The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer

RAY SUAREZ: Good evening. I'm Ray Suarez. On the NewsHour tonight: Our summary of the news; a look back at the year since the U.S. Launched its invasion of Iraq; the gathering political storm over an already signed Medicare bill; and analysis of the week's news with Shields and Brooks.

NEW SUMMARY

RAY SUAREZ: Pakistan sent thousands of fresh troops today to join a fierce battle near the Afghan border. They targeted a large force of militants in a 20-square mile area, possibly including al-Qaida's number-two man, Ayman al-Zawahri. We have a report from Ian Williams of Independent Television News.

IAN WILLIAMS: The Pakistan army is still pouring troops and heavy weapons into the battle area, where they're facing fierce resistance from an estimated three to four hundred heavily armed al-Qaida fighters and local tribal supporters. Helicopter gunships are being used to pound the area, a mountainous and desolate corner of Pakistan's tribal belt, where the authority of the central government has been very weak. Today officials are no longer saying the fighters are surrounded in a fortress-like compound. Instead, they're described as being cornered in several compounds over a number of villages. Civilians are being urged to leave the area, and hundreds are getting out. And although the army still believes there is an important person, or people,up there because of the ferocity of the resistance, they are now denying having any specific intelligence pointing to al-Qaida's number two, Ayman al-Zawahri. The U.S. and Afghan army are beefing up forces on their side of the border to block any attempt by the besieged al-Qaida fighters to flee into Afghanistan.

RAY SUAREZ: The Pakistani army said "a dozen or so" U.S. intelligence agents were helping government forces. A Taliban spokesman claimed today that both Ayman al-Zawahri and Osama bin Laden are safe in Afghanistan, far from the fighting. In Iraq today, the U.S. Military announced two marines were attacked and killed Wednesday, during a patrol west of Baghdad. In all, 570 U.S. troops have died in Iraq from combat and other causes since the war began a year ago; 3,300 have been wounded or hurt in accidents. Secretary of State Powell made a surprise stop in Baghdad today to mark the first anniversary of the war. His visit followed a spate of attacks in recent days. At a news conference, Powell acknowledged "there will be difficult days ahead."

COLIN POWELL: The intelligence system, I think, is getting more and more insight into what is happening. But I don't want to underestimate the seriousness of the challenge, and we have to shift as the enemy shifts. They've moved from harder targets to softer targets, so we'll have toe adapt our tactics likewise.

RAY SUAREZ: Powell also said the U.S. gave Poland "full, candid and open information" before the war. Yesterday, Polish President Alexander Kwasniewski said he had been "misled" about weapons of mass destruction. He also said Polish troops might leave Iraq early. But today, a spokesman said Kwasniewski had assured President Bush the troops would stay as long as needed. Today marked the first anniversary of the war. At the White House President Bush acknowledged the conflict divided the allies, but he urged unity now. He said, "There can be no separate peace with the terrorist enemy. Any sign of weakness or retreat simply invites more violence." We'll have some of the president's speech and more on the war anniversary right after this News Summary. Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry will reject any endorsement by foreign leaders. Late Thursday, a top adviser to Kerry issued a statement saying: "It is simply not appropriate for any foreign leader to endorse a candidate in America's presidential election." Kerry had been criticized for saying some leaders wanted to see him replace President Bush. The president of Taiwan, Chen Shui-Bian, and his vice president survived an assassination attempt today. They were lightly wounded by gunfire, one day before national elections. We have a report narrated by Louise Bates of Associated Press Television News.

LOUISE BATES: Chen was riding in a red convertible four-wheel- drive, waving to crowds lining the streets in his hometown. Footage shows where one of the bullets struck their vehicle, but both leaders seemed unaware of the danger at the time. "Please do not worry about me," Chen said in a televised address to the public a few hours later. "The National Security Bureau and all the related government departments have initiated a reaction mechanism. There's no problem with Taiwan's security," he said. The lead-up to the Taiwanese elections have been marked by China's bitter criticism of Chen's defense referendum. Taiwanese voters will be asked whether the island should beef up its defenses against the hundreds of Chinese missiles pointed at it. China claims Taiwan as part of its territory and fears the referendum could lead to a future vote on Taiwanese independence. On the Mainland, Chinese authorities remained silent following the assassination attempt, and state-controlled media largely ignored the story.

