The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer

JIM LEHRER: Good evening. I'm Jim Lehrer. On the NewsHour tonight: Our summary of the news; then some perspective on today's big jump in the economic growth numbers; the latest on the devastating wildfires of California; excerpts from a related congressional debate on managing forests; an interview with Democratic presidential candidate Wesley Clark; and a last word essay by Roger Rosenblatt.

NEWS SUMMARY

JIM LEHRER: The U.S. economy surged ahead in the third quarter at the fastest pace in nearly 20 years. The Commerce Department reported today the Gross Domestic Product increased at an annual rate of 7.2 percent from July through September. That was more than double the growth in the previous quarter. Consumer and business spending drove the spike, boosted in part by the latest round of tax cuts. We'll have more on this in a moment. Thousands of firefighters in southern California looked to the skies for help today. Cooler temperatures and a light rain moved into areas with the worst fires: The San Bernardino Mountains and Eastern San Diego County. But fire crews still faced winds gusting to 40 miles per hour. So far, the flames have killed 20 people, including one firefighter, and destroyed more than 2,600 homes. We'll have more on this story later in the program. The U.S. Senate neared a vote today to allow more extensive logging in federal forests. It would scale back environmental reviews to allow more thinning of small trees and brush. Supporters said it would stop fires spreading so rapidly. Opponents said it was really a logging bill in disguise. A similar measure has passed the House. We'll have more on today's debate in a moment. Attackers in central Iraq bombed a U.S. supply train today. It happened in an area that's seen dozens of attacks on U.S. forces. We have a report narrated by Louise Bates of Associated Press Television News.

LOUISE BATES: This was the scene after insurgents blasted a freight train on its way from Fallujah to a town nearby. Four containers were set ablaze by the explosions. No casualties were reported, but as soon as the flames subsided, the looting began. Local residents swarmed over the wreckage, carrying off computers, tents, bottled water, and anything else they could find. The bomb was improvised, but the target was clearly calculated. The train carries U.S. Military supplies from Fallujah to bases in the area. Attacks have surged this week to about 33 per day. That's up from 15 per day in early September. Saddam loyalists and Islamic militants are being blamed for the attacks.

JIM LEHRER: Later in the day, an explosion triggered a large fire in Baghdad's old quarter. At least two Iraqis were killed. Iraqi police said a bomb caused the blast. The U.S. Military said it may have been a propane tank that blew up. Also today, leaflets appeared in Baghdad, calling for a three-day general strike beginning on Saturday. A Lebanese TV station reported they came from Baath Party supporters of Saddam Hussein. The United Nations today ordered its remaining international staffers to leave Baghdad for the time being. Secretary-General Annan said it was time to reassess security after a wave of attacks this week. They included a car bomb at Red Cross headquarters. U.N. Staffers in northern Iraq will stay on the job, along with 4,000 Iraqis working for the organization. In Washington today, Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld said relief agencies can still operate safely in some parts of Iraq. At a Pentagon briefing, he acknowledged the growing violence in Baghdad, but he said he wasn't sure what to make of it.

DONALD RUMSFELD: It may be an isolated spike. It may have to do with Ramadan. It may have to do with a... an increase that will continue in incidents. That's possible. And none of us can predict the future. So I can't put it in perspective except that we do know that it has been a higher level of incidence in the last period, week for example, than had been the case previously.

JIM LEHRER: Rumsfeld did say it was possible to speed up training of Iraqi security forces if need be. The New York Times reported today President Bush wants to take that step and put more Iraqis on the front lines. France said today the U.S. needs a "new approach" in Iraq. But it also said an American pullout, at this point, would be "catastrophic." It called for a united, international stance in stabilizing Iraq. The U.S. House headed toward a final vote today on new funding for Iraq. It included $ 20 billion for reconstruction. But a Washington research group questioned the way contracts are being handed out. The center for public integrity said major campaign donors to President Bush have received $ 8 billion. The largest recipient was part of Halliburton, Vice President Cheney's old company. A State Department spokesman denied any favoritism. China and North Korea agreed in principle today on a new round of six-nation nuclear talks. The decision came as the head of the Chinese parliament met with North Korean leader Kim Jong-Il during a goodwill visit. No date was given for the next round of talks. The U.S. Has pressed China to help stop North Korea's nuclear program. A security scare shut down the U.S. House of representatives for a time today. It started when U.S. Capitol police reported possible intruders with a gun. A House office building was evacuated and a swat team searched room-by-room. It turned out the "intruders" were two congressional staffers. They had a fake plastic gun as part of a Halloween costume. Today's big new economic numbers did not trigger a huge response on Wall Street. The Dow Jones Industrial Average gained only 12 points to close at more than 9786. The NASDAQ fell more than 3 points to close at 1932. And that's it for the news summary tonight. Now it's on to: The economy; the California fires; the crowded forests; the presidential candidate Clark; and the last word.

FOCUS SURGING NUMBERS

JIM LEHRER: We look at today's economic numbers with: Lynn Reaser, Chief economist for Bank of America Capital Management; Maria Fiorini Ramirez, a Wall Street economist in New York who runs her own consulting firm; and William Spriggs, economist and director of research and public policy at the National Urban League Institute for Opportunity and Equality, a Washington-based research group.

