May 21, 2004

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

GWEN IFILL, host: In the political soup tonight, developments in Iraq, on the economy and on gay marriage. Six weeks until the political handover in Iraq, and nothing is certain. A member of the Iraqi Governing Council is assassinated, another falls out of US favor. Even Bush loyalists are chafing at the bit.

Sen. George Voinovich (R-Ohio): People ask me what's going to happen at the--at--you know, come July 1st, and I--I just tell them it's going to be a jump ball.

IFILL: Another jump ball, growing fallout over new evidence of US abuse of Iraqi prisoners. The images just keep coming. And amid courts-martial and investigations, the search heats up for who approved it, as a top general admits the scope of the problem.

General JOHN ABIZAID (Commander, US Central Command): There are so many things that are out there that aren't right in the way that we operate for this war.

IFILL: If you've filled 'er up lately, you know why gas prices are making headlines, too. Does the administration have a plan for bringing them back down?

Massachusetts minister: I now pronounce you fully and legally married.

IFILL: And love is in the air as same-sex couples rush to marry legally in Massachusetts. So what does the senator from Massachusetts, who also happens to be the Democratic presidential nominee, have to say about that?

Covering those stories tonight, Doyle McManus of the Los Angeles Times, Michael Duffy of Time magazine, Jeffrey Birnbaum of The Washington Post and Gloria Borger of US News and CNBC.

Announcer: Here again is moderator Gwen Ifill.

IFILL: Good evening.

Analysis: Ongoing problems in the Iraq War

GWEN IFILL, host: Has the planning gone awry in Iraq, or is it that the plan was never very good in the first place? Those are the questions being posed this week as progress is obscured by confusion on the ground and disgust at home over US interrogation practices. General John Abizaid, the top US commander in the region, laid out the challenges to Congress this week.

General JOHN ABIZAID (Commander, US Central Command): (From Wednesday) While we can't be defeated militarily, we are not going to win this thing militarily alone. We have to get everything together: economics, politics, intelligence. You name it; whether it be information, it's all got to come together in a synchronized fashion that allows us to do this very, very important task. And it's really one of the hardest things that this nation has ever undertaken in this part of the world or anywhere else.

IFILL: Well, hard is one way to describe it; intractable is another.

So where do things stand, Doyle?

Mr. DOYLE McMANUS (Los Angeles Times): Well, it's certainly hard, as the general said. Intractable, that really is the big question; that's the $64,000 question. What we heard this week from the administration after a whole string of setbacks on the ground in Iraq was what you might call a new realistic tone, almost a chastened tone. We heard General Abizaid saying it was hard. Paul Wolfowitz, one of the chief intellectual authors of the whole deal in Iraq, told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee for, I think, the first time, that serious mistakes had been made and that, in particular, he and the rest of the administration had underestimated the amount of resistance that the United States was going to face and continue facing.

And from outsiders, from people outside the administration, experts, retired officers, others who were brought in, the diagnosis was even bleaker. General Joseph Hoar, who used to be the commander of CENTCOM--he was General Abizaid's predecessor some years back--said we are on the brink of failure in Iraq. Larry Diamond of Stanford University, who was one of Ambassador Bremer's advisers on the political transition, said Iraq could become a quagmire. He used the Q-word that used to only apply to Vietnam. The problem seems to be that the different setbacks we face in Iraq are now kind of running into each other; they're reinforcing each other. There is a security deficit. Th--you know, Iraqis aren't safe. That means they don't trust the government.

IFILL: Well, let's talk...

Mr. McMANUS: Yeah.

IFILL: Let's talk about that for a for a minute because when you talk about security deficit, it's not just ordinary Iraqis, but the--Izzedine Salim, the head of the Governing Council, who cycled in this month, assassinated this week. This--these are high-profile losses.

Mr. McMANUS: That's right. Politicians at the top can't be protected, r--reliably, at least. There's more crime in the streets, and we are at war with two different sets of people, still, the insurgency in the Sunni triangle and a real shooting war going on in Karbala and other Shiite cities against Muqtada al-Sadr, the radical--radical Shiite. So you've got a security problem that hasn't been solved. That's slowing down the economy. Ordinary Iraqis are saying, you know, `This isn't working.' They're not getting elections soon. It's as if everything that isn't working is working--is--is sort of resonating with everything else.

