The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer

JIM LEHRER: Good evening. I'm Jim Lehrer. On the NewsHour tonight, we have the news of the day; a look at the Bush administration's environmental record tied to today's resignation of EPA Administrator Christine Whitman; another Elizabeth Farnsworth report on the efforts to bring postwar peace to Iraq; the latest on the case of mad cow disease in Canada; and the launch of a conversation series on health care with the Democratic presidential candidates, tonight, Richard Gephardt.

NEWS SUMMARY

JIM LEHRER: Security was intensified around the country today in response to the raising of the terror alert to orange, for "high risk." In New York City, National Guard troops helped protect subways and bridges. In Boston, vehicles had to go through checkpoints. And in Washington, security was increased around monuments and the Capitol Building. It was widely reported all three cities might be targets. But Undersecretary of Homeland Security Asa Hutchinson would not confirm that.

ASA HUTCHINSON: If we have specific threat information relating to a particular locality, we'll pass that along and share that. But this is a general threat information and there's not any specific target which has a basis of credibility or specificity.

JIM LEHRER: Hutchinson said individual cities had to judge for themselves how to react to the new alert. Also today, the Federal Aviation Administration announced it would temporarily ban flights over parts of the Washington area. And late today there was an explosion in the mail room at Yale University at new haven, Connecticut. No one was hurt. An FBI spokesman said an explosive device caused the blast but there were no other details. A new audio tape message surfaced today, said to be from Osama bin Laden's top lieutenant, Ayman al-Zawahri. The Arab satellite TV station al-Jazeera aired excerpts. The speaker on the tape urged Muslims to imitate the 9/11 attacks. He said, "Take your decision against the embassies of America, England, Australia and Norway, their interests their companies, their employees." Three al-Qaida suspects reportedly planned to hijack a plane in Saudi Arabia and use it in a suicide attack. Wire service accounts today said the Saudis arrested the three Moroccan men at the Jiddah Airport on Monday. The Saudi interior minister, Prince Nayef, later denied the hijack report. Instead, he said two Moroccans were in custody for unspecified security issues. A national conference in Iraq to pick an interim government will be delayed. U.S. Administrator Paul Bremer said today it might happen in July instead of June. Seven Iraqi political leaders met last Friday as the likely core of a new government, but in Baghdad today, Bremer said that group was not broad enough.

L. PAUL BREMER: I think it's this fear that the group that we saw on Friday night is not representative of all the Iraqi people by their own admission. And we believe that ultimately the Iraqi government must represent Iraqis from all over the country.

JIM LEHRER: Bremer has made security a top priority since he arrived in Baghdad last week. Today, the "New York Times" reported he would issue a proclamation that Iraqis surrender all automatic or heavy weapons. And in Belgium, members of NATO unanimously agreed to help Poland lead a peacekeeping force in Iraq. The western alliance had been sharply divided over the Iraq war. The U.S. Military said today it cannot account for 20 percent of the radioactive material at Iraq's largest nuclear site. The complex went unguarded during part of the war and was also looted. Before the war, inspectors sealed about 100 barrels of material there. The U.N. Nuclear Agency confirmed today the United States has offered to let some inspectors return to the site. The U.N. Security Council moved today toward a vote on lifting sanctions on Iraq. It was tentatively set for tomorrow. The revised resolution includes more than 90 changes from the original version, but the British ambassador said it still gives the U.S. And Britain control of Iraq and its oil wealth for an undetermined period.

SIR JEREMY GREENSTOCK: It says that in effect that the occupation will end when there is an international recognized representative government that could happen in three months or six months or eighteen months or twenty-four months, but that is the criterion. Nothing in this resolution sets the time criterion other than that.

JIM LEHRER: France, Russia, Germany announced today they would support the resolution. They had pressed for giving the U.N. a stronger role in Iraq. An earthquake shook Algeria late today. The interior minister reported 93 killed, more than 300 hurt. It was east of Algiers. It cut power in parts of city and sent panicked residents running into streets U.S. Marines in Afghanistan shot and killed four Afghan soldiers today outside the American embassy in Kabul. Details of exactly what happened were unclear, but the local police chief called it a misunderstanding. He said the Afghan troops were delivering weapons to an intelligence depot and the marines mistook them for gunmen. The head of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency announced her resignation today. Christine Whitman said she wanted to spend more time with her family. At times, she had clashed with the Bush administration over global warming and other issues. She leaves office in June. We'll have more on this in a moment. The Federal Reserve stands ready to cut interest rates again to get the economy moving. Fed Chairman Greenspan reinforced that message today at a congressional hearing. He said the economy was still being buffeted by strong cross currents. He noted that interest rates are already the lowest in 41 years, but he said more could be done.

ALAN GREENSPAN: Should it turn out that for reasons which we don't expect but we certainly are concerned may happen, the pressures on the short term markets drive the Federal Funds' rate down close to zero. That does not mean that the Federal Reserve is out of business on the issue of further easing and expansion of the monetary base.

