October 17, 2003

Announcer: From our nation's capital, this is WASHINGTON WEEK. And now here's moderator Gwen Ifill.

GWEN IFILL, host: The United Nations gives the president what he wants; the Senate takes some of it away.

It's all in the numbers. At the United Nations, the magic number was 15 as the UN Security Council voted unanimously to help stabilize Iraq. But in the Senate last night...

Senator EDWARD KENNEDY (Democrat, Massachusetts): The president's war has been revealed as mindless, needless, senseless, reckless.

IFILL: ...the number was 51. That was the number of Democrats and Republicans who rejected a White House request for $20 billion in outright aid for Iraq.

On the campaign trail, the numbers were all about who could raise how much money in how short a time. The winners so far? Dean, Kerry, Clark and, far out ahead, George W. Bush.

All this while the Supreme Court launches a new term, stepping into and out of debates on the Pledge of Allegiance and medical marijuana, and there's more to come.

Covering these stories this week: Barbara Slavin of USA Today, Alan Murray of CNBC, Jeanne Cummings of The Wall Street Journal and Linda Greenhouse of The New York Times.

Announcer: Here again is moderator Gwen Ifill.

IFILL: Good evening.

Analysis: What role other countries and American taxpayers should now play in Iraq

GWEN IFILL, host: Once again, Iraq is front and center. Today, the number of American troops killed since hostilities were declared over passed 100; this as the president's supporters, opponents and those in between debated the role other countries and American taxpayers should now play. At the United Nations, the US won the day as every member of the Security Council agreed to a new resolution endorsing the creation of a multinational force.

Secretary-General KOFI ANNAN (United Nations): (From Thursday) The process has been difficult, but the outcome is a clear demonstration of the will of all the members of the Security Council to place the interests of the Iraqi people above all other considerations.

IFILL: The process has been difficult for a reason, and it's still not clear what practical effect the new resolution will have, but it's still a change in attitude at the UN.

The question is: Why, Barbara?

Ms. BARBARA SLAVIN (USA Today): Well, I guess the reason is that this resolution is not quite such a big deal as the administration would like you to believe. It's not like the resolution we had before the war when France led the opposition, when the United States had to pull the resolution at the last minute. This is not a matter of war and peace. This is a matter of trying to rearrange the situation that we have now in Iraq. So the administration was able to get a unanimous vote. Even Syria signed on. But the reason is that everybody had to compromise a little bit on this resolution, including the administration.

IFILL: But if the administration wins a fight, even if it's a symbolic fight which doesn't have a lot of practical effect which we could talk about in a moment, isn't it still a win? Because if the president had lost this, we would be sitting here saying, `What a big setback.'

Ms. SLAVIN: Yeah, I think if he'd lost or if they had had to pull the resolution or if they'd only gotten nine votes, that would have been a tremendous embarrassment, especially with the president now overseas, Secretary of State Colin Powell also overseas looking for more support. But, I mean, when you look at the actual resolution, there isn't really much in it. The Europeans wanted the United States to set a deadline for transferring power from the US-led Coalition Authority to Iraqis. That's not there. What you have is a deadline for a deadline. You have a date of December 15th by which time the Iraqi Provisional Council, which was set up by the United States, has to put forth a plan for writing a constitution and holding elections. The US troops in Iraq now become a multinational force, at least in name, but, in fact, it's still largely a US-run operation.

Ms. JEANNE CUMMINGS (The Wall Street Journal): Barbara, one--one thing that I found kind of interesting was the vote from Syria. Why would they support it? I mean, it's one thing for France and Germany to step out of the way and not pick another fight, but why Syria?

Ms. SLAVIN: I think Syria didn't want to be left out. The way the US approached it, they kind of peeled the onion. First, they got the Chinese to agree. Then they got the Russians. And once the Russians had agreed, that sort of isolated Germany and France. The Germans sort of moved over and finally the French had nowhere to go but be part of it. And then Syria looked around and it was all alone, and I think it might have had a slight impact. In fact, the House of Representatives voted the night before the vote in favor of something called the Syria Accountability Act which gives the president the right to impose new sanctions on Syria. So...

Mr. ALAN MURRAY (CNBC): Where was...

Ms. SLAVIN: ...they don't want to make the United States angry right now.

