Special Report Roundtable - December 5

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

ROBERT GATES, DEFENSE SECRETARY-NOMINEE: I am not giving up the presidency of Texas A&M, the job that I've probably enjoyed more than any that I've ever had.

I'm making considerable personal sacrifice, and frankly going through this process, to come back to Washington to be a bump on a log and not to say exactly what I think and to speak candidly and frankly, boldly, to people at both ends of Pennsylvania Avenue about what I believe and what I think needs to be done.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

HUME: And oh, boy, did the senators love that, especially the Democrats, who praised him for his candor. Some analytical observations on the Gates case now from Fred Barnes, executive editor of the Weekly Standard; Mort Kondracke, executive editor of Roll Call; and Mara Liasson, national political correspondent of National Public Radio -- FOX NEWS contributors all.

And by the time the day was out, he had been unanimously voted out of the committee and is headed for the Senate floor where his confirmation tomorrow, is seemingly set and good to go. They certainly took away from this, didn't they, Mara, the sense -- these senators who have been critical of the policy that this is their man. Is he?

MARA LIASSON, NATIONAL PUBLIC RADIO: Well, it depends what they want to happen. He says he wants to succeed in Iraq and, but he made it pretty clear that the status quo isn't getting the United States to that point. What exactly he's going to offer in eyes stead is unclear.

You know, he didn't say what his solution was going to be, more troops, less troops, different configuration of troops. But he said flatly the U.S. is not winning. And that's kind of a statement of the obvious in some sense. That doesn't mean it can't win and his job is going to be to figure out how to do that.

HUME: Is he the guy the Democrats appear to think he is and will he be?

MORT KONDRACKE, ROLL CALL: I don't think he's the guy that the Democrats think he will be. I mean, the Democrats are hoping that -- they wanted him to say we're losing and we're going to lose and they, basically, want to go for the exit, fast or slow.

I think the reason that they confirmed him so quickly is that they wanted Rumsfeld out the door forthwith and certainly Gates was frank, if nothing else, about the failures of Don Rumsfeld, I mean, that we didn't have enough troops going in, we underestimate the task of trying to govern the country, that we disbanded the Iraqi army too fast, etcetera, etcetera, etcetera, all the things that they -- everything -- on a bipartisan basis, disliked Don Rumsfeld for.

Now whether his -- what his policy is going to be, he didn't say. And it's up to the president, obviously. But what he's going to recommend he didn't say, whether it's more troops, a surge, as Joe Lieberman and John McCain were calling for, or more of the same, which seems to be what Abizaid and Casey are for, or what? He didn't say. You know, we don't know.

FRED BARNES, WEEKLY STANDARD: Yeah, Don Rumsfeld didn't disband the Iraqi army. It disbanded itself. I just fell apart.

KONDRACKE: But we

BARNES: And -- no, no, no -- and the guy " Mort

KONDRACKE: Kramer.

BARNES: OK, you said Rumsfeld. It wasn't Rumsfeld. What Gates was was an ideal witness. He's perfect. He knows Washington, he's been here, he knew how to deal with these senators. So what you do is one, you're independent. Two, you say, well, you know, I'm certainly going to consult Congress, you know, you guys are very important and `Ill be up here a lot and I`ll be candid with you and so on. And the other thing you say is well, I'll consider all ideas. Everything's on the table. I'll consider everything. Now, that's what you tell in a confirmation hearing, that's what you tell these senators, Republicans and Democrats, doesn't make any difference. They both lap it up and it works, and we saw how well it works.

I think, the truth is, though, what I'm told anyway, he told President Bush when Bush interviewed him a couple days before the election, he said, one, I agree that going into Iraq was the right thing, two, I think victory is what we should go after, not retreat, and I'm determined to pursue that.

Now, he didn't say anything today that would have undermined that. But he did characterize it a little different from the president. I mean, a couple weeks ago the president said we're winning in Iraq. He said we're losing

HUME: No. He said we're not winning, but we're not losing.

