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American Agenda: Foreign Policy Town Hall Meeting

Aired October 19, 2004 - 12:00   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.


(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
WOLF BLITZER, CNN ANCHOR (voice-over): George W. Bush versus John F. Kerry. Not in a generation have Americans been this divided over who should be their next president.

ZAIN VERJEE, CNN ANCHOR (voice-over): Two men with sharply contrasting visions of how America should lead on Iraq and elsewhere offering up a future borne out of the tragedy of recent past.

GEORGE W. BUSH, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: After September the 11th, America had to assess every potential threat in a new light. Our nation awakened to even a greater danger: the prospect that terrorists who killed thousands would hijack airplanes, would kill many more with weapons of mass murder.

SEN. JOHN KERRY (D-MA), PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: Just because George Bush says that the terror is going to continue no matter what we do, just because George Bush says he can't get Europeans to be more involved, just because George Bush tells you that he's tried and it can't work, doesn't mean it can't be done.

BLITZER: The challenges, evident for all to see on the battleground that is Iraq to the potentially explosive scenarios of both Iran and North Korea, and to what some say is a monumental effort to win hearts and minds on the Arab street.

VERJEE: Now, from across the political spectrum, Americans speak out in an exclusive CNN Gallup survey on American foreign policy. And as they prepare to elect the next president, we take a closer look at where each man seeks to take his country and ultimately the world: the "American Agenda."

ANNOUNCER: And now, live from the campus of George Washington University in Washington, D.C., here's your hosts, CNN's Zain Verjee and Wolf Blitzer.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

BLITZER: And a very warm welcome to all of you who have gathered here on the campus of George Washington University, and to our viewers around the world.

VERJEE: In exactly two weeks from today, America votes. It's the first election of a U.S. president since 9/11.

BLITZER: Since then, America has gone to war in Afghanistan, in Iraq. American foreign policy has dominated the political debates here in the United States and has divided this nation.

VERJEE: We have a power panel of Democrats and Republicans here to answer questions, our questions, the questions in this town hall.

BLITZER: We're also going to reveal the results of an exclusive CNN-Gallup poll done earlier this month. One issue raised, the Bush doctrine of preemption.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

BUSH: And the people who knocked these buildings down will hear all of us soon.

BLITZER (voice-over): For President Bush, the world has not been the same since that day when 19 hijackers attacked the United States.

BUSH: September the 11th changed how America must look at the world.

BLITZER: As a result, the president made a near 180-degree turn in his world view from someone who ran in 2000 as a candidate opposed to so-called nation building around the world, to a president who's attempting to do precisely that right now in Afghanistan and Iraq. And perhaps other countries down the road.

He also came around to accept a new, more aggressive preemptive strike policy. The upshot, the United States should no longer wait to be hit. Instead, go out and kill the enemy first, even if the threat is not necessarily imminent.

BUSH: In Iraq, we saw a threat and we realized that after September the 11th we must take threats seriously before they fully materialize. Saddam Hussein now sits in a prison cell. America and the world are safer for it.

BLITZER: It's that preemptive strike policy, a centerpiece of the so-called neo-conservative advisers that has generated so much controversy in the United States...

UNIDENTIFIED GROUP: Bush and Cheney got to go, hey, hey, ho, ho.

BLITZER: ... and around the world.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

BLITZER: And let's get right to the first question on our CNN- Gallup exclusive poll. We asked this question: "Should the United States attack another country first if it thinks that country might attack the United States?" Let's show the results. Forty-one percent of the American respondents said yes, 52 percent said no.

Senator Coleman, that would seem to suggest a slight majority opposing the policy of preemptive strikes.

SEN. NORMAN COLEMAN (R), MINNESOTA: Well, you don't make foreign policy on polls. You do what you think is right for the country. This president has made that very clear.

Senator Kerry may take polls and he may go back and forth, but this is not something you do by polls. You do what you think is right. This president said he's going to protect this country, and in the end that's the right thing to do.

BLITZER: In the end, though, you have to worry about what the American public thinks. You're a member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. You're a key influence in the Republican Party. Don't you have to pay attention to the attitudes of your constituents?

COLEMAN: Well, you do pay attention, but the responsibilities of leadership is sometimes to bring people to a place they may not yet want to be. But when you get there, they say this is the right thing. Certainly an America that is safe from attack, an America that doesn't wait to be attacked, is a safer America.

VERJEE: Dr. Susan Rice, you're a senior adviser to John Kerry's foreign policy issues. You've also been a former national former National Security Council. The critical issue here a lot of people are asking is this: is America safer because of the doctrine of preemption? Is America safer because of Iraq?

DR. SUSAN RICE, KERRY CAMPAIGN ADVISER: I think unfortunately the answer to that is no. The president made a choice to divert our attention from the fight against al Qaeda and Osama bin Laden, who attacked us on September 11, to take us to a fight in Iraq where it turns out now there were no weapons of mass destruction, there were no clear links to al Qaeda.

And what we've created in Iraq is something it wasn't before, a terrorist magnet and a terrorist breeding ground. And unfortunately, this president seems to have no sense of the reality on the ground in Iraq, just what a grave mess it is, and no sense of a plan for how to secure the peace and bring our troops home in success.

BLITZER: We're going to have plenty of opportunity for everyone to weigh in. I want to immediately go to our audience.

Please identify yourself and ask your question.

QUESTION: Hi. My name is Vic Woo (ph). I'm from Stanford, California.

With Iraq and Afghanistan, the attention of the United States has been diverted away from other concerns such as North Korea, Iran, and potentially the Taiwan Strait. How will the next U.S. president juggle all these issues on the foreign policy agenda?

BLITZER: Let's ask Senator Cornyn of Texas, a member of the Foreign Relations Committee.

A simple question for you, Senator.

SEN. JOHN CORNYN (R), TEXAS: Well, you simply can't as the preeminent power in the world, economically and militarily, we have to learn to do more than talk and chew gum at the same time. In other words, we have to deal with all of these challenges. And indeed we are, just as we are dealing on six-way talks with North Korea.

We're also working with our European Union partners on dealing with the threat in Iran. As we deal with Afghanistan, with NATO there on the ground, and as we continue to deal with our coalition in Iraq. We have to be able to do all of those things.

VERJEE: In a way that is effective but makes the world safer, I think, is the key issue that we really want to get to as we continue to discuss this. Let's bring in Tori Clark, former Pentagon spokesperson.

Do you think that we are safer today? Do you think when you look at the reality of the situation in Iraq, when we hear of beheadings, when we hear of suicide bombings, when we hear of the chaos in places like the Sunni Triangle and Falluja, in Samarra, that's been reported in the news media over the weeks, do you think the doctrine of preemption is undermined?

VICTORIA CLARKE, FMR. PENTAGON SPOKESPERSON: Not at all. And I absolutely think we're safer. And if Senator Joe Lieberman were here, he would say, as he said before, we are safer, the world is a better place because Saddam Hussein is gone.

VERJEE: How can you be so sure about that?

CLARKE: Well, I've heard Senator Lieberman say it, that's how I can be so sure of that. Now, let me finish.

We are safer because we removed a very, very destabilizing force in a critical part of the world. We are safer because with the help and cooperation of dozens, dozens of countries around the world, we have killed or captured two-third of the al Qaeda leadership. We haven't been distracted from that task at all.

We've disrupted their financing, their training. We've eliminated many, many of those threats with the help and cooperation of nations around this world.

But as the senator said, it would be nice, as some people want to do, to treat these problems in a linear fashion, check a box, oh, we're done with that one, check a box, we're done with that one. That's not reality. You've got to deal with all of these fronts simultaneously, and the best way to get the bad guys is to get them before they get us.

BLITZER: All right. Everybody's going to weigh in.

Let me go to another poll because, I want Senator Corzine of New Jersey to weigh in as well. Here's a question. "Should the U.S. place more emphasis on its own safety and security or peace and stability throughout the world?" Sixty-five percent thought the United States, within the United States, 32 percent said throughout the world.

Frankly, I was a little surprised that it was only 65 percent. I assume you were as well, Senator.

SEN. JON CORZINE (D), NEW JERSEY: I would -- I think all of us sitting here who are involved in public life know protecting the American people is our number one objective, number one responsibility. So that needs to be saved. The fact is, though, that that is best done by being a leader.

We are the sole superpower. We need to use judiciously and wisely our power. We need to involve other countries and other judgments as a part of that process, always protecting ourselves first, always making sure that the American people are protected. But that is best done by reaching out.

BLITZER: And let me let Senator Evan Bayh weigh in as well. You're both a member of the Intelligence Committee and the Armed Services Committee.

The notion of these other crises that our guest in the audience asked, North Korea, Iran, the Straits of Taiwan, all of these issues critical issues. Has the Bush administration's policy of preemptive strikes undermined the U.S. ability to operate in these other areas around the world?

SEN. EVAN BAYH (D), INDIANA: Well, that's an excellent question, Wolf. Our military is stretched almost to the breaking point today. You see Reserve units being called up, National Guardsmen having their tours of duty extended. And one of my real concerns is that, if we were to have an unexpected development in Iran, on the Korean Peninsula, where would we get the forces to deal with that?

So if you're talking about preemption, I'd say a couple of things. That always has to be an option on the table. But you have to exercise that very selectively because we don't have the ability to invade every country that poses a potential problem to us. And the final thing I'd say is it really places a premium upon accurate intelligence, because the consequences of error are so great, unnecessary war, that you really have to be sure that the information you're acting on is accurate as possible.

VERJEE: We have another question from our audience.

Please go ahead.

QUESTION: My name is Audra (ph). I'm with the Rand Corporation.

This administration seems to envision a secular democracy for Iraq, but not all of the people feel that way. And I wanted to know if we should be prepared to accept a democracy with religious elements.

VERJEE: Senator Norm Coleman?

COLEMAN: Yes...

BLITZER: And before you respond, Senator Coleman, you saw what the president said, the interview he conducted yesterday with The Associated Press. He specifically said, "If that's what the people of Iraq want, if they democratically elect a fundamentalist Islamic government, that's democracy."

COLEMAN: I just want to quickly respond to the last question, because it's not inconsistent to say that we'll deal with dangers in the world and protect America at home. In fact, Pakistan today, and -- they're working with us in the fight against terrorism. Afghanistan is no longer the home of the Taliban. Libya is out of the atomic weapons game. So the fact is we are safer because we are addressing some of these issues in other parts of the world.

Beyond that, the president believes in democracy. Democracy is less apt to send suicide terrorists against us and against other countries. And so in the end, the people of Iraq will choose their fate. There's no question about that. And we'll be prepared to accept that.

But, you know, we've ignored what happened in Afghanistan last week. First time in 5,000 years they've had elections.

BLITZER: We've only been on the air for a few minutes. Give us some time.

(LAUGHTER)

BLITZER: Well, I think the world at large has ignored that. The fact is democracy is taking hold, and it's a wonderful thing. And those people who are so pessimistic about it I think are simply wrong, that there's great opportunity. The president recognizes that, we will see that in Iraq when elections are held in January.

