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CNN Newsnight Aaron Brown

Marines Prepare to Attack Fallujah; Arafat Remains in Coma

Aired November 05, 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 everyone.
A brief self indulgent moment, OK, just a bit more self indulgent than usual, the program celebrates its third anniversary tonight. Three years ago we became NEWSNIGHT.

The world has changed a lot. The program has grown as well. Morning papers came. The accordion man left. The power of still photos found a home. The mystery guest is homeless. Nissen has remained Nissen. The theory has remained the same, most of the staff too.

And, while it may not be the largest audience in cable, from the start it's been the most interesting and most demanding I've ever known. We all look forward to the next three. Then we'll decide.

The whip begins, as always, in the present, the clock ticking tonight loudly outside Fallujah where U.S. Marines are poised for a major assault perhaps the most important moment of the war. Jamie McIntyre at the Pentagon starts us off with a headline tonight -- Jamie.

JAMIE MCINTYRE, CNN SR. PENTAGON CORRESPONDENT: Well, Aaron, those Marines near Fallujah know that any day now they could get the order from Iraq's interim government to finish the job their fellow Marines were prevented from doing back in April. That is retaking Fallujah by force.

BROWN: Jamie, thank you. We'll get to you at the top tonight.

Just as events in Iraq are about to shift again, so too is another piece of the puzzle of the Middle East or, at least, it appears to be. CNN's Guy Raz is in Jerusalem tonight with a headline.

GUY RAZ, CNN CORRESPONDENT: As Yasser Arafat remains in a coma uncertainty over who will lead the Palestinian cause -- Aaron.

BROWN: Guy, thank you.

And what Arafat's absence could mean for the peace effort in the Middle East, another piece of the story, Andrea Koppel at the State Department with the headline tonight.

ANDREA KOPPEL, CNN STATE DEPARTMENT CORRESPONDENT: Aaron, President Bush has for years refused to deal with Yasser Arafat. Would a post Arafat era provide Mr. Bush with new opportunities or new challenges -- Aaron?

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

Also ahead on the program on this Friday night the man of the moment by way of the presidential election, President Bush won a second term, Karl Rove gets much of the credit.

And a child's game gets serious, rock, paper, scissors used to be about settling playground disputes. Now there is much more at stake.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Rock, paper, scissors really is the ultimate non-violent conflict resolution mechanism.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BROWN: The perfect NEWSNIGHT anniversary story.

And the rooster stops by with morning papers, perfect too because it's Friday and a tabloid or two will get thrown in, all that and more in the hour ahead.

We begin with Fallujah, a city in the crosshairs tonight, the war in Iraq about to take a nasty turn. Thousands of U.S. troops and Iraqi soldiers too have taken up positions around the city, several thousand insurgents and perhaps 70,000 civilians inside. Today, the Iraqi prime minister said again time is running out.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

AYAD ALLAWI, IRAQI PRIME MINISTER: A window really is closing for a peaceful settlement. The Fallujah people have left, most of them have left Fallujah and the insurgents and terrorists are still operating there. We hope they will come to their senses, otherwise we have to bring them to face the justice.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BROWN: When the battle begins in full force it will unfold in narrow streets and blind allies in many ways the most dangerous kind of battlefield. The risks are great. It would be hard to overstate them. The goal is to break the back and the will of the insurgency, though that is by no means a sure thing. You can win the battle. The larger war remains a more complicated piece of business.

We have several reports tonight beginning at the Pentagon and CNN's Jamie McIntyre.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

MCINTYRE (voice-over): An eerie contrast in Fallujah, a call to prayer in Arabic saying "God is greater than the oppressors," punctuated by explosions, a harbinger of even heavier fighting to come. Well into the early hours of Saturday morning, AC-130 gunships pounded insurgent positions as U.S. tanks attacked along the city's outskirts. Fallujah residents described the latest air strikes as the strongest in months.

It's all designed to pave the way for an assault force that sources say will be far larger than the U.S. Marines had during last April's aborted offensive. It includes some American Army units and importantly thousands of specially trained Iraqi soldiers whose performance in the past has been spotty.

PFC ABRAHAM AUGUSTIN, U.S. ARMY: It's very unpredictable but we have faith in them, hope they don't let us down.

MCINTYRE: In fact, the Iraqi participation, along with local citizen support is considered key to success.

SAMIR SUMAIDAIE, IRAQ'S PERMANENT U.N. REPRESENTATIVE: The Fallujahns are being subjected to a Taliban-like rule. Their houses are being commandeered. They have been threatened and they themselves want the situation to be normalized.

MCINTYRE: While the timing is secret the showdown has been well telegraphed. More than half of Fallujah's 250,000 residents have already fled in anticipation of the offensive. Insurgents believed to number in the thousands have been busy preparing defenses, attacking U.S. troops and rigging booby traps.

Located just west of Baghdad, Fallujah is not just the biggest hotbed of resistance in Iraq, it's also believed to be the base of operations for Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the Jordanian militant who the U.S. hopes to capture or kill if he's there and, while victory in Fallujah is crucial, no one is predicting it will break the back of the insurgency.

MAJ. JIM WEST, 1ST MARINE EXPEDITIONARY FORCE: It is not though the panacea. Just by taking it out does not mean the rest of the insurgency will follow but it will be a big chip in that block out there.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

MCINTYRE: Pentagon officials say there is some evidence that some of the insurgents may have left Fallujah in advance of the offensive. They can't say how many for sure but they say once the smoke clears in Fallujah they'll reassess, evaluate where the insurgents might be regrouping and perhaps plan another offensive -- Aaron.

BROWN: How much concern is there that as we saw last spring that an attack in Fallujah will create a backlash in other parts of the county Sunni and Shia?

MCINTYRE: Well, they are concerned about that. That's one of the reasons they've waited so long to conduct this offensive. Of course, a key difference is last time the governing council stepped in and stopped the offensive because they were worried about the heavy- handed tactics and civilian casualties.

This time it's being done in cooperation with a new interim government and there will be many Iraqi forces, at least involved if not conducting the heaviest fighting. They'll be there and they're hoping that that will really ameliorate the problem they had last time of too much of a backlash.

BROWN: And you said in the whip that they're waiting for the go ahead from the Iraqi government. Is that a literal go ahead or is that more figurative?

MCINTYRE: Well, no, it's a literal go ahead. They are, I mean all the plans are set. You know there's clearly going to be an offensive barring a really unexpected event and the United States wants to make it clear that when the time comes it will be Allawi, Prime Minister Allawi who makes that decision.

BROWN: Jamie, thank you. Have a good weekend, if you get a weekend. Thank you.

MCINTYRE: OK.

BROWN: We have been here before, as we've eluded to back in April waiting for a major assault on Fallujah to begin. It did not go well the first time, as Jamie indicated, and it's fair to say the stakes are even higher now.

The city has become the best known symbol of resistance in Iraq, a measure of how tough the mission has become or always has been depending on who's doing the talking.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

BROWN (voice-over): As the American military swept toward Baghdad 18 months ago, the city of Fallujah was a tactical afterthought. It is no more.

GEN. DAVID GRANGE (RET.), MILITARY ANALYST: It's one of those situations where you can't have a locale like that with such resentment, such independence that they don't go along with the unity efforts of the rest of the country.

BROWN: Only a month after the fall of Saddam, 19 Iraqis died when American soldiers fired into a street demonstration in Fallujah. Someone in the crowd, the military says, fired first. Insurgents began to take control of the city establishing a Taliban-like rule inside its boundaries.

GRANGE: It fell apart because immediately the jihadists took control, pushed extremist law into that particular enclave of the country and totally rejected any influence from the Iraqi interim government.

BROWN: Among those extremists, the Jordanian Abu al-Zarqawi, a terrorist the U.S. military says was behind the slaughter in early March of four civilian contractors, which led to a Marine attack on the city.

GEN. MARK KIMMITT, U.S. ARMY: They are coming back. They are going to hunt down the people responsible for this bestial act.

BROWN: But for all the tough talk at that time the Marines never finished the job. They were pulled back.

CPL. CHRIS RODRIGUEZ, U.S. ARMY: It's upsetting. We don't want to do it. We've been here for a while. We don't want to lose the ground that we fought so hard for and that we've been here, you know, sweating blood.

BROWN: Security was handed over to what was called the Fallujah Brigade, Iraqi soldiers led by former Iraqi Army officers, soldiers who didn't fight, leaders who didn't lead and in some cases aided the insurgents they were supposed to control. So now, again, Marines are preparing to take the city. Iraqi soldiers will back them up. Whether they will fight is not known.

