Transcripts For WMAR This Week 20100530 : vimarsana.com

tribune and joan walsh from salon.com. and as always, the sunday funnies. looks like congress will repeal the don t ask, don t tell policy. thank god. that means the soldiers can freely attend sex and the city 2. hello again. our special guest, former secretary of state colin powell, anyone powell, welcome. thank you very much, jake. good to be here. as you know we have some news this morning on the biggest environmental catastrophe ever to hit the country. we d like to start with it. day 416 the bp oil spill. here are live pictures of the leaking well. bp said late yesterday their effort to stop the leak called top kill did not work. and joining me this morning from houston is bp managing director bob dudley. mr. dudley, thanks for joining us. good morning, jake. so top kill failed. should the american people prepare themselves for what looks like an uncomfortable fact that this hole will not be plugged until august at the earliest? well, the relief well at the end of august is certainly the end point on this game. we failed to wrestle the beast to the ground yesterday. we ll go in and put a cap on it and produce the fluids and next step make sure we minimize the oil and pollution going into the gulf. we ll take a look at it and look at ways to improve it since then main thing now is to contain it. and that s exactly what everyone would expect us to do is not stop after this setback yesterday. as you know there are serious questions about whether or not corners that have been cut perhaps for safety, safety corners are resulted in this accident. the new york times is reporting that almost a year ago bp engineers were expressing concern about a metal casing used at the well. one that is they feared would buckle under the high pressure of being 5,000 feet underwater, one that was the riskier option. why did bp use this riskier option? i m not sure it is a riskier option, jake. the casing designs that are used in the gulf of mexico, we ve used those in other places. i think those are statements that an investigation needs to go through and look at. cutting corners is not the way i describe how we do our business and the men that work out on those rigs are no more conscious of safety. they have to live out there and that s what they focus on. so i wouldn t call it cutting corners in any way. in march, bp told federal regulators that they were struggling with loss of well control. why were operations not shut down immediately until well control was restored? well, that s that is another issue that the investigation is going to look at very, very carefully. there were issues of well control, signs out there and there are strict procedures that are written, the rig owners to walk through well control. that s what the investigation will take minute by minute and investigate that. the failure of the fallback failure of the blowout preventers is something that is very, very troubling. it is impact the industry and is the piece of equipment that is not expected to fail and that s going to have implications for everyone around the world. why didn t you just stop operations? bp knew. bp engineers said they were lewing well control. why didn t you just stop operations then? why isn t that standard operating procedure. it can be standard operating procedure. there is a company there used to drill the well. a contractor drills the well, is responsible for some of those items. we re not going to point fingers. i m sure there was a lot of discussion out there but that is what the marine board investigation will pull apart step by step. certainly some of the equipment should have worked simply by closing in the well. that did not happen. we need to find out why and the fact that that equipment failed is why we have an oil spill today. bob dudley, thank you very much. i was in the gulf earlier this weekend and i caught up with louisiana governor bobby jindal for an exclusive sunday interview. he had just met with president obama and i asked him what he told the president he still needs to battle the spill. we need more local decisionmaking authority. we asked for senior coast guard officials and the second thing we needed, simply more resources. i told the president it is trust but verified. we re heard promises. we want to see that happen on the third. the third was our plan, the state s plan to build sand booms to keep it out of our wetlands. we said for weeks we d rather fight it on a sandy barrier island than our weltlands. miles have been eroded by katrina and storms and we proposed a plan, 24 segments to rebill, refortify the islands. after weeks if they had approved it we could have built ten miles the president says more is not always better and the army corps of engineers took the request seriously, evaluated it. decided it was okay for certain areas but they didn t necessarily think immediately the plan that was suggested was the right plan. is that not a fair response? yesterday the army corps of engineers approved six segments out of 24. over 40 miles out of a hundred. but here s where our concern was. the federal government only ordered bp to pay for to do one of those six segments. that s two miles out of 100. our message to the president today was make bp pay for this. the federal government shouldn t be making excuses for bp. this is their spill, their oil. they re the responsible party. make them responsible. now, admiral allen, i asked him several days ago about why the boom that you ve requested hasn t been getting here and certainly in the amount that you want. he said every state had a contingency plan for an oil spill and they are following the contingency plans and the bottom line is the states including louisiana need more than their own contingency plans called for. if that s true, isn t it fair to say that louisiana in addition to the federal government never really adequately prepared for this. a couple of things. we looked at those plans and said, these plans aren t detailed enough for this spill what s coming into our state and asked coast guard and bp to update the plans. these are generic plans and said update it for