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CNN Newsnight Aaron Brown

Standoff in Ukraine; Tasers in Florida

Aired November 26, 2004 - 22:00   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.


AARON BROWN, CNN ANCHOR: Good evening again.
I was struck today by a note we received from a viewer about a segment in last night's Thanksgiving special. The segment was a piece Nissen did on soldiers badly burned in Iraq and their tender treatment and their difficult recovery.

The writer was angry with us, not for running the piece but because the soldiers in the piece didn't say what she wanted them to say, didn't say what she believed.

Each of them when asked, and they were all asked, thought what they were doing in Iraq was the right thing to do. Each of them regretted they couldn't go back and help their brothers.

A writer complained there was no fairness there. Where were the soldiers angry with the president, she said, bitter about the war? Our answer they weren't there. Not a one we talked to said that and no one controlled who we talked to.

Perhaps at some point in their lives they will be bitter. They have long roads ahead and they have lost much but then as their treatment was beginning they weren't angry and they weren't bitter and they certainly weren't political. They were proud.

Fairness is not to create the other side. Fairness is not to please both sides equally on anything. Fairness is to report what we find honestly, which we explained in our note to our writer is exactly what we did.

Again tonight Iraq leads the program and the whip, CNN's Nic Robertson with the troops, Nic a headline from you.

NIC ROBERTSON, CNN SR. INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Aaron, a lot of the young men who signed up to fight in Iraq joined up after -- joined up to the Army after September the 11th. They're beginning now to learn some of the harsh realities of the battlefield.

BROWN: Nic, thank you.

The Ukraine next, and the standoff with democracy hanging in the balance, CNN's Jill Dougherty with that, Jill, a headline.

JILL DOUGHERTY, CNN MOSCOW BUREAU CHIEF: Two men, two candidates, both of whom claim they have the right to be declared the next president of Ukraine. Today they met for the first time face to face but will it solve this country's political crisis -- Aaron?

BROWN: Jill, thank you.

Finally, Florida and beyond, where taser stun guns are now getting a second look, CNN's Susan Candiotti covering, Susan, a headline.

SUSAN CANDIOTTI, CNN NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Many police agencies and certainly taser's creator says the weapons save lives, yet the debate goes on over whether those who use them have enough training. And today, in a Florida school district, this message to the police. Don't use tasers anymore in our grade schools.

BROWN: Susan, thank you. We'll get back to you and the rest shortly.

Also coming up on the program tonight, a high school football team where the players have two things in common, first and foremost they win and then there's that other thing.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

LEN GONZALES, HEAD COACH: When I arrived here, I told the players to stop feeling sorry for themselves. I can't beat hearing schools, you know. They're too strong for us. He says, no, you're equal. You know you have equal opportunities. You have eyes. You know, the only thing you can't do is hear.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BROWN: A wonderful story this and a wonderful story that.

We'll top it off with a heaping helping, not of leftover turkey of course, but nice, fresh rooster for you, oh my goodness, morning papers at the end of the hour, all that and more in the hour ahead.

We begin tonight with the pressure building to postpone the elections in Iraq. Today more than a dozen Sunni, Kurdish and secular political parties said the 30th of January is simply too soon given the security concerns, especially in the Sunni Triangle.

They want a six-month delay, so do members of Iraq's president's own party but not the leaders of the Shiite community, they are politically organized and they have the votes.

President Bush, meantime, weighed in today from Crawford, Texas. What he said and did not say speaking volumes to our ears at least to the limits of American influence in this case.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

GEORGE W. BUSH, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: The Iraqi Election Commission has scheduled elections in January and I would hope they would go forward in January.

(END VIDEO CLIP) BROWN: Meantime, in Mosul, more signs of trouble. American forces discovering another house full of bodies, 41 in the last week, all of them apparently members of the Iraqi security forces, all of them apparently killed in a campaign of intimidation by the insurgents.

Signs as well in the word and deed that Falluja remains a work in progress, in a statement posted on a radical Web site today insurgents claim they are reorganizing.

Meantime, two U.S. Marines were killed, three others wounded today, while conducting house-to-house searches in the city. This happens more times than it should.

All the training in the world, and American troops are among the best trained soldiers there are, can't always prepare a Marine or a soldier for everything that waits for them behind a door or down a dark alley. War simply doesn't work that way.

For better or for worse, the troops learn it early and they learn it often, CNN's Nic Robertson now on patrol in Mosul with the troops of Task Force Olympia.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

ROBERTSON (voice-over): Outside in the pre-raid darkness, Specialist Dan Sluter (ph) is distinguishable only by the antenna protruding from his backpack. Inside, where even in the light the uniformity of battle gear camouflages Sluter among his comrades, he sticks close to his lieutenant just as a radio operator should. The raid could be going better but no surprise barely two months into their year long mission they are already familiar with the problems they face.

SPC. DAN SLUTER, TASK FORCE OLYMPIA: It's hard to gain trust, I think, out here. It seems to be the culture to be polite up front but kind of dagger and cloak type of attitude sometimes like, yes we'll be nice but it's because we don't want to be killed. This actually is music I downloaded.

ROBERTSON: Known as "freq" as in radio frequency to his platoon mates, Sluter shares his warm, if small, cabin on base with medic Doc Powers, the walls testimony to loves and lives put on hold.

SLUTER: You can't think about it ten months at a time. You really have to go one less day, one day closer to coming back home. That's how I deal with it. That's how my wife deals with it.

ROBERTSON: At 27, Sluter is older than the average specialist. He signed up after 9/11, fueled by a patriotic desire to help, never quite expecting this.

SLUTER: The first day we got here we took mortar fire. Our first mission we took small arms mortar RPG fire. It's just like, I'm like are we in Falluja or Mosul, I mean seriously. It was an eye opener. That was the biggest eye opener. ROBERTSON: He's not angered by what is learned. Indeed, the man from a town of just 17,000 in Indiana, who had never been overseas until now, carries with him the small town work ethic of wanting to help and accepting and rising to every challenge.

SLUTER: At one time I thought I saw one of my buddies actually get hit by a round. You know, you just kind of -- it's just kind of, I don't know how to say this. It's kind of like getting hit by the front in the face kind of thing. I mean it's here's the reality of it.

ROBERTSON: His advice for those considering following in his footsteps...

SLUTER: This isn't Hollywood but when you come over here it's -- you realize that you're here for real. It's the real deal. This is real world. This is actual happening. That's really "Full Metal Jacket" flying over your head. There's no glory.

You just do your job or everything goes out the window and it's just the men to your left and your right that you really look up to, do your mission and you try to make sure they all come back with you and that's a successful mission.

ROBERTSON: Nic Robertson, CNN, Mosul, Iraq.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

BROWN: Last week, a correspondent in Falluja wondered if the troops would end up destroying the city in order to save it. Tonight, it's hard to say that Falluja has either been fully saved or utterly destroyed, only that some work remains on the security side and a great deal of work lies ahead to undo an awful lot of damage.

Today, an important first step was taken. CNN Producer Kianne Sadeq was there.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

KIANNE SADEQ, CNN PRODUCER (voice-over): There used to be a sign here "Welcome to Falluja," no more. This is the last military checkpoint before you get into what had become Iraq's most dangerous city.

We zigzag through aboard a Red Crescent aid truck, one of about a dozen and the first independent humanitarian convoy since the assault on Falluja ended and then into the city itself.

As we drive through the deserted streets, scenes of complete destruction on all sides. The peace here is fragile and the convoy is in a hurry. Red Crescent volunteers empty food, blankets and medicine at a building they've taken over for a distribution center.

This Red Crescent ambulance driver announces our arrival and calls out for civilians to come out and get help. But Iraqi soldiers here seem to be surprised to see the aid workers. A family appears at the gate of a house only to be pushed back inside. We follow the volunteers inside.

Darhan Ahmed (ph) feels helpless. "Falluja is destroyed. There's nothing left" Darhan tells us. Ahmed's daughter Sada (ph) has been sheltering in this house for the last ten days. She says, "We wanted to protect our home but it's not here anymore."

