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February 11, 2007

Douglas Feith, Mitch McConnell, Jack Reed, Roundtable

Fox News Sunday

CHRIS WALLACE, HOST: I'm Chris Wallace. The U.S. military says orders to send sophisticated bomb components to Iraq are coming from the highest levels of the Iranian government. That's next on "Fox News Sunday".

Pre-war intelligence on Iraq -- did Pentagon officials cherry- pick information to build the case for taking down Saddam? We'll ask the man who was in charge, former undersecretary of defense Douglas Feith.

In the Senate, Republicans blocked efforts to vote against the troop surge. What happens now? We'll ask the GOP Senate leader Mitch McConnell and a key voice for the Democrats, Jack Reed.

Also, Barack Obama makes his White House run official.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

SEN. BARACK OBAMA, D-ILL.: That is why I'm in this race, not just to hold an office, but to gather with you to transform a nation.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

WALLACE: Can he really win? We'll get a live update from the campaign trail and hear from our Sunday panel, Paul Gigot, Nina Easton, Bill Kristol and Juan Williams.

And our Power Player of the Week takes us behind closed doors where no cameras are allowed, all right now on "Fox News Sunday".

And good morning again from Fox News in Washington. Here's a quick check of the latest headlines. U.S. intelligence officials in Baghdad presented evidence today Iran is arming Iraqi insurgents -- among the evidence, explosives and triggering devices made in 2006 and traced back to Iran.

In a truck bombing this morning, 30 police were killed as they lined up to report for duty in Tikrit.

Iran said today it's ready for talks to resolve the nuclear standoff with the West but that it won't give up its uranium enrichment.

And in our Sunday political update, Illinois Senator Barack Obama formally announced his run for president -- much more on that later.

Well, joining us now for an exclusive interview, the man at the center of the controversy about pre-Iraq war intelligence and how it was used by the Bush administration, former Undersecretary of Defense Douglas Feith.

Mr. Feith, welcome to "Fox News Sunday".

DOUGLAS FEITH, FORMER UNDERSECRETARY OF DEFENSE: Good to be with you.

WALLACE: The Pentagon inspector general issued a report Friday that was highly critical of your actions back in 2002. It says your office disseminated what it called, quote, "alternative intelligence assessments about links between Saddam Hussein and Al Qaida that made the case for going to war."

Let's take a look if we can, here. While such actions -- this is from the inspector general's report. "While such actions were not illegal or unauthorized, the actions were, in our opinion, inappropriate given that the products did not clearly show the variance with the consensus of the intelligence community and were, in some cases, shown as intelligence products."

Mr. Feith, were you giving the president, the vice president and Defense Secretary Rumsfeld the ammunition they wanted to go to war?

FEITH: What the people in the Pentagon were doing who were criticized by the inspector general was providing a critical look at the CIA's work on the Iraq-Al Qaida connection.

And there was a sense on their part that the CIA was filtering its own intelligence to suit its own theory that the Baathists would not cooperate because they were secularists with the religious extremists of Al Qaida, that they were not doing proper intelligence work, and our people were criticizing them, not putting forward an alternative intelligence analysis.

WALLACE: Now, who asked you to do that, and what were your marching orders?

FEITH: Well, as it turns out, there were actually several people who independently started working at lower levels of the government. One of them was an assistant to Deputy Secretary Wolfowitz. Two of them worked in my office.

WALLACE: But did Rumsfeld -- did Wolfowitz -- ask you to undertake this project?

FEITH: Well, as I said, the fellow who worked for Deputy Secretary Wolfowitz was asked by the deputy secretary to do the work.

The two people in my office actually were doing -- they kind of got into this project fairly spontaneously. One of them was doing a project that had started months earlier. It's the way the bureaucracy works. There were a number of elements that came together.

We then presented the briefing to Secretary Rumsfeld, and he directed that we present it to George Tenet at the CIA.

WALLACE: Okay. Let's talk about it, because the briefing was titled "Iraq and Al Qaida Making the Case", and here are some of the highlights from your PowerPoint presentation. "Intelligence indicates cooperation in all categories, mature symbiotic relationship." "Some indications of possible Iraq coordination with Al Qaida specifically related to 9/11."

And you said an alleged meeting between 9/11 hijacker Mohamed Atta and an Iraqi agent in Prague in April 2001 was a known contact.

Mr. Feith, all of that -- all of that was wrong, wasn't it?

FEITH: No, not at all. There was substantial intelligence. I mean, evidence is a legal term not really appropriate here. There was a lot of information out there. Intelligence is very sketchy, and it's always open to interpretation.

On this issue, there were people who disagreed about the intelligence and the people in the Pentagon were giving a critical review. They were not presenting alternative conclusions. They were presenting a challenge to the way the CIA was looking at things and filtering its own information.

WALLACE: I have to tell you, I mean, when I -- I mean, I read these as "mature symbiotic relationship", "known contact" -- that sure sounds like conclusions.

FEITH: You're plucking language out of a briefing, the thrust of which was why is the CIA not accounting for information that it had that suggested an Iraq-Al Qaida relationship when the CIA was excluding that information from its own finished intelligence at the time.

