The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer; March 28, 2007

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . the Atlantic Philanthropies, the National Science Foundation, and with the continuing support of these institutions and foundations. And this program was made possible by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting and by

contributions to your PBS station from viewers like you. Thank you. President Bush issued a new warning to Democrats today over pull out deadlines and Iraq. He accused them of meddling in military policy by adding time tables to war funding bills. And he complained they've loaded the legislation with domestic spending that has nothing to do with the war. There's $3.5 million for visitors to tour the Capitol and see for themselves how Congress works. I'm not kidding you. Here's the bottom line. The House and Senate bills have too much pork, too many conditions on our commanders in an artificial timetable for withdrawals. The Senate resumed debating its bill today, including a goal of withdrawing combat troops within 12 months. The House version mandates a pull out by September of 2008. The president insisted

again today he'd veto either bill. But House Speaker Pelosi said he needs to think again. On this very important matter, I would extend a hand of friendship to the president just to say to him, calm down with the threats. There's a new Congress in town. We respect your constitutional role. We want you to respect ours. This war must end. The American people have lost faith in the president's conduct of the war. Let's see how we can work together. Amid the debate, U.S. commanders then Iraq said they won't know when to draw down troop levels until fall at the earliest. Major General William Caldwell said the additional forces slated for Baghdad won't be fully in place until June. A wave of revenge killings erupted in northern Iraq today. As many as 70 soonies were shot, execution-style, and telephora. The rampage began after truck bombings killed more than 60 Shiites yesterday. And in Fallujah, suicide

bombers blew up trucks loaded with chlorine. About 15 U.S. and Iraqi troops were wounded. Also today, eight Iraqi soldiers were killed in a separate car bombing in Fallujah. We'll have more on the war funding debate in Washington and the violence in Iraq right after this news summary. Iran showed video today a 15 British sailors on marine seized last Friday in the Persian Gulf. It also released an interview with the lone woman in the group and a letter she said to have written. We have a report narrated by Katie Razzle of Independent Television News. The evening news bulletin on Iranian Al- ion television. The British sailor attorney has confessed to having tresparters to the Mediterranean supporters. Whatever the foreign office says about where the sailors were, this news bulletin forecast

leading seam and ternies confession. My name is leading seam and Faye Ternie. I come from England. I was arrested on Friday, the 23rd of March. Obviously we trespass into their waters. There's no military reason for Faye Ternie to be chosen as spokesperson. Iranian law requires all women to wear headscarves. She's shown smoking and looking tense. They were very friendly, very hospitable, very thoughtful, nice people. They explained to us why we'd been arrested. Faye Ternie is shown eating with the other captured sailors. They haven't been separated on gender lines as his customary. And throughout the broadcast the presenters stress how well the British are being treated by their cattle. The report mentions that Faye Ternie's letter was sent because of mediation between the Iranian foreign

office and the British Embassy. It ends with a smile from the women who the Iranians have promised will be released very soon. The British government condemned Iran's decision to put the sailors on television. The Royal Navy also showed navigational evidence that they were indeed within a rocky waters when they were seized. Police in Zimbabwe detained the main opposition leader again today. Morgan Shangri-Rai was taken into custody shortly before he was due to talk to reporters. Police said they released him a short time later. Two weeks ago he was arrested and severely beaten after attending a protest. Fifty others were also detained. Today's incident came as African leaders held a summit to talk about Zimbabwe. New reports today called for greater use of magnetic resonance imaging MRIs to detect breast cancer. That's in addition to regular mammograms. The American Cancer Society recommended MRIs

for women considered at high risk of getting the disease and a study in the New England Journal of Medicine urged MRIs for women newly diagnosed with cancer in one breast. In some cases the scans found possible tumors in the other breast that escaped detection in mammograms. Well I'm more on this story later in the program. UN Health Agency said today men should be circumcised to reduce the odds of contracting HIV, the AIDS virus. The World Health Organization and UN AIDS said the procedure can cut the chance of infection by up to 60% in heterosexual men. They said it could prevent three million deaths in sub-Saharan Africa alone over the next 20 years. The chairman of the Federal Reserve played down the possibility of recession today. Ben Bernanke told a congressional hearing the slumping housing market remains a threat but he said there's no sign it's affecting the broader economy yet. Our expectation is for

moderate growth. I would make a point I think which is important which is there seems to be a sense that expansions die of old age that at the reach of certain point then they naturally begin to end. I don't think the evidence really supports that. At the same time Bernanke said the Fed is still focused on controlling inflation and he cautioned against assuming that lower interest rates are in the offing. That news helps end Wall Street down today. The Dow Jones industrial average lost nearly 97 points to close at 12,300. The Nasdaq fell 20 points to close at 24-17. San Francisco may become the first U.S. city to ban plastic bags at grocery stores unless they're biodegradable. The city supervisors voted Tuesday to eliminate bags made from petroleum products. The State Grocers Association said other kinds of plastic bags are expensive and untested but a spokesman said there's a good chance the mayor

will sign the new ban. And that's it for the new summary tonight. Now Congress versus the President on the war. Carney Jett Tollefer, a book conversation with his big-nift-presence key and more, always more on cancer. Congress, the President and Iraq, NewsHour congressional correspondent, Kwame Holman, as our report. President Bush's threats in recent weeks to veto any war-funding bill that includes either a timetable for troop withdrawal or conditions on U.S. commanders in the field have not stopped congressional Democrats from moving forward with bills that would do just that. The toll that is taking in lives and limbs, the toll that is taking in on our, the strength of our security, the toll that is taking financially and in our reputation in the world, is one that is too great.

On Friday, the House voted to require troops be pulled out of Iraq by September 2008, securing that measure by the narrowest of margins. And this week, the Senate is likely to overcome near unanimous Republican opposition to pass a bill establishing as a goal that all troops leave Iraq by the end of March next year, with a phased redeployment to begin much sooner. We have been in the House and in the Senate spoken. We've spoken the words the American people wanted us to speak. If either version comes to my desk, I'm going to veto it. This morning, the President reasserted his intention to block any such congressional action to voting more than half his remarks before the National Cattlemen's Association to defending his Iraq policy and condemning the democratic measures. It is also clear from the strong opposition in both houses that my veto would be sustained. Yet Congress continues to pursue these bills. And as they do, the clock is ticking for our troops in the field.

