Interview With Evan Bayh, Lindsey Graham
LARRY KING, HOST: Tonight. Exclusive. She cheated death by inches when a savage mountain lion attacked, tore off half her face and now in her first live television interview. Anne Hjelle takes us back to that terrifying day and tells a miraculous of faith and love, survival and recovery but first, United States forces find a possible nerve gas weapon in Iraq. And the Iraqi governing council president assassinated. What's it all mean with germ warfare correspondent Judith Miller of the "New York Times," Republican Senator Lindsey Graham and Democratic Senator Evan Bayh. They're all next on LARRY KING LIVE.</s>KING: Before we get an update on the Sarin gas and the parent explanation of how that happened in Iraq today, let's first get to the stories appearing in "Newsweek" and the "New Yorker" and start with our senators. What do you make of this, Senator Graham, the possibility that the Geneva Accords were overlooked?</s>SENATOR LINDSEY GRAHAM (R), SOUTH CAROLINA: Some very serious allegations. The basic essence was that they --- some military lawyers may have been dealt out in terms of giving input that there was sort of an effort to camouflage a secret program that did not have to abide by the Geneva Convention. One thing quickly, the al Qaeda has never been -- I agree with the president. Al Qaeda should not be covered by the Geneva Convention in terms of their status because they're not legally entitled to it but they should be treated humanely. That's the president's policy. Whether or not that policy was deviated from, we'll find out.</s>KING: Senator Bayh, are you concerned about the memo from Secretary Powell against all of this? What do you make of it?</s>SENATOR EVAN BAYH (D), INDIANA: Well, Larry, like so much else in this unfolding story, we need to get to the bottom of it. That's why we'll have further hearings this week in the armed services committee and get these facts out. I think Lindsey is right, we need to differentiate uniform representatives of the military of nation states and detain terrorists or insurgents who are killing American military men and women and innocent civilians. It's important that we ensure that this kind of thing never happen again. At the same time, we need to be able to use some acceptable but aggressive techniques when we get some of these hardened terrorists and innocent lives may hang in the balance on our ability to get timely information.</s>KING: It's a puzzlement. Judith Miller, what's your update, what can you tell us about this Sarin gas story? First, what is sarin Gas?</s>JUDITH MILLER, "NEW YORK TIMES": Sarin is a nerve agent, Larry, that causes death by basically asphyxiating someone. You may recall in 1995, it is the agent that a group, Aum Shinrikyo, used in the subways of Tokyo that caused 12 deaths and made about 5,000 people sick. We still don't know for sure what was discovered in Iraq. However it does appear to be Sarin according to two tests that were done by the British and by the Americans in the field. That's according to sources I interviewed today.</s>KING: Now, does this say two things. One that there are weapons of mass destruction around somewhere, and two, are all the troops in danger?</s>MILLER: Well, what it does say is that it appears at this point that there was certainly some insurgent who found something that appears to have been a chemical artillery shell. At that point -- before 1990, Iraq made approximately 4,800 of these shells, and at the end of the U.N. inspection period, there was still about 40 tons of Sarin unaccounted for, but we still don't know whether or not this was one single shell that someone found in a dump someplace or whether or not it was part of a cache that the insurgents may have found from the unaccounted for material that Iraq really never fully explained the fate of.</s>KING: Senator Graham, member of the armed services committee, as is Senator Bayh, veteran of the Air Force. Senator Graham, what do you make of this? It gets puzzling every day, doesn't it?</s>GRAHAM: It does, but in terms of the prison abuse scandal, the rule of law is our guide. We're trying to show the world we're different. I don't want to compare our troops to the Saddam era because I think you've lost when you start doing that. I want to show the world that in a democracy, there's a better way and you got to not only talk about it, you got to demonstrate it. So the prison abuse scandal, holding people accountable is what we're trying to demonstrate to the world is the right way. In terms of the nerve agents, we'll find out over time more about the Saddam era. It's a hard place to crack. People are afraid. Look what happened to somebody today who wanted to step up and have a new Iraq. There are a lot of people in Iraq today that are going to kill you if they can if your idea is to bring about a democratic transformation, because if a democracy is in place, they lose big time because people won't vote for their ideas. You got to stay the course and the paths will come out over time as we have trials and we learn more.