The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer

RAY SUAREZ: Good evening, I'm Ray Suarez. Jim Lehrer is off. On the NewsHour tonight, the news of this day, then: A call for the troops to come home from Iraq; insurgents step up attacks in Afghanistan; a Washington reporter and the CIA leak case; and Anne Taylor Fleming on grieving.

NEWS SUMMARY

RAY SUAREZ: The political fight escalated today over how the U.S. got into Iraq, and how it might get out. An influential House Democrat demanded all U.S. troops withdraw within six months. Congressman John Murtha of Pennsylvania is a Vietnam War veteran who voted for the Iraq war. At a news conference today, he said keeping American troops in Iraq is not in anyone's best interest.

REP. JOHN MURTHA: It's time to bring them home. They've done everything they can do. The military has done everything they can do. This war has been so mishandled from the very start, not only was the intelligence bad; the way they disbanded the troops. There's all kinds of mistakes have been made. They don't deserve to continue to suffer. They're the targets. They have become the enemy. 80 percent of the Iraqis want us out of there. The public wants us out of there.

RAY SUAREZ: Murtha is a close advisor to House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi. She called his statement "courageous" but she did not directly endorse it. But the chairman of the House Armed Services Committee sharply disagreed. Republican Duncan Hunter insisted the troops stay in Iraq until the job is completed.

REP. DUNCAN HUNTER: I think that the worst thing that you can do for those soldiers and Marines is to devalue this mission, and bring them home precipitously. We respect everybody's right to have a position. We just -- I -- I respect John Murtha. He's a friend of mine, and he's wrong.

RAY SUAREZ: We'll have more on this story, including interviews with Congressmen Murtha and Hunter, right after the News Summary.

The battle over the run-up to the war also heated up today. Vice President Cheney fired a new salvo in a Washington speech last night. He condemned Democrats who've attacked the president for his use of intelligence.

VICE PRESIDENT DICK CHENEY: The suggestion that's been made that the President of the United States or any member of this administration purposely misled the American people on prewar intelligence is one of the most dishonest and reprehensible charges of aired in this city. What we're hearing now is some politicians contradicting their own statements and making a play for political advantage in the middle of a war.

RAY SUAREZ: The Cheney remarks brought sharp retorts from Democrats. Sen. Edward Kennedy spoke today at a news conference in the capitol.

SEN. EDWARD KENNEDY: That is the same kind of distortion and misrepresentation that we had leading up to the war. Let me just repeat: Imminent threat, mushroom cloud, contacts with al-Qaida -- all of which were distortions, all of which were misrepresentations, all the words that were used by Dick Cheney and the president of the United States. Those were their words, not ourselves.

RAY SUAREZ: In the last week, President Bush has made his own attacks on critics of how the war began. He said today he agrees with the vice president's statement. Iraq's interior ministry charged today reports of torture at a Baghdad prison are exaggerated. U.S. troops found 173 inmates at the prison last weekend. Most were believed to be Sunni Arabs.

But today, a top Shiite official at the interior ministry insisted only a few were mistreated. He said those making the charges actually support the insurgents. The death toll in last week's hotel bombings in Jordan rose again today. The latest victim was the mother of the bride whose wedding was being celebrated at one of the hotels. She died of her wounds. Al-Qaida in Iraq has claimed responsibility for the three suicide bombings.

President Bush turned aside North Korea's demands for a nuclear reactor today, as he continued his Asian trip. He said the U.S. will not help build a reactor there until North Korea ends its nuclear weapons program. He spoke after meeting with South Korea's president, ahead of an Asian summit.

PRESIDENT GEORGE W. BUSH: The issue really is the light water reactor. Our position is, is that we'll consider the light water reactor at the appropriate time. The appropriate time is after they have verifiably given up their nuclear weapons and/or programs.

RAY SUAREZ: The president is expected to discuss North Korea further, when he meets tomorrow with his Russian counterpart, Vladimir Putin. Russia is a partner in the six- party talks on North Korea's nuclear program.

A tentative agreement to extend the Patriot Act ran into opposition today. A bipartisan group of senators complained negotiators dropped limits on giving investigators access to private records. The agreement would make most provisions of the anti-terror law permanent. They allow for Internet surveillance and the sharing of information among anti-terror agencies. The deal could go to the House and Senate for final votes this week.

The House today rejected a bill to fund health, education and social programs. The vote was 224 to 209 as 22 Republicans joined all of the Democrats in voting "no." They opposed the first cut in education spending in a decade, plus reductions in health care programs. Republican leaders are still hunting votes for $51 billion dollars in cuts to reduce the deficit. The Senate today rejected a windfall profits tax on oil companies. Democrats wanted to add the measure to a $60 billion tax bill. The vote came as the price of crude oil hit a five-month low.

In New York, oil futures fell more than a $1.50 to settle at $56.34 a barrel. The nation's industries surged ahead last month as the economy rebounded from hurricane damage. The Federal Reserve reported today output at factories, mines and utilities was up 0.9 percent, the best since May of 2004. But the Labor Department announced another 19,000 jobs lost to the Gulf storms based on claims for jobless benefits. That makes a total of more than 560,000 jobs eliminated by the hurricanes.

