captions by: caption colorado, llc (800) 775-7838 e-mail: "the mclaughlin group" is brought to you by -- issue one. mission impossible. ♪ [music] ♪ the nightmare of our lives

was finally coming to an end. and now we stand here home and free. >> secret diplomacy, mission impossible, mission accomplished. thank you, bill clinton. for five months, north korea had held two american citizens captive. journalist laura ling and euna lee. both were employees of current tv, a multimedia company co- founded and co-managed by former vice president al gore. ling and lee had illegally entered north korea. the obama stop in washington dismissed the charges, calling them baseless. former u.s. ambassador to the united nations described the imprisonment as an act of state terrorism. when former president clinton arrived in pyongyang, he met with the chief negotiator then kim jong-il himself and later

top leadership. within 24 hours, the north koreans announced mr. clinton had apologized for laura and euna's transgressions, and that both women had been pardoned and released. after the return trip, al gore saluted the president. >> we want to thank president bill clinton for undertaking this mission and performing it so skillfully. >> the white house says the trip was a quote unquote solely private mission. so described by white house press secretary robert gibbs. but ex-president clinton says the white house asked him to iothe mission. "i happy that r happafthat aft with their love. es their families, vice pridgoenndt ae rethe itwh house asked that itundertake this humanitarian mission, i agreed." and this makes it more official. national security advisor james

jones from his office in the west wing asked former president clinton to north kore question. why was bill clinton chosen for this mission and did the white house authorize it in advance? pat bu cannen? >> bill clinton was chosen because kim ill jock demanded bill clinton come to pyongyang and the white house authorized it to get those people back. bubba is back, john. he gets a great success. it's wonderful that it's home but the real winner is kim jong- il. he demanded who it come over after firing missiles at us, saying the korean arm miss stis is all kaput and done all of the other things. and he gets bubba there. what does he do? he he apologized, brought a message from president obama, pleatly undercut american policy. we have traded policy and

prestige for hostages. kim jong-il is the winner of this thing in asia. you notice the south korean hostages did not come out and neither did the japanese hostages. >> a desperate attempt to find something negative here. i call him president clinton, not bubba. the idea surfaced in many conversations between north korea and the state department. basically, this is about saving face for the north korean regime. we've done it before. bill richardson has been over there freeing an american that was held captive. it may be acken ice breaker. maybe it will lead to a thawing in relations, maybe not. the president got important intelligence, i assume, picked up some sense of the health of this regime. both personally and the rest of it, intelligence that we wouldn't have had otherwise. there's nothing lost in this. >> i'll tell what you's lost. >> it's noise too see president clinton get a boost off the beating he took last year in connection with his wife's

campaign. >> first ever all, in terms of stage craft this was pure clintonian brilliance. i'll tell what you was lost. there was a message being sent from kim jong-il to his business partners. i mean weapons trafficking and nuclear proliferations. those are russia, china, iran and syria. there's proliferation happening all over the place among all of the countries. the message here was despite sanctions being brandished by the bm administration and grudgingly approved by part of the u.n. security council that kim jong-il knows how to regain control. grab two amm, and now the signal is that all of this sanctions-busting traffic happen ing among all of the states will and can continue. >> hold okay. president obama salutes president clinton. >> i want to thank president bill clinton. i had a chance to talk to him for the extraordinary

humanitarian effort that rethe release of the two journalists. >> they both used the words humanitarian. clinton and obama used it. >> it was a humanitarian effort and result. >> it was. is it an attempt to say that the fact that the white house was in on this from the beginning? >> of course. clinton didn't go there without knowing the outcome. >> did they have any reserve course in case it misfired? >> i can't imagine they would imagine it would misfire. nobody's going to kidnap bill clinton, for example. that would have been a cause for war. having said that, the fact is, i'm sure there were other things that were discussed. i think there was nothing wrong with that. i do think there is a danger, and pat rightly says if we put ourselves into a position where we are hostage to the kidnapping of americans every time, but kim jong-il is one of the wackier people in the world. set largest proliferater of nuclear weapons and missile technologies to iran as an

example. how do we get that under control? carter went there in 1994, if i remember correctly. he negotiated an agreement and they've broken every agreement we've had. is there any chance to change that? i doubt it. >> why did they demand clinton? was it because he was involved in the framework agreement? [ all talking at once ] >> there were four people who were suggested. >> bill richardson. >> al gore. >> kerry? >> and john kerry. he picked bill clinton. by the way, he was right to do that from his point of view, because he's much more of an international personality and gets all of this attention. >> what about the letter of condolence that clinton wrote to kim jong-il on the death of his father? >> when he was president, that's a long time ago, and that's a conventional. >> it was a moving letter. >> it was a moving letter. that's what clinton is very good at. >> john, the key thing here is, what kim jong-il is demanding get rid of the six-party talks, one on one negotiations with

