The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer

JIM LEHRER: Good evening. I'm Jim Lehrer. On the NewsHour tonight: A summary of the news; the President's Iraq speech to the United Nations, with reaction from Harold Brown, James Schlesinger, Donald McHenry and Patricia Schroeder; an update on life for Muslims in America post-9/11; a "how we've changed" conversation with poet Martin Espada; and a poem by Robert Pinsky.

NEWS SUMMARY

JIM LEHRER: President Bush today challenged the United Nations to confront the problem of Iraq. He addressed the UN General Assembly in New York, and said the world body would become irrelevant if it fails to act. He also warned Saddam Hussein must end his defiance or action will be unavoidable. The President demanded Iraq destroy its weapons of mass destruction, stop persecuting its own people, and end its violations of UN trade sanctions. Before Mr. Bush spoke, UN Secretary General Annan warned the United States not to act alone, but he said Iraq must live up to its UN obligations. We'll have more on this in a moment. Iraq's ambassador to the UN condemned the President's speech. He said there was no evidence tying Iraq to weapons of mass destruction or to terrorism.

KOFI ANNAN: He chooses to deceive the world and his own people by the longest series of fabrications that has been ever told by a leader of a nation.

JIM LEHRER: By contrast, some European nations that have questioned the President's policy generally welcomed the speech. The foreign minister of France and said his government was glad Mr. Bush had stressed the role of the UN in dealing with Iraq. And the top British ambassador reaffirmed his country's support for the U.S. position.

SPOKESMAN: This was a powerful and very effective speech by President Bush setting out graphically and clearly the responsibilities on the Iraqi regime to deal with the threats, which they pose to international community and to their own people, and too setting out the responsibilities on the international community.

JIM LEHRER: In Washington, the focus turned to when Congress might authorize action against Iraq. Leading Democrats and Republicans disagreed on the need to act soon.

SEN. TOM DASCHLE: I think that it's very important for us to be deliberate. I've said now on several occasions and I think the vast majority of members of Congress believe this, that we want to do it right. We don't care if we do it quickly, and I think that if we do it right, we will know when the time is right for us to have this debate on the Senate floor and to make a decision.

SEN. JOHN McCAIN: I think that it's pretty clear from Senator Daschle's remarks that he has not yet committed to a vote before we go out of session. I don't think he's rejected it but I don't think he's committed to it. I hope that we can convince him that it's necessary for is to have the debate and the vote before we go out of session.

JIM LEHRER: McCain said voters expect members of the House and Senate to take a stance before the election but some Democrats have said it's better to wait and take election politics out of the debate. The U.S. economy is still feeling the effects of the terrorist attacks a year ago and the big drop in stock prices. Federal Reserve Chairman Greenspan offered that assessment today at a House hearing. He warned the government must rein in spending until the economy gains strength, and tax revenues begin to recover.

ALAN GREENSPAN: We are all too aware that government spending programs and special tax benefits can be easy to initiate or expand but extraordinarily difficult to trim or shut down once constituencies develop that have a stake in maintaining the status quo.

JIM LEHRER: Greenspan also said Congress should make sure it can pay for any new tax cuts or major spending increases. On Wall Street today, stocks were down. The Dow Jones Industrial Average fell 201 points, or more than 2%, to close at 8379. The NASDAQ was 35 points, more than 2.5%, at 1279. Three former Tyco executives were charged today with violating New York State financial laws. The district attorney of Manhattan made the announcement. He said he accused former CEO Dennis Kozlowski, and former Chief Financial Officer Mark Swartz, of looting the company of $600 million. The former general counsel, Mark Belnick, was charged with covering up millions of dollars in loans to himself. In addition, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission announced a civil complaint against the three. Tyco makes everything from security systems to plastics. Bill McBride moved closer today to winning the Democratic primary for governor of Florida. Election officials announced he finished ahead of former U.S. Attorney General Janet Reno by just over 8,000 votes out of some 1.3 million; the margin was enough to avoid an automatic recount but Reno did not concede and did not rule out a legal challenge. The voting Tuesday was marred by problems of pulling stations and new voting machines. That's it for the News Summary tonight. Now it's on to the President's Iraq speech, an American Muslims update, a "how we've changed" conversation, and a Pinsky poetry reading.

FOCUS THE CHALLENGE

JIM LEHRER: President Bush's challenge to the UN over Iraq. Before the President spoke this morning, UN Secretary General Kofi Annan addressed the General Assembly with some remarks of his own about Iraq and the United States.

