The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer; February 16, 2007

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and with the continuing support of these institutions and foundations. And this program was made possible by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, and by contributions to your PBS station from viewers like you. Thank you. The U.S. House voted against the President's policy in Iraq today, 246 to 182. The non-binding resolution opposed sending another 21,500 U.S. troops. The vote came after a long week of floor debate, 17 Republicans broke ranks and voted with Democrats. The majority leader Steny Hoyer said President Bush might have vetoed an actual bill, but a resolution can't be rejected. What the President cannot veto is the opinion of the Congress of the United States.

The judgment of the United States Congress, the advice and counsel of the Congress of the United States, he cannot veto that, 246 members of the People's House said, Mr. President, the strategy that you have put forth, we do not believe will be successful. But minority leader John Boehner said, even if this vote was only symbolic, it opens a door. He charged the Democrat's ultimate goal is to cut funding for the war. The Democrats in the House and Senate intend to tie the President's hands when it comes to the conduct of war in Iraq. And that's why we want a vote in the House and Senate that says that we will not weave. The United States Congress will not cut funding for our troops in harm's way. It's black and white, and it's coming.

The Democrats have announced the strategy. Democrats deny they mean to cut funding outright. Instead, Congressman John Mirtha has called for imposing conditions that would effectively block new deployments like lengthening the time between combat tours. In the Senate, a test vote on debating the House resolution is expected sometime on Saturday. We'll have more on this story right after the news summary. The Iraqi army today reported a sharp drop in violent deaths in Baghdad. Only 10 bodies were taken to the city morgue overnight, compared with an average of 40 to 50 a day. The Iraqi commander for Baghdad pointed out the new security crackdown. The U.S. commander, Major General Joseph Phil, said it's also because insurgents have pulled back. We also do believe that they're watching us carefully. There's an air of suspense throughout the city, expectations, if you will, and we believe there's no question about it that many of these extremists are laying low and watching

to see what it is we do and how we do it. How long that will last, we don't know. Phil said that dip in violence is not expected to last. He cautioned there will be rough days ahead. An Italian judge indicted 26 Americans today in the abduction of a terror suspect. Most work for the CIA, they, along with five Italians, were charged with seizing an Egyptian man in Milan in 2003. Osama Mustafa Hassan Nasir was eventually taken to Egypt. His lawyer claims he was tortured there. The trial is set to begin June 8th, but there's no indication the U.S. will allow extradition of the agents back to Italy. South Korea today marked the 65th birthday of its leader Kim Jong-il. It came days after a nuclear agreement with the U.S. and four other countries. We have a report narrated by Kylie Morris of Independent Television News. Synchronized celebrations in Pyongyang, gleefully done marked the dear leader's special

day. Birthdays don't get better than this. Right on time, the children of your high ranking officials to claim its beauty. When I see this beautiful flower, I feel I've seen Kim Jong-il himself. And then thousands of people coming to the streets and dance. No one volunteers for these systematic displays, their choreographed in the workplace and by district level administrators. When they get home, according to Chinese sources, these North Koreans will find an extra months food rations. 500 grams of cooking oil, a kilogram of sugar, five eggs and a bottle of alcohol. Only well-fed girls get to sing for the dear leader's birthday. Their pop idol smiles will be watched by everyone lucky enough to have TV and electricity

this holiday. There's no dwelling on the deprivations today, particularly not since Kim Jong-il claimed to have outfoxed the Americans at the six party talks. North Korean state television has reported a great victory by the dear leader, under which the nation will keep its nuclear weapons, but freeze its nuclear program. In return, it receives a million tons oil for its power stations, and South Korea, it believes is about to send half a million tons of rice and fertilizer. Happy days seem near again, despite eight agencies warning a third of the people don't have enough to eat, testimony of torture and murder inside detention camps and thousands risking their lives each month to escape the dear leaders embrace. Kim Jong-il rarely makes public appearances. It was unclear if he attended any of the celebrations today. The last stranded motorists were rescued today in eastern Pennsylvania, two days after a major

winter storm. Hundreds of people were trapped on Interstate 78 starting on Wednesday. Snow and ice created a 50-mile backup. Today, road crews worked to clear parts of I-78 and two more interstates. Some sections were covered in six inches of ice. The storm is now blamed for at least 24 deaths in the northeast and midwest. The house today approved a package of tax breaks for small businesses. Its worth $1.8 billion over 10 years, and it could be coupled with the bill raising the minimum wage already passed by the house. The Senate has passed a wage bill with tax breaks worth more than $8 billion. House and Senate negotiators will have to work out the differences. Inflation at the wholesale level fell in January mostly due to falling energy prices. The Labor Department reported today producer prices were down six tenths of one percent, the most in three months. Separately, the Commerce Department found new home building fell 14 percent to the lowest

level in nearly 10 years. In Wall Street, the Dow Jones industrial average gained two points to close at 12,767. The Nasdaq fell less than one point to close at 2496. For the week, both the Dow and Nasdaq gained one and a half percent. That's it for the news summary tonight. Now, the House War debate and vote won Senators' view, Shields and Brooks, the killing in Darfur, and a new coin for a buck. The House of Representatives takes an official position against increasing the number of troops in Iraq, New's Our Congressional Correspondent Kwame Holman reports. Just before noon today, California Democrat George Miller, a 30-year veteran of the House called on President Bush to take note of the historic action about to be undertaken by the chamber. When we pass this bipartisan resolution, the President should pause.

