The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer; September 4, 2006

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. . . . . . . . . . . . What Susie and I retire will be taking trips like this whenever we want. It's a good thing we've been planning. At Pacific Life, giving you the right tools to help you meet your financial goals is what we're all about. As you look to the future, look to Pacific Life. Pacific Life, the power to help you succeed, and by BP, the Archer Daniels Midland Company, CIT, the Atlantic Philanthropies, and with the generous and continuing financial support of these institutions and foundations. And this program was made possible by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, and by contributions to your PBS station from viewers like you. Thank you.

Al Qaeda in Iraq dismissed reports today its number two man was arrested this weekend. The Iraqi government announced the arrest on Sunday. It said Iraqi troops captured Hamid Jamal Farid al-Saidi, leaving his group in a serious leadership crisis. al-Saidi was said to be directly responsible for the bombing of a major Shiite shrine in Samara last February. But today an umbrella council of Sunni radicals played down the report. It insisted its leadership was in the best condition, and it went on to ask how many deputies have they caught in the past and how many lies have they come up with. The U.S. military today announced five more Americans killed in Iraq since the weekend. Another died of injuries unrelated to combat. Near Basra, two British soldiers were killed today by a roadside bomb. A third was badly wounded. And in Baghdad, up to 40 bodies of Iraqis were found dumped around the city, all showed signs of torture. Two American warplanes mistakenly strafed NATO forces today in southern Afghanistan.

One Canadian soldier was killed in the friendly fire incident in Kandahar Province. Five others were seriously wounded. Also today, a British soldier was killed in a suicide bombing in Kabul that followed a weekend air crash that killed 14 British troops. We have a report from Bill Neale of Independent Television News. Minutes after the suicide bombing, vehicles still on fire, the bodies of civilians scattered on the road. One British soldier dead and four Afghans. The troops were in a vehicle convoy when a suicide bomber rammed his car into them. Three other soldiers were hit by shrapnel. One again British was very seriously injured. The soldier's death means 22 British troops have now died in Afghanistan in a month. This war is becoming more deadly and more widespread. Not long ago, this city Kabul was regarded as safe. British troops could patrol here without fear and suicide attacks were non-existent. Not anymore. The suicide bombing here just a few hours ago and the death of a British soldier are further proof that the militants are extending their reach and intensifying their campaign.

The bodies of the Afghan dead were taken for burial. The name of the dead soldier has not yet been released. The soldiers are still dying in southern Afghanistan too in NATO's biggest battle so far with the Taliban. It was this battle that the RAF Nimrod spy plane and its 14 crew were supporting when their aircraft crashed, almost certainly same military officials and accident. The 27-year-old Nimrod was too high to be shot down, cruising at 25,000 feet when fire warning detectors went off. The likelyest cause and electrical fault and fire at the rear. Witnesses say flames were leaping from the back of the plane. The pilot took the plane down but the fire would almost certainly have damaged flight control cables. The plane lost its battle to land just 12 miles from Kandahar. In addition to British losses, four more Canadian soldiers were killed Sunday in a new offensive against the Taliban.

NATO reported killing at least 200 militants in the first two days of the raids. The government of Sudan issued an ultimatum to African Union peacekeeping forces today. They must leave Western Darfur when their mandate expires at month's end unless they accept Arab League and Sudanese funding. Later, the AU said again its mission will end on September 30. Sudan has rejected a UN plan to replace the African force with 20,000 UN troops and police. The conflict in Darfur has killed well over 200,000 people in the last three years. We'll have more on Sudan right after the news summary. UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan warned today against confronting Iran on its nuclear program. He visited there over the weekend but Iranian leaders refused again to stop enriching uranium. Today, Annan called for more talks. He said this is not the time for anyone to take independent decisions.

U.S. officials have talked of taking action outside the UN Security Council. If that body fails to impose sanctions on Iran, we'll have more from Margaret Warner in Iran later in the program. There were conflicting accounts today on a UN role in winning the release of two Israeli soldiers. They are captured by Hezbollah in July triggered a 34-day war. Today, UN Secretary-General Annan said the two sides accepted his offer to mediate, but the Israelis disputed that account. They said Annan would assist in trying to free the soldiers, but not mediate. The man known as the crocodile hunter, Steve Irwin, was killed today by a stingray in his native Australia. A colleague said the TV personality was filming, and swam too close to the ray, the animals stabbed him in the heart with its poisonous barb tail. Steve Irwin parlaid his enthusiasm for wildlife and conservation into worldwide celebrity. It began with a TV program in Australia in 1992 focusing on some of the world's most dangerous and endangered animals.