It was a criticism. It's healthy to criticize the CIA's intelligence. What the people in the Pentagon were doing was right. It was good government.

In fact, as the Silverman-Robb Commission has said, and as the Senate Intelligence Committee has said, we need more, not less critical reading of intelligence by policy people.

WALLACE: You say this wasn't wrong. Respectfully, sir, the Pentagon inspector general says parts of your analysis were not supported by available -- let me finish -- by available intelligence, and let me continue.

Take a look at this if you will. The 9/11 Commission said, "We have seen no evidence that these or the earlier contacts between Iraq and Al Qaida ever developed into a collaborative, operational relationship."

The 9/11 Commission also concluded, "The available evidence does not support the original Czech. report of an Atta-Ani meeting."

Mr. Feith, the Pentagon inspector general says some of your intelligence was not supported by the evidence that came from the intelligence community. The 9/11 Commission said a number of your conclusions were wrong. And the Senate Intelligence Committee also said it was wrong. FEITH: Nobody ever claimed that what the 9/11 Commission said was -- the case was wrong. In other words, we didn't dispute the -- the 9/11 Commission report said there was no...

WALLACE: But they disputed you, sir.

FEITH: No, they didn't. Nobody in my office ever said there was an operational relationship between Iraq and Al Qaida. It's just not correct. I mean, words matter. And people are throwing around loose allegations, vague allegations, based on not reading the words carefully.

WALLACE: Mr. Feith, I'm just taking comments from your PowerPoint. You said some indications of possible Iraqi coordination with Al Qaida specifically related to 9/11. You said that the Atta- Ani meeting in Prague in 2001 was a known contact.

FEITH: The people who did that briefing were taking the position that the intelligence community took originally. The CIA later changed its views on that meeting after the time relevant here.

There's an enormous amount of misinformation about this subject. Your quote from the 9/11 Commission report is significant. That did not contradict my office. Nobody in my office ever claimed there was an operational relationship.

There was a relationship. That relationship was summarized on October 7th, 2002, by George Tenet in a letter that he sent, unclassified, to the Senate Intelligence Committee chairman, and it basically brought together what the CIA had been saying, what my people had been criticizing, and it summarized the Iraq-Al Qaida relationship.

And we stood on that, and I think that that was the best information that the government had.

WALLACE: Mr. Feith, let's look at the time line of what you did back in 2002. First, you briefed Secretary Rumsfeld on August 8th. Deputy Secretary Wolfowitz said that this was an excellent briefing.

On August 15th, 2002, you briefed CIA Director George Tenet. But in that case, you leave out a slide in your PowerPoint briefing that says that there are fundamental problems with the way the intelligence community is assessing the information.

If this is, as you claim, good government -- let's challenge the intelligence -- why would you leave that slide out of the briefing when you were directly confronting the intelligence community?

FEITH: Because the whole briefing was a challenge to the CIA. And we knew that the CIA might be very sensitive about it and might resent it, which it turns out they did.

But we presented it -- we wanted to present it in the most constructive way. We thought that particular slide had some language that was a little harsh. So to make for a better meeting, we gave -- the substance of that slide was represented in the meeting.

We wanted the words to be a little more collegial, so we took that out. It is of no significance at all, because...

WALLACE: But, Mr. Feith, you say it's of no significance. On September 16th, 2002, you briefed top White House officials, including Steven Hadley and Scooter Libby.

FEITH: No, I didn't. The people who did the briefing.

WALLACE: Right. And you give them -- first of all, you include that slide in that briefing, and you also give them information that the inspector general in his new report -- this is the Pentagon inspector general -- says is not supported by available intelligence.

And what's more, in this effort for good government, the CIA director isn't even told about the briefing and doesn't find out about it for two years.

FEITH: Yeah. Well, that's -- it's interesting because Steve Hadley asked for the briefing in the presence of George Tenet's deputy. So this business that George Tenet didn't know about it is just factually wrong.

Or put it this way: If he didn't know about it, it's because his deputy didn't tell him about it. So that's nonsense.

Secondly, on this issue of the inspector general saying it wasn't supported by the intelligence, the inspector general's logic is circular. What he is saying is it varied from the intelligence community consensus. Well, of course.

The people in my office were doing the criticism of the intelligence community consensus. By definition, that criticism varied. If it didn't vary, they wouldn't have done the criticism.

It's absurd for the inspector general to say that what we did was not the best intelligence, not because he examined the underlying intelligence, because he didn't, and he admitted that to the Senate Armed Services Committee on Friday morning. What he said was it wasn't the best intelligence because it disagreed with the intelligence.

WALLACE: One final question. You say that this was all an effort at good government and, you know, that it's important to challenge the conclusions of the intelligence community.

In all of your effort of good government, all your effort at challenging, did you ever make the case against going to war? Did you ever make the case that Saddam Hussein was not a threat?

FEITH: Yes, absolutely, and in writing and I'm...

