This is a partial transcript from “Hannity & Colmes,” July 29, 2005, that has been edited for clarity.
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RICH LOWRY, GUEST CO-HOST: I’m Rich Lowry, sitting in tonight for Sean Hannity.
Hanoi Jane is back in action. Jane Fonda has announced plans for a cross-country bus tour this spring to protest the war in Iraq. It will be Fonda’s first anti-war protest since Vietnam, when she was infamously photographed atop a North Vietnamese anti-aircraft gun.
Joining us now is former California Republican congressman, Bob Dornan, and Andrea Buffa, the national organizer for Code Pink. Thanks to both of you for joining us tonight.
Andrea, let me start with you. I want to get to Jane Fonda specifically in a second. But just let me make sure that we’re all starting with the same predicates and premises in this debate.
Are you willing to say that the insurgents in Iraq, who every other day blow up children and mosques, are they evil?
ANDREA BUFFA, CODE PINK: Anyone who commits acts of terrorism, who commits violence against innocent civilians is evil. And that certainly includes the insurgents in Iraq and that certainly includes any time that U.S. bombs mistakenly fall on innocent Iraqi civilians.
LOWRY: Andrea, two things. First of all, if the insurgents are evil, why would you endorse Jane Fonda’s call for an end to the war, right now, which will very likely empower those terrorists to take control in Iraq and terrorize the whole country and impose a Taliban-style rule there?
BUFFA: I think that the FOX viewers know that Jane Fonda isn’t the real issue here. She’s just one of millions of Americans, Democrats, Republicans, conservatives, liberals, who see that there is a tragedy going on in Iraq, that 1,800 U.S. soldiers have already been killed there, that thousands have been injured and there is no exit strategy.
So the serious question is, what are we going to do now to get out of Iraq? And Jane Fonda, as I understand it, at every stop at her tour is going to have Iraq war veterans, who came back from Iraq, are speaking out against the war and are calling for the U.S. troops to come home with her.
LOWRY: Well, the tragedy, Andrea, is that every day terrorists there are blowing up our soldiers, and they’re also blowing up women, children, mosques, funerals…any innocent person they can possibly find, they deliberately blow up.
And that’s totally different from what happens when there’s collateral or accidental damage from U.S. bombs. We’re not trying to target innocent civilians.
And Bob Dornan, this seems to me to be vintage Jane Fonda-thought. In Vietnam, she could not tell the difference between the terrorists and the totalitarians, among the Vietnamese communists on the one hand and the U.S. military fighting for freedom on the other.
BOB DORNAN, FORMER CALIFORNIA CONGRESSMAN: Well, she comes from a profession where, when they’re shooting a film, they keep changing the script sometimes, particularly the films that are in trouble and they keep putting in what they call “pink pages.” She’s going to have to put a lot of pink pages in her Vietnam script.
For example, she apologized for the bad visuals of sitting in that enemy gun pit and clasping her hands and giving the Marxist fist, you know, with the thumb, like the Spanish Civil War, goes across the knuckles, all in that scene…
But she never apologized for a forced appearance of POW’s. And she called them liars, professional killers, and other insults that she has never really taken back. And she never apologized for the 10 radio broadcasts.
Now, the British hung Lord Ha-Ha, and Tokyo Rose went — who was Japanese-American — went to prison for 10 years. She could have served 20 or 30. Jane Fonda escaped a hard test of treason by one thing: an undeclared war.
COLMES: All right.
DORNAN: We should have declared that war.
BUFFA: Congressman…
COLMES: Let me ask something, Bob. And welcome to both of you.
BUFF: I also have — I have a question.
(CROSSTALK)
COLMES: Hold on, Ms. Buffa, let me ask Bob a question. You know, Jane Fonda, it’s only because it’s Jane Fonda. If it were anybody else protesting, you wouldn’t have this kind of problem.
And Jane Fonda’s attitude about this war, if you look at the recent Washington Post poll, it was 75 percent say the Bush administration underestimated the challenges. Fifty-six percent say they disapprove of his work. And 62 percent say they think the United States have become bogged down in Iraq.
Her views are with the majority of those people, the majority of Americans, in terms of how people are beginning to perceive this war. She’s not out of the mainstream here.
DORNAN: Alan, if you were to have a secret poll of everybody who wants a secret debate about the war, particularly those that are against our current policies, you would probably get a 98 percent vote to keep Jane Fonda out of it.
Imagine her book, which is sort of on the edge of a bestseller, “My Life So Far.” Suppose her life so far up to ’72 had come out, during the Vietnam War, with all these stories about lesbian three-ways and four-ways…
COLMES: That’s not what we’re talking about here Bob. You’re way off topic.
DORNAN: Wait a minute. It is — I’m not off topic at all, Alan. Now listen. You do this every time, Alan. This is on topic. Jane Fonda…
BUFFA: If I could respond to the congressman.
COLMES: Hold on, Andrea. Let Bob finish, Andrea. I’ll get to you in a second. Let Bob finish. Go ahead.
DORNAN: Let me finish what I’m saying. Jane Fonda does not have the reputation, then or now, to get into a debate this time that does have serious merit on both sides.
COLMES: All right, Andrea, go ahead. She’s speaking out like any other American has a right to do. Go ahead.
BUFFA: The congressman was mentioning the script being changed. It’s actually the Bush administration that continues to change the script.
At first, they were talking at weapons of mass destruction. Those don’t exist. Then they were talking about links between the September 11 attacks and Iraq. Those links don’t exist either.
And I’m sure that the congressman would like to talk about Jane Fonda, but I’d like to talk about the patriotic Americans that have been speaking out against the war in Iraq for very, very long. I brought an image of one of those…
DORNAN: But…
BUFF: His name is Fernandez Juarez Del Solar (ph). And there’s a picture of a him with his son, Jesus, who was in the Marines and was killed in Iraq.
Jane Fonda’s actually apologized for the action that she took 30 years ago.
LOWRY: All right, guys.
BUFF: And I’m still waiting for the Bush administration to apologize for the fact that no weapons of mass destruction were found in Iraq..
(CROSSTALK)
LOWRY: We have to leave it there. Guys — Bob — Bob, we have to — Andrea, we have to go. We have to go. Thank you. Thank you to both. Bob, we have to stop it there. Thanks to both of you.
And by the way, w e do have an exit strategy in Iraq, which is to win that war and beat the terrorists
COLMES: When? Tell me when?
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