The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer; September 5, 2006

I'm Jim Lara, today's news, a new president for Mexico, the Congressional Agenda, a 9-Eleven story, and a 9-Eleven story, all tonight on the New Zealand. Good evening, I'm Jim Lara.

On the news hour tonight, the news of this Tuesday, then I'll look at what is next for Mexico, after today's declaration of a winner in its election for president. An assessment of what's on the plate for Congress now, following the summer recess, and two 9-Eleven stories, a conversation with Lawrence Wright about his new book, The Looming Tower, and a profile of a young New Yorker who joined the Marines the day after the attacks. Major funding for the news hour with Jim Lara is provided by the world's demand for energy will never stop, which is why a farmer is growing corn, and a farmer is growing soy, and why ADN is turning these crops into biofuels. The world's demand for energy will never stop, which is why ADN will never stop. We're only getting started.

ADN, resourceful by nature. At CIT, we provide the financing to keep healthcare strong and healthy. We help energy companies find new resources. We work with communications companies to make the world smaller and life bigger. We offer financial aid to make college possible for more students. At CIT, we help finance the future, because that's the place to be. See it with CIT. And by Pacific Life, BP, the Atlantic philanthropies, and with the generous and continuing financial 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. Felipe Calderon was certified officially today as the winner of Mexico's presidential election.

The top elections court unanimously rejected allegations of fraud. Calderon, the ruling party candidate, became president-elect two months after the vote, is leftist opponent Andre Manuel Lopez-Obrador lost by just over 230,000 votes. The court's ruling is final, but Lopez-Obrador has said he won't accept it. Well, I have more on the story right after this news summary. The Bush administration claimed progress today in the war on terror, but it warned the danger continues. An updated strategy paper said Al Qaeda has been weakened. It also said terrorists have adjusted to U.S. defenses. And a Washington speech, the president, urged Americans not to grow complacent. Ben Lawden and his terrorist allies have made their intentions, as clear as Leonard and Hitler before them. The question is, will we listen? Will we pay attention to what these evil men say?

American or coalition partners have made our choice. Democrats released their own study and charged the Bush policies have made America less secure. Senate Minority Leader Reid said the violence in Iraq speaks louder than the president's words. It's the same speeches that they've given before. And all the speeches in the world do not change what's going on in the ground in Iraq. And as we've heard here, the ground in Iraq is not a pleasant place. We, on a bipartisan basis, want to work with them to do a better job on security. Our arms are open, let them come and work with us, not give these speeches. On a related matter, White House officials rejected calls to replace defense secretary Rumsfeld. Press Secretary Tony Snow said, creating Don Rumsfeld as a bogeyman may make for good politics, but would make for very lousy strategy at this time.

In Iraq today, the U.S. military reported three more Americans killed. That makes eight since Sunday. Scattered violence also killed at least 15 Iraqis and wounded dozens more. NATO commanders in Afghanistan claimed major progress today against Taliban fighters in the South. They said airstrikes and artillery trapped 700 militants near Kandahar in a region including several hundred square miles. The alliance also said another 50 Taliban fighters were killed. The Taliban disputed those claims. Pakistan reached the truce with pro-Taliban militants today. They signed an agreement for a permanent peace in a tribal region that borders Afghanistan. The militants promised to stop attacks on Pakistani troops. They also agreed not to cross the border to attack U.S. and Afghan forces. The government promised to call off a military campaign in the region that began after 9-11. Authorities in Denmark arrested nine men today and accused them of plotting a terror bombing.

Two were later released. It was unclear if the foil plot was tied to cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad, reprinted in a Danish newspaper last winter. They sparked riots across the Islamic world. UN Secretary General Annan warned Sudan today not to block a UN peacekeeping force for Darfur. That came as Sudan's army pressed a new offensive against rebels. We have a report narrated by John Sparks of independent television news. The fighting has begun. A pathway to chaos resumed. An airport in the heart of Darfur. The town is called El Fasher. Reports now coming in that government aircraft are flying continuous missions here. Their holds full of soldiers with the tools of war. The international community has been feeding and helping about three million people. In camps and elsewhere. And if we have to leave because of lack of security, lack of access to the people, then what happens?

Four months ago the move was more hopeful. A new peace deal overseen by 7,000 troops from the African Union was hammered out. Still, the African Union now says it can no longer provide peacekeepers its run out of money. The United Nations has agreed to take over the Security Council authorizing a force of 20,000 soldiers and police officers to keep the peace. And the response in cartoon to UN peacekeepers will forget it. It's an underhanded attempt at regime change, said a presidential aid. In my analysis, we see the U.S. strategy to weaken this government, to weaken it and to turn it into a puppet government. The Sudanese government say they're now sending in troops to afford to provide stability when African Union soldiers pull out. Darfur is displaced in their plastic cityscapes would no doubt phrase it differently. Their future now more uncertain than ever. Relief groups have warned that they may have to halt operations and are for amid the rising violence. A new health study today found widespread lung problems among 9-11 recovery workers in New York City.

