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Lou Dobbs Tonight
Interview With Senator John Kerry; Broader Role for United Nations in Iraq?
Aired August 28, 2003 - 18:00 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.
LOU DOBBS, CNN ANCHOR: Tonight: North Korea raises the stakes. North Korea says it has a nuclear bomb and may test it. National security correspondent David Ensor reports.
The race for the White House: Democratic presidential hopeful Senator John Kerry is our guest. Today, he unveils his economic plan.
"Making the Grade," our series of special reports on education. Tonight, your children's textbooks, who controls the content?
And Harley-Davidson turns 100. Bill Tucker reports on an American classic.
ANNOUNCER: This is LOU DOBBS TONIGHT for Thursday, August 28. Here now, Lou Dobbs.
DOBBS: Good evening.
The United States tonight appears to be moving toward a major policy change in Iraq. For the first time, the White House says it may allow the United Nations to sponsor a multinational force in Iraq.
Senior White House correspondent John King is near the president's ranch in Crawford, Texas, and joins us with the very latest.
John, this appears to be a significant shift on the part of the administration.
JOHN KING, CNN SR. WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: A major shift, Lou.
Just days ago, the defense secretary, Donald Rumsfeld, was saying he wanted the Pentagon to be in charge of the coalition. Now the Pentagon is saying that would still be the case, but, yes, it is open to having some United Nations blessing of this force. The question now is, can the Bush administration pull off this very difficult diplomacy up in New York at the United Nations?
The idea would be a new Security Council resolution that gave the United Nations' blessing to a multinational force, a peacekeeping force, if you will, in postwar Iraq. But the White House insists, it cannot be the traditional blue-helmet United Nations peacekeepers, that only a U.S. general would be in command. Yes, other nations would be welcome to send in troops, but they would always be under the command of a U.S. general. What the administration hopes is that such a resolution would ease the reluctance, wipe away the reluctance, of countries like Pakistan, countries like India and others, who have said they would only send in troops if the United Nations passed a new resolution. Now, it is a major shift for the administration, which had said it did not want to go back to the United Nations on the question of security and the military force in postwar Iraq.
But getting such a force would help the administration achieve two big political goals. The commanding general on the ground in Iraq said just today that having more nations participate would give his force more international credibility. And, Lou, it would allow the United States to, in the months ahead, bring more U.S. troops home more quickly. That could help the president as he heads into a campaign reelection year -- Lou.
DOBBS: John, the contest between the State Department and the Pentagon on the issue of both the war, the diplomacy, and the administration of postwar Iraq is well documented. Does this suggest that the State Department is moving to a primary role on Iraq?
KING: Well, it would suggest that the White House is saying that, if you can bring this about, it would like to do this and it would like to ease the Pentagon's objections.
Where the Pentagon says it will draw the line adamantly is on the question of command. It says, only a U.S. general in charge. All of the troops would have to be under a U.S. authority. The political question for the White House, there has been all the criticism of late, even Republicans coming back from Iraq, saying, you need more troops on the ground. The White House was trying to say no to that question, but it is trying to get some help, if you will, so that it can begin to bring U.S. troops home.
And we are told that the president agrees with this in concept. But, again, there's not even a formal resolution on the table. This is a giant if at the moment. If they get to the point where they think they can get the votes, they will come up with a draft resolution. And, at that point, the president and everyone else, including Secretary Rumsfeld, would have to give it its final blessing.
DOBBS: This policy shift, John, appears to be, at least -- perhaps significantly, but at least moderately, fraught with peril politically domestically, the so-called neoconservative wing that has been driving much of the policy. What is the White House staff thinking? What are you hearing about their concerns there?
KING: Well, certainly, in the administration and outside advisers to this administration are very skeptical of any United Nations' role at all. What they are worried most about is a resolution that would give the United Nations any expanded political power in Iraq, any expanded or any new power at all over the military troops.
The White House says it will not allow that to happen, that the United Nations would be blessing a new multinational force, but not controlling any new multinational force. And therein probably lies the biggest problem. At the United Nations, they say they will agree to this if they see a greater U.N. role and greater U.N. authority. The White House says it can't give up on that point.
So that's why this is an idea at the moment, Lou. And the difficult -- in the difficult diplomacy ahead, it's a big question as to whether the administration can get what it wants, that U.N. blessing, without having to give up so much, that many of its own allies, within the administration and outside, get furious.
DOBBS: John, thank you very much -- John King, our senior White House correspondent.
Before the war, the White House repeatedly said it would not seek the United Nations' approval of any action in Iraq. But now there may in fact be a broader role to be played by the United Nations.
Kitty Pilgrim reports.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
KITTY PILGRIM, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Before the war, the Bush administration's rally of the coalition of the willing smacked of, go it alone.
COLIN POWELL, SECRETARY OF STATE: When we feel strongly about something, we will lead. We will act even if others are not prepared to join us.
PILGRIM: And while the United Nations dithered for weeks, the president took this approach.
GEORGE W. BUSH, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: The course of this nation does not depend on the decisions of others.
PILGRIM: Even last week, Secretary-General Kofi Annan reminded people just how far apart the U.N. was from the U.S. position before the war.
KOFI ANNAN, U.N. SECRETARY-GENERAL: Most people forget that the council did not vote to support the war in Iraq. The council took a different position.
PILGRIM: But now Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage has suggested, the Bush administration is considering the possibility of a U.N.-sponsored multinational force in Iraq, though still under U.S. control, the idea suggested last week by U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan, when he met with Secretary of State Colin Powell. The Pentagon has insisted all along, U.S. control of Iraq is the only way to ensure the success of the mission.
But with the near daily casualties of U.S. troops, the bombing of the U.N. compound in Baghdad, the Bush administration is under pressure to reconsider its options. The coalition of the willing has been sparse. The United States has well over 130,000 troops in Iraq. Only 22,000, according to Secretary Powell, come from other nations.
Today, U.S. Marines handed over an Iraqi city 200 miles south of Baghdad to Spanish forces. The commander of U.S. forces welcomed international support.
LT. GEN. RICARDO SANCHEZ, COALITION GROUND FORCES COMMANDER: Internationalizing the effort is a worthwhile initiative. And it will provide a clear display of international support for the mission that is ongoing here in the country.
PILGRIM: India, France, and Germany have insisted on a new U.N. mandate for their participation. France's foreign minister, Dominique de Villepin, still acting as a spoiler, today said the U.N. and only the U.N. should run the operation in Iraq.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
PILGRIM: Analysts today said, if the Bush administration does give a greater role to U.N. forces, it would represent quite a policy shift. Now, no decision has been made quite yet, but it is clear that officials are floating the idea -- Lou.
DOBBS: Floating it and nudging it along as well.
As I was discussing with John King, this appears to be a policy shift that would have significant, perhaps even seismic, impact here in domestic politics.
PILGRIM: It seems to be quite a difference and quite sudden, too. As of a week ago, there was no indication this might happen.
DOBBS: Well, what happened to the Bush administration's declaration that there would be democratization in the Middle East, that they were there, as Donald Rumsfeld, the secretary of defense, said, for as long as it takes?
PILGRIM: Well, I expect that the commitment is still continuous, but it's very clear that international support is needed.
DOBBS: It's not clear to me, at least, why international forces would be any more effective than U.S. forces in establishing law and order and security for the people of Iraq and U.S. forces there.
PILGRIM: That could explain the duration of the debate over whether to go in this direction or not.
DOBBS: But obviously a major shift, at least at its incipient point, obvious now.
Kitty Pilgrim, thank you.
New guerrilla attacks targeted forces today in Iraq. Four U.S. soldiers were injured when a bomb exploded under a bridge in Fallujah, west of Baghdad. And a British soldier was killed today, another injured in southern Iraq. A crowd armed with rocket-propelled grenades and automatic weapons fired on the British convoy. More deadly violence tonight in the Middle East: An Israeli helicopter gunship fired a rocket into the Gaza. That rocket hit a donkey cart. It killed its passenger, a member of the Islamist terrorist group Hamas. The strike is the fourth against Hamas in the past week. Eight members of the group had been killed in those targeted attacks.
North Korea tonight appears closer to testing its nuclear weapons. U.S. officials say North Korea told a six-nation conference in China that it would soon declare itself a nuclear power and begin testing its weapons.
National security correspondent David Ensor joins us now with the report from Washington.
David, just what does U.S. intelligence know about North Korea's nuclear capabilities at this point?
DAVID ENSOR, CNN NATIONAL SECURITY CORRESPONDENT: Well, Lou, U.S. intelligence officials have been saying for a couple of years now that they believe North Korea had one or two nuclear weapons.
But in the last year or so, there have been a number of disturbing developments, causing them to consider that it may have gone beyond that, first of all, of course, all the activity at the Yongbyon nuclear facility. And we've reported about this in the past. That's the facility where there is a nuclear reactor, with plutonium as a byproduct, where the North Koreans have now said -- and U.S. intelligence has confirmed -- that some of the spent fuel rods that were in one of those buildings have been moved out of that building, the North Koreans saying they are reprocessing that fuel for use in five to six nuclear weapons, U.S. intelligence estimating there might have been as much as enough for one or two bombs removed.
Now, there's been another development, which is that detection by U.S. monitors of some krypton 85 gas. Now, because of the location where this gas was detected, some officials suspect there might be an additional North Korean facility, a secret, perhaps underground facility, where nuclear weapons based on plutonium might be being produced in addition.
And, finally, last year, the U.S. asked the North Koreans point blank at a meeting whether or not they were, as the U.S. suspected they were, enriching uranium, another way to make nuclear weapons. And they got the point-blank answer from the North Koreans that, yes, they were and, in effect, what does the U.S. want to do about it?
Now, put all those together with the fact that the North Koreans have tested a number of increasingly advanced, medium-range missiles capable of carrying a small nuclear warhead, including one that fired over the top of Japan, and you have a rather worrying scenario, Lou.
DOBBS: And with these talks under way, these six-nation talks, it appears at this point that the only result was a declaration again by North Korea that it has nuclear weapons and now an assertion that it may well test those weapons. Where do you think we're headed? What are your sources telling you?
ENSOR: Well, the big news there is that they're threatening to hold a nuclear test. That will upset the neighborhood quite a bit, as well as the United States.
