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CNN Newsnight Aaron Brown

NFL Football Player Dies in Afghanistan; Marines Ready to Resume Siege of Fallujah

Aired April 23, 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.
We report tonight on the death of one time NFL football player Pat Tillman. He died in Afghanistan. We'll leave most of the detail to Frank Buckley's reporting in a little bit but just a few thoughts here first.

Mr. Tillman didn't have to go in the Army. He didn't need the money. In fact, he walked away from millions when he enlisted. He didn't go for the publicity surely, in fact he shunned it when he made his decision.

He went in the days after 9/11 because he believed it was his duty. It is a kind of selflessness few of us possess and so we honor him. But we hope that in reporting on his life and his death tonight you will see this as something more than a story about one guy who made one decision and who died. For, in truth, his death is no more important because of his fame than nearly hundreds of others who have died in that country.

In honoring Pat Tillman tonight, and we do, we hope we also honor all those others who have died, who have been wounded, who are there tonight doing hard and dangerous work and receive little or no attention at all. If Pat Tillman's life and his decision teaches us anything it should teach us that.

It is the war in Iraq that we begin with though, what looks like the end game for the Marines, the insurgents and everybody else in Fallujah. Our Senior Pentagon Correspondent Jamie McIntyre starts us off, Jamie a headline.

JAMIE MCINTYRE, CNN SR. PENTAGON CORRESPONDENT: Well, warning that the U.S. military's patience is not eternal, U.S. commanders signal today that the Marines are ready to resume their siege of Fallujah within days and here at the Pentagon there is some hope it could amount to the insurgents' last stand -- Aaron.

BROWN: Jamie, thank you.

Next to Baghdad, the Fallujah story and all the rest of the news of the day, CNN's Jane Arraf with us again, Jane the headline.

JANE ARRAF, CNN BAGHDAD BUREAU CHIEF: With mosque sermons on Friday warning of an overall uprising if the Marines launch an all out assault on Fallujah, the very name of that city is becoming a rallying call uniting Sunnis and Shias against the occupation -- Aaron.

BROWN: Jane, thank you.

And finally back to the Pat Tillman story, his death, the sacrifice he chose to make, Frank Buckley covering from Phoenix, Frank a headline.

FRANK BUCKLEY, CNN NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Aaron, here in this community Pat Tillman was universally admired for his decision to walk away from a lucrative NFL career to serve his country at a time of war. Tonight, just as many people have been touched by his death -- Aaron.

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

Also coming up on this Friday night, trying to heal the great unhealed wound of American history more than 100 years after the end of slavery an apology.

Plus, a war story heavy on heroism and featuring more than a little there and do, 12 sailors take on a German U-boat and take it home with them.

And it's Friday and we know what that means and so do you. The rooster picked up some tabloids on his way in with the morning papers, all that and more in the hour ahead.

We begin tonight with the standoff in Fallujah, a standoff in a city that has long bedeviled American forces. Fallujah, in fact, was no picnic even in the days of Saddam Hussein who held control by greasing palms, chopping heads and spreading as much terror as his secret police could manage.

The coalition on the other hand has the Marines. The Marines in turn are dealing with locals and rebels who may or may not be gaming each side against the other.

We have two reports tonight beginning first with CNN's Jamie McIntyre.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

MCINTYRE (voice-over): The Pentagon sees the showdown in Fallujah as a potentially pivotal battle in the war against Iraqi insurgents. After enduring nearly two weeks of a one-sided cease-fire and fruitless negotiations with town elders, the U.S. is signaling Marines will storm the city within days.

BRIG. GEN. MARK KIMMITT, DEPUTY DIRECTOR OF COALITION OPERATIONS: These discussions must bear fruit. Our patience is not eternal.

BUCKLEY: The 2,000 or so Marines surrounding Fallujah have come under regular fire from within the city and U.S. demands to surrender all heavy weapons have been met with a paltry assortment of military junk, rusty guns and dud bombs. KIMMITT: It would not appear that we should go on much longer with this fiction.

BUCKLEY: Fallujah is seen as different from the rest of Iraq and Pentagon officials predict it may be the last stand for remnants of the old regime.

PAUL BREMER, U.S. CIVIL ADMINISTRATOR: Some of these men belong to the banished instruments of Saddam's repression, the former intelligence services and former Republican Guards.

MCINTYRE: Among the fighters in Fallujah are believed to be some of Saddam Hussein's most highly trained and effective troops from the old M-14 antiterrorism directorate.

PAUL WOLFOWITZ, DEPUTY DEFENSE SECRETARY: Antiterrorism is an Orwellian phrase. It, in fact, was a terrorist unit that specialized in hijackings, assassinations and explosives.

MCINTYRE: In fact, according to a classified DIA report given to Congress this week, much of the violence in Iraq, including deadly suicide attacks and sophisticated roadside bombs, were part of a prewar master plan devised by the Iraqi Intelligence Service. Despite the fact that heavy fighting and inevitable civilian casualties risks fueling anti-American sentiment, the U.S. believes that risk is worth taking.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

MCINTYRE: The Pentagon believes that many of the remaining diehards are essentially trapped in Fallujah and that wiping them out now might provide the best opportunity to break the back of the resistance -- Aaron.

BROWN: Well, there are some really interesting things about this just in listening here because they are not demanding the surrender, are they, of the insurgents, they are simply demanding, or perhaps not so simply, the heavy weapons?

MCINTYRE: That's right because actually they're not even negotiating with the actual insurgents they're fighting. They're negotiating with middle men in the city and presumably they believe if they get control they'll be able to investigate and try to find the people who are responsible for the acts of violence but they say they're not even getting good faith efforts on what they've asked for, which is of course a cease-fire and the turnover of those weapons.

BROWN: Jamie, thank you. Have a good weekend. Thanks for your work this week.

About a quarter of a million people live in Fallujah and, while many of them clearly sympathize or even support the insurgents, many do not but many more might if retaking the city also kills a lot of innocent bystanders or, if it perceived that way.

That in an ugly nutshell is what the insurgents are counting on. It is also the reality of what the Marines are dealing with and it is a possibility the Fallujans can't ignore.

With more on the spot they are all in we turn once again to CNN's Jane Arraf who joins us once again from Baghdad, Jane good morning.

ARRAF: Good morning, Aaron.

The very name Fallujah is in danger of becoming a rallying call against the U.S. occupation. For Iraqis the prospect of an all out assault on that small city is uniting Sunnis and Shias. In fact, in the mosques today, we heard imams warning that there would be an overall uprising if such an assault were launched.

For the Marines, of course, this is the Sunni heartland and, if they do not defeat or disarm the insurgents they are in danger they feel of losing all of Iraq and in Baghdad streets a lot of Iraqis have forgotten those horrible images of mutilated bodies that preceded the Marine offensive in Fallujah. For them it's become a symbol of Iraqi resistance against occupation.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Fallujah is our city like Baghdad, like Najaf, like Mosul, like (unintelligible). Therefore, if coalition forces don't stop this trouble maybe they'll do some bigger trouble in all Iraq.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE (through translator): These are my people. If an innocent from my family were to get killed, I will fight more than the resistance. What crime have I committed to lose a family member?

(END VIDEO CLIP)

ARRAF: Now, the Marines say they're taking a lot of care to avoid civilian casualties as they always do but two weeks of intense but sporadic fighting have already filled two soccer fields with bodies that their families couldn't get to the morgue and every day military officials here warn that time is running out. If the insurgents and the foreign fighters don't turn in their weapons, they will take the city, something everyone fears -- Aaron.

BROWN: Let me ask two quick questions. One is generally speaking do people in Baghdad, other parts of the country, see all of this on their television screens and who are they watching?

ARRAF: Well, the quick answer to that is they're probably watching the Arab satellite channels and what they're seeing is probably a different version than the pictures that we're seeing for a lot of reasons.

One of those reasons though is that we are with the military. It's very unsafe there and there are very few western television cameras, if any, in the streets of Fallujah getting that other side.

So what they're seeing is a lot of death, a lot of destruction and not necessarily the analysis, not necessarily the reasons that the U.S. military is holding fast to Fallujah. It's insistent that it disarm these people if this does not spread -- Aaron.

BROWN: And one more thing on that, just in briefly looking at Arab TV today, or at least the translated versions that I saw when I came in, there was some sentiment among Iraqis that I would describe as anti-insurgency, people saying essentially we're sick of the violence. We are sick of the shooting. We just want to get on with our lives and this thing has to end.

