The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer

MARGARET WARNER: Good evening. I'm Margaret Warner. On the NewsHour tonight: A summary of the news; the impact of persistent protests against global capitalism; this week's war of words over Iraq, plus analysis by Mark Shields and David Brooks; and a report on the new military command charged with protecting the American homeland.

NEWS SUMMARY

MARGARET WARNER: One of the Senate's most powerful Democrats sharply criticized President Bush today for threatening unilateral war against Iraq. Senator Ted Kennedy warned a unilateral strike could unravel international support for the war on terrorism. In a Washington speech, Kennedy said the administration had not made the case for immediate military action. He said the President should pursue efforts to return UN weapons inspectors to Iraq first.

SEN. TED KENNEDY: Resorting to war is not America's only or best course at this juncture. There are realistic alternatives between doing nothing and declaring unilateral or immediate war. War should be a last resort -- not the first response.

MARGARET WARNER: Later, in Denver, Mr. Bush said that behind his talk of war is "a deep desire for peace." But he warned again that one way or the other, Saddam Hussein must be disarmed.

PRESIDENT GEORGE W. BUSH: I'm willing to give peace a chance, to work, I want the United Nations to work. I want him to do what he said he would do. But for the sake of our future, now's the time; now's the time. For the sake of your children's future, we must make sure this madman never has the capacity to hurt us with a nuclear weapon -- or to use stockpiles of anthrax that we know he has.

MARGARET WARNER: The President also telephoned French President Jacques Chirac to press again for a UN resolution threatening military action against Iraq. In Paris, a spokesman said Chirac still wants two resolutions. The first would demand unrestricted weapons inspections. If that failed, the UN Security Council would consider a second resolution authorizing force. In Atlanta today, Defense Secretary Rumsfeld insisted a "substantial coalition of countries" would join any military campaign against Iraq. He acknowledged that the U.S. cannot assure the next Iraqi leader would be better than Saddam Hussein, but Rumsfeld added, "it has to be the interest of the world to see that his sons don't succeed him." In Baghdad, Saddam's eldest son, Udai, warned that Iraqis will fight off any invaders. "We will chop the head of anyone who dares to approach Iraqi territories," he said in comments broadcast on Iraqi television. Former President Clinton also weighed in on Iraq today during a visit to South Africa. He told ABC that the U.S. ought to work through the UN for a tough resolution to make Saddam Hussein disarm, or face military action. Earlier this week, former Vice President Gore charged that making war on Iraq would undermine the war on terror. Mr. Clinton said he had not heard or read Gore's speech, but he had this comment:

BILL CLINTON: I think we can walk and chew gum at the same time; that is, I think we can turn up the heat on Iraq and maintain an intense focus on terror. But I think that's very important. I think that neither the press nor the American people, nor the administration, should flag at all in our concentration on eradicating the last elements of al-Qaida and dealing with our allies everywhere.

MARGARET WARNER: Of al-Qaida, Mr. Clinton went on to warn, "they still have a vast network." Police in Washington arrested more than 600 people today amid protests against war, corporate greed and globalization. Some of the demonstrators tossed smoke bombs, broke store windows and clashed with police in riot gear. The protesters have vowed to disrupt this weekend's meetings of world finance leaders at the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund. We'll have more on this story in a moment. The U.S. economy grew a bit more than first believed in the second quarter. The Commerce Department reported today the Gross Domestic Product rose at an annual rate of 1.3% from April through June. That was still much slower growth than in the first quarter of the year. On Wall Street, stocks fell sharply over earnings scares at GE and Philip Morris, and word that regional phone giant SBC Communications is cutting another 11,000 jobs. The Dow Jones Industrial Average fell 295 points, or more than 3.5%, to close at 7701. For the week, the Dow was down 284 points. The NASDAQ fell 22 points today, closing at 1199. It was down the same amount for the week. An ocean ferry sank off the West African nation of Senegal today. Some 760 people are feared dead. It happened during a fierce gale. One survivor said the vessel went down in just three minutes. He said the screams of people trapped inside could be heard as the ferry slid under the waves. Only 32 people were rescued. That's it for the News summary tonight. Now it's on to connecting protest to policy, war and politics, Shields and Brooks, and military protection here at home.

FOCUS POLICY AND PROTEST

MARGARET WARNER: Today's protests and the debate over globalization, and to Ray Suarez.

RAY SUAREZ: Through most of the day, police officers outnumbered the scattered protesters on the rainy streets of Washington, D.C.

SPOKESMAN: Back up!

RAY SUAREZ: Small skirmishes erupted early this morning in various downtown areas as anti- capitalist demonstrators tried unsuccessfully to snarl transportation and shut down the city to protest this weekend's annual joint meeting of the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank. Activists argue the two world lending institutions made up of 184 member nations exploit poor countries with their practices and policies.

YOUNG WOMAN: They serve business interest, they serve capitalist interest, and they aren't helping people; they're making poorer countries more poor. They're ruining peoples lives, and they're destroying our planet.

RAY SUAREZ: Many of the demonstrators who were arrested during the day were rounded up and taken away on buses. Some protesters complained the arrests were unwarranted.

YOUNG MAN: I think the police presence is completely unjustified. I've been witnessing people being arrested who have just literally been in the wrong place at the wrong time; it's our understanding that people are not being charged; we've seen a lot of people very roughed up.

CHIEF CHARLES RAMSEY: We gave warnings. I mean, when you've got large groups a lot of noise and things like that but we gave warnings we followed everything by the book.

