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January 25, 2007

Special Report Roundtable - January 25

FOX News Special Report With Brit Hume

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

NOURI AL MALIKI, IRAQI PRIME MINISTER: Frankly, we say that we are before commitments in the executive authority and the Baghdad security plan. We say it again that no place, a school, a house, or even a mosque will be out of bounds if it turned into a springboard. And also Shiite mosque, if it turned into a base for terrorist operations. They will be subject to storming and inspection operations. Allow me to tell you that even party offices will be stormed if they turn into hideouts.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

HUME: Well, that's just talk, of course, but it's talk such as we've not heard before from Nouri al Maliki. He always seemed, to the consternation of the administration, to be hesitant to crack down on those who might form part of his political coalition. Now, to some extent, we're seeing evidence it's happening, and he's certainly saying so.

Some thoughts on all this now 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.

Well, what do we think here -- Fred.

FRED BARNES, WEEKLY STANDARD: Well, it's a tough speech. I liked the word he kept using about storming places. You know, he used it repeatedly, that's a good sign. Brit, this would be just talk, I think you hit it at this -- this would be just talk if things weren't happening. But we know now he has moved on the Mahdi Army of Moqtada al-Sadr. He's arrested one of his top officials. They've got something like 400 people. That's a good sign. And he's brought -- already brought -- begun bringing Iraqi troops into the city.

Remember the last time, what, last fall when that was his first effort to secure Baghdad, the Iraqi troops didn't show up. Well, they're showing up now ahead of the new surge of American troops of 21,500 American troops. So, these are good signs. He seems to be...

HUME: We're hearing about Haifa Street, which is a mean street being the place where there's been a bunch of raids and a bunch of people killed, apparently most of them insurgents.

BARNES: Well, there needs to be a lot of that and the -- and of course, al-Sadr is worried enough. Remember he had pulled his 30 members of parliament out in protest of the Maliki meeting with President Bush in Jordan -- when a couple of months ago, a month ago, 18 -- a month and a half ago, whenever it was. Now they're back and obviously, al-Sadr is feeling the pressure and should.

MORT KONDRACKE, ROLL CALL: And Sadr has told his fighters to hide their weapons, not carry them around the way they used to and Maliki said that the purpose of this is to get people to give up their arms so that the -- only the government will basically be in possession of arms.

Maliki's also talking about reconciliation. Now, what's really important here is that the media which has covered the downslide in Iraq, covered the upside if there is one. If there's progress and it gets reported in the American papers as robustly as the failures have been, maybe it can sustain the effort that's going on Petraeus -- General Petraeus is in charge of.

HUME: In political terms, you can make a pretty god argument that the terrorists haven't made much progress in Iraq, but in news terms, they've done very well, haven't they -- Mara.

MARA LIASSON, NATIONAL PUBLIC RADIO: Yeah, well that's because the situation in Iraq looked very bad to everybody. I don't think it's just a matter of the news reporting. I think that, you know, everyone who went over there thought the situation was slipping out of control and that's why the new plan was devised. Even the president said that his policy was headed -- a slow walk to failure or something like that.

Look, I think all these signs are good. If they weren't happening, it would be really scary, but they are and you know, if this plan is going to succeed, more of them...

HUME: Are you surprised that this seems to be happening this soon?

LIASSON: No.

HUME: After the -- we thought -- I thought we were going to have to gather forces together and get combined U.S. and Iraqi forces together.

LIASSON: I think this should have happened a long time ago.

HUME: I understand that, but I'm talking about this soon after the turn in strategy or turn in tactics.

LIASSON: No. No, because, first of all, right now, these are just the beginning steps. I'm not surprised that these things are happening. What we want to see is that the Mahdi Army doesn't just fade away into the woodwork, they actually do give over their arms. Now, they're trying to negotiate with the U.S. forces to say well don't come into Sadr City and we won't walk around with our weapons. Well, that means they're waiting to fight another day, so the Sunnis are dispatched of by the Americans.

