American Morning

Democratic strategist Victor Kamber back with us today. Good morning, Victor. Nice to see you.

VICTOR KAMBER, DEMOCRATIC STRATEGIST: Good morning, Bill. How are you?

HEMMER: I’m doing just fine. Thank you much.

HEMMER: Former RNC communication director Cliff May also in D.C. We call it Kamber and May.

Cliff, good morning to you as well.

CLIFF MAY, FMR. RNC COMM. DIR.: Good morning, Bill.

HEMMER: I want to go back to the hearing yesterday. Republican Senator James Inhofe put a whole new light on the argument and discussion in this country.

Listen to what he said. We’ll talk about it.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

SEN. JAMES INHOFE (R), ARMED SERVICES COMMITTEE: I have to say, and I am probably not the only one up at this table that is more outraged by the outrage than we are by the treatment. The idea that these prisoners, you know, they’re not there for traffic violations. If they’re in cell block 1a or 1b, these prisoners, they are murderers, they are terrorists, they’re insurgents, many of them probably have American blood on their hands, and here we are so concerned about the treatment of those individuals.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

HEMMER: This is where we start this morning, Victor, in this segment. Is he on point or off point? Outrage by the outrage.

KAMBER: Well, I find Mr. Inhofe to be offensive. I could have closed my eyes and that could have been Saddam Hussein speaking about why he’d put prisoners in jail, because to him, they were murderers and terrorists. The difference between us and Iraqis and Saddam Hussein is there should be some humanity.

Clearly, I’m not defending criminals in Iraq that are put in prison. Clearly, I understand the sentiment in this country about people — we are in war, and there are people there who murder, who — what we saw with the — yesterday, the beheading, the animals that are there.

Having said that, we have a responsibility. We went into liberate people. We went in to treat people, to free people in a whole different way. To suggest that we are just do-gooders who care about prisoners and these prisoners are outright prisoners and should be tortured, this gentleman, and I don’t even — that’s a light word I’d like to use about Mr. Inhofe, is way out in left field.

HEMMER: Cliff, what about it?

MAY: The beheading of Nick Berg doesn’t excuse the abuses that took place at Abu Ghraib Prison, but it put it in some sort of perspective. These are the kinds of people we are trying to fight. and most of the people in the military would never do the kinds of things that would happen at Abu Ghraib prison. I think General Taguba’s investigation shows that. We are there helping Iraqis, for the most part.

There are always abuses in war. We are prosecuting those abuses. We will punish those responsible. By contrast, the people who cut off Nick Berg’s head, the people who decapitated Danny Pearl, the people who attack us on 9/11 and going back for years, they are only going to come to justice if your military brings them to justice. So I think that a lot of people do feel that while we’re showing all these pictures over and over again, I understand, of Abu Ghraib, we’re probably not going to show the pictures over and over again on CNN and other stations of Nick Berg getting his head taken off or Danny Pearl getting his head taken off. Let’s put it into some perspective. I think that’s what Senator Inhofe is trying to say.

KAMBER: What Cliff just said, we want to bring people to justice. There is a difference with bringing people to justice and suggesting that there should be no outrage. And when Cliff says we’ll bring people to justice, it’s not 18, 19, 20-year-olds that made these decisions. I don’t care…

MAY: You don’t know that, Victor; you’re assuming that. We know that those 18, 19, 20-year-olds did what they did. Now if somebody ordered them to do so or was charged…

KAMBER: Or closed their eyes.

MAY: Or closed their eyes, by all means, let’s bring them to justice as well. There was a breakdown in military discipline. Look, it was only November when we were talking about Colonel Alan West, who was drummed out of the military for firing his sidearm to scare a suspect under interrogation. And at that point, I worried that we were going to far in not allowing people to investigate as they should.

By the way, one of the reasons we may have had contractors in here, is because going back years, we have closed down interrogation training at the CIA as part of the peace dividend, as part of the demilitarization of America, because a lot of people thought we had no enemies. You know what, we have serious enemies out there, and let’s not get so distracted that we don’t fight the war we have to fight and win it.

KAMBER: Cliff, we totally agree. The problem is, we have a president who went to war ill prepared, ill prepared for the war and ill prepared for the aftermath of the war, which we’re in right now. And to suggest that it’s only 18-year-olds, 19-year-olds and 20-year- olds that — it’s ludicrous, it’s ludicrous.

MAY: No one is suggesting that. No one is suggesting that. But I think that you’re trying to get some political capital out of this.

KAMBER: No, I’m not, I don’t — this is not a politics story.

MAY: It sound like it when you say, we were ill prepared for war.

KAMBER: We are ill prepared.

MAY: You are absolutely right. The terrorists first attacked us in 1983, and you, and I and every president since 1983 refused to recognize that we had a war we had to fight. We didn’t recognize it until 9/11. Now some of us do.

HEMMER: Gentlemen, I got to leave it there. Thanks, Cliff May, Victor Kamber, Kamber and May.

See you again next week, OK.

MAY: OK.

HEMMER: Appreciate it, gentlemen — Soledad.