February 24, 2006

GWEN IFILL: Tipping points in Iraq, in a brand new domestic controversy, and in the recurring world of abortion politics, tonight on "Washington Week."

PRESIDENT GEORGE BUSH: This is a moment of choosing for the Iraqi people.

MS. IFILL: Political uncertainty descended into violent instability this week in Iraq as the bombing of a revered Shiite mosque ignited days of turmoil, protest, and curfew across the country. Is Iraq heading for a civil war?

At home, dissent of a different sort as a deal to turn over operations of six U.S. ports to a company owned by an Arab government backfires on the president and on his cabinet.

Rep. Peter King (R-NY): It goes right to the heart of our survival as a society. If we've learned anything since 9/11, it's that we can never be too careful.

MS. IFILL: Heels are dug in. A presidential veto looms. What's really going on here?

And at the Supreme Court, the stage is set for another contentious fight over abortion, this time with a different cast. Covering these stories this week, Doyle McManus of the Los Angeles Times, Carl Cannon of National Journal, Karen Tumulty of Time Magazine, and Linda Greenhouse of the New York Times.

ANNOUNCER: Live from our nation's capital, this is "Washington Week" with Gwen Ifill. Produced in association with National Journal.

ANNOUNCER: Here again, moderator Gwen Ifill.

MS. IFILL: Good evening. As if getting Iraq's political house in order wasn't turning out to be enough of a challenge, the sectarian violence that followed the attack on a sacred Shiite mosque this week stripped away even a veneer of normality. Let's review: on Tuesday, the U.S. ambassador to Iraq was threatening to withdraw American financial support if Iraqis don't form a non-sectarian unity government. The next day, the Shiite mosque was bombed in Samarra. And even though retaliation was bloody and immediate, U.S. officials in Baghdad, just yesterday, were still trying to put the best face on it.

MAJ. GEN. RICK LYNCH: (From Thursday) We're not seeing civil war igniting in Iraq. We're not seeing 77, 80, 100 mosques damaged. We're not seeing death in the streets. We're seeing a competent and capable Iraqi government using their capable Iraqi security force to calm the storm.

MS. IFILL: But by today, after it became clear reprisals had now left more than 100 dead, ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad acknowledged the risk at hand. "Everything," he said, "that needs to be done, must be done, to avoid a civil war."

So Doyle, is that the great fear, civil war?

DOYLE MCMANUS: It is the fear, Gwen. It's been an acute enough fear that has recently as Thursday, Condoleezza Rice, the secretary of state, was scolding reporters that asked that question, saying, even using that phrase is not helpful. By today, not only Ambassador Khalilzad, but Condoleezza Rice were going ahead and saying, what we're trying to avoid here is a civil war.

The problem, of course, is the whole American enterprise in Iraq has been to try and build a modern, constitutional, if possible secular society that would unite the ethnic and religious groups: the Shi'a Arabs, the Sunni Arabs, and the Kurds, who are mostly Sunnis, but they're not Arabs and live up in the mountains. But those groups have hundreds of years of grievances. They have been fighting each other for centuries. Saddam Hussein kept the lid on. The question here is, who can keep the lid on it? And there's been a cycle of violence between the two communities that's been escalating. The attack on the mosque this week, probably by Sunni extremists, probably by the Iraqi affiliate of al Qaeda, Zarqawi's group, was clearly designed to touch off an explosion, and it did that.

MS. IFILL: Well, I talked to Ambassador Khalilzad this week on the NewsHour the day before this bombing, and he was talking a lot about the unity government. He also seemed to think that - he basically conceded that there was a threat involved in saying, we're going to take our money and go home if this unity government isn't formed. Did that tick people off?

MR. MCMANUS: Well, after the fact, after the bombing, one of the Shi'a leaders blamed Khalilzad for basically saying to the Sunnis, okay bring it on. Go ahead and foment some violence, and you may run us out. I think that's unfair. This is the kind of thing that has been going on for months. This was just the biggest of its kind.

Now, the lesson we've learned at the end of it is kind of half-empty/half-full. Iraq is on the verge of civil war, but civil war didn't break out. The Iraqi security forces, much derided, actually pretty much held. They weren't in an awful lot of action, but they enforced a curfew. They didn't - the big nightmare there was that they would break down and go back to their villages, and the Shi'a units would go into the Shi'a militia, the Sunnis would go to the Sunni militia. So Iraq is a little bit calmer now. Two days of curfew. The lid is barely on.

