The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer

JIM LEHRER:

Good evening. I'm Jim Lehrer. On the NewsHour tonight: The news of the day; a report from Baghdad on today's meeting on building a new Iraqi government; a discussion of how to mix Islam and democracy; a media report on the Internet development called blogging; and a look at the medical, political, and economic consequences from the SARS crisis in China.

NEWS SUMMARY

JIM LEHRER: Some 300 Iraqi leaders agreed today to hold a national conference within 30 days to choose an interim government. But they divided over how much of a role the United States should have in the transition. The Iraqis discussed those and other issues at a day-long meeting in Baghdad. We'll have more on this story in a moment. This was Saddam Hussein's birthday, and there were new questions about what's happened to him. The U.S. war commander, General Tommy Franks, told the Associated Press he had seen nothing lately that proves Saddam is alive. But Iraq's former deputy prime minister, Tariq Aziz, reportedly said Saddam survived U.S. air strikes aimed at killing him. USA Today reported Aziz made that claim to U.S. Interrogators after he surrendered last week. Amid those conflicting accounts, some Iraqis still marked Saddam's birthday. We have a report from Ian Williams of Independent Television News.

IAN WILLIAMS: In Saddam's hometown of Tikrit today, there were some birthday greetings, though the graffiti was mixed. And it was a pale reflection of the orchestrated celebrations that used to mark this day. If he is alive, Saddam is 66 today. Most people do seem to be pleased to be free of this painful obligation. And the portraits and statues which used to be found all over the country bear witness to Saddam's new status and the pent-up hatred towards him. So not such a happy birthday this year, though for now Saddam and his sons do still have their liberty. As to where they may be, opposition groups who helped negotiate the surrender of other former members of the regime have identified two broad areas. The Iraqi National Congress says one of these areas begins in Ramadi to the west of Baghdad, and forms an arc to the north of the capital. The American presence is still very light here. The second is an area to the northeast of Baghdad, close to the border with Iran, which hasn't yet been secured by coalition forces.

JIM LEHRER: In northern Iraq today, U.S. forces killed at least six Iraqi gunmen in the city of Mosul. The troops said they came under fire from paramilitaries at separate locations. The fighting also forced workers to evacuate a newly established information center. Defense Secretary Rumsfeld said today the U.S. military will reduce its presence in the Persian Gulf region. He spoke during a visit to U.S. Central Command headquarters in Qatar. He did not go into detail, but there were reports the U.S. might move a major air operations center from Saudi Arabia to Qatar. The last American soldier missing in Iraq has been accounted for. The U.S. Military today confirmed the death of Army Specialist Anguiano of Brownsville Texas; he had been missing in southern Iraq. He had been missing since convoy was attacked in southern Iraq on March 23. In all, 137 U.S. troops died in the war. Secretary of State Powell confirmed today North Korea had made an offer concerning its nuclear program. The offer came at last week's talks in Beijing, China. It was widely reported today the North Koreans proposed to scrap their missiles and nuclear facilities. In Washington, Powell summed up the proposal this way:

COLIN POWELL: The North Koreans acknowledged a number of things they were doing and in effect said these are now up for further discussion. They did put forward a plan that would ultimately deal with their nuclear capability and their missile activities. But they of course expect something considerable in return.

JIM LEHRER: He did not say what they wanted, but the Associated Press reported those demands included oil shipments and diplomatic recognition. Today North Korea held separate discussions with South Korea. The South Koreans again demanded an end to the nuclear program, but the North Koreans reportedly refused to even discuss the issue. The World Health Organization said today the SARS outbreak has peaked in Canada, Hong Kong, Singapore, and Vietnam, but it's still spreading in China. So far, some 5,000 people have caught SARS worldwide. At least 333 have died. China has reported the most cases and the most deaths. We'll have more on the situation there later in the program tonight. The crew of the international space station are no longer stuck in space. A Russian space craft docked today with replacements, one American and one Russian. The old crew consisted of two Americans and a Russian. They were supposed to return to earth on March 1 on the space shuttle "Atlantis". The shuttles were grounded after the "Columbia" disaster in February. Ten of Wall Street's largest investment firms will pay $1.4 billion in a settlement with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. They were accused of issuing biased stock ratings to increase their investment banking business. The deal announced today requires the firms to publish more information on their performance, and to make other changes. The Commerce Department reported today consumer spending rose 0.4 percent in March. That's the best showing so far this year. On Wall Street, the Dow Jones industrial average gained 165 points, or 2 percent, to close above 8471. The NASDAQ rose more than 27 points, nearly 2 percent, to close at 1462. And that's it for the News Summary tonight. Now it's on to the Baghdad meeting, making democracy fit into Iraq, blogging on the Internet, and battling SARS in China.

SERIES - THE NEW IRAQ

JIM LEHRER: The meeting in Baghdad to establish a new Iraqi government. Ray Suarez has that story.

