The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer; September 13, 2007

Good evening, I'm Jim Lara. On the NewsHour tonight, the news of this Thursday in two Iraq stories. What next, after the Patreas Crocker report from Zvigna, presenting in Philadelphia, what's the history of relationships between Presidents and Generals, as seen by Ellen Fitzpatrick and Thomas King? A NewsHour report from Los Angeles on a stepped-up recruitment drive for police officers, a look at an experimental treatment for spinal injuries used on a pro football player, and a story from the Arctic about saving seeds from every known plant in the world. Major funding for the NewsHour with Jim Lara is provided by Some say that by 2020, we'll have used up half the world's oil.

Jim say we already have, making the other half last longer will take innovation, conservation, and collaboration. Will you join us? The new AT&T, Pacific Life, the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation working to solve social and environmental problems at home and around the world. People with the ongoing 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. President Bush will defend his Iraq war policy in a prime time addressed to the nation tonight. He's expected to say the troop surge is working.

He's also expected to ask for more time for political progress in Iraq and to endorse a gradual end of the surge by next summer. That would mean withdrawing about 30,000 troops. Age said some 5,700 of those could leave by the end of this year. Democrats dismissed the move as too little, too late. Will have live coverage of the President's address and the Democratic response starting at 9 p.m. Eastern time. The Sunni Sheikh who led a revolt against al-Qaeda in Iraq was assassinated today. Abdul Sattar Abu Risha helped organize Sunni tribes to fight al-Qaeda in Anbar province. He was killed today in Ramadi, when a roadside bomb exploded as he returned to his home. The Sheikh met with President Bush during his visit to Anbar 10 days ago. The President hailed his courage in turning against al-Qaeda. The U.S. commander in Iraq General David Petraeus called Abu Risha's death a tragic loss.

Hurricane Umberto crashed ashore near the Texas Louisiana border today. The storm grew from a tropical depression to a hurricane in only 18 hours. National Hurricane Center officials said that was a record. New Jair correspondent Kwami Holman narrates our report. The hurricane hit in the dead of night, sneaking up as a low power category one storm. The eye made landfall just east of high island Texas near the eastern tip of the state. The whole house was shaking and was just awful. We thought the windows were fixing to come in on us and I mean we just tried to hover, you know, in the safest place in the house until it would stop and it just didn't seem to stop. It just didn't stop for like two hours. It brought lashing rain and sustained winds of 85 miles an hour. Pills of rain ain't going down, it's going like that way. In the light of day, destroyed buildings littered the landscape and more than 100,000 homes had no power.

Saturated fields and flooded roads added to an already record rainfall for Texas this year, the wettest summer since 1942. In Louisiana, ominous clouds hovered over New Orleans today as the storm's remnants across the state. The governors of Louisiana and Texas declared emergencies today to deal with the hurricanes after math. In Pakistan today, a suicide bombing killed at least 15 government soldiers. The target was an Army Missile 45 miles northwest of Islamabad, 11 other soldiers were wounded. The attack came as Deputy Secretary of State John Negroponte met with President Musharraf. They discussed the war on terror and U.S. economic aid. The price of oil closed above $80 a barrel today for the first time. It gained on concerns about the hurricane and the Gulf and finished at $80.09 a barrel. Despite the oil news, Wall Street rallied on hopes of an interest rate cut next week. And out of Jones industrial average gained 133 points to close above 13,424.

The Nasdaq rose nearly 9 points to close at 26.01. And that's it for the news summary tonight. Now looking ahead in Iraq, Presidents and Generals, hiring more police, spinal cord injuries and seeds in the Arctic. After Petraeus and Crocker in Washington, what next in Iraq, Judy Woodruff has our story. For months, President Bush and his aides created a sense of anticipation for this week's Iraq update. I'm away for David to come back. No, it would be General Petraeus. General Petraeus, all of those data points will be taken into account by General Petraeus. The senior field commander in Iraq was called upon to be the principal advocate for a policy and administration that polls show to be increasingly unpopular with the American public.