this spill. the oil may not come to your coast. we said assume the worst case scenario. they told us we won t see the heavy oil. i say to those people come to pass a loutre. come to grand isle. there s 100 miles of coast that are covered with oil. we didn t expect all the resources a month ago but gave them a worst case scenario plan and need resources. one of the parrishs is approved. coast guard approves them for 90,000 feet. they didn t even have much hard boom in the parish what happens? the government says we don t have it? in that case they had a hard boom sitting on the dock and didn t deploy it. why? there is no excuse. the bp contractor said bp told them not to do it until the oil was coming. noaa s projection showed it. we brought the coast guard captain in charge of louisiana s response with us on a national guard black hawk helicopter, showed us the oil on the island and sheen in the bay, showed him the oil coming into that area and said, this needs to be boomed. he agreed it needed to be boomed. before this crisis occurred you were best known as a critic of big government. as a critic of big spending. here you are desperately asking for big government, big spending. when government grows too big it doesn t do its core functions properly. absolutely i believe in a limited government that is limited and effective. we need federal government exactly for this crisis. president obama says everything that the government could do is being done. true or false? well, look, i ve been very clear. i think there could have been a greater sense of urgency. so false? but you ve heard you ve heard federal officials say that, as well. it s not just me the governor of louisiana saying that you ve heard the captain of the coast guard responsible for louisiana s response saying, yeah, he could have been doing more to push bp to get more resources out more quickly but we can continue to look back. i m looking forward. i came from grand isle beach. it s usually pretty crowded. 10,000 should be here. nobody in on the beach, nobody in the marina. it s our way of life. they ve been fishing here for decades and want their children and grandchildren to be able to do that. do you think louisiana will ever be the same? absolutely. we re in a war here to fight to protect our wildlife. we absolutely will get it done. louisiana governor bobby jindal. joining me again general colin powell. thanks for joining us. good to be here. as a former chairman of the joint chiefs of staff what do you make of this push and pull? chairman of the joint chiefs of staff and as secretary of state and national security adviser, i have watched a number of these kind of crises come and go. i ve seen hurricanes, tornadoes, riots in los angeles, the tsunami and in every instance what i have sort of learned from all of these is that the national government, the federal government, the president has to get involved as quickly as possible. if you don t, then public opinion starts to drag you. the media pushes you and so when something like this clearly is going to get beyond the capacity of whoever caused it, get beyond the capacity of local authorities i think the federal government has to move in quickly and move in with to use my favorite expression, decisive force to demonstrate that it s doing everything that it can do. you didn t see that in this case? i think the president correctly said the other day that he had been monitoring it, following it and essentially been on top of it from the beginning but that impression was not conveyed to the american people and the comprehensive speech he gave the other day i think he would have been better served in the nation would have been better served if he had given it a few weeks earlier. i think the federal government is now fully engaged. became more of a problem of stopping an oil spill, an economic problem. the welfare of the people in the gulf region and how do we get it all cleaned up and how is it affecting people so it s more than bp and a hole in the ocean floor, it is a major problem that can only be dealt with by the federal government and all the resources of the federal government and that s what the president is now doing. some are calling for the military to take charge of the whole operation, in fact, senator bill nelson of florida said it should be put in the hands of a solid figure like a retired general, colin powell, i assume you don t want that job but do you think the military could do a better job. depends on what you want them to do. military brings organization, it brings control. it brings assets. whether it s the right distinction of assets that you need right now, i don t know. but certainly i m sure my colleagues in the pentagon are looking at it and what you want is somebody who is in the military now, not somebody who used to be in the military. somebody who is controlling troops now. what we would do in my time we would assign it to one of our army commanders, a second army would go in on hurricane andrew and take charge of things. but whether that s the right combination of assets now have to leave to others to decide. first have to figure out what do we need? people to clean the beaches or put out skimmers? we have lots of fishermen and others down there who are available who want the work and know the water better than an army unit coming in but whether it s army, coast guard, local forces, it is time for a comprehensive total attack on this problem to protect the shoreline, to protect the livestock, to protect the wetlands but most of all to give the people in that part of the country a sense of hope that this is going to be solved. sooner or later they will stop the leak and after that comes a problem of cleaning up and after that comes the problem of, okay, this safety system didn t work. what do we need in the future if another safety system doesn t work. what kind of standby capacity do we have to have to deal with this kind of problem if we re going to do more drilling offshore. i want to move on to other items. big news in the last few days with the house of representatives voting to allow president obama the chairman of the joint chiefs age