The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer

JIM LEHRER: Good evening. I'm Jim Lehrer. Civil disorder dominated the war news today. We have the details; the Rumsfeld-Myers briefing about it; a look at the problems and responsibilities in stopping it; plus a report on wounded marines at Bethesda Naval Hospital; and the weekly analysis of Mark Shields and David Brooks.

JIM LEHRER: The fighting ended across more of Iraq today, but American commanders warned of combat still ahead, and wrestled with civil disorder among some liberated Iraqis. In Washington, Pres. Bush visited some of the war wounded. He said he would not declare victory until the military says the job is done.

PRES. GEORGE W. BUSH: The specific thing I want to hear is that our commanders say we've achieve clear objective I set out. And that's when we will say this is over. This is a campaign that has been run on the front lines by Gen. Tommy Franks. And that's the way it is going to continue to be.

JIM LEHRER: The president said he does not know if Saddam Hussein is still alive. But he said the U.S. objective remains to rid Iraq of any vestige of Saddam's rule, and to eliminate any weapons of mass destruction. Mr. Bush spoke on a day when Iraq's third largest city fell without a fight. Kwame Holman has our war news roundup.

THE WAR WITH IRAQ

KWAME HOLMAN: In northern Iraq, the city of Mosul was captured when thousands of Iraqi soldiers simply gave up the fight and walked away. Almost immediately, chaos broke out. Julian Manyon of Independent Television News witnessed the events there.

JULIAN MANYON: In Mosul, they started by looting the central bank, and then set about the rest. Every official building and many private ones had their contents stolen by excited crowds. The Kurdish driver of this crane had just used it to steal a bus. When he saw me-- one of his liberators, he believed-- his joy was unconfined. But his trophy turned out to be more than he could handle. Meanwhile, the bombed out central police headquarters, center of power of the old regime, began to burn. Saddam's palace in Mosul was one of his most magnificent. Today, it attracted looters in hordes. The lucky ones got the ornate furniture and fittings. Latecomers set about removing doors and window frames. Most of the looters at the palace were Kurds openly celebrating their freedom, but the mood in Arab districts of the city was darker. Here an army base is on fire, the troops have fled, and local people have surged in to loot it. But among many of the Arab population of Mosul, there are profoundly mixed, even hostile feelings, towards what is happening. Above all, they're concerned about the complete breakdown of law and order. At the Saddam Hospital, we found people deeply angry.

MAN: You're responsible for this -- the security, lost in this country. Why?

JULIAN MANYON: In the wards, victims of the coalition bombing. Staff here are having to treat terrible injuries. But today, they were trying to fend off looters who made repeated attempts to steal hospital equipment, including the ambulances.

DR. HASSAN NAJB: We tried our best to keep them. Two of them have been stolen and the other has been left here.

JULIAN MANYON: Two ambulances were stolen?

DR. HASSAN NAJB: Yes. Two ambulances.

JULIAN MANYON: Why did they steal them?

DR. HASSAN NAJB: We don't know. Ask them.

DR. HASSAN NAJB: Reporter: In the streets of the historic city, one of the oldest inhabited places on earth, the rampage went on, and the few Kurdish troops in Mosul seemed to have little interest in stopping it. The roads into Mosul became jammed with vehicles, with drivers either trying to get into the city to pillage it or get out with their loot. In the city center, Arab crowds became angry and a western television crew was stoned. In the afternoon, the first American troops appeared, a handful of Special Forces soldiers accompanied by truckloads of elite Kurdish commandos. The Kurds moved quickly to secure the city center, but soon after we took these pictures, the Americans came under rifle fire and pulled out. Tonight, Mosul is at long last without fear of Saddam Hussein, but also, without law or government.

KWAME HOLMAN: Lawlessness also reigned in parts of Baghdad this evening. Government buildings-- including the education, industry, trade and planning ministries-- all were on fire. This is the third day of rampaging in the capital. At one government building, Iraqis took food that had been stored there. At Ba'ath Party headquarters, furniture was being hauled away. A stack of mattresses was carted off in a wheelbarrow despite hand-written signs that said in Arabic "Looting is forbidden under Islam." At the Pentagon this afternoon, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said prominent reporting of the chaos in Baghdad and other cities overstates the seriousness of the problems.

DONALD RUMSFELD: The images you are seeing on television you are seeing over and over and over, and it's the same picture of some person walking out of some building with a vase, and you see it 20 times and you think, "my goodness, were there that many vases?" (Laughter) Is it possible that there were that many vases in the whole country?

REPORTER: Do you think that the words "anarchy" and "lawlessness" are ill-chosen...

DONALD RUMSFELD: Absolutely. I picked up a newspaper today and I couldn't believe it. I read eight headlines that talked about chaos, violence, unrest. And it just was Henny-Penny, "the sky is falling." I've never seen anything like it. And here is a country that's being liberated, here are people e going from being repressed and held under the thumb of a vicious dictator, and they're free. And all this newspaper could do, with eight or ten headlines, they showed a man bleeding, a civilian, who they claimed we had shot... one thing after another. It's just unbelievable how people can take that away from what is happening in that country. Do I think those words are unrepresentative? Yes.

KWAME HOLMAN: Still, throughout Baghdad, U.S. soldiers began enforcing a dusk to dawn curfew. The International Red Cross said today that Baghdad's medical system was on the verge of collapse. Few if any of the city's 33 hospitals could function they said because of looting, combat damage, or medical personnel who hadn't come to work. This hospital was stripped nearly bare. Even light bulbs were taken. U.S. tanks and troops were deployed to Baghdad's main hospital to keep looters in check. Care was diminished. Some relatives took over basic tasks. A young boy held an I.V. line for his sister. The Red Cross called on U.S. forces to restore order. 100 miles north of Baghdad in Tikrit, Saddam Hussein's birthplace and a regime stronghold, U.S. bombing was intensified. U.S. Commander Gen. Tommy Franks, was asked by reporters in Afghanistan if the members of the Iraqi leadership may have fled to Tikrit.