Irwin mixed science with show business with his trademark expression, Crikey. He was also known for pushing animals to their limits, thrilling his audience, and sometimes causing outcry. In 2004, he dangled his infant son above a crocodile. He claimed the baby was never in danger, but the incident drew sharp criticism from some of his fans. Today, Irwin was killed while filming a new documentary about the great barrier reef off the coast of Queensland in Northern Australia. His producer John Stainton paid tribute to his colleague. Today, the world has lost a great wildlife icon, a passionate conservationist, and one of the proudest dads on the planet. He died, but he loved doing best. Warner has also turned out at the Australia Zoo, founded by his family, and it zoos around the world to pay tribute. He's a quite Australian.

Like, you know, he's done a lot of good for the environment. He obviously cares. I'm very passionate about what he does. I think he was a very colorful character. He obviously loved animals. He educated a lot of people. And it's really sad that he's gone. Steve Irwin was 44 years old. That's it for the new summary tonight. Now, the worsening situation in Darfur, American Muslims, post-9-11. Margaret Warner is expelled from Iran, disposable workers, and a Labor Day essay. The conflict in the Darfur region of Sudan grows more deadly despite renewed international efforts to stop it. Violence and killings are on the upswing, though a cease-fire was signed in May between the central government and Darfur's largest rebel group. Sudan rejected a UN Security Council resolution last week, calling for a UN force. And today, the African Union bowed to a Sudanese demand and said its 7,000 troops would leave the country by the end of the month. Joining us is the U.S. Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs, Jen Dye Fraser.

She was in Sudan last week. Well, Assistant Secretary, the UN resolution envisioned an African contingent at the core of its force in Darfur. Now, the AU is going home, and the Sudanese won't let the UN in. What now? Well, we don't expect the AU to actually go home, the African Union. And it's not at all clear that the government of Sudan has formally asked the African Union to go home. I've had phone calls and discussions with the leadership of the African Union, and they've not gotten a formal request to leave. What the Foreign Minister is reported to have said, the Sudanese Foreign Minister is reported to have said that their mandate ends at the end of September, and they can then leave if they're not willing to accept assistance from the Arab League and the government of Sudan to stay. That is to stay independent of the United Nations. So, I think the diplomacy here is continuing.

The government, I believe, of Sudan is playing brinksmanship. They're trying to intimidate the African Union, but I don't think that they can stand up against the world community. But the AU shows no signs of being willing to accept Arab League and Sudanese funding for its maintenance of some sort of security force in Western Sudan. The Sudan isn't the Sudanese government giving them conditions that they know they'll reject and leave at the end of September? Well, I think the Sudanese government has given them unrealistic conditions because at the Brussels conference, donors' conference, to provide assistance to the African Union. None of the Arab countries, except for Qatar, pledged any funding. The African Union was able to raise $220 million of which the United States pledged $116 million. Qatar pledged $7.6 million, which was money it had already pledged in March. None of the other countries came forward. So, the African Union cannot accept conditions which are not realistic. What reasons does the Sudanese government give for its refusal to accept a UN force on its territory?

Well, they have many reasons, most of which are unrealistic. One is that somehow this represents recolonization of Sudan. Clearly, it's not the case. We are looking to have a UN force into Sudan to protect innocent lives, to protect civilian lives. An impartial force is necessary, and the world community through the passage of UN Security Council Resolution 1706 have affirmed that desire for an impartial force. The African Unionese government has sent a plan to Kofi Annan saying that they would put 10,500 troops into Darfur, and even in fact, start at that offensive. That cannot be considered an impartial force there to protect the people of Darfur. And so, they're claiming recolonization. They're claiming that it takes over the national institutions of Sudan. It does not. I went to Sudan to consult with them to understand better their rationale for not wanting a UN operation there. And to remind them that before the Darfur Peace Agreement was actually signed, they said that they would allow a UN force to come in to implement, to help implement the DPA, the Darfur Peace Agreement, to provide for humanitarian assistance, and to end any violence against civilian population.