JACKIE SPINNER, "THE WASHINGTON POST": This is going to be a big test for them and I think that we'll all be watching to see how well they perform, if they stay in the fight and how long they stay in the fight.

BROWN: The heavy lifting, so to speak, will be done by the Americans and so far in Iraq about 20 percent of the American casualties have been as a result of fighting in or near Fallujah.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

BROWN: So, how many will die in the fighting ahead is simply one uncertainty tonight though few expect the casualties will be minor. Whether the attack will set off a backlash in Iraq or beyond is another. What is clear that this time it is far more difficult to cover the story on the ground that we're sure of.

Hannah Allam is the Baghdad Bureau Chief for the Knight-Ridder chain of newspapers. Knight-Ridder has done a terrific job covering the story and she joins us from Baghdad tonight. What is the mood in the capital? Is there a tension over what's about to begin?

HANNAH ALLAM, KNIGHT-RIDDER BAGHDAD BUREAU CHIEF: There is. I think there's just an overall sense of dread. People aren't sure what to expect. After April, the first battle over Fallujah, you know, people were demonstrating. The mosques were full of protesters of people taking in displaced families from the fighting and a lot of that is going on again.

BROWN: Do you see in people more of a willingness to accept that while it is unpleasant it is an unpleasant necessity or do they not see it that way?

ALLAM: There has been more of that sentiment this time around. Even we're hearing reports from our stringer in Fallujah, our Iraqi correspondent who's there in the town, that a lot of the people they expected to stay and fight have been in fact leaving and that this might just be the price they have to pay to drive out the Islamic extremists who resort to attacks that leave a large number of civilian casualties.

BROWN: Do the Iraqis you talk to make a distinction between the Iraqi nationalists who are part of an insurgency and the foreign jihadists who have taken advantage of the situation in Iraq to create an insurgency?

ALLAM: Absolutely. That's the first thing they say when interviewed is that there is the anti-occupation nationalists. These are the ones whose attacks they support, if not with the money at lest with just sort of their tacit approval and certainly a reluctance to phone in tips on those guys. However, there's really very, very little tolerance for what they see as the outsider extremist element, the Afghanistan crowd.

BROWN: I want to talk about just one or two business questions here. How is -- you said a moment ago you have a stringer, someone who works with you, in the city of Fallujah. How is that person reporting? How is he able, I assume it's a he, how is he able to report?

ALLAM: Very, very cautiously these days. In fact, we offered him a satellite phone. He was too afraid to take it. He thought that if the insurgents who run the city found it on him he'd be executed immediately as a spy.

As it is, he's able to phone in cell phone reports and even then he locks himself into a quiet room and whispers so no one hears him speaking English. It's very difficult for him.

BROWN: How worried are you about that?

ALLAM: I'm very worried. In fact, yesterday I had a conversation with him and I told him, you know, it's getting -- it's getting close and, you know, the story is not worth your life. Feel free to leave, you know. Don't let -- don't stay beyond what you can because it is a life or death situation there.

BROWN: Can people get out, particularly young men? Can young men get out safely now?

ALLAM: I'm not sure what the situation is at the moment but I know yesterday there were leaflets passed out by the Marines in the area urging families to flee while they can and threatening to arrest, detain anyone -- any men, I believe it was, under the age of 45. So, it's going to be really tough for them to get out. They're sealing off the city in effect.

BROWN: Just a final question, maybe a bit inelegant. I apologize. But just talk a bit about how the situation now differs from the situation back last spring when this all played out for the first time, the political situation, the situation in the streets, the attitude of Iraqis, the security problem, the whole nine yards if you will. How different is it just these few months? ALLAM: Well now, of course, the major difference is that elections are at stake. In less than two months now, Iraq is scheduled for National Assembly elections, the first real democratic vote since Saddam's ouster so there's a lot riding on this battle.

Securing the Anbar Province, Fallujah in particular, is going to be key to Sunni Muslim participation in this vote, although there's a lot of influential Sunni Muslim scholars and cleric associations who have said if the offensive starts, they're urging a Sunni boycott.

BROWN: Hannah, the paper or the chain, as I said earlier, has done a terrific job with the story, nicely done.

ALLAM: Thank you.

BROWN: We appreciate your time tonight. Stay well. Thank you.

Still ahead on the program tonight, love him or hate him, Karl Rove, the architect behind the president's win takes a well earned bow.

And, the numbers are in for, jobs that is. They're up. We'll tell you what they mean as we continue from New York on a Friday night.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BROWN: Where politics is concerned, we're in the land of the in- between, the election over, the new term and the new Congress yet to begin but, like nature, journalism abhors a vacuum and so this week has been full of talk about how it all happened and what it meant and somewhere along the way we settled on values as the be-all and end- all, as if one side had them and the other side didn't. The facts are more complicated, as they often are, but one central fact in the campaign can't be dismissed. Karl Rove, the so-called boy genius, was.

Here's CNN's Bill Schneider.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

BILL SCHNEIDER, CNN SR. POLITICAL ANALYST (voice-over): He's the toast of the town.

GEORGE W. BUSH, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: The architect, Karl Rove.

SCHNEIDER: Rove mobilized evangelical Christians. Some Democrats saw a stealth army of evangelical voters organized below the media radar that pulled a surprise attack on Election Day and overwhelmed them at the polls. Evangelicals did vote for Bush in large numbers but that's not the whole story of this election.

Most voters on Tuesday said they support abortion rights, about the same as in 2000. Sixty percent favored some form of legal recognition of same-sex relationships. The voters this year were no more religious than before. Were religious voters more for Bush?

In 2000, Bush carried 59 percent of the vote among churchgoers, this year 61 percent, a two point gain. Now look at non-churchgoers. Their vote for Bush went up by three points. President Bush had something going for him besides religion.

When asked what mattered most to them in deciding how to vote, Bush voters put strong leadership and clear stands on the issues, not religion, at the top of the list. That was Rove's doing too. For eight months, the Bush campaign kept up a relentless attack on John Kerry as a flip-flopper.

BUSH: And then he entered the flip-flop hall of fame and as he entered that hall of fame, he said "I actually did vote for the $87 billion before I voted against it."

SCHNEIDER: In order to win this election, Kerry worked to sell himself as a uniter.

SEN. JOHN KERRY (D), MASSACHUSETTS: I will be a president who unites our country.

SCHNEIDER: That is difficult to do if people see you as wavering and inconsistent, the image that Rove worked hard to create. So now, Rove enters the king maker's hall of fame.

Bill Schneider, CNN, Washington.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

BROWN: Tough politics tonight, Karl Rove, the Democrats, other things too. Frank Rich, the columnist for "The New York Times," we're glad to see him. You are -- you're probably everything that the red states hate. You work for "The Times," kind of an elitist, cultured guy.

FRANK RICH, "THE NEW YORK TIMES": I have no connection with CBS.

BROWN: You must have -- it's close enough at "The Times."

RICH: Yes.

BROWN: What happened?

RICH: What happened? A lot of things happened. First of all, the Democrats don't really have a message and they had a weak candidate from, in my view, a field of weak candidates. It's not like there was anyone that was so great. You know you're in trouble when Al Sharpton is the most electrifying person that they had, you know, during the primary season.

And a very focused president and Karl Rove, as you've been talking about getting out a base that's a minority of this country but has, as they say, values, not necessarily everyone's values, getting them to the polls when the Democrats really apparently did not get young voters who favored them and other parts of its base to the polls.

BROWN: Do you think this whole values discussion has been overdone in the last few days or has it missed the mark in the last few days?

RICH: Well, people don't know how to talk about it. A term that pollsters use is moral values. That's about as vague as saying the weather. I think it's all about sex, quite frankly. I think it's all about gay marriage.

It's about anything connected with sex, abortion, stem cells which in a way is connected with sex or not depending on how you look at it, and no one really wants -- that's the elephant in the room no one really wants to talk about.

And, so I think that people aren't precise about it. I do think it's a big issue. I think it's such a big issue that the Democrats made the fatal mistake of trying to turn John Kerry, who is let's face it a Patrician Yale guy, into just folks and it's not going to work, particularly when you're windsurfing.

BROWN: How is it that -- that's interesting. I said yesterday watching the Democrats is a bit like watching a train wreck. You can't resist looking at it and you can't resist talking about it.

This is a party that is the party of the New Deal. This is the party that has had a long comfortable relationship with working people in the country and seems to have lost its ability to speak a language or find the right words that working people feel comfortable with.