RAY SUAREZ: Throughout the day, police maintained their barricaded perimeter around World Bank and IMF headquarters just blocks from the White House. Some businesses in the area took extra security steps and closed for the day or the entire weekend. Many who work in the district stayed home. Attempts to disrupt the business of international economic conferences have become a familiar feature of the meetings since 1999. That's when some 30,000 labor, environmental and consumer activists shut down a meeting of the World Trade Organization, or WTO, In Seattle, Washington. Dubbed "The Battle in Seattle," the demonstrations turned violent. Police were also criticized for their overreaction, since most of the demonstrations were peaceful. Five months later, 20,000 demonstrators flooded the streets of the nation's capital to protest the spring gathering of World Bank and IMF officials. Police arrested some 1,300 people. The IMF and World Bank were targets again during a September 2000 meeting in the Czech capital of Prague. Violent clashes erupted when 30,000 anti-globalization demonstrators took to the street. In Quebec City the following year, Canadian officials kept tens of thousands of protesters away from the site of the Summit of the Americas using two-and-a- half miles of chain-link and cement. The sealing off of the historic downtown area was in one of Canada's most massive peacetime security operations. In July 2001, violent demonstrations, the death of one protestor and the rioting that followed, threatened to overshadow the G-8 summit of the wealthiest industrialized nations in Genoa, Italy. That led organizers to hold this year's G-8 meeting in a hard-to-reach Rocky Mountain resort in Alberta, Canada. Tight security kept protesters miles away from the summit venue. This weekend in Washington, protesters and police are gearing up for more action as the World Bank and IMF meetings continue through Sunday.

RAY SUAREZ: Now we get some analysis of today's protests and the broader debate over globalization from two economic writers. Adrian Wooldridge is a Washington-based correspondent for "The Economist" Magazine and co-author of "A Future Perfect: The challenge and hidden promise of globalization." And Naomi Klein is a syndicated columnist for Canada's "Globe and Mail" newspaper, and author of "Fences and Windows: Dispatches from the Front Lines of the Globalization Debate."

Adrian Wooldridge, in your book, you call this the most important economic, political and cultural phenomenon of our time saying about globalization, "everybody evokes it but nobody will define it". How do you define it?

ADRIAN WOOLDRIDGE: I define globalization essentially as freedom. Globalization is the ever freer movement of ideas, people, goods and services around the world. It's about building bridges between people in countries and about breaking down barriers.

RAY SUAREZ: Naomi Klein, the people out in the streets, the people you talked to in your reporting following the protestors around the world, how do they define globalization. What are they fighting against? How do they define globalization?

NAOMI KLEIN: I think they're fighting against the betrayed promise of precisely Adrian's definition of globalization, that it was supposed to be about increased freedom but what we actually have is increased mobility for capital, we have increased trade of goods across services but we're seeing increased militarization at our borders, increased militarization at the meetings where the decisions are made about our global economy; and we are seeing trade laws being written that are really about putting barriers up around intellectual property, for instance, around drug patents. So I think to describe it as freedom -- I is really a liberation movement for capital, but I don't think that it has turned into a liberation movement for people at all.

RAY SUAREZ: Well the IMF, World Bank, the WTO and its predecessor organization have been meeting every six months for years.

NAOMI KLEIN: Yes, in Washington.

RAY SUAREZ: And various places around the world. How have these protests changed the way they do business? Have they been heard inside those modern buildings that we saw in these pieces?

NAOMI KLEIN: I think that the debate about globalization in the past three years has changed the discussion. I think that three years ago, there was an illusion of a consensus that free trade was good for everyone, that a rising tide was lifting all boats. And I think at this stage, what is clear is that economic growth and tremendous amounts of profits and prosperity, can co-exist with tremendous inequality and disparity. And I also think it is a little misleading to concentrate on the backlash against these economic policies just at protests in Seattle and Washington because the truth is that the strongest backlash and the most effective backlash is in the countries where these policies are enacted. They're in Argentina, they're in Ecuador , they're in brazil. There's been a wave of movements to stop privatizations of water and electricity across Latin America. So I think that has to be part of the discussion because we can't sort of invisibilize the countries that are living the policies and kind of present this as a debate between police and, you know, college students in Washington. That sort of erases the rest of the world.

RAY SUAREZ: Adrian Wooldridge, have these protests been heard and what about Naomi's point that maybe there is a different platform on which everyone is standing because of the decline in the world economy?

ADRIAN WOOLDRIDGE: The world economy is going through a tough patch but certainly there has not been a decline in the consensus that a rising tide lifts all boats and the evidence suggests that a rising tide does lift all boats. The World Bank has produced definitive evidence that there is a direct and very clear correlation between economies that open themselves to trade and economies that grow and economies that close themselves to trade and economies that are stagnating and declining. Over the 1990s, the 24 most free globalizing developing countries increased GDP per capita by 5% a year. The non-globalizing, non-opening countries reduced GDP by 1% a year. At the same time living standards rose, life expectance rose, personal freedoms rose. It is clear that globalization helps the poor just as much as it helps the rich. In fact probably more.

