A Look at Iraq One Year Later; Bush, Kerry Go Negative Early
Aired March 12, 2004 - 22:00 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
AARON BROWN, CNN ANCHOR: Good evening from Central Command in Qatar. This is the launch point for a trip that will take us into Iraq and to Pakistan if all goes according to plan and it sometimes does.It's almost a year now since the launch of the war with Iraq. It seemed like a good time to take a look and over the next few days we shall. We'll talk with the men and women in charge of running that war. We'll talk to the civil affairs officers in Iraq who are trying to build the country. We'll talk to soldiers on the ground and we'll talk to Iraqi civilians about the good and the bad of the last year and there has been a little of both.When we arrived here last night the word of this horrible terrorist attack in Spain was just starting to spread and while Spain is not in the area of responsibility for the men and women here that attack was very much on their minds.Who did it? Was it homegrown? Was it something else? It may not be their problem today but it may be tomorrow. That seems to be the way the world works these days.We'll be back from here with more in just a bit but this is NEWSNIGHT and NEWSNIGHT begins with the whip no matter where we are and so, for that, we go to Wolf Blitzer in Washington.
WOLF BLITZER, CNN ANCHOR: Thanks very much, Aaron, and we'll return to Qatar later in the program.Our whip includes coverage, complete coverage, everything going on in Spain. Our Christiane Amanpour will join us on that.We'll also follow all the latest developments here in Washington as well, a toughening of security in this country. CNN's Jeanne Meserve on that angle of the story tonight, Jeanne the headline please.
JEANNE MESERVE, CNN CORRESPONDENT: A visible increase in security, Wolf, but is it enough when just about anyone can walk on a train in this country carrying just about anything in their bags. Meanwhile, U.S. officials say it is just too early to say who was behind the carnage in Spain.
BLITZER: All right, Jeanne, we'll get back to you. Our Jeff Greenfield has also been looking at the political situation, one involving so-called smash mouth and trash mouth talking, Jeff a headline from you please.
JEFF GREENFIELD, CNN SR. ANALYST: Wolf, spring is not yet here but the campaign sounds a lot like fall with all the personal attacks. The question is why so nasty so early? We'll try to give you some answers later on.
BLITZER: All right, Jeff. We'll get back to you as well, get back to all of the others in just a few minutes.In our program tonight as well we'll take a close look at a program designed to ease the transition from war to peace for U.S. military personnel.And later, a look at the growing heroin, yes heroin problem among suburban teenagers, especially in New England, all that to come in the hour ahead.But we begin with a moment caught in the terror and confusion of the bombings in Spain, captured in a cell phone conversation a woman on one of the targeted trains as bombs go off and pandemonium erupts.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Montse, listen. I'm, I'm in Atocha. There's been a bomb in the train and we've had...(screams).
(END VIDEO CLIP)
BLITZER: The woman survived. Now she and many, many more have some terrible days to get through. Much as it was in this country on 9/12/01, Spaniards on 3/12/04 were every bit as devastated, just as numb, no less angry and, by the looks of it, no less ready to face up to the terror.About 11 million Spaniards took to the streets today to comfort one another and demand justice. Investigators, meantime, went about the hard work of finding answers, both stories now from CNN's Christiane Amanpour.
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CHRISTIANE AMANPOUR, CNN SR. INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT (voice- over): Spanish investigators continue to pick through the wreckage of blown up train carriages looking for anything that could pinpoint the perpetrators. Despite the reported denials by ETA, the Spanish prime minister says the Basque terrorist group remains the prime suspect in the devastating attacks and he angrily reminded people of recent ETA arrests and thwarted bombings.
JOSE MARIA AZNAR, SPANISH PRIME MINISTER (through translator): What were the group trying to do when they were trying to come into Madrid with 500 kilos of explosives?
AMANPOUR: Even though they found a van containing detonators and an Arabic tape of Koranic verses, the interior minister says they have no hard leads pointing to al Qaeda.
ANGEL ACEBES, SPANISH INTERIOR MINISTER (through translator): None of the services or the security forces that we contacted has given us any indication at this moment that it could be an Islamic terror group.