A recent New York Times survey said only 5 percent of the nation trusts the Bush administration to successfully resolve the Iraq War. As divisions hardened over the war in Congress, General Petraeus and Ambassador Ryan Crocker arrived on Capitol Hill this week to provide their assessment. Petraeus reported tactical gains on the ground. The military objectives of the surge are in large measure being met. The general also recommended the gradual return home of the surge force, some 30,000 troops. However, in their testimony, the two officials acknowledged the military's success had not led to its stated political goal, giving the Iraqis time and space to achieve reconciliation among warring sects. There is an enormous amount of dysfunctionality in Iraq. That is beyond question. The government in many respects is dysfunctional, and members of the government know it. Despite the mixed assessment, both men said a heavy price on a debate should the United

States exit Iraq too quickly. That a rapid withdrawal would result in the further release of the strong centrifugal forces in Iraq and produce a number of dangerous results. Any rock that falls into chaos or civil war will mean massive human suffering, well beyond what has already occurred with any rocks borders. It could well invite the intervention of regional states, all of which see their future connected to Iraq's in some fundamental way. And rather than proposing changes in current policy, Petraeus and Crocker recommended that the American Enterprise in Iraq be given another six months until a further assessment is made. They encountered both hardy encouragement and pointed critiques during their 17 hours of testimony over two days. Mr. M. Basseter, why should we, in Congress, expect the next six months to be any different

than it has been in the past? We're getting it right because we finally have in place a strategy that can succeed. Now we just have the levels of intolerable violence that existed in June of 2006, and that's a candid, independent assessment given with integrity in the same tradition of MacArthur and Eisenhower and Schwarzkopf. The general said he was presenting what he called honest candid testimony. Not a pessimist or an optimist at this point, I am realist about Iraq and Iraq is hard. But on one critical question, Betraya said he could not provide an answer. If we continue what you have laid before the Congress here as a strategy, do you feel that that is making America safer? Sir, I believe that this is indeed the best course of action to achieve our objectives in Iraq.

Does that make America safer? Sir, I don't know, actually. I have not sat down and sorted out in my own mind. What I have focused on and been riveted on is how to accomplish the mission of the multinational for Iraq. Betrayas and Crocker returned to Iraq and that mission next week. With me to discuss where the United States is headed in Iraq after the administration has made its case, ours is a big-nipped Brzezinski, former National Security Advisor under President Carter, and now a counselor at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington. He recently endorsed the presidential candidacy of Barack Obama, and Philip Zelikow, a former counselor to Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, and now a professor of history at the University of Virginia. Gentlemen, thank you both for being with us. Philip Zelikow, let me begin with you. Put it all together. What the president is expected to say tonight, what the general and the ambassador said on the hill this week, what has the administration accomplished for itself this week?

Well, the general and the ambassador really just reaffirmed the premises that everyone else had in mind for the last couple of months. They've reaffirmed that the surge has achieved some temporary stability in parts of Iraq and that the American government has an important interest in not withdrawing from Iraq too quickly so that we can continue to try to shape the future of that vital country. But everyone pretty much knew those facts and those premises before they came to Washington. What they didn't know and what the only the president can reveal is where we're going to go from here. What's the vision for how this story plays out during 2008 and beyond? What's the future of American engagement in Iraq and what's its mission? I think that's really a question that they couldn't answer and only the president can

answer. So in a way, they were just reaffirming the scene setting for what the president will say tonight. It's big enough to just reaffirming is that what we've heard? Well, I think it's worse than that. This is a very sad time for America. We have been involved in a futile war, a war of choice for four years. There's no end in sight. The president is not listening to the heartbeat of the country. The country doesn't want this war to continue. I think there's a widening consensus that the war cannot be resolved militarily. The president is not reaching out at home to the other side, not attempting to shape policy jointly, responding to the overwhelming desire of the American people to end this war. He's not setting in motion a process, a broad, designed to create some modicum of stability as we disengage.

He's essentially decided to bequeath this war to successor and to dribble out, essentially partial withdrawals, which at this rate would last five more years. While at the same time stepping up the pressure on Iran, possibly even raising the risk of a larger war. So this is a tragic and a dangerous time. I hope at some point the Republicans would prevail on the president to do what is needed, not to abdicate his responsibility, but to try to function a truly responsible, historically relevant policy. Philip Zellico, do you see it as, as big enough for Zinski, just described that the president is dribbling this out? And in fact, we've been given an advance copy of some of what the president is saying tonight. He does talk about the war extending beyond his presidency. The role that the U.S. will play in Iraq for years to come. Well, I think the United States will play a role in Iraq for years to come, but the president's job is to explain what that role is.