ARRAF: Absolutely and it's a very delicate balance. It's a balancing act in two places, in the holy cities of Najaf and Karbala and in Fallujah. Iraqis do want the violence to end but they seem to want it to end on their terms. They want some acknowledgement that this is an Iraqi city. I mean we've heard in those sound bytes that people feel very strongly.

Fallujah is Iraq and you cannot just go in and launch an assault and take it. There has to be some negotiated settlement. As Jamie alluded to, though, the problem is who do they negotiate with? Those negotiations so far haven't gotten the U.S. very far and it's not clear that they will -- Aaron.

BROWN: Jane, thank you, Jane Arraf in Baghdad.

Afghanistan now where since the fall of the Taliban dozens of Americans have died the latest of whom is being remembered tonight. His death underscores, we think, a discussion we had this week over reinstating the draft and the not so pretty corollary that Senator Chuck Hagel was quick to notice. In this war, he said, nobody has to sacrifice anything but with that notion hanging so thick in the air, Pat Tillman did.

Here again, CNN's Frank Buckley.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

BUCKLEY (voice-over): Pat Tillman was a successful safety in the NFL making millions, a bright future ahead but the events of 9/11 had a profound impact on the 25-year-old football player. Here's what he said on 9/12.

PAT TILLMAN, KILLED IN AFGHANISTAN: You know my great grandfather was at Pearl Harbor and a lot of my family has given up, you know, has gone and fought in wars and I really haven't done a damn thing as far as laying myself on the line like that and so I have a great deal of respect for those that have.

BUCKLEY: Soon after that interview, Tillman walked away from the game and its glories and with his younger brother joined the U.S. Army.

MICHAEL BIDWILL, V.P., ARIZONA CARDINALS: In sports we have a tendency to overuse terms like courage and bravery and heroes and then someone special like Pat Tillman comes along and reminds us what those terms really mean.

BUCKLEY: Tillman's decision was front page news. For some in professional sports it would have been a moment to capitalize on positive publicity. Tillman refused all interviews.

TIM LAYDEN, SENIOR WRITER, "SPORTS ILLUSTRATED": He didn't want to be made into a hero for what he was doing because that would somehow taint the purity of what he was trying to do.

BUCKLEY: Flags were at half staff at the stadium where Tillman once played, first as an Arizona State linebacker and later as an Arizona Cardinal free safety. Now there are makeshift memorials here and at the Arizona Cardinals training facility.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: It's really sad that somebody that was willing to give that up gets taken.

BUCKLEY: People who never met Pat Tillman came to pay their respects to a football player who seemed to have it all.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: He walked away from it to do something he believed even more deeply in, which is the fight for freedom and I just think he's going to go down in history as one of the true great heroes of our time.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

BUCKLEY: Pat Tillman sure to be one of the names that Americans will forever associate with the war in Afghanistan. Locally at Arizona State University where he played college football they intend to retire his jersey.

They're also establishing a scholarship fund in his name in association with the Arizona Cardinals. The Cardinals also intending to retire his jersey. They say they will also talk to the NFL about putting the number 40 on their apparel next year.

And finally, in 2006 when the Cardinals open their new stadium they say they will name the plaza just outside of the stadium the Pat Tillman Freedom Plaza -- Aaron.

BROWN: Frank, thank you, Frank Buckley in Phoenix.

Iraq forces itself into the news pretty much every day, sometimes several times a day but the sad death of young Pat Tillman reminds us that Afghanistan was the war the country fought first and clearly is still fighting now.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

BROWN (voice-over): Fifteen thousand American troops representing all branches of the armed services are in Afghanistan tonight. They are headquartered at Bagram Air Base north of Kabul with some also stationed around Kandahar and at various camps in the southeastern part of the country.

Most of the troops there are helping to train the Afghan Army. Some are doing reconstruction work but some are also hunting for the Taliban remnants and other threats and a group called Task Force 21 has very specific targets. They are the soldiers charged with finding and capturing or killing former Taliban leader Mullah Omar and the man who set all the killing wheels in motion in the first place Osama bin Laden.

Eighty Americans have died in Afghanistan, more than 19 in helicopter crashes, more than seven in vehicle accidents. In Iraq where there are nearly ten times as many troops, about 135,000 tonight, nearly ten times as many, 707 have been killed so far.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

BROWN: Ahead on the program tonight, if the headlines are so grim, why do the president's poll numbers keep going up? Some theories from Jeff Greenfield coming up next.

And later, the coffin controversy, does the public have the right to see the casualties of war? Do news organizations have an obligation to show them, a break first.

From New York this is NEWSNIGHT.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BROWN: Regular viewers of the program know or have figured out by now that we rarely do stories about polls. Sometimes we do but not often. Still, this is in some respects a story about polls, what they show and what they don't, what they mean and what they don't.

It was a story that had its start earlier in the week with new polls showing the president moving ahead of John Kerry against a news background that at first blush hardly seemed favorable.

Here's our Senior Analyst Jeff Greenfield.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

JEFF GREENFIELD, CNN SR. ANALYST (voice-over): Think of it as an exercise in twisted logic. As long as the candidates are campaigning as if it's mid-October, the press might as well poll as if it's in mid-October, yet each new poll brings enough wind to drive the Americas Cup.

This week, two surveys on the same day did the trick. The CNN- USA Today Gallup poll showed a slight up tick for President Bush. The ABC-Washington Post poll showed a more dramatic shift.

But how, the question went, could this happen what with tough questions from Iraq, tough questions from the 9/11 Commission, much typed books questioning the administration's performance, a contentious press conference?

Ah-huh, came the answer, Iraq reminded voters of presidential leadership. The commission was too partisan. Voters liked the president's moral clarity. And then there were those $50 million worth of Bush commercials challenging Kerry's judgment, inconsistency, and maybe Kerry hasn't been very good on the stump. Fine. Now look at two other numbers. The daily tracking poll from Rasmussen shows, what, it shows virtually no change in weeks and weeks and weeks. The race was and is a virtual dead heat.

Now look at polls from the key state of Florida. One survey from three weeks back showed Bush with an eight point lead. A different poll Thursday showed Bush with just a one point lead.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

GREENFIELD: So, what does this mean? Did the people of Florida dislike the same Bush ads the rest of the country liked? Did Rasmussen talk to different people than ABC or CNN? Or maybe there's a different explanation. Every poll uses different methods to measure likely voters. They ask different questions in different order.

Rasmussen uses touchtone responses. A lot of other pollsters think that's a little tricky. And shifts of two or three points often mean nothing. It is a matter of statistical fluke.

And finally, do we really think mid-April polls tell us anything much about November?

At this point in 1980, Carter led Reagan by six points. He lost by ten.

At this point in 1992, the first Bush led Clinton by 15 points. He lost by six.

Four years ago, George W. Bush led Gore by nine points and he lost the popular vote.

And, as Kevin Nealon famously said on "Saturday Night Live," Aaron, if the presidential election were held today, 85 percent said they'd really be surprised.

BROWN: Well, yes we would. So, at what point should we, if we should, pay attention to polls at all and which polls should we pay attention to?

GREENFIELD: Well, we should get in a plug for CNN's. That's usually pretty conservative. Look, I think by the time you get -- the thing you shouldn't do is watch the polls right after the conventions because unless there's a disaster Kerry will move into a lead after the Democratic convention and the president will move into a lead in the Republican one.

The right track wrong track numbers tell you something because those are numbers where voters get to say whatever is on their mind that is they're not pushed. They just think -- do you think things are going OK or not? And, if many of them say not that can hurt the incumbent.

I also think the Kerry campaign even now has to be a little concerned that in a state like New Jersey that the Democrats carried big the last three elections, he's only up by one point. But all of that, Aaron, as you well know and it's why your show is right I think is this is tentative stuff. Poll numbers look quantitative. They look like they're measuring something real and it is why somebody, I wish it had been me, called polling the crack cocaine of political journalists. We're hooked on them.

BROWN: Jeff, we are sometimes. Thank you.

GREENFIELD: OK.

BROWN: Thank you.

With the deadline fast approaching, U.S. lawmakers have been pushing the Bush administration to define what a sovereign Iraq will look like and now the details are trickling out with two months to go.

The Iraqis will get all the headaches of running their battered country but with significant limits on their power, the kind of limits that make talking about the new Iraq a kind of sovereignty light.

Fareed Zakaria is the international editor of "Newsweek," the author of "Future of Freedom." He's given a lot of thought to the transition in Iraq and we're glad to have him with us again tonight.

I want to maybe talk just one overview question. Let's talk about some of the specifics that came out today. Absent the kind of sovereignty that gives Iraqis real control over their country, are they likely to be very happy?