But what did they tell you about their posture toward any effort to end the killing of civilians in the western part of their country? During my meetings, they came up with the solution that they would ask the African Union itself to stay, to beef up its presence, and to help them to solve the problems in Darfur, implement the Peace Agreement, and provide for security, and also provide for humanitarian access. That was their plan, that the government, along with the African Union, would work together to do this. The African Union, however, knows that it does not have the capacity to deal with the complex situation that's taking place in Darfur today, and the African Union called for the UN to transition it. And that was done as early as March of 2006, and the government of Sudan agreed to that.

They said after a Peace Agreement was signed that they would allow a UN operation. So they're changing the terms right in the middle. From the time that I was there last week until today, now they're saying they don't want the African Union there, or at least it's reported that that's what's being called for. Did you find your counterparts in Sudan willing to listen to what the United States government has to say, or did they play games with you, frankly? Well, I had constructive meetings with the government. Clearly, their official line was that they would not allow a UN transition. Again, as I said, they were looking for the African Union to strengthen its capacity, independent of the United Nations. They also welcomed the U.S. assistance in the form of humanitarian assistance and the assistance that we've been providing to the African Union force. They recognize that we are the largest donor, a country, helping the people of Sudan. But playing games in some sense, yes, and that I think that it continues to be delayed tactics on the government's part. Don't seem to recognize that the world community is not going to allow the conflict in Darfur to continue.

Didn't the Sudanese leader make you wait two days to see him because he was very busy? Well, that's inaccurate reporting, frankly. No, I arrived in Sudan on Saturday evening, and I had meetings all day Sunday with officials. It's their protocol to have the very last meeting of a visit be the president. I was scheduled to meet with President Bashir on Monday afternoon, and he kept called and said he couldn't meet on Monday afternoon, but would I be willing to wait until Tuesday morning? Obviously, this issue was so important that I was willing to wait a few more hours the following morning to meet with the president. Can a UN force, in the case of a humanitarian crisis, enter a country that does not welcome UN soldiers onto its territory? Well, Security Council Resolution 1706, which was just passed, calls for the consent. It invites the consent of the government of Sudan. It doesn't require the consent of the government of Sudan.

And clearly, there is a responsibility of the international community to protect in its civilians who are threatened with death. But we do not foresee the UN fighting its way into Darfur. We would want to do this in cooperation with the government of Sudan, and I continue to hold out some hope that the government will come to reason and will allow the UN to come in and let the multilateral community come in to assist it in implementing the DPA. Because with all this waiting for Sudanese acquiescence as Ambassador Bolton calls it, United States has already called this a genocide. Yet seems to put a lot of store in what the people it feels are complicit in the genocide want to do about it. It's putting a lot of power in the hands of the Sudanese over whether they're going to stop overseeing the killing of civilians or not. Sudan is a sovereign country. In fact, it has a divided government. The government of national unity has not agreed as a whole to oppose UN peacekeepers coming in.

The SPL and the Sudan people's liberation movement calls for peacekeepers coming in as does the Sudan liberation movement of many menawi. So not the entire government has called for opposition to the UN. So we are continuing to try to work diplomatically with the government as well as to get other countries China in particular to put pressure on the government to come to reason to recognize that the entire international community is speaking with one voice. Even a Chinese representative to the UN said we agree with the Security Council resolution. We would have delayed the timing of the vote, but we agree with the substance that there needs to be a UN operation in Darfur. And so I think everyone is speaking with one voice in this regard. Do you say China in particular? Can the combination of a China sympathetic to Sudan and a Sudanese government willing to dig in its heels slow down a resolution of this problem in such a way that while they're stalling many, many more people can die? Well, many, many more people are under threat of death and certainly with the government launching a new offensive, that's more the case than ever. So we need to continue to work with the Chinese government and others Russia as well to put pressure on the government of Sudan to allow the UN to transition come the end of the AU mandate, which is September 31st.

So what's the next steps now? What's the next steps for United States diplomacy for the permanent five on the Security Council? We seem to be at a kind of stasis here. We're not. The next steps are to continue on the route that we've been taking. The road that we've taken. We have to continue to put pressure on the government. We now have a Security Council resolution 1706 that allows the international community to protect innocent civilians. It invites the consent of the government of Sudan. It does not require the consent of the government of Sudan. And so at some point, if the government does not come to reason and the international community may have to take some hard decisions, but certainly we cannot allow innocent civilians to stay unprotected. And that's why the African Union forces there today. It's been there for the last two years. It's been doing a very credible, courageous job.