Funding for our forces in Iraq will begin to run out in mid-April. Members of Congress need to stop making political statements and start providing vital funds for our troops. Is the cost worth what we are attempting to accomplish? But as the Senate continued to work on the $122 billion measure aimed at funding U.S. operations in Iraq and Afghanistan, Democrats from both houses were not backing down from their pledge to attach conditions to the bill. Wisconsin's rust fine gold. This war will end, and the question is when it will go on unnecessarily long. The Democrats and some Republicans are the only force here in this town that is making sure that this war ends as fast as possible. But South Carolina Republican Lindsey Graham said the democratic moves were unprecedented and possibly unconstitutional. The restrictions that we are placing on our military and the deadlines and the timelines and the benchmarks all that up to really making it impossible for the new strategy of

General Petraeus to be successful if they became law. This is a constitutional encroachment upon the power of Commander-in-Chief that I think is unprecedented. There is an honorable path for Congress to take, and that is just stop funding for a war that you think is lost. But the combination of deadlines, benchmarks, timelines, micromanaging, troop rotations, they all add up to the Congress really taking over wartime activity in a way that was never envisioned before. But many House Democrats, such as Oregon's Earl Blumenauer, said they were forced to act because of the Bush administration's exceptionally poor execution of the war, with no check from Congress. Part of the problem is that under unified Republican leadership in the administration in Congress, Congress was missing in action. For the first time in six years, you're seeing a reassertion of our constitutional responsibility for oversight, power of the purse, and policy.

We're co-equal partners here. And by establishing requirements for how the public's money is used, that's not a federal micromanaging, that's establishing the parameters that Congress should have done from the outset. House Speaker Pelosi urged the president to negotiate with Congress. We have a serious responsibility as leaders in Congress to sit down with the president to listen to his concerns, and he has a serious responsibility to sit down with us as well. Each of us respecting each other's constitutional role. I hope that that is what will happen, rather than stonewalling. After the Senate passes its bill expected within days, it still must be reconciled with the House version before a war-funding bill can go to the president. A town in Iraq called Talon. We start with some background, narrated by NewsHour correspondent Spencer Michaels.

These are the scenes from yesterday's massive truck bombings in the northern Iraqi town of Talofford. The two simultaneous blast Tuesday ripped through separate markets in Shiite areas, killing at least 60 people and wounding dozens more. The chaos and carnage sparked a revenge killing spree there today, with Shiite militants and police killing dozens of Sunnis. Talofford, a mainly ethnic Turkmen city, is located 260 miles northwest of Baghdad in the province of Nineveh. On religious lines, it is divided between Shia and Sunni Muslims. Talofford became an al-Qaeda stronghold after the 2003 U.S. invasion of Iraq. In 2005, a U.S. operation under the command of Colonel H.R. McMaster, seen here at the time, a specialist in counter-insurgency warfare, recaptured Talofford.

And the Bush administration touted that effort as a centerpiece in driving al-Qaeda out of Iraq. In a speech last year, President Bush spoke at length about Talofford. The success of Talofford also shows how the three elements of our strategy in Iraq, political, security and economic, depend on and reinforce one another. By working with local leaders through address community grievances, a racking and coalition forces helped build the political support needed to make the military operation a success. The military success against the terrorists helped give the citizens of Talofford security. And this allowed them to vote in the elections and begin to rebuild their city. And the economic rebuilding that is beginning to take place is giving Talofford residents a real stake in the success of a freerag. And as all this happens, the terrorists, those who offer nothing but destruction and death, are becoming marginalized.

Although U.S. and Iraqi forces remain in control of the city, Talofford has been the target of continued sporadic attacks. And to Gwen Eiffel. For more on Talofford, we are joined by Ahmed Hashim, who worked in Talofford as a political advisor to the third armored cavalry regiment in 2005. He's now an associate professor at the Naval War College and he lectures at Harvard. And Greg Jaffe of the Wall Street Journal, he's reported from Talofford and has just returned from Iraq. Mr. Hashim, given the latest violence, is it possible to assume at this point that perhaps the optimism that was expressed in 2005 about what was happening there was either overstated or premature? I think it was overstated. Talofford was never consolidated after the third ACR left. The situation in the city has more to do with local grievances and identity conflicts between the Sunni Turkmen and the Shia Turkmen.

And it really is not al-Qaeda who has infiltrated so much as the fact that what happened in 2003 is the formerly dominant Sunni Turkmen majority there that constitute 70 percent of the population. They controlled the police, the municipality, the security services. They were primarily the teachers and also there's about 20,000 Turkmen who were veterans of the former Iraqi army. Suddenly they felt themselves having been thrown out of power and this is essentially their revenge on what they see as the empowerment of the Shia minority in the town which has been helped by central power and Baghdad which is of course now in the hands of the Shia. Greg Jaffe, if what Mr. Hashim says is correct and in fact all of these ingredients were there waiting in some respects for things to fall apart, what explains this latest outburst which we've been watching?

I think part of it is that we've been able to hold that city together and keep the peace where we've had a sizeable presence. I think one of the byproducts of the big Baghdad security plan and the surge has been that we've shifted forces away from that city. Both American but even more important than that Iraqi army forces. There were some pretty good Iraqi army battalions up there primarily made up of Kurdish Peshmerga forces that we shifted to Baghdad for the security plan there and I think that created a vacuum in which a lot of these sectarian tensions were able to grab hold of the city. So you're saying there's kind of a domino effect if you hold Baghdad you lose something else? With the number of troops we have both Iraqi and American right now I think that that's unfortunately largely true. Mr. Hasham, are the disputes we're seeing in Talapur? Are they driven by religious division or ethnic division? Well it is between Turkmen primarily. Talapur is 90% Turkmen and only about 10% Arab and Kurd.

Most of the Arabs are outside the town that's primarily the Shamar tribe and so on. In the city itself it's really a struggle between Turkmen of different religious sects. It's not so much that they suddenly walk up one day and started detesting each other because of the fact that one group is Sunni and the other is Shia. It's more the fact that political leaders as well as religious leaders in the town and religious and political leaders outside of the town are using the ethnic identity card to mobilize their respective communities in order to gain the resources and the political power that they feel they have a right to. And since the political game in Talapur like much of the rest of Iraq is essentially a zero sum game, the ethnic card has basically mobilized hitherto primarily traditional city into

sort of the kind of violence you see in the past several weeks. Is the violence Greg Jaffy that we've been seeing in the past several weeks being driven? We've heard a lot about foreign fighters and al-Qaeda and outsiders basically driving a lot of this. Is there any evidence of that? I don't think there's a lot of evidence of it. I know when the third ACR cleared Talapur as part of its operation was storing rights. They did not find very many if any foreign fighters. There may be some foreign elements stirring the pot and I don't doubt that there are. But I think this is primarily Iraqis killing Iraqis. Is this something that U.S. forces have just withdrawn from us or something that they were doing right in 2005 when things seem to be resolved for at least temporarily resolved and something they're not doing at all now?