FAREED ZAKARIA, EDITOR, "NEWSWEEK INTERNATIONAL": The key question in a sense is not sovereignty but legitimacy. Will the government be sovereign enough? Will it be powerful enough that people in Iraq will say, yes, this is my government and therefore we don't support insurgents. We don't support extremist militias. We want to get behind this government and that's the balance that the administration has to strike.

BROWN: Is there a chicken and egg issue here? I mean how can you be perceived as a legitimate government absent sovereignty here?

ZAKARIA: Well, you have to...

BROWN: Or you have to get the sovereignty.

ZAKARIA: Well, right, you have to get the sovereignty but the point is how much in a way so we're deciding sovereignty is not going to be an on and off switch. They're going to get some sovereignty but not all.

But I agree with you, if they don't get substantial sovereignty, if they don't get -- if it doesn't look like a government, talk like a government, walk like a government, people in Iraq aren't going to think it's their government.

BROWN: It seems to me that a basic condition of sovereignty is the ability to control your own security forces, your own army, your own police department, your own civil defense forces and that is going to be less than sovereign in whatever emerges after June 30th.

ZAKARIA: There's got to be a way of making it so that the Iraqi government has substantial control over Iraqi government forces, obviously not the Americans.

BROWN: Of course.

ZAKARIA: And, you know, the United States could say it is acting as a partner or something like that because it provides equipment, training and such but to have a government that does not have as the old definition in political science goes a monopoly over the legitimate use of force in your society that's not a real government.

BROWN: Does a sovereign government have the right to say to the American military, no don't attack Fallujah?

ZAKARIA: Right now the way the United States is explaining it the answer is no and I think that again even if that's the real answer when you scratch the surface, it will behoove the administration not to bring that up and to just say these are all matters of discussion.

BROWN: Some people are going to argue that this makes no sense and it's actually far more complicated than that. One of the things apparently that they'll be limited in doing is making law. In and of itself that sounds like a horrible idea. I'm not precisely sure it's that black and white.

ZAKARIA: I think it is. I think the basic idea is that they should function like the executive branch not the legislative branch. In other words, they will govern Iraq day to day under the framework they have but they can't, for example, decide that they want to privatize the oil industry. They can't decide that they want to reinstitute de-Ba'athification.

The idea is that they don't have the kind of support within legitimacy to allow them to engage in that kind of broad scale policy but, you know, they will administer the country. Remember it's only for a year. The idea is you have elections at the end of that process and then you've got the real enchilada.

BROWN: Well, only for a year, a year can be a long time. I want to ask you one quick thing so I don't get you often. Do you detect just a -- in Saudi Arabia a change in how they are dealing with extremism?

ZAKARIA: I think I detect a change in the way they are dealing with terrorism. They're going after the terrorists hard, in fact they're quite successful. They're getting better at it. I'm not sure I detect a change in the way they're going after the fuel that fires terrorism which is extremism. Religious conservatives remain very powerful.

The Saudi regime has this unholy alliance. It has bought itself cheap credibility, what they thought was cheap credibility by funding and encouraging religious extremists. So, for them that break is much more difficult but they have to understand you can catch all the terrorists you want. Unless you get at that underlying political base of support you haven't really won the war.

BROWN: Good to see you. Hope we'll see you again soon.

ZAKARIA: Always a pleasure.

BROWN: Thank you, sir, very much.

Coming up on the program is now the proper time to right an historic wrong? Is this the proper way? The University of Alabama grapples with a legacy of slavery on campus.

From New York this is NEWSNIGHT.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BROWN: If you believe the past no longer informs the present, you better step lightly and stay out of South Boston or Selma or Tuscaloosa. There and elsewhere history, in this case the legacy of slavery and race and redemption, lies heavy on the ground. You don't always see it but from time to time it takes form and touches the present and it has again in Alabama.

Here's CNN's Bruce Burkhardt.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

ALFRED BROPHY, LAW PROFESSOR, UNIVERSITY OF ALABAMA: This the university cemetery where two slaves owned by the university were buried.

BRUCE BURKHARDT, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Behind the biology building here at University of Alabama, a cemetery home to the unmarked graves of two slaves, Jack and Boysey, who died 160 years ago.

BROPHY: Students pass the cemetery every day and don't realize slaves were buried here. They pass the president's mansion every day and don't realize slaves worked there and lived there. They don't realize that slaved were beaten, some would say tortured.

BURKHARDT: Law Professor Alfred Brophy researched the university's connections to slavery. It led to a historic resolution just passed overwhelming by the faculty Senate, an apology.

BROPHY: The faculty needed to apologize because the faculty are the successors of the people who benefited from slavery, beat slaves and taught pro-slavery doctrine. And I think it's important to demonstrate our disavowal of that past.

ROBERT TURNER, AFRICAN-AMERICAN STUDENT GROUP: When those slaves died 161 years ago, they had no thought, no inclination that their death would be the catapult for change on the campus, on the very campus in which they worked for free.

BURKHARDT: A symbolic act, but on this campus, symbolic acts have a history of getting attention.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I hereby denounce and forbid this illegal and unworthy intervention by the central government.

BURKHARDT (on camera): It was on this spot George Wallace made his flashy stand here in front of Foster Auditorium. And soon, if the university has its way, a federal historical marker will stand here, too, joining this one already in place, acknowledging the past.

(voice-over): The apology is part of that, but other measures are being taken, too, an attempt to make the campus more diverse, more hospitable to minorities, a process that was sparked by the simple and symbolic act of an apology.

TURNER: Alabama and America was wrong at that point in time. And they ought to apologize for that. My momma always taught me when I did something wrong to apologize for it. And if I didn't, she beat me. And sometimes if I did, she still beat me.

BURKHARDT: But this concept of apology doesn't sit well with everyone on campus.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Think it's a little silly for a generation of the university that had nothing to do with it to apologize for something it did not do.

BURKHARDT: And yet symbolic acts have power.

BROPHY: This has something to do with how we think about our own identity, how we think about ourselves, how we think about the past. And how we think about the past controls how we act in the present and in the future.

BURKHARDT: Bruce Burkhardt, CNN, Tuscaloosa, Alabama.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

BROWN: Still to come tonight, the casualties of war and the debate caused by showing them, the coffin controversy.

Around the world, this is NEWSNIGHT.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BROWN: As most of you know by now, the program's big believers in the power of still photographs. This week, their power made news and raised again some tough questions. The photos were of coffins containing the bodies of U.S. troops killed in Iraq. The first of them appeared in "The Seattle Times" on Sunday morning. Others ended up on a Web site after the Air Force released hundreds of photographs in response to a Freedom of Information request.

Their publication has set off again a debate over whether the public has the right to see such images, whether news organizations have an obligation to show them.

We're joined tonight from Washington by Robert Hodierne, the senior managing editor of The Army Times Publishing, the world's largest publisher of military publications, and Ross Baughman, the Pulitzer Prize-winning photographer and director of photography for "The Washington Times."

Good to have you both.

Ross, let me start with you, because I find this interesting.

You published one of the photos. And yet you argue, I believe, that we ought not run them.

J. ROSS BAUGHMAN, "THE WASHINGTON TIMES": Well, I realize, as a student of history, that this was an enormous problem for the administration. So it's really a tactical question as to whether they can afford to have these published.

From the standpoint of a newspaper editor, I'm eager to publish them. And so of course we want to show them.

BROWN: Well, all right, do you support the policy of not allowing reporters and photographers to shoot these pictures at Dover or elsewhere?

BAUGHMAN: I believe as matter of history that they should be recorded. It becomes then a political question for the administration. And that's making no apologies for the political power of images and the newspaper editor's decision, because they are the most potent form of political speech.

BROWN: I want to come back to that point in a minute.

Robert, let me get your kind of overview on this. I think your argument is basically, not only should we show them, but the troops want us to show them.

ROBERT HODIERNE, ARMY TIMES: I think the troops on the front lines want people to understand what kind of sacrifices they're making, how difficult this is for them and for their families. And part of the sacrifice that our troops make in Afghanistan and Iraq is that some of them die.

BROWN: Should we as journalists be concerned about the political implications of running a photo?

HODIERNE: Well, no.

We tell the truth and let the chips fall where they may, is the simple answer. The more complex answer is, you can never divorce your editorial decisions from some awareness of the political impact they're going to have.

BROWN: And so, if displaying these pictures time after time or day after day or however it happens affects the view people have of the war or morale of the country, is that a reason not to run them or just need to be aware of it?

HODIERNE: Well, I don't think it's either, actually. The First Amendment was there not just as a boring academic exercise. It's there with the idea that if a free and unfettered press tells what's going on to the best of its capability, then the public will be better informed and can make decisions. And if what we print affects those decisions, that was exactly the intention of the people who wrote that amendment.

