The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer

JIM LEHRER: Good evening. I'm Jim Lehrer. On the NewsHour tonight some analysis of how the showdown with the United States may be seen in Iraq, plus an American view of the crisis from a group of citizens in Denver, the weekly observations of Mark Shields & Paul Gigot, and a David Gergen dialogue about Japanese atrocities in World War II. It all follows our summary of the news this Friday. NEWS SUMMARY

JIM LEHRER: U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan in Baghdad today. He called his visit a sacred duty. He's trying to bring a peaceful end to the standoff over weapons inspectors. He met first with Iraq's deputy prime minister. Both spoke to reporters afterwards.

KOFI ANNAN, Secretary-General, United Nations: I hope that my talks in the next few days will permit me and the Iraqi leadership and President Saddam Hussein to find a way out of this crisis. As a secretary-general I have an obligation, a juridical and moral obligation to try and reduce international tensions wherever I can. And this is the purpose of my mission here, and I hope I will leave Baghdad with a package that will be acceptable to all.

TARIQ AZIZ, Deputy Prime Minister, Iraq: What Iraq wants is a balanced firm solution to this problem. That means peaceful balance and fair to the current situation; that preserves the sovereignty, the dignity, and the national security of Iraq, as well as the implementation of U.N. resolutions. Thank you very much.

JIM LEHRER: Secretary of State Albright today authorized non-essential U.S. officials and their dependents to leave Kuwait and Israel because of the situation in Iraq. At the State Department Spokesman James Rubin said the decision was not due to an imminent threat but was in response to the anxiety of people there.

JAMES RUBIN, State Department Spokesman: This decision to allow voluntary departures does not change our basic assessment of the possibility of attack by Iraq, which is that the probability of Iraq resorting to the use of chemical or biological weapons is remote but cannot be excluded.

JIM LEHRER: Another Clinton administration official was shouted down today. U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. Bill Richardson was delivering a speech on Iraq in Minneapolis when he was interrupted by protesters. [protesters shouting] At the U.N. in New York the Security Council voted unanimously to double the amount of oil Iraq may sell for food and medicine. Secretary-General Annan had proposed the increase, saying it would help prevent a humanitarian disaster. In Washington, President Clinton recorded an address for broadcast in the Arab world. He warned Saddam Hussein was a threat to his own people, as well as his neighbors.

PRESIDENT CLINTON: To all our Arab and Muslim friends let me say America wants to see a future of security, prosperity, and peace for all the people of the Middle East. We want to see the Iraqi people free of the constant warfare and repression that have been the hallmark of Saddam's regime. We want to see them living in a nation that uses its wealth not to strengthen its arsenal but to care for its citizens and give its children a brighter future.

JIM LEHRER: Arab- American leaders met top State Department officials today. They said a U.S. military strike posed a greater danger than the status quo.

JAMES ZOGBY, Arab American Institute: What it will do is unleash a situation in the broader Middle East that will put our allies and our interests at risks. It will put the Iraqi civilian population at greater risk. And I think that it will be devastating in the long-term. It is not necessary, and it is immoral at thispoint, given what has happened to the Iraqi people over these seven years. There are other ways to solve this problem.

JIM LEHRER: We'll have more on the Iraq story right after this News Summary. In Las Vegas today a hearing for two men accused of possessing a deadly toxin was delayed until Monday. That will give authorities time to determine if the substance is, in fact, anthrax, or an anthrax vaccine for animals. One suspect is believed to have white supremacist ties. The other owns two microbiology labs. In Arkansas today former Governor Jim Guy Tucker pleaded guilty to declaring a phony bankruptcy to avoid income taxes. The charges were filed by Whitewater prosecutors. Tucker was sentenced to five years' probation, and he agreed to cooperate in the continuing investigation of President and Mrs. Clinton's business dealings in Arkansas. He succeeded Mr. Clinton as governor and resigned in '96, after being convicted in another Whitewater case. NATO peacekeeping forces will stay in Bosnia beyond their current June deadline. The 16- member alliance formally announced that decision today. Twenty non-NATO countries contribute soldiers to the force. They also approve the extension. Thirty-four thousand troops are there to prevent a resumption of hostilities among the country's rival ethnic groups. The Clinton administration announced today it plans to cut the number of U.S. troops attached to the mission from eighty-five hundred to seven thousand. Sinn Fein was temporarily expelled from the Northern Ireland peace talks today. It's the political arm of the Irish Republican Army blamed for two recent killings. Sinn Fein Leader Gerry Adams called the decision disgraceful. His group will be allowed to rejoin the others next month. All are trying to decide how to work out an arrangement for governing British-ruled Northern Ireland. In the winter Olympics in Japan, American Tara Lipinski became the youngest figure skater ever to win an Olympic gold medal. She did so last night. The 15-year-old went into the final competition in second place, behind U.S. teammate Michelle Kwan. Kwan was edged out by Lipinski's high scores in artistic and technical merit. Kwan took the silver medal. China's Lu Chen won the bronze. And that's it for the News Summary tonight. Now it's on to the Iraqi crisis as viewed by the Iraqis and by some Americans in Denver, plus Shields & Gigot, and a David Gergen dialogue. FOCUS - IRAQ'S AGENDA

JIM LEHRER: President Clinton did speak directly to the people of Iraq and the Arab world today about the crisis. His remarks came in a special broadcast distributed by the U.S. Information Agency. Mr. Clinton blamed it all on Iraq's leader.