RICH: I couldn't agree with you more and the classic example in this election is Ohio. You had people who had been thrown out of work, who disapprove of the war in Iraq, living in a state where the economy is worse than it is in most of the United States voting for the Republicans anyway because the Democrats didn't speak to them and the Democrats, unfortunately, their idea of speaking to working people is to pander to them or patronize them and that doesn't work. It's ridiculous.

BROWN: When did that happen? I mean Bill Clinton obviously could speak to them.

RICH: Bill Clinton could speak to them and I think Al Gore at his best could speak to them and I think John Edwards at his best could speak to them but it's been a -- it's a party that has been in confusion to a certain extent since the Reagan revolution but I think really was thrown by the whole impeachment period and lost its way. I think that, you know, they have a very popular president presiding over a booming peaceful country and it was sort of thrown away over issues of sex.

BROWN: Again.

RICH: Again. And, every since then they've been playing defensive and they don't have much of a bench either, which is another problem. BROWN: At the risk of causing producers trouble in the booth here, I want to go a little bit long. I want to talk about the media a little bit.

RICH: Yes.

BROWN: You've been reasonably harsh, I would say, about how campaigns have been covered. This campaign has been covered particularly harsh where cable is concerned, right fair?

RICH: Yes, that's absolutely fair.

BROWN: Tell me what's the complaint?

RICH: The complaint is it's too much infotainment and too little news. You know, I used an example in a column I wrote of this network, of "CROSSFIRE," before Jon Stewart made his complaint I had the same complaint.

BROWN: You're not as funny as Jon Stewart.

RICH: Not remotely.

BROWN: Yes.

RICH: But he wasn't particularly funny when he did it either. It was sort of a serious subject but he was right. On one hand you have CNN, which I think is a hard news network but your show notwithstanding it's sort of all over the map in terms of how it's presenting the news and I know you've talked about this but, you know, when all things fail let's go to Laci Peterson.

Fox has its own agenda. It's quite naked. MSNBC is finding itself. Cable news is a tremendous source for news. It's something that passes everybody's eyes during the workday, at airports, everywhere else and it's not that serious.

And I'm not saying everything has to be "The New York Times," which can be too serious but I feel this is a time of tremendous importance. It's a time when we're at a war that's -- in a war that's probably going to be an expanding war which neither candidate had a way to get us out of in this campaign and I feel we've got to be tougher and stick to the facts and not have people shouting at each other.

BROWN: In no sense do I mean this defensively because the truth is I've talked about most of these things on the program.

RICH: Sure. Yes, I know.

BROWN: But the paper, "The Times," has taken an incredible amount of criticism for its coverage, prewar coverage.

RICH: And rightly so, rightly so. I feel that "The Times" has done a sort of mea culpa, as to some extent has "The Washington Post," as has Leslie Stahl of CBS News for essentially being too credulous about the WMD evidence and the sources it came from. And so, I think there's room for improvement by everyone, including certainly the place I work for.

BROWN: And just a final question on this. Where do you -- where is the response -- I say when I talk to -- when I make speeches I talk about television as the perfect democracy. People sit there with their remote controls and vote all the time. So, where is the voter, the viewer's responsibility to demand more?

RICH: I think the viewers have to demand more. I think they have to, as in the movie network, say we're mad as hell and we're not going to take it anymore because it is a marketplace. It's not a philanthropic enterprise and I constantly tell people when I speak to them too you can vote with your clicker. You can vote with your Neilson ratings and people have to start doing that if they care about the information they get, which is the life blood of democracy.

BROWN: Nice to see you.

RICH: Good to see you.

BROWN: Will you come back?

RICH: Absolutely.

BROWN: I'm really glad to have you. Have a good weekend.

RICH: You too.

BROWN: Thank you, Frank Rich of the elitist "New York Times."

We'll take a break. We'll be right back.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

* BROWN: Well, we're going to see more of those in the days ahead.

Yesterday, we made note of the fact that events often shape presidential agendas. And the rapidly failing health of the Palestinian leader, Yasser Arafat, a case in point. Today brought more conflicting accounts, more confusion over how ill he is and how close to death he might be. Three U.S. officials telling CNN that Mr. Arafat is being kept alive tonight by machines. There are also reports that his family will not remove life support or declare him dead until burial arrangements are made. A complicated piece of business, that turns out to be. A Palestinian spokesman is denying both accounts.

What is certain is that the collapse of Mr. Arafat's health has profound implications for the second Bush administration and for the Palestinians, too.

Here's CNN's Guy Raz.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE) RAZ (voice-over): Israel plans to out its settlement in Gaza by the end of next year. The process was to take place without Palestinian input.

Now, in a possible post-Arafat era, speculation is that Israel will be forced to coordinate that move with his successors. And who might they be? Former Palestinian Prime Minister Mahmoud Abbas is no stranger to President Bush. The two have met before. And Abbas, also known as Abu Mazen, has been closely linked to the peace process. Abbas is now running the Palestinian Liberation Organization in Arafat's absence and has been involved in the Palestinian struggle since its inception.

ALI JARBAWI, PALESTINIAN ANALYST: To Palestinians are ready to work with the new administration, provided that the terms of the political settlement are not determined only and solely in Tel Aviv.

RAZ: Aside from Mahmoud Abbas, current Prime Minister Ahmed Qorei is a likely possibility. So is Marwan Barghouti, one of the most popular Palestinian leaders, but now serving a jail sentence in Israel.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

RAZ: But, Aaron, no matter who takes over in the interim, the road to Jerusalem may ultimately run through Washington. Now, both the European Union and the Arab League see resolving the Palestinian- Israeli conflict as key to Middle East stability. So the question now is whether the White House will share that view -- Aaron.

BROWN: We'll get to that piece of the puzzle in a second.

Is it a given there on both sides, on the Israeli side and the Palestinian side, that Chairman Arafat's days are numbered, as it were?

RAZ: Well, Aaron, it is certainly a given on the Israeli side. And I think in back rooms on the Palestinian side, it is as well. There certainly is a sense of shock, I would say.

The description that's been made to me is that Palestinian leaders are essentially like lost orphans at the moment, because, of course, Yasser Arafat symbolizes the Palestinian struggle for self- determination. This is a man who really has symbolized the Palestinian cause for the past 40 years. But, publicly, there hasn't been any plan for a funeral. They hasn't been real public talk about succession.

But, clearly, there is that kind of discussion taking place in the background. Just yesterday, all the various Palestinian factions met in Gaza to discuss unity and also to discuss maintaining stability in Gaza in the event that Yasser Arafat dies -- Aaron.

BROWN: All right, thanks very much, Guy Raz in Jerusalem tonight. The president's second term will also be his last, a time in part to both shape and polish legacy, if you're concerned about such things, and almost all presidents are. Iraq is sure to figure, for better or worse, in how history remembers Mr. Bush. But Middle East peace as measured by the Israeli-Palestinian conflict could play a key role.

That side of the story tonight from CNN's Andrea Koppel.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

ANDREA KOPPEL, CNN STATE DEPARTMENT CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Would a Middle East without Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat present a second Bush administration with new opportunities or new obstacles to peace?

GEORGE W. BUSH, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: We'll continue to work for a free Palestinian state that is at peace with Israel.

KOPPEL: Since midway through his first term in office, President Bush has refused to deal with Arafat and called for a new Palestinian leadership. One former U.S. negotiator believes Arafat's absence after four decades at the helm of Palestinian politics could in coming months provide a serious opening and new pressure on all parties to act.

AARON DAVID MILLER, FORMER U.S. NEGOTIATOR: It is going to depend on a reengaged Bush administration. It is going to depend on an Israeli prime minister who is willing to convert a unilateral process in Gaza to a bilateral one. And it will depend on the Palestinian capacity to fight the forces of terror and violence.

KOPPEL: Other says the real onus would be on new Palestinian leaders, in the short term, Palestinian Prime Minister Ahmed Qorei and former Prime Minister Mahmoud Abbas.

DANIELLE PLETKA, AMERICAN ENTERPRISE INSTITUTE: A partner is someone who can speak for all the Palestinian people and can deliver peace and security not just to their people, but also to the Israelis.

KOPPEL: Still, others say President Bush would come under the most pressure from European allies to seriously reengage.

MARTIN INDYK, FORMER U.S. AMBASSADOR TO ISRAEL: Particularly from Tony Blair, who wants to see movement here and feels that Bush owes him on this issue. But I think the real pressure on George Bush will be his legacy. Does he want to be the peacemaker, as well as the war maker in the Middle East?

KOPPEL (on camera): The Bush administration was criticized for not doing more to advance the peace process, while the U.S. blamed Arafat. His departure, whenever that happens, would provide a new opportunity for President Bush to show how he would act on his commitment to Middle East peace.

