Why Is Obama So Focused on Apologies?

This is a rush transcript from "Hannity," April 24, 2009. This copy may not be in its final form and may be updated.

SEAN HANNITY, HOST: The Obama administration is about to release graphic photos of CIA interrogations after releasing the CIA memos to satisfy their own political base. Now the Obama administration is not even fighting to keep those photos out of the public eye after the Bush administration did so for four years.

Instead they are just going to hand them over, and that is our headline this Friday night, "Hurting America First." Now we used call it "Blame America First," but we are beyond the damaging left-wing rhetoric, and now the actions of this administration and other liberals are doing harm to this nation's interest.

Now ABC News reports tonight that the release of the aforementioned photos are provoking a backlash by CIA operatives who are no longer convinced that this country will provide them cover for their clandestine activities.

Now didn't Democrats spend years complaining about something similar when it came to Valerie Plame and the interrogation memos that we have been discussing all week? Well that haven't helped their cause either, revealing to our enemies just how far we will go to learn vital information, and by extension, just how long they have to hold out to prevent us from knowing what we need to know to protect this country.

• Video: Watch Sean's interview

Now this is a president who spent his entire first trip abroad talking down the United States of America, calling us arrogant and apologizing to every European politician that he could find. This is no longer blaming America. This is hurting America.

Indeed, it is injuring America, and the leader of the free world, he needs to know better, and joining me tonight is former presidential candidate Mike Huckabee. He's also the author of "Do the Right Thing," and of course the host of his own show Saturday and Sunday nights right here on the FOX News Channel — what's the name of that show? "Huckabee."

MIKE HUCKABEE, "DO THE RIGHT THING" AUTHOR: It's called "Huckabee". It's real simple. It's...

(LAUGHTER)

HANNITY: Good to see you, Governor.

HUCKABEE: Great to see you, Sean.

HANNITY: Thank you for being with us.

How damaging not only — we have revealed to the enemy the techniques that we have been using, but now they're going to take it a step further with the photos. How damaging is that?

HUCKABEE: Very damaging, especially if you ever think about wanting to recruit someone to be in the CIA. How would you like to get into a clandestine organization that is not clandestine anymore.

HANNITY: Great point.

HUCKABEE: When do you know that what you have done under the orders of your government is going to be released to the public and your home address published, and what does that do for your kids?

We've always protected those people who have served in these very delicate positions of secrecy and intelligence gathering, and when we out them, we really put our lives at risk, and we put our capacity to gather intelligence in great harm.

HANNITY: Well, so this — so my analysis is right. I'm saying that Barack Obama and the administration is hurting our nation's defenses.

HUCKABEE: I think that's a fair assessment, Sean. It is hurting us. It's hurting us first on the point of intelligence gathering. It's going to be much more difficult for us to get the intelligence, we're now telling them all of our techniques, we're letting the other side know exactly what we do and how we do it.

The most dangerous thing that we did even when we disclosed all the details of the interrogation techniques, we basically told them that we really weren't hurting them. It was like a carnival ride, and I'm going to get YouTube'd on this one, because I know they're going to come after me.

But the point is, for example, it wasn't that we were actually go to drown someone, but it was a simulation of it, and for that, there was, in fact, some information that came forth.

HANNITY: And they can use that information. You know they know how far we're going to go, and now they know we're not going to go that far at all, so that, of course, would be used in their training.

One of the things that amazes me is we had four former CIA directors including Barack Obama's own CIA director saying don't do this. You know Michael Hayden.

HUCKABEE: Yes.

HANNITY: Don't do this.

HUCKABEE: Yes.

HANNITY: And yet they did it anyway. Why do you think they did so? Political reasons, they want to make the Bush administration look bad?

HUCKABEE: You've hit it. This is an administration, the Obama administration, that seems obsessed with the past. For an administration whose candidate ran on let's get quit looking behind us, and look ahead of us, he cannot get over the fact that George Bush preceded him in the presidency.

You know for — here's what I don't understand. MoveOn.org needs to move on.

HANNITY: Yes.

HUCKABEE: This is — no longer should they be called Move On, they need to be called CampOut.org, because they are camping out over the past eight years.