AMANPOUR: Still, he's not ruling anything out and many here are asking whether this was al Qaeda's payback for Spain joining the U.S. war in Iraq.(on camera): Even as the investigation continues, more than two million voices rose in protest here in Madrid as people in this capital city and all over Spain answered the call to rally in defiance of this terrorism.(voice-over): Millions turned out to denounce the bombers as assassins and to show support for the victims. Despite a continuous downpour, citizens kept marching for hours holding banners aloft chanting, singing and sometimes cheering for freedom, unity and victory against terrorism.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: People in Madrid and all around Spain is very sad and there were a lot of dead people yesterday and we're trying to cope with that.
AMANPOUR: Indeed many said this would galvanize them into voting in Sunday's national elections, voting against the terrorists whoever they are.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
AMANPOUR: What we can say is that people are really, really eager to know who did this. When we asked them would it make a difference if it was al Qaeda or ETA they said no. Whatever it is, whoever they are, they're just monsters and animals the people that did this to us but we need to know who it was and why.And so this investigation is really crucial for them to get to the bottom of it to know why and who struck at the very heart of Spanish dignity and Spanish nationality in those terrible hours on Thursday during the morning rush hour.
BLITZER: Christiane, is there a sense that you're getting from where you are that people not only in Spain but elsewhere in Europe, whether in France or Germany, England or Italy they're beginning to sense they too are vulnerable just as the Spaniards clearly are?
AMANPOUR: Well, you know, many parts of Europe, including Spain, know terrorism. There have been, as you call them, these homegrown independence groups or others that have attacked various European cities and capitals over the last several years and today there were many European politicians, ministers, government members here in solidarity with the Spanish prime minister and, of course, people are concerned.Even though they have been through it, they know what terrorism is. What happened on Thursday was so far and away bigger than anything that had happened in Europe for as long as people really remember that it does worry people. It does indeed and particularly they want to know who it is and therefore why it is.
BLITZER: Christiane Amanpour reporting from Madrid, thank you Christiane very much.As we reported about 11 million people took to the streets today all across Spain, one in three Spaniards grieving in a very public fashion, others carrying on today or trying to despite the haunting memories that have returned.Here's CNN's Alessio Vinci.
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ALESSIO VINCI, CNN ROME BUREAU CHIEF (voice-over): The day after in Madrid, it is not business as usual. There are fewer commuters on trains and many who do travel are scared."There is a degree of fear" he says "but nothing like what we felt yesterday.""It is just one day after" says Jose Manuel Sierra (ph) "and you can see terror in a lot of faces but we need to keep on going day after day. We cannot stop living because of this."There is less work today for Joseph Alvarez (ph), a porter. For five years he's been buying lottery tickets from a kiosk at the (unintelligible) station. Today the kiosk is closed, the lady who ran it gone. "They told us she's dead" he says. He still holds the last ticket she sold him.
Relatives collect their dead at a makeshift morgue outside of town. Some find the task just too overwhelming. This man collapsed. For others, the burden is not knowing. This woman is still looking for her niece."Up to now they have shown us pictures of faces" she says "and none of them is her. At the moment we have nothing."(on camera): To help forensic experts identify some of the bodies, relatives are being asked many questions. For example, did the victim have a tattoo or a scar? Was he or she wearing jewelry or piercing? In worst cases, however, officials here say dental records, as well as DNA tests may be necessary to identify the rest of the victims.(voice-over):
Hundreds of victims at hospitals. This man found his cousin badly injured. "It is very serious" he says. "The next 48 hours will be critical. We have to wait for progress on the injuries to his head. All we can do is try not to lose hope. You can't lose hope."Doctors appeal for blood donors and ask for help identifying one of the victims, a woman."Her hair is colored dark brown with shades of gray" he says. "She is between 55 and 60 years old and weighs about 50 kilos or 132 pounds."And Friday night in the rain thousands upon thousands of Spaniards take to the streets marching against terrorism with a promise and a plea, never again.Alessio Vinci, CNN, Madrid.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
BLITZER: In addition to being a human tragedy and a case of mass murder, yesterday's bombing is also clearly a wake-up call, especially in this country, a warning of how vulnerable railroads can be. Today came the response, not by any stretch of the imagination the last word in security, but just the same a fairly visible first step.Here's CNN's Jeanne Meserve.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
MESERVE (voice-over): U.S. transit systems were making a big show of the security they've laid on in response to the Madrid bombings and a bulletin from the Department of Homeland Security urging increased vigilance with special attention to unattended bags and backpacks. Why not move the country to threat level orange?
