Did the Powell Mission to Mideast Fail?; Bush's Proposal to Drill in ANWR Defeated
ANNOUNCER: Live from Washington, the</s>CAPITAL GANG. MARK SHIELDS, HOST: Welcome to CAPITAL GANG. I'm Mark Shields with a full CAPITAL GANG -- Al Hunt, Robert Novak, Kate O'Beirne, and Margaret Carlson. Secretary of State Colin Powell completed his visit to the Middle East without achieving a cease-fire in his final meetings with Palestinian Authority Yasser Arafat and Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon.</s>YASSER ARAFAT, PALESTINIAN LEADER: Is this acceptable that I can't go outside from this door? Is this acceptable? Do you think this will not reflect in the whole ...</s>QUESTION: Sir, what did Powell ...</s>ARAFAT: ... stability and the peace in the Middle East.</s>ARIEL SHARON, ISRAELI PRIME MINISTER: I believe that we may reach peace. I will make every effort to reach peace. I'm ready to make</s>SHIELDS: Returned to Washington, Secretary Powell met with President Bush.</s>GEORGE W. BUSH, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: I do believe Ariel Sharon is a man of peace. I think he wants -- I'm confident he wants Israel to be able to exist at peace with its neighbor.</s>SHIELDS: That presidential optimism evoked a bitter Palestinian response.</s>SAEB ERAKAT, PLO SPOKESPERSON: I believe President Bush is rewarding Sharon's terror. He's rewarding Sharon for the massacre he committed in Jenin refugee camp.</s>SHIELDS: Al Hunt, is President Bush right when he says that Prime Minister Ariel Sharon is truly a man of peace?</s>AL HUNT, "WALL STREET JOURNAL": That's about as incredible as saying Arafat is Gandhi, Mark. Look, the Bush administration's performance in the Middle East the last month has been a fiasco -- the Cheney trip, the Powell trip, the president who throws down a marker and then flinches when it's tossed back at him. I think the Powell trip, why it was such a failure is interesting to look at. It tells you something about the problems. It may be that Secretary Powell for all of his enormous popularity doesn't have the negotiating skills of a George Mitchell, of a Henry Kissinger, of a Dick Holbrooke, but they're also -- sources on Capitol Hill tell me that the Israelis had back channels to people in this administration that under cut the secretary, and I think the president's policy or lack of a policy, it changes daily. I think that makes it very difficult for any secretary of state.</s>SHIELDS: Bob Novak, picking up on something that Al said, and that is the strongest quality that people admire most in George W. Bush and "The Wall Street Journal", NBC both says what he means, means what he says. He's never been the mastery of information or his encyclopedic knowledge about the history of places. This is a straight shooter, a straight from the -- straight -- a guy that gives you to you with no baloney. There was a lot of baloney this week.</s>ROBERT NOVAK, "CHICAGO SUN-TIMES": He has run into a situation that is very difficult for a president. I'm glad Al doesn't have to cope with anything like that, of course, Al isn't president of the United States, thank God, and George W. Bush is. And what his situation is, is he has his party, people on his administration want a brutal Israeli policy. They like the man of war, which Sharon is, and the president knows that this cannot be the way the United States goes and he's torn, and he hasn't done a very good job. I think it is unfair to say that Colin Powell is not a good negotiator when he hasn't had 100 percent support from the White House, when he has had very little time and when the situation of -- he has no weapons to put a heavy arm on Sharon and say get out right now. So it's been a very difficult situation, and I think we look very bad in the world.</s>SHIELDS: Margaret Carlson, how do we look in the world? How do we look to you?</s>MARGARET CARLSON, "TIME" MAGAZINE: The situation was too far down the road for Secretary Powell, for anybody to be successful in those few days in the Middle East. So in fairness to him, I don't think we can put him on the hook for this, and in fact, the right wing of the Republican Party is currently acting as secretary of state and influencing Bush. If he really meant what he said, he'd be furious that the United States had had a thumb stuck in their eye by Arafat. He obviously in his heart didn't really ...</s>NOVAK: By Arafat.</s>CARLSON: ... I mean by Sharon. He obviously ...</s>CARLSON: Yes.</s>CARLSON: He obviously didn't really mean it.</s>SHIELDS: Well that was always missing, Kate, and the president's policy was I want an immediate withdrawal or -- and there was no or. I mean his father had stopped the money for settlements in 1991, incurred a lot of rap, a lot of conservative criticism, a lot of Jewish</s>KATE O'BEIRNE, "NATIONAL REVIEW": This president recognizes, though, Israel's right to defend itself from terrorism. It's a fight he himself is waging on our behalf. He detoured bowing to European criticism and criticism from so-called Arab moderate states from the Bush doctrine. I think this week following the Colin Powell visit, he is back on course at a speech he gave at VMI. This week, of course, he's back talking about states, you're either with us in our war against terrorism. This week Dick Cheney called Israel a full partner in our war on terrorism when he was over at the Israeli embassy, or you're not with us and he called the Taliban the first regime to fall in our war on terrorism, implying they'll be others. I think he's reorienting back to Iraq, which remains a central challenge and problem and threat to us, and he is now fully rejecting any linkage between not being able to do anything about the mortal threat Iraq poses to us until we -- quote -- "you know brought peace to the Middle East," which of course we won't be able to do.