second of defense to repeal don t ask, don t tell, the ban on gays and lesbians serving openly in the military if those three figures decide that it s appropriate. here you are in 1993 testifying in favor of this ban. the question is, do you believe that homosexuality is compatible or incompassable with military service? incompatible. incompatible. open homosexuality in a unit setting is incompatible. it involves marys of privacy, human sexuality that in our judgment if allowed to exist in the force would affect the cohesion and well-being of the force. how do you feel today? things have changed. that was 17 years ago and you ll notice that we were uniformed in our opinion. all of the chiefs were speaking and sitting next to me was the secretary of defense, les as pen who felt the same way. democratic administration. democratic administration and the compromise we came up with was don t ask, don t tell. there were worse options being considered. total ban. the compromise was if you want to serve, keep your sexuality, the identification of your sexuality to yourself. where are we today? today we ve changed. the country has changed. i think we are at a point now where the policy which is not a policy, it s a law should have been reviewed. it s been reviewed and i have always believed and i ve said this many times recently that you ultimately have to listen to the military authorities and what they think is good for the force and whether or not the force is prepared to handle this. i think that the position taken by mr. gates, secretary gates and admiral mullen and the chiefs was a sound one. let s study this. let s accept that it s a decision. the president said we re going to do it. it s a decision and the congress has to pass the law to allow that. and so let s take the time to make the study, see what the implications are. congress has decided recently, not done deal yet because the senate hasn t acted that we should pass the law repealing don t ask, don t tell but not put it into effect until the studies have been made and military certified but i think at the end of the day, the law will change and don t ask, don t tell will go away, but don t underestimate some of the issues that we dealt with in 1993 and that we re dealing with now. i think it would have been far more difficult to do it in 93 than today with open attitudes but there are issues of same-sex marriage and domestic partnerships and that s what the study will work its way through. not for a way not to find a way to not accept the judgment of the president and the congress. but how do we actually implement this? a way that strengthens the force. i think it will happen and think the military leaders are speaking out on this and they re not all uniformly of the same view, but they will execute this and execute it like they do everything else there. they ll do it well. are you personally in favor of it? i am personally of the view now that attitudes have changed and i think it is perfectly acceptable to get rid of the law and the policy but i think before we actually do it, we have to hear clearly from the officers and men and women who are in charge of executing that policy. it s one thing to sit here in washington, d.c. and say, it s no problem, do away with it. i think it s important to listen to the troops affected and take into account the views of the senior leadership, military leadership of the armed forces. let s move on to afghanistan. this fall operations in afghanistan will be nine years old, operations that began when you were secretary of state. even when all the troops get in there we ll have half of what we have in iraq, in a country much larger and here s general mcchrystal this month. i think that in the last year, we ve made a lot of progress. i think i d be prepared to say nobody is winning at this point. where the insurgents i think felt they had momentum a year ago, thought that they were making clear progress, i think that stopped. the powell doctrine is overwhelming force decisive force. decisive force. be very precise. it s your doctrine. tell me what it is. at the same time support from the public. right. that s a key component. this war right now does not have support from the public and i don t know if the force is decisive. if general mcchrystal is saying after all this the improvement means we re at a draw, i don t know if that s decisive. are they adhearing to the powell doctrine. the powell doctrine is the powell doctrine. it s not in a military magazine or feel manual. what s called the powell doctrine is the principle of objective in mass. apply the mass needed to achieve that objective. are they? the president has added close to 68,000 troops in the last year since he came into office. not just the 30 you hear but others before that. 68,000 troops were added to it. that is a significant number and, remember, they re not going after a fixed enemy. they re trying to control ground. they re trying to give some comfort to people that their life is going to get better and i m sure anywhere you put in america an infantry battalion things will get better. as stan mcchrystal said at that point it s still a draw. you have to bring in afghan national authorities and bring in the afghan army and police to take it over. you ve got to get the people to buy into it. so i don t think he was saying it s a draw forever. what he was saying we have stopped the taliban advance. we have contained that. i know the opposite he is saying when we withdraw they might take over again. that may well be the case because ultimately the united states army, marine corps cannot remain in afghanistan forever as police forces. the challenge here and the president will have to face this late next year as he said he would is okay, we have had this additional input of 68,000 soldiers bringing it to over 100,000 soldiers. we have done what we said we were going to do. have the afghans done what they must do, build an army that is capable, an army connected to the central government, an army that the people believe in and do we have a police force that is not corrupt and do we have a government in kabul that is really reaching