WALLACE: Was that part of the briefing to the top officials of the White House? FEITH: That wasn't the -- the topic of this briefing was a very specific topic, the Iraq-Al Qaida connection. But the answer to your question emphatically is yes, and in writing, and it's been written about in many books.

We put together, in fact, all of the considerations for not going to war. Secretary Rumsfeld did that. It was a memo that he worked on over a long period of time.

WALLACE: But that wasn't in this briefing that went to...

FEITH: No, but that wasn't the topic of...

WALLACE: ... Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz and to the CIA...

FEITH: But the answer to...

WALLACE: ... and to Libby and to Hadley, correct?

FEITH: I'd like to make two quick points.

WALLACE: OK, because we've got to run.

FEITH: In answer to your question did we ever make the case against the war, the answer is emphatically yes, and we explained what we thought all the problems would be in going to war, because we wanted the president to know that.

Secondly, on this particular briefing, the very same one that the inspector general criticizes, the Senate Intelligence Committee said policy officials acted professionally, played by the intelligence community rules and asked questions that actually improved the CIA's products.

It was good government. The government needs more critical looking by policy people at intelligence.

WALLACE: Mr. Feith, we're going to have to leave it there. We want to thank you so much for coming in today and answering all our questions.

FEITH: Thank you.

WALLACE: Up next, the Iraq war and Congress. As the Senate grinds to a halt over what to do next, we'll talk with two key leaders. Republican Mitch McConnell and Democrat Jack Reed, right after this break.

WALLACE: With us now to talk about the congressional debate over what to do next in Iraq is the Republican leader in the senate, Mitch McConnell, who joins us from his home state of Kentucky.

Senator, first of all, your reaction to what we were discussing with Doug Feith just now -- what do you think of the Pentagon inspector general's report that he acted inappropriately in disseminating information to top administration officials that was not fully supported by the intelligence?

SEN. MITCH MCCONNELL (R), KENTUCKY: Well, I think he also indicated there was no wrongdoing there. And frankly, rehashing what happened four years ago, it seems to me, has limited usefulness at this point. We should be talking about where we're going from here in Iraq.

WALLACE: Let me move on, then. Earlier this week, Senate Republicans blocked a vote on a non-binding resolution against the president's troop surge unless -- and this is the part of the story that doesn't get told all the time -- unless you also got a vote on a resolution promising to keep funding the troops.

Here's how that was reported in the next day's newspapers. Take a look, sir. The New York Times, "In Senate, GOP Blocks a Debate Over Iraq Policy." USA today, "Vote on Iraq is Blocked by the GOP."

Senator McConnell, did you win on the Senate floor but lose the public relations battle?

MCCONNELL: Well, I'm amazed. Some journalists reported it exactly the way you suggest, that a vote to cut off debate was actually a vote to begin debate. I don't think that's ever happened in the history of the Senate.

The New York Times editorial page, ironically, got it right. They said that we shouldn't be limiting the number of proposals when it comes to debating Iraq to just proposals that the majority would like.

What we were insisting on, Chris, was that a vote to indicate whether or not the troops should be supported should also be part of the overall Iraq debate. In the Senate, the majority doesn't get to dictate to a robust minority the terms of the debate.

In fact, the debate went on last week. Fifty-two senators spoke on Iraq on the floor of the Senate. We know we'll go back to the Iraq debate in the near future.

And I would just say, again, at whatever point we go back to the Iraq debate the minority is going to insist on having at least one or two resolutions, as Senator Reed had indicated a week beforehand were entirely appropriate, and one of them will certainly be on supporting the troops.

WALLACE: So I just want to make that clear. You're saying that if Senator Reed decides to try to reintroduce the so-called Warner resolution disapproving of the troop surge, you're going to insist that there also be votes, for instance, on Republican resolutions like the one that would support funding for the troops.

MCCONNELL: Well, of course. As I said, the New York Times editorial page -- not exactly a friend of Republicans -- said that it's not unreasonable to have a full-fledged Iraq debate.

And you can't talk about the surge in Iraq without talking about the troops. And so we'll get back to this issue. In fact, we talked about it all this past week. And whenever we do, there will be alternate proposals, as there always are in the Senate, for the senators to consider.

WALLACE: Senator, I want to show you something that you said back in 2005 when you and the Republicans were in charge, and you were being sometimes stymied by Democratic efforts from the minority.

Let's put it up on the screen. This is you talking. "I don't think obstructionism sells very well to the American people. It's not a great political tactic, in my judgment."

Fair or not, Senator? Doesn't it hurt your party, and especially the candidates who are up for re-election in 2008, to be portrayed as blocking a vote on a resolution a lot of the American public cares about?

MCCONNELL: Well, the portrayal, of course, was totally inaccurate, as we've just been discussing. We were not trying to limit debate. We were trying to broaden the debate and have a number of different proposals for the Senate to consider.

The majority was trying to dictate the terms of the debate, which frequently happens in the Senate. It's almost never possible to do that to a robust minority -- in our case, a robust minority of 49. So we were not trying to obstruct the debate.