ASA HUTCHINSON, UNDERSECRETARY, DEPARTMENT OF HOMELAND SECURITY: It would be the wrong decision to make at this time. We want to know whether this is an incident that was directed at Spain that is no threat to the United States, whether this is an al Qaeda incident.
MESERVE: U.S. military and intelligence officials doubt ETA, if responsible, could have carried out the Madrid attacks alone and the simultaneous explosions could point to al Qaeda. Al Qaeda has in the past expressed interest in striking subways and, if it's involvement is established, that would change the U.S. response.
HUTCHINSON: You then recognize, of course, that this shows their continued capability and would certainly enhance the security even more.
MESERVE: For now there is this.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: The bombing in Madrid, Spain reminds us that terrorist attacks are still a reality.
STEVEN TAUB, WASHINGTON METROPOLITAN AREA TRANSIT AUTHORITY: Something that we continually stress that everybody needs to be on guard and to look for anything unusual and that's why we constantly make these station announcements.
MESERVE: But tightly securing the sprawling rail system is a huge challenge. For example, more than 700,000 people a day stream through Grand Central Terminal unscreened but there is no move towards airport type security.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
MESERVE: Meanwhile, the FBI has offered to assist in the Madrid investigation. As yet the Spaniards have not taken up the offer -- Wolf.
BLITZER: Why not simply do at train stations what's done at airports?
MESERVE: Logistically and financially it would be incredibly difficult. When you're looking at an airport there are a limited number of big airports. There are very few intermediate stops on flights, so you get people on. You can take them to where they're going.When you look at the rail system, it's a really sprawling system, hundreds, even thousands of points of entrance, many more people using it in the course of the average day. If you started screening the way you do at airports, it probably would paralyze the system. That's the way it looks now at least.
BLITZER: All right, a daunting challenge. Thanks very much Jeanne Meserve reporting.More now on the signs and signals that speak to who's responsible. What are Spanish investigators looking for right now? What does the early evidence show? And, for those who make it their business to know, what are their guts telling them tonight?We'll ask Brian Jenkins of the Rand Corporation. He's joining us tonight from Los Angeles. Brian, you've studied this for decades, terrorism. What does your gut tell you?
BRIAN JENKINS, RAND CORPORATION, TERRORISM ANALYST: It's still too early to say, Wolf. I mean certainly ETA has to be at the top of the list, although there are also some contradictory signals from this particular event. If it is ETA, it represents an order of magnitude escalation in the violence. I think their largest incident previously involved 21 deaths. We're talking about 200 deaths here. They simply have not gone in for this large scale indiscriminate violence.And at least one of the ETA spokespersons issued a denial. That doesn't let them off the hook and there is the possibility that it could be a very violent faction of ETA.
ETA, in fact, is prone to factions, has split a number of times over the years and that's a dynamic we see in terrorist organizations. We can't exclude at this point either the possibility that this is somehow related to the global jihad that these are individuals connected to or inspired by the events in the Middle East by Spain's participation in the coalition forces in Iraq.Spain already was a target of a bombing in Iraq and this could be an extension of that. Certainly, there is much that puts Spain on the list going all the way back to the Reconquista, to the eight centuries of warfare between the Spanish and what at that time were called the Moors. There's a lot of history there. That seems to be very, very ancient history but it is not so in the minds of the current jihadist.
BLITZER: Brian, what about the possibility that there could be collaboration between ETA and al Qaeda or some sort of Islamist group like that?
JENKINS: It, again it can't be ruled out. I would say at this point that it seems to be a remote possibility. We don't have a precedent for that kind of collaboration between al Qaeda or the jihadist groups and non-Muslim groups nor do we have any evidence for ETA seeking support from the Muslim groups.ETA does have a history of cooperating with the IRA but those were two like-minded organizations. If indeed it did turn out to be that, that would be an ominous development because it would suggest that this global jihad can mutate and can transcend the current boundaries of Islamic extremism.
