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CNN Newsnight Aaron Brown
Al Sadr Says He'll Leave Imam Ali Mosque; Veterans Lean Toward President Bush; Officials Worry About Elderly In Wake Of Hurricane Charley
Aired August 18, 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.
For the first time in a long time, one of the great spectacles of the western world is back in full swing. Once again tonight, people can escape their everyday troubles and imagine a moment in the sun.
We can dream of reaching our personal best and grabbing it, hitting the number, making the perfect score, or we can just sit back and enjoy the action while the favorites walk away with all the gold. Well, upsets rule the day. Which celebrity is in the game, who is on the sidelines?
Tomorrow, shares of Google are expected to go public on Wall Street, the first major IPO in years. OK, plenty to root for at the other event too but the network can only carry so much.
The whip begins tonight with late developments in the standoff over Najaf playing out there and in Baghdad, CNN's John Vause with the watch, John start us with a headline.
JOHN VAUSE, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Aaron, Muqtada al-Sadr says he is willing to leave the Imam Ali Mosque and dissolve his Mehdi militia but the Shiite cleric has a reputation for bluff and brinkmanship, so believe it when you see it -- Aaron.
BROWN: John, thank you.
On to the campaign and the battle for and by and over veterans, CNN's Dan Lothian with that, Dan a headline.
DAN LOTHIAN, CNN BOSTON BUREAU CHIEF: Well, Aaron, Senator Kerry was in Cincinnati, Ohio today speaking to the VFW Convention there. President Bush was speaking to the same group on Monday. So, what is attracting both of these candidates to veterans and what do the veterans think about them? Those are some questions we'll look at just ahead -- Aaron.
BROWN: Thank you, Dan.
Jeff Greenfield next on the conventional wisdom and the wisdom of it so far ahead of the election, Jeff a headline.
JEFF GREENFIELD, CNN SR. ANALYST: Aaron, tonight we become political meteorologists and trace for you exactly how that current conventional wisdom is formed. Caution it may not be conventional or wisdom by the time I rejoin you in 20 minutes or so -- Aaron.
BROWN: Jeff, thank you.
And finally to Florida and how some of the area's most vulnerable residents are dealing with the effects of Hurricane Charley. CNN's John Zarrella worked the story today, John a headline tonight.
JOHN ZARRELLA, CNN MIAMI BUREAU CHIEF: Aaron, this is certainly not the kind of weather that people here need, particularly the elderly, and healthcare professionals are worried that many of the elderly who will not leave their homes could be added to Charley's death toll -- Aaron.
BROWN: John, thank you. We'll get back to you and the rest in a little bit.
Also coming up on the program tonight the search engine that could almost didn't. Now Google's IPO has been given the green light and trading could begin tomorrow. Hang on to your wallet.
Also the Olympics, once the greatest sporting spectacle of them all, where's the buzz this year? Some theories on the games that seem to have lost some sizzle.
And we'll end it all with morning papers and, just because we can and haven't in a while, we'll throw in a tabloid or two. Will bat boy show up, all that and more in the hour ahead.
We begin tonight in Iraq. After two long and bloody weeks there are signs that the standoff at the mosque in Najaf might be on the verge of ending but a lot still needs to happen before it does.
The cleric hasn't left the mosque, his fighters haven't stopped the fighting. Soldiers on both sides are still dying. What changed today is this. A peace offer was accepted, not yet acted upon but accepted.
We begin with that and CNN's John Vause in Baghdad.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
VAUSE (voice-over): The standoff in Najaf may have ended not with a bang but a letter.
JALIL SHAMARI, SHIITE DAWN PARTY (through translator): We have news from (UNINTELLIGIBLE) office. They approve of Muqtada al-Sadr for the conditions that the National Conference has suggested.
VAUSE: In a statement from his Baghdad office to the Iraqi National Conference, al-Sadr said he was ready to leave the Imam Ali Mosque, dissolve his Mehdi militia and join the political process. Demands made by a peace delegation, which never met with al-Sadr face- to-face.
HUSSEIN AL-SADH, HEAD OF DELEGATION (through translator): Our duty is to deliver peace and in my opinion, although the delegation's task did not reach a conclusive stage, it was successful because it paved the way for a decisive conclusion.
VAUSE: In return, the Shiite cleric gets safe passage from the mosque and will not be arrested but he wants a complete ceasefire and U.S. and Iraqi forces to pull back before he orders his militia to stand down.
With 2,000 U.S. Marines and more than 1,000 Iraqi forces encircling the Imam Ali Mosque, Iraq's defense minister had earlier warned the clock was ticking. A military strike could have been just hours away.
HAZIN SHA'ALAN, IRAQ INTERIM DEFENSE MINISTER (through translator): We will teach these people a lesson in their lives which they will never forget.
VAUSE: If this peace deal holds, it will be a major success for the Iraqi National Conference, a meeting of more than 1,000 delegates in Baghdad. For three days they did little else but work on a negotiated end to the fighting in Najaf. They scheduled an extra day and chose an interim assembly of 100 people to oversee the Iraqi government.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Let Iraq live freely in democracy and in a federal way and in prosperity and may peace be upon you.
VAUSE: The first delicate steps of democracy, they called it, shaky steps down an uncertain road.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
VAUSE: In the end, that interim assembly was really appointed, not elected. Delegates were given a choice of either yes or no for just one list of 100 names and that left delegates from Basra, Tikrit, Mosul and Anbar complaining that they were left under represented.
They say the entire process was stacked in favor of the big political parties and, given those tensions, it seems it will be a long time between now and elections in January -- Aaron.
BROWN: John, back to Najaf for a minute. Just before we came up tonight we saw an AP dispatch which suggested that the Iraqi government, at least, isn't so sure it has a deal with al-Sadr. What do you know?
VAUSE: We know that the Iraqi government has been down this road before with Muqtada al-Sadr. They're very dubious about this man, very dubious that he will, in fact, keep his word.
Moments after that letter was read out to the Iraqi National Conference, al-Sadr and his representatives began putting conditions on acceptance of that peace deal. He wants a ceasefire, troops to withdraw completely. He wants the U.S. and the Iraqi forces to act first before he leaves the mosque.
BROWN: We'll see what happens. John, thank you, John Vause in Baghdad today. It was a nasty day and a nasty place in Baghdad today at Abu Ghraib Prison. U.S. military police shot and killed two Iraqi detainees, wounded five others, while trying to stop a major brawl at the prison.
The violence began, we are told, when several detainees attacked another inmate and it quickly escalated, as things do in prisons, as many as 200 detainees jumping into the fray, this as the Army is preparing to release its report on the prisoner abuse scandal, the focus the role that military intelligence played.
From the Pentagon here's CNN's Barbara Starr.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
BARBARA STARR, CNN PENTAGON CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): The Army investigation of intelligence and interrogation practices at Abu Ghraib Prison is expected to recommend up to two dozen personnel face disciplinary or criminal proceedings according to defense officials. This would expand the number of people alleged to be involved in the scandal far beyond the seven soldiers currently charged, all members of a police unit.
The report will detail findings of alleged wrongdoing by members of the 205th Military Intelligence Brigade, contractors and other government personnel. It will recommend actions ranging from potential administrative discipline all the way to a criminal investigation, officials say.
Barring last minute evidence, investigators have concluded there were no orders from higher-ups to abuse prisoners in order to get information. The Army's longstanding conclusion is the abuse was the work of out of control soldiers with local commanders not paying attention.
LT. GEN. PAUL MIKOLASHEK, ARMY INSPECTOR GENERAL: We looked at this through the eyes of the soldiers and what we found, as I mentioned too, was not a good picture.
STARR: The brigade's commander, Colonel Thomas Pappas, will likely be criticized for failing to oversee his troops but is not found to be directly involved in the abuse.
No one higher up than the colonel is likely to be held responsible. Top commanders in Baghdad will be cited for not adequately overseeing the prison system. An attorney for one of the soldiers already charges says the intelligence brigade was giving the orders.
GUY WOMACK, CHARLES GRANER'S ATTORNEY: This was an interrogation center. He was being directed by military intelligence officers and others in the intel community.
STARR (on camera): Congress is now likely to get its first look at this report next week and will have many questions about yet another Army investigation of itself. Barbara Starr, CNN, the Pentagon.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
BROWN: A lot on the table tonight where Iraq is concerned. When is there not, it seems, which is why we're always grateful for the company of Ken Pollack, CNN Analyst and Director of the Saban Center at the Brookings Institution in Washington. Ken is here with us in New York tonight.
Let's start with Najaf. Assuming for a second, and it is a huge assumption I think, that this deal holds. It is a victory for the Americans. It is a victory for the Iraqi government, is it not?
KEN POLLACK, SABAN CENTER, BROOKINGS INSTITUTION: Yes. If the deal holds, this definitely is an important step forward. I think we got to give credit where credit is due.
It gets the Mehdi Army out of the Shrine of Imam Ali, one of the holiest sites in Shia Islam. No one wanted to take down that place. It gets them out of there, relieves that need. That's an important step forward.