GEN. TOMMY FRANKS: All of you know me will guess the answer before I give it. There are either dead or running like hell. And so that is the case with the leadership of the regime inside Iraq.

KWAME HOLMAN: There also have been reports some Iraqis have fled west to the Syrian border. U.S. Special Operations forces have set up road blocks along main roads there. At CENTCOM headquarters in Qatar this morning, Brigadier Gen. Vincent Brooks was asked what has caused intense fighting there.

BRIG. GEN. VINCENT BROOKS: Al Qaim is an area that we know to be geographically located in such a way that it could potentially be used for the launching of surface-to- surface missiles that would range neighboring countries and threaten them. We know that it historically had been used for that purpose, and we also know that there is a capability to deliver weapons of mass destruction. It's also located on a very critical crossroad between Iraq and Syria. And given some of the reports of infiltration attempts or exfiltration attempts by regime leaders or by foreign fighters, that remains a concern to us also.

KWAME HOLMAN: U.S. Officials say they have intelligence reports that some Iraqi leaders in al- Qaim may be ready to surrender. Sixty miles west of Baghdad, in Ramadi, U.S. warplanes fired six satellite guided missiles at a building used by Iraqi intelligence. Saddam's half brother, Barzan Ibrahim al-Tikriti was thought to be inside. Al Tikriti headed Saddam's secret police. U.S. military officials have a new way to help identify the most wanted Iraqi leaders. They've issued soldiers in the field a stack of photos on playing cards.

BRIG. GEN. VINCENT BROOKS: The key list has 55 individuals who may be pursued, killed or captured, and the list does not exclude leaders who may have already been killed or captured. This list has been provided to coalition forces on the ground in several forms to ease identification when contact does occur. And this deck of cards is one example of what we provide to soldiers out... soldiers and marines out in the field with the faces of the individuals and what their role is.

REPORTER: Could I just ask you because I must. Saddam Hussein, is he the queen of hearts, the ace of spades or one of the jokers you referred to?

BRIG. GEN. VINCENT BROOKS: Well, I haven't sorted all the way through the deck, and I would play cards with you, but I'd probably lose. So, I'm not going to do that. He's in there somewhere, though, I can assure you.

KWAME HOLMAN: Meanwhile, in southern Iraq, there was more looting in Basra. But there also were signs of a return to normalcy in Iraq's second largest city as Muslims gathered for Friday prayers. As of today, the U.S. military reported 107 soldiers and marines killed in the war. More than 400 have been wounded. Ten are missing, and seven still are listed as prisoners of war. The official British death toll remained 31. There is no reliable count of Iraqi soldiers and civilians who've been killed or wounded, but it is believed to be in the thousands. Jim?

JIM LEHRER: Thanks, Kwame. Across the Middle East, a number of Islamic clerics appealed today for an end to the war during Friday prayers. In Iran, the supreme religious leader welcomed the fall of Saddam Hussein, but he also urged U.S. troops to go home. He said: "You toppled Saddam, now leave." In the Iranian capital, Iraqi exiles stormed and ransacked their own embassy. They protested both Saddam Hussein and the U.S. presence in Iraq. Officials of three main opponents of the war met today to discuss what comes next. The leaders of Russia, Germany and France gathered in St. Petersburg, Russia. They called again for the United Nations to lead the effort to rebuild Iraq. Russian Pres. Putin warned the U.S. And Britain would look like colonial powers, if they delay putting the U.N. in charge.

FOCUS - DAYS OF DISORDER

JIM LEHRER: Now, confronting the disorder in Iraq. That subject dominated the Pentagon briefing today by Sec. Rumsfeld and Joint Chiefs Chairman Gen. Myers. Here are more excerpts.

CHARLES ALDINGER, Reuters: Mr. Secretary, you spoke of the television pictures that went around the world earlier of Iraqis welcoming U.S. Forces with open arms. But now television pictures are showing looting and other signs of lawlessness. Are you, sir, concerned that what's being reported from the region as anarchy in Baghdad and other cities, might wash away the goodwill the United States has built? And are U.S. troops capable of or inclined to be police forces in Iraq?

DONALD RUMSFELD: Well, I think the way to think about that is that if you go from a repressive regime that has... it's a police state where people are murdered and imprisoned by the tens of thousands, and then you go to something other than that, a liberated Iraq, that you go through a transition period. And in every country, in my adult lifetime, that's had the wonderful opportunity to do that, to move from a repressed, dictatorial regime to something that's freer, we've seen in that transition period there is untidiness. And while no one condones looting, on the other hand, one can understand the pent-up feelings that may result from decades of repression, and people who have had members of their family killed by that regime, for them to be taking their feelings out on that regime. With respect to the second part of your question, we do feel an obligation to assist in providing security, and the coalition forces are doing that. They're patrolling in various cities. Where they see looting, they're stopping it, and they will be doing so. The second step, of course, is to not do that on a permanent basis, but rather to find Iraqis who can assist in providing police support in those cities, and various types of stabilizing and security assistance, and we're in the process of doing that.

