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Lou Dobbs This Week
Alberto Gonzales Testifies; Senator Reid: Iraq War Lost
Aired April 22, 2007 - 18:00 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
(NEWSBREAK)
LOU DOBBS, HOST, LOU DOBBS THIS WEEK: Tonight, Defense Secretary Robert Gates says the clock is ticking for Iraq, and the United States is losing patience. We'll have that special report.
And as the nation rembers and honors victims of the shooting rampage at Virginia tech, we'll be asking the question here, What should our society be doing about the underlying causes of such violence?
We'll have all of that and much more, straight ahead here tonight.
ANNOUNCER: This is LOU DOBBS THIS WEEK, news, debate and opinion for Sunday, April 22st.
Here now, Lou Dobbs.
DOBBS: Good evening.
We begin tonight with new indication that Attorney General Alberto Gonzales could lose his job. The White House says the president still has full confidence in Gonzales, but several White House aides privately say they were dismayed by the attorney general's performance in front of the Senate Judiciary Committee. Gonzales's testimony failed to restore his political credibility after more than five hours of questioning about the abrupt, controversial dismissal of eight U.S. attorneys.
Dana Bash reports from Capitol Hill.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
DANA BASH, CAPITOL HILL (voice-over): The tone was testy from the start, when the attorney general, crediblity in question and job on the line, angered the committee's top Republican.
SEN. ARLEN SPECTER (R) PENNSYLVANIA: I know you've been preparing for this hearing.
ALBERTO GONZALES, ATTORNEY GENERAL: I prepare for every hearing, Senator.
SPECTER: Do you prepare for all your press conferences? Were you prepared for the press conference where you said there weren't any discussions involving you? GONZALES: Senator, I've already said that I misspoke. It was my mistake.
SPECTER: I'm asking you, were you prepared? You interjected that you're always prepared. Were you prepared for that press conference?
GONZALES: Sir, I didn't say that I was always prepared.
BASH: Alberto Gonzalez told skeptical senators he only had a limited role in firing eight federal prosecutors, saying he left it up to top aides to make judgments about dismissals. In some cases he knew why he signed off on firing someone.
GONZALES: Mr. Mccain, when I accepted the recommendation on December 7th, generally, I recall there being serious concerns about his judgment.
BASH: In others, he did not.
SEN. SAM BROWNBACK (R) KANSAS: Margaret Chiara, of the Western District of Michigan?
GONZALES: Same issue. She's the other person, quite candidly, Senator, that I don't recall remembering -- I don't recall the reason why that I accepted the decision on December 7th.
BASH: The disbelief among loyal Republicans was stunning.
SEN. LINDSEY GRAHAM (R) SOUTH CAROLINA: Most of this is a stretch. I think it's clear to me that some of these people just had personality conflicts with people in your office or at the White House and, you know, we made up reasons to fire them.
BASH: Senators were openly frustrated that the attorney general's testimony was peppered by three words.
GONZALES: I don't recall. I don't recall. I don't recall.
BASH: GOP senators were baffled by Gonzales's inability to rember key facts, like whether he attended a high-level meeting in November, where the firings were discussed.
SEN. JEFF SESSIONS (R) ALABAMA: I guess I'm concerned about your recollection, really, because it's not that long ago. It was an important issue, and that's troubling.
BASH: At the end of day, the committee's top Republican, Senator Arlen Specter, said he thinks the attorney general mismanaged the firing of federal prosecutors, said his credibility has been impaired. He also said he plans to call President Bush to tell him just that.
Dana Bash, CNN, Capitol Hill.
(END VIDEOTAPE) DOBBS: Joining me now are senior political analyst Bill Schneider, senior political correspondent Candy Crowley and our senior legal analyst, Jeffrey Toobin.
Thank you all for being here.
Let me turn to you first, Bill Schneider. Does his performance in the Judiciary Committee hearing effectively doom him or is there some reason for the White House to say they can be hopeful?
BILL SCHNEIDER, SR POLITICAL ANALYST: Right now he has a constituency of one and that is President Bush. Certainly not the Republicans in Congress or in the Senate, at least one of whom has already called for his resignation. Is he doomed? I don't think the president is going to call for him to resign, but I think members of the White House staff are very likely to visit with Mr. Gonzales and say, You are doing damage to the president, it would be better if you left, and that would be the end of it for him.
DOBBS: Your assessment, Candy?
CANDY CROWLEY, SR POLITICAL CORRESPONDENT: I think -- the president, as you know, Lou, can get his back up and then dig his heels in, particularly if he thinks someone is being wronged. This is a very close friend of the president's. My guess, if I had to guess, was, yes, Republicans will go to Gonzales and say, Listen, this is yours to do, don't make the president fire you. But I wouldn't be surprised and I don't think that the president will ask Gonzales to resign.