RAY SUAREZ: Today's gathering took place at a heavily guarded convention hall in Baghdad. It's the second meeting organized by the U.S. to begin the process of creating a democratic Iraq. The first was held two weeks ago in a tent in southern Iraq. Today nearly three times as many delegates attended-- about 300 Shiite and Sunni Muslim clerics, Kurds, tribal chiefs, and exiles were there. Iraq's postwar administrator, Jay Garner, pledged to help build democracy in the war ravaged nation.

LT. GEN. JAY GARNER: The reason I'm here is to create an environment in Iraq which will give us a process to start a democratic government and begin that process so that we can have a government that represents the freely elected will of the people.

RAY SUAREZ: Some delegates came from an Iran-based Shiite group that had boycotted the first meeting. Differences over Washington's role in the new Iraq emerged with calls for the U.S. to leave quickly. And outside the hall, thousands of Shiite Muslims protested the meeting saying their views had been sidelined by the Americans.

MAN: We want representation of the Iraqi people, just that, not a government formed by the American administration. Jay Garner, who is Jay Garner to form the government? Does he have the right to form this government to rule the Iraqi people, do you think that?

RAY SUAREZ: Today's meeting ended after ten hours. The delegates issued a statement calling for a national conference to be held within four weeks for Iraqis to choose an interim government. In a speech to Iraqi Americans in Dearborn, Michigan, today, President Bush pledged to let Iraqis to shape their own government, but also said Iraq would be democratic.

PRES. GEORGE W. BUSH: Whether you're Sunni or Shia or Kurd or Chaldean or Assyrian or Turkman or Christian or Jew or Muslim ( Cheers and applause ) -- no matter what your faith, freedom is God's gift to every person in every nation. ( Applause ) As freedom takes hold in Iraq, the Iraqi people will choose their own leaders and their own government. America has no intention of imposing our form of government or our culture. Yet we will ensure that all Iraqis have a voice in the new government and all citizens have their rights protected. ( Applause )

RAY SUAREZ: For more on today's meeting in Iraq, we turn to Newsweek correspondent Rod Nordland in Baghdad. Rod, welcome.

Was there a better cross- section, better representation of the Iraqi people at this latest meeting?

ROD NORDLAND: Well, there were more of them. There were some 300 delegates. And there probably was a broader cross-section than the 70 who showed up in Nasiriyah. But there were still demonstrations in the streets here by people who felt they weren't represented. SCIRI, a major Shia group was represented at a very low level. In fact, some of their leaders said they were not in fact at the meeting. Chalabi's people from the Iraqi National Congress went there, but whether or not he himself did is still not clear, so it's pretty much of a mixed picture.

RAY SUAREZ: That SCIRI that you referred to, the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq, when you say a low-level delegation, were they silent at the meeting, or did they speak out about their desire to have Iraq become an Islamist nation?

ROD NORDLAND: No, they didn't. They did speak out about the issues of such a security that concerned everybody. But the position they've been taking is a very soft one. They're not trying to provoke the United States with talk of an Islamic republic. In fact, none of the Shia groups are openly. They very much want to get in on the dialogue and to see some sort of hand over power. But it's no secret that that's what they would want in the end.

RAY SUAREZ: The first meeting in Nasiriyah was... looked over here like a "get acquainted, clear the air, stake out your territory" kind of meeting, where people just showed themselves. At this latest meeting, was there something more systematic going on, where you could see the steps toward a government emerging from these conferences?

ROD NORDLAND: No, I don't think so. I think at this point, they're just still talking in a background briefing with some of the American and British officials that are involved in organizing it. The point they had to make was that... well, they basically were downplaying, dialing back expectations and saying this is the first of many meetings, it's a long process, and this is... we're talking about a long process leading to an interim government. So they're not looking forward to any breakthrough soon. And I think they're very aware that this is a very... still a very unrepresentative group. It's top-heavy with exiles. Exiles are not very much appreciated by most Iraqis. In fact, many of them are downright hated, particularly the Iraqi National Congress and Chalabi. So it has a long way to go, and I think they hope that this is just the first step in trying to build something.

RAY SUAREZ: How would you describe American interim administrator Jay Garner's role at this meeting?

ROD NORDLAND: Well, he chaired the meeting, and he had his people described themselves as facilitators. But they're just getting started, too, and they realize they have an enormous task in front of them. They're coming to it a bit late. There's some friction between them and the U.S. military itself. Andthere's an awful lot of problems with Iraqis who don't really accept the idea of any U.S. role here. Those Iraqis were not very much represented at this meeting, but they were certainly out in the streets, and I spent the morning going around Baghdad talking to people about this process, and it was hard to find anybody who was very pleased about it or very optimistic about it.

RAY SUAREZ: When you talk about the desire for security, when you talk about suspicion of the exiles, are those the kinds of things that people speak about openly in this meeting, or is it so polite to a fault that nobody really gets to the nitty-gritty of what they want from each other and what they may resent about each other?