KOFI ANNAN: Even the most powerful countries know that they need to work with others in multilateral institutions to achieve their aims. That applies even more to the prevention of terrorism. Individual states may defend themselves by striking back at terrorist groups and at the countries that harbor or support them. But only concerted vigilance and cooperation among all states, with constant, systematic exchange of information, offers any real hope of denying the terrorists their opportunities. And among multilateral institutions, this universal organization has a special place. Any state, if attacked, retains the inherent right of self- defense under Article 51 of the charter. But beyond that, when states decide to use force to deal with broader threats to international peace and security, there is no substitute for the unique legitimacy provided by the United Nations. The leadership of Iraq continues to defy mandatory resolutions adopted by the Security Council under chapter VII of the charter. I have engaged Iraq in an in-depth discussion on a range of issues, including the need for arms inspectors to return in accordance with the relevant Security Council resolutions. Efforts to obtain Iraq's compliance with the Council's resolutions must continue. I appeal to all those who have influence with Iraq's leaders to impress on them the vital importance of accepting the weapons inspections. This is the indispensable first step towards assuring the world that all Iraq's weapons of mass destruction have indeed been eliminated, and let me stress, towards the suspension and eventual ending of the sanctions that are causing so many hardships for the Iraqi people. I urge Iraq to comply with this obligation for the sake of its own people, and for the sake of world order. If Iraq's defiance continues, the Council must face its responsibilities.

JIM LEHRER: And then the President spoke. Here are major excerpts from what he said.

PRESIDENT GEORGE W. BUSH: Our principles and our security are challenged today by outlaw groups, and regimes that accept no law of morality and have no limit to their violent ambitions.In the attacks on America a year ago, we saw the destructive intentions of our enemies. This threat hides within many nations, including my own. In cells and camps, terrorists are plotting further destruction and building new bases for their war against civilization. And our greatest fear is that terrorists will find a shortcut to their mad ambitions when an outlaw regime supplies them with the technologies to kill on a massive scale. In one place, in one regime, we find all these dangers in their most lethal and aggressive forms, exactly the kind of aggressive threat the United Nations was born to confront. From 1991 to 1995, the Iraqi regime said it had no biological weapons. After a senior official in its weapons program defected and exposed this lie, the regime admitted to producing tens of thousands of liters of anthrax and other deadly biological agents for use with scud warheads, aerial bombs, and aircraft spray tanks. UN inspectors believe Iraq has produced two to four times the amount of biological agents it declared, and has failed to account for more than three metric tons of material that could be used to produce biological weapons. Right now, Iraq is expanding and improving facilities that were used for the production of biological weapons. United Nations inspections also reveal that Iraq likely maintains stockpiles of VX, mustard, and other chemical agents, and that the regime is rebuilding and expanding facilities capable of producing chemical weapons. And in 1995, after four years of deception, Iraq finally admitted it had a crash nuclear weapons program prior to the Gulf War. We know now, were it not for that war, the regime in Iraq would likely have possessed a nuclear weapon no later than 1993. Today, Iraq continues to withhold important information about its nuclear program, weapons design, procurement logs, experiment data, and accounting of nuclear materials and documentation of foreign assistance. Iraq employs capable nuclear scientists and technicians. It retains physical infrastructure needed to build a nuclear weapon. Iraq has made several attempts to buy high-strength aluminum tubes used to enrich uranium for a nuclear weapon. Should Iraq acquire fissile material, it would be able to build a nuclear weapon within a year. We know that Saddam Hussein pursued weapons of mass murder even when inspectors were in his country. Are we to assume that he stopped when they left? The history, the logic, and the facts, lead to one conclusion: Saddam Hussein's regime is a grave and gathering danger. To suggest otherwise is to hope against the evidence. To assume this regime's good faith, is to bet the lives of millions and the peace of the world in a reckless gamble. And this is a risk we must not take. My nation will work with the UN Security Council to meet our common challenge. If Iraq's regime defies us again, the world must move deliberately, decisively, to hold Iraq to account. We will work with the UN Security Council for the necessary resolutions, but the purposes of the United States should not be doubted. The Security Council resolutions will be enforced, the just demands of peace and security will be met, or action will be unavoidable and a regime that has lost its legitimacy will also lose its power. Events can turn in one of two ways. If we fail to act in the face of danger, the people of Iraq will continue to live in brutal submission, the regime will have new power to bully and dominate and conquer its neighbors, condemning the Middle East to more years of bloodshed and fear. The regime will remain unstable-- the region will remain unstable with little hope of freedom-- and isolated from the progress of our times. With every step the Iraqi regime takes toward gaining and deploying the most terrible weapons, our own options to confront that regime will narrow. And if an emboldened regime were to supply these weapons to terrorist allies, then the attacks of September the 11th would be a prelude to far greater horrors. If we meet our responsibilities, if we overcome this danger, we can arrive at a very different future. The people of Iraq can shake off their captivity. They can one day join a democratic Afghanistan and a democratic Palestine, inspiring reforms throughout the Muslim world. These nations can show by their example that honest government and respect for women, and the great Islamic tradition of learning, can triumph in the Middle East and beyond. And we will show that the promise of the United Nations can be fulfilled in our time. Neither of these outcomes are certain. Both have been set before us. We must choose between a world of fear and a world of progress. We cannot stand by and do nothing while dangers gather. We must stand up for our security and for the permanent rights and the hopes of mankind. By heritage, and by choice, the United States of America will make that stand. And delegates to the United Nations, you have the power to make that stand as well. Thank you very much. (Applause)