VERJEE: Is it enough to call it a democracy if somebody gets to vote? If there's no security in the country, the economic situation is questionable in the country, if people can't buy food, if people can't buy fuel, you can't walk the streets, is it enough to say that's it, we did it, it was a success, it's a democracy?

Susan Rice.

RICE: I think that democracy is something that requires many things to reinforce it. Obviously, you need freedom and the opportunity to vote. You need Democratic institutions which are sustainable.

Right now, they're very fragile in Afghanistan. The government in Kabul does not yet really control the vast territory of the country.

Yes, of course you need economic development to reinforce Democratic progress. So all of these things have to go together. And unfortunately, as you suggested, as laudatory as the election was last week, the fact is that the security situation on the ground is very bad.

Seventy-five percent of the world's heroin supply is now coming out of Afghanistan. It is still a very, very unstable situation. BLITZER: It's bad. I think everybody agrees it's not as good as it should be. But if you compare what's in Afghanistan today to what was the case three years ago, when the Taliban...

RICE: There's no doubt.

BLITZER: ... ruled that country, when women had absolutely no rights whatsoever, where al Qaeda had training facilities all over the place, there's been a dramatic -- when you see 10 million people lining up to vote, that's a pretty dramatic improvement.

RICE: There's no question that we're better off in Afghanistan. The issue is, had we stayed in Afghanistan, if we'd not diverted our resources, our intelligence asset, our Special Forces, if we'd finished the job there, committed -- fulfilled our commitment, which the president made to put in place a Marshall Plan for Afghanistan, which we haven't delivered on, if we'd continued to press the fight against al Qaeda and Osama bin Laden, would we be better off than we were having diverted our attention to Iraq and let Iran and North Korea, two of the countries in the president's axis of evil, so-called axis of evil, that actually had weapons of mass destruction not develop their...

CLARKE: Wolf, I've got to stop this, because as somebody who was there when we were in Afghanistan, we continue to be in Afghanistan -- the finance minister from Afghanistan was here a couple weeks ago thanking and commending the United States for sticking with it even though some other people have lost the attention. As a matter of fact, the force levels in Afghanistan went up by several thousand...

RICE: Just recently, Tori.

CLARKE: No, no. Went up as we were going into Iraq. At that time went up. And I'm so bemused when I hear people so critical of these incredible people in Afghanistan.

BLITZER: But...

CLARKE: Wait -- these incredible people in Iraq, and our expectations for those countries. Look at what this country went through during and after the revolution. Look at what it went through. The revolution was...

BLITZER: We're going to pick up all this. Hold on, guys. We're going to pick up all this.

We have more questions from our people here in the audience. We have a lot more to go through. So stand by.

Afghanistan, did the U.S. have enough troops on the ground to get the mission done, to find Osama bin Laden, to capture and kill him? We'll take a quick break.

VERJEE: We will. Iraq clearly dominating this presidential season. But there's plenty more to debate in our town hall, as Wolf pointed out. BLITZER: When we come back, we'll also focus in on another issue, Israel. Hopes for a future Palestine.

VERJEE: Plus, the hearts and minds of the Arab and Muslim world. Is American strategy failing? We'll discuss that when we come back.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

VERJEE: Welcome back to the "American Agenda."

In the Middle East, there's a roadmap for peace, an initiative to outline steps toward security for Israel and for a state for the Palestinians. But amid the ongoing fighting there's little progress down that road.

BLITZER: And in our new CNN/Gallup survey conducted for this town hall, we asked, "Whose side has the United States generally taken in the Middle East?" No great surprise here, 58 percent of the respondents said Israel's side, 30 percent said neither. Just a tiny fraction said the Palestinian side.

VERJEE: Senator Cornyn, why is it that the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, something that really resonates, strikes at the heart of the Arab Muslim world, doesn't play a major role in this campaign? We're not hearing it as a major issue. Why?

CORNYN: Well, I think we all recognize, whether we're Republicans or Democrats, that Israel does have a right to exist, and indeed unfortunately that's what's at stake. And while we want to encourage the Palestinians and Israel to sit down and negotiate their differences, we've found that with Yasser Arafat being the primary spokesman and leader of the Palestinians that he's an unreliable leader.

VERJEE: But that doesn't make it a non-issue, then, does it? I mean, it's a serious issue in the campaign.

(CROSSTALK)

CORNYN: Well, I think if anyone had a perfect answer they would have come up with it by now. But what we need is a commitment, as I think we do have on a bipartisan basis. I don't think...

VERJEE: Susan Rice, does the Kerry campaign have an answer?

RICE: Well, first of all, we agree with Senator Cornyn that the United States has to remain absolutely firmly committed to the security of Israel, our strongest friend and ally in the Middle East. I think the difference is that John Kerry would not take two or three years on the sidelines and not play the traditional leadership role that the United States has in involving itself in trying to resolve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

We'd also take a tougher line on Saudi Arabia, which has been a major financier of terrorists operating against Israel. So there are some differences. But as the senator said, there's some similarities, too.

COLEMAN: The last thing the Israelis want is U.S.-Israel relations being subjected to a global test. What the Israelis want, clearly, is a very firm approach.

You know, they've got to proceed with the Gaza withdrawal. That has to happen. The Israelis and Palestinians have to in the end have a separate state. The president has recognized that.

(CROSSTALK)

CORZINE: John Kerry is not speaking about a global test with regard to the security of Israel. No one is saying that we will do anything other than stand firmly with Israel and support the protection, the right of self-defense. And to try to say that somehow or another we're going do subject American or Israeli foreign policy or actions to a global test is just a diversion away, a total diversion away from reality.

CLARKE: That's totally false.

(CROSSTALK)

VERJEE: Hang on.

Go ahead.

RICE: That's totally false. That's George Bush's distortion of what John Kerry said.

There's no such thing as a Kerry doctrine. John Kerry's been very clear. He will never give any country a veto over our national security. He will not subject our foreign policy to any sort of test. Because George Bush has such an unfortunate record to run on in Iraq and in the war on terrorism, he's distorting John Kerry's record.

BLITZER: All right. Hold on. Hold on a second.

I want to bring in Jim Zogby. We've invited him. He's out in the audience. A long time involved in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, a leader in the Arab-American community.

Why isn't this issue at all, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, the so-called roadmap, Jim, an issue in this campaign?

JAMES ZOGBY, ARAB AMERICAN INSTITUTE: Frankly, I don't understand. I think the American people would welcome it. I think Arab-Americans and American Jews would welcome it. And I know that the world would welcome it.

The total disconnect between the conversation we've just listened to and reality is so striking. And I know viewers all over the world right now are just scratching their heads and saying, is Israel more secure? What about the roadmap? Why can't America be more balanced? Why can't it protect its allies and its interests in the Middle East? So much is at stake, and yet we're going back and forth here about who's the best friend of Israel. And neither side are the best friend of Israel because more Israelis have died in the last four years than in any previous four-year period because we didn't pay any attention at all.

And the Arab world today has no respect for America. Our numbers, already low, have dropped to single-digit favorable ratings. Why? Because our policy is unfair toward Palestinians and our leadership just doesn't get it. We've failed.

BLITZER: All right.

(APPLAUSE)

BLITZER: I want to let Norm Coleman, Senator Coleman respond. But stick around. I want to ask Jim Zogby another question.

Go ahead.

COLEMAN: The fact is the president has laid out a roadmap, but a precondition, Jim, to that roadmap is an end to terrorism. That's the first case.

The goal is a goal of a Palestinian state and Israel state living side by side. But you've got to accept the existence of Israel, and there has to be an end to terrorism before you can move to the next step. I actually have hope, by the way, that the Gaza withdrawal will set in play some greater opportunities in the Middle East.

BLITZER: Jim Zogby, why is it that if you take a look at the past 15 years or so, U.S. policy around the world, every single time the United States has gone to war and risked U.S. treasure and U.S. lives, it's been to help a Muslim country, whether to liberate Kuwait or Somalia or Bosnia or Kosovo, Afghanistan, Iraq. And as a result of that, why is there so little appreciation of what the United States has done in Democratic and Republican administrations throughout the Arab world and the Muslim world?

ZOGBY: Frankly, you know, when we've polled on that, Wolf, that's not true. There is a difference in our attitude toward the Israeli-Palestinian issue and what we've done in Bosnia and Kosovo, what we've tried to do in other parts of the Arab -- liberating Kuwait, for example.

Where the problem is, is the core issue as understood by most people in the Arab world. And that is the fact that we've ignored the Palestinians.

We have a double double standard. We have too much compassion for Israel, none for Palestinians, too much pressure on Palestinians and none on Israel.

If you balance that out a little bit, I think we'd be a whole lot better off, and the region would look at us as being a credible negotiator. They don't look at us as credible. You mentioned the roadmap. We put it on the table, and we dropped it.

President Bush said Ariel Sharon and Abu Mazen were partners and he'd send Condoleezza Rice to the region. She never went. And the result is people just continue to die and people look at us as firing blanks, not serious.

CORZINE: And Arafat got rid of Abu Mazen. So we don't have a reliable partner.

ZOGBY: Actually, (UNINTELLIGIBLE) said that Ariel Sharon got rid of him. Because who did he give the prisoners to? He didn't give prisoners to Abu Mazen. He gave them to Hezbollah in Lebanon, and everybody understood what that meant.

VERJEE: OK. OK. Let's get to a couple of issues here that have been raised by this panel and some that you've raised.

The first, Susan Rice, you brought it up. And you talked about Saudi Arabia, the United Status's relationship with Saudi Arabia.

Is Saudi Arabia a friend or a foe? That's been an issue that's been in the media. That's been something that's really been debated.

What does the United States do in a situation where a country like Saudi Arabia is an ally but it is non-democratic? The United States then supports a regime that is non-democratic. What kind of signal does that send to the greater Middle East, to the Arab world? What do you do with the ally problem that the U.S. has with a country like Saudi Arabia -- Tori Clark.

CLARKE: Well, I reject the premise in your question. We don't have an ally problem. We've got scores and scores of allies around the world who are with us in the war on terror.

Is everybody exactly like us? Of course not. Does everybody do everything exactly the way we would like? Of course not.

VERJEE: But the issue is...

CLARKE: But you have to -- the issue is you've got to make a hard decision. And you've got to say to yourself, is the greater goal fighting this war on terror, in which extremists want to wipe out millions of people around the world? Is the greater goal worth working together and using that engagement to put pressure on some of these allies to try to improve some of the conditions...

VERJEE: Hold on.

CLARKE: Let me finish. No, no. You hold on. Let me finish the sentence.

VERJEE: Can you concede...

CLARKE: Let me finish the sentence. VERJEE: ... that the perception is something that is a negative one, where you -- where...

CLARKE: The perception...

VERJEE: ... much of the Arab world, the Muslim world looks at a relationship like the U.S. and Saudi Arabia and says, why is it that the U.S. is supporting a country that is so non-democratic but yet talks about democracy? And that's -- and that's an important issue that is raised in the Muslim and Arab world.

CLARKE: It is an important issue. And we couldn't have done what we did in Iraq if we didn't have the support of many of the countries in that region directly around Iraq. We could not have done that physically without the support of many, many Muslims.