the americas. >> right. >> clinton comes over and the north koreans say we have had exhaustive talks. what they are saying is we got our one-on-one. >> you take everything that the north koreans say at face value? how naive. >> why would you disbelieve it? [ all talking at once ] >> hold on, please. >> any one of the americans sent over to, in a sense, escort them back would have put ourselves subject to that. i don't see any problem with it. >> you are failing to relinquish. >> i'm sorry. >> i want to remind you or you remind me, did the north koreans detonate a nuclear bomb in may? >> they have done so twice most recently in may. kim jong-il chose bill clinton because he gave away the nuclear sword to him in 1994 and allowed him to acquire the nuclear weapons. >> i'm sorry. >> kim was cheating on us before that was -- >> we can't let that stand

unchallenged. >> jimmy carter -- [ all talking at once ] >> that can't stand unchallenged. president clinton didn't negotiate a framework when george w. bush came in. colin powell wanted to continue that. the bush administration detonated the agreement -- >> the bush. >> all right. ladies. one at a time. [ all talking at once ] >> the george koreans accumulated more nuclear bombs under the bush administration than previous years. >> let's send over jimmy carter. >> he did not. >> carter went on his own. >> they wanted clinton there for a reason. clinton, john, is a former president of the united states. not former vice president like gore or bill richardson. he is a former president of the united states. you can't get any higher as an emissary from america than that. >> that's right. he kawrries status. >> he's got more status than the secretary of state. >> and he's a smart man. when he's over there, he's picking up a lot of information. nothing was lost here. >> monika? >> president obama referred to

it as a humanitarian mission, however, he should have followed it up once the young women were back on the american soil by condemning the human right as buss and demanded international access to and investigation of this isolated goulog where hundreds of thousands of people are starvingp. >> if you're so mart -- >> hold on. >> if you're so smart, why are they so concerned about this not being looked upon as an official government act? why? why? >> because they don't want to conflate the -- >> do they get enough screen from calling it a humannian mission or is it still an official act? >> i don't think they get enough cover. >> sure it's an official act. >> they said it's a private mission. >> oh, come, come, come. >> we're talking here about the language of diplomacy, okay? you want to disguise what was

really going on. >> so the answer to your question is this. we don't want to admit we have dynamited our policy, which is exactly what we did. >> that's not true. the secretary of state, hillary clinton, says it changes nothing in terms -- >> she was insulted by kim ill jock and her husband -- kim jong-il and her husband went there. excuse me. will obama roux the day that he dispatched high-level emissaries to bargain for the freedom of imprisoned americans? pat buchanan? >> he's going to regret what is coming. >> he's not going to regret it. it's been done before. it's a pattern established with this regime and at least keeps the lid on what could be a very dangerous place. >> did you see how fast obama got off the bill clinton subject? >> yes, could he spare it? >> just move it right around. >> this rescue mission which was a human tashian suck -- humanitarian success has the

clinton name on it not an obama mission. >> do you disagree with it? >> no. >> we want them back but dependsen how you do it. >> there were unintended qentses to this. >> there are consequences to everything. >> exactly. >> that's the story of man. >> quickly. >> one thing with the humanitarian mission, they knew what the possible costs might be. i'm sure they will handle that reasonably well going forward and they did it well. >> it was a humanitarian official mission. when we come back, death and its ethics. when planning for retirement these days,

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issue two. the end of days. >> the status quo is unsustainable. if we don't act and act soon to bring down costs, it will jeopardize everybody's health care. >> the cost of u.s. health care is ballooning at a compounding rate of 6.9%.

in 2008, a 12-month period, health care spending in the united states reached a breathtaking $2.4 trillion. 17% of gross domestic product. how exactly does mr. obama plan to stop this outrage? by encouraging americans to make smarter choices. to help that, mr. obama wants government counseling for when one is dying. >> i think for a lot of families to make sure that, you know, if, you know, heaven forbid, you contract a terminal illness, that you or somebody who's able to control this process in a dignified way that is true to your faith and true to how you think, you know that end-of-life process should proceed. >> many americans recoil at

this. controlling this process in a dignified way or not is the thin edge of the word patrick chbu itanwres. "if government intends to bend s, and half of those cocos ste ars incurred in mo hsof life, and physician counselors will be sent to e th seriously ill to adsevithem of what costs will noselonger covered and what their options are, what dyou to be option a?" question for buchanan. is obama proposing to save money in the terminal care of sick patients in order to bail out tim geithner's cronies in the banking industry? >> well, that's putting it a little directly, john, but let me say this. there's no doubt about it that cost containment is one of the primary goals of this legislation. half of all medical costs that folks incur are the last six months of life.