JIM LEHRER: Some reaction now to what the President said from two former Defense Secretaries, James Schlesinger and Harold Brown; a former U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations, Donald McHenry; and a former member of the House Armed Services Committee, Patricia Schroeder.

Secretary Brown, how you would describe the bottom line message of what the President was saying today?

HAROLD BROWN: Essentially in what a thought was a strong and well presented speech, the President was saying, Saddam Hussein has proven he is very dangerous by his past actions -- that nonmilitary reactions have failed to contain him; and that therefore, failing an effective way of ending his program of weapons of mass destruction, military action will have to be taken. He did that in the context of invoking Saddam Hussein's failure to comply with past UN Resolutions. And he implied very strongly that it was up to the UN Security Council to take action and if it didn't for one reason or another that the U.S. would.

JIM LEHRER: Ambassador McHenry, did you hear the same thing, UN you do it because if you don't we will?

DONALD McHENRY: Well, I heard some of that. I think the President did a very good job of telling us what we know. And that is, that Saddam Hussein is a pretty unsavory character, has been in the past, is now -- likely to be in the future. What he doesn't... and that approach has a great deal of appeal in terms particularly of the public. What he doesn't tell us is how he's going to grapple with the situation. He doesn't give us the kind of Cuban Missile Crisis type ammunition to tell us what he so new that we must act now. Nor, frankly, does he deal with what I think are the differences between the United States as the President articulates our policy, and the rest of the international community. We want regime change. The rest of the international community wants enforcement of the resolutions. Now, if you enforce the resolution and in the process you get regime change, that's quite different from the objective of regime change. And what we have done by taking a regime change approach in this administration and the last one, has givenSaddam Hussein an opportunity to say, why should I cooperate? They're not going to lift the sanctions no matter what I do. And it's those kinds of issues it seems to me which he has got to grapple with.

JIM LEHRER: Did you hear, though, the President saying specifically in his speech that the UN, it's up to you to enforce --to take step number one before we take step number two?

DONALD McHENRY: I thought the President fudged these issues at the end of his speech.

JIM LEHRER: What did you hear, Secretary Schlesinger, did you hear a step, a challenge to the UN?

JAMES SCHLESINGER: It certainly was a challenge.

JIM LEHRER: What was it?

JAMES SCHLESINGER: The challenge was quite simple: Is this going to be a talk fest? Are we going to just talk? We have had 12 years now of defiance of UN Resolutions by Saddam Hussein. Do you want to wind up like the League of Nations? If you do want to wind up like the League of Nations, that is one course that can be followed. We are going to take a different course.

JIM LEHRER: What do you think the President said to the UN Security Council in terms of specifically, here's what I want you to do, UN Security Council, did you hear that or what did you read into what he was saying?

JAMES SCHLESINGER: Well, I think the... he laid down a challenge to the UN Security Council to see to it those resolutions that have come serially for the last 12 years are enforced and not defied. I think that Senator Biden put it very well, that this was a very grave indictment of Saddam Hussein by the UN's own standard. And it is the responsibility of the UN to come up with a tough package that will result in Saddam Hussein giving up the weapons of mass destruction. Otherwise, I think, as Secretary Brown indicated, we are going to take action with support of a number of allies.

JIM LEHRER: What did you hear the President say, Congresswoman Schroeder?

PATRICIA SCHROEDER: First of all, I was impressed he went to the UN because it did say the President listened and it's a very hard thing to do in a public debate. This debate has been raging for a couple of weeks. And so many of our allies thought he would do this unilateral thing and not come to the UN, so I think number one I really want to say how hard that is for any human being to do especially in that public an arena.

JIM LEHRER: Because you didn't think he wanted to really do this, right?