NAOMI KLEIN: You know, I actually will only use statistics out of the pages of "The Economist" to refute that point; that in fact, "The Economist" has been reporting in explaining to its readers why there is this backlash against the policies in America and in Latin America and India. Of course there has been a rise in GDP That has co-existed with the free trade policies but it is precisely because the rise in GDP has co-existed with stagnant living standards or dropping living standards that people are rejecting policies in Bolivia, Argentina and India. India is a very good example. 7.5% growth. And I think part of the problem, figures like GDP are too crude to measure actual well being. We are used to saying growth is good. But if you look more close closely and I read this in "The Economist" actually that while India's GDP was increasing by 7.5% in the mid 90s, poverty alleviation was only taking place at 1%. Poverty was dropping at a rate of 1%. According to "The Economist" Magazine, before India opened itself up to the free trade policies, growth was slower but poverty elimination was faster, slightly faster. So I think that this is a terrain of tremendous debate.

RAY SUAREZ: Quick response.

ADRIAN WOOLDRIDGE: I think it is of tremendous debate. I point to one simple figure. If you go back to the early 1970s, the people in the world who lived on less than $1 a day was about 20% of the world population. If you look at the end of the 1990s, there are people living on that measly sum was less than 5% of the world population. Over the last 20 years, there have been two really, really dramatic facts thatmatter far, far more than all of these silly protests going on in the streets -- the fact that the two giant economies, India and China that have been opening themselves up to globalization and that have been getting richer as a result of that opening up.

RAY SUAREZ: Let's talk a little bit more about the silly protests. Naomi Klein talks about the workers in Argentina, people in Indonesia and other places in the developing world, who have had a promise, she says, betrayed. Is there any other way to talk to the WTO, to talk to the World Bank for rank and file workers besides street action? Is there some other way to engage in the debate with central bankers, with finance ministers, than to come yell at them on the streets of world cities?

ADRIAN WOOLDRIDGE: The problem with Argentina is that the Argentineans have run their economy very badly. They borrowed too much money and spent too much of the money not on things like capital projects but feather bedding workers largely in the public sector so it is mismanaged internal policies, I'm afraid, that is leading to this problem now. They need to adopt better policies. People are naturally upset about the fact that they're undergoing this sort of crisis and it is natural to respond in terms of protests, although I think people protesting in Argentina have very little to do with the people protesting on the streets of Washington. What they need is better management of their own economies.

NAOMI KLEIN: I think what they need is better control of their own economies. The reason why an instances tugs like the International Monetary Fund is so controversial because the role they play in the developing world is often to override the decisions the democratic decisions of people. And the best example of this is going in brazil right now where the Brazilian people are about to elect de Silva, as their next president. De Silva is a left-wing politician, spent his life campaigning against the International Monetary Fund saying he would like to renegotiate the term of the debt saying the debt was illegitimate a lot accumulated under a dictatorship and saying he doesn't want more free trade policies like the area of the Americas. The International Monetary Fund has loaned $30 million to brazil recently but they did something they often do when it looks like a country is about to turn to the left. They post-dated the check so that 80% of the money comes after the Brazilian election. And there are strings attached, which say that they have the right to pull the money if the new government changes economic course. So these, precisely it's this overriding of the right to self-determination that is leading to the backlash.

RAY SUAREZ: You heard Adrian dismiss the connection between demonstrators in Buenos Aires and demonstrators in Seattle and Washington. And one feature of the coverage is often that these are some of the most comfortable best fed, best educated young people in the world who are speaking on behalf of people they rarely speak to. How do you answer that critique because it's a pretty persistent one?

NOAMI KLEIN: Yeah. I think there is much more global communication happening at the grass roots level and I think the reason we are seeing protests in Washington against institutions that a few years ago most Americans hadn't even heard of even though their headquarters were in Washington, D.C., is because of globalization. It's not against globalization. It's because globalization also applies to people. And we have been sharing stories across borders. And I even think that we have to sort of slow down and ask ourselves why it is that the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank make their decisions in Washington when the policies and the decisions that are taken are applied everywhere but in the United States. And this is a symbol, really, of what is wrong with these institutions; that they make decisions so far away from where the decisions are implemented. I certainly wouldn't like it if my government was making decisions about how to run my country, you know, in Malawi , if they were doing that, and would I see it as an assault on my democracy. I think it is an act of solidarity to say if the IMF envoy who is a man named Anup Sing who can't walk down the streets of Buenos Aires without being greeted by a symphony of pots and pans and I saw that in Buenos Aires a few weeks ago, then why should they be able to walk down the streets of Washington, D.C. And have the right to serene, spa-like atmosphere. Politics are messy and you have to be accountable for your decisions. And there is something structural in the way these institutions are set up that creates far too much distance from the decision makers and the places where the policies are enacted.

RAY SUAREZ: What about that?

ADRIAN WOOLDRIDGE: I think if you are borrowing money from people, you can't lay down conditions under which you borrow the money. I think the IMF is absolutely right to lay down conditions on the way it lends money there. Is no other way in which a fund can operate responsibly to do that. And on the grounds--

NAOMI KLEIN: That's why the primary demand of the protestors is debt forgiveness.

ADRIAN WOOLDRIDGE: These people are not democratically accountable. On the contrary. IMF Is democratically accountable to the people who provide the funds for the IMF, most of which are sovereign states, most of which are democratically elected states which consists of United States, which consist of the European countries, which consists of Japan. So there is a process of accountability going on. But you can't simply borrow money from people and lay down your own conditions to it. I would love to do that to my own bank manager but I don't expect it to happen.

RAY SUAREZ: Are there not layers of people in between somebody who's putting together a computer keyboard in a Mexican factory or sewing sneakers in Southeast Asia? I mean, you say yes these governments are borrowing money but the sneaker worker isn't, and isn't that who the people on the streets are trying to speak for?

