MSNBC Reports (interview)

MSNBC

HEADLINE: MSNBC REPORTS For March 10, 2003

BYLINE: Joe Scarborough

GUESTS: Jeff Sessions; Gary Ackerman; Curt Weldon; Amardeep Singh; Curtis Sliwa; Kelly Coyne; Ward Connerly

HIGHLIGHT:
"Real Deal:" U.S. doesn't need the U.N. A discussion over why the split within the U.N.

BODY:
JOE SCARBOROUGH, HOST: Is the United Nations signing its own death warrant, and is this week's vote less about Saddam and more about the U.N.'s irrelevance?

New York City's cops are slapped with a lawsuit. A Sikh wants to wear his religious headgear, but New York's finest say it's our way or the highway.

And an affirmative action bake sale. Should white kids have to pay more for their cookies? And a Congressman's comments comparing bin Laden to Ben Franklin. We broke the story here first. And tonight, Marcy Kaptur fights back.

ANNOUNCER: This is a special edition of MSNBC REPORTS. Here now, Joe Scarborough.

SCARBOROUGH: Good evening. I'm Joe Scarborough.

Colin Powell kisses up to Cameroon while liberal critics carp at President Bush for insisting on a U.N. vote they say will embarrass America on the world stage.

But here's the facts, folks. The president's going to get his vote. The U.N.'s going to buckle and it's not going to be America who ends up with mud on its face.

It's time for tonight's "Real Deal."

Some liberals just don't get George W. Bush. He's an Ivy Leaguer who hates elitists. He's a president's son who spent most of his life away from politics. And he's an international leader who doesn't bow down to international types like the wise fools who are now running the U.N.

Liberals have almost convinced themselves that poor George W. Bush is disconnected from the geopolitical reality shaping our age. But you know what? History is going to record just the opposite, because president George W. Bush is on the verge of creating a new world order that his father's administration could have only imagined.

It's going to be a new world order governed by democratic nations promoting democratic ideals. It's going to be a new world order where international security is going to trump parochial economic interests. It's going to be a new world order where serial human right abusers like Libya and Syria are not allowed to pass judgment on America's mortality. And it's going to be a new world order where two-bit dictators and third-world tyrants forever lose their relevance.

For too long America's politely listened to these goons who strutted across the U.N. stage like a young Mick Jagger at Altamont. We pretended they mattered. We pretended we cared. And what's worse, sometimes we did care and we let them dictate our foreign policy.

George W. Bush is going to demand a vote from the United Nations this week and as William Safire wrote today in "The New York Times," that vote is going to expose the Security Council as unwilling to protect the world from blackmail by terrorist states who now hold the ultimate weapons. Safire once again is right on the mark.

The U.N.'s abdication of collective security follows this see-no-evil approach that it took as a million human beings were slaughtered in Rwanda, while two million were killed in the Sudan and while ethnic cleansing was taking to frightening levels in the Balkans.

And in all of these instances, the United Nations stood on the sidelines, keeping its uniform clean, while those battlefields were literally bathed in blood.

Now these Manhattan diplomats are debating the niceties of a new resolution while the butcher of Baghdad plays cat and mouse games with internationalist inspectors. Friends, it's a pathetic situation.

As a U.S. Congressman, I saw first hand how U.N. diplomats tied up American foreign policy. And I say now it's about time that an American president has the guts to call the U.N.'s bluff.

Let them vote no. Go ahead, make our day. And we'll make a new world order that excludes self-important stiffs such as the type that are now running the U.N.

And that's the "Real Deal" for tonight.

And with me from Washington, D.C., on our show is a Republican senator from Alabama, Jeff Sessions, who is also a member of the Senate Armed Services Committee.

Senator Sessions, welcome to our program tonight.

SEN. JEFF SESSIONS (R), ALABAMA: It's good to be with you, Joe.

SCARBOROUGH: Good to see you again.