out and kenging the people together into some kind of political system that people believe in? ultimately we can do just so much. but to win this conflict and to create the kind of afghanistan that we all want to see, it ultimately is going to be in the hands of the afghans just as iraq is ultimately going to be in the hands of the iraqis. let s talk about that. this week for the first time ever there are more u.s. troops in afghanistan than iraq. the u.s. is preparing to withdraw all combat forces. there s still a lot of sectarian violence in iraq. is iraq ready for the u.s. withdrawal? well, ready or not it s going to happen and i think it is ready. there are bombings taking place but it s nothing like it was two or three years ago. might be 10 or 12 a day compared to hundreds a day that used to be the indication. it s not clear that it is the outbreak of the kind of sectarian war we saw in 2005 and 2006. and it is not reached a level where the government starts to look like it s going to collapse. what we re seeing is an interesting democratic process where they re trying to figure out who the next prime minister is going to be. we ve gone through this right here in this country as you recall, my friend. and so they ll have to go through this and come up with a government that represents all parts of iraqi society. and if they do that and if they build up their army, if they continue to show the effectiveness that their army has shown recently, they should be able to contain this and hold it as we continue our withdrawal. we re not going to withdraw to zero. we ll waugh to a lower number that is there to help them to train them to provide military assistance to them. to protect our installations that are still there but they have to do it, whatever fight something required. so far it s moving in the right direction. i think the president is correct to keep it on track and continue with the drawdown. sooner or later we cannot maintain this level of deployment forever. it not only is a burden on our troops, it is enormously expensive in the time of budget deficits and national debt. in fact, the national security strategy president obama revealed talked a lot about that. moving to neighboring iran, sanctions have so far, the three previous regimes of sanctions have so far not convinced the country to stop its nuclear program. here you are in march. i don t yet see a set of sanctions coming along that would be so detrimental to the iranians they ll stop that program. now, since you said that there is a new regime of sanctions that the u.n. it would ban sale of heavy weapons to iran. it would create cargo ship inspections and tighter sanctions on iran s banking and financial sector. is this strong enough, do you think. i don t think so. the iranians have been around for thousands of years trading and selling and i m getting around various constraints and whatnot. they re very clever and they know what sanctions might be coming and i m sure that they have done their own planning and have their own countersanction strategy. so i don t see that this causes sufficient pain that will cause them to say, gee, why didn t we realize we were so off on this and we re going to stop all of our nuclear program. the nuclear program is there. it s operating and i don t think they ll give it up easily. i think we may have to eventually reach a point where we say, well, maybe we have to accept a nuclear program that s designed strictly for power generation and for their medical research reactor, but they say they don t want a weapon so let s put them to that test and put in place a set of inspections and regime of inspections of the iaea and international community that if they violate and agree to the constraints because they say they don t want a weapon and violate them the hammer comes down in a way they can t ignore but right now it s a dangerous situation. i wish they were not pursuing any nuclear program but the fact of the matter is whether we argue about whether they should or shouldn t they have it. the century hugs are spinning and producing material and so far the policy hasn t caused them to stop doing it. education is an issue near and dear to our heart. you and your wife started a foundation announced in march what arne duncan and the president grad nation, a ten-year campaign to reverse the dropout crisis. tell us about that. let me start it this way. in another generation the minorities of america will constitute the majority of americans. and the minorities of america are not finishing high school at an acceptable rate. 50% are not finishing. among all americans a third are not finishing. 300 million americans competing with billions around the world. this is unacceptable so we ve got to do something about our graduation rate. that s why we have started grad nation on top of a lot of other programs and it says all of us have got to get together and focus on the 2,000 schools responsible for most of the dropout problem that we have. and get into these schools but we also have to remember it s not just the schools, if youngsters show up from a home that is not secure, if they show up and they haven t been fed breakfast, if they show up and no one has ever read to them in the home so it s an entire community problem that goes from high school all the way back to kindergarten, all the way back to prenatal care and so don t just think it s a high school problem, we have to deal with the teachers in the high school. we ve got to work with the whole system. that s what grad nation is all about. if we don t solve it america will be in very, very deep trouble as we try to compete in the globalized world. lastly, sir, thank you for your service on this memorial day weekend. the 1,000th service member killed in afghanistan. i believe his name was jacob leicht, a marine. memorial day is tomorrow and you ll speak at the concert on the west lawn of the capitol. what does this mean to you. it s important for me. a time when all americans pause and pay tribute to americans of every generation who went in harm s way and were willing to go in harm s way and perhaps lose their life so that we could have