BLITZER: All right.

CLARKE: So I think you made broad, sweeping generalizations which really do a disservice to the debate.

BLITZER: Let's go to the audience again.

Go ahead, please, with your question.

QUESTION: Hello. My name is David Butler (ph), and I'm a graduate student at George Washington University.

Western-style democracy took hundreds of years to develop in Europe and America, arguably starting with the signature of the Magna Carta in the 13th century. Why does the administration believe that American-style democracy can successfully take root in just a few short years in a region of the world that is so culturally and religiously different than the west?

BLITZER: All right. Let's have Senator Cornyn and then Senator Bayh weigh in.

CORNYN: Well, I don't think anyone has advocated American-style democracy in the Middle East. Prime Minister Allawi, for one, said that freedom and aspirations toward democracy are not strictly something that are an American preserve. And I don't think we should think anyone beneath the dignity of self-government and considered to govern as we have in this country.

That's what the president believes. That's what we have fought in part to preserve, as well as to defend ourselves from subsequent attacks.

You know, we talk about whether we're safer today than we were before Iraq. Well, the 9/11 Commission concluded that we are safer but we're not yet completely safe. And so the work needs to go forward.

BLITZER: All right -- Senator Bayh. BAYH: These countries need to establish governments for themselves that are authentic and legitimate within the context of their own societies. In the case -- if they're going to endure. In the case of Iraq, it needs to be under a constitution that provides for some religious diversity because you have separation between the Sunni and the Shia there, some autonomy for the Kurds if it's going to be a lasting government.

And I think what we're finding here is a couple of things. So it shouldn't be American style. It needs to be legitimate and authentic within their own culture.

The two things that we're finding are first -- and the first is rather ironic. Nation building is hard. Overthrowing a regime is difficult, but pales in comparison to trying to reconstitute a society. This is ironic because the current administration criticized President Clinton for his reasonably modest efforts toward nation building, and now has embarked upon nation building on a scale that we've not seen before.

BLITZER: All right.

BAYH: The final thing I'd say, Wolf, is you've got to have your plans be consistent with your aspirations. And I find myself -- Tori mentioned Joe Lieberman. I happen to agree with Joe Lieberman. It's a good thing that Saddam Hussein is gone.

But the separate question that I think you were getting to a little bit later is, have we handled the aftermath effectively? Effectively? And I find myself in agreement with Dick Lugar, Chuck Hagel and others that, no, we have not handled the aftermath of the war effectively.

CORNYN: We can't handle it with mixed messages by saying it's the wrong war at the wrong place at the wrong time while saying that this administration has failed to get additional nations supporting this effort.

BAYH: It's also possible to say that it's a good thing that Saddam is gone and that the Taliban is gone but also to say that it has not been handled as well as it should have been, putting the entire enterprise at risk needlessly.

BLITZER: Unfortunately we're going to take another quick break, but we have plenty more time for all of us to thrash out what's going on. The first half of our town hall is over. We've still got a long way to go.

VERJEE: When we come back, America's other interests. We're going to talk about Sudan, Iran, North Korea. Some of those issues have already been brought up by the audience. We're going to have more issues brought up from our audience here at George Washington University when we come back.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK) ANNOUNCER: Once again, live from the campus of George Washington University and America's capital, here's your hosts, CNN's Zain Verjee and Wolf Blitzer.

BLITZER: And once again, welcome back to our town hall on American foreign policy. We're calling this town hall "The American Agenda." I'm here with our panel, my colleague Zain Verjee is down with the audience. Let's get to a sensitive issue before we go down to Zain and she can bring in some members of this audience.

Senator Corzine and the panel, does the United States only have national security interests when it deploys troops around the world, or should there be a moral or humanitarian consideration for deployment of troops, and I'm referring to genocide unfolding in Sudan right now?

CORZINE: Well, there are a million-four people in camps, estimates of a hundred thousand plus of Sudanese have died. Everyone acknowledges that it's probably the single largest humanitarian crisis in the world. The United States has done much with words and has had good deeds with regard to humanitarian help, but we have not taken the leadership to do what we're doing in other parts of the world by using our resources to fund the African Union to put peacekeepers on the ground.

And we have not taken strong enough stance in my view with regard to sanctions and other things that would move the Sudanese government to deal with the fact that there is this great crisis building and brewing. And by the way, it's a crisis not only immediately humanitarian-wise, but when you put a million-four people in a bunch of camps where they are going to be disenfranchised from our regular life, a hopeful life, you are creating a brewing ground for terrorism. Osama bin Laden came out of Sudan, and I think this is one of the gravest mistakes this administration...

BLITZER: Let me let Senator Coleman weigh in.

COLEMAN: By the way, it goes back to that first question about things that happen outside this country have a direct effect on the security of this country. Jon has been one of the great champions about Sudan. Colin Powell uttered the magic words, "genocide." This country's been at the forefront saying genocide is taking place.

We should have done something about Rwanda. But the fact is we put -- we have a $15 billion commitment on global AIDS, we have a Millennium Challenge account to help nations move forward to democracy. We are rallying the world around Sudan. That's part of our role as the greatest strength and the greatest democracy on this Earth. We have to do this. This president recognizes that. And I think that's why Americans are responding to his leadership in terms of these...

BLITZER: I want to get back to this issue about deploying military forces to save people's lives, even when there isn't necessarily a national security issue. Here's a poll, and I'm going to let you weigh in, everybody weigh in. "Should the United States take the leading role in solving the world's problems?"

In 2000, when we asked this question, the CNN/Gallup poll, 41 percent said yes. Now it's up to 52 percent. I'm going to go to Zain in the audience, but briefly weigh in, Senator Bayh.

BAYH: Wolf, I think we are strongest and our power is most effective when it is also buttressed not only by our interests but by our moral underpinnings as well because in the long run we're not going to be able to kill all of the bad guys as much as we try. We also have to win hearts and minds. And that's why it's important that -- and it deals with Zain's question about the perception of hypocrisy.

It's when we stand against genocide, we stand for freedom, that we begin to change some of the attitudes around the world that currently have turned against us.

BLITZER: All right. Let's go to the audience -- Zain.

VERJEE: Wolf, Gerald Post is with George Washington University, has an issue that he wants to raise about Sudan.

QUESTION: The dreadful conflict in the Sudan as it plays out desperately requires intervention from the outside. With reference to the United States' role in intervention and in particular reference to its relationship to the U.N., I'd like to ask the question, how can we intervene given how desperately stretched our resources already are? In reality what role can the United States play in general and in particular with reference to the military?

BLITZER: Senator...

VERJEE: Senator Corzine?

BLITZER: No, let's let Senator Cornyn respond on this one, then we'll let the other side.

CORNYN: Well, I think you've put your finger on a challenge. I'm struck, while we all agree that we do have an important role to play in terms of humanitarian efforts around the world, hopefully in conjunction with the United Nations, and we know the United Nations can play that role, whereas perhaps they've been found wanting when it comes to enforcing its own resolutions.

But how can we stand by and say Iraq was the wrong war at the wrong place at the wrong time when Saddam killed between 300,000 and 400,000 people who lie in mass graves in that country and say we're so concerned about Sudan, as we should be, but we're not concerned about those 300,000 or 400,000 people.

BLITZER: Well, what about, Senator -- and I want to let Senator Corzine weigh in. Should the U.S. deploy troops when there isn't a, quote, "national security interest," but it's a humanitarian or moral concern? Yes or no?

CORNYN: I think we should not unless we can -- unless there is a national security interest shown. What we should do is support the United Nations and go for that multilateral humanitarian effort that the United Nations is actually pretty good at.

BLITZER: Quickly, Senator Corzine.

CORZINE: I totally disagree. When you have at risk a million or more people, the kind of genocide that was going on in Rwanda, to have America abstain from expressing its moral responsibility in the world is just...

BLITZER: So you would deploy troops?

CORZINE: I think there are other solutions in Sudan. There's a very clear solution. The African Union is prepared to send troops. It doesn't have the logistical supply, doesn't have the financial resources. And this administration is not willing to ask the Congress to make sure that we have peacekeepers on the ground.

BLITZER: Torie Clarke is going to weigh in, Susan Rice is going to weigh in, but let's go back to Zain. She has a guest.

VERJEE: Yes, I'm with Karl Inderfurth (ph). And I want to talk a little bit about the role of the United Nations. You have a question on that?

QUESTION: Well, I do. The U.N. has obviously a very important role -- has an important role to play with Sudan and other issues. My question is do the panelists believe that our relations with the U.N. are damaged at this time and indeed in need of repair and how important will the U.N. be in a second Bush administration or a first Kerry administration?

VERJEE: Susan Rice first and...

BLITZER: Karl Inderfurth is a former assistant secretary of state for South Asian affairs during the Clinton administration, a colleague of Susan Rice. Susan, you're going to respond in a second, but Torie, why don't you handle that? I know you're not a formal representative of the Bush administration or the Bush campaign, but go ahead.

CLARKE: OK. But I want to go back to Sudan first because no less than "The New York Times," which is no big fan of the Bush administration, has editorialized repeatedly and commended the administration for its efforts on the Sudan. And before people just blithely start thinking about committing troops, just in the last 48 hours, the Sudan, Libya, and a handful of other countries in the region flatly rejected foreign troops coming in there.

There are plenty of ways to deal with this in a multilateral fashion and the United States does have a leadership role there. In the United Nations the United States also has a leadership role, and has exhausted enormous, enormous energies working in the multilateral fronts whenever possible. Worked with and through the United Nations as long as we possibly, possibly could before we made the decision to go into Iraq. It is important. You've got to use the multilateral organizations. To help them be effective they've got to live up to their commitments. When they say to Saddam Hussein, you must do this, this, and this by this time, and they said that for 12 years and he continues to snub his nose and worse at them...

BLITZER: Susan Rice.

CLARKE: No, let me finish. They never lived up to their own resolutions and what they said they were going to do in their own resolutions, and it loses some viability because of that.

BLITZER: Susan, you speak for the Kerry campaign.

RICE: First of all, Senator Cornyn, the reason the president gave for going into Iraq were not the mass graves. They were weapons of mass destruction. So there is no contradiction. John Kerry has been very clear for months. This is a genocide in Sudan. It's not simply enough for Secretary Powell or Colin -- or President Bush to call it a genocide, and then take no action.

They have taken no action to stop this genocide. And tens of thousands of people have died. The U.N. estimated 70,000 have died already. USAID administrator for President Bush said if we don't act, up to a million people could die.

In Rwanda the president said when he ran first for president in 2000 that he would not have intervened to stop the genocide in Rwanda. Now we're learning that a genocide happening on his watch he also won't act to halt. There are concrete steps that we can take. We should be sanctioning Sudan. We could be putting capital market sanctions on Sudan. We could do what we did with Apartheid, South Africa.

Even if we can't get a U.N. Security Council resolution, we can work with our allies to sanction Sudan and we can support, as Senator Corzine said, the African Union.

BLITZER: I want to go back to Zain, but just a quick point and then we'll let Senator Coleman weigh in. You and I went with President Clinton to Rwanda and Burundi after...