It will be interesting to see, if they hold such a test, whether the Chinese, the Russians, and some of the other neighbors increase the pressure they are putting on North Korea to curb its nuclear activities. That is what the U.S. is counting on. That's why they had six nations at the table, to try to get the other nations that don't want to see a nuclear North Korea to bring their pressure to bear as well -- Lou.
DOBBS: David, thank you very much -- David Ensor, our national security correspondent, reporting from Washington.
In Britain today, Prime Minister Tony Blair said, if there were any truth to a BBC report that his government had sexed up Iraqi intelligence, he would resign. Blair talked at an inquiry into the apparent suicide of David Kelly, who was the BBC's main source for the story. The prime minister defended British intelligence leading up to the war against Saddam Hussein. And Blair took full responsibility for decisions that led to Kelly being identified publicly as the source of the BBC report.
Two weeks to the day after the worst blackout in U.S. history, parts of London today went dark. That blackout occurred in the middle of the city's afternoon rush hour. It stranded thousands of subway riders.
Liz George is live in London tonight with the latest for us -- Liz.
LIZ GEORGE, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Lou, yes, thanks very much, indeed.
Well, the blackout took place in southwest London. It was already back up and running within an hour of it going down. But, of course, it affected the tube system here, the underground system here, very badly; 60 percent of the underground system was shut down as a result of this power cut.
Now, of course, that affected the commuters very badly. It took place at rush hour here in London. And, at any one time in rush hour, you've got about four million people traveling on the underground system. So about 250,000 people were actually caught in the tube lines at the time that the blackout hit. And, of course, that took an awfully long time to start getting running again.
Effectively what happened, of course, the transport police had to make sure that the tracks were cleared before they could even move those tube trains into the stations, then begin to get people out of those stations and try and sort things out. In London, it is extremely busy here. I was walking along one of the main streets a little bit earlier on, people on mobile phones phoning their loved ones, the streets absolutely packed, as people were trying to get to buses, were trying to get to taxis.
And wouldn't you just know it, it was raining here in London at the time as well. So that meant that there were very few taxis around for people. So even now, we've got a lot of commuters absolutely stranded in the center of London trying to find a route home. It wasn't just the underground system that was actually put out, but it was the overground rail system taking people out into the suburbs as well.
All of those rail lines were out for a considerable amount of time. And so buses have had to be put on to take commuters out. But it's going to be a very long night here in London -- Lou.
DOBBS: And, Liz, the cause of this blackout in London?
GEORGE: We talked to Scotland Yard a little bit earlier on. And they said, absolutely nothing suspicious as a result caused this blackout.
Basically, what happened was, some major power lines went down in southwest London. It took out a fair amount of the electricity in London. But within half an hour, they were back up and running again. And within an hour, that power had been restored to the whole network. So, really, it was the impact of it cutting out the transport system here, as opposed to the actual power cut itself, which has caused the problems and caused people to be stranded in London at the moment.
It was really areas of southwest London that were hit badly and south London a little bit further out as well, on the outskirts of London -- Lou.
DOBBS: Liz, thank you very much -- Liz George reporting from London, where the lights are back on.
Coming up next here: Democratic presidential nominee candidate Senator John Kerry of Massachusetts says he would move mountains to improve the economy if he were elected president. Senator Kerry joins us to talk about his economic plan, Howard Dean, and George W. Bush.
And Arnold Schwarzenegger takes a stand on a number of controversial issues, as the California recall campaign moves toward Election Day.
Our series of special reports this week on education in America continues. Tonight: school textbooks that are failing American students. Casey Wian reports. And Diane Ravitch, the author of "The Language Police," will be here to tell us who is deciding what your children are reading.
Stay with us.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
DOBBS: California's gubernatorial candidates on the campaign trail again today. Peter Ueberroth made his first pitch directly to California voters, Arnold Schwarzenegger, in the state's farm belt, downplaying his wild past, and Cruz Bustamante talking about high gasoline prices.
Bob Franken joins us now from Los Angeles with the very latest -- Bob.
BOB FRANKEN, CNN NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Well, let's see. Shall we talk about Peter Ueberroth and the fact that he had a town meeting today, as you pointed out, or that Governor Gray Davis was talking about the environment today, or that the lieutenant governor, the Democratic candidate Cruz Bustamante, was taking on the oil companies?
Or shall we talk about Arnold Schwarzenegger, who has ventured out of his Hollywood locale and is headed to the farm belt of California, Fresno specifically, where he spent the day so far at a charter school talking to a mostly minority school that has seen a huge jump in grades after it went to a public-chartered school. He's going to spend a little bit later of the day talking to people in peach-packing plants.
He's also going to be implored by reporters to talk to them. And they have a lot to talk about, specifically some article that appeared about 26 years ago, 1977, to be precise. It accompanied a book that came out by Arnold Schwarzenegger, all in connection with the release of the movie "Pumping Iron." Now, it really describes some risque behavior, by his own account, by Arnold Schwarzenegger. It talks about the use of marijuana and hashish.
And it also talks about some pretty wild sex, to put it bluntly. It talks about, for instance, one incident in which several of his fellow bodybuilders had group sex with a woman who was operating alone, all of that described by Arnold Schwarzenegger 26 years ago. And now that he's running for governor, he's talking about it again. The only response his campaign has allowed him to have so far has been an interview he did last night with a Sacramento radio station.
(BEGIN AUDIO CLIP)
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: There's an old 1977 interview you did with "Oui" magazine out there. And I've got to tell you, Arnold, you were having a lot more fun in 1977 than I was.
(LAUGHTER)
ARNOLD SCHWARZENEGGER (R), CALIFORNIA GUBERNATORIAL CANDIDATE: Well, you have to understand, I know exactly what you're saying.
I never lived my life to be a politician. I never lived my life to be the governor of California. Obviously, I've made statements that are ludicrous and crazy and outrageous and all those things, because that's the way I always was. I was always outrageous. Otherwise, I wouldn't have done the things that I did in my career with the body building and with show business and all those things. I was always out there.
(END AUDIO CLIP)
FRANKEN: Well, it's summer, Lou, and so that means that we are once again confronted with a story that has an awful lot of sex involved in it. Now we're going to find out whether the voters have any feelings about this one way or the other -- Lou.
DOBBS: Well, Californians have got a lot to digest over the course of time between now and the 7th of October. One of the things that appeals to me about this particular election is that you have this host of candidates running for an office that they don't even know is available. How goes the idea that the recall will actually be effective against Gray Davis?
FRANKEN: Well, Gray Davis was considered a severe underdog. He's moved up just to underdog right now in the latest polls.
And polls, by the way, are semi-reliable here, since it's such a different model than normal. He seems to have been gaining some traction. So, all of this may be just an exercise, nothing more than that. But, at the moment, there is a real hard race going on for governor. It seems to be going on mainly between Schwarzenegger and Cruz Bustamante, the Democratic alternative, while Gray Davis tries to make sure that the whole thing is irrelevant.
DOBBS: Arnold Schwarzenegger may have been, Bob, as I understand it, just thinking he left show business, is that right?
FRANKEN: Well, I think he just moved to a different branch of it. But you remember, Andy Warhol called Washington "Hollywood East."
DOBBS: And, occasionally, appropriately so.
Bob Franken, thank you very much.
California's recall fever appears to be spreading. A group of conservatives in Nevada has now launched a recall effort against Republican Governor Kenny Guinn. This group is upset about his approval of the largest tax increase in the state's history. They have 90 days to collect more than 128,000 signatures. If they do so, that would trigger a recall.
Coming up next: Senator and Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry joins us to talk about his run for the White House in 2004, his new economic plan, the war in Iraq, and Howard Dean.
And maintaining the world's best military: General David Grange joins us tonight. We'll talk about U.S. military efforts to innovate, to modernize, and to stay ahead of any potential enemy.
Harley-Davidson turns 100. Bill Tucker reports from hog headquarters in Milwaukee, Wisconsin.
Stay with us.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
DOBBS: Coming up next: Senator John Kerry today unveiled his economic plan. I'll be talking with him about that and a great deal more about his run for the White House. Senator Kerry joins us next. (COMMERCIAL BREAK)
DOBBS: Democratic presidential hopeful Senator John Kerry today outlined his plan for stimulating the economy and creating jobs. The senator talked in New Hampshire, where the latest poll shows him 21 percentage points behind leader Howard Dean.
I talked with the senator about the centerpiece of his economic plan earlier.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
SEN. JOHN KERRY (D), MASSACHUSETTS: Well, the centerpiece is fiscal responsibility and fairness to the middle class of America. We need to pull back from this precipice of deficits, where we're spending more than a billion dollars a day than we're brining into the government. And in addition to that, we've got to make our economy fair again for the average person who's working in America, Lou.
We've got to start creating jobs. And job creation will come when we push the technology curve, the science curve, and excite investment again in another round of technology advances.
DOBBS: Senator, the president, a number of others have talked about jobs, jobs, jobs. Yet I'm unaware of any public policy plan short of direct government investment that creates jobs. Explain what you could do to create jobs if you would.
KERRY: What George Bush has done by creating these very large deficits and cutting a lot of the revenue that was going to states has actually forced states to raise taxes at the wrong moment. Those state tax increases are George Bush's tax increases, and I think they're wrong for our economy right now.
Finally, let me just say I agree with you. Government isn't the principal job creator. Government creates the framework within which the private sector decides where to move capital. But that capital right now is not moving in the directions we want because there's lack of confidence and uncertainty because we haven't made sound fiscal decisions.
DOBBS: You supported the president on the issue of war against Saddam Hussein, yet you've been very critical of the president's policies since May 1st. What is it, in your judgement, that should be done to bring stability, peace to Iraq, and stability to the region?
KERRY: Lou, I think the reason I've been critical is I don't believe the president did the hard work of diplomacy to build the kind of real international coalition that reduce the risks to American soldiers, reduces their risk on a daily basis because we have other troops there sharing that risk, and reduces the cost to the American citizens and the American economy. If we had more people participating, more people who were supportive, we wouldn't be blowing the billions that we're spending every week there in order to do this alone. DOBBS: Yet, Senator, over the past few days there has been a quiet, but nonetheless powerful, seismic shock, if you will, in diplomatic reversals. That is, that the Bush administration is now seeking the support of the United Nations, is now from various quarters within the administration suggesting that the United States hand over power as quickly as possible to the Iraqis. What is your judgement on that?
