The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer

GWEN IFILL: Good evening. I'm Gwen Ifill. Jim Lehrer has the day off. On the NewsHour tonight: A summary of today's news; back to back interviews with Israeli and Palestinian spokesmen on the escalating violence there; Kwame Holman reports on the high- stakes battle over the Crusader weapons system; a Newsmaker interview with Dr. Anthony Fauci on AIDS funding; and a Spencer Michels report on Catholic lay reaction to the new policies on sexual abuse by priests.

NEWS SUMMARY

GWEN IFILL: Another Palestinian suicide bomber struck in Jerusalem today, killing at least six people, and wounding 35. The al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigade claimed responsibility; it's linked to the Fatah movement of Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat. The attack followed a fatal bombing Tuesday that triggered a new Israeli response. We have a report from Gaby Rado of Independent Television News.

GABY RADO: The rescue workers on the streets for the second time in two days in Jerusalem and the number of dead and injured just keeps climbing. This time, the suicide bomber didn't even manage to board a bus. He jumped out of a car at a bus stop and had to dodge past two policemen before he detonated his explosives. One of the policemen pursuing him was badly injured. The red car, which had delivered the attacker, disappeared towards Arab east Jerusalem. It seems that however many policemen the authorities put on the ground, however high the state of alert among the Israeli population, suicide bombers can still penetrate densely populated areas. This bomb went off at one of the northern exits from Jerusalem, only a short journey from the West Bank. The bus suicide bomb, which killed 19 yesterday was what led to Israel sending its military might back into the West Bank early today. Along with the tanks came a new hard line: The forces stay put until the violence ends. Overnight, the Israeli army, bringing with them mobile homes, moved into the town of Jenin. A little later, troops were sent into Nablus to carry out arrests and in Qalqilya, they declared a curfew.

GWEN IFILL: Late today, Israeli helicopters attacked targets in Gaza to retaliate for the latest bombing. Thirteen Palestinians were injured, and late today Israeli tanks also moved to Ramallah. In Washington President Bush in Washington, President Bush again delayed plans for a major statement on the Middle East. A White House spokesman said the immediate aftermath of the attacks was not the right moment.

ARI FLEISCHER: I think the time will be soon, but I'm not going to be in a position to guess exactly what day that means. That's something the President will make a determination on and proceed. But there is... it's hard to get people to focus on peace today when they're still suffering from the consequences of terrorism as we speak.

GWEN IFILL: We'll have more on all of this in a moment. The President called today for spending $500 million to fight AIDS in 12 African nations and the Caribbean. Much of the money would pay for anti-AIDS drugs, to block spread of the HIV virus from mothers to their babies. The goal is to cut transmission by 40% in five years or less. Mr. Bush said the plan is just part of other U.S. efforts.

PRESIDENT GEORGE W. BUSH: The United States already contributes approximately a billion dollars a year to international efforts to combat HIV/AIDS. In addition we plan to spend more than $2.5 billion on research and development for new drugs and new treatments. We have committed $500 million to the global fund to fight AIDS and other infectious diseases and we stand ready to commit more as this fund demonstrates its success.

GWEN IFILL: Parts of today's proposal are already pending in Congress. We'll talk with Dr. Anthony Fauci, a top government expert on infectious diseases, later in the program. President Bush declared parts of Colorado a federal disaster area because of wildfires. The announcement came as a huge blaze near Denver forced new evacuations. Some 7,500 people have now had to flee their homes. A Forest Service worker, Terry Barton, has said she started the fire accidentally. But newspaper reports today said investigators believe she did it deliberately hoping to put it out and get the credit. Air traffic controllers in France staged a one-day strike today, crippling air travel across Europe. More than 7,700 flights were canceled, leaving thousands of travelers stranded. Greek, Italian, and Hungarian controllers also stopped work. They were protesting European Union plans for a centralized system to reduce congestion and flight delays. Unions say it would cost controllers' jobs. That's it for the News Summary tonight. Now it's on to escalating violence in the Middle East, the battle over the Crusader, new AIDS funding, and Catholics react to new policies on sexual abuse.

FOCUS - MOVING BACK IN

GWEN IFILL: For more on the unfolding events in the Middle East, we hear from representatives of the Israeli government and the Palestinian Authority. Margaret Warner gets the Israeli point of view.

MARGARET WARNER: Joining me is Moshe Arens, a legislator in the Israeli Knesset from Prime Minister Sharon's Likud Party. He has previously served as defense minister and foreign minister of Israel. Welcome Mr. Arens.

Just minutes ago the wires began reporting that Israeli tanks are moving into Ramallah, moving toward the downtown where Yasser Arafat headquarters are. Can you tell us anything about that, what the intentions are there?

MOSHE ARENS: I think it should be clear as it is to people in Israel that the only way to fight this kind terrorism, the only way to bring it down drastically is to go to the towns and villages where the terrorist networks are established, where the terrorists are outfitted and armed and where terrorism is planned. It can't be done any other way, only done there and that's what the Israeli army is about to do.

MARGARET WARNER: And do you hold Yasser Arafat personally responsible for the attacks, do you think he's directing them in some way?

MOSHE ARENS: Well, there is no doubt he's directing some of them. The people who took credit for the atrocity today are the al-Aqsa Brigade, and we know that that's an organization that's directly tied to Fatah, which is the organization of which Mr. Arafat is the head. But even when it's done by Hamas, which was the atrocity committed yesterday in Jerusalem, where 19 people were killed, children going to school or by the Islamic Jihad; these are all terrorist organizations that Mr. Arafat has nurtured and allowed to grow and establish themselves. He's the head of the Palestinian Authority, and so obviously he has responsibility for the murder that's going on.

