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PAT BUCHANAN DISCUSSES KOSOVO AND GEORGE W. BUSH CNBC RIVERA LIVE! - http://www.cnbc.com/ June 15, 1999

DAVID GREGORY, host: As Serbs continue to move north out of Kosovo, NATO troops and ethnic Albanians returning to their villages are finding that the gruesome evidence of atrocities the Serbs left behind. There's plenty of it--mass graves, charred, dismembered corpses and bones sticking out of shallow graves. In one village, residents say Serbs killed 155 unarmed men, women and children back in April. In another, Dutch soldiers found 20 burned bodies, while British soldiers in yet another village found piles of bullet-riddled clothing. We're joined now by one of the most provocative figures on the American political landscape, Pat Buchanan. Mr. Buchanan, as you all know, was a senior adviser to Presidents Nixon and Reagan. And after rattling mainstream Republican presidential candidates with his strong showings in 1992 and 1996, he's back on the campaign trail again. He joins us now from Washington. Mr. Buchanan, good to see you again. Mr. PATRICK BUCHANAN (Republican, Presidential Candidate): Good to talk to you, David. GREGORY: This is what you've said about the conflict in Kosovo. 'This war is a strategic blunder that may prove the ruin of the most successful alliance in history. It's an illegal and unconstitutional war launched without authorization by Congress.' Mr. BUCHANAN: Right. GREGORY: When you see the pictures like we just showed, the discovery of the corpses, of the bodies, of the evidence of mass graves and atrocities, do you still call this conflict a blunder? Mr. BUCHANAN: Oh, yeah. I mean, those--none of those people were dead before this war began. These are all casualties of this war, a war launched by the United States and NATO against a thug and a political war criminal whom we should have known would engage in precisely these kinds of atrocities. We were told that we were going to war to prevent what you've just shown pictures of. So we clearly did not prevent it. In that sense, it was a blunder. It was a... GREGORY: So you're not--you don't believe that it was going on before NATO started dropping bombs? Mr. BUCHANAN: Oh, listen, there was, I think, 90,000 refugees there, and there was 2,000 dead in the war in 1998. You had a nasty, ugly little civil war going on. But we didn't have tens of thousands dead. We didn't have tens of thousands raped. We didn't have a million and a half people driven out of their homes. We didn't have Serbia smashed. We didn't have Kosovo in ruins. We didn't have the Balkans destabilized. And we did not have the United States basically almost at sword's point with Russia and with China. This war historically will be seen as an utterly worthless war and, I believe, a strategic blunder. And as you see, David, the Europeans began to form up their own European military force. You can see that what I said about its impact on NATO is already coming true. GREGORY: And the impact is what? Mr. BUCHANAN: The impact... GREGORY: It breaks up the alliance? Mr. BUCHANAN: I think ultimately the impact is--is not a bad thing. It is Europe taking responsibility for its own destiny 45 years after the end--excuse me--55 years after the end of World War II. That would be a good thing. Bring the American troops home to the United States of America. They have no business fighting wars in a Balkan peninsula which has been battling, where they've been killing one another long before we were a nation. GREGORY: But--but isn't that the same isolationist argument that would have kept us out of World War II? Mr. BUCHANAN: We didn't get into World War II until Hitler declared war on us, David. GREGORY: Did Milosevic declare a kind of war that we couldn't stand by and let happen? Mr. BUCHANAN: Look, Milosevic has been engaged in war against Slovenia, he lost it; against Croatia, he eventually lost it; in Bosnia, he eventually lost it. He was going to lose Kosovo. But the idea that we had to get involved, the reasons for that really escape me entirely. It was a low-grade civil war. It would have been a good thing for America to try to stop that war and bring an end to it. GREGORY: But you call the evidence of--of this kind of atrocities on this scale a low-grade civil war and the casualties of a low-grade civil war instead of a--a--a genocidal maniac in the Balkans along the lines of Hitler? Mr. BUCHANAN: David--David--David--David, get control of yourself. Genocide means the mass murder of an entire people. What we have seen is ugly ethnic cleansing, people driven out of their homelands. We saw it happen to the Germans after World War II. From 1945 to '48, 15 million driven out without virtually a word of protest by the United