| Guest | | Posted: Thu Oct 03, 2002 6:57 am Post subject: |
| ‘Hardball’ for Sept. 30
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Guests: Howard Fineman, Richard Perle, Peter Arnett, David Frum, Pat
Buchanan, Carl Jeffers, Tony Blankley, John Zogby
CHRIS MATTHEWS, HOST: Tonight on HARDBALL, scandal finally brings down Senator Robert Torricelli of New Jersey who quits his race for reelection. Could it give President Bush control of the U.S. Senate?
And Richard Perle on war with Iraq. First, it’s the top of the hour, time for the news.
(NEWSBREAK)
MATTHEWS: I’m Chris Matthews. Let’s play HARDBALL. “The Big Story” in a moment. Senator Robert Torricelli suddenly drops out of his race for reelection in the Senate and Iraq rejects tougher U.N. inspections. Will it be the turning point that brings more allies on board? I’ll talk to Richard Perle.
And later the HARDBALL debate. Pat Buchanan launches a new magazine to take back conservatism from what he calls impostors. Have hawks hijacked the American right?
And pollster John Zogby is here with the latest on whether President Bush could lose control of the Congress.
This weekend, Iraq announced it would not accept tougher U.N. weapons inspections. Today Defense Secretary Rumsfeld said that Iraq’s resistance was just the latest evidence it is time for dramatic action. Richard Perle serves on the Defense Policy Board.
Richard, it looks to me like war is the only option right now, from the administration’s point of view. Is that the way you see it?
RICHARD PERLE, FMR. ASST. SECY OF DEFENSE: Well, I think there’s an intense period of diplomacy under way now, and there can be surprises. Saddam sought to surprise people by pretending that he was prepared to accept inspections.
MATTHEWS: But that was a head fake, right, as we say in football?
PERLE: I think it was, yes. That’s now clear because the unconditional acceptance has turned out to have dozens of conditions attached.
MATTHEWS: And that fact that Hussein is now jerking us around, that he’s coming up with new conditions, that he doesn’t want to allow any new enforcement procedures. He doesn’t want to allow any progress in making the procedures better. He simply wants to put together some cobble together, some old system to allow him to protect his palaces from inspection and other places, right?
PERLE: That’s right. And it’s important to remember that these palaces are not what you and I would think of as palaces. Tony Blair, when the British government issued a dossier on this matter, published a map, and it superimposed the palaces on a map of London and it’s about the size of the city of London, the area encompassed by palaces ...
MATTHEWS: That they want to protect from inspection.
PERLE: That’s right, 1,000 buildings in a huge area.
MATTHEWS: Who believes that we can carry out an effective inspections program?
PERLE: I don’t know anyone who believes that we can carry it out except possibly people who earn their livelihood by doing inspections.
MATTHEWS: Because just-let me ask you this as an amateur. It seems to me that anything can be buried. Bin Laden is somewhere. We can’t find him. People can bury treasure, bury bodies 20 feet under. We can’t go 20 feet under everywhere-is that the way you conduct an inspection, block by block, foot by foot? How would you conduct an inspection that would work?
PERLE: Well, it’s clearly impossible. You have a country the size of France and two to 300 inspectors ...
MATTHEWS: Suppose this table in front of us, between us, was a container, a large container of toxic materials, some kind of chemical or biological weapon. You could hide it anywhere.
PERLE: You-absolutely, you could hide it in a farmhouse, a schoolroom, the basement of a hospital. The chance that we would find anything that we did not have prior intelligence telling us to go and look for is zero. No chance at all. And in fact, what the inspectors were able to find when they were there before was almost entirely the result of defectors telling us, go to this place ...
MATTHEWS: Right.
PERLE: ... look in this room ...
MATTHEWS: OK.
PERLE: ... and even then-even then, there were times when our inspectors were at the front door and the things we were looking for were being removed from the back door.
MATTHEWS: Why then doesn’t Saddam Hussein say I accept the full body frisk knowing, being as cynical as he is and a liar, he’s able to do anything he wants like that. He can hide something as big as this. He can hide anything he wants. Why doesn’t he just say come on in? That would get him off the hook with the French, the Russians, the British even, and probably the Chinese, as well, and many people in this country. Why doesn’t he just want to get it over with by a nice fake?
PERLE: I think he has concluded that because he knows what he has and he knows how extensively he’s violating the prohibition on weapons of mass destruction, he knows that something will be found, and he may even suspect that we already know where things are, at which point he would be in violation.