BARNES: OK, but, well it was different from the way the president characterized it.

HUME: Well, he also said it was one of the central fronts in the war on terror and when asked the others were he started a bunch of vague stuff about how well you got terrorist cells in Britain and the U.S. and elsewhere.

BARNES: One of the most interesting things he said, though, was in response to John McCain when he said, "When I was over with the Iraq Study Group," which he was part of in the beginning in Iraq, "and we talked to the generals, none of the generals said we need more troops."

HUME: Right, so what are the chances that the outcome of the Gates nomination and accession of power of secretary of defense is going to be more troops in Iraq?

KONDRACKE: Well, I think there is the possibility that there would be a surge, that on a temporary basis that there would be a short-term increase...

HUME: Based on his recommendations?

KONDRACKE: This is one of the things that Peter Pace reportedly is

HUME: Offers as an option?

KONDRACKE: Yeah, as an option. And there are lots of people who are for it and even though the generals tend to be against it and Rumsfeld was against it in the end. Rumsfeld, in his final memo, was sounding like Carl Levin, for heaven's sake.

HUME: Well, he had a long list that he -- he listed about every idea they could have thrown at him.

KONDRACKE: Well, I know, but that was -- the burden of it was that he seemed to be buying the Levin theory that we should start withdrawals in order to warn the Iraqis that we're not staying forever and get them off the dime...

HUME: Did he recommend that?

LIASSON: That was one of the

KONDRACKE: It was one of his above -the-line suggestions.

LIASSON: If you're not going to withdraw and victory is your goal, and as the president says, were not leaving until we succeed, well, it's hard to see what else you do other than put in more troops, at least in the short term. I mean, what are the other options?

HUME: Well, doesn't, in the end, depend upon whether the goal is for the United States to go in and take control of Iraq in a way it has never before, with an occupation -- with a level of occupation heretofore, unseen and perhaps a level of martial law, heretofore, untried on a democratic country or whether it is the idea that the U.S. should enable the Iraqis to take charge?

KONDRACKE: Well, the whole surge idea is that we would do it on a temporary basis until -- and train the Iraqis on an accelerated basis, equip them on an accelerated basis and then leave it to them. But it would be a temporary measure until they're ready to pick up the slack, which they're not ready to do yet.

LIASSON: And Gates, himself, said that Iraqis have no logistical capability of their own. I mean, that was a pretty

BARNES: And that's why he went on to say, you know, American troops are going to be there

(CROSSTALK)

LIASSON: He said they were coming along very nicely.

BARNES: No. He was talking about the fighting capability, not the guys bringing in the food and the ammunition and so on. I mean, that was nothing new.

HUME: Next for the panel, the ramifications of John Bolton's departure from the Bush administration and the U.N., stay with us.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

GEORGE W. BUSH, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: He did a fine job as the -- a representative at the United Nations for the United States, he really did. On issue after issue, Bolton delivered. And so you're looking at a man who is deeply disappointed and I would call it shallow politics of the Senate.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

HUME: That was President Bush in his interview with me yesterday in which he expressed his regard for John Bolton's performance at the U.N. He later had a meeting and a photo op with Bolton in the Oval Office in which he said much the same thing, which leaves open the question of what kind of a void, if any, John Bolton leaves at the U.N. and what this whole thing was really all about after the job he'd done -- Mara.

LIASSON: Well look, I think that Bolton was clearly a victim of the 2006 election results. I mean, this is why elections matter. He simply didn't have the votes and mostly because of ...

HUME: Well, he didn't have them before the 2006 election.

LIASSON: Well, he didn't have them before, but mostly because Linc Chafee, Republican from Rhode Island, said he wasn't going to vote for him in the committee. But I actually think that the -- other than the symbolism of having someone who was often a very brusque critic of the United Nations gone, I think the person that the president's going to replace him with, if it's Zalmay Khalilzad, is going to be pretty much the same in terms of pressing United States interests at the U.N. and working with other countries on these issues. I think you're going to get the same level of representation without some of the atmospherics.