States, by the Poles, by the Czechs, by the Russians. It was horrible, but I don't believe we should have gone to war with Stalin over it. We should have tried to stop it. There are evils going on all over this world. You read about the horrors, but you don't solve those horrors by launching this war. GREGORY: But that's a pretty... Mr. BUCHANAN: Those bodies, David... GREGORY: But that's a pretty easy argument to make, isn't it? I mean... Mr. BUCHANAN: Those bodies, David, were put in those graves after we launched this war to defend those very people. GREGORY: Isn't it true that it's a pretty easy argument to make that we are now and have been, since the end of the First World War, a European power that has to lead and can't follow Europe into--into taking care of this dirty work? Mr. BUCHANAN: Look--look, this is like saying that we ought to prepare in Washington because General Lee might be coming back up the road to Washington, DC. Europe has been at peace for 45 year--for 55 years. For the last 10, the Soviet empire that was the great enemy of the United States in a war that was our war, the Cold War, in which I was very much an advocate of aggressive action and supported every diplomatic and military initiative we took in that war... GREGORY: Let's listen--go ahead. Mr. BUCHANAN: But when your own war is over, for heaven's sakes, the Europeans have more people than we do, more troops than we do, more money than we do. Can they not handle Slobodan Milosevic, a thuggish leader of a country of 11 million people when they have 350 million? GREGORY: Let's listen to President Clinton talking last Thursday to the nation about the end of the war, what it accomplished. Listen to this. President BILL CLINTON: (From June 10) We have given confidence to the friends of freedom and pause to those who would exploit human difference for inhuman purposes. America still faces great challenges in this world, but we look forward to meeting them. So tonight I ask you to be proud of your country and very proud of the men and women who serve it in uniform for, in Kosovo, we did the right thing. We did it the right way. And we will finish the job. GREGORY: Thirty seconds till the break. Quick comment. Mr. BUCHANAN: Quick comment. The--the job he's talking about is the permanent occupation of Kosovo by America, 7,000 American troops who have no business in there when we could turn that over to the Europeans. What happened was evil. We did not prevent it. We exacerbated it and enlarged it. GREGORY: Pat Buchanan, one more segment, coming back. Standing Pat, that's what we're calling this part of our show. Back after this. (Announcements) Governor GEORGE W. BUSH (GOP Presidential Candidate): (From yesterday) There will be no litmus test, except for whether or not the judges will strictly interpret the Constitution. I--I am not a lawyer. My job is to pick judges who are qualified to serve on the bench, and that would be my criterion. GREGORY: Back with Pat Buchanan now. Is that compassionate conservatism being a centrist on issues that you care about, like abortion? Mr. BUCHANAN: Well, I guess you can call that a centrist if you wish. I think the--Governor Bush's statement from the standpoint of a right-to-lifer, which I am, is grossly inadequate. And he says he would simply appoint, I guess, good, honest judges. My view is this: Just as Abraham Lincoln chose justices to the Supreme Court he knew would vote to overturn the Dred Scott decision, so I would appoint justices to the Supreme Court I know in my heart would overturn Roe v. Wade, which is responsible for the death of some 35 million unborn children in this country. And, David, if a candidate is unwilling to say he will at least do his best to overturn Roe v. Wade in his judicial appointments, I don't know why the right-to-life movement should support him. GREGORY: Pat, you may be able to run with that in a--in a primary season, but doesn't he have a better sense of winning the general election? Can you win a general election with that attitude on abortion? Mr. BUCHANAN: I don't give a hoot... GREGORY: About winning? Mr. BUCHANAN: ...whether my view on right-to-life is--is--is a winning position. I happen to believe that there are those who vote strictly on right-to-life and those who vote strictly on pro-choice. And I think right-to-life is larger. And for that reason, I don't think any national candidate has been hurt by a right-to-life position. Mr. Bush lost in '92 because Perot took 19 million votes, not on right-to-life, but on issues where Perot was right. So I don't mean--my view is, look, I take this, David, because I believe profoundly an unborn child has an immortal soul, a God-given soul, and I don't have and you don't have the right to take its