ADRIAN WOOLDRIDGE: But -- I'm afraid though that you have to-- it's the governments who have to be accountable for their economic policies. If they are borrowing money, they cannot simply lay down the conditions under which they borrow it. So yes, of course people have a right to protest if they think their economies are being very, very badly managed internally but they don't have the right to lay down the conditions under which their governments borrow money from an international fund.

RAY SUAREZ: Quick response.

NAOMI KLEIN: Of course, the debt itself is tremendously controversial, and the primary demand of the protests this weekend is debt cancellation, precisely because the debts that are being paid off were often accumulated under dictatorships, in the case of South Africa, a country was forced to inherit the apartheid debt. So you have the ANC government paying off the debt accumulated under apartheid. And what we are seeing is that when citizens try to elect governments that are going to have new policies, those policies are overridden and it is very difficult to call that democracy.

RAY SUAREZ: Naomi Klein and Adrian Wooldridge, thank you very much.

MARGARET WARNER: Still to come on the NewsHour tonight, a war of words, Shields and Brooks, and the military's new role at home.

UPDATE WAR AND POLITICS

MARGARET WARNER: Sharp political divisions on the Iraq issue surfaced this week, culminating today with a senior democrat taking on the President. ( Applause )

MARGARET WARNER: Democratic Senator Ted Kennedy began his remarks today by saying the country deserves a vigorous and civil debate over going to war in Iraq.

SEN. TED KENNEDY: In this serious time for America and many American families, no one should poison the public square by attacking the patriotism of opponents or by assailing proponents as more interested in the cause of politics than in the merits of their cause. I reject this, as should we all. (Applause) It is possible to love America while concluding that it is not now wise to go to war.

MARGARET WARNER: And now is not the time to go to war, he said, not until other reasonable alternatives have been exhausted.

SEN. TED KENNEDY: There is clearly a threat from Iraq, and there is clearly a danger, but the administration has not made a convincing case that we face such an imminent threat to our national security that a unilateral preemptive American strike, and an immediate war, are necessary. The President's challenge to the United Nations requires a renewed effort to enforce the will of the international community to disarm Saddam. Let us follow that course and the world will be with us, even if in the end we have to move to the ultimate sanction of armed conflict.

MARGARET WARNER: Kennedy said unilateral military action against Iraq would undermine the international coalition needed in the war against al-Qaida-- a war he said the U.S. has not yet won.

SPOKESMAN: The President of the United States, George W. Bush.

MARGARET WARNER: The President, campaigning in Denver, said he was ready to work with the UN to force Saddam to disarm, if the UN will act.

PRESIDENT GEORGE W. BUSH: He can disarm; there's no negotiations, by the way, with Mr. Saddam Hussein. There's nothing to discuss. He either gets rid of his weapons, and the United Nations gets rid of his weapons... (applause) ...he can either get rid of his weapons and the United Nations can act, or the United States will lead a coalition to disarm this man. (Applause) I'm willing to give peace a chance to work. I want... I want the United Nations to work. I want him to do what he said he would do. But for the sake of our future, now's the time. Now's the time. I appreciate both Republicans and Democrats in our country understanding this issue. I want you to know that behind the rhetoric for war is a deep desire for peace -- that I believe that by remaining strong and diligent that we can achieve peace that we can achieve peace not only for America but peace around the world.

MARGARET WARNER: It was the latest exchange in an escalating debate over whether, and how, Congress should endorse the President going to war. Mr. Bush sent a broadly-worded proposed resolution to the Hill last week, asking Congress to authorize him "to use all means that he determines to be appropriate, including force" to enforce UN resolutions on Iraq, defend U.S. interests against Iraq and restore peace to the region. There was little initial opposition from leaders on Capitol Hill, but this week, some prominent Democrats began raising concerns. In a speech in San Francisco Monday, former Vice President Al gore warned of grave consequences for the antiterror coalition if the U.S. Proceeded unilaterally to war. He also questioned the administration's timing.

AL GORE: Rather than making efforts to dispel these concerns at home and abroad about the role of politics in the timing of policy, the President is on the campaign trail two or three days a week, often publicly taunting democrats with the political consequences of a "no" vote.

MARGARET WARNER: That same day, Mr. Bush, on a campaign stop in New Jersey, attacked the Democratic- controlled Senate for stalling the homeland security bill.

PRESIDENT GEORGE W. BUSH: But the Senate is more interested in special interests in Washington and not interested in the security of the American people.

MARGARET WARNER: On Wednesday, the Republican National Committee sent an e-mail to two million Republican supporters, quoting the President's line that "the Senate is not interested in the security of the American people." An irate Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle went to the Senate floor to demand an apology for what he called the President's "outrageous" remark.

SEN. TOM DASCHLE: That is wrong. We ought not politicize this war. We ought not to politicize the rhetoric about war in life and death.

MARGARET WARNER: White House spokesman Ari Fleischer denied the President was politicizing the issue.

ARI FLEISCHER: The President's remarks were not about the democratic Senate, as people may have been led to believe. The President's remarks were not even about the war in Iraq. The President's remarks were about homeland security.

MARGARET WARNER: The President did not apologize, but yesterday, he had conciliatory words for a bipartisan group of lawmakers who came to the White House.

PRESIDENT GEORGE W. BUSH: Congress will have an important debate, a meaningful debate, an historic debate. It will be conducted with all civility. It will be conducted in a manner that will make Americans proud and Americans to understand the threats to our future. We're making progress.