And here I think I agree with this big. The president needs to lay out a strategic direction that the American people can agree upon and sustain. Everyone says that Iraq isn't going to have its problem settled overnight. That means that American engagement needs to be for the long haul. Well, to make this sustainable for the long haul, you need to have a strategic direction that a lot of Democrats, as well as Republicans, can support, because a lot of people agree the country is vital, and they agree we're going to have states there for a while. And so the president has the burden of laying out a strategic vision that can command that support and lay the groundwork for the kind of long-term engagement everyone knows we'll need. Are you saying he has not done that yet? He has not done that yet, but he still has a shrinking window in which to do it. It's big enough for him to do what do you think the strategic vision should be? Well, first of all, I don't think the president can't define the division all by himself.

Sad to say, as a citizen, his record in the last four years isn't very good. I have here a whole folder of quotations from him, in which, in effect, unintentionally, he was misleading the American people, talking about turning points, progress, and so forth. And where are we for years later? Secondly, if he is to provide a vision, he really has to embrace the country and its political leadership, and that means the Republicans and the Democrats. Thirdly, we have to recognize the fact that the war in Iraq is a colonial war for the people in Iraq. We may not want to face that fact, but it is a colonial war. But we live in the post-colonial age. We cannot tell the Iraqis how they ought to live or what kind of a political system they ought to have. And we have to face that fact. And in facing it, we have to step forward with a strategic concept, a comprehensive vision of how to deal with the military situation, the political situation, the regional situation,

and the humanitarian situation. I don't want to be making a political case tonight, but this is what Obama did in his speech. If you don't agree with Obama, formulate an alternative approach, but don't do it the way we have done it, which is just to proclaim another turning point, more progress, and then, in effect, stick the next president with a terrible liability. Picking up on that, Phil Zellico, how do you define U.S. interests in Iraq and in that region for years to come? Because after all, that's what the general, the ambassador, and the president are all talking about. First, we've got to regain this strategic initiative in the region. So instead of looking defensive and weak, we look stronger. Second, to do that, we're going to have to transition out of being responsible. It's responsible for Iraqi security and Iraqi politics.

And instead of looking like we have weak control, instead get to a posture where we have strong leverage. Because we do have the assets to have strong leverage on a vital country undergoing, as Ryan Crocker said, a revolution, and that revolution is going to continue. Next, we need to be able to reach out and keep Al Qaeda from turning Iraq into a base for global terrorism. That could hurt the region and hurt us. Next, we need to have a policy in which Iraq remains an independent country and not a proxy for regional war or battlefield of regional war. And one of the disturbing things that came out this week is how strongly Ryan Crocker and General Petraeus made it clear that Iran is already moving to make Iraq a regional battlefield to conduct such proxy war. Dr. Brzezinski are those, I mean, just to pick a few of the things that Phil Zellico mentioned, Al Qaeda, keeping Iraq independent, making sure Iran is not too influential.

He doesn't need to say, keeping Iraq independent. Keeping Iraq independent, we have devastated the country and we're occupying it. What sort of an independence is that Al Qaeda in Iraq? Because Al Qaeda in Iraq before March 2003, in the problem with the war is that it is a series of horrendous strategic mistakes and to continue on that course is to compound these mistakes, what we really need is a national effort, hopefully launched by the President, but if not by him, then by the opposition to formulate an alternative strategy and to try to resolve this problem, to set in motion the resolution, and not simply to dump it on the lab of the next President, and that is what President Bush said to say in effect is doing.

Phil Zellico, is that what, is that how you see what President Bush is doing? Well, I didn't really hear that this big answer to your question. You asked him to say what he thought the strategy should be. He looked backward and anger instead of forward with ideas. I tried to lay out one construct. There are lots of constructs as to how you would define American interests in Iraq. As big as we need a national strategy that can unite us, I agree. Let's talk about what the elements are. I think you have to take on one way or another the kind of issues that I talked about. To be clear, what I was suggesting was not, stay the course, business as usual. We've got to move from a situation in which we have the appearance of weak control to moving to a posture of strong leverage in a vital country undergoing violent revolution. That's a different kind of posture, but we have to stay engaged in the future of that country and in the future of that region and do so in a way that recovers strategic initiative

instead of letting it drain away. And Dr. Brzezinski. Maintain strong control, maintain strong leverage. We have been doing that for four years and we all see the results. Four million Iraqis driven out of their homes, the country devastated, Iran indeed having more influence as a consequence of us devastating Iraq. That's the past. We have to change that. Phil says, is there an alternative strategy? I'm happy to outline one, I've been doing that for the last three or four years. Basically, we have to make it clear that we're not going to be staying for long because there's going to be no help from anyone, including the Iraqis, if they think we're staying and Phil is talking as we're going to stay there. Secondly, we have to set a date for leaving together with the Iraqis. Thirdly, we have to engage the region. No country in the region is going to be cooperative as long as they think we're staying there indefinitely. Fourth, we have to have a humanitarian program. I've just summarized for you in effect about my recent speech.

