And here's the thing: I traveled in the Third World with the Peace Corps. I've never felt anything but hospitality around the world. I don't think they hate me. I don't feel the hatred a lot of these right-wingers assume. I just don't have the problem a lot of these people have.
And on the war, I think my numbers would be a lot higher if I were out there beating the drum for this war. In fact, I don't think it, I know it. But I can't be for the war.
And then there's Israel - a lot of people support Israel, and it's important to Israel to take out Iraq. So it's all mixed together. It's a combination of motives.
And then what? On to Iran, on to Syria? If you talk to the conservatives who come on my show, they want to squeeze Iran and Syria, maybe Lebanon too. And I don't know how much of this is the president's policy himself.
But he decided to take advice from Dick Morris, and if you want advice to lie or cheat, you go to a guy who lies and cheats. And then he lied, and he used the office to do it.
But we started to sit on Sharon's lap, and say, 'Oh we have the exact same foreign policy as Israel.' Well, not necessarily. We support a two-state solution - that's been our policy. Sharon's not adopting that. I understand why - he's under pressure.
C'mon. He'd be embarrassing upstairs at the White House. So I think she'd have a hard time. I think a woman president would have to be very conservative to get elected.
Five years from now, 10 years from now, there's going to be a huge Islamic population in the world, they're going to be nationalistic, they're going to be religious, and they're going to be militant.
Fox so successful because there's a percentage of Americans, 5 to 10 percent - who feel alienated from secular culture, from television, from the movies, who feel the media is just liberals on the coasts.
From Bork to Thomas to Estrada, they go in, they try to win. And back during the Vietnam War, that was a real opposition, where you use all the power in your hands to stop something that's wrong for the country.
I can't find a reason to be for this war. I've looked, and I can't, so I'm not.
I don't believe he had a responsibility to even answer that question - you have no responsibility to answer personal questions that people have no right to ask you.
I don't know why his lawyers didn't tell him, 'You don't have to answer any questions about your private life, Mr. President. Let them sue you. Take the heat. You don't have to answer.'
I don't understand how we can justify the occupied territories. It serves no goal, except the political goal of Sharon within Israel.
I keep wondering: Is there such a thing as a neo-conservative who doesn't have a column? I'm serious about this. Is it required to have a column to be a neo-conservative? I don't know anybody who doesn't have some kind of column who's a neo-conservative.
I know one thing: There are a billion Islamic people in the world today, and there will be about 2 billion by the time we're dead. They're not going to give up their religion.
I mean, if somebody said to me, junior year of college, you can go anywhere, your old man's paying for it, I'd have been gone in a flash. But I had to work. Every summer my mother would say, 'Get that job and hold on to it until August 30.'
I mean, the idea that Bar could have sent him off on a Grand Tour. But he wasn't the least bit interested. Why? Why isn't he interested in the world? Because here's the bad news for him: He's in the world now.
I mean, when Clinton went out and he had Feinstein sitting in another room waiting and he said, 'I did not have sex with that woman' - that woman! - he used the presidency to cover for his personal behavior.
I still think I could defend myself by pointing to the value of the presidency. I don't think the Democrats protected the value of the presidency.
I tell my staff, we're riding a tour bus around, and we're going to stop and look at some weird stuff - but we're taking our viewers around safely. They're just looking out the window at it. I'm trying to create a sense of comfort for my center audience.
I think people in the Muslim world are going to see this as the Second Crusades.
I think there are several factors here. Most people agree you have to stop weapons of mass destruction - the question is how. Then there's the emotional response to 9/11, there's an emotional demand for payback, which a lot of journalists are reluctant to question.
I think we were on the road to greatness at the end of 2001. You had Germans picking up all kinds of terrorists in their country. The world was united behind us. Even Iran was helping out. There was an active effort to stop al-Qaida.
I'm not just gonna go after the black Jesse Jackson they all want to make fun of, but I know the wrong people are gonna laugh at that. I don't want to play to that crowd. I don't.
I've come to like Hillary a lot. Look, she's going out there, she stuck her neck out, she took a risk running for Senate, she had the balls to do it, she took on the job and she won. And she's a good senator - in fact, she's probably going to be the next Senate majority leader.
It doesn't serve an American interest. It really doesn't really serve Israeli interests - it serves the interests of the political party that's getting the votes of the settlers on the West Bank.
