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May 25, 2007

Gingrich, Col. North on Pearl Harbor, Memorial Day

Hannity & Colmes

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

COL. OLIVER NORTH, HOST, "WAR STORIES": This is the wreckage of USS Utah, one of eight battle ships that were moored here on December 7, 1941. At 7:55 that quiet Sunday morning, wings of Japanese airplanes suddenly appeared overhead, unleashing bombs and torpedoes in a savage, surprise attack.

In less than two hours, more than 300 U.S. aircraft were wrecked, 21 U.S. Navy ships damaged or sunk, and more than 2,400 Americans dead or dying.

FRANKLIN DELANO ROOSEVELT, FORMER PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: The United States of America was suddenly and deliberately attacked. The attack has caused severe damage to American naval and military forces. December 7, 1941, a date which will live in infamy.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

HANNITY: And that was my good friend Colonel Oliver North, who is here with us, by the way, as we come to you live from Pearl Harbor. We're in Honolulu, Hawaii, tonight, and we're just a few days away from Memorial Day, a time of remembrance for those who have died in our nation's service. And no place could be more fitting to honor those men and women than the site here at Pearl Harbor.

The image of the burning and damaged USS Arizona is one that will live with al of us as a symbol of that horrible day when the Japanese attack launched America into a global conflict.

Today more than a million people visit the USS Arizona memorial every single year, filing quietly through the building, throwing flowers into the water. It's not just to remember only those that were lost that horrific day but also all of those who paid the ultimate sacrifice in every conflict since.

And I'm joined right here in Pearl Harbor by "War Stories" host Oliver North, who you just saw. And also joining us, former speaker of the House, Newt Gingrich, by the way, author of the brand new book, "Pearl Harbor: A Novel of December the 8th".

Good to see you. Welcome to Honolulu.

NEWT GINGRICH, AUTHOR, "PEARL HARBOR": Great to be here.

HANNITY: Aloha.

NORTH: Aloha.

HANNITY: Thank you all.

You know, I wanted to go -- because your research on this new book -- and by the way, congratulations. It debuted, you know, very high on the New York Times list. That's a big congratulations your first week out.

I want you to explain where we are and that memorial behind us and this ship over here and everything -- what people can see here.

GINGRICH: Well, what all of our viewers are watching right behind us is the memorial to the Arizona, which was the ship which was most decisively hit, blew apart and sank right in place, has never been recovered. And the bodies of those young Americans are still down there as a memorial to the particular events of that Sunday morning.

Behind us on the other side is the U.S. Battleship Missouri, which was part of our answer to Pearl Harbor, and symbolically powerful because that's the battleship on which the Japanese signed the surrender documents less than four years after their attack.

But if I had one thing, I'd like to really start with for everybody who's watching, imagine this kind of a beautiful day, probably not quite this windy, early on a Sunday morning. America is at peace. Young men in uniform are gathering for breakfast, thinking about what Saturday night was like in Honolulu. The band is playing, the flag is going up.

And suddenly, they hear some bombs going off right across that ridge where the Utah is. They suddenly hear the drone of engines. And over here they suddenly see 20 torpedo planes, Japanese torpedo planes coming in to drop torpedoes right at this -- this was battleship -- this was where the Battleship Row was.

HANNITY: Right here behind us.

GINGRICH: Exactly. And then right up there coming across the mountain are bombers which are carrying modified 14-inch battleship rounds that are designed to come down with such speed from the top, that it was a 14-inch battleship round which blew up inside the Arizona and sank it.

What I want all of our viewers to understand is that a peaceful America, an America that did not want war, America that was committed to finding a way to have a negotiation with Japan, suddenly, in seconds, found itself fighting for its life right here at Pearl Harbor.

HANNITY: Two waves, first one about seven or eight minutes, and then the second wave comes, what 20 minutes, 30 minutes later?

GINGRICH: Thirty minutes later. And in that very short period of time, the battleships are destroyed

HANNITY: Twenty-four hundred men.

GINGRICH: The place is a wreck. Every -- virtually -- about 85 percent of the airplanes have been destroyed. And one of the things we deal with in our novel, "Pearl Harbor", is the question of what would it have been like if the Japanese had decided to launch a third attack, because this place by that stage was relatively defenseless in terms of air power, although it still had a fair amount of anti-aircraft capability.