BROWN: OK. Those are the ifs there. Does it mean that Muqtada al-Sadr is no longer someone who has to be dealt with outside of the political sphere?
POLLACK: Absolutely not. I think this is the downside that we need to keep in mind. If this agreement does hold, what it means is his guys put down their weapons. They walk out of the mosque. They go and rejoin Iraqi society, which is full of weapons. They may keep a low profile for a while.
I think Muqtada al-Sadr has figured out this is not the time for him to stick his neck out but the moment he sees another opportunity he will recall the Medhi Army to the colors in a heartbeat. We have not seen the last of Muqtada al-Sadr.
BROWN: And when all -- again, assuming for a second that this ends as it appears it might, I don't think you can say more than it might, is he a stronger character in Iraqi life than he was a month ago?
POLLACK: In a month ago, hard to say, certainly than six or eight months ago.
BROWN: OK.
POLLACK: He's made himself...
BROWN: Well, he's had two stands basically in the last six to eight months.
POLLACK: Right. And the key there is both now and in April what he did was he made himself the principal voice of resistance to the Americans and, at some point in time when Iraqis once again are feeling ticked off at the United States, he'll show himself and they may very well rally to him because he has had this pattern of resistance to the U.S.
BROWN: Is he -- you know we've tended to think of the resistance as the Sunnis not the Shiites for one thing and then the foreign fighters, whoever and however many there may be. Ought we now think of the resistance as much larger than that, that the potential for at least the disaffected Shias is enormous?
POLLACK: Yes. I think that's a critical issue, Aaron, which is that the Shia have been the ones who we have been most concerned about. They're the majority of the population. They have the most at stake in terms of making democracy work. They're our natural constituency.
But the Shia have also been very wary of the United States. Remember in 1991, we called on them to rise up. They rose up. We did nothing. They were crushed. So, they've always been very wary of us and there are a lot of Shia who have just been over the last 16 months saying, "What are the Americans doing for us? They're doing nothing."
BROWN: To the conference for a second, the way it ended, basically a yes or no vote on a mysterious slate (UNINTELLIGIBLE). At one point today I think there were two slates.
POLLACK: Right.
BROWN: And one just kind of evaporated. Are we expecting more than the Iraqis can deliver where democracy is concerned?
POLLACK: Let's put it this way. I think if this slate holds we can chalk this up as kind of a tactical victory. The thing here is this could have been a catastrophe.
If these groups were unable to agree on any kind of a slate, if the whole thing had fallen apart in chaos, which was always a possibility that would have been a disaster. It seems like, it seems like they've avoided that disaster. That's a small victory but, yes, it doesn't sound like they've achieved a great deal.
BROWN: It just, it feels -- I'm not sure what the question is but it just feels like we're just up against the brink, always up against the brink, whether it's in Najaf or Fallujah or at this conference. There's nothing easy there.
POLLACK: Well, I think you're right and I think maybe a good way to think about it is we made so many mistakes early on in Iraq. We squandered so many opportunities. It's a little bit like the 0-2 in the count in baseball. We've now got to make every single pitch count.
BROWN: Good to see you.
POLLACK: Thanks very much, Aaron.
BROWN: Thank you. Ken Pollack with us tonight. On to presidential politics. For weeks now the candidates have been using military matters, if you will, for political advantage. They're fighting over this war, re-fighting an old one, and today we're at odds over the next.
Whether the president's plan to redeploy troops in Asia might encourage North Korea to invade the south. The latest shot, however, was fired not there but in Ohio, where both sides believe veterans will make a difference come the fall.
Here's CNN's Dan Lothian.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
LOTHIAN (voice-over): Jesse Willingsham, injured in the Korea War, worries about more conflicts.
JESSE WILLINGSHAM, VETERAN: I just hope that we can get to the point where we don't fight useless wars.
LOTHIAN: And is concerned about the state of healthcare and medical facilities for veterans.
WILLINGSHAM: They don't have the funds to take care of the veterans.
LOTHIAN: This week both President George Bush and Senator John Kerry traveled to Cincinnati, Ohio to assure some 15,000 Veterans of Foreign Wars that at their annual convention that each offers the best plan for fighting terrorism, building a stronger military, providing better benefits. Why is this group so important to both candidates?
DOUG CLIFFORD, VETERANS FOR KERRY: We represent a significant portion of the American society and we are people who have very important kind of experience that speaks to the American history.
LOTHIAN: And you vote.
CLIFFORD: And we vote.
LOTHIAN: After listening to Bush and Kerry in Ohio, the choice for some veterans is clear, a partisan divide. These two men turned their backs on Senator Kerry's speech to protest his actions after returning from Vietnam. At both candidate sessions some sat still, as others stood and applauded.
BILL BLOOMQUIST, VETERAN: I would say President Bush impressed me a lot more. Being a veteran myself and active duty, I just don't, I just don't feel that I really get a good positive input from Senator Kerry on what he really, really wants to do.
LARRY LYTLE, VETERAN: I think we're all looking for a leader that we can look up to. I think Senator Kerry may be the person.
LOTHIAN: But some veterans are still on the fence grasping for something more to hang their vote on. Senator Kerry is hoping to connect with veterans by touting his military service. President Bush focuses on the record of his first term. For Jesse Willingsham, still proud of his service and sacrifice...
WILLINGSHAM: And would gladly go again.
LOTHIAN: ...and 29 million other American veterans, the power to influence politics with one vote.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
LOTHIAN: According to the most recent polls, the veterans seem to be leaning towards President Bush but it is essentially a statistical tie between the two candidates when it comes to the veterans' vote at this point.
Now, Senator Kerry is here in Boston tonight. He will be meeting with the International Association of Firefighters tomorrow morning -- Aaron.
BROWN: Just, Dan, if you can, to those veterans who support Senator Kerry how important is his Vietnam service, A, and B, to what extent, if any, has all the hullabaloo over his Vietnam service in the last couple of weeks made any impact at all?
LOTHIAN: It is very important. We were talking to one of the veteran leaders here tonight and he tells me that that is the key issue. That is why he believes so many veterans are behind Senator Kerry and he believes that what has happened in the past is in the past. He believes that Senator Kerry's record, his military record, makes him a good candidate to become president of the United States.
BROWN: Dan, thanks, good to see you, Dan Lothian who's back home in Boston tonight.
How veterans will vote come November 2nd is, of course, a $64,000 question or, in 2004 terms, adjusting for inflation perhaps a $6 million question. That piece of the political story tonight from CNN's Bill Schneider.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
BILL SCHNEIDER, CNN SR. POLITICAL ANALYST (voice-over): As a voting block, veterans seem pretty securely in the Bush camp.
GEORGE W. BUSH, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: Serving our veterans is one of the highest priorities of my administration.
SCHNEIDER: It's not just because most veterans are men. Most male veterans favor Bush, while men who are not veterans are split between Bush and Kerry. Women favor Kerry. Veterans appreciate President Bush's strong, tough international policies.
BUSH: American will continue to lead the world with confidence and moral clarity. SCHNEIDER: Including Iraq. Male veterans strongly prefer Bush's Iraq policy. Men who are not veterans are split over who would handle Iraq better. Women prefer Kerry. When Bush made this statement to veterans, however...
BUSH: We're getting the job done.
SCHNEIDER: ...Kerry saw an opening.
SEN. JOHN KERRY (D), PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: And I'm not going to come to the VFW to tell you the job is done when it isn't done.
SCHNEIDER: Veterans have interests just like farmers and union members. Kerry made a pitch to those interests.
KERRY: I will continue to stand with you as president, leading the fight for a military family bill of rights and leading the fight for full mandatory funding for veterans' healthcare.
SCHNEIDER: Healthcare is a primary interest for veterans and their families. Male veterans do prefer Kerry over Bush on healthcare, just as non-veteran men and women do. But Kerry is not simply appealing to veterans as a voting block. Veterans are also an important prop in the Kerry campaign.
Veterans were featured last month at the Democratic Convention. The Kerry campaign makes sure veterans are there to greet him at every campaign stop. Is that a play for the veterans' vote? Not necessarily.
A recent CNN poll asked voters, "Will Kerry's military service help him be an effective president?" Most male veterans surprisingly said no, it doesn't make any difference.
Kerry's military credentials do impress most non-veterans, however, including most women. Kerry's military experience is most impressive to voters who don't have any military experience.
Bill Schneider, CNN, Washington.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
BROWN: Ahead on the program tonight, coping with the aftermath of Hurricane Charley, the struggle to get aid to those feeling the worst of it the elderly.
And Google, the world's most popular search engine, now heading for the trading floor. It can be yours for a price.
From New York this is NEWSNIGHT.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
BROWN: When Hurricane Charley came and went, it unleashed a swarm of the species known as gougasoris vulgarious (ph), creatures bearing $10 bags of ice, $2,500 generators and $40,000 roof repairs. So far this week, according to the Associated Press, Florida's attorney general's office has received more than 1,800 gouging complaints, many from the elderly who are already having a rougher go of it than most.
From Florida tonight here's CNN's John Zarrella.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
ZARRELLA (voice-over): Gary Parro (ph) spent the day struggling to sift through the sun-scorched remains of his mobile home. Parro has been living in his car since the storm passed. It's got to be awful hard on you in this heat.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: It's not easy. Life's not easy.