MARGARET WARNER: Now officials of the Palestinian Authority say that particularly since Israel's incursion to the West Bank in April that the Palestinian Authority really doesn't have a security infrastructure left and that it's not capable of stopping these attacks. Do you put any, any...

MOSHE ARENS: Credence.

MARGARET WARNER: Credence in that, thank you.

MOSHE ARENS: Not really. You know that these acts of terrorism have been going on now for close to two years as a result of Mr. Arafat deciding to launch a wave of violence against Israel after he rejected the proposals that were made to him by our previous prime minister, Mr. Barak. So this is violence he has started; it's violence that he has commanded. And in some cases it may have run out of his control. I wouldn't say that every act of terrorism is under his direction, under his command. But he certainly is making no attempt to stop it, and as I pointed out the people who committed atrocity this morning, took credit for it, credit in quotation marks, are people associated directly with him.

MARGARET WARNER: Now last night after yesterday's attack the Israeli government issued a statement announcing a change in the way it was going to respond to these attacks in saying Israel will respond to acts of terror by capturing Palestinian Authority territory and every additional act of terror will lead to the taking of additional areas. Are you talking about essentially a broad potentially broad reoccupation of the Palestinian Authority's land?

MOSHE ARENS: In recent weeks it has been the policy of the Israel defense forces to move into certain towns and villages where the terrorist networks were established where some of the terrorists were located, and then after a few days to move out. I think the decision has now been reached considering the continuous - the continuing acts of violence that in certain places the continued presence of the idea will be necessary in order to forestall further acts of murder.

MARGARET WARNER: So in other words, you think by remaining on the ground in these areas you really can stop the attacks in a way that the first incursions, the April one didn't?

MOSHE ARENS: Well the April incursions also brought down the level of violence for a certain period of time but see now it's recurring; we've taken very bad losses these last two days and there is really no alternative to going in there and getting them. The only way to fight terror is to fight it.

MARGARET WARNER: Are you talking about simply a military reoccupation or will the reoccupation be broader, will Israel again essentially be governing these areas?

MOSHE ARENS: Well, I hope not. I hope not. And I hope that the army will be successful in bringing down the level of terrorism, bringing an end to it hopefully. If that happens, then we'll have - it'll be a new ball game; it will be possible to talk about negotiations, about a political process, a process that is absolutely impossible -- even inconceivable in the present climate of violence.

MARGARET WARNER: But in the meantime the statement also said that these, this reoccupation would remain as long as the terror continued. It sounds fairly indefinite, fairly open-ended.

MOSHE ARENS: Well, we certainly count on the fact that the continuation of the terror will not be open-ended and will not be indefinite. We don't give up that easy. We think we're going to do it.

MARGARET WARNER: The... this two days of attacks has, as you know, forestalled the President's planned announcement of his own Middle East initiative. There had been talk, for instance, he would propose some sort of provisional or interim Palestinian state and ways to get there. Do you think any proposal by the White House at this point has any chance of flying?

MOSHE ARENS: Well, I have no idea what it is the President intends to propose. I can certainly understand the decision, if that has been his decision -- to postpone breaking coming out with any kind of plan under the present circumstances. I think that would really be very difficult and so it's best I think to wait and understand that's his choice.

MARGARET WARNER: And wait for how long?

MOSHE ARENS: Well, again, I think that depends on how successful we are in preventing further acts of terrorism.

MARGARET WARNER: So you're...

MOSHE ARENS: And I suppose that if we will have a week or two of quiet and maybe and I'm speculating now, it's really not for me so say, maybe at that time the President will feel that the time is right.

MARGARET WARNER: So you're basically saying though he should probably wait a week or two just given the current atmosphere?

MOSHE ARENS: Well it's not for me to advice the President. My impression is that that's his judgment and that seems right to me.

MARGARET WARNER: What is your thinking about this idea of some sort of provisional Palestinian state?

MOSHE ARENS: Look, we have three terrorist states in the Middle East today. We have Iraq, Saddam Hussein; we have Iran, we have Syria, I don't know that setting up a fourth terrorist state, because that's what it would be, would serve any anybody's interests.

MARGARET WARNER: And this security fence that the Israeli government is now in the process of installing, how much are you counting on that to stop terror attacks?

MOSHE ARENS: Well, first of all it's going to take a while I think maybe something like a year before the fence is completed so we won't hold our breath and continue to take casualties during the year, we better fix the problem before that fence gets completed. The fence is not an answer to everything; it's no magic solution; it's no silver bullet. It may be helpful in certain places to prevent incursions into Israel's population centers and that's the intention.

MARGARET WARNER: All right, Moshe Arens, thanks for being with us.

MOSHE ARENS: Thank you.

GWEN IFILL: Now, Ray Suarez gets the Palestinian perspective.

RAY SUAREZ: And joining me is Nabil Sha'ath, the Palestinian Minister of Planning and International Cooperation. He's also a senior advisor to Palestinian President Yasser Arafat.

Welcome Mr. Sha'ath

NABIL SHA'ATH: Thank you very much for inviting me.

RAY SUAREZ: In the last 24 hours there have been Israeli military incursions into Jenin, into Gaza, and now just before our program began this evening into Ramallah. What's your reaction?