Ms. Ramirez, President Bush said today it was his tax cuts that caused the 7.2 percent jump inthe Gross National Product, in other words, the jump in the economic growth rate. Do you agree with him?

MARIA FIORINI RAMIREZ: Well, I think that many things happen at the same time. It was the tax cut. It was the tax refunds. It was also the fact that businesses for a long time have not spent any money. In the second quarter we really got the first increase in business spending. And in the third quarter we got another huge increase so you put a lot of these things together and what it boiled down to is a number that was not too far from expectations. I think most people were looking for 6 percent. So 7.2 percent was not far away from what was already priced into the market. I think that's why the markets do that much today.

JIM LEHRER: Lynn Reaser, how do you read this jump?

LYNN REASER: We believe the report was very positive. It was broad based. We saw consumer spending up. Increases in capital spending, as Maria suggested, increases in housing and also exports so it appears that the economy is finally coming to life.

JIM LEHRER: So it isn't a one-shot deal. You think this shows real, real staying power in the growth of the economy right now?

LYNN REASER: 7 percent is probably not sustainable but 4 percent probably is as we see the continued impact of low interest rates, a reviving economy around the world, rising stock prices and rising home prices and also improving business confidence.

JIM LEHRER: Mr. Spriggs, how do you read these numbers?

WILLIAM SPRIGGS: Well, I'm a little concerned about the numbers. We had very good growth in the second quarter. Now we had this phenomenal growth in the third quarter but we saw no job growth take place in either quarter. And when you have a growth rate of 7.2 percent and don't see jobs appearing, it's a real puzzle for economists. The last time we saw a job growth rate... an economic growth rate of 7.2 percent was 20 years ago, as you mentioned. In 1984, we were coming out of recession. And we saw tremendous job growth rate in that quarter, over two million jobs, so I think we all have to be concerned that there's growth without jobs and we have to think why is that and how do we get jobs?

JIM LEHRER: Do you have an answer? Do you know why the growth is happening without jobs?

WILLIAM SPRIGGS: I don't know that anyone has a clear answer for this last quarter because the hours worked didn't go up. So it's not as if we all worked extra hours and had overtime go through the ceiling. I guess you could call it intensity. We worked much harder but that wouldn't be sustainable. That's a rather phenomenal intensity level for work. So I think we have to rethink our models. I think we could clearly say that the indicators we had, both the tax cut and interest rates, allowing people to refinance their debt, helped. But it's going to take something else and it may be that we have to think again about government spending directly on job creation.

JIM LEHRER: Ms. Ramirez, do you read it the same way on jobs that everything looks good except for that?

MARIA FIORINI RAMIREZ: Well, I think that businesses are spending a lot faster in adding more capacity, becoming more efficient, part- time workers. And they're really being constrained by the fact that the cost of running a business, via insurance costs, the health care costs, it's a lot more than it used to be. So the last thing that businesses are doing are adding full-time workers. I think that's going to be a problem going forward. And also I think that in past years a lot of the manufacturing jobs have been overseas and that diluted the strength coming out of recovery but now also some service jobs are going overseas. So I think that the problems are going to be more magnified which is the reason why I think that job growth is going to be very modest going forward. It's not going to be 200,000 jobs per month at this stage of the recovery but if we get 100,000 per month let's say in the next six months or so we should be very happy with it because the world we live in is changing. Competition globally has changed and therefore job growth is not going to be as strong as it was in the past.

JIM LEHRER: Do you agree with that, Ms. Reaser, that there won't be this kind of job growth that could be -- should be expected with this kind of economic growth?

LYNN REASER: We believe that job growth will be gradual but will be coming forward. We saw the disconnect between the surge in output and drop in hours worked. Why? Because we had a major increase in productivity. That could only be very good news for the long term for this economy. It reflects some of the investments we made in the late '90s. Productivity will not continue at those rates and as a result we will see companies having to start to hire more workers. In fact already at the end of the third quarter we saw job growth start to occur.

JIM LEHRER: This is not something that concerns you as it does Mr. Spriggs?

LYNN REASER: Productivity growth is the ultimate source of value. It's allowing workers to see increases in their wages. It's allowing companies to see improvement in their profit margins. It will keep inflation down and productivity growth is indeed a very good positive for the economy even though it's slowed down growth in the very near term.

JIM LEHRER: Productivity growth, Mr. Spriggs, means that they have the same amount of workers but there's more output, right?

WILLIAM SPRIGGS: Yes. And that is a good thing. But that means that the economy has to grow even faster in order to get the new workers. So that's the puzzle. 7.2 percent is a very fast growth rate for the economy. So if you can do that without adding workers and again the quarter before that we had a growth rate of 3.3 percent, so you have two solid quarters and to lose 146,000 jobs, to have hours go down means that you'd have to have a tremendous growth rate in order to get the next set of workers added to the payroll. If we're only adding 180,000 jobs a month, that just compensates for the number of new workers who entered the labor force because of the population growth. So we really have to be able to do more than that.

JIM LEHRER: Still a big gap. Ms. Reaser, what about that?

LYNN REASER: We believe that job growth will be coming forward, that this is a delay but that companies are getting to the point where they will need to hire new workers. They can't just rely on these productivity gains. Productivity growth will be good but it won't be as good as we've seen in the last two quarters. So I think it's just a matter of timing before we see those jobs come down the pike.