the freedom of speech you and i are enjoying right now so we can argue with each other as we do so vociferously in this capitol and country. that s what democracy and freedom are all about and it didn t just drop down on us. we fought for it and hundreds of thousands died to protect it. this is the day. this is the weekend when you stop and pause and remember and thank every generation of g.i.s who sacrificed for us and we thank their families and it s something we all should do and we should do with solemnity and with praise and with the sincerest thanks. we thank you for your service and also for coming here today to share your views with us. thank you, jake. the roundtable is next with george will, clarence page, matthew dowd and joan walsh and later the sunday funnies. retirement.it may be a long way off or another adventure waiting just ahead. pacific life can help provide a dependable income you can enjoy for the rest of your life. because retirement could be a very long ride. ask your financial professional about pacific life. pacific life.the power to help you succeed. less travel? more video conferences? limit the cell phone minutes. that s not good enough. we re not leaving this room unless we can cut something else. can they really keep us here? what about all this stuff? what stuff? all this stuff. what does it cost to create all this? time, effort, people. how much? it could be millions. millions. [ male announcer ] save money. trust your business processes to xerox. xerox. ready for real business. look at all this stuff for coffee. oh there s tons. french presses, expresso tampers, filters. it can get really complicated. not nearly as complicated as shipping it, though. i mean shipping is a hassle. not with priority mail flat rate boxes from the postal service. if it fits it ships anywhere in the country for a low flat rate. that is easy. best news i ve heard all day! i m soooo amped! i mean not amped. excited. well, sort of amped. really kind of in between. have you ever thought about decaf? do you think that would help? yeah. priority mail flat rate box shipping starts at $4.95, only from the postal service. a simpler way to ship. - he volunteered. #- we were drafted. - she enlisted. - and off we went to asia. - to europe. - the gulf. - to do our duty. to serve our country. - we were buddies. - shipmates. - best of friends. - i ll never forget his courage. - her dedication. - the way he made you laugh. - and i ll remember him. - remember her. - i ll remember them. always. [ male announcer ] we call it the american renewal. because we believe in the strength of american businesses. ge capital understands what small businesses need to grow and create jobs. today, over 300,000 businesses rely on ge capital for the critical financing they need to help get our economy back on track. the american renewal is happening right now. coming up next, the roundtable and the the sunday funnies. when i served in baghdad, my team did not care whether a fellow soldier was straight or gay. with our military fighting two wars, why on earth will we tell over 13,500 able bodied americans that their services are not needed? the american people don t want to see the american military use to advance a liberal agenda. congress acting first is the equivalent of turning to our men and women in uniforms and saying, your opinions don t count. some sound from the floor of the house as they debated don t ask, don t tell and the repeal that successfully passed. we re joined here to talk about this on our roundtable with george will as always, clarence page of the chicago tribune, matthew dowd former bush adviser and joan walsh of salon.com and should disclose joan hired me for a job in 1999 at salon.com so credit or blame goes to you. thank you. i take all the credit. payback time. i m not going to be easy on you this morning. george, let s start with oil. is president obama being unfairly blamed or is this just part of the job? he s being unfairly blamed and sort of serves him right. i ll tell you what i mean by that. june 3rd, 2008, end of the democratic primary, gives a speech in st. paul and said this is the moment at which people will say the rise of the oceans began to slow. in other words, it kind of grandiosity has been part of his and the modern presidency s narrative. progressive politics from woodrow wilson to obama has said concentrate power in washington, concentrate washington power in the execute branch and concentrate within the executive branch lots of experts and there is no telling what wonders government can do. this just strikes at the narrative of competence that all of this depends on. clarence, have you a column in the tribune today. is this obama s katrina? is it? not yet but it could be. it depends how he handles things from here on. interesting secretary powell earlier said that president obama s press conference the other day might have been better to have made those statements earlier, a few weeks earlier. hindsight is always 20/20 but george is right in the sense that, you know, president obama benefited politically, you could say, from president obama s katrina. there was kind of a standard set rightly or wrongly that presidents are supposed to respond to crises like these in a very visible way and try to capture the public mood right away or suffer consequences, whether they could do something about it or not and, you know, years ago mike royko the columnist said we should all appoint a king along with the president who could handle the ceremonial functions and the hand holdings, the ribbon cuttings, the speeches after great major tragedies, et cetera, so while the president goes about the task of the real management. in some sense we re seeing this here where president obama is being asked to perform both those roles. matthew, you were with president bush during katrina and you and i talked about it. that was something of a tipping point for his presidency. is this that for president obama? well, for president bush it was a tipping point because there was a series of things that had happened before that that built up. the iraq war, people turned on the iraq war and that