On Sinai Medical Center studied the effects of toxic dust. It found nearly 70 percent of workers at ground zero suffered new or worsened lung conditions. And one-third had problems that persisted for months or years after the exposure. Some 8,000 workers and civilians have filed a class action lawsuit against New York City and its contractors. The head of the Medicare program, Mark McClellan, confirmed today he's leaving. He oversaw the addition of the new drug benefit program. The largest change in Medicare since its inception. Also today, President Bush nominated Mary Peters to be Transportation Secretary. She's a former Federal Highway Administrator from Arizona. Peters would replace Norman Monetta, the long Democrat in the Bush Cabinet. He stepped down in July. Chevron announced today it may have discovered a huge new field of oil and gas under the Gulf of Mexico. The fine could increase known U.S. reserves by 50 percent.

Chevron and two other firms base that estimate on a test well in the southwestern Gulf. It was drilled to adapt the more than five miles below sea level. Production may not come online until 2010. And other business news today Intel announced it is eliminating more than 10,000 jobs to cut costs. It will come through layoffs and other means over the next year. And the Ford Motor Company said Bill Ford will step down as Chief Executive, but remain as Chairman. Alan Malali will become CEO after 37 years at Boeing. On Wall Street today the Dow Jones Industrial Average gained five points to close at 11,469. The Nasdaq rose 12 points to close above 2205. And that's it for the new summer tonight. Now the winner is what will Congress do? Looming tower the book and fallen towers a person. Bray Suarez covered Mexico's election for us in July.

He now has the story of the winner being declared. As supporters of the losing candidate demonstrated outside, Mexico's top electoral court delivered a widely anticipated decision today, upholding the slim lead tallied by ruling party candidate Felipe Calderon in July's election. The federal electoral tribunal certified Calderon won July's election by more than 230,000 votes out of more than 41 million cast. A 44-year-old, a former energy minister, Calderon will replace incumbent President Vicente Fox, whose term expires December 1. While the election was contested, Calderon appealed for calm and national unity. The way to solve our differences is to respect the law and each other. Both the outgoing and incoming presidents are members of the pro business and pro trade party known as pun.

But the pun victory has been under challenge since election night by the candidate of the more left-wing PRD party. Andres Manuel Lopez-Obrador, popularly known as Amlo. Lopez-Obrador has called his supporters to the streets of Mexico City and across the country to protest what he labeled a fraudulent election and vote count. After promising earlier this year to accept the voters verdict, Lopez-Obrador later said he would refuse to accept the electoral courts ruling. He promised to establish a parallel government, even though the court's ruling is final and cannot be appealed. Lopez-Obrador spoke last night just ahead of the ruler. We are defending our rights because the people's will is not being respected and because they want to steal the presidency of Mexico from us. We all have legitimate right to defend ourselves. And last Friday, members of Lopez-Obrador's party blocked President Fox from delivering his last state of the nation address in Parliament after a six-year term in office.

For more, we talk with Denise Dresser, a political scientist at the Autonomous Technical Institute of Mexico or ETAM in Mexico City, and a columnist for the Mexican newspapers, reforma and processal. She's a Mexican citizen. And Pamela Starr, an analyst at the Eurasia Group, a risk consulting firm. She was previously a professor of political economy at ETAM for eight years. She's a U.S. citizen. Professor Dresser, this ends the legal battle over who the next president of Mexico is going to be. Does it end the political battle? Not at all, because 30 percent of the population, or more, according to a recent poll in Mexican newspaper in Unibersan, says that people will not accept the result. 30 percent of the population believes that there was fraud. And although there has been a final ruling by the tribunal, that ruling will be meaningless to those who think that there was fraud, that there were irregularities, and that as a result, and as Manuelo-Bissol-Rador has the right and the legitimacy to contest the result,

declare himself to be an alternative president, and to continue with the popular movement whose final outcome may be the desire to topple Galedon's government in the future. But Pamela Starr can test in what way? There's that 30 percent that Professor mentions. But what channels do they have to make their own happiness, no? Well, their contestment now is not focused on the election outcome per se. Their concern now is to try to change the political system in Mexico so that it will allow for an election of the left. The left in Mexico is convinced that the political system in Mexico will never allow them to win the presidency. So what they want to do is see a radical reform of that political order. They're going to use their power both in the legislature and on the streets to try to force the government to make those dramatic changes. The tribunal decided in the end some minor mistakes were made, and they made adjustments to the vote total. But basically they said they got it right.