ZARRELLA: His daughter, Terry (ph), came to help him sort through what little is left. She's tried to get him to leave. He won't.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: He's guarding his rubble.
ZARRELLA: For the elderly here in Punta Gorda and Port Charlotte, life after Charley has been particularly difficult. A third of Charlotte County residents are over 65. The Red Cross and other relief agencies are desperately trying to get those left homeless by the storm into shelters.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: If they can at least come in at night, get some sleep in an air-conditioned space, get hydrated, get some food, let us assist you. We have a lot of able bodied young people that are just waiting to help them that will go to their homes with them.
ZARRELLA: Sonny and Stella Luninfeld (ph) did come in. They are among about 200 elderly people here at this Red Cross shelter. Stella was suffering from heat exhaustion when they got here.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: They told me we were going to die and, of course, that's going to build up your blood pressure and staying out in that heat until we finally came here.
ZARRELLA: Healthcare professionals worry that elderly people refusing to leave their homes and suffering through the heat will add to Charley's death toll. Many are running short of medications.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Two hundred and seventy-five scarves, one set of dentures.
ZARRELLA: Bobbi Houseman (ph) is 72. Her husband died six years ago.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: And I'm tired. I don't know what to do. I don't have no idea what to do next.
ZARRELLA: Houseman is like many of the elderly. Memories lay in that rubble. Bobbi's engagement ring is in there somewhere. She managed to find a box of valuables.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: This is what I've got. It's all I've got. I'm going to go to the clubhouse that's down here this way.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
ZARRELLA: There are busses that do go through the neighborhoods and the trailer parks looking for the elderly that are still out there. Some get on the busses. Some don't. And while there aren't as many as in the first days, when we go through those trailer parks, we still find them too refusing to leave -- Aaron.
BROWN: Are there people there who come, I don't mean family members, but part of the city and county services that come there and help them go through this rubble and find what they can?
ZARRELLA: Sometimes they do. The one gentleman we were talking with today, he was waiting for a FEMA representative to come. Other people are waiting for family members to come down to help them and the National Guard is in there all the time too, Aaron, helping and the church groups are here helping as well. But, nonetheless, some of these people are still saying, "We're staying. We don't want to leave" until they find those last memories -- Aaron.
BROWN: Well, God bless all the people who are helping them. John, thank you, John Zarrella in Florida tonight.
Coming up on NEWSNIGHT, the Senator or the president, who's race is it to lose and just what kind of question is that anyway?
Jeff Greenfield with the wisdom behind the conventional wisdom.
And later morning papers and, just because, the tabloids are back, bat boy, big foot, the space alien, Martha Stewart.
Be right back.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
BROWN: Back to politics now. There are in the country a lot of good and smart people who think about politics most of their waking hours. Individually they work at newspapers and magazines and TV networks. Collectively, they form the conventional wisdom, which is often conventional and sometimes wise. In a fight for the White House, the conventional wisdom has now spoken. Here's our senior analyst Jeff Greenfield.
JEFF GREENFIELD, CNN SENIOR ANALYST: The numbers fall on us like hailstones and they bring the same message over and over, this race is very, very close. Kerry leads Bush by four among likely voters says Zogby. No Bush leads Kerry by three says Gallup, no, it's Kerry by two says Rasmussen. Yet over the last week, something of a consensus appears to have formed in that vague universe called the conventional wisdom, a consensus that as of now this race is John Kerry's to lose, that President Bush is in trouble. There's no way to measure this consensus, because it is made up of conclusions, temporary judgments, hunches on the part of people who have the attention of political operatives and journalists. It may be overstated. It may have the half-life of an ice sculpture in the Sahara. But like Justice Potter Stewart once said of obscenity, maybe I can't define it, but I know it when I see it.
A week ago Tuesday veteran political analyst Charlie Cook wrote in the "National Journal" that while the election is not over, events or circumstances will need to fundamentally change the existing equation for President Bush to win a second term. The major Bush problem, Cook said, was that undecided voters were leaning heavily away from the president. A day later ABC's "the note" a daily online summary of political news declared that quote, this is now John Kerry's contest to lose, unquote. Last Sunday, "The Washington Post's" David Broder declared that the president's decision to attack Iraq and to run up huge deficits in prosecuting the war made him a vulnerable incumbent, dragging two huge weights.
And the hotline, another daily online source for any and all political news of the day, reports that the latest state-by-state poll numbers give Kerry a 316-205 lead in electoral votes, well over the 270 he needs to be elected. What the numbers suggest is that Kerry is ahead in every battleground state where Al Gore beat Bush in 2000. In the two big prizes, he holds a five-point lead in Pennsylvania, a seven point lead in Michigan.
By contrast in the battleground states where Bush beat Gore four years ago, Kerry now leads in Florida, Ohio and Missouri, the three biggest prizes and he's pulled (ph) even one poll says, even in Colorado. But here is where the foundation for this current conventional wisdom needs to be taken with several hundred grains of salt. In many of these states the margins in these polls are so small as to be meaningless, a one-point Kerry lead in Wisconsin, a two-point lead in Ohio, is that really a lead?
Moreover, the Republican National Convention is just around the corner and even a moderate bump for Bush means this Kerry lead could disappear. So Aaron, when it comes to conventional wisdom, remember the disclaimer you see in all these ads for great bargains subject to change without notice.
BROWN: Well, we get about a day's notice when the polls come out. But there are -- the undecided voter question that gets asked is a hugely important question, particularly, it seems to me, in this election, when there are only about 100 of them out there it seems like.
GREENFIELD: The first thing is, I happened to just be having lunch with a prominent pollster today who points out that while 5 percent claim they're undecided, another 15 percent say but we could change our minds and that can throw that into a cocktail (ph). Look, it seems to be true that the undecided voters look more like potential Kerry voters than Bush voters. The problem with a lot of this is people like me, even if we don't like day by day polls, we rely on historical patterns. But you know what, post 9/11 historical patterns may be thrown right out the window.
BROWN: And part of it is we don't know that. We don't know whether they are or whether they aren't. So until we know better we assume they're in play.
GREENFIELD: That's right and for instance, you will hear 100 times, even on this show, no Republican has ever won the White House without winning Ohio. This is true, but if Bush grabs Pennsylvania, he can lose Ohio and be no worse off and that's what - look, if you're doing numbers with baseball games, everything in baseball has happened thousands of times. There have been 53 or 54 presidential contests in this entire history, roughly half of which are completely irrelevant because they happened so long ago.
There aren't enough historical pieces of evidence to form real conclusions, which is why people like me need to say, could you just wait? Could you just -- let's look at these debates. Let's look at events. I sometimes compare people like me to the kids in the back of the car. As the car pulls out of the driveway and we're yelling, are we there yet? We'll know.
BROWN: So who's going to win now (ph). Thank you.
GREENFIELD: All right.
BROWN: Have a good day.
On the go. Try to remember live BG, before Google. Not the first tool for searching the web, to be sure, but arguably the best and undeniably the simplest. Millions of people use it every minute, every second of every day. The name itself has become a verb. We Google things, same as TiVoing NEWSNIGHT or Simonizing the old jalopy. So how do you put a price on all that? Millions of investors are about to find out. Shares of Google could start trading on Wall Street as early as tomorrow. Here is CNN's Mary Snow.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
MARY SNOW, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): It is Wall Street's debut of a Hollywood movie -- Google, the IPO with drama packed until the end. Google announcing the final price at $85 a share, at the bottom end of Google's forecast which already had been reduced just hours earlier by 25 percent, signaling far weaker than expected interest in the much hyped IPO. Still Google expects to sell nearly 20 million shares, raising about $2 billion. Part of the drama? Google broke with tradition and offered shares through a blind auction with buyers bidding for shares. Even seasoned investors initially guessed too high.
MATTHEW RHODES KROPF, COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY: I just picked something really I was winging it.
SNOW: Business Professor Rhodes Kropf who specializes in auctions bid shares at $120.
KROPF: Individuals like myself really have almost no way to come up with how to get their information to a per share price.
SNOW: Google's young company founders, whose motto is don't be evil, vow to allow ordinary people better access to its IPO by using the auction process. But those who follow public offerings say the price was too steep.
DAVID MENLOW, IPO FINANCIAL NETWORK: The best analogy I can give you for what the Google model originally was was similar to two young kids on the corner with a lemonade stand trying to sell lemonade at $10 a cup and not getting any sales.
SNOW: And the company had to cut its price.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: What happened was I think the company realized that demand for its IPO shares was not what the company had expected.
SNOW: But it wasn't just the price that kept investors on the edge of their seats. A "Playboy" article featuring Google's founders raised legal issues about whether the company violated a Securities and Exchange Commission requirement to stay quiet in the period leading up to an IPO.
(on-camera): The next test comes when Google joins its Internet counterparts in trading at the tech-heavy Nasdaq. And just where the stock goes will give the final rating on whether this unusual IPO process was a success or failure. Mary Snow, CNN financial news, New York.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
BROWN: Still to come on NEWSNIGHT, the realities of war. Iraqis and Americans find common ground, grieving after the death of a loved one.
