i m bret baier this washington. the big story here, confirmation hearing for the president s pick as the new secretary of state with foreign policy hot spots around the world. only getting hotter. tonight on special report, we will look at the channels awaiting senator kerry if as expected he is confirmed next week. kerry faced mostly friendly questioning during today s session. the current secretary of state is criticized for a lack of consistency in her statements wednesday about last year s libya terror attack. we ll go over some of the inconsistencies tonight. brit hume will have analysis of clinton s tenure. wheels are in motion for women to serve on the front line of combat position. the change was officially announced today. does president obama really want to annihilate the republican party in special report from washington starts at 6:00 eastern. now back to new york and my colleagues with the five.
two guns used in the operation were found at the scene of the 2010 fatal shooting of border patrol asht brian perry. bob dole is expected to be released from the hospital today. he was admitted to walter reed medical center yesterday for what is being described as a routine procedure. the 1996 republican presidential nominee and the 1996 republican vice presidential nominee has been hospitalized multiple times in recent years including for a leg infection in 2009. fighting for rights for u.s. servicewomen to end the ban on women serving in direct combat position. there are no clear front lines and women often find themselves engaged in combat anyway. they say they are denied promotions because many leadership positions come with the combat jobs. the biggest security breech in all u.s. history is set to
elizabeth miller. the president obviously anticipated the french pullback, even under sarkozy there was less of a commitment. now you have the first socialist president from france in a generation. and he has a starkly different attitude towards afghanistan and these nato commitments going forward. that s right. it looks like he s making good on his promise to pull out 3400 french troops by the end of this year. there might be a compromise where he ll say i m pulling them out of a combat role. we ve been through that ourselves with our own troops. you can take a soldier in a combat role and put him in a training role and he s still in afghanistan. the bottom line for the white house, this is not good because it shows a lack of commitment from the european allies in afghanistan. will this require us to stay longer than the president would like to? we were anticipating that there is going to be an accelerated withdrawal from a combat position. they still will have the 2014 target dat
troops however he needs he or she needs to use them in a difficult situation. and certainly combat is a difficult situation. you know, let me ask you and i m going to ask you more about combat and women in these wars. but, for you, how close did you ever get to a combat position? were you ever close to it? i never really was in the normal context, when you think of combat, you think of troops out fighting each other. i was stationed in vietnam during the vietnam war. i was in saigon, and my quarters were downtown. i stayed in a hotel a about a block and a half from the central market and that was rocketed. it was a target of the viet cong from time to time, and one day
the technical definition means that you re up over the hill and leading the way. we re not doing that anymore. it was very important for the sovereignty of the iraqis to let them know we recognize the fact they re capable. we ll continue to train them and help them. but by the end of next year, we re out. we re gone. it may be a misnomer. but you in literal military terms, we are no longer in a combat position. we are doing support and protecting american facilities, the embassies. we are protecting american personnel, american citizens and training iraqis. one last question. i know your time is short. but on the issue of iraq, having come back from there, i felt like if i forget all the history and i just think this very broad strokes about the fact we have had 7 1/2 years of