RICE: Rwanda, not Burundi.

BLITZER: Right. To Rwanda, where there was genocide.

RICE: Where President Clinton apologized...

BLITZER: Where President Clinton acknowledged that he got the reports coming into the Oval Office and he failed to act.

RICE: And that was wrong. And that's precisely why the United States shouldn't make the same mistake under President Bush.

COLEMAN: Two things. One about the United Nations. The United Nations has a credibility problem with us and the world. I'm chairman of the permanent subcommittee investigation. We're doing the Oil-for- Food investigation. We know at least $10 billion maybe $20 billion that Saddam Hussein got that he stole from that program.

The United Nations did nothing to deal with it. Savan, the person in the United Nations responsible for overseeing it, has been identified as getting oil vouchers from Saddam.

The United Nations has a serious credibility problem with the rest of the world. France, Russia, many of the folks involved in those countries were receiving millions of dollars from Saddam.

So we will work with the United Nations, but they have a serious credibility problem they have to deal with. Last comment though about Rwanda and Sudan. John Kerry has been in the United States Senate for 20 years. He's on the Foreign Relations Committee. I didn't hear him raise his voice about Rwanda. He hasn't been involved in any of the discussions that we've had about Sudan. He simply hasn't been there to raise his voice to say we need to do something.

RICE: John Kerry has been talking about Sudan since April. He called it genocide in July.

COLEMAN: He was in the Senate during Rwanda. I don't remember John Kerry leading the charge to do anything about Rwanda.

RICE: John Kerry was not commander in chief in 1994. George Bush is commander in chief today. He leads our nation, and he leads the world. He has talked about compassionate conservatism. And yet he's given Sudan only words and no action.

BLITZER: I'm going let everybody weigh in. But let's go take another question from the audience -- Zain.

VERJEE: Jay has a question. What is it?

QUESTION: Hi. My question is what does John Kerry mean by America needs to pass a global test? Is he more concerned with America's protection or America's popularity?

BLITZER: That's a good question. And let's let a Democratic senator from Indiana, that would be Senator Bayh, why don't you answer it?

BAYH: I think what Senator Kerry was attempting to say was that the way in which the Bush administration went about gathering support for our effort in Iraq was not the most effective way to go about getting the kind of support that we needed to be as successful as possible there. I don't think he meant to say that there was some sort of test that we had to pass. I don't think he believes that's the case. And it's not the case.

BLITZER: Because there has been a lot of confusion. And Susan, you can speak directly for the Kerry campaign. When he said there must be a global test, what did he mean?

RICE: First of all, that sentence has totally been taken out of context and distorted. The preceding sentence was that he will never give any nation or any institution a veto over our national security but that when we act that action needs to be consistent with the facts and the truth and we need to bring the American people along with us, and if we're going to sustain international support, the international community has to see the rationale for our action.

What President Bush did in Iraq, it was take the country and the international community to war on the basis of false intelligence. He has never acknowledged to the international community that that was a mistake. And as a consequence we are now in a place where the pre- emption option is desperately undermined because we don't have solid intelligence.

BLITZER: I'm going to let Senator Coleman respond to that. Here's a question, though, that we asked at our CNN/Gallup poll. "Should the president pay more attention to the views of other countries?" Sixty-five percent of the American public, a decisive majority, said yes, 27 percent said no.

COLEMAN: I think, by the way, paying attention is important. There's no question about that. I think the president has. The president has assembled a coalition of over 30 nations which Senator Kerry has called the coalition of the bribed and the coerced. What's fascinating is we keep focusing on the president. It's his -- he's the commander in chief. We've got to look at Senator Kerry.

In 1991 when there was a coalition that Senator Kerry has lauded, a broad international coalition, Senator Kerry voted against going after Saddam after Saddam was gobbling up Kuwait. So I mean, we can talk about all the words you want to talk about but you've got to look at Senator Kerry's record, a 20-year record of simply being wrong on these kind of foreign policy issues.

RICE: The fact is President Bush took our nation to war on the basis of false intelligence which he then further distorted. He took us to a place on the basis of weapons of mass destruction that didn't exist. He took us to war on the basis of a link between Saddam Hussein and al Qaeda which doesn't exist. And he says if he had it to do all over again he'd do it exactly the same way.

Well, I think the American people want to know what would we have been doing if we had done things differently in the meantime about Iran, about North Korea, which have serious...

COLEMAN: Senator Kerry was on the Intelligence Committee. Senator Kerry was one of the champions about taking down Saddam before that. He voted for the war. And then when he had a chance to support the funding of the war he voted against the war because Howard Dean was making hay in the Democratic primary. So the president said...

(CROSSTALK)

RICE: ... true distortions.

BLITZER: All right. Very quickly because we're going to take a break. CLARKE: Facts and truth. Four dozen countries, four dozen publicly supported going to war with Iraq before the start of the war. Another 10 or so said privately we're with you but we can't do it publicly for domestic reasons. Those are facts. That's the truth. Some 30 countries are in Iraq with us now doing the hard work. And it is a disservice to them. It is an insult to them to say that the United States went this alone or is going it alone. That's an insult.

BLITZER: We've got to take another quick commercial break, but we're going to keep all of you standing by. We'll take a quick break. More from George Washington University here in Washington, D.C. when we come back.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

VERJEE: Welcome back to "American Agenda." We're discussing U.S. foreign policy at George Washington University. I'm with Marina from the from the Elliott School. You have a question about Russia.

QUESTION: Yes, we've talked about hypocrisy in the Arab world. But meanwhile in Russia they're continuing human rights violations, energy issues, and hostile interference in the affairs of former Soviet republics. The Bush administration has refused to criticize Russia on this in any meaningful way. Why has that happened, and how will the next president manage our relationship with Russia?

VERJEE: Senator Coleman?

COLEMAN: It's fascinating. On one hand the president is criticized for being bold and being aggressive in our foreign policy, and then in another instance being criticized because we're not doing enough in Sudan, we're not doing enough in Russia.

Two things, by the way. First of all, it would be inappropriate right now for the president to be talking about those things in light of what has happened in Beslan. It would almost be like after 9/11 folks coming after the United States and criticizing us for whatever we're doing.

Right now, right this period of time what Russia needs to know, even though we have concerns about many of the things you've talked about, what they have to know is we will work with them, that we have the same resolve to defeat international terrorism.

As Steve Covey, the author once said, you've got the main thing is to keep the main thing the main thing. And that is the war on terror right now. Other stuff has to be dealt with. The main thing is the war on terror. Talk to the moms and dads of those 400 kids who were slaughtered in Beslan about some of the issues you've just raised. They'll say deal with the security issue first.

BLITZER: All right, Zain, I just want to let Senator Corzine respond to that because he's got I think a different perspective.

CORZINE: That is exactly the point that I think we've been trying to make, that John Kerry has been making over and over. The main thing is the war on terrorism. And we should have pursued those who struck America, those that killed 3,000 Americans, 700 in my state, 10 in my home town, I know them personally.

And the idea that we diverted away is a major catastrophic mistake, and it has allowed for the world not to be safer because we've had Beslan, we've had Madrid, we've had all kinds of terrorist attacks, and 1,100 of our men and women have died in Iraq.

And we're creating a situation that has taken our mind off the ball. And we say it's for democracy, and then we don't...

COLEMAN: Jon, did we create Beslan? Did we create Spain?

CORZINE: ... before Beslan -- we didn't create it. What I am saying is we took our eye off the war on terrorism...

COLEMAN: And there is a...

CORZINE: And it is not a creation -- we took our eye off of it.

COLEMAN: ... fundamental difference of opinion here.

CORNYN: Senator Corzine I think makes the point exactly. This is a global war on terrorism. This is no diversion to go to Iraq to take Saddam down after we were attacked by the Taliban and al Qaeda -- or al Qaeda operating in Afghanistan. We'd already been attacked, in 1993 at the World Trade Center. We'd been attacked, our embassies in Africa, the USS Cole, the Khobar barracks towers in Saudi Arabia. How anyone can say that going to Iraq is a diversion from the war on terrorism, which should take place only in Afghanistan, has ignored the reality you just...

BLITZER: Hold off. I want to just get back to the audience because we've got a lot of people in this room itching to ask a question.

Go ahead, Zain.

VERJEE: They definitely are. Yuri Tadesa (ph) is with me, and he wants to address an issue that we discussed a little bit earlier about moral leadership of the United States. What's your question?

QUESTION: While I don't believe that we should seek approval from the rest of the world when and if national security is in question, we must remain mindful that the U.S. is not an island on its own. We live in a global village. What must we do to earn back the respect and the moral leadership we had once?

BLITZER: All right. Let's let Torie Clarke weigh in. And I'll reframe the question.

CLARKE: Sure.

BLITZER: Is it more important for the United States to be loved around the world or feared around the world? CLARKE: It's more important to be respected. And we are. And we're respected by those four dozen countries that went with us into Iraq and the 30 that are there now. And we're respected by many, many people around the world representing several dozen countries that are involved in the war on terror.

And as the senator said, it is a global war on terror. It is something that affects every continent. In every country people are working with us in the global war on terror, not against us. And that is because they do respect our aspirations.

BAYH: I would answer that question a little bit differently. I think all of the public opinion polls Jim Zogby referred to around the world do show that we have suffered a lack of -- suffered a loss of support in many, many important regions. And the way to gain that back, I would say to the questioner, is to prove that when we act to protect ourselves we do it for a larger purpose than just our own self-interest.

The spread of freedom, the spread of democracy, those things that can have universal appeal in an authentic way in these individual societies, and it does involve -- there is some trade-off in the short run, some tension between security and freedom, but it requires, whether it's Beslan or 9/11 or other contexts, as we're standing up to the terrorists and doing whatever it takes to stop them, at the same time we need to be honest with our allies, whether it's Saudi Arabia or Russia, and say look, you need to do better internally because in the long run that's how you win the war on terror.

BLITZER: Senator Coleman?

COLEMAN: I'm in total agreement with what Senator Bayh just said. And that's the president's vision. He believes in the spread of democracy. He believes if we spread democracy to Afghanistan, if we spread democracy to Iraq, and ultimately Saudi Arabia being more Democratic, that that will take place. And the reality is, though, we can't always then defer to France, we can't always defer to Germany or even at times the United Nations if they're wrong. Syria is on the Human Rights Commission of the United Nations.

Wolf, I just -- we're not talking about deferring to anybody. We need to do whatever it takes to protect our own national security interests. But obviously, something is not working well when Jim Zogby reports the results that he's reported. Obviously, our good intentions have not been perceived correctly by many parts of the rest of the world. And in the long run we need to correct that for our own self-interest.

BLITZER: Ladies and gentlemen, unfortunately, we are all out of time, but this has been an excellent discussion. I want to thank all of our guests here at George Washington University. I want to thank the George Washington University for the hospitality, the friendship. Thank all of our panel. On behalf of everyone here at CNN, especially Zain Verjee and me, I'm Wolf Blitzer in Washington. Good-bye for now.

