American Morning

To talk about this and much more, Democratic consultant Victor Kamber. He’s in Washington this morning. Also in Washington, former RNC Communications Director Cliff May. Gentlemen, good morning to you.

VICTOR KAMBER, DEMOCRATIC CONSULTANT: Good morning.

CLIFF MAY, FMR. RNC COMMUNICATIONS DIRECTOR: Good morning.

O’BRIEN: Let’s talk about the report. One, are you surprised it was released accidentally anyway and two, three-plus years after 9/11, we’re finally getting a list of the risks and the potential targets? Isn’t that kind of too little, too late?

KAMBER: Well, I’m one to believe that it’s important to do. It shouldn’t have probably been released. We know it was a slip. I think that we — you know, five years ago, I think we would have been shocked to think of the Twin Towers being attacked and people would have smiled and laughed. Or whatever you want to say. I think today, nothing is untenable and shouldn’t be considered. One, if we have the resources and two, for planning purposes. We shouldn’t be frightening Americans, but we should be realistic that terrorists are going to go wherever they can to make an impact.

MAY: One thing I’d say, Soledad, is that you’ve got to have people in the government whose job it is to think like terrorists, to say if I wanted to do death and destruction in America, how would I do it? And then you plan around it. This kind of risk assessment wasn’t done in the past, needs to be done now. Homeland Security is the place to do it. So that’s very important that they’re doing it, but they shouldn’t release it by accident.

O’BRIEN: Do you need, though, Cliff, a big old list that says that the big cities that are heavily populated are at highest risk? I mean, I could have told you that.

MAY: Well, yeah, you listen — of course, you could tell, look, some of what they’re going to do here is going to be very obvious. Some of it is going to be less obvious. But you need to prioritize, you need to have it down on paper. We do not have infinite resources. We can’t put federal marshals in every mall in America, even though every mall in America is a potential target. So what you do is you try to quantify it and you do it, I hope and I think from what I’ve seen of this, in a rather sophisticated fashion, all the data. And then you analyze it and you say, here’s how our resources are going to be divided.

O’BRIEN: All right, let’s move to our next topic. The “Wall Street Journal” was reporting yesterday that it looks like the U.S. is signaling willingness to sell to India and to Pakistan F-16 fighter jets. This coming from remarks from Condoleezza Rice. Does this make sense to you, Vic, and why?

KAMBER: Well, it doesn’t make sense to me for a number of reasons. One, we’ve condemned our allies in the past for selling arms, military equipment, to people that we’re not terribly fond of, that those allies of ours may be allies with. We’ve done this with African — when French have sold to African countries and the like. Here we have two allies that are allies of us but are enemies of each other. The only reason we’re selling these weapons is obviously, these people are going take action against each other or they’re going to build up to potentially take action against each other.

We’re arming people for the potential of war. That makes no sense. It goes contrary to everything we stand for, except the almighty dollar and the profit. So I’d love to know who is behind — which corporate entities — are behind this that got to this administration to say, hey, let’s go ahead and sell some weapons. We can make money out of the deal. Let those countries kill each other off.

O’BRIEN: Cliff, isn’t this a big old double standard?

MAY: No. Victor is quite missing the point. First of all, China — I’m sorry, Pakistan and India, if they want to buy military hardware, they’ll going to buy it. If they don’t buy it from us, they buy it from Europe. Is that going to help anything? You think we’re going to put sanctions on India and Pakistan? I hope not. India’s our good Democratic ally, Pakistan is an important ally in the war against terrorism.

This is very different from the Europeans selling weapons to China that we don’t want them to. And here’s why. India and Pakistan are not going to declare war on France and Germany, but there’s a possibility we may have to go to war at some point with China, particularly now when they’re rattling their sabers about possibly going over and invading and taking over Taiwan. It’s a huge difference here and you’ve got to be able to see it.

KAMBER: Cliff, they’re going to declare war against each other and we’re aiding this.

MAY: No, they’re not.

KAMBER: They could. And we’re aiding the situation.

MAY: The worst thing we could do is give to one and not the other. As long as they are about equal, it will be a standoff.

KAMBER: Cliff, 125 jets to 25 is not equal.

MAY: We’ll sell to both of them and keep them at parity if parity is where they are actually most stable.

O’BRIEN: Cliff May, Victor Kamber, joining us this morning. Thanks, guys.

KAMBER: Thank you, Soledad. MAY: Thanks.