Did they? Was this a free and fair election by internationalist men? I think it was absolutely a free and fair election on July 2nd, on Election Day. The problem with the election is that, to a certain extent, it was mismanaged. President Fox, for example, chose not to intervene when Congress decided to establish an electoral commission whose members were dominated by individuals from the pre and the bond, the two parties that opposed the PRD and Lopez Obrador in this election. He also tried to eliminate Lopez Obrador as a candidate by impeaching him when he was mayor of Mexico City. And then during the campaign, he skirted the legal limits of the law by implicitly campaigning for Felipe Calderon when the Mexican president is prohibited from doing so by law. And then on Election Day and a few days after that, the federal electoral commission mismanaged the way they presented the results of the election. The result was this fed into the preconceptions of this election was going to be stolen from them. Do you agree, Professor Dresser, that those missteps, as Pamela Starr lays them out, helped build the opposition even after this very close contest was over? Absolutely. And the tribunal reprimanded President Fox for intervening in the election and stretching the limits of the law, pushing those limits.

And that gave Lopez Obrador leeway to declare that the playing field had not been level for him. And therefore, whatever he is doing is justified insofar as Vicente Fox did not behave as he should have. And unfortunately, that is fed into the perceptions of many Mexicans that the system is always corrupt, always unfair, and that the only way to deal with this new injustice is to topple the whole building down. And as Manuel Lopez Obrador on Friday gave a fiery speech in which he said to hell with the institutions. Al diab loconazizito ciones. So he is positioning himself as an anti-institutional player who no longer wants to play within the rules of the game, but actually change them in a way that will benefit his political movement in the future. But that won't be a movement that seeks power through elections or through the legal paths that Mexico has used in the past to evolve.

It will be a very confrontational, very divisive, very polarizing approach to political change in Mexico in the future. As a professor, he said to hell with the institutions, but does Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador's hand begin to weaken? The moment there is a final, declared winner. And every day, until there is a newly sworn president in December. Well, we've seen the weakening of his support. Another poll in newspapers, Reforma, showed that if the election were held today, and this poll was released 10 days ago prior to the ruling of the tribunal, Felipe Calderon would win by 43% versus Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador with 23%. So Lopez Obrador knows that this is a risky strategy and that he is alienating many of the moderates who voted for him in the campaign, and in the election. But he's chosen to solidify his support with a hardcore group willing to follow him to whatever extreme position he chooses to take.

And this is going to mean that the Mexican left is probably going to face difficult times ahead. It feels excluded, and it is taking steps to further perpetuate its exclusion. It's generating a vicious cycle. The PRD is going to claim that it's being kicked out of the political system while at the same time it does everything to get itself kicked out of the political system. Well, do you agree with that notion that in fact the post-election Lopez Obrador has been in some ways his own enemy? I think in some ways he's been his own enemy when we talk about that moderate left that Denise was referring to. But I think he's also been a very clever strategist when we talk about how he goes about positioning himself forward. He sees as the best shot for reaching the presidency in the longer term. What he's trying to do above all else is to hold his political alliance together.

And that alliance is based on politicians who felt that the election was stolen from them in 1988. That's when Guatemocarovanes lost the election to Carlos Salinas. But the difference at that time, Guatemocarovanes chose to not threaten political stability in Mexico by challenging the outcome of the election. That has left a scar in the Mexican left. Lopez Obrador is very cleverly playing to that sensibility in the left to try to strengthen his position as the leader of the left saying, I am the individual who will challenge this outcome and thereby make it possible for the elect the left to come to power at some point in the future. And uptown now it's worked beautifully for him. It's difficult to find a left-leaning politician in Mexico who will openly oppose Lopez Obrador at this point. Well, maybe it has been working better than he even expected. Look at how much time we've spent talking about the guy who came in second. Let's talk about the man who's now president elect. Does he have to walk carefully in the next two months?

I think he does. But he also has to demonstrate that he is now the president elect and now leading Mexico. Guatemocarovanes needs to be very, very forceful in the process of building a government, building his cabinet, but also working with Vicente Fox in the transition process to try to bring some of his preferred legislation before the Congress and hopefully get some wins before he even takes the presidency, takes the oath of office on December 1st. In that process he needs to reach out. He has to reach out to that 30% of the population who still backs Lopez Obrador. Many of them who think that Lopez Obrador lost as a result of fraud. He needs to appeal to them, not only in the process of building his cabinet, but also in his rhetoric, in his tone of voice. And on the latter, Felipe Calderon has not historically been extremely good. Well, after the tumult of the last two months, then he's dresser is until December 1st, enough time for president elect Calderon to bind up some of the wounds of this country?

Well, he's going to have to move very quickly, very aggressively, to position himself as a progressive force for change in Mexico. What he needs to understand is that Andez Manuel Obrador is the symptom of a deeper problem. In equalities, disparities in wealth, extreme poverty, and a system of crony capitalism that directs huge barriers of entry for real competition and for real empowerment of people in Mexico. If, on the other hand, he is filled with a sense of complacency and falls into the inertia of the past and continues to muddle through with Mexico's electoral democracy, but a democracy that doesn't provide real benefits for the vast majority of the Mexican people, he will be putting himself in a very dangerous position. He has to present himself as an advocate of change and recognize that this election was a warning sign. It was a red light, and it sent out a signal that more of the same in Mexico is simply not going to be good enough.