a lot of folks are severely ill and terminally ill there. what is a government agent or government counselor doing coming to the house and what exactly is he going to recommend? and quite frankly, we all know this is one of the major proponents of this is out of oregon, the death with dignity act they've had for 12 years. one of the recommendations is gonna be, would you like to end your life sooner? it's going to be recommendations or suggestions of suicide. >> this is such a distortion. >> what is? >> what pat has just said, that a government official is gonna come and tell you how you're gonna end your life. this is right wing scare tactics built on one provision in the house bill which says that under medicare, if you want to visit your physician, your family physician and you want to discuss end-of-life directives that you want to talk about hospice that md medicare will cover that. you can tell them you want to

be kept alive until you are 300 and you want to be frozen. there's nothing required about any of this. most people do not want to die in a hospital hooked up to tubes. they want to have some control about what procedures are used on them. i have lived this experience as have many people. this is an effort to give people some power over the end of their lives and how -- >> why don't they do the living wills? >> living will is part of that, yes. it's where you say how you would like to be treated, what procedures you would want. >> okay. >> if you're not in position. >> president obama spoke about livingfor us, mr. obama? >> nobody's gonna be knocking on your door. nobody's going to be telling you you've got to fill one out. and certainly, nobody's gonna be forcing you to make a set of decisions on end-of-life care based on some bureaucratic law in washington. >> does that reassure you,

monika? >> just like he said he wasn't going to raise taxes on the middle class. just like he said he wasn't for a single pair system. come on. i'm not buying this. you look at the house bill. there are five competing versions of this, but when you look at the house bill there is a provision in there for the government to come in and counsel on end-of-life issues. most persons do not want the government in any way, shape, or form involved in the most intimate decisions of anybody's life. remember that a quarter of all medicare funding is spent in the last year of life. so if there is a takeover. >> okay. -- [ all talking at once ] >> before you commence, let's see some 39% of americans believe ofams assisted-suicide is moral. 56 believe such assisted-suicide is iml.ramo ra% also believe a person has ai her life if is or chronic, extreme pain being

experienced. question. what can individuals do in this regard? >> well, this is all voluntary. this isn't something that is mandated by the legislation. the real issue here is it's another way of trying to get costs under control. the problem i have with obama's program because so much money is spent in the last six months of life. that's one of the huge -- >> does it sound like euthanasia? >> call it whatever you want to call it. if people want to end their lives, you can call it whatever you want to call it. this is just another part of something which he has not propererly put forward in the health care plan. he says he wants everything to be revenue neutral. we can't afford revenue neutral. >> do you think people will have a say in how far their life is far enough? >> yes, i do. i think this is a matter for the individual. [ all talking at once ] >> this does not get -- >> i don't think there's no law against suicide, if i may so.

>> but mort -- >> let me finish one thing, okay, eleanor? this is a matter forever an individual. whatever the faith part of the thing,it is not something that necessarily applies to all. >> no law against suicide, yes or no? is there? >> well, you can't put somebody in prison for trying to kill themselvesp. >> is there any state law against suicide? >> the problem is moral pressure from government agents, lonely people by themselves. this will be cut off. some lady's at 80 years old an says what are my options? well this is one option. this is another option. that's the danger. >> what about the siblings and what they have to say about it? >> this should be family, priest -- >> big expense involved? >> get the government out of this. we know what the government objective,money. >> you think pressure can come from siblings, too. >> no doubt about it. >> bad pressure. >> there's lots of pressure, but there's nothing wrong with education. telling people that hospice is available.

if you have this treatment it will stend your life this far -- extend your life this far. we're only talking education. we're not talking voluntary suicide. >> i find it amazing that liberals are for this when they are going after deep cuts in medicare and medicaid which are going broke and the government intervention in the most intimate, personal decision in. >> we'll be right back with predictions. when planning for retirement these days, the forecast is full of ifs. if i'm too exposed to downturns. if i'll go through my savings too fast. to help you feel more confident consider putting a portion of your savings in a metlife variable annuity. when the market goes up, it gives your assets a potential to grow. while protecting you if the market goes down with a steady stream of income. let america's number one annuity provider help you stay on course with guarantees for the if in life.

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health insurance? >> government-subsidized private health insurance. [ laughter ] >> quickly? >> okay. if the president's poll numbers continue to drop and health care continues to -- support for it continues to hemorrhage, the president will start sacrificing top advisors. >> the global economic recession in trade is gonna continue affecting dramatically countries like japan and germany whose economies are declining at an annualized rate of between 10 and 15%. that's gonna continue for two to three yearsp. i predict egyptian president hosni mubarak will step down and be replaced by his son by next spring. don't forget to follow us and tweet us

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