BROWN: Ross, go ahead. I hear you I think wanting to weigh in.

BAUGHMAN: The complete timeline of the war in Iraq could be described as a mural. And there are many different kinds of images across its canvas.

For instance, there are orphans made in Afghanistan and Iraq every day, and we could certainly point our cameras at them and break your heart. But there are also schools and hospitals that are opening every day. And it's a question of proportion and, as I argued before, the subliminal politics involved.

BROWN: Should we be concerned about the photos' impact on the country's morale, on the troops' morale, any of that a consideration in whether "The Washington Times" and the photo of "The Washington Times" decides to publish a picture, any picture?

BAUGHMAN: We have to keep track of the entire scope of the war.

And there will be pictures that could have a real effect on the attitudes of our front-line soldiers, of our front-line commanders, and we need to adopt as much as possible their point of view. When we superimpose an attitude from the other side of the world, we may be missing the essential experience that they're going through. If you were to stop and take the point of view of one of the orphans or in fact one of the holdouts inside Fallujah, you'd be telling a very different kind of story.

And I think that being faithful to those points of view is a very important part of what we do.

BROWN: Robert, let me give you the last word here.

Do you think, despite all this fussing the last week over these pictures, that, on balance, the visual story of Iraq, on balance, is being told?

BAUGHMAN: Well, I'd like to have a better opportunity to be traveling with the insurgents and listen to them and hear their side of the story. I suspect if we heard their side of the story, the people in this country would be appalled at what they hear and it would have a very strong impact on creating support for the war.

But we don't get to hear much of that in this country because our journalists, for a variety of reasons, including their personal safety, find that very difficult to do. But, you know, I would like to hear as many different voices from that part of the world as I can hear.

BROWN: So would I.

Good to have you both with us. Thank you for your Friday night.

(CROSSTALK)

BROWN: Ahead tonight, an old war story, but a good one, for a change, down through the years.

This is NEWSNIGHT.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BROWN: The news has been filled with war stories of late, more than many of us would like to me. Tonight, however, we make room for one more. It was 1944 and World War II was raging when the U.S. Navy did something that had not been done since 1815. It captured an enemy ship, a submarine, a dozen U.S. sailors against one German sub. The sub eventually found a home at the Chicago Museum of Science and Industry; 50 years later, it's about to move into a permanent exhibit in the museum.

Last week, four of the heroes recalled their mission.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

NARRATOR: On May 15, 1924, a task group of the Atlantic Fleet heads out to sea with orders to operate against submarines to west of the Cape Verde Islands.

WAYNE PICKELS, WORLD WAR II VETERAN: The officers had a meeting and they decided the next time we get a submarine up, let's don't sink it. Let's try to get a party aboard to save it and capture it.

NARRATOR: For Captain Gallery and his task force, the capture of an undamaged U-boat was a fighting man's challenge.

PICKELS: We got the 505 up to the surface. And the word was passed, boarders stand by and then boarders away. So we got in our wheel boat and headed for the sub. That's how it started.

ZENON LUKOSIUS, WORLD WAR II VETERAN: I was the first one to volunteer because this was my chance now to get out of the engine room and be part of the action. I was never on a submarine before. But I was to help to shut the engines off and to keep that thing from blowing.

NARRATOR: This is it. For the first times since 1815, the United States Navy boards a foreign enemy man of war on the high seas. The first boarding party has swarmed aboard, only one dead sailor on deck. There may be live ones below. The Germans have done a very hurried job of scuffling. Nevertheless, a solid eight-inch stream of water is pouring through an open strainer.

LUKOSIUS: I went right around (UNINTELLIGIBLE) where I could see the water coming in. And we have sea strainers on our ship also, so I knew what that was. So now I'm thinking, I have to put this cover on to stop this water from coming in, because the water keeps coming in, we're going to sink with that submarine.

NARRATOR: A few minutes more and it would have been too late. The inrush of water is checked. Each man has a different job to do.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We managed though the enigma machine. We got all the charts and maps. Of course, when we got the enigma machine, this broke the back of the German submarines in the Atlantic Ocean.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We didn't quite realize then how valuable it was. And I think we helped quite a little bit there.

KEITH GILL, CHICAGO MUSEUM OF SCIENCE & INDUSTRY: This was a very important intelligence haul for the American Navy and allies in general. This was the first enemy man of war captured on the high seas in combat since the War of 1812. It is one of five German submarines left from World War II. And is, of course, the only German submarine to be found in North America. A fund drive was launched to raise money to bring the boat to Chicago and the Marine of Science and Industry. The cost of bringing it here was $250,000 in 1954.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Let's closed the hatch up.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Yes, right.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: A lot of people don't know there was a World War II anymore. But when they come and visit the U-505, that reminds them that the big part that the German submarines had to do with World War II. I think it's great for our grandchildren and their children that -- to remind them there was a World War II.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

BROWN: Still ahead on the program tonight, the hostage homecoming that's a world apart from anything we're accustomed to.

On CNN, this is NEWSNIGHT.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BROWN: We mentioned this last night briefly here in morning papers, the reaction of Japan of the return of three hostages held by insurgent in Iraq. In this country, I am certain there would have been yellow ribbons while they were gone and community-wide tears of joy at their return.

But this didn't happen here. It happened there. And their reaction was very different.

Here's CNN's Atika Shubert.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

ATIKA SHUBERT, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): It was not a warm welcome. The released Japanese hostages landed in their home country blinded by media lights, facing national disapproval, bordering on harassment.

Though none of the hostages would speak to the media, they came off the plane bowing deeply in apology.

(on camera): Local media have pried into their private lives, suggesting that hostages staged their own kidnappings. And letters from the public have labeled them Japan's shame.

(voice-over): Politicians have been more subtle, saying hostages should pay the costs of their own release, including the chartered plane out of Iraq.

JUNICHIRO KOIZUMI, JAPANESE PRIME MINISTER (through translator): I want those who flew into Iraq, ignoring the government's warning, to consider how much effort my staff made working around the clock to solve the problems they caused.

SHUBERT: Why the anger? When this video first flashed across the country, the hostages became the center of a heated debate dividing Japan. Should the country support the U.S. occupation of Iraq? Should Japanese troops be in Iraq at all?

Initially, peace activists paraded pictures of the three aide workers and two journalists as martyrs to the cause. But with freedom, some of the hostages said they wanted to remain working in Iraq, adding fuel to the fire. The public remains evenly divided.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE (through translator): Their intentions were admirable, but they and their families did not handle the situation well. They took the wrong actions and said the wrong things.

SHUBERT: The abduction, it seems, was only part of their ordeal. Coming home has also taken its toll.

Atika Shubert, CNN, Tokyo.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

BROWN: Morning papers and a tabloid moment or two after the break.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

(ROOSTER CROWING)

BROWN: Okeydokey. Time to check...

CREW: Okeydokey.

BROWN: When did this become audience participation? Time to check morning papers from around the country and around the world.

We'll start with "The International Herald Tribune," published in Paris by "The New York Times." "White House Plans to Limit Iraq Sovereignty." The coffin photo on the front page of "The International Herald Tribune," or one of them now. Here's the one that caught my eye. I don't if you can get it, down here. "Poets Do Not Go Gentle, But Go Sooner, It Seems." It's a story on the fact that poets die young. It seems they're really depressed. Our culture does not value poetry and it drives poets crazy into an early death.

We actually were going to do this story. I'm not kidding. But I thought all good writers think of themselves as poets and they probably would do something untoward afterwards.

We appreciate very much "The Arizona Republic" sending us their front page, because it's an unfinished front page, but we know where they're going. Pat Tillman on the cover. It's a great picture, isn't it? "A Hero" is the headline. And they will put some other business there, obviously, but we appreciate their willingness to send us the paper, even as it was incomplete.

"The Philadelphia Inquirer" leads the same. "Forsaking Fame, An NFL Athlete Dies as a Soldier." Also a very good story, "Kerry- Cardinal at Odds Over Abortion."

A couple of tabloid items, if I have time. From "The Weekly World News," this is a terrible war story, "Angel Shot Down By U.S. Troops." There's actually a shot of that.

(LAUGHTER)

BROWN: You know what? You shouldn't laugh at that. That's -- also this item, "Space Aliens Smoke Pot and Love to Disco," if you ever wondered.

(LAUGHTER)

BROWN: But my favorite, oh, my goodness, "Saddam Wants 'Queer Eye' Makeover." The fab five will be doing that.

