Hot Stories for the Week of Feb. 3-7

This is a partial transcript from The Beltway Boys, Jan. 25, 2003, that has been edited for clarity. Click here to order the complete transcript.

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GEORGE W. BUSH, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: The game is over.  All the world can rise to this moment. Saddam Hussein will be stopped.

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FRED BARNES, CO-HOST: As President Bush was suggesting, Mort, what the -- there's time -- the time is up for Saddam Hussein now, so what's over exactly? The negotiation phase is over, the wait-and-see phase is over, the appease-the-French phase is over. And also the United Nations inspection phase is over. And if you don't believe me or you don't believe President Bush, listen to Colin Powell, the secretary of state, and the U.N. the other day.

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COLIN POWELL, SECRETARY OF STATE: The issue before us is not how much time we are willing to give the inspectors to be frustrated by Iraqi obstruction, but how much longer are we willing to put up with Iraq's noncompliance before we as a council, we as the United Nations say, Enough, enough?

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BARNES: You know, I would also say, Enough, enough to all these Democrats, Howard Dean and the rest of them running for president and in Congress saying that the choice is between just the U.S. going to war with Iraq under the auspices of...the United Nation, or, or unilateral action by the U.S. That's not the choice at all. You know, the U.S. has plenty of allies separate from the U.N. There's a long list of them, Mort.

Look at this list of allies who support us. One way or another, rhetorically, offering arms, offering something or other. That's a pretty impressive list, 34 countries, Europe, Asia, Australia, all over the place.

MORT KONDRACKE, CO-HOST: It is a canard that the United States is going to go to war if it goes alone or unilaterally. I mean, we, we do have allies, and we've done the public a -- you've done the public a great service by listing them all.

BARNES: Right.

KONDRACKE: I'm sure people don't...

BARNES: Sure.

KONDRACKE: ... don't, don't appreciate that. It takes courage on the part of a lot of the leaders of those countries, Tony Blair in the lead, but Vaclav Havel, when, when, when he...

BARNES: Sure.

KONDRACKE: ... was president of Czechoslovakia, so on, to do that, because public opinion, world public opinion, is still, sad to say, on the side of the French, the Germans, the Chinese, and the, the Russians.

One of these days, one, one of these days, quite soon, a month from now or so, one side or the other is going to be vindicated. I anticipate and hope and pray that it's our side, that, that, that, we, the Iraqis will greet us as liberators, that we'll discover vast caches of weapons of mass destruction, and war plans, and evidence of human rights violations, and maybe some evidence of French collusion with the, with the Iraqis, wouldn't be surprised at that.

That said, the other hot story is Code Orange, orange alert. Right now, the, the, the administration has announced that, that they're afraid that terrorist attacks may occur within this month in the United States or elsewhere, and there are -- here's, here's John Ashcroft announcing that fact today.

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JOHN ASHCROFT, ATTORNEY GENERAL: This decision for an increased threat condition designation is based on specific intelligence received and analyzed by the full intelligence community. This information has been corroborated by multiple intelligence sources.

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KONDRACKE: Actually that was Friday.

BARNES: Yes.

KONDRACKE: Now, in addition to that scary news is also the fact, as Colin Powell testified at the U.N., the Iraqis have vast stores of chemical and biological weapons, which they could fire at our troops in Kuwait even before we, we get ready for the attack, or, or in Qatar, and in addition to that, we've got the North Koreans trying to provoke a, a crisis, nuclear crisis, which the administration refuses to acknowledge as a crisis, I think because what they want to do is confront North Korea after we have beaten the crap out of, out of Iraq and humiliated the French.

BARNES: And the French need a little humiliating. You know, the press treats the United States as if we are isolated. We saw the list of allies. But actually it's France and Germany who are really the isolated countries. They're isolated in Europe, all the Eastern European countries are behind the U.S., Spain, Italy, Great Britain, Denmark, all these other countries are behind the U.S.

So they're the ones that really have the problem. And, you know, I love that line by Dennis Miller, where he said, You know, after watching the French in action, I now understand why the most-used French phrase in America is "au contraire."

KONDRACKE: Right, your favorite too.

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