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In the Arena
U.S. Drone Attacks Terrorist in Yemen; Pakistan Authorities Arrest Dozens; Turning Point in Pakistan
Aired May 06, 2011 - 20:00 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
ELIOT SPITZER, CNN ANCHOR: Good evening. I'm Eliot Spitzer. Thank you for joining us IN THE ARENA.
As President Obama personally thanked the special ops team responsible for killing Osama bin Laden, we now learn that bin Laden was literally drawing up new terrorist plans against America.
Bin Laden himself wrote the document detailing the threat against our rail system. We'll have more on this in just a minute. But first, here are the stories we're digging into tonight.
What a difference a week makes. Bin Laden caught and killed. Jobs are up, the gas of price is down and Donald Trump is off the front page.
The president isn't just running for re-election, he's taken a victory line. And Obama owes Bush a thank you note. No, that's not Texas talking, it's a Yale law school professor. He says Obama's finest hour was hatched in Gitmo, the place Obama campaigned to close down.
Then time to hit the reset button. Break with Pakistan. And who's the enemy, now that the enemy is dead. Lots of questions.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
FAREED ZAKARIA, CNN CORRESPONDENT: We're effectively invading Pakistan.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
SPITZER: Fareed Zakaria has the answer.
Let's start with breaking news out of Yemen, where U.S.-done attack targeted another top terrorist, Muslim cleric and U.S. citizen, Anwar al-Awlaki.
Joining us now, Pentagon correspondent, Barbara Starr.
Barbara, what can you tell us about this attack?
BARBARA STARR, CNN PENTAGON CORRESPONDENT: Good evening, Elliot. We learned that in the last 48 hours, the U.S. Military launched a drone attack in southern Yemen, in a place called Shabwah. This is a place where they believed Anwar al-Awlaki, the American-born Yemeni cleric was hiding. They did not get him. They have no reason to believe at this point that they killed him in this attack, even though they were targeting him. But two other al Qaeda in Yemen operatives were killed, we are told.
All part of a stepped up campaign to go after al Qaeda leaders around the world. Eliot, as you know, al Qaeda in Yemen and especially this American-born cleric, very dangerous. He's very concerning to the United State. It is believed he inspired the failed Times Square attack and may have been behind the failed underwear bomber attack Christmas Day in the United States. Eliot?
SPITZER: Barbara, is it fair to say that in fact he has been part of what referred to as al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula and they have been launching more attacks and plotting more plans in just about any other part of al Qaeda around the world over the past, let say, year or two years?
STARR: In fact, he is pretty much acknowledged to be the leader and the operational power behind the scenes in al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, al-Qaeda in Yemen, if you will.
Eliot, they are so concerning to the U.S. intelligence community because twice now, they have demonstrated the actual ability in recent months to reach out and touch the United States, if you will. In the failed airline attack and even though the Times Square plot failed, they were said to be the inspiration behind it. And that puts their power right on U.S. Soil. Eliot?
SPITZER: That's exactly right, Barbara. And they are operating in what is essentially a failed state, which on the one hand makes it easier for us to operate there, but also means there are fewer constraints on them.
All right. Thanks, Barbara, so much for that report.
Now let's go back to the president who visited Fort Campbell, Kentucky. He discussed the bin Laden attack while addressing the 101st Airborne Division newly home from Afghanistan. Take a listen.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
BARACK OBAMA, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: Most of all, we're making progress in our major goal, our central goal in Pakistan and Afghanistan, and that is disrupting and dismantling -- and we are going to ultimately defeat al Qaeda.
(APPLAUSE)
We have cut off their head and we will ultimately defeat them.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
SPITZER: Now al Qaeda isn't throwing in the towel. In a message confirming the death of bin Laden, the organization declared, and I quote, "bin Laden's blood will be a curse that will chase the Americans and their agents, a curse that will pursue them inside and outside their country."
Fortunately with a huge cache of intelligence from bin Laden's compound now in American hands, al-Qaeda is on the defensive. In losing bin Laden, al-Qaeda lost their central strategic and operational leader.
This story is moving fast. Let's go now to Abbottabad, where I am joined by CNN senior international correspondent, Nic Robertson.
Nic, the Pakistanis, these days may be scrambling to resuscitate their reputation. They rounded up a whole bunch of people today. What do we know about who they rounded, and what, if anything, they're getting from these folks?
NIC ROBERTSON, CNN SENIOR INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Anyone who had anything to do with the bin Laden compound, that had contact with the bin Laden family, anyone who sold them milk, anyone who sold them meat, anyone who came anywhere close to that front door of the compound and conversations with people on the inside, people living close to the compound were arrested, but also in other parts of the city.
And what officials are saying is, if the relationships that the people had was that they were actually were simply selling something like that meat or milk, and there was nothing nefarious about it, they will be released. But the authorities here want to find out if there's anyone else who had sympathies with al Qaeda, who was supporting bin Laden, who was supporting him and knew about his whereabouts inside that compound, anyone who might even be helping other al Qaeda members or plotting attacks.
So the government here if you like, closing the barn door after the horse has bolted, if you will. But at the same time, trying to take what steps they now can to follow up on this action by the SEALS here killing Osama bin Laden.
Eliot?