PATRICIA SCHROEDER: There was really a lot of suspicion that he didn't want to do this and there was certainly advice that he was getting that he didn't need to do this. So I think we all are proud that he went and he laid the case out there. And the case is a very strong one, that Saddam Hussein is violated the different sanctions that the UN has put on him and I do think they were right, are you a paper tiger or aren't you? Now, I heard what the good ambassador heard in the last couple sentences, which was, okay, I'm here now. Let's do this. You have a couple of weeks or you have a short period of time and then we're going to move on with it. And I hope that's not what he meant. I think maybe hopefully it's the end of the speech and you're in a hurry because the administration appears to publicly have changed their position and evolved a long way. I just put two things together: Number one, we do need our allies. Number two, these are UN sanctions that everybody should be there trying to enforce or we should forget the UN and we do need to give them some time to work this through. The President and his administration has been working this through. We can't say you have to have this by Friday.

JIM LEHRER: Well, did you -- by fact of the President coming to the UN today and saying what he said has he accepted a UN timetable just whether implicitly if not explicitly?

PATRICIA SCHROEDER: I hope that that will be negotiated, that we won't say unilaterally. I was in Congress during the Gulf War and if you remember, we decided to do the vote after the election on the basis we didn't want to look political. My guess is there no one in the UN that thinks that the Congress wouldn't support the President if he comes. Why should we stampede and do that in front of the UN, why wouldn't we allow the Security Council to try and work out a good plan that they can put out there and say, this is how we're going to enforce it and I end by saying this is very expensive and we started with Alan Greenspan saying beware of spending a whole lot of money; this is a way to spend a whole lot of money so all these pieces should come together I hope.

JIM LEHRER: Secretary Brown, let's go back to specifics if we can, let's say for discussion purposes that the UN Security Council and all its members and all its whatever got the message today, yes, we want to enforce all of these resolutions against Iraq. We want to sake severe action to avoid military action. Unilateral, possible unilateral action by the United States. What, in fact, could and should they do?

HAROLD BROWN: I think that we're going to have to go through a process of crafting resolutions, which have to have some sort of deadline on them and which may involve an insistence on inspections at random without notice, no holds barred, and acceptance, full acceptance of that within a fixed time. I have no reason at all to believe that Saddam Hussein will accept that. And then we're going to get into lots of debates. He's going to try a rope a dope strategy of the kind he did during 1998 finally throwing the inspectors out. And there is going to be a lot of negotiation with our allies and others on the permanent five of the Security Council. And either something will happen that empowers the United States under the UN to act, or the U.S. is likely to act alone. The President does have to get support from some of the countries in the region because that's necessary to carry out a military operation effectively. And he's going to have to get support from some of our allies in Europe, because if there is a military action, it's going to leave a very messy aftermath of the same kind as in Afghanistan. We're going to need our allies to help there. So that this going to the UN -- having started behind his own goal line as a result of adopting a unilateralist approach for 18 months -- I think is a step forward even though it has its risk. But specifically I think we're going to have to go down the last chance no holds barred inspection route and I expect it to be rejected because after all, Saddam Hussein has foregone probably about 50 billion dollars of oil revenues in order to avoid inspectors for the past four years.

JIM LEHRER: Ambassador McHenry, what do you see, is that what this is a no holds barred behind the goal line approach that we are now committed to?

DONALD McHENRY: Well, I think they have made some progress in terms of consulting.

JIM LEHRER: There are seven metaphors we mixed there, Mr. Secretary, but go ahead.

HAROLD BROWN: That's all right.

JIM LEHRER: Yeah, I know; it s fine.

HAROLD BROWN: It is a complicated situation.

DONALD McHENRY: We made progress in terms of consulting allies and congress and the UN that is a long way from where they were.

JIM LEHRER: Take us through a process, from your inside knowledge of how the UN operates and what the current situation is how do you see this thing unfolding you heard what Secretary Brown just laid out.

DONALD McHENRY: I think they will need a resolution of the Security Council, which at enforcement.

JIM LEHRER: With deadlines?

DONALD McHENRY: There will be those who will try and do a two-step approach. I think it's best if they do a single-step and make it very clear that action will be taken if you do not have prompt unconditional inspection.

JIM LEHRER: What kind of action?

DONALD McHENRY: It can be military action. The only question I think that the United States is going to have a difference with the international community on is what is your objective? Our objective is regime change. The international community wants enforcement of the resolutions. In which the international community is prepared to lift sanctions.

JIM LEHRER: No matter who is running iraq... as long as they get rid of their weapons.