I think there are probably a couple of things. One I think is just presence. I mean, numbers do count for a lot in these sorts of fights, especially people act irrationally when they don't feel secure or when they feel like they're livelihood is threatened. And a large U.S. Iraqi presence on the ground, I think helps people feel secure. The third ACR had numbers there that we don't have today on the streets, on people's blocks that made them feel secure. The other thing that the third ACR I think did particularly well, and I don't know whether the current unit is doing it as well, is they really reached out to the key political Sunni and Shia players and the Lieutenant Colonel working for Colonel McMaster in that in the city. Chris Hickey did I thought a spectacular job of bringing those folks to the table and getting them to talk. And it required hours upon hours of sort of painful negotiation. Mr. Hasham, having worked with the third ACR that Greg Jaffe was just referring to and looking at the situation now, what would you say needs to happen in order to return Tal

off or to peace? Well I actually quite agree with Greg Jaffe here. We never met, I don't think over there, but I worked with Colonel Hickey in the town and participated in those meetings. Now, the third ACR ACR had a large footprint in the town, but it's not just a question of footprint. It's having the frame of mind of understanding what a counterinsurgency campaign requires. It requires not just fighting and getting insurgents, but it also requires the ability to build security to reconstruct the town and to get the two feuding communities to sit down and talk about how to begin the process of reconstructing the towns and rebuilding trust. I mean it was very difficult to get them to talk. They were feuding constantly, but we thought we'd made some headway.

Now clear, hold and build requires a large footprint, but it also does require an understanding of what counterinsurgency requires. And I think the third ACR did a tremendous job in this regard. But once we left, I think the unit, I don't want to basically condemn it for anything, but I think it didn't have the footprint that was required. We have a tendency in the US to believe that once the situation has been calmed down, we have a metric by which to measure calm and then we can shift forces to another area. You actually need to stay for a very long time to be able to achieve the kind of peace, security and trust between the communities. Let's talk about the metrics, Greg Jaffe. You've recently returned from another trip to Iraq. What we are seeing it unfold in Talapur, the exception, or is it the growing rule?

I mean I think Talapur in some ways represents a sort of microcosm for Iraq. It's a rock on a much smaller scale and it is, it's opposite in the fact that the Sunnis are the majority in the area and the Shiite Turkmen are the minority. But it's the same dynamic I think that you see happening in Baghdad. Others are trying very hard there, I think to try and broker a political compromise between the Sunni and the Shia in a very difficult situation. And in some cases I think the Maliki government rather than helping their cause is hurting their cause. Greg, Jaffe and Ahmed Hashim, thank you both very much. You're welcome. Thanks. Now a new book conversation on American leadership in the world, Margaret Warner is in charge.

Zavignyev Brzezinski has been a frequent commentator on this program since the start of the Iraq War. The former National Security Advisor to President Carter has now authored a book on how the past three presidents have led during the post-Cold War era. In a word, he writes badly. The book is titled Second Chance, Three Presidents and the Crisis of American Superpower. It's Vignyev Brzezinski joins me now and welcome as always back to the programs. Good to be with you Margaret. We are now seeing a serious assault by the Congress on this president's ability and the limitations on him to conduct this war. Do you think this is an expected outgrowth of the 15-year history and the developments that you chronic on this book? You know, in some ways it really is, and perhaps even in a truly profound way, because what it means is that there's not only the debate of the Iraq, such or confrontation of the Iraq, such, which of course is the focus of the issue.

But it's beginning to be a debate about what role the United States should be playing in the world, whether the way the president, the current president, defined it since 9-11 is the right way of defining it. And I think that is a fundamentally important debate and a very timely and a needed debate. Now, your basic thesis in this book, if we go back 15 years and bring us back to this point, is that the United States had a golden opportunity at the end of the Cold War and blew it, explained. Well, essentially what I mean is that in different ways, the three presidents who were the first global leaders in history, George Bush won, Bill Clinton, George Bush too. Each in a different way didn't quite measure up to the opportunity, though the first did quite well otherwise. In fact, I write him quite highly in the way he treated the Soviet Union, its disintegration and particularly the way he conducted the military political operation on Gulf War. But he failed to seize the moment to frame a new vision.

He was essentially a tactician, limited by the circumstances and his own experience. Bill Clinton, in some respects, was extremely appealing as a world leader. But he was self-indulgent in some ways personally, but even more significantly in terms of reflecting a national mood. Things are great, we're satisfied, we can enjoy ourselves, don't worry about the world. He did some very good things, particularly in Europe, but he didn't really address the fundamentals and some issues they curated, the Middle East nuclear proliferation. And the present president, while I have a whole chapter on him, I can describe them two words, the headling, the heading of the chapter, a catastrophic leadership. And that's alas, my verdict. But when you say this was this tremendous opportunity to what lead and reshape the world, you don't think it was somewhat inevitable that the world would come to resent whoever emerges the sole superpower. Absolutely, that's unavoidable.

But the world resents as much more because we have lost our credibility, we have never had a president who, in effect, misled the world who are intentionally or not, I do not know. We have lost our legitimacy, including such things as Guantanamo, which for many people in the world has become the symbol of America, the way the Statue of Liberty used to be. And that's also very important. The world has lost respect for our military power because of the way we have gotten bogged down in Iraq. Now you said you graded these presidents and you're a tough grader, former professor that you are. Let me lead you through the three again very briefly, okay, you gave the first president Bush a solid bee. And here's a man who handled all of these incredible momentous world-changing events. What would say? That was pretty good for years work. It was. It was very good for years work and if he had had eight, he might have done better. But he didn't address even the course of these four years, at least the beginnings of a concept of how to draw Russia into the West and how to address the Middle East.

And he left a legacy in the strategic area of a doctrine which was very imperialistic, shaped by people who were in junior positions in his administration and then who emerged as people in the top positions in the second Bush administration, a doctrine which very easily led to unilateralism. All right, then Bill Clinton, you gave him an uneven sea, but you say he did have a vision of globalization, that was his vision, but that somehow that got in the way, explain briefly how that got in the way. It got in the way because it had two shortcomings. One, it was so deterministic, he made so many speeches saying, this is the unavoidable way of the future, it's got to happen. Well globalization is not some abstract force, it's also a policy and you have to be responsive also to the limits of globalization, to the suffering it imposes on some. And he was at that time presiding over society which was very self-satisfied, not prepared to adopt any self-restrictions.

And there was specific failings, he had eight years and he essentially left the Middle East in the worst shape, then he inherited it. And that's a very major failing because it's part of the problems that we now confront. Now, when you gave the current president Bush and F in the litany of his shortcomings, you said that George W. Bush misunderstood the historical moment and therefore in just five years dangerously undermined America's geopolitical position. And what way did he misunderstand the historical moment? You know it goes beyond the specifics of the Iraq decision even though I deplore it and condemn it. Basically as gotten us into what in the Middle East is to the Middle Easterners, the colonial war and we now live in the postcolonial era. He's waging an essentially imperial war in what is now the post-imperial era. This is not an era in which one single power can dictate to the world, its standards and its norms.