MARGARET WARNER: Both Democrats and Republicans have been circulating alternative resolutions that would impose some limits on the authorization the President seeks.

FOCUS SHIELDS AND BROOKS

MARGARET WARNER: For analysis of all this, we turn to Shields and Brooks, syndicated columnist Mark Shields, and David Brooks of the "Weekly Standard."

Hello, gentlemen.

So, David, what happened to the Democrats this week?

DAVID BROOKS: Perestroika, glasnost the reign of the totalitarian Daschle was broken and you are allowed to have a debate about Iraq. To me the most important speech was Kennedy's. I think it was the first time a major Democratic politician gave a very good, a very professional speech against the President's policies. He uttered the arguments very well that you have to make if you are against it, that we can deter Saddam, that inspectors will work, that if we go in there, it will unleash a whirlwind. I thought it was a very competent, very professional speech. To me, one of the things that was notably lacking in the speech was the tone and specifically for Ted Kennedy was the tone of lack of compassion.

MARGARET WARNER: Was the tone of what?

DAVID BROOKS: A lack of compassion. A tone of almost meanness, that we are going to sit here in a gated community while the tide of despotism spreads across the Middle East and we are not going to do anything about it. And I thought there are serious arguments on both sides on the weapons of mass destruction but there is also an argument about idealism and pessimism. And in this debate, the President has the advantage of envisioning a new and better Middle East that the Democrats or at least Ted Kennedy can't match.

MARGARET WARNER: Mark, was it Al Gore's speech Monday that took the brick out of the dam or whatever? I mean, before that, you had no Democratic leaders saying this kind of thing publicly.

MARK SHIELDS: I think there are a couple of factors and certainly Al Gore was a catalyst, an important catalyst and major voice. And I thought his particular indictment of the vagueness of post-war Iraq and our commitment toward a lack of commitment was quite relevant and very important. But I think, Margaret, in the set-up piece, what the reality was -- that Democrats realized that Karl Rove had said it publicly last January. We are going to create an issues context that is favorable for our candidates in October. And to the Republican National Committee, he said war and who is stronger on war helps Republicans. And when you say Condi Rice came on the show and said the security of the country-- the President has never made that a political issue and you get two million e-mails going out and attacking essentially the question of the Democrats' patriotism and whether in fact they are indifferent to the security of the United States. I think that just set off a flame. Plus, I think there was an overreach on the-- what initially happened, to be brief, is the Democrats have based their opposition more or less on process. The President was acting unilaterally, hadn't gone to the UN, hadn't consulted. The President goes to the UN and makes what people say is a good speech and all of a sudden Democrats are kind of back on their heels. They don't want the war but their arguments have been based on process and he has met the procedural objections. At that point the Democrats started looking at the resolution that was presented and it was truly overreaching, the region, the President's definition of what we are going to do and all the rest of it, plus, I mean, in that resolution, the President went so far, or the White House actually which wrote it, not the Secretary of State who wrote the resolution, went so far as to say, Margaret, we condemn Saddam Hussein because he used chemical weapons, poison gas in the past against another country. That was in 1988. That was when Iraq was being backed by the United States in the Iraq-Iran War and with our support and without our criticism from the Reagan-Bush administration -- 14 years later, we are condemning him for-- a little hypocritical for something we didn't say anything about at the time.

MARGARET WARNER: Let's go back to the politics just for another minute with the Democrats, David. Do you think it was a coincidence that Daschle's outburst also came on the day that the polls started coming out showing that Iraq has edged up now and is even with the economy in voters' minds -- in other words that what the Democrats suspected the Karl Rove strategy had worked?

DAVID BROOKS: Well, I really don't think so. I think this is a substantive debate. Daschle has a problem. Daschle has a split party. He doesn't have a view on the substance of this issue. Whether we go into Iraq, Daschle hasn't made a big speech on whether we should go into Iraq. The President had a major foreign policy doctrine, the most ambitious doctrine change in a generation. Daschle hasn't made a speech about that. He had a televised temper tantrum and probably a sincere one, over how we are going to debate the issues. And that was an evasion of the core issues. But what it did was it allowed him to appear tough about Bush without challenging the substantive Bush and allowed him to say something that all Democrats can agree with. I really-- I don't fault Ted Kennedy because he is tackling the issues. I fault Tom Daschle because he is evading the issues.

MARGARET WARNER: But he had to have been feeling some sort of pressure.

DAVID BROOKS: Well, you know, you can psychologize all about 2004. You've got John Kerry and Al Gore suddenly on the left side; you've got John Edwards, Joe Lieberman on the right. And there is the 2004 element that plays in but how much it plays into their speeches is something you don't know unless you can read their souls.

MARGARET WARNER: How important do you think, Mark, too, the Democratic leadership, are the views of the Democratic rank and file, because again when we look at surveys and you really look at people who say I'm a Democrat, there seems to be a lot of unease about this policy on substantive grounds.

MARK SHIELDS: It's fascinating. In a strange way, Tom Daschle and the Democrats are doing the President a favor and have done him a favor because I thought the most revealing survey all week was this Gallup "USA Today"-CNN poll in which they asked all these different situations, would you back the United States going to war against Iraq with the UN backing? Like three out of four would say yes. With allies, maybe two out of three. By ourselves, three out of five oppose. And the President had started down a unilateral road. What is going to be required now, I think, because of the Democrats, and because of the Democrats in Congress, are going to say you are going to have to be multilateral. You are going to have to certify that you've gone to the UN; that's the big debate politically, Margaret, politically. The tension right now on the Republican side is on those Republicans like Colin Powell, the Secretary of State, who wants a big bipartisan vote on Capitol Hill in favor of this. So he is willing to accommodate the criticisms, to take in all the considerations and doubts and reservations they have to get those Democratic votes so he can go to the United Nations and persuade allies, look, this country is strongly in favor of the President. The President is not steam rolling it.