RAY SUAREZ: Police said they have no suspects in the attack. Elections officials said tomorrow's vote will go ahead as planned. A judge in Spain charged five men today in last week's Madrid train bombing. Three Moroccans were accused of 190 counts of murder. Two Indians were charged with helping terrorists. All claimed they were innocent and they denied any links to al-Qaida. A court official said the prime suspect, Jamal Zougam, stared at the floor and wept during the proceedings. Also today, an Algerian man was released. Police found no evidence linking him to the bombing. Security forces in Yemen today recaptured the remaining suspects in the attack on the U.S.S. "Cole". They and eight other militants had escaped from prison last year. They're suspected in a suicide boat bombing that killed 17 American sailors on the "Cole" in October of 2000. The navy destroyer was refueling in the port of Aden. NATO peacekeepers warned today they will crack down on rioters in Kosovo. A spokesman said troops opened fire on violent protesters yesterday and raided apartment buildings searching for gunmen. Fighting between Serbs and ethnic Albanians began Wednesday. At least 28 people have been killed and hundreds wounded since then. On Wall Street today, the Dow Jones Industrial Average lost 109 points to close at 10,186. The NASDAQ fell nearly 22 points to close at 1940. For the week, the Dow lost half a percent. The NASDAQ fell 2 percent. That's it for the News Summary tonight. Now it's on to: One year later in Iraq, Medicare politics, and Shields and Brooks.

FOCUS - ONE YEAR ON

RAY SUAREZ: President Bush marked the one year anniversary of the war with Iraq by giving a speech at the White House. Here are some excerpts.

PRESIDENT GEORGE W. BUSH: It is the interest of every country and the duty of every government to fight and destroy this threat to our people. There is a dividing line in our world, not between nations and not between religions or cultures, but a dividing line separating two visions of justice and the value of life. There is no neutral ground, no neutral ground in the fight between civilization and terror, because there's no neutral ground between good and evil, freedom and slavery, and life and death. The war on terror is not a figure of speech; it is an inescapable calling of our generation. There can be no separate peace with the terrorist enemy. Any sign of weakness or retreat simply validates terrorist violence and invites more violence for all nations. The only certain way to protect our people is by united and decisive action. One year ago military forces of a strong coalition entered Iraq to enforce United Nations demands to defend our security and to liberate that country from the rule of a tyrant. For Iraq it was a day of deliverance. There have been disagreements in this matter among old and valued friends. Those differences belong to the past. All of us can now agree that the fall of the Iraqi dictator has removed a source of violence, aggression and instability in the Middle East. Whatever their past views, every nation now has an interest in a free, successful, stable Iraq. And the terrorists understand their own interests in the fate of that country. For them, the connection between Iraq's future and the course of the war on terror is very clear. They understand that a free Iraq will be a devastating setback to their ambitionsof tyranny over the Middle East. The rise of democratic institutions in Afghanistan and Iraq is a great step toward a goal of lasting importance to the world. We've set out to encourage reform and democracy in the greater Middle East as the alternatives to fanaticism, resentment and terror.

RAY SUAREZ: Margaret Warner has more on this one-year anniversary.

MARGARET WARNER: Some reflections now from two foreign policy thinkers who were with us one year ago tonight, the night the war began: Zbigniew Brzezinski, counselor at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, was national security advisor in the Carter administration-- his new book is entitled "The Choice: Global Domination or Global Leadership"; and Walter Russell Mead is columnist and a senior fellow for U.S. foreign policy at the Council on Foreign Relations. His recent book is "Special Providence: An Historical Look at the U.S. and the World."

Welcome to you both. We were together, or you were with Jim actually, a year ago tonight.

Zbigniew Brzezinski, a year later, does the Iraq War make America more or less secure?

ZBIGNIEW BRZEZINSKI: On balance, I would have to say, and with genuine sadness, less secure. I think we have increased the number of enemies. The global antagonism towards the United States is much higher than before. International mistrust of the United States is at unprecedented heights. And the United States is more isolated internationally than probably at any point in its history.

MARGARET WARNER: How do you see it, Walter Mead, less secure?