DOBBS: Jeffrey?
JEFFREY TOOBIN, SR LEGAL ANALYST: I think he's going stay, at least for a while. As Bill said, he has a constituency of one, who appears to be in this corner, the president. Also, I think, remember where we are in the Bush presidency. They essentially have no domestic agenda at all. It's not like they have to go through Congress to get something through. They're not going through anything anyway.
So the president wants to stand by his guy. He's not going get impeached. I think that's what's going to happen.
DOBBS: Bill Schneider, Jeffrey makes an interesting point about not having a domestic agenda, unless you consider, of course, the so- called comprehensive immigration reform that he's trying to build a backdoor deal with the Democrats in the Senate over. The attorney general, however, though, plays a role in all of that.
SCHNEIDER: That's right. He does.
DOBBS: His performance has been questionable at best.
SCHNEIDER: It's certainly questionable. Arlen Specter is the one who put it most dramatically at the hearing the other day when he said, Your characterization is totally at variance with the facts. That was a devastating judgment, and several other Republican senators made similar judgments.
The problem is not just Gonzales, but the president of the United States. He simply lacks clout. He has been more than two years, almost the entirety of his second term, without majority approval. That's the longest period a president has lacked majority approval since Harry Truman in the early 50s. That means he lacks clout. He can't get things done. The fact that he stands behind the attorney general doesn't really mean much, politically, because nobody sees any advantage to siding with the president right now.
TOOBIN: It's really one of the most historic transformations that we've seen, in terms of clout. This is the president who -- you probably all remember -- the day after he was re-elected, said I have political capital and I intend to use it. He used it to try to get his Social Security reform passed, which was a complete failure.
The one thing he did in this second term was nominate, successfully, two Supreme Court justices, which, as we learned this week in the abortion decision was, in fact, a transformative change in the court, but that appears to be the beginning and end of his second- term agenda.
DOBBS: Candy, what are the politics here? Is it in the interests of the Democrats to keep Attorney General Gonzales in place or to head as much as they can to persuade that constituency of one to remove him?
CROWLEY: Look, they like him, as somebody they can beat up on. This is a very -- at the moment and it's the politics of the moment right now because we're so far away from november of '08, but at the moment he is a very good issue for Democrats. They are using it on the campaign trail.
It doesn't mean anything once he's gone. If you're a Democrat, you're kind of liking having this pinata.
SCHNEIDER: And Lou, there is a risk here for Democrats, that if Gonzales does resign, they'll be able to say, the Republicans, to say it's over, let's move on. The fact is, it may not be over for a lot of Democrats, who wonder, did the White House allow politics to interfere with the process of law enforcement? Were Karl Rove and Harriet Miers and other people in the White House involved in this episode of firing these U.S. attorneys? What role did they play? Democrats want to be going into that, and that could be harder if Gonzales resigns.
DOBBS: And this Justice Department, is it fair to say, Jeffrey Toobin, that it is amongst the most political in recent history?
TOOBIN: What's remarkable, if you talk to people at Justice, is how alienated the career officials are at Justice. The United States Department of Justice has some of the most competent, professional, wonderful people, especially in the U.S. attorney's offices, who are career people, who stay, year in and year out. And they're the ones who have been the most alienated by this administration.
DOBBS: Candy, you get the last words and thought.
CROWLEY: I was going to say that this isn't all that unusual. The amount of alienation may be larger than it has been in the past, but you get that a lot. You get it at the State Department, you get it at the Pentagon and you have it at the Justice Department.
DOBBS: Candy Crowley, Bill Schneider, Jeffrey Toobin. Thank you all.
Still ahead here, Defense Secretary Robert Gates tells the Iraqi government the United States is losing patience with Iraq. That special report upcoming.
Also, students, faculty members, staff and the nation remember and mourn victims of the Virginia Tech massacre. We'll have that report.
And the shooting rampage has re-ignited the call for gun control. Will Congress introduce new attempts at restrictions on gun ownership and should they? We'll have that story. Stay with us.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
DOBBS: Defense Secretary Robert Gates has given the Iraqi government a blunt warning. The Defense secretary telling them that U.S. support for Iraq is not open-ended. The Iraq government must work harder to achieve reconciliation.
Meanwhile, the new commander of U.S. troops in the Middle East, Admiral William Fallon, said the United States is losing ground in Iraq each and every day.
The admiral's remarks came on the same day that insurgents killed almost 200 people in a series of bomb attacks in Baghdad.
Barbara Starr reports now from the Pentagon.
(BEGIN VIDEO)
BARBARA STARR, CNN PENTAGON CORRESPONDENT, THE PENTAGON (voice- over): Across Baghdad, at least six bombings. One of the deadliest days in Iraq ever.