GEN. RICHARD MYERS: Charlie, another point, I think, to make is that it's uneven throughout the country. In the south, where we've been forsome time, where the clerics have been speaking out against looting and for civil order, where some of the Iraqi citizens themselves are saying, "let's don't loot," and that sort of thing, that actually the situation is pretty good. In Umm Qasr, it's in good shape. In Basra, it's... looting has been going down over time as we track it. So as we go up from the south, it's getting better and better for obvious reasons.

REPORTER: Given how predictable the lack of law and order was, as you said, from past conflicts, was there part of Gen. Franks' plan to deal with it?

DONALD RUMSFELD: Of course.

REPORTER: Well, what is it?

DONALD RUMSFELD: This is fascinating. This is just fascinating. From the very beginning, we were convinced that we would succeed, and that means that that regime would end. And we were convinced that as we went from the end of that regime to something other than that regime, there would be a period of transition. And you cannot do everything instantaneously. It's never been done, everything instantaneously. We did, however, recognize that there was at least a chance of catastrophic success, if you will, to reverse the phrase, that you could, in a given place or places, had a victory that occurred well before reasonable people might have expected it, and that we needed to be ready for that. We needed to be ready with medicine, with food, with water, and we have been. And you say, "Well, what was it in the plan?" The plan is a complex set of conclusions or ideas that then have a whole series of alternative excursions that one can do depending on what happens. And they have been doing that as they've been going along, and they've been doing a darn good job.

BARA STARR, CNN: Gen. Brooks said this morning that the military... U.S. Military did not want to reconstruct the Iraqi police force in Baghdad because the feeling of the U.S. Military is that that Iraqi police force has been operating against the U.S. Military. He didn't feel that was a secure solution. So with some specificity, what type of Iraqi force can you bring to bear in Baghdad to have Iraqis help restore security? And what types of specific tasks are you now going to assign the U.S. Military to do to help restore the situation, which the people of Baghdad appear to be concerned about?

DONALD RUMSFELD: They're already going to hospitals that have been looting and stopping it. If you look carefully, you'll see images of people being arrested for looting, and they're walking out with those little white things on their wrists, and said "Don't do that." And they take them out of there and they tell them to go someplace else. And that's happening all over the place.

GEN. RICHARD MYERS: Here's the...

DONALD RUMSFELD: Our folks are operating, to the extent they can, in Baghdad, and creating a presence, and dissuading people from looting. And for suddenly the biggest problem in the world to be looting is really notable.

JIM LEHRER: Margaret Warner has more on the civil disorder story.

MARGARET WARNER: Who's responsible for restoring order in Iraq, and how should it be done? We get four views. James Dobbins held top state department and White House posts under four presidents. As the Bush administration's envoy to Afghanistan, he helped install the new post-Taliban government there. He's now director of the International Security and Defense Policy Center at RAND, a Washington think tank. Eugene Fidell is founder and president of the National Institute of Military Justice. He's a former Coast Guard lawyer. Retired Army Major-General Dave Meade commanded the tenth mountain division when it provided military backup for the 1993 change in government in Haiti. He went on to command all military forces there, including those sent by other countries. And retired army Colonel W. Patrick Lang, one of the NewsHour's regular wartime military analysts, is a former special forces officer and Middle East intelligence analyst.

Welcome, gentlemen. Let's start with the question that Sec. Rumsfeld laid on the table. Jim Dobbins, is he right? Has this been just way overplayed by the press?

JAMES DOBBINS: I think so. If we've still got the situation going a week from now, then we're in trouble. But for this situation to obtain 24 hours after you've liberated the country and while you still have pockets of fighting going on strikes me as rather normal and not something to worry about as long as it is brought under control.

MARGARET WARNER: Not something to worry about, Pat Lang?

COL. W. PATRICK LANG: Well, as the ambassador says, if it stops, that's great. Presumably they're going to stop carrying things out of the buildings when there are no more things to carry out and the emotional fires will burn down. But I think if it goes on very long, you have to do something about this because the society is coming unraveled in the process and that can't be allowed to go on forever. But I don't understand why they're so emotional about this in the responses to these rather probing questions to the press, after all, that's the press's job. You know they were going to win. I would think they would just shrug it off but they don't seem to do that.

MARGARET WARNER: How do you see it in terms of, Gen. Meade, in terms of the looting and disorder that we're seeing? Is it undercutting the military success there or has this been overplayed just because of it provides a great picture?

MAJ. GEN. DAVE MEADE: I don't think it is undercutting the success of the United States armed forces now. But I think the secretary of defense has made a good point and that his concerns are real, because if it is not a problem today, if it not compelling, it is going to be a problem at some time. We are going to see a continued deterioration at least to some degree, of whatever could be called society and civil order in Iraq before we see things get better, so the trick for the United States is the transition. At some point the United States Army and United States marines fighting forces are not going to be in country.

MARGARET WARNER: All right. Eugene Fidell, whose responsibility is it legally to restore order in Iraq?

EUGENE FIDELL: Legally, Margaret, that responsibility rests on the United States as the occupying power. Under The Hague regulations which date from 1907, the occupying power has the obligation to restore and ensure order as far as possible, being mindful of the existing laws of the country.

MARGARET WARNER: So, and what about the Geneva Convention? I've heard that mentioned. Does that also bring responsibility with it?

EUGENE FIDELL: Yes, the fourth Geneva Convention also has a number of provisions in it that relate to how an occupation should be shaped and the way the civilian population should be dealt with. But the immediate issues, I think, are issues relating to The Hague regulations.

MARGARET WARNER: Ambassador Dobbins, one, do you agree with it that, that it is the U.S. legal responsibility, and if so, does it begin right now? You know, the argument you're hearing from the CENTCOM briefers is our troops are over there still fighting a war. We can't spare troops for police function by and large. Does it begin now even while the war fighting is going on?