Several families crowded in this house during the fighting with little food, no running water, no electricity. Outside, Marine commanders tell us it's still dangerous. Two Marines were killed in Falluja Friday.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: There are still a number of small insurgent groups who we are tracking down.

SADEQ: But civilians here are beginning warily to step out of their homes. It's still too early to tell how many civilians need help and how many may have died. The task of building the city is huge but Dr. Said Ismail Hakki of the Red Crescent seems hopeful.

DR. SAID ISMAIL HAKKI, RED CRESCENT: We're starting the process of healing, rehabilitation and that takes time. You can blow a house in less than five seconds but to build a new house you need months, so we're going to rehabilitate this town.

SADEQ: The media are ferried back to the distribution center. And one family is evacuated to Baghdad. The women and children are sick. Dr. Hakki puts the little girl into the ambulance and promises he'll be back with more help tomorrow.

Kianne Sadeq, CNN, Falluja.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

BROWN: Moving on, it's cold again in Kiev, snow in the forecast from now until next Thursday, not that anyone in the Ukrainian capital would notice. Protesters occupying the center of town spent another day rallying against the presidential election they believe was rigged and, in many ways, they seem to be creating their own spring thaw.

In one of the many rallies today, a couple married. Whether the warmth will last and keep the political dispute from getting ugly though is another story. Today though, at least, the signs were more hopeful and so, again from Kiev CNN's Jill Dougherty.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

DOUGHERTY (voice-over): After five days of massive street demonstrations and tense political standoff, the two men who claim they should be president of Ukraine met face to face.

Arriving for talks at the presidential palace in Kiev, they sat across from each other at a large, round table, Viktor Yanukovich, the government-backed candidate, declared winner of Sunday's runoff election and opposition leader Viktor Yushchenko, who claims that election was stolen through massive vote fraud. The atmosphere between the two men, according to the European Union's Javier Solana, who brokered the three-hour meeting, cold. The two sides agreed that round-the-clock street demonstrations led by the opposition can continue but they cannot block access to government buildings. They also agreed to avoid violence or use of force.

According to Solana, representatives from both sides will now create working groups aimed at resolving the crisis, opening the door to annulling the disputed elections and holding new ones.

JAVIER SOLANA, EUROPEAN UNION: It may be the solution, the final solution that comes out of the group, the working group. They will start tomorrow.

DOUGHERTY: Watergate Ukrainian style, the opposition says, releasing tapes of conversations that allegedly prove the government and its candidate falsified election results, even deciding in advance the margin of victory.

OLEG RYBACHUR, YUSHCHENKO CAMPAIGN MANAGER: We have agreed our candidate will with three or 3.5 percent. The voice of the person who is telling this is also on the tape.

DOUGHERTY: The shockwaves from the crisis in Ukraine are spreading wide and far.

BUSH: The international community is watching very carefully. People are paying very close attention to this and hopefully it will be resolved in a way that brings credit and confidence to the Ukrainian government.

DOUGHERTY: As news of the round table meeting spread to the streets of Kiev, opposition protesters turned up the volume, encouraged by signs of progress.

(on camera): But this is still just a first step toward finding a way for Ukraine to climb out of the political crisis that's engulfing it. Ukrainians consider themselves very patient people but no country can hang indefinitely on the brink of instability.

Jill Dougherty CNN, Kiev, Ukraine.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

BROWN: A few more items before we go to break here.

The State Department today issued an updated warning to Americans traveling in Israel, the West Bank and Gaza, this due to the uncertainty in the wake of Yasser Arafat's death.

In that regard, an influential Palestinian figure said he will not seek Mr. Arafat's job from behind bars in an Israeli prison. Marwan Barghouti instead threw his support behind Mahmoud Abbas.

The son of the U.N. Secretary-General finds himself in an uncomfortable spotlight, a U.N. spokesman today saying Kojo Annan, son of Kofi Annan, received payments in connection with the Iraqi Oil-for- Food Program as early as this year, a program being investigated for all sorts of shenanigans.

And a new report says not enough is being done to safeguard commercial flights from hazardous cargo such as oxygen canisters that caught fire causing the crash of a ValuJet DC-9 some years back. The report, put together by the inspector general's office at the Department of Transportation, calls the FAA regulation of Hazmat lengthy, cumbersome and at times ineffective.

Ahead on the program on a Friday night, the kind of temptation you might not expect to find in Las Vegas.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I have a mission called by God to talk to people about salvation. God bless you.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BROWN: Salvation on the sidewalks of the city built on sin, some would say.

And later, a different sales pitch, yes, Black Friday, we'll check the receipts, albeit quickly, a break first.

This is NEWSNIGHT.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BROWN: It seems often things change only after something extreme happens. Take, for example, the 6-year-old boy in Florida who was tasered by police. Now there are questions about whether the taser can severely hurt someone, maybe even kill them.

Some would say the timing of the questions are just coincidence but critics argue it took a little boy, a first grader getting tasered in school, for people to demand that police change their tactics.

From South Florida tonight, here's CNN's Susan Candiotti.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

CANDIOTTI (voice-over): About one week after learning from CNN that police tasered a 6-year-old boy in one of its elementary schools, the district said no more. In a letter sent to Miami-Dade's police chief, the school superintendent asks that police "refrain from deploying tasers against elementary school students."

Police say its officers, three feet away, were afraid the cornered boy might hurt himself further. The first grader was bloody, holding a piece of broken glass. Police shot metal darts into his chest, charged with 50,000 volts.

DR. ROBERT PARKER, MIAMI-DADE, FLORIDA: I'm telling you that these two police officers in this case were small female police officers.

CANDIOTTI: Next week, Amnesty International is releasing a report claiming police are overusing tasers, at times amounting to mistreatment and torture. Training is one area questioned.

BENJAMIN JEALOUS, AMNESTY INTERNATIONAL USA: Certainly it comes down to a judgment call and that's why we're saying that, you know, they need better training.

CANDIOTTI: In Boynton Beach, Florida, an officer was forced to resign last month after authorities say he lied about why he tasered a suspect. A surveillance tape shows the seated man in a cell was not resisting but the officer stunned him anyway.

Wednesday night, a different set of circumstances led Indianapolis Police to fire a stun gun twice at Minnesota Timberwolves basketball layer Michael Olowokandi. He allegedly refused to leave a bar.

SGT. STEVE STALETOVICH, INDIANAPOLIS POLICE: There were no injuries reported to Mr. Olowokandi and the taser appears to have worked, worked great.

CANDIOTTI: Taser International insists its weapons are generally safe. Other experts say testing is far from complete. Nationwide many police agencies using tasers commend them.

SHERIFF-ELECT DEAN KELLY, PUTNAM CO., FLORIDA: Since we have started using the taser about two years ago, we have seen a decrease in injuries to not just our officers but also to the people being arrested of over 83 percent.

CANDIOTTI (on camera): After "The New York Times" published a report critical of Taser International, the stock fell five percent. The company questions the timing of that newspaper report just before it splits its stock next week. In the words of the company's co- founder, "The bottom line is we're saving many, many lives yet the debate is far from over."

Susan Candiotti, CNN, Miami.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

BROWN: Still ahead tonight a quiet conversation about a place that's anything but. Reporter Michael Ware joins us after a tour of duty in Falluja.

And later, a different tone entirely, a football game in which silence says volumes about character and teamwork, a break first.

Around the world this is NEWSNIGHT.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BROWN: Keep those names in mind for the next ten minutes or so. For a reporter, war is the ultimate story, truth be told. There are triumphs and disasters, heroes and cowards. There are important objectives and policy disasters all before lunch, if there is lunch, which there often isn't.

Michael Ware has been writing war stories for "Time" magazine. He was embedded with a small Army unit in the fight in Falluja and he's back home now for a bit or at least back here in New York, home for Michael being a long ways away. We talked with him earlier tonight.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

BROWN: In a sentence or two describe the unit you were with.