MATTHEWS: So he expects us to find what we’re looking for?
PERLE: Well, I think he expects to be able to hide quite a lot, but if we found anything at all, there would be an unambiguous violation.
MATTHEWS: Do you, as an expert, you’re adviser, head of the Advisory Board of the United States Defense Department, do you sense any reason as an American that we’re not going to go to war?
PERLE: Well, I think ...
MATTHEWS: Anything can stop us-like reasonable doubt. Is there reasonable doubt in your mind we won’t go to war?
PERLE: I think it’s still very much an open question until the president gives the order, Chris. But let me just say that the policy board that I’m privileged to chair doesn’t take positions and everything I say is entirely my own view.
MATTHEWS: Good.
Up next, more with Richard Perle, with his own views on what’s going to happen.
Also, what happens if Israel gets drawn into a war with Iraq? Good possibility.
And later, the HARDBALL debate. Have neo conservative hawks taken over the American right? Pat Buchanan sure thinks so. He’ll take on David Frum with the “Weekly Standard.”
And John Zogby is going to be here with the latest poll numbers from around the country. Does the public really want this war with Iraq? Surprising answers and some in conflict.
You’re watching HARDBALL.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
MATTHEWS: On the next HARDBALL “College Tour,” John Kerry, he’s a Democrat with war experience. Does that make him the best candidate for his party to take back the White House in 2004? We’ll find out when he joins us on the next HARDBALL “College Tour.”
ANNOUNCER: Wednesday night at 9:00 only on America’s news channel,
MSNBC.
MATTHEWS: No lectures, no papers, just HARDBALL.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
MATTHEWS: We’re back with Richard Perle. Let’s talk about the war as it may come about. It looks to me and I say this tonight not as a hawk-people know I’m not-but as a realist. It looks to me like Saddam Hussein is once again blown any chance for peace and maybe that’s God’s will, but it looks like he’s not going to let true inspections occur that could prevent us from being hit some day by him or anyone else.
Let me ask you about the kind of war we might see. Desert Storm was a storm of troops, soldiers and men on the ground, and tanks and armor, and it moved across a landmass from Saudi Arabia into Kuwait and liberated that country, a fine piece of work. This war, will it be gross numbers like that or will it be more elite corps kind of a thing?
PERLE: I would guess that the numbers involved would be very much smaller, and I think they might have been smaller even in 1991, if we had fully appreciated how fragile Saddam’s control over his own troops was. In large numbers of Iraq, he’s surrendering. In some cases to ...
MATTHEWS: But weren’t they surrendering because they saw a half a million people coming ...
PERLE: Well, they ...
MATTHEWS: ... armed and angry.
PERLE: They were thoroughly demoralized, disorganized, and disrupted
by the bombing campaign that ...
MATTHEWS: Right.
PERLE: ... preceded the ...
MATTHEWS: That’s another question. Last time around, it was like five weeks of bombing followed-of heavy bombardment followed by a very quick lickety-split left outflanking maneuver by Schwarzkopf. What’s it going to look like this time, without giving away too much? I know you know a lot, but give us what you can.
PERLE: Well, I don’t know much about the planning, but one important element now is the extraordinary capability we have in air-to-ground surveillance, that is the ability to find targets, and the ability when we find them, and we will, to strike them precisely, so a much smaller force of highly precise weapons.
MATTHEWS: That looks like the Afghan campaign. It looks like people on the ground with radios or some means of communications. Give us the coordinates with our Special Ops people perhaps playing that role and also locals playing that role, right?
PERLE: Well, there is a significant Iraqi opposition. I have every reason to think they will be helpful in this regard, but we also have quite remarkable capabilities to ...
MATTHEWS: Will they be like on the phone saying ...
(CROSSTALK)
MATTHEWS: ... hit-don’t hit the school, hit the munitions plant right next to it. Will they be telling us that kind of stuff or I saw Saddam here last week, hit that building?
PERLE: I would hope we would have that kind of information, and there’s no doubt that there are many Iraqis who will regard this as a liberation, not an invasion.
MATTHEWS: What happens if it’s not that way? Suppose we go in and we face a situation like Mogadishu, where we have a lot of crack men moving in, in light arms, small armored personnel carriers racing through the streets of Baghdad, and they’re pinned down. What happens then, by a crazed crowd of Iraqis who decide they’re nationalists that week?
PERLE: You can always get that phenomenon. You can always get engagements like that, but the evidence is that after nearly 30 years of brutal, bloody tyranny, Sad dam is very unpopular in his country, and I think he knows it. The frequency with which he rotates his troops ...