TO ORDER A VIDEO OF THIS TRANSCRIPT, PLEASE CALL 800-CNN-NEWS OR USE OUR SECURE ONLINE ORDER FORM LOCATED AT www.fdch.com


Aired October 19, 2004 - 12:00   ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
WOLF BLITZER, CNN ANCHOR (voice-over): George W. Bush versus John F. Kerry. Not in a generation have Americans been this divided over who should be their next president.

ZAIN VERJEE, CNN ANCHOR (voice-over): Two men with sharply contrasting visions of how America should lead on Iraq and elsewhere offering up a future borne out of the tragedy of recent past.

GEORGE W. BUSH, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: After September the 11th, America had to assess every potential threat in a new light. Our nation awakened to even a greater danger: the prospect that terrorists who killed thousands would hijack airplanes, would kill many more with weapons of mass murder.

SEN. JOHN KERRY (D-MA), PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: Just because George Bush says that the terror is going to continue no matter what we do, just because George Bush says he can't get Europeans to be more involved, just because George Bush tells you that he's tried and it can't work, doesn't mean it can't be done.

BLITZER: The challenges, evident for all to see on the battleground that is Iraq to the potentially explosive scenarios of both Iran and North Korea, and to what some say is a monumental effort to win hearts and minds on the Arab street.

VERJEE: Now, from across the political spectrum, Americans speak out in an exclusive CNN Gallup survey on American foreign policy. And as they prepare to elect the next president, we take a closer look at where each man seeks to take his country and ultimately the world: the "American Agenda."

ANNOUNCER: And now, live from the campus of George Washington University in Washington, D.C., here's your hosts, CNN's Zain Verjee and Wolf Blitzer.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

BLITZER: And a very warm welcome to all of you who have gathered here on the campus of George Washington University, and to our viewers around the world.

VERJEE: In exactly two weeks from today, America votes. It's the first election of a U.S. president since 9/11.

BLITZER: Since then, America has gone to war in Afghanistan, in Iraq. American foreign policy has dominated the political debates here in the United States and has divided this nation.

VERJEE: We have a power panel of Democrats and Republicans here to answer questions, our questions, the questions in this town hall.

BLITZER: We're also going to reveal the results of an exclusive CNN-Gallup poll done earlier this month. One issue raised, the Bush doctrine of preemption.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

BUSH: And the people who knocked these buildings down will hear all of us soon.

BLITZER (voice-over): For President Bush, the world has not been the same since that day when 19 hijackers attacked the United States.

BUSH: September the 11th changed how America must look at the world.

BLITZER: As a result, the president made a near 180-degree turn in his world view from someone who ran in 2000 as a candidate opposed to so-called nation building around the world, to a president who's attempting to do precisely that right now in Afghanistan and Iraq. And perhaps other countries down the road.

He also came around to accept a new, more aggressive preemptive strike policy. The upshot, the United States should no longer wait to be hit. Instead, go out and kill the enemy first, even if the threat is not necessarily imminent.

BUSH: In Iraq, we saw a threat and we realized that after September the 11th we must take threats seriously before they fully materialize. Saddam Hussein now sits in a prison cell. America and the world are safer for it.

BLITZER: It's that preemptive strike policy, a centerpiece of the so-called neo-conservative advisers that has generated so much controversy in the United States...

UNIDENTIFIED GROUP: Bush and Cheney got to go, hey, hey, ho, ho.

BLITZER: ... and around the world.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

BLITZER: And let's get right to the first question on our CNN- Gallup exclusive poll. We asked this question: "Should the United States attack another country first if it thinks that country might attack the United States?" Let's show the results. Forty-one percent of the American respondents said yes, 52 percent said no.

Senator Coleman, that would seem to suggest a slight majority opposing the policy of preemptive strikes.

SEN. NORMAN COLEMAN (R), MINNESOTA: Well, you don't make foreign policy on polls. You do what you think is right for the country. This president has made that very clear.

Senator Kerry may take polls and he may go back and forth, but this is not something you do by polls. You do what you think is right. This president said he's going to protect this country, and in the end that's the right thing to do.

BLITZER: In the end, though, you have to worry about what the American public thinks. You're a member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. You're a key influence in the Republican Party. Don't you have to pay attention to the attitudes of your constituents?

COLEMAN: Well, you do pay attention, but the responsibilities of leadership is sometimes to bring people to a place they may not yet want to be. But when you get there, they say this is the right thing. Certainly an America that is safe from attack, an America that doesn't wait to be attacked, is a safer America.

VERJEE: Dr. Susan Rice, you're a senior adviser to John Kerry's foreign policy issues. You've also been a former national former National Security Council. The critical issue here a lot of people are asking is this: is America safer because of the doctrine of preemption? Is America safer because of Iraq?

DR. SUSAN RICE, KERRY CAMPAIGN ADVISER: I think unfortunately the answer to that is no. The president made a choice to divert our attention from the fight against al Qaeda and Osama bin Laden, who attacked us on September 11, to take us to a fight in Iraq where it turns out now there were no weapons of mass destruction, there were no clear links to al Qaeda.

And what we've created in Iraq is something it wasn't before, a terrorist magnet and a terrorist breeding ground. And unfortunately, this president seems to have no sense of the reality on the ground in Iraq, just what a grave mess it is, and no sense of a plan for how to secure the peace and bring our troops home in success.

BLITZER: We're going to have plenty of opportunity for everyone to weigh in. I want to immediately go to our audience.

Please identify yourself and ask your question.

QUESTION: Hi. My name is Vic Woo (ph). I'm from Stanford, California.

With Iraq and Afghanistan, the attention of the United States has been diverted away from other concerns such as North Korea, Iran, and potentially the Taiwan Strait. How will the next U.S. president juggle all these issues on the foreign policy agenda?

BLITZER: Let's ask Senator Cornyn of Texas, a member of the Foreign Relations Committee.

A simple question for you, Senator.

SEN. JOHN CORNYN (R), TEXAS: Well, you simply can't as the preeminent power in the world, economically and militarily, we have to learn to do more than talk and chew gum at the same time. In other words, we have to deal with all of these challenges. And indeed we are, just as we are dealing on six-way talks with North Korea.

We're also working with our European Union partners on dealing with the threat in Iran. As we deal with Afghanistan, with NATO there on the ground, and as we continue to deal with our coalition in Iraq. We have to be able to do all of those things.

VERJEE: In a way that is effective but makes the world safer, I think, is the key issue that we really want to get to as we continue to discuss this. Let's bring in Tori Clark, former Pentagon spokesperson.

Do you think that we are safer today? Do you think when you look at the reality of the situation in Iraq, when we hear of beheadings, when we hear of suicide bombings, when we hear of the chaos in places like the Sunni Triangle and Falluja, in Samarra, that's been reported in the news media over the weeks, do you think the doctrine of preemption is undermined?

VICTORIA CLARKE, FMR. PENTAGON SPOKESPERSON: Not at all. And I absolutely think we're safer. And if Senator Joe Lieberman were here, he would say, as he said before, we are safer, the world is a better place because Saddam Hussein is gone.

VERJEE: How can you be so sure about that?

CLARKE: Well, I've heard Senator Lieberman say it, that's how I can be so sure of that. Now, let me finish.

We are safer because we removed a very, very destabilizing force in a critical part of the world. We are safer because with the help and cooperation of dozens, dozens of countries around the world, we have killed or captured two-third of the al Qaeda leadership. We haven't been distracted from that task at all.

We've disrupted their financing, their training. We've eliminated many, many of those threats with the help and cooperation of nations around this world.

But as the senator said, it would be nice, as some people want to do, to treat these problems in a linear fashion, check a box, oh, we're done with that one, check a box, we're done with that one. That's not reality. You've got to deal with all of these fronts simultaneously, and the best way to get the bad guys is to get them before they get us.

BLITZER: All right. Everybody's going to weigh in.

Let me go to another poll because, I want Senator Corzine of New Jersey to weigh in as well. Here's a question. "Should the U.S. place more emphasis on its own safety and security or peace and stability throughout the world?" Sixty-five percent thought the United States, within the United States, 32 percent said throughout the world.

Frankly, I was a little surprised that it was only 65 percent. I assume you were as well, Senator.

SEN. JON CORZINE (D), NEW JERSEY: I would -- I think all of us sitting here who are involved in public life know protecting the American people is our number one objective, number one responsibility. So that needs to be saved. The fact is, though, that that is best done by being a leader.

We are the sole superpower. We need to use judiciously and wisely our power. We need to involve other countries and other judgments as a part of that process, always protecting ourselves first, always making sure that the American people are protected. But that is best done by reaching out.

BLITZER: And let me let Senator Evan Bayh weigh in as well. You're both a member of the Intelligence Committee and the Armed Services Committee.

The notion of these other crises that our guest in the audience asked, North Korea, Iran, the Straits of Taiwan, all of these issues critical issues. Has the Bush administration's policy of preemptive strikes undermined the U.S. ability to operate in these other areas around the world?

SEN. EVAN BAYH (D), INDIANA: Well, that's an excellent question, Wolf. Our military is stretched almost to the breaking point today. You see Reserve units being called up, National Guardsmen having their tours of duty extended. And one of my real concerns is that, if we were to have an unexpected development in Iran, on the Korean Peninsula, where would we get the forces to deal with that?

So if you're talking about preemption, I'd say a couple of things. That always has to be an option on the table. But you have to exercise that very selectively because we don't have the ability to invade every country that poses a potential problem to us. And the final thing I'd say is it really places a premium upon accurate intelligence, because the consequences of error are so great, unnecessary war, that you really have to be sure that the information you're acting on is accurate as possible.

VERJEE: We have another question from our audience.

Please go ahead.

QUESTION: My name is Audra (ph). I'm with the Rand Corporation.

This administration seems to envision a secular democracy for Iraq, but not all of the people feel that way. And I wanted to know if we should be prepared to accept a democracy with religious elements.

VERJEE: Senator Norm Coleman?

COLEMAN: Yes...

BLITZER: And before you respond, Senator Coleman, you saw what the president said, the interview he conducted yesterday with The Associated Press. He specifically said, "If that's what the people of Iraq want, if they democratically elect a fundamentalist Islamic government, that's democracy."

COLEMAN: I just want to quickly respond to the last question, because it's not inconsistent to say that we'll deal with dangers in the world and protect America at home. In fact, Pakistan today, and -- they're working with us in the fight against terrorism. Afghanistan is no longer the home of the Taliban. Libya is out of the atomic weapons game. So the fact is we are safer because we are addressing some of these issues in other parts of the world.

Beyond that, the president believes in democracy. Democracy is less apt to send suicide terrorists against us and against other countries. And so in the end, the people of Iraq will choose their fate. There's no question about that. And we'll be prepared to accept that.

But, you know, we've ignored what happened in Afghanistan last week. First time in 5,000 years they've had elections.

BLITZER: We've only been on the air for a few minutes. Give us some time.

(LAUGHTER)

BLITZER: Well, I think the world at large has ignored that. The fact is democracy is taking hold, and it's a wonderful thing. And those people who are so pessimistic about it I think are simply wrong, that there's great opportunity. The president recognizes that, we will see that in Iraq when elections are held in January.