HANNITY: You don't want to give it away, because it's obviously in your novel.

Colonel North, you...

NORTH: Without giving away the novel, because it is a great novel, had the Japanese hit the subpats (ph), the subMarines, we would have had nothing to go after the Japanese offensively at all or defensively in the Pacific.

And of course, the aftermath of the attack here, the attacks on Wake Island, which finally falls at Christmas. And for weeks, this island was literally preparing for an invasion.

We've never experienced anything like that in the United States before or since. Closest we've got is 9/11.

The interesting difference between what happened here is until the end of the war, Americans said, "Remember Pearl Harbor." And after the war, people said, "No more Pearl Harbors."

We've had a Pearl Harbor. It's called 9/11. And the unfortunate part of it, Sean, is our memories seem to be short. The million folks who will visit this memorial this year, many of them will not be Americans. They come and they take great respect.

The Japanese tourists who come here from all -- and from the rest of world think how could this great nation have let itself get caught on December 7, 1941, let itself get caught again on 9/11?

And we now have, think of it, 150,000 young Americans at war in Iraq. We've got 20,000 at war in Afghanistan, fighting a terrorist organization that is every bit as brutal as those who attacked us...

COLMES: Ollie, Newt, I don't know if you can hear me OK. It's Alan in New York. Good to see you both.

But I think the reason things are so different, and you alluded to this just now, Ollie, in this country right now, and the attitude and the sentiment much different than it was back when Pearl Harbor was attacked. As we went into a nation that was not part of the attack on September 11 and that greatly divided this nation.

Which is why you talk about "remember Pearl Harbor." We don't have a similar sentiment because of the reaction we had to September 11 by this administration.

NORTH: Now, Alan, I'm sitting next to a great history professor, but let me first -- allow me to remind you, Germany didn't attack us on December 7, 1941.

COLMES: They declared war on us. They declared war on us.

NORTH: And yet by the 11th of December, we were at war. Italy never attacked us and we were at war with them. And so, please don't, you know, try to fudge things over about what's going on in Iraq.

COLMES: Germany declared war on the United States.

Let me go to Newt Gingrich on this. Doesn't that, though, speak to why there's such a difference? You yourself, Speaker, have been very critical of this war and how it's being conducted.

GINGRICH: I've been very critical of how we have conducted the war in order to find ways to get us to victory. Victory seems to be a term that some people in Washington and in the news media don't like to talk about.

But, let me tell you back to Germany, since you raised it. And Franklin Delano Roosevelt. In September 1941, when we were at peace, President Roosevelt unilaterally declares that we will protect all of the Atlantic west of a certain line in the middle of the Atlantic.

U.S. destroyers are out sinking German submarines, clearly by the modern New York Times standard, a sign of illegality.

HANNITY: All right. We're going to take a break. We're going to continue with more with former speaker of the House, Newt Gingrich, and Colonel Oliver North. We are having a special edition of "Hannity & Colmes", live here at Pearl Harbor. A lot more to come, straight ahead.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

HANNITY: And welcome back to "Hannity & Colmes". We are live tonight from the USS Missouri battleship memorial. We are in Pearl Harbor in Hawaii. And we continue now with former speaker of the House, Newt Gingrich, author of the brand new book -- it's a terrific novel -- "Pearl Harbor: A Novel of December the 8th". By the way, just made the New York Times list its first week out.

And the host of "War Stories" right here on the FOX News Channel, Colonel Oliver North.

A day of infamy, and we did have a second one, as you pointed out.

NORTH: We did, 9/11.

HANNITY: But you deal with, in the novel, the idea -- first of all, it's historically accurate but you raise questions, what if questions if things didn't go...

GINGRICH: First of all we tried to signal by the title "December the 8th", this attack from an American standpoint was Sunday morning, December the 7th. But the Japanese imperial navy measured all of its orders by Tokyo time. And because the international deadline -- dateline, it was December the 8th in Tokyo.

So the order actually reads "On December the 8th, you will attack Pearl Harbor."

HANNITY: Right.

