Teens@EagleForum.org
	On a quarterly basis, teens from groups across the country will interview Phyllis Schlafly on various topics.

Q: Several of Bush's deterrents are comparing the war in Iraq with the Vietnam War. Do you think that our efforts in Iraq are comparable to this?

A: I don't think it's comparable to Vietnam. Vietnam was part of the world wide resistance to Communism and this is an attempt to get rid of one bad dictator and the danger that he might pose. I really think the jury is still out, we don't know how it's going to turn out. We wish the President well and we hope he makes the right decisions. But I'm not an authority on the Middle East and I can't second-guess him on it. I think our troops over there are doing a fantastic job. The situation of guerrilla warfare is a very difficult situation and I can't predict how it's going to turn out.

Q: There are also some opinions within the public that we should pull our troops out of Iraq, what are your thoughts on this?

A: That's part of the whole decision of whether we're going to use American troops to maintain some type of stability in the Middle East. I really don't see any good solution for what's going on. I hope and pray for the best, but I can't say that I have a solution for it. I do believe that Bush is doing as well as anybody could do. I don't see that Kerry is improving the situation; his whole solution as far as I can see is to turn it over to the U.N. The U.N. isn't going to go in there as long as anybody's getting killed. The money is all ours anyway. Anything that is covered with the U.N. mantle is American money and American soldiers. I don't see where that gets us. We hope it works out for the best.

Q: There is some controversy over the Bush administration's reason for entering into the war. (In Bush's own words: the reason was "Iraq's illegal weapons programs, its attempts to hide those weapons from inspectors, and its links to terrorist groups.") Some believe it was for oil, others believe it was because of the World Trade Center Attack. What do you think was the true reason and did Bush use proper judgment in his reason for the war?

A: I think there were a number of reasons; there was some indication that there was a connection to 9-11 or weapons of mass destruction. It looks to me like the President was not given accurate intelligence on the situation. I think somebody should've been fired. My own opinion is that all the key people were all holdovers from the Clinton administration. That's the head of the CIA and the head of the FBI. They were both Clinton appointees and holdovers and I just don't understand why they were retained. Also the man who has made such a big splash in attacking Bush, Richard Clarke, he's another holdover, a Clinton appointee. I don't think that oil is a bad reason for what we did. It's our money that is maintaining the Muslims with all their attacks. They were no threat to anywhere in the world until they had our money from our oil. I think we ought to do what we can to make ourselves energy efficient. But as long as everything in the whole Muslim world is supported by our money and the cars that we're driving, I think we have a right to know where that money is going, and to figure out ways that it can't be used to kill us.

Q: Do you think the War in Iraq is becoming a political game in some ways? If so, how and why?

A: I think Kerry is trying to make it a political issue, but I don't that's going to get anywhere for him, for the reasons that I just said. He doesn't have any solution except to turn it over to the UN. I think when people look at Kerry and look at Bush they may think. They probably will think that it's a bad situation, but Bush can probably do better at handling it than Kerry. I don't see the war as being a big issue in the upcoming Presidential campaign.

Q: It seems to be a difficult task to fight a War on Terror. Do you think the Bush Administration is being aggressive enough in its war strategy?

A: The Bush administration is certainly aggressive in Iraq. What they haven't done is to go after closing our borders. What precipitated all of this was the attack on 9-11 by 19 criminals. Those 19 criminals should not have been allowed into the United States. They all had government issued visas. Most of them had driver's licenses. Some had social security numbers. I don't understand why nobody's been fired for the breakdown in our border security that allowed these men to come into our country, to travel around freely, to get flight training at schools and then to board the planes to kill us! I do not think that the Bush administration has done enough to close our borders. According to Fox News, since 9-11, there are at least eight thousand people who illegally have come across our southern border from the Middle East. There's no real attempt to stop the illegals coming over. There are some coming now who are Arabs trying to speak Spanish and carrying Mexican documentation. This is ridiculous.

Q: It seems that some of our soldiers and Marines are dying in Iraq every day now. Our enemies apparently hope that we will give up because of the mounting casualties. The mainstream media calls attention to every death and reports every explosion that they learn about. Is this playing right into the terrorists' hands? And do you think that the American people have the fortitude to fight a long war of attrition?