JAMES DOBBINS: Well, the responsibility begins, but how reasonable it is to think that you can fulfill it entirely immediately is a different question. So, yes, it is our responsibility, yes, we have to do something about it. Can we instantly and comprehensively solve it? No. Can we progressively solve it? Yes. If it is still like this a week from now, are we in big trouble? Yes.

MARGARET WARNER: So, Gen. Meade, which forces... if the U.S. has the obligation, which forces do it? Should it be the fighting troops that are there on the ground now, the military police? Who should actually do it?

MAJ. GEN. DAVE MEADE: Initially the fighting forces that are there on the ground now -- both of the marine corps and of the army and we are talking primarily about infantrymen and some military police. I think we'll probably end up putting lots of military police in there; at one point when we went to Haiti, we had eight companies when normally an infantry division only has one. Then the military police then will sort of show the way. And incrementally we can bring in police forces of other countries, for instance, that would be willing to accept that responsibility.

MARGARET WARNER: All right. But let's talk about the here and now and the U.S. military's role. Pat Lang, were you arguing on this program last night that fighting troops are not trained to do this. Make your case.

COL. W. PATRICK LANG: I think they're not well suited for this kind of role. As the general says, it is going to be necessary to use them in this role, and with close supervision and encouragement, the example of whatever MP's are available, they'll do the job without a doubt. I don't have any doubt about that at all. But in fact it would be much more desirable to have a large force of military police there. If they need to bring in more from the states, then they ought to do that; if they have to pull them out of the reserve establishment or someplace else, this is an urgent need; it's a big country. You know, it's not like Afghanistan or even Haiti, which were fairly small societies or very tribal. This is a highly integrated urban kind of setting, and you need a lot of people to establish a working police force.

MARGARET WARNER: How many people do you think would be needed? This is a country of twenty-three/twenty-four million people. What are you talking about?

MAJ. GEN. DAVE MEADE: Well, considering the size of the force that we have in there now.

MARGARET WARNER: Which is about 130,000, hard to put an exact figure.

MAJ. GEN. DAVE MEADE: We need five, six, seven thousand police officers in there right away. They can come from, as I say, from a broad number of different sources. But the people who own the ground and the territory right now are the fighting forces. They're the ones that know what is going on in Baghdad and in the other cities and on the main supply routes back down to the south. They're experienced at all that. So we have to have an incremental orderly changeover to whatever becomes the more lasting constabulary.

MARGARET WARNER: You're nodding your head.

JAMES DOBBINS: Well, I was responding to the comment that we ought to be looking for some international civilian police to complement what our forces can do. We put 1,000 international civilian police into Haiti. We put 5,000 in Kosovo. And Kosovo is only a society of less than two million people -- so 12 times smaller. So, you know, an analogy would be 50,000 of them in Iraq. That is one area where we may have been a little slow to recruit and at least begin to flow international civilian police in - in the next few weeks. And there has been talk that yes we are thinking about this, or, yes, we're positively inclined to do that. Wolfowitz said that yesterday. But I don't think we have actually recruited any, nor have we, in fact, recruited any Americans for the task.

MARGARET WARNER: Let me just get Gene Fidell back in here even though he's not at the table.

Mr. Fidell, what about the rules of engagement? This morning at the CENTCOM briefing, Gen. Brooks said that troops have been instructed that they're not to shoot looters, for instance. How do you-- first of all, what is our sort of legal obligations on that score? Do they shift between being in your fighting force mode versus the very same troops that may be in Baghdad but are also doing this semi-policing role?

EUGENE FIDELL: Right. What happens is that you sort of move through the looking glass when you shift from fighting the armed forces on the other side to a more law enforcement function and you obviously have to have a different mindset when you're making that transition. It is a very difficult transition and it is being done in real-time. So I think that the notion that there may be some awkwardness in making that transition is a very real concern. It is a transition that can be eased if the people who are going to be responsible for suppression of looting or prevention of looting are relatively fresh troops, let's say, who have not had to deal with the shooting war as such. I also think, Margaret, it is quite important to bear in mind the next stage of the process, which has to do with what you do with looters and that involves getting a law enforcement machinery, the court system, up and running, whether it's an Iraqi system subject to modifications or whether it's provost marshal courts, which would be part of a military court system created by the United States as the occupying power.

MARGARET WARNER: How do you see the rules of engagement issue?

MAJ. GEN. DAVE MEADE: The rules of engagement is going to be very tricky in this kind of but if you ever get to the point where those who are looters believe that there is nothing that really can happen to them, and that they can, in the most open and flagrant kind of a way, rob.

MARGARET WARNER: As we've seen.

MAJ. GEN. DAVE MEADE: As we've seen, then you have a problem that is just going to grow. I want to follow on to Jim quickly. The international police monitors that we had in Haiti were very high quality people, police officers and constables from all over the world. They did a wonderful job. They were led by Ray Kelly who is presently the commissioner of the police department in New York. That's the kind of outfit we had down there.

COL. W. PATRICK LANG: You know, this is actually a very different situation than that. I mean Haiti is an island and the other half of the island filled by the Dominican Republic that wasn't infiltrating fanatical fighters into Haiti to continue the struggle as some of the other countries are. We have people showing up in the country and they're probably not going away too soon. You are going to continue to have an ongoing combat situation in which combat forces are going to try to deal with that as well as try to remember that they're not supposed to shoot looters. I mean, it's going to be really tough, you know? I think people ought to think about the Iraqi police and get over the idea that the Ba'ath Party equals the Nazi Part. In fact, this was a situation in Iraq in which lots and lotsof people belonged to the Ba'ath Party because it was a mass movement. It was what the rulers of the country had and they're not some kind of strange three-headed being, you know

MARGARET WARNER: But aren't the Iraqi police - and I noticed that Gen. Myers said today in fact we're looking for the good Iraqi police - that wasn't his exact phrase - but what are the risks in that when it seems as a lot of the population did not care for anyone in that law enforcement structure?