But this is an alternative, and I think we can only shape a meaningful program. We do it on a bipartisan basis, or we'll have to do it through the elections. And how does al-Qaeda and how does Iran, how do Iran and al-Qaeda fit into what you just described? Al-Qaeda can be best dealt with by the Iraqis. If it wasn't there until we came in, it's the opposition and the resistance to us that legitimates its presence in Iraq and gives it recruits. If we're going to deal with al-Qaeda effectively, we have to have the Iraqis in charge of the country. The Iranians can still be engaged because they realize that an Iraq that explodes upon our disengagement poses real dangers to Iran's territorial integrity, national integrity as well. And the Iranians know that, the Syrians are in the same position. In fact, the Saudis are in the same position. This is why launching a regional effort makes sense, but it has to be launched rather than simply to stay on course.

So bottom line to both of you, Phil Zellico, how long does the United States end up staying in Iraq with a significant military force? I think Iraq will stay engaged with the United States for years to come, and Iraqis are going to decide that working with the United States. But I think it's going to be on a diminished scale as time passes, and the American role, I think, here I agree with Spig, does need to change, where we disagree as this. He thinks we can remain strong, engaged, and influential if we just guarantee we're leaving and get everybody out. One of the responsible Iraqis think they can beat al-Qaeda on their own. None of the responsible Iraqis believe that Iran wants to respect their national integrity. They want our help precisely so they can be independent, otherwise the Shia are thrown upon other dependence upon Iran. They don't want that either.

They want to play both sides of the street, and it's our interest to exert leverage to help steer Iraq in a direction that doesn't make them a dependent of Iran, and doesn't create a situation, a proxy civil war, in which the United States stands on the sidelines, arms folded, shaking its head in disapproval, and reflecting bitterly on the past. We need to have a strategy for the future. And a final response for me. Well, I have here a very extensive polls, just taken in Iraq regarding their attitude towards the United States staying there, towards the American president, and so forth, and very little of that bears out what Phil was saying. The point is that if we are to disengage from Iraq, in effect that mitigates the consequences that might ensue from our departure, we have to engage the entire region. We have to say to the region that we intend to leave, to be credible, we have to set a date, and on and then can we mobilize both the regional forces and the Iraqis in the strategy of disengagement, which creates stability upon our departure.

We will leave it there. It's big enough for Shinsky. We thank you, Phil. Is that Leko? Thank you, both. Next, generals and the presidents they have served. Margaret Warner has that story. Has there ever been a battlefield general who played such a pivotal role for his president as General Petraeus did this week? To explore that, we turn to Thomas Keeney, executive director of the Foreign Policy Institute at Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies. He's a retired Air Force colonel and a new's-hour regular Ellen Fitzpatrick, professor of American history at the University of New Hampshire. And welcome to both of you, Tom Keeney, have we ever seen the situation as we saw this week in which there was such a tension focused on a battlefield commander that the president himself said he was waiting for the assessment of that commander before he went to the country

with his own way forward. Frankly, no. We have no real precedent for that. We have examples of generals who have had prominent political roles, but none that was tied so much to the administration strategy was where General Petraeus actually becomes the voice of that strategy. To agree, Ellen Fitzpatrick, no real precedent for this in terms of the public role that he has taken. I think it is true specifically speaking, but more broadly, in 1967, Lyndon Johnson employed General William Westmoreland very similarly during the Vietnam War. And the parallels are interesting, because in August of 1967, for the first time public opinion polls showed that a slim majority of the public didn't feel that the war was going well, that we were winning the war. And Johnson began a concerted campaign that was an ongoing one to try to shape public opinion. He called Westmoreland back from Vietnam and in the fall, Westmoreland gave a speech before

Congress. He appeared on Meet the Press with the Ambassador to Vietnam, Ellsworth Bunker, to make the case that there was light at the end of the tunnel, that the enemy was weakening. He even suggested that we might be able to draw down troops before long. And of course, a couple of months later, the Ted offensive occurred. But Tom King, there's another interesting new wrinkle to this that I don't think was in play with the Westmoreland case, which is Petraeus's report and appearance was in fact demanded by Congress, which essentially put it in legislation and demanded that by September 15th he, not the Secretary of Defense, not the head of the Joint Chiefs, come report. What does that say? Well, exactly right. And that says two things to me. First of all, up until now, if you had to have a voice on what the strategy was, it would have been the prior secretary, Don Rumsfeld, with the chairman of Joint Chiefs at his bias side. But now it becomes the commander in the theater as a personality, not just as a position.