Insurgents challenging the Bush administration's claim that the troop surge and security crackdown are working.
On Capitol Hill, the top U.S. commander for the region had a dire warning about Iraq.
ADM. WILLIAM FALLON, COMMANDER, U.S. CENTRAL COMMAND: But I'll tell you that there's hardly a week goes by - certainly, almost a day that doesn't go by - without some major event that also causes us to lose ground.
STARR: CNN has learned that at the most senior levels of the U.S. military, there is growing concern that al Qaeda-backed suicide car bomb attacks simply may be unstoppable.
Commanders also are worried that recent violence, including the bombing in the Green Zone and challenges by the radical cleric, Muqtada al-Sadr, may be a death blow to political progress.
FALLON: This is really the Iraqi leadership's major and potential last opportunity to really take this ball forward.
STARR: Defense Secretary Robert Gates, touring the Middle East, warned that getting Iraqis to take control of their future is one of the vital benchmarks to keeping the U.S. troop surge in place.
ROBERT GATES, U.S. SECRETARY OF DEFENSE: I think that there is progress being made. I believe that faster progress can be made in the political reconciliation process in Iraq.
STARR: And while the administration continues to oppose congressional deadlines for withdrawing troops from Iraq, the secretary used the controversy in Washington to offer his own warning to the government of Prime Minister Nouri al-Malaki.
GATES: What I have said is that the debate in Congress, I think, has been helpful in demonstrating to the Iraqis that American patience is limited.
(END VIDEO)
STARR (on camera): Lou, Admiral Fallon made more news when he declared that the "long war" is over.
Well, it's not really over, but what Admiral Fallon said to his troops is, he wants everybody to stop using the phrase "long war" to describe the global war on terror, because he said it really no longer fits that the war against extremism would not include that open-ended long, long-term commitment of U.S. troops in combat.
So, a little bit of a change in the bureaucracy, but it may be tough to see what it really means to a soldier or Marine on the ground - Lou.
DOBBS: Barbara, an excellent point. And at the same time, the terminology that the Pentagon that has been - its use of words over the course of this conflict has been instructive.
I can still recall Donald Rumsfeld standing up there in those briefings, talking about the insurgency, the sectarian violence as dead-enders, thugs, bitter enders.
To watch the evolution of language from the Pentagon, one has to believe that the rest of the command structure, if not the civilian leadership, has to appreciate Admiral Fallon's arrival in a leadership position there.
STARR: Well, it certainly is a change.
Admiral Fallon also made clear to his forces another change, Lou. No more use, necessarily, of the word "jihadi" or "jihadist" to describe those who are fighting U.S. troops.
The command, the Central Command says that has religious connotations that they no longer want to use. So, lots of changes in the works.
DOBBS: We were watching changes in language. Very few, unfortunately, changes in the progress and the success of the U.S. military in Iraq to this point.
We all hope that changes soon.
Barbara, thank you very much. Barbara Starr from the Pentagon.
Senate majority leader, Senator Harry Reid has simply declared, in his opinion, the war in Iraq has been lost.
Senator Reid also said President Bush's troop buildup, or "surge," is not accomplishing anything.
Senator Reid's declaration came a day after he and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi met with the president to discuss emergency war funding.
The White House said Senator Reid's comments are in direct conflict with the opinion of military commanders in Iraq.
White House spokesman, Dana Perino, challenged Senator Reid to cut off funds for this war, if he really believes the United States is lost.
Up next here, did Virginia Tech officials and law enforcement miss key warning signs ahead of Monday's deadly rampage? Should there be all of this second-guessing? And what about the media's role?
And renewed debate over gun control laws after the campus shootings. We'll have a special report on what the Second Amendment means.
We'll be right back.
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DOBBS: The victims of the deadly shooting rampage of Virginia Tech, remembered Friday by students, teachers, family and friends. Classes resume Monday at the school.
Virginia Tech president, Charles Steger, said the university will move forward in a way that will honor the memory of those we lost.
Brianna Keilar has our report from the Virginia Tech campus - Brianna.
BRIANNA KEILAR, CNN CORRESPONDENT, BLACKSBURG, VIRGINIA: Lou, every day since Monday has been a day of mourning here on the Virginia Tech campus, but Friday was an official day of mourning. A sea of orange and maroon gathering at the makeshift memorial on the drill field at the center of the Virginia Tech campus for a moment of silence.
Around the nation, other universities and communities remember those 32 students who were killed her by Cho Seung-Hui, by tolling bells and with prayer vigils.