We'll be having a weekend. We hope you will be, too. 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 April 23, 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.
We report tonight on the death of one time NFL football player Pat Tillman. He died in Afghanistan. We'll leave most of the detail to Frank Buckley's reporting in a little bit but just a few thoughts here first.

Mr. Tillman didn't have to go in the Army. He didn't need the money. In fact, he walked away from millions when he enlisted. He didn't go for the publicity surely, in fact he shunned it when he made his decision.

He went in the days after 9/11 because he believed it was his duty. It is a kind of selflessness few of us possess and so we honor him. But we hope that in reporting on his life and his death tonight you will see this as something more than a story about one guy who made one decision and who died. For, in truth, his death is no more important because of his fame than nearly hundreds of others who have died in that country.

In honoring Pat Tillman tonight, and we do, we hope we also honor all those others who have died, who have been wounded, who are there tonight doing hard and dangerous work and receive little or no attention at all. If Pat Tillman's life and his decision teaches us anything it should teach us that.

It is the war in Iraq that we begin with though, what looks like the end game for the Marines, the insurgents and everybody else in Fallujah. Our Senior Pentagon Correspondent Jamie McIntyre starts us off, Jamie a headline.

JAMIE MCINTYRE, CNN SR. PENTAGON CORRESPONDENT: Well, warning that the U.S. military's patience is not eternal, U.S. commanders signal today that the Marines are ready to resume their siege of Fallujah within days and here at the Pentagon there is some hope it could amount to the insurgents' last stand -- Aaron.

BROWN: Jamie, thank you.

Next to Baghdad, the Fallujah story and all the rest of the news of the day, CNN's Jane Arraf with us again, Jane the headline.

JANE ARRAF, CNN BAGHDAD BUREAU CHIEF: With mosque sermons on Friday warning of an overall uprising if the Marines launch an all out assault on Fallujah, the very name of that city is becoming a rallying call uniting Sunnis and Shias against the occupation -- Aaron.

BROWN: Jane, thank you.

And finally back to the Pat Tillman story, his death, the sacrifice he chose to make, Frank Buckley covering from Phoenix, Frank a headline.

FRANK BUCKLEY, CNN NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Aaron, here in this community Pat Tillman was universally admired for his decision to walk away from a lucrative NFL career to serve his country at a time of war. Tonight, just as many people have been touched by his death -- Aaron.

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

Also coming up on this Friday night, trying to heal the great unhealed wound of American history more than 100 years after the end of slavery an apology.

Plus, a war story heavy on heroism and featuring more than a little there and do, 12 sailors take on a German U-boat and take it home with them.

And it's Friday and we know what that means and so do you. The rooster picked up some tabloids on his way in with the morning papers, all that and more in the hour ahead.

We begin tonight with the standoff in Fallujah, a standoff in a city that has long bedeviled American forces. Fallujah, in fact, was no picnic even in the days of Saddam Hussein who held control by greasing palms, chopping heads and spreading as much terror as his secret police could manage.

The coalition on the other hand has the Marines. The Marines in turn are dealing with locals and rebels who may or may not be gaming each side against the other.

We have two reports tonight beginning first with CNN's Jamie McIntyre.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

MCINTYRE (voice-over): The Pentagon sees the showdown in Fallujah as a potentially pivotal battle in the war against Iraqi insurgents. After enduring nearly two weeks of a one-sided cease-fire and fruitless negotiations with town elders, the U.S. is signaling Marines will storm the city within days.

BRIG. GEN. MARK KIMMITT, DEPUTY DIRECTOR OF COALITION OPERATIONS: These discussions must bear fruit. Our patience is not eternal.

BUCKLEY: The 2,000 or so Marines surrounding Fallujah have come under regular fire from within the city and U.S. demands to surrender all heavy weapons have been met with a paltry assortment of military junk, rusty guns and dud bombs. KIMMITT: It would not appear that we should go on much longer with this fiction.

BUCKLEY: Fallujah is seen as different from the rest of Iraq and Pentagon officials predict it may be the last stand for remnants of the old regime.

PAUL BREMER, U.S. CIVIL ADMINISTRATOR: Some of these men belong to the banished instruments of Saddam's repression, the former intelligence services and former Republican Guards.

MCINTYRE: Among the fighters in Fallujah are believed to be some of Saddam Hussein's most highly trained and effective troops from the old M-14 antiterrorism directorate.

PAUL WOLFOWITZ, DEPUTY DEFENSE SECRETARY: Antiterrorism is an Orwellian phrase. It, in fact, was a terrorist unit that specialized in hijackings, assassinations and explosives.

MCINTYRE: In fact, according to a classified DIA report given to Congress this week, much of the violence in Iraq, including deadly suicide attacks and sophisticated roadside bombs, were part of a prewar master plan devised by the Iraqi Intelligence Service. Despite the fact that heavy fighting and inevitable civilian casualties risks fueling anti-American sentiment, the U.S. believes that risk is worth taking.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

MCINTYRE: The Pentagon believes that many of the remaining diehards are essentially trapped in Fallujah and that wiping them out now might provide the best opportunity to break the back of the resistance -- Aaron.

BROWN: Well, there are some really interesting things about this just in listening here because they are not demanding the surrender, are they, of the insurgents, they are simply demanding, or perhaps not so simply, the heavy weapons?

MCINTYRE: That's right because actually they're not even negotiating with the actual insurgents they're fighting. They're negotiating with middle men in the city and presumably they believe if they get control they'll be able to investigate and try to find the people who are responsible for the acts of violence but they say they're not even getting good faith efforts on what they've asked for, which is of course a cease-fire and the turnover of those weapons.

BROWN: Jamie, thank you. Have a good weekend. Thanks for your work this week.

About a quarter of a million people live in Fallujah and, while many of them clearly sympathize or even support the insurgents, many do not but many more might if retaking the city also kills a lot of innocent bystanders or, if it perceived that way.

That in an ugly nutshell is what the insurgents are counting on. It is also the reality of what the Marines are dealing with and it is a possibility the Fallujans can't ignore.

With more on the spot they are all in we turn once again to CNN's Jane Arraf who joins us once again from Baghdad, Jane good morning.

ARRAF: Good morning, Aaron.

The very name Fallujah is in danger of becoming a rallying call against the U.S. occupation. For Iraqis the prospect of an all out assault on that small city is uniting Sunnis and Shias. In fact, in the mosques today, we heard imams warning that there would be an overall uprising if such an assault were launched.

For the Marines, of course, this is the Sunni heartland and, if they do not defeat or disarm the insurgents they are in danger they feel of losing all of Iraq and in Baghdad streets a lot of Iraqis have forgotten those horrible images of mutilated bodies that preceded the Marine offensive in Fallujah. For them it's become a symbol of Iraqi resistance against occupation.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Fallujah is our city like Baghdad, like Najaf, like Mosul, like (unintelligible). Therefore, if coalition forces don't stop this trouble maybe they'll do some bigger trouble in all Iraq.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE (through translator): These are my people. If an innocent from my family were to get killed, I will fight more than the resistance. What crime have I committed to lose a family member?

(END VIDEO CLIP)

ARRAF: Now, the Marines say they're taking a lot of care to avoid civilian casualties as they always do but two weeks of intense but sporadic fighting have already filled two soccer fields with bodies that their families couldn't get to the morgue and every day military officials here warn that time is running out. If the insurgents and the foreign fighters don't turn in their weapons, they will take the city, something everyone fears -- Aaron.

BROWN: Let me ask two quick questions. One is generally speaking do people in Baghdad, other parts of the country, see all of this on their television screens and who are they watching?

ARRAF: Well, the quick answer to that is they're probably watching the Arab satellite channels and what they're seeing is probably a different version than the pictures that we're seeing for a lot of reasons.

One of those reasons though is that we are with the military. It's very unsafe there and there are very few western television cameras, if any, in the streets of Fallujah getting that other side.

So what they're seeing is a lot of death, a lot of destruction and not necessarily the analysis, not necessarily the reasons that the U.S. military is holding fast to Fallujah. It's insistent that it disarm these people if this does not spread -- Aaron.

BROWN: And one more thing on that, just in briefly looking at Arab TV today, or at least the translated versions that I saw when I came in, there was some sentiment among Iraqis that I would describe as anti-insurgency, people saying essentially we're sick of the violence. We are sick of the shooting. We just want to get on with our lives and this thing has to end.

ARRAF: Absolutely and it's a very delicate balance. It's a balancing act in two places, in the holy cities of Najaf and Karbala and in Fallujah. Iraqis do want the violence to end but they seem to want it to end on their terms. They want some acknowledgement that this is an Iraqi city. I mean we've heard in those sound bytes that people feel very strongly.

