqi army, which is what we've been doing, but we've been doing it only with 4,000 troops, they're recommending 20,000, that's an increase.

And the most interesting thing I read, the single thing I saw in there -- do you realize that Congress has only given $3 billion to the Iraqi military for equipment, which is about what we spend in two weeks for American forces. They don't have the equipment to do the job that we're assigning them to. And so this report is recommending that a large increase in equipment for the Iraqis.

FRED BARNES, WEEKLY STANDARD: You know, in some ways this report was reassuring because they certainly, as Mort suggested, knock down the idea of an immediate withdrawal, which is favored by John Murtha and endorsed by Nancy Pelosi, immediate withdrawal -- that's what John Murtha has said over and over again. So they came out pretty strongly against that. And, Brit, as you suggested, they backed -- explicitly backed the goal of Bush to create Iraq that can govern itself, sustain itself and defend itself. I'm reading from page 40 of their report.

But what they didn't do was -- and one way you could tell this, my assistant did a word search and when you search the words "victory" and "war" you don't find them at all. They talk about the fear of an al Qaeda victory, but they never talk about we need to win an American war or an Iraqi victory.

HUME: But isn't "success" a synonym?

BARNES: No, I don't think it is synonym, quite. It's something -- it's a lower grade thing and I think it's a more malable word, too. And "winning," there's another word they don't use except for about the fear of maybe al Qaeda winning.

I -- you know, their military plan, I think would be -- it's kind of hard for the Bush administration to oppose because General John Abizaid has basically endorsed that idea of having more troops in training for the Iraqi military.

Look, I'm all for doing that, but not what the commission recommended to withdraw them from American combat units. I mean, we need these American combat units to be fully stocked right now, and actually engaged more heavily in fighting the terrorists.

HUME: In retro -- in looking at it now that we've seen this commission coming out together, do you think that they rejected the idea of more troops as utterly as they did because they thought we couldn't do it or because they thought it was politically impossible?

BARNES: Probably both.

LIASSON: Yeah, I think politically.

KONDRACKE: I think both.

LIASSON: I actually think more politically. I think that if there are going to be more troops in there it's going to have to come from the generals and at which point, I think, it becomes a much more sellable.

HUME: It was interesting to hear.

LIASSON: .question than if George Bush.

HUME: They kept saying that the generals would.

(CROSSTALK)

LIASSON: I think that if the generals saying we're making one last push for Baghdad we need more troops, I think they can...

KONDRACKE: Way deep in the report, they say that we would not be against a surge -- a temporary surge in troops if the U.S. military supported it, which they've not done.

HUME: Yeah. Question: Does this report constitute something useful for President Bush or a problem for him?

LIASSON: Useful.

KONDRACKE: I think useful.

HUME: Fred.

BARNES: Didn't tell him anything he didn't already know.

HUME: When we come back with our panel, we'll discuss the study group's recommendation on the diplomatic side, on the role of Syria, and to a lesser extent, Iran might play. This is remarkable, stay tuned.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

JAMES BAKER, IRAQ STUDY GROUP CO-CHMN: If we could flip Syria away from Iran and toward their Sunni-Arab neighbors, whiche they used to have good relation,s and toward the United States we could cure Israel's Hezbollah problem and furthermore, we could get the Syrians, I'm convinced we could do this, get the Syrians to convince Hamas to accept Israel's right to exist and that would give Israel a negotiating partner for the Palestinian track.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

HUME: As I got up to leave that interview, and the cameras were no longer rolling, Baker held his finger up and he said, "Flip Syria! Flip Syria!" An idea in which he obviously has a great deal of faith. It is certainly the most -- the biggest departure from current approach that is articulated in this report. They abdicated something similar with Iran, but they hold out almost no hope it could work. You hear Baker talking about "I'm convinced we could do this" in terms of getting Syria to be helpful in the Arab-Israeli conflict and negotiations there. What about this? This is a striking -- is this the most striking idea. Flipping Syria, he solves everything.

KONDRACKE: I suggest that President Bush appoints James Baker the flipper in chief and send him over there and see if he can do it. Here's what they're proposing -- that Syria agree -- Syria, which is tried to topple the government of Lebanon, would suddenly support the government of Lebanon, stop trying to interfere with it, agree to.

HUME: As he put it, "stop screwing around in Lebanon," is the way he put it.