President Bush and Secretary Powell spent all day today working the phones and trying to win support from at least five more countries with votes on the U.N. Security Council before the next meeting.

As it now stands, as you know, the U.S. can count on support from Britain, Bulgaria, and Spain, but Pakistan announced today that it might abstain from that vote.

And there are five undecided countries whose support would force the French or the Russians to exercise their veto power. They're Angola, Cameroon, Chile, Guinea and Mexico.

Senator Sessions, if that happens and if a French or Russian veto ultimately dooms this U.N. resolution, doesn't it just prove how dysfunctional and useless the United Nations has become in the 21st Century?

SESSIONS: I certainly agree. I believe it is an organization that really can't function. I guess that's what a dysfunctional organization is.

I mean when you have to have this kind of unanimity among this broad breadth of nations who don't share democratic principles, who themselves are often totalitarian brutal dictatorships, yet they have the ability to block or some nations even have the right to veto resolutions, then I think the United States cannot put its security and the world's security in this organization's hands.

SCARBOROUGH: Doesn't it seem almost surreal to you that you have Colin Powell and George Bush going to the leaders of Cameroon, Angola, and Guinea and literally begging them for the right to go and defend American security?

SESSION: It is really, really an important thing for the people of America and, really, the world to see. Because the fate of an issue of this importance that has almost no relevance to the average life of a citizen in Cameroon or Angola, for example, just points out how bizarre it is that we would—anyone would suggest we ought to turn over our policymaking power to this organization.

I'm not saying the United States—the United Nations is evil, it ought to be totally discounted, but it cannot be counted on, Joe. It cannot be counted on to make good decisions.

SCARBOROUGH: And Senator, I think that they've proven that. Like I said in "The Real Deal," they've proven it in the Balkans, they've proven it in Rwanda, they proved it in the Sudan, where over two million people were slaughtered and the U.N. did nothing.

Now last Thursday, the president made it eminently clear that he intends to see the U.N. debate through to a vote. And today, with France and Russia threatening to veto a second resolution, Ari Fleischer explained why the president is still pushing for that vote.

Let's listen.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

ARI FLEISCHER, WHITE HOUSE SPOKESMAN: The United Nations Security Council's, from a moral point of view, leaving the people of these regions on the sidelines. The people of Iraq will know in their hearts who led the action that led to their freedom and who didn't.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

SCARBOROUGH: Senator Sessions, first of all, I think that's fascinating that Ari Fleischer is saying we want the people of Iraq to know who their liberators are and we want them to know who was against liberation.

But many people are wondering now, again, why we're moving forward the way we are. And I need to know, do you think that the president is moving forward with this to actually try to expose the U.N. as not being up to the challenge and being scared to stand—to take a stand?

SESSIONS: No, I think he's moving because he thinks Iraq threatens the United States and the world, really. And he also knows that in the end, it will be good for the people of Iraq. I think if he didn't believe that, he would be more reluctant to go forward. He believes, I think rightly, that the people will welcome a regime change.

So we have a security interest for the United States, and he's willing to challenge the U.N. As you said in the opening, it's time for somebody to stand up to this organization and not kowtow to people, to totalitarian regimes who abuse their own people and then sanctimoniously criticize the United States for trying to liberate people.

SCARBOROUGH: Senator, one final question in the few seconds we have remaining: what's your prediction? Do you think that we're going to get the nine votes required, and do you think that France and Russia are going to stay on the sidelines and not exercise their veto?

SESSION: Well, it looks like France will be on the sidelines and maybe others. Maybe we can get that nine votes. I'd like to do that just as a psychological matter.

But let me remind you, Joe, this Congress has voted overwhelmingly to authorize President Bush to act without a U.N. vote, without a NATO vote, alone if need be. And this president is not going to back down no matter how Angola or Cameroon vote.

SCARBOROUGH: All right. Senator Jeff Sessions from the great state of Alabama, thanks so much for being with us tonight.

SESSION: Good to be with you.