Because at that moment, the President will not have the support of the United States House of Representatives, and at that moment, the President will also not have the support of the people of the United States. The Democrat written resolution was approved late this afternoon after four days of often passionate debate. It says Congress will continue to support and protect U.S. troops in Iraq, but that Congress disapproves of the President's decision to send more troops. We owe our troops a course of action in Iraq that is worthy of their sacrifice. Today we set the stage for a new direction on Iraq by passing a resolution with fewer than 100 words, which supports our troops and disapproves of the President's escalation proposal. Instead, Democrats have proposed a different course of action to the President.

After 45 hours of debate and speeches from almost 400 members, the final vote was 246 to 182. Democrats got help from 17 Republicans who crossed the aisle to support the resolution. One was staunch conservative Walter Jones of North Carolina. Four years ago, Jones led the effort to change the name of French fries sold in the capital to Freedom fries in response to the French government's opposition to the U.S. war effort. But soon after, Jones said he began to regret his vote for the war. He attended a funeral in late 2003 for Marine Sergeant Michael Bitz killed in Nasseria during the initial invasion, leaving a widow and three young children. A sergeant who left a wife and three children, twins that were born two weeks after he was deployed, he never saw him. And at the funeral, the wife read the last letter, word for word. She cried and I cried too by God.

He was driving home back 72 miles back to my home in North Carolina. I had such a rush of emotion of the fact that, you know, when you send somebody to give their life this country, you better be sure that it is necessary. There is no other option. This week, Jones signed on as a co-sponsor of the Democrats' resolution, bucking his president and most members of his party. He explained why he felt he should. Because I have such strong faith in God that there is one word that I think is critical to the future of a democracy. And that one word is truth. The American people must have the truth because if they have the truth, then they will support their government. But if they start questioning whether they have government, no matter which level of government, is not giving them the truth, then I think they will rebal. James Clyburn, the House Democratic Web, said he believed Jones spoke for many of his Republican colleagues who were stifled during years of strict Republican rule.

I think that many of them were just as disenchanted with what was happening to them about that leadership as we were. But Jones didn't speak for Darryl Aisa of California. Aisa came to the floor to argue certain members were telling the troops in Iraq to give up. Are they toppled Saddam? And now they're being told to cut and run. That's what this is leading to. The speaker, we cannot do that and we know it. North Carolina Republican Howard Coble, who also supported the resolution, mocked that line of attack. Oh, you cannot leave. You'll be accused of cutting and running were told. If we had removed Saddam, which most Iraqis wanted, and then withdrew four or five weeks later or even four or five months later, that would have constituted cutting and running. But we've been there for years, and Mr. Speaker, over 3,100 of our troops have given

the ultimate sacrifice. In excess of 25,000 have suffered injuries, many permanent disabling injuries. This is sacrifice, not cutting and running. Ironically, most of the Republicans who voted against the President's troop buildup are from solidly Republican congressional districts. However, New Mexico's Heather Wilson, who barely won reelection in the fall, opposed the resolution today, even though she also opposes the troop buildup. The first woman veteran ever elected to Congress, Wilson this week complained that the resolution would protect only the troops in Iraq, not the thousands yet to be deployed. What about the five regades of young Americans who are now preparing their families and packing their gear to deploy? What about them? What are you saying to them? Will we be blind, body armor for them?

Will we have armored humvies for them? Majority leaders, Denny Hoyer, rushed to the House floor to rebut Wilson's remarks. No one ought to come to this floor and say that this Congress, 435 of us will not support whatever soldier or sailor or marine is deployed to Iraq. Whether it's today or tomorrow, they will have our support. As the debate in the House continue to unfold today, Republican leader John Boehner joined his Senate colleagues to predict the next move by the Democratic majority and enforceable cut off of funding for the war. This is all part of their plan to eliminate funding for our troops that are in the harm's way, and we stand here as Republicans in the House and Senate committed to making sure our troops in harm's way have all the funds and equipment they need to win this war in Iraq.