Fallujah is Iraq and you cannot just go in and launch an assault and take it. There has to be some negotiated settlement. As Jamie alluded to, though, the problem is who do they negotiate with? Those negotiations so far haven't gotten the U.S. very far and it's not clear that they will -- Aaron.

BROWN: Jane, thank you, Jane Arraf in Baghdad.

Afghanistan now where since the fall of the Taliban dozens of Americans have died the latest of whom is being remembered tonight. His death underscores, we think, a discussion we had this week over reinstating the draft and the not so pretty corollary that Senator Chuck Hagel was quick to notice. In this war, he said, nobody has to sacrifice anything but with that notion hanging so thick in the air, Pat Tillman did.

Here again, CNN's Frank Buckley.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

BUCKLEY (voice-over): Pat Tillman was a successful safety in the NFL making millions, a bright future ahead but the events of 9/11 had a profound impact on the 25-year-old football player. Here's what he said on 9/12.

PAT TILLMAN, KILLED IN AFGHANISTAN: You know my great grandfather was at Pearl Harbor and a lot of my family has given up, you know, has gone and fought in wars and I really haven't done a damn thing as far as laying myself on the line like that and so I have a great deal of respect for those that have.

BUCKLEY: Soon after that interview, Tillman walked away from the game and its glories and with his younger brother joined the U.S. Army.

MICHAEL BIDWILL, V.P., ARIZONA CARDINALS: In sports we have a tendency to overuse terms like courage and bravery and heroes and then someone special like Pat Tillman comes along and reminds us what those terms really mean.

BUCKLEY: Tillman's decision was front page news. For some in professional sports it would have been a moment to capitalize on positive publicity. Tillman refused all interviews.

TIM LAYDEN, SENIOR WRITER, "SPORTS ILLUSTRATED": He didn't want to be made into a hero for what he was doing because that would somehow taint the purity of what he was trying to do.

BUCKLEY: Flags were at half staff at the stadium where Tillman once played, first as an Arizona State linebacker and later as an Arizona Cardinal free safety. Now there are makeshift memorials here and at the Arizona Cardinals training facility.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: It's really sad that somebody that was willing to give that up gets taken.

BUCKLEY: People who never met Pat Tillman came to pay their respects to a football player who seemed to have it all.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: He walked away from it to do something he believed even more deeply in, which is the fight for freedom and I just think he's going to go down in history as one of the true great heroes of our time.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

BUCKLEY: Pat Tillman sure to be one of the names that Americans will forever associate with the war in Afghanistan. Locally at Arizona State University where he played college football they intend to retire his jersey.

They're also establishing a scholarship fund in his name in association with the Arizona Cardinals. The Cardinals also intending to retire his jersey. They say they will also talk to the NFL about putting the number 40 on their apparel next year.

And finally, in 2006 when the Cardinals open their new stadium they say they will name the plaza just outside of the stadium the Pat Tillman Freedom Plaza -- Aaron.

BROWN: Frank, thank you, Frank Buckley in Phoenix.

Iraq forces itself into the news pretty much every day, sometimes several times a day but the sad death of young Pat Tillman reminds us that Afghanistan was the war the country fought first and clearly is still fighting now.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

BROWN (voice-over): Fifteen thousand American troops representing all branches of the armed services are in Afghanistan tonight. They are headquartered at Bagram Air Base north of Kabul with some also stationed around Kandahar and at various camps in the southeastern part of the country.

Most of the troops there are helping to train the Afghan Army. Some are doing reconstruction work but some are also hunting for the Taliban remnants and other threats and a group called Task Force 21 has very specific targets. They are the soldiers charged with finding and capturing or killing former Taliban leader Mullah Omar and the man who set all the killing wheels in motion in the first place Osama bin Laden.

Eighty Americans have died in Afghanistan, more than 19 in helicopter crashes, more than seven in vehicle accidents. In Iraq where there are nearly ten times as many troops, about 135,000 tonight, nearly ten times as many, 707 have been killed so far.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

BROWN: Ahead on the program tonight, if the headlines are so grim, why do the president's poll numbers keep going up? Some theories from Jeff Greenfield coming up next.

And later, the coffin controversy, does the public have the right to see the casualties of war? Do news organizations have an obligation to show them, a break first.

From New York this is NEWSNIGHT.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BROWN: Regular viewers of the program know or have figured out by now that we rarely do stories about polls. Sometimes we do but not often. Still, this is in some respects a story about polls, what they show and what they don't, what they mean and what they don't.

It was a story that had its start earlier in the week with new polls showing the president moving ahead of John Kerry against a news background that at first blush hardly seemed favorable.

Here's our Senior Analyst Jeff Greenfield.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

JEFF GREENFIELD, CNN SR. ANALYST (voice-over): Think of it as an exercise in twisted logic. As long as the candidates are campaigning as if it's mid-October, the press might as well poll as if it's in mid-October, yet each new poll brings enough wind to drive the Americas Cup.

This week, two surveys on the same day did the trick. The CNN- USA Today Gallup poll showed a slight up tick for President Bush. The ABC-Washington Post poll showed a more dramatic shift.

But how, the question went, could this happen what with tough questions from Iraq, tough questions from the 9/11 Commission, much typed books questioning the administration's performance, a contentious press conference?

Ah-huh, came the answer, Iraq reminded voters of presidential leadership. The commission was too partisan. Voters liked the president's moral clarity. And then there were those $50 million worth of Bush commercials challenging Kerry's judgment, inconsistency, and maybe Kerry hasn't been very good on the stump. Fine. Now look at two other numbers. The daily tracking poll from Rasmussen shows, what, it shows virtually no change in weeks and weeks and weeks. The race was and is a virtual dead heat.

Now look at polls from the key state of Florida. One survey from three weeks back showed Bush with an eight point lead. A different poll Thursday showed Bush with just a one point lead.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

GREENFIELD: So, what does this mean? Did the people of Florida dislike the same Bush ads the rest of the country liked? Did Rasmussen talk to different people than ABC or CNN? Or maybe there's a different explanation. Every poll uses different methods to measure likely voters. They ask different questions in different order.

Rasmussen uses touchtone responses. A lot of other pollsters think that's a little tricky. And shifts of two or three points often mean nothing. It is a matter of statistical fluke.

And finally, do we really think mid-April polls tell us anything much about November?

At this point in 1980, Carter led Reagan by six points. He lost by ten.

At this point in 1992, the first Bush led Clinton by 15 points. He lost by six.

Four years ago, George W. Bush led Gore by nine points and he lost the popular vote.

And, as Kevin Nealon famously said on "Saturday Night Live," Aaron, if the presidential election were held today, 85 percent said they'd really be surprised.

BROWN: Well, yes we would. So, at what point should we, if we should, pay attention to polls at all and which polls should we pay attention to?

GREENFIELD: Well, we should get in a plug for CNN's. That's usually pretty conservative. Look, I think by the time you get -- the thing you shouldn't do is watch the polls right after the conventions because unless there's a disaster Kerry will move into a lead after the Democratic convention and the president will move into a lead in the Republican one.

The right track wrong track numbers tell you something because those are numbers where voters get to say whatever is on their mind that is they're not pushed. They just think -- do you think things are going OK or not? And, if many of them say not that can hurt the incumbent.

I also think the Kerry campaign even now has to be a little concerned that in a state like New Jersey that the Democrats carried big the last three elections, he's only up by one point. But all of that, Aaron, as you well know and it's why your show is right I think is this is tentative stuff. Poll numbers look quantitative. They look like they're measuring something real and it is why somebody, I wish it had been me, called polling the crack cocaine of political journalists. We're hooked on them.

BROWN: Jeff, we are sometimes. Thank you.

GREENFIELD: OK.

BROWN: Thank you.

With the deadline fast approaching, U.S. lawmakers have been pushing the Bush administration to define what a sovereign Iraq will look like and now the details are trickling out with two months to go.

The Iraqis will get all the headaches of running their battered country but with significant limits on their power, the kind of limits that make talking about the new Iraq a kind of sovereignty light.

Fareed Zakaria is the international editor of "Newsweek," the author of "Future of Freedom." He's given a lot of thought to the transition in Iraq and we're glad to have him with us again tonight.

I want to maybe talk just one overview question. Let's talk about some of the specifics that came out today. Absent the kind of sovereignty that gives Iraqis real control over their country, are they likely to be very happy?