WALTER RUSSELL MEAD: Well, I think we're... I'm a little bit more optimistic than Dr. Brzezinski, although I share most of the concerns that he just expressed. I think, strategically, and in a very big picture, dealing with the regime of Saddam Hussein was something we had to do-- and probably the sooner we did it, the better. But I don't necessarily think that all the steps we've taken along the road have been the right steps or the smartest steps. Maybe we've done the best thing and sometimes we've done it in the worst way.

MARGARET WARNER: Is that part of what you mean, Dr. Brzezinski? In other words, Wolfowitz-- Paul Wolfowitz, the deputy secretary of defense-- was on the program last night and he said, as the president has said, the world is a lot safer with Saddam Hussein gone. Do you disagree with that, or are you saying the goal might have been all right, but the price we paid, the way we waged it was...

ZBIGNIEW BRZEZINSKI: I have no regrets that Saddam Hussein is gone. I'm not sure the world is necessarily safer because, in fact, he wasn't such a threat. But the world is better off without him because he was a very ugly dictator. And I suppose American power is more respected, and that is, to some extent, a good thing. Maybe such things as the breakthrough with Libya was accelerated by what we did. But then you have to count against that, first of all, the loss of life. More than five hundred, seven hundred Americans and friends killed. Probably up to 10,000 Iraqis killed -- continued costs, they're escalating, both in blood and money. But above all else, the loss of American credibility, both at home and abroad, is something that's very serious. The fact that president of the United States is no longer trusted and his word is not taken to be America's bond is a serious development. It detracts from our power. But then, beyond that, there is the proliferation of terrorist groups; that is a serious problem. And the connection between terrorism and Iraq, which the president tried to establish today in his anniversary speech, is to put it very mildly, extremely tenuous.

MARGARET WARNER: How do you see that issue, Walter Mead, the connection between terrorism in Iraq? The president is saying it's always been part of the same war on terror. Others, including Zbigniew Brzezinski just now, seem to be suggesting that, in fact, the Iraq War helped generate a proliferation of terror cells. How do you see it?

WALTER RUSSELL MEAD: Well, I think we were in the process of proliferating terror before the Iraq War. There are ways in which the connection between Saddam Hussein and terrorist organizations wasn't that Saddam Hussein himself was funding them. For example, U.S. troops had to stay in Saudi Arabia after the Gulf War on a permanent basis because Saddam Hussein violated his cease-fire agreement and was a threat to Saudi Arabia. It was because U.S. troops were permanently stationed in Saudi Arabia that Osama bin Laden founded al-Qaida. So people thought that containing Iraq was a kind of a cost-free policy -- I actually think it was a high- cost policy and those costs were mounting with time. So this is one reason I feel we kind of had to lance the boil at some point.

MARGARET WARNER: What I'm asking you is -- we've seen all of these attacks in the past year, cells "linked to al-Qaida," whether it's in Spain or whether it's Istanbul or Casablanca. Do you think that would have happened anyway, or do you think that the Iraq War, in part, generated them?

WALTER RUSSELL MEAD: I think it's hard to say. It's very hard to go back and say what might have been. But I think that terrorists have been gaining confidence and gaining organizational ability. If we hadn't taken Saddam Hussein out, I'm afraid that in Saudi Arabia, you would have found a government that was... whose legitimacy was so undercut by the presence of U.S. troops on a permanent basis, that the Saudis would have been forced to continue to try to pander even more and even harder to these Wahabist fanatics. We might have seen a much greater flow of money. It's possible that the acceleration of Saudi Arabia... sorry, the disintegration of Saudi Arabia might have reached a truly dangerous point. It's very hard to compare what is with what might have been or could have been. But I think the reality is that terrorism has been on an accelerating curve for some time, and would be whether or not we were in Iraq.

MARGARET WARNER: Mr. Brzezinski, let's go back to the point you raised about credibility and American leadership. I went back and read the transcript from a year ago. And you actually said... the first thing you said to Jim was that the greatest risk was perhaps to the president's credibility. For example, if there are no weapons of mass destruction, you said, if they're not used and they're not there, it certainly would damage his credibility. Are you saying that this has a permanent effect on America's ability to lead now in the future?