MATTHEWS: What about the blood oath he’s asked everyone to take? It’s very (UNINTELLIGIBLE), but he’s asked them to take it, all his officer corps.
PERLE: Well, I think if you’re living in Iraq and somebody asks you for a blood oath, you have two choices. You either take ...
MATTHEWS: Blood or the oath.
PERLE: Or you give your blood.
MATTHEWS: Look, it’s such a reminder of that part of the Third Reich
at the top, I should say. Anyway, thank you, Richard Perle, for joining us.
Up next, Peter Arnett on whether the Iraqi people will fight for Saddam Hussein, the very point we’re on.
And later, the HARDBALL debate. Is President Bush under the influence of neo conservative hawks? Pat Buchanan thinks so, and he says it’s time to reclaim the American right.
You’re watching HARDBALL.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
MATTHEWS: Peter Arnett is the chief correspondent for CameraPlanet, and he recently visited Iraq. Peter, thanks for joining us. We just had Richard Perle on, and we talked about the question of whether the Iraqi people will fight for their leader. Will they?
PETER ARNETT, CHIEF CORRESPONDENT, CAMERAPLANET: I think you’ve got three aspects of that. Will they fight for Saddam? Will they fight against him with the Americans, or will they fight each other? And I think you can say yes to all three with percentages of the population involved in all three.
MATTHEWS: What about the possibility of our troops getting pinned down in the early going, in Mogadishu, and I saw the film like most of us did to “Black Hawk Down,” just getting pinned down in the streets by an angry mob that’s all shooting at them.
ARNETT: I think-it may not be in the early going; may be in the later going. Don’t forget, there are a dozen fairly large communities, cities in Iraq, which will have to be taken, and Mogadishu remember, the U.S. went in without opposition, and it was only later when the rebellion sort of developed. So you’ve got to look at, you know, all the cities, including Baghdad, where spread out, lots of people, you know potentially there could be mini rebellions and antagonism in many parts of these cities.
MATTHEWS: There’s a famous line in the movie “Casablanca” when Bogart says to the Nazi, “there are certain neighborhoods in New York I wouldn’t advise you to try to invade.” Is that the spirit of Iraq? That no matter what they think of Saddam, they would fight for their turf?
ARNETT: I think you’re absolutely right. Don’t forget in Baghdad, you have the Shiite population in Saddam’s city and other suburbs; you have a Sunni population. My concern is, Chris, that when the police force and security withdraws, which presumably it will, if the U.S. forces go in and really attack and cripple the government, then you will have millions of people who’ll be tempted to take out their anger and ire on their neighbors and on those ...
MATTHEWS: Right.
ARNETT: ... and other ethnic groups. So I think this is a big danger, and can the U.S. provide security for them?
MATTHEWS: So that’s going to be like freedom at midnight in Italy when you have India and Pakistan going to war when the barrage ended?
ARNETT: Potentially. The Iraqi opposition says it has enough contacts to try-contacts to try and control that situation, but when you consider the number of guns, I mean, it’s estimated six million weapons in the hands of Iraqis right now, plus the military. You know, they could be using those against each other definitely because ...
MATTHEWS: How many ...
ARNETT: ... there’s a lot of antagonisms there.
MATTHEWS: How many outside troops would be needed to maintain order in that scenario?
ARNETT: Well, I would think there’d be, you know, 100,000 or so. It would be taking over a city and investing it and controlling it that may be moving on to the next. You know history tells us the Iraqis can be very bloody and violent. In 1958 when the royal family was overthrown, the mobs just went through, they killed every foreigner in every hotel. They took out the government plus all of the royal family and many hundreds of thousands of each other, so you know this could be a very difficult time.
MATTHEWS: Just a few seconds. Why does Saddam Hussein not want to escape with his skin and his life? Why does he resist these inspections if they’re the last chance for him?
ARNETT: Basically in 1998, the reason they would not allow total inspections, they argued, the Iraqis, that what the inspectors want would even be the whereabouts of Saddam Hussein. Is he personally sitting on weapons of mass destruction? They do not want to give that security information about him or their key military people. So in the end ...
MATTHEWS: OK.
ARNETT: ... they claimed it was a matter of self-survival.
MATTHEWS: Thank you very much. I thought it might be that. Thank you very much, Peter Arnett.
Up next, the HARDBALL debate. The battle for the Republican Party’s conservative wing. The neo con hawks may have the president’s ear, but Pat Buchanan is trying to change that. Buchanan and David Frum will debate when we return.