KERRY: Lou, I think that's finally moving in the right direction. But I think it would be terrific to have a president of the United States who gets it right at the beginning. We shouldn't have to spend these months -- how many kids have died in the last months because the United States didn't take the time to put together the kind of coalition and have a plan for winning the peace?
Why is it that we allowed the looting of a nuclear facility immediately after we occupied Iraq? Why did we allow looting of the city? I mean, we didn't have a plan to go in and provide the kinds of services and the kind of security that is necessary to win the hearts and minds of the Iraqis and reduce the risk to American soldiers as fast as possible.
DOBBS: Senator, the latest polls show Howard Dean running well ahead of you in New Hampshire. It is certainly early. But will you be focusing more on foreign policy and your judgements on economic policy to try to diminish that lead of the former governor of Vermont?
KERRY: No. It's very, very early, Lou. I haven't even announced my candidacy yet. I'm going to be kicking off my campaign next week.
We haven't done any television. Other campaigns have been on television and spent a lot of money. We're very confident about where we are. I like the pace, and there's a long way to go over the next four-and-a-half months.
I'm very confident that as people really listen to the different programs and what we're working for and fighting for, and as they measure our character and our history and our records, I look forward to taking that out to the American people because people are going to make a judgment about who can really be president and hit the ground running right away on the critical issues that face this country. So I look forward to that over the next months. It will be a good debate.
DOBBS: Senator Kerry, we thank you very much.
KERRY: Thank you very much, Lou. Take care.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
DOBBS: And that brings us to the subject of tonight's poll. The question -- "Who is your preference among the leaders now for Democratic presidential -- the presidential nomination of the Democratic Party? "Dean, Gephardt, Kerry, or Lieberman?" Please cast your vote at cnn.com/lou. We'll have the results later in the show. The results of yesterday's poll -- the question, "Are you disappointed, like the Justice Department, that Oklahoma's attorney general filed charges against WorldCom and six of its executives?" Five percent said yes, 95 percent of you said no.
Coming up next, censorship in the schools, the content of our textbooks and what it's really teaching our students. Casey Wian will report.
Diane Ravitch, author of "The Language Police," joins us.
And then, "Grange on Point" -- transformation of the American military keeping the world's most powerful armed forces in cutting edge. David Grange joins us.
And an "American Classic" cruises into its second century. Bill Tucker reports on Harley-Davidson, the Hog at 100.
Stay with us.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
DOBBS: This week, we are focusing through our series of special reports on American education, "Making the Grade." Tonight, we take a look at school textbooks, which some educators say are too often boring, sanitized, and in some cases absolutely downright wrong.
Casey Wian reports from Los Angeles.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
CASEY WIAN, CNNfn CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): As eighth grade history teacher Brent Heath (ph) prepares for the new school year, you won't find textbooks in his classroom. Instead, he uses historical fiction, the Internet, the Library of Congress, even music to teach students.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: It's the exact same content. It's being taught in a different way.
WIAN: Hundreds of teachers nationwide use his methods. Jack Farrell (ph) still has textbooks in his high school English classes, but he doesn't like the slick, state-approved books he must use.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Because it's attractive to the eye the way TV might be, the way the Internet might be, you think the student's going to be pulled into it. But in point of fact it's very hard to negotiate logically. Text boxes, graphical organizers lots of ways that the thinking is laid out for the students and controlled for them. But if you look at this, this is a book in the real world.
WIAN: Too often, teachers say, the real world is absent from school textbooks, from racial quotas on illustrations, to sanitizing rough language in literary classics. Critics say textbooks designed to not offend also don't do much to inform. WILLIAM BENNETTA, PRES., THE TEXTBOOK LEAGUE: The books get dumber and dumber. Dumber in what they say and dumber in the sense of delivering less and less content.
WIAN: Bennetta publishes a newsletter exposing textbook mistakes.
BENNETTA: The Chinese were weaving silk and making beautiful artifacts when most Europeans were living in caves and wearing animal skins. That's what this book says. It was easy to find out that Europeans were weaving textiles somewhere between 1,500 and 2,000 years before any Chinese ever wore any silk.
WIAN (on camera): The content of textbooks is often influenced by forces that have little to do with educational merit. Special interest groups from both the left and the right exert tremendous pressure on states, school districts, and textbook publishers.
(voice-over): Publishers say they're just meeting the demands of big customers like California, Texas and other states with formal approval processes that dictate content.
STEVE DRIESLER, ASSN. OF AMERICAN PUBLISHERS: Textbooks in our public schools are provided free of charge to all students. That means they're purchased with taxpayer dollars. And so the process is open for citizen input, and that's both a blessing and in some instances perhaps a curse.
WIAN: Especially for districts or private schools that want more choice. The Catholic schools textbook project this year introduced an alternative to history books that ignore religious influences.
MICHAEL VAN HECKE, CATHOLIC SCHOOLS TEXTBOOK PROJECT: Whether you're secular or Catholic or Jewish, Muslim, it doesn't matter. The history is history. And let's tell the story.
WIAN: Casey Wian, CNN, Newbury Park, California.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
DOBBS: Diane Ravitch says textbook censorship is alive and well in this country, and her book, "The Language Police," -- Diane says censorship is a result of the publishers' desire to make money the political pressure to avoid that awful word, controversy, and to protect students from so-called offensive material.
Diane Ravitch joins us tonight. Good to have you here.
DIANE RAVITCH, AUTHOR, "THE LANGUAGE POLICE" Well, the -- thanks, Lou. It's great to be here.
I thought that was a great lead-in because it really demonstrated the issues, which is two states have a huge amount of power, Texas and California. They buy textbooks for the entire state, and the textbook publishers -- and I'm not casting blame at them -- kowtow to these two states, and whenever there are textbook hearings, the groups come out of the woodworks. They're from the left, they're from the right, and they all want the textbooks censored to avoid offensiveness.
DOBBS: There's another issue here, too. How many -- how many companies are publishing textbooks primarily in this country?
RAVITCH: Well, there are four big companies that have about 75 percent of the market. It's a huge market. It's a $4 billion market. And this very process of the states buying the textbooks has caused competition to dry up. It's caused huge mergers.
DOBBS: What we're watching here, it appears, is the homogenization of textbooks. You could travel to various school districts throughout the country 30 years ago and find a rich diversity of textbooks in the school systems. Now, with four companies producing them, the idea of competition within that is a silly concept.
RAVITCH: Well, you know, what's interesting, Lou, is that some of -- all of these companies produce more than one line of textbooks. It's a little bit like having all competing cereals but all from one company. So that when you look at the textbooks that come from four different companies they all look like peas in a pod. There's no real difference between the textbooks of company A, B, C, or D.
DOBBS: The idea of offensive to students to the point that references to God are eliminated, the suggestion that there is no such thing as interracial marriage in these textbooks. What in the world is going on?
RAVITCH: What happens is that when there are hearings, as there regularly are in Texas and California, the right-wingers come out, the left-wingers come out, the feminists come out, the people who say I represent, you know, obscure groups...
DOBBS: Every special interest in the country.
RAVTICH: Right. Every special interest. And the states say to the publishers, You know, you've got to get that out of the textbook. So they have been, for the past 25 or 30 years, sanitizing the books, removing controversy, but puffing them up with all of these graphics. And the teacher in your lead-in said very well that the books are gorgeous but the kids don't want to read them.
DOBBS: Very pretty, but what's in it?
The four publishers that dominate the market, how many of them are American companies?
RAVITCH: McGraw-Hill is the big American company. Recently, there was a French company, Vivendi, that owned a huge number of American -- of American publishing houses, and they just sold their interest in the textbook industry out. So we might yet again have two big American publishing companies. But right now there's just one, McGraw-Hill.
DOBBS: Out of the four controlling 75 percent, only one of them at this point, depending on what Vivendi does, is an American company. RAVITCH: That's correct.
DOBBS: And what is the solution here? Teachers -- we've looked at all aspects of the issues because people seem to forget -- they keep talking about pedagogy, and there's all sorts of big words and abstractions here. But effectively it's coming down to where the teacher meets his or her student in the classroom. What in the world are going to do to provide accurate textbooks, textbooks that reflect the life that these children will be leading?
RAVITCH: I think we have a real distortion in the marketplace right now, and that distortion is caused by the state governments buying the books. It's a little bit like the state government telling you what movies to see or what TV channel you should have on all the time.
I think the states should get out of there and allow a real marketplace to emerge where small publishers have a chance to compete, and teachers should be encouraged to use things other than textbooks. I think all of the really great teachers that I've met are using real novels, real historians' work...
DOBBS: Classics.
RAVITCH: ...and -- classics. And they use the textbook as a reference work. And I think we just have to change the marketplace itself by eliminating state adoption of textbooks. That's the point where political negotiations begin and groups come in and say we don't want evolution in the science books. We don't want this representation in the history books. And when you realize that your history books and your science books and your literature books are not the result of experts sitting down and making it a wise decision, but of political pressure groups coming to the state textbook hearings, this is wrong.
DOBBS: There's much wrong here. And the sad part is there are so many people, great people, trying to do the right thing for these students. But people have simply got to wake up.
RAVITCH: Absolutely.
DOBBS: Diane Ravitch, thanks very much for being with us.
RAVITCH: Thank you, Lou.
DOBBS: Look forward to seeing you soon.
Today marks the 40th anniversary of Martin Luther King, Jr.'s famous "I have a dream" speech. Tonight's thought celebrates Dr. King's lasting contribution to this country's civil rights movement: "If a man," he said, "hasn't discovered something he will die for, he isn't fit to live." That from Dr. Martin Luther King.
Coming up next, the future of the U.S. military. How to ensure constant innovation and technological advancement. General David Grange "On Point" next. Stay with us.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
DOBBS: In tonight's "Grange On Point," General David Grange takes a look at the transformation of this country's armed forces. General Grange says making changes in the military is essential. But the transformation is made difficult when our forces are involved in major fights around the world.
General David Grange joins us tonight from Oak Brook, Illinois.