And very quickly before we go, any new footing for the U.S.-Mexican relationship? I think the United States, the best thing you can do right now is to simply recognize Felipe Calderon and leave it at that. Leave it as a pure diplomatic relationship. But I don't think that this outcome, this election outcome, is necessarily problematic for the United States in the medium term. What United States needs is for Felipe Calderon to be successful. To the extent that he is successful, this is good news for the United States. It's Pamela Starr, Denise Dresser. Thank you both. Coming up to five years later, 9-11 stories, they follow a look at the return of Congress with Judy Woodruff. The House and Senate returned from a five-week August recess during which many members campaigned for reelection,

and with no less than majority control of Congress in play. Perhaps for the first time in 12 years, members will be more than anxious to leave Washington in a month or so to campaign full-time, right up to Election Day, November 7. Your first to handicap each party's chances in the upcoming midterm elections are Stuart Rothenberg, he's editor of the Rothenberg Political Report, and Amy Walter. She's a senior editor of the Cook Political Report. Amy, thanks very much. Studio first, Democrats need to pick up 15 seats in the House, 6 in the Senate, in order to win control. What are their chances? Well, yeah, Democrats have to pick up those significant numbers. Right now, I think the Democrats' chances are pretty good in the House. Not quite as good in the Senate. We have a long way to go, but right now in the House, I think there are enough seats in play. The poll numbers local and national suggest something that's happening. I think the Democrats have a decent chance. Why do you think that?

Well, it's a combination of the national stuff. There is a national wave going on in terms of Bush job approval, congressional job approval, and the poll question is a country headed in the right direction or off on the wrong track. All when you add those together, there's a desire for change out there. The public is dissatisfied with the direction of the country with the president's performance. So that creates an environment, a landscape that's good for the Democrats. They've recruited enough candidates. There are not a lot of districts in play, Judy, but there are probably enough decent candidates to take advantage of their environment. And when Amy and I scope around, when we smell around to try to find what the poll numbers are in individual districts, it's very clear that Democratic numbers are unusually good for this point in the cycle, and Republican incumbents have media and national numbers. Amy, you're forecasting a good season for the Democrats. What's changed in the last two years in the last congressional election? Well, still pointed to it. It's the environment that's changed the most dramatically. If you go back two years ago, or let's go back to the last midterm election when the president was sitting at 60 percent approval rating. You asked the question about who do you trust better on the issue of terrorism?

Republicans had something like a 30-point advantage on that. Even in 2004, what you knew was that while the president's approval rating wasn't as strong, he still had a great support among his base. And even as he was losing independence, there's only by one vote. And when Stu and I are looking at these polls, what we're seeing is now that not only are Democrats more motivated, and that's a real problem than Republicans. And if you ask the question about how motivated today are you to go out and vote in November, Democrats certainly much more so than Republicans. And then you look at independence, who were breaking evenly two years ago, today they're breaking dramatically for the Democrat. The one question now is, you know, there are a bunch of folks right now sitting in undecided. I think those voters are the ones that both sides are going after. Democrats going after them, as Stu is saying, with this sort of time for change, message. What Republicans are going to try to do is to say, you know what, you may be undecided right now. They're not going to try to sell them on the Republican as much as trying to undercut the Democrat. And what is the core of this unhappiness on the part of voters?

I think the sense that the country is not headed in the right direction. And for some people, it may be when the war in Iraq, for other people, it might be the administration's response to Katrina. For other people, it's high gas prices. But there's a mood. Judy elections are often about status quo. Keep the guys who are there. They're doing an okay job versus change. And at the moment, for a variety of reasons, different people may have different reasons. But they're all saying, we need some new decision makers, some new leaders. So, is this Amy something that the Democrats can do something about? Or is this just a matter of the Republicans minimizing the damage potential? Right. It's just, for Democrats, it's really just holding on. It's literally, you know, the feeling of having a tailwind. And what you want to do is just write it for as long as you can and try not to give Republicans any opportunities to knock you off course. If you're the Republicans, and this is the big difference from 1994. The last time we saw one of these wave or mood elections, look, there were a lot of Democrats who never thought that was going to happen. There were many that were caught off guard.

Candidates, campaign committees, bigger, stronger, faster, better funded than they were in 1994. Well, I just want to say, I think the difference between this election and other elections is that in most other elections, the out party, the challengers have to try to make the case to fire the incumbent. Right. So they're looking for an issue here, healthcare, prescription drugs, immigration, whatever it is. You fire the incumbent. He's made him here or she has made mistakes. That's not the way it is now. Now it is the voters seem to want change, so it's up to the incumbent Republicans to say, here's why either you shouldn't fire me or in most cases. Here's why you ought not hire this other person because if you get them, wow, this is what you're going to get, you're not going to like it. And you're not going to like it either because of their personal ethics, their previous political performance or whatever. Can President Bush make a difference? Can he go around? He's been campaigning. We hear he's going to do more. Can he make a difference in these races, Amy? You're not saying a lot of Republicans that are working hard to attach themselves to the president like they were in O4, certainly in O2. Look, they want him to come in right now because he's still the best fundraiser in the country. He can bring in $200, $500,000 in one night.