He's been several other commanders, but none have had quite the same importance as General Petraeus. The perhaps the closest analog is General Westmoreland, but there's a crucial difference. At the time in 1967, there was nowhere near the fear that we were actually going to lose that war. That came later. And Westmoreland could be relieved without causing a great stir within the country, as he was the year later. At this point, I think the administration has tied themselves to General Petraeus. And that happens when particularly in more time when the commander looks like he's losing. It's ironic that you think you'd want to change the commander, but the effect on the public of firing a commander at that time is even more dangerous. In Alan Fitzpatrick, we also have a situation, in this case, in which the president's own credibility seems to rest on the General's credibility, at least in the eyes of the public and the Congress.

Now, was that the case with Westmoreland and Johnson? I think in a way that current president is playing a high card, because part of what he's capitalizing on is what public opinion polls show is a very high regard in the United States for the American military. And particularly, very strong confidence in their integrity, their capacity to tell the truth. There has been, of course, criticism of Petraeus in this regard, but generally, there is high confidence in the military. In 1967, when Westmoreland appeared, there was also considerable confidence, but it was eroding. And I think part of what we're looking at here is the tail wagging the dog. Johnson employed Westmoreland to support a strategy and a set of policies in a position that he himself was aggressively pursuing to make the public case for. In this case, we're seeing almost a deference to the general that he will, the president

will wait upon him. Now, if we go back to what got General Petraeus into this position in the first place, namely, you had, this is not unprecedented, is it Tom Keeney, that you have a war that's going badly, that there have been, in the eyes of many, at least, miscalculations, what's the big Brzezinski just called strategic blunders, and that a president brings a new general in, and it's sort of a last chance to make the war a success. Yes, I think that's exactly right. Give us some examples. I mean, wouldn't you say it goes back to the Civil War? Well, the Civil War, when President Lincoln brings in General Grant to take over as Commander of the Union Army, that's a similar case, that is Lincoln has finally found his general grant, and he probably has no alternative. If Grant fails, he has no alternative to pick to someone to replace Grant. That said, the president keeps a very close eye on Grant.

He sends people down into his camp to continue to assess him. I think that General Petraeus, even more so than General Grant, is now the face of the strategy, and there's really no fallback, Congress wanted to hear from him because they did not trust to hear the Secretary of Defense in the longer, for instance. Allen, can you think of other examples in which a new general is asked to essentially pull a rabbit out of a hat? I think it was not uncommon during the Vietnam War, Westmoreland, after the Tet Offensive, which appeared to give the why, and this is something to recall that within two months of having been deployed by the Johnson administration to make the case to the American people about the success of the war, the Tet Offensive occurred. It was in fact not a military defeat for the United States, but it appeared to be one because of the contradiction between the two. Then Westmoreland was relieved of his command, Abrams takes over, and he's in the position

of trying to make the case for the American cause in Vietnam. It happens often. The question is how persuasive are they, and is this in our system, which constitutionally puts the president in charge, we have civilian control of the military, should the military be placed in this position? Speaking of being placed in a position, a final thought from you, Tom Keeney, as a former military man yourself, what kind of position does this put a battlefield commander in? To be essentially called back and asked to assume this leading political role in the sense of salesmen role. When General Petraeus was here last night with Jim, he said, all the impatience of frustration he heard was part of a heavy ruck sack that they all carry back in Iraq. Is there a downside in terms of the effectiveness of the battlefield commander when he's

asked to take this role? It's certainly a downside that there's no choice, and under the conditions, there's no way around it. This kind of war, even more so than Vietnam, is a insurgency in general, is just such a political war that you cannot disentangle the military competence from the understanding of the political atmosphere. That was clear from what General Petraeus said. Therefore, there's no way that General Petraeus can leave it at the fact that he is what I think militarily will work. I think everyone heard him say that, I know what I can do militarily, but this is a political solution, and he just can't avoid addressing that as he had to when he testified before Congress. Thanks so much, Tom Keeney and Ella Fitzpatrick, thank you. Just a look at tough times for police recruitment. News are correspondent Jeffrey Kay of KCET Los Angeles report. To attract and hire a thousand new police officers, the city of Los Angeles is spending

a million dollars this year on a recruitment blitz. With baby boomers retiring from police departments in large numbers, and with starting salaries often not keeping up with the cost of living, law enforcement agencies across the country are having trouble filling their ranks. And the war hasn't helped, the military usually a good source of law enforcement candidates is retaining personnel. In addition, since 9-11, federal agencies from the Board of Patrol to the FBI also have ramped up their own hiring, increasing the competition for available and qualified personnel. It's a challenge nationwide. Everybody's talking about recruitment and the recruitment of qualified police officers. Chief Garner is a deputy chief of the Los Angeles Police Department. Every police department is hiring right now.