was a horrible summer for the president where he didn t meet with the peace marchers. he spent most of his time on vacation. he didn t show up for katrina right away. and so that basically the public finally said that s enough. we re done and after katrina he never recovered. never got above 43% or 44% job approval. i don t think it s this president s katrina yet. i think the public is still going to give him room to maneuver and do things. my guess is it s not until after the midterms when the public says has he done or not done the job but in the end whether it s his fault or not if you want the pomp and you want the power then you got to take the pain of the job and this is part of the pain of the job when you live in the white house and fly around on air force one, whether or not you could actually do something on this incident, you have to take responsibility for it. my question for the president is no longer he i think he showed up too late. i think he showed passion too late but today it s no longer about press conferences and no longer about visits but fixing the hole in the ocean floor and cleaning up the beaches. if he does that well he ll recover. if he doesn t do that well, then he can t recover from it. joan, you know who he is getting the most guff from is not even republicans in a lot of ways, it s liberals. it s democrats. here s former democratic congressman james bonior and james carville. they may have had it as their top priority but did not communicate that to the american people. you ve got to show emotion. this is an emotional issue. you have to put somebody in charge of it. we re about to die down here. any of way what s your take? that s the president s supporters nominally. nominally. look, i cut james carville a lot of slack. he is suffering. he lives down there. the whole other bunch not so much. i saw bonior say that the other day he needs to be more emotional. i want to add to clarence s point. we don t just need a president and king but a daddy. there s this great call for a daddy and especially among liberals and find it ridiculous. maureen dowd is calling him spock. calling the president spock. arianna huffington is calling him nowhere man because he s daring to still see a concert honoring palm mccartney and i think it s really it s a stand-in for a sense of helplessness when we sit here and as you the point you made in your interview earlier in the show there really was a pattern of negligence and there really were warning signs on that rig in the month certainly months perhaps and that s what we need to get to the bottom of. i don t care if he emotes. i don t care. i don t need a daddy. i had one, he was great. i think the danger isn t that this is his katrina. it s that it s his iranian hostage crisis. that happened to carter in his first and it turned out only term. so it wasn t like katrina which was sort of beside the point, bush was a spent force by then anyway and it reinforced the perception, people said, intelligent, likable fellow but maybe he isn t up to the job and the jury is still out on that for barack obama. is that fair, clarence? yeah, i said that. in my column i said president obama needs to get ahead of the story without being held captive by it. one of president carter s mistakes, he committed himself to saying, you won t see me rest. he committed himself regardless of what else happens to reminding everybody daily, in fact, there was an abc program that rose up, wasn t it called hostage in america held in hostage. it became nightline. all held the presidency captive. i think democrats better be careful in their criticism of the president. only person holding them up at all politically is the president because their numbers in congress are in the 20s. his till in the low 50s, high 40s. how much you criticize him going into a midterm is not necessarily the best strategy. well, let s turn to president obama and the congress working on the repeal of don t ask, don t tell. first of all, joan, it s not technically a repeal, right? right. what passed? he gets permission to repeal it once they finish this this set of studies why not wait until the studies are done. you know, jake, there s never it s never the wrong time to do the right thing and i think i think that s what they re saying. people are calling it political and i won t sit here and say it s not political. but they re not studying whether it should be done. as general powell made the point on the show which was excellent. they re studying how to do it. still not a matter of if they re going to do it but there are logistical questions, fair questions. they will be presented with findings but there s no doubt that they re going to do it. and so do the democrats want this vote to please their base? yes, but did they make a campaign promise that they want to keep? did obama? yes, he did. is that bad? i don t think so. your son daniel, matthew, just finished pfeiffer years in the armed forces. what does he think of this? it s interesting. when they talk about the military, republicans criticize it and say we shouldn t do this to the men in uniform. from my son s perspective it s already been decided and they said we shouldn t have don t ask, don t tell and when they raise their hands and say who thinks we should have gays in the military, 80% against it. now it s 80% for it. my son explains they go to high school with kids now openly gay. they socialize with kids that are openly gay and all of a sudden they go in the armed services, somebody gives them a rifle and they re not supposed to be around gay people anymore? it doesn t make any sense. long been decided in the public s mind. i think the republicans are so far out of step where the country is especially the generation republican office holders because republican people are in favor of repealing the ban. yeah, republican office holders are so far out of step with this of the especially the generation of folks under 35 who are basically see it on television and movies and act it in their daily life. from mine and my son s perspective it s way over due. you served in the army during vietnam. vietnam era. to be more precise. never