So that certainly is going to be there. But I think what we're already starting to see in some of these campaign ads are Republicans who are either very openly distancing themselves from the president, or at least in a more subtle way, trying to break and show their independence from the president. What's an example? Clay Shaw down in Florida. Now, here's an incumbent who's been around for quite some time. He's survived in a pretty marginal district. He's not exactly one of the most conservative members of Congress, but right now he's coming out in his ads and saying outright, I disagree with the president on Social Security, or I'm not a, I don't like party labels. I'm just here for Florida. So just to be clear, both of you are saying right now, it looks good for the Democrats to take control of the House Senate, pick up seats, but maybe not take control. And we would both agree a lot could change between now and November, but I think you're right. This is September the 5th. Finally, there's a sense in American politics, at least for the last decade or so, the Republicans do better closing on Election Day, and that those final hours up to Election Day. Why wouldn't that happen this year?

Well, it might. It's possible. They may be doing, they have run recently. I think we're only talking the last few cycles, technically better campaigns with more money. Remember, 20 years ago, Judy, we used to talk about organized labor turning out voters, and we say the Democrats had an advantage. I think the Democrats have a terrific team at the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee. They've raised a lot more money than they have in the past. Republicans may win in the final two weeks, but the win at the back of the Democrats, the Democrats' financial footing. And I think motivation is the other key. It is a lot easier to turn out voters when they're already motivated to vote, or when they already support your president. But if only 80% or 78% of Republicans are even supporting the president right now, it's not just a question I'm getting about to vote. You've got to get them out, convince them that they want to support a Republican. That's very different than we saw in 2004. All right. Andy Walters, too. Roth and Berkman ready to come back to you in just a few minutes. But right now, Republicans still do have a firm hold on this Congress, and they are going to try to take political advantage of that with a targeted legislative agenda over the remaining weeks. For more on that, we are joined by Norman Ornstein of the American Enterprise Institute.

He's co-author of the Broken Branch, How Congress Is Failing America. And how to get it back on track, Norman Ornstein. Thank you very much. Given this political scenario that Astu and Amy have laid out here, what do you expect to see happen over these next several weeks in Washington? Well, Congress is back today. They're scheduled to leave on September 29th. They desperately want to go back in campaign. They've got 15 legislative days in which to work. And what they've decided to do is to make this security month. Instead of focusing on a domestic agenda, which includes, of course, immigration as the big issue, along with an ambitious plan for offshore oil drilling and a host of other issues, including 11 appropriations bills that are undone. They're going to focus on a series of things, some of which are clearly necessary on the agenda. They hand in decision of the Supreme Court through the issue of trials for terrorists back in Congress's court, dealing with wire taps and FISA. They have to do defense appropriations to deal with the war and homeland security as well.

But the fact is that they want to make this political point for just the reasons that Stu and Amy have suggested. They don't have much traction on other issues. They think they still have some on security, and they can portray the Democrats as being weak in dealing with terrorists. So this is as much a political agenda as it is a policy one. So the Republican leadership doesn't risk anything by, for example, setting immigration aside, which is something that we had heard earlier. Was a priority for them to get a deal done this year on? I think it's a big risk, actually, because I think one of the themes that we're going to have out there that plays with dissatisfaction in the electorate is the do nothing Congress. And by focusing the way they are, there's a real chance that we will have very few accomplishments, actual policy items getting through. Immigration may not have quite the same resonance as the failure of health care did in 1994, when one party, then the Democrats were in power. But it will underscore the notion that not much is happening. But frankly, as well, we saw today a number of Democrats, including the leaders' sign a letter and hold a press conference calling for the resignation of Secretary Rumsfeld.

It's clear now that as Republicans focus on the security agenda, very aggressively talking about the defeatocrats. Democrats are going to respond in kind, and that means an even more rancorous month in what has been an unusually rancorous Congress. And it's not clear that voters are going to react very well to bickering that doesn't result in accomplishment. So, Norm, what happens to some of these other things that we had heard earlier in the year were a priority for the Congress lobbying reform, earmark reform, this whole appropriations process that favors special interest. Well, they've pretty much abandoned the larger issues of lobbying and ethics reform and are going to do a targeted earmark reform, hoping they can get that through the House and Senate in identical form, which won't be easy to do. But they're not going to be able to get the appropriations done. They're hoping, certainly, to get the big ticket defense appropriations. And, by the way, with that, funding for a fence in Mexico, hoping that that will at least stave off the worst case on immigration and homeland security. But we're going to end up with a fiscal year beginning, October 1, almost certainly with another large continuing resolution.