SPITZER: You know, Nic, it sounds like they're just arresting everybody in Abbottabad to make themselves look as though they are being aggressive.
What has the response been in the street? Are there protest on either side. Is there a genuine sense of sympathy for bin Laden, or is the larger mass of the public saying thank goodness, he's gone?
ROBERTSON: You know, I get the impression that most people are saying thank goodness, he's gone. How do I get that impression?
Well, a lot of people I talked to express that opinion. They like the United States to see the positive things, the United States can do for Pakistan. There are some things they don't like. They don't like to see the U.S. fly in here in their army, not being able to do anything about it. But at the same time, the people are coming out and demonstrating. We saw today were minority. They were motivated by the Islamism political party, Jamiat-e Islami, but they were small in numbers. 600. Their protest was pretty muted. They sort of applauded on cue, chanted on cue. Down with America, out with America. Down with the government. And then they left and went away with nothing further. So I think they're the minority. The majority here seem to be happy bin Laden is gone, Eliot.
SPITZER: All right, Nic, thanks so much. It's going to be interesting to see what the real popular response over there is once you cut through all the political rhetoric that was almost inevitable.
All right. Thank you, Nic, so much.
Here's a lot of information to go over, and luckily, we have two of the very best people to break it down for us in Washington. Phil Mudd, a former CIA analyst and deputy director of counterterrorism. And here in New York, Paul Cruickshank, CNN's terrorism analyst.
To both of you, thank you for being here tonight.
The first question is, we now seem to be finding out. And, Phil, you've been in the trenches with this. It seems bin Laden himself was, in fact, an operational commander. He was not a distant chairman of the board. He was making day to day decisions. Does that surprise you?
PHILIP MUDD, FORMER CIA ANALYST: It does not. I think we have to think about a couple of things here.
First, we don't have a lot of information on the threat plotting that he was allegedly involved in. There's a fundamental difference between people coming to bin Laden saying look, here's some ideas about how we go after the United States.
Ideas that look like what happened in Madrid a few years ago, what happened in London in 2005. Do you think these ideas are OK? Should we proceed? And saying we have four operatives, they might succeed 90 days from now. Do you want to give the go ahead?
We have a lot to learn about this intelligence. This might simply be subordinates saying, do you think this is the kind of strategic plotting we should be involved with?
SPITZER: So the bottom line is we don't yet know immediately how involved he was.
You know, Paul, let me ask you this. One of the critical issues for any organization. I don't care if it's a Fortune 500 company or a small business, or school is succession planning.
Was there succession planning and in within bin Laden's organization, al Qaeda? Are they ready to replace him as a leader?
PAUL CRUICKSHANK, CNN TERRORISM ANALYST: They thought about this. They call it the internal constitution of al Qaeda. Zawahiri, number two, the deputy in there, will now take over. It will be rubber stamped, by the Shura Council of al-Qaeda.
I think we might expect a written statement in the next week or so, and maybe a videotape in the next month or so announcing that Zawahiri is the next leader of al Qaeda -- Eliot.
SPITZER: But, Phil, you weigh in on this. Is he going to carry the same weight, the same emotional power that bin Laden did.
I'm told, you can confirm this or not, that when people became members of al Qaeda, they actually swore allegiance to bin Laden, maybe the organization as well, but to bin Laden personally. So will this new number two, soon to be the number one, will he carry that same weight and have the same capacity to run the organization?
What do you think, Phil?
MUDD: Absolutely not. No how, no way. He's got two fundamental problems. One internal, one external.
Internally, coming from the time when he was the head of an Egyptian Islamist group back in the '90s. Very poorly respected.
Seen as a difficult man to work with, has no sense among the work force in al-Qaeda, the kind of prestige that bin Laden had. So, internally, he's not going to be able to carry the baton.
The second and more significant thing, I would say, is al-Qaeda is not a terrorist organization. They are misread in this country. This is a revolutionary organization that depends on spreading the revolution through messages. Bin laden was a messenger who had prestige around the world. Zawahiri has not. This is a big loss for the organization.
SPITZER: You're saying something that's kind of dramatic. You're saying that they're not a terrorist organization, they were a messenger and a revolutionary organization, but I'm trying to understand that distinction.
They did plan and plot terrorist acts, did they not?
MUDD: Absolutely. But a terrorist act is not an end to itself. It's a means to convince people in the Persian Gulf and North Africa, in Europe and United States that the revolution can be won, that the Americans are not invulnerable.
When you lose your messenger for the revolution, kids and financiers across the world start to say who do we support? Who do we join? Who do we pay? Who do we give our money to? And increasingly, that's not al Qaeda.
SPITZER: Paul, you're nodding your head in agreement. That's a fundamental point that I think, most of us, you know, just lay readers of the newspapers think of them as terrorists and full stop. Explain this from your perspective. CRUICKSHANK: Well, Zawahiri has none of the charisma of bin Laden. He went out to inspire people, not just who are joining the al Qaeda organization, but people who have never joined the al Qaeda organization and are trying to launch attacks in their name.
In the United States, we've seen for example the growth of home grown radicalization. People wanting here in the United States to launch attacks. Without bin Laden there anymore, they won't be as inspired, Eliot.