There will be times, Chris, when obstructionism would be appropriate, but we don't think that's appropriate in debating what's clearly and unambiguously the most important issue in America today, the Iraq war.

WALLACE: But, Senator, forgive me. I think you're confusing the facts with the political perception of this here.

There are already a number of Republican senators who, after you won and the Democrats gave up and decided not to pursue their resolution and also not to make a deal -- who now are saying they want to put the Warner resolution, the troop surge resolution, on every piece of legislation.

Whether it's fair or not, aren't there some members of your caucus who are very nervous about being put in this position?

MCCONNELL: Well, look. I'm in favor of having a vote on the Warner resolution. We were trying to craft an agreement under which that would be voted on and alternatives would be voted on. Nobody's afraid of this debate, certainly not Senate Republicans.

In fact, the vote that we cast Monday was to continue the debate. This is the only time I can recall in the history of the Senate when a vote to cut off debate was treated by some -- not everyone; the New York Times editorial page, as I said, got it right -- by some as an effort to shut down the debate. We're prepared to have the debate.

WALLACE: Let me just say I think that's a new record, three times today that you have approved of the New York Times editorial page.

MCCONNELL: It's a rare thing. I've almost never had that opportunity before.

WALLACE: Let me, if I may, switch subjects to Iran. U.S. officials, as we reported earlier, have released information that they say indicates that orders to arm our enemies in Iraq with some of the most deadly explosive devices are coming from the highest levels of the Iranian government.

Have you been briefed on this subject? And how strong is the case?

MCCONNELL: I've not been briefed fully on it, but if we're going to protect our forces in Iraq, and if there are Iranians in Iraq, inside Iraq, seeking to do harm to our soldiers, of course we'll take the appropriate action.

WALLACE: Well, you say "the appropriate action". If it's true, what should the U.S. do about it?

MCCONNELL: Well, we're going to protect our forces in Iraq. There's no indication that any of this has to do with going beyond Iraq. But inside Iraq, if there are foreigners in there seeking to harm American soldiers, certainly we're going to respond to that.

WALLACE: Let me ask you about that. Why should it involve only acting within the borders of Iraq? If there are Iranian forces just over the border who are involved in aiding and abetting our enemy that are killing American soldiers, why shouldn't we cross the border and go after them and take them out?

MCCONNELL: Look, I don't think we're going to announce on a Sunday show exactly what the tactics might be. But we're going to try to protect the U.S. forces in Iraq, and that requires -- with that force protection, that requires going after those who are trying to harm Americans.

WALLACE: And would we go after them wherever they are?

MCCONNELL: I think we're going to try to protect the U.S. forces in Iraq.

WALLACE: But you're not willing at this point -- I mean, forgive me, sir, but I do want to press the question. You don't want to say whether or not we should cross the border?

MCCONNELL: Well, yes, you can press the question. That's a question I'm not prepared to answer. We are going to try to protect our forces in Iraq.

WALLACE: Senator McConnell, we're going to have to leave it there. We want to thank you so much for coming in and sharing some time with us.

MCCONNELL: Thank you.

WALLACE: Now for the Democrats' view, we turn to a member of the Armed Services Committee, Senator Jack Reed.

Senator, welcome back to "Fox News Sunday".

SEN. JACK REED (D), RHODE ISLAND: Thanks, Chris.

WALLACE: I have to say, I'm genuinely confused about what the Senate Democrats are going to do now on this Iraq resolution.

Do you intend to bring the non-binding resolution up again? Do you intend to let the Republicans hang out there, being seen, fairly or not, as obstructionists?

Or, as it has been reported in some quarters, do you intend to move away from non-binding resolution and actually try to pass something to stop the president from continuing this troop increase?

REED: Well, our immediate attention has to be to the continuing resolutions, the budget this week, so we can pass a budget and move forward and not shut the government down.

But when we return, I think what you'll see is efforts by both sides, Senator Warner and his Republican colleagues, to bring up this resolution, his resolution, others, and so we will eventually get into, I think, a very open-ended and free-wheeling debate.

The point I think, though, that we should stress about last week -- this is not just about the debate. It's about preventing a decisive vote on the Warner resolution which would oppose the president's escalation.

And the procedural maneuvers that Senator McConnell, others, used basically frustrated that vote, that up and down vote, where do you stand on that. I think we should have had that vote last week. WALLACE: But let me ask you about that. What's wrong with Senator McConnell's position, which is that if you want an up or down vote, fair enough, on the Warner resolution disapproving of the troop surge, give them an up or down vote on their resolution?

REED: Well, the problem I think, as I see it, is that they were insisting upon a 60-vote margin so that even though there would be a strong bipartisan majority vote against the president's escalation, that would not effectively have passed the Senate, whereas other proposals, in fact, those that are embraced by both sides very sincerely, supporting the troops, would have passed.

I think they end of the day, they wanted to defeat by any means they could the resolution that Senator Warner proposed.

And I think, again, the letter that Senator Warner authored along with seven or eight other Republicans just a day after this procedural deadlock, suggesting they're going to bring it up, shows that they really want to get back to the business of getting an up or down vote on the resolution.

