The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer

JIM LEHRER: Good evening. I'm Jim Lehrer. On the NewsHour tonight: The news of this Friday; then on the eve of the third anniversary of the Iraq war, Andrew Kohut takes us through new polling numbers on declining public support; authors Michael Gordon and Bernard Trainor talk about their new book on the early war decisions; and David Brooks and Tom Oliphant offer their analysis and reaction; we close with a debate about the record and future of the Food and Drug Administration.

NEWS SUMMARY

JIM LEHRER: A federal judge accepted a compromise today in the sentencing trial of Zacarias Moussaoui. He admits plotting with al-Qaida, but denies any role in 9/11. Today, Judge Leonie Brinkema allowed the government to offer new witnesses on aviation security. She had barred others because they were coached. Prosecutors said the witnesses are crucial to seeking the death penalty. The trial resumes Monday in Alexandria, Virginia. This was day two for Operation: Swarmer in central Iraq. American and Iraqi troops swept through 100 square miles around Samarra, hunting for insurgents. One U.S. soldier was killed. U.S. officials released video that showed troops recovering stashes of weapons. They also took about 40 suspects into custody. In Baghdad, a top U.S. commander praised the Iraqi forces. Army Lieutenant General Peter Chiarelli said he sees progress from a year ago.

LT. GEN. PETER CHIARELLI: I come back to Iraq with what you all see every day, us turning more and more battle space, hard for me to even keep track of it on a daily basis over to the Iraqis where by this summer about 75 percent of Iraq will be in -- that battle space will be owned by Iraqi units.

JIM LEHRER: Around Baghdad today, at least 19 people were killed or wounded in various attacks. Most were Shiite pilgrims on their way south for a major religious holiday on Monday. The U.S. ambassador to Iraq confirmed efforts today to set up talks with Iran about Iraq. Zalmay Khalilzad said the talks should be held in Baghdad. And traveling in Australia, Secretary of State Rice said talks with Iran could be useful. Iran offered yesterday to open a dialogue with the United States, but only on Iraq. The U.S. Senate narrowly passed a budget last night, for the coming fiscal year. The spending plan totals $2.8 trillion. It's more than $16 billion over President Bush's spending caps on education, health and other programs. It also excludes the president's recommended tax cuts and his curbs on the growth of Medicare. The House has yet to write its version of the budget. On Wall Street today, the Dow Jones Industrial Average gained 26 points to close at 11,279. The NASDAQ rose nearly seven points to close at 2306. For the week, both the Dow and the NASDAQ gained nearly 2 percent. And that's it for the News Summary tonight. Now, three takes on three years of the war in Iraq-- American public opinion, Gordon and Trainor, and Brooks and Oliphant-- plus an FDA debate.

FOCUS NEW LOWS

JIM LEHRER: How do Americans view the war in Iraq now? That question is the basis of a new poll conducted by the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press. Andrew Kohut is the center's director. Andy, welcome. What did you find about general support for the war now?

ANDREW KOHUT: It's declining. There's less support for the war the public is more pessimism that we're going to achieve our goals; there are greater calls for getting you are people out. People look at the situation over the past few months and they say things aren't going well. In January 51 percent said things are going pretty well in Iraq, not a great rating but now it's 43 percent. Consequently, we have more people saying we have to get our troops out now, and more people saying what they hadn't been saying which is we may not succeed. We now have only 49 percent, I think we have a graphic.

JIM LEHRER: Let's put the graphic up here. Magic. There we go.

ANDREW KOHUT: Only 49 percent saying we're going to achieve our goals. It was as high as 60 percent a year ago. Even when we were struggling, people have been reluctant to think that Iraq would turn out like Vietnam, a failure for the United States. And still, with 49 percent there are many people who are hoping that we're going to succeed. But that hope is quickly turning sour.

JIM LEHRER: Now you asked them also if they felt that President Bush had a plan for achieving success. What did you find there?

ANDREW KOHUT: Well, we've been putting out a lot of negative numbers about President Bush but this is the most negative. 70 percent say the president does not have a clear plan to succeed in Iraq. And that's about as high as that's been.

JIM LEHRER: Can you break it down in terms of Republicans versus Democrats in a general way or specific, any way you would like to do it?

ANDREW KOHUT: Boy, that is the right question. Because what we have, we don't have one public opinion about the war in Iraq as we did back in Vietnam. We have two, if not three. 78 percent of Republicans think we made the right decision. 26 percent of Democrats think we made the right decision.

JIM LEHRER: You mean to go in there in the first place?