JIM LEHRER: Greenspan also warned of the potential risk of deflation. When prices drop so much, it hurts the economy. The last time that happened in the U.S. Was the Great Depression in the 1930s. A state appeals court in Florida court threw out a record-setting verdict today against the tobacco industry. Three years ago, a jury in Miami ordered the nation's five largest cigarette makers to pay $145 billion. The money would have gone to thousands of sick Florida smokers. The appeals court ruled the smokers should not have been allowed to join together in a class-action lawsuit. U.S. and Canadian officials scrambled today to minimize damage from fears of mad cow disease. On Tuesday, Canada announced its first case in a decade. As a result, the U.S. temporarily banned all Canadian beef imports. And today, the U.S. Agriculture Department began re-examining all procedures used in the American beef industry. We'll have more on this story later in the program. On Wall Street today, the Dow Jones industrialaverage gained 25 points to close at 8516. The NASDAQ fell one point to close below 1490. That's it for the News Summary tonight. Now it's on to a good-bye- Whitman look at environmental policy, Elizabeth Farnsworth from Iraq, a mad cow disease update, and health care by Gephardt.

FOCUS - BEING GREEN?

JIM LEHRER: Gwen Ifill has our look at the Bush/Whitman environmental record.

GWEN IFILL: In her two and a half years at the helm of the EPA, Christine Todd Whitman has often been the Bush administration's most reliable lightning rod as she defended the president's efforts to alter decades-old environmental policies. Among the notable issues: Global warming. Less than three months after taking office, President Bush announced he would not regulate carbon dioxide emissions from power plants and he decided not to sign the Kyoto Treaty, an international plan to reduce greenhouse gases. On water quality, the administration moved to abandon a Clinton-era rule to reduce arsenic in drinking water. Clinton officials had argued permissible levels were too high.

SPOKESMAN: Virtually all of the science that I'm aware of suggests that arsenic is a very significant threat to public health and that we need to significantly reduce the standard.

GWEN IFILL: But Whitman said the tougher Clinton standards carried unintended consequences.

CHRISTINE TODD WHITMAN: Water companies going under, people being forced to drill their own wells, and drinking water that had higher incidence of arsenic than they were getting before-- that's not helping public health, and what we want to do is ensure that we help public health.

GWEN IFILL: The arsenic rule provoked public outcry, and the Clinton standards were reinstated. On public lands: President Bush did overturn another Clinton rule -- the ban on snowmobiles in Yellowstone National Park, opting to limit their use instead. On oil exploration: The administration has long viewed Alaska's Arctic National Wildlife Refuge as a potentially rich source of domestic energy. But environmentalists warned about the risks to wildlife. So far, measures to approve drilling in Alaska have failed in Congress. On nuclear waste: Last year, President Bush approved a plan to store the nation's nuclear waste at Yucca Mountain in Nevada, but environmentalists and Nevada state officials have opposed it, citing safety concerns. On clean air: The administration has proposed allowing old power plants, most of them in the Midwest, to continue to function without modern pollution controls. Northeastern states complained, saying pollution drifts their way.

SPOKESMAN: This study draws direct links between the air pollution in the Midwest that is blown by the prevailing winds to Connecticut-- nitrogen oxide, sulfa dioxide causing acid rain, smog-- that not only damages our lakes and rivers and trees, but also causes severe respiratory problems in our citizens and very grave health problems.

GWEN IFILL: Nine northeastern states have challenged the Bush rule in court. And on expanded logging: Just yesterday, the House of Representatives approved a plan to increase logging on 20 million acres of federal forests. The president said thinning the woodlands would help prevent devastating wildfires.

PRESIDENT GEORGE W. BUSH: It sets the goal of thinning trees and cleaning out underbrush and restoring the health to 20 million acres. I hope Congress says when we're successful in the 20 million, we need to get after the 175 million more acres.

GWEN IFILL: Environmentalists, however, say logging companies will only cut down large trees, not the undergrowth which provides fuel for forest fires. In announcing her departure, Whitman said she is not leaving under pressure, but to spend more time with her family. And in her letter of resignation, she wrote: The EPA has built an enviable record of success that will result in significant improvements for the state of our nation's treasured environment.

GWEN IFILL: Significant improvements or historic rollbacks? Here to offer an assessment of the Bush environmental record so far are: Lynn Scarlett, the assistant secretary for policy, management, and budget in the U.S. Interior Department; Gregory Wetstone, the director of advocacy for the Natural Resources Defense Council, a not-for-profit environmental organization; and Paul Portney, the president of Resources For the Future, a not-for-profit group that conducts independent research on environmental issues.

Lynn Scarlett., what is your overview the Bush administration record so far particularly during Christine Todd Whitman's tenure?

LYNN SCARLETT: I think we're doing a tremendous job. The president set forth when he calls a vision of a new environmentalism. And by that he meant let us build a vision based on innovation.

And so he put the largest ever amount of resources towards climate change research, for example. We have his new car investment to try and bring new technologies for cleaner cars. It's a vision based on what Secretary Norton at Interior called cooperative conservation. We're working with some 27,000 landowners to extend a caring hand across the landscape in partnership. I think the proof of the pudding is in the tasting. We're achieving some tremendous wetlands restoration. We are bringing those forests back to health; they need it. They are overcrowded with thin and spindly trees. We have in southern California where I'm from a terrible insect devastation. We need to get and bring those forests back to health. And that's what we're trying to do.