WALLACE: So, basically, though, what you seem to be saying is that you were worried that their resolution, the Gregg resolution to keep funding the troops, was going to get more votes than yours and you wouldn't get the headline you wanted in the papers the next day.

REED: Well, it wouldn't be just about the headline. It wouldn't have the -- the Warner resolution wouldn't have the effect of passing the United States Senate.

WALLACE: What difference does it make if it gets 54 votes? It's a non-binding resolution anyway.

REED: Well, it makes a great deal of difference, particularly as the House this week will be considering something that might be very similar to that, and it would send a very strong message.

I think there's a difference between being able to argue that it passed the United States Senate and an argument that I think Senator McConnell would make very enthusiastically, that it didn't pass, and we're moving on with just a resolution supporting the troops.

We do support the troops, obviously. In fact, I think many of us feel that if we get the policy right, that will be the best way to support the troops.

WALLACE: What about the argument you hear from a number of Democrats that this whole question, which I'm sure is kind of glazing over the eyes of some of our viewers, is a waste of time?

If you really disapprove of the policy, if you really think it's wrong to send the troops in, you're in the majority in the Senate. You're in the majority in the House. Pass binding legislation to stop it.

REED: Right. Well, I think the proof that this is not just some sort of idle exercise is the efforts that have been made to stop an up or down vote on the resolution by the White House, by the Republican leadership in the Senate.

So there's something here they feel would be a significant, I think, statement. And I think also we understand that this...

WALLACE: But if I may, what about my point, which is if you really think that this is wrong, and this isn't going to work, and it's endangering those 21,500 more troops that are going in, then act to stop it, act to defund it?

REED: Well, the first step, I think, is to get this resolution in place, because it represents a bipartisan effort. I think it's very important to recognize this is not just a Democrat proposal.

Senator Warner, Senator Hagel, Senator Snowe, Senator Collins -- Republicans joining Democrats to try to make a statement. That's important. But no one assumes that this is going to be the last step. But I think it's an important first step and a necessary step before we go forward.

WALLACE: You're a member of the Armed Services Committee, as we said, that got the report from the Pentagon inspector general very critical of the office that Doug Feith held. What did you make of what you heard from Mr. Feith earlier?

REED: Well, I think the I.G.'s report is very critical, and rightly so. One, he took a significant piece of information that was in dispute and crafted it in his presentations as being a known fact -- the meeting in Czechoslovakia with Atta and representatives of the Iraqi intelligence service.

That was a fact -- not really, but a fact that was used publicly by many people in the administration to argue to the American public about the validity of their charges of this relationship between Al Qaida and the Iraqi government.

I think also, too, as you pointed out in the discussion, he seemed to have a different briefing for different audiences. When he went to the CIA, supposedly to challenge them on their poor handling of intelligence, poor analysis, he left out the critical chart which talked about how the CIA wasn't doing their job.

And I think that's not because of atmospherics, et cetera. That was the message he was sending he didn't want to be interfered with by the CIA.

WALLACE: And going beyond Mr. Feith, his whole charter from the Pentagon and how it was used, what do you think was going on here?

REED: Well, I think they were trying to create a case to go to war with the Saddam Hussein regime based upon very faulty intelligence, very faulty analysis.

They did it very deliberately. They used that analysis. It was leaked to the media. It was reported in newspapers. It took on a credibility beyond the facts that the intelligence community had.

And I think it set the stage for what is, I think, a very -- in retrospect -- and at the time I felt the same way because I voted against the resolution -- a policy that has been harmful to the United States.

WALLACE: Finally -- and we have less than a minute left -- what about Iran? How solid is the evidence that you, as a member of the Armed Services Committee, have seen that Iran is arming our enemies in Iraq and that this is coming from the highest levels of the Iranian government?

REED: I think the evidence is confused. There are certainly indications, as Mr. Gates pointed out this week, that these explosive foreign projectiles seem to be coming from Iran. They've been used.

The question is is this a deliberate policy of the Iranian government at the highest levels. Is it rogue elements within the government? And then the other question is to what extent are there countervailing signals that the Iranians actually are trying to -- not control, but not to further raise the stakes in Iraq.

So it's a very complicated situation.

WALLACE: Senator Reed, we're going to have to leave it there. Thank you so much for coming in.

REED: Thanks, Chris.

WALLACE: Please come back, sir.

REED: Yes, sir.

WALLACE: Up next, Senator Barack Obama is now officially in the race for the Democratic presidential nomination. What are his chances?

We'll ask our Sunday panel and get a live report from the campaign trail in Iowa right after this.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

OBAMA: I want us to take up the unfinished business of perfecting our union and building a better America.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

WALLACE: That was Senator Barack Obama in Springfield, Illinois on Saturday starting to make his case to be president.

From his announcement, Obama flew on to the key state of Iowa where those all-important caucuses will be held next January. And traveling along with him is Fox News senior political correspondent Carl Cameron.

Carl, what's the early reaction to Senator Obama?