General, good to have you with us.
This army, this military doing an incredible job. Why do we need to transform it?
BRIG. GEN. DAVID GRANGE (RET.), U.S. ARMY: Well, they're doing a magnificent job, as you stated, Lou. But transformation is a continuous process that all militaries must go through.
The United States army, our military's has done it for 228 years. It's ongoing. And if you don't do it, then the enemy gets ahead because every time you have an advantage a counteraction is created by your adversary to negate that advantage and the process starts again.
And it's in all domains. It's on leadership, it's on training, it's on equipment. All domains involved in the military.
DOBBS: You mentioned equipment. And obviously, some of this has to do with technology, and the most advanced technology being applied by any country in the world to its military. Is our -- in your judgment, is our military technology sufficient. Is it adequate?
GRANGE: Our -- our technology is better than any in the world. It gives us an advantage.
But technology only enhances the human being. And the human being makes any system strong or weak. It's the weakest link or the strongest link in any system. And so technology has to enhance the trooper, the sailor, the airman, the Marine in order to be effective. It's not a panacea to solve any kind of threat or defeat any type of enemy, especially low-tech enemies like guerrillas and terrorists. They're very hard to counter with just high technology alone.
DOBBS: Of the issues in transformation, of course, I would have to imagine the greatest question is, "What are we transforming to?" What will this modern U.S. military look like in 10, 12 years? Those are decisions. We're looking at a picture as we're discussing this, Dave, of the Osprey, a highly controversial program. The money that we're investing, the programs that are going to be funded, the strategies that will be employed, that's a very difficult choice to make. How is that -- how is that being accomplished now?
GRANGE: It's all about priorities. It's all about the proper analysis of current ongoing operations, whether it be peacekeeping or combat. And what the future may look like across the second and third ridgeline, across the hill, what's over there, what's going to happen. And so you have to think ahead in a way that your assurances are going to be met.
Take the Osprey. The Marines are flying helicopters that are older than the people that fly them. They need a new piece of equipment. They need a new piece of equipment that has a speed, a mobility to get somewhere quickly, and then can act like a helicopter once it gets into the theater of operations.
And so it's all about how you man a force, how you organize a force, how you equip it -- equip it, the type of training that the forces go through to meet the complex environments, whether it be a city or a jungle, and be -- have the agility to bounce back and forth between peacekeeping and war and those other type of demands placed on our military today.
DOBBS: The issues that you're talking about here tonight are -- resonate as the issues that Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld broached upon taking office as secretary of defense, obviously before September 11. A lot of thinking has changed in that time. General Grange is going to focus on these issues in the weeks and days ahead to tell us what he thinks this military should look like as we move further into this new millennium.
Dave, thank you very much. General David Grange. We appreciate it, as always.
GRANGE: My pleasure, Lou.
Tonight's quote comes from Baghdad, where the commander of U.S. forces in Iraq said he would welcome more international troops but he stressed he needs more than manpower, saying, "Putting more soldiers on the ground is not going to solve the problem when I don't have the intelligence to act on it." That from Lieutenant General Ricardo Sanchez.
And a reminder, our poll question tonight.: "Who is your preference now amongst the leaders for the Democratic presidential nomination? Dean, Gephardt, Kerry, or Lieberman?" Please cast your vote at cnn.com/lou. We'll have the results coming up and of course, you'll be able to vote over the next 23 hours.
Up next here, an "American Classic" -- living high on the Hog for a century. Bill Tucker reports from Harley-Davidson headquarters in Milwaukee, Wisconsin.
And an American legend takes on the younger generation tonight as we look at these live pictures of New York's Radio City Music Hall. Crowds gathering for the 20th Annual MTV Video Music Awards. Johnny Cash, a major contender.
Stay with us.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK) DOBBS: The MTv Video Awards (sic) program begins here in New York in just over an hour. And what you're looking at now is a shot of Radio City Music Hall. That's where the awards show is being held and broadcast from. Typically, those awards focus on the youth culture of rock and roll and pop music but tonight an old man just may steal the show, but a great old man.
Legendary country singer, 71-year-old Johnny Cash. The video of his song "Hurt" has been nominated for six awards, including video of the year. Cash had hoped to attend tonight's ceremonies but has been hospitalized with a stomach ailment.
Three hundred thousand people and their motorcycles today gathered in Wisconsin to celebrate the 100th birthday of Harley- Davidson. But it's not just a celebration of the motorcycle, of course, it's also a classic American experience.
Bill Tucker reports from Milwaukee.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
(MUSIC)
BILL TUCKER, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Long before Peter Fonda hit the road on his Harley in "Easy Rider" the Harley was more than just a motorcycle. It's the romance, the open road rolled up with a sense of anticipated adventure.
FRANK SAVAGE, HARLEY-DAVIDSON OWNER: It's kind of like caffeine, you get off the bike and you're feeling a little different than if you drove in on a car.
MITZ KOHNKE, HARLEY-DAVIDSON EMPLOYEE: Hey, if we had to explain, you wouldn't understand. It's just the freedom.
MARTIN SNODGRASS, HARLEY-DAVIDSON OWNER: It's American-made bike, and it's just -- it just captures everything that's great about America.
TUCKER: American as denim and rock and roll. Elvis rode a Harley.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Hey, Johnny, what are you rebelling against?
MARLON BRANDO, ACTOR: What have you got?
TUCKER: Marlon Brando rode a Harley in the motorcycle outlaw lure in "The Wild One." Steve McQueen fled the Nazis, jumped the barbed wire in "The Great Escape," riding a Harley.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: It's a bit of a cult thing. To me it's just a great motorcycle to ride. My wife rides her own. We've been riding motorcycles for years. I've only ever owned one Harley. I've had it since 1992. TUCKER: Some days it seems everybody owns a Harley. But as popular as the bike is, a lot more people wear a Harley than ride a Harley.
Harley has defined motorcycle apparel since 1912. That leather jacket Brando wore in "The Wild One," a Harley jacket. Harley dealerships don't just sell motorcycles. They sell a lifestyle for the whole family.
GEORGE STANELY, HARLEY-DAVIDSON EMPLOYEE: If you own a Harley- Davidson, you know the passion.
TUCKER: Harley-Davidson's come a long way from the shed where the first one was built. Along the ride it's been the bike of outlaws and now it's the bike of politicians. The one they most love to use to shine up their images by visiting a Harley plant or even riding to a campaign rally. So what is it that makes the machine so special?
MICHAEL KEEFE, DIRECTOR HOG: It's the people that ride them that makes the difference. I've been, you know, so lucky to be able to ride Harley-Davidsons since 1967, and everybody I know with the exception of my brother and a friend of mine I've known since second grade, I've met from the saddle of a Harley-Davidson.
TUCKER: Bill Tucker, CNN, Milwaukee.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
DOBBS: When we continue, we'll have the results of tonight's poll. Also, we'll look at some of your thoughts on the idea of a uniform national curriculum.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
DOBBS: Now the results of our poll tonight. The question, who is your preference now amongst the leaders for the Democratic presidential nomination? Sixty percent of you said Dean, 9 percent said Gephardt, 25 percent Kerry, 7 percent Lieberman. Well, you can continue to vote on the question through the next 23 hours.
On Wall Street today, stocks managed a late-day rally. The Dow up more than 40 points. The Nasdaq added 18. The S&P up 6.
Christine Romans is here now with the market for us. A pretty good day. The summer rally is arriving.
CHRISTINE ROMANS, CNN FINANCIAL CORRESPONDENT: Well, the summer -- it doesn't feel like much, but it's been four days in a row now for the S&P to be higher, and the Nasdaq hit a new 16-month high today. So much for the summer doldrums, right?
More evidence of economic recovery, that helped. The economy grew at 3.1 percent in the second quarter. The fastest growth in more than a year. And weekly jobless claims rose, but remained below 400,000 for the fifth week in a row, continuing claims also below 400,000, that's important. Meanwhile, the stock market optimism continues. 56 percent of newsletter writers surveyed are bullish on stocks, 19 percent are bearish. 79 percent of the stocks listed at the New York Stock Exchange are trading above their ten-week moving average. That's down from about 82 percent last week, but still pretty good. And Sara Lee was the latest company to raise its dividend. Merrill Lynch expects an S&P 500 dividend yield by the end of the year, 1.85 percent. That's compared with about 1.7 percent now.
Interestingly, Lou, watching these dividend-paying stocks, as a group they're up 11 percent this year, lagging the overall market. But a lot of analysts continue to recommend this group because of the favorable tax situation. They expect a lot more companies to continue to raise their dividends.
DOBBS: That's contrary to what most people thinking, those non- dividend paying stocks are outperforming them.
ROMANS: Almost by two to one.
DOBBS: Well, we didn't talk about volume.
ROMANS: About a billion shares. You can tell when I don't talk about volume that's how quiet it is. A lot of people are betting tomorrow will be the lightest trading day of the year.
DOBBS: Well, that's going to be interesting. It's good to know they'll be there to do the trading in advance of this holiday weekend. Thanks a lot, Christine. Christine Romans.
Taking a look now at some of your thoughts, Joy Ortega of Independence, Kansas, wrote in about our face-off last night on a uniform national curriculum for every school in the country saying, "I am a freshmen in college studying to be a high school teacher. Within 5 years I hope to have a class of my own and if we have a national curriculum it will affect how I will have to teach my students. Will we be so wrapped up in getting to get students to pass a national standards test that we don't teach them the information they need?"
Bill Young of South Hampton, New York, "Can you please explain to me how we can have high national educational standards when we have some schools with a computer at every desk while others don't even have books in the library?"
Anna of Morristown, New Jersey about the proposed cuts in funding for the health care of our veterans, "I firmly believe that more money needs to be spent on improvements, perhaps all our congressmen, senators and their families should be required to receive their medical care at the local VA. I certain the issue of cut backs would not even be on the table".
As always, we love hearing from you. E-mail us at loudobbs@CNN.com. And that's our show for tonight. Thanks for being with us.
Tomorrow in our series of Special Reports on America's education we look at teachers. Does the training fit the job? Are they doing the job? And the editors of "Forbes," Fortune" and "Businessweek" join us in our weekly editors' circle. Please join us.
