Liberals vs Conservatives:

It got pretty hot on the Fox News Sunday roundtable. Here is part of the exchange: (emphasis added)

CONNELY: There are a lot of unanswered questions here. We still know very little about contractors over there and what they do in the prisons. We know that Army pathologists ruled two prisoner deaths in Afghanistan, homicides.

HUME: [garbled] we don't know though.

CONNELY: I'm just saying we've got more to learn.

KRISTOL: Here is one thing we do know. We're at war. I think one of the best lines Donald Rumsfeld had there "I've stopped reading the newspapers about this", and he should stop reading the newspapers about this. There's a legal process under way. Punish the people who engaged in wrongdoing; go up the chain of command to the degree necessary; rethink our military intelligence rules if you want to. It's ridiculous. We're at war. I've been a critic of Rumsfeld, but I was heartened by his visit to the troops, and I've been heartened, actually, by his, many of his [garbled]. You interviewed Colin Powell - very well - and Senator Levin for half an hour. Neither of them mentioned the fact that we're at war. We've got to win this war. And it's insane for this country to be obsessing about a small prisoner abuse scandal.

[crosstalk]

KRISTOL: We'll win the debate if the Democrats and the liberal media want to obsess about seven guys from Cumberland humiliating some Iraqi prisoners.

WILLIAMS: You want to make this into Liberals versus Conservatives.

KRISTOL: Absolutely.

WILLIAMS: ... over the treatment of prisoners. Well, I think you should go talk to Lindsey Graham and people who have been military prosecutors, and they'll tell you this is not what America should stand for.

[crosstalk]

WILLIAMS: ... moral values. That when we take this position, that the president doesn't forswear putting hoods over people, putting people in humiliating sexual positions ...

KRISTOL: Do you think we should fight the war on terror without ever putting hoods ...

WILLIAMS: No.

KRISTOL: Do you think we should fight the war on terror without using any techniques like that.

WILLIAMS: No. You have to use techniques, but there are legitimate techniques. The Geneva Convention exists apart from whatever moral standards we want to advance, and say they are truly American standards. We didn't even adhere to the Geneva Convention and you're going to sit here and say it's a matter of Liberal versus Conservative? That's wrongheaded.

HUME: I would say this about it. Bill's point is right. This comes down to whether you think we're at war or not. And if you think we're at war and this is a real war, not a figurative war, but a real war, you recognize one other thing, which is war is hell and terrible things happen.

WILLIAMS: Oh, so we do ...

HUME: Excuse me.

WILLIAMS: ... no standards at all. No standards. Do whatever you like. We're Americans, held to a higher standard and we represent something great in the world - we'll then you lose all that Brit. You lose your standing representing anything different from [garbled] terrorist [garbled]

HUME: That is a monstrous distortion of what I am saying. What I am saying, Juan, if you'll let me finish is this. War is a terrible thing and terrible things happen in wars on all sides. Something terrible happened in this war and it's being addressed and it is not being minimized. It was way less terrible than the things that are happening to us in this war. The business at hand ... the real business at hand is to get on with this war. To win it, and finish it. And that will eradicate all the rest of this and it won't matter in the end because the Iraqi people will be better off and so will we and so will the world.

WILLIAMS: They want us out. That's what I notice.

NOTE: For a limited time (about one week) we provide a low-fi .wav file (1.3 Meg) of the exchange as an assurance that our transcript is accurate. It is availabe from this link.

posted by Quiddity at 5/16/2004 11:43:00 AM