JIM LEHRER: Ms. Ramirez, I want to come back to a point you made a moment ago. You said it was not a surprise that the stock market didn't react. At the beginning of today when the... when these numbers came out, it spiked, it went way up and then it settled back down. As I reported in the News Summary a moment ago, the NASDAQ even lost a few points. The Dow I think went up only 12 points. Why didn't the market go really... why didn't the market get excited about this?

MARIA FIORINI RAMIREZ: Well, I think, Jim, it's because the market has been doing so well lately. The merger announcement earlier in the week gave a lot of sort of strength to the financial sector. The market has done, you know, quite impressively in recent months on the expectation that the economy was going to be doing better and profits were going to be up. So third quarter numbers have been coming out. Profits have been better than expected. GDP growth has been stronger. So I think that people are looking at these days when the market does really well, you know, it takes some profits. I think that that's pretty much what happened today. I think that it would have been disappointing if GDP growth would have been less than 5 percent. So I think that there's so much anticipation that we're in recovery. It's broad based. I think that what's going to happen going forward that's going to create some jobs is inventory rebuilding. Normally when you go into a slowdown, inventories get weaker and weaker. And I think that even what contributed to growth this quarter was even more inventory pairing so I think that in the fourth quarter we're going to have some inventory rebuilding, which is going to last a few years. And I think with that to produce that, there's going to be some job growth. So I do think that the stock market is always going to have an anticipation built into it. And it's going to be the disappointment that triggers a fall back so I think that we're in good shape as far as profits is concerned. ... are concerned. And I don't think really we're going to see a reversal going forward. I do fear that the expectations might be a little bit too bullish.

JIM LEHRER: I see. Lynn Reaser, how do you read the stock market's reaction today?

LYNN REASER: The stock market really expected pretty much a strong number so a little bit better was not really a startling up side shock. In terms of the market's focus now, this was a report, as you mentioned, for July through September, the market now wants to know what's happening in October, November, December. So it will now focus on what happens to those jobs numbers as reported next week and will look to see if the kind of growth that we're forecasting, around 4 percent, will in fact occur.

JIM LEHRER: Mr. Spriggs, just as a general guideline for laypeople, how important should they consider the rise and fall of the stock market on a day like this? I mean, if the market... they're not experts and so everybody expected, "my, goodness, this is in 20 years, this and this and all the stuff that I reported." And then the market goes ummm and everybody says wait a minute. What is it we don't understand? What is it we don't understand?

WILLIAM SPRIGGS: The markets do discount information.

JIM LEHRER: Way ahead of time.

WILLIAM SPRIGGS: Way ahead of time. And so it's something that is well within expectations, then the markets aren't going to have fantastic reactions to it. I think we do have to be concerned that the bond market didn't think that this was some sort of good sign. And, again, we did this with a very huge deficit. So if we're going to have a deficit of this size without job growth, we do have to show some concern. The economy is growing. That should help to reduce the deficit, but we know that we have some structural issues within the federal budget that may make the deficits go out for some time. And in the past when we've run deficits like this during a recession or during a period of no job growth, we've seen eventually those deficits spur jobs. You could sort of think, okay, we're willing to pay that price. If we continue with the deficits, then I think that the bond market won't show us the kind of confidence that interest rates can stay low.

JIM LEHRER: In general terms in a word, this should be seen today as good news though that the economy is doing better than many people expected it to be doing?

WILLIAM SPRIGGS: Well, I think we have to be very happy that we saw two quarters of business investment going forward. That means that, yes, there should be some pressure, we should have some expectation at some point we'll see some jobs come out of that. But if we continue to see what was else in the numbers, which is that wage and salary actually didn't go anywhere, that you can't see consumption continue to go somewhere when people aren't making any more money. We're not going to see growth there until we see the job growth.

JIM LEHRER: What caveats would you put to this, Ms. Reaser?

LYNN REASER: I think we will need to see that job growth. We have seen some signs. Temporary help has increased in the last five months. We did have one month in job gains. We think we'll see another one in October. And we've seen lay-offs subside at a lower level throughout October so I think we are at a turning point where this economy's recovery will start to feel real and we'll finally start to see those jobs created.

JIM LEHRER: Do you have any caveats, Ms. Ramirez, what to look for?

MARIA FIORINI RAMIREZ: Well, I think that we turned the point where things started getting better a few months ago. As far as the deficits, they look level. A lot of the counties that I talk to it seems like tax revenue is up. And I think that's a good indicator. I do think that the best of the sort of stimulus from low interest rate is really behind us but housing remains pretty strong. Barring any sort of unpredictable kind of events I think that we've turned the corner and things are better already. I think that GDP growth in the fourth quarter will be pretty strong still -- maybe 4 or 5 percent or even better. And I think that it is sustainable next year but I do think that the base of economic growth has to be broader as it was in the third quarter in order for this to be sustainable through 2004 and 2005, and lastly the rest of the world is doing a little bit better. And that should help our exports quite a bit.

JIM LEHRER: Okay. Thank you all three very much.

UPDATE - FIRESTORMS

JIM LEHRER: Still to come on the NewsHour tonight: The California fires; thinning forests; Democratic presidential candidate Clark; and a Roger Rosenblatt essay. Spencer Michels begins our fires report.