On Wall Street, the Dow Jones Industrial Average gained 45 points to close at 10,720. The NASDAQ rose 32 points to close at 2,220. That's it for the News Summary tonight, now it's on to: Withdrawing the troops from Iraq; fighting insurgents in Afghanistan; reporting on leaks; and writing about grief.

FOCUS - CALL FOR WITHDRAWAL

RAY SUAREZ: The debate that keeps growing over the Iraq war and to Margaret Warner.

MARGARET WARNER: It's been a week of fierce argument over Iraq. Two days ago, the Senate debated and defeated a Democratic proposal to set a firm timetable for withdrawing U.S. troops. But it did vote 79-19 to make next year a period of -- quote -- significant transition of security back to the Iraqis.

Today, the argument took a dramatic turn in the House when Congressman John Murtha of Pennsylvania, the ranking Democrat on the Defense Appropriations Committee, a decorated Vietnam veteran who voted for the war, said it's time for the U.S. to leave. His remarks brought a swift rejoinder from leading defense Republicans. We join that debate now, first with Congressman John Murtha.

And, Congressman, welcome. Explain to us why you have now rejected the president's policy, which is the U.S. simply cannot leave Iraq until the Iraqis are ready to take on the security duties themselves.

REP. JOHN MURTHA: Well, Margaret, as I said in my comments in the news conference, this is a flawed policy wrapped in illusion. From the very start, they said the oil production would pay for any rehabilitation. It would only cost us a few billion dollars, that there would be a big coalition supporting us, and we'd get all kinds of money from everybody else. They expected to be able to do this with a lot less troops. They thought they'd have only forty or fifty thousand troops the first year.

Now I listened to, that I looked at the intelligence, and I thought, well, maybe they're right. And we gave them a club, hoping that he would be able to get an international coalition together.

MARGARET WARNER: Right.

REP. JOHN MURTHA: The intelligence was, obviously, wrong. I think everybody agrees to that. But the policy's been so flawed. They went in with inadequate number of troops to keep the thing under control in the transition to peace, and then after that, they disbanded the Iraqi army, which was the biggest single mistake that they made.

MARGARET WARNER: But Congressman, if I may interrupt, for instance, Sen. McCain, who is also critical of the way the war is being waged, is nonetheless saying the answer isn't to cut and run. The answer is to, if anything, send in more troops. I mean, what about the argument that it will just descend into civil war.

REP. JOHN MURTHA: Margaret, let me just tell you this: The time has come when 80 percent of the Iraqi people are saying that they want us out of there, that 45 percent of the Iraqi people say that the United States -- it's justified to kill Americans. So you have a country that wants us out of there, and we've become the enemy. We are the target.

When I went to Iraq two months ago, I talk to the commanders at Adefa, the Marine commander, and I saw some of the explosive devices that were used. Incidents have increased in Iraq from 150 a week in a year to 700 a week in the last week. So we're losing that type of activity. They won the military victory in Iraq. They toppled Saddam Hussein. They defeated the army, but the incidents -- the economic situation has gotten worse.

So when I look at the reports, when I go out to the hospitals every week, and I see these young Americans in the hospitals and I see them with legs off, I see them with arms off, and they are so self-sacrificing, they don't ask for anything for themselves. They don't complain about their injuries. And they shouldn't. They're disciplined. They understand how it works.

MARGARET WARNER: Let me ask you about those soldiers because the Republicans - there were a lot of Republican critics came out today to take aim at your proposal, and they said if the U.S. leaves now before the job is done, it will simply devalue the sacrifice that the more than 2,000 Americans who died made, and all of these many, many--

REP. JOHN MURTHA: Margaret, Margaret, the flawed policy is what's devaluated their service. They had inadequate forces when they went in, and then they disbanded the army.

These troops are disciplined. They can't speak for themselves. It's up to the Congress of the United States. Only the Congress can send our nation to war, and the Congress -- and I voted to go to war. When I looked at the intelligence, I believed the same way they believed.

But now I believe the opposite. I believe we've done everything we can do. I believe we have become the enemy. And I'll tell you this: The Iraqis are not going to do the fighting unless we turn it over to them. They're going to let us continue.

If we allow our measurement to get out of their up to the Iraqis, we'll never get out. It's going to be up to us to decide when we get out of there.

Now, when I say redeploy our troops, I'm talking about to Kuwait, if they allow us to redeploy there, to Okinawa where we can be over the horizon, go back in, in case there's more terrorist activity.

You have got to remember, Margaret, there was no terrorist activity in Iraq at all before we went in there. There's been an increase. The State Department said there's been an increase in terrorist activity in the last couple of years, before they stopped putting the report out.

MARGARET WARNER: Okay. But the president does say, as you know, that for whatever reason Iraq --

REP. JOHN MURTHA: But the president said a lot of things, and they turned out not to be true. The president said there are weapons of mass destruction. The president said oil would pay for it. The president cut taxes at a time when we're in a war.

MARGARET WARNER: So do you reject -

REP. JOHN MURTHA: Just because he says it doesn't make it so. The American people don't believe this president.

MARGARET WARNER: But may I ask you, sir, if you believe -- he says -- for whatever reason, Iraq has become the center of terrorism - that if the U.S. appears to retreat in the face of that, that it will be a blow to the American fight against radical Islamic terrorism? What do you say to that?

REP. JOHN MURTHA: Well, I say that the fight against Americans began with Abu Ghraib. It began with the invasion of Iraq. That's when terrorism started. It didn't start when there was criticism of this administration. This administration doesn't want to listen to any ideas.