And even in regards to such otherwise desirable issues as democratization, he's done it in such a fashion that he has set in motion populist passions that are increasingly anti-American. So he misunderstood the nature of the moment and he translated the 9-11 attack on us into a kind of a phantom-like threat which is not precisely defined but which lurks everywhere and he's contributed to shaping a nation dominated by what I call a culture of fear. Now you end on a somewhat optimistic note, you say there is a second chance that indeed is the title of your book but what's the second chance? The second chance comes with 2008. I don't think any president, even a Republican one, is going to continue the President policy in Iraq, he's not going to stay on course. The big question for all of us right now is whether something doesn't happen between now and 2008 which precludes the possibility of a second chance and the fear that I have relates to what's going on right now, I'm afraid that the escalation of the war in Iraq

may inadvertently lead to the enlargement of the war in Iraq because something can happen between us and the Iranians, some spark, some collision and the whole thing escalates. You do say though that whoever is the next president, that what constitutes world leadership is going to be totally different in the 21st century than what it was in the 20th. Yes because what is different is that the world is now politically awakened everywhere. The population of the world is politically conscious, it is stirring, it is making demands and it wants a world which is more just and which gives everybody a sense of their personal dignity and that comes even before democracy. It's a big news for those people, thank you so much. Thank you. And happy birthday. Thank you very much. Finally tonight a two-part look at detecting cancer, Judy Woodruff has our story.

For much of the past week the subject of cancer has again captured national attention. Two public figures, Elizabeth Edwards, wife of presidential candidate John Edwards and White House Press Secretary Tony Snow disclose their cancers had advanced and today new guidelines are calling for expanded use of MRI scans for women who are at higher risk of breast cancer. To fill us in on the latest research is our health correspondent Susan Denser. Our health unit is a partnership with the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. Susan, thank you for being here. Let's start with these new breast cancer guidelines that have come out by the American Cancer Society, explain what those are who they apply to. Judy the average American woman will have a one out of nine chance of being diagnosed with breast cancer over the course of her lifetime but some women will have a much higher risk, a one in four risk or even a one in five risk. These are women who have some particular strong family history of breast cancer and by

strong I mean they've been assessed according to various risk models that look closely at this or they have perhaps inherited one of several identified breast cancer gene mutations that we know are linked to breast cancer. A couple known as BRCA-1, Bracka-1 or BRCA-2 which are associated with breast and ovarian cancer and women with those genetic mutations will have as high as a 45% to even a 90% chance of developing breast cancer or ovarian cancer over their lifetimes. So if you fall into any of those categories or you fall into another category which is you're a woman who's also been treated for something called Hodgkin's disease and you have you've been treated with rate essentially with radiotherapy you can also be at greater risk for breast cancer. If you're in any of those pools the American Cancer Society now it says you should be not just screened by routine mammography which of course as we know for all women is recommended by the Cancer Society for routine annual screening starting from age 40 on.

In addition to mammography American Cancer Society says you should also be screened with MRI. MRI magnetic resonance imaging is a technology that is distinct from mammography which has very low dose x-rays that gives you a couple of different views of the breast. MRI is going to give you a cross sectional view much more refined and in fact if it's also used with what is the equivalent of a kind of a dye a contrast agent it's going to show in much higher resolution even very small cancers tumors as small as 100 of an inch or less. So the Cancer Society says you should be screened with an MRI if you fall into one of these high risk groups because that is going to do a much better job of detecting a cancer when it's very small and very treatable. So that's one new set of guidelines that came out today completely separately the New England Journal of Medicine another set of guidelines briefly what were those about.

Not guidelines in this case but in fact a study that was very much brought out in time to coincide with the guidelines. This study looked at a different pool of women. These are women who already have been diagnosed with breast cancer in one breast and the question is what do you do about concerns that that woman could also have a cancer and another breast. This study said that for those women who've been diagnosed with one breast cancer MRI screening is also an effective technology. This study essentially took about 970 women who have been diagnosed with cancer already gave them all MRIs and in fact it found out it found in about 3% of the women overall a tumor was detected in the other breast that was not already present or shown to be there by mammography or a so-called regular breast exam. So that study seemed to indicate this was a very effective technology to use for those particular women as well. So two sets of findings recommendations. Does this represent unanimity in the medical community? By no means because there rarely is there's probably a little bit more unanimity around

the notion of screening a woman who's already had cancer in one breast with MRI for the second one, mainly because for one thing that gives a woman much fuller sense of what her treatment options are or should be. Many women with cancer, one breast will elect to have the other breast surgically removed also just because they're worried about it. If you can give them an MRI and give them some confidence that they don't have cancer in that other breast, women just have a better sense of what their treatment option should be. The question of screening women at higher risk, screening always brings about debates because a big issue in cancer screening is, did you establish that somebody had a cancer sooner and therefore treated them appropriately and therefore you actually extended their life or made them less likely to die or did they die about the same time they would of any way they just knew that they had cancer longer and you treated it for them in the process. And so there's a lot of concern that this type of study and the guidelines that the American

Cancer Society unveiled are not based on the kind of evidence that would give you real assurance that there would be real reductions in deaths and expansion of life, extension of life. The American Cancer Society and others who are in favor of this kind of screening say you probably could never do the kinds of trials that would give us unequivocal evidence. This is the best evidence we have to treat women in the here and now. But there are those who would hold down for that just quickly Susan in the real world, magnetic resonance imaging, expensive procedure, these MRI devices. Is there the insurance coverage to do this and are there, are there the equipment, is there enough equipment out there to take care of them? Probably are enough MRIs in America to do this. The real issue is more, do we have radiologists who can read these scans appropriately and even more important than that, do people understand when things that are found should be biopsied in the study that we just talked about, 120 women were actually biopsied and in 90 of those cases the lesions were found to be benign, there was not cancer, there was a high false

positive rate. You have to be able to know when something is really a cancer and really needs treatment and that's really going to be the bigger question, do we have enough people who really know that enough sophisticated centers that can screen women appropriately? And finally Susan, bringing it back to the news of the last week, Mrs. Edwards, Elizabeth Edwards and more recently Tony Snow, does what we've learned today in any way add to our broader understanding about the causes of cancer, our ability to prevent it because all of us I think are more focused on it as a result of what we've learned. I think what we know is that one in three Americans now will face a diagnosis of cancer and the cancer caseload will probably double over the next 10 to 15 years. So the name of the game is going to be early detection. We want to detect cancers as early as possible when they're localized and haven't spread as has been now shown to be the case of both Tony Snow and Elizabeth Edwards. Those cancers are much less treatable and survival records are much poorer. So you want to find cancers early as possible and screening is one mechanism to do that

and as we'll see in our forthcoming piece another, a lot of hopes are now being pinned on cancer biomarkers as another tool for early detection and also monitoring of the effectiveness of treatment over time. It's pretty clear that both Tony Snow and Elizabeth Edwards would have benefited if their treatment could have been monitored in a new way by evaluating cancer biomarkers that probably would have given an even better indication of the state of their disease. All right, Susan Denser, thank you very much. And speaking of that, we want to show you now Susan's report on how researchers are looking for a better way of finding those early signs of cancer. Every few months in anxious, Kathy Littleman undergoes a CT scan to see if her ovarian cancer has recurred. Littleman, who's 52, was diagnosed with a deadly disease almost three years ago. She had never had a blood test for so-called CA 125, a protein that at high levels can signal the presence of ovarian cancer.