GWEN IFILL: Greg Wetstone cooperative conservation?

GREGORY WETSTONE: I don't think so. Unfortunately, our take is that the big picture here is an almost daily drumbeat of fundamental weakening changes in landmark environmental programs that have played a huge role in improving our quality of life in this country, reducing pollution, protecting public health, and improving our quality of life, and we see this again and again and again at EPA, at the Department of Interior and across the Bush administration and the federal agencies charged with environmental protection. We have never been confronted with such a fundamental effort to weaken these basic programs that have proven effective and are hugely popular with the American public.

GWEN IFILL: Paul Portney, to listen to these two guests tell us it - the glass is either -- it's not even half full or half empty -- it's either completely full or completely empty. How do you see that?

PAUL PORTNEY: Well, I see some water in the glass, Gwen. I think at the EPA I don't see absolutely dramatic changes that Greg does from what we have seen in the previous administrations, not just in the Clinton administration but even going back to President George H.W. Bush. I think there's been a reasonable degree of continuity and EPA type environmental policy. I think on some of the public land management issues, forestry, wilderness, issues in the West, I think you do see a difference between the policies of Bush administration and the policies of the preceding administration, so I see reasonable continuity at EPA, bigger changes on some the western land management issues.

GWEN IFILL: Let's go through some of these issues, issue by issue. Let's start with global warming. That was the first thing that caught so many people's attention when this administration came into office that the decision not to go along with the Kyoto Accord. Paul, was that something that has had reverberations since then?

PAUL PORTNEY: Well, there's no question that the political ramifications of the president's decision to turn way from Kyoto have been significant. I think it's affected the conduct of U.S. foreign policy because this is an issue that's been -- that remains very important in other countries of the world. I think they were disappointed when President Bush signaled that he wouldn't go along with Kyoto and at least at the time he announced it he didn't put forward an alternative to it. So that has been a significant departure and if I had my druthers, I would like to see the administration begin a gradual program of mandatory restrictions in C02 emissions beginning very gradually and ramping up slowly over the years because I think that this is a problem against which we need to begin to take some protective measures.

GWEN IFILL: Is anything like that on the table, Lynn Scarlett?

LYNN SCARLETT: What we have on the table is the largest budget ever applied to investing in climate

change technologies. Remember that we can't get those emission reductions without changes in technologies, without cleaner cars, cleaner ways of using energy. And we have a $700 million increase in this just year alone. You turn again to the clean car project that the president announced in his budget this year, again tremendous potential payoff in the future. At interior we're playing a big role on public lands. A lot of people forget that dimension, tree planting, just in basic tree planting there can be tremendous benefits for climate. We're working on that effort replanting wetlands in the southern part of the state, working with our fish and wildlife refuge. There's a tremendous amount of activity and then partnership with industry, getting them to sign up, register their reductions and commit to reductions.

GWEN IFILL: Greg Wetstone.

GREGORY WETSTONE: Global warming should be what it's about. The energies in this administration should be about how we're going to find a way to move forward in global warming. The rejection by this administration unfortunately went much deeper than this internationality agreement out of Kyoto. It went to the basic notion of moving forward with policies to reduce U.S. contribution to global warming pollution. And the technology is there today and ready to be deployed, and all we need is the federal government to show leadership in improving fuel economy from cards, reducing pollution from power plants, which is the complain commitment that George Bush made on the campaign trail and renounced early in his administration that you mentioned in the earlier piece, the technology's there. We should be getting started. And this is where our energy should be -- not on fighting weakening changes to existing programs. which is where we are, but in how we move forward, and we'd love a chance to work together with this administration and with industry to do that, but we have to see leadership.

GWEN IFILL: On water quality that was another issue that got a lot of attention early on with the proposed rollback of the arsenic rules. Is water purer now that it was two and a half years ago?

GREGORY WETSTONE: I think when we talk about the quality of waters in our rivers and the effectiveness of the Clean Water Act, there is probably no statue more at risk today and I would urge our viewers to check out our web site at NRDC.org. All these changes are documented there on clean water, we are now in the midst of an EPA effort to dramatically narrow which waterways are protected by the Clean Water Act. Today virtually all the waterways are covered. We're seeing action on a proposal that would remove 60 percent of the stream miles in this country from protection of the Clean Water Act in 20 percent of the wetlands. Paul mentioned the notion of this is really no different than even than the original Bush administration. If you look at the policies and clean water, it is dramatically different both in the coverage of the act. Wetlands protection was another very important initiative of George Bush the first -- completely reversed under this administration.

GWEN IFILL: Let me get Lynn Scarlett to respond.