This is an idea of how we can save lives, of how we can be on the periphery of Iraq and send troops back in, in case there is an increase in terrorism that we need to go back in.

The Iraqis have to control this themselves. They're proud people. They've got to realize this election -- and I'm saying this before the election because I believe the Iraqis have to -- when they elect somebody, they've got to unify that country, and we have got to ask for international help to work through the problem. I think terrorism would stop. I think it would be the opposite. We're the enemy. We're reason they're -- we're the ones they're attacking for heaven's sake. We're the only thing that could unify the Iraqis.

MARGARET WARNER: You said something today, and I'm going to quote you, you said, "The future of our military is at risk if the U.S. stays in Iraq much longer."

REP. JOHN MURTHA: Yes.

MARGARET WARNER: Explain in a nutshell what you meant by that.

REP. JOHN MURTHA: Yes. And this is really a problem. We have got $50 billion worth of ground equipment which needs to be rehabilitated, and I've told all the CEO's that's where they ought to be looking because we're not going to be able to buy "em anything.

We only bought four or five ships this year. They cut back $5 billion out of defense this year, and what I worry about, it takes 18 years to put a system in place, and we don't know what the threat is. Is China the threat down the road?

We don't want to -- there to be a misperception that we're not prepared to fight a war. We don't want somebody miscalculating like they did in Korea. George Washington said the best way to preserve peace is to have -- be prepared with your military, and that's what we have to be.

MARGARET WARNER: Let me ask you about something the vice president said last night, and the president has said it. And they are saying that it's irresponsible for Democrats like you, who saw the intelligence before the war, who voted for the war, to now be out criticizing the war and undercutting it. What do you say to that?

REP. JOHN MURTHA: Well, I say that it's time to return our troops -- I say to redeploy our troops out of Iraq. I say it's time to change direction in Iraq. The American people are way ahead of us. You know, Cheney, he is a good friend of mine. The president, they may believe what they're saying, but it's an illusion.

A year from now, if we stay in there, we're going to be - we'll have the same number of casualties, if not more; this thing is not going to get better.

MARGARET WARNER: Republicans who have worked with you on defense issues for decades were stunned by this, what did you today. Was it hard for you to come to this?

REP. JOHN MURTHA: Well, it's not a matter of being hard. It's what I decided. My conclusion was, that in measuring every element that I've seen, and a number of Republicans came to me and said they thought it was a very thoughtful statement. But the point is I came to this conclusion by measuring the casualties, by measuring the criteria for success which they sent over themselves, and then looking and seeing no progress at all, economically, or on the ground.

MARGARET WARNER: Finally, Congressman, do you think the fact that you as a defense hawk have now come to this position, do you think this represents a tipping point? Are you hearing from other Democrats who voted for the war that they're coming to this view themselves?

REP. JOHN MURTHA: I hope this is a watershed. I hope a lot of people think about what I've said and we can begin to withdraw our troops immediately from that area and put them on the horizon, or over the horizon, so if they have to they can go back in.

MARGARET WARNER: All right. Congressman John Murtha, thank you so much.

REP. JOHN MURTHA: Nice to be here, Margaret.

MARGARET WARNER: Now the Republican response; it comes from Congressman Duncan Hunter of California, also a Vietnam veteran and chairman of the House Armed Services Committee.

Congressman Hunter, you today said that Congressman Murtha was just plain wrong. What is wrong with the idea that the military has done as much as it can, and it's just time to leave?

REP. DUNCAN HUNTER: Well, Margaret, moving -- leaving in a precipitous manner -- that is, before we fully train up the Iraqi military and give them the ability to sustain their own security -- is a recipe for disaster.

And we saw that when we tried to move green Iraqi troops into the battle in Fallujah before they were trained and we noticed they didn't show up for formation the next day.

So we've walked through this series of milestones for the elections and the approval of the constitution and we're moving toward a permanent government. And we are standing up the Iraqi military. We are training them, and they're taking on larger responsibilities every day.

They're taking over areas like Najaf and Sadr City that heretofore were guarded only by Americans, and the decision to leave should be based solely on the judgment of the combatant commanders on the ground who say, "My Iraqi counterparts can now handle this particular area of the country on their own with minimum American support or with no American support." When they can do that, we should leave.

MARGARET WARNER: Okay, but Congressman as you know, even the generals say there are almost no battalions that are ready -- Iraqi battalions ready to do that, and Congressman Murtha says until the Iraqis know for sure we're getting out, there's very little incentive for them to actually assume the responsibilities themselves.

REP. DUNCAN HUNTER: Listen, I like John very much. He's a very fine guy, and we stand together on lots of issues.

But you always have that balancing that requires judgment. You don't want to do everything for the force that you're training up. You have to make sure that they get out and start taking on additional responsibilities.

On the other hand, you don't want to push them out too early as we did in Fallujah where they don't show up for formation the next day. So it's a balancing act.

But certainly there's no military leadership who agree that you could turn over the country tomorrow to the Iraqi forces and just simply leave and leave them in place and not expect them to have incredible problems, take enormous casualties and to have disastrous consequences.