James Clyburn acknowledged that the resolution passed today was just the first of several moves to redirect U.S. policy in Iraq. It is a first step, it is an expression, it is saying to the President that you've put forth the policy that we do not think is the best policy, let's have a partnership here and let's have some discussions about how we ought to go forward rather than have everything done on high and rubber-stamped by those Congress, we are not going to rubber-stamped anymore. Meanwhile, Senate Democrats have scheduled a rare Saturday vote on how to proceed on the Iraq resolution there. And for more on the action the Senate is preparing to take, we go to Judy Woodruff. Early last week, the Democratic majority in the Senate tried and failed to muster the 60 votes needed to launch its own debate and vote on a resolution opposed to the troop buildup in Iraq, but with majority leader Harry Reid scheduling another such test vote

tomorrow, will the results be any different? For that we go to Republican Senator Chuck Hagel of Nebraska, he is one of several Senate Republicans who support such a resolution and yet voted against allowing a formal debate to begin. Senator Hagel, thank you very much for being with us, since you support that resolution and refresh us on why you voted against allowing the debate last week. The vote was a procedural vote as you have noted, and I, as you also noted, was one of the authors of the so-called Warner resolution and had an awful lot to do with framing it. But as to why I voted the way I did, essentially it was because I have always believed that Senate is about one thing more than anything else and that's protecting minority rights. And I believe that the minority, which I'm a Republican, part of, even though I don't agree with my party's position on this, does deserve the right to frame its own resolutions,

bring them to the floor for a vote. So, have you changed your mind? Well I will have to vote tomorrow again, and I will vote for a closure tomorrow. And the reason I will is this is just another procedural vote. We do need to move this forward now, we've given the two leaders two weeks to try to resolve this. They have at least so far been unable to do it. We need to have, we need to have the next series of votes. This is a procedural vote, and I will vote to move the procedure along. So you have changed your position. Well I've only changed my position on a procedural vote, not on the issue. But it's a matter of whether the debate goes forward. Will the opponents now be able to get the 60 votes they need to allow this debate to get underway? I doubt if there will be 60 votes tomorrow. But again, I think we should keep our eye focused on the issue here. And that is debate of resolutions and votes on those resolutions. We will have that debate, Judy, there's no question about that.

What format comes in is the only question. Obviously the House passed today a resolution, which we will take up, I believe, I hope. When we come back, if we go out next week. But there will be different forms of the Iraqi debate, appropriations. The President will be asking for $100 billion in new emergency supplemental spending for Iraq and Afghanistan. So this is just but one set of issues as far as the debate itself and one set of votes. This is going to go on for some time. And it should be played out. So the American people have an opportunity to know exactly where they're members of Congress, the House and Senate stand, on a further escalation of America's military involvement in Iraq. But essentially what the Senate will be saying, if they don't get the 60 votes to let the debate go forward, is that they don't think it's important enough to make this statement, at least not enough senators do. Well, I don't ever ascribe many of my colleagues there, motives or reasons why they vote. The way they do, I just explain why I'm going to vote for culture because I think it is

this issue. Iraq is the most important pressing issue facing this country, and I think it's going to become more and more dangerous unless we do have an honest open debate on this so the American people can hear it. We don't want to put American opposition, which it could well be in in six months, where the American people are so frustrated, they say to their members of Congress, we want out. Let's just cut the funding and we want out. That would be the wrong thing to do in my opinion and irresponsible, but it could get there unless we work our way along here on these issues that we should be debating. What do you say to those who will say, well, the House has now made a clear statement with its vote today, opposing the troops, surge, supporting the troops, but opposing the President's policy, the Senate on the other hand, if what happens tomorrow is, as you say, is going to look as if it's still tied and nots over this. Well, that's right, and the American people have a rather low regard for the Congress

United States as well as the President right now, reflected in every poll, and we deserve it. My goodness, if we cannot take the time to debate and have a very legitimate discussion on behalf of the American people, and especially the military men and women, we ask to go fight and die in their families, then what are we there for? What is our job if we don't do this? Well, yes, if we can't get closer tomorrow, I think the American people will lose further confidence in our ability to help govern this country. And yet, Senator, in both houses, we're talking about a non-binding resolution. Does it really amount to very much when all is said and done? Oh, it does, absolutely. When you put the Congress United States on record on any of these big policy issues, that's significant. You know, I've heard some of my colleagues here in the Senate to talk about paper mache paper confetti resolutions. Well, I remind them, Judy, and I reminded them, rather pointedly in a floor speech I gave

this week, as I quoted a number of them, from past the beach over the last 12 years on Bosnia and Haiti and Somalia and Kosovo, non-binding resolutions when we had troops over there putting the Senate on record on what our position is. The Congress can't lead. We can't conduct any policy, especially foreign policy or war policy, without the support of the American people, without the support of the Congress. But, Senator, you mentioned appropriations. There are those who are in the over in the House who are talking about funding issues down the road. If you can't even in the Senate get enough votes together to have a debate on a non-binding resolution, what makes you think there are going to be enough votes in the future to affect funding or appropriations for this war? Well, this is a matter of convergence, Judy. The events are taking us along a very swift current. And I don't have a dot in my mind that this debate is going to occur. We will be forced to debate on appropriations, Judy.