ZBIGNIEW BRZEZINSKI: "Permanent" is probably too strong a word but an enduring one, yes. You cannot be leading if you are misleading. And that is just a fact of life. Democracy is based on trust, on the covenant between the people and the president. An international alliance of democracies is based on trust. When President Kennedy sent Dean Acheson to Paris to alert De Gaulle that there were Soviet missiles aimed at the United States and that the United States would remove them, and when Acheson finished briefing De Gaulle and said to De Gaulle, "I now want to show you the evidence," De Gaulle responded, "I don't want to see the evidence. I believe the president of the United States. France stands with the United States." Would this happen today? I doubt it very much. The fact is that our credibility has been hurt. And our ability to discuss terrorism seriously is also weakened because we now generalize about terrorism. We talk about it as if it was a single phenomenon. Yesterday in the "New York Times," there was a very interesting article which talks explicitly about the spread of new groups since the war in Iraq, incidentally, and that the IISS, The Institute of International Strategic Studies in London, is reporting that the recruitment-- global recruitment-- for anti-American Jihad is rising since the war against Iraq. And last but not least, we celebrate today the first anniversary of the war against Iraq and we gain a link to terrorism even though there is no more evidence for that than there was for the weapons of mass destruction. This is hurting us. There is terrorism. There is a problem, but we are not going to combat it effectively if people don't trust us.

MARGARET WARNER: Walter Mead, how damaging is this credibility problem, do you think, to America's ability to lead in the future?

WALTER RUSSELL MEAD: Again, I think, we have sustained a great deal of damage and I don't think it was necessary. Even if we were going into Iraq, I think the United States should have made a much broader case. Regime change with Saddam Hussein had been our objective since the Clinton administration. Saddam Hussein was violating a cease-fire with the United States. He was firing on American forces who were performing legal missions from time to time. We had a much better case. And if you look very carefully through what the administration was saying a year ago, there are signs of that case in there. But they allowed the entire weight of the public case, particularly internationally, to hang on the weapons of mass destruction issue. Now, I think, in fairness to both the president and to Prime Minister Blair, I don't think they would have been so foolish as to tell a lie that would be so quickly revealed as a lie. I think they had to have believed, on the basis of evidence that they were seeing, that a much more extensive program of weapons of mass destruction would have been uncovered as the U.S. occupied Iraq. What this suggests is that, to some degree, we have some intelligence problems. You think that we missed the Pakistani nuclear program. We missed the degree to which Pakistan had been... had become, set up a kind of nuclear bazaar. At least a rogue scientist had done it. So in that case, we missed a lot of evidence of actual WMD operation. And in Iraq, our error was the other way. Unfortunately, because of the way the public case was made, the intelligence failure has deeply damaged the credibility of the United States. And it is a very sad and costly development.

MARGARET WARNER: Let me ask you both a brief final question. It's about something the president said today, beginning with you, Mr. Mead. He said today that the differences over Iraq-- he means sort of prewar-- "belong to the past." Do you agree or do you think that the damage to U.S. relationships with allies is deeper than that?

WALTER RUSSELL MEAD: The truth is the damage is done and is real, but from this point on, we all do actually want a stable, free Iraq. So I'm not sure that we are going to see a great... as great a difference in approaches to this question going forward.

MARGARET WARNER: Dr. Brzezinski?

ZBIGNIEW BRZEZINSKI: I think the problem is much wider and bigger than Iraq, and the connection between Iraq and terrorism is tenuous. I think we can begin to redeem the past by working together with the Europeans. But if we are serious about it, then we have to realize that many of the problems that produce terror are conflated, and that you cannot solve the problem of terrorism without addressing the problems that generate terrorism. You have to extirpate the terrorists. But if there is no serious progress towards stability and democracy in Iraq and towards peace between the Israelis and the Palestinians, the mess will continue and probably intensify. And right now, we are not doing much, particularly, about the peace between the Israelis and the Palestinians.

MARGARET WARNER: Zbigniew Brzezinski, Walter Russell Mead, thank you both.

RAY SUAREZ: Still to come on the NewsHour tonight, Medicare politics, and Shields and Brooks.

FOCUS - THE POLITICS OF MEDICARE

RAY SUAREZ: Now, a growing political controversy over the new Medicare law, reported by Susan Dentzer of our health unit, it's a partnership with the Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation.