And don’t forget, the HARDBALL “College Tour” rolls on this Wednesday to the Citadel with Senator John Kerry, who’s running for president.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
MATTHEWS: This half-hour on HARDBALL, the battle for the conservative heart of the Republican Party. Have neo con hawks hijacked the right wing?
And later, the latest poll numbers on President Bush and war with Iraq. But first, it’s time for a look at the latest news.
(NEWSBREAK)
MATTHEWS: The HARDBALL debate tonight, the battle for the right wing of the Republican party. Are conservatives best represented by hawkish interventionists or by those who favor America keeping to itself? Here’s HARDBALL correspondent, David Shuster.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
DAVID SHUSTER, HARDBALL CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): It’s the Republican version of the Hatfields and the McCoys. On one side, conservative firebrand, Pat Buchanan.
PAT BUCHANAN, AMERICAN CONSERVATIVE: We believe America is a Republic and they believe America out to be a global empire.
SHUSTER: On the other side, hawks, including Vice President Cheney, Defense Secretary Rumsfeld, and a large movement of neoconservative intellectuals including Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz.
PAUL WOLFOWITZ, DEPUTY DEFENSE SECRETARY: We must not only capture and kill terrorists and break up individual plots, but we must drain the swamp in which terrorists breed.
SHUSTER: The neoconservative movement was born during the Cold War and promotes an aggressive confrontation of tyranny around the globe. It’s a movement largely of Jewish thinkers who write for magazines like “Commentary” and Bill Kristol’s “The Weekly Standard.”
BUCHANAN: All of them beating the drums for war, all of them beating the drums not only for going after Iraq, but then Iran and Syria and Libya and who knows where else and we don’t think that’s conservatism at all.
SHUSTER: Buchanan is convinced the neocons have a grip on the Bush administration and also on what used to be bastions the old right, like “National Review” magazine. Buchanan is launching his own magazine, called “American Conservative.” The goal he said is to take back the good name of conservatism from what he calls the right wing impersonators. Buchanan points back to John Quincy Adams, who said we believe in freedom everywhere but we don’t go abroad in search of monsters to destroy. But critics argue this debate has nothing to do with intervention versus isolationism, rather, an ability by some to keep up with the dangers of the times.
DAVID KEENE, AMERICAN CONSERVATIVE UNION: Pat’s not an old American conservative. He’s an old European conservative. It’s as if he’s a Frenchman arguing against free economics, arguing totally and completely on cultural grounds that everything should be directed to keeping the world the way he’s always wanted it to be.
SHUSTER (on camera): So the question is, who represents the best interests of conservatism? The neoconservative hawks advocating a war with Iraq, or Pat Buchanan’s more isolationist old school approach? I’m David Schuster for HARDBALL in Washington.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
MATTHEWS: Patrick Buchanan is co-host of “BUCHANAN & PRESS” on MSNBC as well as the founder of the “American Conservative” magazine. David Frum is a contributing editor to Bill Crystal’s “Weekly Standard.” He’s author of the upcoming book “The Right Man: the Surprise Presidency of George W. Bush.” Both of you gentlemen, and take your turns on this so the viewers out there who are not political junkies will learn from this discussion of you two people. What’s the difference between a traditional American conservative-Pat Buchanan first-and then tell me what a neoconservative is, David Frum.
You first, Pat.
BUCHANAN: You have to define it by the various issues. Let’s take foreign policy right now. In my view, a conservative is one who believes when America is attacked, it fights its wars and wins and the troops come home. I believe that this tradition is being violated right now and that neoconservatism represents an interventionist foreign policy which is not conservative, a neo-imperial foreign policy. It is much more Wilsonian, Woodrow Wilson, F.D.R. in character, and that it want to reshape and remake the world and we conservatives have always believed that was utopian and foolish and anti-conservative.
MATTHEWS: David Frum, your take on that?
DAVID FRUM, WEEKLY STANDARD CONTRIBUTING EDITOR: Well, I wouldn’t consider myself a neoconservative. I think it’s a biographical description of people who began on the left and migrated to the right, important group in the 1970s. Tradition American conservatism is and American conservatism that among other things, doesn’t make excuses for the country’s enemies, which I wish would be more characteristic of the magazine Pat Buchanan now edits.
MATTHEWS: Well, let me ask you this, Pat. You’ve argued, you’ve made an indictment of the conservative movement of late saying it’s been taken over, hijacked is the term you’ve used I believe from the traditional conservatism of Barry Goldwater and going back to Bob Taft and forward to Ronald Reagan. Do you want to make that point now?