And the Olympics. What happened to the sizzle? Where did it go? We'll be right back.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
BROWN: There are sides of the war in Iraq we don't often see and this is one of them. We hear about deaths on both sides. Every night we honor Americans soldiers lost. But how those deaths are marked and grieved rarely make it into the public record, something veteran war photographer Peter Turnley is trying to change. Since the war in Iraq began, he's been documenting grief on both sides. A photo essay of his work appears in this month's "Harper's" magazine, where he is a contributing editor.
PETER TURNLEY, CONTRIBUTING EDITOR, "HARPERS" MAGAZINE: The photographs of this photo essay were taken from the very first day of the war in 2003 when the coalition forces first invaded Iraq up until just the last few months. And these pictures were taken both in Iraq, essentially, of the funerals of Iraqi civilians and soldiers. And then the American pictures were taken at the funerals of American soldiers killed in Iraq. The photographs of American soldiers were taken all over the United States, in South Carolina, Oklahoma, New Mexico. I witnessed funerals that took place very quickly after death, often in Iraq. Very often people are buried within the first 24 hours of their death. I saw funerals taking place in Iraq in very raw conditions.
The funerals that I photographed and witnessed in the United States of American soldiers were most often in environments that were much more organized several weeks after the actual death of the soldier, where there had been much more time for preparation, in an environment that was thousands of miles away from the war theater, in very starkly different physical conditions.
What strikes me, though, having witnessed grieving of death in both Iraq and in America is much more the commonality of suffering than the things that make them different by virtue of their environment. When you witness the mother of an Iraqi soldier, an Iraqi civilian that has died, when you witness her grief and you witness the grief of the mother of an American soldier, the body language, the visual expression, the emotion is all very much the same.
Untold Iraqis have been killed and a large number now of American soldiers have been killed. I've been concerned that I've had the sense that the American public has not been distinctly made aware of the actual realities of war and the magnitude of death. I simply have not understood the notion that in any way showing the realities of war to the public could in any way be unpatriotic.
It seems to me that the responsibility of a journalist today is to tell as much as possible the true realities of what is taking place in the world. My desire is to simply try to dignify the reality of what people experience in war by showing the public what does happen there.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
BROWN: We confess we've been trying hard to ignore Athens all week. But tonight we couldn't help ourselves. American Olympic athletes collecting more gold today and making some pretty cool history along the way. In the women's 800 meter freestyle relay, the U.S. shattered the oldest world record in swimming set 17 years ago by the eastern German women. Hmm.
In gymnastics, Paul Hamm became the first American to win the men's all-around title. It was a stunning comeback. He came back after a fall on his vault landing which pushed him out of the top 10. The routines that followed were that spectacular.
And a book end victory for Kimberly Rhode who is now the first and last gold medalist in the women's double trap. The shooting event is being discontinued after debuting eight years ago in Atlanta. Ms. Rhode took that gold that year as well. It was quite a day in Athens.
That said, there does seem to be something missing in Athens this year, fans for one thing, many empty seats and some sizzle, too. We're joined tonight from Phoenix by Bill Goodykoontz, the TV critic for the "Arizona Republic" and a former sports columnist and we'll ask him to wear both hats tonight. Good to see you.
We were talking before the break or in the break that part of the problem is technology, is that if the suspense is part of the fun in watching, part of the fun of the games, it is hard to escape knowing what happened.
BILL GOODYKOONTZ, TV CRITIC, THE ARIZONA REPUBLIC: Right. I think any web page, my newspaper's home page, they'll put the results up as soon as they get them. That didn't use to be the case. People didn't use the Internet that way. People didn't report that way on the Internet. Now, you know, you can't avoid it and I guess if you have great self-restraint, which I do not, you could try to avoid it or you could maybe not read the details. But if I see the headline, I see that Hamm wins gold, I want to know every jot and tiddle (ph) about it.
BROWN: Now have the TV ratings actually suffered for it? I thought I read today that they're about where they were.
GOODYKOONTZ: They're about where they were. You're not going to beat ratings like you had in Atlanta, which are sort of home team kind of ratings and not a small thing in the same time zone. The time zone again comes into play there.
BROWN: But there is, I think, more to this than technology. And I think some of the theories about it are fascinating. One of them is there are no bad guys out there anymore. There's no good and evil at the Olympic games, the Russians, the East Germans, the Americans.
GOODYKOONTZ: Right. Frankly, it was kind of hard to get behind the East German women's swimming team 17 years ago. It's sort of hard to cheer for them. I think that there was, you know our good guys, they're bad guys, from our perspective. Now you just have these sort of middling good guys. You sort of like them, but you sort of don't. The Iraqi soccer teams, they're the darlings of the Olympics so far.
BROWN: Why do we need that to enjoy -- we don't need it to enjoy all sports. But we perhaps need it to enjoy these sports.
GOODYKOONTZ: I think we do -- in some regard we do need it for all sports. Sports at its best is like a good drama and a good drama has a good guy and a bad guy. You need somebody to root for and ideally you have somebody to root against. That just makes it fun.
BROWN: And if global nuclear annihilation hangs in the balance, what the heck, huh?
GOODYKOONTZ: Right. Well, but it was sort of an offshoot of that. I will say that I guess you don't have anybody to root against, Bob Costas had a funny quote that I read somewhere where he said, well it is not like al Qaeda has a gymnastics team. ... doesn't really participate in these kind of things.
BROWN: There is I think though some truth in that. If you go back in the modern Olympic games and you go back to the Berlin games and Jesse Owens and Hitler and the Nazis, there have been for a long time this struggle, if you will, between good and evil, part of which was played out in swimming pools and on track fields.
GOODYKOONTZ: Sure. The greatest example, actually, in the winter Olympics during 1980 with the hockey team when we beat the Russian hockey team.
BROWN: Is there anything else in your mind -- well, first of all, do you think is it overdone? Do you think there's this notion that the games have lost their sizzle or these games have lost their sizzle is overdone?
GOODYKOONTZ: Well, I think that they're still getting good ratings. There are still things that you want to watch. I think that the real fun in the Olympics in these games is all the cable coverage, all the sports. Everybody wants to see Michael Phelps win, of course, everybody wants to see gymnastics. But there's a lot of fun stuff going on on cable that a lot of people don't have time to watch. Handball is fabulous, badminton, table tennis. All these sports that you wrongly think that you could sort of fall out into your back yard and play at an Olympic level. They're great to watch and you don't really care who wins, so you don't have that problem of the suspense being taken away from you.
BROWN: Do you watch rhythmic gymnastics?
GOODYKOONTZ: I watch it because I watch all of it. I don't particularly enjoy it.
BROWN: That one I can't figure out.
GOODYKOONTZ: The one that I can't figure out, I don't dislike it, but I can't figure it out is the synchronized diving, where the two divers dive at the same time. To me it just seems like one of those sports where maybe some divers who didn't quite make the team decided they'd invent their own sports and get to the Olympics that way.
BROWN: Well, good for them, because they did.
GOODYKOONTZ: Well, sure but it would be sort of as if swimmers who didn't quite make the cut, lined up on either end of the pool and swam to the middle to see who could get there the fastest.
BROWN: Good having you with us. Thank you.
GOODYKOONTZ: Thank you.
BROWN: Come back again. Thank you. We'll check morning papers and a tabloid or two after the break.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
BROWN: Okey-dokey. Time to check -- time to check morning papers from around the country and around the world. Tabloid or two thrown in if I can get the paper clips out of them. The "International Herald Tribune," this is a great story, ladies and gentlemen. Sharp new focus for U.S. election. Foreign affairs now tops economy as voters' greatest concern, poll shows. This is a poll done for Pew Research Center. One of the other questions in it, is the United States more or less respected in the world? Only 10 percent of respondents thought more respected, 67 percent thought less respected. I don't know what the political ramifications of that would be. We'll find out.
"Washington Times" is running excerpts of the "Unfit For Command," the John Kerry -- attack on John Kerry.
I just thought we'd mention that and the "Miami Herald," only restaurant open. This is a very good picture, people getting their first hot meal in a while.
Quickly now, the tabloids, OK, didn't know about this but I do now. Condi Rice thinks she's Catwoman. I don't know. I loved this, OK? Bush clone turns four. Kid has White House potential, experts say. Now, can you get a shot of this little guy? He does look a lot like the president, doesn't he? You got that shot? He has kind of an adult head on a little boy's body. I don't know how they got that, 15 seconds, the cover story. Martha creates Stepford clone, domestic diva lives it up while double goes to jail,
My goodness, the weather in Chicago I'll tell you when we come back. We'll wrap it up in a moment.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
BROWN: A few seconds left, time to get in a couple more tabloids, OK. Space aliens spotted hugging Kerry. Is ET switching parties again? They actually have a picture of that. Mrs. Kerry is there, too. That concerns me a little bit.
And this is a great headline. Muslim dogs must wear burqas. Can you see (INAUDIBLE) at the bottom of the page. They got a little shot of like lassie wearing a burqa. Have a great weekend. No, have a -- we'll see you tomorrow one or the other.