SPENCER MICHELS: Firefighters on the front lines in the San Bernardino Mountains struggled to keep wind-driven blazes from raging toward the resort towns of Lake Arrowhead and Big Bear. At a morning briefing, a fire department spokesman said the weather might be helping.

DANA VAN LEUVEN, Chief, Big Bear Fire Dept.: Mother Nature has come in to give us a hand here, so we are really happy to see that moisture out in the area. This fire has been so unpredictable-- fire behavior has been something that we've never seen before. Just when we think we can get lines established, those lines go away.

SPENCER MICHELS: Overnight wind gusts of up to 70 miles per hour fueled towering flames that burned at least 350 homes to the ground east of Lake Arrowhead. And in the city of San Bernardino, some people were returning to their communities near the base of the mountain range. Some found homes completely burned to the foundation. Many said they fled with only the clothes on their backs when fires roared in on Saturday afternoon.

MAN: I was on the roof and then my truck caught fire. I ran out here with the hose and then ran back and my shirt caught fire. I said "it's time to go." I said, to be honest, I was going to be in hell soon enough; I didn't need to start then.

SPENCER MICHELS: Thousands of others who have been evacuated are waiting it out in shelters. Further South, in San Diego County, the state's largest and deadliest fire, the Cedar Fire, continued to burn out of control. Steven Rucker from northern California was the first and so far the only firefighter to die in more than a week of wildfires. He was trapped in a house in the area near Julian. Three other crew members were injured, one critically. More than 200 homes near Julian have burned, but the town itself remains intact, although surrounded by fire. There were signs of improvement in some areas. In Simi Valley, wet conditions slowed fires considerably. And north of Los Angeles in Santa Clarita, a more than 100,000-acre blaze that threatened neighborhoods yesterday moved away. At a press conference this afternoon, California Governor Gray Davis said assistance was coming from all directions.

GOV. GRAY DAVIS: Everywhere you look, from Canada to Alberta to the Navy to the neighboring states to California, every asset available for deployment is being deployed to fight these fires.

SPENCER MICHELS: California Governor-elect Arnold Schwarzenegger decided to cut short his trip to Washington to return to his fire-ravaged state. He spoke with reporters after a White House meeting with Vice President Cheney.

ARNOLD SCHWARZENEGGER: I think that the key thing that came from the trip was that there would be immediate response, that FEMA will be responding very quickly. There'll be the financial aid.

SPENCER MICHELS: Schwarzenegger planned to tour devastated areas by air. Meanwhile an official on the scene said he saw light at the end of the tunnel and firefighters said today they welcomed a weekend weather forecast predicting more favorable conditions.

JIM LEHRER: Ray Suarez has more on the fires.

RAY SUAREZ: And we're joined by Jerry Williams, the director of fire and aviation management for the U.S. Forest service; and Jim Purpura, meteorologist in charge of the National Weather Service forecast office in San Diego. And Jim Purpura, let's start with you. From the point of view of someone who watches the weather, how has the weather created conditions that have made these fires so bad?

JIM PURPURA, National Weather Service: Well, really, as we look into the beginning of the year when we had a little bit above normal precipitation encouraged extra growth of vegetation, we got into a dry period late in the spring and into the summer and now into the fall where that vegetation has dried out. Before the fire started, we had another period of exceptionally hot and very dry air. Now we have...the Santa Ana winds set up last week, allowed the winds to become very strong in the passes and canyons and got into our fire situation. We've turned around now to west winds. And that's actually pushed the fires off to the East into the mountains. All these things have come together.

RAY SUAREZ: And Jerry Williams, taking what your colleague just said in the overall conditions, what had those conditions done to the forest to make these fires particularly bad?

JERRY WILLIAMS, U.S. Forest Service: There's a couple of dimensions to this. One is the drying trend has dried out the fuels, dried out the trees, and dried out the vegetation, which makes more fuel available to feed these fires. More thanthat, though, over a period of many, many years, more vegetation has dominated this fire-prone environment. Many of our forests at the higher elevations are choked with too many trees and many of the fuels that load up these forests are really what are causing these fires, or at least predisposing these fires.

RAY SUAREZ: Now, Jim Purpura, people have been saying over the last couple of days that they're hoping for more humidity, they're hoping for lower winds. What is the forecast showing for the next couple of days that might give firefighters an edge?

JIM PURPURA: Actually, we had winds switch to the west here a couple of days ago, and they have started to bring more moisture in. Now the moisture is as high as 6,000 or 7,000 feet, which has really helped the firefighters. We're looking for... after today the winds are going to be dying down significantly. So the combination of higher moisture, lower temperatures, and less wind is going to help quite a bit in the fire fighting efforts.

RAY SUAREZ: Now, Jerry Williams, does a tree respond that quickly to changes in the weather? Does it make it immediately less inflammable?

JERRY WILLIAMS: It helps a lot. What's happening here is as the humidities go up and the temperatures start to drop, the fire behavior will start to fall off dramatically. A good threshold for us in this country is, generally, we'll see very, very severe fire behavior when relative humidities drop below, say, 20 percent and temperatures start climbing above 80 to 85 degrees. Wind is another big factor... during the Santa Ana event that really drove these fires, wind speeds were clocked around 60 miles an hour.

RAY SUAREZ: But when you're talking about fires this size involving hundreds of thousands of acres, do they, in effect, make some of their own weather and create conditions on the ground, drying adjacent trees, drying adjacent areas, creating winds because they're sucking in so much oxygen?