NABIL SHA'ATH: Well, we've heard Mr. Arens say this is the only way. I wonder if this only way will do nothing more than just deepen the cycle of violence, kill more Palestinian civilians, leading to more killing of Israeli civilians and I don't think thisis any way to solve a problem. I think going back to a real peace process is the way that have solved the problems before in Palestine in 1994, in Ireland, in South Africa, in many other places. Doing more occupation and more killing and more invasions is not the way to bring about security and peace. It's a way to bring about more blood shed.

RAY SUAREZ: To the people who have planned and carried out the bombings of the last two days, do you think that they would be responsive to a commencement of the peace process that they are running in tandem with your views in such a way that this would calm them?

NABIL SHA'ATH: No. I'm not saying that. In fact, if you see how they choose their timing, it's to blow up our effort as much as that of the United States or others to bring back peace again. They time their bombs to explode opportunities for peace, and that's why I'm saying we should never really allow them that kind of victory. A start of peace would create a Palestinian public opinion that will totally isolate them and will force them to stop. And I think this is the political angle. But also going back to peace will bring with it a rebuilding of the Palestinian Authority's security ability that was destroyed by the Israeli invasions and, therefore, will also carry with it some more ability to preempt their action. Going forward to peace is really the only way to solve the problem without further bloodshed.

RAY SUAREZ: But you questioned Mr. Arens' assertion this was the only way to deal with continued terror attacks. What you would suggest that Israel do in the short-term to protect its own citizens?

NABIL SHA'ATH: Well, nobody wants Israel not to protect its own citizens. And nobody is asking the Israelis to drop down their vigil in that matter. The question is: Is the way to protect their own citizens to attack and kill other people, the death of Palestinian civilians in this case can only be shrugged as collateral damage? 60% of the damage has been to Palestinian civilians to mothers and children. Hundreds have been killed in their schools or going to schools. And, therefore, I think this just creates further bloodshed, further violence, further hatred. What we should really appeal to is that the sense of both Palestinian and Israelis to isolate the extremists and to stop them.

RAY SUAREZ: Well, let's talk a little bit about the role of Yasser Arafat in that case. Israel and as you just heard Mr. Arens doesn't give him much credit for trying to stop these attacks on Israeli civilians. How do you see Mr. Arafat's role?

NABIL SHA'ATH: Well, I worked with him very closely between 1992 and the year 2001. There was only one case in 1996 of three suicidal bombings in Ashtalon, Jerusalem and Tel Aviv. And President Arafat then acted in a very decisive way to make a real stop. He went into every direction in order to get these people, apprehend them and stop them. And Israel, outside this period in March/April 1996, really have seen one of the best security situations in all its history. But that really coincided with a period in which the Israelis had withdrawn from parts of the West Bank, had allowed a free election that elected President Arafat himself including election by Palestinians in Jerusalem. And, therefore, he had the whole Palestinian people with him against the extremists who wanted to plant bombs against civilians to destroy the peace process. But today the situation is quite different. President Arafat is hampered by an Israeli occupation and siege and curfews and collective punishments and destruction, and he is also hampered by destruction of all his security forces, all their police stations and all their prisons and their vehicles and their communication system. So he has neither the ability to persuade, nor the ability to enforce and, therefore, he is really a prisoner in his small office in Ramallah. There has been three times in which the Israelis put him really in a literal prison in that office. And then they ask him to do more. That's really a very difficult situation.

RAY SUAREZ: Well, that process may be starting again. Once again there are Israeli troops entering Palestinian cities. What do you make of the promise that this time they won't leave until the violence stops?

NABIL SHA'ATH: But they can do that for a while, in fact, they have been putting the West Bank and their occupation since 1967. Thirty-thirty-five odd years of occupation of the West Bank has not yet provided them with that kind of control they wanted. This is not the first Intifada; this is the second Intifada, and they have to really rethink the value of the continued occupation of the West Bank and Gaza. I think that's the critical situation. They should get out of the West Bank and Gaza and up for a real peace based on two states neighbors to each other rather than one of them occupying the other. I think that's the crux of the situation.

RAY SUAREZ: Earlier you mentioned you felt the suicide bombers were not only attacking Israel but attacking your government's efforts to bring peace to that region.

NABIL SHA'ATH: Absolutely. Absolutely.

RAY SUAREZ: It looks like it's put off -- and no one knows for how long -- the new Bush initiative on the region.

NABIL SHA'ATH: Well, that will be unfortunate. I know that only the President of the United States has the right to decide when he wants to come out with that statement. But it has become very critical. Putting it back or delaying it once more is in a way allowing the extremists to succeed, on both sides -- the people of the right wing of Sharon who wants to transfer the Palestinian people, i.e., ethnically cleansing them out of Palestine, and our extremists who want to continue that confrontation. I think this is a time of action, as Mr. Bush himself put it, to seize the moment. And what better than a policy produced by the United States and a commitment by the United States to lead an international action, to bring about that peace. The United States did not hesitate to go with NATO forces in Kosovo and Bosnia and many other places to see other forces go to Timor and places of that kind of confrontation and stop these confrontations and produce peaceful solutions. It's played a major role in the peace in Ireland and before that in South Africa. Both are cases of settler colonialism and ethnic strife and I think that's the time to do that in Palestine and Israel.

RAY SUAREZ: Mr. Nabil Sha'ath, thanks for joining us.

NABIL SHA'ATH: Thank you.

GWEN IFILL: Still to come on the NewsHour tonight: The battle over the Crusader; new AIDS funding; and Catholics respond to their bishops.

