Special Report Roundtable - March 8

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

NANCY PELOSI (D-CA), HOUSE SPEAKER: It calls for the strategic redeployment of U.S. combat troops by the end or sometime in 2008. Only then can we refocus our military efforts on Afghanistan to the extent that we must.

JOHN BOEHNER (R-OH), HOUSE MINORITY LEADER: General Petraeus should be the one making the decisions about what happens on the ground in Iraq, not Nancy Pelosi or John Murtha.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

HUME: And so it went today in the House of Representatives where House Democrats have come up with another plan. By Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell was account, they're up to 16 or 17, all which are - - have the goal of getting the United States out of Iraq and the sooner the better.

Some thoughts on this 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.

Mort, I keep hearing this phrase "strategic redeployment." Can you translate it for me?

MORT KONDRACKE, ROLL CALL: It means withdraw. It means bugging out.

HUME: Is it really fair to characterize it as bugging out?

KONDRACKE: Well, it's -- in some cases. I mean, what the progressive caucus -- the out of Iraq caucus, 70 members in the House, want to do does amount to bugging out. The others want to move hastily or slowly, depending on the conditions.

But look, the basic problem here is you have general Petraeus commanding this last effort to try to turn this thing around, and achieve something that we can call success. He's reporting today that there are encouraging signs. The Democrats do not care. They are not even listening. All they're doing -- they just walk out, and you know, they're trying to fashion some sort of resolution that will get a majority of the Democrats -- it's never going to pass, the president is going to veto, it will be filibustered in the Senate and all the rest. They are making points.

The real point ought to be to give Petraeus a chance. If Petraeus fails, if Bush fails, the Democrats will pick up the pieces politically, but you know, what they're doing is they're tantamount to rooting for American defeat, and I think it is disgraceful. I would like to see one Democrat, besides Joe Lieberman, stand up and oppose this thing and say this is on worthy of us.

HUME: Mara, what are its chances?

MARA LIASSON, NATIONAL PUBLIC RADIO: Well, that's the big question. As Mort said, it has a lot of hurdles to get through. First of all, will it get a majority of Democrats? I mean, it was really hard for them to come up with this and the reason it was hard is because you've Liberal out of Iraq caucus people...

HUME: That's significant number, 70.

LIASSON: Seventy people who think they want to get out now. They would like to defund the war if they could. Then you've the rest of the Democrats or anti-war but more cautious. Who certainly don't want to defund the war or look like they are? And, you know, they've come -- tried hard and they came up with a lot of things that they had to discard.

Then, you've the Senate, which has a very high hurdle of 60 votes. Then, you got a presidential veto. I mean, some of the provisions in this are absolutely veto (INAUDIBLE) -- like no military action against Iran without...

HUME: Would you regard this behavior, in some sense, as a bunch of free votes for Democrats in the House?

LIASSON: Can't ever pass.

HUME: Well, they know the chances are it cannot pass, and they know that it isn't going to come to anything, on the other hand, they feel honor bound to their constituents who put them in office, largely on this issue, to try to at least seem to be doing all they can to get the war over with. So, these are, if affect, free votes.

LIASSON: I think they're relatively free votes since it's not going to become law, yes. That's the definition of a free vote.

FRED BARNES, WEEKLY STANDARDS: Yeah, well it's also political posturing. The president's already said he's going to veto this bill. And Mara's right, they're going to have a problem getting Republicans -- I mean getting enough Democrats to pass this because some on the left don't think it is strong enough, and they are unifying Republicans.

Remember on the anti-surge resolution that passed the House, 17 Republicans voted for it. They're not going to get that many this time, anything near that, because Republicans aren't going to vote for something that tries to micro-manage the war.

I think, this can lead to a great embarrassment, if the surge actually works, and the new strategy there. Democrats, down the line, refused to admit that there is a new strategy being employed in Baghdad. If it works, this will backfire.

HUME: Now, the Republican strategy, in part, at least particularly in Senate, seems to be to try to make the whole effort by the Democrats as embarrassing as possible. Let's listen to something Mitch McConnell said today, talking about all of the efforts that have been made thus far by Democrats to end the war in Iraq.