Mr. MURRAY: Where was Kofi Annan in all of this? He had made some pretty critical comments...

Ms. SLAVIN: Yeah.

Mr. MURRAY: ...about the United States.

Ms. SLAVIN: He had, and--and interestingly enough, he really--the US wanted a larger role for the UN, said it wanted a larger role for the UN, but they had to change the resolution to make it easier for Kofi not to have a larger role for the UN. As you recall in August, there was a terrible bombing at UN headquarters in Baghdad. Twenty-three people were killed. So the resolution now says that Kofi Annan can send people back as circumstances permit. So he's not forced to send a huge staff back to Iraq while security remains such an issue.

Ms. LINDA GREENHOUSE (The New York Times): Barbara, since th--since this resolution doesn't require anybody really to do anything, to go out on any kind of limb, to walk any plank, is it too cynical to say it's just really a fig leaf that is temporarily going to dissolve?

Ms. SLAVIN: Well, you know, I think--a lot of the analysts said that it really had more to do with domestic politics, that Bush wanted to get the UN votes so then he could go to the Hill and insist on his $87 billion. So I think it has some symbolic effect. It certainly was a boost for Colin Powell, who has been looking for a few victories lately.

IFILL: Alan.

Ms. SLAVIN: And it was a nice gift to him before he left on the trip.

Mr. MURRAY: It also clears the way for--for multilateral groups like the World Bank to start giving money to Iraq, which is a big thing, isn't it?

Ms. SLAVIN: Again, when you look at the numbers, we're talking about a few billion from the rest of the world and $20 billion from the United States.

IFILL: So--so when Colin Powell, whose victory you just said this is partly, goes to this donors conference in Madrid next--Next week?--this week he's on his way there, I guess, and says, `Aha, we have support from the UN, we have support from the Congress,' we'll talk about in a moment, does that mean that all of a sudden the wallets are open?

Ms. SLAVIN: I don't think so. I mean, the figures we've got so far--Japan is the biggest one. They've got $1.5 billion that they're going to promise. They've already announced that. The European Union is only giving something like $230 million. You'll get a little more from Britain, a little more from Spain, but it's--it's really paltry compared to what Americans are being asked to contribute.

IFILL: So bottom line, it's better to have the resolution than not have it, but it doesn't fundamentally change where the--where the US stands right now in...

Ms. SLAVIN: No, it doesn't.

IFILL: ...in the reconstruction project.

Ms. SLAVIN: It does not.

IFILL: OK. Thank you, Barbara.

Analysis: Approval of $87 billion in additional spending for rebuilding Iraq and Afghanistan

GWEN IFILL, host: Well, the v--victories might be symbolic, but they're still victories, and defeats are always defeats. Even though both chambers of Congress have now approved in principle the president's $87 billion request for money to rebuild Iraq, the House and the Senate are now trying to sort out a fundamental disagreement over how much of that money should eventually be repaid.

Representative SUE MYRICK (Republican, North Carolina): (From Thursday) I come from a district where there's been a great deal of hardship lately, a lot of job loss, and my people, frankly, don't understand why this can't be a loan instead of a grant. And a lot of them say to me, `This just doesn't make any sense. Iraq has all that oil.'

IFILL: Congresswoman Sue Myrick was on the losing side in the House, but her argument won the day in the Senate, at least last night. Alan Murray is here to tell us why.

Mr. ALAN MURRAY (CNBC): Well, it's pretty significant. You have to say, first of all, that these are victories for the president. I mean, both the House and the Senate passed his $87 billion spending bill. In the Senate, it was an 87-to-12 vote. In the House, it was a 3-to-1 vote. So you have to chalk those up as significant victories.

However, there was this itch in the Senate, as you said. A--a number of senators said, `We want at least half of the money going for Iraqi reconstruction to be a loan, not a grant.' Now the White House was totally opposed to this. They wanted it to be a grant because they said Iraq needed the money. They said if you made it a loan, it would feed this argument in the Arab world that this was really all about oil the end of the day because it would be paid back with oil revenues. And they s--wanted it to be a grant because they thought that would make it easier when they go to this donors conference next week to get other countries to give even small amounts--to give what small amounts they were--were going to give.