BUCHANAN: Well, yes. I mean, let’s take Barry Goldwater, let’s take Ronald Reagan, the great conservative. He didn’t intervene abroad. He used military force three times, once mistakenly in Lebanon where we did not belong, correctly in taking out adversary in the Caribbean in Grenada and when I was in the White House working with him and attacking a reprisal against Libya.
What we have now is an interventionist foreign policy being pushed upon this country by ex-Democrats who are refugees from the Democratic party, driven out by the McGovernites, who have come into the conservative movement and have redefined conservatism as meaning we should march up to Baghdad first, take that over and then we’re going to democratize Iraq and then we’re going to attack Iran and then we’re going after Saudi Arabia, as “National Review” recommends, and this is an idiotic foreign policy of interventionism and near madness which is being driven by a number of neoconservatives in the administration, among them Mr...
MATTHEWS: Name names.
BUCHANAN: Mr. Frum is one. I would say Mr. Perle is another, Mr. Wolfowitz, a brilliant man, but you look at the Wolfowitz doctrine of 1996...
MATTHEWS: He’s deputy secretary of defense.
BUCHANAN: He’s a very brilliant fellow, very brilliant, but he also put together something called the Wolfowitz doctrine, Pentagon doctrine of 1992 which was ridiculed and laughed at but it has been revived in this security doctrine of (UNINTELLIGIBLE).
MATTHEWS: David, respond to all this charge.
FRUM: Well, I’m afraid that the person who Pat Buchanan has the biggest quarrel with doesn’t have a Jewish name, and that’s President Bush. President Bush is the one who is control of this administration and who has made the relevant decisions, all of which Pat Buchanan doesn’t like and President Bush is I think universally recognized as the leader of the Republican party and the conservative movement now and it’s with him that Pat Buchanan has the quarrel, not Wolfowitz and Abramowitz and Hershowitz.
MATTHEWS: Well, he didn’t mention Abramowitz. But let’s mention Jean Kirkpatrick and Bill Bennett and others like that, James Q. Wilson. There’s a large group of people who are taking an extremely interventionist view of foreign policy and they’re leading the president toward that. Would you not agree with that, David?
FRUM: Well, I would say after the country has taken an attack from the middle east, there’s going to be a lot of responsible people who are going to be worried about how do you make the country safe. And after 9/11, you’re going to worry about weapons of mass destruction in the hands of Iraqis and Iranians and that’s what the president has been worrying about and that 98 percent of the Republican party is behind him on this.
BUCHANAN: Well, let me respond to that first. 9/11 was a direct consequence of the United States meddling in an area of the world where we do not belong and where we are not wanted. We were attacked because we were on Saudi sacred soil and we are so called repressing the Iraqis and we’re supporting Israel and all the rest of it. That does not justify mass murder.
We ought to take down al Qaeda, anyone that gives them sanctuary. But we’ve got to realize that we were bitten because we were out there putting pins in rattlesnakes, and as long as the United States intervenes all over the world, we’re going to have terrorism is the price of empire. Terrorism is the price of interventionism. If America will come home from this part of the world and adopt a foreign policy of don’t tread on me, the coiled rattlesnake, stay out of us, nobody in the world wants to fight. No country wants to fight the United States of America.
FRUM: Sounds like the McGovernites have taken over Pat’s party. The idea that Ronald Reagan and Barry Goldwater would have delivered that kind of excuse for people who have launched a surprise attack on American soil, I don’t think the Pat Buchanan of 15 years ago would have said such a thing.
BUCHANAN: This is not an excuse. Look, David, you have to give a reason and a rationale. Why do they hate us? Why did they hate us? Why do they attack us? That doesn’t justify it. We ought to go punish everyone who does that. But it is naive and foolish for “National Review” and neoconservatives and others to make this simpleton argument that they attacked us because we are good, because we are Democratic. We have free elections all the rest of it.
They are over here because we are over there. We are intervening in that part of the world I believe where we have no business. We cannot Democratize a part of the world which is mired in a religion now militant that is 1400 years old any more than we’re going to build a great society on the Mekong. We ought to win this war on terrorism and stay out of this region.
MATTHEWS: Your response David.
FRUM: Well, I don’t know how you win the war on terrorism by chasing bandits through the mountains of Afghanistan. That’s not where the terrorism starts.
