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July 12, 2007

Special Report Roundtable - July 12

FOX News Special Report With Brit Hume

GEORGE W. BUSH, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA: The real debate over Iraq is between those who think the fight is lost or not worth the cost, and those who believe the fight can be won, and that is as and that as difficult as the fight is, the cost of defeat would be far higher.

I believe we can succeed in Iraq, and I know we must.

SEN DICK DURBIN, (D) ILLINOIS: Sad to say, President Bush is out of touch. He is out of touch with the reality of the war in Iraq, he is out of touch with the American people. This benchmark assessment report, which we have received, doesn't give us much hope.

HUME: And that benchmark assessment report is about the Iraqis and how well they are holding up their end of the deal, the plan that brought the troop surge into Iraq. And what it basically said was is that they have done well in some areas, principally security areas--the provision of troops, and so on--and not so well in the political areas.

Some thoughts on all this now from Fred Barnes, Executive Editor of The Weekly Standard, Mort Kondrake, Executive Editor of Roll Call, and the syndicated columnists Charles Krauthammer, Fox News contributors all.

Well, Charles, this record will add to the debate. We have seen the reaction to it, where does it stand?

CHARLES KRAUTHAMMER, SYNDICATED COLUMNIST: Well, the Democrats are latching on to the benchmark issue as a way to say we have to give up because it is lost. And I have been as critical as others of the Maliki government. The way it is constituted, it is almost inherently unable to pass the kind of broad-reaching reconciliation laws that you will need in the long run.

But two things are important here. A, you can't run a war on benchmarks. If Lincoln had done that, we would be two nations right now.

But, more important, is that a year ago, you would have said the only way to bring the Sunnis over out of the insurgency and to dry up the sea in which the Sunni insurgents are swimming, is to have the kind of broad legislation out of the central government that we have talked about.

But something has happened in the last year. In Anbar, in the absence of that stuff coming out of Baghdad, there has been a radical change on the ground. And what happened is, after an American offensive and we sent al-Quida running, the tribal leaders came over and joined our side.

Ramadi, the capital of Anbar is now one of the most secure cities in Iraq--it was an al-Quida outpost--as a result of this. Which shows you that what can happen on ground in the absence of a national accord is a provincial and a local turnaround as Sunnis come over against al- Quida.

And that is happening in provinces around Baghdad, and that is exactly what the surge is about. It is not about what Maliki does. It is about winning over Sunnis, and it is happening on ground right now.

MORT KONDRAKE, EXECUTIVE EDITOR, ROLL CALL: Now, there is progress on what the report calls bottom up reconciliation, and in various places.

The president can sustain this policy in September, maybe, the first of year. But look, bottom is dropping out, unfortunately. I mean, I say this with as much sadness as I can summon.

I would love to say that this country will stick this thing through to the finish. But yesterday there were 56 votes, including about six Republicans, who voted for the Webb resolution amendment, which said that troops couldn't stay any longer in Iraq than they had had as a rest at home.

All they need is four votes more, four more Republican votes to end the war effort. September is the date. If we don't have a miracle, a bunch of miracles, by September, I'll afraid the bottom is going to drop out.

FRED BARNES, EXECUTIVE EDITOR, WEEKLY STANDARD: I don't think so at all, I couldn't disagree more. I don't think we see any, despite all the talk from Lugar, and Domenici, and some others--there were seven votes, I think, for cloture, as well, back in May--so, it is not much worse.

I think the thing you have to look at, and this the most important thing to look at in these 18 benchmarks, is, as they said in the report, and this is a tough report. This was not a rosy view of these benchmarks, these people were tough, because they knew if they weren't, they would be just dismissed.

But they said there are leading indicators, and there are lagging indicators. And one of the leading indicators are the things that you want to have gone well now. The sending of Iraqi troops at the proper levels into Baghdad, the setting up of the joint security stations with the U.S. and the Iraqis, and also the fact that no safe havens are allowed for terrorists--parts of city where they just ignore.

Those are the leading indicators. What are the lagging indicators? What will come later after there has been some military success? Well, that's where the political benchmarks come in. There will be an oil law, there will be a law that sets up provisional elections next year. There will be some de-baathification.

But those things come later. The fact is, the important things are the thing on which they are doing well now.

KONDRAKE: But to look at the report in a clear eyed way, it says, yes, we are making big progress in Anbar and Diyala Province, but in Baghdad, the number of bodies, executed bodies, is up 41 percent since January. And Muqtada al-Sadr is back starting to attack U.S. troops.

KRAUTHAMMER: The most important benchmark about the central government in Baghdad is that al-Sadr is out of the coalition. He and Maliki are at odds. If we have a Prime Minister who has excluded Sadr, that is an extremely good advance.