JAMES DOBBINS: Well, we certainly will try to make use of the police. We'll try to conduct a purge of the leadership but keep enough people so that we can get somebody between us and the crowd, somebody between us and the criminals if at all possible. How successful it will be, I'm not sure. Remember, that's what we intended to do in Haiti, and then as our troops - I'm sure Dave will remember this - getting off the ships, you know, disembarking the Haitian police tried to control the crowd and began committing human rights violations right in front of our eyes and right in front of your eyes, international press. We sent seven more companies of the MP's down the next morning because we said, you know, a plan says we're going to use the Haitian police, we can't - they've apparently - I'm sure the plan said we use the police in Baghdad and now the commanders, according to this report, said, no we can't, so you know, you're going to have to adjust from day to day, but the plan certainly will call for maximizing use of existing police to the extent they're (a) reliable and (b) acceptable to the people, and we'll have to test those theses, and if they turn out to be false, we'll have to substitute for them.

EUGENE FIDELL: Margaret, if I can comment.

MARGARET WARNER: Yes, please do.

EUGENE FIDELL: There's an old - in the Gilbert and Sullivan literature there's a tune that goes the policeman's lot is not a happy one, and I think one of the things about performing police functions when there's such a paroxysm of public anger at the former regime is that you may make yourself extremely unpopular. One of the things we are trying to do obviously is not make this situation worse in terms of our own dealing with and building bridges with the Iraqi people so this is something that we have to be very mindful of and it may be that we are not going to find the necessary numbers of police officers within the Iraqi police departments now and we may have to look elsewhere in other Islamic countries for example.

COL. W. PATRICK LANG: Well, if popularity of the police is a criterion you are going to use, you are going to have a tough time because the whole region out there is characterized by autocratic regimes where the police are disliked, despised, and hated by everybody and the society who isn't on top. This is no different than that. If you ask the average Iraqi do you like the policemen out here on the street, he is going to say of course not. If you are going to use that as a criteria , you might as well start over again from the beginning.

MAJ. GEN. DAVE MEADE: And you can get that same answer in Brooklyn if you ask, by the way...

MARGARET WARNER: What about Jim Dobbins's point that the Iraqi police are used to certain methods that we would not consider?

MAJ. GEN. DAVE MEADE: I think that is exactly true and that has to be changed and some won't make the grade just like some didn't make the grade in Haiti but a lot of them are re-constructible, if that is a term that will work here, and can move on and can learn from good people such as these international policemonitors from all over the world that we had in Haiti.

EUGENE FIDELL: My concern, Margaret is that....

MARGARET WARNER: Go ahead -- very briefly.

EUGENE FIDELL: You can't expect people, police officers from Denmark or Holland, for example, to be the beginning, I think, of a police force within the new Iraq.

MARGARET WARNER: I'm sorry, gentlemen, we have to leave it there. Back again, thank you.

FOCUS - COMBAT INJURIES

JIM LEHRER: Next, the wounded. Pres. Bush visited two Washington-area military hospitals today, and he said: "Ours is an amazing country, where a young soldier can be wounded on the battlefield, and four days later be receiving the best health care possible." Our health correspondent Susan Dentzer talked with two U.S. marines who've had that experience.

SUSAN DENTZER: American troops injured in the war on Iraq have been treated at field hospitals, aboard the navy's hospital ship, the U.S.N.S. "Comfort," or at the U.S. Military's regional medical center at Landstuhl, in Germany. Marine First Lt. James Hutchins and Corporal Stephen Hammond have now come home to the United States. They're among a group of about 60 marines and navy personnel who've been treated for their injuries here at the National Naval Medical Center in Bethesda, Maryland.

CPL. STEPHEN HAMMOND, U.S. Marine Corps: The bullet, it went through here and exited here. It just went through the calf, the back of the calf muscle, a luckily it didn't hit any bone, it didn't hit any vitals, it didn't hit any tendons or ligaments.

1ST LT. JAMES HUTCHINSON, U.S. Marine Corps: I had approximately 18 small holes in my legs, what they counted. There were four major holes - two in my right leg here, as you can see, two in close proximity to my left leg.

SUSAN DENTZER: Hutchinson, who's 25, is a platoon commander with the marine's second combat engineer battalion out of Camp Lejeune, North Carolina. He was injured amid intense fighting in late March in the Iraqi town of Nasariyah.

1ST. LT. JAMES HUTCHINSON: All I remember there was a big loud explosion, a big loud bang, and I'm flying through the air. I hit the ground, did a couple somersaults, and I get up real quick and just start running.

SUSAN DENTZER: Hot shrapnel penetrated Hutchinson's hands and legs, and injured many in his unit as well as well. The unit's corpsman, the navy's equivalent of a combat medic, rushed to their aid.

1ST. LT. JAMES HUTCHINSON: I was bleeding quite a lot, and at that point I turned command of the platoon back to my gunner sergeant, who was hit in the back but was still going. I had to have somebody drag me because I was in and out of consciousness.

SUSAN DENTZER: Hutchinson spent two days at field hospitals in Iraq before being transferred to Germany, and then to Bethesda. After three surgeries, his prognosis is for a full recovery.

1ST. LT. JAMES HUTCHINSON: I'll have lots of scar tissue that will have to break up, but they say I'll be able to run again and do all that stuff, be active, which is great news for me because I'm a very active person.