But the other lesson is that contrary to what the general said, it wasn't the civilian secular politicians who calmed things down; it was the clergy on both sides. So the extent that the American enterprise here was to try to build a modern secular society that kind of looks like us - not happening. There is some kind of civil order there, there is a civil society, but it's a much earlier model that's based on ethnic groups and religious groups, and that's what we've still got to contend with.

MS. GREENHOUSE: Doyle, if the lid does some off, which is certainly foreseeable, what's the worst-case scenario? A civil war leading to what outcome? Are people playing this out?

MR. MCMANUS: Well, no one in the administration will play with worst-case scenarios. They don't want to get anywhere near it. But you could hear a little echo of the worst-case scenario in something Condoleezza Rice said on her way back from the Middle East just today. She said ever other Arab leader she met with in the area - in Saudi Arabia and the emirates, elsewhere - said they were worried about the violence spreading outside Iraq. So you want to know the real worst-case scenario? It's not just a civil war in Iraq, which the United States military would probably be powerless to stop. If you've got the entire population fighting a war of survival, you can't put 136,000 troops in between the two sides and make it work. The real worst-case scenario is a civil war in which the Iranians back the Shiites; the Saudis, the Jordanians, and others back the Sunnis; the Kurds in the north bring the Turks in, who have their interests there; and you've got one heck of a mess.

CARL CANNON: You mean you're talking about regional-wide sectarian war pitting Sunnis and Shi'as from Lebanon to Iran?

MR. MCMANUS: We were talking worst-case scenario. Is that the way things are headed? No. I mean there is also, you know, good news. The news is not as bad as it could be. We are not there yet. We are not even at an Iraqi civil war yet. But it is striking at this point how few direct instruments of power the United States has. You know, Zalmay Khalilzad, the ambassador, is out there still trying to pull a unity government together, but it's not the politicians who are making the difference. It's the clergy and it's the militias on the ground - 136 American troops in Iraq, but they were mostly invisible. They were staying in the barracks because their presence at mosques and at demonstrations would make things worse, not better at this point.

KAREN TUMULTY: So what does this say about our government's plans to begin pulling U.S. troops out of there in significant numbers, and especially in significant numbers before the November elections?

MR. MCMANUS: The Bush administration is really stuck between a rock and a hard place. It's clearly going to increase domestic pressure for that. To ordinary Americans, to members of Congress it looks like a mess. Why are we there? But any military planner would say, this is when you need more American troops, not less. So the Bush administration really has very few good options.

MS. IFILL: Back at home this week, another tempest. This one, exposing the fault lines in the war on terror within the Republican Party and within the Bush administration itself. It was all about a deal to run six U.S. ports, one given to a company controlled by the government of the United Arab Emirates apparently without the knowledge of key members of Congress, but also without the knowledge of the president or the secretary of defense or the secretary of treasury or the secretary of homeland security. What an uproar.

REP. CURT WELDON (R-PA): It almost smacks of an arrogance, like it doesn't matter what the Congress says. We're going to do what we think and if they don't like our agency heads, if they don't like our departments and what we've done, that's too bad. We'll run roughshod. Well, this time the Congress is saying, oh, no you won't.

MS. IFILL: The president threatened to veto any legislation that would stop the deal. The company itself agreed to delay the agreement, and tonight there is a standoff. So how did all of this get so out of control, Carl?

MR. CANNON: Well Gwen, last year the United Arab Emirates decided it wanted to be a world power in shipping and it merged a Dubai port company with its international arm and they promptly launched a takeover of the fourth largest shipping company in the world, a venerable British firm the P&O that was, I think, started in 1837, and when the bidding got up about almost to $7 billion, the P&O shareholders said yes. So Dubai Ports World is now going to run supposedly this company and what it inherited the companies good name, its know how, and terminals and contracts at 29 ports around the world, including the six that you mention in the United States: New York, New Jersey, Philadelphia, Baltimore, Miami, and New Orleans. And who knew about this in the United States? The Committee on Foreign Investments knew. They're the group that is suppose to look at it. And the treasury secretary didn't know, but the assistant secretary and the people they have meeting in secret, decided not to stop this.