But look, these are all good signs. And if things are going to change in Iraq, we need many more like this.

BARNES: That's why I like the storming, you know. You can storm the place where they put their weapons.

LIASSON: Let's see if they do.

BARNES: Let's see if they do and that'll be one of the tests. The other thing that's been reported is that al Qaeda has pulled out its people, is starting to go pull out its people out of Baghdad. Well look, that's a good sign. It doesn't mean al Qaeda is dead, they may try to come back, but the first job here is to secure the capital city. You can't do anything. You can't have any political solution until you do that, the more al Qaeda people who leave or are killed, the better.

HUME: One wonders, Mort, if the situation in Baghdad stabilizes, and the violence is diminished to a considerable extent and the sectarian violence subsides, and U.S. forces then find themselves mostly fighting al Qaeda around the country. Will the pressure to get out of there be the same or will the mission be one that even the weakening Republicans or the softening Republicans in the Senate could then support?

KONDRACKE: Well, there'll be a lot of doves on all sides that'll say OK, we accomplished that mission now we can start withdrawing. Because what they want to do, most of all, is to withdraw. But the president can say we're succeeding and our policy is to clear and hold, and we have to hold. Now, this has got to be combined with reconciliation, political reconciliation. Maliki promising...

HUME: Now we're hearing two things happening. He's pushing for the oil distribution measure, and he's working toward other measures to -- supposed to pacify the country.

KONDRACKE: They're supposed to write a new constitution.

LIASSON: And on thing that would help if the security situation gets better, maybe more of those members of the parliament would actually come back to town and vote on some of these things they're having trouble getting...

(CROSSTALK)

KONDRACKE: That's partly a security problem. They're afraid to come back...

LIASSON: Yes, that's what I'm saying, the security gets better, they'll come back and then the parliament can work.

HUME: Which does make you wonder about the argument about how you -- we should pull out and hope the Iraqis can reconcile their differences when they're afraid to come to town to vote.

KONDRACKE: The big problem here, from a political standpoint for the administration is -- is the Vietnam parallel. Even when we were succeeding, after 1968, when General Abrams took over and after American forces left and the South Vietnamese were able to beat the North Vietnamese, the press didn't report it as such, Congress paid no attention to it, the public thought we were losing, and they pulled the plug in the end. Now that's got -- that parallel is terrible.

HUME: I know -- we know from talking to people in the administration that that haunts people like Dick Cheney who was around then.

BARNES: Yeah, the question is whether the media and Congress will recognize victory if it occurs.

HUME: Next up with the panel now, senators who oppose the president's strategy have no objection to promoting the general who devised it and sending him over there. We're going to talk about that next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

SEN JACK REED (D), RHODE ISLAND: I wish you ultimate success because the lives of a lot of young Americans are in your hands and you know that and you'll perform, I think, magnificently taking care of those troops.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I wish you good luck and I wish you have success.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: General, I support your nomination and I wish you well.

SEN CLAIRE MCCASKILL (D), MISSOURI: Thank you. We all wish you not just Godspeed, but success and health.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Godspeed, general.

LT GEN DAVID PETRAEUS, U.S. ARMY: Thank you, sir.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

HUME: And so the Senate Armed Services Committee by a vote of 25-0, sent the nomination of General David Petraeus to the Senate floor where a confirmation is expected in short order, no problems. And as you heard, Democrats who are critical of the president's plan and one Republican, John Warner who doesn't like the plan. This is the Petraeus plan to a considerable extent. He's going over there for the purpose of putting into effect the plan that the members of Congress -- or the members of the Senate are about to voice their objections to in a nonbinding resolution. What is going on?

BARNES: He's a popular guy. Obviously, they like him. But if they pass this resolution, which a lot of them are going to vote for, including many of the ones, if not all the ones we just saw a quote in there, they didn't believe a word he said. He said, "I cannot succeed unless I get these extra troops. They are critical."

HUME: Well, Godspeed.