Ms. GLORIA BORGER (Co-host, CNBC "Capital Report"): Now it seems that the president is going to go on a PR offensive, for lack of a--of a better phrase, starting this coming week to talk to the American people about Iraq. What's he going to do?

Mr. McMANUS: Well, all of this bad news, Gloria, has, you know, in--including, of course, the prison scandal at Abu Ghraib, but not only that, that--this sense that nothing is quite working well has taken a terrible toll on public support for the war. And you've got a lot of the talking heads on--on foreign policy panels, saying, `You've got to change course. You've got to do some different things.' The administration knows they have to speak to this problem. They know that there is a sense out there that the strategy isn't clear. Plenty of people who are saying there really--really isn't a strategy.

Well, the White House believes that there is a foundation for public support here, but the president just hasn't been heard on it or the public hasn't been tuned into the right stuff. If you turn on the news, you're going to see a lot of Humvees blown up; you're going to see a lot of prison pictures; but you're not getting a very clear message from the administration.

So the president is going to give six major speeches in six weeks. There are six weeks between now and the turnover of Iraqi sovereignty on June 30th. And he is going to hammer away, try and make the case. And we're told there is not going to be a major change of course. It's basically, `Stay the course and hang with us.'

Mr. JEFFREY BIRNBAUM (The Washington Post): Doyle, could you talk about that transition to the--the switch of sovereignty? It is just so close. I--I'm not sure that I or--I mean, could you explain what it is we should ex--be expecting and how this will proceed?

Mr. McMANUS: Well, time does not permit, hap--happily for all of us, going through all of the complexities of--but, basically, the UN envoy Lakdar Brahimi is going to try and come up with the names for a new government. They are going to receive sovereignty. There is supposed to be a UN resolution blessing the deal. And sovereignty means that this new Iraqi government, even though they won't have been elected by anybody, will have the right, theoretically, to say, `You know what? We're tired of you Americans. You need to get out.' Now...

IFILL: Is it fair to say that Ahmad Chalabi--after this morning's events, the US raid on his home, will not be part of that government?

Mr. McMANUS: Mr. Chalabi won't be part of that government as far as anybody can tell. In fact, that's probably one of the reasons for--for--for that raid. That was a--that was a rather amazing spectacle. Because, of course, Chalabi was Paul Wolfowitz's darling, our guy. We were paying Chalabi money for intelligence. That relationship has been going sour for a long time. And the--the straw that broke the camel's back, we are told from people all over the administration, was Chalabi was getting too close to Iran. He was playing, as an official said, both sides of the street.

Analysis: Unfolding Iraqi prisoner scandal

GWEN IFILL, host: Well, the other part that has been going sour, obviously, has been this unfolding Iraqi prisoner scandal. As if we hadn't seen enough, there were new pictures, video and sworn accounts of torture and abuse in an Iraqi prison which surfaced today. Some are looking for heads to roll in the chain of command, up to and including the Pentagon. But there are others on Capitol Hill who are saying, `Enough.'

Representative DUNCAN HUNTER (Republican, California): (From Tuesday) It's time to refocus on winning the war and not--and not pull our battlefield leadership out of the field.

IFILL: But even Congressman Hunter must have figured out by now that it's hard to focus in the middle of what is turning out to be a genuine international scandal.

What's happening behind the scenes, Michael?

Mr. JEFFREY BIRNBAUM (The Washington Post): Gwen, there is so much going on in--right in front of our eyes, it's--I--I barely had time to get to the behind-the-scenes stuff this week. And if we were probably down the road, you know, a mile at the Pentagon tonight, we probably wouldn't have trouble finding a meeting where they were behind the scenes trying to figure out how to turn the corner--not get ahead, just turn the corner on it.

They worked in several ways this week to do that. They, obviously, tightened some of the rules that govern the prison. They released two groups of prisoners, large groups. There were 3,000 people there. They're trying to take that down by half by the end of the month. They sent a bevy of generals to the Hill, as you saw, to try to explain how we got there and what they're doing about it. And those--that testimony raised as many questions as it answered. And, of course, they tried to make an effort for the first time in a few weeks to background some reporters on how these policies were cooked up in the first place.