Now, in the coming months, we're going to be waiting to hear what an independent panel, reviewing the university's response to shooting, will say. This, of course, comes amid criticism that the university didn't warn students soon enough after that first shooting, and that they didn't shut down campus after that first shooting.
This is a panel that is put together by Governor Timothy Kaine at the request of university president, Charles Steger. And we have learned that it's going to be headed up by a former head of the Virginia State Police, Colonel Gerald Massengill. He'll be joined by former secretary of the Department of Homeland Security, Tom Ridge, as well as experts in the field of mental health, higher education and law enforcement.
But right now, the focus here on campus is to remember those who were lost here and to help those who lost their friends, lost their classmates cope with that.
And I did speak with many students. They told us that when classes reconvene on Monday, they will be there and they want to finish out the school year - Lou.
DOBBS: Brianna Keilar reporting.
The deadly rampage at Virginia Tech has unbelievably already prompted a number of incidents at other schools around the country.
In Yuma City, California, a man threatened to go on a killing spree there at local schools. He later turned himself in to police. He's been charged with making criminal threats.
And the campus at St. Edwards University in Austin, Texas, shut down last week after a bomb threat. Incidents also reported at a rural Louisiana high school and in Hollywood, Florida, where a high school was locked down after the report of a student with a gun threatening suicide.
The shootings at Virginia Tech raise the politically charged issue of gun control. Public support for tighter gun control is declining.
And studies show there is no evidence that tighter gun control laws actually reduce gun violence.
As Christine Romans now reports, the Second Amendment still stands.
(BEGIN VIDEO)
CHRISTINE ROMANS, CNN CORRESPONDENT, (voice-over): The law of the land. These 27 words. "A well regulated Militia being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep bear Arms, shall not be infringed."
But for years, gun control advocates and lawmakers have sought to restrict the Second Amendment with gun-free zones, waiting periods, firearm registration and licensing, with the view that limiting access to guns would decrease crime.
JACOB SULLUM, REASON MAGAZINE: It's never been demonstrated in any conclusive way that gun control reduces crime.
The rules disarm the law-abiding people, but they leave the criminals free to attack their victims, who have no defense.
ROMANS: In fact, crime has been declining across the country, irrespective of the state gun laws, whether lenient or tough. The CDC several years ago concluded there is no proof that gun laws reduce firearm violence.
In fact, some of the most violent places have the toughest gun laws. Think Washington, D.C., and its 30-year ban on hand guns.
The most restrictive gun laws in North America are in Mexico, where citizens are unarmed. Killer drug cartels are armed.
The Virginia Tech campus is a gun-free zone. That did not stop Cho Seung-Hui. But his actions inevitably are reviving the gun control debate.
A Virginia congressman.
REP. JIM MORAN, D-VIRGINIA: It is simply too easy to obtain a firearm.
ROMANS: New York's mayor.
MICHAEL BLOOMBERG, MAYOR, NEW YORK CITY: All mayors understand that taking illegal guns off the streets has nothing to do with the Second Amendment and everything to do with law enforcement.
ROMANS: Intense debate over the modern meaning of a 216-year-old right.
PROF. NICHOLAS JOHNSON, FORDHAM LAW SCHOOL: But there is a split among the courts. There's a split among academics.
But among American people, the majority of Americans believe that they have a right to arms.
ROMANS: An estimated 70 million Americans are gun owners.
(END VIDEO)
ROMANS (on camera): The courts most recently weighed in on gun control laws in Washington, D.C., just last month striking down that city's 30-year-old prohibition on hand guns, ruling it unconstitutional, insisting, Lou, that the Second Amendment is not ambiguous.
DOBBS: And it took only a matter of hours before proponents of gun control - or the elimination of guns in society at all - started their cry for either eliminating them or reducing or restricting gun ownership.
There's no political prospect here, though, according to most who say that this is going to happen.
ROMANS: The Democratic leadership is not keen to push this on the scene at the moment. And there have been no real cries from the leadership to address this right now.
DOBBS: And that may have something to do with the fact that there are 70 million gun owners in the country.
Thank you very much, Christine Romans.
Up next, Attorney General Alberto Gonzales under fire. Can he keep his job? Should he keep his job after his unconvincing performance on Capitol Hill?
Also, the Bush administration struggles to hire thousands of new border patrol agents, while at the same time cutting the number of National Guard troops on our border.
We'll have a special report on the reality on our southern border.
And still many, many unanswered questions about the Virginia Tech University killer. Our panel of experts joins us to assess what we know and what we don't, and what we must learn from this tragedy.
Stay with us. We'll be right back.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
DOBBS: An independent panel will review all aspects of the Virginia Tech massacre, including the events that preceded the tragedy.
There are new details that show a deeply disturbed young man who displayed many warning signs, some of which were missed or ignored.
