From Special Report with Bret Baier | Monday, July 23, 2012
On Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s statement yesterday that Israel would consider intervening in Syria to prevent chemical weapons from reaching Hezbollah:
I think he’s sending a message, but they’re two separate issues, Iran and Syria. Syria is a more pressing question because they’ve now admitted what everybody knew, they have chemical and biological weapons. The problem for the Israelis is, when Obama said it would be a tragic mistake if the regime used them — for the Israelis the issue isn’t the use of these weapons. That would be so reckless it would be incomprehensible. The problem is Assad might transfer the weapons to Hezbollah.
So what you’re talking about here are weapons that will be in the hands of, for example, Hezbollah, who are responsible for the attack last week in Bulgaria, the slaughtering of young Israelis on a bus in Bulgaria, whose leader has declared his aim is not just the destruction of Israel but the genocide of the Jews in Israel….
If the Israelis have an inkling of a transfer of weapons, the Israelis have teams and they will not wait for the U.N. or the Russians or the United States. The Israelis will go in and either seize them or destroy them. It could be risky. These things are always risky….
There is one other factor that makes it more immediate a threat. The Syrians have weaponized their chemical weapons. In other words, they have them on missiles. All it takes is a push of a button and they end up in Tel Aviv where Sarin gas can kill in the tens of thousands. So for Israel, it isn’t a slow transfer to Hezbollah or Iran or al-Qaeda if the regime collapses. It could be instantaneous, and that’s why the Israelis are not going to wait. They never wait.
On Mitt Romney’s upcoming international tour:
He will not say anything that would attack Obama or criticize the United States. It’s not what he says. It’s the choice of countries — Britain, Poland, and Israel, all of which have been dissed by the Obama administration. With Britain, the United States intervening in the Falklands dispute — unbelievably unnecessarily; with the Poles, undercutting the missile defense [agreement with the US]; and with Israel, the tension Obama has generated between him and the Israelis. All Romney has to do is show up and that will make a statement: I will stand with our friends and oppose our enemies, and the implication will be — unlike the president.
On Sen. Joe Lieberman’s remark that members of Congress will not address gun control because “the gun lobby is that strong”:
Well, the problem for Lieberman is that the gun lobby is the majority of the American people. It’s not a lobby that is stopping all this. The reason the lobby’s strong is because it represents overwhelming opinion in the United States. And how do we know that? The president of the United States, who had a tremendous opening if he wanted to push [gun control] after a tragedy of this magnitude… has assiduously stayed away from it because he knows it’s a losing political proposition.
Liberals in the country want gun control, Democrats don’t. They normally overlap, but not on this. Democrats won’t go near it because of the experience of 1994, and they don’t want to repeat that again. We’re at the height of an election year and they won’t go near it.
You’re going to have a lot of discussion on talk shows — and none in Congress.