saw combat. never in vietnam but i right. i was in the service for two years, there were homosexuals in the service 40 years ago and 400 years ago for that matter. the thing is the military does have its own culture and that needs to be respected. this was dealt with in a way that people whom you knew personally you would cover for them if you liked them. if you didn t maybe not. i mean that kind of thing. that nonsense now. this younger generation is beyond that the only question i have now and this too is serious, how much recognition are we going to have? how normalizing is it going to be? if you ve got two gay military people who decide they want to get married in massachusetts or iowa or whatever, they want to live in base housing that is for married couples, how will the military handle that? that those are the nuts and bolts questions that the commanders are going over now. that s why this year-long study is necessary. but i think as far as this train has left the station. it s going to happen. exactly. for people of matt s son s generation, being gay is like being left-handed. it s really not very interesting. you do raise a point. there is a gap, a different culture between the military and sievians and we want it that way because we ask them to make serable sacrifice and do difficult things. that said i was struck by your interview with general powell and the demonstration that from 93 to now, 17 years is a very long time in the united states. supreme court has a famous phrase it used in some opinion. the evolving standards of decency that mark a maturing society. clearly these are evolving and case is over basically. the case is over. why is there such a fight by republican office holders? if you look at polling the public is overwhelmingly in support. conservatives are supporting it. white evangelicals support it. what is going on with the republicans in congress? they re not being very intelligent. thank you. all right. moving on to another topic. there was a lot of debate and kerfuffle, intrigue over the whole question of what the house offered congressman joe sestak in order to not run against arlen specter. it came out at the end of the week that president clinton had offered sestak according to this story a nonpaying job to not run. here is congressman sestak and one of the big republicans leading the charge for a special prosecutor, darryl issa. i merely looked at this as just another effort by the democratic establishment in washington, d.c. not to have me in the race. it wasn t appropriate or was it? no, there was nothing wrong that was done. it s for either the attorney general using a special prosecutor or the fbi to do the independent investigation, get the on the record testimony from people such as president clinton now we discover and make a decision. it s not for members of the house, republican or democrat, but it s also not for the white house to whitewash their own actions. matthew, the white house s explanation of this basically is there s no crime here. there s nothing unethical. it s politics as usual, but does that hurt the obama brand? well, it is politics as usual. i don t think this should be prosecuted. most people think this goes on every day. the only question is how competent they are in doing politics. i don t know if that raises any degree of competence. but i think this issue is it is it is a political issue. and it does hurt his brand because he came to washington and said, i m going to change things. i m going to do things differently. i m not going to be like bush and cheney. we ll bring people together and not do we won t politicize things and their excuse, everybody does it so we do it. that s a problem for his brand. georgy. politics is a transactional business. candidates go to voters and say you vote for me, i ll do this for you. that s what we do in this business and there s nothing wrong with it. that s called democracy and free government. obama was seriously trying to act as the leader of his party to get what he thought was the he was wrong to get the strongest candidate in the race in pennsylvania. nothing the matter with this and for republicans of all people to try and resuscitate that frankenstein monster of the independent counsel is preposterous. the interesting thing to me about it, if they were successful, they would be faced with the fact they probably would lose the race in the general election if they had been successful getting sestak out and arlen specter was the nominee. sestak is much stronger and will likely keep the seat. if they had been successful they probably would have lost the seat. that s the marv news irony. the system worked in this case. the question of whether sestak was actually offered or whether this was a driel balloon floated in a conversation, hey, did you ever think about being on an unpaid advisory position? that hair split something what you get down to if somebody did try to prosecute this case. but i think what s really important here is that, you know, obama i guess criticized just as much more not being political enough and not being hardball enough. anybody who knows his biography first time he ran for office in illinois there was behind the scenes work to help him. he knows how to play hardball. if you want to call that the chicago way, there are a lot of different chicago ways, let sea say but this kind of business as usual is not what s going to cause wars. i don t see it herring his brand at all. people supported him. they didn t expect him to be jesus in the white house. some might have. yeah. a couple people did. yeah. just the one. he was the one. then it became that one. anyway, go on. so i don t see this hurting him at home. darrell issa needs to go back to california. this is silly. moving on to one last topic, immigration. president obama announced he was sending troops to the u.s./mexican border. here s the response from senator john mccain. what happened yesterday and what was clearly a pr stunt, the president announced 1,200 national guard to the border. now we find out they ll do desk jobs. one of the things we have found out is that the presence of a uniformed american