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MITCH MCCONNELL (R-KY), SENATE MINORITY LEADER: There's 16 of them. There was the Biden resolution, then there was the Levin resolution, then there was the Reed-Pelosi resolution, the Murtha plan, the Biden-Levin resolution, the Conrad Funding Cut, there was a waiver plan, a Timeline plan, a Feingold resolution, an Obama resolution, a Clinton resolution, a Dodd resolution, a Kennedy resolution, a Feinstein resolution, a Byrd resolution, a Kerry resolution. And today would make No. 17.

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HUME: Now, he objected to the thing being brought up in the Senate, and he cited as his reason the fact that it'd just been dropped in his lap and he and his caucus hadn't had a chance to look over.

Now, every time this has happened before, the result has been news stories that some Republicans block debate on Iraq. Now this time, it appears that the Democrats may be willing to allow the measure that the Republicans have been willing to vote on, that's the measure that would say we're not going to defund the troops, express that sentiment, to be acted on. How's this going to play out for the...

BARNES: No, no, but Brit, but Brit, that's what the Republicans wanted to -- the resolution, they wanted to bring up a few weeks ago. That may not be the one they want to bring a now. And Harry Reed may is trying to tell them, here are the resolutions we're going to bring up. These are yours, these are ours. And the question is, look, they may face another filibuster if they don't allow the Republicans to bring up exactly the resolution they want.

HUME: They want now.

BARNES: They want now.

HUME: Well, how's this going to play out in the press?

(CROSSTALK)

KONDRACKE: Well, you know how it's going to play out in the press. It'll be -- you know, Republicans blocking the debate again. But, you know, the one thing I'm worried about...

HUME: Do you think that's true?

LIASSON: I think the -- there has been a lot of press about Democrats in disarray, how difficult it is...

HUME: That's true, divided Democrats. That doesn't mean that this won't play out as a Republicans plot debate, but Democrats...

LIASSON: Well, I do thing Republicans will block debate if they want to because they can, and I actually think that even though it was kind of fun sound bites to listen to, the strongest thing that Mitch McConnell to do, not to just mention how many resolutions, because let's fact it, on popular issues among Republicans, there's lots of tax cut proposals and there's a Kyle plan and a Warner plan, you know, but the...

BARNES: There'd been 17.

LIASSON: OK, but...

KONDRACKE: But look, it does not make any difference how many resolutions there are and all this kind of stuff. What really counts is what happens to the supplemental appropriation? Does it pass with the money going to the troops? That's the important thing. It's going to be...

HUME: Well, it's loaded of all -- now it's loaded up...

KONDRACKE: Loaded up with all kinds of stuff, and it will be subject to the House action, then Senate action, then a conference committee, and what kind of shape it's going to be in at the end of that...

HUME: What happens if the president sees all this, it gets to him, there's money in there for the troops, that he wants, but it's got all this other stuff in it, including the restrictions on him, and he vetoes it.

KONDRACKE: And he vetoes it.

HUME: Who wins?

KONDRACKE: I think, I'm afraid the president will lose, that the Democrats will win.

HUME: Will it get overridden?

KONDRACKE: Well, it won't get overridden. The problem is that the money gets delayed for the troops, the question then...

HUME: But don't they have enough money to push this thing into the fall?

KONDRACKE: They can certainly continue the operation. The question is, what kind of a message does it send to have the Congress of the United States quarrelling and not funding the troops, even by a veto, what kind of message does that send to Maliki?

LIASSON: If that happens, Republicans will say you're defunding and by insisting on these provisions.

HUME: Next up with the panel, we'll talk about the continuing inquiry into the firing of eight federal prosecutors. Stick around.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

SEN CHARLES SCHUMER (D), NEW YORK: I want to ask each of you, based on everything you know, sitting here today, do you believe that you were fired for any failure of performance as alleged by the Justice Department - - Miss Lam?

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: I honestly don't know, but I do not think so, Senator.

SCHUMER: Mr. Iglesias?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: No, sir.