UPDATE - ARTILLERY BATTLE

GWEN IFILL: Now, a look at the battle over a new army weapons system. Kwame Holman reports. (Explosion)

KWAME HOLMAN: This is the Crusader, a multibillion dollar army artillery piece designed to revolutionize ground warfare. The Crusader never has been fired in wartime, but it has set off one of the fiercest fights in decades between the Secretary of Defense, who wants to kill the big gun...

DONALD RUMSFELD: We're going to cancel the Crusader.

KWAME HOLMAN: ...And members of Congress, who want to save it.

SPOKESMAN: You haven't even analyzed the alternatives. You don't have an alternative. That chart is not an alternative.

KWAME HOLMAN: In a surprise announcement last month, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld zeroed out money for the Crusader program from the pentagon's budget request. Since then, he's raised the stakes. Rumsfeld says ending a Crusader program he views as outdated is a critical test of his ability to reshape the entire U.S. Military into a faster, lighter force ready to fight 21st century wars. He spoke on the NewsHour last month.

DONALD RUMSFELD: If you can't do this one, then we're not gong to be able to transform the armed forces of the United States, and we simply must do that.

KWAME HOLMAN: But a vast counterattack has been launched against Rumsfeld's decision to kill the Crusader. The charge is being led by Republican lawmakers from Oklahoma, where the cannon would be assembled. Also fighting for the Crusader, in public and behind the scenes in Congress, is an industrial alliance comprising more than 100 contractors and suppliers who employ 2,200 people in 27 states, and a bevy of retired military officers.

GEN. JOHN TILELLI, Former Commander, U.S. Forces Korea: Crusader is a transformation system. Crusader is a system for the objective force, and it's needed by our war fighting commanders, and if we had it today, we'd use it.

KWAME HOLMAN: Rumsfeld has been making his case at venues like this Senate Armed Services Committee hearing.

DONALD RUMSFELD: It's clear that continuing to fund a program we now know will not best meet the mission would be irresponsible and a misuse of taxpayers' dollars.

KWAME HOLMAN: But when Rumsfeld was followed by the army's top general, Chief of Staff Eric Shinseki, he seemed to contradict his civilian boss.

SEN. JOHN WARNER: General, I think the fundamental question before us is: Do you, in your own personal professional opinion, believe that this system is essential for the future transformation of the United States Army?

GEN. ERIC SHINSEKI, Army Chief of Staff: The requirement is still there, yes, sir.

KWAME HOLMAN: A showdown is underway. The House of Representatives voted last month to require that the Pentagon make "no change to the Crusader development schedule." While the Bush administration, though still in the midst of a war, promised the President would veto any military spending bill that includes Crusader funding. Crusader was designed during the early 1990s. Its job is to provide massive covering firepower for the Army's heavy mechanized units in battles against other modern armored forces. During the Gulf War, American state-of-the-art Abrams tanks and Bradley armored personnel carriers raced through the Iraqi desert at top notch speeds. But the army's 1960s-era self- propelled artillery, the Paladin, could not keep up. The Army spent $2 billion developing the Crusader as the answer. Plans call for spending another $9 billion to complete development and purchase of 480 Crusaders between 2004 and 2012. But the Crusader as originally designed weighed 60 tons. This early prototype, the only Crusader developed, is too heavy to transport rapidly by air. Two years ago, the Army began to focus on building lighter, more mobile forces, United Defense-- the Crusader's manufacturer-- redesigned Crusader to make it lighter. This animation depicts what a 40-ton Crusader-- with its two resupply vehicles-- would look like. It would be more deployable by air.

GEN. BARRY McCAFFREY: Our artillery is 1960s technology and it's grossly out- branched by all the Soviet stuff, which many of our potential adversaries have. We simply had to upgrade. We knew that coming out of the Gulf War in 1992. That was the theory behind Crusader, a system that actually is a revolutionary change in capability.

KWAME HOLMAN: Retired Army General Barry McCaffrey, who is a consultant to the manufacturer, says the Crusader, with its automatic loading, liquid-cooled cannon, can drop 12 rounds per minute on targets 40 kilometers away. That's a big improvement over the Army's current Paladin artillery, which fires one round per minute to a maximum range of 30 kilometers. McCaffrey says the Crusader is now light enough to be deployed rapidly by air anywhere.

GEN. BARRY McCAFFREY (Ret.): 40 tons puts two of them on an Air Force C-17, and they come off in the objective area to support the airborne operations. Four of these Crusaders cover the entire country of Bosnia.

LT. COL. RALPH PETERS (Ret.): It's utterly the wrong system for today's United States Army, because no matter how good a system is, if you can't Fed-Ex it, I mean, if it can't get to the battlefield quickly, it's meaningless.

KWAME HOLMAN: Lt. Colonel Ralph Peters had a 22 year career in the army. He has written several books about military affairs.

LT. COL. RALPH PETERS: We hear a great deal about Crusader having been reduced to 38 tons. Well, that's still pretty heavy, but you also then have to add on the armored ammunition resupply vehicle, the fuelers, the infrastructure vehicles countered battery systems. So when you start with the whole package, it becomes ideal if we did have to fight armored mounted warfare again, but for most of the problems we are facing and will face we need lighter guns that can get there.

KWAME HOLMAN: The generals don't even agree on whether the Crusader would have been helpful during the last major battle in Afghanistan.

GEN. ERIC SHINSEKI: In the first two days of Operation Anaconda, 28 of our 36 casualties were due to indirect fire from mortars. And it would have been in our interests to put together the capabilities to have turned those guns off, turn those mortars off. Crusader would have been capable of doing all of these.