JERRY WILLIAMS: There's a lot of that going on. A lot of radiant heat is occurring, which of course is preheating fuels ahead of the fire, but the big factor for us under these conditions are the high wind speeds. What's happening there is spot fires are being generated up to a mile-and-a-half ahead of the fire front. In other words, lofted firebrands from the main fire being lofted high in the atmosphere and carried downwind and dropped back on to the forest ahead of the fire. That's our biggest concern and that's why we adopt the fire fighting strategies that we do under these conditions.

RAY SUAREZ: Jim Purpura, can forecasts become tools in the hands of firefighters? If you get them timely information, can they change their tactics, where they stage to fight blazes in a particular area?

JIM PURPURA: Yes, and that's what we've been doing all before and during the event. We have fire weather forecasters at the San Diego Weather Service office, and also there are incident meteorologists or "imets" at these major fires and that's exactly what they'll do. They'll provide continuous weather updates to the decision- makers in the fire fighting process.

RAY SUAREZ: Jerry Williams, once someone knows that information, they have a forecast in hand, give us an idea. If you're in a mountainous area and you know which way the wind is coming from, which direction moisture might be coming from, what you might do differently.

JERRY WILLIAMS: We have people called fire behavior analysts that work very closely with the incident meteorologists. Those folks team up to take weather information and then translate it intofire behavior outputs. Basically, what they're doing is forecasting not only the rate of spread and the direction of spread, but also the perimeter growth over the next several hours. That, in turn, is used to adjust tactics and strategies that may involve large-scale firing operations at very high intensities, high wind speeds as an example, air tanker use becomes less effective. At that point, we'll start using backfires and indirect attack strategies that are tailored to the fire behavior which, of course, is interpreted from the weather that we're getting from the meteorologists.

RAY SUAREZ: As this fire begins to burn in such... over such a vast number of acres, Jim, are we in a situation where places very, very far away from the forests are feeling some of the effects in a sensory way, either sunlight that's being blocked or a smell that they might not otherwise have, winds they might not otherwise have?

JIM PURPURA: A look at the analysis from the smoke this morning shows that the smoke is already, from this southern California group of fires has reached already into southwestern Utah. So many hundreds of miles downstream, they can feel the effect of a very significant fire.

RAY SUAREZ: And before we go, Jerry Williams, when the forests finally start to cool, and the final tally can be taken of the damage, are people going to have to start managing the forests in inhabited areas like those in southern California in a different way?

JERRY WILLIAMS: We would certainly hope so. For many years, there have been efforts across the country for people to work more closely with the dynamics of these landscapes. These are fire-prone environments. They occur in hot, dry portions of the country. As I said at the top of your show, many of these forests are choked with too many trees and loaded with too much fuel. If people are going to coexist in this environment, we've got to learn to better manage, more actively manage these forests to reduce the flammability potential that fuels these disasters.

RAY SUAREZ: Jerry Williams and Jim Purpura, gentlemen, thank you both.

JERRY WILLIAMS: Thank you, sir.

JIM PURPURA: Thank you.

JIM LEHRER: That very question of managing the forests was the subject of debate in Washington this week. Kwame Holman has that story.

KWAME HOLMAN: Those hundreds of thousands of acres of burning California forests, the hundreds of millions of dollars worth of property destroyed, and the loss of life have convinced members of the senate to brush aside many of the concerns of environmentalists and push through new forest management legislation which had been sidelined for months. The new rules would allow the U.S. Forest Service to thin out millions of acres of federal forest land of brush, small trees, and dead trees for the first time in decades.

SPOKESMAN: Senator from Mississippi.

SPOKESMAN: Mr. President...

KWAME HOLMAN: Thad Cochran is chairman of the Senate Agriculture Committee.

SEN. THAD COCHRAN: In the past, the U.S. Forest Service has been forced to spend great amounts of time and resources battling lawsuits instead of managing the forests. The result has been months and even years of delays in fuel reduction projects. And our forests have continued to suffer, and they have continued to burn.

KWAME HOLMAN: It primarily was western state senators who began coming to the floor yesterday to describe just how serious the problems in their states are. Alaska Republican Lisa Murkowski:

SEN. LISA MURKOWSKI: This is a picture of forest that have been totally wiped out by the spruce bark beetle. There is not a tree that you look at in the forefront or in the background that is alive. Every one of these trees are dead. These trees that you are looking at are probably thirty to forty feet high. These are very mature old-growth trees that are standing, standing, waiting for an accident to happen-- waiting for a fire.

KWAME HOLMAN: Democrat Dianne Feinstein of California, which no longer is waiting for a fire:

SEN. DIANNE FEINSTEIN: The first area where the southern California fires are burning is the pine forests of the San Bernardino Mountains. I want you to take a look at these forests and look at the homes in the middle of this forest: House, house, house, house, house, house, house, house, house, house, house, house, house. House, house, house, house, house. Do you notice the yellow forest? That is all dead and dying and infested bark beetle forest. There are 44,000 homes located in the Big Bear/Arrowhead area where this fire is now on two sides, moving. Look at these homes. Look at the dead and dying trees. Does anyone believe they have a chance of surviving if this forest isn't cleaned?