GINGRICH: And we spend half the novel from the Japanese side, half the novel from the American side. And one of the things -- the only thing that we change in a major way is we have Admiral Yamamoto, who's the great aviation admiral, and a man who really believed in gambling and really believed in luck. He'd made a lot of money in the U.S. playing poker, and then he made a lot of money in Monte Carlo playing poker in the casinos -- playing in the casinos.

And we have him come forward, instead of Nagumo, who was a battleship admiral. And we think that, had Yamamoto been here, that there would have been a dramatically more aggressive campaign.

HANNITY: It was a day of infamy, though, that -- that phrase? Tell us what that means.

GINGRICH: Well, President Roosevelt understood that this had to be a moral cause for the American people to truly be committed to it.

And on noon on December 8, he comes to the U.S. Congress. It was a relatively short speech. And he talks about the fact that the Japanese have attacked, and this is a sneak attack. But they have killed thousands of Americans.

As Colonel North said, they were attacking at Wake Island. They were attacking in Guam. They were attacking in the Philippines. They were attacking in Malaya, where they sank two major British warships and killed thousands.

And he said this was a -- this was a sneak attack, utterly immoral and that this will be a day of infamy that will live in history.

COLMES: Ollie, let me ask...

GINGRICH: We will be dedicated to winning.

COLMES: Let me address the issue of readiness in that regard, because we clearly are always at the ready. And how ready were we then and how ready with we now for such a situation?

NORTH: Well, we weren't ready. In fact the first wave gets in and out, comes literally over my left shoulder and attacks Battleship Row without -- totally unscathed, because the anti-aircraft ammunition hadn't been broken out yet. The second wave does get a counter response.

But the problem today, Alan, is not military preparedness. We're -- militarily, we are ready. The problem is politically we're not ready.

And you know, I'm a big fan of this president, as everybody knows. But the mistakes that have been made -- and I think the speaker's been very articulate about this.

There was an opportunity to mobilize this nation for the war on terror, the jihad that is being waged against us by people -- here's the important thing. The adversary we faced here on December 7, 1941, wasn't simply willing to die. Many of them wanted to die. That's the same kind of adversary we face today.

COLMES: Mr. Speaker...

NORTH: It's beyond our comprehension.

COLMES: Yes.

NORTH: Admiral Spruance couldn't believe that there were kamikazes, the banzai charges that were conducted as they were.

And so politically is our problem today. It's not military preparedness.

HANNITY: All right, you guys. We've got to take a quick break. We'll come back.

More from Pearl Harbor on this special edition of "Hannity & Colmes". Thank you for being with us.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

HANNITY: And welcome back to "Hannity & Colmes". We're live from the USS Missouri battleship memorial in Pearl Harbor. And we continue now with the host of "War Stories", Colonel Oliver North. And the author of a brand new book, "Pearl Harbor: A Novel of December the 8th", Newt Gingrich, is with us.

Interestingly, we are all going, immediately after this program, to the Honolulu Convention Center. And by the way, they've had to expand the room twice because you two are there. And -- and anyone can come.

But we're going to be met, all of us, by a group of picketers and protesters, apparently, that don't like our views.

GINGRICH: Well, what I'm confused by is what you're -- what we're doing tonight is raising money for a great cause, to help the young people -- you should explain to them now. To help the young people whose parents have risked their lives for America.

And I can't imagine any American who would object to helping the children of our veterans.

NORTH: What Freedom Rallies (ph) does is it provides scholarships for youngsters who have lost a parent serving the line of the duty. The last page of your book has had a wonderful dedication to that cause. We also do things like we did last night, with Triple Army (ph). Sean and I were there with these wounded warriors.

And as you know, the Congress only provides so much money for a wounded warrior's dependents to get to where they are wounded. And so we supplement that. We system (ph) through the chaplains and through the base surgeons and things like that.

So Sean has helped us raise a lot of money for that. FOX has been very generous with their time on it.

HANNITY: You wonder why this could be, but let me ask you in the context of just the news events this week. We literally had 14 senators that wouldn't vote to fund the troops that many of them sent to war, into battle.

We have a U.S. senator, the head of Senate and the Democrats, saying that we've lost a war that he went to go send them to fight.