For all of us here, good night from New York.
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Nations in Iraq?>
Aired August 28, 2003 - 18:00 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
LOU DOBBS, CNN ANCHOR: Tonight: North Korea raises the stakes. North Korea says it has a nuclear bomb and may test it. National security correspondent David Ensor reports.
The race for the White House: Democratic presidential hopeful Senator John Kerry is our guest. Today, he unveils his economic plan.
"Making the Grade," our series of special reports on education. Tonight, your children's textbooks, who controls the content?
And Harley-Davidson turns 100. Bill Tucker reports on an American classic.
ANNOUNCER: This is LOU DOBBS TONIGHT for Thursday, August 28. Here now, Lou Dobbs.
DOBBS: Good evening.
The United States tonight appears to be moving toward a major policy change in Iraq. For the first time, the White House says it may allow the United Nations to sponsor a multinational force in Iraq.
Senior White House correspondent John King is near the president's ranch in Crawford, Texas, and joins us with the very latest.
John, this appears to be a significant shift on the part of the administration.
JOHN KING, CNN SR. WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: A major shift, Lou.
Just days ago, the defense secretary, Donald Rumsfeld, was saying he wanted the Pentagon to be in charge of the coalition. Now the Pentagon is saying that would still be the case, but, yes, it is open to having some United Nations blessing of this force. The question now is, can the Bush administration pull off this very difficult diplomacy up in New York at the United Nations?
The idea would be a new Security Council resolution that gave the United Nations' blessing to a multinational force, a peacekeeping force, if you will, in postwar Iraq. But the White House insists, it cannot be the traditional blue-helmet United Nations peacekeepers, that only a U.S. general would be in command. Yes, other nations would be welcome to send in troops, but they would always be under the command of a U.S. general. What the administration hopes is that such a resolution would ease the reluctance, wipe away the reluctance, of countries like Pakistan, countries like India and others, who have said they would only send in troops if the United Nations passed a new resolution. Now, it is a major shift for the administration, which had said it did not want to go back to the United Nations on the question of security and the military force in postwar Iraq.
But getting such a force would help the administration achieve two big political goals. The commanding general on the ground in Iraq said just today that having more nations participate would give his force more international credibility. And, Lou, it would allow the United States to, in the months ahead, bring more U.S. troops home more quickly. That could help the president as he heads into a campaign reelection year -- Lou.
DOBBS: John, the contest between the State Department and the Pentagon on the issue of both the war, the diplomacy, and the administration of postwar Iraq is well documented. Does this suggest that the State Department is moving to a primary role on Iraq?
KING: Well, it would suggest that the White House is saying that, if you can bring this about, it would like to do this and it would like to ease the Pentagon's objections.
Where the Pentagon says it will draw the line adamantly is on the question of command. It says, only a U.S. general in charge. All of the troops would have to be under a U.S. authority. The political question for the White House, there has been all the criticism of late, even Republicans coming back from Iraq, saying, you need more troops on the ground. The White House was trying to say no to that question, but it is trying to get some help, if you will, so that it can begin to bring U.S. troops home.
And we are told that the president agrees with this in concept. But, again, there's not even a formal resolution on the table. This is a giant if at the moment. If they get to the point where they think they can get the votes, they will come up with a draft resolution. And, at that point, the president and everyone else, including Secretary Rumsfeld, would have to give it its final blessing.
DOBBS: This policy shift, John, appears to be, at least -- perhaps significantly, but at least moderately, fraught with peril politically domestically, the so-called neoconservative wing that has been driving much of the policy. What is the White House staff thinking? What are you hearing about their concerns there?
KING: Well, certainly, in the administration and outside advisers to this administration are very skeptical of any United Nations' role at all. What they are worried most about is a resolution that would give the United Nations any expanded political power in Iraq, any expanded or any new power at all over the military troops.
The White House says it will not allow that to happen, that the United Nations would be blessing a new multinational force, but not controlling any new multinational force. And therein probably lies the biggest problem. At the United Nations, they say they will agree to this if they see a greater U.N. role and greater U.N. authority. The White House says it can't give up on that point.
So that's why this is an idea at the moment, Lou. And the difficult -- in the difficult diplomacy ahead, it's a big question as to whether the administration can get what it wants, that U.N. blessing, without having to give up so much, that many of its own allies, within the administration and outside, get furious.
DOBBS: John, thank you very much -- John King, our senior White House correspondent.
Before the war, the White House repeatedly said it would not seek the United Nations' approval of any action in Iraq. But now there may in fact be a broader role to be played by the United Nations.
Kitty Pilgrim reports.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
KITTY PILGRIM, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Before the war, the Bush administration's rally of the coalition of the willing smacked of, go it alone.
COLIN POWELL, SECRETARY OF STATE: When we feel strongly about something, we will lead. We will act even if others are not prepared to join us.
PILGRIM: And while the United Nations dithered for weeks, the president took this approach.
GEORGE W. BUSH, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: The course of this nation does not depend on the decisions of others.
PILGRIM: Even last week, Secretary-General Kofi Annan reminded people just how far apart the U.N. was from the U.S. position before the war.
KOFI ANNAN, U.N. SECRETARY-GENERAL: Most people forget that the council did not vote to support the war in Iraq. The council took a different position.
PILGRIM: But now Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage has suggested, the Bush administration is considering the possibility of a U.N.-sponsored multinational force in Iraq, though still under U.S. control, the idea suggested last week by U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan, when he met with Secretary of State Colin Powell. The Pentagon has insisted all along, U.S. control of Iraq is the only way to ensure the success of the mission.
But with the near daily casualties of U.S. troops, the bombing of the U.N. compound in Baghdad, the Bush administration is under pressure to reconsider its options. The coalition of the willing has been sparse. The United States has well over 130,000 troops in Iraq. Only 22,000, according to Secretary Powell, come from other nations.
Today, U.S. Marines handed over an Iraqi city 200 miles south of Baghdad to Spanish forces. The commander of U.S. forces welcomed international support.
LT. GEN. RICARDO SANCHEZ, COALITION GROUND FORCES COMMANDER: Internationalizing the effort is a worthwhile initiative. And it will provide a clear display of international support for the mission that is ongoing here in the country.
PILGRIM: India, France, and Germany have insisted on a new U.N. mandate for their participation. France's foreign minister, Dominique de Villepin, still acting as a spoiler, today said the U.N. and only the U.N. should run the operation in Iraq.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
PILGRIM: Analysts today said, if the Bush administration does give a greater role to U.N. forces, it would represent quite a policy shift. Now, no decision has been made quite yet, but it is clear that officials are floating the idea -- Lou.
DOBBS: Floating it and nudging it along as well.
As I was discussing with John King, this appears to be a policy shift that would have significant, perhaps even seismic, impact here in domestic politics.
PILGRIM: It seems to be quite a difference and quite sudden, too. As of a week ago, there was no indication this might happen.
DOBBS: Well, what happened to the Bush administration's declaration that there would be democratization in the Middle East, that they were there, as Donald Rumsfeld, the secretary of defense, said, for as long as it takes?
PILGRIM: Well, I expect that the commitment is still continuous, but it's very clear that international support is needed.
DOBBS: It's not clear to me, at least, why international forces would be any more effective than U.S. forces in establishing law and order and security for the people of Iraq and U.S. forces there.
PILGRIM: That could explain the duration of the debate over whether to go in this direction or not.
DOBBS: But obviously a major shift, at least at its incipient point, obvious now.
Kitty Pilgrim, thank you.
New guerrilla attacks targeted forces today in Iraq. Four U.S. soldiers were injured when a bomb exploded under a bridge in Fallujah, west of Baghdad. And a British soldier was killed today, another injured in southern Iraq. A crowd armed with rocket-propelled grenades and automatic weapons fired on the British convoy. More deadly violence tonight in the Middle East: An Israeli helicopter gunship fired a rocket into the Gaza. That rocket hit a donkey cart. It killed its passenger, a member of the Islamist terrorist group Hamas. The strike is the fourth against Hamas in the past week. Eight members of the group had been killed in those targeted attacks.
North Korea tonight appears closer to testing its nuclear weapons. U.S. officials say North Korea told a six-nation conference in China that it would soon declare itself a nuclear power and begin testing its weapons.
National security correspondent David Ensor joins us now with the report from Washington.
David, just what does U.S. intelligence know about North Korea's nuclear capabilities at this point?
DAVID ENSOR, CNN NATIONAL SECURITY CORRESPONDENT: Well, Lou, U.S. intelligence officials have been saying for a couple of years now that they believe North Korea had one or two nuclear weapons.
But in the last year or so, there have been a number of disturbing developments, causing them to consider that it may have gone beyond that, first of all, of course, all the activity at the Yongbyon nuclear facility. And we've reported about this in the past. That's the facility where there is a nuclear reactor, with plutonium as a byproduct, where the North Koreans have now said -- and U.S. intelligence has confirmed -- that some of the spent fuel rods that were in one of those buildings have been moved out of that building, the North Koreans saying they are reprocessing that fuel for use in five to six nuclear weapons, U.S. intelligence estimating there might have been as much as enough for one or two bombs removed.
Now, there's been another development, which is that detection by U.S. monitors of some krypton 85 gas. Now, because of the location where this gas was detected, some officials suspect there might be an additional North Korean facility, a secret, perhaps underground facility, where nuclear weapons based on plutonium might be being produced in addition.
And, finally, last year, the U.S. asked the North Koreans point blank at a meeting whether or not they were, as the U.S. suspected they were, enriching uranium, another way to make nuclear weapons. And they got the point-blank answer from the North Koreans that, yes, they were and, in effect, what does the U.S. want to do about it?
Now, put all those together with the fact that the North Koreans have tested a number of increasingly advanced, medium-range missiles capable of carrying a small nuclear warhead, including one that fired over the top of Japan, and you have a rather worrying scenario, Lou.
DOBBS: And with these talks under way, these six-nation talks, it appears at this point that the only result was a declaration again by North Korea that it has nuclear weapons and now an assertion that it may well test those weapons. Where do you think we're headed? What are your sources telling you?
ENSOR: Well, the big news there is that they're threatening to hold a nuclear test. That will upset the neighborhood quite a bit, as well as the United States.