On November 27th, 2005, a female student so unnerved by Cho Seung-Hui's stalking, she called police, but did not press charges. December 12th, another female student asked police to make Cho stop his instant messaging to her. Again, no charges filed.
Soon after, police were notified that Cho might be suicidal. He went to the police department and was evaluated by a counselor. A special justice magistrate ruled that he did in fact present an imminent danger to self or others.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
CHIEF WENDELL FLINCHUM, VA TECH POLICE: Based on that interaction with the counselor, a temporary detention order was obtained and Cho was taken to a mental health facility.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
DOBBS: And later that fall, an English professor was so disturbed by Cho that she refused to teach him. The head of the department trying to intervene.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
LUCINDA ROY, ENGLISH PROFESSOR: I contacted the Virginia Tech police and student affairs and counseling and the college. They did feel that their hands were tied because he hadn't made an actual threat, and that was very -- that was difficult for me to accept.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
DOBBS: A string of warnings, in some cases clear warnings tied together all too late. We're still struggling to understand why this young man gunned down so many people in cold blood.
For some possible answers and what can be done to prevent a recurrence we're joined by Katherine Newman, professor of sociology at Princeton's Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs, also the author of the book "Rampage."
And Richard Arum, professor of sociology and education at New York University. Professor Arum, author of "Judging School Discipline."
Good to have you both back here. Let me start with you Professor Newman. There's -- this panel is going to work, we've seen so many signs from this young man who turned into a cold-blooded killer.
But he obviously has a history that goes back to his childhood. Is there something that could have been done much earlier, should have been done much earlier in your judgment?
KATHERINE NEWMAN, SOCIOLOGY PROFESSOR: I'm sure there's a lot more that could have been done when he was younger. But if you're talking about what could have been done once he got to the university, I think there are some questions that need to be asked what kind of informs the university could gain access to, what they could do with it, how they could act on it. And I'm sure all of that will be investigated.
DOBBS: You seem to intimate they were proscribed by law from learning some things and doing certain things.
NEWMAN: I suspect that was probably the case. The Americans with Disabilities Act does limit the options for excluding someone who hasn't made direct threats. And I think that probably needs to be more closely examined. DOBBS: And the idea that standing before a magistrate and being determined a threat to self or to others and for there to be no follow up on the mandated treatment.
NEWMAN: I don't really understand how that happened. I'm sure that will be a primary focus of the investigation. Because that seems like a pretty clear standard.
DOBBS: Professor Arum, let's go to the same question that I asked Professor Newman. We have schools in which -- and this is an area upon which you're certainly an expert. We have schools that simply are right now tied up in knots in many -- and many students can't be helped because of constrained budgets in terms of treating children who are exhibiting mental illness, in a layman's point of view, I'm not talking about being actually diagnosed by a professional.
They can't take certain steps. They are proscribed in maintaining discipline in their classrooms. To what degree do you think that contributes to the possibility of incidents like this tragedy at Virginia Tech?
RICHARD ARUM, PROFESSOR OF SOCIOLOGY AND EDUCATION: I think that's clearly a part of the pattern of what developed here at Virginia Tech. Here if we just look at the case that we already know about this student's actions in Virginia Tech classrooms, here is a student who is acting in a completely anti-social way, not returning comments when spoken to the professor, and the university feels completely constrained in responding to that said student.
DOBBS: Well, is there anything that we should be doing? As a society, whether it be in terms of education policy, and I'm talking K through 12 primarily, whether it be in the way we are giving rights to students that they never had before until recent -- until recent history, is there something we should be doing differently here?
NEWMAN: I think with respect to K through 12, we actually have some pretty good ideas. They are never going to be 100 percent though, Lou. There isn't any policy we know of that will absolutely catch every last one of these incidents. But the more we catch, the better. And in K through 12, here are things I learned in my research.
School resource officers who are soft cops whose job it is to get to know kids and provide an opportunity for kids to come forward to someone they trust who will treat information confidentially are extremely important resources because the best line of defense in these cases is to make it possible for kids who hear threats to come forward to someone they trust. That has worked. We've had near miss plots stopped in their tracks because there was such a person there.
ARUM: I think we need top avoid resorting to technical solutions for this problem. More school security, metal detectors in the school and the like, we need to restore the capacity of educators to respond on a case by case basis to troubled youth. We also need to move our schools away from a focus solely on academic achievement to remind schools that they're also responsible for youth socialization.
DOBBS: Yeah, and educators, I've had a number say to me, you know, we're not supposed to be replacing the parent. But the reality is quite different. Schools are replacing parents. Parents, if they're fortunate enough to have two adults in that household, both are most often working. Don't have the time as in previous years.