MEDICARE AD: It's the same Medicare you've always counted on, plus more benefits, like prescription drug coverage.

SUSAN DENTZER: Now airing around the country, this television commercial about the sweeping Medicare changes Congress enacted last year.

MEDICARE AD: You can save with Medicare drug discount cards this June and save more with prescription drug coverage in 2006.

SUSAN DENTZER: The ad may not look all that controversial, but it is. Democratic Senator Ted Kennedy of Massachusetts says it's blatantly political.

SEN. EDWARD KENNEDY: It's basically to try and sell the Medicare program and for the Republicans to take credit for it. This is a political action, and it should be clearly done with political resources and political money and not the money from scarce resources our senior citizens pay into.

SUSAN DENTZER: The federal Department of Health and Human Services produced the commercials as part of a $23 million awareness campaign. Kevin Keane is the department's top spokesman.

KEVIN KEANE: The law tells us it's our responsibility to educate seniors about these new prescription drug benefits. And what more efficient way can you do that than with an advertising campaign and directly mailing information to Medicare beneficiaries?

SUSAN DENTZER: It's been just over three months since president bush signed the new Medicare law last December. But in that time, a series of controversies have erupted as both parties seek political advantage in an election year. This week Democrats sharply criticized this so-called video news release. HHS Recently gave it to TV stations to use in their news broadcasts. The Department says about 52 stations did use it in broadcasts seen by about one million people.

VIDEO CLIP: Medicare officials emphasize that no one will be forced to sign up for any of the new benefits.

SUSAN DENTZER: In the video, a voiceover from a freelance journalist describes the Medicare changes.

VIDEO CLIP: From Washington, I'm Karen Ryan, reporting.

SUSAN DENTZER: Last month Kennedy and other senate democrats wrote congress's investigative arm, the General Accounting Office. They asked it to look into whether the information campaign violated a law governing use of public funds for publicity or propaganda. The GAO has since concluded that the commercials were legal. But it says it's still examining the video news releases, or VNRS. Keane says the VNRS don't warrant the scrutiny.

KEVIN KEANE: It's just a wayof giving the broadcast media a press release in a format they can use. It's used in government and the Clinton administration has more than we have.

SUSAN DENTZER: The biggest controversy to date involves a dispute over just what the Medicare changes could cost and whether the bush administration deliberately kept its own higher estimates from congress. When the Medicare law was passed last November, congress' scorekeeping arm, the Congressional Budget Office, pegged the cost at $395 billion over ten years. Contrast that with the $534 billion estimate from HHS's Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, or CMS. The Bush administration released the estimate last month as part of its 2005 federal budget request. Economist Robert Reischauer is a Medicare expert and former CBO Director. He says the CMS estimate was higher mainly because it assumed more Medicare beneficiaries would sign up for aspects of the new prescription drug programs.

ROBERT REISCHAUER: In fact, it was probably an estimate that was done about the same time as the congressional budget office estimated this bill, and there is no reason to believe the CMS number is more correct than the CBO number. Both are well within the range of the possible here.

SUSAN DENTZER: But Reischauer also says the higher administration estimate could have derailed passage of the Medicare law if it had been known about at the time.

ROBERT REISCHAUER: Many Republicans were concerned about the size of this piece of legislation, concerned that Republicans were about to enact the largest expansion in entitlements in at least 25 years, and the administration, I'm sure, would have been concerned that this would have led to more Republicans voting against the bill, and they really didn't have any to spare.

SEN. EWARD KENNEDY: The administration, the leaders, the republican leaders represented figures that were just entirely different from what the accurate figures were, and that is deception that we cannot afford in our relationship between the Executive and the Congress.

SUSAN DENTZER: Democrats are now focusing their attention on charges made by CMS's chief actuary and cost estimator, Rick Foster. In recent press reports, foster has said he was threatened with termination last summer by then- CMS administrator Tom Scully if he revealed higher estimates of portions of the Medicare legislation. On CNBC's "Capital Report" this week, Scully acknowledged he had told Foster not to provide House Democrats with one estimate they had sought. Scully said that was because the estimate dealt with a controversial section of the Medicare bill that had already been taken out by House Republicans.