There's no question about that. You can't evade that or avoid making the hard choices. When we are all going to have to vote on the President's supplemental emergency appropriations request, we're going to have to vote on the defense authorization appropriations request. So within that framework, we'll have a very intense debate on Iraq. What do you say to the viewers out there, the American people who are looking at the Congress and saying, come down on one side of this, one side or another, on this issue, one side or another? Well, I think that's partly what we saw in the House resolution debate today. That's what we'll see in the resolutions we eventually debate in the Senate positions we take. Now, one of the resolutions that is before the Senate, not formally yet, but one of them that I help write, this will call one a resolution, we do take a position that we're opposed to further military escalation in Iraq. And then we also say that there are some things we think the administration should be doing

to enhance our position, and I think that's responsible. So no, we take a position on it, either you're for it or you're against that escalation of American military involvement in Iraq. And just quickly, how long before you think there will be action in the Senate? Well, I can't predict the next votes tomorrow and we'll see, but we can't avoid this. It is going to catch up with this and the longer we avoid it, the more we squander the public trust of the American people, and we fail the American people and these military men and women and their families. Senator Chuck Hagel, thank you very much. Thank you, Judy. Coming up, looking for peace in Darfur, selling dollar coins, and the analysis of shields and brooks, that syndicated columnist Mark Shields, New York Times columnist David Brooks.

And Mark, there was a great deal of difference of opinion on the House floor over whether this non-binding resolution was important, not important, but they passed that it was hardly a squeaker. It wasn't a squeaker, Ray, and it was interesting. You're right, I was up there and no David was to listen to the debate. And the Republicans' criticism of the Democrats' position seemed to be, ultimately, this is an empty gesture, it's a hollow, meaningless, nothing but words, or this is the end of Western civilization, as we know it. In fact, Adam Putnam, the chairman of the Republican House Congress, combined both positions in his own argument that it was meaningless and empty rhetoric and a threat to the Western world. So it's an important first step, it's about to go in the fifth year. But first step toward what? Well, it's the fifth year, it's the fifth year of the war, it's about to begin. And this is the first time this Congress is dealt with it, debated it, voted it on anything. And I think that the next step is going to be in the form of the dealing, just as

Chakegal told Judy, dealing with the appropriations process, and it's going to be a real fight. It's no doubt about it. Well, David, we also heard Chakegal say that this was a big deal for all the attempts to minimize it over the last several days. What do you think? No, I'd say a medium deal, I think a precursor to a big deal. I mean, I think you can't beat something with nothing. And so far, the war opponents have nothing. It's no surprise that the war is unpopular and that was registered in the vote. But you've got to have some alternative policy. And some people do, Jack Mirth has a policy with troll, other people do, Joe Biden has a policy. But you've got to have resolutions that promote an alternative. And until there's an alternative, I don't think you're going to see much fracturing in the Republicans. And you really won't see much weakening in the White House resolve to continue with the surge. So we're going to get to a debate where Jack Mirth is going to say they're going to impose restrictions and conditions on the money that's being spent or on the way the troops are rotated in and are out. And at that point, you not only have a big debate because you've got two alternative policies, you have a huge constitutional crisis because you will have people in the White

House saying to people in the Congress, you guys are micromanaging troop levels in a war. You can't do that. And that really will be a big moment. Do you recall anything like this happening, a rebuke to a president's policy during a time of war? Now, not to a military operation that's already underway. The surge is underway, the troops are going out there. And so after it's already underway, I don't recall anything like that. I think there are a number of proposals, not just Jack Mirth as Carl Levin's had, I mean, Barack Obama has Hillary Clinton has which have criticized as well. But I think that what we have now, Ray, is that fight coming up. And I think Mirth, Jack Mirth, who's the chairman of the House Subcommittee on Defense Appropriations, has framed it in a way that is going to be politically difficult for Republicans to oppose. That is, he's saying we're not going to send any troops in unless they are fully equipped, fully armored.

Push themselves, and the equipment they're using. And absent that, they will not go in, and that they have to be fully trained. Now, the idea that you're going to be some sort of a sunshine patriot or a summer soldier and say, well, that's all right, let them go whatever the way. That to me is a reasonable. Now, obviously, he's putting, it's a political position he's taking. He's against this war, he has stated his opposition to it, he wants this war to end. But I think that, as a political position, is almost unassailable for the war. But he's also insisting on a much longer interval between combat. He is that. And isn't that just a backwards way, a way of backing into, cutting down on the number of people who can go to Iraq? And General Schoemaker yesterday, the outgoing Army Chief of Staff, yesterday, said that the army is not ready, that it cannot deploy, that it is exhausted, that it really has to be restored, refurbished, and resupplied, as well as the troops. No, I think that's it, but I think those, the idea of people going in untrained and

unarmored is unacceptable to the American people, irrespective of where they sit on this war. Go ahead. Yeah, I would say, first of all, show some directness. If you want to get the troops out, call for a resolution that calls for getting the troops out. Don't monkey with the rotation schedules and the conditions. I think just think it's indirect, it's not honorable, do it straightforwardly. The second thing I'd say, the surge is underway. We're going to have some troops already going there over the next several months. Are we going to leave them hanging out there without the full body, which the president and Petraeus thinks they need? I think that's a perfectly legitimate argument. Republicans would say, you're leaving these guys just hanging out there, and the people they need to complete the mission aren't going to be coming. And the third and the most powerful argument I think the Republicans are going to use is that you're sitting there in Congress. You don't manage wars and how many troops should be in a city or what neighborhood they should be in. That's the president's job. That's in the Constitution. And there's plenty of backup for that. And we should not have 435 members of Congress micromanaging that. Quick response.