BARNES: Well, they want him to succeed, which is a vague word, they didn't mention victory, but they want him to do well and do well by the troops even without that. They think the surge is wrong, they seem to think they know more about what's good in Iraq, militarily, than he does.

HUME: If you were serious, though, if you were a member of Congress who legitimately and seriously, as many do, object to this strategy, why would you want to vote for a nonbinding resolution that has no legislative effect and never reaches the president's desk, it's just an expression of an opinion, and vote in favor -- why wouldn't you obstruct the guy who's going to put the plan into effect and going there or cut off funding?

(CROSSTALK)

BARNES: I think that's harder to do politically. Passing a resolution is easy. That's why so many of these weak or soft or quivering Republicans are going to vote for it.

HUME: Does this speak of certain unseriousness?

KONDRACKE: It does. Mark my words; they are moving in that direction. Senator Biden said there would be more to come. If the president doesn't listen to the Senate, there will be -- he will start to back these various resolutions that are binding that call for some sort of cap on the level of troops. Now, I don't think that's going to work. But ultimately, the left wing base of the Democratic Party is going to be demanding and if the polls keep going down for the president, they will start getting tougher and tougher as they go along. Now, how far they will go, I don't know.

HUME: Mara, let's talk about the likely consequences. We know what the shape of the Senate looks like. We know how many votes it takes to break a filibuster. Let's talk about the prospects in any foreseeable time of a measure that would seriously tie the president's hands or restrict what he can do in Iraq. Do you see it?

LIASSON: I don't see it. No, I do not.

HUME: So this is -- these are -- they can huff and puff about these things.

LIASSON: They can go on record as disapproving, but it seems to me if you want to stop it, you vote for something that actually would, like cutting off funding, but if you don't want to do that, but you do say you want to put a cap on troops, then that's the same thing as keeping the status quo, which they all say they don't like. So it's confusing.

However, the one thing to point out is the Democrats are not unified on this. Jim Webb, who gave the Democrats' response, so clearly they made him a prominent spokesman for Iraq policy, said he didn't want a cap, he didn't want a precipitous withdrawal and he didn't want to step back...

HUME: No, he said he wanted a prompt one or what'd he say?

LIASSON: No, no, no.

KONDRACKE: Short order.

LIASSON: Short order, but he said no precipitous withdrawal, no -- not one step back in the war on terror. Maybe that means you move troops to Anbar province where you want to fight terrorists, you just don't want to be in the middle of a civil war. That everything that Democrats say they're for except for the people who want to cut of funding involves actually putting more troops there; including Biden's plan to partition the country because you would need a ton of troops to move that many people around in Iraq.

BARNES: You know what's silly about those people, Brit? They're on the slippery slope, just as Mort was suggesting. Look, right now it's a resolution that's nonbinding. We went through all this during the Vietnam era. Then they moved to a cap on the troops, then they'll move to defunding this or that and ultimately, in Iraq, they defunded any support from the South Vietnamese Army which was holding the country...

HUME: Isn't that what Mrs. Clinton -- Senator Clinton wants to do? Now she wants to defund the Iraqis. Now, and a lot of the Democrats say they want to let the Iraqis do it. She wants to cut of the money to them.

KONDRACKE: Well, she's not cutting them off immediately. It's a conditional thing. Now, there will be, when this Biden resolution, or whatever it is, the (INAUDIBLE) amalgamated resolution between the Biden resolution and the Warner resolution comes to the floor, various pro administration Republicans will offer an amendment that says, in effect, -- dares them to cut of the funds, and they'll all vote against that, presumably, and so that will be a little bit of a movement in support of the president.

HUME: Can a resolution, that would seriously tie the president's hands, ever pass this Senate?

KONDRACKE: Oh, yes. I mean, eventually, we've got two years for this Senate. Oh, absolutely. It happened. I've seen this movie before.

HUME: Mara and I are doubtful.

LIASSON: Oh now. Well, I suppose...

HUME: We got to go.

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