MS. IFILL: So that seems like a pretty reasonable idea. This is (air?) of globalism. We try to work. Shipping is by - inherently a global kind of enterprise. So, Karen, why did everybody, especially the Republicans, get so out of sorts?

MS. TUMULTY: Gwen, you're talking about the substance. The fact is, what drove the entire furor this week was politics. And it was politics on a couple of levels: it gave the Democrats - Dubai, the government that owns this company, was also the home country of a couple of the 9/11 terrorists. They used Dubai banks to launder their money, and Dubai was one of the few governments in the world that supported the Taliban. All of these things suggest that at least the symbolism of this and the politics of this are terrible. And the Democrats, who are already on warning that the Republicans plan to use national security as an issue against them in this election, immediately rushed in to have the chance to get to the right of the Republicans. And the Republicans - the last thing they wanted to do was to be sitting in a situation where Hillary Clinton and Teddy Kennedy look stronger on national defense than they do.

MS. IFILL: The White House was saying in response that there was a certain amount of nativism involved in the unhappiness about this deal.

MR. CANNON: Yeah, they said that, and there may have been, but the interesting thing - to go back to your original question, the politics - they didn't get this right away. On Air Force One when Bush talks to the pool, the president threatens this veto. He cuts off the question. I don't want to talk about the politics. He wanted to talk about the merits. So even while this thing was exploding and people were asking about the politics, he acted indignant and said, you know, I want tot talk about the merits. And the merits to him was - what you said - and the United Arab Emirates is, despite what Karen's talked about, is the government over there that's helping us the most. And Bush, the president is saying, well, if we want to push these people over to al Qaeda, I guess we can do it, but they're helping us. And that was his argument. But he - even in the midst of this, he didn't want to talk about the politics.

MR. MCMANUS: Now, Carl, this used to be a White House and a president that was pretty sure-footed politically, that didn't miss a lot of steps like that. I mean, I'm tempted to say that this would never have happened of Karl Rove were still alive. What went wrong?

MR. CANNON: Well, you know, John Kerry's not there for us to call up and get his quote and run it off. I mean, look, this thing happened. The competitors raised this - it used to be called raising the patriot flag. I mean, these companies who didn't get the company planted these stories and filed lawsuits and started agitating their local mayors, Martin O'Malley up in Baltimore and then Governor Ehrlich of Maryland, he has to jump in and so they've got this pot going, but what they didn't get is that -

MS. IFILL: This is a mid-term election year?

MR. CANNON: That's right. These Republicans - they've got to run with this guy. He's at 40 percent.

MS. TUMULTY: Exactly. And this is a mid-term election year and this is a president who never has to run for reelection again, which means that what always happens in the second term of a presidency is your instincts and your reflexes aren't quite as sharp. And the Republicans, the people who usually back the president up on the Hill, no longer see their own political fates so closely tied to his, so from here on out I think this was a pretty strong warning to the White House that from here on out it's every man for himself.

MS. GREENHOUSE: Carl, could I just ask on the substance of the basis of the concern, other than politics, if there is - not to sound naïve, but you know, here we've been giving up our cuticle scissors, we've been taking our shoes off every time you go to the airport. Nobody's discussed - ordinary people or politicians haven't discussed ports, which I gather not just these six or eight, but 100 or more ports in the country and nobody's really said boo about them for years. So is this a real security concern? What's the deal here?

MR. CANNON: Well, the Bush administration hasn't yet gone to the place where they're agreeing to use this as an opening to really talk about port security, but some of the editorial writers are. I was telling Gwen, USA Today wrote a very thoughtful editorial saying - basically criticizing all Bush's critics and saying that they're just grandstanding, but saying, you know, we're not doing anything at the ports. And the port security - we've spent a hundredth as much money as we have on air security. Well, they may not come in next time by air. And so the White House has not yet gone there, but there are people in Congress now, some of the moderate people - Evan Bayh did this - they are starting to say, look, all right, let's stand down a little bit. Let's quit bashing the president. Let's use this to talk about what you're talking about: port security.