And what we need is an Iraqi military that is capable of protecting this government. It doesn't have to be an Iraqi military that can handle an invading argument with seven armored divisions. It only has to be a military that's capable of stabilizing their own country and protecting this fragile democracy that we are growing. That's what they have to do.

MARGARET WARNER: Now, what about Congressman Murtha's point, though, which is he says the fact of the U.S. presence there is in fact fueling the insurgent, that 80 percent of the Iraqi people want us out, that we are -- well that our very presence, as I said, is an instigating factor in the level of violence, and that U.S. troops would be much better off being, what he says, over the horizon -- in Kuwait, somewhere where they can come in and help, but not right in the Iraqi people's face.

REP. DUNCAN HUNTER: Here's the problem, Margaret: To train up this force and to make sure that you've got a competent Iraqi force that does two things, that gets respect for commands that come down from the chain of command, and secondly, respects the civilian government, you have to train them. And you can't train them from 10,000 miles away. You have to be there up close and personal to train them.

And right now, the capability of our military, which is now -- which is now being used in this training phase, is being reflected in the new competence of the Iraqi military.

And this thing about only one battalion being totally self-standing is a little bit misleading, because you have a 200,000-person force trained and equipped to some degree, and you have lots and lots of them, many thousands of them, which are involved in combat operations every day.

So if you want a force equivalent to the United States force in quality, there's probably no -- in fact, there are no nations in the Middle East that have it. But if you have -- if you're look for a force that's competent to protect its government, we can do that. M

MARGARET WARNER: Okay, do you agree from where you sit as chairman of Armed Services, with Congressman Murtha's point, that the U.S. military is being really stretched way too thin now by this, in terms of equipment, weapons, manpower, personnel, and has been put in a position where it's not necessarily ready for the next threat?

REP. DUNCAN HUNTER: I disagree with that. In fact, the American military -- and I say this as a guy who has watched a number of conflicts and served in Vietnam and my son served, as you know, in the Marines in Fallujah, did two tours there -- the quality of our military is superb right now, and it's unprecedentedly effective.

So the idea that these folks are being stretched to the point where you're going to have a breakdown in the military I think underestimates the capability, the endurance, the staying power and the quality of our military. It's actually finer than it's ever been. We do have to replace a lot of equipment that's getting chewed up in the desert sand, and that's our responsibility in Congress.

MARGARET WARNER: One last quick question, Congressman Murtha said he hoped what he had to say today would be a watershed. Are you sensing with the polls heading south in terms of approval of the war that even among Republicans there's at least a growing desire for some kind of firmer timetable than we have right now for getting U.S. troops out?

REP. DUNCAN HUNTER: No, Margaret, the timetable has to come from one place, and that's from the judgment of the combatant commanders who say, "My counterpart unit in the Iraqi military can now handle this particular town or this particular area that heretofore American troops have been handling has got to come from judgment on the ground." And you know this is the second phase that always happens in a conflict.

The first phase, the attack phase, there's lots of flags waving, there's 90 percent approval; the Congress is cheering, giving standing ovations to our military leaders.

This is the middle phase where you're taking some casualties, you're making incremental gains, and the polls are going down because people don't like it see casualties on television.

This is a time when America has to stay steady. If we stay steady, and we're going to continue to tick off these milestones, including having a permanent government, we're going to be able to have an Iraqi -- an Iraq that may not be perfect but it's not going to be an enemy of the United States it's not going to be a springboard for terrorism. That will be a successful mission.

MARGARET WARNER: And, Congressman Duncan Hunter, we have to leave it there, thank you.

REP. DUNCAN HUNTER: Thank you, Margaret.

RAY SUAREZ: Still to come on the NewsHour tonight: Deadly days in Afghanistan; a reporter's beat in Washington; and Anne Taylor Fleming on author Joan Didion.

FOCUS - PERILOUS PLACE

RAY SUAREZ: While much attention here has focused on Iraq, there has been an upsurge of violence in Afghanistan the first overseas battlefield in the U.S. war on terror. We start with some background.

RAY SUAREZ: It's been more than four years since the U.S. and allied forces overthrew the Taliban government in Afghanistan. But so far, this year has turned out to be the deadliest for U.S. forces with nearly 90 American deaths. U.S. Military officials say that's because insurgents have shifted to deadlier tactics. Until two months ago, suicide bombings were relatively rare in Afghanistan.

Since then, at least nine such attacks have taken place, killing dozens. On Monday, suicide bombers targeted a NATO convoy in Kabul; nine people were killed, including a German peacekeeper. It was the first major attack on foreign troops in the capital in more than a year.

Yesterday in southern Afghanistan, another suicide bomber smashed a car loaded with explosives into a convoy, carrying westerners. Three civilians were killed. The Afghan defense minister told the Associated Press that terrorist attacks now resemble the violence in Iraq.

BDUL RAHIM WARDAK: There is no doubt that there is a connection between Taliban, al-Qaida, and some of the fundamentalist organizations in the region.

RAY SUAREZ: In September, it was widely reported the U.S. was considering major troop cuts in Afghanistan. Accounts in the New York Times and the Washington Post said the levels could be reduced up to 20 percent by next spring.

Defense Secretary Rumsfeld said U.S. combat forces will play a strong role in Afghanistan, even after NATO peacekeepers expand their mission. Afghan President Hamid Karzai has appealed for international troops to stay until the country develops its own institutions necessary for stability.