SPITZER: And so it sounds to me, Phil, as though what you're saying is that there maybe a continuation of the organization, but as a messenger organization, they will be more muted, less powerful, but others will pick up the baton to use a bad metaphor. Others, for instance, al Qaeda, in the Arabian Peninsula and in Yemen, other will begin to plot where al Qaeda have been the primary force before.
Is that a fair assumption?
MUDD: That is correct. We are celebrating way too early. And I must say as a professional who was on the inside, I was disappointed to see the reaction this week. We just finished a chapter in the book. We did not finish the book. We didn't finish a terrorist. We didn't finish a group. What we face is a global revolution of people who believe and act like al-Qaeda even if they're not man of al Qaeda.
So what we ought to say is job well done. Let's have a vigil for the people who are lost in the tragedy, of kids who will never grow up with a parent, but chin up, face forward, move on. This is not a time for celebration. This isn't just a loss of a group or the leader of a group, this is an effort against a revolutionary movement and that movement has become global. We've got a way to go here.
SPITZER: If what I hear you saying is correct, then what it really does is put a premium on using the information we got. The treasure trove -- we're referring to it as a treasure trove at least, to see how far out this information radiates so we can track down all the affiliate and individuals and groups who themselves will become nodes of both being messengers and terrorist actors in the forthcoming months. But the premium will be on time.
Is that right, Paul?
CRUICKSHANK: That's absolutely right. And Zawahiri maybe in some jeopardy, because western intelligence believed that he was perhaps in close geographic proximity to bin Laden in recent years. And in some sort of contact. So they may be able to get Zawahiri next. But al Qaeda is a more decentralized organization now than it was in Taliban or in Afghanistan. So they're not going to be able to unravel the whole al Qaeda leadership, Eliot.
SPITZER: All right, Phil, I want to come back to you for a minute.
You have been in the trenches in the very literal sense in this business of counterterrorism. One of the things that is most amazing to me is we set up a safe house, you know, proximate to the compound over the past months. How do you go about doing that? We thought it would be hard for bin Laden to disappear into Abbottabad and nobody notice.
How do a bunch of U.S. CIA agents -- you don't just go there and rent a bunch of hotel rooms and say here we are.
Tell us what you can about how you disappear into the woodwork there and begin to set up such an operation.
MUDD: Well, you don't disappear. And there's not a bunch of U.S. CIA agents run around. You've got to find people who mix in with the locals. So you're not going to have some kid from Houston showing up in Abbottabad saying, I want to rent an apartment.
You've got to have a cut out who looks like he's local, who talks like he's local, who acts like he's local. So you can go in and say, how can we keep a low profile, a limited footprint, and then you have got to move on and ask a couple of questions.
So first is, can we verify the target? Do we have some certainty that the guy who we suspect is in those walls is actually there. And the second is, there's a lot of planning that's got to be done to bring some halos in there.
Small things like, are there wires around that a rotor can hit? Big things like, what does the environment looked like? Where can a halo land? What can of people around at 2 a.m. There's a lot of work to be done beyond identifying bin Laden, but you wouldn't do that with a fellow from Houston. You're going to do that with locals.
SPITZER: Yes, showing up with a New York Giants T-shirt isn't going to help exactly in terms of being undercover. But what that suggests to me then is you need a lot of local assets as you guys refer to them. People whom you trust enough to extend into Abbottabad to begin to gather this information on a pretty high value target. So you needed to have some pre-existing infrastructure in that region to get this going.
Is that a fair assumption?
MUDD: That's a fair assumption. And remember, we've been at this for nine years. This is not like creating an infrastructure on the ground, off the cuff. We've been looking at the infrastructure of al Qaeda in the tribal areas. We've had success in operating in the cities in Pakistan.
Remember, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, in the first take down we had, Abu Zubaydah in the spring of 2002, were taken down --
SPITZER: Paul, last year from you. If, in fact, the loss of Bin Laden is such a blow to them, al Qaeda as an organization, how do they then re-establish themselves as a major force?
Does that mean, we can predict that they will try to do something aggressive in the near term?
CRUICKSHANK: Well, they're going to try and launched an attack. You know, maybe the 10th anniversary -- it seems that bin Laden was obsessing about the 10th anniversary, handwriting plans, plots against the United States on the 10th anniversary. So they're going to try and restore of some sense of relevance here. But this is a big blow against al Qaeda during this Arab spring where al Qaeda has been reduced to virtual irrelevance in much of the Arab world. Their best messenger is no longer there now, Eliot.
SPITZER: And in a way, I think that maybe the most important point. Ideologically, they have lost touch, we hope with the next generation of both the Arab youth and certainly those in North Africa. Hopefully those in Pakistan as well.
All right, Phil Mudd, Paul Cruickshank, thanks so much for being with us. MUDD: My pleasure. SPITZER: Coming up, our relationship with Pakistan is at a crossroads as some in Congress argued to break ties. There's no one that understands the consequences of that better than Fareed Zakaria. I'll talk to him next.
We'll be right back.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
SPITZER: In the wake of the killing of Osama bin Laden, are we at a turning point in our relationship with Pakistan?
Joining me to talk about the chance for a new direction in the region is Fareed Zakaria, host of CNN's weekend show "FAREED ZAKARIA GPS."