HANNITY: All right. The evidence that this political — let me go through two specific examples. The first one is, Barack Obama himself, his propagandas — by the way, I can't believe he made 100 days — Gibbs, and Rahmbo "dead fish" Emmanuel.

All right. All three of them said they weren't going to pursue this. It wasn't on our best interest. All of the sudden they make a 180 degree turn after their political base is calling for this. So that means that what? They're beholden to them? They're not going to put what's in the best interest of the country over their political, you know, benefit?

HUCKABEE: You can't play politics with national security and especially with intelligence secrets. And I think it's now interesting that we're discovering that in 2002, Nancy Pelosi and other Democratic leaders were fully briefed on all the way down to the details of waterboarding, and they were perfectly OK with it in 2002.

So if we're going to have a criminal investigation, let's make sure that we have some lady size handcuffs to go along with the ones they're going to put on the Bush people.

HANNITY: But that's what I want to know is the second part of the politicizing this, because we now — Porter Goss has come out. George Tenet has come out. And they said that in spite of Nancy Pelosi first denying that she knew that these specific techniques were going to be used, even she changed her position and said well, I couldn't stop it, so evidence that she in fact may have lied.

If Nancy Pelosi lied, and she knew about it, and she denied it and lied to the American people, should she be removed as House speaker?

HUCKABEE: Well, that would be, I guess, a job for the Democrats who elect her to be House speaker, but I don't think she should have ever have been put there from the first place.

HANNITY: Yes, well — but seriously, if she's going to manipulate and lie to the American people...

HUCKABEE: But she certainly has lost her credibility.

HANNITY: We know what they went through. They literally mentioned this, and...

HUCKABEE: Yes.

HANNITY: According to every report, Porter Goss was the latest, and George Tenet said the same thing, not only was there not opposition, they were wondering if whether or not we were going far enough at the time in a post- 9/11 environment.

HUCKABEE: I think it's important to note that George Tenet was not a Bush administration appointee, he was a holdover, but he was a Clinton appointee. George Tenet was not exactly a fan of all the things that the Bush administration did, but when it comes to this issue, all things except national security become the interest of these former directors, and even the current one, Leon Panetta...

HANNITY: Yes.

HUCKABEE: ... is not happy with this whole process.

HANNITY: All right. Let's look at the big picture. You know, apologizing for America tour, calling America arrogant to our enemies, bowing before the Saudi king, embracing the Castro brothers, Hugo Chavez, Daniel Ortega, cutting missile defense at a time North Korea is firing missiles, meeting with Ahmadinejad who denied again this week the Holocaust.

What does this say about Barack Obama and his mind-set and the principles that guide his decision making?

HUCKABEE: I think it's one thing for America to say look, we want to have conversations with anyone if we feel like that they can be productive, but we're talking about negotiations and even acknowledgements to people who don't deserve that level of respect from the president.

It's one thing to send a third tier emissary to let them kind of understand, we may talk to you but you're not talking to the big guy.

HANNITY: Yes.

HUCKABEE: Because you haven't earned that. But here's what really was disturbing. The relationship with Cuba. Raul Castro is a murderer. We have every reason to believe that he was personally responsible in the order of the shooting down of the Christian brothers civilian airplane that was taking relief to Cubans, and there's never been an accountability.

There are political prisoners and journalists in jail in Cuba. They've never had free elections, and as soon as Raul Castro goes out and says everything is on the table, his brother releases a statement the next day and says hold that thought.

HANNITY: Yes. Let me ask a final question here. If the 9/11 Commission report was right that it's not a matter of if, but it's a matter of when, and we're doing — taking all of these steps to send signals to the world that America is lowering its defenses, to what extent, God forbid, and I mean this sincerely, if lowering our defenses results in an attack, to what extent is Barack Obama responsible for the decisions he's making, you know, in this last month? Is he responsible?

HUCKABEE: There's going to be a lot of accountability, and particularly if the reason that we didn't know about the attack coming or didn't do something about it was because we had completely emasculated our intelligence gathering operation.

Sean, ask yourself. What do you the morale would be in Langley, Virginia today among the CIA people? I'm imagining they're going home and saying honey, I think it may be time to take retirement.

HANNITY: Governor, we'll watch you this weekend. Thanks for being with us. Appreciate it.

HUCKABEE: Thanks a lot, Sean.

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