MS. IFILL: Well, one of the things I'm curious about talking about, though, is United Arab Emirates, which clearly has friends in high places. We can name Bob Dole. We can name Madeline Albright's group. We can name people who have a lot of pull in Washington. So behind the scenes tonight, what's going on?

MS. TUMULTY: Well, behinds the scenes what significantly is going on is that the company has backed off and they have said that they are not actually going to take over the management of these terminals until the president and the Congress have time to sit down and sort of - particularly these lawmakers can have some of these concerns reassured. I think that these lobbyists are going to be working the whole issue pretty heavily as well.

Now, Bob Dole is in an interesting position because his wife, Elizabeth, is in the Senate, and in addition to that, she is running the campaign committee for these senators who are up for reelection. He has promised he is not going to bring it up with her or anybody in the senate.

MS. IFILL: That he says, that he's not going to lobby on it. That's he's said. But you know he's got a job to do. Now, I'm also curious, though, when you look at what they have to do there, politically, whether this is one of those cases where the president is counting everything just to die down, kind of like with the intelligence case - the domestic spying case, where after members of Congress were briefed all of a sudden a lot of the complaints calmed down.

MS. TUMULTY: Yeah. I'm sure that is what they are hoping, but the fact is we are in an election year and the Democrats are not going to let it die down and the Republicans know it.

MS. GREENHOUSE: In terms of our security, does it matter who has these contracts? I mean, you hear the White House saying it's, you know, the Coast Guard is who takes care of the security of the ports. This is just a sort of a management contract. What's -

MR. CANNON: Using - taking the merit of the argument instead of the politics of it, the criticism - the worry is that it will be easier for al Qaeda to infiltrate a company based in Dubai than a company based in London. That's the criticism. I don't know that that's true. United Arab Emirates has a lot more to lose than London by that happening, but that's the criticism, and I - you know, that's the legitimate complaint. That's what should have been explored and why - one of the reasons the Bush administration was criticized is that they gave this such a cursory look. This Committee on Foreign Investments met in secret. They refused, as they always do - you know, this is classified. I don't know that it's classified, but they said it was. There may have been very good assurances given, but we weren't given any of them and neither were the Republicans on the Hill. Bill Frist wasn't.

MS. TUMULTY: And it's probably worth noting, by the way, that the management of these port terminals is already done almost entirely by foreign countries. It's sort of pick your - which foreign country is going to do it, but there're really are not any American companies that are in this business in a big way.

MR. MCMANUS: Karen, enough substance, I want to go back to politics for a minute. (Laughter.) Is this what President Bush's year is going to be like? You know, he gave his State of the Union address only about a month ago. He wanted to talk about health savings accounts. He wanted to talk about energy independence. And since then, he can't buy time on television to talk about those things.

MS. TUMULTY: I think this is a very much of a foretaste of what's ahead of the White House for this year, and they know it. And they also know that what is particularly significant about what happened this week is that to have the entire Republican Party stand up united against the president on something like this, a national security issue - it's going to be a lot easier for them to do it a second time and a third time and a fourth time and a fifth time.

MS. IFILL: Now there's been a crack in the veneer, at least for this week. And then we'll see what goes wrong next week.

Now, to the Supreme Court. We don't usually report on the court's simple decision to take a case, but this week's was no ordinary case. The court will revisit one of the most controversial issues on its docket: abortion. And with two new justices weighing in, it's an open question what will happen next.

So what's significant, Linda, about this new case they decided to take?

MS. GREENHOUSE: Well just for one thing, the case is a reminder of how much ferment there still is over this issue. Of course, the confirmation hearings for Chief Justice Roberts and Justice Alito reminded us of this, but here we have the issue of so-called partial-birth abortion. This is a federal ban on this method of abortion. The ban was passed in 2003, signed by President Bush, there've been similar bills passed earlier that President Clinton had vetoed. The last time the court substantively looked at abortion was six years ago in a case from Nebraska on partial-birth abortion, a state law in that case, and the Court voted by five to four and said the law was unconstitutional. This is essentially the same law. So the question is, do they stand by the precedent? We've got these two new justices. Justice O'Connor was one of the five, so no we have Justice Alito replacing her and the whole thing is really up for grabs.