Fareed, this week will not soon be forgotten. Sort of change the tectonic plates in the region. What, to set first principles, are our interest in Pakistan and what are the options we've got to accomplish them?
ZAKARIA: It's a great way to think about this, Eliot, because we forget, we get so enmeshed in these places.
Our interest in Pakistan and Afghanistan are pretty simple. Al Qaeda found a way into Afghanistan, and then from Afghanistan into Pakistan created bases, created a kind of command and control center there.
That is our principal interest, to deny them an opportunity to have a command and control center. I would say that we have a secondary interest, which is largely in Pakistan and not in Afghanistan.
Afghanistan is a messed up country. It's difficult, it's dysfunctional, but it's not that relevant. Pakistan is, just to put into perspective, six times the size and population of Afghanistan. It has 100 nuclear weapons. It is half the size of the entire Arab world. And it has probably the most virulent streams of Jihadism as any of the country in the world right now. So we have more interest in Pakistan than we have in Afghanistan by far.
SPITZER: It seems to me we have done better at eliminating the command and control structure of al Qaeda without forging a relationship with Pakistan than we have through forging a relationship with them. So in order to accomplish the objective of sort of decapitating al Qaeda and hopefully making it irrelevant to the rest of the world, do we need a close relationship with a Pakistani government?
ZAKARIA: Unfortunately, yes, because I would contest that premise. You know, we go into their country. We're effectively invading Pakistan with the complicity of the Pakistani government. It's not as though they don't notice. They know we're doing it. They allow us to do it. It's a game. This way they have plausible deniability. I don't mean in this particular operation.
SPITZER: Right.
ZAKARIA: But in general, they can say we didn't do it, but they're allowing us to go in and kill all these bad guys.
SPITZER: It's sort of a benign neglect. They know we're going to do it. We don't tell them. Therefore, we can play to the public saying of course we object as well, but they want us to do this.
ZAKARIA: No, what would be a powerful step forward is if we could get the Pakistani military as an unwavering ally to go after those groups in northern Waziristan, but that so far they have not been able to do it.
SPITZER: I think I've heard you say in the past, they have really three discreet groups. You have the elected leadership, you have the military, then you have the intelligence framework. Three discrete nodes of power in Pakistan. But you also said this past week in terms of how we structure the relationship, I think the quote is, "I'm left with the conclusion that there was some level of state support for al Qaeda. So why is there, this duality. Yes, they have the relationship with us, they want us to do what we're doing, but there is certain hesitancy, obviously.
ZAKARIA: So from the Pakistani point of view, this is how they see the world.
They say you, Americans, you've come in now, you're being nice to us, but you're going to go away. You always go away and forget about us. And then we are stuck in a neighborhood where the 800-pound gorilla is India. We can't win a conventional war with India. There's no way. The Indian army is much too powerful. So our only means of keeping India on edge is to use these militant groups as proxies to go into Kashmir. We keep Afghanistan on edge the same way. Now that is their world view. And so they say we're not going to shut all these things down.
We'll shut down the bad guys who kill Pakistanis, but we're not going to shut down the bad guys who kill Afghans and Indians and Americans. We need those bad guys.
SPITZER: So sounds like at every turn there is a very nuanced balancing game where nobody is alive with anybody. Unconditionally, it is always, we only go a little bit this way and then pull back.
ZAKARIA: Exactly. Now it's not actually in Pakistan's interest to think like this. I think they are being foolish because they want to have what they call strategic depth in Afghanistan. They want to have strategic depth vis-a-vis India. But what does this mean in the 21st century?
What Pakistan needs is to raise the standards of the living of its people to build more schools, to build more infrastructure, to hook itself to the Indian growth machine that is growing at eight percent a year. But unfortunately, that's not the way the Pakistani military think. The Pakistani military are stuck in a kind of 19th century real politic world view where they're trying to keep India on edge, keep Afghanistan down. It doesn't get them anything. But they do it.
SPITZER: It sounds like beneath the public hysteria, there is, in fact, a similarity of interests here that binds us to the Pakistani government.
ZAKARIA: If the Pakistani government could see its interests properly - I'll tell you what, the civilian government, the democratically-elected government in Afghanistan and the United States do have very similar interests. They both want a military that is more accountable and less engaged. That is less engage in rouge operations.
Now, the problem is the elected government of Pakistan doesn't actually run the country. And so if we could find a way to get Pakistani democracy more strengthened, and the military to play its proper and constitutional role, that would be a frame work which would be a win-win for Pakistan and the United States.
SPITZER: I want to talk about the nukes for a minute. They have, as you said, about 100 nukes. It has grown 40 percent over the last couple of years. They are the fifth largest nuclear power in the world. Clearly, something to be reckoned with.
Who controls those nukes? And is there a genuine risk that given our ability just to fly our choppers in there and do what we did. Somebody else could go in there, seize them, get control of them, do something that would be threatening to us?
ZAKARIA: I think it's a very low probability. The Pakistani military is a pretty hierarchical organized military. It is a British military, British in origin in training. Every coup that has taken place in Pakistan has never been a colonel's coup or lieutenant's coup. It has been the Pakistani military with its entire command chain intact moving to replace the civilian government and then moving back out.