Trying to get the bare minimum done, basically, with a few accomplishments that they can point to so that they can get out of town as quickly as they can. My guess is they won't be able to leave until at least the first week in October. But they're probably not going to have a whole lot of trophies to put on the wall. Very quickly, nor many chances of a lame duck session. I think the chances are extraordinarily high of a lame duck session. But keep in mind, Judy, that if the Democrats win either House of Congress, their incentives to do much cooperating with Republicans in a lame duck where the Republicans are still in charge when they're going to take over in January will be close to zero. Okay, Norm Ornstein, thanks very much. I want to bring Amy Walter and Stu Rothenberg back into the conversation. Amy, if this is the way it plays out, as we just heard from Norm, what is that portend for the November elections? Well, look, I think Norm set it up quite well. There's not a whole lot that Republicans, I think, are going to be able to change the minds of voters right now. I mean, I think that voters are almost as calcified as they can be at this point in terms of their views of Congress, of the President, of the direction of the country.

And they've been pretty set for some time now. And the only question then is, can Republicans change the terms of the debate in these individual districts? Can they do, as Stu said, focus on this candidate here, this candidate there, try to knock them off their game a little bit, and hold on literally district by district, rather than, I think, nationalizing the campaign is not the way that Republicans are going to come. Because Stu, this entire thrust of the Republicans to talk about security, to say if you have Democrats in charge, the country is not as safe as it is with Republicans in charge. I think it's a good strategy, because you can only play the cards that you have, and that's the one card that they still have left. It's the one card where the President has summoned them. And it's working in the past. Right, and it unifies Republicans, and it might appeal to swing voters. The only thing that I take that I disagree with Normon, and I never disagree with Normon, no better, is that if the Republicans brought up immigration, it would only point out to the divisions within the party, they still couldn't get anything done. The Republicans want to keep this election on one national issue terror, and as Amy has suggested, all about the individual candidates.

Why? Candidate X shouldn't be sent to Washington, DC. Why? Who? Lois Murphy in Pennsylvania, or Diane Farrell, or Patricia Madrid, why that person is unacceptable. So the fact that nothing's getting done while there is a risk for do nothing, Congress, I certainly agree with that. The Republicans really want to keep the focus of this campaign elsewhere, terrorism, and then the individual qualities of the challengers. Any particular Senate race, very quickly, either one of you suggests to our viewers they should keep in all of them. Well, of course, of course. Look, there are, we pointed out earlier in the broadcast that there are six that Democrats need to pick up. So states like Montana, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Missouri, those are real battleground states for the Democrats. I think that if you see movement, when you say in Missouri, Ohio, there's a really the two sort of properties. I think they say Missouri. That is the one I would say too. That'll tell us how big the wave is. That'll tell us how big the wave is.

Okay. Stu Rothenberg, Amy Walter. Thank you both. Now, two post-9-11 stories, beginning with a new book conversation about the people and events behind the attacks and a Jeffrey Brown. Say it could to an Egyptian writer who visited the United States before pinning a manifesto that would galvanize several generations of Muslims to turn toward a more militant Islam. We are Muslim. We are Muslim. I'm an al-Zawari, an Egyptian doctor who railed against his own government in a Cairo jail. We thought our best to establish this Islamic State and the Islamic society. And later became the number two in al-Qaeda. And Osama bin Laden raised amid privilege and wealth in Saudi Arabia. He liked to quote poetry and verses from the Quran like this one, wherever you are, death will find you even in the looming tower. Their stories and much more are told in a new book called the looming tower al-Qaeda and the road to 9-11.

It's author is Lawrence Wright, a staff writer with the New Yorker magazine. Lawrence Wright, welcome. Thanks for having me, Jeff. And one way of looking at 9-11 is the big picture for a flash of civilizations. You write about big shifts, but you have decided to focus and tell the story through individuals. Why? Well, there are two reasons. One is it's an easier story to tell when you're following the biographies of individuals. Because they're interesting in themselves and characters like that are great for a writer because they can carry the information. But the second is that there were individual decisions that made al-Qaeda. It wouldn't be what it is if it weren't for a few men's. I'm an al-Zawahri and bin Laden being two of them. Al-Qaeda in his present form is the creation of individuals. It's not just a historical phenomenon. The predecessor to those two that you start with, scied cut to Egyptian intellectual, comes to the United States in 1948. That's correct.

And has a clash with modernity that you suggest some of the themes have come down to this day. Yeah, his trip to America really pre-figures the experience of many radical Muslims who discovered themselves as extremists in the West. A clip of arrived in America in 1948. And he came to Washington in New York and spent most of his time in Greeley, Colorado, a little western town where there was an education school. And it was a temperance colony. No alcohol allowed had a church on every corner. You would expect that this middle-aged tea totalling Egyptian virgin would have found himself right at home there. But he saw in America that most Americans didn't see at that time. For one thing, he was a dark Egyptian. He had a sense right away that race was a terrific problem in America and he felt very offended. He also was extremely unsettled by the women.