TOM SCULLY: They insisted that he score a provision in the bill that was no longer in there just to create this havoc to take the bill down, and I said no.

SUSAN DENTZER: A congressional press release issued last June cited a heated conversation Scully later had with a House Democratic staffer. The aide claimed Scully told her Foster would "be fired so fast his head would spin" if the actuary released the estimate in question. The episode occurred nine months ago, but it was only yesterday that Democrats asked the GAO to investigate whether the threatened firing violated federal law. In today's "Washington Post," Foster was quoted as saying he believes pressure to hide the higher CMS estimates came directly from the White House. This week H.H.S. Secretary Tommy Thompson asked the department's inspector general to look into the allegations of Foster's threatened firing and suppressed cost estimates.

KEVIN KEANE: The inspector general's going to take a look into what happened, what the accusations are, what's true, what's not true and make a finding, and then we'll go from there.

SUSAN DENTZER: And even Republicans who voted for the legislation now say they agree with the need for an inquiry. Georgia Republican Representative Jack Kingston:

REP. JACK KINGSTON: As I understand it, Mr. Foster and Mr. Scully have had some personality rubs, and I think some of that has happened on this. But I will say that if somebody was sitting on good numbers or better numbers than us, that we want to know about it.

SUSAN DENTZER: Last fall Kingston was part of the House team that helped persuade many reluctant conservative members to vote for the Medicare bill. Many had been alarmed at the bill's projected cost, but say they voted for it under pressure.

SPOKESMAN: The conference has agreed to...

SUSAN DENTZER: And this week the house ethics committee opened a formal investigation into whether one republican member, Representative Nick Smith of Michigan, was offered a bribe to vote for the bill.

Medicare Foster is scheduled to appear before the Ways and Means Committee next week. He is to testify about Medicare's long-term financial question. But he's sure to be questioned about his role in Washington's latest political storm.

FOCUS - SHIELDS & BROOKS

RAY SUAREZ: And that brings us to the analysis of Shields and Brooks: Syndicated columnist Mark Shields and "New York Times" columnist David Brooks. It's hard to remember a bill passed, signed, consigned to history that now seems to have so many bedeviling stories floating around it.

MARK SHIELDS: This is a real story I think. I think it's a story for a couple of reasons, first of which is it's united The Democrats -- the Democratic House and Senate leadership both calling for a re-vote. I think what it does, Ray, is raise questions about misleading his own party, misleading the country on the cost of what it is going to be and suppressing those costs, and it - remember Tom Scully, who was the Medicare guy, whom did he talk to at the White House, who told him to do this, and there is some real anger on the part of conservatives, who voted for it only with the understanding that it would not exceed $400 billion which became sort of the magic ceiling beyond which they wouldn't go. So I think it's a political problem, and it's a legislative problem, and what you have in Mr. Foster is the ideal whistle blower. Most whistle blowers sadly seem like sort of malcontents of some sort. This seems like an enormously conscientious even likable public person who is going to testify next Wednesday before the Ways and Means Committee and it is going to be a story - it is a story with real legs.

DAVID BROOKS: Small legs. First of all, these estimates are just guesses. They are elaborate calculations built on guesses of what these things are going to cost, 400 billion, 500 billion, estimates say seven trillion over 75 years. We really have no clue what it is going to cost. Do I think it would have cost, changed any votes? I don't think there was anybody in Washington when it passed who thought it was a $400 billion piece of legislation. Everybody I knew, we probably talked about it here on this program.

RAY SUAREZ: It was a magic number David and the fact that it is a third higher comes out not in the out years, not five years from now, six years from now, but a matter of weeks after the bill is passed. Isn't that a little different?

DAVID BROOKS: Yes, absolutely, and I've said that on this program. I believe they knew what this new estimate was at the time. I believe they were wrong in not telling everybody. Well, I'm pointing out two things. First of all, it didn't change any votes because everybody knew that this $400 billion estimate was off, just like every estimate is off. It is not like there is a right estimate cost. Second, they should have announced everything. We do not yet know and I personally have gone too far on many issues where you do not know what the exact, what is in each estimate. If there were some things that were scored in the $400 billion, another piece of legislation with different provisions would score in the $500 billion. We don't know that yet. We'll wait for the inspector general's report; then we'll have better knowledge about it.