MARGARET WARNER: And he is making the argument inside the administration.

MARK SHIELDS: He is and on the other side is Tom DeLay and the other Republicans who were right about holding on to the House who didn't like the fact that the President on Thursday appears in the Rose Garden surrounded by House Democrats who are in tough races and that he is storming -- he is upset as DeLay -- calling the White House saying what is going on? This is a campaign picture for Democrats. They wanted it to be an RD vote.

DAVID BROOKS: I'm going to drag us back to the core issue. Tom DeLay is not the core issue. The core issue is the President and the President said he is going to be multilateral. As we go into war right now we would have Spain. There has movement in Saudi Arabia, a half dozen European countries.

MARGARET WARNER: But would you say, David, that there is a slight shift at least rhetorically in the President in the last couple of days. The clips we were watching where he said if not, he didn't say if he UN doesn't act you, we will or I -- he said if the UN doesn't act, we will lead a coalition. I mean, he seems to be-- whether it is a real change or not, rhetorically there is.

DAVID BROOKS: Yeah. But he's always felt the way you start a coalition is exactly the way his father did. His father said this will not stand. Andthen he got the coalition behind the leadership. That's always been the Bush policy. Colin Powell has been traveling around the world with Donald Rumsfeld and Paul Wolfowitz ginning up this coalition for six months. Maybe rhetorically it has changed, they've always been for moving multilaterally.

MARGARET WARNER: All right. So what do you think now is going to happen really on the Hill? I mean, I gather this resolution for it is going to come up next week. Is there really going to be any change in what the White House wants?

DAVID BROOKS: It looks like there's going to be a change restricting it to Iraq. There was early language that would be region wide and then giving the Congress some role of oversight or at least some information, getting informed about how things go. I have to say, as I look at Ted Kennedy on one side and George Bush on the other, I really can foresee us getting to a median point, which you might call the ultimatum policy, where the UN gives an ultimatum: Three weeks, six weeks, full inspections, full disclosures or there's war. That's a policy that both George Bush and Ted Kennedy from the speech today can sign on to and that may be where we end up.

MARK SHIELDS: I think what is going to happen on the Hill right now, Senator Byrd is threatening a filibuster, which would postpone it. It's tough to do a filibuster all by yourself. But Democrats are divided. Tom Daschle has not taken a position on this. He is working he's got a real problem internally among Democrats in the sense that a number of Democrats have already endorsed the President's position or committed to it, who are up in tough reelection fights. So he doesn't want--.

MARGARET WARNER: Like?

MARK SHIELDS: Mary Landrew in Louisiana, Max Cleland in Georgia, Tim Johnson, Tom Daschle's own colleague in South Dakota, Gene Carnahan in Missouri. So, you know, he doesn't want to cut them loose-- or make it tough for them-- but there are Democrats in the Senate who are saying, look, we insist upon these, we insist that it be multilateral. It is going to be open-ended. What David just described is a timetable that goes three, four, fie months in the future. At some point the President should be required to come back and report should there be something multilateral. I think you'll hear these arguments but I think there is no question that the President has the votes to cut off debate on Capitol Hill and to get his resolution approved with those modifications.

DAVID BROOKS: There's something disturbing going on, which is if you are supporting the President, that's a patriotic stance if you're doing it out of principle. If you are opposing him on principle, that's a patriotic stance. There are a lot of people in Congress who are going to vote one way and their conscience tells them to vote the other.

MARGARET WARNER: On both sides.

DAVID BROOKS: ON both sides. Absolutely true. If you are voting against your conscience on a matter of war and peace, that really is dishonorable, that is putting party above country. If you are trying to close down debate, to me that's dishonorable. There are villains, something really dishonorable going on.

MARGARET WARNER: When Condi Rice was on the show, she suggested that they wouldn't mind limiting it to Iraq and having the reporting requirement but she seemed to draw the line on any resolution that would tie the President's actions to the UN. You think they can find a common ground on that point?

DAVID BROOKS: Well, that's obviously the tougher sell. Mark is right. They are going to get a resolution passed by a huge majority out of the Congress. The UN is really much more up in the air. They're working, but they have got three members of the Security Council who seem to be against them, the issue there is: do we have one resolution: Senate inspectors and automatic war or do we need two resolutions -- have war with the second. They don't want to be hand tied by the dictators of China and Russia. Just because the guys in China don't want to do it doesn't mean we can't do it.

MARGARET WARNER: Quick final question in one minute to the two of you. Do you think Democrats who oppose the President in this are taking a political risk?

MARK SHIELDS: Well, it's short-term. If the election is November and that's all it is about, there is a risk, especially if you are in a state where the President-- I mean the states I mentioned, the President carried virtually all of them, so that is a problem. Just one quick thing and I'll give it to David and that is this: That Tom Daschle, I don't think it was an orchestrated tantrum. I think it was a genuine response. That night meeting of the Senate Democrats he got a standing ovation. And the fact that Dan Inouye came down and stood behind him on the Senate floor with an arm missing shows the depths of their anger and their fury at what they was cheap politicization by the White House.