Andrea Koppel, CNN, at the State Department. (END VIDEOTAPE)

BROWN: Still ahead on the program tonight, more jobs have been created, the latest numbers on the economy. And it is not just for playgrounds anymore, rock, paper and scissors.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DOUGLAS WALKER, CO-DIRECTOR, ROCK PAPER SCISSORS SOCIETY: We have found again and again that players who are able to successfully intimidate their opponents seem to do a lot better at the game.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BROWN: Gee, it's nice to know.

We'll take a break. Around the world, this is NEWSNIGHT.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BROWN: A quick look at some of the other stories that made news tonight. Tuesday, 11 states voted to ban gay marriage. Today, the Texas Board of Education voted to ban the mention of it in their school textbooks, not the elections, but gay marriages. The board got two of the biggest publishers of school textbooks, Holt, Rinehart and Winston, and Glencoe/McGraw-Hill, to define marriage as a union between husband and wife, man and woman, instead of using terms like married partners or when two people marry. The companies said the textbooks sold in other states will not have those changes.

In New Jersey, Senator Frank Lautenberg is calling for a temporary suspension of National Guard training flights in his state. This is an unbelievable story, that after an F-16 fighter pit on a night training mission fired 25 rounds into an elementary school. This happened last night. The pilot was supposed to shoot up a practice range 3 1/2 miles away. It was late at night. The school was closed. No one was hurt, investigation under way.

It will be a long weekend for the jury in the Scott Peterson trial. They ended their third day of deliberations with no verdict. They'll spend the weekend sequestered in a motel, start up again on Monday.

And a bigger-than-expected surge in jobs last month, 337,000 new jobs created. That's almost twice the number economists had predicted. Despite that, unemployment ticked up one-tenth to 5.5 percent.

A little backed up on time here. We'll take a break.

When we come back, a game we learned to play on the playground, sort of. In any case, the players are older and more serious about it today, the world championships of rock, paper and scissors, and the rooster waiting in the wings with a tabloid or two. Morning papers will wrap up the week.

This is NEWSNIGHT from New York.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BROWN: OK, this is an absolutely true story.

My daughter said to me the other day that she had perfected a system for winning the classic game of rock, paper, scissors. Given that her aging father assumed that no such thing was possible, that it was simply random choice and luck, we sat on her bed and played a bit. She was actually very good at this.

Now, in truth, I would prefer she was really good in, oh, let's say, chemistry or history. But, that said, her rock, paper, scissors skill could lead to greatness.

Consider that before dismissing as pure fun NEWSNIGHT Maryanne Fox's (ph) look at the RPS. That would be the rock, paper, scissors championships.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I now declare officially open the 2004 World Rock, Paper, Scissors Championship.

D. WALKER: Rock, paper scissors hasn't really gotten the due it deserves. A lot of people have been under an erroneous perception for years that the game is purely random chance.

We happen to know, as many studies have proven, that humans are actually incapable of being random. So it is really about time that the sport had its own world championship.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Our championship directors.

D. WALKER: We took it on upon ourselves, on behalf of the World RPS Society, to have the rebirth of the World Rock Paper Scissors Championships.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Our current world championship, Rob Krueger, is just entering the building. This is who you're going to have to fight tonight.

D. WALKER: At the world championship level, it sort of follows a game-set-match-type scenario, where you play a best of three in order to win a set. And you need to take two sets in order to move to the next round.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Scissors cuts paper. Point.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: You are no longer undefeated.

D. WALKER: The atmosphere at the world championships, with the lights, the cameras, the media, crowds cheering for you or against you, all of that can be fairly intimidating.

So, if you haven't planned things out in advance, if you don't know how you're going play or if you haven't experienced it before and are prepared for sort of the rigors of what happens, it is very easy for people to fall into those patterns and for the expert to take advantage of those patterns.

GRAHAM WALKER, CO-DIRECTOR, ROCK PAPER SCISSORS SOCIETY: Probably the most well known strategic ploy is to tell my opponent what you're going to throw, because if I tell my opponent what I'm going to throw, then that immediately puts them on the defensive and me on the offensive, because I know if I'm lying or telling the truth. And that's what separates really a pro player from an amateur player.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Oh, yes!

ROB KRUEGER, 2003 RPS WORLD CHAMPION: One of my basic fundamental skills is to always, every day, wage psychological war with the opponent. It is everything from engaging them in the eyes, yelling at them. And it knocks them off their game.

Boom!

D. WALKER: We have found again and again that players who are able to successfully intimidate their opponents seem to do a lot better at the game.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Papers.

(CROSSTALK)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: It is right here.

D. WALKER: Rock, paper, scissors really is the ultimate nonviolent conflict resolution mechanism.

G. WALKER: We sort of see it as the impartial judge and jury in all those small, unresolvable disputes that you have in life. When you're a child, it's about getting the ball over the fence where the mean dog lives. When you're a little bit older, it's who gets to sit in the front seat of the car, who has to get off the couch to get a beer. And then later on in life, it's who has to change the diapers. People sort of have affectionate place in their heart for it.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: ... 2004 World Rock Papers Scissors Champion.

(CHEERING AND APPLAUSE)

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BROWN: Hope Frank Rich left already.

Morning papers and a tabloid or two in a moment.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

(ROOSTER CROWING)

BROWN: Okeydokey, if I can get organized here, it's time to do morning papers from around the country and around the world. Here we go.

"The Washington Times." "Arafat On the Brink Sparks Burial Debate." He would like to buried in Israel. I don't think so. That's not going to happen. Anyway, that is what they would like. And they also put the textbook story on the front page. They just -- I don't know. "Texas School Panel Forces Changes to Books on Health." There we go. I'll just leave it without comment, though that was sort of a comment, wasn't it?

"Philadelphia Inquirer." This is a very good story. "Airmen Are Laid to Rest at Last." "A Bearing Six Crew Members Went Down in 1966 in Laos." That's the year I graduated high school. "Plane Lay Undisturbed for Nearly 30 Years. An Overbrook Man" -- it must be local -- "Was Among Those On Board." Anyway, they were finally give a proper burial at Arlington today. They also put on the front page the jobs story. "337,000 Jobs Are Added in October."

"The Herald Record" in Upstate New York, nice story on the front page. That's a good, powerful picture. "He Won't Give Up. " Chris Burke (ph) wants to be a fighter pilot. After basic training, he discovered he had cancer. That is a story -- I would go buy the paper for that. And then up in the corner: "Bill Clinton: Dems Shouldn't Whine." No one should whine. Whining is a really unattractive thing.

"The Des Moines Register." "More Young Citizens Vote, Boost Kerry Totals."

(LAUGHTER)

BROWN: He lost. Apparently, not enough of them voted, as it turned out.

A tabloid or two, OK? We haven't done this in a while. They were unusually tasteless. But we'll eliminate most of the tasteless ones, but not all. "Bat Boy Musical Knocks Them dead in London." So that is why we haven't heard from Bat Boy in a while. He's been in rehearsal, as it turns out. And he looks pretty darn good.

On the other side of this one, this is the disgusting one. I am not going to do it. It is a rare moment of self-censorship on my part. "Gay Pirates Force Boaters to Have Makeovers." "I Hate Your Hair. It Is So 1990" is the caption. I hadn't herd about that, but apparently that's problem out at sea.

This was sort of shocking to me. I don't really get home in time to see late-night television, but did you know that Jay Leno's chin is fake? And they actually have it. And the cover story this week in "The Weekly World News," "Marilyn Monroe Found Alive. She's Living With 34 Cats and a Retired Plumber in Cleveland." And they have the picture to prove it. Do you have that shot? Quickly. There we go.

The weather tomorrow in Chicago, "sanguine." You can all go look up what that means.

We'll be right back to wrap it up in a moment.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BROWN: A programming note before we say good night.

This Sunday, "CNN PRESENTS" goes inside Saudi Arabia to report on the growing al Qaeda threat there and the stability of the ruling family. In the birthplace of Islam, a breeding ground for terrorism, can the royal family maintain stability and control or is the kingdom and all its oil, close U.S. ally, more or less, heading for political chaos? Nic Robertson travels across Saudi Arabia, talks with dozens of Saudis from all walks of life, gets some answers to these and other questions. So join me Sunday for "Kingdom on the Brink: The Battle for Saudi Arabia," 8:00 p.m. Eastern time.

And if you want to call me before I leave tonight, I'll tell you about that one tabloid headline I didn't read on the air. If not, have a terrific weekend. We're all back here Monday.

