ANNOUNCER:   Join Carville, Begala, Carlson and Novak in the CROSSFIRE. For free tickets to CROSSFIRE at the George Washington University, call 202-994-8CNN or visit our Web site. Now you can step into the CROSSFIRE. 
CARVILLE:   The war on terror and who should lead the charge is getting some much-needed attention today. John Kerry laid out a well- crafted outline to get us back on the right track. The Bush folks say he's just repackaging initiatives already implemented by the president. Joining us in the CROSSFIRE to hash it out are former Virginia Governor and my Old Town Alexandria neighbor Jim Gilmore. He chaired the Gilmore Commission, an advisory panel on domestic response to terrorism in the RAND Corporation. And P.J. Crowley, another dear friend of mine, is a former spokesman for President Clinton's National Security Council. 
NOVAK:   You're now with the Center For American Progress.    Everybody's raving about Senator Kerry's speech on terrorism today. He made one big booboo. And let's just listen to it right here. 
KERRY:   All you have to do is ask General Tommy Franks how surprised he was that those troops got moved out of there when he was trying to do the job he was doing before the Congress had even approved moving to Iraq. 
NOVAK:   He's saying that General Franks, all you got to do is ask him about moving troops out of Afghanistan to Iraq. Now, let me tell you what Tommy Franks said    Just a minute. Just a minute. 
CROWLEY:   Ask the right question. 
NOVAK:   I will ask you the question, if you don't interrupt me. Tommy Franks on the Sean Hannity radio show said: "My name is Tommy Franks. I don't lie. Reading my book, the way you have, I would refer you to page 386 of my book, where we go ahead and we talk about the fact that the president used to stress to me every day his concern that we should not distract from Afghanistan and the fight there while we were conducting Iraq." 
CROWLEY:   Bob, you're detached from reality, just the way that President Bush is detached from reality if you think that we haven't diverted attention from Afghanistan to Iraq. Here we are. We're 18 months into the mission in Iraq. We've spent $145 billion. We've suffered 1,000 casualties. And what do we have. We have a bearded guy in jail who's not the one that attacked us on 9/11. 
NOVAK:   Well, why is it, P.J., that when I ask Kerry people a question, they never answer? What I asked you -- and I'll try to explain.    Just a minute. 
CROWLEY:   We have absolutely diverted attention away from what attacked us on 9/11 what we eventually have to address.    We are losing the war on terrorism because of Iraq. 
NOVAK:   You are repeating yourself. And let me ask you the question. If you will concentrate and listen to it, I would appreciate it. And that was that Senator Kerry, trying to be president of the United States, says, to prove your point, ask Tommy Franks. Tommy Franks was the commander of the whole theater. He says that didn't happen. How do you answer? How do you respond to that? 
CROWLEY:   Well, and Tommy Franks did not have enough troops to come into the country. A fundamental mistake... 
CARVILLE:   Read Senator Graham's book. It clears that up. 
CROWLEY:   We did not have enough troops to win the peace, just as we did not have enough troops to win... 
NOVAK:   You call him a liar? You call Tommy Franks a liar? 
CROWLEY:   Tommy Franks had a bad plan. 
CARVILLE:   He had a bad plan. There you go. Governor Gilmore, I want to show you a new ad that president -- I mean, that Senator Kerry has just put up. And I think it brings up an interesting point here. 
BUSH:   I saw a poll that said the right track/wrong track in Iraq was better than here in America. 
NARRATOR:   Right track? Americans are being kidnapped, held hostage, even beheaded. Over 1,000 soldiers have died. And George Bush has no plan to get us out of Iraq. John Kerry does. The Kerry solution: Allies share the burden, train Iraqis to protect themselves. 
KERRY:   I'm John Kerry and I approved this message. 
CARVILLE:   Now, governor, this is what my question is, is, do you believe that the president believes that we're on the right track in Iraq or do you believe that he's just saying that, because, obviously, he can't really believe that, can he? It's not possible. 
GILMORE:   You know, this speech That Senator Kerry put out today, you probably wrote that speech, James. I don't know. But, clearly, Kerry has come into it. 
CARVILLE:   I wish I could take credit for it. 
GILMORE:   Kerry's come into this very, very late in the day. He's been absent without leave on this for years and years, a now a couple of months before the election, even a few weeks before the election, he rolls in. And you know what? It's all warmed-over stuff. 
CARVILLE:   Really? 
GILMORE:   It's what the president's been doing. It's what the president's been doing all along. 