DONALD McHENRY: No matter who s running Iraq. If you listen to the end of the President's speech, he gave you two scenarios, one scenario was Saddam Hussein continuing to do what he's doing and the second scenario, was a new iraq with a different kind of government and different kind of regime. So it's regime change, which is his objective.

HAROLD BROWN: If there is military action this time, there will be regime change.

DONALD McHENRY: Oh, if regime change comes out of enforcement of the resolution, you won't get any objection from I think anyone. But if your objective is to simply change the regime, it is very difficult for the international community to agree that we are ought to introduce this new concept.

JIM LEHRER: Secretary Schlesinger, do you have a scenario that you would like to put on the table, what's next and then take us down your route?

JAMES SCHLESINGER: I think that we are going to have to have enforcement by military forces. That means that Saddam Hussein will see that his palaces are, indeed, inspected on demand.

JIM LEHRER: Not necessarily a massive invasion but just an enforced kind of inspection?

JAMES SCHLESINGER: And unless he agrees to that, action will be taken. I think that the action will be taken by the United States and some of the others.

JIM LEHRER: Under... do you think process now means that eventually the UN will stamp it, yes, go?

JAMES SCHLESINGER: There is enough resolution on the part of the UN already to justify action. We have had 12 years of defiance of the UN. The question once again is whether we're going to have talk, talk, talk, with the old League of Nations outcome.

JIM LEHRER: Sure. But this new process, let's forget what's happened until now, we have a new process that began, let's say began today, so what do you foresee happening, do you foresee any possibility that Saddam Hussein will, in fact, allow inspections in such a way that would clear this whole thing up and everybody goes home?

JAMES SCHLESINGER: I do not but I say there is a desire to delay in order to provide protection as it were for the regime. And I don't think that the United States will tolerate that.

JIM LEHRER: You mean you don't think the United States will play this whole thing out in terms of...

JAMES SCHLESINGER: Not if it's an endless delay. I think that given the nature of the summer in iraq, which gets to 115, 120 degrees we are going to move by the winter.

JIM LEHRER: Do you believe Congresswoman Schroeder that in order for the United States to maintain a... to get and keep the UN Security Council with them, there is some kind of playing out that must be done no matter what the end result might appear to be ahead of time?

PATRICIA SCHROEDER: Well, the nice thing about the Security Council is it's a small group, and I worry the most about Russia in that group, but I think since the President has such close ties with Putin, you know maybe that's all doable. And if they stand together as a group, if they really stand up and say, we are... we really want the inspectors in there. We're really angry that the sanctions have been brushed off by Saddam Hussein, then I think he has to take another whole look at this. He's gambling on the fact that they're all going to....

JIM LEHRER: You mean Saddam Hussein?

PATRICIA SCHROEDER: Yes. I think he's gambling on the fact they'll....

JIM LEHRER: This will never happen.

PATRICIA SCHROEDER: And what I think is so good about the President going there he really kind of laid the gauntlet down and I just think the French made some very encouraging statements today and so you know maybe we've made some progress by doing that. And to me that is so important, because as the superpower we have to be the adult and being an adult really isn't a lot of fun but we have to be an adult and say to everybody else you have an adult too.

JIM LEHRER: What did you make of what Secretary-General Annan said right before the President, he essentially said that in a way, a wild paraphrase but said please don't do it alone you must have us the United Nations?

PATRICIA SCHROEDER: That's exactly right but I think he also went on to say and some people are surprised that Secretary-General Annan said he thought Saddam Hussein had thumbed his nose at the UN Sanctions and if the UN To be meaningful had to do something. So the challenge to join us in the adult caucus was very good.

JIM LEHRER: Speaking of joining us in adult caucuses, thank you all four for doing so tonight.

FOCUS UNDER SUSPICION

JIM LEHRER: And still to come on the NewsHour tonight: An American Muslims update; a "how we've changed" conversation; and a poem from Pinsky.

JIM LEHRER: Jeffrey Kaye of KCET/Los Angeles looks at some of the effects of last year's attacks on the Muslim community in America.

JEFFREY KAYE: Just a few minutes north of Disneyland is "little Gaza." The neighborhood is the heart of southern California's Middle Eastern community. Here, Muslims and Arab Americans come to pray, eat, and shop. At Sinbad s ranch market, up until a year ago, customers were just another part of southern California's multiethnic landscape. But things are now different, says Syrian-born Abdo Khouraki, the market owner. He and his customers think of life before and after September 11.

ABDO KHOURAKI: Before, we were almost like a regular community, any other community. Now, we feel we are kind of different, we are, kind of, being watched. We are, kind of, everybody pointing finger at us, like we are the one who did it, which is... we have nothing to do with it, even we are against it 100%.