But you had eight Republicans who rebelled from the White House, joined up with Democrats and...

IFILL: In the Senate.

Mr. MURRAY: ...in the Senate and supported this notion because they felt like American taxpayers shouldn't have to bear the cost of rebuilding a country that has the resources in the long run to pay for its own reconstruction.

IFILL: And why is that not an argument that wins the day? I mean, I assume that these senators were doing this in part because they're hearing from their constituents at home that they have been--they were listening...

Mr. MURRAY: Sure.

IFILL: ...when they heard the administration say...

Mr. MURRAY: Well, it's--it's...

IFILL: ...Iraq has a lot of oil.

Mr. MURRAY: ...a powerful argument. Look, no one in--or there were few people in the House or the Senate who wanted to stop this bill altogether, although some of the Democratic presidential candidates did vote against it complete--but few really wanted to stop it. They wanted the money to get to the troops, and they want us to--to deal--to reconstruct Iraq in a way that makes what we've done over there look good.

But the argument that it could be done as a loan was a pretty powerful one to, I think, majorities in both Houses. However, the White House opposed it, the leadership opposed it, and I think at the end of the day, it's not going to happen. I mean, I talked...

Ms. JEANNE CUMMINGS (The Wall Street Journal): And...

Mr. MURRAY: ...I talked to two of those Republican senators today who insisted on the loan. I said, `If this comes out of a conference committee,' 'cause they have to--the House and the Senate have to work out their differences in a conference committee, `that this comes out of a conference committee without your provision, will you vote for it?' Both of them said, `Yes, we will vote for it.'

Ms. CUMMINGS: Alan, one of the things I found intriguing is that the opposition to this--to grants didn't just come from Democrats or even moderate Republicans. It came from conservative...

Mr. MURRAY: Right.

Ms. CUMMINGS: ...Republicans as well.

Mr. MURRAY: Sam Brownback of Kansas...

Ms. CUMMINGS: And...

Mr. MURRAY: ...Lindsey Graham of South Carolina.

Ms. CUMMINGS: ...Zach Wamp and Sue Myrick. So what politically--how does this--how does this play out if even the conservative wing of his own party is--is nervous that they can't go home to their voters and justify these huge...

Mr. MURRAY: Well, I--I think the...

Ms. CUMMINGS: ...these huge grants?

Mr. MURRAY: I think these--as you know, the $87 billion has been the thing that has really grabbed Americans' attention and, in some ways, focused some opposition to what the president is doing. Most polls show that a majority of people oppose using $87 billion of taxpayers' money to fund this, but the f--the president feels quite strongly that having removed Saddam Hussein from power, we've got to finish the job. We can't walk out of there and leave Iraq in a mess.

Ms. CUMMINGS: But...

Mr. MURRAY: And to do that right, it takes money.

Ms. CUMMINGS: ...but they're not saying, `Walk out.' They're saying, `Just don't do it for free.'

Mr. MURRAY: They're saying, `Don't do it for free,' and the argument that the White House is making is you can--you don't want to saddle Iraq right now, when its oil-producing capacity is low, with more loans. They've got all these old loans that they already have to deal with.

Ms. BARBARA SLAVIN (USA Today): Yeah, Alan, isn't that an issue? I mean, they've got $200 billion in debt already, and I think one of the things that the Senate wanted--they wanted to make sure that we weren't going to be giving them money that they would then turn around and use to pay the...

Mr. MURRAY: It was a big issue.

Ms. SLAVIN: ...French and the Russians...

Mr. MURRAY: It was a big issue.

Ms. SLAVIN: ...and so on, you know?

Mr. MURRAY: Absolutely, because one of the things a lot of these people in Congress were--were saying was, `Look, if we give this money as grants, and then they start producing oil again, if they use that money to pay off these old debts to Russia and France, the American taxpayer is getting the shaft.' Now that's not what the administration wants. The administration wants France and Russia to--to renegotiate these steps because before the war they weren't ever going to be paid anyway. It was worthless.

Ms. SLAVIN: Wasn't there a provision--something like 90 percent of the debt has to be forgiven or else, you know...

Mr. MURRAY: That's what the Senate provision said.

Ms. SLAVIN: Yeah.