PRESIDENT CLINTON: No people have suffered more at the hands of Saddam Hussein than the Iraqi people themselves. I have been very moved, as so many others around the world have been, by their plight. Because of Saddam Hussein's failure to comply with U.N. resolutions, the sanctions imposed by the U.N. at the end of the Gulf War to stop him from rebuilding his military might are still in place. As a result, the people of Iraq have suffered. Saddam's priorities are painfully clear--not caring for his citizens but building weapons of mass destruction and using them--using them not once but repeatedly in the terrible war Iraq fought with Iran, and not only against combatants but against civilians, and not only against a foreign adversary but against his own people. And he's targeted Scud missiles against fellow Arabs and Muslims in Iran, Saudi Arabia, and Bahrain. Now, he is trying to rid Iraq of the international inspectors who have done such a remarkable job in finding and destroying his hidden weapons, weapons he, himself, promised in 1991 to report and help destroy. If Saddam is allowed to rebuild his arsenal unchecked, none of the region's children will be safe. America is working very hard to find a diplomatic solution to this crisis Saddam has created. Nobody wants to use force. But if Saddam refuses to keep his commitments to the international community, we must be prepared to deal directly with the threat these weapons pose to the Iraqi people, to Iraq's neighbors, and to the rest of the world. Either Saddam acts, or we will have to.

JIM LEHRER: Now some analysis of how this crisis may be viewed from inside Iraq and to Phil Ponce.

PHIL PONCE: We get four perspectives. Kanan Makiya has written four books on his native Iraq, which he left at age 18 to study in America. He's now a visiting professor at Brandeis University. Edmund Ghareeb has authored books on Iraq and the Kurds, as well as a history of the Gulf War. He's an adjunct professor at American University. Oleg Grinevsky ran the Middle East department of the Soviet Foreign Ministry and met Saddam Hussein several times. He's now a visiting fellow at Stanford. And Amatzia Baram heads the Middle Eastern History Department at the University of Haifa in Israel. He's currently a senior fellow at the United States Institute of Peace. Gentlemen, welcome. Mr. Ghareeb, why, in your opinion, is Saddam Hussein ready to risk bombing by Americans and the British? What's his motivation in all this?

EDMUND GHAREEB, American University: I think there are a number of factors that are involved here. Some of them have to do with domestic situations. Some of them have to do with a regional one. I think one of the most important and the most immediate has to do with his belief that whatever he does or does not do in terms of cooperating with UNSCOM, with the inspections regime, the sanctions are not going to be lifted on Iraq. This has been to a large extent greatly strengthened by the statements that came out from the administration last spring, especially Secretary Albright which has said that if the sanctions will not be lifted as long as Saddam Hussein remains in power in Iraq. So basically this changing of the goal posts in many ways has contributed to this problem.

PHIL PONCE: So you're saying he feels he has what, nothing to lose?

EDMUND GHAREEB: Basically in part because he realizes that it's going to be difficult to bring about the changes, but he probably believes that there has to be pressure, there has to be a push in order to change the things, there has to be a dramatic position. The second thing that I think is also very important in this area is that he probably also may have reacted recklessly to the reckless statements and provocative position that has been adopted by UNSCOM and its--its executive director. At least this is one of the main ways that people in the region are looking at it.

PHIL PONCE: Before we leave that, when you say reckless, what is--what do you mean by that?

EDMUND GHAREEB: Basically what a lot of people have been saying about what Mr. Butler has done--for example last fall he came out and made a statement saying sort of--and almost--it was seen by a lot of people in the Middle East as an orientalist or almost racist statement, saying that people in the Middle East have a different way of looking at truth. We in the West have a literary tradition, a cultural tradition that looks at truth as being objective, but in the Middle East, or in Iraqi-Muslim culture, this is looked at as in many ways as a way that the truth is something that could be looked at, how you convince the other person, how does the other person see it.

PHIL PONCE: Let me get Mr. Makiya in here. Mr. Makiya, what is your opinion as to what Saddam Hussein's motivation might be?

KANAN MAKIYA, Brandeis University: He hopes to extract political advantage out of the current crisis. He sees--he doesn't care about the strike. He hopes to be able to utilize it to underscore the essential lie that's at the bottom of American foreign policy today, and that is that a pretense that if you just keep--observe the--if you just allow us full inspection of the country and you--these sanctions will, in effect, be removed. I agree with Dr. Ghareeb, that he understands that it is not--the hidden agenda of U.S. officials is not to remove those sanctions. And now he's engaged in a project to convince the world and appear reasonable, as he illustrates, that the United States is not serious; that, in fact, it has a policy of hurting the larger number--larger proportion of Iraq's population. The problem, he sees the current confrontation as an excellent opportunity to expose this essential lie, if I might call it that, at the heart of the current policy of the Clinton administration.

PHIL PONCE: Mr. Baram.

