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Is It Time to Take War on Terror to the Axis of Evil?; Should Inmates Receive Organ Transplants?

Aired January 31, 2002 - 19:30   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 VIDEO CLIP)

GEORGE W. BUSH, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: States like these and their terrorist allies constitute an axis of evil, arming to threaten the peace of the world.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BILL PRESS, CO-HOST: Is it time to take the war on terror to Iran, Iraq, and North Korea?

And we get to the heart of the matter. Should a California prison inmate have been eligible for a life-saving heart transplant?

ANNOUNCER: Live from Washington, CROSSFIRE. On the left, Bill Press. On the right, Tucker Carlson. In the CROSSFIRE, former assistant Defense Secretary Frank Gaffney and Edward Peck, former ambassador to Iran. And then, Arthur Caplan, director of the Center for Bioethics at the University of Pennsylvania. And in California, radio talk show host Mark Williams.

PRESS: It's CROSSFIRE. Thanks for being here. Them's fighting words, a phrase not heard since World War II. President Bush drops a bombshell in Tuesday's State of the Union speech. He denounced three states, Iran, Iraq and North Korea as the axis of evil and warned they could be the next targets in the war on terrorism.

Later, the White House insisted the president was not talking about immediate military action, so what was he talking about? Why North Korea and not Somalia or Yemen? And why add Iran to the list when Iran helped us overthrow the Taliban? Lots of questions. Time to get some answers -- Tucker.

TUCKER CARLSON, CO-HOST: Ambassador Peck, let me answer Bill Press's question posed in the intro here. He asked why did the president call these three countries evil and a threat to the United States? And I would, I guess answer by saying all three are evil and all three of them are a threat to the United States. What's wrong saying so?

EDWARD PECK, FMR. AMBASSADOR TO IRAQ: Well, I guess the question you have to ask is yourself is are they evil and are they all threats to the United States? If you think they are, and clearly the president does or his advisers do, but threats in which sense?

In the case of North Korea, which we can perhaps talk about and get off the table fairly quickly, we've been negotiating with them for some years. As you may know, although they have a weapon and a delivery system. We gave them a $600 million economic assistance program and a light water nuclear reactor. And we sent Madeleine Albright. And we've been talking to them, trying to find some way of sorting out our differences, if you will, a long way from here. Hasn't worked too well, but at least we're talking wit them.

On the other hand, we've never talked to Iraq or Iran. And we have no idea what we could possibly gain from such a discussion. Now you don't lose a thing when you try, because our country, my nation, you nation, is pushing Palestinians to talk to Israelis, Catholics to talk to Protestants, Iran to talk to -- I mean, Pakistan to talk to India. Don't fight guys, talk. Why are you going to do this?

CARLSON: Well, wait a second. I may be mishearing you.

PECK: Perhaps.

CARLSON: You seem to be implying that these countries Iran, Iraq and North Korea aren't evil and aren't a threat. If I could just -- I mean, the list is long. We could spend the entire evening going through the catalog of examples. I'll just name a few. We know that Iran and Iraq each have large chemical and biological weapons.

PECK: No, I'm sorry, that's not...

CARLSON: Well, the CIA believes it. And it's what the...

PECK: Well, OK, you can take that if you wish.

CARLSON: Thirdly, we know that North Korea has up to 5,000 tons of biological weapons. We believe they may have a nuclear weapon. It's possible. And we know they have missiles that could be capable of reaching the West Coast of the United States. That in addition to kidnapping, drug running, counterfeiting, the list goes on and on and on.

They're evil. You were an ambassador to Iraq. You must know evil when you see it. Just because evil doesn't mean we have diplomacy, but there's still evil.

PECK: Evil means what? Evil means they're doing things that are counter to your interests. Now if it's really a threat to what your country is all about, then it's a serious issue to deal with. But you know, a prostrate, you know, economically...

CARLSON: Evil means preparing to kill large numbers of civilians. That's evil.

PECK: In Afghanistan?

CARLSON: We did not target civilians in Afghanistan. PRESS: All right, let's keep on target here, right? We're responding to 9/11 to terrorist attacks committed by the al Qaeda network. So now let's take the countries one at a time.

Let's start with North Korea. No al Qaeda forces in North Korea. No sign of support at all from North Korea to the al Qaeda, but in fact, as the ambassador indicated, in 1994 North Korea agreed to abandon their nuclear production program. They've agreed to suspend long-range nuclear tests. They've agreed to enter talks with South Korea, which South Korea very, very much wants. We gave them $600 million in aid. And yet Bush is lumping them in with Saddam Hussein. I mean, can I ask a serious question. Does he even know what he's talking about?