LYNN SCARLETT: You know, one of the things that we have done over the last 30 years is to often equate the result with a process or a permit, and one of the things we're trying to do is to shift that and say what really matters is the end outcome. Are we getting the job done? Let us take wetlands, a lot of focus on wetlands regulation, but we went and looked at how much those regulations have actually protected on net over the last 20 years. It's about 20,000 acres a year over that ten-year period. By contrast the kinds of things we have done working in partnership with landowners, achieved hundreds of thousands of acres of protection. We think that's where the future is -- partnering with a nation of citizens and getting this job done and not mistaking a process or a permit for the result. The result is in what happens on the ground.

GWEN IFILL: Paul Portney?

PAUL PORTNEY: Well, Gwen, I think the discussion between Greg and Lynn points out an interesting dilemma in environmental policy, and that is that often these debates are hard to settle because we don't have very good data about the progress that we're making or the of progress that we're seeing in some areas. It's interesting that a bill has been introduced in Congress by Congressman Offay of California that would both elevate EPA to cabinet status and also create within EPA something called a Bureau of Environmental Statistics that would do the same thing within EPA that the Bureau of Labor Statistics does within the Labor Department or the Bureau of Economic Analysis does within the Commerce Department, which is collect and provide to the public on an annual basis the best information available about trends in air quality, water quality, land use, et cetera

GWEN IFILL: Where does that bill stand now?

PAUL PORTNEY: It's been introduced. I think that a House subcommittee will hold hearings on this bill in a couple of weeks and I think if we had something like that, we would have a little bit better factual basis to help decide issues like this.

GWEN IFILL: Lynn Scarlett, I want to ask you about exploration issues. One of points that this administration makes is that in order to wean ourselves from dependence on foreign sources of energy, oil in particular, that we need to do more exploring in our own backyard, including say the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, also San Padre Island, which they have opened for more gas drilling. Where does that stand now?

LYNN SCARLETT: You know, this administration has a vision of anarchy in meeting our energy needs that is very comprehensive. Over half of the elements in the president's national energy plan actually are focused on conservation. There's a large effort also focused on renewable energy; that's what we're doing at Interior, investing in geothermal, solar, wind. But part of the picture is also of course tapping those fossil fuels, those traditional sources. We think we can do that; we think we can do that in a way that yields healthy lands and thriving communities because we have technologies now that can lighten our footprint, unable us to get at that oil but do it in a way that does not disturb the landscape in which that activity is occurring very much.

GWEN IFILL: Greg Wetstone?

GREGORY WETSTONE: I want to come back to the basic question that how do you know if these laws are working and whether these changes are steps back backwards? And I think there's a long history. These laws started out as largely voluntary efforts, calling the states, get started, then we realized we had to have these laws that say what needs to happen in the agencies to carry them out and enforce them. And what we have seen across the board are agencies reinterpreting the laws to require less and less of polluters, less and less public involvement and environmental investigation with regard to energy development on public land and less enforcement. And what that does is reduces the credibility of these laws that remain in the books but become less effective. We move in the direction of say Mexico, which has very tough laws on the books but it doesn't mean much happens on the ground. And I don't think you have to look too deep to see this is going to hurt our quality of life in this country and it's a step backward on the environment.

GWEN IFILL: Administrator Whitman was asked earlier today on another program about criticism from groups like yours, and her response was no matter what we do groups like the Natural Resources Defense Council will always take the opposite tact because it will drive up their membership, gets their membership riled.

GREGORY WETSTONE: I don't think that's true. And in fact when the administrator came forward with a positive action on diesel pollution which was the single bright point in her tenure at EPA, no one was more out front in praising her action than the Natural Resources Defense Council. But we have to look at the broad picture here and the broad picture here is a very troubling one. And unfortunately it's got to be our role to call the public's attention to what is happening here. And that's the reason, by the way, we have been winning again and again in court in challenging these actions.

GWEN IFILL: And, Lynn Scarlett, the criticism of course that applies to the administration that you took rollbacks and you dress them up with names like the clear skies initiative which when it's actually according to the environmentalists a rollback in pollution standards. What's your response to that sort of criticism?

LYNN SCARLETT: I think we actually have some common ground here. Paul Portney mentioned the importance of indicators. We have actually been investing a lot of time and effort and certainly Council of Environmental Quality on building those indicators, participating in getting that information because the end result is what we want to know about. You know, I think again something Greg said is important to think about. Success does not reside on one -- whether one has a permit or has a particular regulation; what matters is what we do on the ground. Again, if you look at our Cooperative Conservation Initiative that we have highlighted at Interior, we have put over a half a billion dollars in cooperative conservation programs. Withthat coming is tremendous, tremendous restoration of streams, wetlands, replanting of trees, invasive species, I think is a problem we all agree is out there and we're working hard to mitigate that.

GWEN IFILL: Paul Portney where do you find or see if there exists middle ground in this debate?

PAUL PORTNEY: Well, Gwen, I think there is at least one area in people in the environmental community including Greg and his colleagues at Natural Resources Defense Council and people in the Bush administration have a found some common ground and that's the notion of using cap and trade programs to address pollution. Once you've decided how much a pollutant you can allow establish a firm cap but allow the firms to buy and sell the pollutant to trade amongst themselves so that the reductions get concentrated at the sources that can most inexpensively reduce pollution. And on an issue like this my colleagues, researcher at Resources for the Future have worked both with people in the Bush administration and also with Greg's colleagues at NRDC to fashion binding caps that will really limit emissions and reduce the amount of pollution but do it in a way that allows us to continue to grow the economy and keep both the U.S. economy and the economies of rest of world strong, which depend on them.