ANDREW KOHUT: In the first place.

JIM LEHRER: I see, okay.

ANDREW KOHUT: And all of the other indicators show this huge gap with Republicans saying -- 69 percent of Republicans saying the war is going well. 29 percent of Democrats saying the war is going well. They're looking at the same war. Not only do they have different judgments about the war, they see different realities. And Jim, when I looked at the polling from Vietnam, we saw the same erosion of support over time it happened -- it took a longer time to happen in the '60s but Republicans and Democrats, independents, all moved to the same conclusion. We don't have that situation. We should if we want to reflect the public opinion about Iraq we almost have to talk about the three publics, or at minimum the two publics, Republicans versus the rest -- because the independents are beginning to come the way of the Democrats.

JIM LEHRER: So in a nutshell, Iraq has become a partisan issue is what you are saying.

ANDREW KOHUT: It has been a partisan issue --.

JIM LEHRER: From the beginning?

ANDREW KOHUT: From the very beginning but what has happened is the independents are beginning to look at this much the way the Democrats have. And what really is taking the toll here is the Iraqi casualties. Increasing numbers of people --.

JIM LEHRER: U.S. casualties in Iraq.

ANDREW KOHUT: Iraqi casualties in Iraq, people see civil war.

JIM LEHRER: I'm sorry.

ANDREW KOHUT: 80 percent in the AP poll released this week say a civil war is likely. In our poll the percentage of people saying we're losing ground on preventing a civil war rose from 45 percent a month ago to 6 percent. The Americans are confronted with 50 people die here, 40 people die here. And it's not Americans, it's Iraqis against Iraqis.

JIM LEHRER: Now just for the record, how many people were polled in your poll?

ANDREW KOHUT: This is a survey of 1500 people and we did it last weekend.

JIM LEHRER: Last weekend.

ANDREW KOHUT: That's right.

JIM LEHRER: Okay. And they pretty well jibe with the other recent polls by other organizations?

ANDREW KOHUT: All of the polls pretty much show the same thing. If anything, our polls show a little more support, our questions are did we make the right decision or the wrong decision. Other polls say did we make a mistake and they get higher numbers but they all show the same trend, which is disillusionment. We said to people come up at the very first question, give us one word that comes to mind when you think of Iraq. And the word they most often said was a mess.

JIM LEHRER: Okay. Andrew Kohut, thank you very much.

JIM LEHRER: Now a new look at the critical decisions before and during the war. And Margaret Warner has that story.

MARGARET WARNER: On the eve of the Iraq war's third anniversary, a new book has been released chronicling the planning and execution of the war and the bloody occupation that followed. The book is "Cobra II: The Inside Story of the Invasion and Occupation of Iraq." It's based on three years of reporting by co-authors Michael Gordon, chief military correspondent for the New York Times, and retired Marine Corps Lieutenant General Bernard Trainor, a former Times military correspondent. And both gentlemen join us now. And welcome, thank you for being here.

This book is filled with all kinds of fascinating detail about the planning and execution and the occupation of the war. But I'd like to focus on those new things you discovered that bear on why we're in the predicament we are now.

And I would like to start with you, Michael Gordon. There is a quote very early, you write very early in the book, what I found the most stunning overall conclusion you came to and it was the following: "There were indications from the first days of the invasion,' you wrote, of the insurgency and guerrilla tactics to come, but they were ignored at the highest levels in Washington and at the central command.'

What were those indications and who failed to take them seriously?

MICHAEL GORDON: Right. I think in going back and studying the war in microscopic detail, which is what you do, interview all the participants, go through the documents, what basically happened is the forces as soon as they crossed the border, they were involved in rather fierce fights in towns like Nasiriyah, Samawah, An Najaf -- and they were fighting an irregular enemy, an enemy that used guerrilla-style tactics from Toyota pickup trucks, used RPGS -- not the republican guard or regular army. And it was very evident to the forces in the field that this was a different type of foe. In fact some of the intelligence officers said this is a kind of enemy that's not going to go away when Baghdad falls. But these lessons really weren't learned at the highest levels.

MARGARET WARNER: But they did send back word. They sent back intelligence reports and field reports, is that right?

MICHAEL GORDON: Well, that they were involved in the fights was no surprise to General Franks or Secretary Rumsfeld. The forces had to stop and pause for several days to deal with this enemy. They had to change their plan, which didn't go down too well at the highest levels. But there was a Marine intelligence officer in really the first major battle of the war in Nasiriyah who wrote an intelligence report. And he had experience in insurgency and counterinsurgency operations and he said this enemy is not being defeated. It's going to ground and we're bypassing this enemy and we're going to have to deal with it again and it could disrupt our postwar efforts. It was an early clue but there were many others that basically the war wasn't going to necessarily end when Baghdad fell.