VERJEE: Is it enough to call it a democracy if somebody gets to vote? If there's no security in the country, the economic situation is questionable in the country, if people can't buy food, if people can't buy fuel, you can't walk the streets, is it enough to say that's it, we did it, it was a success, it's a democracy?

Susan Rice.

RICE: I think that democracy is something that requires many things to reinforce it. Obviously, you need freedom and the opportunity to vote. You need Democratic institutions which are sustainable.

Right now, they're very fragile in Afghanistan. The government in Kabul does not yet really control the vast territory of the country.

Yes, of course you need economic development to reinforce Democratic progress. So all of these things have to go together. And unfortunately, as you suggested, as laudatory as the election was last week, the fact is that the security situation on the ground is very bad.

Seventy-five percent of the world's heroin supply is now coming out of Afghanistan. It is still a very, very unstable situation. BLITZER: It's bad. I think everybody agrees it's not as good as it should be. But if you compare what's in Afghanistan today to what was the case three years ago, when the Taliban...

RICE: There's no doubt.

BLITZER: ... ruled that country, when women had absolutely no rights whatsoever, where al Qaeda had training facilities all over the place, there's been a dramatic -- when you see 10 million people lining up to vote, that's a pretty dramatic improvement.

RICE: There's no question that we're better off in Afghanistan. The issue is, had we stayed in Afghanistan, if we'd not diverted our resources, our intelligence asset, our Special Forces, if we'd finished the job there, committed -- fulfilled our commitment, which the president made to put in place a Marshall Plan for Afghanistan, which we haven't delivered on, if we'd continued to press the fight against al Qaeda and Osama bin Laden, would we be better off than we were having diverted our attention to Iraq and let Iran and North Korea, two of the countries in the president's axis of evil, so-called axis of evil, that actually had weapons of mass destruction not develop their...

CLARKE: Wolf, I've got to stop this, because as somebody who was there when we were in Afghanistan, we continue to be in Afghanistan -- the finance minister from Afghanistan was here a couple weeks ago thanking and commending the United States for sticking with it even though some other people have lost the attention. As a matter of fact, the force levels in Afghanistan went up by several thousand...

RICE: Just recently, Tori.

CLARKE: No, no. Went up as we were going into Iraq. At that time went up. And I'm so bemused when I hear people so critical of these incredible people in Afghanistan.

BLITZER: But...

CLARKE: Wait -- these incredible people in Iraq, and our expectations for those countries. Look at what this country went through during and after the revolution. Look at what it went through. The revolution was...

BLITZER: We're going to pick up all this. Hold on, guys. We're going to pick up all this.

We have more questions from our people here in the audience. We have a lot more to go through. So stand by.

Afghanistan, did the U.S. have enough troops on the ground to get the mission done, to find Osama bin Laden, to capture and kill him? We'll take a quick break.

VERJEE: We will. Iraq clearly dominating this presidential season. But there's plenty more to debate in our town hall, as Wolf pointed out. BLITZER: When we come back, we'll also focus in on another issue, Israel. Hopes for a future Palestine.

VERJEE: Plus, the hearts and minds of the Arab and Muslim world. Is American strategy failing? We'll discuss that when we come back.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

VERJEE: Welcome back to the "American Agenda."

In the Middle East, there's a roadmap for peace, an initiative to outline steps toward security for Israel and for a state for the Palestinians. But amid the ongoing fighting there's little progress down that road.

BLITZER: And in our new CNN/Gallup survey conducted for this town hall, we asked, "Whose side has the United States generally taken in the Middle East?" No great surprise here, 58 percent of the respondents said Israel's side, 30 percent said neither. Just a tiny fraction said the Palestinian side.

VERJEE: Senator Cornyn, why is it that the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, something that really resonates, strikes at the heart of the Arab Muslim world, doesn't play a major role in this campaign? We're not hearing it as a major issue. Why?

CORNYN: Well, I think we all recognize, whether we're Republicans or Democrats, that Israel does have a right to exist, and indeed unfortunately that's what's at stake. And while we want to encourage the Palestinians and Israel to sit down and negotiate their differences, we've found that with Yasser Arafat being the primary spokesman and leader of the Palestinians that he's an unreliable leader.

VERJEE: But that doesn't make it a non-issue, then, does it? I mean, it's a serious issue in the campaign.

(CROSSTALK)

CORNYN: Well, I think if anyone had a perfect answer they would have come up with it by now. But what we need is a commitment, as I think we do have on a bipartisan basis. I don't think...

VERJEE: Susan Rice, does the Kerry campaign have an answer?

RICE: Well, first of all, we agree with Senator Cornyn that the United States has to remain absolutely firmly committed to the security of Israel, our strongest friend and ally in the Middle East. I think the difference is that John Kerry would not take two or three years on the sidelines and not play the traditional leadership role that the United States has in involving itself in trying to resolve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

We'd also take a tougher line on Saudi Arabia, which has been a major financier of terrorists operating against Israel. So there are some differences. But as the senator said, there's some similarities, too.

COLEMAN: The last thing the Israelis want is U.S.-Israel relations being subjected to a global test. What the Israelis want, clearly, is a very firm approach.

You know, they've got to proceed with the Gaza withdrawal. That has to happen. The Israelis and Palestinians have to in the end have a separate state. The president has recognized that.

(CROSSTALK)

CORZINE: John Kerry is not speaking about a global test with regard to the security of Israel. No one is saying that we will do anything other than stand firmly with Israel and support the protection, the right of self-defense. And to try to say that somehow or another we're going do subject American or Israeli foreign policy or actions to a global test is just a diversion away, a total diversion away from reality.

CLARKE: That's totally false.

(CROSSTALK)

VERJEE: Hang on.

Go ahead.

RICE: That's totally false. That's George Bush's distortion of what John Kerry said.

There's no such thing as a Kerry doctrine. John Kerry's been very clear. He will never give any country a veto over our national security. He will not subject our foreign policy to any sort of test. Because George Bush has such an unfortunate record to run on in Iraq and in the war on terrorism, he's distorting John Kerry's record.

BLITZER: All right. Hold on. Hold on a second.

I want to bring in Jim Zogby. We've invited him. He's out in the audience. A long time involved in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, a leader in the Arab-American community.

Why isn't this issue at all, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, the so-called roadmap, Jim, an issue in this campaign?

JAMES ZOGBY, ARAB AMERICAN INSTITUTE: Frankly, I don't understand. I think the American people would welcome it. I think Arab-Americans and American Jews would welcome it. And I know that the world would welcome it.

The total disconnect between the conversation we've just listened to and reality is so striking. And I know viewers all over the world right now are just scratching their heads and saying, is Israel more secure? What about the roadmap? Why can't America be more balanced? Why can't it protect its allies and its interests in the Middle East? So much is at stake, and yet we're going back and forth here about who's the best friend of Israel. And neither side are the best friend of Israel because more Israelis have died in the last four years than in any previous four-year period because we didn't pay any attention at all.

And the Arab world today has no respect for America. Our numbers, already low, have dropped to single-digit favorable ratings. Why? Because our policy is unfair toward Palestinians and our leadership just doesn't get it. We've failed.

BLITZER: All right.

(APPLAUSE)

BLITZER: I want to let Norm Coleman, Senator Coleman respond. But stick around. I want to ask Jim Zogby another question.

Go ahead.

COLEMAN: The fact is the president has laid out a roadmap, but a precondition, Jim, to that roadmap is an end to terrorism. That's the first case.

The goal is a goal of a Palestinian state and Israel state living side by side. But you've got to accept the existence of Israel, and there has to be an end to terrorism before you can move to the next step. I actually have hope, by the way, that the Gaza withdrawal will set in play some greater opportunities in the Middle East.

BLITZER: Jim Zogby, why is it that if you take a look at the past 15 years or so, U.S. policy around the world, every single time the United States has gone to war and risked U.S. treasure and U.S. lives, it's been to help a Muslim country, whether to liberate Kuwait or Somalia or Bosnia or Kosovo, Afghanistan, Iraq. And as a result of that, why is there so little appreciation of what the United States has done in Democratic and Republican administrations throughout the Arab world and the Muslim world?

ZOGBY: Frankly, you know, when we've polled on that, Wolf, that's not true. There is a difference in our attitude toward the Israeli-Palestinian issue and what we've done in Bosnia and Kosovo, what we've tried to do in other parts of the Arab -- liberating Kuwait, for example.

Where the problem is, is the core issue as understood by most people in the Arab world. And that is the fact that we've ignored the Palestinians.

We have a double double standard. We have too much compassion for Israel, none for Palestinians, too much pressure on Palestinians and none on Israel.

If you balance that out a little bit, I think we'd be a whole lot better off, and the region would look at us as being a credible negotiator. They don't look at us as credible. You mentioned the roadmap. We put it on the table, and we dropped it.

President Bush said Ariel Sharon and Abu Mazen were partners and he'd send Condoleezza Rice to the region. She never went. And the result is people just continue to die and people look at us as firing blanks, not serious.

CORZINE: And Arafat got rid of Abu Mazen. So we don't have a reliable partner.

ZOGBY: Actually, (UNINTELLIGIBLE) said that Ariel Sharon got rid of him. Because who did he give the prisoners to? He didn't give prisoners to Abu Mazen. He gave them to Hezbollah in Lebanon, and everybody understood what that meant.

VERJEE: OK. OK. Let's get to a couple of issues here that have been raised by this panel and some that you've raised.

The first, Susan Rice, you brought it up. And you talked about Saudi Arabia, the United Status's relationship with Saudi Arabia.

Is Saudi Arabia a friend or a foe? That's been an issue that's been in the media. That's been something that's really been debated.

What does the United States do in a situation where a country like Saudi Arabia is an ally but it is non-democratic? The United States then supports a regime that is non-democratic. What kind of signal does that send to the greater Middle East, to the Arab world? What do you do with the ally problem that the U.S. has with a country like Saudi Arabia -- Tori Clark.

CLARKE: Well, I reject the premise in your question. We don't have an ally problem. We've got scores and scores of allies around the world who are with us in the war on terror.

Is everybody exactly like us? Of course not. Does everybody do everything exactly the way we would like? Of course not.

VERJEE: But the issue is...

CLARKE: But you have to -- the issue is you've got to make a hard decision. And you've got to say to yourself, is the greater goal fighting this war on terror, in which extremists want to wipe out millions of people around the world? Is the greater goal worth working together and using that engagement to put pressure on some of these allies to try to improve some of the conditions...

VERJEE: Hold on.

CLARKE: Let me finish. No, no. You hold on. Let me finish the sentence.

VERJEE: Can you concede...

CLARKE: Let me finish the sentence. VERJEE: ... that the perception is something that is a negative one, where you -- where...

CLARKE: The perception...

VERJEE: ... much of the Arab world, the Muslim world looks at a relationship like the U.S. and Saudi Arabia and says, why is it that the U.S. is supporting a country that is so non-democratic but yet talks about democracy? And that's -- and that's an important issue that is raised in the Muslim and Arab world.