GWEN IFILL: Market-oriented responses to the same kind of goals. Well, thank you all very much for joining us.

JIM LEHRER: Still to come on the NewsHour tonight, Elizabeth Farnsworth in Iraq, mad cow disease in Canada, and Gephardt on healthcare.

FOCUS -FIGHTING THE PEACE

JIM LEHRER: Now, the third of Elizabeth Farnsworth's reports from Iraq -- this one from a place that saw much fighting during the war.

ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: Nasiryah is a city of 300,000 in south-central Iraq where a major road crosses the Euphrates and other highways converge. During the war, U.S. forces fought tough battles here against Iraqi militia trying to stop coalition convoys as they headed north to Baghdad. Now, a little more than a month later, camels and sheep meander across the bridge where some of the heaviest fighting took place. About 900 U.S. troops remain in this city, and on the surface, Nasiryah seems at peace. But dangers persist that are almost as threatening to people here as war-- badly damaged water systems, for example. Children wade in putrid ponds and scoop up dirty water to drink. Coalition bombing and looting after the war damaged the city's electricity and water plants, and though U.S. troops are trying, the systems aren't fixed yet. At night, as the city cools, people gather and complain.

PERSON ON STREET (Translated): No democracy, no services. Saddam Hussein was much better than the Americans. Yes, he was a tyrant, but now we don't have power or water or medicine. No work, no salaries. None of the city workers have been paid. How can we survive?

ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: That question haunts the man in charge of the U.S. Military's reconstruction work here. Lieutenant Colonel Christopher Holshek heads an army civil affairs group.

LT. COL. CHRISTOPHER HOLSHEK: The thing about this kind of mission is the meter's ticking, and every day that goes by that we're not delivering the goods is one more day that we have to try and maintain credibility among these people, and, as I say, when you don't deliver, you know, sooner or later they begin to wonder about your sincerity.

ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: And Iraqis are beginning to wonder.

PERSON ON STREET: They want their salary. They are angry at American forces here, yes? And they do not understand the problems. Yes? Who do the problems? Who do the problems, the American side or the Iraqi side?

ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: These public employees haven't gotten a salary or pension since the war began. They're gathered outside the headquarters for the military civic action programs here, the nerve center for those trying to ease this city's woes. Inside, soldiers and civilians from aid groups were meeting to coordinate their work.

MAJOR CHRIS STOCKEL, 402nd Civil Affairs Battalion, U.S. Army: The good news is I think it's going to be ten degrees cooler than it was yesterday. We predicted 106. We heard that it was up to 115. We'll start off in the morning with Sergeant Race right here and he will give us our intel and weather briefing and that if everybody that is new and we take the opportunity, afterwards we'll update the boards. The engineers continue to update the project boards. I know there's some discussion going on there. I like to get the board up and running 100 percent by today.

ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: After a report on the latest security situation, aid groups described their work.

WOMAN: Stephanie -- so you have your bakery --.

WOMAN: On the bakery front, all the equipment is now in the warehouse; thank you very much to the guys who brought the forklift yesterday, so we got the oven in. So we'll be going ahead with installation over the next few days. We actually have a technical team coming up for the installation today. That's about it at the moment. The only thing I wanted to bring this morning was that earlier on this morning we actually have another unexploded ordinance at our accommodation site. So if we could get someone to have a look at that, it would be great.

ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: Later, the military side discussed what the soldiers could do to help.

SPOKESMAN: They need a high lift crane -- to get those towers back up again. These are the ones down toward Basra, right?

SPOKESMAN: These -

SPOKESMAN: The ones going North?

ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: The list of problems is daunting, but already some solutions are under way. On this afternoon, soldiers provided security for a shipment of medicines flown in by military transport for the humanitarian group, GOAL. Coalition bombing destroyed a hospital and pharmaceutical warehouse much of the Nasiryah region depended on. Donna Smith had organized the shipment, which was paid for partly with funds from the U.S. Agency for International Development

DONNA SMITH, GOAL Ireland: This is the beginning of the supply of drugs to try to meet the needs of a million and a half people. The needs are very great because they do have chronic diseases of hypertension and diabetes.

ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: Across town, the British group War Child was unloading equipment for an emergency bakery. Norman Sheehan is the organization's CEO.

NORMAN SHEEHAN: This bakery unit will provide bread for vulnerable groups in situations such as hospitals, orphanages, and schools in the area. And it has the capacity of doing 240,000 Arabic breads per day if we need that requirement.

ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: Why is it necessary here?

NORMAN SHEEHAN: There's an extreme shortage of propane fuel, gas fuel, kerosene. Kids are cutting down trees in the town and the capacities here cannot meet the demand.

ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: Kids are cutting down trees for fuel?

NORMAN SHEEHAN: Exactly. What we'd like to do is stop the kids from going further and further afield, because what's happening is they come across cluster munitions, gathering firewood, the kids are being maimed, are being killed.