CARL CAMERON, FOX NEWS: Well, it's still awfully chilly. He calls himself a, quote, improbable candidate, and he's portraying it more as a movement than an actual presidential campaign and in launching it as he did yesterday from Springfield, Illinois, boldly drew parallels between himself and Abraham Lincoln.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

OBAMA: The shadow of the old state capitol where Lincoln once called on a house divided to stand together, where common hopes and common dreams still live, I stand before you today to announce my candidacy for president of the United States of America.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

CAMERON: Whether charisma makes up for relative inexperience against Hillary Clinton and others is the main question. He'll run against them as an outsider, a change agent, untainted by the cynical Washington politics that he implies disqualifies them.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

OBAMA: I know that I haven't spent a lot of time learning the ways of Washington. But I've been there long enough to know that the ways of Washington must change.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CAMERON: First stop, Iowa, the lead-off caucus state. He trails by double digits in the polls, behind Democratic frontrunner Hillary Clinton. She made her first trip to new Hampshire, the first primary state, and again refused to say her vote for the Iraq war was wrong, even though rival John Edwards has done just that and Democrats clearly want her to.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

ROGER TILTON: I want to know if right here, right now, once and for all, without nuance, you can say that that war authorization vote was a mistake.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

(END VIDEOTAPE)

CAMERON: And demands for Clinton to recount her Iraq war vote are beginning to dog her on the campaign trail. She's an historic candidate in her own right.

And now for Obama comes the scrutiny from as far away as Australia where Prime Minister John Howard has suggested that Al Qaida is rooting for Obama and Democrats to win the 2008 election, suggesting that if they do, it would weaken the international war on terrorism.

Chris?

WALLACE: Carl Cameron, reporting from Iowa.

Carl, thanks.

And it's panel time now for Paul Gigot of the Wall Street Journal and Fox News contributors Nina Easton of Fortune magazine, Bill Kristol of The Weekly Standard and Juan Williams of National Public Radio.

So Barack Obama launches his campaign with a speech that's less about specific programs and more about a new generation and a new approach to our politics.

Bill Kristol, is that the best argument he should be making?

BILL KRISTOL, WEEKLY STANDARD: Well, he is from a new generation and we're in a new moment. It's a post-9/11 moment. What strikes me is that he wants to make a generational speech -- two paragraphs on foreign policy.

He says 9/11 was a very important moment, and therefore we have to be tough on terrorists, but the first thing we have to do to be tough on terrorists is to withdraw from Iraq by 2008. That will really send a signal to those terrorists.

He's going to run as a dovish candidate. Hillary Clinton will stay more hawkish than he, and I do think that's good for Hillary Clinton.

WALLACE: Juan?

JUAN WILLIAMS, NPR: Well, I think that the idea that he says that Iraq was a dumb war back in 2002 allows him to say that, unlike Hillary Clinton or John Edwards, his two prime rivals now in terms of the top of the contest for the Democratic nomination -- that he has the legitimacy to say I had the foresight, I saw this war for what it was when others felt that they had to stay in line with what the president was calling for, even if the president was calling for something that has turned out so tragically for the U.S.

And the idea that he's calling for a pull-out by March of '08 -- goodness gracious, that's even behind what most Americans want. Most Americans want the troops gone now.

So I think the generational appeal is what really struck me, that idea that he was acting as sort of a traditional Bill Clinton or even Kennedy in saying, you know, time for this new generation, saying you know what, it's time to get beyond the pettiness of arguments in Washington. I think it has real appeal.

WALLACE: Let me ask you about that, because central to his argument, Paul, seems to be the idea that voters are tired of the kind of hyper- partisanship of the baby boomers, and that may include Clinton and Bush II and now Clinton again, and that they want to turn the page. Do you see any evidence that's true?

PAUL GIGOT, WALL STREET JOURNAL: Oh, I think there is that sentiment out there, there's no question about it. I personally am a conservative, but I love the Lincoln rhetoric. You know, he called himself a tall, gangly, self- made Springfield lawyer. And Lincoln is a historic bipartisan figure. Everybody in America reveres the president. I think that's smart.

But you know, I don't know -- when you look at the actual details of the speech, and there weren't many -- but there wasn't a single issue that the Democratic left likes that wasn't massaged, from health care, to global warming, to union membership.

If you look at it, he talked about them in general terms, but he was saying to the political left out there look, I'm your guy. So the bipartisanship may go away as this campaign goes on.

WALLACE: Nina?

NINA EASTON, FORTUNE: What also wasn't in that speech was any reference to Republicans, except for one Republican he worked with, any reference to the Bush White House. It was a very rise above politics. He talks about the smallness of politics.

And he's definitely trying to, yes, appeal to the left but also capture this anti-Washington sentiment in the country. He's trying to take his two years here and make that his asset, in fact.

What I find quite striking is the difference between Obama and Edwards, both trying to be the anti-Hillary candidate. And Obama is coming out saying I don't like hardball politics. Edwards is playing hardball politics, and he's far more seasoned, and I think that's the race to watch.