Never seen that before in my 30 years in law enforcement, where every police department usually it's one or the other is hiring, but now everybody is hiring. Although no hard numbers exist, organizations representing law enforcement agencies say most large police departments in the US complain they have shortages of sworn offices. So many are making the hard sell at job fairs and hiring expos. At this one held recently by the San Diego Police Department, potential recruits were shown law enforcement hardware. They got an opportunity to test their reflexes on training simulators. Hope the excitement and a spread of core of a job in law enforcement would appeal to both those seeking their first job and those thinking about a career change. People such as Benjamin Pearson. Hi, I'm board.

I'm super board and I've had a number of careers, but I've had a number of jobs that have never amounted to anything and I want to challenge, I want to make positive contributions to society. In San Diego, the country's sixth largest city, the police department has more than 200 vacancies. That shortage says police chief Bill Lansdowne is leaving divisions severely under staff. We're not providing all the services we used to. We belong to a lot of task forces, we've drug enforcement administration, ICAC, internet crimes against children. We've had to pull some of our officers out of those task force and put them back in, patrol duty so we can continue to answer the calls. We're not clearing as many cases as we used to because of the shortages and our response times are starting to move up a little bit because we're not getting to the calls as quickly as we used to. When job fairs, videos and billboards aren't enough, chief Lansdowne acknowledges he's not about poaching qualified offices from far away departments, even using San Diego's mild

climate as a valuable recruiting ally. This winner will be on the East Coast when there's six feet of snow out there showing the coast of San Diego and people who will be surfing. This summer, when it's 115 degrees in Arizona, we'll be recruiting there as our temperature will stay around 82 degrees. This is a great environment to work in and a great police department to be on. More controversial, some departments are also changing their hiring requirements. In some cases, they're relaxing fitness standards and forgiving recruits past debt problems and minor criminal convictions. The LAPD has revised its zero tolerance policy towards past drug use among recruits. Admitting to having used cocaine or marijuana no longer eliminates candidates. You can't use 1950 standards and apply them today.

We're not open up the floodgates, but we are being realistic in the 21st century and saying that some kids will experiment with drugs. But an experiment is one thing, being a drug user is another thing. To help borderline candidates pass the department's fitness requirements, the LAPD has also expanded a program that helps harden the bodies of potential offices before they enter the police academy. All these efforts are geared to getting more cops, but will more police offices equal less crime? I have long maintained that it isn't about adding more numbers. It's about how we use those resources effectively and efficiently in the first place. Joseph Bran is a former chief of police who in the 1990s directed the Clinton administration's community-oriented policing services or COPS program. It's provided billions of dollars in federal funds to help local law enforcement agencies hire 100,000 new offices.

Now a private consultant, Bran believes local politicians and law enforcement agencies often promise to increase police personnel as a way to score public relations points. If elected officials would ask the question when a police organization is saying we need more in the way of resources, they ought to be asking a very specific question. What are we going to get if we provide you with those additional resources? What's the outcome that's going to be achieved here? And I think if we did that, we would actually recognize what type of resources we need to be seeking. We would also be a lot more careful about just adding bodies for the sake of adding bodies. Instead of putting more bodies in uniform, Bran advocates turning over some policing jobs to civilian employees, making great use of technology such as surveillance cameras in public places, and creating better partnerships between the public and police. But in high-crime neighborhoods such as LA's Panorama City District, some residents

simply want more cops on the streets. I'd feel much safer with more police. I'd like to be able to walk down the street feeling secure and not afraid, so I can do the things I need to do. One considered an under-police city, Los Angeles now has about 9,500 sworn police officers. The chief has gone on record saying, you know, to really police this city the right way you need between 14 and 15,000 officers, and so that's the goal. But you know, first we have to walk before we run, and that first goal is to get up to 10,000 and have, you know, have enough officers to really fully deploy. LA PD officials are confident they'll meet their hiring goals. Looking the epitome of spit and polish perfection, a graduating class of police cadets recently stepped smartly onto the LA PD Academy's parade ground. When the ceremony ended, Los Angeles had 63 newly sworn officers on its police force.