MICHAEL WARE, "TIME" CORRESPONDENT: During the battle of Falluja, I was with an Army unit, a smaller element within the broader attack but very important. It boiled down to the 3rd Platoon of Alpha Company and what's known as the 2nd Battalion, 2nd Infantry Regiment. These are essentially mechanized infantry, young guys who jump out of the back of the Bradley armored vehicles.

BROWN: Nineteen to 25, 26?

WARE: Yes. I mean the leaders of these men, if you call them that are more like (UNINTELLIGIBLE) boys. The eldest among them was 26, perhaps one was 29. The bulk of them were in their late teens or just out of their teens. These really are the youth of America.

BROWN: The day before they went in were you with them?

WARE: Yes, I was.

BROWN: What was it like?

WARE: Pensive, I mean, these men had it drilled into them over and over what it was that they were to expect about going into the dark heart of the Iraqi insurgency. This was the nest or this was the base, not only of the homegrown Iraqi nationalists but this was the central node of the foreign jihadis, the real hardcore.

BROWN: Were they scared?

WARE: Yes. I mean, there's always that fear, I mean that anticipation of battle. I mean, you become so cognizant of your own mortality and these boys aren't immune from that but they do not shy away from it. They swallow it down and press on.

BROWN: Well, there's a difference between being afraid and being -- and cowardice. Those are very different things. You're nuts not to be afraid.

WARE: Absolutely.

BROWN: Guys are going in there, they're shooting at you and they're throwing RPGs at you and there's bombs everywhere. WARE: Absolutely and I have seen in combat in Iraq where you'll be with five or six men and you're engaged with the enemy and there's a fierce firefight and suddenly you'll look down for a moment and there's one man curled up into a ball who simply can't pick up his weapon.

The funny thing is the next day you may be in another firefight and here's the fiercest amongst them. That's something about combat. There's nowhere to hide from yourself. There's no room for pretense whatsoever. And, in Falluja, this really was such a place.

BROWN: They go in. They make their way in. They have all of the power of the U.S. military behind them, air power, big tanks, artillery, the whole deal, and they are facing guys hiding in windows.

WARE: Absolutely. There's guys hiding in what you call rat holes and it's an apt description. There are men who are lying in wait and these were men who stayed behind when all the other insurgents left, when their leadership left, when their comrades departed to move on and fight for another day.

BROWN: They stayed to die?

WARE: They stayed to die. They stayed to kill American boys and to die themselves. Now, there's no greater enemy than that. It's one of the most powerful weapons in combat that is a man prepared to die.

BROWN: People talked about that you'd go around a corner and you didn't know what you'd find. Was it like that?

WARE: Absolutely. I mean, the enemy, death, great harm lurked in every nook, in every cranny. There was one particular moment in the battle of Falluja with 3rd Platoon where insurgents were hiding in a series of houses. We didn't know which one. After searching nine, we entered the 10th. And it was at quarter to 2:00 in the morning. The insurgents weren't in the front room. They were hiding in the kitchen. They allowed these boys to enter the house. And they waited for one of them and then another to step around into the hallway, and then they opened fire.

We're talking six to eight feet away in pitch black. Danger can't lurk any more sinister than that.

BROWN: We'll pick it up there.

We'll take a break. We'll continue with Michael in just a moment.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BROWN: Continuing for a few more minutes with Michael Ware of "TIME" magazine on the battle of Falluja.

Was it as they thought it would be?

WARE: No. In the end, I wouldn't call it an anticlimax, but it wasn't the Armageddon-style showdown that many were expecting.

BROWN: They came there expecting to -- in some sense, to end it all?

WARE: I'm sure the planners weren't deluding themselves to the degree that this would be the final crunch in the insurgent war in Iraq, but there certainly was a sense that this would be the great showdown.

And it wasn't. And there was some surprise at that. And that struck me. Because I don't understand why they were surprised. I mean, we have seen this, not only from the Iraqi insurgents, but from the al Qaeda-inspired insurgents and the jihadis. We saw it in the battle of Shah-i-Kot in Afghanistan, in the battle against Ansar al- Islam in Halabja in northern Iraq during the invasion. We even saw it in Samarra four or five weeks before Falluja.

This is a guerrilla war. They're never going to confront you head on. They're always just going to wither away and come back to fight you another day, from the flank, from the behind, from above, from below. That's the nature of this war.

BROWN: Let me come back to that point, one or two more things about Falluja. You shot some -- as people are seeing -- some incredible pictures. And when you look at it, it seems totally chaotic. When you're in it, is there a sense of order, or is it as chaotic as it appears to be?

WARE: I mean, combat is a very confusing place. There is a chaos to it.

You don't know where the enemy is sometimes. You don't know how you can react, how you can rally yourselves. You don't know what support you've got. You don't know if you're out there on your own. Sometimes you don't even know where your friends are, particularly if it's dark or it's a close urban environment. It is hard to know where the next man is.

I mean, it's almost impossible to describe. And what it takes, what it invariably demands is for one man in the group to stand up.

BROWN: Who was the guy in your group?

WARE: In 3rd Platoon, there was too men, both staff sergeants. One was Staff Sergeant David Bellavia. And the other one was Staff Sergeant Colin Fitts.

BROWN: So late 20s?

WARE: Yes, 26, 27, 28, I mean, young men themselves, yet with a maturity so far exceeding their years.

And, invariably, it was them that the younger men turned to. And these men, I spoke to them after some of these engagements. Internally, they're as terrified as the boys, yet they can never show this. And I know on one occasion when Bellavia stood up. I knew from afterwards what was going through his mind, that he didn't want to do what he was about to do, to enter this house where he knew insurgents were laying in wait for him. Yet, from what he was saying, you got no hint of that.

BROWN: Just one final big-picture question. You've been in and out of there for two years. You'll be back in there probably sooner than you want. Do you have a sense that, on the military side, progress is being made?

WARE: To put it simply, no. No, I don't. I mean, I don't have any sense of victory or a sense that the coalition, that the West is winning right now.

I mean, it seems to me we're losing ground, figuratively and literally. Just from my own example, six -- nine months ago, I could travel the breadth of Iraq. Sure, it was dangerous, it was risky, but it was calculated. Then that ceased. And I was restricted to Baghdad itself. And the only way I could leave Baghdad was if the insurgents took me and guaranteed my safety.

Now I can't leave my compound. Kidnap teams circle my house. And even in my compound, they mortar, drop bombs on our house. And in parts of Baghdad itself, the U.S. military has lost control. The terrorists of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi control entire quarters of suburbs. One of them, Haifa Street, the most famous, is within mortar range of the U.S. Embassy itself. And every day, we're creating more recruits for the insurgents, and every day more young men from outside Iraq, from the Muslim world agree, the disenfranchised, they're rising up and coming to join the fight, to blood themselves.

Right now, we are the midwives of the next generation of jihad, of the next al Qaeda. So the very thing that the administration says it went there to prevent, it is creating. And despite the honor and the bravery and the uncommon valor that I see among the American boys there in uniform who are fighting this grinding war day to day, when I see them dying in front of me, I can't help but think that perhaps they're dying in vain, because we're making the nightmare that we're trying to prevent.

BROWN: It's good to see you. Have a good holiday.

WARE: Thank you very much. It's my pleasure.

BROWN: One of the truly wonderful things about you, I think, is that you understand that you get a holiday and they don't.

WARE: That's very true.

BROWN: They don't.

WARE: There's no let-up. There's no let-up. And it's very hard when you're leaving these guys and you have to say goodbye, because, yes, they don't get this. BROWN: Good to see you.

WARE: Thank you. It's my pleasure.

BROWN: Thank you.

Michael Ware, who is covering the war for "TIME" magazine. Obviously, other people see the situation there differently than Michael. We talk to them as well. But that's Michael's view. And, as we said, he's been in and out of there for two years.

We'll take a break. We'll continue in a moment.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BROWN: Willie Sutton, the bank robber, famously said when asked why he robbed banks, because that's where the money is. The same theory applies to Jim Webber, who does not rob banks but saves souls. At least that's what he tries to do. And if you're going to save souls, you might want to hang out where there are plenty of potential customers, if you will, and Jim does, saving souls in sin city.