FAREED ZAKARIA, EDITOR, "NEWSWEEK INTERNATIONAL": The key question in a sense is not sovereignty but legitimacy. Will the government be sovereign enough? Will it be powerful enough that people in Iraq will say, yes, this is my government and therefore we don't support insurgents. We don't support extremist militias. We want to get behind this government and that's the balance that the administration has to strike.

BROWN: Is there a chicken and egg issue here? I mean how can you be perceived as a legitimate government absent sovereignty here?

ZAKARIA: Well, you have to...

BROWN: Or you have to get the sovereignty.

ZAKARIA: Well, right, you have to get the sovereignty but the point is how much in a way so we're deciding sovereignty is not going to be an on and off switch. They're going to get some sovereignty but not all.

But I agree with you, if they don't get substantial sovereignty, if they don't get -- if it doesn't look like a government, talk like a government, walk like a government, people in Iraq aren't going to think it's their government.

BROWN: It seems to me that a basic condition of sovereignty is the ability to control your own security forces, your own army, your own police department, your own civil defense forces and that is going to be less than sovereign in whatever emerges after June 30th.

ZAKARIA: There's got to be a way of making it so that the Iraqi government has substantial control over Iraqi government forces, obviously not the Americans.

BROWN: Of course.

ZAKARIA: And, you know, the United States could say it is acting as a partner or something like that because it provides equipment, training and such but to have a government that does not have as the old definition in political science goes a monopoly over the legitimate use of force in your society that's not a real government.

BROWN: Does a sovereign government have the right to say to the American military, no don't attack Fallujah?

ZAKARIA: Right now the way the United States is explaining it the answer is no and I think that again even if that's the real answer when you scratch the surface, it will behoove the administration not to bring that up and to just say these are all matters of discussion.

BROWN: Some people are going to argue that this makes no sense and it's actually far more complicated than that. One of the things apparently that they'll be limited in doing is making law. In and of itself that sounds like a horrible idea. I'm not precisely sure it's that black and white.

ZAKARIA: I think it is. I think the basic idea is that they should function like the executive branch not the legislative branch. In other words, they will govern Iraq day to day under the framework they have but they can't, for example, decide that they want to privatize the oil industry. They can't decide that they want to reinstitute de-Ba'athification.

The idea is that they don't have the kind of support within legitimacy to allow them to engage in that kind of broad scale policy but, you know, they will administer the country. Remember it's only for a year. The idea is you have elections at the end of that process and then you've got the real enchilada.

BROWN: Well, only for a year, a year can be a long time. I want to ask you one quick thing so I don't get you often. Do you detect just a -- in Saudi Arabia a change in how they are dealing with extremism?

ZAKARIA: I think I detect a change in the way they are dealing with terrorism. They're going after the terrorists hard, in fact they're quite successful. They're getting better at it. I'm not sure I detect a change in the way they're going after the fuel that fires terrorism which is extremism. Religious conservatives remain very powerful.

The Saudi regime has this unholy alliance. It has bought itself cheap credibility, what they thought was cheap credibility by funding and encouraging religious extremists. So, for them that break is much more difficult but they have to understand you can catch all the terrorists you want. Unless you get at that underlying political base of support you haven't really won the war.

BROWN: Good to see you. Hope we'll see you again soon.

ZAKARIA: Always a pleasure.

BROWN: Thank you, sir, very much.

Coming up on the program is now the proper time to right an historic wrong? Is this the proper way? The University of Alabama grapples with a legacy of slavery on campus.

From New York this is NEWSNIGHT.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BROWN: If you believe the past no longer informs the present, you better step lightly and stay out of South Boston or Selma or Tuscaloosa. There and elsewhere history, in this case the legacy of slavery and race and redemption, lies heavy on the ground. You don't always see it but from time to time it takes form and touches the present and it has again in Alabama.

Here's CNN's Bruce Burkhardt.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

ALFRED BROPHY, LAW PROFESSOR, UNIVERSITY OF ALABAMA: This the university cemetery where two slaves owned by the university were buried.

BRUCE BURKHARDT, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Behind the biology building here at University of Alabama, a cemetery home to the unmarked graves of two slaves, Jack and Boysey, who died 160 years ago.

BROPHY: Students pass the cemetery every day and don't realize slaves were buried here. They pass the president's mansion every day and don't realize slaves worked there and lived there. They don't realize that slaved were beaten, some would say tortured.

BURKHARDT: Law Professor Alfred Brophy researched the university's connections to slavery. It led to a historic resolution just passed overwhelming by the faculty Senate, an apology.

BROPHY: The faculty needed to apologize because the faculty are the successors of the people who benefited from slavery, beat slaves and taught pro-slavery doctrine. And I think it's important to demonstrate our disavowal of that past.

ROBERT TURNER, AFRICAN-AMERICAN STUDENT GROUP: When those slaves died 161 years ago, they had no thought, no inclination that their death would be the catapult for change on the campus, on the very campus in which they worked for free.

BURKHARDT: A symbolic act, but on this campus, symbolic acts have a history of getting attention.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I hereby denounce and forbid this illegal and unworthy intervention by the central government.

BURKHARDT (on camera): It was on this spot George Wallace made his flashy stand here in front of Foster Auditorium. And soon, if the university has its way, a federal historical marker will stand here, too, joining this one already in place, acknowledging the past.

(voice-over): The apology is part of that, but other measures are being taken, too, an attempt to make the campus more diverse, more hospitable to minorities, a process that was sparked by the simple and symbolic act of an apology.

TURNER: Alabama and America was wrong at that point in time. And they ought to apologize for that. My momma always taught me when I did something wrong to apologize for it. And if I didn't, she beat me. And sometimes if I did, she still beat me.

BURKHARDT: But this concept of apology doesn't sit well with everyone on campus.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Think it's a little silly for a generation of the university that had nothing to do with it to apologize for something it did not do.

BURKHARDT: And yet symbolic acts have power.

BROPHY: This has something to do with how we think about our own identity, how we think about ourselves, how we think about the past. And how we think about the past controls how we act in the present and in the future.

BURKHARDT: Bruce Burkhardt, CNN, Tuscaloosa, Alabama.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

BROWN: Still to come tonight, the casualties of war and the debate caused by showing them, the coffin controversy.

Around the world, this is NEWSNIGHT.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BROWN: As most of you know by now, the program's big believers in the power of still photographs. This week, their power made news and raised again some tough questions. The photos were of coffins containing the bodies of U.S. troops killed in Iraq. The first of them appeared in "The Seattle Times" on Sunday morning. Others ended up on a Web site after the Air Force released hundreds of photographs in response to a Freedom of Information request.

Their publication has set off again a debate over whether the public has the right to see such images, whether news organizations have an obligation to show them.

We're joined tonight from Washington by Robert Hodierne, the senior managing editor of The Army Times Publishing, the world's largest publisher of military publications, and Ross Baughman, the Pulitzer Prize-winning photographer and director of photography for "The Washington Times."

Good to have you both.

Ross, let me start with you, because I find this interesting.

You published one of the photos. And yet you argue, I believe, that we ought not run them.

J. ROSS BAUGHMAN, "THE WASHINGTON TIMES": Well, I realize, as a student of history, that this was an enormous problem for the administration. So it's really a tactical question as to whether they can afford to have these published.

From the standpoint of a newspaper editor, I'm eager to publish them. And so of course we want to show them.

BROWN: Well, all right, do you support the policy of not allowing reporters and photographers to shoot these pictures at Dover or elsewhere?

BAUGHMAN: I believe as matter of history that they should be recorded. It becomes then a political question for the administration. And that's making no apologies for the political power of images and the newspaper editor's decision, because they are the most potent form of political speech.

BROWN: I want to come back to that point in a minute.

Robert, let me get your kind of overview on this. I think your argument is basically, not only should we show them, but the troops want us to show them.

ROBERT HODIERNE, ARMY TIMES: I think the troops on the front lines want people to understand what kind of sacrifices they're making, how difficult this is for them and for their families. And part of the sacrifice that our troops make in Afghanistan and Iraq is that some of them die.

BROWN: Should we as journalists be concerned about the political implications of running a photo?

HODIERNE: Well, no.

We tell the truth and let the chips fall where they may, is the simple answer. The more complex answer is, you can never divorce your editorial decisions from some awareness of the political impact they're going to have.

BROWN: And so, if displaying these pictures time after time or day after day or however it happens affects the view people have of the war or morale of the country, is that a reason not to run them or just need to be aware of it?

HODIERNE: Well, I don't think it's either, actually. The First Amendment was there not just as a boring academic exercise. It's there with the idea that if a free and unfettered press tells what's going on to the best of its capability, then the public will be better informed and can make decisions. And if what we print affects those decisions, that was exactly the intention of the people who wrote that amendment.