ROD NORDLAND: Yeah, I don't think you'd describe it as polite. It was a pretty raucous gathering. There was a lot of high emotions, a lot of strong expressed opinions. But there was that element of let's not be too insulting to our hosts, and while people expressed the desire for an Iraqi government and so on, they are not coming down on the coalition. But this was a pre-selected group. It was Garner and his people who selected the members, and the kind of people who would voice those views really weren't represented at that meeting.

RAY SUAREZ: Did you get a chance to talk to any of the delegates when the meeting broke up?

ROD NORDLAND: We did talk to some of them while it was going on and so on, but it was difficult to get a read from just a few of them. In mean, basically... in fact, one of Garner's people said it best, I think. Most of the people at this meeting were essentially representing themselves, and it's a long way from being any kind of body that represents a cross-section of interest in Iraq.

RAY SUAREZ: Do the street demonstrations show signs of being large enough, loud enough, extensive enough that they may call into question the value of what's going on inside the room, when you see what's going on out on the street?

ROD NORDLAND: Well, no, they weren't really that large. But I think that's partly because the idea of demonstrating in the streets is still something new. I think a lot of people would expect coalition forces to come down on them if they did that, so they'd be reluctant to attend. You know, today was Saddam's 66th birthday. Usually this is a day full of parades and demonstrations in favor of Saddam, and a day off from work, and even a lot of extra pay for people, especially Ba'athist Party members, and none of that took place. And also, the way the occupation forces have managed things in the city make it very difficult for a large demonstration to take place. There are lots of roadblocks, lots of restrictions on movement. In fact, the meeting itself was held so far from any kind of access by the population that it was even hard for some of the delegates to get into it. It took us something like two and a half hours to get to the meeting. So there weren't going to be any big crowd scenes in front of it, and I think that was the intention.

RAY SUAREZ: Newsweek's Rod Nordland in Baghdad, thanks for joining us.

ROD NORDLAND: My pleasure.

FOCUS - BUILDING A DEMOCRACY

JIM LEHRER: Now, fitting today's news into the larger questions of Iraq, Islam, and democratic government, and to Margaret Warner.

MARGARET WARNER: And for that broader historical and cultural perspective, we turn to Michael Hudson, a professor of international relations at the Center for Contemporary Arab Studies at Georgetown University. He's written widely on the politics of the Middle East. Fawaz Gerges, a professor of Middle Eastern Studies at Sarah Lawrence College. He recently authored "The Islamists and the West: Ideology Versus Pragmatism." And Juan Cole, a professor of history at the University of Michigan. His recent book "Sacred Space and Holy War" is about Shiite history and its modern experience in Iraq. Welcome to you all. Professor Cole, what does Iraqi history tell you about the prospects for democracy taking root in Iraq?

JUAN COLE: Well, it's going to be a difficult process. Iraq had multi party elections back in the 0s, 40s, 50s, until the military coup in 1958. But that was a system that really favored a handful of large landlords -- democracy in the sense of a large public with lots of civil society organizations being deeply involved in running the country, that's something that modern Iraq really hasn't experienced; and the necessity to cooperate, to compromise, all of those things are things that the current political forces are going to have to learn.

MARGARET WARNER: Professor Gerges, what's your read on this period from, what is it "21 to '58 when the British were in charge and they did install this sort of monarchy and some parliamentary democracy, did it create the building blocks at all for representative government?

FAWAZ GERGES: Well, in a way it did. But in another way it reinforced Arab and Muslim misperceptions or perceptions that really the West cares very little about democracy. As you know, Margaret, in the eyes of many Arabs and Muslims, democracy is closely associated with the western colonialism and hegemony. For example, when Britain constructed modern Iraq in the 1920s, he paid little attention to local sensibilities and national frontiers, it imported a local king and crowned him as king without discussion and consultation with Iraqis, and in this particular sense I think also Britain used the notion of divide and rule in order to consolidate its control of Iraq,. And to take it a bit to the present now, I think there's a wide -- I think -- spread perception that the United States also does not really care about democracy and it uses democracy as a stick to punish its enemies, the Iraqi president and the Palestinian president, while shutting its eyes and ears for human rights violation. Let's hope now that the Bush administration lives up to its really promises, not only assisting Iraqis in rebuilding their lives, but also in really fully empowering and allowing Iraqis to fully determine their political future.

MARGARET WARNER: Professor Hudson, let's go back to the history for a minute, because even after the British period ended, you've now had 45 years of a really autocratic repressive rule. What impact do you think that had on the prospects for democracy? For instance, were there any institutions of dissent that now, that could come to the fore now?