</s>KING: Senator Bayh, do you sense the public turning against the war in Iraq?</s>BAYH: I think the public is concerned, Larry. I think the American people have more resiliency and staying power than they're given credit for. What they really want are two things. First they want a strategy with a plausible, successful outcome. Lay out the steps that we're going to pursue here to create a stable, more democratic Iraq and ultimately Iraqi defense forces and police forces that can secure their own society so that our troops can come home. What's the strategy? How do we successfully resolve this and No. 2, candor, Larry. And I think that's where we may be getting into trouble. At the outset of this, there were some who said, look, this will be easy. We'll be greeted as liberating heroes. It won't cost us much money or too many lives. Some of the rest of us knew it was going to be more difficult than that. So I think to the extent you're seeing the public sour, it's because of the element of surprise. We need to be candid going forward. We can win this. It's vitally important we be successful but it's going to be a difficult undertaking.</s>KING: Judith and this for all of you. What do you make of the killing of the president of the Iraqi governing council today, the second member of the council killed?</s>MILLER: Exactly. I think it shows that the insurgents are targeting the Iraqis who would claim to be part of any kind of transition government, who are working with the Americans, the fact that the insurgents can kill the head of this council will certainly -- it's aimed at deterring other Iraqis from stepping forward to carry this burden. Ultimately, Larry, it's going to be up to the Iraqi people to decide whether or not they have the courage and persistence to fight to save their own country, and we don't yet how that struggle is going to come out.</s>KING: Senator Graham, what's your read?</s>GRAHAM: Well said. They have to want their freedom as much or more than we do. If you sign up to be a police chief, to be a city councilman, to be a governing council member the insurgents and al Qaeda want to kill you, because they don't want a democracy. If you're a coalition force member, they're going to come after you like they did in Spain. Their goal is to drive us out. That's what the beheading was about, and I think we have the resolve, as evidenced, to stay the course, because the only way we'll change this world is allow women to vote, women to participate in Middle East politics and a democratic Iraq is good not only for Iraq, but for the United States, and they're going to test us. Is our resolve to stay greater than their resolve to drive us out? We need to adjust. I believe we're going to stick to it and win if we have the resolve to do so.</s>KING: Senate Bayh, is the United States the changer of the world?</s>BAYH: We can't take on the task of changing the entire world but we can stand for our values which are democracy and freedom, and the right of every individual to try and choose their own elected leaders and benefit from the fruits of their own labors, worship God as they see fit, associate with those of their own choosing. If we stand for those principles, that will stand in stark contrast to the principles of those who beheaded Nicholas Berg, the principals of those who assassinated this leader today in Iraq, and in the long run, Larry, you know, we're not perfect. The prisoner scandal showed that. But I think our ideals and values will be a better path for those in the Middle East than suicidal tear and the path that some others would have them travel down. That's our greatest hope in the long run, not imposing our values but exposing others to them. And in the long run if I put it in one sentence, it's not just the power of our arms but the power of our ideas that ultimately will secure our country.</s>KING: Thank you. Judith Miller, Senators Lindsey Graham and Evan Bayh. We'll be calling on you all again. We appreciate the time, and when we come back, we'll meet an extraordinary young lady, Anne Hjelle, this is her first live primetime interview. She was mauled by a mountain lion in January. Don't go away.</s>DONALD RUMSFELD, DEFENSE SECRETARY: We have to be careful. We can't say something that's inaccurate. So what we have to then do is to try to track down and figure out how it might be there, what caused that to be there in this improvised explosive device and what might it mean in terms of the risks to our forces, the risks to other people, and any other implications that one might draw, and that's going to take some time.