AMATZIA BARAM, University of Haifa: I must say I disagree with my two learned colleagues, whom I like and admire and respect. I think that until a few months ago this could certainly be one--one possible and acceptable explanation. This is no longer the case. He listens very carefully to what the president is saying here and what the secretary of state is saying, and what they said recently was that there is a very good chance at least, even more than that, it was implied that, in fact, America implied that America has decided to forsake its position that whatever Saddam does, embargo stays on. If he listened carefully--and I'm sure he did--both the President and the secretary of state almost said it in so many words, that the moment--in fact, the secretary actually said it--the moment he complies with 687 namely, allows UNSCOM to go in, look, come back to New York, and report that, give him a clean bill of health, the moment that happens, he--the embargo is going to be lifted. So today I think he knows the embargo will be lifted because America already changed its position even though it's not yet fully expressed in a sort of specific way, explicit way; however, I think that he wants to do two things. I look at his modus operandi, and that's my conclusion. He wants to keep the weapons of mass destruction. He needs them--he thinks he needs them for a number of reasons. And he wants the embargo to be lifted, both things. Now, of course, because UNSCOM are bothering him all the time, show us this and show us that, and go everywhere and look around, allow us free access, he wants to kill UNSCOM as well. But his dilemma--that's his first dilemma--if he kills UNSCOM, there will be nobody to come back to New York and tell the Security Council here, Saddam has a clean bill of health. So what he's trying to do is trying to do two things: to erode UNSCOM to the extent that it won't really be operative anymore, but it will still be there, and create a time limit, create a timetable. The Iraqis now demand two months. They will be able to--ready to compromise on three months--few months--very few months, at the end of which UNSCOM cannot find anything concluding the embargo is lifted. Now, UNSCOM will try to find something; they will continue to obstruct; and so the idea is to continue and obstruct UNSCOM but have a timetable that is binding and in two or three months the embargo is over and UNSCOM is no longer necessary, and he's got free of both. That, I think is their idea.

PHIL PONCE: Let me get the Ambassador. Ambassador Grinevsky, your thoughts?

OLEG GRINEVSKY, Former Russian Diplomat: Well, thank you. First of all, for my mind this is maybe the key question, to understand his motivation and--I mean, Saddam's motivation. That's, one, he is building weapons of mass destruction and trying to threaten to the other countries. Is he crazy or what, or maybe stupid? That's the question I ask myself several times when I met him--last time it was in 1989, when Gorbachev send me to Baghdad to persuade Saddam Hussein to support the Soviet withdrawal from Afghanistan. Well, I met him in the palace. I gave him a letter from Gorbachev and then explained the supposition, what he takes--well, it took about 40 minutes, not more. But then late in the night, about 11 o'clock PM, special car came and took me I don't know where, in some place, maybe it's palace, maybe not, and then we have a talk until 3 o'clock in the morning, and it was very interesting impression. He looked at me with cold eyes, very suspiciously, and I had an impression that I am talking with a snake which is looking on me and just calculating where to bite. Well, his main impression was, please, explain me what's behind your decision, what kind of guarantee you have that Afghanistan will not become Muslim fundamentalist country? I managed to explain that, but you see, the question about motivations are combined with his personality--very suspicious, very tough, maybe ruthless. But let's not analyze what's happened with. He came to power in 1979 and then he headed situation in the country when the whole country was divided into three parts--Northern part--this is Kurds, who are struggling for their independence; the Southern part, the majority of the population, this is the Iranian Shia population, Iraqi Shia population, but very close ties with Iranian population; and then it was necessary for him to have some kind of a national idea to unite the whole country.

PHIL PONCE: Mr. Ambassador, I'll have interrupt you with the history because there are so many things to talk about, about the current situation, and let me leave you for a moment and go to Mr. Makiya. Mr. Makiya, what do you think the incentives are that Saddam Hussein might have to make a deal?

KANAN MAKIYA: If he comes out looking good at the end of it, right now the--everything is going his way, he has--Kofi Annan, the secretary-general of the United Nations going there in person. He has the entire world focused on him. He has President Clinton addressing the Arab world, talking about how dangerous he is, and like a magnifying glass, the way this has always worked in the seven years since the Gulf War, he is made bigger than the actual tin-pot dictator that he actually is. He is enlarged by the attention of the world that's currently going on, and this is precisely the game that has proceeded so beautifully from his point of view ever since the end of the Gulf War. I mean, who could have imagined a turnaround in the situation after the devastating defeat of 1991 to be in a situation where the entire--the United States has lost all its allies in the region, its military victory has completely whittled away, and we now actually have, if Professor Baram is right, a U.S. administration that is seriously going to trust this guy to not build such weapons, which is delusion, if there ever was one, in the future. And supposed they went in there with UNSCOM, cleared every single weapon, suppose he gave them a complete bill of health and they went in there and checked the whole country inside/out, do you and I, or does anybody now seriously not believe that this leader, this particular regime, this system will not go ahead and rebuild these weapons, of course, they will. Every sensible, reasonable, rational human being knows that that is the structure, that's the way this regime works. So if that is why I speak of a lie at the heart of U.S. foreign policy, most American officials I talked to are all convinced that he would do this, they lack any trust. You can never trust him again. So are we-- do we think really that President Clinton will trust the Iraqi leader at some point down in the future? Is that the message that President Clinton is passing onto the Iraqi population? Well, if it is, no one I think really see it, can take it very seriously.

PHIL PONCE: Mr. Baram, what incentive does Saddam Hussein have--what incentives might he have for saying no to a deal?

AMATZIA BARAM: I think Saddam is between the horns of a dilemma right now. If he says no to a deal, unless the U.S. and the British accept every demand of his, he stands a chance of being bombed. Now, he now thinks--he now believes that America will go ahead with it. If he's bombed, it's not like--I know many people believe--some people who know a lot believe that he doesn't care if he's bombed. I would put it this way. If he knows that the bombing will be light, a day or two or three, avoiding his military position, avoiding his power base, dealing only with--factory or a suspected factory--I think then he doesn't care, then he'll emerge victorious politically, not militarily, politically, and that's enough. But I think he has to take into account that maybe one of two things will happen: If the bombing is heavy, either during the bombing there will be a coup de tat against him, there will be total havoc in Baghdad, total chaos in Baghdad, no electricity, no communication, no telephones, and he is afraid of a coup de tat, why there is such chaos in Baghdad.