But, you know, three weeks after the Pentagon first said that this was just the acts of a few bad apples, nobody, including a lot of people in the military, believe it anymore. The Pentagon has yet to rule out the idea that this was--these abuses were the result of either a written policy, ap--approved at all kinds of levels--and there seemed to be a variety of choices--or an unwritten policy, one that was, if not verbally encouraged, certainly verbally countenanced. And there's evidence on both sides for that. And so three weeks into this, they still are trying to climb out.

And--and at one point in one of the briefings this week, you could just see the Pentagon try to almost melt because the--the senior officials who was--who was doing the background was saying, `Look, we're trying to figure this out ourselves.' They clearly haven't figured out exactly how it all--how--how it all got unsorted. And there are a couple of bad facts. We learned for--this week, for example, that, you know, the Geneva Convention was pretty much suspended after 9--9/11 for people in--you know, in Afghanistan.

And while that policy was never approved for Iraq, the people who carried it out did travel to Iraq. And then the people who practiced it at Git--at Guantanamo and Afghanistan did finally find their way to Abu Ghraib. And--and there were debates about this internally, stopping and starting, and the policies would be put in place and then they'd be withheld and then they'd be changed. And where there's stopping or starting, there is paper. And so, eventually, all that stuff will find its way to Capitol Hill and we'll eventually know just how far it--it--it went.

Mr. JEFFREY BIRNBAUM (The Washington Post): So--so could you just take us down the road a little bit. There are--are there six investigations going on, maybe more?

Mr. DUFFY: Yes. Six military investigations.

Mr. BIRNBAUM: With--right. And then...

Mr. DUFFY: Not counting on what's going on on the outside.

Mr. BIRNBAUM: Sure--well, where--where does this--where does this take us, then? I mean, should we be expecting a series of reports or more revelations just looking down the road?

Mr. DUFFY: In militaryspeak, for the time being, it takes us up the chain of command, and particularly to the whole institution of military intelligence, Army intelligence, which, if you talk to guys in the Army, is its own sort of subculture. Th--I--I was talking to a three-star infantry officer who commanded troops in the first Gulf War--was there as an overseer in the second one. He said, `When you have military intelligence officers, they do a good job, but you have to keep them very close to you. You have to make sure they work for you and that they are not by themselves.' In this prison they were in charge. And so the extent to which the military intelligence organization, which is big and fairly secretive, was allowed to operate without a lot of oversight is where, I think, it started.

IFILL: And the person who was supposed to be in charge of the oversight is General Sanchez?

Mr. DUFFY: Right. There--there was increasing evidence this week--he was one of the ones who testified on Capitol Hill--that--that Sanchez had--was--is the man who works for Abizaid, who's basically running Iraq, the military side of it. Bremer's on the civilian side; Rick Sanchez is on--on the military side. And he was clearly involved, not only in handing control of the prison over to military--military intelligence last fall, but then also sort of overseeing the rules that were put into place. They're changing them as necessary and then moving to try to actually fix it in the spring.

Ms. GLORIA BORGER (Co-host, CNBC "Capital Report"): But, Mike, there were reports about this from the Red Cross. The Red Cross issued a report last February saying that what was going on at Abu Ghraib was tantamount to torture.

Mr. DUFFY: Mm-hmm.

Ms. BORGER: And nothing came of it.

Mr. DUFFY: Many reports.

Ms. BORGER: Nothing came of it.

Mr. DUFFY: Many reports. In fact...

IFILL: And many of the detainees who were interviewed at the time who are now--their stories are now coming out about the way they were tortured, that also occurred in January.

Ms. BORGER: Right.

Mr. DUFFY: Correct. And I--I think the military pretty much ignored the first two rounds of reports; we also learned that this week. And I suspect that was because they weren't Army reports. They weren't US reports; they were by an international group, a non-governmental organization. That's not a cuss word in this--you know, in--in this environment. But if, for many months, it has not been a group that was--you know, that our administration thought had anything to do with making things right in Iraq. And this week, a senior military officer, in front of the Senate--it was a colonel who oversees the legal operations--said the Army's handling of the Red Cross reports was haphazard. That means we either didn't read them or we read them and did nothing about it.

Mr. DOYLE McMANUS (Los Angeles Times): Michael, a week ago, two weeks ago, the big question was: Where does Donald Rumsfeld come out of all of this? Now there's been this flood of--of documents, as--as you said, on how the policy was put together. Is it any clearer how close that gets to Rumsfeld?