KWAME HOLMAN: Iowa Democrat Tom Harkin questioned why those homes were built there in the first place.

SEN. TOM HARKIN: If someone wants to build a house out in a wilderness area, fine, I have no problem with that. It's private land. They can do that. But I don't know that we then have the responsibility as taxpayers to come in and say we are going to spend millions of dollars to protect your house from a wildfire.

KWAME HOLMAN: The Senate bill, called "Healthy Forests," would provide $ 760 million a year, double the current amount, to the Forest Service for thinning operations on 20 million acres of federal land. Half of that money would be spent in forests closest to populated areas. Court orders blocking such projects would expire after 60 days unless renewed. Idaho Republican Mike Crapo:

SEN. MIKE CRAPO: Finally, it requires the court to balance the harms of what would happen if we don't do the thinning project or the proposed fuel reduction project, and the future harms that could come as a result of that against the current harm of what the injunction is proposed to stop.

KWAME HOLMAN: But Senator Harkin warned his colleagues against moving too fast on this legislation.

SEN. TOM HARKIN: This is not a bill that we can take a wink and a nod and let it go because everyone agrees with it.

KWAME HOLMAN: Harkin said he spoke on behalf environmental groups who complained the new rules were written too loosely, and used the "small trees" definition as an example.

SEN. TOM HARKIN: It is my understanding that these small trees can go up to 12 inches in diameter, and that these are the trees that loggers want now. These seem to be what is in demand. I am not a contractor. I don't build houses and stuff like that. But I am to understand that these are the ones most in demand right now, trees up to 12 inches in diameter-- that is a pretty good-sized tree. That is not brush. But that is what we are talking about here, going out and clearing those trees.

KWAME HOLMAN: Idaho Republican Larry Craig intimated that Harkin of Iowa didn't have a dog in this fight.

SEN. LARRY CRAIG: And before the ranking member of the Ag Committee sits down, I would be more than happy to include the protection of all the old growth in the federal forests of Iowa in this bill, if it existed. Or maybe we would put a prohibition against wildfires in Iowa on public lands in this bill. And that is something we could accomplish, because those two issues-- both the old growth, which I am sure the state of Iowa wished it had, and wildfires, which I know they would not want-- don't exist in Iowa, because no federal forest lands exist there.

KWAME HOLMAN: Though the healthy forests bill, stoked by the wildfires, was moving swiftly tonight toward approval in the Senate, it still could stall once the fires die out, and the legislation meets a version even less acceptable to environmentalists approved by the House last spring.

CONVERSATION

JIM LEHRER: Now, Democratic Presidential Candidate Retired Army General Wesley Clark. We have talked with the other eight Democratic candidates from time to time this year.

Margaret Warner has our first conversation with General Clark since he entered the race last month.

MARGARET WARNER: He's the newest entrant in a crowded field: Fifty-eight years old, born in Chicago and raised in Little Rock, Arkansas, he graduated first in his class at West Point in 1966, and went on to earn a masters degree as a Rhodes Scholar at Oxford. His 34-year Army career included 18 months as a headquarters staff officer and a company commander in Vietnam, where he was wounded and awarded the Purple Heart and Silver Star, a year as commanding general of the U.S. Southern Command in Panama, and three years, from 1997 to 2000, as the NATO supreme allied commander in Europe. There, he commanded Operation Allied Force, NATO's successful intervention in the ethnic conflict in Kosovo. He retired in 2000 as a four- star general. He opened a consulting firm in Little Rock, and has written two books on modern warfare. General Clark joins us now.

Welcome, General Clark.

WESLEY CLARK: Thank you, Margaret.

MARGARET WARNER: Welcome back as a candidate this time.

WESLEY CLARK: It's great to be with you.

MARGARET WARNER: Let's start with the big economic news today -- a jump 7 percent in the GDP-- more than 7 percent in last quarter. President Bush's aides, the White House aides are pointing to his tax cuts. Can they take the credit?

WESLEY CLARK: Well, I think that the real issue on the tax cuts is how much better could we have been if the tax cuts had gone to the people who really needed them? I mean, what you had was a lot of people in this country who really needed money. I talk to a lot of big department store owners dealing with ordinary Americans, they said our people are desperate, so when people got that check in July, you bet. But it's amazing how much of that tax cut was targeted to people who didn't need it. Almost a trillion dollars over the next ten years is going to Americans who are making, you know, $ 150,000-$ 200,000 a year or more and a lot of these people are saying they don't really need this money.

MARGARET WARNER: But now you've called for reversing some of those tax cuts.

WESLEY CLARK: I have.

MARGARET WARNER: But let's say this is the beginning of an economic rebound and a year from now, we're in a full recovery and a booming economy. Would it still be necessary in your view to reverse the Bush tax cuts?

WESLEY CLARK: Well, none of the economic models show that the recovery is going to be strong enough to restore fiscal responsibility. We're not going to get back to a balanced budget with the amount of the tax cuts that have been given away according to any of the economic models. Even if you take the most optimistic models, you say they're still too low, boost it up by another third sustained, it still doesn't get us back to a balanced budget. So this is a real problem for us because as the baby boom generation ages and retires, then we start drawing off the Social Security money that we're all putting away right now. When we're no longer earning that money, we start drawing down that and, you know, we're operating in the United States under what we call a unified federal budget so there's an operating budget and then you add in the Social Security together. That's the deficit that's $ 374 billion -- the unified federal budget.