Stemming the insurgency is one of many challenges facing Afghanistan's new parliament. The results of parliamentary elections were announced last Saturday after eight weeks of delay. Officials estimate more than half of those elected have ties to warlords or are warlords themselves.

RAY SUAREZ: For more on the situation in Afghanistan we get two views. Ahmed Rashid is the author of two books on Afghanistan and Central Asia, and writes for the International Herald Tribune and the Daily Telegraph of London. Col. David Lamm was the chief of staff at the coalition headquarters in Afghanistan from July 2004 to June 2005; he's now a professor of strategy at the National War College.

Ahmed Rashid, how do you explain the sudden up-tick in violence against international forces in Afghanistan?

AHMED RASHID: Well, I think Iraq is part of the reason because there have not been sufficient troops. There hasn't been sufficient funding for the reconstruction of Afghanistan. There has been very little done in the rebuilding of infrastructure, and at the same time there's no doubt that al-Qaida, I think, has reorganized itself. It has got all these disparate groups - the Taliban, the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan, Chechen fighters, the fighters of Gulbuddin Hekmatyar -- there's much better coordination between them along the Pakistan/Afghanistan border. They are much better funded, they're much better armed. Larger groups are coming in. So there seems to have been a major kind of reorganization over the last twelve to eighteen months.

RAY SUAREZ: Colonel Lamm, do you agree with that analysis?

COL. DAVID LAMM: Well, I tend to disagree. I think that a great deal has been done on reconstruction in Afghanistan. And, secondly, we see, during these times of year, particularly now, an up tick in insurgent violence because of what is normally the traditional campaign season in Afghanistan, which begins in the spring and now with the snows in November, begins to -- begins to taper off.

So as far as the Afghans, their ability to work against the insurgency, they've been fairly successful. They're very resilient, and the thing to keep in mind with Afghans is, in the larger part of this operation, they know what failure looks like. They've lived under the Taliban, and I think that they'll work through this and take care of the problem.

RAY SUAREZ: But Ahmed Rashid suggests a reorganization of the very forces in Afghanistan that Americans went over there to fight. Doesn't the fact that American soldiers died at a faster rate this year than when they overthrew the government tell you that he might be right?

COL. DAVID LAMM: Well, I must say that if I were in the Taliban or Hekmatyar or another insurgent group, given what's happened in Afghanistan since the fall of the Taliban regime, I'd be reorganizing myself. In fact, I'd be foolish if I didn't reorganize.

We have to keep in mind that the Afghans have been able to play, say, a very moderate constitution. They've had a registration for presidential election. They've had a successful presidential election, a very successful inauguration. And every one of these steps along the way, the insurgents, the Taliban, and other groups associated with the Taliban and these groups have said that they are going to interrupt this process, this political process.

Quite frankly, they've been very, very unsuccessful at doing that. The up tick in U.S. casualties is in many ways because prior to the elections, the presidential elections in 2004 and the parliamentary elections, we have been actively campaigning in a very offensive manner to locate insurgents and to hunt them down and to bring them to justice, or if they decide to -- which this year, for several times, large groups have decided to fight, and essentially, they've died in compounds around Afghanistan to the last man.

RAY SUAREZ: Well, Ahmed, you heard the colonel's answer to your opening brief. There are a lot of signs of progress. The reconstruction team's doing their work -- political institutions starting to jell and take hold in the country.

AHMED RASHID: Absolutely. I mean, from where we started in 2001, of course, I mean, you know, you had a failed state, you had a state run virtually by al-Qaida. There has been a huge advance. You now have a political edifice, as it were, constitution, a legitimate president, and in a couple of weeks, you'll have a sitting parliament.

Now, what needs to be done is filling in, you know, all the big holes that are lying under this edifice, as it were. In the first instance, I think, you know, reconstruction needs to be speed up much more, especially the building of the infrastructure.

For example, I mean, there have been no major power stations built in Afghanistan. You have a huge industrial park in Kabul, built by the international community, lying vacant, and oversubscribed by foreign investors who want to come in but lying vacant because there's no power. So you need reconstruction.

There has been a very speedy buildup of the Afghan security forces. The army is now 25,000 strong. It's performed very well. It's probably performed much better than the Iraqi army has performed so far. But you still have to produce an army of 70,000 men, and this is going to take time.

So I think, you know, the problem here is that a lot needs to be speeded up. And at the same time, I mean, there is a race against time, a race against disillusionment coming in from the Afghan population, and at the same time a race to prevent the insurgents from gaining ground.

RAY SUAREZ: You heard disillusionment among the Afghan population. Does that create a Petri dish? Does that create a place to hide for these elements that you've talked about reconstituting themselves?

COL. DAVID LAMM: Well, first of all, we've recent polling data inside Afghanistan by outside agencies, and the U.N., indicate currently, 66 percent of the Afghans agree that their life now is better than it has been, and 78 percent agree that in the future, it will get better.

Now, as far as building power stations in Afghanistan, I mean, as Dr. Rashid knows, this is a country where less than 1 percent of the population ever had electrification. So we are working as fast as we can. The USAID, international agencies are in there.

There is no doubt, to reconstruct Afghanistan -- and we're not talking about reconstructing Afghanistan. This is the issue. We are talking about constructing Afghanistan because it is isn't as though the infrastructure was of there really in the first place, except for a few large urban areas.