BROWN: Ross, go ahead. I hear you I think wanting to weigh in.

BAUGHMAN: The complete timeline of the war in Iraq could be described as a mural. And there are many different kinds of images across its canvas.

For instance, there are orphans made in Afghanistan and Iraq every day, and we could certainly point our cameras at them and break your heart. But there are also schools and hospitals that are opening every day. And it's a question of proportion and, as I argued before, the subliminal politics involved.

BROWN: Should we be concerned about the photos' impact on the country's morale, on the troops' morale, any of that a consideration in whether "The Washington Times" and the photo of "The Washington Times" decides to publish a picture, any picture?

BAUGHMAN: We have to keep track of the entire scope of the war.

And there will be pictures that could have a real effect on the attitudes of our front-line soldiers, of our front-line commanders, and we need to adopt as much as possible their point of view. When we superimpose an attitude from the other side of the world, we may be missing the essential experience that they're going through. If you were to stop and take the point of view of one of the orphans or in fact one of the holdouts inside Fallujah, you'd be telling a very different kind of story.

And I think that being faithful to those points of view is a very important part of what we do.

BROWN: Robert, let me give you the last word here.

Do you think, despite all this fussing the last week over these pictures, that, on balance, the visual story of Iraq, on balance, is being told?

BAUGHMAN: Well, I'd like to have a better opportunity to be traveling with the insurgents and listen to them and hear their side of the story. I suspect if we heard their side of the story, the people in this country would be appalled at what they hear and it would have a very strong impact on creating support for the war.

But we don't get to hear much of that in this country because our journalists, for a variety of reasons, including their personal safety, find that very difficult to do. But, you know, I would like to hear as many different voices from that part of the world as I can hear.

BROWN: So would I.

Good to have you both with us. Thank you for your Friday night.

(CROSSTALK)

BROWN: Ahead tonight, an old war story, but a good one, for a change, down through the years.

This is NEWSNIGHT.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BROWN: The news has been filled with war stories of late, more than many of us would like to me. Tonight, however, we make room for one more. It was 1944 and World War II was raging when the U.S. Navy did something that had not been done since 1815. It captured an enemy ship, a submarine, a dozen U.S. sailors against one German sub. The sub eventually found a home at the Chicago Museum of Science and Industry; 50 years later, it's about to move into a permanent exhibit in the museum.

Last week, four of the heroes recalled their mission.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

NARRATOR: On May 15, 1924, a task group of the Atlantic Fleet heads out to sea with orders to operate against submarines to west of the Cape Verde Islands.

WAYNE PICKELS, WORLD WAR II VETERAN: The officers had a meeting and they decided the next time we get a submarine up, let's don't sink it. Let's try to get a party aboard to save it and capture it.

NARRATOR: For Captain Gallery and his task force, the capture of an undamaged U-boat was a fighting man's challenge.

PICKELS: We got the 505 up to the surface. And the word was passed, boarders stand by and then boarders away. So we got in our wheel boat and headed for the sub. That's how it started.

ZENON LUKOSIUS, WORLD WAR II VETERAN: I was the first one to volunteer because this was my chance now to get out of the engine room and be part of the action. I was never on a submarine before. But I was to help to shut the engines off and to keep that thing from blowing.

NARRATOR: This is it. For the first times since 1815, the United States Navy boards a foreign enemy man of war on the high seas. The first boarding party has swarmed aboard, only one dead sailor on deck. There may be live ones below. The Germans have done a very hurried job of scuffling. Nevertheless, a solid eight-inch stream of water is pouring through an open strainer.

LUKOSIUS: I went right around (UNINTELLIGIBLE) where I could see the water coming in. And we have sea strainers on our ship also, so I knew what that was. So now I'm thinking, I have to put this cover on to stop this water from coming in, because the water keeps coming in, we're going to sink with that submarine.

NARRATOR: A few minutes more and it would have been too late. The inrush of water is checked. Each man has a different job to do.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We managed though the enigma machine. We got all the charts and maps. Of course, when we got the enigma machine, this broke the back of the German submarines in the Atlantic Ocean.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We didn't quite realize then how valuable it was. And I think we helped quite a little bit there.

KEITH GILL, CHICAGO MUSEUM OF SCIENCE & INDUSTRY: This was a very important intelligence haul for the American Navy and allies in general. This was the first enemy man of war captured on the high seas in combat since the War of 1812. It is one of five German submarines left from World War II. And is, of course, the only German submarine to be found in North America. A fund drive was launched to raise money to bring the boat to Chicago and the Marine of Science and Industry. The cost of bringing it here was $250,000 in 1954.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Let's closed the hatch up.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Yes, right.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: A lot of people don't know there was a World War II anymore. But when they come and visit the U-505, that reminds them that the big part that the German submarines had to do with World War II. I think it's great for our grandchildren and their children that -- to remind them there was a World War II.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

BROWN: Still ahead on the program tonight, the hostage homecoming that's a world apart from anything we're accustomed to.

On CNN, this is NEWSNIGHT.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BROWN: We mentioned this last night briefly here in morning papers, the reaction of Japan of the return of three hostages held by insurgent in Iraq. In this country, I am certain there would have been yellow ribbons while they were gone and community-wide tears of joy at their return.

But this didn't happen here. It happened there. And their reaction was very different.

Here's CNN's Atika Shubert.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

ATIKA SHUBERT, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): It was not a warm welcome. The released Japanese hostages landed in their home country blinded by media lights, facing national disapproval, bordering on harassment.

Though none of the hostages would speak to the media, they came off the plane bowing deeply in apology.

(on camera): Local media have pried into their private lives, suggesting that hostages staged their own kidnappings. And letters from the public have labeled them Japan's shame.

(voice-over): Politicians have been more subtle, saying hostages should pay the costs of their own release, including the chartered plane out of Iraq.

JUNICHIRO KOIZUMI, JAPANESE PRIME MINISTER (through translator): I want those who flew into Iraq, ignoring the government's warning, to consider how much effort my staff made working around the clock to solve the problems they caused.

SHUBERT: Why the anger? When this video first flashed across the country, the hostages became the center of a heated debate dividing Japan. Should the country support the U.S. occupation of Iraq? Should Japanese troops be in Iraq at all?

Initially, peace activists paraded pictures of the three aide workers and two journalists as martyrs to the cause. But with freedom, some of the hostages said they wanted to remain working in Iraq, adding fuel to the fire. The public remains evenly divided.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE (through translator): Their intentions were admirable, but they and their families did not handle the situation well. They took the wrong actions and said the wrong things.

SHUBERT: The abduction, it seems, was only part of their ordeal. Coming home has also taken its toll.

Atika Shubert, CNN, Tokyo.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

BROWN: Morning papers and a tabloid moment or two after the break.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

(ROOSTER CROWING)

BROWN: Okeydokey. Time to check...

CREW: Okeydokey.

BROWN: When did this become audience participation? Time to check morning papers from around the country and around the world.

We'll start with "The International Herald Tribune," published in Paris by "The New York Times." "White House Plans to Limit Iraq Sovereignty." The coffin photo on the front page of "The International Herald Tribune," or one of them now. Here's the one that caught my eye. I don't if you can get it, down here. "Poets Do Not Go Gentle, But Go Sooner, It Seems." It's a story on the fact that poets die young. It seems they're really depressed. Our culture does not value poetry and it drives poets crazy into an early death.

We actually were going to do this story. I'm not kidding. But I thought all good writers think of themselves as poets and they probably would do something untoward afterwards.

We appreciate very much "The Arizona Republic" sending us their front page, because it's an unfinished front page, but we know where they're going. Pat Tillman on the cover. It's a great picture, isn't it? "A Hero" is the headline. And they will put some other business there, obviously, but we appreciate their willingness to send us the paper, even as it was incomplete.

"The Philadelphia Inquirer" leads the same. "Forsaking Fame, An NFL Athlete Dies as a Soldier." Also a very good story, "Kerry- Cardinal at Odds Over Abortion."

A couple of tabloid items, if I have time. From "The Weekly World News," this is a terrible war story, "Angel Shot Down By U.S. Troops." There's actually a shot of that.

(LAUGHTER)

BROWN: You know what? You shouldn't laugh at that. That's -- also this item, "Space Aliens Smoke Pot and Love to Disco," if you ever wondered.

(LAUGHTER)

BROWN: But my favorite, oh, my goodness, "Saddam Wants 'Queer Eye' Makeover." The fab five will be doing that.

We'll be having a weekend. We hope you will be, too. Good night for all of us at NEWSNIGHT.

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