Reporting tonight CNN's Miguel Marquez.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

MIGUEL MARQUEZ, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): He's a fixture on Vegas sidewalks. For the last 30 years, Jim Webber, a real estate agent, has sold Jesus on the strip.

JIM WEBBER, STREET PREACHER: I have a mission called by God to talk to people about salvation.

MARQUEZ: It's an avocation that at times has gotten him a not- so-subtle invitation to leave, as shown in Webber's home video.

WEBBER: Security people at these different casinos are big gestapo-type guys. And they will push you around and intimidate you.

MARQUEZ: In Vegas, the casinos own many of the sidewalks. But, in 2001, a federal appeals court ruled that a sidewalk is a sidewalk, open to anyone to speak freely.

GARY PECK, ACLU: Like any other streets and sidewalks in America, they are public fora where First Amendment activities have to be allowed.

MARQUEZ: To the rescue, an unlikely ally for the street preachers, the American Civil Liberties Union.

WEBBER: Many, many of my friends look at the ACLU as almost being like the devil.

MARQUEZ: But Webber says the ACLU has been more like an avenging angel.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Thank you.

MARQUEZ: Also fighting for what they say is their right to make a pitch on the strip, hand billers, giving out advertisements for strippers.

ALAN FELDMAN, MGM MIRAGE: What we think is happening here are people who are here trying to promulgate this adult material are hiding behind others who have a legitimate free speech interest.

MARQUEZ: Again, the ACLU says commercial or religious, speech is speech.

PECK: You can't have a blanket ban on commercial speech activities on Las Vegas Boulevard, in the view of the ACLU.

MARQUEZ: The Vegas Police Department says it is developing guidelines so everyone knows what constitutes protected speech on the Vegas Strip, rules for a city where supposedly anything goes.

Miguel Marquez, CNN, Las Vegas.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

BROWN: A few other stories that made news around the country today.

The FDA says it may begin a criminal investigation into Bayer AG, the company who mayor the cholesterol-lowering drug Baycol. There are allegations that Bayer knew just three months after Baycol hit the market, 1998, that it could cause serious muscle damage when combined with another cholesterol-lowering drug. Baycol was taken off the shelves in August of '01. Bayer has already paid out a billion dollars, more, in out-of-court settlements to users of the drug.

Talk about getting rocked, a massive rock slide in Colorado about 160 miles west of Denver. Boulders the size of trucks ripped up the roadway, shutting down traffic for hours, making some people very late for Thanksgiving dinner yesterday. Nobody hurt, thankfully.

Like a bunch of locusts, that's what one shopper said it sounded like when she and other shoppers, literally tens of millions from all over the country, rushed in to snap up bargains this morning. Retailers call today Black Friday because today's sales could help lift their bottom line from the red to the black.

Ahead on NEWSNIGHT, for one high school football team in California, Friday nights just aren't about winning. They're about earning respect, quietly, one yard at a time.

From New York, this is NEWSNIGHT.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BROWN: Too often we hear about all the bad boys of sports, last week's fight during the NBA day one example of many. Sports, of course, isn't really about that. It isn't about the best in the world and millions of dollars and tens of millions of fans. Sport at its best is about kids suiting up, supporting each other, competing against the odds.

This story is about that sort of sport. Winning and losing counts of course, but beating the odds, that's really the game.

Here's CNN's Frank Buckley.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

FRANK BUCKLEY, CNN NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Under the Friday night lights in Riverside, California, this team is making history. For the first time in the history of the California School For the Deaf in Riverside, the school's football team is playing as league champion.

Maybe you didn't notice when the quarterback didn't call for the snap or when the cheerleaders signed to the fans. If you didn't, these players and their coaches have succeeded, because they don't want you to see them as deaf football players, but as football players who are deaf.

MARK KORN, QUARTERBACK (through translator): The deaf and hearing are the same. You know, we just can't hear. You know, we can play football.

BUCKLEY: And play it well. This is what a perfectly executed play looks and sounds like to them. The Cubs of Riverside went into this playoff game with a 9-1 record.

LEN GONZALES, HEAD COACH (through translator): You belong where you're at.

BUCKLEY: Under head coach Len Gonzales.

GONZALES (through translator): When I arrived here, I told the players to stop feeling sorry for themselves: I can't beat hearing schools. They're too strong for us. He says, no, you're equal. You know, you have equal opportunities. You have eyes. The only thing you can't do is hear.

BUCKLEY: They don't hear the whistle. They simply stop when the play is over. There's no cadence. Players go when the ball is snapped. Coaches communicate by signing.

(on camera): They insist on receiving no special treatment, but they do ask the referees to clearly use hand signals on the field.

(voice-over): Referees oblige the deaf coaches. Opposing teams regularly underestimate the deaf players.

GARY SIDANSKY, CORNERBACK (through translator): I think at first they react like we're nothing, we're handicapped, we can't do anything. But after the game, they realize that we can play football.

BUCKLEY: Tackle William Albright articulates what he and his teammates hope to gain this season. Read his lips.

WILLIAM ALBRIGHT, TACKLE (through translator): Respect.

BUCKLEY: On this night, they got it, scoring more points in a playoff game than any in the school's history, 27. But, in the end, it wasn't enough. They lost. Still, their journey from boys who didn't believe in themselves to young men who made it to the playoffs is one for the history books.

Frank Buckley, CNN, Riverside, California.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

BROWN: Morning papers after the break.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

(ROOSTER CROWING)

BROWN: Okeydoke, time to check morning papers around the country and around the world.

But, before we do, a thank you to all of you, the many, many, many of you who sent me recipes for turkey. I could brine it, baste it, cook it on its breast, cook it on its side, cook it really high, cook it really low, put a wet T-shirt over it. I'm not making that one up. It was still dry. So was yours, right?

"International Herald Tribune." "Kiev Rivals Meet as Protest Goes On. Two Presidential Contenders Agree to Try and Resolve Crisis and Avoid Violence." Neither can back down, because then they'd be chicken Kiev.

(LAUGHTER)

BROWN: That was for the producer, the queen of puns.

"The Washington Times." "Opposition Demands New Ukraine Vote." It's the lowest form of humor, you know, puns. "Rivals Fail to Resolve Stalemate After Meeting" is their lead story. Well, this is not a bad story either. "CIA Report Cites North Korean Proliferation Threat, Includes Talk About Transfer of Nuclear Weapons," just something to make you feel good on a Saturday morning when you wake up.

"The Dallas Morning News." We don't do this often. We should. This is my lead story and in fact was our lead story. "Iraqis Demand Election Delay as Violence Continues. Sunni, Shiite Clash on Six- Month Wait." But just to bet you -- not a real bet, because I'm -- we can't do that. But they're not going to have this election on the 30th of January. Not going to happen.

"Philadelphia Inquirer." I just like the headline. "Aisles to Go Before They Sleep." You know, puns are the lowest form of humor. "Shoppers Spend Predawn Hours in Quest For Bargains." "Ukraine Opposition Demands New Vote." Have we mentioned that? I guess we do. "Atlanta Journal Constitution" leads local and leads sadly. "Atlantan Slain on Streets in Iraq. Tireless Volunteer Found His Calling as U.S. Diplomat on Education Mission." We mentioned this the other night. We didn't know much about the circumstances of Jim Mollen's death. We know more now thanks to the "Atlanta Journal Constitution."

"The "Chattanooga Times." "Tis' the Season." There's Santa. Is the first time we've seen Santa on the program this year? I think it is. Anyway, Santa is there. And they put that on the front page, and a good Iraq story. "Convoy Tests Soldiers' Navigational Skills Coming Out of Kuwait."

"The Chicago Sun-Times," for those of you who wonder, "Come and Get It." The weather in Chicago tomorrow, "dicey."

Have a terrific weekend, dicey or not. We're all back here on Monday. Good to have you with us this week.

Good night for all of us at NEWSNIGHT.