John Edwards says there no global war on terror. A week that Ahmadinejad wants to once again blow up Israel and the IAEA says he may have a nuclear weapon in three years.

GINGRICH: Let me say the think the most disappointing vote this week was Senator Clinton. Senator Obama may not know better. She does. And she was very courageous for a long time in resisting her left and saying this was the right war, this was the right thing.

And it is sad to see the pressure she's under. And she just today released a statement defending Israel and talking about the need to do something about Hamas at the very time that she was refusing to send the money to fund her own troops. And I think that it is the saddest political spectacle we've seen.

Again, Senator Obama I think doesn't have a clue. But Senator Clinton actually knows better and is doing this, I think, for the narrowest of political reasons.

NORTH: Well, Alan -- by the way, Alan, one of the reasons why we weren't as militarily prepared as we could is in the vote taken just a month before Pearl Harbor to extend the draft, it passes by one vote in the Congress of the United States. So my -- that's my point about the lack of political preparedness in America. And it just exemplifies...

COLMES: Ollie North and Newt Gingrich, it's Alan back in New York.

By the way, two of the people, two of the 14 who voted against this supplemental were Republicans: Mike Enzi of Wyoming, Richard -- and actually Coburn. Three, actually, three Republicans. So it's not all Democrats.

Yet, I don't hear you attacking -- I don't hear conservatives upset with this vote, the no votes, attacking them because they didn't like the pork in it. President Bush didn't like the pork in it the first time.

GINGRICH: Alan.

COLMES: This time he doesn't seem to have a problem with all the pork in the bill.

GINGRICH: Listen, Alan, you lump together left-wing Democrats who, as a matter of principal, are voting against sending money to the U.S. troops, with conservatives who are against paying the politicians' pork to get their vote to send money. I think those are two totally different motivations.

COLMES: The president's signing it with all the pork.

HANNITY: We only have a second. Hey, Alan, we only have a second.

GINGRICH: OK. I just want to say one thing, Alan. The Japanese thought their only hope was that American politicians would cave and negotiate a treaty. And my guess is if we had live coverage from Guadalcanal, you'd have seen a third of the Congress begging for negotiations for the troops.

HANNITY: We've got to take a break.

Now, when we come back, for those of you that happen to be in Hawaii, the three of us tonight are going to be at the Honolulu Convention Center. We'll tell you about that when we get back.

Also we're going to give you the dates and locations of our Freedom Concerts to help with this great cause to raise money for the children of these slain soldiers, these slain heroes.

I'm going to tell you about that, straight ahead on this special edition of "Hannity & Colmes".

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

HANNITY: All right. As we wrap up here from Pearl Harbor tonight, with Speaker Gingrich and Colonel North, for those of you in Hawaii, we're going to be at the Honolulu Convention Center, the three of us, tonight. And a lot of protesters apparently. And there are tickets available. We've expanded the room twice. So there's room, apparently, for anybody if you want to come up to the door.

And also we're working on five Freedom Concerts this year. And it's to raise money. It's a scholarship fund for the children of these brave heroes. These kids that didn't have their parents at baseball games and ballet recitals and graduations and proms.

The five locations: Dallas-Fort Worth; Jackson, New Jersey on September 11. Atlanta, San Diego and Cincinnati. And if you haven't gotten your tickets, as you go through your weekend barbecuing and going to the beach and hanging out with your family, one of the reasons we are here is because of sacrifice of these brave men and women and the kids that have lost their parents in this conflict.

We are a grateful nation and the scholarships, Colonel, to remember them. And if you could get your tickets at Hannity.com for the concerts. You are going to be a number of them, and you're going to come to a couple, too.

NORTH: I want to thank the speaker for that dedication page at the back of his book of the novel.

And KNBH, this great radio affiliate right here, wouldn't come out and all that crap. But by the way, military personnel, 40 percent off tonight. Bring a defense I.D. card or military I.D. card. You're in.

HANNITY: The tickets for the Freedom Concert. If you get time this weekend, and you're thinking about all the liberty and the freedom we have because of the sacrifice of others, and you think of these kids, Hannity.com for that.

Have a great Memorial Day weekend. We'll see you back in New York on Tuesday. And thank you for being with us.

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