It will be interesting to see, if they hold such a test, whether the Chinese, the Russians, and some of the other neighbors increase the pressure they are putting on North Korea to curb its nuclear activities. That is what the U.S. is counting on. That's why they had six nations at the table, to try to get the other nations that don't want to see a nuclear North Korea to bring their pressure to bear as well -- Lou.
DOBBS: David, thank you very much -- David Ensor, our national security correspondent, reporting from Washington.
In Britain today, Prime Minister Tony Blair said, if there were any truth to a BBC report that his government had sexed up Iraqi intelligence, he would resign. Blair talked at an inquiry into the apparent suicide of David Kelly, who was the BBC's main source for the story. The prime minister defended British intelligence leading up to the war against Saddam Hussein. And Blair took full responsibility for decisions that led to Kelly being identified publicly as the source of the BBC report.
Two weeks to the day after the worst blackout in U.S. history, parts of London today went dark. That blackout occurred in the middle of the city's afternoon rush hour. It stranded thousands of subway riders.
Liz George is live in London tonight with the latest for us -- Liz.
LIZ GEORGE, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Lou, yes, thanks very much, indeed.
Well, the blackout took place in southwest London. It was already back up and running within an hour of it going down. But, of course, it affected the tube system here, the underground system here, very badly; 60 percent of the underground system was shut down as a result of this power cut.
Now, of course, that affected the commuters very badly. It took place at rush hour here in London. And, at any one time in rush hour, you've got about four million people traveling on the underground system. So about 250,000 people were actually caught in the tube lines at the time that the blackout hit. And, of course, that took an awfully long time to start getting running again.
Effectively what happened, of course, the transport police had to make sure that the tracks were cleared before they could even move those tube trains into the stations, then begin to get people out of those stations and try and sort things out. In London, it is extremely busy here. I was walking along one of the main streets a little bit earlier on, people on mobile phones phoning their loved ones, the streets absolutely packed, as people were trying to get to buses, were trying to get to taxis.
And wouldn't you just know it, it was raining here in London at the time as well. So that meant that there were very few taxis around for people. So even now, we've got a lot of commuters absolutely stranded in the center of London trying to find a route home. It wasn't just the underground system that was actually put out, but it was the overground rail system taking people out into the suburbs as well.
All of those rail lines were out for a considerable amount of time. And so buses have had to be put on to take commuters out. But it's going to be a very long night here in London -- Lou.
DOBBS: And, Liz, the cause of this blackout in London?
GEORGE: We talked to Scotland Yard a little bit earlier on. And they said, absolutely nothing suspicious as a result caused this blackout.
Basically, what happened was, some major power lines went down in southwest London. It took out a fair amount of the electricity in London. But within half an hour, they were back up and running again. And within an hour, that power had been restored to the whole network. So, really, it was the impact of it cutting out the transport system here, as opposed to the actual power cut itself, which has caused the problems and caused people to be stranded in London at the moment.
It was really areas of southwest London that were hit badly and south London a little bit further out as well, on the outskirts of London -- Lou.
DOBBS: Liz, thank you very much -- Liz George reporting from London, where the lights are back on.
Coming up next here: Democratic presidential nominee candidate Senator John Kerry of Massachusetts says he would move mountains to improve the economy if he were elected president. Senator Kerry joins us to talk about his economic plan, Howard Dean, and George W. Bush.
And Arnold Schwarzenegger takes a stand on a number of controversial issues, as the California recall campaign moves toward Election Day.
Our series of special reports this week on education in America continues. Tonight: school textbooks that are failing American students. Casey Wian reports. And Diane Ravitch, the author of "The Language Police," will be here to tell us who is deciding what your children are reading.
Stay with us.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
DOBBS: California's gubernatorial candidates on the campaign trail again today. Peter Ueberroth made his first pitch directly to California voters, Arnold Schwarzenegger, in the state's farm belt, downplaying his wild past, and Cruz Bustamante talking about high gasoline prices.
Bob Franken joins us now from Los Angeles with the very latest -- Bob.
BOB FRANKEN, CNN NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Well, let's see. Shall we talk about Peter Ueberroth and the fact that he had a town meeting today, as you pointed out, or that Governor Gray Davis was talking about the environment today, or that the lieutenant governor, the Democratic candidate Cruz Bustamante, was taking on the oil companies?
Or shall we talk about Arnold Schwarzenegger, who has ventured out of his Hollywood locale and is headed to the farm belt of California, Fresno specifically, where he spent the day so far at a charter school talking to a mostly minority school that has seen a huge jump in grades after it went to a public-chartered school. He's going to spend a little bit later of the day talking to people in peach-packing plants.
He's also going to be implored by reporters to talk to them. And they have a lot to talk about, specifically some article that appeared about 26 years ago, 1977, to be precise. It accompanied a book that came out by Arnold Schwarzenegger, all in connection with the release of the movie "Pumping Iron." Now, it really describes some risque behavior, by his own account, by Arnold Schwarzenegger. It talks about the use of marijuana and hashish.
And it also talks about some pretty wild sex, to put it bluntly. It talks about, for instance, one incident in which several of his fellow bodybuilders had group sex with a woman who was operating alone, all of that described by Arnold Schwarzenegger 26 years ago. And now that he's running for governor, he's talking about it again. The only response his campaign has allowed him to have so far has been an interview he did last night with a Sacramento radio station.
(BEGIN AUDIO CLIP)
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: There's an old 1977 interview you did with "Oui" magazine out there. And I've got to tell you, Arnold, you were having a lot more fun in 1977 than I was.
(LAUGHTER)
ARNOLD SCHWARZENEGGER (R), CALIFORNIA GUBERNATORIAL CANDIDATE: Well, you have to understand, I know exactly what you're saying.
I never lived my life to be a politician. I never lived my life to be the governor of California. Obviously, I've made statements that are ludicrous and crazy and outrageous and all those things, because that's the way I always was. I was always outrageous. Otherwise, I wouldn't have done the things that I did in my career with the body building and with show business and all those things. I was always out there.
(END AUDIO CLIP)
FRANKEN: Well, it's summer, Lou, and so that means that we are once again confronted with a story that has an awful lot of sex involved in it. Now we're going to find out whether the voters have any feelings about this one way or the other -- Lou.
DOBBS: Well, Californians have got a lot to digest over the course of time between now and the 7th of October. One of the things that appeals to me about this particular election is that you have this host of candidates running for an office that they don't even know is available. How goes the idea that the recall will actually be effective against Gray Davis?
FRANKEN: Well, Gray Davis was considered a severe underdog. He's moved up just to underdog right now in the latest polls.
And polls, by the way, are semi-reliable here, since it's such a different model than normal. He seems to have been gaining some traction. So, all of this may be just an exercise, nothing more than that. But, at the moment, there is a real hard race going on for governor. It seems to be going on mainly between Schwarzenegger and Cruz Bustamante, the Democratic alternative, while Gray Davis tries to make sure that the whole thing is irrelevant.
DOBBS: Arnold Schwarzenegger may have been, Bob, as I understand it, just thinking he left show business, is that right?
FRANKEN: Well, I think he just moved to a different branch of it. But you remember, Andy Warhol called Washington "Hollywood East."
DOBBS: And, occasionally, appropriately so.
Bob Franken, thank you very much.
California's recall fever appears to be spreading. A group of conservatives in Nevada has now launched a recall effort against Republican Governor Kenny Guinn. This group is upset about his approval of the largest tax increase in the state's history. They have 90 days to collect more than 128,000 signatures. If they do so, that would trigger a recall.
Coming up next: Senator and Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry joins us to talk about his run for the White House in 2004, his new economic plan, the war in Iraq, and Howard Dean.
And maintaining the world's best military: General David Grange joins us tonight. We'll talk about U.S. military efforts to innovate, to modernize, and to stay ahead of any potential enemy.
Harley-Davidson turns 100. Bill Tucker reports from hog headquarters in Milwaukee, Wisconsin.
Stay with us.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
DOBBS: Coming up next: Senator John Kerry today unveiled his economic plan. I'll be talking with him about that and a great deal more about his run for the White House. Senator Kerry joins us next. (COMMERCIAL BREAK)
DOBBS: Democratic presidential hopeful Senator John Kerry today outlined his plan for stimulating the economy and creating jobs. The senator talked in New Hampshire, where the latest poll shows him 21 percentage points behind leader Howard Dean.
I talked with the senator about the centerpiece of his economic plan earlier.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
SEN. JOHN KERRY (D), MASSACHUSETTS: Well, the centerpiece is fiscal responsibility and fairness to the middle class of America. We need to pull back from this precipice of deficits, where we're spending more than a billion dollars a day than we're brining into the government. And in addition to that, we've got to make our economy fair again for the average person who's working in America, Lou.
We've got to start creating jobs. And job creation will come when we push the technology curve, the science curve, and excite investment again in another round of technology advances.
DOBBS: Senator, the president, a number of others have talked about jobs, jobs, jobs. Yet I'm unaware of any public policy plan short of direct government investment that creates jobs. Explain what you could do to create jobs if you would.
KERRY: What George Bush has done by creating these very large deficits and cutting a lot of the revenue that was going to states has actually forced states to raise taxes at the wrong moment. Those state tax increases are George Bush's tax increases, and I think they're wrong for our economy right now.
Finally, let me just say I agree with you. Government isn't the principal job creator. Government creates the framework within which the private sector decides where to move capital. But that capital right now is not moving in the directions we want because there's lack of confidence and uncertainty because we haven't made sound fiscal decisions.
DOBBS: You supported the president on the issue of war against Saddam Hussein, yet you've been very critical of the president's policies since May 1st. What is it, in your judgement, that should be done to bring stability, peace to Iraq, and stability to the region?
KERRY: Lou, I think the reason I've been critical is I don't believe the president did the hard work of diplomacy to build the kind of real international coalition that reduce the risks to American soldiers, reduces their risk on a daily basis because we have other troops there sharing that risk, and reduces the cost to the American citizens and the American economy. If we had more people participating, more people who were supportive, we wouldn't be blowing the billions that we're spending every week there in order to do this alone. DOBBS: Yet, Senator, over the past few days there has been a quiet, but nonetheless powerful, seismic shock, if you will, in diplomatic reversals. That is, that the Bush administration is now seeking the support of the United Nations, is now from various quarters within the administration suggesting that the United States hand over power as quickly as possible to the Iraqis. What is your judgement on that?
