From last night’s Special Report with Brit Hume :

–On David Bell’s Thesis on the War on Terror–

HUME: David Bell, a history professor from Johns Hopkins University wrote a piece, basically asking the question: Was 9/11 really was that bad . . . did it really and does any likely future attack from the same type of people really threaten the existence of the United States? . . . He argues that judged in historical terms against past wars and past threats it doesn’t measure up.
MORT KONDRACKE: David Bell acknowledges that these people are hate filled fanatics who would like nothing better than to destroy our country, but he says that they lack the capacity. Well one, if they got a hold of Iraq or Saudi Arabia they would have oil wealth and they could buy any weapon that they chose. . . . Pakistan is about one bullet away from supplying Islamic fundamentalists with a fully blown nuclear arsenal . . . and Iran is working on that.
MARA LIASSON: [W]hen he lays out the proportion of people killed versus the proportion of people killed in conflicts that were existential, he makes a valid point.
FRED BARNES: That’s irrelevant, though. I mean, one nuclear weapon and you kill a lot more people than were killed in all those wars.
Look, this is an example of the polio fallacy. And that is that people don’t get the vaccine anymore because, or a lot of people don’t, because they say “well gee, nobody gets polio anymore. What do I need it for?” Well here we haven’t had another serious terrorist attack, so people start saying, “well gee, maybe the threat’s not that great. We don’t have to do all these things like the Patriot Act and have eavesdropping and so on through wiretapping and things like that.”
LIASSON: I think the argument that this is more like the Cold War is valid. The Cold War was fought over a very long time, it was fought on many fronts. You know, this guy talks about that we need coolness, resolve, and stamina to fight this battle. And, you know, I think that’s valid.

–On Candidates at the NRI Summit–

LIASSON: [T]he guy who got the biggest reception was Jeb Bush, and he’s not a candidate. I think that tells you something. Conservatives have not really fallen hard for any of these guys.
Mitt Romney got a — I would say, a warm, but not wildly enthusiastic reception. He didn’t give the kind of speech that Jeb Bush gave where he really confronted the problems of Republicans and he didn’t mince words.
You know, the next day, Mike Huckabee came, he’s a dark horse. I think that conservatives are really up for grabs, the three — none of the three leading candidates really has a bond with the conservative base of the party — Giuliani, McCain, and Romney. And I think that that’s — you know, this is a base that’s to be courted. I mean, nobody has them sewn up and I think there’s going to be a real battle for them. But I think a lot of them wish that Jeb Bush was running.