Good night for all of us at NEWSNIGHT.

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


Aired November 5, 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 everyone.
A brief self indulgent moment, OK, just a bit more self indulgent than usual, the program celebrates its third anniversary tonight. Three years ago we became NEWSNIGHT.

The world has changed a lot. The program has grown as well. Morning papers came. The accordion man left. The power of still photos found a home. The mystery guest is homeless. Nissen has remained Nissen. The theory has remained the same, most of the staff too.

And, while it may not be the largest audience in cable, from the start it's been the most interesting and most demanding I've ever known. We all look forward to the next three. Then we'll decide.

The whip begins, as always, in the present, the clock ticking tonight loudly outside Fallujah where U.S. Marines are poised for a major assault perhaps the most important moment of the war. Jamie McIntyre at the Pentagon starts us off with a headline tonight -- Jamie.

JAMIE MCINTYRE, CNN SR. PENTAGON CORRESPONDENT: Well, Aaron, those Marines near Fallujah know that any day now they could get the order from Iraq's interim government to finish the job their fellow Marines were prevented from doing back in April. That is retaking Fallujah by force.

BROWN: Jamie, thank you. We'll get to you at the top tonight.

Just as events in Iraq are about to shift again, so too is another piece of the puzzle of the Middle East or, at least, it appears to be. CNN's Guy Raz is in Jerusalem tonight with a headline.

GUY RAZ, CNN CORRESPONDENT: As Yasser Arafat remains in a coma uncertainty over who will lead the Palestinian cause -- Aaron.

BROWN: Guy, thank you.

And what Arafat's absence could mean for the peace effort in the Middle East, another piece of the story, Andrea Koppel at the State Department with the headline tonight.

ANDREA KOPPEL, CNN STATE DEPARTMENT CORRESPONDENT: Aaron, President Bush has for years refused to deal with Yasser Arafat. Would a post Arafat era provide Mr. Bush with new opportunities or new challenges -- Aaron?

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

Also ahead on the program on this Friday night the man of the moment by way of the presidential election, President Bush won a second term, Karl Rove gets much of the credit.

And a child's game gets serious, rock, paper, scissors used to be about settling playground disputes. Now there is much more at stake.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Rock, paper, scissors really is the ultimate non-violent conflict resolution mechanism.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BROWN: The perfect NEWSNIGHT anniversary story.

And the rooster stops by with morning papers, perfect too because it's Friday and a tabloid or two will get thrown in, all that and more in the hour ahead.

We begin with Fallujah, a city in the crosshairs tonight, the war in Iraq about to take a nasty turn. Thousands of U.S. troops and Iraqi soldiers too have taken up positions around the city, several thousand insurgents and perhaps 70,000 civilians inside. Today, the Iraqi prime minister said again time is running out.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

AYAD ALLAWI, IRAQI PRIME MINISTER: A window really is closing for a peaceful settlement. The Fallujah people have left, most of them have left Fallujah and the insurgents and terrorists are still operating there. We hope they will come to their senses, otherwise we have to bring them to face the justice.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BROWN: When the battle begins in full force it will unfold in narrow streets and blind allies in many ways the most dangerous kind of battlefield. The risks are great. It would be hard to overstate them. The goal is to break the back and the will of the insurgency, though that is by no means a sure thing. You can win the battle. The larger war remains a more complicated piece of business.

We have several reports tonight beginning at the Pentagon and CNN's Jamie McIntyre.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

MCINTYRE (voice-over): An eerie contrast in Fallujah, a call to prayer in Arabic saying "God is greater than the oppressors," punctuated by explosions, a harbinger of even heavier fighting to come. Well into the early hours of Saturday morning, AC-130 gunships pounded insurgent positions as U.S. tanks attacked along the city's outskirts. Fallujah residents described the latest air strikes as the strongest in months.

It's all designed to pave the way for an assault force that sources say will be far larger than the U.S. Marines had during last April's aborted offensive. It includes some American Army units and importantly thousands of specially trained Iraqi soldiers whose performance in the past has been spotty.

PFC ABRAHAM AUGUSTIN, U.S. ARMY: It's very unpredictable but we have faith in them, hope they don't let us down.

MCINTYRE: In fact, the Iraqi participation, along with local citizen support is considered key to success.

SAMIR SUMAIDAIE, IRAQ'S PERMANENT U.N. REPRESENTATIVE: The Fallujahns are being subjected to a Taliban-like rule. Their houses are being commandeered. They have been threatened and they themselves want the situation to be normalized.

MCINTYRE: While the timing is secret the showdown has been well telegraphed. More than half of Fallujah's 250,000 residents have already fled in anticipation of the offensive. Insurgents believed to number in the thousands have been busy preparing defenses, attacking U.S. troops and rigging booby traps.

Located just west of Baghdad, Fallujah is not just the biggest hotbed of resistance in Iraq, it's also believed to be the base of operations for Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the Jordanian militant who the U.S. hopes to capture or kill if he's there and, while victory in Fallujah is crucial, no one is predicting it will break the back of the insurgency.

MAJ. JIM WEST, 1ST MARINE EXPEDITIONARY FORCE: It is not though the panacea. Just by taking it out does not mean the rest of the insurgency will follow but it will be a big chip in that block out there.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

MCINTYRE: Pentagon officials say there is some evidence that some of the insurgents may have left Fallujah in advance of the offensive. They can't say how many for sure but they say once the smoke clears in Fallujah they'll reassess, evaluate where the insurgents might be regrouping and perhaps plan another offensive -- Aaron.

BROWN: How much concern is there that as we saw last spring that an attack in Fallujah will create a backlash in other parts of the county Sunni and Shia?

MCINTYRE: Well, they are concerned about that. That's one of the reasons they've waited so long to conduct this offensive. Of course, a key difference is last time the governing council stepped in and stopped the offensive because they were worried about the heavy- handed tactics and civilian casualties.

This time it's being done in cooperation with a new interim government and there will be many Iraqi forces, at least involved if not conducting the heaviest fighting. They'll be there and they're hoping that that will really ameliorate the problem they had last time of too much of a backlash.

BROWN: And you said in the whip that they're waiting for the go ahead from the Iraqi government. Is that a literal go ahead or is that more figurative?

MCINTYRE: Well, no, it's a literal go ahead. They are, I mean all the plans are set. You know there's clearly going to be an offensive barring a really unexpected event and the United States wants to make it clear that when the time comes it will be Allawi, Prime Minister Allawi who makes that decision.

BROWN: Jamie, thank you. Have a good weekend, if you get a weekend. Thank you.

MCINTYRE: OK.

BROWN: We have been here before, as we've eluded to back in April waiting for a major assault on Fallujah to begin. It did not go well the first time, as Jamie indicated, and it's fair to say the stakes are even higher now.

The city has become the best known symbol of resistance in Iraq, a measure of how tough the mission has become or always has been depending on who's doing the talking.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

BROWN (voice-over): As the American military swept toward Baghdad 18 months ago, the city of Fallujah was a tactical afterthought. It is no more.

GEN. DAVID GRANGE (RET.), MILITARY ANALYST: It's one of those situations where you can't have a locale like that with such resentment, such independence that they don't go along with the unity efforts of the rest of the country.

BROWN: Only a month after the fall of Saddam, 19 Iraqis died when American soldiers fired into a street demonstration in Fallujah. Someone in the crowd, the military says, fired first. Insurgents began to take control of the city establishing a Taliban-like rule inside its boundaries.

GRANGE: It fell apart because immediately the jihadists took control, pushed extremist law into that particular enclave of the country and totally rejected any influence from the Iraqi interim government.

BROWN: Among those extremists, the Jordanian Abu al-Zarqawi, a terrorist the U.S. military says was behind the slaughter in early March of four civilian contractors, which led to a Marine attack on the city.

GEN. MARK KIMMITT, U.S. ARMY: They are coming back. They are going to hunt down the people responsible for this bestial act.

BROWN: But for all the tough talk at that time the Marines never finished the job. They were pulled back.

CPL. CHRIS RODRIGUEZ, U.S. ARMY: It's upsetting. We don't want to do it. We've been here for a while. We don't want to lose the ground that we fought so hard for and that we've been here, you know, sweating blood.

BROWN: Security was handed over to what was called the Fallujah Brigade, Iraqi soldiers led by former Iraqi Army officers, soldiers who didn't fight, leaders who didn't lead and in some cases aided the insurgents they were supposed to control. So now, again, Marines are preparing to take the city. Iraqi soldiers will back them up. Whether they will fight is not known.