</s>NOVAK: Kate made a very important point there and that is the position taken by the editorial page of the -- of "The Wall Street Journal," by her magazine "National Review", by many people in the -- in the administration, which is that we should not get involved in this peace process in the Middle East. We should let force -- the superior force of the Israelis pound down the Palestinians, put in puppets if necessary, don't worry about atrocities they commit, and that we should instead go ahead to Iraq and make a military operation there. That is -- that is a very strong position and it has support in the -- in the administration. I don't think it is secretary -- I know it's not Secretary Powell's position. I don't think it's really the president's ultimate position to say that we are just going to turn our back on the Israeli-Palestinian peacemaking process and become the war-making nation of the Middle East.</s>O'BEIRNE: Mark, very quickly ...</s>SHIELDS: OK.</s>O'BEIRNE: ... it's also not the position of those that Bob cited. The recognition has to be that Israel is fighting a war against terrorism. Once they are successful in their war against terrorism, then they can talk peace. They tried the other way with respect to land for peace and negotiating for peace and of course since Arafat doesn't want peace with Israel, that's impossible. And it's an appreciation, Bob, that this is bigger than Arafat. Syria and Iran have a role to play here.</s>HUNT: Kate, I don't know how you can be so supportive of the president given his record over the last month. If this were Bill Clinton and Al Gore and Madeleine Albright, instead of George Bush and Dick Cheney and Colin Powell -- I mean, exact same circumstances they'd do exactly the same, I think you would be talking about amateur hour in foreign policy ...</s>HUNT: ... putting politics first and if everything was the same, I don't think you can just excuse George Bush ...</s>O'BEIRNE: No. No. I called it a detour. I thought the policy was deteriorating into incoherence. This administration is very good to correct mistakes, and I think we saw this one quickly corrected.</s>SHIELDS: Go ahead.</s>CARLSON: But you don't want to correct it by calling Sharon a man of peace. A, if you're going to say who's the worst terrorist, yes, it's Arafat. But that does not make Sharon a man of peace. He does not want peace and for Bush to come out and call him that ...</s>CARLSON: ... the Israelis do ...</s>CARLSON: ... the problem is that the ...</s>CARLSON: ... leaders -- the leaders of both countries of neither country want peace.</s>NOVAK: And Erakat, the Palestinian negotiator, is quite right, that they -- that the president has ended up -- I don't think that was his intention. He's ended up rewarding the militarism of Sharon. One thing I would like to separate myself from some of the people who are attacking Bush and even some of the people at this table. I really hope that Bush succeeds.</s>CARLSON: So do</s>I. NOVAK: I really do.</s>CARLSON: So do we all.</s>SHIELDS: Let me -- let me just -- let me ask the question, though. But this is an administration that even if its severest critics have acknowledged had iron discipline. It spoke with one voice on virtually everything ...</s>SHIELDS: And, boy, in this one, I mean, you get Cheney saying one thing. You get the Cheney, Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz crowd and they -- let's go to Iraq, and you've got Colin Powell and the State Department and other fact -- and apparently, Condy Rice saying let's negotiate and let's try -- I mean, isn't this really a certain incoherence?</s>NOVAK: But that's the -- that's the -- that's the word that people like to use is incoherent. But I tell you what gets to me a little bit is a lot of people want to use this as a -- people who have been attacking George W. Bush since the Florida recount want to use this as an attack on Bush, and I don't -- I don't believe that is the problem. I think this is a tragedy that's occurring in the Middle East and I certainly feel very badly about people engaging in cheap politicking.</s>HUNT: No, I think you're absolutely right. Just as -- just as I think when Bill Clinton made huge foreign policy mistakes in Somalia and elsewhere, I don't think people would use that -- I would hope people wouldn't have used that ...</s>NOVAK: Never.</s>HUNT: ... to take cheap shots against the president, but say we hope American would right itself.</s>SHIELDS: That's a good point, Al.</s>SHIELDS: Good point, and let's just check the record on that, Bob. The "Gang" of five will be back with a disaster for oil drillers.