And remember, the reason we are over there is because we were dragged in over there. The American troops got deployed in Saudi Arabia after Iraq attacked a country that the United States had pledged to defend when Pat Buchanan was in the White House, that the-unfortunately, that while Pat may not be interested in the rest of the world, the rest of the world is interested in him, and that the kind of-what Pat Buchanan seems to think of as promiscuous interventionism is in fact a rational program of defense against real dangers that really threaten the United States.
BUCHANAN: David Frum, come on now. The United States has troops in more countries than the British empire did. We got troops in central Asia. We got troops now in the Balkans. We have expanded NATO all the way up to Russia. We’re in the Persian Gulf. We’re going to defend the Taiwan straits. We got troops in Korea 50 years after the Korean war is over when 60 percent of the Korean people now don’t like Americans. What is wrong with a foreign policy such as we fought in previous wars where you go over there, defeat your enemy and then don’t try to impose your system on them but come home?
FRUM: It was tried. It was tried in 1918, it didn’t work so well, and the system...
BUCHANAN: It worked fine for America.
FRUM: Americans were back at war in 1949, after a sneak attack caused by people who no doubt had very great grievances ...
BUCHANAN: In 1941, if you were an American, not a Canadian, you’d know that.
FRUM: I said 1941, Pat. You have some foreigners, I think, on bankrolling your operation, so I don’t know what that-what that point proves.
BUCHANAN: I’m not sure. I’m not sure who they are.
MATTHEWS: Let’s try to define this for the public before we leave here. It seems to me that there is in fact an ideology driving this administration. I hear it from people I get along with well. Michael Adine (ph) comes on the program. We’re not just going to Iraq. It’s not a unique case. They argue that there’s a doctrine that’s been developed here in recent months that we should go beyond Iraq to Iran perhaps throughout the whole axis of evil nations that have been listed by this administration. Tell us about that philosophy because it seems new to me, David.
FRUM: Chris, you’re not going to get me to endorse the idea that there’s some sinister cabal behind the president controlling his thoughts and actions. The president is the author of America’s foreign policy and he’s been extremely clear and explicit about what it is.
MATTHEWS: But you’re the author of the axis of evil.
FRUM: I just wrote for the man, for goodness sake.
MATTHEWS: Who came out with the list of the three countries? Who told you to put what words to put in the script?
FRUM: Every important ...
MATTHEWS: No, I’m asking you a simple question. Who said it was Iran, Iraq and North Korea?
FRUM: Like who makes the phone call or who makes the...
MATTHEWS: Who told you that those were the three countries (UNINTELLIGIBLE)
FRUM: Chris, I’m not going to tell you about the daily workings of the Bush administration.
MATTHEWS: No, it’s a major question. Pat raised the question that we have a hit list of countries, a road to greatness where we’re going to go country to country to country and democratize them. Your list of axis of evil. You called it the axis of terror. It began with Iraq, Iran and North Korea. Tell me who gave you those names?
FRUM: Every decision in that administration is made by the president.
MATTHEWS: Ultimately, but who initiated the idea?
FRUM: In that administration, every important decision is made directly by the president and the idea of shifting responsibility to this cabal is I think...
MATTHEWS: I’m just asking the question, who made our enemies list?
Was it Richard Nixon?
FRUM: Chris, I’m answering for the fourth time, it is the president.
MATTHEWS: We’ll be back with this conversation. We’ll continue. Pat Buchanan, my colleague, thank you, David Frum. Thank you for joining us.
Up next, the real deal, when Barbra Streisand’s big money comeback concert to benefit the Democrats. Plus, does the American public support war with Iraq? John Zogby here with the interesting results of that question. You’re watching “HARDBALL.”
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
MATTHEWS: Now for the real deal, our nightly look at hot political stories from around the country. Scandal brought down Senator Bob Torricelli, but he isn’t the only sitting Democrat with an ethics headache. In squeaky clean Iowa, Tom Harkin faces a police investigation and his campaign manager has already resigned. Why? Because Harkin’s campaign arranged to secretly tape his opponent’s campaign meeting. At first, the senator denied any knowledge of the escapade, but then he changed his story.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
SEN. TOM HARKIN (D), IOWA: Mistakes have been made. We’re not perfect. No one is. But when this happened, I took responsibility for my campaign’s mistakes. I apologize to Congressman Ganske and I apologize to his campaign and to the people of Iowa.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
MATTHEWS: Iowa voters have a very high bar when it comes to ethics.
We’ll see on November 5 if Senator Harkin can still clear it.