PHIL PONCE: Mr. Baram, do you agree with that--

AMATZIA BARAM: Let me just finish. Or after the bombing, if he sees that the damage is tremendous, his army and the Republican Guard officers will turn against him because they regard him as a failure. He has to worry.

PHIL PONCE: Mr. Baram, how concerned do you think he is about that scenario that he just--

EDMUND GHAREEB: Mr. Ghareeb.

PHIL PONCE: I'm sorry.

EDMUND GHAREEB: I think this question of the danger of a collapse of the Iraqi state in case there's a major campaign is real and the danger here is that Iraq could collapse as a state, Iraq's territorial integrity could fall apart, and this could lead to a new kind of disaster for the whole region because it's going to invite the neighbors of Iraq to come in; it's going to lead to probably a civil war inside Iraq. So what are the chances of this? I think this only could happen if there is a major military campaign, with devastating impact on all of Iraq, or maybe if they do get Saddam Hussein, himself. On the other hand, I think there are--what's important, that some of the point that we did not mention earlier, what are some of the changes that have occurred in the region that have led Saddam Hussein to at least take the position he did. One of them for example was that he realized that U.S. policy of dual containment was falling apart, especially the containment of Iran was falling apart; there was only--containment of Iraq. The second thing is he realized that the Arab states were becoming very disenchanted with Washington, especially with the failure of the peace process, the failure to put pressure on Netanyahu. There was also growing concern in the Arab world that Iraq was no longer as a state being seen as a threat to its neighbors as was the case during the Gulf War of 1990/91. But now Iraq, itself, was being threatened. So he realizes that all of these issues and also one other thing--and this is a final point I'll make--especially after the Turks--the Turkey launch against the Kurds in Northern Iraq--this was a major issue, and there was silence in Washington, this became a big issue for them and also for the Arab region, so he wanted to exploit that.

PHIL PONCE: I'd like to get back to the ambassador for one final question. Sir, in your opinion, what is the inclination in Iraq towards making an attack against Israel?

OLEG GRINEVSKY: Well, I don't think that there is a real inclination for such an attack. The main problem for Iraq is to keep that unity. For one time--well, if he tried to play into Israel card-- but right now he is more and more concentrated on the unity to keep the whole country united. That's why I think that now there is unique possibility for peace. I think that practically now Saddam is ready to open all the palaces, or all the places. The difference is just it will be the United Nations ambassadors for countries represented in the Security Council, accompanied by the members of special United Nations commission, or vice versa; United Nations commission accompanied by the ambassadors. To my mind, this is not the problem, real problem, where it's possible to strike, and diplomatically, it's not very difficult to solve this problem.

PHIL PONCE: Mr. Ambassador, we'll have to leave it there. A lot to talk about, and I'm afraid we're out of time. Thank you all. FOCUS - OF THE PEOPLE

JIM LEHRER: An outside- Washington American view of the Iraq face-off. It comes from a diverse group of Denver voters we have brought together before to talk about other things.Elizabeth Farnsworth spoke with them again last night.

ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: It's good to see you all again. Thanks very much for being with us. Chris Goodwin, do you support strikes--military strikes--against Iraq to enforce compliance with U.N. resolutions?

CHRIS GOODWIN, Stockroom Manager: No, I don't, absolutely not.

ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: Why?

CHRIS GOODWIN: I think it's a very reckless policy. It's a policy that doesn't seem to have a lot of purpose to it. I think the people who are going to suffer from these bombings are innocent Iraqis who really have nothing to do with Saddam Hussein's policies. I think it's a big mistake. We seem to be, for the most part, going it alone on this policy. That's another big mistake. Even the countries in the Middle East region around Iraq aren't supporting this policy. I also think it's a very hypocritical policy. We do not have anything resembling an evenhanded foreign policy in the Middle East. There are other countries that possess nuclear weapons, weapons of mass destruction, and countries like Israel who are to this day in violation of U.N. resolutions. It's a big mistake. I think it's a disaster waiting to happen in a lot of ways.

ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: Linda Stahnke, a big mistake?

LINDA STAHNKE, Homeschooler: No. I think we should act militarily. I'm concerned that we don't have enough resolution to finish the job. I'm concerned that ourplan is just to bring them partway to a point. It seems so political, like the Vietnam War, rather than something firm, that we have goals that we'll finish the job.

ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: Well, what you said, something political, what do you mean, you mean run by politicians, instead of the military?

LINDA STAHNKE: Yes. Just all the bickering back and forth and maneuvering and threatening and at the same time there isn't a decisive goal; there's not a finish to this. We won't know when we're done. I think they should hit every target they know of, every production facility. They should hit every storage facility, and we do have the weapons to target that now. They can be very specific in what they hit, and they need to get Saddam Hussein out of there and let those people run their country, instead of that tyrant.

ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: Dick Ceresko, what do you think about objectives, are they clear enough? Have you heard what you need to hear?

DICK CERESKO, Vietnam Veteran: I don't think that our objectives are very clearly defined in terms of a military action. To me, one of the lessons of the Vietnam War was that bombing in itself is not an effective way to achieve strategic objectives. You have to have really massive military force to accomplish something like that, and it seems like kind of a rehash in a sense. The strategy is limited war with limited objectives, and it failed in Vietnam in many cases because we didn't really use the amount of force that was needed to achieve our objectives. And I think after all these bombs are dropped, if they are dropped, there will be no real change in the situation, other than Saddam will be thumbing his nose at the U.S. again.

ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: So if you felt that the objectives weren't limited, would you support it, or do you not support the bombing in this case, period?

DICK CERESKO: I don't think aerial bombardment is an effective tactical approach. We were misled during the Gulf War by all of the news clips that were given by the Pentagon to the news media of bombs going through elevator shafts and these kinds of things. And we found out later when the GAO and others studied what actually happened, we really learned that it was not as--anymore effective than what was happening in Vietnam. And the only way to do it is, you know, if you're going to use military strategy is to use massive force and not just aerial bombardment.

ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: Tom Bock, where do you come down on all of this?

TOM BOCK, Vietnam Veteran: Well, some of the things that Dick says I agree with, but I tend to go with Linda. I think that it's time that we do something. We've talked about it. I mean, we've rattled our sabers long enough. And if we back off now, what's to say anything is going to happen. Of course, a diplomatic resolution would be the first choice, but that's not working it out. And I would wholeheartedly support going in there and taking it and saying when we leave, Saddam goes with us.

ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: Athena Eisenman, how much of a problem, from your point of view, is not having more support say in that region?

ATHENA EISENMAN, Director, Charity Organization: I think that's our biggest problem. The first time we went in with Desert Storm, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, we had Jordan; we had all of the countries with us. This time no one desires to stand with us as a country relating to Saddam Hussein and the problem he's created in Iraq, and I personally feel as long as he stays within his own borders and he is not aggressing against any other country there, we're the odd man out.Perhaps what we need to do is just stand back, allow him to do whatever it is he's going to do, and at that point, if he aggresses, I'm sure we will get a lot of allies, and at that point be invited to come in and to help. But I think the key here, we must be invited. We're not invited yet.

ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: Tom Conway.

TOM CONWAY, Stockbroker: Well, I'm really--I've got a lot of mixed emotions on this. It's certainly not as clear as it was eight--seven years ago in '91, when he made an aggressive act and we retaliated. Right now, he is thumbing his nose at the U.N. and not complying with the resolutions, and we do have to go in there and make him comply with those resolutions. But the situation right now, as far as I can see, is not clearly stated in those objectives. If we're going to do it, let's go in, occupy it, take it over, and make 'em run it right. And maybe we have to occupy with the U.N. for 10 years.

ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: Do you agree, Bob Jornayvas, that the objectives not being clear, is that the main problem?

ROBERT JORNAYVAS, Oil and Gas Executive: Well, I think our overall policy has some problems with timing and not being well thought out. I mean, this problem has been growing for a long time, and our administration has just not taken the time to fix it over time. And all of a sudden, we want to go in and bomb now. At some point we're going to have to deal with Saddam, but we're going to have to build a coalition similar to what we did before because if we go in now by ourselves, we're going to get ourselves in trouble. The question is whether or not this administration can go in and create a worldwide coalition that will not allow Saddam to build weapons of mass destruction because we know he will use them. So to suggest bombing in the short-term I think is not prudent. But we do need to start focusing on a longer-term plan here, whether it's six months or a year, to build a coalition to go back in and do a much more comprehensive solution.

ERIC DURAN, Financial Analyst: I disagree. I think that in 1991, George Bush made the decision not to go in and occupy Iraq because it would take serious casualties from the American public. We don't know that, you know, the Iraqi people would be willing to support U.S. occupation; there would be serious numbers of casualties, and I don't think the American public is ready to accept that. The coalition is not going to go for the occupation; they were only for the removal of Saddam Hussein from Kuwait. I think this decision was made a long time ago at the end of the Gulf War, and I think our only real option at this point is containment.

ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: In other words, you would support bombing as a way of containing now?

ERIC DURAN: Absolutely. And I think we're going to have to do it. I think the administration is not being very honest with the public. I think the reality is that we're going to be bombing this country for--we're going to bomb 'em for a week now, and we're going to probably bomb 'em in another year or so. And that's the policy.

UNIDENTIFIED MAN IN GROUP: Well, this recurring nightmare, then the objective, as was stated, should be longer-term. Let's resolve this. They've been fighting since--

ERIC DURAN: Well, there's no way the American public or any of the coalition--

UNIDENTIFIED MAN IN GROUP: Well, the entire U.N. has to be--

ERIC DURAN: They're not going to go for it.

ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: Okay. Dee Cisneros.

DEE CISNEROS, Retired Teacher: How did the United States ever get into a corner that we can't get out of it? I mean, it really bothers me that here we are with the United Nations and we can't get the support of--but three out of five of the security--I mean, they're just not with us. The Iraq neighbors are not with us, and they're the ones that we're supposed to be protecting, and they don't seem to be afraid. So why are we worried?

ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: Do you think it's a failure of political leadership in--has the administration failed in some way?

DEE CISNEROS: Well, somehow, something happened, I don't know, and I don't think they've used up all their options. I'm hoping diplomacy will still work. They haven't sent Jimmy Carter there yet. [laughter among group]

LINDA HOUSTON, Insurance Broker: I believe that part of the reason they don't have the support is because we didn't finish the job seven years ago. And I think that was--the fact that we didn't finish the job seven years ago I think was very political. We had a president who needed to be re-elected, and he was at his highest rank of popularity at that point. And I think he was looking at it as a--sort of a humanitarian sort of thing to do--not to take it any further. I think he should have done it seven years ago.

ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: Suzanna Cordova, do you think you're getting the information you need?