SPOKESMAN: The oceans of Allah are unlimited.

JEFFREY KAYE: At the nearby mosque, a focal point for Muslim life, there is also talk of a community under suspicion. After September 11, some members were interrogated by FBI agents looking for terrorist connections. The government also closed down three prominent national Islamic charities, citing alleged ties to terrorists. The organizations had enjoyed wide community support, since charitable giving is a central principle of Islam. Hedab Tarifi, a Palestinian raised in Kuwait, is active in the California Muslim community. She says many Muslims now fear if they donate to other Islamic charities, they'll be investigated.

HEDAB TARIFI: They're afraid to give checks because they don't want, in any way, their name to be associated with what the government might consider illegal or suspicious.

JEFFREY KAYE: Anti-Muslim incidents, well-publicized in the Islamic community, have also generated fear. The Council on American-Islamic Relations cites hundreds of episodes, ranging from violent attacks, including several killings, to threats, hate mail, and public harassment. For Tarifi, fear hit close to home. First came the shooting, soon after 9/11, of an Egyptian American grocer.

HEDAB TARIFI: And I knew this guy. He was one of the first people that I'd known when I first came to California, and he wasn't even a Muslim. The only reason behind his killing was because he was Middle Eastern. And that came of the same day where my sister told me that her staff had received a call from someone who was asking, "What is the background of the dentist, the owner of the practice?" And it scared the heck out of me.

JEFFREY KAYE: Someone called your sister's office and asked if she was a Muslim?

HEDAB TARIFI: Yes. Or an Arab.

JEFFREY KAYE: The feeling of fear is particularly acute among Muslim women, who stand out because they choose to wear headscarves out of religious conviction. Tarifi found her loyalties being questioned by strangers.

HEDAB TARIFI: For instance, you know, why Muslims hate America.

JEFFREY KAYE: You were asked that?

HEDAB TARIFI: Yeah. And I'm like, "I don't hate America." I chose to come to America. How can I hate it? So it's that kind of generalization. And then when I answer the question, "oh, but you know Osama bin Laden?" But like what do I have to do with Osama bin Laden?

JEFFREY KAYE: At a local Persian restaurant, Muslim women spoke of their fear of being in public, subjected to glares and shouted insults.

MARYANN DADABHOY: And sometimes when I'm going home from work, people will scream something out their window, something offensive. And, you know, it scares me because I'm, like, if they can say stuff, then, you know, they could also do stuff.

JEFFREY KAYE: Sabiha Kahn works for the council on American- Islamic relations. Born in Los Angeles to Pakistani immigrants, she now feels the need to watch even her most innocent words and actions.

SABIHA KAHN: A few nights back, I went out to dinner with a friend of mine, and we were just having conversation about what we would like to do for our vacation, you know. And then she just pulled out a map of some place where we would like to stay. And then I wasn't thinking about this, but as soon as she put it away, I was like, "maybe we shouldn't have done that in public."

JEFFREY KAYE: Why were you thinking, "I shouldn't have done that?"

SABIHA KAHN: Well, because the people might get the wrong message. You know, "why is a Muslim looking at a map?" When they don't know that we're talking about our vacation, basically.

JEFFREY KAYE: For Tarifi, who works as a computer specialist, one response to fear was to get more involved in educating non-Muslims about her views on her faith and culture.

HEDAB TARIFI: Salam Aleichem, boys and girls. Greetings of peace. Salam aleichem is the Arabic way of greeting among Muslims.

JEFFREY KAYE: In this case, speaking at an assembly of very curious middle school students.

STUDENT: Why do men rule over women in Islam?

HEDAB TARIFI: Some Muslim societies treat Muslim women badly. You know, again, it's the society, it has nothing to do with Islam. Just as there are abused American women, there are abused Muslim women.

JEFFREY KAYE: Muslims have responded to curiosity, and in some cases, hostility towards Islam, by organizing lessons in public speaking.

SPEAKER: It's not about victimization. It's really about taking this opportunity to give us a deeper understanding of our religion, and to use this as an opportunity to empower other Muslims who are confused.

JEFFREY KAYE: Muslim activists have been troubled by critics, who have publicly condemned Islam as a violent and evil religion.

DANIEL PIPES, Middle East Forum: Historically speaking, I speak as an historian, jihad has meant expanding the realm of Islam through armed warfare.

JEFFREY KAYE: This seminar used role playing to deal with handling hostile questions.

WOMAN: Isn't it true that Islam is a religion in which god requires you to send your son to die for you?