MARGARET WARNER: Now, there was another fascinating nugget you all discovered which was where the Fedayeen came from, and, in fact, it had been created by Saddam Hussein to fight a very different enemy. Explain that and how it morphed into really the core of the early insurgency.

LT. GEN. BERNARD TRAINOR (Ret.): Well, you have to understand that Saddam Hussein's sole goal was the survival of the regime and survival of the regime meant keeping control of the Shia population in the South, which rose up against him at the end of the first Gulf War. And he had a great deal of difficulty putting it down. And so he decided that he would put together a parallel quasi military force to the regular army, called the Fedayeen, paramilitaries which he put under his son Uday. And these would be armed with AK-47s, RPGS, machine guns, no artillery or tanks. And they would be located throughout all of the rural and urban areas in the southern portion of Iraq to put down any sort of insurgency -- not because the Americans were coming, but just put down insurgency. The only external threat he saw was not from America but from Iran. So these were internal security forces. But they were armed. They were fanatical and then when we went in there, when the army and republican guard was not particularly difficult target, the Fedayeen picked up the slack.

MARGARET WARNER: Now the debate about troop levels is an old one. But you also have some new information on that score, which was that it wasn't just army -- army chief of staff, General Shinseki, who had said we're going to need a more robust force but that there were a lot of military commanders who in the planning phase were saying you're going to need more.

MICHAEL GORDON: The central point that General Shinseki made in congressional testimony in response to a question was that the force you need to control the country after the regime falls is larger than the force you need to destroy the regime. And what we have discovered in this book is this was by no means his unique assessment, number one. There was an army general, Steve Hawkins, who worked on planning issues for the land war command who the day before General Shinseki testified told him that his internal estimate was that you could need in excess of 300,000 forces to control the country.

Also, there was a Marine officer on the staff of the National Security Council who put together a study of the number of forces that have typically been required for postwar situations. And he looked at Bosnia, and he looked at a whole host of them. And he said based on past experience -- he took the Balkans, for example, as your model -- How many would we need in Iraq? And what he discovered is you need three hundred to four hundred thousand.

This study was briefed to Steve Hadley, the man who is now the national security advisor to the president, to Condi Rice. They saw this information. They just preferred to stick with their optimistic estimates.

MARGARET WARNER: And so as a military man, what is your conclusion based on your reporting of why Tommy Franks, the CENTCOM commander, and Secretary Rumsfeld ignored this advice and went with the smaller, leaner force? Was it all about his desire to transform the military?

LT. GEN. BERNARD TRAINOR (Ret.): Well, that was certainly part of it, certainly on Rumsfeld's part. But as Michael said, yeah, we did have enough forces to win the battle. But you know, they overlooked the fact that just fighting a battle is not what warfare is all about. Warfare goes beyond the end point of the battle, which is the post operation period. And that's where the shortage of forces were.

MARGARET WARNER: But you found that -- at least in this book you write about the fact that even after the Saddam statue falls but the looting has begun in earnest that at that point, even then Franks did not believe that there was a need for a bigger force.

LT. GEN. BERNARD TRAINOR (Ret.): No, the whole idea was that well, we really don't need forces for the postwar, post combat phase because the Iraqi police, Iraqi civil infrastructure, they will take over. External international forces will come in and we go home. That was the whole idea that we were sought to draw down our forces so that after a short period of time at the end of December, we would be down to just about 30,000 troops. So the whole thing --

MARGARET WARNER: And in fact he told his commanders to get ready.

LT. GEN. BERNARD TRAINOR (Ret.): Get ready to withdraw the forces, correct, yeah. So it was in and out very quickly. So you wouldn't need extra forces for the post combat phase.

MARGARET WARNER: Michael, you write about Tommy Franks that he, quote, never acknowledged the enemy he faced, nor did he comprehend the nature of the war he was directing. Now that's pretty tough. What do you mean by that? Explain that?

MICHAEL GORDON: Well, you know, I bear no animus towards General Franks and I think he did a number of good things. I think the idea of beginning the air war and the ground war simultaneously was an important innovation that allowed the U.S. to achieve tactical surprise and I think General Franks deserves credit for that. That said, when the Fedayeen raised their ugly head and the field commanders decided they had to stop and fight them for several days before resuming the march General Scott Wallace, the commander of the Fifth Corps, made some public comments to the media why this was necessary. As a consequence General Franks threatened to fire this commander. Instead of learning the lessons of the war and adapting, he wanted to shoot the messenger.