TO ORDER A VIDEO OF THIS TRANSCRIPT, PLEASE CALL 800-CNN-NEWS OR USE OUR SECURE ONLINE ORDER FORM LOCATED AT www.fdch.com


Aired November 26, 2004 - 22:00   ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
AARON BROWN, CNN ANCHOR: Good evening again.
I was struck today by a note we received from a viewer about a segment in last night's Thanksgiving special. The segment was a piece Nissen did on soldiers badly burned in Iraq and their tender treatment and their difficult recovery.

The writer was angry with us, not for running the piece but because the soldiers in the piece didn't say what she wanted them to say, didn't say what she believed.

Each of them when asked, and they were all asked, thought what they were doing in Iraq was the right thing to do. Each of them regretted they couldn't go back and help their brothers.

A writer complained there was no fairness there. Where were the soldiers angry with the president, she said, bitter about the war? Our answer they weren't there. Not a one we talked to said that and no one controlled who we talked to.

Perhaps at some point in their lives they will be bitter. They have long roads ahead and they have lost much but then as their treatment was beginning they weren't angry and they weren't bitter and they certainly weren't political. They were proud.

Fairness is not to create the other side. Fairness is not to please both sides equally on anything. Fairness is to report what we find honestly, which we explained in our note to our writer is exactly what we did.

Again tonight Iraq leads the program and the whip, CNN's Nic Robertson with the troops, Nic a headline from you.

NIC ROBERTSON, CNN SR. INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Aaron, a lot of the young men who signed up to fight in Iraq joined up after -- joined up to the Army after September the 11th. They're beginning now to learn some of the harsh realities of the battlefield.

BROWN: Nic, thank you.

The Ukraine next, and the standoff with democracy hanging in the balance, CNN's Jill Dougherty with that, Jill, a headline.

JILL DOUGHERTY, CNN MOSCOW BUREAU CHIEF: Two men, two candidates, both of whom claim they have the right to be declared the next president of Ukraine. Today they met for the first time face to face but will it solve this country's political crisis -- Aaron?

BROWN: Jill, thank you.

Finally, Florida and beyond, where taser stun guns are now getting a second look, CNN's Susan Candiotti covering, Susan, a headline.

SUSAN CANDIOTTI, CNN NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Many police agencies and certainly taser's creator says the weapons save lives, yet the debate goes on over whether those who use them have enough training. And today, in a Florida school district, this message to the police. Don't use tasers anymore in our grade schools.

BROWN: Susan, thank you. We'll get back to you and the rest shortly.

Also coming up on the program tonight, a high school football team where the players have two things in common, first and foremost they win and then there's that other thing.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

LEN GONZALES, HEAD COACH: When I arrived here, I told the players to stop feeling sorry for themselves. I can't beat hearing schools, you know. They're too strong for us. He says, no, you're equal. You know you have equal opportunities. You have eyes. You know, the only thing you can't do is hear.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BROWN: A wonderful story this and a wonderful story that.

We'll top it off with a heaping helping, not of leftover turkey of course, but nice, fresh rooster for you, oh my goodness, morning papers at the end of the hour, all that and more in the hour ahead.

We begin tonight with the pressure building to postpone the elections in Iraq. Today more than a dozen Sunni, Kurdish and secular political parties said the 30th of January is simply too soon given the security concerns, especially in the Sunni Triangle.

They want a six-month delay, so do members of Iraq's president's own party but not the leaders of the Shiite community, they are politically organized and they have the votes.

President Bush, meantime, weighed in today from Crawford, Texas. What he said and did not say speaking volumes to our ears at least to the limits of American influence in this case.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

GEORGE W. BUSH, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: The Iraqi Election Commission has scheduled elections in January and I would hope they would go forward in January.

(END VIDEO CLIP) BROWN: Meantime, in Mosul, more signs of trouble. American forces discovering another house full of bodies, 41 in the last week, all of them apparently members of the Iraqi security forces, all of them apparently killed in a campaign of intimidation by the insurgents.

Signs as well in the word and deed that Falluja remains a work in progress, in a statement posted on a radical Web site today insurgents claim they are reorganizing.

Meantime, two U.S. Marines were killed, three others wounded today, while conducting house-to-house searches in the city. This happens more times than it should.

All the training in the world, and American troops are among the best trained soldiers there are, can't always prepare a Marine or a soldier for everything that waits for them behind a door or down a dark alley. War simply doesn't work that way.

For better or for worse, the troops learn it early and they learn it often, CNN's Nic Robertson now on patrol in Mosul with the troops of Task Force Olympia.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

ROBERTSON (voice-over): Outside in the pre-raid darkness, Specialist Dan Sluter (ph) is distinguishable only by the antenna protruding from his backpack. Inside, where even in the light the uniformity of battle gear camouflages Sluter among his comrades, he sticks close to his lieutenant just as a radio operator should. The raid could be going better but no surprise barely two months into their year long mission they are already familiar with the problems they face.

SPC. DAN SLUTER, TASK FORCE OLYMPIA: It's hard to gain trust, I think, out here. It seems to be the culture to be polite up front but kind of dagger and cloak type of attitude sometimes like, yes we'll be nice but it's because we don't want to be killed. This actually is music I downloaded.

ROBERTSON: Known as "freq" as in radio frequency to his platoon mates, Sluter shares his warm, if small, cabin on base with medic Doc Powers, the walls testimony to loves and lives put on hold.

SLUTER: You can't think about it ten months at a time. You really have to go one less day, one day closer to coming back home. That's how I deal with it. That's how my wife deals with it.

ROBERTSON: At 27, Sluter is older than the average specialist. He signed up after 9/11, fueled by a patriotic desire to help, never quite expecting this.

SLUTER: The first day we got here we took mortar fire. Our first mission we took small arms mortar RPG fire. It's just like, I'm like are we in Falluja or Mosul, I mean seriously. It was an eye opener. That was the biggest eye opener. ROBERTSON: He's not angered by what is learned. Indeed, the man from a town of just 17,000 in Indiana, who had never been overseas until now, carries with him the small town work ethic of wanting to help and accepting and rising to every challenge.

SLUTER: At one time I thought I saw one of my buddies actually get hit by a round. You know, you just kind of -- it's just kind of, I don't know how to say this. It's kind of like getting hit by the front in the face kind of thing. I mean it's here's the reality of it.

ROBERTSON: His advice for those considering following in his footsteps...

SLUTER: This isn't Hollywood but when you come over here it's -- you realize that you're here for real. It's the real deal. This is real world. This is actual happening. That's really "Full Metal Jacket" flying over your head. There's no glory.

You just do your job or everything goes out the window and it's just the men to your left and your right that you really look up to, do your mission and you try to make sure they all come back with you and that's a successful mission.

ROBERTSON: Nic Robertson, CNN, Mosul, Iraq.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

BROWN: Last week, a correspondent in Falluja wondered if the troops would end up destroying the city in order to save it. Tonight, it's hard to say that Falluja has either been fully saved or utterly destroyed, only that some work remains on the security side and a great deal of work lies ahead to undo an awful lot of damage.

Today, an important first step was taken. CNN Producer Kianne Sadeq was there.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

KIANNE SADEQ, CNN PRODUCER (voice-over): There used to be a sign here "Welcome to Falluja," no more. This is the last military checkpoint before you get into what had become Iraq's most dangerous city.

We zigzag through aboard a Red Crescent aid truck, one of about a dozen and the first independent humanitarian convoy since the assault on Falluja ended and then into the city itself.

As we drive through the deserted streets, scenes of complete destruction on all sides. The peace here is fragile and the convoy is in a hurry. Red Crescent volunteers empty food, blankets and medicine at a building they've taken over for a distribution center.

This Red Crescent ambulance driver announces our arrival and calls out for civilians to come out and get help. But Iraqi soldiers here seem to be surprised to see the aid workers. A family appears at the gate of a house only to be pushed back inside. We follow the volunteers inside.

Darhan Ahmed (ph) feels helpless. "Falluja is destroyed. There's nothing left" Darhan tells us. Ahmed's daughter Sada (ph) has been sheltering in this house for the last ten days. She says, "We wanted to protect our home but it's not here anymore."