SPOKESMAN: Islam does not tell us to send our children to die for us. Islam tells us to care for our children from day one, and teach them how to pray, and to be a good citizen.

JEFFREY KAYE: While many Muslims have complained about anti- Islamic sentiment, they say they have also been touched by expressions of support.

MARYAM DADABHOY: Like, my mom was at the store, and she was just standing and buying something at target, and this lady was looking at her, and my mom's like, "oh, boy, she's going to..." well, she came by, she held my mom's hand, and she said, "I hope people are being nice to you." So, these are complete strangers who are coming up, and you know, showing support for us. And we heard of people who had called the mosque to say, "do you need someone to go shopping for your Muslim women? We'll go do their groceries for them."

HEDAB TARIFI: I need your help.

JEFFREY KAYE: To show their grief over the lives Lost on September 11, Tarifi, and others in the Muslim community, decided to make a quilt.

HEDAB TARIFI: That has all the names of the victims.

JEFFREY KAYE: Tarifi is hoping this ambitious project will allow Muslims to be seen as part of the

American tapestry.

HEDAB TARIFI: As you see, it's, you know, the... all the patriotic colors, you know, the stars, and the red, white and blue. I wanted people to realize that, "oh, this quilt is made by American Muslims." And American Muslims are just as part of America as everybody else.

JEFFREY KAYE: Tarifi and others working on the quilt say that because the 9/11 victims were killed in the name of Islam, American Muslims must continue to denounce terror, and to demonstrate their commitment to peace.

CONVERSATION THEN & NOW

JIM LEHRER: Now a conversation, and to Ray Suarez.

MARTIN ESPADA: This is an edition of Whitman that was actually published during his lifetime, and authorized by him.

RAY SUAREZ: Poet, college professor, lawyer, and like Walt Whitman, a Brooklynite, Martin Espada is on the faculty at the University of Massachusetts. He talked to us at his home in Amherst.

MARTIN ESPADA: Whitman tells us that the duty of the poet is to cheer up slaves and horrify despots. You know, I always liked that.

RAY SUAREZ: His work has won many awards and critical attention. His 1996 collection, "Imagine the Angels of Bread," won an American Book Award. His poetry can be tender, fierce, political. After NewYork was attacked on September 11, he remembered the immigrants who filled the kitchens of the World Trade Center's restaurants, members of one union local who caught the subway to work and never came home.

MARTIN ESPADA: The word alabanza means "praise" in Spanish, and this poem is called "Alabanza: In praise of local 100," for the 43 members of hotel employees and restaurant employees, Local 100, working at the windows on the world restaurant who lost their lives in the attack on the World Trade Center.

MARTIN ESPADA: "Alabanza. Praise Manhattan from 107 flights up like Atlantis glimpsed through the windows of an ancient aquarium, praise the great windows where immigrants from the kitchen could squint and almost see their world, hear the chant of nations Ecuador, Mexico, Republica Dominicana, Haiti, Yemen, Ghana, Bangladesh alabanza. Praise the kitchen in the morning where the gas burned blue on every stove and exhaust fans fired the diminutive propellers, hands cracked eggs with quick thumbs or sliced open cartons to build an altar of cans -- alabanza. Praise the busboys' music the chime, chime of his dishes and silverware in the tub -- alabanza. Praise the dish dog the dishwasher who worked that morning because another dishwasher could not stop coughing or because he needed overtime to pile the sacks of rice and beans for a family floating away on some Caribbean island plagued by frogs -- alabanza. Praise the waitress who heard the radio in the kitchen and sang to herself about a man gone -- alabanza. When the war began from Manhattan and Kabul two constellations of smoke rose and drifted to each other mingling in icy air and one said with an Afghan tongue teach me to dance we have no music here and the other said with a Spanish tongue I will teach you; music is all we have. "

RAY SUAREZ: For a long time after the attacks, one of the refrains that you heard constantly was "at a time like this," as if all human activity outside of just the task at hand was superfluous. "How can you do that at a time like this?" Why do we need poetry at a time like this?

MARTIN ESPADA: Poetry humanizes. Poetry gives a human face to a time like this. Poetry gives eyes and a mouth and a voice to a time like this. Poetry records a time like this for future generations who want to know about a time like this in terms of the five senses, and in terms of the soul, I think.

RAY SUAREZ: And people who want to understand this time, understand September 11, should hear about Local 100?

MARTIN ESPADA: Absolutely. Absolutely. Again, when we think of these buildings, the WTC, these were, after all, office buildings in Manhattan. And a shadow army passes through every office building in Manhattan, making those buildings run and providing what we need. What could be more basic than food, than feeding us? That is what those food service workers were doing that very morning.