WALLACE: Well, he's not far more seasoned.

EASTON: Well, he been in a presidential campaign and that -- you know, and it shows. Out on the trail with Edwards, that shows.

WALLACE: Bill, let's switch, if we can, to Rudy Giuliani, who also made news this week -- and it's amazing how many bites of the apple these politicians take now -- by announcing that he's filing a formal statement of candidacy.

He's not a candidate, but he's filing a formal statement of candidacy, and he began to deal with what could be a troubling issue for him, the fact that he's pro-choice on abortion, by trying to switch the subject a bit to whom he would appoint as judges or justices if he's president. Let's take a look.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

GIULIANI: But I do think you have sort of a general philosophical approach that you want from a justice. And I think a strict constructionist would be probably the way I'd describe it.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

WALLACE: Bill, is that enough to satisfy the social conservatives?

KRISTOL: It could be. If we're not electing a war president in 2008, I don't think Rudy would be a viable candidate for the Republican presidential nomination. We're electing a war president in 2008.

If I can come back to Obama and Lincoln for just one second, Lincoln's house divided speech in 1858 was a speech saying we cannot live as a house divided on slavery and we will -- and he implicitly says we'll have to fight a civil war if necessary on this.

Obama's speech is a can't-we-all-get-along speech. It's sort of the opposite of Lincoln. He would have been with Stephen Douglas in 1858 -- let's paper over these differences, rise above politics and all get along.

That's not Giuliani's mode. And I think in a war context, social conservatives want to win the war against Islamic jihadism, and I think Giuliani has a pretty good chance.

WILLIAMS: Well, the only way that Giuliani would have a chance, I think, is if the social conservatives fracture. I just don't think there's any way that social conservatives are going to get beyond not only his stand on abortion, but then you come to gay rights -- I mean, his many divorces.

I mean, I think what's required here is that there is no social conservative candidate. And you know, Sam Brownback would like to be that candidate. I guess Duncan Hunter would like to be that candidate. I guess Mitt Romney would like to be that candidate.

But there's got to be a fracturing there that says we don't like McCain, and therefore we're willing to do business with Giuliani. Now, when you suggest that Giuliani would do well as the war candidate, I think what experience does Rudolph Giuliani have in terms of dealing with foreign policy or with war. It makes Barack Obama look experienced by comparison.

GIGOT: Juan, he dealt with a crisis after 9/11.

WILLIAMS: Sure. That was a crisis. That's not war experience, Paul.

GIGOT: We don't know what's going to happen in any new president. And if you can -- if you've shown that you've had the experience to deal with a crisis, a lot of voters are saying geez, that's what I want, because there's great unknowns out there.

Also, there's this view out there that social conservatives, or some of them, are one-issue voters. And some of them are, that's right. But not all of them are. And particularly this idea of strict constructionism is important because all of the big cultural debates in our society now end up in the courts anyway.

And I think what social conservatives want to know is they're not going to have their views hijacked by judges, so they want a democratic hearing. Important point for Rudy.

WALLACE: All right. We need to take a break here.

But coming up, the Senate revisits the issue of whether the Bush administration manipulated intelligence to lead the country to war. Our panel joins that debate right after this.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

WALLACE: On this day in 1979, Ayatollah Khomeini seized power in Iran after leading a revolution to overthrow the shah. Khomeini remained supreme ruler of Iran until his death in 1989.

Stay tuned for more from our panel and our Power Player of the Week.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

FEITH: Nobody in my office ever said there was an operational relationship between Iraq and Al Qaida. It's just not correct. I mean, words matter.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

WALLACE: That was former Undersecretary of Defense Douglas Feith a few moments ago here on "Fox News Sunday" talking about the controversy over pre-war intelligence.

And we're back now with Paul, Nina, Bill and Juan.

So, Paul, what was going on here with Feith's operation in the Pentagon? Was this an honest, good faith alternative analysis of the intelligence? Or was this a bunch of top officials in the Pentagon and the White House who were trying to build a case to go to war?

GIGOT: We didn't go to war because of Al Qaida links. We went to war because of WMD, which was what the CIA said Saddam had, and that's what they got wrong.

This was an attempt by people in the administration to take a second look, to scrub the details, to make other judgments. I think the appointed representatives of elected officials -- CIA doesn't run for office. President Bush does. He appoints Donald Rumsfeld and Doug Feith.

They have an obligation to double-check intelligence, not to do their own intelligence work, which they didn't do here. What they did was their own analysis.

And I think in the wake -- about a year after the anthrax attacks which we had in 2001, which hadn't been solved, a year after our country was attacked, they had an obligation to look at the links between Al Qaida and state sponsors of terror.

I think the Senate owes Doug Feith an apology, because they've been claiming -- intimating that he committed crimes, he did something wrong. The inspector general's report says no crimes were committed. This was authorized. I think he was doing a public service.

WALLACE: It also said, though, Nina, that it was inappropriate and that he sometimes passed things off as intelligence products.

EASTON: That's right. And what an irony here that this shop that was set up to look at intelligence that they thought was weak, in fact, comes under scrutiny and their own assessments are weak.