Mr. MURRAY: What they said was, `If France and Russia and the others who have old debts to Iraq will forgive 90 percent of them, then we'll make this a grant instead of a loan,' but again, I talked to the senators who wrote that provision, and they said they don't really expect France and Russia to do that.

IFILL: Linda?

Ms. LINDA GREENHOUSE (The New York Times): Alan, if it's so clear that the conference is going to drop the loan provision, which, after all, was only $10 billion out of the $87 billion, was the fixing from the beginning, were these senators enabled to vote for the loan in the knowledge that--that would play back home, that at the end of the day it really was a lo...

Mr. MURRAY: I think there's a little bit of that. I think--even with some of the people who voted against it. I mean, I talked to Senator John Kerry, who's the Democratic presidential candidate--voted against it, but if you ask him, `Did you want it to die?' he'd say, `No. No, I want our troops to get the money.' So a lot of this was sort of symbolic protest of the way that some of this has been conducted.

Analysis: Presidential fund-raising

GWEN IFILL, host: Wel--well, as you say, Alan, the Democrats running for president are the ones who have been leading the fight, the criticism on Iraq, but that's not all they've been doing. Along with President Bush, they've also been raising tons of money. Howard Dean led the pack, raising close to $15 million during the last three months, Wesley Clark, more than $3 million in just three weeks, while President Bush, best of them all, adding--adding $50 million to his campaign account.

But we decided to look a little more closely at what the candidates spent and how much they have left. Among the best financed Democrats, Howard Dean has spent nearly $13 million and has about $12 million left. John Kerry has spent that $12 million and has about $8 million still in the bank. And Richard Gephardt has spent nearly $8 million, has about $6 million left. By contrast, President Bush, who will have no primary opponent, has spent more than $14 million so far and has $70 million on hand.

IFILL: So what's more telling, the amount raised, the amount spent or none of the above, Jeanne?

Ms. JEANNE CUMMINGS (The Wall Street Journal): It's actually a combination of the two: How much have they got left? How much is left in the bank account? Do they have enough money to make it now to January when some taxpayer matching funds will give an infusion to their campaigns? That's really what's important right now. It's called cash on hand.

And a good example is Gore in 2000. In this quarter, this was a time his campaign had to slash their operating expenses. They told campaign staff they had to share hotel rooms. The vice president was told he couldn't use the helicopter anymore, and Tipper was told she's flying Southwest. They had to do it because expenses go up now rapidly in this last quarter as they expand their base operations and field operations and their advertising budgets, and it's much harder to bring in new money because of the holiday season.

And so here's an--an example of--of how it might--how it's working out in one campaign. If you look at the Kerry campaign, he spent $12 million in the last quarter--this third quarter, that's about $4 million a month. Well, Kerry has $8 million left and three months to go to January. And so it may be that the Kerry campaign winds up having to make the same kind of operational, expensive, tough, you know, belt...

IFILL: Like belt-tightening.

Ms. CUMMINGS: Yeah, thank you. These are decisions that the Gore campaign had to make.

Mr. ALAN MURRAY (CNBC): Well, some...

Ms. LINDA GREENHOUSE (The New York Times): Do you...

Mr. MURRAY: I'm sorry. Go ahead.

Ms. GREENHOUSE: Are there any of these candidates who--whose balance sheet looks so weak that they might have to drop out before January?

Ms. CUMMINGS: Well, there are some that are weak. I think if we look at the major candidates only, I think Lieberman's the weakest in the positioning, but I have a feeling--and I--I think it's true--none of them will drop out over this like Bob Graham had to do. Bob Graham was--ha--only raised, like, $1 1/2 million. He was extraordinarily weak.

Lieberman still has $4 million in the bank, and so he may have to make some big budget cuts. He could also borrow off of the money that's expected to come in in January--to get him through to January because they are--I think they've all reached a point now, they're almost there. They want to go through--they want to go through New Hampshire and Iowa. They all remember the McCain miracle. He beats Bush in New Hampshire and $2 million rolls in overnight. Hey, maybe that'll happen to them.

IFILL: And--and John McCain...

Mr. MURRAY: But the...

IFILL: ...had said--said, `By the way, I lost.'

Ms. CUMMINGS: Yeah.

IFILL: Yeah.

