BEGALA:   Welcome back to this special steel caged death match version of CROSSFIRE. President Bush delivered at least one memorable sound bite in last year's State of the Union address. He was, of course, talking about Iraq, Iran, and North Korea. 
BUSH:   States like these, and their terrorist allies constitute an axis of evil, arming to threaten the peace of the world. 
BEGALA:   One year later, Iraq has allowed weapons inspectors in their country. And they have found no evidence of nuclear weapons. North Korea has kicked weapons inspectors out and is restarting its nuclear weapons program. Guess which country President Bush wants to go to war with? My friend Tucker, what's the president going to say tonight? 
CARLSON:   Well, I'm glad you ask, Paul, since we have excerpts of the speech in advance. The president's going to make an argument aimed directly at liberals who have said we need the U.N. behind this. And it's an argument I think they're going to have trouble refuting. Here it is: "Almost three months ago," the president will say, "The United Nations Security Council gave Saddam Hussein his final chance to disarm. He has, instead, show his utter contempt for the United Nations and for the opinion of the world. The dictator of Iraq is not disarming. To the contrary, he is deceiving." This sums it up perfectly. He has not only given the finger to the United States, but really to the United Nations. Now how are liberals going to argue against that? It's true. BEGALA; Quote -- "Shooting the finger, we go to war?" The question is: Why war and why now? And if he doesn't answer those two questions, he's not going to persuade the country to follow him into a war.    Well, then maybe you could answer this question for me, and I'd be glad to hear a liberal answer to this. How -- if the aim, the object is to disarm Saddam Hussein, how do we do that without going to war? 
BEGALA:   Containment and... 
CARLSON:   I said to disarm Saddam Hussein. 
BEGALA:   Yes. We can contain him. We contained and disarmed the Soviet Union. It doesn't even exit any more. 
NOVAK:   What's very interesting, in this important speech, is the president is not saying we are going to go to war with Iraq. Not saying that. He -- people who are very close to him say, he has not made up his mind. He is not sure. Do I think we probably will? Yes. But it's very interesting with the whole country watching, he is not making a prediction. He is not making an ultimatum. And that is very hard to get the whole country behind you, Tucker ,for a bloody battle if you haven't decided you're going to have a battle. 
CARVILLE:   I'm going to do something that I don't normally do. I'm actually going to defend the here. A, I don't think tonight he ought to make his case. I don't think he's made his case. I don't think tonight is the night to make the case. If he wants to take this country to war, then he's got to make the case separate. I think he should make a speech entirely separate than tonight. He can address it, that's fine. I don't think he should. I think if he wants to take us to war he's got to make a much better case than he's made so far. They ought to give him an opportunity to make that. This is a very serious step. If he believes what he says about the United Nations is true, then he ought to go to the United Nations, give a speech, tell them that they've been dissed and why they need to do this. 
CARLSON:   But maybe you didn't see the report from Hans Blix, which says really clearly that Iraq ask in violation of the resolution. 
CARVILLE:   I understand -- look. If we went to war, Tucker, if we want to war when everybody in violation of a U.N. resolution, we'd have been at war for the last -- since the U.N. was started. 
CARLSON:   But James, you're totally missing the point. 
CARVILLE:   What I'm saying is if you don't go to war -- you don't go and make a point when you have 70 percent of the people in America said he hasn't made the case yet. If you take us to war when the world doesn't want this war, you have to give good reason for it. 
CARLSON:   You know perfectly well that he has a speech... 
CARVILLE:   It's insufficient cause. I just want to hear it. What I'm saying is Tucker, give the man a chance to make his case. 
CARLSON:   You know as well as I do that there is a speech being worked on right now that the president will deliver if he decides to take the country to war. 
CARVILLE:   When he does, I'll listen. 
NOVAK:   The problem with this is that this weapons of mass destruction is just a subterfuge. It is a pretext. That isn't what they're worried about. They think he's a very bad man, he's an evil man, and we should remove him. Now whether that is the purpose of the United States to remove evil men around the world is an interesting debate. And I don't think it's a debate he can win. And therefore we go into this whole question of weapons of mass destruction. 
BEGALA:   That's what I'm looking for. He always, when he speaks about Iraq he says two things: Saddam Hussein is an evil man, the American people are good and decent. Hell, I know that. And I don't have intelligence clearing anymore. I can figure that out. I need him to tell us what the clear and present danger to the American national interest is by Saddam Hussein, who has had weapons of mass destruction for 20 years. He's never used them on us, Tucker. Why? Because we have deterred him and contained him. 
CARLSON:   One argument at a time. I must say, I thought that the liberal position on this, and I'm no hawk on going into Iraq...    What the liberal position -- Cob, I'm not sure I even understand your position. The point is, the point is the liberals have said from the beginning, We need U.N. cover and the integrity of the U.N., the respect of the U.N. around the world is paramount. This is a guy who has said clearly, in no uncertain terms, We don't care.. 
CARVILLE:   I don't know how to explain this to you, son. A country violating a U.N. resolution to most people is not sufficient cause to start a war. They violate it all the time. When you want to make a point to go to war, you have to explain to the country and the world why you're doing it. 
NOVAK:   Tucker said he didn't understand my position. My position is that the United States, as the sole emerging superpower, is not under obligation to clean out every dictator in the world. 
CARLSON:   Nobody says it is, as you know. 
NOVAK:   Well, the question is which dictator do you kick out? And if the dictator is not a threat to the American national interests, we shouldn't kick him out. So the president is obliged to make a more convincing case than he has so far. 
BEGALA:   Let me play a piece. You asked about the liberal position. The leader of my party in the Senate is Tom Daschle. He gave a speech yesterday where he laid out what he's looking for tonight on Iraq and you paraphrased it earlier. Let me play you a piece of it. This is what Tom Daschle said. 
SEN. TOM DASCHLE  , MINORITY LEADER:   The two crucial questions the president needs to answer on Iraq are first: Does Saddam Hussein pose a threat to national security so imminent that it justifies putting American lives at risk to get rid of him? And second: How are our efforts to deal with this threat helped by short circuiting an inspections process that we demanded in the first place? 
BEGALA:   Will the president answer those questions or just tell us again that Saddam Hussein is an evil man? 
CARLSON:   You see, what the remarkable thing and why this reveals Tom Daschle is a very unserious person at least on this issue, is he completely ignores him.  From the day he gave that speech, Hans Blix report became public and it said very clearly Iraq has weapons of mass destruction. In that same speech, he said, Well where's the evidence? It was right there. he didn't bother to read it. 
NOVAK:   Paul, You know what the problem with Tom Daschle is? 
BEGALA:   Nothing. He's not running for president. 
NOVAK:   Except for Al Sharpton, you never saw a Democrat you didn't like.    Let me tell you what his problem is. He voted for the resolution to authorize war. He's ineligible to have that political demagoguery when he voted for that resolution. Because he wants it both ways and all the Democratic presidential candidates do the same thing. 
CARVILLE:   I think, again I go back to the point -- I don't think he needs -- I think he needs to make the case if he wants to take this nation to war and he wants to take this nation to war against the rest of the world, I think he needs to make his case in a separate speech. He has not made his case yet. 
CARLSON:   Should your response be constantly to snipe and offer no constructive... 
NOVAK:   All right. The president has another big challenge tonight: finding a way to generate more economic growth. That's next in the CROSSFIRE. And guess what? It's still lower taxes, stupid. Later -- the expectations game. To which audience is the president really reaching out? Republicans, moderate Democrats, or the voters watching on TV?