So I tend to think it's pretty controlled. They have, you know, locks and keys on it with one caveat. The last year you have seen these assassinations of government figures, the government of Punjab, the minister, some of them by their own security guard so they do appear to be elements within the --
SPITZER: They're fissures. Not at the general's level, but the foot soldier's label.
Let's switch then back to al Qaeda. Are the groups, is the support for al Qaeda that is there in some form, within either the intelligence or the military. Are there rogue operations, or is that sanctioned from higher up?
ZAKARIA: Here's my guess, and there's no way of knowing. My guess is that nobody at the top knew that Osama bin Laden was where he was. But that within elements of the ISI and the military, there are friendly colonels or captains who knew that there was -- some al Qaeda guy was there. Maybe it was Osama who provided some logistical support. And the higher ups have a policy of "don't ask, don't tell."
SPITZER: Right.
ZAKARIA: And they don't want to know what's going on with the militant operations. They don't want to know what's going on with the connections with the Hakani faction, the other militant group that the ISI has contact with.
And it's a game. You know, they main plausibility deniability at the top, but there's somebody out there helping these guys.
SPITZER: If the president of the United States called you and said Fareed, look, there are Republican voices and some Democratic voices saying cut all aid to Pakistan. They're lousy, no-good partners, we don't want them anymore. What would your response be? And what would you say, very quickly, we should condition our aid on their doing.
ZAKARIA: So we tried it in the 1990s. We cut aid to Pakistan because of nuclear issues. The military got isolated. They went more radical. They went into the arms of the Chinese to a certain extent and we lost all control, all influence.
So I would say the aid is the one thing that gives us some influence. Keep the civilian aid for god's sake because that's what's building Pakistani civil society and democracy.
On the military side, we should be much tougher. We have to realize ultimately they need us more than we need them. We can walk away. We can say to the Indians, go and do what you want in Afghanistan. And that's not something the Pakistanis want to hear.
SPITZER: So we can condition aid to Pakistan on their eliminating the safe havens, for instance?
ZAKARIA: For me the crucial issue for the Pakistani military is, are they willing to go into North Waziristan, which is the area where the bad guys live who kills Americans? So far they have only gone after the bad guys who kill Pakistanis. They need to start going after the bad guys who kill Americans, because, otherwise, it means they are maintaining this strategy of saying there are some good terrorists and there are some bad terrorists. And the good terrorists, whether intentionally or not, are the ones that kill Americans.
SPITZER: All right, Fareed, as always, fascinating stuff. Thank you.
ZAKARIA: Pleasure.
SPITZER: Coming up, was killing bin Laden murder? I talk with two sometimes controversial scholars about the true meaning of the raid that took out the world's top terrorist. Don't go away.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
SPITZER: Did the United States have any intention of capturing Osama bin Laden alive? Our next guests think not. In fact, one of them says bin Laden was murdered by American forces.
Joining me now is Chris Hedges, former "New York Times" Middle East bureau chief who won a Pulitzer prize for the paper's terror coverage, and Yale Law School professor Stephen Carter, who wrote a piece in the upcoming issue of "Newsweek," urging Americans to face up to the ugly truth of the raid on bin Laden, or as he put it, the assassination. These are two respected scholars with sometimes surprising and controversial reviews.
Gentlemen, welcome to you both. All right.
Chris, let's start with you. Here's the question. Was the mission against bin Laden an act, a legitimate act of war, murder or assassination? And regardless of what you call it, was it morally justified?
CHRIS HEDGES, FMR. "NEW YORK TIMES" MIDDLE EAST BUREAU CHIEF: You know, without being there, it's hard to say. And I spent a lot of time in combat as a war correspondent for 20 years, starting in Latin America ending up in the Balkans, Middle East. And you have to make split-second decisions. So without being in the room, I think we have to throw out that caveat. However, by their own admission, he was unarmed. He was shot in front of his wife and daughter, and these are very, very highly trained units. And one suspects that the order was probably shoot to kill.
SPITZER: And your presumption then, what I hear you saying and I've read speeches you've given since early in the week is that your belief is that there really was no intent to do anything other than kill him.
HEDGES: Well, without being on the inside, that's certainly the way it appears. And I think for those of us who cared about the rule of law, and remember I covered the war in the Balkans, I watched The Hague, I watched the importance of The Hague when it brought in figures like Slobodan Milosevic and others.
SPITZER: By The Hague, you mean the international criminal court?
HEDGES: Yes, the international court. And I think that we who believe that the rule of law should be the foundation of a society, if there was any way we could have taken bin Laden to The Hague, it would have been a far better outcome than killing him.
SPITZER: All right, Steven, let me turn to you. You are the legal scholar. You have written about the law of war. Do you agree that it would have been both preferable to do that, to use the international criminal court as the means of prosecuting him? Or do you think it was morally appropriate -- there's the premise that the SEALs went in there with a shoot to kill order. What do you think? How do you assess this?
STEPHEN L. CARTER, AUTHOR, "THE VIOLENCE OF PEACE: Well, first of all, I would agree with Chris that without being in the room, it's very hard to give advice. But I would say this, President Obama in his own Nobel Prize address in 2009 said that a great nation's actions should be judged by the just war tradition. And in the just war tradition, there's a difference between someone dying in battle and setting out to kill a particular person. It can be justified to do it, but it's a different kind of act. You might have to face up to that.