SPOKESMAN: Here's another round, still live. It's just an antiaircraft round. This is real typical to find.

ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: Unexploded ordinance is ubiquitous in Nasiryah. Petty Officer Jeff Ham, on assignment from the navy, took us to just one of many sites.

SPOKESMAN: If you step on that round, it'll pretty much blow you up.

PETTY OFFICER 1ST CLASS JEFF HAM, U.S. Navy: There was a report the other day unconfirmed report the other day-- that a kid was killed two days ago from playing with some UXO, and about four days before that there was a kid playing with something and it blew up and killed him and two of his friends.

ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: The unexploded ordinance is threatening, but U.S. forces here face even more immediate concerns. The civil affairs teams that work out of this building are supposed to help provide badly needed humanitarian and reconstruction aid, and they do, but a lot of their time is still taken up with security crises, because looting and other crimes continue.

SPOKESMAN: There were three guys, they took off, they wrapped an AK-47 up with a cloth, and one of them had a grenade.

ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: For example, during a visit one afternoon to the operations center, word came that one of Nasiryah's last garbage trucks had been hijacked.

SPOKESMAN: So they kidnapped and car jacked. We got to put this all in the police report, okay. And get Colonel Murphy's people on it. Maybe we can find out what is going on. My friend you are having a busy day.

ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: The garbage truck was eventually recovered, but on the same day two other vehicles were also hijacked. U.S. Marines are helping train a new police force to deal with the lawlessness, but meanwhile, security problems are slowing down the reconstruction of Iraq.

JIM LEHRER: Elizabeth's next report looks at marine reservists who are training a new Iraqi police force. And we'll have that tomorrow night.

FOCUS - MAD COW ALERT

JIM LEHRER: Now, the mad cow disease alert from Canada, and to Ray Suarez.

RAY SUAREZ: For the first time in ten years, a case of mad cow disease was found in North America in a single cow in Alberta, Canada. The country's agricultural minister made the announcement yesterday. He said the eight-year was destroyed in January after showing signs of the disease. That announcement prompted the United States to immediately ban all beef imports from Canada. We get the latest now on the situation from Dr. Lester Crawford, the deputy commissioner of the Food and Drug Administration. Dr. Crawford, help us understand why one cow found to be affected in a Canadian herd of 3.6 million is a serious thing.

DR. LESTER CRAWFORD: Well, we don't know the extent of the infection. This one cow has been discovered and she definitely has the disease. It was confirmed in the United Kingdom. What is going on now is the Canadian government is doing an excellent job of tracing down where she came from, what she had eaten and whether or not herd mates not only this herd but the previous herd she was in have the disease. Right now we're in a wait and see proposition. Ten years ago as you mentioned we only had the one case so the bans we put in on the border and other countries followed suit. It only lasted a very short time, but we don't have enough information to know how long this is going to be.

RAY SUAREZ: Has the science moved forward far enough so that you'll ever be able to really now hoe that one cow contracted this?

DR. LESTER CRAWFORD: The science has moved forward a great zeal since 1993. When the U.S. put in their program we had almost no way to defendant for the disease under any circumstances so everything was by gross pathology and was done indirectly. Now we can do the testing and we will probably eventually know what caused this particular animal to come down with the disease. It's a mystery at this point though because we don't have feeding records on the cow.

RAY SUAREZ: Do we know yet for sure whether there's a risk for human beings whether in the ingestion of the affected food you get the manifestation, the human form of disease?

DR. LESTER CRAWFORD: There's a human form that experts in the field believe is significantly different from the disease that occurs normally in human beings. There are several forms of disease that occurs in humans. But this one is so different it's called new variant CJD, or Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease. There's little disagreement in the scientific and medical community that consumption of the infected material from a beef carcass will cause the disease in human beings. There have been over 100 deaths from this particular form of this disease in the United Kingdom and it is felt almost beyond a shadow of a doubt that it comes from consumption of the meat.

RAY SUAREZ: With an enormous beef industry in the United States and an international market in cows and beef products how do you keep the American consumer safe?

DR. LESTER CRAWFORD: What we decided to do in 89, we were the first country to put in what was called at the time a draconian program - this was when I was in the Department of Agriculture and had a little bit to do with it. We decided based op the science we had it could possibly be a risk to human being and we believed it would decimate the United States beef industry and be a terrible blow in our economy so we essentially put up a wall around the United States. We banned all things British. We were about to become some what self-satisfied until we had that one case in "93 in Canada and then we tested our system and you know we're very, very careful about this. The organization in the Department of Agriculture that protects us from live animal diseases like foot and mouth disease and so far is just an exceptional cadre of public servants and they have been so good at foot and mouth disease we haven't had it since 1929. We're the only western country that hasn't had BSE or mat cow disease.

RAY SUAREZ: The American consumer really doesn't have to worry there's no self-protection measures or anything like that that need to be take money is the.

DR. LESTER CRAWFORD: We worry a lot for them. What the population of this country does need to be concerned about if they travel to BSE countries they should heed advisories. They should heed advisories; these are very simple kinds of things. They also would want to know that we're taking the Canadian incident seriously. We're working with the Canadian government. We get briefings at FDA daily from them. I just got off the phone with them a short time ago. We believe they are doing a great job in dealing with the problem but this government is going to have to be satisfied before we reopen the borders.