Now a new approach to treating spinal cord injuries, Ray Suarez has that story. Buffalo Bill's tight end Kevin Everett was making what appeared to be a routine tackle on Sunday against the Denver Broncos, but his helmet hit another player's shoulder pad. In an instant, Everett is down. He lay motionless on the field. His teammates knelt down to pray as Everett was loaded into an ambulance, having fractured and dislocated his spine between his third and fourth vertebrae. The initial prognosis was grim. Doctors said Everett was paralyzed from the shoulders down. After Andrew Capuccino operated on the athlete, I told Kevin that the chances for a full neurologic recovery were bleak.

Dizmal with my clinical examination prior to surgical intervention, I felt that it was less than 5 or 10% chance that he would ever regain a full utilization. Even Everett's fellow players accustomed to football injuries struggled to make sense of the situation. It's pretty, you know, somber, I mean, you know, having it to make it hurt like that's pretty tough, but, you know, they served really well, as far as, you know, what we could tell so, and he's just recovering right now. Then yesterday, news of a surprising improvement, doctors reported Everett had some movement in his arms and legs. Dr. Kevin Gibbons. He demonstrated clear improvement in the motor function in his legs, brisk ability to push his knees together and apart. The ability to wiggle his toes, slight movement at the ankles, and most importantly, from our standpoint, the ability with his knee elevated to kick out his lower leg against gravity.

Doctors were also encouraged that Everett's spinal cord was intact rather than severed, but they cautioned much is still unknown. We still are looking at many weeks to months scenario and walking out of this hospital really is not a realistic goal, but walking may very well be. In the aftermath of his injury on Sunday, one treatment Everett received was a therapy called moderate hypothermia, doctors cooled the body a few degrees by injecting icy saline into the patient. The goal is to limit swelling, inflammation, and other spinal cord damage. Some specialists say the therapy may hold hope for other patients like Kevin Everett, 11,000 Americans suffer a catastrophic spinal cord injury each year. For more on the hypothermia treatment and its possibilities, we turn to Dr. Rob Parrish, he's a neurosurgeon at the Methodist Neurological Institute in Houston, and Dr. Parrish,

here you've got Kevin Everett being rushed off the field with a disc in his neck pressing heavily against his spinal cord. Why cool down his body? Well, there's some evidence that spinal cord injuries can be attenuated or lessened by treatment after the injury, we have a secondary or additional injuries that occur to the spinal cord in the hours, days, weeks, and months after the injury, and the hypothermia tries to decrease that injury and the cell death that comes after the initial injury. Expand on that a little bit. What's happening to your spinal cord as a result of those bones pressing against it that you either slow down or stop by using a cooler body? Well, it may not be just the cooler body. The emergency surgery is also an important part of the treatment of the spinal cord injury, so it reduces the additional mechanical injury to the spinal cord, and we're not sure that

it was the hypothermia that turned things around. The use of hypothermia and stroke and heart attacks and head injuries is the experimental at this time. It's been used in the past. It's doing better now that we have ways of controlling the temperature more precisely than we did even five years ago, so I think it's an important way to go, but we only have this as an anecdotal case, one case that showed success with hypothermia and emergency surgery, and I might add very good care by the emergency medical people on the field. Now hypothermia is something we normally try to avoid. When I was taking first aid merit badge and scouting, I was told that somebody just injured, if they show any signs of chills, bundle them up because they're one of the side effects of shock could be loss of body temperature.

How did we figure out that a little hypothermia, a little lowering of the body temperature might provide a window? Well, I'm not sure how we figured it out, but there's a lot of investigation going on to spinal cord and neurological injury both around the world and at the neurological institute here in Houston, so it's these advances that we have to look into and expand with more research. Looking at the particular case of Kevin Everett is a third and fourth vertebrae injury considered extremely serious compared to other spinal injuries? Yes, sir. It's often fatal unless there are emergency medical teams right at hand, as many people may know the diaphragm and ability to breathe is lost with an injury that high in the spinal cord. And in addition to surgery and the other things they've attempted, I guess they found that there was still a lot of good living tissue and not accompanying cell death.