RAY SUAREZ: What about the PR program being run for the bill and the charges that are starting to look at how it was passed?

DAVID BROOKS: Two things. The how it was passed, the three-hour delay, I do think that was just a mistake. You can't hold it open. One of the interesting things about this piece of legislation, nobody supports it now. I don't know anybody who likes it. So if they want to re-vote and re-defeat it, that would be fine with everybody I suspect. The second thing is about the ads they're running on the Medicare. I saw those ads before I even read about them and my first reaction was that they were over the line. The ads they are running in defense of the president that are supposed to be non-political ads which are made to be political - so I do think that that's another case where they've just bungled it.

MARK SHIELDS: I think this thing has an awful lot of angles to it. First you mentioned how they passed it, keeping it open until dawn, keeping the House vote open beyond the usual 15 minutes or even 30 minutes.

RAY SUAREZ: Let's explain what we mean by keeping it open.

MARK SHIELDS: Usually the House has a prescribed period of time in which members can vote. They vote electronically. And they'll let it go a few minutes extra if somebody is on his way or her way from a House office or a committee meeting, and it may go thirty minutes; it may thirty-five or forty minutes if you have got three or four votes that you know are coming in that you need to pass something. This was kept over for over five and a half hours. Throughout the entire night and quite openly the House leadership was leaning on Nick Smith, the retiring Republican from Michigan who has made serious allegations himself that had he was threatened. His son is running to succeed him - that any support for his son would be cut off if he voted against the bill. He probably ended up helping his son because he did vote against the bill and, if anything, whatever independence and heroism that attaches on the stand probably his son inherits but we are talking about $100,000 and money and support or withholding thereof on the House floor. That's going to be investigated by House Ethics Committee. I just think that it's a story where Tommy Thompson, secretary of Health and Human Services, who's Mr. Scully's boss, and a very successful governor of Wisconsin, that he has demanded an investigation. He is distancing the administration - he's distancing himself from the decision that was made. It's a little bit like Arnold Schwarzenegger calling for the investigation of the allegations against him. I mean Tommy Thompson, I assume, probably was... is deeply involved in the passage of it and support of the Medicare bill. Of course quite obviously the word came from White House.

DAVID BROOKS: Let me just separate the weak from the chaff here. We have got a lot of Washington infighting. Some of it was done well; some of it was probably done well. That's not the big story here. The big story is that we have a 400 billion or a 500 billion or 600 billion, a massive piece of legislation that conservatives don't like, that liberals don't like, that centrists don't like. This says something serious about Medicare - our medical reform over the next ten years. Somehow we have a massive bill that nobody likes. I don't know whether it means there is no common ground or the whole debate is just in a turmoil but something is weird when you have a hugely expensive piece of legislation and nobody is actually in favor of it.

RAY SUAREZ: Let's move on to the anniversary of the Iraq War. Today the president was speaking to supporters, representatives of nations that supported this action, called it a brave and historic achievement. A year ago as hostilities were beginning, and he spoke to the country, he said it was to defend the world from grave danger. Is American rank and file faith in those two assurance solid?

DAVID BROOKS: Well, there's still a majority of support for the war, there's still majority support for the idea of getting rid of Saddam, and most importantly there is support in Iraq. There was a poll out just recently that a majority of Iraqis feel they're better off than they were when Saddam was still in power. 70 percent expect to be better off in a year and only 6 percent expect to be worse off. I mean, the big story is here that a year ago Saddam was in his palace, Uday and Qusay were out hunting quail. Now we have a democratic constitution in Iraq. We have businesses starting. And we are, if this works out, we're on a path, a bumpy path, toward some sort of democracy in that region, and hopefully spreading throughout that region. That's the big story here. This is going to be the roughest year of what hopefully the next ten or fifteen years when the payoffs will be seen.