You know, back in World War II, Winston Churchill and Franklin Roosevelt sat down and made a list of 10 to 15 Nazi leaders for whom they'll prepared to issue shoot on sight orders. The idea was that they would not be allowed to surrender or be killed wherever found. The only reason they never issued the list wasn't some moral squeamishness. It's that when Stalin saw the list, he wanted to make it 5,000 or 10,000 names instead.
We have a long tradition of going after leaders on the other side. I think that instead of trying to figure what name to call it, we have to be adults and face up to it and decide whether it's the kind of thing we want to do.
SPITZER: OK, Stephen, I want to push a little bit. I read your book, it's brilliant. And you say we have to face up to it and be honest about it. But answer the question, does that mean it is morally appropriate?
CARTER: If you can find a way to limit killings like this to situation of strict necessity where you're going to save large numbers of civilian lives, I do think you can make a case for it. What we have to worry about is not the killing of Osama bin Laden, which I think most of us are actually relieved. It's rather that we are ceding to the president, the authority to decide who should be killed. And that's not just an authority for president like Obama who many of us may like. It's his successor and his successor and his successor. As long as there's a war on terror, there will be presidents who will be exercising the authority unilaterally of deciding who around the world they have enough evidence against to kill. That is at least something we should talk about and think about very hard.
SPITZER: Chris, in your commentary over the course of this week, you have taken as a premise that bin Laden was not operationally involved in Al Qaeda, that he had somehow become a father figure to them and an ideological spokesman perhaps but not day to day involved. Has anything that has emerged such at it is changed your perspective on that and if it has changed your assessment of whether to take him out was appropriate?
HEDGES: Well, I mean, he was unarmed. I mean, so, that's an act of murder. Having spent a lot of time in combat, murder is always part of warfare. But it is murder as opposed to killing which is taking the life of somebody who has the capacity to harm you. So I think to the point that Stephen have made is a valid one.
In terms of when I covered Al Qaeda, he certainly signed off on events. He contributed ideas about events and he was instrumental in terms of the funding. But he did not run the day to day operations. And I spent a year rebuilding every step that operatives took. Richard Reid, the Paris embassy bombing plot, and I don't see any evidence that that has changed. However, we may find that within the intelligence or, you know, the intelligence community, assessing what they found, we have a different portrait. But certainly the intelligence officials that I was interviewing when I was with "The New York Times," that was their belief.
SPITZER: Look, Chris, there are few people who know more Al Qaeda's than you. So here is the question I have. Do you think that by killing him, we will evoke a stronger, more vicious type of retaliation than we might have if he had been taken than if he had been taken alive?
HEDGES: Well, I think the fundamental problem is occupation within the Middle East. Remember that after the first Gulf War, Osama bin Laden offered to come back to Saudi Arabia and help organize the defenses. He was turned down by the kingdom. We saw not only heavy occupation within Kuwait, occupation of Iraq, Afghanistan, Doha. And this is far more important. This is what is triggering that collective humiliation. That is what is fielding recruits from Yemen and other countries into Iraq, into Afghanistan. And I think that that is a far more serious threat than Al Qaeda, which has been largely broken and disrupted.
SPITZER: OK. We'll come back to that in a second. But, Stephen, I apologize. I cut you off before.
CARTER: That's all right. One small point, I want to correct one thing that Chris said. Under the law of war, it is not murder to kill someone who is unarmed. As long as someone is a member of a belligerent force including the leader of a belligerent force, and is not actively trying to surrender at that moment, you certainly have the right to treat them as a belligerent and kill them. It's not a crime against the laws of war.
SPITZER: All right. Stephen, Chris, stay right where you are. We're going to take a quick break. We'll continue this conversation when we come back. Don't go away.
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SPITZER: I'm back with Chris Hedges, former Middle East bureau chief of the "New York Times" and Pulitzer Prize winner, and Stephen Carter, Yale Law professor.
Stephen, let me come back to you. I want to put up on the screen a quotation from your marvelous book "The Violence of Peace." And it reads, "The true absolutist will say, and mean it, 'Never resort to torture.' This position is in its way noble, but it fails to partake of the reality that we have no choice but to rank evils."
Moral relativism then is something you're acknowledging here. You have said the assassination, murder, defeat of bin Laden is perhaps President Obama's finest hour. Are you saying when you put these thoughts together that the torture, if you believe it was required, that it was required to find him, was morally justified?
CARTER: First of all, I want to make clear, I'm not associating myself with the word murder where Osama bin Laden is concerned.
SPITZER: I'm sorry.
CARTER: It's assassination. I just want to be as clear on that as I can.
As to torture, I don't know and I don't think any of us know how much of any of the information that we used to track down bin Laden came from either our use of these harsh techniques or perhaps the Pakistanis use them in some of the small clues they may have passed along. None of us know that. Maybe none of us ever will. My point is that, again, we as grown-ups have to recognize, accept the possibility that maybe an outcome many of us think is a good one, the killing of bin Laden might be somehow associated at some point in its history with an outcome -- with a method, I should say, that many of us don't like at all.