MARGARET WARNER: So your answer is you would still take back the tax cuts for anyone earning more than $ 200,000?

WESLEY CLARK: Yes, we would. And that's the plan right now. Obviously, you know, I will always look at that. Nobody wants to have to collect tax revenues. But you have to be responsible about what the country needs.

MARGARET WARNER: All right. Let's turn to Iraq. More attacks today. There have been horrific attacks this week. If you became president tomorrow, what would you do to restore some sort of security there?

WESLEY CLARK: Well, the first thing I would do is get the big picture right. And what you've got is a regional dynamic in which both Syria and Iran are working consciously against the United States in the region because they believe that this administration intends to handle them next. So that a U.S. success, however it's defined in Iraq, means that then the United States is free to put more pressure on them. So they don't want us to have that success so the regional dynamic needs to be worked inside Iraq. We would go immediately back to Kofi Annan at the United Nations and say let's talk again about what the United Nations or an international organization could do. I would remove that occupying power, that authority there. I'd put it under the United Nations or an international organization. I would ask the Iraqi governing council to take more responsibility for governing Iraq. One of the things we want to do is we want to avoid the emergence in Iraq of more intense sect feelings. You have the Kurds in the North. They're armed; they kept their army. They're very concerned if the Turks were to come in. They're prepared if anything should go wrong in the rest of Iraq, they're prepared to say, okay, we have got our independent Kurdistan. You have the Shia in the South. They've never gotten really organized and they're not... they have not been traditionally as radicalized as the Iranian Shia population has, but they're organizing. There's a 500,000 man army of god in Baghdad. There's others and there's jostling for position and there's been some assassinations and assassination attempts in there. If that goes the wrong way, we could have real violence in Iraq.

MARGARET WARNER: All right. Let's go back to something you just said, though. Are you saying that the coalition authority that Paul Bremer heads now, you would transfer that authority to the U.N.?

WESLEY CLARK: Yes, I would.

MARGARET WARNER: Would you retain U.S. authority over the military aspect?

WESLEY CLARK: Yes, you must do that. The United Nations cannot do the military piece, but I believe that you can put the United Nations or you can form an international organization as we did in the case of Bosnia to do the political development and the economic development, and you can take Halliburton out of the expanded nation building role it has and let it do what it normally does which is provide some of the logistics back up for the American troops.

MARGARET WARNER: All right. But are you saying you would do this because you think then that would encourage foreign countries to send serious numbers of troops to help?

WESLEY CLARK: I think you do it for three reasons. First, because it takes the United States off the blame line in the eyes of the Iraqi people and especially in the Islamic world. So now it's not a U.S. occupation. It's a lot of the different nations who are simply there trying to help because remember it's not only the international authority but you make the Iraqi governing council immediately take more responsibility. Then number two, I think it improves your chance of getting more significant, more immediate grant economic assistance. Number three, I do think it makes it more likely you'll get more substantial numbers of foreign troops.

MARGARET WARNER: President Bush said in his press conference Tuesday, we're not leaving, quote unquote, until Iraq is stable. Are you suggesting that the U.S. would ever leave militarily before the situation was stable?

WESLEY CLARK: I think we have to be very careful about leaving. We don't want to leave prematurely. We don't want Iraq to fall apart, but there is a window in there in which we've got the optimum chance for stabilizing and after which if we don't handle things right, it could go downhill and be counterproductive for us.

MARGARET WARNER: So when you say, as you said in the debate Sunday night, you said you want the president... let me get the exact words. You're waiting for the president, to quote, have a strategy to get out. What is your strategy to get out?

WESLEY CLARK: Well, what I do is first of all I've just described it. I put the international authority in. I reduce the influence of the U.S. occupying authority. I put the Iraqi governing council more in charge. I work for the constitution of the Iraqis in the long term. I keep the U.S. in charge of the security situation. I build up the Iraqi security forces. And I would... I do it all the same way we did it, let's say, in the Balkans. We put out a matrix. You said here's your political. Here's your economic. Here's your military. Here's what you're going to do this month, that month, so forth. Here's where you want to be. Here's your objectives. Here's how much it's going to cost. Show it to the American people.

MARGARET WARNER: Here's what I'm trying to get at. Do you agree, for instance, with the Bush administration that until the Iraqis have a constitution and a government elected under that constitution that they can't run the show themselves?

WESLEY CLARK: No, I don't agree that they've got to have a constitution. I mean it took the United States of America seven years after its independence to get a constitution finished. I mean, we started with the Articles of Confederation. So they may work for a long time on a constitution. We don't want to be there running the show in Iraq for seven years.

MARGARET WARNER: Let me ask you about something you said Tuesday on another foreign policy issue in the speech. You said there's no way this administration can walk away from its responsibility for 9/11. What are you saying there? Are you saying the president could have prevented the September 11 attacks and somehow failed in his responsibility to do so?