Several families crowded in this house during the fighting with little food, no running water, no electricity. Outside, Marine commanders tell us it's still dangerous. Two Marines were killed in Falluja Friday.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: There are still a number of small insurgent groups who we are tracking down.

SADEQ: But civilians here are beginning warily to step out of their homes. It's still too early to tell how many civilians need help and how many may have died. The task of building the city is huge but Dr. Said Ismail Hakki of the Red Crescent seems hopeful.

DR. SAID ISMAIL HAKKI, RED CRESCENT: We're starting the process of healing, rehabilitation and that takes time. You can blow a house in less than five seconds but to build a new house you need months, so we're going to rehabilitate this town.

SADEQ: The media are ferried back to the distribution center. And one family is evacuated to Baghdad. The women and children are sick. Dr. Hakki puts the little girl into the ambulance and promises he'll be back with more help tomorrow.

Kianne Sadeq, CNN, Falluja.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

BROWN: Moving on, it's cold again in Kiev, snow in the forecast from now until next Thursday, not that anyone in the Ukrainian capital would notice. Protesters occupying the center of town spent another day rallying against the presidential election they believe was rigged and, in many ways, they seem to be creating their own spring thaw.

In one of the many rallies today, a couple married. Whether the warmth will last and keep the political dispute from getting ugly though is another story. Today though, at least, the signs were more hopeful and so, again from Kiev CNN's Jill Dougherty.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

DOUGHERTY (voice-over): After five days of massive street demonstrations and tense political standoff, the two men who claim they should be president of Ukraine met face to face.

Arriving for talks at the presidential palace in Kiev, they sat across from each other at a large, round table, Viktor Yanukovich, the government-backed candidate, declared winner of Sunday's runoff election and opposition leader Viktor Yushchenko, who claims that election was stolen through massive vote fraud. The atmosphere between the two men, according to the European Union's Javier Solana, who brokered the three-hour meeting, cold. The two sides agreed that round-the-clock street demonstrations led by the opposition can continue but they cannot block access to government buildings. They also agreed to avoid violence or use of force.

According to Solana, representatives from both sides will now create working groups aimed at resolving the crisis, opening the door to annulling the disputed elections and holding new ones.

JAVIER SOLANA, EUROPEAN UNION: It may be the solution, the final solution that comes out of the group, the working group. They will start tomorrow.

DOUGHERTY: Watergate Ukrainian style, the opposition says, releasing tapes of conversations that allegedly prove the government and its candidate falsified election results, even deciding in advance the margin of victory.

OLEG RYBACHUR, YUSHCHENKO CAMPAIGN MANAGER: We have agreed our candidate will with three or 3.5 percent. The voice of the person who is telling this is also on the tape.

DOUGHERTY: The shockwaves from the crisis in Ukraine are spreading wide and far.

BUSH: The international community is watching very carefully. People are paying very close attention to this and hopefully it will be resolved in a way that brings credit and confidence to the Ukrainian government.

DOUGHERTY: As news of the round table meeting spread to the streets of Kiev, opposition protesters turned up the volume, encouraged by signs of progress.

(on camera): But this is still just a first step toward finding a way for Ukraine to climb out of the political crisis that's engulfing it. Ukrainians consider themselves very patient people but no country can hang indefinitely on the brink of instability.

Jill Dougherty CNN, Kiev, Ukraine.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

BROWN: A few more items before we go to break here.

The State Department today issued an updated warning to Americans traveling in Israel, the West Bank and Gaza, this due to the uncertainty in the wake of Yasser Arafat's death.

In that regard, an influential Palestinian figure said he will not seek Mr. Arafat's job from behind bars in an Israeli prison. Marwan Barghouti instead threw his support behind Mahmoud Abbas.

The son of the U.N. Secretary-General finds himself in an uncomfortable spotlight, a U.N. spokesman today saying Kojo Annan, son of Kofi Annan, received payments in connection with the Iraqi Oil-for- Food Program as early as this year, a program being investigated for all sorts of shenanigans.

And a new report says not enough is being done to safeguard commercial flights from hazardous cargo such as oxygen canisters that caught fire causing the crash of a ValuJet DC-9 some years back. The report, put together by the inspector general's office at the Department of Transportation, calls the FAA regulation of Hazmat lengthy, cumbersome and at times ineffective.

Ahead on the program on a Friday night, the kind of temptation you might not expect to find in Las Vegas.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I have a mission called by God to talk to people about salvation. God bless you.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BROWN: Salvation on the sidewalks of the city built on sin, some would say.

And later, a different sales pitch, yes, Black Friday, we'll check the receipts, albeit quickly, a break first.

This is NEWSNIGHT.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BROWN: It seems often things change only after something extreme happens. Take, for example, the 6-year-old boy in Florida who was tasered by police. Now there are questions about whether the taser can severely hurt someone, maybe even kill them.

Some would say the timing of the questions are just coincidence but critics argue it took a little boy, a first grader getting tasered in school, for people to demand that police change their tactics.

From South Florida tonight, here's CNN's Susan Candiotti.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

CANDIOTTI (voice-over): About one week after learning from CNN that police tasered a 6-year-old boy in one of its elementary schools, the district said no more. In a letter sent to Miami-Dade's police chief, the school superintendent asks that police "refrain from deploying tasers against elementary school students."

Police say its officers, three feet away, were afraid the cornered boy might hurt himself further. The first grader was bloody, holding a piece of broken glass. Police shot metal darts into his chest, charged with 50,000 volts.

DR. ROBERT PARKER, MIAMI-DADE, FLORIDA: I'm telling you that these two police officers in this case were small female police officers.

CANDIOTTI: Next week, Amnesty International is releasing a report claiming police are overusing tasers, at times amounting to mistreatment and torture. Training is one area questioned.

BENJAMIN JEALOUS, AMNESTY INTERNATIONAL USA: Certainly it comes down to a judgment call and that's why we're saying that, you know, they need better training.

CANDIOTTI: In Boynton Beach, Florida, an officer was forced to resign last month after authorities say he lied about why he tasered a suspect. A surveillance tape shows the seated man in a cell was not resisting but the officer stunned him anyway.

Wednesday night, a different set of circumstances led Indianapolis Police to fire a stun gun twice at Minnesota Timberwolves basketball layer Michael Olowokandi. He allegedly refused to leave a bar.

SGT. STEVE STALETOVICH, INDIANAPOLIS POLICE: There were no injuries reported to Mr. Olowokandi and the taser appears to have worked, worked great.

CANDIOTTI: Taser International insists its weapons are generally safe. Other experts say testing is far from complete. Nationwide many police agencies using tasers commend them.

SHERIFF-ELECT DEAN KELLY, PUTNAM CO., FLORIDA: Since we have started using the taser about two years ago, we have seen a decrease in injuries to not just our officers but also to the people being arrested of over 83 percent.

CANDIOTTI (on camera): After "The New York Times" published a report critical of Taser International, the stock fell five percent. The company questions the timing of that newspaper report just before it splits its stock next week. In the words of the company's co- founder, "The bottom line is we're saving many, many lives yet the debate is far from over."

Susan Candiotti, CNN, Miami.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

BROWN: Still ahead tonight a quiet conversation about a place that's anything but. Reporter Michael Ware joins us after a tour of duty in Falluja.

And later, a different tone entirely, a football game in which silence says volumes about character and teamwork, a break first.

Around the world this is NEWSNIGHT.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BROWN: Keep those names in mind for the next ten minutes or so. For a reporter, war is the ultimate story, truth be told. There are triumphs and disasters, heroes and cowards. There are important objectives and policy disasters all before lunch, if there is lunch, which there often isn't.

Michael Ware has been writing war stories for "Time" magazine. He was embedded with a small Army unit in the fight in Falluja and he's back home now for a bit or at least back here in New York, home for Michael being a long ways away. We talked with him earlier tonight.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

BROWN: In a sentence or two describe the unit you were with.