MARGARET WARNER: And did people in the room with him at the time tell you that he just didn't believe the postwar challenge was going to be great?

MICHAEL GORDON: Well, General Franks had overseen the operation in Afghanistan. And he thought he learned an important lesson from Afghanistan that you didn't need large forces to score a lightening victory. I think he learned the wrong lesson from Afghanistan. I think it is an entirely different strategic case. But he says in his own after-action interview which we've also accessed for this book that was done internally, that that was a big influence on him. Also, I think in General Franks's own personal history he has done many different things. He was in Korea. He was in Europe. He was never among the generals who did Balkan peacekeeping. He didn't have that in his background the way a Dave Petraeus does. And I think it was a gap.

MARGARET WARNER: And then of course ultimately, General Trainor, it's the civilian leadership that is really running the show, to what degree, in terms of the decision whether they were good or not wise in retrospect would you say that Secretary Rumsfeld and Vice President Cheney and President Bush were really involved, were hands-on?

LT. GEN. BERNARD TRAINOR (Ret.): A troika, three of them joined at the hip. They were the ones that ran the law. The president presiding, the vice president, kind of being the brains behind the organization and the man that carried the thing out would be Rumsfeld, the secretary of defense. Everybody else was kind of in and out of circle. Condi Rice, the national security advisor, Colin Powell cut out, even the so-called neocons, they were part of the great cause but those three were joined at the hip and they thought the same way and acted the same way.

MARGARET WARNER: And you obviously got a lot of military men to speak very candidly for you for this book. Why did not one of them speak out publicly at the time?

LT. GEN. BERNARD TRAINOR (Ret.): You have to understand the culture of the military. I mean, they will make their case, lay their case before the decision maker, the civil decision maker. And after they make their case, a decision is made against them, they will say aye, aye, salute and try to do the best they can. They could have pushed back harder, but they didn't.

MARGARET WARNER: General Bernard Trainor, Michael Gordon, thank you.

FOCUS BROOKS & OLIPHANT

JIM LEHRER: And to the analysis of Brooks and Oliphant: New York Times columnist David Brooks and columnist Tom Oliphant. Mark Shields is off tonight.

David, what do you make of what Trainor and Gordon have just said?

DAVID BROOKS: Well, the book is gripping reading, infuriating reading. You want to throttle Donald Rumsfeld and Tommy Franks, in particular, but a lot of other people including the president and vice president.

What you see is first of all how much they stifled debate. There were a series of officers who knew better, knew what was going on and as Gordon mentioned one of them they tried to fire.

A lot now regret they didn't say something in meetings because the atmosphere was so stifling of free debate. And the other thing you are furious about is that as the author said, March 24 comes along, they are hitting resistance in Nasiriyah, they -- it's time to adjust. They never adjusted. It is not only people in the military who knew they had to adjust. I looked back and looked at the punditry from columnists, everyone was saying this is a guerrilla war, it's no longer against the republican guard, we need more troops. The colonels who sat at this table sitting here --

JIM LEHRER: I remember that.

DAVID BROOKS: Colonel Lang, Colonel Gardiner I think Anderson was here.

JIM LEHRER: That's right. That's right.

DAVID BROOKS: I went back and read those transcripts. They were saying it. You don't have to be some super secret agent to know what was going on. It was in the papers, it was on TV. Everybody knew it, it seems, but Rumsfeld and Franks, because they had some preconception of the war they were going to fight and they didn't adjust to reality.

JIM LEHRER: Tom.

TOM OLIPHANT: In other words, this is confirming evidence as opposed to new evidence.

JIM LEHRER: You mean the book, what Gordon and Trainor have said.

TOM OLIPHANT: That's right. And the reason it's so important because there are going to be more books than this, as this -- these and other questions get examined more -- is that the feelings that Andy Kohut was talking about with regard to the war, people are going to be able to find more souls with information that are very likely to solidify these feelings rather than to question them.

David is absolutely right. Before, during and after the invasion, you can find the dots. Not connecting them, there is no question that David is right about the fault at the top levels of the administration, but frankly, what I find most interesting is how you can apply this analysis to our own conduct in the press. And there's no question in my mind that we got sucked along in this atmosphere and didn't really do the kind of questioning job we are supposed to do.