A: I think the media are showing all these pictures because they're anti-Bush. I'm not sure that they're anti-war but they are certainly anti-Bush and I think that's why they're showing them. I think a lot of it is very hurtful. I'm not a big T.V. watcher, but I've seen those torture pictures already about six or eight times, the same pictures. It's not news anymore, we saw it once. A lot of the bias in the news media is in the repetition that you see over and over again. That's picked up by the Muslim media and used to inflame people against us. I think its anti-Bush. You can further see the bias in the press and media in the way they've really concealed the women who were involved in this torture. It was a woman commander of this prison. It was a woman who was engaging in the abuse of the prisoners, enjoying it. I understand there was another one too, although I've only seen the two. But you don't see any comment on this. There have been at least eighteen women killed in the Iraqi war. This is toadying to the feminists who don't want people to realize that there's been a tremendous change in the way the military treats women.

Q: There are those who contend that the Bush Administration should ask the United Nations for help in the rebuilding and restructuring of Iraq. What is your opinion of this idea?

A: There's an old saying, "follow the money" that really answers most of the questions. During all the years that we were boycotting and isolating Saddam Hussein, some oil was allowed to be sold supposedly to allow enough money to go in for children, hospitals and humanitarian reasons. Now we know this was just a slush fund for all the corrupt people who were dipping into the pot. That's not just Saddam and his cronies; it's all the people in the UN because the UN managed this. It's totally corrupt, they're all just lining their pockets. The whole reason to get the UN involved know is so they can get their take of the money involved with the oil. The UN didn't do anything to get rid of Saddam. I don't see why they should be in the picture.

A: It would have a tremendous effect; I don't think it's going to happen anytime soon and of course it would not happen unless Roe v. Wade were overturned. There are enormous numbers of people in this country who will do something if it is legal but not if it was illegal. There are always those who choose to do something illegal and there were a certain number of abortions that took place when abortion was illegal. There may be a majority of people in this country who simply wouldn't do it if it were illegal.

Q: What is the greatest fallacy the abortion uses to justify itself?

A: The abortion industry has tried to make the unborn baby the property of the mother. She can dispose of it in any way she likes because it's her property. We just don't think that one human being should be the property of another. The abortion industry had misled people about life and the humanity of the baby. We are beginning to increase public knowledge tremendously about what goes on in the womb of a mother. Now young mothers know what sex their baby is and can watch its heartbeat on ultrasound. It's been a big awakening to a lot of people that it really is a baby! That's why I think incrementally the Pro-lifers are gaining every year. There are more and more young people who see their baby months before it's born and realize, "Well, what do you know, it really is a baby after all!"

Q: Are there any other ways we can better educate Americans into the horror of what abortion truly is?

A: I think the ultrasound equipment has done more than anything. It has not been particularly productive to show the gruesome pictures of the killing of the babies or what they look like after an abortion. People are revolted by that and I don't think that has been a selling tactic for the Pro-life movement. Seeing that's it's a real baby has been tremendous. One of the projects of the Pro-lifers is to put these ultrasound machines in all the crisis pregnancy centers. Once a girl sees what it is, it changes her whole attitude toward it. I think that's probably the best thing we can do, present life in a positive way.

In fighting the Pro-life battle, the big issue is the courts. The courts are 99 percent of the problem. This is why I've spent so much of my time trying to alert Pro-lifers. If you really care about this issue, you have to help us do something to curb the court and stop the activist judges from trying to make law and trying create new rights (which they did in Roe vs. Wade). It is a total outrage that the partial birth abortion bill that was passed by congress and signed by the President a few weeks ago has now been challenged in three places across the country; San Francisco, Nebraska and New York. Everybody is now realizing what a gruesome thing partial birth abortion is, but their justification for it is that it is medically necessary. Attorney General Ashcroft, in defending the law which is his job as Attorney General, simply said we want to do discovery. When you have a lawsuit; you go into discovery to find out all the facts of the case. They're claiming it's medically necessary. Therefore, Ashcroft said let's see the medical records that show that its medically necessary. The Pro-abortionists simply went into a fit about this. The San Francisco judge denied that petition for discovery; I think its still open in Nebraska and in New York. These are the pro-abortion judges who've been put on the court by Bill Clinton who appointed half of the federal judges we have currently. Anybody who cares about the Pro-life issue has got to care about the problem of the activist judges. That's why this summer I am coming out with my new book called The Supremacists. They are the people who believe in the supremacy of the judiciary. They believe that the judges are smarter than the rest of us. They should make all of our laws and decisions for all the ignorant people that haven't got the competence to make their own decisions.