MICHAEL HUDSON: Well, I wouldn't say there were institutions of dissent. But I think one of the interesting things that happened in more modern history was the rapid and impressive development of its social and economic infrastructure. We forget now that Iraq was in such a bad state at the moment. But if you look back to the mid 8 oh 0s, even while they were fighting a very debilitating war against the Iranians at the time, the numbers for Iraq in terms of per capita GNP, health standards, literacy, educational levels and so forth were very impressive. And there were many professional associations and societies, a very vibrant intellectual and artistic life. In short they had a lot of what was we would call the building blocks for an ultimate kind of opening liberal democratic opening. But unfortunately, especially after 1979 when Saddam really took control of the Ba'athist revolution, making what was already a kind of an authoritarian one-party situation much more tyrannical, unpredictable and frightening, a lot of these institutions I think were pulverized, and the question that General Garner and everybody else I suppose is asking now is, can these things be resuscitated in some way, but what you see, of course, in this enormous outpouring of enthusiasm, but also confusion and insecurity, is those organizations that did survive, deep beneath the surface, and these tended to be religious organizations, they tended to be local, they tended to be oriented to Shiite networks or ethnic groups or even vestigial kinds of tribal groups, and what you're seeing now then is this kind of raw expression that has to be somehow molded into something more tolerant.

MARGARET WARNER: So Professor Cole, pick up on that. Do you agree that while they weren't institutions of dissent to the authoritarian rule, they were the kinds of institutions that might provide building blocks for democracy?

JUAN COLE: There were institutions of dissent, the Shiite clerics often dissented from Saddam and were assassinated in some cases because they did so. The difficulty is that Saddam repressed people so much that he drove many of those institutions somewhat underground. And you have movements like the Suder movement in Najaf, Koufa, the slums of East Baghdad, which is a somewhat extreme movement and now has its own militias patrolling neighborhoods. And the way the Americans went into Iraq and kind of got rid of the Ba'ath regime without having immediately in hand anything to replace it has allowed some of the more extreme movements to assert themselves as paramilitaries in these urban areas. How you draw them then into a more of a parliamentary discourse, a give and take, a compromise, how you disarm those militias that have sprung up and now have arms depots, that's going to be a question that the Garner team has to answer.

MARGARET WARNER: Professor Gerges, you said that you hope the Americans would let the Iraqis have the kind of government they want. What do you think of the prospects that if they were to have a free election they would choose a kind of Islamic state on the Iranian model, something that the Americans have made clear they would not want to see happen?

FAWAZ GERGES: Surely, Margaret, I think the Bush administration has not only underestimated the strengths of religious fervor in Iraq, that Iraqi society has become much more religious, in tick in the last 18 years as a result of course of the brutal economic sanctions that have let Iraqi civil society dry but also the power and strengths of conservative religious forces. But I think here I want to stress one point, is that we have been talking a great deal about the Shia community. The Shia community is highly complex and diverse, there exists several political current within the Shia community. While the conservative religious forces are now very emboldened and well organized, let's remember there are many Shiites who are highly nationalistic, there's a strong sense of nationalism, and let's remember that the Shia community played a leading role in the Iraqi state since 19 20s, they were even leading players in the Saddam Hussein government. So while I think the conservative religious forces are very powerful at the moment, we should not really over-exaggerate their power, because the Shia community is not only divided across or along religious lines, but also along ideology, class and interest, there's a great deal of momentum and complexity within the Shia a community.

MARGARET WARNER: That raises the larger issue, even larger issue, Professor Hudson, of Islam and democracy. And there's a raging debate on this. What are the elements in Islamic thought and culture and tradition that are conducive to democracy, and what elements are either lacking or perhaps even hostile to it?

MICHAEL HUDSON: Well, I think to take the hostile ones first, in the sense Islamic history the way it has played out I think has been in a sense hostile or at least unfamiliar with the democracy as we understand it. You had a history of dynasties and rather traditional autocratic rule, within the Islamic framework. But on the positive side, there are elements in Islamic texts and Islamic political theory that place great emphasis on the importance of consultation, the importance of developing consensus, a kind of sense of the meeting, and of course on the importance of rulers operating within some kind a rule of law. Now to be sure that law traditionally has been Islamic law, but there's a sense that there should not be uncontrolled license given to rulers. So when you consider all of these things, I don't accept the, I guess, widely held view that Islam is sort of antithetical to democracy. But as Dr. Gerges was suggesting and Dr. Cole, it kind of depends on who is doing the talking. And at the moment we're seeing a very rough kind of Shiite expression, which doesn't bode well, I think, certainly for the future of an Iraq which after all is not a Shiite population. It may be a majority Shiite population, but it is also a Sunni population, it's also a Kurdish population, it is also a place with a national identity. And it also is a place, as my late colleague, Hannah Batatu, wrote in a magnificent book about the old social classes of Iraq, a place where political thought and ideologies from the communists to the constitutionalists to the nationalists, to the Arab nationalists, they were all there. And I suspect they're all going to come back. So the Islamists don't, and I think shouldn't have the field all to themselves.

MARGARET WARNER: Professor Cole, pick up on this theme about Islam and democracy. For example, most would say that a tolerance for dissenting views is an important component of basically any democratic system. Is that compatible with Islamic culture and tradition?