JACKIE SPINNER, "THE WASHINGTON POST": This is going to be a big test for them and I think that we'll all be watching to see how well they perform, if they stay in the fight and how long they stay in the fight.

BROWN: The heavy lifting, so to speak, will be done by the Americans and so far in Iraq about 20 percent of the American casualties have been as a result of fighting in or near Fallujah.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

BROWN: So, how many will die in the fighting ahead is simply one uncertainty tonight though few expect the casualties will be minor. Whether the attack will set off a backlash in Iraq or beyond is another. What is clear that this time it is far more difficult to cover the story on the ground that we're sure of.

Hannah Allam is the Baghdad Bureau Chief for the Knight-Ridder chain of newspapers. Knight-Ridder has done a terrific job covering the story and she joins us from Baghdad tonight. What is the mood in the capital? Is there a tension over what's about to begin?

HANNAH ALLAM, KNIGHT-RIDDER BAGHDAD BUREAU CHIEF: There is. I think there's just an overall sense of dread. People aren't sure what to expect. After April, the first battle over Fallujah, you know, people were demonstrating. The mosques were full of protesters of people taking in displaced families from the fighting and a lot of that is going on again.

BROWN: Do you see in people more of a willingness to accept that while it is unpleasant it is an unpleasant necessity or do they not see it that way?

ALLAM: There has been more of that sentiment this time around. Even we're hearing reports from our stringer in Fallujah, our Iraqi correspondent who's there in the town, that a lot of the people they expected to stay and fight have been in fact leaving and that this might just be the price they have to pay to drive out the Islamic extremists who resort to attacks that leave a large number of civilian casualties.

BROWN: Do the Iraqis you talk to make a distinction between the Iraqi nationalists who are part of an insurgency and the foreign jihadists who have taken advantage of the situation in Iraq to create an insurgency?

ALLAM: Absolutely. That's the first thing they say when interviewed is that there is the anti-occupation nationalists. These are the ones whose attacks they support, if not with the money at lest with just sort of their tacit approval and certainly a reluctance to phone in tips on those guys. However, there's really very, very little tolerance for what they see as the outsider extremist element, the Afghanistan crowd.

BROWN: I want to talk about just one or two business questions here. How is -- you said a moment ago you have a stringer, someone who works with you, in the city of Fallujah. How is that person reporting? How is he able, I assume it's a he, how is he able to report?

ALLAM: Very, very cautiously these days. In fact, we offered him a satellite phone. He was too afraid to take it. He thought that if the insurgents who run the city found it on him he'd be executed immediately as a spy.

As it is, he's able to phone in cell phone reports and even then he locks himself into a quiet room and whispers so no one hears him speaking English. It's very difficult for him.

BROWN: How worried are you about that?

ALLAM: I'm very worried. In fact, yesterday I had a conversation with him and I told him, you know, it's getting -- it's getting close and, you know, the story is not worth your life. Feel free to leave, you know. Don't let -- don't stay beyond what you can because it is a life or death situation there.

BROWN: Can people get out, particularly young men? Can young men get out safely now?

ALLAM: I'm not sure what the situation is at the moment but I know yesterday there were leaflets passed out by the Marines in the area urging families to flee while they can and threatening to arrest, detain anyone -- any men, I believe it was, under the age of 45. So, it's going to be really tough for them to get out. They're sealing off the city in effect.

BROWN: Just a final question, maybe a bit inelegant. I apologize. But just talk a bit about how the situation now differs from the situation back last spring when this all played out for the first time, the political situation, the situation in the streets, the attitude of Iraqis, the security problem, the whole nine yards if you will. How different is it just these few months? ALLAM: Well now, of course, the major difference is that elections are at stake. In less than two months now, Iraq is scheduled for National Assembly elections, the first real democratic vote since Saddam's ouster so there's a lot riding on this battle.

Securing the Anbar Province, Fallujah in particular, is going to be key to Sunni Muslim participation in this vote, although there's a lot of influential Sunni Muslim scholars and cleric associations who have said if the offensive starts, they're urging a Sunni boycott.

BROWN: Hannah, the paper or the chain, as I said earlier, has done a terrific job with the story, nicely done.

ALLAM: Thank you.

BROWN: We appreciate your time tonight. Stay well. Thank you.

Still ahead on the program tonight, love him or hate him, Karl Rove, the architect behind the president's win takes a well earned bow.

And, the numbers are in for, jobs that is. They're up. We'll tell you what they mean as we continue from New York on a Friday night.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BROWN: Where politics is concerned, we're in the land of the in- between, the election over, the new term and the new Congress yet to begin but, like nature, journalism abhors a vacuum and so this week has been full of talk about how it all happened and what it meant and somewhere along the way we settled on values as the be-all and end- all, as if one side had them and the other side didn't. The facts are more complicated, as they often are, but one central fact in the campaign can't be dismissed. Karl Rove, the so-called boy genius, was.

Here's CNN's Bill Schneider.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

BILL SCHNEIDER, CNN SR. POLITICAL ANALYST (voice-over): He's the toast of the town.

GEORGE W. BUSH, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: The architect, Karl Rove.

SCHNEIDER: Rove mobilized evangelical Christians. Some Democrats saw a stealth army of evangelical voters organized below the media radar that pulled a surprise attack on Election Day and overwhelmed them at the polls. Evangelicals did vote for Bush in large numbers but that's not the whole story of this election.

Most voters on Tuesday said they support abortion rights, about the same as in 2000. Sixty percent favored some form of legal recognition of same-sex relationships. The voters this year were no more religious than before. Were religious voters more for Bush?

In 2000, Bush carried 59 percent of the vote among churchgoers, this year 61 percent, a two point gain. Now look at non-churchgoers. Their vote for Bush went up by three points. President Bush had something going for him besides religion.

When asked what mattered most to them in deciding how to vote, Bush voters put strong leadership and clear stands on the issues, not religion, at the top of the list. That was Rove's doing too. For eight months, the Bush campaign kept up a relentless attack on John Kerry as a flip-flopper.

BUSH: And then he entered the flip-flop hall of fame and as he entered that hall of fame, he said "I actually did vote for the $87 billion before I voted against it."

SCHNEIDER: In order to win this election, Kerry worked to sell himself as a uniter.

SEN. JOHN KERRY (D), MASSACHUSETTS: I will be a president who unites our country.

SCHNEIDER: That is difficult to do if people see you as wavering and inconsistent, the image that Rove worked hard to create. So now, Rove enters the king maker's hall of fame.

Bill Schneider, CNN, Washington.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

BROWN: Tough politics tonight, Karl Rove, the Democrats, other things too. Frank Rich, the columnist for "The New York Times," we're glad to see him. You are -- you're probably everything that the red states hate. You work for "The Times," kind of an elitist, cultured guy.

FRANK RICH, "THE NEW YORK TIMES": I have no connection with CBS.

BROWN: You must have -- it's close enough at "The Times."

RICH: Yes.

BROWN: What happened?

RICH: What happened? A lot of things happened. First of all, the Democrats don't really have a message and they had a weak candidate from, in my view, a field of weak candidates. It's not like there was anyone that was so great. You know you're in trouble when Al Sharpton is the most electrifying person that they had, you know, during the primary season.

And a very focused president and Karl Rove, as you've been talking about getting out a base that's a minority of this country but has, as they say, values, not necessarily everyone's values, getting them to the polls when the Democrats really apparently did not get young voters who favored them and other parts of its base to the polls.

BROWN: Do you think this whole values discussion has been overdone in the last few days or has it missed the mark in the last few days?

RICH: Well, people don't know how to talk about it. A term that pollsters use is moral values. That's about as vague as saying the weather. I think it's all about sex, quite frankly. I think it's all about gay marriage.

It's about anything connected with sex, abortion, stem cells which in a way is connected with sex or not depending on how you look at it, and no one really wants -- that's the elephant in the room no one really wants to talk about.

And, so I think that people aren't precise about it. I do think it's a big issue. I think it's such a big issue that the Democrats made the fatal mistake of trying to turn John Kerry, who is let's face it a Patrician Yale guy, into just folks and it's not going to work, particularly when you're windsurfing.

BROWN: How is it that -- that's interesting. I said yesterday watching the Democrats is a bit like watching a train wreck. You can't resist looking at it and you can't resist talking about it.

This is a party that is the party of the New Deal. This is the party that has had a long comfortable relationship with working people in the country and seems to have lost its ability to speak a language or find the right words that working people feel comfortable with.