Iraq war protester Barbra Streisand found a reason to come out of her semi retirement from live concerts. Singing to Democrats last night in Hollywood, she raised $6 million for the party. How much does Streisand miss a Democratic Congress and White House? Well, listen to these lyrics. She sang them, “scattered pictures of the House we left behind, lovely Democratic memories of the way we were.”
Alec Baldwin is another Hollywood celebrity hoping for a Democratic take over. Over the weekend, the actor criticized what he called “muscular conservative” media outlets like Fox News and the online Drudge Report. Baldwin said that if Democrats had been in charge on September 11, “you’d see a banner across the bottom of Fox.” Usama at large, day 30, day 40. This administration’s answer is, we can’t find Usama. Let’s go get Saddam. That’s Alec Baldwin. Baldwin was campaigning in Minnesota for Paul Wellstone, the incumbent Democrat running for reelection, but he’s sounding a lot like Al Gore.
The C.I.A. is warning that al Qaeda operatives are engaging in unthinkable acts of telemarketing, making dinnertime phone calls that solicit vacation home rentals, long distance phone service and magazine subscriptions. That’s what the satirical newspaper “The Onion” recently reported. The fictional story fooled one gullible reader, the Branch County, Michigan Sheriff’s Department. They alerted local news organizations about the C.I.A. warning. One radio station even broadcast the information. So much for homeland security.
John Zogby is a pollster, Tony Blankley is editorial page editor of the “Washington Times.” Carl Jeffers is a syndicated columnist with the “Seattle Times.”
Your job, Tony, the impact, the political impact reported just a few hours ago, Bob Torricelli, the lightning rod senator from New Jersey resigned, or rather gave up his chances for election.
TONY BLANKLEY, WASHINGTON TIMES: Well, actually, probably potentially increases the Democrats opportunities if they play it right. I think the transition has to be well managed. I thought Torricelli was going down.
MATTHEWS: You think the person who’s thrown in there now to replace him in the last months of his campaign can win?
BLANKLEY: If they can manage the transition without making it look too manipulative from above, if they can get him off the ballot, which remains to be seen, I think this is the reason why the Democrats wanted him off because they thought that he was a sure loser and if you put someone like a Bradley, whoever it may end up in that slot, at least it gives them a shot. After all, the entire Forrester campaign is basically premised on being not Torricelli. Now both parties are going to have a not Torricelli.
MATTHEWS: John, do you buy this?
JOHN ZOGBY, POLLSTER: I absolutely do. Doug Forrester is pulling 34 percent as of...
MATTHEWS: So he’s just an option, always an alternative.
ZOGBY: He was an empty suit against Bob Torricelli.
MATTHEWS: If you fill a suit in there with some else like Lautenberg, the former senator, Bill Bradley, will they win?
ZOGBY: I think they could, yes.
MATTHEWS: Well, amazing. I’ll (UNINTELLIGIBLE) in a moment. Coming up, more on the fight for the Senate, plus new numbers on Iraq. How would Americans feel about sending their own sons and daughters to war? Interesting answers, but that’s not surprising. We’ll be right back with HARDBALL.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
MATTHEWS: We’re back with more political buzz with John Zogby, Tony Blankley and Carl Jeffers. Carl, it’s your turn. It seems to me that Democrats are hopeful that they can throw somebody into that slot, run him for election to the Senate in New Jersey and in a month, convince the voters that somebody they never heard of before should be their senator.
CARL JEFFERS, SEATTLE TIMES: Well, you got to remember, Chris, one thing that Forrester has been an unknown commodity in New Jersey for most of the campaign and even with his poll numbers, if you interview people in New Jersey, they don’t know who he is.
Number two, the entire campaign he’s run has been to attack Torricelli, to get at Torricelli. With Torricelli gone, he’s got no issues because he never made any issues out of positive campaign themes and thirdly, you can’t have an election in New Jersey without having the Democratic base be excited about what’s happening now, because with the issues out of the way with Torricelli, they really can motivate their base and get out the vote. I think they have a very good chance.
MATTHEWS: Well, you’re an optimist. I vote that the Republican will win in that state, because I think it’s too late to start. But let me go to Tony. Any other states where there’s going to be (UNINTELLIGIBLE) I mentioned Harkin. Is he going to get dumped to by the (UNINTELLIGIBLE)?
BLANKLEY: Well, I think (UNINTELLIGIBLE) to tell, but Ganske’s campaign has come alive in the face of the scandal that Harkin is not well managed. I think Minnesota, there’s a very good chance of the incumbent Wellstone going down. I think in Missouri there’s a very good...