GEN. TOMMY FRANKS, Commander-in-Chief, U.S. Central Command: Would it have been employed in anaconda if we had it? Candidly, I doubt it. I don't think it would have. Given the characteristics of that particular fight, it probably wouldn't have been there.

KWAME HOLMAN: The Bush Administration wants to shift the $475 million it originally planned to spend on Crusader next year, to what it hopes will be more promising precision artillery systems, such as this high-mobility artillery rocket system.

PAUL WOLFOWITZ, Deputy Secretary of Defense: Changing the way that military forces operate is only partly a matter of equipment.

KWAME HOLMAN: Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz says the Pentagon's civilian leaders want to change more than just the weapons they buy.

PAUL WOLFOWITZ: In every case where there's been a military revolution in the past, it's involved changes in equipment, but also changes in organization, but also changes in the way people think. One example, which I think applies to this Crusader issue, is the changes in mind set that come when you have accurate munitions. When it comes to artillery, it's still dumb, it's still inaccurate. What we're hoping to do with this decision of taking the money from Crusader and shifting it instead to much more accurate, much more rapid development of accurate artillery systems, is to get that ability to use artillery with precision we've never had before.

GEN. BARRY McCAFFREY: Wolfowitz is brilliant, he's a patriot. I've worked with him for years. They're wrong on the issue.

KWAME HOLMAN: Barry McCaffrey says the Crusader can fire accurate shells, as Secretary Wolfowitz wants, but precision isn't everything. In battle, he says, the enemy's location is not always known and a barrage of steel and fire on a general area sometimes is required.

GEN. BARRY McCAFFREY: The nature of actual, confused, high intensity combat is we don't know where the enemy is frequently. It's not all a precision battle. It's a suppression battle. We start getting pounded by 90 some odd artillery weapons, 100- plus mortars. We start putting suppressive fires, and we then fire and maneuver. So artillery has got to do a couple of things. One of them is give us cover, suppress enemy forces, fire counter battery. That's what Crusader is prepared to do and it'll do it reliably.

KWAME HOLMAN: According to Ralph Peters there is a generational split within the Army.

LT. COL. RALPH PETERS: The majority of junior officers don't want Crusader; it's the senior officers, who are wed to this once valid vision. A lot of the proponents of Crusader are these generals who won the Cold War and Desert Storm. They built that heavy military that served us so well in its time. They had a tremendous emotional bond with it. And, you know, it's hard for all of us, especially when we get older, to let go of the past, the things we built so proudly or did so proudly.

KWAME HOLMAN: But Barry McCaffrey, who commanded the 24th mechanized infantry division during the Gulf War, says America still needs to prepare for high-intensity warfare using heavy forces.

GEN. BARRY McCAFFREY: We also need to remind ourselves we've got to look at enemy capabilities and our potential to deter or carry out combat operations against the North Koreans, Syrians, Iraqis, defend Taiwan, defend Israel, where we have to seize ground or defend people. When it comes to high intensity when it comes to high intensity combat, it's the Abrams-Bradley ground combat team backed up by artillery.

SPOKESMAN: I believe we will not end up saving a dime.

KWAME HOLMAN: Leading the Crusader crusade in the Senate is Oklahoma Republican James Inhofe. The Crusader was to have been built in his state by United Defense.

SEN. JAMES INHOFE: Yes, they're talking about having an assembly plant in Elgin, Oklahoma. That's because it's next to Fort Sill, the artillery training area; a logical place for it. It's great for our state. I'm glad they're going to do that, but that isn't a reason for my passion on this. My passion is we want to have a superior system, and we don't have it; right now we're inferior.

KWAME HOLMAN: Inhofe helped craft a senate proposal that aims to preserve the technologies developed for the Crusader while creating a lighter piece of artillery. In addition to the Crusader, there are a number of other big- ticket weapons systems that have been in development for more than a decade that might get scaled back. They include the Marine Corps' Osprey tilt rotor aircraft, the Army's stealthy Comanche helicopter, and the Air Force's F-22. What happens to the Crusader may set the precedent for the Pentagon's ability to win future cuts in as many as eight major weapons systems now in development and under review.

GWEN IFILL: This afternoon the Senate voted overwhelmingly to allow the Pentagon to terminate the Crusader and use the money to develop a lighter artillery system. That decision now goes to a conference committee with House members.

NEWSMAKER

GWEN IFILL: AIDS, Africa, and the President's new plan to fight the disease. Earlier today, I spoke with Dr. Anthony Fauci, Director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, about today's announcement.

GWEN IFILL: Dr. Fauci, thank you for joining us.

DR. ANTHONY FAUCI: It's good to be here.

GWEN IFILL: So describe for us what the President's approach is today on AIDS.

DR. ANTHONY FAUCI: Well, the President launched a new program that's directed at the interruption, or the prevention of transmission of HIV from pregnant women to their babies at the time of birth, through pregnancy, or during breast-feeding. It's a program that is part of the broad general approach of trying to do something to interrupt the spread of this epidemic in a catastrophic way, and particularly in developing countries; the most hard hit of which are those in sub-Saharan Africa and the Caribbean. And what the program does, it aims in...in two separate phases. One is more of a low-tech phase where you involve involuntary counseling and testing of pregnant women, determine if they're HIV infected, and to use a therapeutic approach, which is really very simple. It's a single dose of the drug to the mother during labor, and a single dose to the baby within 48 hours of birth. And that has shown to decrease the transmissibility by about 50%. The program is a program that's scoped out for about five years, and at the end of the fifth year, you should reach the point...