Her only symptoms have been occasional gastrointestinal trouble, easily attributable to something more benign than cancer. They were just stomach problems and I was almost going through menopause right then to and I would have it one week, I would feel awful and then the next week I would be okay. Her doctor first misdiagnosed littleman, shown here with her daughter, is having a condition called irritable bowel syndrome. By the time cancer was diagnosed more than a year later, Littleman had an orange-sized tumor on one ovary and the disease had already spread to other organs. Now after two long bouts of chemotherapy, Littleman knows the odds are against her. Only about one in three women with advanced ovarian cancer survived beyond five years. Littleman wishes the cancer had been detected sooner when it could have been removed by surgery alone. I wouldn't have to had gone through the chemo, I wouldn't be worried now about recurring every few years if they had caught it early, I would have been done with it and be back

to my normal life. Detecting cancer earlier in patients like Littleman is critical, says Lee Hartwell. He's a Nobel Prize winning scientist who heads the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center in Seattle. Perhaps the most important statistic we know about cancer is that if you detected an early stage, then standard treatments, usually surgery and radiation, will cure the disease. But if the disease is detected late, it's very unusual to cure the disease. Early detection is all the more urgent now that one in three Americans are facing cancer. And the overall number of cases is expected to double within 15 years. So scientists here at Fred Hutchinson and at other labs across the country are searching for better early warning systems for cancer. They're called biomarkers, substances like CA 125 or the prostate specific antigen, PSA, that can be a sign of prostate cancer.

In the future, many more biomarkers could be found through a simple blood urine or saliva test, and signal that a disease process like cancer is underway. Scientists and a barker is deputy director of the National Cancer Institute, a branch of the National Institutes of Health. Fire markers are variously defined. It's a complex term that captures an enormous amount of science, but really it's measuring the change in a normal cellular process or a malignant or cancer cell process. So that means the biomarkers can be G, changes in genes, changes in proteins, some combination thereof. Barker says biomarkers will be crucial across the whole range of cancer detection, diagnosis, and treatment. That's a key reason NCI and NIH are pumping tens of millions of dollars into biomarker research. We have to have better ways to detect this disease earlier. We have to treat it in a much more targeted fashion. We have to be able to know when cancer is going to come back or recur, and biomarkers are actually probably the single biggest hope we have to accomplish those goals.

Cancer, the uncontrolled growth of cells, is that it's root a disease of genes. Some cancer causing genes can be inherited, like BRCA-1 and BRCA-2, which predispose some women to breast in ovarian cancer. But other normal genes mutate in the body when exposed to environmental influences, such as when lung cells are bathed into back-o-smoke. And the genetic changes in cancer don't stop there, so scientists aren't well. When a cancer actually starts in the body, there are further genetic changes that occur progressively. And that's the fundamental basis of the cancer process, is changes in the genes during the course of the disease. Genes normally function as switches that turn on protein-making factories and cells, and these proteins then carry out the body's basic work. So each genetic change that takes place as cancer develops leads directly to changes in the body's proteins. Some changes produce an excess of protein over the normal.

It's the same protein, there's just a lot more of it. Other genes get inactivated, so that a protein that's normally produced is not produced during that. Then a third type of change is where the protein that's produced is actually a different protein and has some abnormal function. So a biomarker for cancer could be any of these changes in genes, or changes in the body's untold number of proteins, as many as one million of those proteins could turn out to be important in cancer. That means the quest to identify all the biomarkers associated with cancer will be a herculean effort destined to take a decade or more. Leading the effort at Fred Hutchinson to study biomarkers for ovarian cancer is biostatistician Nicole Urban. For her, the quest is personal, as much as professional, since she was diagnosed with ovarian cancer three decades ago. It was very early stage, it was also not a very aggressive form of ovarian cancer. I had been very lucky to have been diagnosed early, and so I wanted to do what I could

to solve this problem. The problem, Urban says, is that unlike in her case, three quarters of ovarian cancers are like catheolilaments. Their diagnosis after the disease has spread beyond the ovaries and pelvis, drastically raising the odds of death. Whereas if it's detected early, 90% of women survive at least five years, most of them 10 years. The biomarker CA-125 for cancer antigen 125 is a useful but not altogether dependable signal of cancer. At the time that a diagnosis is made when a woman is symptomatic and has a late-state cancer, about 80% of those women do have elevated CA-125. The problem is that it doesn't elevate until the cancer is quite advanced. So Urban and her team are now evaluating other proteins linked to ovarian cancer to see if together they serve as clearer indicators of early stage cancer.

One is produced by a gene called HE4, normally expressed in the male testicles. For unknown reasons, it's almost never found in women, unless they have ovarian cancer. Urban says she thinks a test could ultimately be created to detect HE4 and several other ovarian cancer biomarkers. What I would actually hope in my wildest dreams is that we would have risk markers. We would have, so when women go for a mammogram, that at the time that they get their mammogram, they would also have their blood tested. And that there would be markers that would identify women who are at very high risk of being diagnosed with ovarian cancer. Heartwell says the goal should not be just to find biomarkers for all cancers, but also to find them for other devastating diseases, like diabetes. I imagine a future in which we will routinely take a blood test several times a year that looks at tens of thousands of biomarkers and by comparing our pattern over time, we will detect

changes in our health state that allow us to do much more in terms of prevention. But a mind-boggling amount of scientific research will have to be conducted before that hope is borne out. Among other things, scientists need more sophisticated tests to detect the presence of biomarkers and then prove from clinical trials that these biomarkers reliably predict disease in large populations of very different patients. We have to discover biomarkers, we have to validate biomarkers, and then we have to use biomarkers in clinical trials, and then we have to actually make products that patients receive that are actually biomarker-based. Teaching all this science along as fast as possible and turning it into tests and treatments for patients is now a top government priority, says Dr. Janet Woodcock. She's Chief Medical Officer for the Food and Drug Administration.

