This is a rush transcript from "Special Report," October 24, 2011. This copy may not be in its final form and may be updated.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
HILLARY CLINTON, U.S. SECRETARY OF STATE: We came, we saw, he died.
( LAUGHTER)
CHRIS WALLACE, FOX NEWS HOST: Secretary, do you regret what you said?
CLINTON: Well, you know, I'm not going to comment on that. We didn't even know what was happening at that time because it was an unconfirmed report.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Qaddafi's capture alive was an opportunity for the Libyan authorities to put him on trial.
VICTORIA NULAND, STATE DEPARTMENT SPOKESWOMAN: I think there are many Libyans who agreed with that, and had he been captured alive, I think --
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: He was captured alive. Isn't that what the video suggests or are suggesting that he was dead when he was captured?
NULAND: Again, I'm not -- fog of war. There will be an investigation.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
BRET BAIER, ANCHOR: There will be an investigation.
Before the break our question of the day asked you, should Muammar Qaddafi have been put on trial? 33 percent of you said yes, 67 percent said no, and obviously many have seen now that video that's made its way around the Internet about the final moments of Muammar Qaddafi's life.
We're back with the panel. Let's start there and see what's next for Libya. What about this whole back and forth, Charles?
CHARLES KRAUTHAMMER, SYNDICATED COLUMNIST: You mean on Qaddafi's death? I think it's a non-issue. To me he had his chance for a trial. He was offered at the beginning of the civil war. He would have been given asylum. He could have escaped a trial and had his life and part of his fortune and a nice sweet retirement like Idi Amin had in Saudi Arabia. He said no. Well, if you say no and you are willing to die, and then you kill thousands after you say no, you don't get a fair trial or a free trial. You get a Mussolini treatment. And to me that's perfectly OK.
BAIER: Now, the chairman of the Libyan National Transitional Council said this about the way forward inside Libya, quote, "We as Muslim nation take Sharia law as the basic source of law," meaning that the Sharia Islamic law will be the basis and other laws will be thrown out if they don't meet with that. What about that?
KRAUTHAMMER: Well, it was one of the many Islamists surprises that we're going to see coming out of Libya. And we may rue the day in which people declared mission accomplished with the death of Qaddafi. As we learned in Iraq, mission accomplished is not the fall of the regime. It's the establishment of a stable, secular, and successful successor.
And what Jalil did in this speech, and he is supposed to be the secularist, the guy presenting the face, sort of the western face of Libya, he went into detail. And he said he wanted the abolition of interest payments and the encouragement of polygamy. As I understand, under the current Libyan law the first wife has to agree to the acquisition of a second wife. Apparently you won't need that acquiescence.
So this to me -- and it was in a speech that didn't have anything to do with the new law. It tells us that there are great strains in North Africa. We saw it in the success of the Islamists in Tunisia, the most westernized of all the North Africans, tells us there is a very strong strain of Islamic thought in the region, and we better be prepared for its onslaught. It's beginning at least right now.
BAIER: Mara?
MARA LIASSON, NATIONAL PUBLIC RADIO: We'll we're going to find out the answer to the question, which is can you have a democracy that takes for inspiration and maybe more than that Sharia law and is still pro-western and an ally of the United States? I mean, turkey is one experiment of that, and there are going to be a whole bunch of other ones. We don't know the answer to that question yet, but we're going to find out.
BAIER: Does -- go ahead.
KRAUTHAMMER: And the Turkish experiment is still up in the air.
LIASSON: Yes, that's right.
KRAUTHAMMER: Because he is dismantling the democracy one step at a time and making it into autocracy. So it's not a slam dunk that that reconciliation is possible.
LIASSON: Right --
BAIER: There is no love lost, Steve, for Muammar Qaddafi or his end. But how it ended and how it was treated by the folks on the ground, does that say anything about the way forward, and what it may be -- a little rocky in the coming weeks?
STEVE HAYES, SENIOR WRITER, THE WEEKLY STANDARD: I think it will certainly be rocky in the coming weeks, but I don't think that the way that he died -- I agree with Charles. I don't think the way that he died is why it will be rocky. I mean, you're going to have a full-fledged fight right now between the secularists and the Islamists.
I would argue that this is one of the reasons that if the United States was going to be engaged from the beginning, we ought to have been engaged in a frontal way and said here is what we're doing, here is how we are coming to help you. And then at this point you would have much more influence. You can use that leverage in a way that helps you weigh in heavily on the side of the secularists.
I think we should still try to do that. Just because it's going to be hard doesn't mean we shouldn't try to do it. To the extent that we can help them craft laws, to the extent that we can stress upon them the importance of civic institutions, things like that, we should be making our case, maybe through our NATO allies et cetera, but we need to do it. I think it would be a mistake to disengage at this point.
BAIER: You think this investigation will be pretty quick?
HAYES: I think the investigation will be quick.
BAIER: That's it for the panel. But stay tuned to see what happens when I take a couple days off.
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