WESLEY CLARK: What I'm saying is the president is the commander in chief. He's the highest authority in the United States of America. When something goes wrong, he has an obligation to lead and participate actively in the investigation of what went wrong, not to stonewall it. He needs to provide that information in the presidential commission. One more thing, Margaret: When you look at this, every military commander in the aftermath of a military operation, whether it's a success or failure, we all do what we call after-action reviews. And the commander participates in it. He's not exempt. He doesn't say, well, my intelligence officer didn't do this. He actually lays it out. They say, what happened exactly? And why did it happen? And everybody fesses up. Now we don't know exactly what happened in this administration but what we do know is that the threat of Osama bin Laden was well known and recognized on the 21st of January in 2001. What we also know is that in September on the 10th of September, there was still no plan for dealing with Osama bin Laden. We don't really know what happened. We don't know whether that was normal, whether it was abnormal but here is what I think the American people need to know. I think they need to know that the President of the United States believes that the buck stops on his desk, not on the desk of FBI official in Arizona or somebody in Minnesota who didn't communicate a memo and so forth and that everything was okay because no one told him. When you're the commander in chief, it's your obligation to know, to set the command climate as we would say in the military -- the intensity of your effort. You do your homework. You work the issues. Your highest obligation as the President of the United States next to upholding the Constitution is to assure the security of the United States of America.

MARGARET WARNER: Let me end with a quick strategy question, maybe a brief answer. When you got in this race you jumped to the top of the national polls but since then in the last five or six weeks you're still in the states where they're paying attention, New Hampshire, South Carolina, you're still down in the single digits or maybe just out of them. Is this proving tougher than you thought?

WESLEY CLARK: No it's not but it is a matter of simply getting an organization on the ground. I think we now have six people on the payroll in New Hampshire. I think the lowest next campaign has 40 and some of the campaigns have 80. We still don't have a television ad out. But we're the only one who doesn't in New Hampshire. So there are some practical matters. It just takes a while. This is like launching A... starting a transatlantic voyage and building the ship as you leave the harbor. Well, I mean that's what it was. I never thought I'd be running for the President of the United States. But I'll tell you, Margaret, I never thought the United States would be in such a condition as this both abroad and at home. We talked at the beginning about the economic situation: 3.3 million jobs lost -- the first administration since Herbert Hoover.

MARGARET WARNER: Wesley Clark, thanks for being with us.

WESLEY CLARK: Thank you.

ESSAY THE LAST WORD

JIM LEHRER: And finally tonight, essayist Roger Rosenblatt has a few last words on this Halloween Eve.

ROGER ROSENBLATT: "This isn't Hamlet, you know. It's not meant to go in my bloody ear." Those were the last words of Laurence Olivier, spoken to a hapless nurse when she spilled water on him in the hospital. "Am I dying, or is it my birthday?" Lady Astor said that at the end. We can't be sure of any of these reports, of course, but they make for delightful reading in a new little book called, "Famous Last Words," compiled by Ray Robinson, published by Workman Press. The book is delightful reading and curious reading in that people say quite different things when they come to the finish, the absolute finish. Madam Pompador implored, "wait a second." Death never does. Some of the more familiar last words we've heard all our lives. Goethe's "More light." W.C. Field's preference for Philadelphia. Recently, Bob Hope's grandson related that, near the end, the great comedian was asked where he would like to be buried. He answered, "Surprise me." One would like to be that consistent with one's final remarks, to make them a summation of the life that came before, like the fictional Citizen Kane's last word...

ACTOR: Rosebud.

ROGER ROSENBLATT: ...The supposed clue to his entire existence. Lou Costello, given a treat on his deathbed, said simply, "that was the best ice cream soda I ever tasted." ( Train whistle ) One hopes it was. Pavlova said, "get my swan costume ready." One hopes they did. ( Baby crying ) Nobody understands your outcry coming into the world. But we hang on to what we say going out. The word "closure," which is used stupidly for most experience, has meaning here. Most people die without saying anything. The rest is silence, for Hamlet if not for Olivier. One expects the truth from last words, but I don't know why. The gangster, Arnold Rothstein, who did the Black Sox baseball fix in 1919, was gunned down by other gangsters. Refusing to finger his killers, he told the cops, "My mother did it." Epitaphs, living wills, tapes of the deceased played after they are deceased, all are versions of last words. But the words one actually speaks have the quality of urgency, of drama. One gives them a special value-- a sudden ejaculation of cosmic comprehension. It rarely happens. ( Drum roll ) When the great and irascible jazz drummer Buddy Rich was dying in a hospital, the nurse asked him if, for once, he had no complaints. Rich said, "I still hate country and western." That's the way to go, I think: To go out with the same lusty outcry that you came in with -- bookends to the interesting experience that occupied your 50, 60, 100 years. "Drink to me," said Picasso. If you can't think of anything to say, count on your friends to make something up -- something brilliant and witty. When he was gunned down, Pancho Villa implored, "Don't let it end like this. Tell them I said something." That's the ticket. We want to leave them with a word that will give us a little immortality when all our other words have disappeared. I've always admired the last words of the hypochondriac written on his tombstone, "I told you I was sick." I was Roger Rosenblatt.

RECAP

JIM LEHRER: Again, the major developments of this day: The U.S. economy surged ahead in the third quarter at the fastest pace in nearly 20 years. Wildfires raged across southern California, but cooler temperatures and a light rain moved into the worst areas. And attackers in central Iraq bombed a U.S. Military supply train outside Baghdad. There were no casualties. We'll see you online, and again here tomorrow evening with Mark Shields and William Safire, among others. I'm Jim Lehrer. Thank you and good night.