It's a matter of immense degrees of difference between not liking your secular lifestyle, and killing you - or killing themselves to kill you, which is even a step beyond that.
Just look at who won the third debate between Bush and Gore. I knew Bush won, because people liked him more. People just didn't like Gore. But all the journalists thought Gore won big, he cleaned the guy's clock.
Keep your enemies in front of you.
Most Americans don't travel much - some of these guys never leave the country. Still they say, 'They hate us already. It doesn't matter what we do in Iraq.' But nothing's more dispiriting than saying there's nothing we can do.
Motives are so hard to get to. There are people opposed to this war who are trying to stop it, and there are people who are just posing as critics.
My audience is much more center right, or centrist.
Once it was suggested that Saddam Hussein might give his weaponry to terrorists, or might use weapons himself in the region, then it became hard for the Democrats to say, 'Well, that can't happen.'
Somebody should have stood up and said, 'Mr. President, I'm turning in my resignation. I care about your policies and what you came here to do, but I cannot defend my role in a coverup of your obvious misbehavior.'
Someone needs to talk sense to the president. But these people are not world travelers. This president, much as I like him, had all the opportunities in the world.
That's a particular regional issue involving people who don't want Israel to have whatever it has, and Israel wanting to play tough with them. But now we're against that too - as if we're going after the Basques, and the Provisional IRA too. We're not.
The Democrats just don't have a foreign policy that they're willing to defend, that they're willing to use to take down the president's. We're dealing with the power of suggestion here.
The Democrats just never ruled on this. They should have come together and said, 'We're gonna censure this guy.' They never did. They never went to him and said, 'Stop lying. Stop lying right now.' They let the Republicans do it through impeachment.
The difference between me and them is that I'll look at Jesse Jackson and I'll see four Jesse Jacksons, and they'll just see one, the clown ambulance chaser.
The media elite thought Gore proved he knew so much, but the fact was, as they say, Gore knew a lot, but Bush knew enough. People liked Bush.
The question will be, 'Do they hate us or not? Do they have a grievance?' Well, they will after this, won't they?
Then the administration tied it in to the regional dispute between Israel and its enemies, as if that's about international terrorism. No, it's not.
They were unable to stand up and say: 'Here's our policy. It's 'Unite the world against terrorism.''
This was worse than the Gulf of Tonkin. It was, 'Whenever you get around to it, here's your hall pass, Mr. President.'
Unity is the most important thing on the road to stamping out terror. You need global rules of law and order, and they have to be enforced. Start with that principle.
We supported the contras. We're not against all opposition to government, or all paramilitary operations.
We're taking on a billion people. A battle for Baghdad could ignite a war with Islam.
We've always had a dual role in the region - friend of Israel, and honest broker. We've given up the honest broker role completely.
We've got to recognize that when we march into Iraq, we're setting up the card tables in front of every university in the Arab world, the Islamic world, to recruit for al-Qaida.
Well, the right-wing policy with regard to Israel - the people who don't want to deal with Arafat, who don't want a Palestinian state - the whole sort of right-wing view is consistent with the view toward Iraq. It's the same policy and the same people.
Why didn't we recognize how much it bothered them spiritually and politically?
Why don't we just go set up the card tables ourselves, right now? Sign them up to commit suicide. And you never hear anybody talking about this.
With Bush, it's probably a combination of oil, the father, the politics of the evangelicals in the South, who support Israel, and Jewish voters. It's very dangerous to speculate about motives, though. It doesn't get you anywhere. All it does is agitate people.
You don't know whether he's thought through how this is going to affect the Middle East.
You don't say, like the Bush crowd, 'I got this guy over here and I don't like him and I'm gonna get him, whether you back me or not.'
You had Morse, you had Church - they went after the money. I don't see that in this debate at all. I see people who are just posturing.
You know, there were 29 Democratic votes for censure in the Senate. And if the Republicans had any sense, they would have censured him before the '98 midterm election, and they would have won the election.
Chris was the Bureau Chief for the San Francisco Examiner for 13 years.
Chris worked as a speech writer for President Jimmy Carter.
Chris worked as a print journalist for the San Francisco Chronicle.
Chris attended the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and majored in economics.
Chris is 6 feet 3 inches tall.
Chris is of Irish descent.
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