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March 23, 2007

Special Report Roundtable - March 23

FOX News Special Report With Brit Hume

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

NANCY PELOSI (D-CA), HOUSE SPEAKER: Proudly, this new Congress voted to bring an end to the war in Iraq. It took one great, giant step in that direction.

GEORGE W. BUSH, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: Purpose of the emergency war spending bill I requested was to provide our troops with vital funding. Instead, Democrats in the House, in an act of political theater, voted to substitute their judgment for that of our military commanders on the ground in Iraq.

REP PATRICK MURPHY (D), PENNSYLVANIA: For too long, the American people have been craving leadership, craving accountability, and craving a new direction in Iraq. Let's give that to them today.

JOHN BOEHNER (R-OH), HOUSE MINORITY LEASER: It's about whether we've got the courage to give victory a chance or whether we're just going to bring our troops home and give up.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

ANGLE: There is a sample of the debate today as the House took its first action in a funding bill to try to end the war in Iraq.

Now some analytical observations from Fred Barnes, executive editor of the Weekly Standard; Mort Kondracke executive editor of Roll Call; and syndicated columnist, Charles Krauthammer -- FOX NEWS contributors all.

So gentleman, Congress, after Democrats tried on a number of occasions, they have finally come to the point where they're using a spending bill, not to further the war, although they say that they're going to continue to give money to the troops, but actually lay out all sorts of conditions and timelines aimed at ending the war. They say this is the beginning of the process -- Charles.

CHARLES KRAUTHAMMER, SYNDICATED COLUMNIST: Well, it's all show because the Democrats know it's not going to be enacted, as a way of making a statement. And look, it's got so many problems with it.

First of all, the Democrats clime that this is an issue of high moral importance, which of course, it is and then they go about purchasing their majority with subsidies for peanuts and shrimp and, you know, all kinds of other things that.

One Republican, Wagg, said this is a war supplemental -- this is a salad bar at Denny's, which is disgraceful. If you're going to have a vote -- I mean, when the Bush senior and junior took us into war, in the Gulf War and the Iraq War, they didn't purchase the authorization of votes by authoring a bridge or a courthouse. You don't do that if you're serious.

And secondly, all of these conditions, which John Murtha has said explicitly, were chosen knowing in wartime you can't meet them as a way to bleed the war effort down and to make it impossible, are past the conditionally here. So obviously, it's a matter of theater, it's not going to happen, the president will veto.

But the question is at some point the House is going to have to authorize the money. It's going to have to happen, but by the middle of April. And Democrats are going to have to yield on this.

ANGLE: Mort, I mean, Nancy Pelosi was smiling from ear to ear, today, I think, happy that she was finally able to get just enough votes to get this through.

MORT KONDRACKE, ROLL CALL: Yeah, well, I mean, she pulled out all the stops, twisted all the arms, offered all the promises she had to do in order to get 218 votes and that's all she got, that's a bare majority.

But the point is that, you know, it is theoretically possible for them to stop the war. And that is by not passing the supplemental. Now, what's going to happen is that this bill is never going to be enacted into law. The Senate is about to consider its own version of this, then there's going to be a conference committee. Then they are going to come up with a final bill and there's going to be a lot pressure on Nancy Pelosi from the left to say: don't pass that bill, because it'll be -- it won't contain a hard deadline in it...

ANGLE: She's under a lot of criticism already from the left.

KONDRACKE: OK, so then...

ANGLE: Saying now the war is the fault of the Democrats because they have signed on to funding until next year.

KONDRACKE: So then what does she do? You know, the president and the secretary of defense will stand up and say: we need this money or else the troops are going to die. You know, and it's the truth. And I think that she's going to be forced to yield, but it's going to be a difficult process. It's going to be very ugly for her because she's going to be screamed at from both the left and the right.

ANGLE: Fred?

FRED BARNES, WEEKLY STANDARD: Here's what I'd like to point out, and I agree with everything that Charles and Mort said -- this won't become law. Now, that was an interesting bite by Congressman Patrick Murphy because it -- he was repeating what Democrats have said all along which happens to be completely untrue, and that this will force a new direction in Iraq.

There is a new direction in Iraq. Maybe he's never heard of General David Petraeus, who's instituted a counterinsurgency strategy in Iraq that from early indications in Baghdad, in particular, from early indications is doing quite well.

The other rationale is one I think offered many times by Senator Carl Levin of Michigan, who's a very smart guy, was that we need to do this we need to start withdrawing troops because otherwise the government of Iraq will not do the things we needed to do. They just won't happen. They need to have American troops withdrawing it, and then they will act responsibly.

The truth is they've done all these things with the American troops building up right now. Look what the Maliki government has done. They let American troops sweep through the Shia neighborhoods, they've scared off Sadr and his Mahdi Army, they've arrested some, they've killed some, they've jailed some. They have done all these things, the Maliki government has deployed all the troops in Iraq it promised to. Maliki's now gone to Sunni areas. I could go on, but the fact is he's responding already. He doesn't need troops to be withdrawn.