HUME: So, somebody " this next person will be better in your judgment?

LIASSON: Not necessarily better. I think that they'll do the same kind of thing, but there won't be that kind of clash about the United States being a prod for reform in the high-profile way Bolton did it.

KONDRACKE: Yeah, look, I think the Democratic senators who opposed and led by Chris Dodd and Joe Biden and other people, are just impervious to evidence. I mean, John Bolton went up there with a bad reputation with them for being a foe of the United Nations, for not wanting the United Nations to succeed.

He went up there, he wasn't making foreign policy, he was carrying it out, but he carried it out rather brilliantly. I mean, he got U.N. resolutions, Security Council resolutions against Iran's nuclear activities, against North Korea, he led the way on trying to get a U.N. -- beefed-up U.N. Force in Darfur, he pushed U.N. reform, which everybody believes is necessary.

HUME: Or claims to.

KONDRACKE: And these guys gave him no credit whatever. I mean, they didn't change their minds; they wouldn't give him a fresh look. I mean it's funny that everybody's giving Bob Gates a fresh look, but they wouldn't give it to Bolton and they just decided they were going to exact this price, I guess, as part of the election. But, you know, if the Republicans had won the election, I guess he'd have gone through because Chafee would have been gone, but, you know, I agree with Bush that it's obstructionism.

HUME: Fred, a headline in the Washington Post or some such organ, said today, that the president had surrendered to his foes in the case of Bolton and let him go. Is that really what happened?

BARNES: Well, I wouldn't use that word. What happened was there was this idea that you could give him a job, a nonconfirmable post in the State Department, and then send him to the U.N. as acting ambassador, and the person who pulled the plug on that was John Bolton. You know, he'd been up there for nearly a couple years as a nonconfirmed U.N. ambassador and he just didn't want to do it under this new arrangement.

HUME: Is it clear that the job will have the same emphasis, that someone of Khalilzad's standing will be named?

BARNES: Yeah. No, um, I'm not so sure of that. I don't know who they're going to name. Some people have talking about Fred Thompson would be -- the former senator, would be a good choice up there. And then he might be. I think you're going to have a hard time filling John Bolton's shoes, thought. I agree with everything Mort said.

He's been a spectacular ambassador to the U.N., of the Moynihan and Kirkpatrick type people who aggressively defend the American interests there, and to the extent -- John Bolton was a little dubious of running American foreign policy through the United Nations and yet, when he was called on to do that, he did a great job.

KONDRACKE: I would think that Zalmay Khalilzad is needed in Iraq. I mean, this is a crucial time in Iraq. He knows the players, the politics are very complicated.

HUME: We don't want to pull him out of there.

KONDRACKE: Yeah, to pull him out of there, I think, would be a mistake. And the names you hear around -- Paula Dobriansky who is an undersecretary of state for Democracy Promotions, not exactly a high- profile figure. As I understand it, she'd get confirmed pretty easily, but on the other hand, you know, she'd have to -- maybe the job itself conveys a certain stature, although...

HUME: But all kinds of U.N. ambassadors have held that job that nobody ever heard of.

KONDRACKE: Yeah, that's true.

HUME: And I think -- probably the greatest example of that was when Arthur Goldberg was on the Supreme Court and Lyndon Johnson talked him into stepping down and sent him to the U.N. where we was never heard from again.

KONDRACKE: Yeah, and he became the former Arthur Goldberg.

HUME: Yeah, that's right.

Mara, final thought here on this?

LIASSON: Yeah, look, I think that John Bolton did exactly what the president wanted him to do at the United Nations and I think whoever replaces him is going to carry almost the same kind of portfolio, like I said, there's just not going to be the fireworks.