So we're talking about a whole scale construction of the country of nearly 30 million people. It does go slow. And, in fact, just the capacity for Afghan and its government and Hamid Karzai and his government to absorb the construction has been difficult. But we are making good progress there.

And the big key is, it is an international coalition effort that I think in the long run will be very successful there. But it is the long run. We have to stick it out, andit will take ten to fifteen years.

RAY SUAREZ: Before the fall of the Taliban regime, some of the Taliban's closest allies were in the Pakistani security forces, and in the intelligence services. Are they still there? Are they still supporting what's left of the Taliban?

AHMED RASHID: Well, I think, you know, the Taliban are getting support from elements in Pakistan, not necessarily from the security forces, but what is happening, is that the government is turning a blind eye to those elements who are directly helping the Taliban. For example, some of the Islamic parties who are running the provincial government in Balujistan, which is adjacent to Southern Afghanistan, they are allowing the Taliban to recruit from the religious schools there, their training camps there. That is where the Taliban's logistics and weapons bases are, where they get their food supplies, et cetera.

There's a drug mafia, which is based both in Afghanistan and in Pakistan, who are also helping the Taliban because it suits them to have a kind of anarchic situation; they don't want peace and stability at all.

So there are, you know, many elements in Pakistan, and as we know, there are extremist groups who are opposed to President Musharraf, who are also helping the Taliban, who are directly fighting for the Taliban. Quite a few Pakistanis have been captured or have been killed by Afghan and American forces inside Afghanistan.

RAY SUAREZ: Is there any room for hope there in those southern frontiers? It's a tough place.

COL. DAVID LAMM: Sure, sure, it's always been a tough place. And the issue is, because the tribal affiliations, the Pashtun belt goes over the border, back and forth. So the border is really a - it's very porous and tribes live on both sides and it's the same tribes in the Pashtun belt.

The issue is that the Pakistanis have been very supportive of the overall global war on terror and have worked very closely with coalition forces in Afghanistan.

Last year, nearly 70,000 Pakistani troops worked along the Pakistan-Afghan border, and prior to the presidential elections. And in fact, the first vote in last year's election was a female voter in a Pakistani refugee camp.

RAY SUAREZ: Col. Lamm, Ahmed Rashid, good to talk to you both. Thank you.

FOCUS - WASHINGTON BEAT

RAY SUAREZ: And now Bob Woodward and new developments in the CIA leak case. Jeffrey Brown has our media unit report.

SPOKESMAN: I'm going to work to do --

RAY SUAREZ: Veteran investigative reporter Bob Woodward was en route to his Washington Post job yesterday as usual, except the stories on the front page of his paper the past two days weren't by him but rather about him.

The Post detailed how Woodward, an assistant managing editor, testified under oath Monday in the CIA leak case. He told a special prosecutor he'd been told about Valerie Plame Wilson and her position at the CIA by a senior administration official nearly a month before her identity was disclosed in 2003.

Woodward has not named his administration source, but did indicate it was not Lewis "Scooter" Libby, the former chief of staff to Vice President Cheney, and the only person to be indicted in this case so far.

In an interview in the Post yesterday, Woodward apologized to his executive editor, Leonard Downie, for failing to inform him of the leak for more than two years, even as the investigation of the various leaks to reporters became a huge national story.

"I explained in detail that I was trying to protect my sources," Woodward wrote. "That's job number one in a case like this. I hunkereddown a bit. I'm in the habit of keeping secrets. I didn't want anything out there that was going to get me subpoenaed."

Woodward is perhaps best known for his coverage of Watergate. He kept the identity of "Deep Throat" secret for 30 years until another publication revealed who he was.

Woodward has also penned best-selling books on politics and foreign affairs, relying on his close access to highly placed officials.

Editor Downie was asked on CNN if Woodward owes readers an apology.

LEONARD DOWNIE: No, Bob owed me and the newspaper an apology for not telling me. But if he had told me, I don't know what we would have been able to publish in the newspaper because of the confidentiality agreement under which this was stated and we still aren't able to publish details of it. We're eager to --

JEFFREY BROWN: However, just last month on Larry King Live Woodward denied that he had any secret information about the case.

BOB WOODWARD: I hear you have a bombshell. Would you let me in on it.

LARRY KING: Now the rumors are about you.

BOB WOODWARD: And I said, I'm sorry to disappoint you, but I don't.

JEFFREY BROWN: The Internet blogosphere has lit up with talk about Woodward, one calling him Mr. "Run Amok" mimicking the nickname given former New York Times reporter Judith Miller who just left her paper after a public feud over, among other things, her sourced reporting.

Tim Russert, one of the reporters called to testify, questioned on the Today Show this morning whether Woodward's actions could affect the case.

TIM RUSSERT: Absolutely, and give the Libby defense a chance to say a lot of people's memories were faulty. And maybe Libby's conversations with Tim Russert or with Matt Cooper or with Judith Miller, maybe those are all up in the air and there are two sides to these issues. The more confusion the Libby defense team can create regarding this case, the better off they think they'll be.

JEFFREY BROWN: One of Lewis Libby's lawyers questioned whether Woodward's testimony undermines the special prosecutor's case. Another of his lawyers, Ted Wells, had this to say:

TED WELLS: We urge all reporters who have relevant information to do like Mr. Woodward did today and come forward with the truth.