GWEN IFILL: $500 million program.

DR. ANTHONY FAUCI: Yeah, it's a $500 million program -- about a million... $100 million a year. But the goal, and I think it's an attainable goal, is to be able to save the lives, in the sense of preventing infection, in 145,000... 146,000 children per year by the end of the fifth year, which is a really quite... quite an important advance if we can do that.

GWEN IFILL: Why the focus on mother-child transmission rather than adult-to-adult transmission?

DR. ANTHONY FAUCI: Sure. Sure. And that's an excellent question. Certainly this is... this is not excluding other things that we'll be doing with the global AIDS trust fund and a variety of other programs at the CDC, and the NIH and others. But the reason for focusing in this particular arena of mother- to-child transmission is that in order to provide therapy for adults who are already infected for the period of time -- essentially, indefinitely -- you would need a health care infrastructure that just doesn't exist right now. That doesn't mean that we're not going to be partnering with other nations to try and build up to that, but it's a very difficult thing to do. What this is, it's treatment that serves as a prevention. It isn't treatment for an indefinite period of time of people who are already infected; it's treating the mother to be able to block transmission to the baby. So it's a combination of a treatment program, which its end effect is actually prevention.

GWEN IFILL: But if you're saving the children...

DR. ANTHONY FAUCI: Right.

GWEN IFILL: ...And not necessarily taking care of the mother, don't you run the risk of leaving orphans?

DR. ANTHONY FAUCI: Of course. That's the obvious question, that there's a problem would you leave the child who's escaped infection as an orphan. Again, part of the program is to actually provide comprehensive therapy to a certain proportion -- but you-- of the mothers. You can't do that if the infrastructure doesn't exist. So it isn't as if the government... the President is focusing only on thisto the exclusion of the others. What we're saying is that right now we can have an impact on spread from mother to child at the same time that we're participating in a more comprehensive program of building up infrastructure to be able to treat people so that you can keep mother and father alive. But that's something that is logistically difficult to do -- not impossible, but it's going to require lot more resources and a lot of collaboration among multiple nations, among NGO's, non-government organization, and it will require an infrastructure that just is not there yet.

GWEN IFILL: You're probably aware that critics of this have said it is just a drop in the bucket; that when you talk about how much more the administration is willing to spend down the road, it's going to come too late at a time when AIDS in sub-Saharan Africa is projected to double in five years.

DR. ANTHONY FAUCI: Well, I think you have to remember certain things. First of all, we have a $500 million commitment to the Global AIDS Trust Fund. That clearly is more than anyone else is doing. That doesn't mean that's going to be the only amount. And the President made it very clear that what he's doing here is not a substitute for the Global AIDS Trust Fund, nor does it eliminate or push it aside. It's in addition to; it's complimentary. So if this were being a substitute, you'd say, "well, you know, you're going in one direction and not in the other." That's not the case at all, and the President made that very clear in his remarks today.

GWEN IFILL: And what about the drug of choice in this treatment program? Nevirapine?

DR. ANTHONY FAUCI: Yeah, Nevirapine.

GWEN IFILL: Why... why this drug?

DR. ANTHONY FAUCI: Well, this drug is an important drug because in a clinical trial in sub-Saharan Africa, it was shown that if you give us just a single dose at the right time, the half-life of the drug, or the duration of time that the drug hangs around is just enough to get through that period of time of the high probability of transmission from a mother to a baby during birth at the time of labor and delivery. And if you give it to the baby, you even put icing on the cake for that. We still have the problem, obviously, that we're going to have to address one way or the other of breast-feeding, of the added infection that would occur through breast-feeding. And that's the reason why it's part of the program, though it's restricted somewhat because of the lack of the infrastructure is to treat the mother beyond just the birth of the baby so that as you're treating the mother, you can then continue to block transmissibility through breast-feeding.

GWEN IFILL: How do you monitor the success of an effort like that?

DR. ANTHONY FAUCI: Well, you monitor the success because you know what the percentages of infected pregnant women are. You know what the percentage of transmissibility... it's about 30% or more in sub-Saharan Africa. So if a mother is... if a woman is pregnant and infected, there's at least a 30% chance. What you'll be able to monitor is that when you follow these women, you'll be able to determine if you have that projected decrease in transmissibility and the mathematical modeling that was done indicates the numbers that I mentioned to you, that at the end of the five-year period, we hopefully will have 145,000, 146,000 babies per year who otherwise would have been infected who are not infected. That's the measurement, and I think that's the reason why the President is high on this program, because it has quantifiable endpoints. It isn't something justvague where you just put money in and you hope that something good happens. These are quantifiable endpoints that we'll be looking for.

GWEN IFILL: One more question on the money. Democrats and Republicans in the Senate were prepared to spend much more than this. What guarantees do they have that, as you say, there will be more money down the road to broaden this kind of... this kind of effort?

DR. ANTHONY FAUCI:I think that when we have success, which I certainly hope and think we will, that that will be the incentive to put money in, and that's what we're expecting -- that when see quantifiable results, which is one of the good reasons why this, I think, is a good program, that when people see that, then that's a very good incentive to say, "let's put more money in."

GWEN IFILL: Okay. Dr. Anthony Fauci, thank you very much for joining us.

DR. ANTHONY FAUCI: You're welcome.