Mr. DUFFY: You know, you have to go through the testimony of these guys on the Hill with a fine-tooth comb because anytime they were asked directly--anyone who has a star on their shoulder--you know, `Was this ever approved?' `I did not approve it.' `We never approved it in written form.' `I never signed a memo that said, "Go ahead and do this."' As long as it's a question about what's written down, no one above the level of brigadier or colonel seems to have ever had anything to do with it. Below that, there seems to be plenty of evidence.

IFILL: And below that, of course, we have the courts-martial, the--the small guys are all getting court-martialed, one at a time, while they're still trying to figure out who on top should pay.

Mr. DUFFY: Right.

IFILL: Thank you, Michael.

Analysis: High gas prices

GWEN IFILL, host: Well, with everything going on in Iraq, all must be well with the economy, right? Well, not so much, at least not if you're buying gas. President Bush, taking note of the new $2-a-gallon record, resisted Democratic calls to increase supply by oi--opening oil reserves.

President GEORGE W. BUSH: (From Wednesday) We're at war. We face a tough and determined enemy on all fronts, and we must not put ourselves in a worse position in this war. And playing politics with the Strategic Petroleum Reserve would do just that.

IFILL: So our question tonight: How much of this gas-price war is politics and how much a sign of genuine trouble?

Jeffrey?

Mr. JEFFREY BIRNBAUM (The Washington Post): Well, I guess, Gwen, it's a little bit of both; it has to be. First of all, the--the price of gas is, in a lot of places in this country, approaching $2 a gallon, which is as high as it's ever been. The national average is very near $2 a--a gallon. And that--in--in pure dollar terms, that's a historic high. Now in fairness, if you adjust for inflation 23 years ago, it was actually higher than that. But, nonetheless, the sticker shock of seeing near $2 or more than $2 a gallon has really made a lot of Americans feel that the economy is not moving in their favor, even though there are some signs that the economy actually is improving in the--in the aggregate.

You know, also, milk prices have been going up. So where people really feel it when they actually take the--their wallets out of their pockets or pocketbooks, it really makes a difference. And that's being reflected, I think, in the political polls. If you look at the--the--the public's view about the direction the country is going in, huge majorities lately have shown that--that most Americans believe that the country is moving in the wrong direction. And I think that has to do with their feel of the economy. And the gas prices, I think, are an important part of that.

Ms. GLORIA BORGER (Co-host, CNBC "Capital Report"): Now President Bush says that, `If Congress had only passed my energy bill...'

Mr. BIRNBAUM: Yeah.

Ms. BORGER: `...gas prices would be down.'

Mr. BIRNBAUM: Well, you shouldn't believe everything you hear, I think.

IFILL: She didn't say she believed it. She just said she heard it.

Mr. BIRNBAUM: No. I wasn't referring to Gloria. I--Gloria knows that. But, in--in fact, supply and demand don't work on a legislative schedule. And that's really what's behind all of this. Supply has been tight. Earlier this year, the OPEC oil cartel cut supply, which--which, of course, would have the effect of raising prices in addition to, in this country, a lot of refineries are--are already producing full out, and not a single new refinery has been built in this country for decades. At the same time, demand is going up. You know, all those huge SOV ta--SUV tanks are sucking up gas all over the place.

And in--and in--on the macro sense, China is a huge and growing economy that is using a lot more oil and refined oil products than we ever thought. The combination--you add onto that also the Iraq premium; that is, the war premium. And right now, although the price of a barrel of oil has declined recently, it's still in the range of about $40 a barrel. And most experts just a few months ago expected $24 a barrel. There is our problem.

Mr. DOYLE McMANUS (Los Angeles Times): Jeff, I've got a dumb question to ask. President Bush has had Crown Prince Abdullah, the head of--ruler of Saudi Arabia, down to the ranch. He spends time with Prince Bandar, the Saudi ambassador. Can't the president pick up the phone and say to the Saudis, `How about opening the spigot and lowering the price?'

Mr. BIRNBAUM: Well, we don't know if he has, but we did hear today from the Saudis that they will increase production in Saudi Arabia, and they will ask OPEC, which is meeting over this weekend, to increase production to try to help this supply crunch that we've had. And so it is possible that OPEC could be giving us some of the help that we heard--that--that Bob Woodward suggested in his book--recent book that we might be getting. Now I don't know who made the call, but somebody is listening so...