MS. IFILL: During the confirmation hearings for Justices Alito and Roberts, I don't recall hearing either of them actually answer the question about what their view would be on something like this.

MS. GREENHOUSE: No, they were proxies for it. They were asked to talk about precedent; what weight do you give to precedent? Chief Justice Roberts, I think was a little bit more forthcoming on that, but it was a kind of a dance of the seven veils.

MS. IFILL: Is the 2003 case precedent?

MS. GREENHOUSE: Well, I mean it's on the books. It's certainly a precedent and when the Court issued that decision in the Nebraska case, a couple of dozen state laws fell by the wayside because all of the laws were the same. Congress then responded by passing the federal law really as a direct challenge to the Court, I think in the expectation by those who supported the law that by the time it worked its way up through the pipeline and got back to the court, it might be a new court. So we know it's a new court with two new people; we'll see if it's a new court substantively on this issue.

MR. MCMANUS: Linda, does it matter that this is a federal law and not the state law that they handled earlier?

MS. GREENHOUSE: Well, the argument that of the Bush administration - the law has been struck down by three federal appeals courts, which is no surprise: they were applying the Supreme Court precedent, as they're supposed to do. What the Bush administration says is this is a federal law, Congress made findings in this federal law that partial-birth abortion is never medically necessary, consequently we don't need a health exception. What the court has said in the Nebraska case was false because there was no exception for times when this method is necessary to preserve a woman's health. Take the Congressional findings. It's sort of like, you know, when Senator Frist was diagnosing Terri Schiavo - Congress as a medical expert - and the question is, will Court defer to that or not?

MS. TUMULTY: Well, meanwhile out in the states, South Dakota this week passed a law that all but banned abortion there. How soon is a law like that likely to be put in front of the Supreme Court, and how would something like that come out?

MS. GREENHOUSE: Well, that is a bill that has been passed by the South Dakota legislature, not yet signed by the governor. He indicates he may well sign it, but he hasn't promised to sign it. The intent of it is directly to get a clear challenge to Row against Wade on the Court's docket soon. And it could be soon because the lower courts, of course, like lightning will have to declare this unconstitutional applying the precedent,

MS. IFILL: And we should make clear this is an outright ban with no exceptions for health of the mother or -

MS. GREENHOUSE: There's a life exception, but there's no other exception. There's not the usual rape, incest, and so on and so on. I mean, clearly the Court, as constituted today, would strike this down in a minute. There are not five votes on the Court today, even with Chief Justice Roberts and Justice Alito to strike down - to overturn Row against Wade and uphold the law like this. So, you know, I don't think that this strategy represents the core strategy of the right-to-life movement. These are some folks in South Dakota who are kind of freelancing it.

MR. CANNON: Linda, do you think this is the kind of thing John Roberts and Sam Alito wanted to face this quickly - right away, right out of the chute?

MS. GREENHOUSE: No. I wouldn't imagine that they did, although it was very foreseeable. In fact, this case - this appeal by the administration was pending, had reached the Court this fall. And the justices waited on it. They didn't issue the order granting it until this week, which was the first week that Justice Alito was seated. So I think out of kind of courtesy to him, they decided to let him participate in the decision to hear this case. I should say, the decision to hear it was pretty much automatic because when a lower court strikes down a federal statute, the court has to take a look at it.

MS. IFILL: Well, abortion, next week what do you think? School prayer? Let's just bring all the hot buttons up one after the other.

MS. GREENHOUSE: How about flag burning?

MS. IFILL: Flag burning, why not? Well, thank you all very much. This week's fun details from our new partners at "National Journal" reminds us why it will take more than a hunting accident to dethrone Dick Cheney as one of history's most powerful vice presidents. In its weekly insiders' poll of Republican political experts, "National Journal" found that nearly two-thirds of them said the vice president will still be an asset in this year's mid-term elections. Twenty-four percent thought he'd be a liability. By the way, when Democratic insiders were asked the same question about Hillary Clinton, the numbers were almost identical.

That's it for tonight. All these stories are still developing. Keep up with them every night on the "NewsHour with Jim Lehrer." Send us questions about them for our web-exclusive "Washington Week" extra. Listen to our Podcast at PBS.org and then join us again around the table, next week on "Washington Week." Good Night.