life. And if government has any responsibility, it is to protect defenseless, innocent human life. And the most defenseless, clearly, are unborn children and the elderly and the handicapped. And I think that a society which is now deciding that that quality of life isn't worth it and these people can be done away with, I think, is literally on the road to hell. GREGORY: But here's what you said about George W. Bush. You said the following: 'Some people have put the crown on his head. He's never run a national campaign, and I think it's premature for people to endorse him who have never met him.' Certainly got quite a reaction, didn't he, in New Hampshire and Iowa? Mr. BUCHANAN: Oh, he's doing... GREGORY: What kind of campaign is he running? Mr. BUCHANAN: Pretty smart. No, the governor is extremely popular. There's a tremendous hunger for victory in the Republican Party. He did very well in Texas. He's a popular governor. He's a pleasant fellow. He's a personable fellow. GREGORY: So no reason why he won't win then? Mr. BUCHANAN: And they're so hungry to win, they say--they endorse him without knowing who he is or having met him or any stand he's taken. It's a phenomenon unseen since Ike--'I like Ike' in '52, but Ike, after all, had invaded Europe and crushed Hitler's fortress Europe, which was a pretty good accomplishment. He'd been head of NATO and head of a university. But I think that the Republican Party's clearly taking a risk, I think, in basically sight unseen, accepting Mr. Bush. But I do believe it's going to be a much closer contest than people think. After all... GREGORY: When is it going to get close? Mr. BUCHANAN: Well, look, after all, at this... GREGORY: What's it going to take to get closer? Mr. BUCHANAN: David, relax. In 1991, at this point in time, his father was at 91 percent in the polls, and I was a talk-show host on a--on a--name of a program on another little network. GREGORY: Right. Little one. Mr. BUCHANAN: And in--and in--by February of 1992, I had almost beaten the president of United States in the New Hampshire primary. GREGORY: Well, so all I'm asking is how--how--how did you do it then, and what do you do to the other Bush to get there? Mr. BUCHANAN: Well, I'm not going to--I'm--well, quite frankly, Mis--Governor Bush is himself have to going to define where he stands on a variety of issues. He's begun to do so. He hasn't been specific. He and I disagree on MFN for China. We disagree on Kosovo. We disagree on NATO expansion. We disagree on the World Trade Organization. We disagree on the IMF. We disagree on immigration. We disagree on right-to-life. On all of these, he agrees with Clinton and Gore, so it's going to be a terrific campaign. And that's one thing I can guarantee. GREGORY: All right. Let's show this poll. This is some of the latest standings. Mr. BUCHANAN: All right. (Graphic on screen) GOP Presidential Candidate George W. Bush 48% Elizabeth Dole 14% Dan Quayle 6% Pat Buchanan 6% John McCain 5% Source: CBS News Survey of GOP Voters GREGORY: As we look at George W. Bush at 48 percent and pretty--pretty short after that. Elizabeth Dole, 14 percent. There you are at--at 6 percent. And--and here we are in June. Mr. BUCHANAN: Yeah. Well, look, Elizabeth Dole four months ago was probably up where Mr. Bush is now, and it wouldn't surprise me, after the big brouhaha, if she didn't even get into the race. In 1995, Newt Gingrich went to New Hampshire, and he got the same reception as the governor did. Look, David, if you're taking a snapshot right now, George Bush would win every primary, and George Bush would win the election with over 60 percent of the vote. Is there anyone out there who believes that's going to happen? GREGORY: What do you think of Al Gore, Pat? Mr. BUCHANAN: I think he's a competent civil servant who doesn't have Clinton's political skills and who's carrying a lot of the burden for the president, whom I disagree with, but who I think is an honorable man. GREGORY: You think George W. Bush is going to have some problems with his past, or are we--are we over that in the--the aftermath of Clinton? Mr. BUCHANAN: You know, I pray, David, that we fight this out on mature issues about where our country is going. Now what we talked about Kosovo, we may disagree, but that is serious business. China is serious business. Trade and all these jobs being lost is serious business. I don't care if George W. Bush was a hellion in college. I mean, I don't even need to hear about it. So let's talk about what's th--is going to happen to this country in its future. GREGORY: Got to leave it there, Pat Buchanan. Mr. BUCHANAN: OK. GREGORY: Standing Pat, that's our program. Mr. BUCHANAN: All right. GREGORY: See you back here tomorrow night. Thanks, Pat. Good night, everybody.