JEFFREY BROWN: Other lawyers widely quoted today say the underlying case against Lewis Libby is still well intact.

JEFFREY BROWN: The new revelations regarding Bob Woodward only add to questions that have long loomed in the CIA leak case, about the perhaps "too cozy" relationship between Washington journalists and government officials.

Joining me now to look at that are: Tom Rosenstiel, former congressional correspondent for NewsWeek and national correspondent for the Los Angeles Times; he's now director of the Project for Excellence in Journalism, a media think tank. And Leon Panetta, who served as chief of staff in the Clinton White House, and spent 16 years in the House of Representatives. He currently directs the Panetta Institute for Public Policy at California State University, Monterey Bay. And welcome to both of you.

Starting with you, Tom Rosenstiel, when we hear, when we learn that Bob Woodward has been told about Valerie Plame by a high official, that in itself is not surprising, correct?

TOM ROSENSTIEL: No, I mean, not every conversation between a reporter and an official is a formal, strict interview with a notebook out. There's exchange of information that flows both ways. And the job of the journalist is to decide what here is in the public interest, what here is news? And officials, as Leon Panetta will probably admit, try out rhetoric and messages on reporters to see how that will work. Reporters test information that they have that's fragmentary, information sort of flows back and forth, and stories form out of multiple conversations that form into ideas.

JEFFREY BROWN: And where does the danger lie in getting too close?

TOM ROSENSTIEL: Well, reporters need to create a feeling among officials that they are -- that their relationship is special, that the official can trust them, and you know, thinks that they're a person of integrity. But the reality is that the journalist owes his or her allegiance to the citizen, to the reader, to the audience.

In effect, the reporter should be acting as the public agent in the conversation with that official. To take the analogy a little bit further, we are spies on behalf of the public in those relationships, and if we lose sight of that, if we function as someone who cares more about that relationship with the official, or their access, if they are of in a situation where they're not acting on behalf of the public, then they are acting unprofessionally. They've crossed I line. And I should add that this is at the heart of what the public is concerned with.

JEFFREY BROWN: Mr. Panetta, well, how did it work for you? Did you, for example, have special relationships with a small group of journalists that you felt you could deal with, pass information to?

LEON PANETTA: Well, I think it's the case in every White House that the -- you know, the top aides to the president will try to establish relationships with reporters.

I mean, you hope that you have a good relationship with all of the press, but the reality is that in the White House, you've got a very confined situation in which most of the press is spoon-fed the news. They're given releases, they're given briefings. They really don't have that much access to people in the White House.

And so what you try to do is to develop relationships with certain reporters so that you can kind of give them the inside spin, the key message that you want to be able to transfer, hopefully to the public. So without question, you do establish those relationships. You try to maintain them.

The reporters want to have that access as well. It's a two-way street. But in the end, you hope that both sides operate by the rules, the first rules, which would -- which is essentially be honest with the public.

JEFFREY BROWN: But to put it bluntly, Mr. Panetta, and to help people who sort of watch this go on understand, can a good White House player get out his or her story to a handpicked journalist?

LEON PANETTA: Oh, without question. You know, every day there are supposed leaks that take place. A lot of those leaks are very deliberate by White House personnel. You essentially give the news to a reporter from New York Times or the Washington Post, or the Wall Street Journal or other media, and you hope by giving them a heads up on the leak, that you can basically get your spin on the news. That's done every day.

JEFFREY BROWN: Now, Mr. Rosenstiel, you said this public perception is at the heart of what we're seeing now. How? How is it what we're seeing in the CIA leak case, and what we're now seeing with Bob Woodward, related to these perceptions about the cozy relationship?

TOM ROSENSTIEL: There are really two decades now of research, public opinion survey work that shows that the growing distrust of the press boils down to two things: one, they feel that news companies do what they do for money, for economic reasons. And they think that individual journalists act out of their own self-interest and career aggrandizement; and the cozy relationship, or the perception of a cozy relationship, goes to the heart of this, and I think is part of why new generations of news consumers are going to alternative sources that they think are more in sync with them as an audience, whether it's bloggers, or news from the Daily Show or comedy programs, things that they feel they have a connection to.

If they see the journalist as part of the inside establishment as part of them, rather than part of us, that really is, you know, an element in the breakdown, not only of trust, but on the economic side in breakdown in audience. This is something the journalists need -- even if they think that some intimacy with sources is a necessary part of doing their job, it's something that they've got to realize is part of the economic breakdown of the news business.

JEFFREY BROWN: And in this case, you have Mr. Woodward having information and not telling anyone, even his own paper, for two years.

TOM ROSENSTIEL: Yes.

JEFFREY BROWN: Troubling?

TOM ROSENSTIEL: If we think this about that, that's really hard to imagine. This case is swirling in the news. You've got reporters going to jail, people testifying. It's a front-page story in its own newspaper, and he's sitting on this secret.

He's keeping a secret not only from the public but from his own bosses. It's got to be gnawing at him. It's not an oversight that he forgot to tell. It's a secret that he's harboring.

And when Bob says, "I'm in the business of keeping secrets," even that rhetoric is sort of troubling. He's in the business of learning things on behalf of the public, and presumably helping create public knowledge. Keeping secrets is maybe a necessary means for that, but if he sees that as more than just some trade craft but somehow part of his personality, I think that's troubling.