Mr. McMANUS: Does the price come down by Election Day?

Mr. BIRNBAUM: Well, most experts actually think that the price of gas will remain pretty much where it is now because in the same way that legislation doesn't move fast enough, I'm afraid it will take a long time for that to--to get through. But we may have some easing of the price earlier than we thought because of OPEC's move, which could come this weekend.

Mr. JEFFREY BIRNBAUM (The Washington Post): Have you seen Senator Kerry, Mr. Bush's opponent, try to take advantage of this situation? Or is there a way he can actually criticize the president, given the fact that the economy is, in some ways, doing very well?

Mr. BIRNBAUM: Well, let's see, he--he mentions it on most days, I think, the--the price of gas, along with the other--with the other Democrats. And--and I think the price of gas is an important wedge, a way for Kerry to grab onto this economic issue because, as I mentioned, the actual economic performance is improving in this country. New jobs are being created by the hundreds of thousands. In fact, today we heard that 11 of the 17 swing states where the presidential election will be decided, each of those have had improvement--improve--improvements in the joblessness situation. The economy itself is actually growing at a pretty good clip, about 4 percent annually. Consumer spending is still holding steady, despite an increase in int...

IFILL: And Alan Greenspan has been...

Mr. BIRNBAUM: Right.

IFILL: ...renominated. So we're supposed to rest easy, right?

Mr. BIRNBAUM: Everything is going to be OK. Now this is not a surprise that Greenspan has been renominated for his fifth four-year--his fifth term. But then again, I think that really has stabilized the markets, and that was relatively good news in the face of rising gas prices.

IFILL: Thank you, Jeffrey.

Mr. BIRNBAUM: Thank you.

Analysis: Same-sex couples rush to marry legally in Massachusetts

GWEN IFILL, host: Well, while the Republicans and Democrats were duking it out over gas prices and Alan Greenspan wasn't, gay couples in Massachusetts were making history, tying the knot from Pittsfield to Provincetown. One would imagine the Democrat from Massachusetts who is running for president might use this opportunity to state his clear support or opposition. So this is what John Kerry had to say.

Senator JOHN KERRY (Democratic Presidential Nominee): (From Monday) I would never reduce the happiness of any two people in life who find whatever way it is that they privately believe makes them happy and fulfills their needs and rewards them as human beings.

IFILL: Say what?

Gloria, you translate.

Ms. GLORIA BORGER (Co-host, CNBC "Capital Report"): I don't think I can, Gwen. It's--it's very difficult. You know, watching John Kerry in--in that--in that piece of tape talk about gay marriage reminds me of watching John Kerry during the primaries talk about the war in Iraq. You remember he voted against--I mean, for the war in Iraq, but he opposed the war during the primaries. It was a little confusing. And this, of course, needs some prescience. So let me try and do this for you. John Kerry opposes gay marriage. He supports civil unions.

Unidentified Panelist: Oh.

Ms. BORGER: OK. He opposes a federal constitutional amendment that would ban gay marriage, but he supports a state constitutional amendment in Massachusetts, his own state.

IFILL: And given his druthers, he wouldn't talk about it at all.

Ms. BORGER: Right. Right. Right. Exactly. So, you know, the--the Bush-Cheney campaign--shock--is saying, `Well, this is just another example of John Kerry's flip-flopping.' However, the Bush-Cheney campaign made this an issue in the first place, and this will be part of the Republican platform because they believe it is a way to get out their base voters who oppose gay marriage. And I might add, a majority of people in this country oppose gay marriage, which is why most of the Democratic candidates, including the nominee, John Kerry, oppose gay marriage.

So it's sort of a complex issue. He feels worried about it, clearly, because he wants to get those swing voters. He doesn't want to alienate them. And he's got George W. Bush out there, saying, `I am more opposed to gay marriage than you are.' And that's what the political fight is, believe it or not.

Mr. JEFFREY BIRNBAUM (The Washington Post): Well, isn't it mostly just a political fight, at least when it comes to Congress? I mean, the last we heard about this, there was this mad rush...

Ms. BORGER: Total.

Mr. BIRNBAUM: ...to pass a constitutional amendment.

Ms. BORGER: Right.

Mr. BIRNBAUM: And now silence. What--what's the deal?

Ms. BORGER: Well, guess what? They discovered they didn't have the votes.