CLARKE: It is an important issue. And we couldn't have done what we did in Iraq if we didn't have the support of many of the countries in that region directly around Iraq. We could not have done that physically without the support of many, many Muslims.

BLITZER: All right.

CLARKE: So I think you made broad, sweeping generalizations which really do a disservice to the debate.

BLITZER: Let's go to the audience again.

Go ahead, please, with your question.

QUESTION: Hello. My name is David Butler (ph), and I'm a graduate student at George Washington University.

Western-style democracy took hundreds of years to develop in Europe and America, arguably starting with the signature of the Magna Carta in the 13th century. Why does the administration believe that American-style democracy can successfully take root in just a few short years in a region of the world that is so culturally and religiously different than the west?

BLITZER: All right. Let's have Senator Cornyn and then Senator Bayh weigh in.

CORNYN: Well, I don't think anyone has advocated American-style democracy in the Middle East. Prime Minister Allawi, for one, said that freedom and aspirations toward democracy are not strictly something that are an American preserve. And I don't think we should think anyone beneath the dignity of self-government and considered to govern as we have in this country.

That's what the president believes. That's what we have fought in part to preserve, as well as to defend ourselves from subsequent attacks.

You know, we talk about whether we're safer today than we were before Iraq. Well, the 9/11 Commission concluded that we are safer but we're not yet completely safe. And so the work needs to go forward.

BLITZER: All right -- Senator Bayh. BAYH: These countries need to establish governments for themselves that are authentic and legitimate within the context of their own societies. In the case -- if they're going to endure. In the case of Iraq, it needs to be under a constitution that provides for some religious diversity because you have separation between the Sunni and the Shia there, some autonomy for the Kurds if it's going to be a lasting government.

And I think what we're finding here is a couple of things. So it shouldn't be American style. It needs to be legitimate and authentic within their own culture.

The two things that we're finding are first -- and the first is rather ironic. Nation building is hard. Overthrowing a regime is difficult, but pales in comparison to trying to reconstitute a society. This is ironic because the current administration criticized President Clinton for his reasonably modest efforts toward nation building, and now has embarked upon nation building on a scale that we've not seen before.

BLITZER: All right.

BAYH: The final thing I'd say, Wolf, is you've got to have your plans be consistent with your aspirations. And I find myself -- Tori mentioned Joe Lieberman. I happen to agree with Joe Lieberman. It's a good thing that Saddam Hussein is gone.

But the separate question that I think you were getting to a little bit later is, have we handled the aftermath effectively? Effectively? And I find myself in agreement with Dick Lugar, Chuck Hagel and others that, no, we have not handled the aftermath of the war effectively.

CORNYN: We can't handle it with mixed messages by saying it's the wrong war at the wrong place at the wrong time while saying that this administration has failed to get additional nations supporting this effort.

BAYH: It's also possible to say that it's a good thing that Saddam is gone and that the Taliban is gone but also to say that it has not been handled as well as it should have been, putting the entire enterprise at risk needlessly.

BLITZER: Unfortunately we're going to take another quick break, but we have plenty more time for all of us to thrash out what's going on. The first half of our town hall is over. We've still got a long way to go.

VERJEE: When we come back, America's other interests. We're going to talk about Sudan, Iran, North Korea. Some of those issues have already been brought up by the audience. We're going to have more issues brought up from our audience here at George Washington University when we come back.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK) ANNOUNCER: Once again, live from the campus of George Washington University and America's capital, here's your hosts, CNN's Zain Verjee and Wolf Blitzer.

BLITZER: And once again, welcome back to our town hall on American foreign policy. We're calling this town hall "The American Agenda." I'm here with our panel, my colleague Zain Verjee is down with the audience. Let's get to a sensitive issue before we go down to Zain and she can bring in some members of this audience.

Senator Corzine and the panel, does the United States only have national security interests when it deploys troops around the world, or should there be a moral or humanitarian consideration for deployment of troops, and I'm referring to genocide unfolding in Sudan right now?

CORZINE: Well, there are a million-four people in camps, estimates of a hundred thousand plus of Sudanese have died. Everyone acknowledges that it's probably the single largest humanitarian crisis in the world. The United States has done much with words and has had good deeds with regard to humanitarian help, but we have not taken the leadership to do what we're doing in other parts of the world by using our resources to fund the African Union to put peacekeepers on the ground.

And we have not taken strong enough stance in my view with regard to sanctions and other things that would move the Sudanese government to deal with the fact that there is this great crisis building and brewing. And by the way, it's a crisis not only immediately humanitarian-wise, but when you put a million-four people in a bunch of camps where they are going to be disenfranchised from our regular life, a hopeful life, you are creating a brewing ground for terrorism. Osama bin Laden came out of Sudan, and I think this is one of the gravest mistakes this administration...

BLITZER: Let me let Senator Coleman weigh in.

COLEMAN: By the way, it goes back to that first question about things that happen outside this country have a direct effect on the security of this country. Jon has been one of the great champions about Sudan. Colin Powell uttered the magic words, "genocide." This country's been at the forefront saying genocide is taking place.

We should have done something about Rwanda. But the fact is we put -- we have a $15 billion commitment on global AIDS, we have a Millennium Challenge account to help nations move forward to democracy. We are rallying the world around Sudan. That's part of our role as the greatest strength and the greatest democracy on this Earth. We have to do this. This president recognizes that. And I think that's why Americans are responding to his leadership in terms of these...

BLITZER: I want to get back to this issue about deploying military forces to save people's lives, even when there isn't necessarily a national security issue. Here's a poll, and I'm going to let you weigh in, everybody weigh in. "Should the United States take the leading role in solving the world's problems?"

In 2000, when we asked this question, the CNN/Gallup poll, 41 percent said yes. Now it's up to 52 percent. I'm going to go to Zain in the audience, but briefly weigh in, Senator Bayh.

BAYH: Wolf, I think we are strongest and our power is most effective when it is also buttressed not only by our interests but by our moral underpinnings as well because in the long run we're not going to be able to kill all of the bad guys as much as we try. We also have to win hearts and minds. And that's why it's important that -- and it deals with Zain's question about the perception of hypocrisy.

It's when we stand against genocide, we stand for freedom, that we begin to change some of the attitudes around the world that currently have turned against us.

BLITZER: All right. Let's go to the audience -- Zain.

VERJEE: Wolf, Gerald Post is with George Washington University, has an issue that he wants to raise about Sudan.

QUESTION: The dreadful conflict in the Sudan as it plays out desperately requires intervention from the outside. With reference to the United States' role in intervention and in particular reference to its relationship to the U.N., I'd like to ask the question, how can we intervene given how desperately stretched our resources already are? In reality what role can the United States play in general and in particular with reference to the military?

BLITZER: Senator...

VERJEE: Senator Corzine?

BLITZER: No, let's let Senator Cornyn respond on this one, then we'll let the other side.

CORNYN: Well, I think you've put your finger on a challenge. I'm struck, while we all agree that we do have an important role to play in terms of humanitarian efforts around the world, hopefully in conjunction with the United Nations, and we know the United Nations can play that role, whereas perhaps they've been found wanting when it comes to enforcing its own resolutions.

But how can we stand by and say Iraq was the wrong war at the wrong place at the wrong time when Saddam killed between 300,000 and 400,000 people who lie in mass graves in that country and say we're so concerned about Sudan, as we should be, but we're not concerned about those 300,000 or 400,000 people.

BLITZER: Well, what about, Senator -- and I want to let Senator Corzine weigh in. Should the U.S. deploy troops when there isn't a, quote, "national security interest," but it's a humanitarian or moral concern? Yes or no?

CORNYN: I think we should not unless we can -- unless there is a national security interest shown. What we should do is support the United Nations and go for that multilateral humanitarian effort that the United Nations is actually pretty good at.

BLITZER: Quickly, Senator Corzine.

CORZINE: I totally disagree. When you have at risk a million or more people, the kind of genocide that was going on in Rwanda, to have America abstain from expressing its moral responsibility in the world is just...

BLITZER: So you would deploy troops?

CORZINE: I think there are other solutions in Sudan. There's a very clear solution. The African Union is prepared to send troops. It doesn't have the logistical supply, doesn't have the financial resources. And this administration is not willing to ask the Congress to make sure that we have peacekeepers on the ground.

BLITZER: Torie Clarke is going to weigh in, Susan Rice is going to weigh in, but let's go back to Zain. She has a guest.

VERJEE: Yes, I'm with Karl Inderfurth (ph). And I want to talk a little bit about the role of the United Nations. You have a question on that?

QUESTION: Well, I do. The U.N. has obviously a very important role -- has an important role to play with Sudan and other issues. My question is do the panelists believe that our relations with the U.N. are damaged at this time and indeed in need of repair and how important will the U.N. be in a second Bush administration or a first Kerry administration?

VERJEE: Susan Rice first and...

BLITZER: Karl Inderfurth is a former assistant secretary of state for South Asian affairs during the Clinton administration, a colleague of Susan Rice. Susan, you're going to respond in a second, but Torie, why don't you handle that? I know you're not a formal representative of the Bush administration or the Bush campaign, but go ahead.

CLARKE: OK. But I want to go back to Sudan first because no less than "The New York Times," which is no big fan of the Bush administration, has editorialized repeatedly and commended the administration for its efforts on the Sudan. And before people just blithely start thinking about committing troops, just in the last 48 hours, the Sudan, Libya, and a handful of other countries in the region flatly rejected foreign troops coming in there.

There are plenty of ways to deal with this in a multilateral fashion and the United States does have a leadership role there. In the United Nations the United States also has a leadership role, and has exhausted enormous, enormous energies working in the multilateral fronts whenever possible. Worked with and through the United Nations as long as we possibly, possibly could before we made the decision to go into Iraq. It is important. You've got to use the multilateral organizations. To help them be effective they've got to live up to their commitments. When they say to Saddam Hussein, you must do this, this, and this by this time, and they said that for 12 years and he continues to snub his nose and worse at them...

BLITZER: Susan Rice.

CLARKE: No, let me finish. They never lived up to their own resolutions and what they said they were going to do in their own resolutions, and it loses some viability because of that.

BLITZER: Susan, you speak for the Kerry campaign.

RICE: First of all, Senator Cornyn, the reason the president gave for going into Iraq were not the mass graves. They were weapons of mass destruction. So there is no contradiction. John Kerry has been very clear for months. This is a genocide in Sudan. It's not simply enough for Secretary Powell or Colin -- or President Bush to call it a genocide, and then take no action.

They have taken no action to stop this genocide. And tens of thousands of people have died. The U.N. estimated 70,000 have died already. USAID administrator for President Bush said if we don't act, up to a million people could die.

In Rwanda the president said when he ran first for president in 2000 that he would not have intervened to stop the genocide in Rwanda. Now we're learning that a genocide happening on his watch he also won't act to halt. There are concrete steps that we can take. We should be sanctioning Sudan. We could be putting capital market sanctions on Sudan. We could do what we did with Apartheid, South Africa.

Even if we can't get a U.N. Security Council resolution, we can work with our allies to sanction Sudan and we can support, as Senator Corzine said, the African Union.