JUAN COLE: Well, Islam is not one thing. There are lots of different kinds of Muslims. There are people whose religion is Muslim but who have a secular point of view. There are other people who are very devoted to Islam as a political project. Islamists are the people invested in political Islam about whom we're mainly talking I think when we discuss this subject. And there may be problems. For instance, the center movement that I mentioned had as one of its tenets that one may only follow one religious ruler's fatwas or rulings. And they have clashed over even with other Shiite groups. So there is a kind of intolerance in some of these more extreme factions, and I would just say that although they may be not the majority of Shiites in Iraq, as I said, there are many middle class secular people, they are the ones right now with the guns and with the political momentum. And therefore they have a lot to say about the future of Iraq. And as I have suggested before, you saw similar things happen in Lebanon in the 1980s, and ultimately those Shiite militias were turned into political parties and had to contest elections in parliament, Hezbollah and Amal both do in Lebanon, and the best case scenario is that you get the people in the Suder movement and you get the people in the Supreme Council and these other Shiite movements into a democratic give and take,. That can be done, I think, but it's not easy and the problem is that nobody from those groups showed up today except a low level delegation from Syria.

MARGARET WARNER: Professor Gerges, do you agree with that, that even if parties start out as religiously based, that in the proper democratic environment, they can come to be part of a functioning give and take democratic society?

FAWAZ GERGES: Absolutely, absolutely. I think Turkey is a classic case of how religiously oriented parties evolve and develop. I think the Islamists have really ended on a major transformation in many countries, and, Margaret, here, in the last decade there have been some major intellectual efforts on the part of must rims trying to reinterpret their Islamic doctrine and stress what Professor Hudson says, the consultation and the representation as respect of Islam doctrine. And I think we should not allow the current social and political turmoil to blind us to the fact that really Muslims are deeply struggling to redefine the boundaries between religion and politics, and also to prevent the hijacking of Islam by the fringe, and I think the challenge for the Iraqis at this moment, how to revive the dormant middle class, which used to be one of the largest, how to revive and secularize or liberalize secular and political culture in Iraq, which also used to be very impressive, and of course I will argue how to create the foundations and the building blocks of representative democracy in the next few years down the line.

MARGARET WARNER: Professors Gerges, Cole and Hudson, thank you all three.

JIM LEHRER: Still to come on the NewsHour tonight, blogging on the web, and SARS in China.

FOCUS - WEBLOGGING

JIM LEHRER: And now to media correspondent Terence Smith with a look at that growing something called "blogging."

TERENCE SMITH: Four guys in a bar-- in this case, four bloggers in a bar-- talking over a beer in suburban Washington about their common obsession: Weblogging.

SPOKESPERSON: I had 550 people yesterday.

SPOKESPERSON: Wow.

SPOKESPERSON: Wow.

SPOKESPERSON: And so, it's been growing. So now, like a good day is 500, 600.

TERENCE SMITH: James Robertson:

JAMES ROBERTSON, Web Logger: Weblogging is much the same thing as keeping a diary. It's a way of putting up your thoughts on whatever is going through your life that day. Sometimes I'm ranting. Sometimes I'm just saying, "this was kind of neat."

TERENCE SMITH: Thomas Bascom:

THOMAS BASCOM, Web Log Software Designer: I look at blogging as a group of millions of people trying to share the message, writing passionately about, you know, what they're interested in, telling stories.

TERENCE SMITH: Weblogs, or blogs, are personal online journals, one of the fastest-growing phenomena on the Internet. There are currently an estimated 500,000 weblogs in the virtual universe popularly known as the blogosphere. Bloggers were especially busy during the Iraq War, offering readers alternative views and information. Some, like the group Weblog, the Command Post, were updated every few minutes. For months leading up to the war, readers followed day-to-day conditions in Baghdad courtesy of a blogger identified only as "Salam Pax." His last post was March 24, the day power and phone service were disrupted in Baghdad. Weblogs have been dismissed by some as little more than soapboxes for the self-absorbed, while others see them as a new interactive form of participatory journalism. What motivates bloggers?

JOAN CONNELL, Exec. Producer, MSNBC.com: Narcissism, creativity, and a desire to connect with like- minded people.

TERENCE SMITH: Joan Connell selects and edits weblogs that she posts on the web site MSNBC.com.

JOAN CONNELL: That is what journalism is all about, actually, in some ways, and it's what creating communities are all about. And that's one of the great challenges to us as news gatherers and journalists: How do we discover information and share it in creative ways with people? Give them the information they need to make the choices in their lives as citizens.

TERENCE SMITH: Weblogs are public web sites characterized by brief, time-stamped entries in reverse chronology, often laced with edge and attitude. They customarily include hypertext-- links to other sites favored by the author-- and some now include still photos, video, and audio.

AUDIO: Or sometimes I'll say sorry-- mostly sorry...

TERENCE SMITH: The subject matter is diverse as the Internet itself, from classic cars to sex to knitting. But it is the opinion journalism weblogs, like Instapundit and Andrew sullivan.Com, that can and have made a difference in the public policy arena.

SEN. TRENT LOTT (Dec. 5, 2002): I want to say this about my state: When Strom Thurmond ran for president, we voted for him. We're proud of him. ( Applause ) And if the rest of the country had followed our lead, we wouldn't have had all these problems over all these years, either.