JEFFREY BROWN: Mr. Panetta, you were at the Clinton White House when Bob Woodward was writing a book about the Clinton presidency. How did that work? Were you troubled by what you could say, when you could say it how much could come out at any given time?

LEON PANETTA: Any time somebody is writing a book about the White House, you can be assured the president and the staff get very nervous, especially if it's a Woodward book.

I mean, to some extent they know that that book can help establish their legacy as an administration, so the real challenge here is do you cooperate with a Bob Woodward or do you try to shut him down?

Either way you know a book is going to come out. So generally, while there probably aren't very many ground rules established here, the effort is to try to cooperate to, try to put the best spin on what's taking place in the hope that ultimately, the book will be something that will show the administration in a good light. That's the whole effort within the White House.

I'm sure it's not necessarily Bob Woodward's intent, but to some extent, the two kind of -- that chemistry kind of works together to produce the final product.

JEFFREY BROWN: So, let me ask you both one last thing,

Mr. Panetta, starting with you, what advice do you give to viewers or readers who are looking at what's going on, they read stories, they read about who the source was, but they may not know what to make of that; they may not understand what the story is based on, what the relationship between the reporter and the official is? Mr. Panetta?

LEON PANETTA: I think the public has to continue to ask itself questions about whatever news it gets these days. I mean,I think, as was pointed out, I think we're in a period where trust is undermined in a number of our institutions. It's not just government and corporations, but it also happens to be the press.

And so the result of that, it seems to me, is that the public has to be much more questioning about the news that they receive. And it also has to send a message to the policy makers, it seems to me, that they have to be much more honest and direct about what's taking place. Otherwise, the public will become that much more cynical.

JEFFREY BROWN: Let me ask you for a brief response.

TOM ROSENSTIEL: Journalists need to understand that they have a different interest than policy makers. People like Leon Panetta in the administration are there to advance the administration, and journalist is there for a different purpose.

And the other thing that people in the press need to remember is that the crisis in confidence that the media is facing is really a crisis over motive. The public is uncertain of what the motives of the press are today, and we need to keep that in mind as we develop relationships with sources and people in power.

JEFFREY BROWN: All right. Tom Rosenstiel and Leon Panetta, thank you both very much.

ESSAY - DEATH'S EMBRACE

RAY SUAREZ: Finally, author Joan Didion received the National Book Award last night for her memoir about her husband's death. That's the subject for essayist Anne Taylor Fleming.

ANNE TAYLOR FLEMING: In her magical new book, "The Year of Magical Thinking," Joan Didion explores the subject of grief, her own intense grief at losing her husband of 40 years the writer, John Gregory Dunne, and watching their own daughter, Quintana, struggle against illnesses that would lead to her death after the book's completion.

The book is spare, rigorous in its avoidance of sentiment, but the pages are nonetheless weighty with feelings of a sorrow so wrecking they spun the normally cool, contained author into a fantasy-land of memory and longing.

"We are strangers to the land of grief," she says, "until forced to visit it." Are we? Should we be? Didion makes the point that we die now, often, in antiseptic ways -- in hospitals, tethered, drifting off across the life-death divide surrounded by tubes and techno-beeps -- drifting off across the life-death divide, surrounded by tubes and techno beats -- in short, not at home, not in our beds, not in each other's arms.

Death has become more impersonal and that, she says, is the way we seem to want it.

Grief, she suggests, is downright un-American, unpatriotic, and flies in the face of all of our exuberant, future-facing, can conquer anything ethos, even death.

Look how we try to forestall it: All of our antioxidants and age-defying creams. We don't slide towards it but away from it, aging with the ridiculous botoxed cheer, inhaling "how to age gracefully" manuals.

When death comes, we do not grieve much in public. We have our carefully orchestrated memorial roast. That's what they often feel like now -- shedding our restrained tears and making jokes about the recently departed.

And after, should the grief persist, we join buck-up groups or take anti-depressants in an effort to seek closure as if that were possible or desirable.

"Haven't you been sad long enough? When are you going to start dating again, get a dog, take a trip, have a face lift?"

But Didion cleared out of family within a matter of months will not have that. Her book is a meticulously crafted whale, a small seditious stand for grief, for its place, its propriety, its necessity, its inevitability, on a personal level, even by inference on a national level.

Among us, families are grieving all the time -- hard, crazy-making grief: Neighbors, friends, people who lost family members in New Orleans, not to mention their whole city. Parents whose kids are coming home from Iraq in those coffins we do not see, not make ourselves see.

We allow them to be kept from us. We want them to be kept from us. We have made grief corny, feminine, weak, when of course, it is the opposite -- a wild and powerful force.

To try to stage manage it, avoid it, as we seem intent to doing, leaves us blind and lonesome.

After all, grief is the outline of the thing lost, the husband or daughter, as Didion so clearly attests. It is the new companion, and as such needs to be embraced, explored, lived with if we are to make our human way.

I'm Anne Taylor Fleming.

RECAP

RAY SUAREZ: Again, the major developments of this day: An influential House Democrat, John Murtha of Pennsylvania, called for all U.S. troops to leave Iraq within six months. Republicans said that would damage the U.S. and Iraq. We'll see you online and again here tomorrow evening with David Brooks and Tom Oliphant, among others. I'm Ray Suarez. Thanks. Good night.