DAVID BROOKS: I don't think I -- you look at the columns that were being -- Michael Kelly was embedded with the Third ID; David Ignatius, the Washington Post. There were a whole bunch of columns in the U.S. and the British press, quite a lot, around the world in the Pakistani and Muslim press, all of them beginning to question. It wasn't -- we remember it and I remember it as rah, rah, we are doing great, aren't our boys great, but there was a whole series of people saying these resistance fighters are serious and we got to take care of this. We are driving right by the enemy.

One of the scenes in the book which lingers is of people at CENTCOM, at central command following the war in real time on computer screens and the U.S. troops were signified by blue icons. And as long as those blue icons were moving, they thought we're winning. But the blue icons were totally misleading.

JIM LEHRER: What, Tom, about the point, excuse me, about the point that General Trainor just made to Margaret that the military just saluted and did not, Shinseki, for instance, General Shinseki became kind of a folk hero. We pleaded, everybody in the press pleaded with General Shinseki to come and do an interview. And neither he nor any of the others in the military would ever speak out publicly.

TOM OLIPHANT: However, and there was a tip of the iceberg quality to some of this information, including the punditry that David is citing. The follow-up job that the press exists to do and that we did not do in this war involves, you hear the number 400,000 troops, for example, which General Shinseki did not say in an open session by the way it was in a closed session. But he actually used a number in closed session, I'm told. And it didn't come off the top of his head. It came as a result of almost formulas that are used in the military to calculate what you need after something like this.

JIM LEHRER: As they just went through --

TOM OLIPHANT: And that is just one example of an opportunity that we in the press had to develop a story from a tidbit, which after all is what we do in this business --

JIM LEHRER: Good point.

TOM OLIPHANT: -- and didn't do.

JIM LEHRER: What about Andy's figures, the public opinions. Does that surprise you what the public thinks about this war right now, David?

DAVID BROOKS: Not particularly. I think the mosque bombing was a shock to everybody because what it signified was that it's not an insurgency but the civil war. And that's the horror scenario. So it has been a gloomy period. I don't know anybody who doesn't feel that this has just been the gloomiest period of the war.

The first time I think a lot of people thought hey, we could lose this thing. We're still a majority or plurality think we are not going to lose it but where you had to consider the possibility, no matter what you thought about the war going in.

JIM LEHRER: What about Andy's point, Tom, that Republicans feel one way and Democrats feel another, it's almost a partisan issue?

TOM OLIPHANT: Yes. It's a very important point because it is so different from Vietnam. You know, you had that sense, at least on the right during Vietnam of win in four minutes or get out. In this case, you don't. But one thing that I think is important to keep in mind is that the number, percentage of Americans who are partisan, self-described is dropping. And to say --.

JIM LEHRER: Just in a general way

TOM OLIPHANT: That's right. To say that self-identified Republicans versus self-identified Democrats, at most that is only about two-thirds of the story. I think what is most significant in Andy's work is showing this steady, consistent drift of independent and moderate thinking toward the opposing point of view.

DAVID BROOKS: I disagree a little. I think most people who call themselves independent are really partisan; they are just lying. And I think partisanship, one of the things political science shows is that partisan shapes the reality you choose to see. People choose the reality that flatters their partisanship. For example, in the Reagan years unemployment went from 13 percent to 5 percent. If you asked Democrats at the end of that did unemployment go up or down under Reagan, 60 percent said it went up. Republicans said down. You choose the reality you want to see. And then the Clinton years when you had the reverse, this time it was the Republicans turned out to be more pessimism and wrong. People choose the reality that flatters them.

JIM LEHRER: What is the reason for the defection of people like William F. Buckley and other prominent conservatives who have said, hey, this war was a mistake, let's get out of there, words to that effect?

DAVID BROOKS: Well, I would say philosophically -- and this something happening in the Republican Party -- there are conservatives and then there are American conservatives, if I could put it that way. The conservatives traditionally have always believed, all conservatives, that you can't change countries dramatically. You don't want to try something dramatic because there are so many things it you don't know, there will be unintended consequences. There are very conservative reasons for not wanting to do this and I think Bill Buckley had that in him and a lot of us who supported this had these conservative warnings in the back of our heads and maybe didn't listen to them as much as we should have.

TOM OLIPHANT: What is fascinating me as I try to understand where I went wrong in supporting all of this before it happened, Buckley doesn't work for me because I think he's an iconic figure who is so obviously independent and his own person. He's not much of a harbinger now. But some neoconservatives, for example, Francis Fukuyama, who more of us should have listened to in recent months, indicates that opinion is not monolithic within the neoconservative orbit.