SUZANNA CORDOVA, School Administrator: I'm very conflicted about this, and I feel just now, listening to people talk about bombing and I find that really frightening on one hand, and to think about just the cost in human lives is, I think, really overwhelming to have a casual discussion like this, where, you know, where we can talk about it in a room is really frightening, and on the other hand, I think if this really is the kind of situation where we're talking about a Hitler in '38, you know, it's a pretty heavy thing on both sides, and I haven't really made up my mind if I think we should do this, or if I feel like we should go all the way and get Saddam out, or if I feel like we should take a more, you know, cautious "wait and see."

ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: Tom Bock, do you think that the President is doing a good job preparing the American people for casualties, for the reality of what may be ahead?

TOM BOCK: No, I don't. I was kind of surprised at the venue they selected to make their announcement in Ohio. I didn't think that was very effective at all. I tried to watch some of it, and I became very frustrated in the fact that with the environment being so nosy you couldn't hear the questions going back and forth, and it just seemed like chaos, rather than an organized effort in representing the most powerful country in the world.

LINDA HOUSTON: I was also really frustrated that it wasn't President Clinton. I mean, he's supposed to be the best communicator in our nation. Why didn't he address it? I mean, I really felt like he needed to get up and address it and really lay down the plan.

ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: What do you think, Jim Sulton?

JAMES SULTON, Higher Education Administrator: I think the public needs to know. I don't get it why people don't understand the objectives if the objectives have been clearly articulated and they have targeted the weapons of mass destruction. You need to go in and take out those weapons of mass destruction because this is an individual who will not hesitate to use them, and he needs to be stopped.

DEE CISNEROS: I have a family there. I have a niece with her entire family in Kuwait, so if they go in there and bomb and put all that, what, chemicals into the air, some of those people, the Saudis and the Kuwaitis, they're going to get sick, or die. AndI'm just really concerned about that.

ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: Chris, how about you?

CHRIS GOODWIN: I don't think there is any military solution to the problems in the Middle East. I think it has to be settled through diplomacy. The military solution has never worked there.

ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: Well, thank you all very much for being with us again. FOCUS - POLITICAL WRAP

JIM LEHRER: Now, some Friday night political analysis by Shields & Gigot, syndicated columnist Mark Shields, Wall Street Journal columnist Paul Gigot. Mark, in general terms, how would you read public support for striking Iraq tonight?

MARK SHIELDS: Public support, I think, is questioning, Jim. I don't think it's firmed up by any means, and I think in large part because seven years ago in this country we had George Mitchell, the Senate Majority Leader from Maine, Tom Foley from Washington is the Speaker of the House. Bob Michel of Illinois was Republican House Leader, and Bob Dole of Kansas was Republican Senate leader. We had a great debate, a truly great debate. It was televised. You recall it. Americans sat and watched it. Both parties made their cases. They stood up, and what we've had this time is Congress just take a walk. They've been too busy because they're now raising money. The Senate Majority Leader has been trying to pacify his anti--his tax cut crowd in his party. And somehow this has gone undebated. It's gone in the wall posters, discussions about go in and take 'em out, says the Senate Majority Leader, when asked if he'll follow it up with ground troops, oh, no, no, no, even though everybody acknowledges that ground troops would be necessary to take him out, so it's been a lousy debate. The administration has its responsibilities as well, but I really think the Congress has let the country down.

JIM LEHRER: Do you agree, Congress has let the country down?

PAUL GIGOT: How Mark can turn this thing into a problem of irresponsibility on the part of Congress when everybody knows that as a body Congress is always irresponsible when it comes to foreign affairs.

MARK SHIELDS: They weren't in 1991.

PAUL GIGOT: No, they absolutely weren't. George Mitchell did--he went right up to the edge and said we're going to--there are going to be 52 votes, Mr. President, we're going to have 47 votes against you, hold it against you, show you that we're against this policy, but you go ahead, Mr. President. I disagree with Mark about the nature of that debate. I think that was George Mitchell trying to lay out a marker against George Bush if something went wrong. This time you kind of have presidential leadership, Mark. If you're going to sell foreign policy in this country, if you're going to sell a war in this policy, you have to have a president say this is the policy I want. This is the direction we want to go. You can't have a president, as he's been doing, calling members of Congress, and, instead of saying this is my policy, he's saying, what do you think? I'm worried about casualties; I'm really worried about this. The members go, wow, if he feels that way, why should I sign on?

JIM LEHRER: Did you not find it interesting that a lot of those people in Denver told Elizabeth that the president or the administration chose Columbus, Ohio, to make the announcement? In other words, that wasn't where they were making an announcement, they were--he saw it that way--I mean, they just went out there to try to explain their policy.

MARK SHIELDS: They went out there to try and explain their policy. They didn't think Columbus, Ohio, was going to be Berkeley, California, or Madison, Wisconsin, or Cambridge, Massachusetts. It had always been the home of Woody Hays and Richard Nixon's--

JIM LEHRER: There was a football coach--

MARK SHIELDS: And a right-wing politician. And that's what it had always been. It had been very, very passive, docile, big Republican town, with very little student unrest. And so I think they were unprepared for that. But I do have to come back to this question: Has the President carried the ball on this? No, he hasn't. But let's get one thing straight. If there's one thing that we've learned or should have learned from Vietnam, which apparently nobody at Capitol Hill is willing to grasp, is that it is not an army that fights a war; it's a country that incites a war. What we found out in Vietnam was the country went fine--the stock market went to new heights, full employment. The only problem was with 53,000 Americans killed and 2 million Asians killed. Now, that's what we're talking about right now. I mean, where is the debate on this, where are the costs?