We think this is so urgent that among the federal sector, the Food and Drug Administration, the National Cancer Institute, and the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services or CMS, we've teamed up together to make sure that not only are the tests developed into medical products, but there's enough information about them, about their value that CMS is able to reimburse for them. The FDA recently approved for sale one type of biomarker test, the MOMA print. By analyzing 70 genes and tumor tissues, he can help predict whether women with breast cancer are at risk of recurrence or spread of the disease, following treatment. My doctor says it's just a harbinger of what's to come. Well, having actually lost my entire family to cancer, my mother, my father, my sister, my grandmother and two aunts, I can only say that if biomarkers had been available when any one of them basically was alive, I think they would have probably helped those individuals

to have a higher quality of life certainly and maybe live longer. But for cancer patients like Kathy Lilleman, that's a future well worth hoping for. And again, the other major developments of this day, President Bush warned Democrats again against setting deadlines for pulling combat forces from Iraq. He said he'd veto House or Senate bills that do just that. In response, House Speaker Pelosi said Mr. Bush needs to calm down. Take a breath. Iranian television aired video of 15 British sailors and Marines seized last Friday in the Persian Gulf. And the chairman of the Federal Reserve played down the possibility of recession. And once again to our honor role of American service personnel killed in Iraq and Afghanistan,

we add them as their deaths are made official and photographs become available here in silence are 12 more. Finance. . . . . .

. . . . . . . . . . We'll see you online and again here tomorrow evening. I'm Jim Laera. Thank you and good night. . Major funding for the news hour with Jim Laera is provided by. . . The world's demand for energy will never stop, which is why a farmer is growing corn, and a farmer is growing soy, and why ADM is turning these crops into biofuels. The world's demand for energy will never stop, which is why ADM will never stop.

We're only getting started. ADM, resourceful by nature. . And by Chevron. . Pacific Life. The Atlantic Philanthropies. The National Science Foundation. And with the continuing support of these institutions and foundations. And this program was made possible by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. And by contributions to your PBS station from viewers like you. Thank you. . . To purchase video cassettes of the news hour with Jim Laera. Call 1-866-678-News.

We are PBS. . . . . . .

. . . . . . . . .

. . . . . . . . . .

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . What Susie and I retire, we'll be taking trips like this whenever we want. It's a good thing we've been planning.

A Pacific Life, giving you the right tools to help you meet your financial goals, is what we're all about, as you look to the future, look to Pacific Life. A Pacific Life, the power to help you succeed. We've discovered the world's most powerful energy. You'll find it in everything we do. Uncover it in all the places we work. And see it in our more than 55,000 employees. It's called human energy, and it's the drive and ingenuity that we'll never run out of. And by the Archer Daniels Midland Company, the Atlantic Philanthropies, the National Science Foundation, and with the continuing support of these institutions and foundations. And this program was made possible by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, and by contributions to your PBS station

from viewers like you. Thank you. President Bush issued a new warning to Democrats today over pull out deadlines and Iraq. He accused them of meddling in military policy by adding timetables to war funding bills. And he complained they've loaded the legislation with domestic spending that has nothing to do with the war. There's $3.5 million for visitors to cure the capital and see for themselves how Congress works. I'm not kidding you. Here's the bottom line. The House and Senate bills have too much pork, too many conditions on our commanders in an artificial timetable for withdrawals. The Senate resumed debating its bill today, including a goal of withdrawing combat troops within 12 months. The House version mandates a pull out by September of 2008.

The President insisted again today he'd veto either bill, but House Speaker Pelosi said he needs to think again. On this very important matter, I would extend a hand to friendship to the President just to say to him, calm down with the threats. There's a new Congress in town. We respect your constitutional role. We want you to respect ours. This war must end. The American people have lost faith in the President's conduct of the war. Let's see how we can work together. Amid the debate, U.S. commanders and Iraq said they won't know when to draw down troop levels until fall at the earliest. Major General William Caldwell said the additional forces slated for Baghdad won't be fully in place until June. A wave of revenge killings erupted in northern Iraq today. As many as 70 soonies were shot, execution-style and telephora. The rampage began after truck bombings killed more than 60 Shiites yesterday.

And in Fallujah, suicide bombers blew up trucks loaded with chlorine. About 15 U.S. and Iraqi troops were wounded. Also today, eight Iraqi soldiers were killed in a separate car bombing in Fallujah. While I have more on the war funding debate in Washington and the violence in Iraq right after this news summary. Iran showed video today a 15 British sailors on marine seized last Friday in the Persian Gulf. It also released an interview with a lone woman in the group, and a letter she said to have written. We have a report narrated by Katie Russell of Independent Television News. The evening news bulletin on Iranian Al-Ahlan television. Alan Bikomina Mujazin led a human member who presented her audience. The British sailor, say, turny, has confessed to having trespass in Iranian waters. To the britaniya satorney, el mwahtajas, whatever the foreign office says about where the sailors were.

This news bulletin broadcast leading seam and turny's confession. My name is leading seam and say turny. I come from England. I was arrested on Friday the 23rd of March. Obviously, we trespass into their waters. There's no military reasons for Faye Terny to be chosen as spokesperson. Iranian law requires all women to wear headscarves. She's shown smoking and looking tense. They were very friendly, very hospitable, very thoughtful, nice people. They explained to us why we've been arrested. Faye Terny is shown eating with the other captured sailors. They haven't been separated on gender lines as his customary. And throughout the broadcast, the presenters stress how well the British are being treated by their cattle. The report mentions that Faye Terny's letter was sent because of mediation between the Iranian Foreign Office and the British Embassy.

It ends with a smile from the women who the Iranians have promised will be released very soon. The British government condemned Iran's decision to put the sailors on television. The Royal Navy also showed navigational evidence that they were indeed within Iraqi waters when they were seized. Police in Zimbabwe detained the main opposition leader again today. Morgan Shangri-Rai was taken into custody shortly before he was due to talk to reporters. Police said they released him a short time later. Two weeks ago he was arrested and severely beaten after attending a protest. 50 others were also detained. Today's incident came as African leaders held a summit to talk about Zimbabwe. New reports today called for greater use of magnetic resonance imaging MRIs to detect breast cancer. That's in addition to regular mammograms. The American Cancer Society recommended MRIs for women considered at high risk of getting the disease.

And a study in the New England Journal of Medicine urged MRIs for women newly diagnosed with cancer in one breast. In some cases, the scans found possible tumors in the other breast that escaped detection in mammograms. Well, I've more on this story later in the program. UN Health Agency said today men should be circumcised to reduce the odds of contracting HIV, the AIDS virus. The World Health Organization and UN AIDS said the procedure can cut the chance of infection by up to 60 percent in heterosexual men. They said it could prevent 3 million deaths in sub-Saharan Africa alone over the next 20 years. The chairman of the Federal Reserve played down the possibility of recession today. Ben Bernanke told a congressional hearing the slumping housing market remains a threat. But he said there's no sign it's affecting the broader economy yet.