But I'm also interested to see a backlash developing on the right among people who used to be called realists in foreign policy thinking -- Henry Kissinger, Brent Scowcroft, people like that, who are beginning to be somewhat appalled at what they see in terms of the U.S. role in the world, our reach vastly exceeding our grasp in terms of changing other societies and countries.

JIM LEHRER: Let me introduce another, speaking of Brzezinski said yesterday he is going to be on this program Monday night talking about this whole subject. But he said whatever anybody thinks about the Bush administration, the real failure here too is among the Democrats who have come up with no coherent alternative to the Iraq policy of the Bush administration. Guilty as charged?

DAVID BROOKS: I think for the liberals it is guilty as charged. I think for a lot of the centrists and who supported the war, I feel like adding that I still support the war. I still think it is going to work out. But I think they were furious at Rumsfeld and Bush -- over the past two years in particular, I think they have come to see that there has been in the last two years, there has been some adaptation and that the counterinsurgency tactics we are now using, the Zalmay Khalilzad tactics we're using on the political sphere, that stuff is actually working; whether it is too late is an open question. But I think over the past two years there has been a consensus about what we should do. And so I don't blame the moderate Democrats for not coming out against the war right now because right now what we are doing is working. The question is whether it is too late.

TOM OLIPHANT: There is something that has gone on, and I wish Dr. Brzezinski would take a little more cognizance of it in his analysis. There is a real set a date about a year from now' movement. It started from different directions, Russ Feingold in Wisconsin, Jack Murtha in Pennsylvania.

JIM LEHRER: He's the first one who really came out.

TOM OLIPHANT: But it picked up some speed. There is some evidence that the Bush administration is following a version of this. And while no one can legislate --.

JIM LEHRER: In other words -- excuse me, what you are saying that set a date' meaning Iraq, get your act together within a year, we're getting out of here one way or another, something like that?

TOM OLIPHANT: Exactly. And there is some indication that messages like that are being transmitted privately to the Iraqis by our government. So there is an increasing coalescence around an idea. And I think it has power. And I think it is basically American policy.

JIM LEHRER: Before we go quickly what do you think of the Feingold, speaking of you mentioned Feingold -- what do you think of the Feingold resolution to censor President Bush on the NSA surveillance?

DAVID BROOKS: I think the conventional thing that Republicans -- any time Democrats are in the news, Republicans feel good about it; when Republicans are in the news, they feel bad about it. So it was good for the Republicans and I think most Democrats acknowledge that.

TOM OLIPHANT: Yes, but a little polling data to end. For censure or against it: American Research Group last week, for, 48, against, 43; impeachment -- against 50, for 43. There is --.

JIM LEHRER: You mean this is a national poll.

TOM OLIPHANT: That's right. Eleven hundred cases last week. This, there are emotions out there in the country; Feingold did not make this up.

JIM LEHRER: Okay, thank you both very much.

JIM LEHRER: Still to come on the NewsHour tonight, the debate over the Food and Drug Administration.

FOCUS AGENCY UNDER FIRE

JIM LEHRER: Finally tonight, the troubles and future of the Food and Drug Administration. Ray Suarez has our story.

RAY SUAREZ: The FDA has been an agency under fire in recent months for its role in overseeing drug safety. This week, there was new scrutiny when President Bush nominated the FDA'S acting director, Andrew Von Eschenbach to become the agency's permanent chief. Von Eschenbach is also director of the National Cancer Institute and has said he will resign that post. But in the Senate, Von Eschenbach, the third commissioner appointed to the position by President Bush, faces a tough confirmation fight.

SPOKESPERSON: Take the first dose now. Take the second dose in 12 hours.

RAY SUAREZ: Front and center in the debate: The FDA's handling of emergency contraceptives, "morning-after" pills, known as "Plan-B." Some Democrats are pushing to allow what's now a prescription drug to be sold over-the- counter. On Wednesday, Senators Hillary Rodham Clinton of New York and Patty Murray of Washington announced they'd put a hold on the nomination until the FDA makes a decision on Plan B's status.

So far, the FDA has put off granting approval for Plan B, saying more research needs to be conducted. If confirmed, Von Eschenbach will take over an agency heavily criticized by patients and scientists for insufficient drug oversight. The most prominent case recently involved the painkiller Vioxx, pulled from the market by Merck in 2004, after studies linked it to an increase of heart attacks and strokes. Some patients and doctors said the FDA did not adequately monitor the drug's problems.