SPITZER: OK.
CARTER: Instead of turning hand springs --
SPITZER: Stephen, I want to do to you what I'm sure you've done to your students at Yale Law school, throw you a hypothetical. Change and presume that without the use of enhanced interrogation, waterboarding -- I'm not going to call it torture -- draw your own conclusion, without the use of enhanced interrogation, we would not have gotten this evidence. Would you as president have said yes, use that enhanced interrogation?
CARTER: I as president would have said no, don't. But I perfectly well understand how someone could make a different choice. I think that we're at a point where if you're going to get good information, people are going to try hard and use these methods to get it. I would rather we didn't try it. If that meant bin Laden had gotten away, well, I suppose he'd still be running free. But I don't think we should flee from the possibility that the information was related, and I think we should just accept that and accept that maybe those programs, horrific as they were, may have helped lead to this outcome.
HEDGES: Being a good intelligence officer is not that different from being a good investigative reporter. And when you have to resort to torture, your intelligence system has broken down. Probably the most tortured detainee, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, who was waterboarded, I mean, how many times? Eighty times?
SPITZER: A hundred eighty.
HEDGES: A hundred eighty times -- did not divulge the name of this courier.
SPITZER: He lied about him.
HEDGES: He lied about him.
SPITZER: Before and after.
HEDGES: There you go. And I think that when you have to resort to torture, I mean, what happened in 9/11 was that we had no human assets inside of Al Qaeda. At least according to French intelligence, who I was working very closely with. And all of the major terrorist attacks that the French stymied, stymied through infiltrating these groups and the idea that torture is number one effective, because you reach a point where even if they say something is true, then you keep going, and they'll say anything to stop the pain.
SPITZER: Time winds down. I want to give you the last shot. You've been enormously skeptical of what our strategy has been thus far towards Al Qaeda. In 30 seconds, give us the strategy you would have us pursue.
HEDGES: We should have built on the empathy that we had garnered throughout the Muslim world after 9/11. Terrorism is a tactic. It's been with us for generations. You can't make war against a tactic. You have to isolate terrorists within their own society. And as soon as the Bush administration started dropping iron fragmentation bombs all over the Middle East, they became the best recruiting tool these terrorist groups had.
SPITZER: Just as quickly, are we doing any better now that we are trying to reach out towards the Arab spring, reaching out to opposition forces? Whether in Libya or Egypt, is that laying the foundation for a newly formed relationship?
HEDGES: Libya and Egypt is more complicated because the military is still controlled, but the key issue is the expanded occupation and the proxy wars in Yemen and Pakistan. That is the problem. And until we address that problem, terrorism is not going to go away.
SPITZER: We're going to have to continue this some other day. Stephen Carter, Chris Hedges, thank you so much. Fascinating conversation with two of the very smartest people in the world on this issue.
Coming up, it was a very, very good week. Perhaps the best week ever for President Obama. Is it all downhill from here? Not quite. When we come back.
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SPITZER: What a week. Last Friday, the president's poll numbers were terrible and we were still talking about that birth certificate. But by Monday, Americans were posting pictures like this one all over the Internet. And just so you can see it, it says sorry it took so long to get you a copy of my birth certificate. I was too busy killing Osama bin Laden. Can't say a whole lot more than that.
Today, he's soaring in the polls, hero to the troops. Suddenly 2012 looks like a cake walk. Or does it?
Joining me now our own Will Cain and Steve Kornacki of Salon.com. Thanks guys for coming in.
So, first of all, which is more important, Osama bin Laden or job numbers? You have to pick number or the other. Which would you rather carry as a sort of banner in the campaign?
Steve, what have you got?
STEVE KORNACKI, NEWS EDITOR & COLUMNIST, SALON.COM: I mean, it would have to be job numbers. I mean, we have some perfect -- or near perfect historical parallels for this. You can remember 20 years ago at this time, George Bush Sr. was an absolutely shoo-in for re- election because he kicked America's Vietnam syndrome. They won the first Gulf War. His approval rating was 91 percent after that. The entire Democratic Party took 1991 off because he was unbeatable. And guess what, Bill Clinton became president because --
SPITZER: Remember he was running against the seven dwarfs. That's what the Democrats in New Hampshire called.
All right. So, Will, if that is correct, how do you interpret --
WILL CAIN, CNN CONTRIBUTOR: It's not.
SPITZER: Take it as a premise or respond to it, but I also want to ask you this. How do you interpret today's job numbers? Let's stick with this. 244,000 additional jobs. Pretty good number, I think, but the unemployment rate jumps to nine. Explain how you see this politically.
CAIN: Yes, the political fact of job numbers in April -- what, a year and a half away from an election, are virtually worthless, Eliot. I mean, the extent to which they have some merit is, what are they suggesting as far as the larger trend? Is the economy trending towards a position in which Obama will be in a position of strength in the election? And count me as pessimistic. I think there's too many negative indicators. Look, there's a very intelligent theory out there that the economy is treading water and it's propped up solely because of QE2. When it expires, we'll have a smarter conversation about this.
SPITZER: You acknowledge QE2 was a good job creating mechanism?
CAIN: I'm acknowledging QE2 is propping up the economy.