RICH: I couldn't agree with you more and the classic example in this election is Ohio. You had people who had been thrown out of work, who disapprove of the war in Iraq, living in a state where the economy is worse than it is in most of the United States voting for the Republicans anyway because the Democrats didn't speak to them and the Democrats, unfortunately, their idea of speaking to working people is to pander to them or patronize them and that doesn't work. It's ridiculous.

BROWN: When did that happen? I mean Bill Clinton obviously could speak to them.

RICH: Bill Clinton could speak to them and I think Al Gore at his best could speak to them and I think John Edwards at his best could speak to them but it's been a -- it's a party that has been in confusion to a certain extent since the Reagan revolution but I think really was thrown by the whole impeachment period and lost its way. I think that, you know, they have a very popular president presiding over a booming peaceful country and it was sort of thrown away over issues of sex.

BROWN: Again.

RICH: Again. And, every since then they've been playing defensive and they don't have much of a bench either, which is another problem. BROWN: At the risk of causing producers trouble in the booth here, I want to go a little bit long. I want to talk about the media a little bit.

RICH: Yes.

BROWN: You've been reasonably harsh, I would say, about how campaigns have been covered. This campaign has been covered particularly harsh where cable is concerned, right fair?

RICH: Yes, that's absolutely fair.

BROWN: Tell me what's the complaint?

RICH: The complaint is it's too much infotainment and too little news. You know, I used an example in a column I wrote of this network, of "CROSSFIRE," before Jon Stewart made his complaint I had the same complaint.

BROWN: You're not as funny as Jon Stewart.

RICH: Not remotely.

BROWN: Yes.

RICH: But he wasn't particularly funny when he did it either. It was sort of a serious subject but he was right. On one hand you have CNN, which I think is a hard news network but your show notwithstanding it's sort of all over the map in terms of how it's presenting the news and I know you've talked about this but, you know, when all things fail let's go to Laci Peterson.

Fox has its own agenda. It's quite naked. MSNBC is finding itself. Cable news is a tremendous source for news. It's something that passes everybody's eyes during the workday, at airports, everywhere else and it's not that serious.

And I'm not saying everything has to be "The New York Times," which can be too serious but I feel this is a time of tremendous importance. It's a time when we're at a war that's -- in a war that's probably going to be an expanding war which neither candidate had a way to get us out of in this campaign and I feel we've got to be tougher and stick to the facts and not have people shouting at each other.

BROWN: In no sense do I mean this defensively because the truth is I've talked about most of these things on the program.

RICH: Sure. Yes, I know.

BROWN: But the paper, "The Times," has taken an incredible amount of criticism for its coverage, prewar coverage.

RICH: And rightly so, rightly so. I feel that "The Times" has done a sort of mea culpa, as to some extent has "The Washington Post," as has Leslie Stahl of CBS News for essentially being too credulous about the WMD evidence and the sources it came from. And so, I think there's room for improvement by everyone, including certainly the place I work for.

BROWN: And just a final question on this. Where do you -- where is the response -- I say when I talk to -- when I make speeches I talk about television as the perfect democracy. People sit there with their remote controls and vote all the time. So, where is the voter, the viewer's responsibility to demand more?

RICH: I think the viewers have to demand more. I think they have to, as in the movie network, say we're mad as hell and we're not going to take it anymore because it is a marketplace. It's not a philanthropic enterprise and I constantly tell people when I speak to them too you can vote with your clicker. You can vote with your Neilson ratings and people have to start doing that if they care about the information they get, which is the life blood of democracy.

BROWN: Nice to see you.

RICH: Good to see you.

BROWN: Will you come back?

RICH: Absolutely.

BROWN: I'm really glad to have you. Have a good weekend.

RICH: You too.

BROWN: Thank you, Frank Rich of the elitist "New York Times."

We'll take a break. We'll be right back.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

* BROWN: Well, we're going to see more of those in the days ahead.

Yesterday, we made note of the fact that events often shape presidential agendas. And the rapidly failing health of the Palestinian leader, Yasser Arafat, a case in point. Today brought more conflicting accounts, more confusion over how ill he is and how close to death he might be. Three U.S. officials telling CNN that Mr. Arafat is being kept alive tonight by machines. There are also reports that his family will not remove life support or declare him dead until burial arrangements are made. A complicated piece of business, that turns out to be. A Palestinian spokesman is denying both accounts.

What is certain is that the collapse of Mr. Arafat's health has profound implications for the second Bush administration and for the Palestinians, too.

Here's CNN's Guy Raz.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE) RAZ (voice-over): Israel plans to out its settlement in Gaza by the end of next year. The process was to take place without Palestinian input.

Now, in a possible post-Arafat era, speculation is that Israel will be forced to coordinate that move with his successors. And who might they be? Former Palestinian Prime Minister Mahmoud Abbas is no stranger to President Bush. The two have met before. And Abbas, also known as Abu Mazen, has been closely linked to the peace process. Abbas is now running the Palestinian Liberation Organization in Arafat's absence and has been involved in the Palestinian struggle since its inception.

ALI JARBAWI, PALESTINIAN ANALYST: To Palestinians are ready to work with the new administration, provided that the terms of the political settlement are not determined only and solely in Tel Aviv.

RAZ: Aside from Mahmoud Abbas, current Prime Minister Ahmed Qorei is a likely possibility. So is Marwan Barghouti, one of the most popular Palestinian leaders, but now serving a jail sentence in Israel.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

RAZ: But, Aaron, no matter who takes over in the interim, the road to Jerusalem may ultimately run through Washington. Now, both the European Union and the Arab League see resolving the Palestinian- Israeli conflict as key to Middle East stability. So the question now is whether the White House will share that view -- Aaron.

BROWN: We'll get to that piece of the puzzle in a second.

Is it a given there on both sides, on the Israeli side and the Palestinian side, that Chairman Arafat's days are numbered, as it were?

RAZ: Well, Aaron, it is certainly a given on the Israeli side. And I think in back rooms on the Palestinian side, it is as well. There certainly is a sense of shock, I would say.

The description that's been made to me is that Palestinian leaders are essentially like lost orphans at the moment, because, of course, Yasser Arafat symbolizes the Palestinian struggle for self- determination. This is a man who really has symbolized the Palestinian cause for the past 40 years. But, publicly, there hasn't been any plan for a funeral. They hasn't been real public talk about succession.

But, clearly, there is that kind of discussion taking place in the background. Just yesterday, all the various Palestinian factions met in Gaza to discuss unity and also to discuss maintaining stability in Gaza in the event that Yasser Arafat dies -- Aaron.

BROWN: All right, thanks very much, Guy Raz in Jerusalem tonight. The president's second term will also be his last, a time in part to both shape and polish legacy, if you're concerned about such things, and almost all presidents are. Iraq is sure to figure, for better or worse, in how history remembers Mr. Bush. But Middle East peace as measured by the Israeli-Palestinian conflict could play a key role.

That side of the story tonight from CNN's Andrea Koppel.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

ANDREA KOPPEL, CNN STATE DEPARTMENT CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Would a Middle East without Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat present a second Bush administration with new opportunities or new obstacles to peace?

GEORGE W. BUSH, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: We'll continue to work for a free Palestinian state that is at peace with Israel.

KOPPEL: Since midway through his first term in office, President Bush has refused to deal with Arafat and called for a new Palestinian leadership. One former U.S. negotiator believes Arafat's absence after four decades at the helm of Palestinian politics could in coming months provide a serious opening and new pressure on all parties to act.

AARON DAVID MILLER, FORMER U.S. NEGOTIATOR: It is going to depend on a reengaged Bush administration. It is going to depend on an Israeli prime minister who is willing to convert a unilateral process in Gaza to a bilateral one. And it will depend on the Palestinian capacity to fight the forces of terror and violence.

KOPPEL: Other says the real onus would be on new Palestinian leaders, in the short term, Palestinian Prime Minister Ahmed Qorei and former Prime Minister Mahmoud Abbas.

DANIELLE PLETKA, AMERICAN ENTERPRISE INSTITUTE: A partner is someone who can speak for all the Palestinian people and can deliver peace and security not just to their people, but also to the Israelis.

KOPPEL: Still, others say President Bush would come under the most pressure from European allies to seriously reengage.

MARTIN INDYK, FORMER U.S. AMBASSADOR TO ISRAEL: Particularly from Tony Blair, who wants to see movement here and feels that Bush owes him on this issue. But I think the real pressure on George Bush will be his legacy. Does he want to be the peacemaker, as well as the war maker in the Middle East?

KOPPEL (on camera): The Bush administration was criticized for not doing more to advance the peace process, while the U.S. blamed Arafat. His departure, whenever that happens, would provide a new opportunity for President Bush to show how he would act on his commitment to Middle East peace.

