Bush Addresses Nation From Aircraft Carrier Deck
ANNOUNCER: Live from Washington,</s>THE CAPITAL GANG. MARK SHIELDS, HOST: Welcome to CAPITAL GANG. I'm Mark Shields, with Al Hunt, Robert Novak, and Margaret Carlson. Our guest is Republican Senator John Sununu of New Hampshire. It's good to have you back, John.</s>SEN. JOHN SUNUNU (R), NEW HAMPSHIRE: Great to be here.</s>SHIELDS: Thank you. President Bush addressed the crew of the USS Abraham Lincoln from the deck of the aircraft carrier.</s>GEORGE W. BUSH, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: Major combat operations in Iraq have ended. In the battle of Iraq, the United States and our allies have prevailed.</s>SHIELDS: Meanwhile, the president unveiled the road map to Israeli-Palestinian peace.</s>MAHMOUD ABBAS, PALESTINIAN PRIME MINISTER (through translator): For ending the disorder and chaos of arms with the threats that are imposed on the country will be one of our main tasks, and we will not be lenient at all.</s>SHIELDS: But after a suicide bomber in Tel Aviv left three dead, the Israeli military forces then killed 14 Palestinians.</s>GIDEON MEIR, ISRAELI FOREIGN MINISTRY: I am not willing to talk about anything which has to do with the political situation before there is a stop and a cessation of terror and violence against the people of Israel.</s>SHIELDS: Margaret Carlson, is the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, crisis, raining on George W. Bush's victory parade?</s>MARGARET CARLSON, CAPITAL GANG: A hurricane couldn't have interfered with that particular parade. It was so well done, and even though we knew that everything was choreographed down to, you know, catching that fourth hook on the ship, it was still a pretty stirring tableau. Cecil B. DeMille couldn't have been done better. And even though you know there's no Santa Claus, Christmas is still great, and that was with that particular moment. As for the Middle East, Bush has kept his distance from it up to this point, and he's not associated so much with the violence, but it is off to an awfully bad start. And Colin Powell being sent there is going to get the administration involved. And only administration involvement is going to move it along.</s>SHIELDS: John Sununu, I'm going to give you a chance to agree with Margaret Carlson.</s>SUNUNU: Well, if you recall, I believe Margaret and I agreed on the last show I did, and she makes a good point. The administration does have to be involved. They've got to be involved aggressively. That's what putting out the road map is all about. There are going to be highs and lows in this process. What is important is that there's a true commitment to end the violence, to end the terrorism, and that there's confidence building in the near term, an ability to -- for Palestinians to move back and forth to their jobs, to help support economic growth, and in addition to that, commitment on the other side, to stop the growth of settlements. Those are critical steps, but this is going to be a very long process. And I don't think the administration is going into this with rose-colored glasses.</s>SHIELDS: Bob Novak, the political reality of it, though, if you look at it, the religious right, much of it, is a -- is opposed to this. Large sections of the American Jewish community, both Republicans and Democrats, members of Congress, 297 of them signed, you know, basically a letter endorsing the Sharon position. I mean, is the president willing to spend this kind of political capital?</s>ROBERT NOVAK, CAPITAL GANG: I don't know. And this is the biggest test of his presidency, in my opinion, because you will not have a good situation in not just Israel and the Palestinian area, but the entire region, unless this problem is addressed. You know, the -- it -- the scenario was so bad after he put out the road map, was that the terrorist group who doesn't want any peace killed -- did a suicide bombing, and immediately the Israeli Defense Force went on a rampage, and we had an announcement by this official spokesman that we can't have peace while this is going on. They don't -- Sharon doesn't want a Palestinian state. We all know that. But I just have to say one other thing, that that was a great photo-op on the aircraft carrier, and the Democrats I've talked to tried to think of Joe Lieberman in an Air Force jumpsuit, and they can't quite make it.</s>SHIELDS: Well, it was just as unlikely for some of us to see George W. Bush in that position after...</s>CARLSON: He grew into that.</s>AL HUNT, CAPITAL GANG: It was fantastic political theater. I mean, it was as good a photo-op as I have ever seen. Democrats not only say what, say what Bob just cited, but they're a little upset about this. They say they're using it for political purposes. Well, guess what, get used to it, because the second-most powerful man in America, Karl Rove, is going to use this war and any success in the war on terrorism any way he can. If things are going well in Iraq a year from now, if the war on terrorism's going well, that will make a powerful television commercial. If things aren't going well, they'll have to drop it. I think the Middle East -- there are two key questions. There are two -- there's two, still two troubling thorns, if you will. One is Arafat. I think we have to be encouraged by what's happening with the Palestinians, but I -- let's be careful about Arafat trying to muck up this new constitution, giving himself too much power. And if Sharon overreacts, because there's going to be acts of terrorism. And if he uses it as an excuse to sandbag this thing, then it's going to put tremendously...</s>NOVAK: What, what, what do you think of killing 14 Israelis, including a 2-year-old baby...</s>SHIELDS: Fifteen Palestinians.</s>NOVAK: Fourteen Palestinians, including a 2-year-old baby, just in, just immediately? And, I, you know, to me, this is all -- this is all orchestrated,</s>SUNUNU: He is up to it. He has to be up to it. You know, you pointed out that this will affect -- his commitment to this process will affect the way we're perceived throughout the entire Middle East, Israelis, Palestinians, throughout the Arab world. And if he wants to solidify and build upon the success that we've had in Iraq, and hopefully progress in working with the -- a lot of the Iraqi people to establish representational government, he also has to show commitment to this process. Otherwise, those gains...</s>SHIELDS: I...</s>SUNUNU: ... might go by the wayside.</s>SHIELDS: I don't argue with that, John. But, boy, certainly the early returns from Iraq are anything but encouraging. When you read that General Jay Garner, who has been in charge up until now, doesn't have phones himself, doesn't have e-mail, doesn't even have security, and doesn't have any way of communicating with what's going on. One of his top aides was unaware of the fact that American troops had fired on and killed 14 Iraqi civilians.</s>CARLSON: And he may be trumped by Paul Bremer being appointed, and the lines of command there getting muddied just at a time when things aren't up and running.</s>NOVAK: Mark, just for the sake of correction, in Iraq, you say is -- fired on 14 Iraqi civilians. The -- our troops, which I believe, said they were fired on, they told them not to fire, and then they -- and they only shot them, I believe our troops, not the Iraqi civilians.</s>SHIELDS: I'm not talking about, Bob, if you listen to what I said, I said the -- one of his top aides was unaware of the fact that</s>NOVAK: I'm just</s>CARLSON: Correcting a mistake you didn't make.</s>HUNT: Look I...</s>SHIELDS: Yes, that's right.</s>HUNT: ... I think we still have, we still have, have this tremendous conundrum over there that we, A, want to get out quickly, and B, we want to build a model, a model democracy. Well, they're, they're, they're contradictory. You can't do both. I think John Sununu, Sununu is absolutely right that over the long term, if you don't have progress in the Middle East, if he's right and George Bush is really committed to it, that's an incredibly important, Mark.</s>SHIELDS: As political theater, the only thing that could top the "Abraham Lincoln" on Thursday night would be George W. Bush giving his renomination acceptance speech at Ground Zero in New York. That would be, that would be the only thing, I think, that would be...</s>CARLSON: He -- and he's going to get, he's going to get as close as possible.</s>SHIELDS: One step beyond -- That's right. And have the courts shredded the McCain-Feingold finance reform? John Sununu and THE GANG will be right back with an answer.