MICHAEL WARE, "TIME" CORRESPONDENT: During the battle of Falluja, I was with an Army unit, a smaller element within the broader attack but very important. It boiled down to the 3rd Platoon of Alpha Company and what's known as the 2nd Battalion, 2nd Infantry Regiment. These are essentially mechanized infantry, young guys who jump out of the back of the Bradley armored vehicles.

BROWN: Nineteen to 25, 26?

WARE: Yes. I mean the leaders of these men, if you call them that are more like (UNINTELLIGIBLE) boys. The eldest among them was 26, perhaps one was 29. The bulk of them were in their late teens or just out of their teens. These really are the youth of America.

BROWN: The day before they went in were you with them?

WARE: Yes, I was.

BROWN: What was it like?

WARE: Pensive, I mean, these men had it drilled into them over and over what it was that they were to expect about going into the dark heart of the Iraqi insurgency. This was the nest or this was the base, not only of the homegrown Iraqi nationalists but this was the central node of the foreign jihadis, the real hardcore.

BROWN: Were they scared?

WARE: Yes. I mean, there's always that fear, I mean that anticipation of battle. I mean, you become so cognizant of your own mortality and these boys aren't immune from that but they do not shy away from it. They swallow it down and press on.

BROWN: Well, there's a difference between being afraid and being -- and cowardice. Those are very different things. You're nuts not to be afraid.

WARE: Absolutely.

BROWN: Guys are going in there, they're shooting at you and they're throwing RPGs at you and there's bombs everywhere. WARE: Absolutely and I have seen in combat in Iraq where you'll be with five or six men and you're engaged with the enemy and there's a fierce firefight and suddenly you'll look down for a moment and there's one man curled up into a ball who simply can't pick up his weapon.

The funny thing is the next day you may be in another firefight and here's the fiercest amongst them. That's something about combat. There's nowhere to hide from yourself. There's no room for pretense whatsoever. And, in Falluja, this really was such a place.

BROWN: They go in. They make their way in. They have all of the power of the U.S. military behind them, air power, big tanks, artillery, the whole deal, and they are facing guys hiding in windows.

WARE: Absolutely. There's guys hiding in what you call rat holes and it's an apt description. There are men who are lying in wait and these were men who stayed behind when all the other insurgents left, when their leadership left, when their comrades departed to move on and fight for another day.

BROWN: They stayed to die?

WARE: They stayed to die. They stayed to kill American boys and to die themselves. Now, there's no greater enemy than that. It's one of the most powerful weapons in combat that is a man prepared to die.

BROWN: People talked about that you'd go around a corner and you didn't know what you'd find. Was it like that?

WARE: Absolutely. I mean, the enemy, death, great harm lurked in every nook, in every cranny. There was one particular moment in the battle of Falluja with 3rd Platoon where insurgents were hiding in a series of houses. We didn't know which one. After searching nine, we entered the 10th. And it was at quarter to 2:00 in the morning. The insurgents weren't in the front room. They were hiding in the kitchen. They allowed these boys to enter the house. And they waited for one of them and then another to step around into the hallway, and then they opened fire.

We're talking six to eight feet away in pitch black. Danger can't lurk any more sinister than that.

BROWN: We'll pick it up there.

We'll take a break. We'll continue with Michael in just a moment.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BROWN: Continuing for a few more minutes with Michael Ware of "TIME" magazine on the battle of Falluja.

Was it as they thought it would be?

WARE: No. In the end, I wouldn't call it an anticlimax, but it wasn't the Armageddon-style showdown that many were expecting.

BROWN: They came there expecting to -- in some sense, to end it all?

WARE: I'm sure the planners weren't deluding themselves to the degree that this would be the final crunch in the insurgent war in Iraq, but there certainly was a sense that this would be the great showdown.

And it wasn't. And there was some surprise at that. And that struck me. Because I don't understand why they were surprised. I mean, we have seen this, not only from the Iraqi insurgents, but from the al Qaeda-inspired insurgents and the jihadis. We saw it in the battle of Shah-i-Kot in Afghanistan, in the battle against Ansar al- Islam in Halabja in northern Iraq during the invasion. We even saw it in Samarra four or five weeks before Falluja.

This is a guerrilla war. They're never going to confront you head on. They're always just going to wither away and come back to fight you another day, from the flank, from the behind, from above, from below. That's the nature of this war.

BROWN: Let me come back to that point, one or two more things about Falluja. You shot some -- as people are seeing -- some incredible pictures. And when you look at it, it seems totally chaotic. When you're in it, is there a sense of order, or is it as chaotic as it appears to be?

WARE: I mean, combat is a very confusing place. There is a chaos to it.

You don't know where the enemy is sometimes. You don't know how you can react, how you can rally yourselves. You don't know what support you've got. You don't know if you're out there on your own. Sometimes you don't even know where your friends are, particularly if it's dark or it's a close urban environment. It is hard to know where the next man is.

I mean, it's almost impossible to describe. And what it takes, what it invariably demands is for one man in the group to stand up.

BROWN: Who was the guy in your group?

WARE: In 3rd Platoon, there was too men, both staff sergeants. One was Staff Sergeant David Bellavia. And the other one was Staff Sergeant Colin Fitts.

BROWN: So late 20s?

WARE: Yes, 26, 27, 28, I mean, young men themselves, yet with a maturity so far exceeding their years.

And, invariably, it was them that the younger men turned to. And these men, I spoke to them after some of these engagements. Internally, they're as terrified as the boys, yet they can never show this. And I know on one occasion when Bellavia stood up. I knew from afterwards what was going through his mind, that he didn't want to do what he was about to do, to enter this house where he knew insurgents were laying in wait for him. Yet, from what he was saying, you got no hint of that.

BROWN: Just one final big-picture question. You've been in and out of there for two years. You'll be back in there probably sooner than you want. Do you have a sense that, on the military side, progress is being made?

WARE: To put it simply, no. No, I don't. I mean, I don't have any sense of victory or a sense that the coalition, that the West is winning right now.

I mean, it seems to me we're losing ground, figuratively and literally. Just from my own example, six -- nine months ago, I could travel the breadth of Iraq. Sure, it was dangerous, it was risky, but it was calculated. Then that ceased. And I was restricted to Baghdad itself. And the only way I could leave Baghdad was if the insurgents took me and guaranteed my safety.

Now I can't leave my compound. Kidnap teams circle my house. And even in my compound, they mortar, drop bombs on our house. And in parts of Baghdad itself, the U.S. military has lost control. The terrorists of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi control entire quarters of suburbs. One of them, Haifa Street, the most famous, is within mortar range of the U.S. Embassy itself. And every day, we're creating more recruits for the insurgents, and every day more young men from outside Iraq, from the Muslim world agree, the disenfranchised, they're rising up and coming to join the fight, to blood themselves.

Right now, we are the midwives of the next generation of jihad, of the next al Qaeda. So the very thing that the administration says it went there to prevent, it is creating. And despite the honor and the bravery and the uncommon valor that I see among the American boys there in uniform who are fighting this grinding war day to day, when I see them dying in front of me, I can't help but think that perhaps they're dying in vain, because we're making the nightmare that we're trying to prevent.

BROWN: It's good to see you. Have a good holiday.

WARE: Thank you very much. It's my pleasure.

BROWN: One of the truly wonderful things about you, I think, is that you understand that you get a holiday and they don't.

WARE: That's very true.

BROWN: They don't.

WARE: There's no let-up. There's no let-up. And it's very hard when you're leaving these guys and you have to say goodbye, because, yes, they don't get this. BROWN: Good to see you.

WARE: Thank you. It's my pleasure.

BROWN: Thank you.

Michael Ware, who is covering the war for "TIME" magazine. Obviously, other people see the situation there differently than Michael. We talk to them as well. But that's Michael's view. And, as we said, he's been in and out of there for two years.

We'll take a break. We'll continue in a moment.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BROWN: Willie Sutton, the bank robber, famously said when asked why he robbed banks, because that's where the money is. The same theory applies to Jim Webber, who does not rob banks but saves souls. At least that's what he tries to do. And if you're going to save souls, you might want to hang out where there are plenty of potential customers, if you will, and Jim does, saving souls in sin city.