CARVILLE:   Let me ask you again. The CIA issues a devastating briefing to the president that says the best we can hope for is to muddle through. We're losing people at a faster rate after the handover than we did before. We're ceding large parts of the country. My question is, the president can't really believe that we're on the right track in Iraq, can he? 
GILMORE:   Well, well... 
CARVILLE:   Is it possible that he -- that's all I'm trying to ask you, Governor. Could he possibly think that? 
GILMORE:   Here's the answer. After 9/11, everybody knew that this was going to be a tough, long struggle, it's going to a difficult situation, that it's going to take a long time. 
CARVILLE:   Right. 
GILMORE:   Had to do it in Afghanistan, have to do it in Iraq, have to do it in other places as well. This has been a problem that has been brewing for many years, all through the Clinton administration, all left to fester. The president has now got...    Well, that's absolutely true. Now got to deal with the situation. And he's doing it. 
CROWLEY:   We have George Bush have had to go into Iraq to redeem the mistakes that his father made and the mistakes that his vice president made. 
GILMORE:   No. 
CROWLEY:   He's lost situational awareness in Iraq, is what we say. And when that happens, the troops are in danger. The mission is at risk. He doesn't read the newspaper. He doesn't read Bob's column unless one of his staff breaks the law. 
GILMORE:   P.J... 
CROWLEY:   Wait a second. 
GILMORE:   Can you talk longer than anybody else can? Is that the ball game here? 
CROWLEY:   He doesn't even read intelligence estimates that tell him that we're on the wrong course.    He's determined to stay the course, rather than adapting to a better one. 
GILMORE:   He here's the bottom line on the topic at hand, which is Kerry's speech. He say that he wants to do something to improve intelligence. That is ongoing. We're talking about weapons of mass destruction. That has been put under control, terrorist financing, Patriot Act.    Homeland security, whole department made. 
NOVAK:   Wait a minute. Wait a minute. It's my turn. I would suggest to you, Colonel -- and I mean this seriously -- that you don't accuse people of breaking the law when you're talking about something you don't know the slightest thing about. I think it's a very...    No, we're not going to get into it. Just be very careful about making accusations about people breaking the law. 
CROWLEY:   Well, you know something about that, but you won't talk to the government about it. 
NOVAK:   But you don't know anything of what I'm doing. And I think it demeans you to accuse people of breaking the law. And I think you made a big mistake. 
CARVILLE:   Both Novak never accused President Clinton of breaking the law, did he? 
NOVAK:   I'm not asking for a response. 
CROWLEY:   When the special prosecutor finishes the work, we'll know if that happened or not. 
NOVAK:   Joe Lockhart, who -- was one of your colleagues, and he sounds like it in the White House, said this of interim Prime Minister Allawi, who is a very brave man trying to do a good job in Iraq. He's a visitor to our country. This is what Lockhart said: "The last thing you want to be seen as is a puppet of the United States. And you can almost see the hand underneath the shirt today moving the list." You used to work on the National Security Council. Do you think that's in the best interests of the country to say something like that? 
CROWLEY:   Well, all right it may be slightly inartful. 
NOVAK:   Slightly inartful? 
CROWLEY:   However, it's absolutely -- it's absolutely true. The is fact is that Allawi is our appointed leader. He's a good man. He's trying to do a good job. I wish that, rather than having appointed a viceroy named Bremer for a year, we actually had put Allawi in place earlier, so that he could actually be making the progress, some of which he's making now.    Allawi is a good man. But the issue is not how we see him. The issue is how the Iraqi people see him. And they won't be able to do that, express their views until January, if we can get from where we are now to where we need to be, free and fair elections. 
CARVILLE:   I want to go back to my question. You said at CIA, intelligence has improved. July, this president from his CIA got a piece of intelligence that said the best we can hope for is to muddle through. The Royal Academy of Foreign Policy in London said the same thing. My question I keep coming back to is, he can't really believe that we're on the right track in Iraq, can he? He's just got to be trying to fake it through the election. 
GILMORE:   But it's this. But it's the big picture. And the big picture, James, is this. You're going to have to do something to transform the Middle East and create a more stable situation. You can't do that with a dictator like Saddam Hussein in charge of all that oil. And the president went in there to make sure that we were going to be sure to deal with the situation. 
CARVILLE:   I think you agree with me. He doesn't really believe it. He can't believe it. 
NOVAK:   OK. We're going to have to take a break. And next in "Rapid Fire," does John Kerry, really, in his heart, wish Saddam Hussein was still in power? And can it really be happening again? The latest on the threat to Florida from Hurricane Jeanne.