And for the government of Sudan to basically stand up to all of the African countries, the members of the AU, and say to them, we no longer need you here. And to say that this is an organization after all that President Beshear himself aspires to lead. How can he throw out that organization from his country? I don't think that presidents of African countries, Nigeria, South Africa, and others are going to allow President Beshear to hold their organization hostage to the demands to not allow the U.N. to come in. They, in fact, have called for the U.N. to come in. In their own Peace and Security Council communicate, it recognizes that the government of Sudan agreed to the U.N. coming in after a Darfur Peace Agreement was signed. Well, that agreement is there. We need to implement it, and we need to protect innocent lives. Assistant Secretary of State Jen Difraja, thanks for joining us. Thank you very much. Now, as the fifth anniversary of 9-11 approaches, we begin a series of reports on the impact the events of that day have had on the life in this country.

Tonight, NewsHour correspondent Spencer Michaels reports from San Francisco on the American Muslim community there. Nearly five years after 9-11, members of the growing American Muslim community continue to wrestle with their place in modern American society. For most of them, three to nine million, depending on whose counting life is not the same as it was before. Hi, Tom Basian, a Jordanian-born Palestinian who teaches about Islam at the University of California at Berkeley, has studied the American Muslim population, especially in the San Francisco Bay area. Since 9-11, I think the community is essentially under fields under siege. It's there in a constant state of what I consider to be virtual internment. In the sense that the community feels entrapped in its own mind, it's unable to fully be a full member of the American society.

I consider it to be that they're Americans on probation. They're guilty, that they have to prove themselves innocent. They're guilty of having the same religion as those who undertaken the attacks of 9-11. Basian says he sees the arrests of Muslims in England for allegedly planning to blow up transatlantic airliners as adding to the siege mentality of Muslims in America. Politicians and the media, he said, when we talked after the plot was revealed, unfairly paint all Muslims with the same brush. The Muslims are right now, are the boogie man that you need to be fearful of. If you look at the newspapers almost every day there is an image and a picture in a news item. I think on a slow day there's about 10 stories that is negative toward Muslims.

There is this construct that the Muslim American community, as a class, is deemed to be guilty and has to prove itself innocent. Basians' contention that American Muslims cannot speak their minds, especially if they oppose American foreign policy, was endorsed by others. I definitely feel like I should be a little bit more careful. At the Muslim Community Association mosque in Silicon Valley, California, one of the largest in the country, four members talked about their own experiences as Muslims professionally and personally post 9-11. Marwa El-Zancali is an attorney. There is this sort of your other with us against this mentality that's developed and there's no gray lines in between. And so if you're not totally with us and it's almost as though, well, what you're saying is you're really supporting the terrorists. When I talk to my mom, for instance, who lives in Jordan, I often wonder if that call is being recorded by someone. There is definitely a feeling that we are a little bit more on this scrutiny since September 11. Among Muslims, there is not complete unanimity.

I actually don't have the sense of virtual imprisonment because I still believe in the freedom of speech and I really don't feel that if I'm to express my opinion that I'll have any negative repercussions. There might be another type terrorist attack and I fear really fear the ramifications of that and what could possibly happen as a response from Americans as a whole. I hear rumors about internment camps being awarded his contracts to some companies and I think to myself and they call it in case of a immigration emergency. And I think to myself, you know, is that going, I'm an American, but my parents immigrated to this country and I'm a first-generation immigrant. Am I going to be rounded up in case of an attack, I have nothing to do with. The civil rights officer at the Department of Homeland Security told the news hour there are no such plans and such a roundup could not happen. At the Zaytuna Institute, the only training facility for Muslim spiritual leaders in the US, Imam Zaid Shakir is even more fearful. I know from various elements in the print media and that climate that's being created makes Muslims defensive.

Shakir says he is concerned this could be a very dangerous situation for Muslims. I hope it's not an appropriate place to talk about genocide, but every genocidal campaign has been preceded by a media campaign against the people who are eventually targeted. Maybe that in Rwanda, be that in Bosnia, be that here. Shakir, who was a southern Baptist from Georgia until he converted to Islam at age 20, has become a popular figure among American Muslims. He teaches and speaks regularly across the country. He admits he used to preach some anti-American rhetoric of his own, but he no longer talks like an extremist and he wasn't just fear that made him change his rhetoric. I think a lot of the change in terms of tone and direction is a simple factor of maturity. Our function of maturity, so I think there's been a maturation process that's been going on that started before September 11th and probably was catalyzed by those events.