KONDRACKE: Right. Support a full investigation of the deaths of Hariri and Jamaal who obviously the Syrians killed, stop aiding Hezbollah, help out with Hamas, and what's going to -- and the list goes on.

HUME: And what do they get for that?

KONDRACKE: The Golan Heights, you know, so they want Israel...

HUME: Now the Golan Heights -- look, just to be fair, the Golan Heights have been a very sore point and Syria lost them in a war with Israel. Israel has continued to hold them ever since, they believe they're strategic. Do the Golan Heights matter to Syria as much as they used to?

BARNES: Oh, I don't think they do. And besides the Golan Heights are not owned by the Baker Commission, you know, maybe Jim Baker thinks so, but actually they're Israeli property and I hope he checked with them before he offered them to the Syrians. Look, Mort wants him to be our envoy over there, even though you think all his ideas are crazy.

KONDRACKE: I want to see him deliver this deal.

(CROSSTALK)

BARNES: You know he can't and, Mort.

LIASSON: Some of these things might be unrealistic.

HUME: Hold it, Fred? Mara -- Fred, finish.

BARNES: Well, I was going to say, the idea is that Syria would give up what it really wants, in other words, Lebanon back, and no investigation of these murders so they can get the Golan Heights which they don't care about that much anymore.

HUME: All right, Mara, go ahead.

LIASSON: First of all, you know, you can poke holes in a number of these expectations of his like somehow that Syria controls Hezbollah. I thought it was Iran who was the main sponsor of that group. However, what James Baker is mostly associated with throughout his career is the big solution, the comprehensive solution, and this kind of diplomacy, which hasn't been tried, he seems very, very confident that even if you couldn't do this with Iran, you could with Syria. You know, I agree with Mort, like, why not send him over there and see what he can do even if it seems very, very ambitious.

KONDRACKE: The problem with it is that the comprehensive solution that he delivered, he's the one who set in motion the Arab-Israeli peace process, Oslo, and all that stuff, which all it did was let Yasser Arafat and his gang back into Palestine where they engaged in Intifadas. You know, this was a strategy to defeat Israel by degrees instead of all at one time.

And look, I think that if you get all these countries together, as they're proposing in this fancy group, what do Saudi Arabia and Egypt and Syria and Iran and Iraq have in common, but they don't like Israel, you know. So that the focus of this whole thing could be on making the Israelis give in and negotiate with Hamas which has declared that it shouldn't exist. I mean, I can see very bad things coming out of this idea.

BARNES: They seem to buy into the idea of the root of all the problems in the Middle East is the difficulty between Israel and the Palestinians, mainly the Israelis, they seem to buy into that, which is nonsense. It's used as talking points for these other countries -- these other Arab countries, and it's crazy.

Look, the biggest problem, Mara, with you -- you want Baker to go over and make these negotiations, but he doesn't have the Golan Heights to give away. They don't belong to him.

HUME: Well, obviously Israel would be a part of any such negotiations.

LIASSON: Right.

BARNES: Well, no, no when he talks about this conference, Israel is not to be a part of it.

KONDRACKE: Yeah, Israel.

BARNES: In the big meeting conference, Israel would not be there.

(CROSSTALK)

LIASSON: The conference would not be to negotiate the return of the Golan Heights.

KONDRACKE: If he would negotiate it and the Israelis were willing to give up the Golan in return for these things, which I think are, frankly, impossible he would deserve a Nobel Peace Prize. I don't think he can do it, but I -- if he could try -- I want him to try.

(CROSSTALK)

HUME: You want to give him a chance.

Let me ask one final question. The president has said, instead of waiting for the State of the Union to articulate a new outlook or a new approach, if there's going to be one to Iraq, is going to do it soon before Christmas, the latest we have from the White House is. A wise thing to do, do it sooner rather than later?

LIASSON: Well sure. If he has some good ideas why keep them under wraps?

HUME: Well, what does he need to do? Make it -- to do something different or at least appear to be doing something different?

KONDRACKE: I think he needs to do something different. We're losing this war.

BARNES: Yeah, no, I think he does, too and.

HUME: Well, had anybody given him a basis yet?

BARNES: Well, not in this report, not by taking troops out of combat, that's not going to do it. Look, it comes down to one thing, comes down to Baghdad. You got to win Baghdad. You have victory in Baghdad.

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