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 August 18, 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.
For the first time in a long time, one of the great spectacles of the western world is back in full swing. Once again tonight, people can escape their everyday troubles and imagine a moment in the sun.
We can dream of reaching our personal best and grabbing it, hitting the number, making the perfect score, or we can just sit back and enjoy the action while the favorites walk away with all the gold. Well, upsets rule the day. Which celebrity is in the game, who is on the sidelines?
Tomorrow, shares of Google are expected to go public on Wall Street, the first major IPO in years. OK, plenty to root for at the other event too but the network can only carry so much.
The whip begins tonight with late developments in the standoff over Najaf playing out there and in Baghdad, CNN's John Vause with the watch, John start us with a headline.
JOHN VAUSE, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Aaron, Muqtada al-Sadr says he is willing to leave the Imam Ali Mosque and dissolve his Mehdi militia but the Shiite cleric has a reputation for bluff and brinkmanship, so believe it when you see it -- Aaron.
BROWN: John, thank you.
On to the campaign and the battle for and by and over veterans, CNN's Dan Lothian with that, Dan a headline.
DAN LOTHIAN, CNN BOSTON BUREAU CHIEF: Well, Aaron, Senator Kerry was in Cincinnati, Ohio today speaking to the VFW Convention there. President Bush was speaking to the same group on Monday. So, what is attracting both of these candidates to veterans and what do the veterans think about them? Those are some questions we'll look at just ahead -- Aaron.
BROWN: Thank you, Dan.
Jeff Greenfield next on the conventional wisdom and the wisdom of it so far ahead of the election, Jeff a headline.
JEFF GREENFIELD, CNN SR. ANALYST: Aaron, tonight we become political meteorologists and trace for you exactly how that current conventional wisdom is formed. Caution it may not be conventional or wisdom by the time I rejoin you in 20 minutes or so -- Aaron.
BROWN: Jeff, thank you.
And finally to Florida and how some of the area's most vulnerable residents are dealing with the effects of Hurricane Charley. CNN's John Zarrella worked the story today, John a headline tonight.
JOHN ZARRELLA, CNN MIAMI BUREAU CHIEF: Aaron, this is certainly not the kind of weather that people here need, particularly the elderly, and healthcare professionals are worried that many of the elderly who will not leave their homes could be added to Charley's death toll -- Aaron.
BROWN: John, thank you. We'll get back to you and the rest in a little bit.
Also coming up on the program tonight the search engine that could almost didn't. Now Google's IPO has been given the green light and trading could begin tomorrow. Hang on to your wallet.
Also the Olympics, once the greatest sporting spectacle of them all, where's the buzz this year? Some theories on the games that seem to have lost some sizzle.
And we'll end it all with morning papers and, just because we can and haven't in a while, we'll throw in a tabloid or two. Will bat boy show up, all that and more in the hour ahead.
We begin tonight in Iraq. After two long and bloody weeks there are signs that the standoff at the mosque in Najaf might be on the verge of ending but a lot still needs to happen before it does.
The cleric hasn't left the mosque, his fighters haven't stopped the fighting. Soldiers on both sides are still dying. What changed today is this. A peace offer was accepted, not yet acted upon but accepted.
We begin with that and CNN's John Vause in Baghdad.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
VAUSE (voice-over): The standoff in Najaf may have ended not with a bang but a letter.
JALIL SHAMARI, SHIITE DAWN PARTY (through translator): We have news from (UNINTELLIGIBLE) office. They approve of Muqtada al-Sadr for the conditions that the National Conference has suggested.
VAUSE: In a statement from his Baghdad office to the Iraqi National Conference, al-Sadr said he was ready to leave the Imam Ali Mosque, dissolve his Mehdi militia and join the political process. Demands made by a peace delegation, which never met with al-Sadr face- to-face.
HUSSEIN AL-SADH, HEAD OF DELEGATION (through translator): Our duty is to deliver peace and in my opinion, although the delegation's task did not reach a conclusive stage, it was successful because it paved the way for a decisive conclusion.
VAUSE: In return, the Shiite cleric gets safe passage from the mosque and will not be arrested but he wants a complete ceasefire and U.S. and Iraqi forces to pull back before he orders his militia to stand down.
With 2,000 U.S. Marines and more than 1,000 Iraqi forces encircling the Imam Ali Mosque, Iraq's defense minister had earlier warned the clock was ticking. A military strike could have been just hours away.
HAZIN SHA'ALAN, IRAQ INTERIM DEFENSE MINISTER (through translator): We will teach these people a lesson in their lives which they will never forget.
VAUSE: If this peace deal holds, it will be a major success for the Iraqi National Conference, a meeting of more than 1,000 delegates in Baghdad. For three days they did little else but work on a negotiated end to the fighting in Najaf. They scheduled an extra day and chose an interim assembly of 100 people to oversee the Iraqi government.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Let Iraq live freely in democracy and in a federal way and in prosperity and may peace be upon you.
VAUSE: The first delicate steps of democracy, they called it, shaky steps down an uncertain road.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
VAUSE: In the end, that interim assembly was really appointed, not elected. Delegates were given a choice of either yes or no for just one list of 100 names and that left delegates from Basra, Tikrit, Mosul and Anbar complaining that they were left under represented.
They say the entire process was stacked in favor of the big political parties and, given those tensions, it seems it will be a long time between now and elections in January -- Aaron.
BROWN: John, back to Najaf for a minute. Just before we came up tonight we saw an AP dispatch which suggested that the Iraqi government, at least, isn't so sure it has a deal with al-Sadr. What do you know?
VAUSE: We know that the Iraqi government has been down this road before with Muqtada al-Sadr. They're very dubious about this man, very dubious that he will, in fact, keep his word.
Moments after that letter was read out to the Iraqi National Conference, al-Sadr and his representatives began putting conditions on acceptance of that peace deal. He wants a ceasefire, troops to withdraw completely. He wants the U.S. and the Iraqi forces to act first before he leaves the mosque.
BROWN: We'll see what happens. John, thank you, John Vause in Baghdad today. It was a nasty day and a nasty place in Baghdad today at Abu Ghraib Prison. U.S. military police shot and killed two Iraqi detainees, wounded five others, while trying to stop a major brawl at the prison.
The violence began, we are told, when several detainees attacked another inmate and it quickly escalated, as things do in prisons, as many as 200 detainees jumping into the fray, this as the Army is preparing to release its report on the prisoner abuse scandal, the focus the role that military intelligence played.
From the Pentagon here's CNN's Barbara Starr.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
BARBARA STARR, CNN PENTAGON CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): The Army investigation of intelligence and interrogation practices at Abu Ghraib Prison is expected to recommend up to two dozen personnel face disciplinary or criminal proceedings according to defense officials. This would expand the number of people alleged to be involved in the scandal far beyond the seven soldiers currently charged, all members of a police unit.
The report will detail findings of alleged wrongdoing by members of the 205th Military Intelligence Brigade, contractors and other government personnel. It will recommend actions ranging from potential administrative discipline all the way to a criminal investigation, officials say.
Barring last minute evidence, investigators have concluded there were no orders from higher-ups to abuse prisoners in order to get information. The Army's longstanding conclusion is the abuse was the work of out of control soldiers with local commanders not paying attention.
LT. GEN. PAUL MIKOLASHEK, ARMY INSPECTOR GENERAL: We looked at this through the eyes of the soldiers and what we found, as I mentioned too, was not a good picture.
STARR: The brigade's commander, Colonel Thomas Pappas, will likely be criticized for failing to oversee his troops but is not found to be directly involved in the abuse.
No one higher up than the colonel is likely to be held responsible. Top commanders in Baghdad will be cited for not adequately overseeing the prison system. An attorney for one of the soldiers already charges says the intelligence brigade was giving the orders.
GUY WOMACK, CHARLES GRANER'S ATTORNEY: This was an interrogation center. He was being directed by military intelligence officers and others in the intel community.
STARR (on camera): Congress is now likely to get its first look at this report next week and will have many questions about yet another Army investigation of itself. Barbara Starr, CNN, the Pentagon.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
BROWN: A lot on the table tonight where Iraq is concerned. When is there not, it seems, which is why we're always grateful for the company of Ken Pollack, CNN Analyst and Director of the Saban Center at the Brookings Institution in Washington. Ken is here with us in New York tonight.
Let's start with Najaf. Assuming for a second, and it is a huge assumption I think, that this deal holds. It is a victory for the Americans. It is a victory for the Iraqi government, is it not?
KEN POLLACK, SABAN CENTER, BROOKINGS INSTITUTION: Yes. If the deal holds, this definitely is an important step forward. I think we got to give credit where credit is due.
It gets the Mehdi Army out of the Shrine of Imam Ali, one of the holiest sites in Shia Islam. No one wanted to take down that place. It gets them out of there, relieves that need. That's an important step forward.
BROWN: OK. Those are the ifs there. Does it mean that Muqtada al-Sadr is no longer someone who has to be dealt with outside of the political sphere?