Reporting tonight CNN's Miguel Marquez.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

MIGUEL MARQUEZ, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): He's a fixture on Vegas sidewalks. For the last 30 years, Jim Webber, a real estate agent, has sold Jesus on the strip.

JIM WEBBER, STREET PREACHER: I have a mission called by God to talk to people about salvation.

MARQUEZ: It's an avocation that at times has gotten him a not- so-subtle invitation to leave, as shown in Webber's home video.

WEBBER: Security people at these different casinos are big gestapo-type guys. And they will push you around and intimidate you.

MARQUEZ: In Vegas, the casinos own many of the sidewalks. But, in 2001, a federal appeals court ruled that a sidewalk is a sidewalk, open to anyone to speak freely.

GARY PECK, ACLU: Like any other streets and sidewalks in America, they are public fora where First Amendment activities have to be allowed.

MARQUEZ: To the rescue, an unlikely ally for the street preachers, the American Civil Liberties Union.

WEBBER: Many, many of my friends look at the ACLU as almost being like the devil.

MARQUEZ: But Webber says the ACLU has been more like an avenging angel.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Thank you.

MARQUEZ: Also fighting for what they say is their right to make a pitch on the strip, hand billers, giving out advertisements for strippers.

ALAN FELDMAN, MGM MIRAGE: What we think is happening here are people who are here trying to promulgate this adult material are hiding behind others who have a legitimate free speech interest.

MARQUEZ: Again, the ACLU says commercial or religious, speech is speech.

PECK: You can't have a blanket ban on commercial speech activities on Las Vegas Boulevard, in the view of the ACLU.

MARQUEZ: The Vegas Police Department says it is developing guidelines so everyone knows what constitutes protected speech on the Vegas Strip, rules for a city where supposedly anything goes.

Miguel Marquez, CNN, Las Vegas.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

BROWN: A few other stories that made news around the country today.

The FDA says it may begin a criminal investigation into Bayer AG, the company who mayor the cholesterol-lowering drug Baycol. There are allegations that Bayer knew just three months after Baycol hit the market, 1998, that it could cause serious muscle damage when combined with another cholesterol-lowering drug. Baycol was taken off the shelves in August of '01. Bayer has already paid out a billion dollars, more, in out-of-court settlements to users of the drug.

Talk about getting rocked, a massive rock slide in Colorado about 160 miles west of Denver. Boulders the size of trucks ripped up the roadway, shutting down traffic for hours, making some people very late for Thanksgiving dinner yesterday. Nobody hurt, thankfully.

Like a bunch of locusts, that's what one shopper said it sounded like when she and other shoppers, literally tens of millions from all over the country, rushed in to snap up bargains this morning. Retailers call today Black Friday because today's sales could help lift their bottom line from the red to the black.

Ahead on NEWSNIGHT, for one high school football team in California, Friday nights just aren't about winning. They're about earning respect, quietly, one yard at a time.

From New York, this is NEWSNIGHT.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BROWN: Too often we hear about all the bad boys of sports, last week's fight during the NBA day one example of many. Sports, of course, isn't really about that. It isn't about the best in the world and millions of dollars and tens of millions of fans. Sport at its best is about kids suiting up, supporting each other, competing against the odds.

This story is about that sort of sport. Winning and losing counts of course, but beating the odds, that's really the game.

Here's CNN's Frank Buckley.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

FRANK BUCKLEY, CNN NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Under the Friday night lights in Riverside, California, this team is making history. For the first time in the history of the California School For the Deaf in Riverside, the school's football team is playing as league champion.

Maybe you didn't notice when the quarterback didn't call for the snap or when the cheerleaders signed to the fans. If you didn't, these players and their coaches have succeeded, because they don't want you to see them as deaf football players, but as football players who are deaf.

MARK KORN, QUARTERBACK (through translator): The deaf and hearing are the same. You know, we just can't hear. You know, we can play football.

BUCKLEY: And play it well. This is what a perfectly executed play looks and sounds like to them. The Cubs of Riverside went into this playoff game with a 9-1 record.

LEN GONZALES, HEAD COACH (through translator): You belong where you're at.

BUCKLEY: Under head coach Len Gonzales.

GONZALES (through translator): When I arrived here, I told the players to stop feeling sorry for themselves: I can't beat hearing schools. They're too strong for us. He says, no, you're equal. You know, you have equal opportunities. You have eyes. The only thing you can't do is hear.

BUCKLEY: They don't hear the whistle. They simply stop when the play is over. There's no cadence. Players go when the ball is snapped. Coaches communicate by signing.

(on camera): They insist on receiving no special treatment, but they do ask the referees to clearly use hand signals on the field.

(voice-over): Referees oblige the deaf coaches. Opposing teams regularly underestimate the deaf players.

GARY SIDANSKY, CORNERBACK (through translator): I think at first they react like we're nothing, we're handicapped, we can't do anything. But after the game, they realize that we can play football.

BUCKLEY: Tackle William Albright articulates what he and his teammates hope to gain this season. Read his lips.

WILLIAM ALBRIGHT, TACKLE (through translator): Respect.

BUCKLEY: On this night, they got it, scoring more points in a playoff game than any in the school's history, 27. But, in the end, it wasn't enough. They lost. Still, their journey from boys who didn't believe in themselves to young men who made it to the playoffs is one for the history books.

Frank Buckley, CNN, Riverside, California.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

BROWN: Morning papers after the break.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

(ROOSTER CROWING)

BROWN: Okeydoke, time to check morning papers around the country and around the world.

But, before we do, a thank you to all of you, the many, many, many of you who sent me recipes for turkey. I could brine it, baste it, cook it on its breast, cook it on its side, cook it really high, cook it really low, put a wet T-shirt over it. I'm not making that one up. It was still dry. So was yours, right?

"International Herald Tribune." "Kiev Rivals Meet as Protest Goes On. Two Presidential Contenders Agree to Try and Resolve Crisis and Avoid Violence." Neither can back down, because then they'd be chicken Kiev.

(LAUGHTER)

BROWN: That was for the producer, the queen of puns.

"The Washington Times." "Opposition Demands New Ukraine Vote." It's the lowest form of humor, you know, puns. "Rivals Fail to Resolve Stalemate After Meeting" is their lead story. Well, this is not a bad story either. "CIA Report Cites North Korean Proliferation Threat, Includes Talk About Transfer of Nuclear Weapons," just something to make you feel good on a Saturday morning when you wake up.

"The Dallas Morning News." We don't do this often. We should. This is my lead story and in fact was our lead story. "Iraqis Demand Election Delay as Violence Continues. Sunni, Shiite Clash on Six- Month Wait." But just to bet you -- not a real bet, because I'm -- we can't do that. But they're not going to have this election on the 30th of January. Not going to happen.

"Philadelphia Inquirer." I just like the headline. "Aisles to Go Before They Sleep." You know, puns are the lowest form of humor. "Shoppers Spend Predawn Hours in Quest For Bargains." "Ukraine Opposition Demands New Vote." Have we mentioned that? I guess we do. "Atlanta Journal Constitution" leads local and leads sadly. "Atlantan Slain on Streets in Iraq. Tireless Volunteer Found His Calling as U.S. Diplomat on Education Mission." We mentioned this the other night. We didn't know much about the circumstances of Jim Mollen's death. We know more now thanks to the "Atlanta Journal Constitution."

"The "Chattanooga Times." "Tis' the Season." There's Santa. Is the first time we've seen Santa on the program this year? I think it is. Anyway, Santa is there. And they put that on the front page, and a good Iraq story. "Convoy Tests Soldiers' Navigational Skills Coming Out of Kuwait."

"The Chicago Sun-Times," for those of you who wonder, "Come and Get It." The weather in Chicago tomorrow, "dicey."

Have a terrific weekend, dicey or not. We're all back here on Monday. Good to have you with us this week.

Good night for all of us at NEWSNIGHT.

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