The terrorism arrest in Britain once again put terrorism against America on the front burner. Here we go again. This is another 911. This is another 711 subway attacks that happened in London. So again it reinforces Islam's association unfortunately with violence and terrorism. The Israeli Hezbollah war in Lebanon, she added, brought up other negative and false images of Muslims. As far as the war in Lebanon it reinforces the stereotype that these people are willing to risk there's a billion population for a senseless, mindless war, which couldn't be further from the truth. That war had nothing to do with the religion of Islam, had everything to do with politics. If you took Islam out of the equation, I think the war would have happened between Hezbollah and the state of Israel.

All right, let's see our walk cycles. Yeah, go ahead. By, he's now a mainstream American and a devout Muslim. There's kidnapping, there's rape and slaughtering and things like that. This is all not Islamic, has nothing to do with Islam. The Muslims and the Sunnis and the Shia fighting and killing each other blowing up mosques. These are acts of people who call themselves Muslims, but they're not following Islam. Some American mosques, Muslim fundamentalism or attacks on American foreign policy. Court documents in a civil case allege the Imam at El Sabil Mosque in San Francisco at one point called for a holy war against Israel and U.S. forces in Iraq and Afghanistan and branded Shiites agents of treason.

The Imam Safwad Morsi said the reports were incorrectly translated. Being in the spotlight has also forced Muslims to examine their own place, in American society, says Maha El Jinate. Because we were asked questions, where do your loyalties lie? Do they lie with America or with Osama bin Laden?

Which is a ridiculous question, but they were really excellent questions because, you know, those people that may not have identified as being American, that saw themselves as Muslims first. I think began to see themselves as Muslim Americans. So that question actually helped. Muslims articulate for themselves their American nests. After the British arrests, El Jinate said she thought American Muslims, even though stigmatized, may have it easier than Muslims in England. America has been very effective in integrating its populations, its diverse populations. Whereas it seems to me from what we're reading and what we're hearing that Britain hasn't been very effective in assimilating and integrating its diverse population. So, a British or Muslim who has second or third generation may still not be viewed as truly British by the United Kingdom.

For all the turmoil among American Muslims, most see one positive result, an opportunity to teach people about their traditions and religion. Before 9-11, few Islamic centers had outreach programs, but today almost all of them do, as American Muslims realize that their lives are not insulated from what others do in the name of Islam. Still, to come on the news hour tonight, Paul Solomon on disposable American workers and a Labor Day essay. But first, we talk with senior correspondent Margaret Warner, who's been ordered to leave Iran, where she's been reporting for the news hour. I spoke with her by phone just before she left Tehran.

Margaret, welcome. I know you were supposed to be reporting from Iran until the end of the week, but you're headed home now. What happened? Well, yesterday, late afternoon, I got a call from the, it's called the Ministry of Islamic Guidance, which sort of oversees all the foreign press and whoever come into Iran. And very nice woman said she had a call from the police saying that I and my crew had to leave my Tuesday at midnight. I asked why, and she said she didn't know, and that she checked with other people, but it seemed to be pretty firm. My surmises that it was connected to a possible interview that I was thinking of dealing with the parents of a young man who died in prison here in Tehran, Asian prison on July 30th. And he'd been in prison since the 1999 student demonstrations, often on. And the condition of the body, according to letters that his father had written his father, mother to the UN and so on, was pretty suggested that he'd certainly been tortured and abused. Well, until this communication, asking you to leave the country, had there been any attempt to interfere or influence who you were talking to and what you were talking to them about in Iran.

Not on the topic, but definitely on who. The way it works here is you have to register with an agency that's in turn licensed by this Ministry of Islamic Guidance, and you are assigned a translator. And basically, most reporters here think they're, you know, they're tracked pretty closely, and the translator whenever you talk to someone as far as he is obviously there. And then you have to make a request through them for anyone who's official. So, for instance, I'm here doing a nuclear story, but we couldn't possibly get any nuclear installation, any kind of even nuclear research lab or talk to any nuclear scientist. And you can't really go around them. Now, you certainly can make private appointments with people who aren't in government and all of us do that. But it's pretty tightly at least monitored. Better reporters who've been here several times today, the atmosphere is definitely more restrictive and more tense than it has been, say, in years past.