TERENCE SMITH: When former Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott famously dug his political grave at Sen. Strom Thurmond's 100th birthday party, the mainstream media largely ignored his remarks.

JOSHUA MARSHALL, Freelance Journalist: It was sort of an open secret in a way that Trent Lott had this sort of, you know, somewhat unreconstructed views about the past of the American south. And everybody kind of knew that, and knew that it was something we all knew, but it's kind of old news, and we don't talk about it.

TERENCE SMITH: Joshua Marshall is a freelance writer and author of talkingpointsmemo.Com, a popular weblog that he says averages 15,000 readers a day. He and other bloggers fastened on to the Lott quote, and repeatedly posted it on their sites. Marshall dug into Lott's past, and found echoes of the Senator's earlier comments.

JOSHUA MARSHALL: Blogs sort of kept it from dying for a critical period, until the rest of the media paid attention. It was one of those things that kind of needed to be repeated and unpacked over time to really get a sense, and so, blogs, I think, were... had all the right characteristics to be able to do that.

TERENCE SMITH: News organizations subsequently began to cover the controversy, which mushroomed onto the front pages. Two weeks after the original blog entries, the Mississippi Republican bowed to pressure from his own party, and stepped down from his leadership position. Joan Connell of MSNBC.com:

JOAN CONNELL: And pretty soon this story gathered momentum enough in the blogosphere to shake the foundations of traditional journalism, and then the traditional news organizations jumped on board. But this was something that was very grass-roots.

TERENCE SMITH: So they brought down a senate majority leader?

JOAN CONNELL: They had a hand in it.

TERENCE SMITH: Josh Marshall says he was astounded by the outcome.

JOSHUA MARSHALL: It's just that something had gone from being something on my site and other people's web sites that was, you know, just a few people were paying attention to, and over the course of a week or two, kept ratcheting up until it... you know, what's the senate majority leader, the third or fourth most powerful person in the country, is tossed out by their own party. So yeah, kind of awed just that it played out the way that it did.

TERENCE SMITH: Weblogs are free for the reading on the Internet, but some webloggers-- like Marshall and a handful of better-read bloggers-- pass what amounts to a virtual tin cup on their sites. Andrew Sullivan, the former editor of the New Republic, staged a pledge week on his site that reportedly brought in tens of thousands of dollars. And a freelancer, Christopher Allbritton, who used to work for the Associated Press, raised $10,000 from his readers to finance a reporting trip to Iraqi Kurdistan during the war. But the question remains, is weblogging journalism? Joan Connell maintains that the weblogs on her site are.

JOAN CONNELL: One of the values that we place on our own weblogs is that we edit our webloggers. Out there in the blogosphere, often it goes from the mind of the blogger to the mind of the reader, and there's no backup. And I would submit that that editing function really is the factor that makes it journalism. Are you making a mistake here? Do you really want to say that? Do you really want to use that word? Is that libelous? All of those basic journalism questions that we always ask.

TERENCE SMITH: On the theory that if you can't beat 'em, join 'em, MSNBC.com now has some of its own news correspondents writing weblogs. But for the vast majority of bloggers, like these four who spend hours a week writing their weblogs, the motivation is personal expression. John Irons is an assistant professor of economics at Amherst College.

JOHN IRONS, Web Logger: When I first started writing, my goal was actually to get myself to write, to try to become a better writer. I figured if I could do it on the web, then no one would ever see it. But over the years, all of a sudden, people started coming to the web site.

TERENCE SMITH: Scott Knowles markets Internet advertising by day, and writes about the industry on his weblog by night.

SCOTT KNOWLES, Web Logger: It's really what the web is all about, I think, is each person having their own voice, and really kind of a democratization of media. And I think that's really what turned me on.

TERENCE SMITH: Nowhere is the democratization more evident than in the growing number of weblog readers, estimated at about five million a day. A case in point is Dick Riley, an attorney in a Washington law firm. He's been reading weblogs for a couple of years, and writes to Josh Marshall on a regular basis. One note was in response to a blog Marshall wrote, meditating on the newly current term "homeland security."

SPOKESMAN: The phrase really does have a deep blood-and-soil tinge to it which is distinctly Germanic, more than a touch un-America, and a little creepy. I mean, we-- that is to say, Americans-- don't really use this word, not just liberals or cosmopolitan northeasterners, but really any of us.

DICK RILEY: I've wondered where that unpleasant word came from. When the bush administration came up with it right after 9/11, I honestly thought they chose "homeland security" because "home security" sounded like a burglar alarm company. But you've conclusively demonstrated, I think, that the term developed among the missile defense community, and that's undoubtedly why it was on the minds of the bush people.

TERENCE SMITH: Riley says he enjoys the fact that he can participate in political debate.

DICK RILEY, Web Log Reader: I like weblogs because you get sophisticated political commentary in bite-sized chunks. And together with that, you get the opportunity to correspond in real time with writers. I think the whole process is just terrific. It's an absolute conversation between political and cultural commentators and their readers.