The FDA is known mostly for drug oversight, but the agency also regulates the safety of medical equipment, food, cosmetics, animal feed and other products. FDA-regulated products account for about 25 cents of every consumer dollar spent in the U.S.

RAY SUAREZ: For more on the state of the FDA and the challenges facing its next leader, I'm joined by two people who have worked with the agency. Dr. Alastair Wood is associate dean at Vanderbilt University's medical school and chairman of the FDA's advisory committee on over-the-counter drugs. And Peter Pitts is director of the Center for Medicines in the Public Interest, a group that receives funding from the pharmaceutical industry; he had served as the associate commissioner for external affairs at the FDA.

And Peter Pitts, Dr. Von Eschenbach has been acting commissioner since last fall, he replaced a man who had only served a few months after his Senate confirmation in the job. Is it important that an acting person be made permanent, that this agency have a leader?

PETER PITTS: Oh, it absolutely is. An acting commissioner is a caretaker and a confirmed commissioner can really energized agency with an agenda and get things going. This that is important in an agency that is really devoted to advancing the public health. We simply don't have the opportunity or the time to let the FDA do things slowly and waiting for somebody to take over. Now is the time for somebody that can really get the job done in a very aggressive and appropriate way.

RAY SUAREZ: Dr. Wood, do you agree with that?

DR. ALASTAIR WOOD: Yeah, I think it's more than that. A new leader cannot only energize an agency, but can restore morale and bring people in to do new things, and provide really important any directions for an agency which an acting director can't do. So I think it's very important that we get a new agency commissioner.

RAY SUAREZ: Well, Dr. Wood, what exactly does the FDA need? You've had in the recent past the approval of a cardiac defibrillator that had some problems, the much- publicized Vioxx incident. What exactly is the FDA looking for from its next leader?

DR. ALASTAIR WOOD: Well, I think the real crisis in drugs right now is that we need new drugs. And there has been a fairly dramatic fall in the number of new drugs submitted to the agency. It's becoming harder and harder to develop new drugs. And we need to get incentives in place that encourage the development of drugs that we need. We need drugs to prevent diseases that my generation are going to get as we age: Alzheimer's, osteoarthritis, things like that. These are things that we don't have a system for right now and we need to get one that encourages the development of these kind of preventive agents.

RAY SUAREZ: Peter Pitts, is that the problem, a pipeline that's not full enough?

PETER PITTS: I think is really part of problem and that's indicative of a bigger problem which is that the FDA doesn't really have the tools to regulate and put through the process 21st century personalized medicine drugs, and that is why the whole concept of the Critical Path Project, which the FDA announced yesterday to work with industry and academia to develop the new tools to regulate the new drugs of the 21st century, is so important. That's why it was so surprising that it got such little media coverage today.

A confirmed commissioner that is really empowered to move this agenda forward can use the bully pulpit to explain to people what this is all about, get it funded, and then get it done.

RAY SUAREZ: But Dr. Von Eschenbach has been in charge, Mr. Pitts, since September. How come none of these things could go on while he was acting head of the agency?

PETER PITTS: Well, things have happened since he was acting, Critical Path, for example, got a $6 million budget infusion which is a down payment on America's future. Some new drugs were approved. Some very significant regulatory actions were taken. That's not to say nothing has happened. What I'm saying, I think what Dr. Wood is saying as well is with a confirmed commissioner you can engender the career staff to move forward, to take tough decisions to get things done. Things are getting done now; things need to get done but more quickly and with more precision.

RAY SUAREZ: Is the FDA really being pulled in two different directions, Dr. Wood: On one side being encouraged to speed up the approval process for certain much desired drugs, while at the same time being asked and cautioned to go slow so that bad drugs don't hit the marketplace?

DR. ALASTAIR WOOD: Well, you know, that's often the somewhat simplistic way that this is presented. But you know, the way I see it is drugs are not like fine wines. Drugs don't get better because they are kept longer. And they certainly don't get better or safer just because they sit on somebody's desk for longer. So the issue is not delaying approval. The issue is making sure we have the right data, we have the right information, and we have the right drugs, and to get them approved. Our crisis is in getting new drugs. And that's what we need to incentivize.

By and large, drugs are remarkably safe. It's easy to forget that given all the politics around this issue. But by and large drugs are pretty safe. We need drugs to treat the diseases that people are faced with.