DAVID BROOKS: There's huge risks for both sides. Mark and I went at it last week because we passionately disagree but there is high downside risk on both sides. It could be catastrophic either way so everybody is taking a huge risk.

MARGARET WARNER: More next week. Thank you both.

FOCUS GUARDING THE HOMELAND

MARGARET WARNER: Now, the U.S. military responds at home to the post-September 11 world. Kwame Holman has our report.

KWAME HOLMAN: At Peterson Air Force Base in Colorado Springs, Colorado, construction workers were finishing the last touches on the headquarters for the new United States Northern Command. Next week, this base will make history as the home of the first American military command with the primary responsibility of conducting homeland security missions in the continental United States. Its reach also extends to cover Canada, Mexico, and the Caribbean basin.

GENERAL RALPH EBERHART: This command will be one-stop shopping in terms of providing military support to other federal agencies and to local responders.

KWAME HOLMAN: General Ralph Eberhart is the Pentagon's choice to lead the new command.

GENERAL RALPH EBERHART: We draw up plans that show how we would assist anywhere from flood to fires, to a terrorist attack; to, God forbid, a chemical, biological, nuclear-type weapons attack, weapons of mass destruction.

KWAME HOLMAN: The Northern Command will centralize the control of the kinds of homeland security missions the military performed after September 11 when fighter jets patrolled over American cities, military cargo planes flew rescue missions to New York City, and a Navy hospital ship was dispatched to New York Harbor to treat the wounded. John Brinkerhoff, a retired Army colonel who also worked at the Federal Emergency Management Agency, says the foreign-based attacks of September 11 illustrated an urgent need for a domestic military command.

JOHN BRINKERHOFF: The United States itself is now for the first time since the War of 1812 a theater of war. That means that we should apply, in my view, the same kind of command structure in the United States that we apply in other theaters of war.

SPOKESMAN: Ladies and gentlemen, please be calm, take your clothes off, clean yourselves down. We're here to help you.

KWAME HOLMAN: To perform its missions, the Northern Command would be able to call on units from each of four armed services.

SPOKESMAN: Let's go.

KWAME HOLMAN: In the case of a chemical or biological attack, the Marine Corps' Chemical Biological Incident Response Force might deploy.

SPOKESMAN: This is senior man here.

SPOKESMAN: You two come with me.

KWAME HOLMAN: This 400-member unit, based an hour's drive south of Washington D.C., was created in 1996 specifically to respond to weapons of mass destruction attacks on civilians. Commanding Officer Colonel Thomas Hammes:

COLONEL THOMMAS HAMMES: Essentially, we're to back up civilian first responders in a life-saving role. Our job is to enter a contaminated environment, extract the casualties, decontaminate them, and hand them over to the civilian medical service for final treatment.

CHIEF JOHN DARBY: We basically have the same skill sets that most fire departments around the city do have.

KWAME HOLMAN: Marine Reservist John Darby is a local senior firefighter when he's not on active duty.

CHIEF JOHN DARBY: It's the quantities of people that we bring, you know, to the incident, and I think that's the biggest thing that we have is the numbers of people.

SPOKESMAN: The two teams and yourself have leadership

KWAME HOLMAN: But relying on the military for such traditionally civilian duties has its critics.

AMY SMITHSON: In order to make a life- saving difference in a chemical attack, you've got to be there with your gear, working with victims within a matter of minutes, not hours.

KWAME HOLMAN: Amy Smithson is a public policy analyst at the Henry Stimson Center, a non- profit research organization. She says communities depend on the quick response of local fire departments and HAZMAT teams in the event of a catastrophic attack, and money spent on assets like the Marine unit would be better directed toward beefing up local first responders.

AMY SMITHSON: It's the locals that have to be best trained and equipped; they are the people that are going to save lives. That was proved on September 11, and proved many times over in any number of other disasters.

BATTALION CHIEF MICHAEL FARRI: We don't look at ourselves as a law enforcement agency.

KWAME HOLMAN: Michael Farri is a battalion chief in Alexandria, Virginia's fire department, which exercised with the Marine unit. He likes the fact that the chemical and biological response force could provide policing as well as rescue functions.

BATTALION CHIEF MICHAEL FARRI: They bring a law enforcement agency group with them and they have no problem if somebody needs to be restrained with handcuffs or flex cuffs or whatever to keep them from going from the hot zone to a cool zone; whereas the fire department, we are not geared to do that.

KWAME HOLMAN: So that's a benefit?

BATTALION CHIEF MICHAEL FARRI: Absolutely. I think it is a benefit. You have better containment, better control.

KWAME HOLMAN: Colonel Hammes says his Marines are trained to handle uncooperative people.

COLONEL THOMAS HAMMES: Obviously, first, we try to just talk to them. If they're really hysterical, there's some simple techniques from this program called Marine Martial Arts, that teaches various martial arts skills; there are common techniques that police also use to provide pain compliance-- no permanent damage, just enough to get your attention, and allows us to control you. If you still won't, then we can control in flex cuffs, and then we'll flex cuff decontaminate you. And if you're calm at that point, we turn you loose... if you're still not calm, then the police will be asked to give us a hand.

TIMOTHY EDGAR: I think that just shows one of the potential dangers for mission creep.