TERENCE SMITH: It's a conversation that seems destined to grow. A new weblog reportedly is created by a yet another commentator every 40 seconds.

UPDATE - COPING WITH SARS

JIM LEHRER: Finally tonight, China's huge SARS problem. So far, that country has reported at least 3,100 cases of the respiratory disease, 140 deaths, and those numbers are growing daily. After being accused of doing too little, Chinese officials in recent days have begun to take dramatic steps. We begin with a report from Beijing by Julian Manyon of Independent Television News.

JULIAN MANYON: All morning, ambulances moved in and out of one of Beijing's biggest hospitals as medical officials carried out the latest government orders in China's battle against SARS. The plan: To clear the hospital of ordinary patients and make room for more expected victims of the new killer virus. The police looked on as the sick and injured were helped on their way to other places where they will be cared for during the emergency. Staff at this giant medical facility have been told that within 24 hours, their hospital will be entirely devoted to SARS patients. For them it's a chilling prospect. What it means is that they will be effectively in quarantine, unable to visit friends or family until the disease is under control. As the hospital prepared for its dramatic new role, staff members were understandably fearful.

STAFF MEMBER (Translated): Of course I'm worried, because we have to be in close, direct contact with the patient. It's very high risk.

STAFF MEMBER (Translated): I'm not really frightened. It's our responsibility as medical workers to do it.

JULIAN MANYON: One reason more hospitals are needed is because some of those originally chosen failed to prevent the spread of SARS infection within their walls. Today the World Health Organization said that China still faces a difficult struggle to contain the virus.

HANK BEKEDAM, World Health Organization: The public health system in China has been under funded for the last 20 years, and I do believe that this public health system is barely ready to deal with a disease like SARS.

JULIAN MANYON: Some other countries can now claim to be getting on top of SARS. But for China, and in particular its capital city, the battle against this virus is still a frightening journey into the unknown.

JIM LEHRER: And to Gwen Ifill.

GWEN IFILL: To tell us more about the medical, political and economic fallout of SARS in China, I'm joined by Ming Wan, an associate professor of public and international affairs at George Mason University. He is also an Asian policy fellow at the Woodrow Wilson Institute and Joan Kaufman, director of the AIDS Public Policy Project at Harvard's John F. Kennedy School of Government; she was based in China for ten of the last 23 years. Professor Wan, what do you know of the extent at this point of SARS in China?

MING WAN: It's a very serious public health crisis. As your lead to the story indicated, according to the latest statistics, China now has over 3,000 cases of probable cases of SARS, and 140 dead, and it has spread to 26 of the 31 provinces, autonomous regions and municipalities directly under the state council. Beijing alone I heard today there are 9,000 people being quarantined.

GWEN IFILL: If 9,000 people are being quarantined in Beijing, yet in other countries they are saying the incidences of SARS have peaked, why are the numbers continuing to grow there?

MING WAN: I think part of the reason is that the Chinese government's initial cover-up. I think that to a large extent in places like Beijing, the fact that it didn't share the information early on with the public and health workers aggravated the problem.

GWEN IFILL: Professor Kaufman, let me ask you that question as well. Why do the numbers keep going up in Beijing?

JOAN KAUFMAN: Well, I think what we're -- a certain amount of catch up, in that the early reporting was the actual number of cases was not honestly reported. And I think what you're seeing now as a result of early under reporting and the ineffective contact tracing and infection control that wasn't done properly in the first phase. So now belatedly, proper policies are being put in place, but it's harder to understand the actual extent of infections and to really understand who may have acquired the infections and where they have taken them in the country.

GWEN IFILL: Through your work with AIDS on the continent, Asian continent, but especially in China, you have had extensive experience dealing with the Chinese health care system. What is it about that health care system that might have exacerbated the spread of SARS?

JOAN KAUFMAN: Well, I think the problem is not necessarily the health care system but the control of information about health that, you know, shouldn't be treated really as a state secret. I think when people know they're at risk, especially medical workers and others, they can take the proper protective measures. I think what's happened is that you've got -- in Beijing people who should have been isolated were not, and people thought there was no major problem in Beijing, so suspected cases were not treated properly. So this has spread. And I think the worrisome situation now is that whereas the urban health facilities are reasonably good, the rural health facilities have deteriorated substantially over the last 20 or so years. There are fairly, they're independently financed by local communities, more or less. So poor communities have sort of worse quality care, and I think you see real variations in the quality of care around the country. And it's worrisome about the potential to really deal appropriately with the epidemic once it's outside of the major urban centers and hospitals, where you have a more sophisticated set of health care workers and health organizations.

GWEN IFILL: Professor Wan, let's pick up on that point. How much of a danger is there that this disease will not be confined to either just the rural areas or the big cities where they are better able to cope, or actually will begin to spread because of a lot of travel between the two?

MING WAN: Yeah, there is a real danger. And there are two or three millions of migrant workers in Beijing alone, and many of them have returned to their hometowns.

GWEN IFILL: They're migrant workers who come just to work in the city and then go home.