FRANK GAFFNEY, FMR. ASST. DEFENSE SECRETARY: I think he does. And I think the amazing thing probably to most Americans watching this program is we're having one of these Washington hot house discussions as to whether one of the most repressive and odious and despicable regimes on the planet qualifies for the term evil?

North Korea is evil incarnate under the regime of Kim Jong Il and his father Kim Il Sung. And the problem is, and the reason the president put them in the axis of evil, is they do represent a threat to the United States, if only because their cash crop at the moment is ballistic missiles, which they are selling all over the world, principally in exchange for oil and other assistance from fellow members of this axis, both named and as yet unnamed. And that represents mortal peril to a country that has no missile defense, Bill.

PRESS: But let me disabuse you and everybody listening of one thing. This is not an academic discussion.

GAFFNEY: Not at all.

PRESS: The president targeted these nations, meaning we could be going against them militarily. It's up to every American is that the thing that we want our country do?

GAFFNEY: Absolutely.

PRESS: So then now let's take Iran. Here's Iran. A lot's changed since 25 to 30 years ago, when they grabbed our hostages. We've got elected clerics now, who say they want to re-establish relations with the United States. They helped us overthrow the Taliban, withdrew their support from them.

Iran was there at the Bonn conference to help us put together this new government in Afghanistan. They gave the United States landing rights in this war against the Taliban. And we kick them in the groin. Is that the way to -- I mean what's that all about, Frank?

GAFFNEY: Well, let me tell you what it's about. What it's about is I think the president gave them a get out of jail free card at the beginning of this war because they did some of the things that you talked about. Unfortunately what they've been doing subsequently is trying to undermine the very government that they were supposedly trying to help put in place in Afghanistan, and are trying to create within that currently unstable situation in Afghanistan, a new pro-Iranian arrangement that will be another hot bet of terrorism and very much contrary to our interests.

Plus, they are involved in the weapons of mass destruction programs that Tucker talked about and are building ballistic missiles with which to deliver them, and I believe, are actively supporting terrorism all over the world. They're not on our team and the president is right to say so.

CARLSON: Right, Ambassador Peck, since we can't even agree that North Korea is evil, let me start a simpler question then. Do you think that Iraq and the region around Iraq would be better off if Saddam Hussein was not running Iraq?

PECK: Well that's the kind of question, you see, that I was trained to be able to answer. And the answer is who the hell knows? You could go in and knock off...

CARLSON: So you were trained, but you never got the answer?

(CROSSTALK)

CARLSON: Tell me what you think. I mean, hypothesize here.

PECK: What is it -- let's hypothesize for a second. Let's suppose you get Saddam Hussein. Let's suppose you get him. What happens then? Who knows? (UNINTELLIGIBLE) until how you see Ramadan. To use a sports analogy, it's second and 10.

So you get rid of Taha Ibrahim (ph). Now it's third and 10. So take off the top 296 people. All right? And you decapitate the government. What happens then? Who knows the hell knows? But let's guess.

You got the Shi'a and the Sunni. And they spill over into surrounding countries. You've got the Talibani Kurds and the Barzani Kurds. And they spill over surrounding countries. And we got all the people. You didn't even talk about the Azzizis (ph), the Sabians (ph), the Caldeans (ph), the Assyrians, the Turkmen. And these people are all going to rush out into the streets to settle their bitterly divisive, savagely contested differences using ballots that they've been saving up, all right?

CARLSON: This is the same argument that opponents of force in Afghanistan made.

PECK: Stand by. Stand by.

CARLSON: That it was going to be an ethnic bloodbath.

PECK: Stand by.

CARLSON: See, I'm watching now, and it's...

PECK: It hasn't come yet. These things take a while.

PRESS: I want you to talk about Iraq, but I want to ask you another question. Front page "Washington Post" this morning, OK, very interesting stuff when the president met with his five top advisers at Camp David to say how are we going to respond to 9/11? He's giving us briefings back by the CIA, OK?

At the upper left-hand corner is a picture of Osama bin Laden inside a red circle with a red slash across it. That was the whole focus.

So let's talk about Iraq. You know Saddam Hussein is not giving any support to Osama bin Laden. And you know he's not in Iraq. We don't know where he is. Maybe Yemen, maybe Somalia. A general told me last night, who knows what's going on, I think, that he's probably in Saudi Arabia.