KWAME HOLMAN: Timothy Edgar is legislative counsel in the Washington, D.C., office of the American Civil Liberties Union. He says the prospect of the military engaging in law enforcement is problematic. He points to the case of a military unit that helped patrol the U.S.-Mexican border in Texas, resulting in the death of American citizen Ezequiel Hernandez.

TIMOTHY EDGAR: Unfortunately, there was an incident in 1997 where a young Marine shot and killed a student who was herding his family's goats out on the border. That's not the kind of position we want to put our troops in. We want to make sure our troops are fighting wars -- that they're not put in the position of having to make those kinds of judgments that are better left to police departments that have the kind of training to respect constitutional rights and to use minimal force, rather than overwhelming force to defeat the enemy.

KWAME HOLMAN: The Defense Department says any deployment of the Northern Command will be guided by the principles of the Posse Comitatus Act. Congress created that legislation during the Civil War era. It prohibited the army from enforcing civilian laws unless specifically authorized. Posse Comitatus was a reaction to how federal troops had been used. Local southern sheriffs used them to track down fugitive slaves before the Civil War. Later, soldiers protected freed slaves from vigilantes, kept the peace after disputed elections, and even guarded polling stations during the Presidential election of 1876. General Eberhart spoke to NewsHour reporter Dan Sagalyn.

GENERAL RALPH EBERHART: As a law, it's something have to be, one, familiar with and, two, abide with, and that's certainly what we'll do. So it's essentially, it establishes lanes in the road, of tasking; missions, if you will.

KWAME HOLMAN: But Timothy Edgar says the Act has loopholes and is not sufficient to protect civil liberties.

TIMOTHY EDGAR: The Posse Comitatus Act and other laws have a number of exceptions in them, and those exceptions can permit the military to be involved in law enforcement with creative legal interpretation, and that's not the kind of thing we want. We need guidelines that are based on function and that will prevent the military from being involved in those routine activities.

SPOKESMAN: In this building, adjacent...

KWAME HOLMAN: The Northern Command's leader says he'll have more than 200 people focusing on domestic intelligence. They would receive information about potential threats from local, state and national agencies.

GENERAL RALPH EBERHART: I'd like to get information in terms of that they've seen something suspicious, so if we're starting to see a lot of suspicious things or there's a pattern across the country, or if it's all at dams, per se, or all at hydroelectric plants, that, to me, starts to paint a picture of where we might be vulnerable or what the enemy is considering doing.

TIMOTHY EDGAR: Well, it raises a lot of questions. There was a program during the '50s and '60s where the Pentagon was involved in receiving information about protesters. It was called Continental United States based on some of our exaggerated fears of leftist movements in the U.S. That's not the kind of thing we would want to have our military to be involved in. They obviously need to have access to the information which is important for them to do their job. But we don't want the military, certainly, to be spying on Americans for their political activities.

GENERAL RALPH EBERHART: We are not going to be out there spying on people. We get information from people who do.

KWAME HOLMAN: Retired Air Force Colonel Randall Larsen sees challenges ahead for the new Northern Command.

COL. RANDALL LARSEN (Ret.): There is going to be a problem. They're going to have to pull back on the reins a little bit. You know, in the military, they teach you to lean forward, to be prepared, to go out and do the pls.

KWAME HOLMAN: Larsen directs the Institute for Homeland Security at the consulting group Anser Corporation. He supports creating the new command, but says it must show restraint.

COL. RANDALL LARSEN (Ret.): And so it's going to be difficult for a four-star General, what we used to call CYNCS, we now call Combatant Commanders, for them not to be charging forward to go out and do the mission they see in front of them a major attack occurs on a U.S. city like a tactical nuclear weapon goes off in some city, that general is going to be starting to move airplanes and assets and resources. We realize that, first of all, the mayor is going to have to call the governor; the governor is going to have to call the President; he'll act... the President will activate the federal response plan, and part of that will be the military in a supportive role. So it is a little bit different for the general to have to sit back and all of their staff and all of their careers they've trained to step forward.

KWAME HOLMAN: Retired National Guard Brigadier General David McGinnis says the National Guard should be the first military responders inside the homeland. Otherwise, he says, it may be too tempting simply to give active duty forces carte blanche during a major disaster.

BRIG. GENERAL DAVID McGINNIS (Ret.): My concern is that a situation will happen; there will be a large catastrophe somewhere, and the commander will come in and say, "I'm taking control." The sheriffs, the mayors will say, "no, you're not." And he's going to say, "I'm declaring this a national defense area under the existing statute, and I'm taking control of the area," and move his troops in and push everybody out, take control of the area.

GENERAL RALPH EBERHART: There may be situations if we ever got into a major chemical biological nuclear attack problem where we may, in fact, be in charge. And the only way I can see that happening is one of two ways: First, it's become so bad that the lead federal agency in working with the state governors say, you know, "we give up. We do not have the wherewithal to deal with this. We need not only federal support and federal help here, but we need the federal forces to take the lead." And then the President and the Secretary of Defense would have to decide, "yes, that is appropriate."

KWAME HOLMAN: As of next week, the Northern Command, with an eventual staff of 500 and a $70 million budget, officially begins a new era in the military's role in homeland security.

RECAP

MARGARET WARNER: Again, the major developments of the day: Senator Edward Kennedy sharply criticized President Bush for threatening unilateral war against Iraq. The President said he was willing to "give peace a chance," but he said Iraq must be disarmed one way or the other. A reminder that "Washington Week" can be seen on most PBS stations later this evening. We'll see you online, and again here Monday evening. I'm Margaret Warner. Thanks for being with us. Good night.