I think the administration's tried to have it both ways on this Al Qaida-Iraq link. He said just now no operations -- Doug Feith said no operational link, we never said that. Well, in fact, you go back and you look at George Bush's speeches from 2002, the fall of 2002, and he said that Saddam Hussein was training Al Qaida operatives.

But that said, I have to agree with Paul on the big picture here. This is a subplot, this whole Al Qaida-Iraq link. We did not go to war because of this. Again, go back and look at George Bush's speeches. It was about WMD.

And a very gutsy Democratic move, I believe, would be to look at the intelligence that dates back not just from Republican administrations but Democratic administrations and look at why the National Intelligence Estimate of 2002 that we all looked at was so wrong.

KRISTOL: Look, Generally speaking, we have underplayed over the last 20 years -- our intelligence has underestimated the rapidity of the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction and the amount of state sponsorship of terrorism.

And after a year, incidentally, of everyone saying oh, Iran, very minimal role in Iraq, they wouldn't do anything there, it's a Sunni insurgency, why would the Iranians be playing around there, it turns out they are providing, it seems, the explosive devices that are by far the most damaging and dangerous for U.S. troops there.

So there are connections between terrorists and state sponsors of terrorism, including connections between religious states and secular -- secular states and religious terrorists and vice versa.

And so I think, in fact, to the degree that this is being promoted now, it's an attempt to prevent political leaders from making judgments about how dangerous certain states are because of their relationships to terrorists.

WALLACE: But wait a minute. When you say promoted, this is a report by the Pentagon inspector general. What's promoted?

KRISTOL: Well, I believe it's a report at the request of the Senate committee, and the hearing was the Senate hearing.

WALLACE: But it wasn't done by Levin. This was done back when the Republicans were in control.

KRISTOL: Well, it was done by an inspector general, who is non- partisan. And if we're going to have the standard that, you know, no one gets to ever question the intelligence agencies, and no one gets to say look, we think there are links, we're not certain if they're operational but they're dangerous enough, that's a standard to which people are going to be held, and if they're going to be second-guessed -- incidentally, there were links.

Where was Zarqawi in 2002, if we can get back to the leader of Al Qaida in Iraq? Al Qaida in Iraq. Mr. Zarqawi -- he was in Saddam's Iraq. So are people still going to say no links between Saddam and Al Qaida?

WILLIAMS: Look, I find this so unbelievable. It's so tenuous, but it seems to me clear that there's a need to somehow defend this idea that there was some kind of operational link when it's clear there wasn't ever any operational link between Al Qaida and Saddam Hussein.

And then you can say oh, yes, there might have been a meeting between Mohamed Atta and Iraqi intelligence agents in Prague. Never proven. Oh, there might be Zarqawi visiting. You know, people visit all the time different places.

I don't know that there's any evidence that there was discussions about planning an attack on the United States. I haven't seen anything like that.

What is clear, though, is that people are refusing to acknowledge the idea, even given that it's a Pentagon report, that this was cherry-picking intelligence. I think if you saw that lady astronaut charging after the other one with a pepper spray, you'd say oh, well, it could be she just wanted to say hello.

I mean, it's a clear case of someone manipulating evidence to build a case to go to war. And obviously, it's led to tragic consequences for people. We've lost lives and money and time.

GIGOT: But we didn't go to war for that. We went to war for WMD which the intelligence services got wrong.

WILLIAMS: But the reason we went to war over WMD is the fear that if Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction, he would lend them to Al Qaida, strengthening Al Qaida, and that was just wrong, Paul.

GIGOT: Do you think that that was impossible? Do you think that that could never have happened?

WILLIAMS: No, but, Paul, that's not what you just said. Paul, you said we went to war over WMD. They didn't have the WMD. And the idea was even if they did, that it would lead them to then support Al Qaida because they knew that they couldn't beat us given what happened in '91 in the Gulf War.

GIGOT: We don't know if they would have -- if Saddam would have given a nuclear weapon to Al Qaida or not. But it's certainly a question I'd like to know the answer to. And I'd like to know about the links...

WILLIAMS: Is it worth going to war and losing all our men and women? GIGOT: It may be if he had the potential for WMD -- but since when are the intelligence services above questioning, Juan, by the appointed representatives and elected officials?

The CIA got WMD wrong. The CIA got the nuclear weapons that Saddam -- they said he didn't have anywhere close to a nuclear weapon before the first Gulf War. When we went in there, we found out it was a lot closer to getting one.

They got the size of the Russian economy wrong during the Cold War. They make all kinds of mistakes. We need a Team B. We need to have these things scrubbed. And that was the whole idea behind the national director of intelligence, to get a group that would look at these things more closely.

WILLIAMS: I don't think anybody here would have any objection to saying let's have a critical look. The CIA obviously got some things wrong. But the key is to do it in such a way as you're a team effort, not to hide things and cherry-pick.

WALLACE: We're going to have to leave it there. You've run out the clock again, Juan.

Thank you, panel. See you next week.

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