HUME: Next up with the all-stars, the new information on the strength of al-Quida on the heels of reports about the Homeland Security Secretary's gut. Don't go anywhere, we will be right back.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

SEN HARRY REID, SENATE MAJORITY LEADER, (D) NEVADA: New intelligence assessments conclude al-Quida is going stronger while Usama bin Laden is operating freely, we understand, in the Afghan-Pakistan border. The president wants to keep our troops in open-ended war.

CONDOLEEZA RICE, SECRETARY OF STATE: You cannot lose a whole layer of field generalship in the way that they have. You cannot lose your training bases in Afghanistan, you can't lose the capacity to freely move money around, because there is no effort to tracing terrorist financing, you can't be in the same situation today that you were prior to 9/11 if you are al-Quida.

HUME: Well, the debate is now, in Washington, about whether al- Quida was stronger before 9/11, or whether they have regrouped to the point where they are even stronger now than they were back then.

Democrats seem to think that based on an intelligence assessment, preliminary, but, nonetheless, real, that al-Quida has regained most of its strength, and not all of its maybe stronger than before.

What about it, Fred?

BARNES: Stronger than before what? They are not stronger than before 9/11 when we didn't even know they were out there, really, and they built up a huge force, and they had a safe haven in a country, where they could go in an out of the airport in Kabul, Afghanistan.

I want to hear Harry Reid say that Usama bin Laden can move about freely. Yes, he can move about freely in a mountainous area that is almost impossible to get to in Pakistan.

Well, good for him. He can move freely in that area, but let him try to go to Karachi, or someplace like that, and he isn't going to be able to move freely.

But there is a difference now. What the report says, as I understood it, is that al-Quida is stronger than it was a year ago or two years ago. And they do have this safe haven, as remote as it is, as inadequate as it might be--it doesn't match the safe haven they had in Afghanistan--but, nonetheless, it is, and they are doing training there. And they are getting away with it.

So that, I think, has strengthened them, making them stronger than they were a year or two ago. But what is arrayed against them, as Condoleezza Rice said, is law enforcement and intelligence, it's a lot stronger as well.

KONDRAKE: Well, that is true. And what this assessment says is that the key factor here was our ally Musharraf's deal with the tribal leaders, which, basically, gave al-Quida free run.

HUME: It wasn't supposed to.

KONDRAKE: It wasn't suppose to, but that is the effect of this. The Pakistani military don't go anywhere near it anymore, and as a result of al-Quida is capable of really incredible communication stuff, at least. I don't know what they can do militarily.

But they can get thousands of c.d.'s and videotapes within days into the streets of Islamabad, which suggests that they have got a very sophisticated, at least, transmission belt going, communications, and what this assessment says--

HUME: Or a bunch of busy laptops.

KONDRAKE: Or something, that they are gearing up to attack the west.

Now, I frankly think that we ought to use our influence to get Musharraf to step down, have a democratic government in Pakistan, and let Binizer(ph) Bhutto handle the problem.

KRAUTHAMMER: Look, whenever you get a report like this, Democrats jump on it, and they blame it on Bush and the war in Iraq. This is, as we just heard, the result of--it talks about al-Quida being strengthened in the last year or so.

What has happened in the last year? Iraq is not different. What happened is the deal that Mort has talk about. Musharraf allows al- Quida to operate northwest Pakistan, he withdraws his army.

Harry Reid brings this up, and what is his solution? Do in Iraq what Musharraf has done in Pakistan, withdraw, and leave al-Quida with a safe haven. That is hardly an answer.

And secondly, look around the world at what has happened in the last few days. A suicide attack it Algeria, an attack, of course, in the mosque which we saw in Islamabad, attacks all over in Lebanon, for example, al-Quida operating--a Palestinian camp attacking the Lebanese army.

This is not about Bush. It is not about Iraq. It is not about Palestine. It is about the failed society of the Arab and Islamic world, which has not modernized. It has not had any answers, it tried socialism, it tried Nasserism. Everything has failed, and it turns to Islam.

You can't kill a movement like that overnight. You can minimize its destructiveness, as we have with al-Quida, but, in the end, there is going to have to be a change in the Arab world. And that is not going to happen in our lifetime.

HUME: Let's talk for a minute about what the Democrats would do. Now, let's assume that the president decided all right, I'm going to do what you need me to do to attack this problem of the safe haven. How would they do that?

BARNES: Well, Hilary Clinton--

HUME: They talk about sending troops to Afghanistan.

KONDRAKE: Afghanistan, yes. Nobody has yet talked about, you know, bombing raids in Mozerastan(ph).

HUME: Let alone landing the marines.

KONDRAKE: Right. It's part of the Pakistan, now.

KRAUTHAMMER: And if we did, who do you think would turn against it within a year? Democrats.

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