MATTHEWS: You smell anti-incumbentitis?
BLANKLEY: No, I think the Democrats badly mismanaged August and since August, the chances have been going down and that’s why you see the panic running through the Democratic...
ZOGBY: I agree with half of that, but I also see Hutchinson and Allard as well in deep trouble.
MATTHEWS: Hutchinson in Arkansas and Allard in Colorado, two Republicans in trouble. According to the latest-go ahead, Carl.
JEFFERS: Just remember that Harkin is up by 20 points. Torricelli was down by close to 13.
MATTHEWS: You’re right. You’re on top of that. So Harkin has a lot more to lose and he can’t lose it that fast.
According to the latest “Newsweek” poll, 63 percent of Americans support military action against Iraq when it come to casualties. When it comes to casualties, however, American are less enthusiastic. According to the latest Zogby poll, only 41 percent would support war if it meant hundreds of U.S. casualties and when asked if war with Iraq entailed sending a daughter or a son of their own, only 45 percent would still support the action. John, tell me about that. How can people think we’re going to go to war with Iraq and win the war without at least a couple hundred casualties?
ZOGBY: Look, it depends on how the question’s asked. Do you support a war to remove Saddam Hussein? Absolutely.
MATTHEWS: Who do they think’s going to fight the war, the Chechens, (UNINTELLIGIBLE). It’s going to be our guys.
ZOGBY: But that’s how the question is asked.
MATTHEWS: Is that the way the people answer it? That they are oblivious to the fact we got our own soldiers...
ZOGBY: Would you like the get rid of Saddam Hussein? Who wouldn’t.
If it takes-the devil is in the details.
BLANKLEY: I agree. The polling data is inconclusive. These questions haven’t been asked for several year on the same topic. Nonetheless, my sense is that the underlying attitude of the American public which will be rallied when the war starts. These number are much lower than they’ll be when it starts.
MATTHEWS: Bush is the commander-in-chief, Tony, you’re looking at these numbers, you’re saying, I’m going to have blood on my hands as commander in chief because I have to make the decision to send our guys in. And then I look at these polls and they say, wait a minute. The American people don’t want to send their guys or daughters in.
BLANKLEY: Look, I don’t have any doubt that by the time we get to the point of war, after the president has done everything he can with the U.N., probably getting support, Security Council, but even if not, he’ll have support. Seventy-five, 80 percent and the public will rally around any president fighting a just war for a long period of time.
MATTHEWS: Back to that. Carl, do you think people were thinking of a remote control war, that they think it will be like a virtual war like in “The Matrix” where you don’t actually go? You send some technology to win the war?
JEFFERS: You know what they’re doing, they’re relying on the experience of 1991 and we know that Saddam has made a lot of positive changes since then in terms of how he would fight us. We sat in our living rooms and watched guided missiles go down the chimney, make a U turn and come back up. They hit the hospitals and everywhere else we were attacking. That’s not going to be the case. This is going to be a difficult prospect.
MATTHEWS: But I thought the army of Iraq, the Iraqi Republican Guard, so-called, the top, the elite force is weaker than it was. Isn’t that right, Tony?
BLANKLEY: Yes, it is. The difference between now and 1991 is September 11. And although there’s no direct connection at this point proven between Saddam and September 11...
MATTHEWS: That’s the truth (ph) behind this war.
BLANKLEY: The fact we’ve taken 3,000 casualties, we’ve changed our sense of what the price of victory is going to be.
JEFFERS: Chris, I have to disagree with Tony on that one, because in fact, Al Gore was actually right on target when he said that what we’ve done here is confuse the war on terrorism with the war on Iraq. The American people who are outraged by what happened on September 11 still haven’t been entirely convinced yet that our attacking Iraq is the part of the real effort to deal with al Qaeda and the people who...
MATTHEWS: Is that true, John? You’re the pollster. Do people know that Iraq is really not the focus of our revenge campaign, which is legitimate?
ZOGBY: They do understand that, and again, the difficulty here is that there’s no visual in this war and the American people like their wars to be quick. They like them to be won and they want them...
MATTHEWS: What do you mean by no visual?
ZOGBY: We see Saddam Hussein sitting in a cabinet meeting with beret wearing...
MATTHEWS: Looks like a joke.
ZOGBY: Cabinet members. Where are the dead bodies? Where’s the ugliness?
MATTHEWS: Thank you, John Zogby, Tony Blankley and Carl Jeffers. | |
