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January 26, 2007

Special Report Roundtable - January 26

FOX News Special Report With Brit Hume

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

NANCY PELOSI (D-CA), HOUSE SPEAKER: We're proud of you, we appreciate your patriotism, your courage, the sacrifice that you are willing to make, we're there for you, we support our troops.

GEORGE W. BUSH, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: One of the things I found in Congress is that most people recognize that failure would be a disaster for the United States and that I'm the decision maker, I had to come up with a way forward that precluded disaster.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

ANGLE: There's House speaker Nancy Pelosi and President Bush talking today. Now some analytical observations from Fred Barnes, executive editor of the Weekly Standard; Mort Kondracke, executive editor of Roll Call; and the syndicated columnist, Charles Krauthammer -- FOX NEWS contributors all.

So Charles, the Democratic delegation goes to Baghdad, they meet with Prime Minister Maliki, we don't know what their sense was of things, or what Maliki said to them, but Nancy Pelosi did say she supports the troops.

CHARLES KRAUTHAMMER, SYNDICATED COLUMNIST: Well, I'm sure she's sincere in saying it and I'm sure she learned the lesson of the anti-war left in the `60s which is that you shouldn't oppose the troops even if you oppose the war. That was a mistake of the left in those days and it's not been repeated.

On the other hand, here she is in Baghdad speaking to the troops on the ground, already in place and saying we support you, you're in the top spot, but we're going to do everything that we can to prevent the arrival of the re-enforcements that your commander-in-chief and your new local commander, Petraeus, say that you absolutely need. So, it's a hell of a kind of support when we say we support you, but we're going to try to stop cavalry from arriving to help you out.

ANGLE: Mort, there was also an interesting development reported on at the top of the show today, in that apparently Moqtada al Sadr has been negotiation, I think it's fair to say, with the coalition talking about not standing in the way of the coalition and essentially the surge in Baghdad and actually cooperating with them and even disarming the militias that are associated with him. That would seem to change the debate over the surge because the argument against it was that we'd be putting these troops in the middle of sectarian violence that was basically being fomented by Moqtada al Sadr.

MORT KONDRACKE, ROLL CALL: Well, I mean, this -- if he were to do what he apparently is saying that he will do, that would be great news and an indication that the threat of the surge and Maliki's statements that he was going to oppose armed militias was having an affect on Sadr. I tell you, I'm suspicious of this, however. My guess would be that Sadr would lay low, have some sort of semi-disarmament, let the surge forces fight with the Sunni insurgents if the Sunni insurgents are willing to fight and then come back another day and try to take over the government, you know, when all is said and done.

I think that.

ANGLE: After the U.S. troops are gone, you mean?

KONDRACKE: Yeah, and this needs to be taken with a lot of grains of salt. You know.

ANGLE: Does it matter to the U.S. as long as he disarms while the U.S. troops are there?

KONDRACKE: Well, we don't want -- Sadr is aligned with the Iranians, he's getting aid from the Iranians, we don't want him to take over this government at the end of the day.

ANGLE: But isn't the idea the surge to strengthen the Iraqi forces until they're able to take over?

KONDRACKE: Yeah, assuming that the Iraqi forces are not infiltrated by militias in a kind of a clandestine way, fine.

ANGLE: All right -- Fred.

BARNES: You know, I like the way Zarqawi, the U.S. ambassador to Iraq, said it. He said we don't know if this on Sadr's part, whether it's a change of heart or merely a change of at the tactics. I think he's just responding to the pressure. I mean, obviously Prime Minister Maliki has turned against him and realized that he's a threat. I mean, they're both Shiites but that he is -- he and his Mahdi Army are a threat, they're not helping and now these American troops are coming and so on and Sadr realizes that he was on the losing end and he has to change his tactics. At the least, I share Mort's suspicion of what he ultimately wants to do.

I wanted to follow up on what Charles said about this idea that Nancy Pelosi and these anti-war Democrats and anti-war Republicans support the troops. You know, they don't support the mission. They're not for victory, which is what the troops want. General Petraeus said that passing a resolution in Congress and the House and the Senate that says -- that opposes the surge in troops could only encourage the enemy. Now, if you vote for that resolution and all these Democrats and a lot of Republicans are committed to it, it helps the enemy, how can you still say you support the troops? The fact is they don't.

ANGLE: And Defense Secretary Gates said today it would embolden the enemy too, right?

KONDRACKE: It does, but let me just say a word on the ambassador's question whether the change of Moqtada al Sadr was of heart or of tactics. The answer is change of tactics. This guy does not have a change of heart and his heart is a bad heart.