POLLACK: Absolutely not. I think this is the downside that we need to keep in mind. If this agreement does hold, what it means is his guys put down their weapons. They walk out of the mosque. They go and rejoin Iraqi society, which is full of weapons. They may keep a low profile for a while.
I think Muqtada al-Sadr has figured out this is not the time for him to stick his neck out but the moment he sees another opportunity he will recall the Medhi Army to the colors in a heartbeat. We have not seen the last of Muqtada al-Sadr.
BROWN: And when all -- again, assuming for a second that this ends as it appears it might, I don't think you can say more than it might, is he a stronger character in Iraqi life than he was a month ago?
POLLACK: In a month ago, hard to say, certainly than six or eight months ago.
BROWN: OK.
POLLACK: He's made himself...
BROWN: Well, he's had two stands basically in the last six to eight months.
POLLACK: Right. And the key there is both now and in April what he did was he made himself the principal voice of resistance to the Americans and, at some point in time when Iraqis once again are feeling ticked off at the United States, he'll show himself and they may very well rally to him because he has had this pattern of resistance to the U.S.
BROWN: Is he -- you know we've tended to think of the resistance as the Sunnis not the Shiites for one thing and then the foreign fighters, whoever and however many there may be. Ought we now think of the resistance as much larger than that, that the potential for at least the disaffected Shias is enormous?
POLLACK: Yes. I think that's a critical issue, Aaron, which is that the Shia have been the ones who we have been most concerned about. They're the majority of the population. They have the most at stake in terms of making democracy work. They're our natural constituency.
But the Shia have also been very wary of the United States. Remember in 1991, we called on them to rise up. They rose up. We did nothing. They were crushed. So, they've always been very wary of us and there are a lot of Shia who have just been over the last 16 months saying, "What are the Americans doing for us? They're doing nothing."
BROWN: To the conference for a second, the way it ended, basically a yes or no vote on a mysterious slate (UNINTELLIGIBLE). At one point today I think there were two slates.
POLLACK: Right.
BROWN: And one just kind of evaporated. Are we expecting more than the Iraqis can deliver where democracy is concerned?
POLLACK: Let's put it this way. I think if this slate holds we can chalk this up as kind of a tactical victory. The thing here is this could have been a catastrophe.
If these groups were unable to agree on any kind of a slate, if the whole thing had fallen apart in chaos, which was always a possibility that would have been a disaster. It seems like, it seems like they've avoided that disaster. That's a small victory but, yes, it doesn't sound like they've achieved a great deal.
BROWN: It just, it feels -- I'm not sure what the question is but it just feels like we're just up against the brink, always up against the brink, whether it's in Najaf or Fallujah or at this conference. There's nothing easy there.
POLLACK: Well, I think you're right and I think maybe a good way to think about it is we made so many mistakes early on in Iraq. We squandered so many opportunities. It's a little bit like the 0-2 in the count in baseball. We've now got to make every single pitch count.
BROWN: Good to see you.
POLLACK: Thanks very much, Aaron.
BROWN: Thank you. Ken Pollack with us tonight. On to presidential politics. For weeks now the candidates have been using military matters, if you will, for political advantage. They're fighting over this war, re-fighting an old one, and today we're at odds over the next.
Whether the president's plan to redeploy troops in Asia might encourage North Korea to invade the south. The latest shot, however, was fired not there but in Ohio, where both sides believe veterans will make a difference come the fall.
Here's CNN's Dan Lothian.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
LOTHIAN (voice-over): Jesse Willingsham, injured in the Korea War, worries about more conflicts.
JESSE WILLINGSHAM, VETERAN: I just hope that we can get to the point where we don't fight useless wars.
LOTHIAN: And is concerned about the state of healthcare and medical facilities for veterans.
WILLINGSHAM: They don't have the funds to take care of the veterans.
LOTHIAN: This week both President George Bush and Senator John Kerry traveled to Cincinnati, Ohio to assure some 15,000 Veterans of Foreign Wars that at their annual convention that each offers the best plan for fighting terrorism, building a stronger military, providing better benefits. Why is this group so important to both candidates?
DOUG CLIFFORD, VETERANS FOR KERRY: We represent a significant portion of the American society and we are people who have very important kind of experience that speaks to the American history.
LOTHIAN: And you vote.
CLIFFORD: And we vote.
LOTHIAN: After listening to Bush and Kerry in Ohio, the choice for some veterans is clear, a partisan divide. These two men turned their backs on Senator Kerry's speech to protest his actions after returning from Vietnam. At both candidate sessions some sat still, as others stood and applauded.
BILL BLOOMQUIST, VETERAN: I would say President Bush impressed me a lot more. Being a veteran myself and active duty, I just don't, I just don't feel that I really get a good positive input from Senator Kerry on what he really, really wants to do.
LARRY LYTLE, VETERAN: I think we're all looking for a leader that we can look up to. I think Senator Kerry may be the person.
LOTHIAN: But some veterans are still on the fence grasping for something more to hang their vote on. Senator Kerry is hoping to connect with veterans by touting his military service. President Bush focuses on the record of his first term. For Jesse Willingsham, still proud of his service and sacrifice...
WILLINGSHAM: And would gladly go again.
LOTHIAN: ...and 29 million other American veterans, the power to influence politics with one vote.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
LOTHIAN: According to the most recent polls, the veterans seem to be leaning towards President Bush but it is essentially a statistical tie between the two candidates when it comes to the veterans' vote at this point.
Now, Senator Kerry is here in Boston tonight. He will be meeting with the International Association of Firefighters tomorrow morning -- Aaron.
BROWN: Just, Dan, if you can, to those veterans who support Senator Kerry how important is his Vietnam service, A, and B, to what extent, if any, has all the hullabaloo over his Vietnam service in the last couple of weeks made any impact at all?
LOTHIAN: It is very important. We were talking to one of the veteran leaders here tonight and he tells me that that is the key issue. That is why he believes so many veterans are behind Senator Kerry and he believes that what has happened in the past is in the past. He believes that Senator Kerry's record, his military record, makes him a good candidate to become president of the United States.
BROWN: Dan, thanks, good to see you, Dan Lothian who's back home in Boston tonight.
How veterans will vote come November 2nd is, of course, a $64,000 question or, in 2004 terms, adjusting for inflation perhaps a $6 million question. That piece of the political story tonight from CNN's Bill Schneider.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
BILL SCHNEIDER, CNN SR. POLITICAL ANALYST (voice-over): As a voting block, veterans seem pretty securely in the Bush camp.
GEORGE W. BUSH, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: Serving our veterans is one of the highest priorities of my administration.
SCHNEIDER: It's not just because most veterans are men. Most male veterans favor Bush, while men who are not veterans are split between Bush and Kerry. Women favor Kerry. Veterans appreciate President Bush's strong, tough international policies.
BUSH: American will continue to lead the world with confidence and moral clarity. SCHNEIDER: Including Iraq. Male veterans strongly prefer Bush's Iraq policy. Men who are not veterans are split over who would handle Iraq better. Women prefer Kerry. When Bush made this statement to veterans, however...
BUSH: We're getting the job done.
SCHNEIDER: ...Kerry saw an opening.
SEN. JOHN KERRY (D), PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: And I'm not going to come to the VFW to tell you the job is done when it isn't done.
SCHNEIDER: Veterans have interests just like farmers and union members. Kerry made a pitch to those interests.
KERRY: I will continue to stand with you as president, leading the fight for a military family bill of rights and leading the fight for full mandatory funding for veterans' healthcare.
SCHNEIDER: Healthcare is a primary interest for veterans and their families. Male veterans do prefer Kerry over Bush on healthcare, just as non-veteran men and women do. But Kerry is not simply appealing to veterans as a voting block. Veterans are also an important prop in the Kerry campaign.
Veterans were featured last month at the Democratic Convention. The Kerry campaign makes sure veterans are there to greet him at every campaign stop. Is that a play for the veterans' vote? Not necessarily.
A recent CNN poll asked voters, "Will Kerry's military service help him be an effective president?" Most male veterans surprisingly said no, it doesn't make any difference.
Kerry's military credentials do impress most non-veterans, however, including most women. Kerry's military experience is most impressive to voters who don't have any military experience.
Bill Schneider, CNN, Washington.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
BROWN: Ahead on the program tonight, coping with the aftermath of Hurricane Charley, the struggle to get aid to those feeling the worst of it the elderly.
And Google, the world's most popular search engine, now heading for the trading floor. It can be yours for a price.
From New York this is NEWSNIGHT.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
BROWN: When Hurricane Charley came and went, it unleashed a swarm of the species known as gougasoris vulgarious (ph), creatures bearing $10 bags of ice, $2,500 generators and $40,000 roof repairs. So far this week, according to the Associated Press, Florida's attorney general's office has received more than 1,800 gouging complaints, many from the elderly who are already having a rougher go of it than most.
From Florida tonight here's CNN's John Zarrella.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
ZARRELLA (voice-over): Gary Parro (ph) spent the day struggling to sift through the sun-scorched remains of his mobile home. Parro has been living in his car since the storm passed. It's got to be awful hard on you in this heat.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: It's not easy. Life's not easy.