Our expectation is for moderate growth. I would make a point, I think, which is important, which is there seems to be a sense that expansions dive old age at the reach of certain point than they naturally begin to end. I don't think the evidence really supports that. At the same time, Bernanke said the Fed is still focused on controlling inflation and he cautioned against assuming that lower interest rates are in the offing. That news helped send Wall Street down today. The Dow Jones Industrial Average lost nearly 97 points to close at 12,300. The Nasdaq fell 20 points to close at 24-17. San Francisco may become the first U.S. city to ban plastic bags at grocery stores, unless they're biodegradable. The city supervisors voted Tuesday to eliminate bags made from petroleum products. The State Grocers Association said other kinds of plastic bags are expensive and untested, but a spokesman said there's a good chance the mayor will sign the new ban.

And that's it for the new summary tonight. Now, Congress versus the President on the war, Carnegie Jet Tollefer, a book conversation with big-nip presentsky, and more, always more on cancer. Congress, the President and Iraq, NewsHour Congressional Correspondent Kwame Holman as our report. President Bush's threats in recent weeks to veto any war-funding bill that includes either a timetable for troop withdrawal or conditions on U.S. commanders in the field have not stopped congressional Democrats from moving forward with bills that would do just that. The toll that is taking in lives and limbs, the toll that is taking on our strength of our security, the toll that is taking financially, and in our reputation in the world is one that is too great. On Friday, the House voted to require troops be pulled out of Iraq by September 2008, securing that measure by the narrowest of margins.

And this week, the Senate is likely to overcome near unanimous Republican opposition to pass a bill establishing as a goal that all troops leave Iraq by the end of March next year, with a phased redeployment to begin much sooner. We have been in the House and in the Senate spoken. We've spoken the words the American people wanted us to speak. If either version comes to my desk, I'm going to veto it. This morning, the President reasserted his intention to block any such congressional action, devoting more than half his remarks before the National Cattlemen's Association to defending his Iraq policy and condemning the democratic measures. It is also clear from the strong opposition in both houses that my veto would be sustained. Yet Congress continues to pursue these bills. And as they do, the clock is ticking for our troops in the field. Funding for our forces in Iraq will begin to run out in mid-April. Members of Congress need to stop making political statements

and start providing vital funds for our troops. Is the cost worth what we are attempting to accomplish? But as the Senate continued to work on the $122 billion measure aimed at funding U.S. operations in Iraq and Afghanistan, Democrats from both houses were not backing down from their pledge to attach conditions to the bill. Wisconsin's rust fine gold. This war will end, and the question is when? It will go on unnecessarily long. The Democrats and some Republicans are the only force here in this town that is making sure that this war ends as fast as possible. But South Carolina Republican Lindsey Graham said the democratic moves were unprecedented and possibly unconstitutional. The restrictions that we're placing on our military and the deadlines and the timelines and the benchmarks all that up to really making it impossible for the new strategy of General Petraeus to be successful if they became law.

This is a constitutional encroachment upon the power of Commander-in-Chief that I think is unprecedented. There is an honorable path for Congress to take, and that is just stop funding for a war that you think is lost. But the combination of deadlines, benchmarks, timelines, micromanaging, troop rotations, they all add up to the Congress really taking over wartime activity in a way that was never envisioned before. But many House Democrats, such as Oregon's Earl Blumenauer, said they were forced to act because of the Bush administration's exceptionally poor execution of the war with no check from Congress. Part of the problem is that under unified Republican leadership in the administration in Congress, Congress was missing in action. For the first time in six years, you're seeing a reassertion of our constitutional responsibility for oversight, power of the purse, and policy. We're co-equal partners here, and by establishing requirements for how the public's money is used,

that's not real micromanaging. That's establishing the parameters that Congress should have done from the outset. House Speaker Pelosi urged the President to negotiate with Congress. We have a serious responsibility as leaders in Congress to sit down with the President to listen to his concerns, and he has a serious responsibility to sit down with us as well. Each of us respecting each other's constitutional role. I hope that that is what will happen rather than stonewalling. After the Senate passes its bill expected within days, it still must be reconciled with the House version before a war-funding bill can go to the President. A town in Iraq called Talon. We start with some background narrated by a news hour correspondent, Spencer Michaels.

These are the scenes from yesterday's massive truck bombings in the northern Iraqi town of Talon. The two simultaneous blast Tuesday ripped through separate markets in Shiite areas, killing at least 60 people and wounding dozens more. The chaos incarnate sparked a revenge killing spree there today, with Shiite militants and police killing dozens of Sunnis. Talaffa, a mainly ethnic Turkmen city, is located 260 miles northwest of Baghdad in the province of Nineveh. On religious lines, it is divided between Shia and Sunni Muslims. Talaffa became an al-Qaeda stronghold after the 2003 U.S. invasion of Iraq. In 2005, a U.S. operation under the command of Colonel HR McMaster, seen here at the time, a specialist in counter-insurgency warfare, recaptured Talaffa.

And the Bush administration touted that effort as a centerpiece in driving al-Qaeda out of Iraq. In a speech last year, President Bush spoke at length about Talaffa. The success of Talaffa also shows how the three elements of our strategy in Iraq, political, security, and economic, depend on and reinforce one another. By working with local leaders to address community grievances, Iraqi and coalition forces helped build the political support, needed to make the military operation a success. The military success against the terrorists helped give the citizens of Talaffa security. And this allowed them to vote in the elections and begin to rebuild their city. And the economic rebuilding that is beginning to take place is giving Talaffa's residence a real stake in the success of a freer act. And as all this happens, the terrorists, those who offer nothing but destruction and death, are becoming marginalized. Although U.S. and Iraqi forces remain in control of the city,

Talaffa has been the target of continued sporadic attacks. For more on Talaffa, we are joined by Ahmed Hashim, who worked in Talaffa as a political advisor to the third armored cavalry regiment in 2005. He's now an associate professor at the Naval War College and he lectures at Harvard. And Greg Jaffe of the Wall Street Journal. He's reported from Talaffa and has just returned from Iraq. Mr. Hashim, given the latest violence, is it possible to assume at this point that perhaps the optimism that was expressed in 2005 about what was happening there was either overstated or premature? I think it was overstated. Talaffa was never consolidated after the third ACR left. The situation in the city has more to do with local grievances and identity conflicts between the Sunni, Turkey, and the Shia Turkmen. And it really is not al-Qaeda who has infiltrated so much as the fact that

what happened in 2003 is the formerly dominant Sunni Turkmen majority there that constitute 70% of the population. They control the police, the municipality, the security services. They were primarily the teachers. And also there's about 20,000 Turkmen who were veterans of the former Iraqi army. Suddenly they felt themselves having been thrown out of power. And this is essentially their revenge on what they see as the empowerment of the Shia minority in the town, which has been helped by central power and Baghdad, which is of course now in the hands of the Shia. Greg Jaffy, if what Mr. Hashim says is correct, and in fact all of these ingredients were there waiting in some respects for things to fall apart. What explains this latest outburst which we've been watching?