FOCUS - THE LAITY SPEAKS

GWEN IFILL: Now a view from the pews as Catholics respond to the Church's new policy to remove abusing priests from the ministry: That plan adopted by the Conference of Catholic Bishops. At our Lady of Lourdes Church in Oakland, seven Catholics from northern California, discussed the policy with our correspondent Spencer Michels.

SPENCER MICHELS: Thank you all very much for being with us today. All of you, in fact, heard about what happened in Dallas this last weekend. Lael Carlson, should the bishops have spent so much time on this particular issue-- how do you punish a priest who has engaged in this behavior?

LAEL CARLSON, Church Music Director: It's such a heinous abuse of power, and as a parent, I just... you know, they had to be strict; they had to come down hard. And, you know, there are people that say it wasn't hard enough, but I think they went as far as they could go at this time.

SPENCER MICHELS: Marie DePorres Taylor, you were a nun for 30 years, now you work in local government. Do you think this policy of removing from ministerial duties any priest who has ever abused a minor, was that... is that a good idea?

MARIE DE PORRES TAYLOR, Former Nun/Administrator: Yes, that's a good idea. I think that it also should be that they are prosecuted, that the individual is prosecuted. So I have a...

SPENCER MICHELS: Do you think, though, that a priest who abused someone 30, 40 years ago and hasn't done it since ought to have this sanction on him, that he should be isolated like that?

MARIE DE PORRES TAYLOR: Yes, I do. Yes, I do, because it's very hard to really cure pedophiles.

SPENCER MICHELS: George Fruehan, you... last time when you were... we had this discussion, you disclosed that you had been abused as a child by a priest.

GEORGE FRUEHAN, Business Consultant: Yes.

SPENCER MICHELS: What do you think now when you hear the new policy? Would that have helped?

GEORGE FRUEHAN: Well, I think certainly the Church had to draw a very severe line this time, and it's partly because... mostly because of the action of the bishops in the past of moving pedophiles around, and basically administrative malfeasance on the part of the bishops. So, although we may think of that as a pretty strict line to draw, that, you know, one... one molestation in the past, we have to realize, I mean, that was a criminal act.

SPENCER MICHELS: Maria Lopez Knowles, you've heard probably that many of the victims' groups and some of the reform elements in the Church have said it wasn't even strict enough, that it really ought to be tougher.

MARIE LOPEZ-KNOWLES, Marketing Director: I think it was strict enough. I think isolating them is important. I agree with Marie they need to be supervised. If they're guilty, one act is enough, as far as I'm concerned. They don't have to do it five times over 20 years. And they should... they should be criminally prosecuted as well. I think in the case of the bishops in Dallas, it's very easy to look at the priests and say, "the problem resides there, so we'll do zero tolerance at that level." But they need to look in the mirror. I think the bishops need to look at themselves and take care of their own situation quickly.

GEOFF COLLINS, Insurance Investigator: Let's face it, none of this crisis, none of this agony that the victims went through and now loyal Catholics are going through, would have to have happened had the bishops, and certain bishops certainly in particular dioceses, had done their job. We need to see the resignations of men like Cardinal Law, Cardinal Mahony, and potentially Cardinal Egan and other bishops like that who have allowed this thing, I think, to become the scandal that it is.

SPENCER MICHELS: The "Dallas Morning News" reported that two out of every three priests-- bishops, rather-- has dealt with this issue in that way; by transferring priests, by hiding it, by not bringing it forward. That would be a wholesale change in the Church if you had to deal with two-thirds of the bishops and get rid of them. Would that... does that make sense, Geoff?

GEOFF COLLINS: No, not really, because there are many bishops who were naive initially, who believed in good faith that some of these priests could be rehabilitated. But the ones that I spoke about earlier, certainly the princes of the church, so to speak, there's ample evidence to justify not only misfeasance, but frankly, I think, criminal obstruction of justice charges. This is really a crisis of authority and the abuse of authority. We are the Church; not the bishops, not even the Pope. They serve us, not the other way around. And they've given us tremendous disservice to this point.

SPENCER MICHELS: Doesn't that imply, what you're talking about, both of you, a wholesale reorganization of the personnel in the upper reaches of the Church?

GROUP MEMBER: Why not?

SPENCER MICHELS: Anthony?

ANTHONYGONZALES, President, Catholic Men's Group: I come from Silicon Valley. I know of innumerable CEO's that were kicked out because they weren't doing their job right.

LAEL CARLSON: But doesn't that decision have to come from the Vatican? I mean, the bishops cannot remove each other. I mean, it has to come down from the Vatican.

SPOKESPERSON: No, it's...

MARIE LOPEZ-KNOWLES: And it's very difficult to defrock a priest. That comes from the Vatican, too.

LAEL CARLSON: But there has...

MARIE LOPEZ-KNOWLES: That's a very difficult situation in and of itself.

ANTHONY GONZALES: This is very interesting. A priest is automatically defrocked when he's excommunicated, okay?

SPENCER MICHELS: Nobody's talking excommunication here, though.

ANTHONY GONZALES: But... but here's the point, they could have made... the bishops in the United States could have made this an excommunicatable offense.

SPENCER MICHELS: Did anybody even propose that?

ANTHONY GONZALES: No.

SPENCER MICHELS: I didn't hear that at all.

ANTHONY GONZALES: It was not proposed and it should have been.

GEORGE FRUEHAN: That's within their authority as...

ANTHONY GONZALES: Yes. Absolutely. Each bishop in his diocese has that authority. The bishops are supposed to be our exemplars. And where are their... are our exemplars when these kind of things happen?

SPENCER MICHELS: But it also says in the bible that you forgive, that forgiveness is the whole basis for the Christian faith.