RAY SUAREZ: We know that cows don't give it to each other. Do we know how they get it?

DR. LESTER CRAWFORD: There's some evidence. In 1989 we were talking about this disease, someone said we know about as much about this disease as we knew about smallpox at the time of Christ. We now know a little bit more than that. And we're learning more all the time but we still don't know exactly how the animal gets the disease. We know that it has to be condition assumed. They have to eat the infectious material but exactly how it gets from the stomach until the case of cattle - four stomachs -- all the way to the brain is not clearly worked out -- may not be worked out for a long, long time. We know what happens in the brain and we have characterized the disease, it doesn't appear to be at this point amenable to vaccination or to therapy. It's always fatal, and this particular cow that has the disease in Canada, we don't know the origin of her so it's possible that she could have come from another country into Canada. That's yet to be determined. But if she was Canadian born and bred and has been there all her life how she got infectious material is going to be a big mystery. There's importation of cattle feed in virtually almost every country and the fact is that this is eight and a half years ago so -- old so at the time of her birth they didn't have the restrictions in Canada and neither did we, which would have protected her from this. It's possible that it could be an old infection. The incubation period in cattle is normally about four and a half years but it can go up to seven years in extreme cases. So maybe it was an exposure a long, long time ago; we just don't know yet.

RAY SUAREZ: Well, the tracing system that's been put in place in response to mad cow disease -- I need to know more about it. Is it as reliable as the vin number on an automobile?

DR. LESTER CRAWFORD: Yeah, the Canadians have a system which we're fully aware of and we believe that works. What it does is they register the cattle with a unique number. They place a tag or other identifying device in the animal's ear or somewhere else in the carcass and they are able to find out where it has been all of its life by consulting the registry. That's what they are doing now. Once they find a spot where she was three years ago -- this herd she is in now was only formed three ears ago. They essentially have to go back to the herd and confirm that in fact she was there once they find it and they have to go all the way back to the time she was born. I think this system works well.

RAY SUAREZ: Dr. Lester Crawford, thanks for being with us.

DR. LESTER CRAWFORD: Thank you.

SERIES - CANDIDATES' RX

JIM LEHRER: Now, the launch of another series of conversations with the democratic presidential candidates. This time the focus is on health care. Margaret Warner has the first.

MARGARET WARNER: Congressman Richard Gephardt of Missouri was the first Democratic contender to offer a health care plan aimed at the nation's 41 million uninsured. It proposes providing health insurance to virtually all Americans through their employers and repealing President Bush's tax cuts to pay for it. Among the highlights, all employers would be required to buy health insurance for their workers. They would receive a federal tax credit to offset 60 percent of the insurance cost, more than double the current tax benefit. To finance this plan which could cost well more than $200 billion a year, Gephardt would repeal President Bush's ten-year $1.3 trillion tax cuts of 2001 and any pending Bush taxes as well. Congressman Gephardt joins us now. And welcome, congressman.

This is the most expensive sweeping health care proposal since the Clinton health care plan of 1993. Is the country ready for this?

REP. RICHARD GEPHARDT: I think the country is ready for it and I'm excited about being able to give people a real choice in this election. If they like the Bush tax cuts, they ought to vote for George Bush. If they really want guaranteed health insurance that can never be taken away from them, then they ought to vote for me because that's my plan. We help employers who not only don't now give their employees health insurance, we also help employers who already help their employees. And one of the things you need to understand is that most Americans even if they have health insurance are worried they're going to lose it. So my plan takes away that anxiety. I also help state and local municipal employees and state employees and not-for-profit employees. This is really national health insurance through the present system and I think given that choice, Americans will choose health care.

MARGARET WARNER: Let's look at a couple of specifics -- first of all, requiring all employers to provide health insurance, even the smallest mom-and-pop family-run business with one employee. Couldn't that be a burden?

REP. RICHARD GEPHARDT: Well, understand how the plan works. All I require is that every employer provide plans to the employee, in other words offer plans for them to choose from, and then they have to at least pass on the 60 percent credit, the credit worth 60 percent of cost of whatever plan is chosen. They don't have to add anything to it. So this is not like an employer mandate, which was in the Clinton plan. This is simply requiring that they offer plans and that they offer the tax credit to the employee so they can use it to put together with the 40 percent they would have to put up to get the plan. If they offer more than 60 percent, I'd go right up with them, I'd give them 60 percent of say 20 percent they put on top of it, so we cot get people more than 60 percent if that was their choice.

MARGARET WARNER: All right, let's take another element that you referred to, but that you would take all the big companies, state and local governments, they already offer health insurance, and you are going to subsidize them as well with double the tax benefit. That adds a lot of cost to your plan. Why is that necessary?