Do you think you were followed during last week when you were out and about and doing your work? Well, the joke is they don't need to follow you because you always have these cars or caps and, you know, they know exactly where you are. So, no, I never thought I saw someone telling me though there was an experience actually we were at a cemetery. And I was interviewing people there the next day in a completely different location, the same plain closed guy was hanging around. So, you know, you can draw your own conclusions. You mentioned that people find things tighter, the controls more strict than they had been before. What do Iranians say about that? Well, they say it's true also for Iranians. And the paradox is that the conservatives actually now have a complete grip on the government. The presidency and the parliament and the hands of hardliners, people here in Tehran, at least that we've spoken with, say there's definitely a difference. It's definitely more restrictive. They definitely feel they have to be more cautious than what they say. And there is still healthy debate here and there are opposition papers, but they think it's related perhaps to the tension over the nuclear controversy.

You know, and others think it's related to the regime's desire to be sure it remains in control. Why that's worse now is unclear. The nuclear controversy is certainly one of the issues that brought you to Iran in the first place. Could it be that any foreign reporter in the country is now simply a headache to the regime. Now that the deadline has passed, now that President Ahmadinejad has held his news conference and expressed Iran's intention to continue enriching uranium. I'm the only journalist. I'm my crew that I know has been expelled, but other journalists here have had difficulty, for instance, getting their visas extended, which they had thought they would be able to. So, little by little, the numbers are dwindling. And, you know, again, you're kind of left wondering because when you ask official them, they kind of shrug or say, oh, there's no problem. You know, so you don't really know why, but there are too many similar situations, at least with the visas, could be a complete coincidence.

Was much accomplished during coffee and nuns trip to Iran? Not apparently. What we're told is that President Ahmadinejad just gave no quarter, just basically repeated the position of the Iranian regime, which is they do want to talk about the nuclear program, but they're not going to agree to any preconditions. The United States and Europe has asked them to do a freezing enrichment. What was apparently striking to ammon was Ahmadinejad, almost in your face, attitude. He was not at a whole diplomatic, and he was sort of rash, a little bit cocky. He likes to joust with people, and he's very assertive and aggressive, but it was not a diplomatic conversation from what I understand. And certainly, there seems to be no apparent movement. There's a meeting in Europe tomorrow between Larry Johnny, the chief nuclear negotiator for Iran. And, however, Solana, the Foreign Minister of the EU in Europe, and it's anyone's guess what's going to happen there, but the betting among people in the know here is if Iran is going to indicate any flexibility in any desire to search for a workable compromise.

But it should come in that meeting. Margaret Warner joining us from Tehran shortly before her expulsion by the authorities there. Margaret, thanks a lot. Thanks, Ray. Tomorrow, we hope to have Margaret's report on Iran's confrontation with the West over its nuclear program. Now, a Labor Day look at workforce layoffs and their consequences. NewsHour economics correspondent Paul Solman has the story. Yes, that's become the conventional wisdom over the years, as millions of Americans have been forced from their jobs. But after covering layoffs for the past few decades, New York Times reporter Lew U.

There's one of several key myths. People have lives here. Where do we going to go? We recorded that late off worker back in 1996. And he's wanted several blasts from the past in this story. Among them, almost a decade later, machine is dead landry. We went to lunch and a job went to China. Is that literally where your job went? That's right, that's the 38 years in the same shop. I come out of service and went to work, we're all working. And last September, they told us that they decided to bite a product in China, so they haven't been here in the United States. So one myth of layoffs that they'd stop. In fact, they haven't even slowed down. The equilibrium we've settled into is the equilibrium of the knee jerk layoff, if you will. A second myth says Lew U.

You should tell. There's plenty of good jobs out there, folks. And all you have to do is be in the right skills. If you're in the wrong skills and you lose your job, we'll train you to be in the right skills. And it's turned out there just aren't enough good jobs at good pay for all the qualified people who want them in this country. That's another theme we've been hearing from going to decade. But the final myth was to you should tell the most disturbing. They didn't deciding whether and how to lay people off. The economics should be dictated by the costs and benefits to the company alone. If they can make a bajillion dollars, but I don't think it should be at the expense of a community. I put my blood. See it? It's right there. My blood, my machine is a painful blood. And they're going to stay here. That man was also laid off in 1996.