So what are we doing going after Iraq, as repulsive as Saddam Hussein is, and not going after the country that is now harboring Osama bin Laden?

GAFFNEY: Well first of all, we don't know most of the things that you just said. "The Post" story starts talking about having spent a fair amount of time talking about do we go after Iraq now? And the decision was no, we go after it later. The main point of the president's state of the union address, Bill, and I'm sorry if this doesn't fit within your concept.

PRESS: On what grounds do we strike Iraq first?

GAFFNEY: The point is...

PRESS: On what grounds...

GAFFNEY: I'm telling you. I'm telling you. We strike Iraq or we take actions against Iraq, make it's striking, maybe it's not. But we have Iraq as part of the axis of evil because it is, in fact, working with terrorist organizations, al Qaeda and others. And because at the end of the day, it is probably the most dangerous country on the planet under Saddam Hussein especially. It has to be put out of business.

(CROSSTALK)

CARLSON: Ten-second question, the suicide bomber goes off in Israel. The other day, it's a woman. Saddam Hussein erects a monument to her, downtown Baghdad. Can you agree that's wrong?

PECK: No, but that's...

GAFFNEY: He pays $10,000 to her family.

PECK: They built a monument in Israel to Bernard Goldstein who massacred the 59 or the 29 praying Muslims. CARLSON: Is that in Baghdad? My question, was it wrong that Saddam did that?

PECK: No, I mean, it depends on who does it.

GAFFNEY: No, it doesn't, but it's altogether a different thing. You've got a state sponsor of terrorism in one case.

PECK: The point I want to make to you is that you may be too young to remember. At the height of the Cold War, when the United States and Soviet Union were a button push away from eliminating the human race from the face of the earth, there's a threat. We had an embassy in negotiations and committees, and not because we had loved and trusted them, but because we didn't.

CARLSON: But one was still right and one was still wrong.

(CROSSTALK)

CARLSON: We're going to have to leave it there. Ambassador Peck, Frank Gaffney, thank you both very much.

Up next, who deserves a heart transplant more, an 11-year-old girl dying of an inherited disease, or a convicted armed robber languishing in prison? Ethical quandary? To some it is. The debate rages next on CROSSFIRE.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

CARLSON: Welcome back to CROSSFIRE. Organ transplants, thousands of desperately ill Americans await them, but only some get them. What if one of those patients turned out to be a prison inmate?

It happened recently in California, where a 31-year-old two-time felon received a heart transplant. The total price, $1 million, all of it from taxpayers. The inmate is said to be resting and doing well. Many other Californians, however, aren't. They're angry that preference seems to have been given to a convicted armed robber. Do they have a point or are $1 million organ transplants the next civil right?

Joining us from New York, Arthur Caplan, a bioethicist who is not angry about the transplant. And in Sacramento, radio talk show host Mark Williams, who is -- Bill Press.

PRESS: Mark Williams from radio station KFBK, one of my favorite California stations, welcome.

MARK WILLIAMS, RADIO TALK SHOW HOST: Thank you.

PRESS: Let me see, Mark, where you're coming from. So as I understand it, you know, there are never enough organs to go around. So there's this thing called an organ transplant center, I believe. And all those people who are waiting for organs are put on the list. And then, when an organ becomes available, let's say a heart, the computer goes to the list to check the need, the age, the availability, where the patient is located, so there might be transportation questions or something like that. And bingo, it picks the lucky recipient. Are you really saying that if that recipient just happens to be in prison, he or she ought to be automatically disqualified?

WILLIAMS: Absolutely. There's no reason why that shouldn't be a criteria. There's a whole long list of criteria right now for organs, that include a number of disqualifications. You can't be retarded. You can't be over 65. You can't smoke. You can't drink. You can't have bronchitis, high blood pressure, HIV. You can't be homeless. But most of all, you can't be poor. You have to be able to pay for it.

PRESS: Yes, but Mark, the prisoners are, by the way, still human beings. They're on this...

WILLIAMS: Absolutely.

PRESS: Let me finish. They're on this list. And as you know, there's a good reason on this list. And I want to let Bob Martinez from the California Department of Corrections remind you and inform our viewers what rights the Supreme Court, in fact, has given them. Here's Mr. Martinez.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

BOB MARTINEZ, CALIF. DEPT. OF CORRECTIONS: Just because someone is an inmate, someone is incarcerated doesn't mean he doesn't have a right to medical care. In fact, the Supreme Court back in 1976 determined, I guess to the surprise of a lot of people, that, in fact, an inmate has a constitutional right to medical care.