The second point I would make is, I don't think people fully understand how drug use has changed over the last few years. When I graduated from medical school we largely treated episodes of disease that were fairly short and fairly defined. Now, thank God, we've been successful in preventing disease with drugs. And that means that we're treating people for a lifetime and a lifetime that's longer because of these drugs but it changes the risk benefit thinking because I always know the person who had an adverse event for a drug being given to prevent disease; I can never identify the person who benefited from that drug. And that's something we need to educate the public and politicians about.

RAY SUAREZ: We've got a brief description of a new system for approving drugs from Peter Pitts; do you approve of that?

PETER PITTS: Well, I think there is a lot to that. The paradigm is changing from one where we are treating acute care to one where we are going to increasingly be dealing with chronic issues. And that's going to will save a lot of lives, make people more productive and, more importantly, it's going to save our health-care system trillions of dollars. And, again, that is why leadership is so important. The longer you put that off, the longer you put off moving in this direction.

RAY SUAREZ: And Mr. Pitts, the nomination of Dr. Von Eschenbach to become permanent head already has two announced holds on it. Do you expect that this is going to be a rough couple of weeks?

PETER PITTS: A rough couple of weeks absolutely. But I think if people are concerned about Plan B, then Plan A should be a confirmation of an FDA commissioner.

RAY SUAREZ: Well, the two senators in question, Senator Clinton and Senator Murray, thought that they had had just that arrangement with the previous confirmed head, Dr. Lester Crawford. But that didn't happen.

PETER PITTS: Well, I don't think that you can use a drug approval or a drug action as a barter chip when you approve an FDA commissioner. That's not fair. And it's not appropriate. What they really should be thinking about is what is best for the public health, you know, for the entire nation rather than playing politics with an individual decision. I think asking a commissioner or a secretary or a president to set a precedent wherein you can bargain with drug approvals is just the wrong thing to do.

RAY SUAREZ: But you are not saying that Dr. Von Eschenbach has the luxury of going slow on plan b one way or the other, do you?

PETER PITTS: Well, I think Dr. Von Eschenbach has the responsibility to do the right thing which is look at the science and make a decision.

RAY SUAREZ: And Dr. Wood, what do you make -- you were on the medical panel that approved Plan B for over-the-counter use. Where do you think that stands now, both in his likelihood of confirmation and as an issue facing the agency?

DR. ALASTAIR WOOD: Well, I can't estimate his likelihood of confirmation. But clearly the right thing for any commissioner to do is make sure that he acts on the signs. You know, the FDA is kind of like the referee in a match. And you expect the referee to act on what goes on, on the field, not on what goes on outside the field of play. Clearly it's important that the FDA acts on the science that they're presented with and acts appropriate on that. That is the only decision that the FDA should be making. And if Dr. Von Eschenbach wants to demonstrate his independence and his commitment to science, he will approve Plan B, rapidly.

RAY SUAREZ: Well, Dr. Wood, we've been talking mostly about drugs, and indeed that is what the public largely associates the FDA with. But as we mentioned earlier, they regulate a great many things. Is the agency funded, set up, staffed to also regulate animal feed, medical devices, all the food that is sold in United States, its transshipment and storage?

DR. ALASTAIR WOOD: The FDA needs more funding. That's probably a refrain that every agency will make. But the FDA clearly needs more funding. It needs more funding to conduct what's become a critical mission as you say in food, as well as in drugs and also in devices. And it needs more funding to make sure that it's able to retain the excellence staff that it has and to enhance their morale which is in a sorry state right now in many cases.

RAY SUAREZ: And Peter Pitts, quickly before we go, is the FDA asked to be -- asked to do too much?

PETER PITTS: It's not asked to do too much. It's asked to do too much with too little. Congressman and senators and media and pundits want it to do more but they are not ready to show FDA the money and now is the time to do that.

RAY SUAREZ: Gentlemen, thank you very much.

DR. ALASTAIR WOOD: Thank you.

PETER PITTS: Thank you.

RECAP

JIM LEHRER: Again, the major developments of the day: A federal judge allowed new aviation security witnesses in the sentencing trial of Zacarias Moussaoui. That allows the government to pursue the death penalty. And American and Iraqi troops swept through central Iraq on day two of Operation Swarmer. One U.S. soldier was killed.

JIM LEHRER: And, once again, to our honor roll of American service personnel killed in Iraq and Afghanistan. We add them as their deaths are made official and photographs become available. Here, in silence, are 12 more.

JIM LEHRER: Washington Week can be seen on most PBS stations later this evening. We'll see you online and again here Monday evening. Have a nice weekend. I'm Jim Lehrer. Thank you and good night.