The year you should tell, Spear headed a major New York Times series about so-called corporate downsizing. When the series inspired us to discuss economic insecurity on the news hour, the CEO of Sundi, Al Dunlap, seemed to some outlandish, in defense of layoffs. I had a corporation where every person stood the chance of losing their job. So I got rid of 35% of the people. But 65% of the people have a more secure future than they've ever had. And we did this without a single labor interruption or a single grievance. We must have been doing something right. Or something wrong. Dunlap, already known as Chainsaw, Al, was later pursued by the SEC for fraud and settled by paying out millions and being banned from corporate America for life. Yet his book back then, Mean Business, became a best seller. Layoffs, a more and more acceptable way to boost a firm's stock price by making it leaner and meaner.

Now, in his new book, The Disposable American, Lu You Should Tell argues that this legitimizing of layoffs has come at a devastating cost to workers and American society as a whole. My book is not about unemployment. It's about the blow, the trauma that people suffer when they're told they don't have value. The evidence of that trauma comes not only from laid off workers, it turns out, but those in whom they've confided, like their psychotherapist. How many of you have had a patient or patients who have been laid off lost their jobs? And that's just virtually everybody here. How many of you have had patients who have been traumatized by that event? The disposable American was the trigger for this session at the annual meeting of the American Psychoanalytic Association, chaired by psychiatrist Ted Jacobs, on the psychic cost to those laid off.

Depression, severe anxiety, panicky feelings, crises of self-esteem, and regressive behavior are not at all uncommon. Now, a cynic might argue that these shrinks for themselves in a shrinking profession, so they're projecting their own anxieties onto their patients. But their case history suggested otherwise. People scarred by an economy that now treats layoffs as a getover at the fact of life. I cannot underscore the kind of reverberation this had in his life, in his family. Mark Smaller is talking about a friend, also a therapist, who was counseling laid off workers when he himself was laid off. He got a better job right away. But a year ago, he called me and said this weird thing had happened that his boss of the company had called him on a Friday and said, there's something I need to speak with you about, but it can wait and I'll talk with you on Monday. And the entire weekend, he was anxious and couldn't sleep because it had stirred up the whole trauma all over again.

The news is that research now quantifies such dramas for white and blue collar workers alike. The average layoff it turns out takes years off your life. The thanks are that people who become unemployed have a 20% higher mortality rate than others from the same socioeconomic stratum who remain employed. Please forgive the odd image and sound. But we interview British epidemiologist Michael Marma via the internet from London to avoid blowing a fortune on travel and perhaps risk being laid off ourselves. He's found a higher death rate from layoffs. Worse health, just worrying about them. What we've shown is that in the anticipation of layoffs, so people who are working under the cloud and job insecurity have worse health while they're feeling insecure at work. Marma's data is backed up by this new Yale study, which found that people laid off after age 50 were twice as likely to suffer a heart attack or stroke in the decade following as those still working, holding all other risk factors constant.

And what's driving it? Lack of control over one's life says Marma, which actually raises stress hormones. And lack of control has profound physiological effects. Lack of control. That's really what it comes down to. Jim first goes father was laid off from his manufacturing job. I really destroyed him, I really did destroy him. He died of heart disease. At what age? He was 57. And you attribute that to his job woes? Yeah. But I just make him increasing his stress level. And Fusco himself, a computer consultant, has been laid off twice from AT&T and IBM.

The laid off are often pariahs, he says. I mean, they're treated in a certain way like their lepers, you know, like they have some kind of disease, like to associate with them, is to maybe perhaps bring that same bedlock on yourself. So, layoffs can be hellish even lethal. But given that global competition has made this a different world, is there anything you can really do about layoffs? There's no question that there are differences now, and that some companies can't employ the number of people that they do. But in most cases, the damage from the layoff is such that you should think twice about getting rid of workers. To force a second thought then, you should tell would have the government require companies to report all layoffs. So at least the public would know the true number. He'd also increased government investment to provide good jobs, promote policies to strengthen the labor movement. This is where critics draw the line.

Martin Bailey sitting on the left, one of President Clinton's chief economists. And William Niscannon of the devoutly pro-market Cato Institute, both acknowledge that layoffs can be devastating. I think that we have to be very careful, however, about spending a case for national policy out of being sympathetic with a particular people who are affected by these conditions. In Europe, they have a labor market where you have a sort of fairly favored group of people who is employment, as well protected, and whose wages are well protected. The problem is that if it makes it difficult for their companies to restructure and compete in the global labor market. And it means all the people who are not part of this favored elite class of workers are without jobs. And those are the unemployed, those are the people that are rioting in the suburbs of Paris. So are we then doomed to be uncompetitive unless employers are willing to lay off ruthlessly? You're going to be a land shark to do what they do. The entire attitude in the workplace is grovel or we'll throw you out the door because there's 20 others waiting to come in.