KERRY: Lou, I think that's finally moving in the right direction. But I think it would be terrific to have a president of the United States who gets it right at the beginning. We shouldn't have to spend these months -- how many kids have died in the last months because the United States didn't take the time to put together the kind of coalition and have a plan for winning the peace?
Why is it that we allowed the looting of a nuclear facility immediately after we occupied Iraq? Why did we allow looting of the city? I mean, we didn't have a plan to go in and provide the kinds of services and the kind of security that is necessary to win the hearts and minds of the Iraqis and reduce the risk to American soldiers as fast as possible.
DOBBS: Senator, the latest polls show Howard Dean running well ahead of you in New Hampshire. It is certainly early. But will you be focusing more on foreign policy and your judgements on economic policy to try to diminish that lead of the former governor of Vermont?
KERRY: No. It's very, very early, Lou. I haven't even announced my candidacy yet. I'm going to be kicking off my campaign next week.
We haven't done any television. Other campaigns have been on television and spent a lot of money. We're very confident about where we are. I like the pace, and there's a long way to go over the next four-and-a-half months.
I'm very confident that as people really listen to the different programs and what we're working for and fighting for, and as they measure our character and our history and our records, I look forward to taking that out to the American people because people are going to make a judgment about who can really be president and hit the ground running right away on the critical issues that face this country. So I look forward to that over the next months. It will be a good debate.
DOBBS: Senator Kerry, we thank you very much.
KERRY: Thank you very much, Lou. Take care.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
DOBBS: And that brings us to the subject of tonight's poll. The question -- "Who is your preference among the leaders now for Democratic presidential -- the presidential nomination of the Democratic Party? "Dean, Gephardt, Kerry, or Lieberman?" Please cast your vote at cnn.com/lou. We'll have the results later in the show. The results of yesterday's poll -- the question, "Are you disappointed, like the Justice Department, that Oklahoma's attorney general filed charges against WorldCom and six of its executives?" Five percent said yes, 95 percent of you said no.
Coming up next, censorship in the schools, the content of our textbooks and what it's really teaching our students. Casey Wian will report.
Diane Ravitch, author of "The Language Police," joins us.
And then, "Grange on Point" -- transformation of the American military keeping the world's most powerful armed forces in cutting edge. David Grange joins us.
And an "American Classic" cruises into its second century. Bill Tucker reports on Harley-Davidson, the Hog at 100.
Stay with us.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
DOBBS: This week, we are focusing through our series of special reports on American education, "Making the Grade." Tonight, we take a look at school textbooks, which some educators say are too often boring, sanitized, and in some cases absolutely downright wrong.
Casey Wian reports from Los Angeles.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
CASEY WIAN, CNNfn CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): As eighth grade history teacher Brent Heath (ph) prepares for the new school year, you won't find textbooks in his classroom. Instead, he uses historical fiction, the Internet, the Library of Congress, even music to teach students.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: It's the exact same content. It's being taught in a different way.
WIAN: Hundreds of teachers nationwide use his methods. Jack Farrell (ph) still has textbooks in his high school English classes, but he doesn't like the slick, state-approved books he must use.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Because it's attractive to the eye the way TV might be, the way the Internet might be, you think the student's going to be pulled into it. But in point of fact it's very hard to negotiate logically. Text boxes, graphical organizers lots of ways that the thinking is laid out for the students and controlled for them. But if you look at this, this is a book in the real world.
WIAN: Too often, teachers say, the real world is absent from school textbooks, from racial quotas on illustrations, to sanitizing rough language in literary classics. Critics say textbooks designed to not offend also don't do much to inform. WILLIAM BENNETTA, PRES., THE TEXTBOOK LEAGUE: The books get dumber and dumber. Dumber in what they say and dumber in the sense of delivering less and less content.
WIAN: Bennetta publishes a newsletter exposing textbook mistakes.
BENNETTA: The Chinese were weaving silk and making beautiful artifacts when most Europeans were living in caves and wearing animal skins. That's what this book says. It was easy to find out that Europeans were weaving textiles somewhere between 1,500 and 2,000 years before any Chinese ever wore any silk.
WIAN (on camera): The content of textbooks is often influenced by forces that have little to do with educational merit. Special interest groups from both the left and the right exert tremendous pressure on states, school districts, and textbook publishers.
(voice-over): Publishers say they're just meeting the demands of big customers like California, Texas and other states with formal approval processes that dictate content.
STEVE DRIESLER, ASSN. OF AMERICAN PUBLISHERS: Textbooks in our public schools are provided free of charge to all students. That means they're purchased with taxpayer dollars. And so the process is open for citizen input, and that's both a blessing and in some instances perhaps a curse.
WIAN: Especially for districts or private schools that want more choice. The Catholic schools textbook project this year introduced an alternative to history books that ignore religious influences.
MICHAEL VAN HECKE, CATHOLIC SCHOOLS TEXTBOOK PROJECT: Whether you're secular or Catholic or Jewish, Muslim, it doesn't matter. The history is history. And let's tell the story.
WIAN: Casey Wian, CNN, Newbury Park, California.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
DOBBS: Diane Ravitch says textbook censorship is alive and well in this country, and her book, "The Language Police," -- Diane says censorship is a result of the publishers' desire to make money the political pressure to avoid that awful word, controversy, and to protect students from so-called offensive material.
Diane Ravitch joins us tonight. Good to have you here.
DIANE RAVITCH, AUTHOR, "THE LANGUAGE POLICE" Well, the -- thanks, Lou. It's great to be here.
I thought that was a great lead-in because it really demonstrated the issues, which is two states have a huge amount of power, Texas and California. They buy textbooks for the entire state, and the textbook publishers -- and I'm not casting blame at them -- kowtow to these two states, and whenever there are textbook hearings, the groups come out of the woodworks. They're from the left, they're from the right, and they all want the textbooks censored to avoid offensiveness.
DOBBS: There's another issue here, too. How many -- how many companies are publishing textbooks primarily in this country?
RAVITCH: Well, there are four big companies that have about 75 percent of the market. It's a huge market. It's a $4 billion market. And this very process of the states buying the textbooks has caused competition to dry up. It's caused huge mergers.
DOBBS: What we're watching here, it appears, is the homogenization of textbooks. You could travel to various school districts throughout the country 30 years ago and find a rich diversity of textbooks in the school systems. Now, with four companies producing them, the idea of competition within that is a silly concept.
RAVITCH: Well, you know, what's interesting, Lou, is that some of -- all of these companies produce more than one line of textbooks. It's a little bit like having all competing cereals but all from one company. So that when you look at the textbooks that come from four different companies they all look like peas in a pod. There's no real difference between the textbooks of company A, B, C, or D.
DOBBS: The idea of offensive to students to the point that references to God are eliminated, the suggestion that there is no such thing as interracial marriage in these textbooks. What in the world is going on?
RAVITCH: What happens is that when there are hearings, as there regularly are in Texas and California, the right-wingers come out, the left-wingers come out, the feminists come out, the people who say I represent, you know, obscure groups...
DOBBS: Every special interest in the country.
RAVTICH: Right. Every special interest. And the states say to the publishers, You know, you've got to get that out of the textbook. So they have been, for the past 25 or 30 years, sanitizing the books, removing controversy, but puffing them up with all of these graphics. And the teacher in your lead-in said very well that the books are gorgeous but the kids don't want to read them.
DOBBS: Very pretty, but what's in it?
The four publishers that dominate the market, how many of them are American companies?
RAVITCH: McGraw-Hill is the big American company. Recently, there was a French company, Vivendi, that owned a huge number of American -- of American publishing houses, and they just sold their interest in the textbook industry out. So we might yet again have two big American publishing companies. But right now there's just one, McGraw-Hill.
DOBBS: Out of the four controlling 75 percent, only one of them at this point, depending on what Vivendi does, is an American company. RAVITCH: That's correct.
DOBBS: And what is the solution here? Teachers -- we've looked at all aspects of the issues because people seem to forget -- they keep talking about pedagogy, and there's all sorts of big words and abstractions here. But effectively it's coming down to where the teacher meets his or her student in the classroom. What in the world are going to do to provide accurate textbooks, textbooks that reflect the life that these children will be leading?
RAVITCH: I think we have a real distortion in the marketplace right now, and that distortion is caused by the state governments buying the books. It's a little bit like the state government telling you what movies to see or what TV channel you should have on all the time.
I think the states should get out of there and allow a real marketplace to emerge where small publishers have a chance to compete, and teachers should be encouraged to use things other than textbooks. I think all of the really great teachers that I've met are using real novels, real historians' work...
DOBBS: Classics.
RAVITCH: ...and -- classics. And they use the textbook as a reference work. And I think we just have to change the marketplace itself by eliminating state adoption of textbooks. That's the point where political negotiations begin and groups come in and say we don't want evolution in the science books. We don't want this representation in the history books. And when you realize that your history books and your science books and your literature books are not the result of experts sitting down and making it a wise decision, but of political pressure groups coming to the state textbook hearings, this is wrong.
DOBBS: There's much wrong here. And the sad part is there are so many people, great people, trying to do the right thing for these students. But people have simply got to wake up.
RAVITCH: Absolutely.
DOBBS: Diane Ravitch, thanks very much for being with us.
RAVITCH: Thank you, Lou.
DOBBS: Look forward to seeing you soon.
Today marks the 40th anniversary of Martin Luther King, Jr.'s famous "I have a dream" speech. Tonight's thought celebrates Dr. King's lasting contribution to this country's civil rights movement: "If a man," he said, "hasn't discovered something he will die for, he isn't fit to live." That from Dr. Martin Luther King.
Coming up next, the future of the U.S. military. How to ensure constant innovation and technological advancement. General David Grange "On Point" next. Stay with us.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
DOBBS: In tonight's "Grange On Point," General David Grange takes a look at the transformation of this country's armed forces. General Grange says making changes in the military is essential. But the transformation is made difficult when our forces are involved in major fights around the world.
General David Grange joins us tonight from Oak Brook, Illinois.