ZARRELLA: His daughter, Terry (ph), came to help him sort through what little is left. She's tried to get him to leave. He won't.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: He's guarding his rubble.
ZARRELLA: For the elderly here in Punta Gorda and Port Charlotte, life after Charley has been particularly difficult. A third of Charlotte County residents are over 65. The Red Cross and other relief agencies are desperately trying to get those left homeless by the storm into shelters.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: If they can at least come in at night, get some sleep in an air-conditioned space, get hydrated, get some food, let us assist you. We have a lot of able bodied young people that are just waiting to help them that will go to their homes with them.
ZARRELLA: Sonny and Stella Luninfeld (ph) did come in. They are among about 200 elderly people here at this Red Cross shelter. Stella was suffering from heat exhaustion when they got here.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: They told me we were going to die and, of course, that's going to build up your blood pressure and staying out in that heat until we finally came here.
ZARRELLA: Healthcare professionals worry that elderly people refusing to leave their homes and suffering through the heat will add to Charley's death toll. Many are running short of medications.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Two hundred and seventy-five scarves, one set of dentures.
ZARRELLA: Bobbi Houseman (ph) is 72. Her husband died six years ago.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: And I'm tired. I don't know what to do. I don't have no idea what to do next.
ZARRELLA: Houseman is like many of the elderly. Memories lay in that rubble. Bobbi's engagement ring is in there somewhere. She managed to find a box of valuables.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: This is what I've got. It's all I've got. I'm going to go to the clubhouse that's down here this way.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
ZARRELLA: There are busses that do go through the neighborhoods and the trailer parks looking for the elderly that are still out there. Some get on the busses. Some don't. And while there aren't as many as in the first days, when we go through those trailer parks, we still find them too refusing to leave -- Aaron.
BROWN: Are there people there who come, I don't mean family members, but part of the city and county services that come there and help them go through this rubble and find what they can?
ZARRELLA: Sometimes they do. The one gentleman we were talking with today, he was waiting for a FEMA representative to come. Other people are waiting for family members to come down to help them and the National Guard is in there all the time too, Aaron, helping and the church groups are here helping as well. But, nonetheless, some of these people are still saying, "We're staying. We don't want to leave" until they find those last memories -- Aaron.
BROWN: Well, God bless all the people who are helping them. John, thank you, John Zarrella in Florida tonight.
Coming up on NEWSNIGHT, the Senator or the president, who's race is it to lose and just what kind of question is that anyway?
Jeff Greenfield with the wisdom behind the conventional wisdom.
And later morning papers and, just because, the tabloids are back, bat boy, big foot, the space alien, Martha Stewart.
Be right back.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
BROWN: Back to politics now. There are in the country a lot of good and smart people who think about politics most of their waking hours. Individually they work at newspapers and magazines and TV networks. Collectively, they form the conventional wisdom, which is often conventional and sometimes wise. In a fight for the White House, the conventional wisdom has now spoken. Here's our senior analyst Jeff Greenfield.
JEFF GREENFIELD, CNN SENIOR ANALYST: The numbers fall on us like hailstones and they bring the same message over and over, this race is very, very close. Kerry leads Bush by four among likely voters says Zogby. No Bush leads Kerry by three says Gallup, no, it's Kerry by two says Rasmussen. Yet over the last week, something of a consensus appears to have formed in that vague universe called the conventional wisdom, a consensus that as of now this race is John Kerry's to lose, that President Bush is in trouble. There's no way to measure this consensus, because it is made up of conclusions, temporary judgments, hunches on the part of people who have the attention of political operatives and journalists. It may be overstated. It may have the half-life of an ice sculpture in the Sahara. But like Justice Potter Stewart once said of obscenity, maybe I can't define it, but I know it when I see it.
A week ago Tuesday veteran political analyst Charlie Cook wrote in the "National Journal" that while the election is not over, events or circumstances will need to fundamentally change the existing equation for President Bush to win a second term. The major Bush problem, Cook said, was that undecided voters were leaning heavily away from the president. A day later ABC's "the note" a daily online summary of political news declared that quote, this is now John Kerry's contest to lose, unquote. Last Sunday, "The Washington Post's" David Broder declared that the president's decision to attack Iraq and to run up huge deficits in prosecuting the war made him a vulnerable incumbent, dragging two huge weights.
And the hotline, another daily online source for any and all political news of the day, reports that the latest state-by-state poll numbers give Kerry a 316-205 lead in electoral votes, well over the 270 he needs to be elected. What the numbers suggest is that Kerry is ahead in every battleground state where Al Gore beat Bush in 2000. In the two big prizes, he holds a five-point lead in Pennsylvania, a seven point lead in Michigan.
By contrast in the battleground states where Bush beat Gore four years ago, Kerry now leads in Florida, Ohio and Missouri, the three biggest prizes and he's pulled (ph) even one poll says, even in Colorado. But here is where the foundation for this current conventional wisdom needs to be taken with several hundred grains of salt. In many of these states the margins in these polls are so small as to be meaningless, a one-point Kerry lead in Wisconsin, a two-point lead in Ohio, is that really a lead?
Moreover, the Republican National Convention is just around the corner and even a moderate bump for Bush means this Kerry lead could disappear. So Aaron, when it comes to conventional wisdom, remember the disclaimer you see in all these ads for great bargains subject to change without notice.
BROWN: Well, we get about a day's notice when the polls come out. But there are -- the undecided voter question that gets asked is a hugely important question, particularly, it seems to me, in this election, when there are only about 100 of them out there it seems like.
GREENFIELD: The first thing is, I happened to just be having lunch with a prominent pollster today who points out that while 5 percent claim they're undecided, another 15 percent say but we could change our minds and that can throw that into a cocktail (ph). Look, it seems to be true that the undecided voters look more like potential Kerry voters than Bush voters. The problem with a lot of this is people like me, even if we don't like day by day polls, we rely on historical patterns. But you know what, post 9/11 historical patterns may be thrown right out the window.
BROWN: And part of it is we don't know that. We don't know whether they are or whether they aren't. So until we know better we assume they're in play.
GREENFIELD: That's right and for instance, you will hear 100 times, even on this show, no Republican has ever won the White House without winning Ohio. This is true, but if Bush grabs Pennsylvania, he can lose Ohio and be no worse off and that's what - look, if you're doing numbers with baseball games, everything in baseball has happened thousands of times. There have been 53 or 54 presidential contests in this entire history, roughly half of which are completely irrelevant because they happened so long ago.
There aren't enough historical pieces of evidence to form real conclusions, which is why people like me need to say, could you just wait? Could you just -- let's look at these debates. Let's look at events. I sometimes compare people like me to the kids in the back of the car. As the car pulls out of the driveway and we're yelling, are we there yet? We'll know.
BROWN: So who's going to win now (ph). Thank you.
GREENFIELD: All right.
BROWN: Have a good day.
On the go. Try to remember live BG, before Google. Not the first tool for searching the web, to be sure, but arguably the best and undeniably the simplest. Millions of people use it every minute, every second of every day. The name itself has become a verb. We Google things, same as TiVoing NEWSNIGHT or Simonizing the old jalopy. So how do you put a price on all that? Millions of investors are about to find out. Shares of Google could start trading on Wall Street as early as tomorrow. Here is CNN's Mary Snow.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
MARY SNOW, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): It is Wall Street's debut of a Hollywood movie -- Google, the IPO with drama packed until the end. Google announcing the final price at $85 a share, at the bottom end of Google's forecast which already had been reduced just hours earlier by 25 percent, signaling far weaker than expected interest in the much hyped IPO. Still Google expects to sell nearly 20 million shares, raising about $2 billion. Part of the drama? Google broke with tradition and offered shares through a blind auction with buyers bidding for shares. Even seasoned investors initially guessed too high.
MATTHEW RHODES KROPF, COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY: I just picked something really I was winging it.
SNOW: Business Professor Rhodes Kropf who specializes in auctions bid shares at $120.
KROPF: Individuals like myself really have almost no way to come up with how to get their information to a per share price.
SNOW: Google's young company founders, whose motto is don't be evil, vow to allow ordinary people better access to its IPO by using the auction process. But those who follow public offerings say the price was too steep.
DAVID MENLOW, IPO FINANCIAL NETWORK: The best analogy I can give you for what the Google model originally was was similar to two young kids on the corner with a lemonade stand trying to sell lemonade at $10 a cup and not getting any sales.
SNOW: And the company had to cut its price.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: What happened was I think the company realized that demand for its IPO shares was not what the company had expected.
SNOW: But it wasn't just the price that kept investors on the edge of their seats. A "Playboy" article featuring Google's founders raised legal issues about whether the company violated a Securities and Exchange Commission requirement to stay quiet in the period leading up to an IPO.
(on-camera): The next test comes when Google joins its Internet counterparts in trading at the tech-heavy Nasdaq. And just where the stock goes will give the final rating on whether this unusual IPO process was a success or failure. Mary Snow, CNN financial news, New York.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
BROWN: Still to come on NEWSNIGHT, the realities of war. Iraqis and Americans find common ground, grieving after the death of a loved one.