SCHUMER: Mr. McKay?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Senator.

SCHUMER: Mr. Comings, we know that that's a fact with you because they admitted that.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

HUME: Well, what were they going to say? But on the other hand, this idea has a lot of currency in Washington right now. There were eight United States attorneys who serve at the pleasure of the president, were excused from further duties to be succeeded by others.

There's a -- there you see the eight of them. The Justice Department, which feels constricted, I think, in what it can say about this, has indicated they were fired for various failures of performance. As you saw four of them there say no they weren't and several of them say they were subjected to political pressure. What is really going on here -- Fred.

BARNES: Look, I don't think there's anything wrong with these phone calls that were made by Senator Pete Domenici of New Mexico, Heather Wilson, a congresswoman from New Mexico...

HUME: This is what it meant by the political pressure?

BARNES: Yeah, but they called the U.S. attorney in New Mexico, Iglesias, and asked about was an indictment of a Democratic -- former Democratic official going to happen before election day.

Well now, that seems perfectly OK to me if they do that.

(CROSSTALK)

Look, sure, he doesn't need -- look, he can say buzz off, I don't have to answer that question. But he's an appointed official of the Bush administration, they're elected officials, that seems perfectly all right to me. I think you'll learn a lot what's going on when you see Chuck Schumer there, who's on the Judiciary Committee and the head of the subcommittee that's looking into this, and then you recognize that Chuck Schumer is also the chairman of the Democratic Senate Campaign Committee and Pete Domenici's up for reelection next year. I think you can see the home page -- that's the home page of the Democratic Senate Campaign Committee.

There's Pete Domenici, he's being pilloried into hearings and then it's being used by Democrats, by Chuck Schumer himself, the campaign against him to raise money. If you look on the left, you'll see the word "donate." And this is purely political. There is no -- this is a non- scandal scandal.

KONDRACKE: Well, in the case of Heather Wilson, apparently, she asked about a sealed indictment, which was sealed, and she was told it was sealed and wasn't going to be unsealed and et cetera, and that -- there may be more some more ethical problems...

HUME: What, with her asking the question?

KONDRACKE: Well, yeah, but the implication is that, you know, somehow she could get it unseal before the election in time to embarrass the Democrats.

HUME: Did she?

KONDRACKE: No, she didn't.

BARNES: Of course, she did.

KONDRACKE: But the prosecutor involved, Iglesias, says that he felt pressured by these two former political friends of his to do something, and so there is a case.

(CROSSTALK)

Just a second...

BARNES: Now wait a minute, wait a minute, I'm going to respond to that, the rules in the Justice Department, if you feel pressure, you reported it -- you report it to the...

(CROSSTALK)

KONDRACKE: I know but...

HUME: Now hold it, Mort.

BARNES: But did not -- none of the others who said they felt intimidated or pressure -- they didn't feel is so much that they reported it, which you would automatically be expected to do if you really felt...

HUME: Mort. Mort, your turn.

KONDRACKE: OK, Domenici apparently did complain to the Justice Department about Iglesias. Now, what the content of that complaint is, I do not know. But in others words, he went over his -- the attorney's head in order to lodge a complaint with the Justice Department.

This all originated, by the way, with another case about Tim Griffin in Arkansas, who was a "crony" of Karl Rove's, protege of Karl Rove's, and was the research director of the Republican National Committee. Well, I happen to know, now, this is a case where this guy is a -- was a...

HUME: Political operative?

KONDRACKE: He was a political operative...

HUME: Trying to help you here.

KONDRACKE: I know. More importantly he was -- I know -- a military lawyer, had been a prosecutor, was fully qualified for the job, and as you pointed out, these people serve at the pleasure of the president.

LIASSON: They certainly can be fired any time, but ethics experts down the line say that elected officials are not suppose to inquire about ongoing cases.

BARNES: Why?

LIASSON: They're not.

BARNES: That's nonsense. Total nonsense.

LIASSON: Pete Domenici has hired a lawyer to represent him before the Ethics Committee, who's going to look into this, and we're going to get a ruling on this on way or another, pretty soon.