CARLSON:   Welcome back to CROSSFIRE. President Bush this afternoon told reporters that his State of the Union speech, including the claim that Iraq was trying to buy uranium in Africa, was cleared ahead of time by the CIA. Does it follow, then, that CIA Director George Tenet should be clearing out his desk? That's our question. Here to debate it: former Democratic Congressman Tom Andrews. He's now the director of Win Without War. And with him is New York Republican Congressman Peter King. 
BEGALA:   Thank you both for joining us.    Congressman King, in his farewell press briefing today, Ari Fleischer, who really is a very good guy, described all this as... 
KING:   So are you. 
BEGALA:   Well, thank you.    Described -- he used a little Texas colloquialism. Ari's from New York, but he called it a bunch of bull. And I suspect one of the criticisms is, it all focuses on just one sentence. So let me play for you that sentence and the sentence that follows it, so we can see the larger context. 
KING:   Sure. 
BEGALA:   Here's our president in his State of the Union. 
BUSH:   The British government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa. Our intelligence sources tell us that he has attempted to purchase high- strength aluminum tubes suitable for nuclear weapons production. 
BEGALA:   Now, we know for a fact -- the White House has admitted -- the first sentence is false. The second sentence, according to most experts who have looked at it, is also false. This case for war was built on falsehood upon falsehood. And isn't that the president's responsibility? 
KING:   Actually, you're wrong on every count. First of all, I don't think the president should of, in any way, retracted what he said about British intelligence, because British intelligence believed then and believes now that Iraq did attempt to purchase uranium from Africa. There's been nothing at all that has caused Tony Blair, who, by the way, was Bill Clinton's closest friend as a world leader, who has stood by our country in a terrible time, Tony Blair, to this day, believes 100 percent that that intelligence is accurate. 
BEGALA:   But this is the nation that thinks Prince Charles is a good catch. I don't think we should base our foreign policy on what England thinks. 
KING:   No. I think it's very valid for the president of the United States, after laying out all the intelligence we have, and on top of that to say, and our closest ally, with a very reputable intelligence service, also believes this. Now, as far as the tubing, that is a very interesting point, because, throughout all the briefings during the fall which we got from the CIA and from the NSC and from the State Department, they told us that the CIA and the State Department both believed that these tubings were suitable for nuclear weapons. But they also made a point of saying that the Department of Energy did not. That was always out there. But the consensus in the American government... 
BEGALA:   The president didn't say that to Americans, did he? 
KING:   No, no, because the consensus in the American government was that they were for that. And that's still the consensus. 
CARLSON:   Now, Mr. Andrews, I want to throw up something you've seen. It's a spot put on the air by Win Without War and MoveOn.org, both of which I think you're affiliated with. And it addresses this question of uranium in Africa pretty directly. Here it is. 
NARRATOR:   Now there's evidence we were misled. And almost every day, Americans are dying in Iraq. We need the truth, not a cover-up. 
CARLSON:   Now, there are a number of problems just with that very short segment of the ad. One, it tries to draw a connection between this statement about buying uranium in Africa to American deaths directly. And that's unfair, almost outrageous. And, second, it alleges a cover-up. And, in fact, there is no cover-up. The White House has admitted this information was wrong, that they made a mistake. There's no Nixonian cover jump at all. And don't you undermine a serious inquiry into this with hyperbole like that? 
ANDREWS:   Well, when you have plausible deniability being drawn out again, like it was in the Nixon White House during the Watergate area, you know there is a problem; 16 words -- listen, if you take a look at what the CIA was saying repeatedly, for months and months and months, none of these allegations, they told the White House, they told the vice president, they told the State Department, has any substance in reality. Despite that fact, despite... 
CARLSON:   That's not a fact, but we'll get to that in a minute. 
ANDREWS:   No, it is. It is a fact. 
CARLSON:   It's actually not a fact. The CIA, a month before the State of the Union address, gave a large intelligence dossier to the White House that did not say, this is not true. That's just not true. 
ANDREWS:   Listen, let's not mince words. George Tenet was very clear that the administration was heading in the wrong direction when they started making allegations such as this. He tried very, very hard to stop the administration from going forward with these allegations. The pattern that we've seen with other CIA agents now talking about what they learned and what they did was that there was enormous pressure from this administration to have the facts add up to what they had concluded was the truth. And so you have this bending, this twisting, this distortion. The American were people were sold a bill of goods. And it's because we were sold that bill of goods and members of Congress are now calling for an independent investigation who voted for this war, because they feel they were misled. That's why people are dying right now, Tucker. That's the relationship. 