I think part of it is that we've been able to hold that city together and keep the peace where we've had a sizeable presence. And one of the byproducts of the big Baghdad security plan and the surge has been that we've shifted forces away from that city. Both American but even more important than that Iraqi army forces. There were some pretty good Iraqi army battalions up there primarily made up of Kurdish Peshmerga forces that we shifted to Baghdad for the security plan there. And I think that created a vacuum in which a lot of these sectarian tensions were able to grab hold of the city. So you're saying there's kind of a domino effect? If you hold Baghdad you lose something else? With the number of troops we have both Iraqi and American right now I think that that's unfortunately largely true. Mr. Hashim, are the disputes we're seeing in Talahpur? Are they driven by religious division or ethnic division? Well, it is between Turkmen primarily. Talahpur is 90% Turkmen and only about 10% Arab and Kurd. Most of the Arabs are outside the town. That's primarily the Shamar tribe and so on.

Inside the city itself it's really a struggle between Turkmen of different religious sects. It's not so much that they suddenly walk up one day and started detesting each other because of the fact that one group is Sunni and the other is Shia. It's more the fact that political leaders as well as religious leaders in the town and religious and political leaders outside of the town are using the ethnic identity card to mobilize their respective communities in order to gain the resources and the political power that they feel they have a right to. And since the political game in Talahpur like much of the rest of Iraq is essentially a zero sum game, the ethnic card has basically mobilized here that to primarily traditional city into sort of the kind of violence you see in the past several weeks. Is the violence growing jaffy that we've been seeing in the past several weeks being driven we've heard a lot about foreign fighters in al-Qaeda and outsiders basically driving a lot of this. Is there any evidence of that?

I don't think there's a lot of evidence of it. I know when the third ACR cleared to offer as part of its operation restoring rights they did not find very many if any foreign fighters. There may be some foreign elements stirring the pot and I don't doubt that there are but I think this is primarily Iraqi killing Iraqis. Is this something that U.S. forces have just withdrawn from is there something that they were doing right in 2005 when things seem to be resolved at least temporarily resolved and something given not doing it all now? I think there are probably a couple of things one I think is just presence I mean numbers do count for a lot in these in these sorts of fights especially people act irrationally when they don't feel secure when they feel like they're livelihood is threatened and a large U.S. Iraqi Iraqi army presence on the ground I think helps people feel secure. The third ACR had numbers there that we don't have today on the streets on people's blocks that made them feel secure. The other thing that the third ACR I think did particularly well and I don't know whether the current unit is doing it as well is they really reached out to the key political Sunni and Shia players and the lieutenant colonel working for Colonel McMaster in that in the city Chris Hickey did I thought a spectacular job of bringing those folks to the table and getting them to talk and it required hours upon hours of sort of painful negotiation.

Mr. Hasham having worked with the third ACR that Greg Jackie was just referring to and looking at the situation now what would you say needs to happen in order to return Talap or to peace? Well I actually quite agree with Greg Jackie here we never met I don't think over there but I worked with Colonel Hickey in the town and participated in those meetings. Now the third ACR ACR had a large footprint in the town but it's not just a question of footprint it's having the frame of mind of understanding what a counterinsurgency campaign requires. It requires not just fighting and getting insurgents but it also requires the ability to build security to reconstruct the town and to get the two feuding communities to sit down and talk about how to begin the process of reconstructing the towns and rebuilding trust.

I mean it was very difficult to get them to talk they were feuding constantly but we thought we'd made some headway. Now clear hold and build requires a large footprint but it also does require an understanding of what counterinsurgency requires and I think the third ACR did a tremendous job in this regard but once we left I think the unit I don't want to basically condemn it for anything but I think it didn't have the footprint that was required and we have a tendency in the US to believe that once the situation has been calmed down we have a metric by which to measure calm and then we can shift forces to another area you actually need to stay for a very long time to be able to achieve the kind of peace, security and trust between the communities.

Let's talk about the metric square cafe you've recently returned from another trip to Iraq is what we are seeing it unfold and tile off the exception or is it the growing rule. I mean I think to offer in some ways represents a sort of microcosm for Iraq it's a rock on a much smaller scale. And it's opposite in the fact that the Sunnis are the majority in the area and the Shiite Turkmen are the minority but it's the same dynamic I think that you see happening in Baghdad. And commanders are trying very hard there I think to try and broker a political compromise between the Sunni and the Shia and a very difficult situation and in some cases I think the Maliki government rather than helping their cause is hurting their cause. Greg the jaffy and Ahmed Hashim thank you both very much.

You're welcome. Thanks. Now a new book conversation on American leadership in the world Margaret Warner is in charge. In the post Cold War era in a word he writes badly the book is titled second chance three presidents and the crisis of American superpower it's a big nymph resensky joins me now welcome as always back to the programs. We are now seeing a serious assault by the Congress on this president's ability and the limitations on him to conduct this war. Do you think this is an expected outgrowth of the 15 year history and the development that you chronic on this book. You know in some ways it really is and perhaps even in a truly profound way.

Because what it means is that there's not only debate over Iraq such or confrontation over Iraq such which of course is the focus of the issue. But it's beginning to be a debate about what role the United States should be playing in the world. Whether the way the president the current president defined it since 9-11 is the right way of defining it. And I think that is a fundamentally important debate and a very timely and needed debate. Now your basic thesis in this book if we go back 15 years and bring us back to this point is that the United States had a golden opportunity at the end of the Cold War and blew it. Explain. Well essentially what I mean is that in different ways the three presidents who were the first global leaders in history. George Bush won, Bill Clinton, George Bush too. Each in a different way didn't quite measure up to the opportunity. Though the first did quite well otherwise in fact I write him quite highly in the way he treated the Soviet Union.

It's disintegration in particular the way he conducted the military political operation in Gulf War. But he failed to seize the moment to frame a new vision. It was essentially a tactician limited by the circumstances and his own experience. Bill Clinton in some respects was extremely appealing as a world leader. But he was self indulgent in some ways personally but even more significantly in terms of reflecting a national mood. Because our great were satisfied we can enjoy ourselves, don't worry about the world. He did some very good things particularly in Europe. But he didn't really address the fundamentals and some issues they curated. At the Middle East nuclear proliferation. And the present president, well I have a whole chapter on him, I can describe it in two words. They had the heading of the chapter.