From last night’s Special Report with Brit Hume:

—On Harry Reid and Iraq—

MORT KONDRACKE: But, you know, you have a dynamic going where everybody is ratcheting up their rhetoric and ratcheting up their position or making it more [confrontational], and I wonder whether there’s going to be a deal reached here. If there’s not a deal reached, the troops don’t get their money. If troops don’t get their money then they begin hurting as of a certain point. And I got to say, you know, if al Qaeda is watching American television, watching what’s going on in the United States, they must be just delighted. . . .

FRED BARNES: You know, I was asked a question today by Senator Lindsey Graham. I happened to be talking to him, the Republican from South Carolina, he said look, if Harry Reid’s right and we’ve lost the war, who won? Who won the war?

I think that’s the question that Harry Reid needs to answer. If we’ve lost, who won? And I think the only answer is, if indeed we do lose in Iraq, the answer is there’ll be two big winners, there’ll be al Qaeda, which will have that whole area, that whole Sunni area, which will be an enclave for them, a safe haven, a place to train troops and launch attacks elsewhere in the world.

And the other big winner will be who all the Shia go to in the other part of Iraq, who will they look for an ally if the U.S. is gone? It’s pretty obvious. There’s one big Shiite country in that region and that’s Iran. And they’ll be a big winner.

—On the Attorney General—

BARNES: I mean Bush picked him. He may not be the greatest attorney general in the world, and certainly he’s not. On the other hand, I don’t see how President Bush could fire him. I hear a lot of Conservatives who’d like to have him fired. . . . But one of the obligations of a president is to not only defend his country but defend his administration and his party and the people who work for him and I think that’s what he has to do in this case.

HUME: All right, so consensus on this panel is about Gonzales stays for now?

MARA LIASSON: Stays. . . .

Comments

BARNES: Stays forever.