You have a responsibility as a member of Congress. You voted to go to war, you have a responsibility to oversee that war. This war has gone unsupervised. There's been no accountability for the past four years. The idea that you would not frame your position, and Merth has been very candid about where his position is. He wants this war over. But you want to frame it in a way that is politically defensible because you know what the other side is going to do. It's already set it. You're selling out, you're cutting and running, you're going to use every scare tactic in the world. The idea that you go in and unilaterally disarm politically in presenting your position, I think doesn't make any sense. David the Senate was way out ahead on these very questions. Then got tangled in its various procedural knots. The House moved very quickly on this, for better or worse. Talk a little bit about the dynamic between the two bodies now. Now, the Senate's doing a very unusual Saturday session to take a test vote of all things. Has the Senate's thunderbin stolen on this question? They certainly feel that.

I saw our inspector say, you know, we don't want to be the dominant body. We should at least be equal. We should be relevant to the rate. The reality is they want to be the dominant body, believe me. So they are really the more foreign policy-oriented body, and they want to be out front, and they know they screwed up with their own internal dynamics that rendered them irrelevant to this debate, which is exactly where they don't want to be, so they're coming back Sunday. I'm not even sure they're going to get to the vote to get the debate to get what they need, but they really know they messed up. Well, Mark, does that shake loose votes that had been wavering? People who had been enticed by one side or the other on this thing? I think what you'll see is that, I don't think they'll get to the 60, at least that was my own judgment of what I found today. I do think that you'll find some of the Republicans who voted on the initial vote with their party and the procedural vote, such as Chuck Hagle, such as John Warner, responses, will vote to bring it up, so that it'll be somewhere in the higher 50s. There'll be improvement, but there won't be the magical number, and they won't come to that point of debate.

But Hagle put it well, they're going to have to confront this in appropriations. They're going to have to confront this in defense authorization. I mean, it's going to be debated. You can postpone the debate as long as you want, but the debate is going to come. Well, the 80 or 90 senators that are running for president will have to be in the Senate. Well, that's Washington this weekend instead of New Hampshire. It's kept the same Columbia South Carolina's more important than voting on Iraq, I think, right now, whether whoever you are running for president. But the field is fleshing out on both sides. It certainly is. We had Governor Romney come in, and we had the 112th announcement by Mayor Giuliani that he was, he was in fact going to run. And it's an interesting field, it's becoming, I think, a fascinating field. What do you think, David? Three bigs on either side, Giuliani moved three centimeters closer to exploring the possibility of maybe conditionally entertaining the option of running. And to me, right now, he's had the best period, actually. McCain is dropping on the Republican side because of ties to the war. Romney's really been dropping because of the flip-flops on crucial life issues.

And Giuliani seems to be floating above, and it's worth remembering he's number one in the polls right now. And what strikes me, I spent some time with some serious Republican evangelical donors. This week that they weren't rejecting, or rejecting Giuliani, even though he is extremely crypto. Well, that's interesting because you're saying the Romney flip-flops, such as they are, are hurting him, but isn't Mayor Giuliani trying to stake out some safer ground on some of these things? Yeah, no, he is. They're all moving as candidates tend to, but what strikes me is, at least among this group, was that they were not satisfied with any of the options, but they were not rejecting Giuliani out of hand. And this is a group that knows what Giuliani stands. It's always worth reminding ourselves that 60 percent of Republican voters do not know that Rudy Giuliani is pro-choice. And so when they discover that, he'll lose some support, but nonetheless, a lot of people are going to decide, and that was my sense from this group, was that, you know, we don't agree with them on these issues, but it's war, and he's right for this moment. I would just say, on poll numbers at this point, and I think David would agree, they are

written at the water's edge in wet sand. This is February of 2007. This is a year before the primaries. I mean, we had President Muske, we had President Romney in 1968, Mitt Romney's father, and I think that raises something that I think the Governor Romney's problems are deeper than flip-flops are becoming more conservative, it isn't like he changed and went to the other direction. I think America has become a more tolerant people in the last half-century, more tolerant place. Just in 1958, 54 percent of Americans admitted they would not vote for black for president. Now, only 5 percent will say that. When Jack Kennedy ran one out of five said that no circumstance would go for a Catholic, that's down to 4 percent. The one exception is Mormons, and his the irony, Ray, and when George Romney ran Mitt Romney's father, Governor Michigan in 1968, 17 percent of Americans said they wouldn't vote