PRESS: So on the law, Mark, you're dead wrong.

WILLIAMS: No.

PRESS: Because the Supreme Court says so.

WILLIAMS: No, the law says that the inmate has a right to medical care. There's no law that says the organ transplant industry has to make an organ available to that inmate.

PRESS: What are you going to do, let him die?

WILLIAMS: An inmate -- somebody over the age of 65.

PRESS: What are you going to do, let him die?

WILLIAMS: Some poor retarded kid should die, somebody who lit up a cigarette should die? There's absolutely no reason why a two-time felon, a two-time felon, not one but two, should be able to get a heart when some working stiff is out there who needs a heart, him or herself is paying the bill for that fellow.

CARLSON: That's exactly right. Now Arthur Caplan, you're a bioethicist. There's no way you can defend the notion even a theoretical notion that a prison inmate, an armed robber ought to get the heart at the expense of let's just say a 6-year-old girl with a hereditary disease. There's no defending that, is there?

ARTHUR CAPLAN, BIOETHICIST: Absolutely, there is a defense of it. And in fact, Mark is simply wrong. We transplant people with HIV. We transplant alcoholics. The most common cause of transplant is attempted suicide. People who go binge drinking and kill off their liver people, people who swallow a bottle of pills, that are trying to end their lives, top of the list for transplant.

At my University of Pennsylvania, at his university at Stanford, there's a whole host of sinners in there.

WILLIAMS: Now wait.

CAPLAN: If you want to sort that list out by who sinned, it'll be short list, because you'll only be transplanting nuns and Mormon elders.

(CROSSTALK)

CARLSON: No, hold on. Let me ask you, Mr. Caplan. That's more commentary on your university and I'd say you than anything else. Because it's not a question of who...

CAPLAN: It's nationwide.

CARLSON: OK, it's not a question of excluding sinners, but if someone has contributed actively and knowingly to the detriment of the organ he wants to be transplanted, then I'm not saying he shouldn't get it, but don't you think he should give his place to someone, say a child say, who didn't intentionally destroy his own organs?

CAPLAN: The problem is...

CARLSON: That's an easy call.

CAPLAN: ...Tucker, that if you try to sort the list out, according to who's most deserving, according to who didn't try to harm themselves the most, you'll lose your mind because everybody who's an organ failure, with the exception of a few kids, has done something to cause their heart to fail, their liver to fail, their kidneys to fail.

Let me add, too, what's the first thing we did when those prisoners showed up at Guantanamo? We gave them health care. They're trying to destroy us. They're trying to kill us. When we are sitting in the ER and a robber comes in who just shot a cop, and they got shot back, we treat them both. In war, we treat the enemy. The ethic of medicine...

CARLSON: Oh, please.

(CROSSTALK) WILLIAMS: He's off on a relative fantasy here, because the Medicare federal guidelines for transplants include psychological and social concerns. The transplant recipient has got to have demonstrated social, psychosocial stability and family support. This is all taken into account. It's got nothing to do with morals. It has to do with whether...

(CROSSTALK)

WILLIAMS: It has to do with whether or not the heart will be wasted.

PRESS: OK.

CAPLAN: Mark, in your town, there are people getting transplanted today who have cirrhosis of the liver, who have HIV.

(CROSSTALK)

PRESS: Whoa, whoa, guys. One at a time, Mark.

WILLIAMS: The day this felon got that heart transplant, there were six people in Sacramento who needed a heart, who were not in prison, 569 in the state of California, 4,119 nationals.

CAPLAN: Did they match by blood type?

WILLIAMS: They weren't in prison.

CAPLAN: Did they match by tissue type? The issue, I can tell you how we give out organs. I know about it very well.

PRESS: Mark -- let me come back to you, Mark. Quick question, which you totally ignored the last time, so I'm going to ask you again.

WILLIAMS: OK.

PRESS: This guy is 31 years old.

WILLIAMS: Right.

PRESS: He's in prison for 14 years for armed robberies. As I said, it's the second time around.

WILLIAMS: Right.

PRESS: He served six years of his sentence already, OK?

WILLIAMS: That's right.

PRESS: So here's the object. He needs a heart, or he's going to die. The law says prisoners must be given proper medical care and kept alive. He was not given a death sentence by the judge. Are you saying don't give him the heart, let him die?

WILLIAMS: If that heart can go to a working, honest citizen who contributes to this state and this society, absolutely let him die.

PRESS: Well, why not just something else? Why not let him out of prison?