Andrea Koppel, CNN, at the State Department. (END VIDEOTAPE)

BROWN: Still ahead on the program tonight, more jobs have been created, the latest numbers on the economy. And it is not just for playgrounds anymore, rock, paper and scissors.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DOUGLAS WALKER, CO-DIRECTOR, ROCK PAPER SCISSORS SOCIETY: We have found again and again that players who are able to successfully intimidate their opponents seem to do a lot better at the game.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BROWN: Gee, it's nice to know.

We'll take a break. Around the world, this is NEWSNIGHT.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BROWN: A quick look at some of the other stories that made news tonight. Tuesday, 11 states voted to ban gay marriage. Today, the Texas Board of Education voted to ban the mention of it in their school textbooks, not the elections, but gay marriages. The board got two of the biggest publishers of school textbooks, Holt, Rinehart and Winston, and Glencoe/McGraw-Hill, to define marriage as a union between husband and wife, man and woman, instead of using terms like married partners or when two people marry. The companies said the textbooks sold in other states will not have those changes.

In New Jersey, Senator Frank Lautenberg is calling for a temporary suspension of National Guard training flights in his state. This is an unbelievable story, that after an F-16 fighter pit on a night training mission fired 25 rounds into an elementary school. This happened last night. The pilot was supposed to shoot up a practice range 3 1/2 miles away. It was late at night. The school was closed. No one was hurt, investigation under way.

It will be a long weekend for the jury in the Scott Peterson trial. They ended their third day of deliberations with no verdict. They'll spend the weekend sequestered in a motel, start up again on Monday.

And a bigger-than-expected surge in jobs last month, 337,000 new jobs created. That's almost twice the number economists had predicted. Despite that, unemployment ticked up one-tenth to 5.5 percent.

A little backed up on time here. We'll take a break.

When we come back, a game we learned to play on the playground, sort of. In any case, the players are older and more serious about it today, the world championships of rock, paper and scissors, and the rooster waiting in the wings with a tabloid or two. Morning papers will wrap up the week.

This is NEWSNIGHT from New York.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BROWN: OK, this is an absolutely true story.

My daughter said to me the other day that she had perfected a system for winning the classic game of rock, paper, scissors. Given that her aging father assumed that no such thing was possible, that it was simply random choice and luck, we sat on her bed and played a bit. She was actually very good at this.

Now, in truth, I would prefer she was really good in, oh, let's say, chemistry or history. But, that said, her rock, paper, scissors skill could lead to greatness.

Consider that before dismissing as pure fun NEWSNIGHT Maryanne Fox's (ph) look at the RPS. That would be the rock, paper, scissors championships.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I now declare officially open the 2004 World Rock, Paper, Scissors Championship.

D. WALKER: Rock, paper scissors hasn't really gotten the due it deserves. A lot of people have been under an erroneous perception for years that the game is purely random chance.

We happen to know, as many studies have proven, that humans are actually incapable of being random. So it is really about time that the sport had its own world championship.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Our championship directors.

D. WALKER: We took it on upon ourselves, on behalf of the World RPS Society, to have the rebirth of the World Rock Paper Scissors Championships.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Our current world championship, Rob Krueger, is just entering the building. This is who you're going to have to fight tonight.

D. WALKER: At the world championship level, it sort of follows a game-set-match-type scenario, where you play a best of three in order to win a set. And you need to take two sets in order to move to the next round.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Scissors cuts paper. Point.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: You are no longer undefeated.

D. WALKER: The atmosphere at the world championships, with the lights, the cameras, the media, crowds cheering for you or against you, all of that can be fairly intimidating.

So, if you haven't planned things out in advance, if you don't know how you're going play or if you haven't experienced it before and are prepared for sort of the rigors of what happens, it is very easy for people to fall into those patterns and for the expert to take advantage of those patterns.

GRAHAM WALKER, CO-DIRECTOR, ROCK PAPER SCISSORS SOCIETY: Probably the most well known strategic ploy is to tell my opponent what you're going to throw, because if I tell my opponent what I'm going to throw, then that immediately puts them on the defensive and me on the offensive, because I know if I'm lying or telling the truth. And that's what separates really a pro player from an amateur player.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Oh, yes!

ROB KRUEGER, 2003 RPS WORLD CHAMPION: One of my basic fundamental skills is to always, every day, wage psychological war with the opponent. It is everything from engaging them in the eyes, yelling at them. And it knocks them off their game.

Boom!

D. WALKER: We have found again and again that players who are able to successfully intimidate their opponents seem to do a lot better at the game.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Papers.

(CROSSTALK)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: It is right here.

D. WALKER: Rock, paper, scissors really is the ultimate nonviolent conflict resolution mechanism.

G. WALKER: We sort of see it as the impartial judge and jury in all those small, unresolvable disputes that you have in life. When you're a child, it's about getting the ball over the fence where the mean dog lives. When you're a little bit older, it's who gets to sit in the front seat of the car, who has to get off the couch to get a beer. And then later on in life, it's who has to change the diapers. People sort of have affectionate place in their heart for it.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: ... 2004 World Rock Papers Scissors Champion.

(CHEERING AND APPLAUSE)

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BROWN: Hope Frank Rich left already.

Morning papers and a tabloid or two in a moment.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

(ROOSTER CROWING)

BROWN: Okeydokey, if I can get organized here, it's time to do morning papers from around the country and around the world. Here we go.

"The Washington Times." "Arafat On the Brink Sparks Burial Debate." He would like to buried in Israel. I don't think so. That's not going to happen. Anyway, that is what they would like. And they also put the textbook story on the front page. They just -- I don't know. "Texas School Panel Forces Changes to Books on Health." There we go. I'll just leave it without comment, though that was sort of a comment, wasn't it?

"Philadelphia Inquirer." This is a very good story. "Airmen Are Laid to Rest at Last." "A Bearing Six Crew Members Went Down in 1966 in Laos." That's the year I graduated high school. "Plane Lay Undisturbed for Nearly 30 Years. An Overbrook Man" -- it must be local -- "Was Among Those On Board." Anyway, they were finally give a proper burial at Arlington today. They also put on the front page the jobs story. "337,000 Jobs Are Added in October."

"The Herald Record" in Upstate New York, nice story on the front page. That's a good, powerful picture. "He Won't Give Up. " Chris Burke (ph) wants to be a fighter pilot. After basic training, he discovered he had cancer. That is a story -- I would go buy the paper for that. And then up in the corner: "Bill Clinton: Dems Shouldn't Whine." No one should whine. Whining is a really unattractive thing.

"The Des Moines Register." "More Young Citizens Vote, Boost Kerry Totals."

(LAUGHTER)

BROWN: He lost. Apparently, not enough of them voted, as it turned out.

A tabloid or two, OK? We haven't done this in a while. They were unusually tasteless. But we'll eliminate most of the tasteless ones, but not all. "Bat Boy Musical Knocks Them dead in London." So that is why we haven't heard from Bat Boy in a while. He's been in rehearsal, as it turns out. And he looks pretty darn good.

On the other side of this one, this is the disgusting one. I am not going to do it. It is a rare moment of self-censorship on my part. "Gay Pirates Force Boaters to Have Makeovers." "I Hate Your Hair. It Is So 1990" is the caption. I hadn't herd about that, but apparently that's problem out at sea.

This was sort of shocking to me. I don't really get home in time to see late-night television, but did you know that Jay Leno's chin is fake? And they actually have it. And the cover story this week in "The Weekly World News," "Marilyn Monroe Found Alive. She's Living With 34 Cats and a Retired Plumber in Cleveland." And they have the picture to prove it. Do you have that shot? Quickly. There we go.

The weather tomorrow in Chicago, "sanguine." You can all go look up what that means.

We'll be right back to wrap it up in a moment.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BROWN: A programming note before we say good night.

This Sunday, "CNN PRESENTS" goes inside Saudi Arabia to report on the growing al Qaeda threat there and the stability of the ruling family. In the birthplace of Islam, a breeding ground for terrorism, can the royal family maintain stability and control or is the kingdom and all its oil, close U.S. ally, more or less, heading for political chaos? Nic Robertson travels across Saudi Arabia, talks with dozens of Saudis from all walks of life, gets some answers to these and other questions. So join me Sunday for "Kingdom on the Brink: The Battle for Saudi Arabia," 8:00 p.m. Eastern time.

And if you want to call me before I leave tonight, I'll tell you about that one tabloid headline I didn't read on the air. If not, have a terrific weekend. We're all back here Monday.

Good night for all of us at NEWSNIGHT.

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