SUSAN DENTZER: Corporal Hammond, who's 22, is with the second marine expeditionary brigade, also out of Camp Lejeune. On March 26, his unit was called on to attack Iraqi soldiers who'd hidden inside a Nasariyah hospital.

CPL. STEPHEN HAMMOND: We started storming the building and we stopped momentarily. So what I did is I turned around and I took a knee and faced outward to provide security, and that's when I took a bullet to the right leg. I just told the corpsman, "I've been hit, I've been hit," and he immediately came over and put some pressure on my leg, and then my platoon sergeant, staff sergeant, came over and picked me up and carried me out of there, out of the hostile.

SUSAN DENTZER: Hammond was moved to a battalion aid station, then to a field hospital, and on to Kuwait and Germany before being brought to Bethesda. Navy Admiral Donald Arthur, commander at National Naval Medical Center, explains the process.

ADM. DONALD ARTHUR, Commander, National Naval Medical Center: We want to keep patients moving from the battlefield back home. If someone is wounded there is going to be another one and another one. You don't want to have so many people on the battlefield being treated where we can't really give that state-of-the-art, tertiary medical care as we can back in the states or at Landstuhl. So we want to get the patients off the battlefield and get them o that definitive care.

SUSAN DENTZER: For Hammond, definitive care at Bethesda included a graft of skin taken from his thigh and transferred to cover the gaping wound on his calf. He's also expected to make a full recovery. But Admiral Arthur says others have needed more advanced care and have a longer road ahead of them.

ADM. DONALD ARTHUR: The battlefield injuries have ranged from simple gunshot wounds-- I say simple but no gunshot wound is really simple-- to major fragmentary explosive injuries where people have lost limbs or lost sight. It's been a broad spectrum. A couple of people have been in motor vehicle accidents, severe accidents -- one marine run over by an Abrams tank and survived.

SUSAN DENTZER: That marine, Cpl. Travis Eichelberger, suffered a crushed pelvis. After several days in intensive care at Bethesda, he's already up and walking without help.

ADM. DONALD ARTHUER: He'll go from room to room and motivate the other marines to get up, to get out of bed, to feel better about their injuries. And they see him and they think he's a superhero. They call him "Tank."

SUSAN DENTZER: Along with Hammond, Hutchinson and many of the wounded, Eichelberger was awarded the purple heart in a bedside ceremony. Lieutenant Commander Pam Patnode is a nurse and naval air reservist. She's one of about 550 reservists called up to Bethesda after 1,000 of the hospital's personnel were sent to care for troops aboard the hospital ship "Comfort." Patnode says she's been struck by the resiliency of the wounded.

LT. CMDR. PAM PATNODE, U.S. Naval Reservist: You'd think a couple of them, you'd see signs of trauma, because they have very traumatic injuries. They're just ready to go forward. This isn't going to get me down, I want to get up. "When can I get up?"

1ST LT. JAMES HUTCHINSON: You just live with the fact that you're here, you got hit, and basically all you can do is just pray that your marines are okay. Because when it all comes down to it, they're the guys that protect you, to your left and to your right. So, but I do wish I was out there still with them.

CPL. STEPHEN HAMMOND: I don't belong here. I'm a platoon commander. You get wounded, that stuff happens, but I just feel guilty leaving my marines to still be fighting over there while I get to sit in a nice cushy hospital and get nice food and get warm showers.

SUSAN DENTZER: And have shrapnel removed from your leg and get physical therapy.

CPL. STEPHEN HAMMOND: It's all relative, ma'am. It's all relative.

SUSAN DENZTER: Reporter: Hammond and Hutchinson hope to leave the hospital within several weeks, heading home to their families in Arizona and New Jersey.

FOCUS - SHIELDS & BROOKS

JIM LEHRER: Finally tonight, the observations of Shields and Brooks. Syndicated columnist Mark Shields and David Brooks of the Weekly Standard.

Mark, more images, this has been a week of images on this war, has it not?

MARK SHIELDS: It sure has, Jim. And the confusing images, I guess from Iraq and the sense of jubilation there, subdued jubilation here. I mean. It is just sort of A... I mean obviously relief that weapons weren't used, that there were... that the blood that people feared would be spilled wasn't spilled in the dimension that they feared, but it's been one of almost conflicting images of great joy and at the same time a reminder that the victory is defined by what happens afterwards and what replaces that regime and that despot of Saddam Hussein.

JIM LEHRER: David, what did you think when you saw the statue of Saddam Hussein go down in that square in Baghdad?

DAVID BROOKS: I didn't have...

JIM LEHRER: Were you conflicted?

DAVID BROOKS: I didn't feel conflicted. I had quiet jubilation. I bought some French champagne, and I thought it would be a long time before I bought a French product again. But, listen, for me, April 9 was the most emotional, publicly emotional day since Sept. 11 to see Americans involved in the liberation of a people, to see a tyranny destroyed; that doesn't happen every day, to see really what was a slow motion holocaust of two million people ended. You know, whatever else happened destroying a tyranny is not nothing. To me it was a great day. I don't let me kids watch TV on the weekdays, sorry about the show, but I made sure they watched that because I wanted them to remember. And the other thing is something else happened. Illusions began to fall; in the Arab world and also at home -- illusions that the al-Jazeera incitement style of media. People are going to think, what happened here? They didn't prepare us for this. What is al-Jazeera all about -- illusions about America's role in the world. The illusion that says every time America goes abroad it's colonialization again. I think we are beginning, and already beginning to see debate and that's all a result of April 9.