In the end, it's evidence like this, building up over the years, that led Lou Uchetel to name his book, The Disposable American. And I think we've organized our society now to emphasize this disposability. It's a disposability that he thinks cheapens us all. We closed tonight with some Labor Day thoughts from guest essay as Julia Keller of the Chicago Tribune. Labor Day is here again, the day originally set aside in 1882 to honor America's trade unions. The nature of work has changed drastically since that very first Labor Day, just as the next blacksmiths you come across. But the place work occupies in our lives has it changed at all. Labor is more than just what we do, it's who we are.

Most of us don't work on farms anymore as we did in the 19th century or in factories as we did in the 20th. An increasing number of us work in what's called the information economy. We sit amid quietly humming computers in air conditioned offices. On Labor Day, we ought to pause over the word itself, Labor. In these times, it sounds quaint, almost old fashioned. It sounds like muscles and grunts, like rolled up sleeves and paint spattered pants, like difficult, innovating, physical toil. Your basic 21st century city wants to be known for its sleek technological sophistication, for cool hip economies that don't raise a sweat or make a stink, for Wi-Fi, for hands-free. But here in Chicago, one of the slogans is, the city that works. It's a curious motto to carry around in the year 2006, but maybe it's in our geographical genes. This is a place after all that Illinois native Carl Sandberg raptureously called, the city of the big shoulders.

Hog Butcher for the world, he went on, two maker, stacker of wheat, stormy, husky, brawling. In the same 1914 poem, Sandberg celebrated a city fond of shoveling and wrecking and planning and building. Nothing hands-free about that. Those of us who don't get dirty in the course of a workday tend to carry an image of labor, real labor, as something requiring vigorous and sustained exertion. We admire the roofer, the mason, the mechanic, the carpenter, the coal miner, the electrician. People who create things, who mend things, who make things go, things you can touch, things you can use. My father was a college mathematics professor. His father worked in an ice cream factory, and I know they're lingered deep in my father's soul, a sense that his own work, teaching and writing, was not actually work at all. Not real work, that is.

Not the kind of work that leaves you spent, but satisfied, exhausted, but exhilarated. Not the kind of work that leaves you bent and bruised, but a glow. The way lots of us now make our living, perched in front of computers, feels a little bit like cheating. It doesn't offer the promise of gritty redemption that you can find in real labor. Playwright Arthur Miller was born in the east, but educated in the Midwest. This is where he started writing, and it shows. I'm tired of death, and I couldn't make it. In death of a salesman, he has somebody say of Willie Loman, he was a happy man with a batch of cement. Happy that is was something more real and smiles and likability. As the world changes, work changes. We can do so many things faster now, faster and smoother and smarter. And yet there's something lost too, when we no longer feel, at the end of the work week, that delicious ache of a body pressed to its very limit, a body that hums with the good, bad feeling of fatigue. Labor, real labor, tethers us to the world.

Through that kind of labor, we can actually see what we've made and what we're made of. I'm Julia Keller. Again, the major developments of this day. Al Qaeda in Iraq dismissed reports. It's number two man was captured over the weekend. The U.S. military announced four more Americans killed in combat in Iraq. American planes mistakenly strafed NATO forces in Afghanistan, killing one Canadian soldier and seriously wounding five. And UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan warned against confronting Iran on its nuclear program he called instead for more talks. And again, to our honor role of American service personnel killed in Iraq and Afghanistan, we add them as their deaths are made official and as photographs become available.

Here in silence are nine more. Thank you. We'll see you online.

And again here tomorrow evening, I'm Ray Suarez. Thanks for joining us. Good night. Major funding for the news hour with Jim Lara is provided by. The world's demand for energy will never stop, which is why a farmer is growing corn, and a farmer is growing soy, and why ADM is turning these crops into biofuels. The world's demand for energy will never stop, which is why ADM will never stop. We're only getting started. ADM, resourceful by nature. At CIT, we provide the financing to keep health care strong and healthy. We help energy companies find new resources. We work with communications companies to make the world smaller and life bigger. We offer financial aid to make college possible for more students.

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