JIM LEHRER: What do you think the Congress--why did the Congress leave without debating this, without having any kind of discussion at all, and without taking a vote on a resolution?

PAUL GIGOT: They were working on a resolution with the White House. And they started out--not this week but the week before last--thinking they would happen. They happened, based on my report, is support started to fritter away, when they got briefings from the administration, because he didn't like the plan that they were hearing; they have a real problem with credibility that the President means what he says on this, that he is going to stick with it. I talked to John McCain--

JIM LEHRER: But stick with it to do what?

PAUL GIGOT: To me, to have ends and means coincide. If Saddam is really as bad as we say, well, then what are we going to do to really hurt him? And it looked like--to a lot of members like we were talking about just a token bombing campaign, a very small kind of thing that wasn't--risked lives, risked prestige, risked undermining the coalition, but really wouldn't do the job, and in the end, the administration kind of walked away and said, well, we'll come back to this after you come back. I think they'll be an effort this week to try to get a coalition together, and I agree with Mark, it would be useful to have a debate. It usually is useful to have a debate, but you have to have a president who sits down and sets the direction. And he looks to me and he looked at the Pentagon this week like a man--

JIM LEHRER: Speech--when he made a speech to the Pentagon?

PAUL GIGOT: He looks to me to be a man who doesn't believe in his own policy.

JIM LEHRER: That's tough.

MARK SHIELDS: I think there's a serious question. I think the President owes the nation, a full explanation as to what his policy is, but just look at one thing. This effort in 1991 cost $60 billion. The tab was picked up by Japan, the oil states, the oil- -the Gulf states and the oil sheiks, they all chipped in. We don't have that.

JIM LEHRER: That's right. Jim Baker went around and--

MARK SHIELDS: And tin-cupped right up and down, they're all around in Bahrain, and all the rest of them, all these places you couldn't find on a map, they all came up with big checks. Now there's nobody doing that, Jim. Okay, who's going to pay for it? The Congress is talking about a tax cut. Now, for God sakes, if we're not willing to pay for this, if we're not willing to come up with the bucks, then let's forget the whole policy, let's bring everybody home. Let's not send young Americans, good Americans in harm's way while we sit back here and sip our martinis and pretend nothing else is wrong and watch it on TV.

JIM LEHRER: What about the debate--Paul, how do you have a debate about how to take out Saddam Hussein without saying you're going to go in there and kill the guy, you're going to have an assassination attempt? I mean, how do you talk about that in any kind of public way that makes sense?

PAUL GIGOT: Well, I'll give Chuck Robb of Virginia, Democrat of Virginia, real credit. He stood up this week and said maybe we ought to repeal the assassination ban because we all dance around it, and we all know that if a missile, if it happened to bomb and if a missile happens to arrive in the building where Saddam Hussein is, nobody's going to shed a tear about it, most of all the Iraqis, themselves, and when Ronald Reagan bombed Libya, and tried-- and if a bomb would have hit Qadhafi's tent, we wouldn't have minded that either. So maybe we ought to have a debate about precisely that, otherwise, you have this legal, technical maneuvering when everybody knows that if we could, in fact, kill him, we would.

JIM LEHRER: Because the thesis is that the Iraqi people are terrific; we don't want to hurt them; it's just this awful man and weapons of mass destruction are also okay, it's this awful man who has them, right?

MARK SHIELDS: Jim, if you want to talk about going in and taking out Saddam and installing a democratic regime, which an awful lot of conservative think tank people are pushing at this point, all they need for a preview, an occupation, are an Arab nation, all right, our going in, American troops, western Christian occupied. We've seen a preview of this in Northern Ireland. We've seen 30 years of occupation by the British. You can't tell the difference between the British and the Irish, from ethnic stock. And we've seen the bloodshed; we've seen the mayhem; we've seen the brutality; we've seen the killing; we've seen the division. Now if you think seriously, if anybody seriously suggests the United States is going to occupy or be part of an occupying army in Baghdad, they are smoking something that ought to be illegal.

JIM LEHRER: Is anybody seriously thinking about that?

PAUL GIGOT: Well, there have been some people who have proposed it, but I think that most people are talking about pressuring Saddam so that we can ultimately remove him understand it's not--we're not going to fight hand-to-hand combat in Baghdad, that there's a process, a series of policies perhaps, working with Iran a little bit to get Saddam upset about that rival, maybe having a no-drive zone in the South of Iraq, so that he can't maneuver, maybe the bombing campaign, instead of just going after the weapons of mass destruction, taking after his Republican Guard, the sources of his power and his political and military clout. There are a lot of ways to do it without the Armageddon scenario that Mark has, which is hand-to-hand combat in Baghdad.

JIM LEHRER: Do you think this thing is going to end up with some conflict of some kind?

PAUL GIGOT: I think the President looks to me to be somebody who's trying to find a way out, and if Kofi Annan can provide him that--

JIM LEHRER: Do you have a prediction, Mark?

MARK SHIELDS: I have a prediction, Jim, based upon Ohio State, and I think Ohio State shows that there is real passion in this country, and I hope some of it catches on in Washington before we do plunge into it. But at the same time, the administration doesn't have an obligation to follow blindly public opinion, butit does have an obligation to inform the public about its goals, its tasks, and the costs involved, and I think for that they made a start this week.

JIM LEHRER: Thank you, gentlemen. DIALOGUE

JIM LEHRER: Finally, a Gergen dialogue. David Gergen, editor-at-large of "U.S. News & World Report," engages Iris Chang, author of "The Rape of Nanking: The Forgotten Holocaust of World War II."