All the answers as to how we can curtail activist judges will be in my new book, which has been sent to the publisher and will be ready by July. It will reveal the problem and the solution.

A: Marriage is another problem of the courts. Unless we do something to clip the courts from their elitist, activist position, the courts can do all kinds of things with it. Take for example the Massachusetts court that started this furor about same-sex marriages. The Massachusetts Constitution was written by John Adams and adopted in 1780. It is totally absurd to think that John Adams wrote anything that could possibly approve of same-sex marriage. In 1976, Massachusetts added a clause to its Constitution that said you couldn't discriminate on account of sex, race, etc. One of the judges who voted for same-sex marriage in this famous Goodrige decision (which happened this year in Massachusetts) relied on this new provision of the Massachusetts Constitution, which was called, I think wrongly, the Massachusetts Equal Rights Amendment. That was voted by the voters of Massachusetts in 1976. When you have a referendum, usually there is a state agency that issues an official document on what this means. What the state issued was very explicit. It said that the amendment had nothing to do with same-sex marriages or homosexuals; it is solely concerned with any differences of treatment between the sexes. This is what the feminists were talking about in those days.

Despite that, the court used this language to approve same-sex marriages. This is a clear example of how once you have these activist judges, they can ignore the language, they can ignore the intent, they can do whatever they want and that's what we have to stop!

Q: There are already Defense of Marriage Acts in several states (including Missouri), but they are not being taken seriously. Would the Federal Marriage Amendment provide a solution to this or do you think the states need to simply be more hands on in the defense of marriage?

A: I think the attack on marriage is one of the two or three major issues of our time. We have to defend marriage by every peaceful tactic we have. I think we can walk and chew gum at the same time. I'm in favor of using every weapon we have. The Marriage Amendment could be one remedy! The Federal Defense of Marriage Act (called DOMA) is extremely important. The state DOMAs, I believe there are 38 states that have state DOMAs-Some of them have them in their Constitution and some of them as a law. Some are beginning to put them in their Constitution, which has higher standing than just ordinary law. The Federal DOMA was overwhelmingly passed by Congress and signed by Bill Clinton. It is a perfectly good, splendid law. The legal buzz is that the courts are going to throw it out. They have no business doing this. We cannot stand around and allow this to happen. It's a perfectly fine law and we want to keep it. What Congress should do is pass another law saying that the courts cannot hear any challenge to DOMA that cannot hear any challenge in the Federal courts to the state DOMAs. That's what should be done!

DOMA does two things; DOMA says marriage is a man and a woman as husband and wife. That's been the definition of marriage for centuries. The other section of DOMA says basically that if one state has a differing definition of marriage, the other states don't have to recognize it. That would mean that if Massachusetts changes its definition of marriage, nobody else has to recognize it. And it would mean that the Federal Government wouldn't have to recognize it. Take for example the joint-income tax return. I think the Bush administration should announce immediately that if Massachusetts changes its definition of marriage, internal revenue should immediately announce that it will not accept joint-income returns from anybody married in Massachusetts-not just the same-sex couples but anybody, if Massachusetts gets rid of its definition of marriage as husband and wife. That would send a tremendous message.

I am in favor of using every weapon to defend marriage. I think marriage is the bedrock of our society and I think this country is quite capable of fighting it on every front.

Q: How do you think the fight to defend marriage in America can best be won? How can we as citizens combat the foes of marriage?

A: You could tell every congressional candidate that you're not going to support him unless he passes votes for legislation to take away power of the courts to throw out DOMA. You could do likewise at the state level. Homosexual couples can live together, make contracts and wills, buy property but they aren't satisfied with that. They want us to approve it. A license is society giving its approval of whatever you're doing. We don't have to do that. I think society is entitled to say that marriage is between a man and a woman as husband and wife.