What can you do in the immediate days, in the first few days after an injury, to try to get control of the situation so things don't continue to deteriorate? Well, there are a number of studies that are underway around the country, around the world. These are studies that involve the molecular biology of spinal cord injury and the mechanics of spinal cord injury following the initial insult to the spinal cord. And how long are we talking about keeping a patient slightly chilled? Is this something that is advised or as we're finding out through more research, something that you just do for a finite period of time or is this something that can go on for several days? Well, that's not known. That's a reason that research is underway into spinal cord injury and hypothermia for all those other diagnoses that I mentioned.

Hypothermia, as you pointed out, can be very deleterious to your health. It causes changes in the ability of the blood to coagulate. It can cause heart arrhythmias and very profound hypothermia, of course, leads to death. So do we even have a set of widely used techniques that are completely understood and sort of systematized in medicine for doing this or is it something that we just sort of figuring out, still figuring out how to do? Well, we're still figuring it out in some ways, but we do have methods of inducing hypothermia that are outlined in many of these protocols for stroke, spinal cord injury, cardiac arrest and head injury. Now, when we're talking about the way medicine works in a big country like this, when there's a high profile injury, when a technique is given a lot of attention in the news, does it become more widely examined?

Does it get a little faster adoption? Well, I hope that it can bring it to more attention in the research around the country. It certainly has elevated the awareness of spinal cord injury, and as you mentioned earlier, there are 11,000 people with spinal cord injuries just in our country each year. That's a huge social problem and one that we need to continue to investigate every way to prevent and to improve that outcome. Well, Dr. Parrish, thanks for joining us. Yes, sir. Thank you for having me. And finally tonight, another in our reports from the Arctic, under the deep permafrost is a newly constructed vault containing every variety of seed from around the world. Tom Clark of Independent Television News reports from the Norwegian Arctic Islands.

Not much grows in the high Arctic, and what does eaks out a meager living during this short summer, just a few hundred miles from the North Pole. But the very fact this landscape is frozen is why it's been chosen as the home of a global effort to protect the plants where most directly dependent on for food carved into this mountain on the island of Spitzbergen is the entrance to a seed bank at the end of this tunnel blasted out of frozen rock, three giant bolts are taking shape. Why here? Because it's cold and it's safe. That is permafrost here, so you could store the seeds in minus 40,000 Celsius, temperature will never rise beyond it. And it's an island, that is a neutral island. And you know everybody who comes, I do come by plain, or you come by boats, so you know every people who come up here. Many countries keep stores of important seeds in case disease or drought wipes out key crops.

The idea here is to build a backup vault, a kind of fortnight for crops where other seed banks can make deposits, whether it's wheat, cassava or cabbage. It's a long time for endeavour, given new impetus by the threat of climate change to plants. The seed bank now opens next February. Each vault can store one and a half million different seeds, spaces of the premium, there's a hundred thousand varieties of rice alone. So we're here visiting a seed bank designed to ensure the world's biodiversity against the effects of climate change, but the plants that actually live here on Swabard outside the vault are some of the first to feel the effects of global warming. We accompanied Elizabeth Cooper into the tundra she and her students have studied for seven years, not many botanists carry high powered rifles, but then not many botanists study arctic plants. And for those that do polar bear attacks for an occupational hazard, Dr. Cooper is studying how climate change is affecting humble arctic flora, like polar willow, mountain avens and

arctic white bell heather. So this is one of my senses, which I made last autumn. Climate change is expected to bring more snow to the Swabard Islands. Experiments here are designed to see whether these tiny plants can continue to thrive under deeper flurries. We have large areas of tundra, which are likely to be affected by climate change, which at the moment are holding huge amounts of carbon, but if they're balanced, the carbon banks are shifted, they might be releasing more carbon. Natural results suggest plants here might struggle, so as well as threatening this fragile ecosystem, further warming could turn the high arctic from an area that helps keep our climate stable into one that makes it warmer still, and that would affect the whole planet valuable crops and all. Again, the major developments of this day, President Bush will defend his Iraq war policy and a prime time address to the nation tonight.

The Sunni Sheikh who led a revolt against al-Qaeda in Iraq was assassinated. Hurricane Huemberto crashed ashore, near the Texas Louisiana border, it dumped heavy rain as it pushed inland across central Louisiana, and the price of oil closed above $80 a barrel for the first time ever. We'll see you online and again here later tonight for the President's address to the nation, plus the Democrats' response on most PBS stations, and we'll be here tomorrow evening with Defense Secretary Gates, plus Mark Shields and David Brooks, among others. For now, I'm Jim Lara, thank you, and good night. After funding for the news hour with Jim Lara is provided by... Now headquarters is wherever you are, with AT&T data, video voice, and now wireless,

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