BEGALA:   Let me ask you why you're not for an independent investigation, because not only is there serious dispute about the uranium claim and the aluminum tubes, most experts say that the Bush administration overhyped whatever connection there might have been to al Qaeda, overhyped any connection to 9/11, which they claimed that there had been some secret meeting in Europe, overhyped a claim about unmanned vehicles that could hit America. They can could only fly 300 miles. We're 6,000 miles away. Overhyped the whole case for war -- now, if that's not worthy of an investigation, what is? 
KING:   Let's go down each of those points. First of all, as far as the chemical and biological weapons, President Bush was saying nothing that Bill Clinton didn't say. Remember, Bill Clinton, without authorization in Congress or any authorization from the United Nations, launched a preemptive attack on Iraq in 1998 because of chemical and biological weapons that were an imminent threat to the United States. 
BEGALA:   And don't you think he hit a few? And that's why they didn't have them for the war. 
CARLSON:   Do you really believe that? 
BEGALA:   I think the bombing, the sanctions, and the inspections brought them to their knees. 
CARLSON:   That's insane. 
KING:   You're saying four days of bombing knocked out all the chemical and biological weapons? 
BEGALA:   And years of sanctions and years of inspections.    What happened? Did they paint them with invisible paint guns? 
ANDREWS:   They were not an imminent threat. That's the point. They were not an imminent threat. 
KING:   And nothing, to me, changed between 1998 and 2001. And the fact is, the CIA never said that they could not -- that it was untrue that Iraq was trying to purchase uranium from Africa. They said, we didn't have the evidence. But the British said their intelligence services do, which they 
CARLSON:   Mr. Andrews, the question is... 
KING:   That's a distinction that any intelligent person should be able to appreciate, which is why so many Democrats are calling for an investigation. 
CARLSON:   You're leaving out one thing. 
ANDREWS:   How can you make a claim...  
CARLSON:   Then let me ask you this. You say the evidence doesn't exist. 
KING:   What you say is, your closest ally says it's true. 
CARLSON:   The difference here... 
ANDREWS:   The CIA said the evidence doesn't exist. 
CARLSON:   The difference here is that there's a presidential campaign under way, as I think you know. The number of candidates now running for president had access to basically the same information that the president himself had access to. And they reached the same conclusion he did. I want to read you a quote from one. This is from Senator Graham of Florida -- quote -- this is what he said October 2002 -- "Saddam Hussein's regime has chemical and biological weapons and is trying to get nuclear capacity." That is the same point that every member of the Security Council, that Bill Clinton, the Democrats all through Congress made and that the president made. And now, because the election is in full swing, they're claiming, oh, we never believed that. Come on. This is political. 
ANDREWS:   Most Americans believed it because the president of the United States looked us in the eye and told us that. Vice President Cheney told us back in March that Iraq has a reconstituted, in his words, nuclear program, a reconstituted nuclear program, with nuclear weapons. We now know there was no evidence to support that. So, when the vice president tells us something, when the president of the United States tells a joint session of Congress and the American people, in the most important speech of the year, the State of the Union speech, something that turns out to be not true, well OK, we're guilty. We believed them. But we should never believe them again. We should never believe them again. 
BEGALA:   Listen, this is the problem that our president has. The CBS News poll that came out on Friday said that, a month ago, just one month ago, the majority of Americans thought Iraq was an imminent threat that required military action. One month later, because of these falsehoods, the majority of Americans think, no, that it wasn't an imminent threat. Isn't that the whole heart of why we went to war? The American people no longer believe Iraq was an imminent threat. 
KING:   First of all, there were no falsehoods. You haven't been able to prove one. Secondly, it wasn't just President Bush saying this. Last September, Al Gore said, based on the intelligence he had seen as vice president, that Iraq had massive chemical and biological weapons and he had secreted them around the country. That's Al Gore. Your vice president, our vice president, said that last September.  Bill Clinton, just this past May, said he doesn't question George Bush's intelligence requirements, because he said he was told the exact same thing from the CIA and from the intelligence agencies. 
CARLSON:   Unfortunately, Clinton/Gore always a good place to end. We're going to take a quick break. We'll be back in just a minute. Coming up after a quick break and Wolf Blitzer's check of the headlines, we'll give our guests the "Rapid Fire" treatment; and later, a "Fireback" of sorts from a former occupant of the White House who isn't happy with Paul Begala. We'll explain. We'll be right back.