MARK SHIELDS: Misinformation at home on Medicare, misinformation here. A year ago the argument was used by the people who wanted to go to war: Look, this guy's Hitler. One thing you do with it. You stand up as Churchill wanted to or you cave like Neville Chamberlain and so it was appeasement versus stopping another Hitler. He turned out to be a toothless tiger. It turned out to be a country not with weapons of mass destruction. The human rights activists were rights and the hawks were wrong. The sanctions had hurt. The sanctions had left Iraq a weak, poor and hungry nation with weak, poor and hungry people with no capacity to wage war against anybody else. Now is Saddam gone? Is that good yeah, fine. Is the world a better place because he is gone? Absolutely. But was that the reason we went to war? No, it wasn't and it wasn't the case that was made. I mean, our credibility in the world is diminished, the mistrust of the United States -- we're isolated. What Zbigniew Brzezinski said in the segment with Margate is true in spades. He said it more effectively but he said it more circumspect than is the reality.

DAVID BROOKS: He's not a toothless tiger. He killed two or three million people in that region, over thirty thousand people dying every year because of the sanctions region. But the mass graves were still being filled. The torture centers were still being filled. He was a guy who wanted to control that region and he was someone who was guy shooting at our planes.

RAY SUAREZ: I think that Mark's point is that that is not why we were going to war

DAVID BROOKS: It's what I said 500 million times. It is what most people said, there were multiple reasons why we went to war. As the president said again and again and again, one was the WMD -- the main one for me and for a lot of people was that the sea bed of terrorism was the cascade of tyrannies in the Middle East and you had to address the fundamental problem that there were all these people sitting around with no hope, with no rights, with no liberty and you had to change the dynamic in the Middle East.

MARK SHIELDS: There is no question absent the idea and the argument that he represented a threat to the United States, to our well-being, to the survival of this nation, to the safety of the American people that there wouldn't have been a war, that George W. Bush could not have enlisted simply because of the terrible things he had done to his own people. That was not the case that was made to the American people or to the United Nations.

RAY SUAREZ: Spanish elections came over the weekend and there was a swing of a couple of percentage points and the government that supported George Bush is gone. Did the Spanish result indicate that people are separating the war on terrorism from the war in Iraq?

DAVID BROOKS: It depends which people.

RAY SUAREZ: Let's start with the Spanish.

DAVID BROOKS: I really don't know why the Spanish voted the way they did. I do know that al-Qaida received a message that their tactics work and I do know that the gap across the Atlantic was widened and widened for two reasons. The Americans and Europeans see things very differently and the Bush administration has done a poor job of selling their policies in the Middle East. Why wasn't George Bush in Spain this week? Why wasn't Colin Powell in Spain? They should absolutely have been there. We should have sent people immediately. But that's only part of the problem. The bigger problem is we just see terrorism very differently. I spoke to Romano Prodi, the European Commission president, last night; he said we can't address -- the al-Qaida terrorist situation will not be abated until the Middle East Israeli-Palestinian dispute is solved. I just fundamentally don't agree with that. I don't think al-Qaida is about the Middle East - about that particular dispute.

MARK SHIELDS: I recommend Keith Richburg's reporting in the "Washington Post" which was pretty straightforward. The Spanish people were lied to by their government in when it happened. The government in power that lost on Sunday's election made the case that this was the Basque terrorists rather than al-Qaida that had done this. The domestic political consumption showed how tough we were standing up to them and don't we deserve another term in office and people -- enough people had concluded quite apparently that they had been lied to and misled by their own government and they routed them out of office.

DAVID BROOKS: I would say you can conclude that but you still don't give al-Qaida the appearance of a victory because then they're going to be bombing another election in other countries.

MARK SHIELDS: I just couldn't disagree more. People vote for their leadership based upon that leadership, its strength and weaknesses and they were let down by their own leadership.

RAY SUAREZ: Gentlemen, thanks a lot.

RECAP

RAY SUAREZ: Again, the major developments of this day: Pakistan sent thousands of fresh troops into a battle with militants, possibly including al-Qaida's number-two man. President Bush warned allies against making a "separate peace" with terrorists. And the president and vice- president of Taiwan survived an assassination attempt.

RAY SUAREZ: And again to our honor roll of American service personnel killed in Iraq. We add them as their deaths are made official and as photographs become available. Here, in silence, are seven more.

RAY SUAREZ: A reminder, that "Washington Week" can be seen on most PBS stations later this evening. We'll see you online and again here Monday evening. Have a nice weekend. I'm Ray Suarez. Thank you and good night.