for a moment, now a full quarter admit upfront that they would not vote for a moment. It's really, he's encountering an enormous prejudice, which I think he will confront. Not unlike Kennedy David the Houston Minister's speech in 1960, but I think he has to. Is the war forcing some things to happen earlier? Is the conversation on the trail getting more serious sooner than it would have been? Otherwise, on both the Democratic and the Republican. That's a good point. I think there is an error of sobriety. I don't think the war is defining the Republican race. They're all within a stonest row of each other, but it is defining the Democratic race, and in particular Hillary Clinton, who's coming under this intense pressure to apologize for position. And it has created a sobriety, it's also created a sense, a new, a different look at the candidates. Is Barack Obama ready for a war time? Rudy Giuliani probably wouldn't be a serious candidate if not for the war. So it does pervade the whole race. I think the Republican race is being increasingly defined by it. I think John McCain is paying, not simply for him to be in the most stalwart and visible

support of the president's policy and his troop surge, but also for having been the day factor running made of George W. Bush in 2004. I think it's in the slippage there, but he is the work and he's got the votes on it. Giuliani and Giuliani are positioned. They haven't voted on it. They've been chummy and supportive. Giuliani is moving now, Ray. Giuliani is saying, wouldn't it go on him when more troops wouldn't have dismantled Saddam's army. He's getting a little daylight between himself and George W. Fellas have a great weekend. Thank you. Now, for our Darfur update, Jeffrey Brown spoke yesterday with the Bush administration's pointman trying to settle the conflict in Sudan. Four years after the killing began, the Darfur region of Sudan remains violent and unsettled and the killing continues. In all hundreds of thousands have died in more than two and a half million are refugees. In 2004, the Bush administration first labeled the crisis a genocide.

In 2006, peace deal came and went, plans to mobilize a UN peacekeeping force have stalled. The government supported John Deweed militias have continued their marauding and rebel factions fight one another. Last September, President Bush appointed Andrew Nachios as his special envoy to Sudan. He previously served as U.S. aid administrator, he's a professor at Georgetown University and joins us now. Welcome to you. Let me start with this situation on the ground. Earlier this week, you were quoted as fearing a potential new bloodbath. Strong language. What do you see happening? Well, the John Deweed militia, which are the allies of the Sudanese government, they're the Arab militias. They live in Sudan, in Darfur, are reported to have been asked last October to empty the camps, the displaced camps, where the refugees were the refugees, where the displaced people are, who fled the massacres in 2004. It has not happened yet, I believe that the diplomacy of the United States and the international community has restrained that from happening.

There are elements in the Sudanese government that want a negotiated peace, but there are other elements that think a military solution is the only way out. We're trying to convince them military solution just means more people are going to get killed and they will be no end to this conflict. And so our view is there needs to be immediate negotiation, NSCs fire on the rebel side and on the government side. Well, so to what extent is the government at this point either fomenting or allowing the killing to continue? Well, they're doing some of the killing. The Sudanese military and the John Deweed burned down 100 villages. I think it was in November in the Zagawa area because they had a major move against Zagawa rebels. There are three rebel, three tribes that are the base for the rebellion. One is the four tribe, the other is the Zagawa and then the Ma's elite. And so when they attack the rebels, they also attack the villages they come from and that's one of the problems. Is it your belief and is it still U.S. policy that genocide is occurring in Sudan? Because of the nature of the rebellion, the attacks of the Sudanese government have been

against the tribes from entering the rebellion and they have been masking people from particular ethnic group and that is definition of a genocide when you're killing non-combatants and not just directing this against the rebels themselves. This however, the nature of the conflict has changed, most people lived in villages prior to the war and most of those people who are African who are at risk from those tribes are now in displaced camps and displaced camps have not been attacked. I mean, one has a little one four months ago but in a broad base they have not launched massive attacks to disperse the camps and I am worried, I have been worried since I took over that there are people who would like to do that. So I think the big risk now is people being enclosed in areas, that's where you have massacres, people enclosed in areas in these camps being targeted. Hasn't happened yet and I've warned the Sudanese government, President Bush has warned them and so is Secretary Rice and so far it's held. Now you just use the word warning.

Now in November you set it a State Department briefing, January 1st we either see a change or we go to plan B. Now what is plan B exactly and why has it not been implemented? When I made those comments we had the Security Council, the United have passed Resolution 1706 which is a resolution calling for a UN peacekeeping operation in Darfur. The Sudanese government completely rejected it so there will never be one blue helmet in Darfur under any circumstances ever will go to war before it will happen and President Bushier made very, very aggressive remarks on that in September. Since then, Cofianan has had a meeting of the Africans, the Europeans, the United States, the Chinese were there and Arab states were there and they fashioned a compromise called the Addis Compromise of early November and that was affirmed by the African Union and Boudja a month later and that is now the operative plan.