General, good to have you with us.
This army, this military doing an incredible job. Why do we need to transform it?
BRIG. GEN. DAVID GRANGE (RET.), U.S. ARMY: Well, they're doing a magnificent job, as you stated, Lou. But transformation is a continuous process that all militaries must go through.
The United States army, our military's has done it for 228 years. It's ongoing. And if you don't do it, then the enemy gets ahead because every time you have an advantage a counteraction is created by your adversary to negate that advantage and the process starts again.
And it's in all domains. It's on leadership, it's on training, it's on equipment. All domains involved in the military.
DOBBS: You mentioned equipment. And obviously, some of this has to do with technology, and the most advanced technology being applied by any country in the world to its military. Is our -- in your judgment, is our military technology sufficient. Is it adequate?
GRANGE: Our -- our technology is better than any in the world. It gives us an advantage.
But technology only enhances the human being. And the human being makes any system strong or weak. It's the weakest link or the strongest link in any system. And so technology has to enhance the trooper, the sailor, the airman, the Marine in order to be effective. It's not a panacea to solve any kind of threat or defeat any type of enemy, especially low-tech enemies like guerrillas and terrorists. They're very hard to counter with just high technology alone.
DOBBS: Of the issues in transformation, of course, I would have to imagine the greatest question is, "What are we transforming to?" What will this modern U.S. military look like in 10, 12 years? Those are decisions. We're looking at a picture as we're discussing this, Dave, of the Osprey, a highly controversial program. The money that we're investing, the programs that are going to be funded, the strategies that will be employed, that's a very difficult choice to make. How is that -- how is that being accomplished now?
GRANGE: It's all about priorities. It's all about the proper analysis of current ongoing operations, whether it be peacekeeping or combat. And what the future may look like across the second and third ridgeline, across the hill, what's over there, what's going to happen. And so you have to think ahead in a way that your assurances are going to be met.
Take the Osprey. The Marines are flying helicopters that are older than the people that fly them. They need a new piece of equipment. They need a new piece of equipment that has a speed, a mobility to get somewhere quickly, and then can act like a helicopter once it gets into the theater of operations.
And so it's all about how you man a force, how you organize a force, how you equip it -- equip it, the type of training that the forces go through to meet the complex environments, whether it be a city or a jungle, and be -- have the agility to bounce back and forth between peacekeeping and war and those other type of demands placed on our military today.
DOBBS: The issues that you're talking about here tonight are -- resonate as the issues that Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld broached upon taking office as secretary of defense, obviously before September 11. A lot of thinking has changed in that time. General Grange is going to focus on these issues in the weeks and days ahead to tell us what he thinks this military should look like as we move further into this new millennium.
Dave, thank you very much. General David Grange. We appreciate it, as always.
GRANGE: My pleasure, Lou.
Tonight's quote comes from Baghdad, where the commander of U.S. forces in Iraq said he would welcome more international troops but he stressed he needs more than manpower, saying, "Putting more soldiers on the ground is not going to solve the problem when I don't have the intelligence to act on it." That from Lieutenant General Ricardo Sanchez.
And a reminder, our poll question tonight.: "Who is your preference now amongst the leaders for the Democratic presidential nomination? Dean, Gephardt, Kerry, or Lieberman?" Please cast your vote at cnn.com/lou. We'll have the results coming up and of course, you'll be able to vote over the next 23 hours.
Up next here, an "American Classic" -- living high on the Hog for a century. Bill Tucker reports from Harley-Davidson headquarters in Milwaukee, Wisconsin.
And an American legend takes on the younger generation tonight as we look at these live pictures of New York's Radio City Music Hall. Crowds gathering for the 20th Annual MTV Video Music Awards. Johnny Cash, a major contender.
Stay with us.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK) DOBBS: The MTv Video Awards (sic) program begins here in New York in just over an hour. And what you're looking at now is a shot of Radio City Music Hall. That's where the awards show is being held and broadcast from. Typically, those awards focus on the youth culture of rock and roll and pop music but tonight an old man just may steal the show, but a great old man.
Legendary country singer, 71-year-old Johnny Cash. The video of his song "Hurt" has been nominated for six awards, including video of the year. Cash had hoped to attend tonight's ceremonies but has been hospitalized with a stomach ailment.
Three hundred thousand people and their motorcycles today gathered in Wisconsin to celebrate the 100th birthday of Harley- Davidson. But it's not just a celebration of the motorcycle, of course, it's also a classic American experience.
Bill Tucker reports from Milwaukee.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
(MUSIC)
BILL TUCKER, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Long before Peter Fonda hit the road on his Harley in "Easy Rider" the Harley was more than just a motorcycle. It's the romance, the open road rolled up with a sense of anticipated adventure.
FRANK SAVAGE, HARLEY-DAVIDSON OWNER: It's kind of like caffeine, you get off the bike and you're feeling a little different than if you drove in on a car.
MITZ KOHNKE, HARLEY-DAVIDSON EMPLOYEE: Hey, if we had to explain, you wouldn't understand. It's just the freedom.
MARTIN SNODGRASS, HARLEY-DAVIDSON OWNER: It's American-made bike, and it's just -- it just captures everything that's great about America.
TUCKER: American as denim and rock and roll. Elvis rode a Harley.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Hey, Johnny, what are you rebelling against?
MARLON BRANDO, ACTOR: What have you got?
TUCKER: Marlon Brando rode a Harley in the motorcycle outlaw lure in "The Wild One." Steve McQueen fled the Nazis, jumped the barbed wire in "The Great Escape," riding a Harley.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: It's a bit of a cult thing. To me it's just a great motorcycle to ride. My wife rides her own. We've been riding motorcycles for years. I've only ever owned one Harley. I've had it since 1992. TUCKER: Some days it seems everybody owns a Harley. But as popular as the bike is, a lot more people wear a Harley than ride a Harley.
Harley has defined motorcycle apparel since 1912. That leather jacket Brando wore in "The Wild One," a Harley jacket. Harley dealerships don't just sell motorcycles. They sell a lifestyle for the whole family.
GEORGE STANELY, HARLEY-DAVIDSON EMPLOYEE: If you own a Harley- Davidson, you know the passion.
TUCKER: Harley-Davidson's come a long way from the shed where the first one was built. Along the ride it's been the bike of outlaws and now it's the bike of politicians. The one they most love to use to shine up their images by visiting a Harley plant or even riding to a campaign rally. So what is it that makes the machine so special?
MICHAEL KEEFE, DIRECTOR HOG: It's the people that ride them that makes the difference. I've been, you know, so lucky to be able to ride Harley-Davidsons since 1967, and everybody I know with the exception of my brother and a friend of mine I've known since second grade, I've met from the saddle of a Harley-Davidson.
TUCKER: Bill Tucker, CNN, Milwaukee.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
DOBBS: When we continue, we'll have the results of tonight's poll. Also, we'll look at some of your thoughts on the idea of a uniform national curriculum.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
DOBBS: Now the results of our poll tonight. The question, who is your preference now amongst the leaders for the Democratic presidential nomination? Sixty percent of you said Dean, 9 percent said Gephardt, 25 percent Kerry, 7 percent Lieberman. Well, you can continue to vote on the question through the next 23 hours.
On Wall Street today, stocks managed a late-day rally. The Dow up more than 40 points. The Nasdaq added 18. The S&P up 6.
Christine Romans is here now with the market for us. A pretty good day. The summer rally is arriving.
CHRISTINE ROMANS, CNN FINANCIAL CORRESPONDENT: Well, the summer -- it doesn't feel like much, but it's been four days in a row now for the S&P to be higher, and the Nasdaq hit a new 16-month high today. So much for the summer doldrums, right?
More evidence of economic recovery, that helped. The economy grew at 3.1 percent in the second quarter. The fastest growth in more than a year. And weekly jobless claims rose, but remained below 400,000 for the fifth week in a row, continuing claims also below 400,000, that's important. Meanwhile, the stock market optimism continues. 56 percent of newsletter writers surveyed are bullish on stocks, 19 percent are bearish. 79 percent of the stocks listed at the New York Stock Exchange are trading above their ten-week moving average. That's down from about 82 percent last week, but still pretty good. And Sara Lee was the latest company to raise its dividend. Merrill Lynch expects an S&P 500 dividend yield by the end of the year, 1.85 percent. That's compared with about 1.7 percent now.
Interestingly, Lou, watching these dividend-paying stocks, as a group they're up 11 percent this year, lagging the overall market. But a lot of analysts continue to recommend this group because of the favorable tax situation. They expect a lot more companies to continue to raise their dividends.
DOBBS: That's contrary to what most people thinking, those non- dividend paying stocks are outperforming them.
ROMANS: Almost by two to one.
DOBBS: Well, we didn't talk about volume.
ROMANS: About a billion shares. You can tell when I don't talk about volume that's how quiet it is. A lot of people are betting tomorrow will be the lightest trading day of the year.
DOBBS: Well, that's going to be interesting. It's good to know they'll be there to do the trading in advance of this holiday weekend. Thanks a lot, Christine. Christine Romans.
Taking a look now at some of your thoughts, Joy Ortega of Independence, Kansas, wrote in about our face-off last night on a uniform national curriculum for every school in the country saying, "I am a freshmen in college studying to be a high school teacher. Within 5 years I hope to have a class of my own and if we have a national curriculum it will affect how I will have to teach my students. Will we be so wrapped up in getting to get students to pass a national standards test that we don't teach them the information they need?"
Bill Young of South Hampton, New York, "Can you please explain to me how we can have high national educational standards when we have some schools with a computer at every desk while others don't even have books in the library?"
Anna of Morristown, New Jersey about the proposed cuts in funding for the health care of our veterans, "I firmly believe that more money needs to be spent on improvements, perhaps all our congressmen, senators and their families should be required to receive their medical care at the local VA. I certain the issue of cut backs would not even be on the table".
As always, we love hearing from you. E-mail us at loudobbs@CNN.com. And that's our show for tonight. Thanks for being with us.
Tomorrow in our series of Special Reports on America's education we look at teachers. Does the training fit the job? Are they doing the job? And the editors of "Forbes," Fortune" and "Businessweek" join us in our weekly editors' circle. Please join us.
For all of us here, good night from New York.
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