on the border has a very significant effect on the drug cartels because the only threat they feel in mexico is from the mexican army. george, senator mccain calls this pr. is it pr. it is pr but not convincing. bush sent 6,000 troops to the border. didn t have much effect. the number of border agents has increased 80% since 2004 and we now have learned exactly what slows down illegal immigration. a real serious world class recession. that s true. the act that says military people can t make arrests, so but they can offer support. president bush did send 6,000 troops down to be place holders until more border guards were brought in which happened and this is a bone toss, mccain wanted 6,000. obama gives 1,200 on the border but it s more symbolic than real. very quickly, matthew, president obama says republicans need to work on comprehensive immigration reform. you can t solve it with national guard troops. here are some national guard troops anyway. is he right in that republicans are not working with him on this. there are not many republicans willing to stand like president bush did when he was governor and basically if they took his plan he offered congress, that is the plan that would solve much of these problems. republicans they re benefiting from the short term. the american the country likes this and wants their border protected but like a virus, they ll contract a virus and over the long term they ll get sick. fastest group of voters are latinos and republicans right now look very, very, very intolerant of latinos. very quickly, was this a good move by president obama or not. i think it was a fine move. i think once again he made john mccain look like the guy telling everybody to get off his lawn. the roundtable continues in the green room on abcnews.com. later check out our fact checks. this week politifact have joined with our newsmakers. sfx: car crashing this is onstar. i ve received a signal .you ve been in a crash., i ll contact emergency services. [ male announcer ] we call it the american renewal. because we believe in the strength of american businesses. ge capital understands what small businesses need to grow and create jobs. today, over 300,000 businesses rely on ge capital for the critical financing they need to help get our economy back on track. the american renewal is happening right now. now in memoriam. running head out on the highway i can t. i m a little man. i m a little man. what you talking about. what you talking about? what you talking what you talking about, willis? what do you do for fun? drinks beer and smokes sigars. this week the pentagon released the names of eight soldiers and marines killed in iraq and afghanistan. we ll be right back. [ male announcer ] over the past 50 years, toyota has been proud to be a model of quality car making. but recently, the safety of our cars and trucks has come under question. and at toyota, this is something we don t take lightly. that s why we re making fundamental changes inside our company, to communicate with customers better, and respond to their needs faster. in addition, we re currently spending over a million dollars an hour to enhance the technology and safety of our vehicles. the result? our comprehensive star safety system is now standard on every vehicle we make. don t get us wrong, we know actions speak louder than commercials. but just know, your safety will continue to be a top priority in any, and all of our decisions. and while it can never be fully answered, it helps to have a financial partner .like northern trust. by gaining a keen understandingof y, we re able to tailor a plan ! using a full suite. of sophisticated investment .strategies and solutions., so whatever s around the corner can be faced with confidence. northern trust. look ahead with us at northerntrust.com. now the sunday funnies. the president finally arrived on the gulf coast today to survey the damages. i thought this was telling. while he was there fema arrived for katrina. arizona governor january brewer put out a video to sell her new immigration law fee turing a puppet that looks like kermit the frog. even craze ser he sings it s not easy being brown. this is the end of the big tv viewing season. and so they wrap up the series. for example, lost. that s gone. the whole series. everything is gone. that s over. law & order. say good-bye to the gulf coast. they re wrapping that up. severed alt relations with south korea preparing for war. today american spy satellites took a picture of something very scary. look at this. look at that. we ll be right back with some images from memorial day. data generated from an electrical grid. from wires, streets, businesses, homes. when you can harness data, you can do things you couldn t do before. prepare for alternative energy sources, accelerate the adoption of electric vehicles, help prevent blackouts. see the data from energy usage as it happens and you can do what they re doing in places like california and build a smarter energy system. let s build a smarter planet. when i got my x medicare car, i realized i needed x an aarp. medicare supplement insurance card, too. dicare is one of the great things about turning 65, in fact, it only pays up to .80% of your part b expenses. if you re already on or eligible for medicare, call now to find out how an aarp. medicare supplement insurance plan, insured by unitedhealthcare insurance company, not paid by medicare part b. that can save you up to ! thousands of dollars. these are the only medicare supplement insurance plans. exclusively endorsed by aarp. when you call now, you ll get this free information kit. and guide to understanding medicare, i can keep my own doctor and choose my own hospital. and i don t need a referral to see a specialist. as with all medicare supplement plans, you can keep your own doctor and hospital that accepts medicare. and help pay for what medicare doesn t. to get your free information kit and guide # to understanding medicare. that s our show for today. we leave you at arlington national cemetery where earlier this week the third u.s. infantry, the old guard honored america s fallen hero with the flags in.