In December the Sudanese said we're still not going to allow any blue helmets. You can do all the compromise that you want to but we're not going to do the blue helmets in Darfur. I made an agreement with President Bashir in December that if we at the UN affirmed the compromise achieved Addis he would try to change the policy of his government on blue helmets and he did and in mid-January the Sudanese government allowed a very small number I think was 65 blue helmets for the first time in Darfur. So we made progress. We've made some halting bits of progress but we are dissatisfied with that and we've told the Sudanese we can't keep making these little steps we need to break through and most importantly not just have blue helmets in Darfur in a hybrid peacekeeping operation between the African Union and the UN which is what the compromise achieved and Addis was. We need now a negotiated piece between the rebels and the government without a negotiated

piece there's not going to be any end to this. But why not apply more pressure in whatever this plan B idea would be? You know there are critics saved Darfur campaign and others who say the time to talk is past it's time for us to do more and there have been reports about possible financial economic sanctions there are proposals to have a no fly zone implemented by NATO or the UN. Why not do something stronger at this point? Well the question is what you want them to do in other words you have to connect the sanctions and the aggressive measures we call plan B with specific changes in their behavior and that's what we're formulating now in an operational plan where we're connecting specific things we'd like to achieve with elements of plan B. We've already actually implemented parts of level one of plan B done on a smaller scale and the more aggressive measures we're going to connect to specific objectives and benchmarks later on.

What would certain things trigger further actions like the kinds of things that you were talking about fearing more action against the refugee camps? That's correct. That would trigger all the Sudanese already that if they attack the camps then we will go to plan B. And we've made that very clear it is policy of the U.S. government announced it last week and a hearing before the House International Relations Committee and so we've made that very clear. We've also said if there's a systematic effort to expel the NGOs and the UN aid agencies that are providing support to people in those camps there's going to be a movement to plan B by the United States government. We made that clear earlier. I think that's one reason of several why the Sudanese government has not done that. And so we want to make sure that it's very clear what we're expecting and what the consequence will be if we don't reach that. Now, but once again the only way to resolve this so that the bloodletting is gone and

that two and a half million people can go back to their homes and renew their lives is a negotiated peace. And the Sudanese government took a step yesterday which was very important to us. The first two meetings of the rebels have divided into 12 different factions and some of them are fighting each other. I met with them in August, I'm sorry, I met with them in January in Chad and I said you've got to get a night, it's not for me or the U.S. government to say you're politically your needs to be, but you need to choose someone to negotiate with. Let me ask you finally about the role of China here. President Hu Jintao was in Sudan, Sudan not too long ago. There have been reports that the Chinese quietly at least have pushed the Sudanese government to take some action on Darfur, but then at the same time their public statements from the Chinese officials suggest that's not our role. We don't interfere with the Sudanese government. They have important clout there because of their economic ties. Are you satisfied with what they're doing there?

Are they acting in a positive way or do you want to see more? Early in January I went to Beijing at President Bush and Secretary Rice's request and I spent three days meeting with a Chinese leadership at the most senior level and we discussed this. I told them what our objectives were that we really don't want confrontation, we'd like a negotiated peace, but the Sudanese were not being cooperative. And they said that they took the same position. So we are told that President Hu delivered the message to President Pashir that he needs to move along on implementing the UN AU deal agreed to in Addis and a negotiated settlement. The Chinese are not confrontational. They do not believe in interfering in the internal affairs of any country. And so their worldview is a little different than ours. I still think they can be helpful. We were disappointed because there were mixed messages when the President who announced the palace being loaned for the palace being built in Sudanic, kind of upset all of us here in the United States.

It was sort of a mixed message. But I still think that Chinese can play an important and stabilizing role because President Pashir is going to listen to President Hu in a way that he might not listen to the rest of us in the West. All right. Andrew Nazzios is the special envoy to Sudan. Thank you very much. Finally tonight, a new push for the use of dollar coins. Americans got a shiny new addition to their pocket change this week. The presidential dollar coin, featuring the nation's first president, George Washington. The U.S. Mint will issue four of these gold colored coins a year in the order that the president served. On the head side, you'll find, literally, presidential heads, John Adams, Thomas Jefferson and James Madison will also be released this year. Each coin will be minted only once during a 10-week period. On the tail side, each coin features the Statue of Liberty.

And the edges are inscribed with the year of minting, E. Pluribus Unum. In God, we trust, and the mint mark showing where it was struck. But selling the American public on the idea of using, not just collecting dollar coins, hasn't been easy. The U.S. Mint is released three other dollar coins since 1971. The president Dwight Eisenhower dollar, the Susan B. Anthony dollar, and in 2000, the sackage away a dollar, all of which failed to gain wide circulation. The recent Associated Press poll found three-fourths of Americans want to keep the paper dollar, and they were evenly split on the idea of having both a paper bill and a dollar coin. Joining me now is the director of the U.S. Mint, Edmund Moy and Mr. Moy. Why, after our recent history with this, introduce a new dollar coin. The timing is really good. Inflation is taken, it's toll. A quarter doesn't buy as much anymore. They're just up in New York, quarter by seven-and-a-half cents in a parking meter.