REP. RICHARD GEPHARDT: Well, it's necessary because in almost every situation across the country, people are now worried, employers are worried that they are either going to have to drop coverage or they're going to have to drop benefits or raise the expenses to the employees to an intolerable level. This is a problem in almost every company in America and for every employee in America. People are worried. I have people come up to me all the time and say, "I have health insurance, but I'm losing benefits. I'm not going to be able to afford it. I'm worried about losing it." So this is a tremendous problem for both employers and employees that we really need to solve. Besides that, I think it's really bad policy to say to the employers who have not given their people insurance, "we're going to help with you a doubling of the tax credit, but we're not going to do anything for the companies that have done the right thing through the years." One thing I learned in advocating the Clinton plan a few years ago, is that if you distinguish between people and treat them unfairly, you really get into trouble in being able to get the plan through the Congress. So I think this is a very important feature of my plan and will allow us to be able to get the plan through. A plan you can't pass is worse than no plan at all.

MARGARET WARNER: Now to fund this as we described, you would repeal, rollback the 2001 tax cut, some of which have already taken effect. Can Democrats really sell a tax increase?

REP. RICHARD GEPHARDT: Well, it's not a tax increase. This is a very important point. It's a different kind of tax cut. And I think it's a better tax cut for most people. Most people get $300, $500, $700, $800 out of the Bush tax cut. The economists that have studied my plan think that my plan gets $1,800 a year to the average tax payer or average family in terms of added health care benefits or added wage benefits, so I think I've got a better tax cut that is fully competitive and superior to what George Bush's tax cut would do for people. And I offer it as a choice. I think elections need to be about important things. I'm trying to give people important choices and this is certainly one of the most important ones. And again, I think most people will choose health care over the $300, $500, $600 tax cut they get from the Bush tax cuts.

MARGARET WARNER: As you know, economists who have scored this plan say that even all the money in the Bush tax cut is not enough to pay for it and that in fact it will drive the deficits even higher than the Bush taxes. Are you essentially saying here that you think offering this near-universal coverage is more important than bringing the budget back to balance?

REP. RICHARD GEPHARDT: Well, I don't subscribe to that theory. I think my tax cut is less expensive than the Bush tax cut, especially if you figure in the one that's going through the Congress right now. When you put those two together, you are probably at or above $2 trillion over ten years. We think that more than adequately covers, but...

MARGARET WARNER: But you don't deny that in fact it would contribute to higher deficits? I mean, it's...

REP. RICHARD GEPHARDT: Well, the Bush tax cuts are going to contribute to higher deficits, but I would also argue to you that my tax cut is more stimulative to the...

MARGARET WARNER: You are talking about your health care plan?

REP. RICHARD GEPHARDT: My health care plan tax cut. It's a tax cut for health care-- is more stimulative of the economy. It will build more jobs. It will take costs off corporate books, it will put money in people's pockets because they'll be able to pay less for their health care. It will help corporations be able to hire more people or make capital investments. It really is much more stimulative than the Bush tax cuts, most of which went to the wealthiest Americans. And we already have the jury in on the Bush tax cuts, they haven't worked. Jobs haven't been created. They are not solving our economic problems. So the best way to get rid of this deficit is to get the economy to go forward. That's what my tax cut health care plan is designed to do.

MARGARET WARNER: Finally, many of your rivals for the Democratic nomination have offered plans of their own and they've also, all, not all, but many of them have attacked yours. Let me read you what they have said. Howard Dean calls yours "a pie in the sky radical revamping of our health care system. Bob Graham has said "we have tried that before," referring to the Clinton plan. Senator Lieberman called it "a return to the big spending Democratic idea of the past." And John Edwards called it "a giveaway that takes money out of pockets of working people and gives it to corporations." What is your answer to al that?

REP. RICHARD GEPHARDT: I'm happy to hear their thoughts. This is what a debate should be about. I would rather be debating health care than whether George Bush should have gone on the aircraft carrier with a helicopter or an airplane. This to me is a real issue in people's lives. My answer to all the critics is first of all, I would like to see your plan and some of them have plans, but some of them don't. So I think before we get into a big critique it would be nice if everybody would come forward with a plan that would be designed to solve this problem. But beyond that I think my plan is the best plan. I think their critics are wrong. Their criticism is wrong. This is a plan that is fair to everybody, that will get everybody covered with guaranteed health insurance that can't be taken away faster than any of the other plans. It's not complicated. It's based on the present system and I think I can better pass my plan than any of the other plans. I can get business for my plan, labor for it, the health care industry for it. I think it is the kind of clear simple plan that the American people are waiting to see put into action and I think can I get it done.

MARGARET WARNER: Congressman and Democratic presidential candidate Dick Gephardt, thanks.

REP. RICHARD GEPHARDT: Thank you.

MARGARET WARNER: Tomorrow we'll talk to former Vermont Governor Howard Dean.

RECAP

JIM LEHRER: Again, the major developments of this day: Security was intensified around the country after the raising of the terror alert status. An explosion damaged at empty classroom at Yale University in New Haven, Connecticut, no one was hurt. The FBI said it was an explosive device but there were no other details. And an earthquake in Algeria killed more than 95 people and hurt more than 200. We'll see you online, and again here tomorrow evening. I'm Jim Lehrer. Thank you and good night.