Mr. MURRAY: But the--the amazing story is a story you wrote in The Wall Street Journal this week about Howard Dean bringing in these contributions. Now it's not much compared to the president, but Howard Dean isn't president, you know, and he's bringing in all these contributions, many of them small contributions, the kind of fund-raising that people said wasn't possible a year or two ago. What--what--what's going on there?

Ms. CUMMINGS: Well, Dean has--is rewriting the way cam--that you finance campaigns as we speak. His use of the Internet, the energy he has on the Internet, his interaction with his supporters on the Internet, they're all new tactics that will be employed in years to come; and already the presidential candidates, the other ones, are trying to mimic him this season, none with this much success. There's something special about Dean's relationship with his supporters, but people are going to try.

Now the--there are a couple of things about Dean that are important. First of all, as they go, he has the most cash on hand of the Democrats, $12 million. It puts him in the strongest position. Most importantly, because of that Internet phenomenon, he can raise money better than the rest of them. And when you compare him to the president, he has almost matched Bush's number of donors, 260,000 or so, but most of Bush's have maxed out. Only 1 percent of Dean's have maxed out. He can keep going back to those donors and asking a little more an--a little more and they could create a financial lifeline to take him all the way through to next summer's convention.

Ms. BARBARA SLAVIN (USA Today): You mentioned Bush. He has all this cash and it's still so early. He faces no opponents in any primaries. What is he spending his money on?

Ms. CUMMINGS: Well, it's interesting. The--the Bush operation has decided they are going to build an unprecedented ground-up grassroots operation across the country that would be similar to and try to match what the DNC used to do, the Democrats used to do, with their labor allies. Now this tells us a lot about their lack of confidence in their business allies' ability to do real grassroots voter mobilization. So they're just going to do it themselves, and they're not going to do it on the cheap.

Now part of his spending--he's the biggest spender with around $14 million--is that he's starting from ground up. So they're building everything. So he went from a media budget of zero to a million. So he's just starting.

IFILL: And he doesn't have to--he's not relying on anybody else to do this kind of gra--this groundbreaking work for him. So he's got to raise all the money for that as well.

Ms. CUMMINGS: He's going to buy the best. He's going to hire the best. He's not going to do it on the cheap. They won't throw money around, but they're not--but they're going to have the best operation they can afford, and they have a lot of money.

IFILL: Oh, this is going to be good and expensive. Thank you, Jeanne.

Analysis: Supreme Court issues

GWEN IFILL, host: Now over to the Supreme Court. The beginning of what could be a dramatic new term. The court stepped out of a fight over medical marijuana but into the fight over the constitutionality of the Pledge of Allegiance. At issue: The phrase, `One nation under God.'

Another hot-button case for you, Linda.

Ms. LINDA GREENHOUSE (The New York Times): Yeah, a lot of people thought the court, after the amazing term they had last year between affirmative action, gay rights and so on, would like to take a breather this term, and that's not the case. And, you know, it's interesting, the court deals with a lot of cases, obviously, that matter a great deal to people--the allocation of public resources or, you know, interactions between citizens and the police, really the bread and butter--butter of--of civic life, but it's a case like this that has great symbolic--we've been talking a lot about symbolism tonight, the great symbolic importance that really sort of gets the public's goat. The--the decision out of the appeals court in San Francisco back about 15 months ago that said--first--first, the cou--the appeals court said, `The "one nation under God" made the whole pledge unconstitutional.' That really got people's attention. They issued a subsequent opinion, which is the only opinion that the Supreme Court is going to review, that limited the holding to the public schools and said that for teachers to lead students i--public school students in the pledge was unconstitutional, was a violation of separation of church and state.

Mr. ALAN MURRAY (CNBC): Linda, the r--the remarkable thing about that story to me is that one--one of the justices, Justice Scalia, has recused himself, and in a court that, as you know better than any of us, decides so many of these cases on 5-4 decisions could make all the difference in the world.

Ms. GREENHOUSE: Yeah, very interesting. Mr. Newdow, the plaintiff in this case, the--the atheist father who--who brought the lawsuit, moved to have Justice Scalia disqualify himself on the basis of a speech that Justice Scalia gave back in the winter before the case was at the Supreme Court but after it had been decided by the lower court in which Scalia basically said, `You know, the country's on the wrong track with respect to church and state,' and this decision is an example of that.