GEOF COLLINS: No, question about that.

MARIE LOPEZ-KNOWLES: That's a double-edged sword.

SPENCER MICHELS: But that's a double-edged sword.

LAEL CARLSON: But what does forgiveness mean?

SPOKESPERSON: It implies...

LAEL CARLSON: You can still forgive, but are they in that position anymore? Do you know what I mean? There can still be forgiveness.

ADRIAN MISON FULAY, High School Teacher: The first step is... the first step is the penitence of the individual person to seek that forgiveness. And one of the speakers at the bishops' conference meeting, Scott Appleby from the University of Notre Dame, stated, you know, "the problem lies in this arrogance of power." And I think that's the most pressing problem in the Church today, the arrogance of power.

GEOFF COLLINS: No question about it. The problem is you're dealing with power, and when they see a threat to power, that's when they close ranks. And that's why all Catholics, I think, of whatever persuasion, as laity, are really questioning now that power.

MARIE DE PORRES TAYLOR: When a man is ordained a bishop, he becomes the sole shepherd, shall we say, of a diocese or archdiocese. He is the king of his kingdom.

SPENCER MICHELS: Would you change that?

MARIE DE PORRES TAYLOR: Well, yes, because you're talking about power. But to do that, you will have to change the upside down of hierarchy. And I'm not sure that Rome is ready to be turned upside down.

ANTHONY GONZALES: These men were given Christ's authority. Now they've abused that authority, and therefore Rome should be the one that comes down on them if they don't have the honor and the integrity and the guts to do what's right.

SPENCER MICHELS: Which gets us to a very crucial point in this, which is what is the role of the laity here, and what is the role of the hierarchy? Are you saying that the laity ought to know its place and not get this involved?

ANTHONY GONZALES: No, no. It is our... it is our duty as the laity to bring these issues up to the bishops and to say, "well, excuse me, Your Excellency, you don't have that right. You don't have that right. You cannot do what you are doing."

GEOF COLLINS: The only problem is you're going to come up flat against power politics, and believe me, these guys know how to play it better than anybody, especially the Romans. However, I do believe that we have to approach this with a little moderation. We have to look at it where we can contribute, because this... we have a lot of victims here. We can't forget them.

SPENCER MICHELS: New subject-- kind of related: Should the bishops have talked about the specific cases of homosexuality in the priesthood, celibacy for priests, married priests, women in the priesthood? Should they...

GROUP: No.

SPENCER MICHELS: No? Why not? (Group speaking at once )

GEORGE FRUEHAN: First of all, there's a limited amount of time. Second of all, each of those topics in its own right, it is highly political hot buttons for many different people. And so if you want to get a problem solved, you have to have some focus. And certainly those questions of celibacy and marriage for priests... you know, the influence of lay people in a parish and in a diocese, those have to be brought up in the future. But if you're going to get something done now, you have to concentrate on the topic at hand.

SPENCER MICHELS: But don't those underlie the topic at hand? Aren't they really important for the scandal?

MARIE LOPEZ-KNOWLES: I don't think they have to do with the scandal. And I think those are issues that have to be dealt with in Rome.

ANTHONY GONZALES: It has been the case that in every crisis of the church it's the laity that ultimately holds fast to the faith, unlike my brethren here, and keeps... ( laughter )

GEOF COLLINS: A humble opinion. In his Christian opinion.

ANTHONY GONZALES: ...And keep the church on the straight and narrow. Let me just... one thing. Spencer, please.

ADRIAN MISON FULAY: But that's what keeps me in the church because we can have these dialogues, we can have these arguments, we can fight with each other, but I'm not being driven out of this church because of sin, mistakes, arrogance, power. I'm staying in this church because from inside I can affect a lot of change.

ANTHONY GONZALES: Here's the bottom line: Our faith isn't in bishops or priests or nuns or cardinals or even the pope-- that's not where our faith lies. Our faith lies in Jesus Christ and in the revealed truth that he gave us and that has been preserved in the church.

SPENCER MICHELS: Okay. So what do you do now? The Vatican has this on its plate at this point. Do you write the Vatican? Do you go to your bishop and tell him, or do you just give up and say, "okay, we've done what we can do."

MARIE DE PORRES TAYLOR: What I want to see is that true change will happen, is if each bishop and archbishop really takes the recommendation seriously and enacts them in his parish, in his diocese and archdiocese.

SPENCER MICHELS: So Rome is almost irrelevant, then.

MARIE DE PORRES TAYLOR: Yeah, I think so. If they... if we... I mean, I think, it's nice to have Rome's, you know, papal blessing on it, but I still think it has to go down to the local area.

ADRIAN MISON FULAY: And I think in our culture today, with the media, with the information out there, and people are not going to tolerate anything, you know, coming up, coming across as false.

LAEL CARLSON: You know, and change is messy. It's all messy and it's going to be forward and back and back and forward, and it... it is a beginning. It is a beginning. I think there are some positive things happening. I really do.

SPENCER MICHELS: So we will end at that beginning, I'm afraid, because we're out of time. But thank you all very much for being here.

GROUP: Thank you.

RECAP

GWEN IFILL: Again, the major developments of the day. Another Palestinian suicide bombing killed six people and wounded at least 35 in Jerusalem. Israeli forces moved into the West Bank and attacked in Gaza. And President Bush called for spending $500 million to fight Aids in Africa and the Caribbean. We'll see you online and again here tomorrow evening. I'm Gwen Ifill. Thank you and good night.