Interview with Rep. Curt Weldon and Rep. Adam Smith

SHOW: FOX HANNITY & COLMES

HEADLINE: Interview With Rep. Curt Weldon and Rep. Adam Smith

GUESTS: Rep. Curt Weldon, Rep. Adam Smith

BYLINE: Sean Hannity, Alan Colmes

BODY:

COLMES: Joining us now, Republican Pennsylvania congressman Curt Weldon and Washington Democratic congressman Adam Smith. Gentlemen, good to have you with us.

Congressman Smith, let me go with you and ask you what you thought of the president's performance tonight.

REP. ADAM SMITH (D), WASHINGTON: Well, I think he was pretty straightforward. He said we had to stay the course. And I think he's right. The consequences of failure in Iraq would be great, and I think we absolutely have to stick it out and make sure that we support our troops necessary. I think he was a little absent on specifics about how exactly we're going to go about doing that, what we're going to do different, how we're going to respond to some of the challenges that the administration obviously didn't anticipate and how we're going change our policy to deal with that. So I think we need a few more specifics on what we're going to do. But he's right, we have to stay the course. Freedom in Iraq is critically important. I just was hoping for some more specifics.

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

HANNITY: You know, Congressman Smith, I want to pick up on something that we were discussing with Susan Estrich in the last segment. And I-I would advocate-let's imagine for just a second we didn't go into Iraq. Just imagine that.

SMITH: I heard, actually, what you said earlier.

HANNITY: I believe that this is all a preview of coming attractions, based on the knowledge we have of enemies, sworn enemies of liberty and freedom. So we don't go into Iraq. Three years from now, we get attacked by a terrorist group. We find out they got their weapons of mass destruction that we knew Saddam Hussein had because Bill Clinton told us, the U.N. told us, the French told us. Everybody knew he had them. And the weapons came from there. Wouldn't there be a commission set up then, blaming President Bush? Why didn't you know the weapons-why didn't you do something about-he didn't abide by the resolutions. He didn't abide by the ceasefire agreement. Wouldn't we be hearing all those words? Be honest!

SMITH: Well, I supported the Iraq war resolution because I felt holding Saddam Hussein accountable was critical. We didn't know whether he had weapons of mass destruction and we couldn't afford...

HANNITY: But wouldn't we hear that from Democrats...

SMITH: ... not to know. And I thin...

HANNITY: ... prominent Democrats?

SMITH: Let me-let me sort of express the thought here. As I said, I supported holding Saddam Hussein accountable. But if you use your theory and basically say, if we can say three years from now we were hit-I mean, we can't always say, No matter what, we're just going use the military because better safe than sorry.

COLMES: Congressman...

(CROSSTALK)

SMITH: The idea that there is-let me finish the thought.

COLMES: Yes. Go ahead.

SMITH: The idea that there is no cost whatsoever to using the military, that better safe than sorry, if we see a threat...

HANNITY: After 17 resolutions!

SMITH: ... knock it out with the military, that there's not a risk-no, but I think we need to balance the risk.

COLMES: Congressman Weldon, you know, we...

(CROSSTALK)

COLMES: We don't go to war on speculation in this country. And that seems...

SMITH: Exactly.