Mr. BIRNBAUM: Oh.

Ms. BORGER: And so now there is not a mad rush anymore. They knew that they probably wouldn't have the votes. You need two-thirds vote; and so it's difficult. But in the House of Representatives, they were all eager, `Let's go--let's go do this. Let's support the president. This will be great for us.' And this week, last time I checked, they seem to be backing down. The Senate Judiciary Committee was supposed to have a hearing this week with Mitt Romney, the governor of Massachusetts. It was going to be a big deal, he was going to go up there; he was going to talk about the constitutional amendment. Somehow the hearing got canceled. Now we know why hearings get canceled, because the people in control don't want to have them. And so I think that they realized that this is a double-edged sword.

Mr. DOYLE McMANUS (Los Angeles Times): Gloria, does this really--is this the magic bullet for the Bush campaign...

Ms. BORGER: No.

Mr. McMANUS: ...in the fall election? If you look at the swing states, what effect does it really have?

Ms. BORGER: Well, it's kind of interesting. It--it is what they call in politics a "base stimulator," which means that it will get out those churchgoers who support Bush by a two-to-one margin. It will get them out, and evangelicals will come out, and it will--it will get out their base. However, it--and they also believe that it will help them in the swing states. Because if you look at a swing state--we--you just spoke about it, Jeff--look at a swing state like Ohio. Economically, 250,000 jobs lost. You would think, gee, that might trend Democratic. But culturally, it's conservative. You look like--at a city like Cleveland, a large Catholic population, conservative. So they believe that in some of the swing states, they can blunt the economic issue with...

IFILL: The social issue.

Ms. BORGER: ...the cultural issue and the social issue, which is why it was raised in the first place. I mean, the issue of gay marriage has not been a pressing issue until the president raised it and said, `I'm for this federal constitutional amendment.'

Mr. JEFFREY BIRNBAUM (The Washington Post): Isn't this also a way Bush can actually press another button with his base, which is about judges?

Ms. BORGER: Yeah, absolutely. This has become an issue of activist judges. And I actually just happen to have a quote...

Mr. DUFFY: Oh, there you go.

Ms. BORGER: ...from the president with me. He said, referring to Massachusetts, quote, "The sacred institution of marriage should not be redefined by a few activist judges." That's another hot-button issue. The judges in the state of Massachusetts decided that--that gay marriage was fine.

Mr. DUFFY: It's OK.

Ms. BORGER: And he says, you know, `That's why I have to appoint the judges that I want to appoint.'

IFILL: I have to ask you another not related but a political question, which is: John Kerry let--let leak a trial balloon today that he is considering not accepting the nomination formally at the Democratic convention this fall, but, in fact, giving himself another month to raise some more money, which I'm not sure why we're covering it at all anymore. But--but what--what is that about?

Ms. BORGER: Money, money, money.

IFILL: Yeah.

Ms. BORGER: It's about money. If he becomes the nominee--don't forget, his convention is in July. If he becomes the nominee five weeks before George W. Bush is nominated at the end of August, he can't spend all this money that he's been raising. And I think, quite frankly, the Kerry campaign has been shocked that they have been able to raise this kind of money, and they don't want to be handcuffed. So there's not going to be an acceptance speech at that convention, Gwen, I'm so sorry to say.

IFILL: And this is what I have been waiting for. All this--all that happens anymore at conventions are the acceptance speeches.

Mr. McMANUS: But--but he will give a thank you speech.

Mr. DUFFY: Yeah.

Ms. BORGER: Yeah, he will. He'll thank all his contributors, right.

Sign-off: Washington Week

GWEN IFILL, host: Well, speaking of thank you, thanks, everybody.

Before we go, a bit of congratulations is in order for Mr. Duffy here, who this week won the Gerald R. Ford--Ford Prize for distinguished reporting on national defense with his colleague Mark Thompson at Time magazine. The rest--rest of us are just going to try to keep up with you, Michael.

Mr. JEFFREY BIRNBAUM (The Washington Post): Oh, you're doing fine. Don't worry.

IFILL: Oh, I don't think so. Well, we're going to try it on the Web. Next Thursday at noon, join me for my monthly Web chat on pbs.org. Also keep up with daily developments on "The NewsHour." Then join us around the table next week on WASHINGTON WEEK. Good night.

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