RAY SUAREZ: Has America's reaction to this encouraged you, depressed you, inspired you? This was a place you knew well and a lot of people watching this broadcast tonight don't know well. But then you watched your country react. What did you think?

MARTIN ESPADA: It is sad and scary on the whole. We are certainly attuned to the danger from without. We are less attuned, I think, to the danger from within. Ultimately, Osama bin Laden cannot restrict our civil liberties. Only we can do that to ourselves. Al -Qaida can not take away our freedoms. Only we can do that to ourselves. And this is the time for us to be especially vigilant about those freedoms and about whatwe now refer to as the Patriot Act.

RAY SUAREZ: And I guess I should mention that in addition to being a writer and a teacher, you're a lawyer as well.

MARTIN ESPADA: Yes, and over the years I've been an advocate for the Latino community, for immigrants. It troubles me to see what has happened to immigrants from the Arab and the Arab American communities in this country, because eventually what starts out as a backlash against one immigrant becomes a backlash against all immigrants. This concerns me deeply because the only way the essential character of this country will change is if we permit it to change. We have choices, and we have to make the right choices.

RAY SUAREZ: Any hopeful note that you take out of this time? Any reaction that you actually found life-affirming?

MARTIN ESPADA: I'm encouraged by the fact that in spite of everything, there are people who seem to remember what the essential character of this country is about, or should be about. I'm encouraged by dissenters, particularly because this is such a difficult time to dissent. I am encouraged by people I've met such as Christina Olsen, who lost her sister on 9/11 and who subsequently has become very active in the peace community; who even went to Afghanistan to sing over there songs about peace-- extraordinarily strong and sensitive individual. I am encouraged by all of that. I'm encouraged by the fact that, you know, there are many of us, in spite of everything, who seem to remember the principles to which this country aspires.

RAY SUAREZ: Martin Espada, thanks a lot for talking to me.

MARTIN ESPADA: Thank you.

FINALLY 9/11

JIM LEHRER: Finally tonight, another poet remembers 9/11. He is former poet laureate Robert Pinsky. Here is a poem he wrote for the anniversary, commissioned by the "Washington Post."

ROBERT PINSKY: We adore images, we like the spectacle of speed and size, the working of prodigious systems. So on television we watched the terrible spectacle, repetitiously gazing until we were sick not only of the sight of our prodigious systems turned against us but of the very systems of our watching. The date became a word, an anniversary that we inscribed with meanings-- we who keep so few, more likely to name an airport for an actor or athlete than "First of May" or "Fourth of July." In the movies we dream up, our captured heroes tell the interrogator their commanding officer's name is Colonel Donald Duck-- he writes it down, code of a lowbrow memory so assured it's nearly aristocratic. Some say the doomed firefighters before they hurried into the doomed towers wrote their Social Security numbers on their forearms. Easy to imagine them kidding about it a little, as if they were filling out some workday form. Will Rogers was a Cherokee, a survivor of expropriation. A roper, a card. For some, a hero. He had turned 16 the year that Frederick Douglass died. Douglass was 12 when Emily Dickinson was born. Is even Donald half-forgotten? Who are the Americans, not a people by blood or religion? As it turned out, the donated blood not needed, except as meaning. And on the other side that morning, the guy who shaved off all his body hair and screamed the name of God with his box cutter in his hand. Oh Americans- -as Marianne Moore would say, whence is our courage? Is what holds us together a gluttonous dreamy thriving? Whence our being? In the dark roots of our music, impudent and profound? Or in the 18th century clarities and mystic Masonic totems of the founders: The eye of the pyramid watching over us, hexagram of stars protecting the eagle's head from terror of pox, from plague and radiation. And if they blow up the Statue of Liberty-- then the survivors might likely in grief, terror and excess build a dozen more, or produce a catchy song about it, its meaning as beyond meaning as those symbols, or Ray Charles singing "America the Beautiful." Alabaster cities, amber waves, purple majesty. The back-up singers in sequins and high heels for a performance-- or in the studio in sneakers and headphones, engineers at soundboards, musicians, all concentrating, faces as grave with purpose as the harbor statue herself.

RECAP

JIM LEHRER: Again, the major developments of this day: President Bush challenged the United Nations to confront the problem of Iraq, but Iraq charged the president had lied to the world. And Federal Reserve Chairman Greenspan said the U.S. economy is still feeling the effects of the terrorist attacks a year ago, and the big drop in stock prices. We'll see you online, and again here tomorrow evening with Shields and Brooks, among others. I'm Jim Lehrer. Thank you and good night.