The sexuality of America was extremely threatening to him. And especially in Greeley, these young girls that were coming in from the ranches and farms and the small cities in Colorado, they were very frank and open about their sexuality at a time when it was pretty closed. Now he would go back to Egypt and up in the jails by the government of Nasser at the time hanged. Kutta was hanged because he wrote this book, Mylon Filterique, which means milestones. And it's the manifesto that Zawahri and Bin Laden and all the jihadi leaders read. It calls for a vanguard of Muslim youth to purify as long. The next character, you mentioned, Zawahri, also was in the jails of Cairo. Where you suggest one of the major themes that comes out in the book, humiliation. Torture leads to humiliation, leads to yet another theme revenge.

When Nasser hanged Kutta bin 66, Zawahri started a cell to overthrow the Egyptian government. It was 15 years old. His idea at that time was to create a swift surgical coup, but after the Sadata assassination in 1981, he was, as you say, rounded up and put him prison. And he was tortured, brutally tortured. A lot of human rights workers suggest, and I agree, that the brutality that characterizes the al-Qaeda movement was born in those Egyptian prisons. And the point of torture is humiliation. He was a surgeon, a very proud man, and some of these people were completely broken. But he came out of there a butcher. So much of the focus after 9-11 was on Saudi Arabia, but it's fascinating to read in the book so much of the earlier history is in places like Egypt. That's where this movement grew up, and that's where the thinking came from.

You have so much detail about bin Laden, I mean, that kind of remarkable his favorite television program was Bonanza at one point. He turned to farming, and he boasted about his sunflower should be in the Guinness Book of Records. At times he seems like a so-so businessman. At times more a myth maker than a fighter in Afghanistan, how did he become the galvanizing force that he became? First of all, he had a vision for what was really kind of a Muslim foreign legion. He was an anti-communist. When the al-Qaeda was formed in 1988, the first meeting was in August. The mission was really to chase the retreating Soviet Union out of Afghanistan and fight communism in Central Asia and then in Yemen. Now, this was a bold vision, but he could never have put together this plan if it weren't for his warring. So, warring already had a terrorist group called Al-Jahad, which he was using to wage war on Egypt.

And he noticed this charismatic and wealthy young Saudi and surrounded him with his Egyptian well-trained leaders. And they became the core of al-Qaeda. So, in many ways, al-Qaeda is really a vector of these two forces of bin Laden and his Saudis and Zawahri and his Egyptians. So, given that, how did America become the chief enemy? America represents modernity, of course, and that's one of the things they say they're against, although al-Qaeda is really a very modern creation. But by fighting America, bin Laden was able to elevate his cause. By provoking America, he hoped to get America to follow in the footsteps of the Soviet Union in Afghanistan. He imagined that America, like the other superpower of the Soviet Union, would blunder into Afghanistan and there'd be bled to death by Muslim holy warriors. So, it was an escalation on his part to try to draw the U.S. into Afghanistan and then rally Muslims to attack us.

They're by creating a unified, Muslim, Uma, an army of Muslims who would then be able to spread their message throughout the world. All of these people that you talked to, the hundreds of interviews to get all this information, you must have met some very unsavory, dangerous characters. What was it like personally for you? Well, it's hard because right after 9-11, my emotions weren't all together in control. I was angry and I was spending a lot of time in places where people were angry at me, angry at me for being an American. I had to put aside my anger in order to be able to elicit the kind of information I needed. Because in a sense, you're putting a human face on me. Well, there's a fellow in cartoon that was extremely helpful to me.

His name is Abarida Al-Suri and he was a bin Laden's business manager. He took the notes, the handwritten notes, on August 11, 1988, where al-Qaeda's first mentioned. So, he was deeply involved. He lived earlier in Kansas City. He was originally from Damascus. And he's a funny guy. He's got a great sense of humor. He was always teasing bin Laden. And when bin Laden first approached the subject of creating al-Qaeda, for instance, he said, how are you going to get him to the fight? Are air France? I mean, you suddenly saw the nature of the people that put this together and who they really were without forgetting what they eventually had done. That was a thing. Sometimes I would go back after a conversation like that. And I feel exhilarated that I got in the information.

And then also horrified about the deeds that these guys had done. Several reviewers have talked about your book having the narrative quality of a novel, which I agree with. It just reads like a novel. But one where we know the ending, the 911 attack. But if you look at the headlines now, you look at what's going on in the world, it's also true in a sense that we don't know the ending. Yes. We don't know the ending. And I can tell you this. In November, December of 2001, when America and coalition forces invaded Afghanistan and fought the Battle of Toribora, although we didn't capture a kill bin Laden or as a war hurry or some of the other top lieutenants, al Qaeda was essentially dead. It was not only that most of the members been killed or captured. It was repudiated throughout the world. And the internal documents show that they were in great despair.