And the Olympics. What happened to the sizzle? Where did it go? We'll be right back.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
BROWN: There are sides of the war in Iraq we don't often see and this is one of them. We hear about deaths on both sides. Every night we honor Americans soldiers lost. But how those deaths are marked and grieved rarely make it into the public record, something veteran war photographer Peter Turnley is trying to change. Since the war in Iraq began, he's been documenting grief on both sides. A photo essay of his work appears in this month's "Harper's" magazine, where he is a contributing editor.
PETER TURNLEY, CONTRIBUTING EDITOR, "HARPERS" MAGAZINE: The photographs of this photo essay were taken from the very first day of the war in 2003 when the coalition forces first invaded Iraq up until just the last few months. And these pictures were taken both in Iraq, essentially, of the funerals of Iraqi civilians and soldiers. And then the American pictures were taken at the funerals of American soldiers killed in Iraq. The photographs of American soldiers were taken all over the United States, in South Carolina, Oklahoma, New Mexico. I witnessed funerals that took place very quickly after death, often in Iraq. Very often people are buried within the first 24 hours of their death. I saw funerals taking place in Iraq in very raw conditions.
The funerals that I photographed and witnessed in the United States of American soldiers were most often in environments that were much more organized several weeks after the actual death of the soldier, where there had been much more time for preparation, in an environment that was thousands of miles away from the war theater, in very starkly different physical conditions.
What strikes me, though, having witnessed grieving of death in both Iraq and in America is much more the commonality of suffering than the things that make them different by virtue of their environment. When you witness the mother of an Iraqi soldier, an Iraqi civilian that has died, when you witness her grief and you witness the grief of the mother of an American soldier, the body language, the visual expression, the emotion is all very much the same.
Untold Iraqis have been killed and a large number now of American soldiers have been killed. I've been concerned that I've had the sense that the American public has not been distinctly made aware of the actual realities of war and the magnitude of death. I simply have not understood the notion that in any way showing the realities of war to the public could in any way be unpatriotic.
It seems to me that the responsibility of a journalist today is to tell as much as possible the true realities of what is taking place in the world. My desire is to simply try to dignify the reality of what people experience in war by showing the public what does happen there.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
BROWN: We confess we've been trying hard to ignore Athens all week. But tonight we couldn't help ourselves. American Olympic athletes collecting more gold today and making some pretty cool history along the way. In the women's 800 meter freestyle relay, the U.S. shattered the oldest world record in swimming set 17 years ago by the eastern German women. Hmm.
In gymnastics, Paul Hamm became the first American to win the men's all-around title. It was a stunning comeback. He came back after a fall on his vault landing which pushed him out of the top 10. The routines that followed were that spectacular.
And a book end victory for Kimberly Rhode who is now the first and last gold medalist in the women's double trap. The shooting event is being discontinued after debuting eight years ago in Atlanta. Ms. Rhode took that gold that year as well. It was quite a day in Athens.
That said, there does seem to be something missing in Athens this year, fans for one thing, many empty seats and some sizzle, too. We're joined tonight from Phoenix by Bill Goodykoontz, the TV critic for the "Arizona Republic" and a former sports columnist and we'll ask him to wear both hats tonight. Good to see you.
We were talking before the break or in the break that part of the problem is technology, is that if the suspense is part of the fun in watching, part of the fun of the games, it is hard to escape knowing what happened.
BILL GOODYKOONTZ, TV CRITIC, THE ARIZONA REPUBLIC: Right. I think any web page, my newspaper's home page, they'll put the results up as soon as they get them. That didn't use to be the case. People didn't use the Internet that way. People didn't report that way on the Internet. Now, you know, you can't avoid it and I guess if you have great self-restraint, which I do not, you could try to avoid it or you could maybe not read the details. But if I see the headline, I see that Hamm wins gold, I want to know every jot and tiddle (ph) about it.
BROWN: Now have the TV ratings actually suffered for it? I thought I read today that they're about where they were.
GOODYKOONTZ: They're about where they were. You're not going to beat ratings like you had in Atlanta, which are sort of home team kind of ratings and not a small thing in the same time zone. The time zone again comes into play there.
BROWN: But there is, I think, more to this than technology. And I think some of the theories about it are fascinating. One of them is there are no bad guys out there anymore. There's no good and evil at the Olympic games, the Russians, the East Germans, the Americans.
GOODYKOONTZ: Right. Frankly, it was kind of hard to get behind the East German women's swimming team 17 years ago. It's sort of hard to cheer for them. I think that there was, you know our good guys, they're bad guys, from our perspective. Now you just have these sort of middling good guys. You sort of like them, but you sort of don't. The Iraqi soccer teams, they're the darlings of the Olympics so far.
BROWN: Why do we need that to enjoy -- we don't need it to enjoy all sports. But we perhaps need it to enjoy these sports.
GOODYKOONTZ: I think we do -- in some regard we do need it for all sports. Sports at its best is like a good drama and a good drama has a good guy and a bad guy. You need somebody to root for and ideally you have somebody to root against. That just makes it fun.
BROWN: And if global nuclear annihilation hangs in the balance, what the heck, huh?
GOODYKOONTZ: Right. Well, but it was sort of an offshoot of that. I will say that I guess you don't have anybody to root against, Bob Costas had a funny quote that I read somewhere where he said, well it is not like al Qaeda has a gymnastics team. ... doesn't really participate in these kind of things.
BROWN: There is I think though some truth in that. If you go back in the modern Olympic games and you go back to the Berlin games and Jesse Owens and Hitler and the Nazis, there have been for a long time this struggle, if you will, between good and evil, part of which was played out in swimming pools and on track fields.
GOODYKOONTZ: Sure. The greatest example, actually, in the winter Olympics during 1980 with the hockey team when we beat the Russian hockey team.
BROWN: Is there anything else in your mind -- well, first of all, do you think is it overdone? Do you think there's this notion that the games have lost their sizzle or these games have lost their sizzle is overdone?
GOODYKOONTZ: Well, I think that they're still getting good ratings. There are still things that you want to watch. I think that the real fun in the Olympics in these games is all the cable coverage, all the sports. Everybody wants to see Michael Phelps win, of course, everybody wants to see gymnastics. But there's a lot of fun stuff going on on cable that a lot of people don't have time to watch. Handball is fabulous, badminton, table tennis. All these sports that you wrongly think that you could sort of fall out into your back yard and play at an Olympic level. They're great to watch and you don't really care who wins, so you don't have that problem of the suspense being taken away from you.
BROWN: Do you watch rhythmic gymnastics?
GOODYKOONTZ: I watch it because I watch all of it. I don't particularly enjoy it.
BROWN: That one I can't figure out.
GOODYKOONTZ: The one that I can't figure out, I don't dislike it, but I can't figure it out is the synchronized diving, where the two divers dive at the same time. To me it just seems like one of those sports where maybe some divers who didn't quite make the team decided they'd invent their own sports and get to the Olympics that way.
BROWN: Well, good for them, because they did.
GOODYKOONTZ: Well, sure but it would be sort of as if swimmers who didn't quite make the cut, lined up on either end of the pool and swam to the middle to see who could get there the fastest.
BROWN: Good having you with us. Thank you.
GOODYKOONTZ: Thank you.
BROWN: Come back again. Thank you. We'll check morning papers and a tabloid or two after the break.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
BROWN: Okey-dokey. Time to check -- time to check morning papers from around the country and around the world. Tabloid or two thrown in if I can get the paper clips out of them. The "International Herald Tribune," this is a great story, ladies and gentlemen. Sharp new focus for U.S. election. Foreign affairs now tops economy as voters' greatest concern, poll shows. This is a poll done for Pew Research Center. One of the other questions in it, is the United States more or less respected in the world? Only 10 percent of respondents thought more respected, 67 percent thought less respected. I don't know what the political ramifications of that would be. We'll find out.
"Washington Times" is running excerpts of the "Unfit For Command," the John Kerry -- attack on John Kerry.
I just thought we'd mention that and the "Miami Herald," only restaurant open. This is a very good picture, people getting their first hot meal in a while.
Quickly now, the tabloids, OK, didn't know about this but I do now. Condi Rice thinks she's Catwoman. I don't know. I loved this, OK? Bush clone turns four. Kid has White House potential, experts say. Now, can you get a shot of this little guy? He does look a lot like the president, doesn't he? You got that shot? He has kind of an adult head on a little boy's body. I don't know how they got that, 15 seconds, the cover story. Martha creates Stepford clone, domestic diva lives it up while double goes to jail,
My goodness, the weather in Chicago I'll tell you when we come back. We'll wrap it up in a moment.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
BROWN: A few seconds left, time to get in a couple more tabloids, OK. Space aliens spotted hugging Kerry. Is ET switching parties again? They actually have a picture of that. Mrs. Kerry is there, too. That concerns me a little bit.
And this is a great headline. Muslim dogs must wear burqas. Can you see (INAUDIBLE) at the bottom of the page. They got a little shot of like lassie wearing a burqa. Have a great weekend. No, have a -- we'll see you tomorrow one or the other.
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