ANGLE: Well now, just a few seconds left in this panel, but the fact is, the Senate Democrats have a significantly different position than the House Democrats. They want to follow what is essentially the Iraq Study Group plan which would take out about half of the force by next March, but then no deadlines or timelines after that. That is a very different approach.

KRAUTHAMMER: Well, it's a softer approach. And as you say, it doesn't have hard deadlines. The House can't live with that, at least the left of the House. And Pelosi is going to have a dilemma.

But look, in the end, neither of them are going to apply. In the end, Democrats in the House and Senate are going to have to decide if they want to have the bleeding of our troops out there, lacking equipment, lacking supplies, lacking reinforcement on their heads. And I think the answer in the end is going to be no.

ANGLE: All right. Next up with the panel, more wrangling over why U.S. attorneys were fired and who has to testify about it. And a look at what happened in a previous Democratic administration on the same issue. More with the all-stars, after a break.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

SEN DIANNE FEINSTEIN (D), CALIFORNIA: This is not going to go away. It's not going to diminish. We are very serious in the pursuit of truth, here. And there's only one way we're going to get that truth. And that's in the open with a transcript, so that everybody can hear the same thing.

SEN CHARLES SCHUMER (D), NEW YORK: They did say they were fired for specific reasons. And you read the 3,000 pages of emails, and you can't really find the specific reasons, that's sort of strange.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

ANGLE: OK, there were some of the comments today on the ongoing dispute over the firing of U.S. attorneys.

Charles, Senator Schumer says that he couldn't find the specific reasons the U.S. attorneys were fired. Is that evidence of improper actions or the absence of improper behavior?

KRAUTHAMMER: Well, this really is bizarre. The Democrats, in the House and the Senate, want to subpoena the White House aides looking for -- if you're going to do that it's a serious thing, all presidents have resisted that, so you've to have some suspicion of illegality and impropriety, obstruction of justice or impeding investigation -- you've got to have something.

So, Schumer reads 3,000 pages of emails and finds nothing and says: aha, well that increases my suspicion. This is beyond the catch-22. This is Kafka (ph). If they have any indication of illegality, they ought to show it. In the absence of that, you shouldn't be issuing subpoenas.

Yes, you can speak to Justice Department employees, that's overnight. But if you're going to ask a White House aide to appear with all the issues of confidential advice, you have to have something hard. If the absence of evidence is evidence, then this is a looking glass world.

ANGLE: Now Mort, it was announced today that Kyle Sampson, from the Justice Department, will testify next Thursday, I believe. So, he will go up. They said: Hey, he's coming voluntarily, don't need a subpoena. He's happy to come and talk to you about this.

KONDRACKE: And he's going to be under oath and if he tells the truth, and there is something nefarious that was involved in all this, then we'll have some evidence and they can legitimately go after whoever they want to go after. And we'll see. I don't know what Sampson has to say. He certainly was the guy at the cockpit of all this. His boss, Alberto Gonzales, was not. Gonzales seems not to have known what Sampson was up to.

ANGLE: He seems not to have known what other officials were saying about this either. Fred, one of the things that's odd about this is that people keep saying: well, it was political. Well yeah, it was political.

BARNES: Of course it was political. These are political appointees by the president. Even when Jimmy Carter, rather, bill Clinton fired all 93 U.S. attorneys, to whom were they to send their resignation letters? To the President, because they were political appointees of the president, so there is absolutely nothing wrong with this. I'm still waiting, as I think Charles and Mort are, for some evidence of wrongdoing, particularly obstruction of justice. It's just not there, haven't seen it.

ANGLE: Now, there was a case under President Carter, I think you were about to get to, Mort, in 1978 where he fired a U.S. attorney at the behest of a member of Congress -- a Democratic member of Congress, who was being investigated by the U.S. attorney.

KONDRACKE: Yes, it was David Marsten in Philadelphia and it was a Joshua Eilberg, congressman from Pennsylvania, who was being investigated for receiving kickbacks in a hospital grant.

In any event, and Carter fired him, the U.S. Attorney. Now, this is the kind of case that if it comes up, you know, if one of these people - - these prosecutors was fired because he was going after the wrong kind of politician, a Republican politician, then the Democrats have got something. So far there is no evidence of that what ever.

BARNES: None.

It is Kafka, I like that. It had -- as Charles said, it's just ludicrous. And these Democrats have to know, including Dianne Feinstein, who was one of the big complainers about the now fired U.S. attorney in San Diego, Carol Lam, who was reluctant to press immigration law violations.

ANGLE: Yeah. One thing that must be said, though, Charles, the administration has created this thing by some really confused complaints that have allowed the Democrats to step right in here.

KRAUTHAMMER: Last week I said Alberto Gonzales muffed a three-foot putt. Well, a lot have called me and said: but that can be difficult. So, it actually -- it's a two-foot putt, is what it is.

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