Unfortunately, Iraq is given the war in Iraq is given them new life. And I fear the progeny of al Qaeda are going to be with us for a long time. All right. Lawrence Wright. Thank you very much for joining us. It's been a great pleasure. Thank you. And now the first in our series on Americans change by 911. This is about a young man who felt the call to duty after his hometown was attacked five years ago. My name is Sergeant Lazaro Rocha on 25. I was born and raised in New York City, New York. And I joined the United States Marine Corps day after 911. The towers used to just stand right there. The last time I was up here, it was actually on 911. And the second plane hit, I just got up here just in time to see that.

It was a shock. It was definitely a shock. These terrorists are attacking our country, especially my city. It's like, holy smokes right in the big apple. I was like, no way, man. This isn't the way it's going to be. I started hating an enemy. I didn't know existed. I didn't know who these people were. They didn't know they had a face. They didn't know anything. I wanted to look them in the eye. I want to find out what it is exactly about us, about Americans, that they hate so much. I had to stay in my girlfriend's parents' house. I stood with them that night. Her brother, we were both sitting up to see just how it got home. He was like, you know, I wish I could do something in body. I was thinking about this the whole day. I was like, well, we can't join the Marines, man. He looked at me and started laughing. He's like, there's no way, man. He said, no, you know, we should join the Marines. When I joined up, my mom was fine.

She didn't have no problems with me joining. She was actually very proud. But my aunt and uncle, they were pretty upset. They were pretty much hoping I was going to go to college and do the whole education route. That wasn't for me. That's not what I wanted. I wanted to go and represent New York City. I wanted to go out there and be a voice for my country. My relationship with everybody before 9-11 changed, definitely. All my friends in high school, I never saw them again. I started realizing I really liked talking to them anymore. It was so negative about everything. I can't believe you're going to go out there. You're going to wind up getting hurt out there or you're going to die for some stupid reason. That's what I was hearing. I was getting feedback like that from my friends. I was like, man, you guys ain't my friends. I left them behind.

But by then, I had already started working on another family. That's how Marines are. We're all brothers. I was with First Battalion 8 Marines and we wind up going to Iraq twice. We went into Fallujah in November 2004. And the fighting there was very intense. From the moment we started pushing into the city, it was just we already knew it was going to be nonstop to the end. He's wounded in between these two houses. And sometimes these guys, they're kids. They're like 15, 16 years old, and you're looking at them like, wow. You want to try your best not to have to use lethal force if it's possible. Sure. But if it is, and if it comes down to, if it's going to be him or me, then it's going to have to be. I'm trying to make it home.

I want my Marines to make it home. We're going to do five seconds of suppression. Hello, can I speak to Anthony? This is Sergeant Rocha. My job is just to maintain the manpower of the Marine Corps. That's what I'm going to do. I'm going to find that person who's going to take my place in the future. If I start making calls and nobody's home, I'm not reaching anybody, then it's time for me to get up and hit the road and see what I find out there. There'll be times, you know, driving down the street and I'll see a kid just walking down the road and I'll just instantly just bank a U-turn and just approach that kid just so that I can get my hand out there. Have you guys ever gotten any information on the Marines or anything like that? Always the biggest question was, you know, have you been to Iraq? What was it like? I get all these, you know, all these questions every time. Never fails. And I just tell them it's tough, you know, it's really tough out there. I'm not going to lie to them.

Would you want to come down to the office, get some information? I start there. One young lady that I put in last month, her mom asked me, you know, is there any chance, you know, that, what are the chances that she's going to go to Iraq? I told her they're great. Yeah, this is a great chance that she will be in Iraq. That's more money. I've definitely come across a lot of people that feel what I do is wrong, being a recruiter. Like, oh, you're lying to kids, you're... You're tricking them. I get that all the time. It's not really that much about 9-11 anymore. You'll find your few, your few here and there. It was pretty much the guys who went for 9-11. We're pretty much the guys that went when I went. That was a big, that was a big year in recruiting that year. A lot of young men answer the call. When I still think about it, it upsets me. It still does to this day. I don't think that's something I'm ever going to totally get over. Just thinking, you know, back into that day, it's just so much turmoil and confusion and everything.

I would never want to see that happen again here. So, it's definitely something. That's definitely one of the reasons why I fight. That's why I'm a Marine. And again, the major developments of this day. Felipe Calderon was certified as the winner of Mexico's Presidential Election and the Bush administration claimed progress in the war on terror, but it warned the danger continues. To online notes, you can add your thoughts to a discussion about the lasting effects of 9-11 by going to our website at pbs.org. Also, there is a new collaboration between the news hour and Yahoo News. It's part of our generation next project about the lives and attitudes of young people. This week, we've asked Senator John McCain to take questions. We'll see you online and again here tomorrow evening.

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On the news hour tonight, the news of this Tuesday, then I'll look at what is next for Mexico after today's declaration of a winner in its election for president. An assessment of what's on the plate for Congress now, following the summer recess, and two 9-Eleven stories, a conversation with Lawrence Wright about his new book, The Luming Tower, and a profile of a young New Yorker, who joined the Marines the day after the attacks. Major funding for the news hour with Jim Lara is provided by... The world's demand for energy will never stop, which is why a farmer is growing corn,

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