SPITZER: QE2 being the Feds quantitative use, which I thought you opposed a couple of weeks ago.
CAIN: No.
SPITZER: All right, not with me, but somewhere else. All right.
Steve, do you buy this, that the 244,000 doesn't really matter yet?
KORNACKI: Well, it doesn't matter in terms right now looking at 2012. If this is the start of a trend, it absolutely matters. I mean, I think the line that everybody sort of established for Obama in terms of, if he's under eight percent for unemployment, he wins. If he's over eight percent, he loses. Every sort of analysis I've seen at this point says this is going to be right around eight percent. Which means it's probably going to be a really close election, decided at the margins.
CAIN: Unless you say this, Steve, that the suggestion is, is this largely a bigger trend? Is it part of a bigger trend? That's the important thing. I don't know that we can say yes.
KORNACKI: It was better than we expected. I think we have to say that today. I think when you look at the growth figures that came out, I don't think anybody expected the jobs report --
SPITZER: Right. This is a factual matter. Explain to folks very quickly, also 244 was the net. It was actually I think 268 in the private sector and a loss of 24,000 in the public sector, which frankly in the long run, may be a good thing. That's a lot of policy built into that. The reason we got nine percent move up in unemployment is that people are coming back into the job market which is a good think in the sense that more people are looking. Do you agree with that?
CAIN: Yes.
SPITZER: They haven't found a job.
CAIN: Yes, but I think we're looking at little ripples in a pond. It is much bigger than this. The question will be, what will the economy be like when Obama is seeking re-election in a year?
SPITZER: Another question.
CAIN: And that -- the answer to that, by the way, is when it's QE3. SPITZER: Well --
CAIN: It will be coming. It will be coming.
SPITZER: We'll get to that perhaps.
KORNACKI: I think there's another thing that happened this week that's worth pointing out. There was actually a Republican debate last night down in South Carolina. And I think --
SPITZER: I didn't know that.
KORNACKI: Neither did most people.
SPITZER: -- most of the Republican candidates for that matter.
KORNACKI: If you watch this thing, I think you saw another reason why Obama might be a little optimistic. And that is if the unemployment rate is around eight percent, and this is really a toss- up election, if these are the kinds of candidates the Republican Party is dealing with right now or candidates who are going to have to run against these guys, if this is what the Republicans put out next year for people to see, then in a toss-up election around eight percent unemployment, that's an advantage for Obama.
SPITZER: Yes. Will, do you want to respond to that and defend your, you know, your lineup at this point?
CAIN: No, I don't. And let me say this. Those job numbers, by the way, are not partisan --
SPITZER: That doesn't bode so well, I suppose.
CAIN: Those job numbers are not a partisan issue. That's not playing well for anybody. Nobody has an answer to this, by the way. That's why my original point to Steve was Osama bin Laden is much bigger news. Obama has that feather in his hat. Look, it takes the winds out of the sails of every single Republican who says he's weak on foreign policy. Really? I got Osama bin Laden.
SPITZER: OK. Will, Steve, stay right there. We're going to take a quick break. Come back with some final thoughts. We'll be right back.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
SPITZER: Back now with our Will Cain and Steve Kornacki of Salon.com.
All right, Will, the Republicans punted within a few weeks of announcing their big Medicare proposal. What happened? They looked at it, tried to sell it, failed terribly and threw it overboard? I mean, what happened here?
CAIN: How did they pull it?
SPITZER: They say they're not pushing it anymore.
CAIN: Well, I don't know and I know Steve has written about this. This is a basic premise that I'm challenging here. I don't know that the Medicare reform proposal that Paul Ryan put together was ever suggested to be tied to a debt ceiling raise. Or for that matter a 2011 budget was never a suggestion that they could do this from a minority position in the government.
KORNACKI: Yes, I think that's news to a lot of House Republicans who thought this was something that they were going to really use as a bargaining chip with the debt ceiling vote with the budget.
I think there was logic to what the Republicans did here in putting this out, voting on, and now pulling it back. And that is, that the logic is this, they need to satisfy this sort of rabid Tea Party base. They need to show that they're serious, that they took the vote to really make it look like it's because the Democrats have the Senate and the White House that are blocking this. Then they can take it off the table like we're doing now and hope they got a year and a half to make the country forget about it. And if they get a president in 2012, they'll bring this back.
SPITZER: So that suggests that they will try to make this the fulcrum of the 2012 election?
KORNACKI: No, they will pretend this didn't happen. But if they win, it will come back.
CAIN: That's the basic --
SPITZER: But, Will, can they sell it to the public?
CAIN: I don't know the answer to that, Eliot. History suggests no. History suggests the American public wants every entitlement they can have and low taxes. They want things that are not realistic. That is what I was so proud of Paul Ryan about. He told not only the general American public, but his own voters, hey, you can't have everything. Look, say you want to cut Medicare.
SPITZER: We've got to stop there.
CAIN: He cut me off now.
SPITZER: And he got kicked and he didn't do it.
All right. Thanks, Will. Thanks, Steve.
For more stories and videos, go to our blog, CNN.com/inthearena.
Thanks for joining us. Have a Happy Mother's Day. Good night from New York.
"PIERS MORGAN TONIGHT" starts right now.