Dollar coins are becoming more practical. But if they are side by side with an equally valued currency, aren't we pretty conservative about money? Are we going to accept a new coin? All of our surveys and internal market research has shown that Americans have gotten much more interested in using the dollar coin of the survey that has been discussed as over half of all Americans, which is between 140 and 150 million Americans are interested in using this. When you finally set down to design the thing, and I mean you and all the other people in this business, did you go to school on what works and what doesn't work? Did you talk to vendors, transit systems, and say, well, what do you need a dollar coin to do? Absolutely. And all of the above. And one of the lessons that we've learned, for example, is from the 50-state quarter program that Americans like a rotating series of designs. So you're like checking their change on a periodic basis to see what that new design is. And the presidential dollar coin program was based on that where we do four presidents

a year. Did you try to understand why earlier releases didn't work and try to avoid some of the design problems with those? Sure. Susan B. Anthony, for example, had a silver cast to it, which made it very hard to distinguish itself from a quarter. What we've learned from the Sacajawea that was very positively received was its golden alloy that we used. So when you look at your change, you can easily identify that that's a dollar coin. So what did you do this time to sort of bring in the best elements and still make a coin that we can afford to make and widely distribute? Yeah. What we did this time on the coin was to keep that golden color. There's one of us to take the models of the country, E pluribus unum and ingot retrust and highlight them by putting them on the edge of the coin. That does two things. One, it gets Americans to look at their coinage a little more and say, where are those models and reacquains them with that? But also, if you grab the coins out of your pocket and you have a column of them, you can

easily distinguish from the side that you got a dollar coin. The other thing that we did was the series and having that rotating series of designs when people look at their coins more, they use them more. So William Henry Harrison, who was president for a month, is going to have about the same amount of play as Franklin Roosevelt, who was president for 14 years or that. That's right. And one of the wonderful pieces about American coinage is that it also represents history and it's an education opportunity. 50 stakeholders got my nieces and nephews interested in state geography. We hope that these presidential dollars get kids interested in not only collecting them, but understanding and learning about those presidents. When the Congress and the Mint commits itself to a series like this that will stretch over the next dozen or so years, is there any revisiting? Will you go back and see, well, is the polish, the finish working right? Are these coins wearing well or the aging well?

Yeah, the point that you made it as we began is we're constantly learning. And if we weren't, we wouldn't be doing our job. And so our obligation to Congress is to continue to give them feedback on how the coins are doing and what we can do to improve. But it does take an act of Congress to change the way that we're doing things. Are we ever going to embrace a dollar coin if we still have a paper dollar? I'm not, I don't know what the answer to that question is, but I do know that the purpose of our program is not to supplant the dollar bill, but instead to offer an option to Americans so that they have a choice so they can use the currency that's most convenient for them for each transaction. Director Moy, thanks for being with us. It's good to be with you, Ray. Again, to the major developments of this day, the U.S. House voted against sending more troops to Iraq to 46 to 182.

The vote came on a non-binding resolution and violence was down in Baghdad today. The U.S. military said insurgents may be holding back to see how a security crackdown develops. Washington Week can be seen later this evening on most PBS stations. We'll see you online. And again, here Monday evening, have a great weekend. I'm Ray Suarez. Thanks for joining us. Good night. Major funding for the new sour with Jim Lara is provided by... What does the future hold? Will you have the choices to make your world better? To live the life you dream of? At Pacific Life, planning for a better tomorrow is what we're all about. That's why for over 135 years Pacific Life has offered millions of people a world of financial solutions to help them live well now and plan well for the future. Pacific Life, the power to help you succeed.

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. . . . Good evening, I'm Ray Swar, as Jim Lehrer is away. On the news hour tonight, the news of this Friday, then two takes on the Iraq War resolution,

excerpts from the final day of debate before the House approved its measure, and an interview with Republican Senator Chuck Hagel, who opposes the president's plan to send more troops. Plus, the weekly analysis of Mark Shields and David Brooks, a conversation about the crisis in Darfur, with U.S. special envoy Andrew Nazios, and a look at the new $1 coin. . Major funding for the news hour with Jim Lehrer is provided by. . Somewhere in the hard land, a child is sitting down to breakfast, which is why a farmer is rising for a 15-hour day, and a trucker is beginning a five-day journey. An ADM is turning corn and wheat, soy and cocoa beans into your favorite foods. Somewhere in the hard land, a child is sitting down to breakfast, which is why so many work so long, and take their job to hard. ADM, resourceful by nature.

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The U.S. House voted against the President's policy in Iraq today. 246 to 182. The non-binding resolution opposed sending another 21,500 U.S. troops. The vote came after a long week of floor debate. 17 Republicans broke ranks and voted with Democrats. Majority leader Steny Hoyer said President Bush might have vetoed an actual bill, but a resolution can't be rejected. What the President cannot veto is the opinion of the Congress of the United States. The judgment of the United States Congress. The advice and counsel of the Congress of the United States. He cannot veto that. 246 members of the People's House said, Mr. President, the strategy that you have put forth, we do not believe will be successful. But minority leader John.

Thank you.