Look, he -- but, what we have here is a difference between short run and long run. In the short run we want a one-front war, us against the Sunni and baathist insurgents and not have people shooting us in the back. And this is an advantage even though it is only a change in at the tactics, if he lies low, it allows the success of the surge. After that we are going to have a long run. Which is how to handle Sadr once we take care of his and the Shiite enemy. However we will be in a position with Maliki and other Shiites to say we're with you if you suppress Sadr and they may respond if the surge succeeds.

ANGLE: OK, when we return with the panel, the president may fear that Iranian interference in Iraq will not be tolerated. Iran's also messing around on the nuclear front again. We'll talk to the all-star panel about all of that, next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

BUSH: Our policy is going to be to protect our troops in Iraq. It just makes sense that if somebody's trying to harm our troops, our stop us from achieving our goal or killing innocent citizens in Iraq, that we will stop that.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

ANGLE: There's the president responding to questions generated by an article in the Washington Post today that suggested, there you see it, "Troops authorized to kill Iranian operatives in Iraq." Suggested this was some bold new policy, it turns out the policy started last summer and it's been well underway. And Charles we've seen the U.S. has arrested two groups of people who claim to be Iranian diplomats, one of which clearly was not, did not have diplomatic credentials. And we don't know the extent to which Iranian operatives have been killed, but we know that they've been training militants and making IEDs and generally mucking around in Iraq.

KRAUTHAMMER: Well, it makes you wonder what our policy was before. I mean, when we saw a guy planting a roadside bomb, de the American soldier have to ask "where are you from?" And if the guy says Egypt he shoots, Pakistan he shoots, Iran, well you can go then?

I mean, obviously we're at war and the Iranians obviously are working assiduously in training and planning and supplying the guys who are attacking our troops and we ought to kill them and if we capture them we ought to get information out of them.

So, I don't see that as a big story. I mean, the bigger story is - - are we going to get serious with Iran in Iraq? The answer appears to be yes, but on the nuclear front, it looks as if our policy is still as weak as it was and it's trailing behind Iranian advances in uranium enrichment.

ANGLE: Now one thing, Mort, on the nuclear front, since Charles ended on that -- is we've seen over the last several days that Ahmadinejad seems to be running into some trouble among the Iranian elite, among the ayatollahs and so forth, who seem to be a little discomforted by all of the international action against Iran. Is that making any difference do you think?

KONDRACKE: Well, it looks as though it is. For the -- one of the senior clerics to be denouncing him in public is kind of significant, and what's happened is, it's not the U.N. sanctions that are making a difference, but various financial squeezes that the Treasury Department is putting on is having an affect on the Iranian economy which is not in strong shape anyway even though they've got all this oil money.

Now, I think there is a kind of a general squeeze that the administration is putting on this policy of arresting Iranian, "diplomats" is one example of it. We're also trying to either see -- interdict the supplies that the Iranians are sending to Hezbollah to use against the Lebanese government and to Hamas to use against the Palestinian authority. So it's sort of all across the board which is great.

The administration has said that it's willing to negotiate with Iranians, but only if we have leverage and what we're trying to do is get leverage.

ANGLE: Fred.

BARNES: You know, it really is breathtaking for the Iranians to complain about America's violation of the diplomatic niceties of grabbing some of their people in Iraq. You know, it's just a red -- it's the same regime going back to 1970 when they famously, of course, seized the American embassy in Tehran and kept our diplomats there as prisoners for 444 days. So, you know, we can ignore any of .

ANGLE: Any protests about diplomatic niceties?

BARNES: Yeah, their indignation. Now look, Mort's right, you know, this squeeze is obviously working. My understanding is that they -- one way or another sent a message to the U.S. through the Treasury Department saying please, ease up, you know, this is really hurting, your discouragement of investment coming in, they can't get parts for the oil refineries and so on and this went to President Bush and his decision was squeeze harder. I mean it's obvious that the U.N. sanctions aren't getting anywhere, but things like what they've done to discourage investment in Iran has helped.

You know, we do -- we have had a navel buildup in the Persian Gulf and other things as well, that are -- I think the Iranians are beginning to feel the effects of that. And as Mort says, their economy's weak anyway.

ANGLE: Now Charles, you're not -- you don't think we've made that much progress on the Iranian front, but the Iranians are doing what the State Department today called "inspector shopping" and threatening to throw out the chief inspector, does that -- just a few second left -- does that suggest that they are getting a little antsy about this?

KRAUTHAMMER: Well, it's what Saddam did and no, I think it shows defiance on their part. I'm not sure I see any evidence of capitulation.

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