WILLIAMS: Now, there's a solution.

(CROSSTALK)

WILLIAMS: He's already committed two felonies. Let's let him loose because he doesn't feel well. Yes, there's a great solution for you. Let's open all the doors.

CARLSON: OK, Arthur Caplan, I want to ask a question here. It does raise an interesting question. As far as under the Supreme Court has not ruled that states are required to give million-dollar organ transplants to prisoners, but the ruling has been interpreted to suggest that the state is responsible that they have a right to medical care.

CAPLAN: Right.

CARLSON: Ordinary citizens, as you know, don't.

CAPLAN: Correct.

CARLSON: As an ethicist, this doesn't strike you as odd? Or is this OK, like everything else seems to be?

CAPLAN: It strikes me as exceedingly odd, but the answer isn't to croak the prisoner. The answer is to get a right to health care for the rest of us. Again...

PRESS: Amen.

CAPLAN: ...we come back to this basic point. You don't -- when you get put into prison, you're standing there on a waiting list of people who've done all kinds of things to harm or hurt their bodies. Some are undeserving. There are bad guys. There are people who are slugs.

We in health care deal with them. You don't want your doctor trying to decide if you're good enough to merit care. You really don't.

CARLSON: Wait, not giving them a million-dollar transplant.

CAPLAN: What you want is a right to health care. Well, let me just say last -- about the $1 million, that's over his lifetime. The transplant itself will cost about 100,000.

CARLSON: Well, it's still the money.

CAPLAN: If he lives to 75 -- well, the point still is minimal care.

WILLIAMS: What we're really talking about here. PRESS: All right, gentlemen, I'm sorry, Mark, I've got to jump in here. You're a talk show host. You know what's that like. Mark, we are absolutely out of time. Mark Williams, I'm sorry. Thank you for joining us.

WILLIAMS: Thanks.

PRESS: Arthur Caplan, thank you so much for joining us. Delighted to hear Tucker make the case for universal health care.

And when we come back, next on the agenda, triple trouble. We'll tell you the sad tales of three people who got busted, including a member of Congress and the president's niece in our Thursday night "Police Blotter."

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

CARLSON: Welcome back. Time for our Thursday night "Police Blotter," when public figures intersect with law enforcement, CROSSFIRE is there.

First up this week and last week and perhaps many weeks to come, Congressman Jim Traficant. The Ohio Democrat is facing more than 60 years in prison on 10 different federal charges, including racketeering and bribery. The trial starts in days, though Traficant is not taking it lying down. The congressman has sued the government for $250 million, claiming he's victim of a vendetta, stretching back to 1993 in his first corruption trial.

Good luck, congressman. You're welcome to tell your side on CROSSFIRE anytime.

PRESS: Maybe time to round up the -- rev up the old Traficant defense fund.

Tucker, next in the police line-up, 24-year-old Noelle Bush arrested in Florida for phoning in a fake prescription of Xanax. The daughter of Governor Jeb and the niece of President George W. was handcuffed, fingerprinted, and held in jail for four hours. Prosecutors have not yet decided whether to press charges, but today police insisted, she'll get no special treatment.

CARLSON: And finally, Terry McAuliffe, chairman of the Democratic Party yesterday morning as a guest on Paula Zahn show. McAuliffe was asked about a memo written by James Carville and Bob Shrum that tells Democrats how to get political mileage of Enron. Here's what McAuliffe said.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

TERRY MCAULIFFE: I'm chairman of the Democratic Party. I knew nothing about it.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CARLSON: A good question is always worth posing twice. So we asked McAuliffe the very same question on CROSSFIRE last night. Here was his response only 11 hours later.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

MCAULIFFE: Oh, I haven't seen the memo. It's the first I heard about it.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CARLSON: In a word, busted. Busted.

PRESS: But Tucker, wait, he said it in the morning. And then he said it 11 hours later and got away with it.

CARLSON: Bill, 11 hours later, he had heard about it 11 hours before.

PRESS: Let me finish. I think you're the one that got busted.

CARLSON: What, that I wasn't watching the morning show? The guy lied about it on our show.

PRESS: All right. Hey, folks, we'd love to hear from you. Invite our e-mails to us at crossfire@cnn.com. We'll read a lot -- as many as we can tomorrow night. And from the left, I'm Bill Press. Thanks for joining us from CROSSFIRE. Good night.

CARLSON: And from the right, I'm Tucker Carlson. Join us again Friday nigh, tomorrow night, for another edition of CROSSFIRE. See you then.

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