Now this told us nothing about Justice Scalia's thinking on church and state that we didn't already know. He's made this abundantly clear in his opinion. So it wasn't some, you know, startling revelation, but it did go, I'd say, a millimeter over the line. A judge is not supposed to express views that indicate clearly that he or she has--has decided the merits of the case. And so to everybody's surprise, without explaining himself--he didn't say, `I'm doing this because,' he simply took himself out of the case. And, of course, that does raise the prospect of a 4-to-4 tie. And in the Supreme Court, tie favors the lower court opinion. It's an automatic affirmance of the lower court. So we'll have to see.

Ms. JEANNE CUMMINGS (The Wall Street Journal): Where did--`under God' is a fairly new expression. What--why was it inserted? When was it inserted? You know, what...

Ms. GREENHOUSE: It was inserted in 1954...

Ms. CUMMINGS: ...give us the history.

Ms. GREENHOUSE: ...and I probably shouldn't admit this in this group, but I actually remember this. I was in first grade at the time. I was very confused by it because having laboriously learned the Pledge without `under God,' all of a sudden, `under God' came in; it was a federal law. And I didn't realize at the time that I had become a foot soldier in the war against Godless communism. That's what it really was about.

Unidentified Panelist: That's amazing.

Ms. BARBARA SLAVIN (USA Today): That was the reason.

Mr. MURRAY: But...

Ms. GREENHOUSE: It's a political, you know, way of distinguishing--it was a Cold War rule, basically.

Ms. SLAVIN: Sure, yeah.

Mr. MURRAY: But there were plenty of other places in civic life, on the currency, on various pledges, where references to God could be found.

Ms. GREENHOUSE: Oh, for sure, in the Supreme Court itself. `God, save the United States and this honorable court' is how every court session starts. You know, there's--there's two lines of cases here that--that really matter. One is prayer in schools. You know, can you pray in the classroom? No. Can you pray at the Friday night football game in high school? No. Can you pray at high-school graduation? No. I mean, these are Supreme Court decisions. That's one line of cases, prayer.

Then there's a whole other line that some people refer to as ceremonial deism. You know, on the coin--the court hasn't actually dealt with on the coins but, you know, where the invocation of God's name is so casual and attenuated--the school board here defends it, saying, `This isn't religion. This is patriotism,' which, of course, is a problem for some religious people who think that, you know, God is--talking about God is--is religion.

IFILL: But this is not going to be the onl--the one big th--the only thing, and we haven't got a lot of time...

Ms. GREENHOUSE: Right.

IFILL: ...this isn't going to be the one thing that the court's going to talk about this session?

Ms. GREENHOUSE: Oh, no...

IFILL: Other big deals.

Ms. GREENHOUSE: ...no, no. They've already agreed to--to take about 60 cases. It's a--may not be the term of the dimension of last year, but it's a pretty interesting term. They've got--one--one of my favorite cases is the--case on the constitutionality of political gerrymandering, very timely. It's a case from Pennsylvania, but it--it relates very much to what's going on in Texas.

IFILL: Right.

Ms. GREENHOUSE: At what point does an overpolitical gerrymander become unconstitutional?

Ms. SLAVIN: There's...

Ms. GREENHOUSE: That's one issue.

Ms. SLAVIN: There's another cultural issue as well--Isn't there?--having to do with medical marijuana.

Ms. GREENHOUSE: Well, the court didn't take this case about the extent to which the federal regulators could go after doctors who recommend to patients that they use marijuana for...

IFILL: Why not?

Ms. GREENHOUSE: ...medical purposes. Why didn't the court take it?

IFILL: Briefly.

Ms. GREENHOUSE: I think--I think--I think the court thought that it was decided correctly in the lower court where the lower court said, `You've got to leave the doctors alone.'

IFILL: OK. Thank you, Linda. That's another free-speech issue. This time, the court stayed out of it. Thanks, everybody.

GWEN IFILL, host: We're going to leave it there for now. But if you're hungry for more, just go to the Web for our WASHINGTON WEEK Web cast where every week we answer viewers' questions honestly. Find us at pbs.org and keep track of daily developments on "The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer" until we see you again next week on WASHINGTON WEEK. Good night.

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