BLITZER: I want to go back to Zain, but just a quick point and then we'll let Senator Coleman weigh in. You and I went with President Clinton to Rwanda and Burundi after...

RICE: Rwanda, not Burundi.

BLITZER: Right. To Rwanda, where there was genocide.

RICE: Where President Clinton apologized...

BLITZER: Where President Clinton acknowledged that he got the reports coming into the Oval Office and he failed to act.

RICE: And that was wrong. And that's precisely why the United States shouldn't make the same mistake under President Bush.

COLEMAN: Two things. One about the United Nations. The United Nations has a credibility problem with us and the world. I'm chairman of the permanent subcommittee investigation. We're doing the Oil-for- Food investigation. We know at least $10 billion maybe $20 billion that Saddam Hussein got that he stole from that program.

The United Nations did nothing to deal with it. Savan, the person in the United Nations responsible for overseeing it, has been identified as getting oil vouchers from Saddam.

The United Nations has a serious credibility problem with the rest of the world. France, Russia, many of the folks involved in those countries were receiving millions of dollars from Saddam.

So we will work with the United Nations, but they have a serious credibility problem they have to deal with. Last comment though about Rwanda and Sudan. John Kerry has been in the United States Senate for 20 years. He's on the Foreign Relations Committee. I didn't hear him raise his voice about Rwanda. He hasn't been involved in any of the discussions that we've had about Sudan. He simply hasn't been there to raise his voice to say we need to do something.

RICE: John Kerry has been talking about Sudan since April. He called it genocide in July.

COLEMAN: He was in the Senate during Rwanda. I don't remember John Kerry leading the charge to do anything about Rwanda.

RICE: John Kerry was not commander in chief in 1994. George Bush is commander in chief today. He leads our nation, and he leads the world. He has talked about compassionate conservatism. And yet he's given Sudan only words and no action.

BLITZER: I'm going let everybody weigh in. But let's go take another question from the audience -- Zain.

VERJEE: Jay has a question. What is it?

QUESTION: Hi. My question is what does John Kerry mean by America needs to pass a global test? Is he more concerned with America's protection or America's popularity?

BLITZER: That's a good question. And let's let a Democratic senator from Indiana, that would be Senator Bayh, why don't you answer it?

BAYH: I think what Senator Kerry was attempting to say was that the way in which the Bush administration went about gathering support for our effort in Iraq was not the most effective way to go about getting the kind of support that we needed to be as successful as possible there. I don't think he meant to say that there was some sort of test that we had to pass. I don't think he believes that's the case. And it's not the case.

BLITZER: Because there has been a lot of confusion. And Susan, you can speak directly for the Kerry campaign. When he said there must be a global test, what did he mean?

RICE: First of all, that sentence has totally been taken out of context and distorted. The preceding sentence was that he will never give any nation or any institution a veto over our national security but that when we act that action needs to be consistent with the facts and the truth and we need to bring the American people along with us, and if we're going to sustain international support, the international community has to see the rationale for our action.

What President Bush did in Iraq, it was take the country and the international community to war on the basis of false intelligence. He has never acknowledged to the international community that that was a mistake. And as a consequence we are now in a place where the pre- emption option is desperately undermined because we don't have solid intelligence.

BLITZER: I'm going to let Senator Coleman respond to that. Here's a question, though, that we asked at our CNN/Gallup poll. "Should the president pay more attention to the views of other countries?" Sixty-five percent of the American public, a decisive majority, said yes, 27 percent said no.

COLEMAN: I think, by the way, paying attention is important. There's no question about that. I think the president has. The president has assembled a coalition of over 30 nations which Senator Kerry has called the coalition of the bribed and the coerced. What's fascinating is we keep focusing on the president. It's his -- he's the commander in chief. We've got to look at Senator Kerry.

In 1991 when there was a coalition that Senator Kerry has lauded, a broad international coalition, Senator Kerry voted against going after Saddam after Saddam was gobbling up Kuwait. So I mean, we can talk about all the words you want to talk about but you've got to look at Senator Kerry's record, a 20-year record of simply being wrong on these kind of foreign policy issues.

RICE: The fact is President Bush took our nation to war on the basis of false intelligence which he then further distorted. He took us to a place on the basis of weapons of mass destruction that didn't exist. He took us to war on the basis of a link between Saddam Hussein and al Qaeda which doesn't exist. And he says if he had it to do all over again he'd do it exactly the same way.

Well, I think the American people want to know what would we have been doing if we had done things differently in the meantime about Iran, about North Korea, which have serious...

COLEMAN: Senator Kerry was on the Intelligence Committee. Senator Kerry was one of the champions about taking down Saddam before that. He voted for the war. And then when he had a chance to support the funding of the war he voted against the war because Howard Dean was making hay in the Democratic primary. So the president said...

(CROSSTALK)

RICE: ... true distortions.

BLITZER: All right. Very quickly because we're going to take a break. CLARKE: Facts and truth. Four dozen countries, four dozen publicly supported going to war with Iraq before the start of the war. Another 10 or so said privately we're with you but we can't do it publicly for domestic reasons. Those are facts. That's the truth. Some 30 countries are in Iraq with us now doing the hard work. And it is a disservice to them. It is an insult to them to say that the United States went this alone or is going it alone. That's an insult.

BLITZER: We've got to take another quick commercial break, but we're going to keep all of you standing by. We'll take a quick break. More from George Washington University here in Washington, D.C. when we come back.

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VERJEE: Welcome back to "American Agenda." We're discussing U.S. foreign policy at George Washington University. I'm with Marina from the from the Elliott School. You have a question about Russia.

QUESTION: Yes, we've talked about hypocrisy in the Arab world. But meanwhile in Russia they're continuing human rights violations, energy issues, and hostile interference in the affairs of former Soviet republics. The Bush administration has refused to criticize Russia on this in any meaningful way. Why has that happened, and how will the next president manage our relationship with Russia?

VERJEE: Senator Coleman?

COLEMAN: It's fascinating. On one hand the president is criticized for being bold and being aggressive in our foreign policy, and then in another instance being criticized because we're not doing enough in Sudan, we're not doing enough in Russia.

Two things, by the way. First of all, it would be inappropriate right now for the president to be talking about those things in light of what has happened in Beslan. It would almost be like after 9/11 folks coming after the United States and criticizing us for whatever we're doing.

Right now, right this period of time what Russia needs to know, even though we have concerns about many of the things you've talked about, what they have to know is we will work with them, that we have the same resolve to defeat international terrorism.

As Steve Covey, the author once said, you've got the main thing is to keep the main thing the main thing. And that is the war on terror right now. Other stuff has to be dealt with. The main thing is the war on terror. Talk to the moms and dads of those 400 kids who were slaughtered in Beslan about some of the issues you've just raised. They'll say deal with the security issue first.

BLITZER: All right, Zain, I just want to let Senator Corzine respond to that because he's got I think a different perspective.

CORZINE: That is exactly the point that I think we've been trying to make, that John Kerry has been making over and over. The main thing is the war on terrorism. And we should have pursued those who struck America, those that killed 3,000 Americans, 700 in my state, 10 in my home town, I know them personally.

And the idea that we diverted away is a major catastrophic mistake, and it has allowed for the world not to be safer because we've had Beslan, we've had Madrid, we've had all kinds of terrorist attacks, and 1,100 of our men and women have died in Iraq.

And we're creating a situation that has taken our mind off the ball. And we say it's for democracy, and then we don't...

COLEMAN: Jon, did we create Beslan? Did we create Spain?

CORZINE: ... before Beslan -- we didn't create it. What I am saying is we took our eye off the war on terrorism...

COLEMAN: And there is a...

CORZINE: And it is not a creation -- we took our eye off of it.

COLEMAN: ... fundamental difference of opinion here.

CORNYN: Senator Corzine I think makes the point exactly. This is a global war on terrorism. This is no diversion to go to Iraq to take Saddam down after we were attacked by the Taliban and al Qaeda -- or al Qaeda operating in Afghanistan. We'd already been attacked, in 1993 at the World Trade Center. We'd been attacked, our embassies in Africa, the USS Cole, the Khobar barracks towers in Saudi Arabia. How anyone can say that going to Iraq is a diversion from the war on terrorism, which should take place only in Afghanistan, has ignored the reality you just...

BLITZER: Hold off. I want to just get back to the audience because we've got a lot of people in this room itching to ask a question.

Go ahead, Zain.

VERJEE: They definitely are. Yuri Tadesa (ph) is with me, and he wants to address an issue that we discussed a little bit earlier about moral leadership of the United States. What's your question?

QUESTION: While I don't believe that we should seek approval from the rest of the world when and if national security is in question, we must remain mindful that the U.S. is not an island on its own. We live in a global village. What must we do to earn back the respect and the moral leadership we had once?

BLITZER: All right. Let's let Torie Clarke weigh in. And I'll reframe the question.

CLARKE: Sure.

BLITZER: Is it more important for the United States to be loved around the world or feared around the world? CLARKE: It's more important to be respected. And we are. And we're respected by those four dozen countries that went with us into Iraq and the 30 that are there now. And we're respected by many, many people around the world representing several dozen countries that are involved in the war on terror.

And as the senator said, it is a global war on terror. It is something that affects every continent. In every country people are working with us in the global war on terror, not against us. And that is because they do respect our aspirations.

BAYH: I would answer that question a little bit differently. I think all of the public opinion polls Jim Zogby referred to around the world do show that we have suffered a lack of -- suffered a loss of support in many, many important regions. And the way to gain that back, I would say to the questioner, is to prove that when we act to protect ourselves we do it for a larger purpose than just our own self-interest.

The spread of freedom, the spread of democracy, those things that can have universal appeal in an authentic way in these individual societies, and it does involve -- there is some trade-off in the short run, some tension between security and freedom, but it requires, whether it's Beslan or 9/11 or other contexts, as we're standing up to the terrorists and doing whatever it takes to stop them, at the same time we need to be honest with our allies, whether it's Saudi Arabia or Russia, and say look, you need to do better internally because in the long run that's how you win the war on terror.

BLITZER: Senator Coleman?

COLEMAN: I'm in total agreement with what Senator Bayh just said. And that's the president's vision. He believes in the spread of democracy. He believes if we spread democracy to Afghanistan, if we spread democracy to Iraq, and ultimately Saudi Arabia being more Democratic, that that will take place. And the reality is, though, we can't always then defer to France, we can't always defer to Germany or even at times the United Nations if they're wrong. Syria is on the Human Rights Commission of the United Nations.

Wolf, I just -- we're not talking about deferring to anybody. We need to do whatever it takes to protect our own national security interests. But obviously, something is not working well when Jim Zogby reports the results that he's reported. Obviously, our good intentions have not been perceived correctly by many parts of the rest of the world. And in the long run we need to correct that for our own self-interest.

BLITZER: Ladies and gentlemen, unfortunately, we are all out of time, but this has been an excellent discussion. I want to thank all of our guests here at George Washington University. I want to thank the George Washington University for the hospitality, the friendship. Thank all of our panel. On behalf of everyone here at CNN, especially Zain Verjee and me, I'm Wolf Blitzer in Washington. Good-bye for now.

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