They also, our kids are being bombarded by a pop culture that is absolutely pervasive in many respects extremely negative. Schools do have to step up to that responsibility and socialization, don't they?
NEWMAN: They do and don't. Here we may differ a little bit. I found when you looked at middle schools, you find that parents are sort of edged out of the social world of their children for good reasons. We want the kids to learn how to grow up, they need to be able to be somewhat more independent.
But kids are very likely to come forward to their parents if they hear things that are scaring them. And if the parents don't know the teachers, if the parents are not incorporated in some way into the school environment, they feel hamstrung with what to do with this information.
I found that in at least two of the cases I studied. The parents didn't know what to do with the information they observed themselves. I'm not persuaded they should be totally excluded from the school environment.
DOBBS: Professor Arum, you get the last word.
ARUM: I think indeed, the needs of our kids have increased and simultaneously, schools over the last two to three decades have had their hands tied in dealing with them. We have the right to privacy, a right to free speech, a right to due process, special protections for disabled students, all of these rights were extended to students only in the last two to three decades.
And it is that is legal regulation of schooling that makes it impossible to socialize youth effectively.
DOBBS: Should those regulations and legislation be rolled back?
ARUM: I do think we need to reconsider it. And the Supreme Court right now is considering a case on this very issue.
DOBBS: Professor Newman, Professor Arum, thank you both very much for being here.
Coming up next, troubling new concerns about the Bush administration's commitment to securing our borders. We'll have a special report.
And Republican support for attorney General Alberto Gonzales waning. Three of the country's best political analysts join me to discuss that and an a great deal more. Stay with us. We'll be right back. (COMMERCIAL BREAK)
DOBBS: More outbreaks of brutal violence in Mexico this week, as warring drug cartels take their deadly fights to tourist resorts and hospitals. We want to advise you some of the video that you're about to watch may be disturbing.
Hundreds of terrified patients and other people fled a Tijuana hospital on Wednesday after gunmen stormed that facility, trying to free a prisoner undergoing surgery. Police responded -- two officers and a gunman were killed. Also this week, bodies of dozens of shooting victims were discovered throughout Mexico, including the resort cities of Acapulco and Cancun. The violence attributed to warring drug cartels who are now vying for control of smuggling routes to move their illicit products into the United States.
Protecting our border is an issue the president insists is high on his agenda. The president says he's planning to boost the size of the Border Patrol by 6,000 agents by the end of next year, and at the same time, cut the number of National Guard troops deployed on our border. But as Casey Wian reports, as is so often the case on the issue of border security, what's being talked about is not what's happening.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
CASEY WIAN, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice over): When President Bush toured the border near Yuma, Arizona, last week, he made an unusual recruiting pitch.
GEORGE W. BUSH, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: I know some people are wondering whether or not it makes sense to join the Border Patrol. My answer is, I've gotten to know the Border Patrol. I know the people serving in this fine agency. I would strongly urge our fellow citizens to take a look at this profession.
WIAN: The Border Patrol is holding job fairs nationwide.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: The Border Patrol.
WIAN: And running television ads to meet the president's request to hire an additional 6,000 agents by the end of 2008.
But during the past six months, the Border Patrol has only grown by about 650 agents.
T.J. BONNER, PRESIDENT, NATIONAL BORDER PATROL COUNCIL: It is a very difficult job to fill, even in the best of times. The pay is low. The working conditions are very difficult, compounded by the fact that it's not the attractive job that the recruitment videos portray it to be.
WIAN: Adding 6,000 agents to a 12,000-member force in two years would be unprecedented, and some say next to impossible. Border Patrol agent pay starts at around $40,000 a year.
The job can be monotonous. Agents often spending hours alone monitoring the border. But in an instant it can turn deadly.
The requirements are stiff. Applicants must know Spanish and immigration law. Only one in 30 applicants are hired.
A Government Accountability Office report last month raised concern about a shortage of veteran personnel to train the massive influx of new agents. The report also found the government spends about $188,000 to deploy each new Border Patrol agent, including recruitment, training and equipment. At that rate, the price tag for 6,000 agents will exceed $1 billion.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
WIAN: The Border Patrol says it remains on target to meet the president's goal and will double the number of recruits going through its academy starting this month. As a result, the National Guard, Lou, is already making plans to reduce the number of troops deployed on the southern border in a support role.
Casey Wian, CNN, Los Angeles.
DOBBS: Up next -- why a record number of Americans say it's time to change course in Iraq. Bill Schneider joins me with that report. Stay with us.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
DOBBS: A record number of Americans now say it's time to change course in Iraq. The latest poll numbers indicating that voters don't believe the president's troop buildup or surge will defeat the insurgency. As Bill Schneider now reports.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
BILL SCHNEIDER, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Pessimism about Iraq has mounted, even before the news of Wednesday's bombings in Baghdad. In a CNN Opinion Research Center poll taken last week, 69 percent of Americans say things are going badly for the United States in Iraq.