MING WAN: Right. And there is also reports there are lots of college students from Beijing universities have returned to their hometown. The Chinese government has been trying to tell them to stay at school. But there is no effective measure to stop them from doing that, so many of them have returned.

GWEN IFILL: So quarantines aren't working, they're going this huge hospital north of Beijing which is supposed to be just for SARS patients, that's not going to be enough to keep people from going back and forth?

MING WAN: The Chinese government has announced several occasions have people have been quarantined -- some buildings, hospitals, and neighborhoods. But they can't quarantine Beijing and the whole city - there are check-up points around Beijing, but from what I've heard people who man those check-up points do not know what they're going to do with people who are leaving the city, because they don't really have the proper authority to do that.

GWEN IFILL: Professor Kaufman, let me ask a na ve question. Many Americans look at the socialist system in China and assume that there would be health care for all, that that would be one of the benefits of a socialist society. Why is it that people in rural areas are not in a position to get the same kind of care that people in Beijing would be, or Shanghai?

JOAN KAUFMAN: Well, I think what you see in the last 20 years is that the let system has, the rural health system has become completely privatized. It's not socialist medicine any more; when the commune system ended in the late 1970s and early 80s, the mechanism for health insurance and subsidy for the health facilities really disappeared. And there was much less transferring of money down from national to provincial to local to subsidize universal health care. The barefoot doctor era is surely over, it hasn't existed for quite some time. The richer areas still have some reasonable level of care and in the urban areas people are covered by health insurance through factories or if they work for the government. Their work unit provides health insurance. But you don't have such arrangements in the rural area, which it's basically a private family farming system now, and actually the cost of catastrophic health care of a major health event is one of the major reasons for families falling into poverty. I think you see this happening with the AIDS epidemic in certain parts of China where people are selling all their assets and their major breadwinner, you know, is no longer able to work. And people are just falling into poverty because of the high cost of medical care. People tend to therefore use local clinics, village clinics, which are, you know, they exist which is good, it's better than in many places in the world, and there is a reasonable level of sort of curative care for simple problems you can get there. And most drugs are available also. But the level of care, the sophistication of care is quite low, and it's on a fee for service basis. People don't go and seek care at higher levels because they simply can't afford it.

GWEN IFILL: Professor Wan, there has been much discussion, generally accepted at this point, that one of the reasons this spread so quickly and the reason we didn't know it was spreading was because of political considerations. Is there a political element, and the way that China has attempted to or not attempted to control the spread of SARS?

MING WAN: The SARS crisis has huge implications for China, and depending on how the crisis plays out it may either trigger a political crisis or serve as the catalyst for further reform, including some type of political reform. Two weeks ago you could have asked me and my answer would be that there is real potential that this public health crisis might evolve into a political crisis.

GWEN IFILL: When you say political crisis, you mean change in leadership?

MING WAN: No, it may be that the eternal fight between the leaders and an example would be 1989, the Tiananmen incident, and in China if you base it on reasonable experience, including Tiananmen incident, and you need two key ingredients to have a political crisis: First you have major social unrest or mass protest, second you have a serious division. We think the leadership, which creates a vacuum in the center and allows the institution get out of hand -- two weeks ago it did not look very good because we knew the disease was spreading, and at the same time the central government wasn't doing anything. Naturally people wonder either the new government was not capable of meeting its very first test, or there might be serious division.

GWEN IFILL: What do you think now?

MING WAN: The situation has improved considerably, and as you know, two very senior officials, the minister of health and Beijing's mayor, and has mobilized the country's resources to fight this disease. And for the past few days the other seven members of the standing committee of the politburo have also spoken out. At least right now in appearance there was a united front.

GWEN IFILL: Professor Kaufman, finally do you think things have to get worse before they get better?

KAUFMAN: I think they certainly will get worse before they get better. I think at this point the level of cases suspected cases is expanding very rapidly, and has most certainly moved beyond - you know -- the urban, moved beyond Beijing. As people have said, it's in just about every province. I think it will expand for a while. I do think that the government has really stepped up and tried to do the right thing at this point. But the lack of information so far has created almost a panic effect, or a real panic effect, and you've got people who really are reacting to rumor and trying to move and in a sense undermining the attempt at containing the epidemic.

GWEN IFILL: All right. We'll be following that, Joan Kaufman and Ming Wan, thank you very much for joining us.

MING WAN: Thank you.

RECAP

JIM LEHRER: Again, the major developments of this day: Some 300 Iraqi leaders met in Baghdad. They agreed to hold a national conference within 30 days to choose an interim government. Defense Secretary Rumsfeld said the U.S. Military will reduce its presence in the Persian Gulf region. And Secretary of State Powell confirmed North Korea had made an offer concerning its nuclear program. It was widely reported the North Koreans proposed giving up their missiles and nuclear facilities, in return for major concessions.

JIM LEHRER: And before we go, we add one more to our silent honor roll of American military personnel killed in Iraq.

JIM LEHRER: We'll see you online, and again here tomorrow evening. I'm Jim Lehrer. Thank you and good night.