DAVID GERGEN: Iris, your book tells a tale that is almost unbearable and unbelievable. Tell us what happened.

IRIS CHANG, Author, "The Rape of Nanking:" Well, in 1937, in December, the Japanese swept into the city of Nanking and within six to eight weeks, they had massacred more than 300,000 civilians and raped 80,000 women. And 300,000, please keep in mind, is more than the death toll at Hiroshima and Nagasaki combined. Three hundred thousand is also more than the combined civilian casualty count for several European countries during the entire World War II period. So, in other words, if you add up the number of people who died, civilians who died, in England, France, and Belgium for the entire World War II period, that would still be less than the number of people who died in Nanking, just one Chinese city, in six to eight weeks.

DAVID GERGEN: You say 300,000 were massacred. How many people lived in Nanking before the Japanese arrived?

IRIS CHANG: One million.

DAVID GERGEN: And about half fled before the Japanese got there, and of the rest, more than half died?

IRIS CHANG: That's correct.

DAVID GERGEN: Iris, you went back yourself and had an opportunity to talk to some of the survivors who are still alive, and some of those tales are just awfully grisly. Can you tell us about them.

IRIS CHANG: Yes. I mean, we have to keep in mind that it's not just about the numbers of people who died; it's also the manner which many of these victims met their deaths. The Japanese turned murder into sport. They rounded up tens of thousands of men and used them for bayonet practice or decapitation contests, or they simply sprayed gasoline on them and burned them alive. Some men were skinned alive, tortured to death with needles, or buried waist down and in the soil, where they were ripped apart by German Shepherds. The Chinese women suffered far worse, and many of them were mutilated horribly after rape. And the Japanese even forced fathers to rape their own daughters or sons their mothers, brothers their sisters in order to further degrade the victims.

DAVID GERGEN: They were equally brutal to the small children, in fact, the babies.

IRIS CHANG: They were tossing babies up in the air and bayoneting them as they came down, or throwing them into vats of oil and water.

DAVID GERGEN: It was some two centuries ago that Robert Burns wrote those memorable lines, "Man's inhumanity to man makes countless thousands mourn." How do you explain in your own mind the inhumanity you found in Nanking?

IRIS CHANG: What was really chilling for me was to discover that many of these atrocities were committed not by people who were diabolical serial types by nature, but by people who were very ordinary citizens. Many of them were model citizens from Japan and when they returned became respectable members of the community. In fact, in my book there's a doctor who had committed horrible crimes in Nanking, but now he's a respectable family practitioner, and it's a true life Dr. Jekyll/Mr. Hyde story.

DAVID GERGEN: So what explains it? How does someone become such a butcher?

IRIS CHANG: You know, it seems that the greatest factor behind whether these atrocities can be committed is this concentration of power. Research has found that the more concentrated the power in the hands of a few, such as in a totalitarian regime or in a dictatorship, the more likely that few powerful elite will commit atrocities both at home and abroad. So it seems as if almost all people have this potential for evil, which would be unleashed only under certain dangerous social circumstances.

DAVID GERGEN: In which they're indoctrinated, in effect.

IRIS CHANG: Absolutely. And what research has shown is that power seems to be the greatest factor behind these atrocities, regardless of that country's nationality, political affiliation, race, or religion. Power is the greatest source.

DAVID GERGEN: Let me ask you about another mystery surrounding Nanking, and that is, as you point out, there were more people killed in Nanking than in Hiroshima and Nagasaki combined. And yet, after all the debates about Nagasaki and Hiroshima, we have amnesia about Nanking. Why?

IRIS CHANG: Well, I think the Cold War is the main reason why we have this worldwide amnesia on the subject. After 1949, neither the People's Republic of China, nor the Republic of China and Taiwan wanted to push the Japanese for reparations or an apology because both of them ironically now needed Japan as an ally against each other, and they needed Japan's economic and political support. To this day, I think there is a reluctance on the part of both governments to broach the subject with Japan.

DAVID GERGEN: In the year since World War II Germany has paid reparations to victims, has apologized, sent its leaders into the Warsaw Ghetto to apologize. Why have not we seen comparable actions by the Japanese?

IRIS CHANG: I think it's because the United States permitted the Japanese wartime bureaucracy to remain virtually intact after the war. Unlike the Germans, whose top officials were either thrown in prison or executed or at the very least many had to live as fugitives from the law, in Japan many of the leading wartime officials were permitted to stay in power, or were permitted to flourish in academia or business. By 1957, Japan had elected as its prime minister a class A war criminal.

DAVID GERGEN: Iris, you've written this book as one way of trying to address these issues some 60 years later. Is there more that can be done?

IRIS CHANG: There's a lot that can be done. The Japanese need to do three things: One, pay reparations to the victims, which they have not done; two, give a sincere official apology to the people of Nanking; and thirdly, they have to stop censoring this event from their textbooks. They've been whitewashing the history of the rape of Nanking so that Japanese schoolchildren remain ignorant of the event.

DAVID GERGEN: Iris Chang, a strong story, a strong indictment. Thank you very much for joining us.

IRIS CHANG: Thank you. RECAP

JIM LEHRER: Again, the major story this Friday, U.N. Secretary-General Annan was in Iraq trying to resolve the standoff over weapons inspectors, and the Security Council voted to let Iraq double the amount of oil it sells for food and medicine. We'll see you on-line and again here Monday evening. Have a nice weekend. I'm Jim Lehrer. Thank you and good night.