JIM LEHRER: What about Mark's point that there was elation? We saw it and it was memorable and none of us will forget seeing the elation of the Iraqis, but there was no other place in the world where there was that kind of elation over seeing the same thing, not even here in the United States in any kind of public way. I'm sure there was quiet elation as you say. How do you explain that?

DAVID BROOKS: Well, the world was opposed, in general. To me, one of the things we have to do, and there is debate in the Republican Party, should we freeze the French and Germans out? There will be a debate in Baghdad. They stormed the French and German consulates and viciously destroyed the places out of a sense of anger. I have contempt for a lot of the European opinion about this. But there are a lot of honest people in Europe and around the world who just didn't understand what we were there for. They really did think we were there for the oil, they really did think we were an imperial power. And to me one of the reasons why we and especially Republicans have to resist the temptation to freeze them out is that we've got to get them involved so they can see how America behaves up front, so they can be embedded with the way the reporters were embedded with the marines and the army and to see the idealism that genuinely does drive a lot of these people.

JIM LEHRER: Do you agree with David?

MARK SHIELDS: I didn't have the same emotional experience David had. I think the Republicans, the administration...

JIM LEHRER: Go back. When you saw the statue go down, you didn't....

MARK SHIELDS: I was pleased for...

JIM LEHRER: You weren't right on, isn't this great?

MARK SHIELDS: The people of Iraq, a sense of relief he was gone. I think the reason probably it has been so guarded in this country is that we still know the number of steps that must follow. I mean, and that the jury of the world and the jury of the region is very much out on the United States. David thinks we have clean hands and Halliburton has a contract to put out oil fires for two years, a no bid contract. That's an interesting thing -- a $400 million profit at least calculated into it. So there is suspicion. And the real the clincher, the catch-22 the administration and Republican Party are in, they think those who paid for the war, damn it, they paid for it, they ought to benefit from it. There is no point in sharing these benefits with somebody else. American companies ought to do the work and these people who weren't on our side weren't there when we needed them, they ought to be excluded and that is a real dominant, I would say a majority point of view on the part of many of the president's supporters in the Congress and outside.

JIM LEHRER: But you agree with David, that's not a good idea?

MARK SHIELDS: I think it is a terrible idea. I think it's an awful idea. I think Tony Blair put it right to the president this week. He said, we can't even have an interim government, you know, in Iraq. Jim, the question is going to be the process by which they're chosen and the product that emerges.

JIM LEHRER: They meaning the people who run the country.

MARK SHIELDS: In the interim basis and he said -- Blair made the point we need U.N. sanction processes before you even get to the selection of the leaders to have credibility both in the country and beyond.

JIM LEHRER: David, why is it that -- what is your explanation for why they're so resistant to this -- is it because, my gosh, they weren't there when we needed them in the U.N. Security Council, is so buzz off?

DAVID BROOKS: I spoke to friends all week in the White House, and the thing that is striking -- right now they're into problem solving. They have one problem after the other. There is this debate over should it be the U.N. that run things, the State Department, the Defense Department, NATO, run what -- there is nothing there to run. Ba'ath Party ran the country. The Ba'ath Party apparatus is destroyed. What they're thinking about is fundamental grassroots, how do we organize the food in this block, how do we organize the sewage system here. To me, all these big debates over who should run what, that's not what they're focused on necessarily. The big stories that are happening this week is not the big debates about Washington or about who should run things. The big stories are the city council meeting in Umm Qasr, the city council meeting in Basra, that these people are emerging to form that city council. And the question is who are these people? Are they legitimate representatives? Are they all Sunni and the Shiites get shut out again? To me, those are the tricky questions and that's all grass roots. It's not the big debates we are having here.

JIM LEHRER: The more we do report on this program about it and have discussions about it, the more complex it appears. I mean, how in the world are we going to sort through all....

DAVID BROOKS: I covered the end of the Soviet Union and the beginning of Russia. That was different obviously, but it was totalitarian and this is totalitarian. There is no easy road from here to there. There is just none because people don't have political habits. They don't have a sense of property. They have been living their lives without any sense of that this is property -- of rule of law that there is a legitimate rule of law and I should obey the law. That's all gone.

MARK SHIELDS: City council meetings, Jim, admirable and important, but when the hospitals in the city of Baghdad are closed because of looters, I mean, who is in charge? We're in charge. That's ours. We broke it. We pay for it. This is the antique shop...

DAVID BROOKS: We didn't break Iraq. Saddam Hussein broke Iraq.

MARK SHIELDS: We broke the regime. We broke the regime. And before the regime, while the regime was there, and you made the same point about the Soviet Union, David -- there isn't looting because of fear. There isn't looting because it's authoritarian and repressive. There isn't sectarian strife for the same reason. All of a sudden, you take that out-- and the sectarian strife that there is, I'm getting even with that SOB Sunni or Shiia or Kurd or whoever the hell else, or Turk or whatever. That is there and I think the test is going to be immediately there is no humanitarian aid until there's order; I mean order is indispensable and we don't want to be police.

JIM LEHRER: Pat Lang, retired Army Colonel Pat Lang said in the earlier segment with Margaret that he was surprised at the emotional defensiveness of Rumsfeld over this issue of looting and civil disorder. What did you make of that?

DAVID BROOKS: You could read it in Rumsfeld's eyes. I just had the greatest victory maybe in military history. How about a little patting on the back -- and the next day -- there was maybe one day of patting on the back -- the next day, what about the looting and welcome to the press corps. You know. But I would say what we are going to climb here is a wall of quagmires; the military quagmire, we got all upset for a few days about that; the looting quagmire, there's going to be political corruption quagmire. There's going to be a series of problems because I can tell you, again, from the Soviet experience it's just terrible all the way along. I mean, the Soviet Union, mortality rates -- I mean the average lifespan of the Russian man has dropped like ten years. These are serious problems you're facing.