That's the most negative assessment yet recorded, up from 54 percent who thought things were going badly last June and 62 percent in October. The public's view? It's not working. Only 29 percent of Americans believe that sending additional troops to Iraq will make it more likely the U.S. will achieve its goals there. Democrats claim a popular mandate.
SEN. HARRY REID, (D) NEVADA: The president must recognize that the American people, the military all over America, and majorities in both the House and the Senate have said the president must change course.
SCHNEIDER: Senator John McCain's view? SEN. JOHN MCCAIN, (R) ARIZONA: The judgment of history should be the approval we seek, not the temporary favor of the latest public opinion poll.
SCHNEIDER: The vice president denounces congressional Democrats.
RICHARD CHENEY, VICE PRESIDENT: Rarely in history has an elected branch of government engaged in so pointless an exercise as Congress is now doing.
SCHNEIDER: Pointless? The Democratic speaker says quoting the secretary of defense.
REP. NANCY PELOSI, (D) HOUSE SPEAKER: And I quote Secretary Gates, "The debate in Congress has been helpful in demonstrating to the Iraqis that American patience is limited. The strong feeling expressed in the congress about the timetable probably has had a positive impact in terms of communicating to the Iraqis that this is not an open-ended commitment." End of quote.
SCHNEIDER: Which side does the public take in this standoff? It's not even close. Sixt percent of Americans say they side with Democrats in Congress. Thirty-seven percent with the president.
(on camera): That 37 percent is a persistent figure, 37 percent of Americans say if the president vetoes the Iraq funding bill, Congress should pass another bill without a timetable, 37 percent want the U.S. to keep forces in Iraq as long as they're need.
Democrats claim to speak for the more than 60 percent of Americans who disagree. Bill Schneider, CNN, Washington.
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DOBBS: Joining me now are Errol Louis, columnist, "New York Daily News", Democratic strategist Hank Sheinkopf from Washington, "Washington Times" columnist Diana West. Thank you for being with us this week.
Hank, this Harry Reid saying out loud, the Senate majority leader saying this war is lost. Smart to do so?
HANK SHEINKOPF: Some will think not, some will think yes. But it's consistent with public opinion that seems to believe this needs to be ended as quickly as possible. He's responding to public opinion polls.
DOBBS: Is he also offering an answer.
SHEINKOPF: No, he is not. And part of the problem is the Democrats need to come up with better answers about suggesting to the public what ought to happen rather wringing hands.
DOBBS: Errol, your thoughts?
ERROL LOUIS, "NEW YORK DAILY NEWS": A lot of us thought the war was lost when those Abu Ghraib pictures came out and that was years ago. The fact that the military situation has deteriorated to the point it's almost undeniable no matter where you sit, that this thing is not going to be won in military terms, I think points back to the flaw that's been there all along. You need a diplomatic and to a certain extent cultural solution here. You are not going to shoot your way into making peace between warring religious factions that have been going at it for half a millennium at this point.
DOBBS: Diana.
DIANA WEST, "WASHINGTON TIMES": I would say that this poll reflects Americans' consternation and upset at the policies as they have been carry out. I would also say that the poll and the way we talk about this war, I think, shows the terrible tunnel vision that has gotten into this mess.
And by that I mean, we continue to see Iraq as a discrete unit, as the be all and end all of our efforts abroad. Iraq is not such a thing. It is part of a huge playing board. When we first went into Iraq, we actually could have gone just as easily into Iran and Syria. Certainly war plans were on the table. The days when we were trying to look at preempting terrorist states.
DOBBS: Are you saying the Bush administration has bollixed this?
WEST: Yes, absolutely.
DOBBS: General Odom is right, it's the greatest strategic blunder in American history?
WEST: I don't know if I agree entirely with General Odom, however, bollixed is a very good word. And it has to do with something Errol was getting at. Cultural misunderstanding but also a tunnel vision in terms of seeing this only as an Iraqi conflict.
DOBBS: History teaches us that if we understand ourselves and true to our own national values, the requisites for cultural understanding are minimized. This war and the way in which we moved into this war are in contravention of our national values, our national experience. It's remarkable.
LOUIS: That's why for me the Abu Ghraib pictures were kind of the breaking point. I didn't see how you could go about winning the larger question, the larger war of instilling or at least sharing American values, respect for the rule of law and so forth in light of that and the way that it was handled.
Now trying to simply shoot our way out of it, throw in more troops, and what did we see? We saw a suicide bomber go into the Parliament, inside the Green Zone and detonate a bomb. This is literally, an apt metaphor for blowing to smithereens the high hopes that attended the beginning of the conflict.