JIM LEHRER: So Rumsfeld better get used to such attack he had today. Oh, my gosh.

MARK SHIELDS: Rumsfeld, you know, I mean this is a guy -- talk about self congratulatory. He said we just removed a dictator of the dimension of Stalin and Hitler. I mean, this was a despot, this was a tyrant but this was not Hitler; this was not Stalin. He was kind of crowing and a little chest thumping. To say you've just done this and this is over and wait a minute, in your wake you see this kind of chaos, he is going to get the question and if he is going to take the credit for the sunshine, he has going to have to answer the questions about the rain.

JIM LEHRER: A pure politics question, the political pundits have been saying since the fall of Baghdad, and they've had three days to say this now, that any Democratic presidential candidate who voted wrong or who was on the wrong side, in other words, any peace candidate is toast as a result of this. Do you agree? You're a pundit. Both of you guys are qualified.

DAVID BROOKS: I'm three days behind. I'm not sure. I really am not sure because it could go terribly in which case Sean Penn will be president.

JIM LEHRER: Let me write that down.

DAVID BROOKS: The problem the Democratic Party has is that 80 percent roughly approve the war, 17 percent disapprove of the war, and the core of the Democratic party is that 17 percent. You can't win elections with 17 percent. And the problem is not so much how things are going to look in 2004, who knows. The problem is there's a fundamental divide in the Democratic Party between the activists and the majority. 62 percent of registered Democrats support the war but when Edwards, Gephardt, Lieberman go out and speak, they're heckled by the core who oppose. And that's a divide over America's role in the world that is a fundamental divide in the party that somebody has got to solve.

JIM LEHRER: Mark.

MARK SHIELDS: Jim, I think that first of all this is not 1991. 1991 the argument that was used against, by Democrats opposing that war was that the body bags, the thousands of body bags that would come back. That didn't materialize in the war in 1991. And therefore could you say they were wrong. Democrats did win the presidency in 1992 over the president who had presided over that victory...

JIM LEHRER: To remind people, that was Bill Clinton defeated George Bush.

MARK SHIELDS: George Bush. That's right. This time, the criticism of the Democrats, the opposition was based upon what I considered to be two factors. The first was the diplomatic botching by the administration, which they faulted the fact, the isolation ended up acting unilaterally. And second it was the sense of what the implications would be, what the fallout would be both regionally and globally and internationally and what the consequences of our act would be? It would unleash terrorism and things of this sort. In both cases, I think those are open to criticism and we don't know the answer yet.

JIM LEHRER: They're not toast, not yet - too early. You two pundits say the other pundits are wrong.

DAVID BROOKS: We will be talking for the next two years about how untoast they are.

JIM LEHRER: And we're just going to leave it there.

JIM LEHRER: Again, the major war developments of this day, and to Kwame Holman.

FOCUS - THE WAR WITH IRAQ

KWAME HOLMAN: Iraq's third largest city, Mosul, fell without a fight today. Almost immediately the city was hit with a wave of looting. There was more looting in Baghdad but Defense Sec. Rumsfeld said reports of disorder were overstated and Pres. Bush said it was too soon to declare victory as the U.S. Military warned more fighting lay ahead.

Jim.

JIM LEHRER: Thanks again, Kwame.

JIM LEHRER: In the non-war news today, ten suspects in the bombing of the U.S.S. "Cole" escaped from a prison in Yemen. They had been jailed in the port city of Aden, where the bombing killed 17 U.S. sailors in October of 2000. The attack was blamed on al-Qaida. The escapees included the chief suspect in the plot. Police said they might be headed to al-Qaida strongholds in northern Yemen. The U.S. House and Senate narrowly adopted a budget today for 2004. It passed the House by five votes; in the Senate Vice Pres. Cheney had to break a 50-50 tie. The budget totaled nearly $2.3 trillion, and included tax cuts of up to $550 billion over the next ten years. But Senate Republican leaders promised the actual cut would not exceed $350 billion - about half of what the president wanted. It also projected record deficits, but did not include the cost of the war. Also today, the House approved an energy bill. Among other things, it would open the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge in Alaska to oil drilling. The Senate has already rejected that idea, but is still considering the overall bill. The House version also provides nearly $19 billion in tax breaks, mostly for the oil, gas, coal and nuclear industries. In economic news, the Labor Department reported that wholesale prices increased 1.5 percent in March, due mostly to higher energy costs. And on Wall Street, the Dow Jones industrial average lost nearly 18 points to close at 8203. The NASDAQ fell more than six points to close below 1359. For the week, the Dow lost nearly 1 percent - the NASDAQ fell more than 1.5 percent. The American Red Cross promised today to meet all federal rules on blood safety or pay major fines. It did so in a settlement with the Food and Drug Administration. The FDA had alleged the Red Cross accepted blood from unsuitable donors and mislabeled blood products going back 17 years. The Red Cross provides about 45 percent of the nation's blood supply.

JIM LEHRER: And once again, in silence, we close with our ongoing honor roll of American military personnel killed in Iraq. We present them as their deaths are made official, and photographs become e available.

JIM LEHRER: A reminder: Washington Week can be seen on most PBS stations later this evening. We'll be here for special NewsHour editions tomorrow and Sunday nights. Please check your local listings for the time in your area. And we'll see you online, and at our regular NewsHour time on Monday evening. For now, I'm Jim Lehrer. Thank you and good night.