DOBBS: We'll be right back with our panel in just one moment. Stay with us.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
DOBBS: Well, let's turn to Alberto Gonzales. His performance this past Friday, Hank, just one man's opinion, he looked lost and I actually found myself pitying the man.
SHEINKOPF: I felt like he was a boy on a scavenger hunt trying to find pieces along the way to explain the puzzle and in fact he could not. Put this together with the war, this continues, these Republicans will have an extraordinarily difficult time holding on to what they have if this continues come 2008.
LOUIS: The extraordinary thing to me was there were early reports that he was boning up, that he was studying.
DOBBS: Preparing.
LOUIS: He was practicing and he was preparing. And the only thing I could think about was maybe some of those people that he fired, maybe he got rid of all the good people. I mean, there didn't seem to be any kind of preparation that you could easily anticipate. He was going to be asked basic questions, when did you make these questions, and he had no answers to anything.
DOBBS: I've seen two counts, one suggesting somewhere around 60 times that he said he didn't recall, another suggestion was around 100. What did you think?
WEST: Well, I think there are two separate issues here. One is the aura and karma and performance of Alberto Gonzales. I think all of us would agree it was pretty poor. The other is the actual essence of this, the meat of this scandal, which I find extremely paltry. I still don't know why we're expending all this time and energy looking into what is the exercise of a presidential prerogative.
That said, I think there are a number of motives going into the dissection of Alberto Gonzales. We have Republicans now jumping on him and I think they're hoping for a more conservative, you know, official to replace him. And that's pie in the sky.
DOBBS: Do you think that's right, hank?
SHEINKOPF: I think that Diana is partially right. The question about the scandal, whether there is a scandal or not is not the issue.
WEST: It's not?
SHEINKOPF: No, no, not in public performance. We're now past that. What is an issue is the competence and quality of the people who are leading this government militarily and on the policy side. If the attorney general of the United States, the chief law enforcement officer cannot answer questions put to him before a U.S. congressional committee, what is going on here? What is going on?
DOBBS: Errol, you get to answer that one. What in the world is going on here? LOUIS: Like many of the people closest to Bush, he was being rewarded primarily for his loyalty going back deep into the Texas days. So this is one of the president's closest aides and assistants. And this was also in part frankly a play for Hispanic votes. They've made a number of serious moves to try and bring Latino votes into the Republican Party for the long-term.
DOBBS: This isn't the best way to go about it.
LOUIS: It could have worked out better. It could have worked out better.
DOBBS: Unbelievable.
The idea that you see this as a not a constitutional crisis, at one point, Diana, they were saying some of the pundits that this is a constitutional crisis. It's not that.
WEST: I don't get it.
DOBBS: But it is a sorry episode that has revealed, just breathtaking incompetence on the part.
SHEINKOPF: It is an incompetence crisis, Lou.
DOBBS: An incompetence crisis. Look at Congress, look at the White House throughout nearly every agency of the federal government.
WEST: Whether it's incompetence, I even disagree with only because if a man delegated these decisions. Could he have easily defended that so easily. We could all write the text for him.
DOBBS: Does he remember who he delegated to?
WEST: No. He seems not to have done that. I don't recall, yes. That's a big problem. But again, it's a separate issue. Did that -- is that the motive behind this -- this trial we see going on?
DOBBS: Well, let me ask you to just turn quickly, because we're going to wrap up here. Which of the candidates now as we approach a year and a half from the election are you most excited about? Who do you think is just humming?
WEST: Oh, humming. I don't know if anyone is humming but I like Duncan Hunter and Tom Tancredo for bringing serious issues to the fore and I hope they get attention.
DOBBS: Errol?
LOUIS: The rise of Rudy Giuliani. It seems unstoppable and having covered him in New York for years it's amazing to me that he's just rewriting his history, rewriting his philosophy.
Now he's not so sure about gun control, he's not so sure about gay marriage and so forth. It's amazing. He's getting a makeover.
DOBBS: You're not calling him a flip-flopper?
LOUIS: It's a makeover. It's a second or third or fourth act in his political life.
WEST: I don't think he's unstoppable.
SHEINKOPF: Rudy Giuliani, most interesting. Understands fundamentalist Christians in that party. They will forgive the sinner but not the sins and he is getting rid of his sins faster than anybody can shovel sand on a beach.
DOBBS: I want to thank all of you. Hank Sheinkopf, Errol Louis, thank for your being with us as always, and Diana West, thank you very much.
Thank you for joining us. Please join us tomorrow. For all of us here, thanks for watching. Enjoy your weekend. Good night from New York. THIS WEEK AT WAR starts now with Tom Foreman.
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