BLITZER: And Brian, finally, if it were simply ETA, homegrown terrorists, it would be one thing but if there is an al Qaeda connection, it bodes very, very ominously for everyone, not only in Europe but here in the U.S. as well, wouldn't you agree?
JENKINS: I would agree with that. In fact, I think this attack really bodes ill in either case because what it suggests that if it turns out to be ETA, unconnected with al Qaeda, it confirms a long term trend that we have seen and that is a trend towards the increasing incidence of large scale indiscriminate violence.Al Qaeda may be setting the path but other organizations are saying if that's what it takes to get attention, to make ourselves heard, to exert pressure, then we will operate at that level.
BLITZER: Brian Jenkins joining us tonight. Brian thanks very much, lots to consider based on what you said.
JENKINS: Thank you.
BLITZER: And just ahead on the program tonight, we'll turn to presidential politics and get our Jeff Greenfield, his expert opinion on what the presidential campaign has turned into and why it's apparently a little bit ugly so early.And later, Aaron will report from Central Command in Qatar with a look at some of the lessons the U.S. military has learned in the year since the war began. From Washington this is NEWSNIGHT.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
BLITZER: In the virtual slugfest, also known as presidential campaigning, John Kerry hit back today, a counter punch to the one President Bush threw yesterday when he attacked Senator Kerry on taxes and defense.The new Kerry campaign ad accuses the president of misleading the country. A lot of people are talking about how ugly the campaigning already has become, which raises the question is the tit-for-tat meaner than usual and, if so, why so mean so early?Here's CNN's Senior Analyst Jeff Greenfield.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
SEN. JOHN KERRY (D), PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: These guys are the most crooked, you know, lying group of people I've ever seen.
GREENFIELD (voice-over): From John Kerry's unguarded rhetoric...
ANNOUNCER: And he wanted to delay defending America until the United Nations approved.
GREENFIELD: To George Bush's tough new ad, this campaign has turned very harsh very early. Indecision kills, Vice President Cheney said of Kerry's alleged uncertainties.
KERRY: Bad rushed decisions kill too.
GREENFIELD: Bad rushed decisions kill, Kerry said of the Bush administration's war on Iraq. (on camera): Now, a word of caution is in order. The press loves to label every campaign bitter even if the candidates are just politely disagreeing on the issues but this time it is different tougher, blunter, way, way early. The question is why. The answer lots of reasons.(voice-over): First, in the old days candidates battled within their parties for the nomination. It took until the summer to sort this out. Now the contenders are picked in early March.Second, when incumbent presidents have the wind at their backs they can set a sunny upbeat tone.
ANNOUNCER: It's morning again in America.
GREENFIELD: Reagan's "Morning in America" in 1984.
ANNOUNCER: Building a bridge to the 21st Century.
GREENFIELD: Bill Clinton's "Bridge to the 21st Century" in 1996, though Clinton did run ads linking GOP nominee Bob Dole to House Speaker Gingrich.But the mood of America right now is darker. Four years ago most Americans said they were satisfied with how things were going. Today, most are not. This means the Bush campaign cannot stay above the fray, not when the polls show him even with or trailing his opponent.Third...
REP. DICK GEPHARDT (D), MISSOURI: In such a partisan way.
GREENFIELD: Four years ago the country was clearly hungry for a change from the pitched warfare of the Clinton years. Then Governor Bush ran on changing the tone in Washington. Instead of feeding red meat to the GOP convention, he said...
GEORGE W. BUSH, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: I have no stake in the bitter arguments of the last few years.
GREENFIELD: And his take on Clinton was almost sympathetic.BUSH: So many talents, so much charm, such great skill but, in the end, to what end?
GREENFIELD: This year by contrast the Democrats found themselves with a primary base steeped in intense dislike of President Bush. Howard Dean's rise was fueled in large measure by his insistence that the party confront the president head on.BUSH: Once again, Senator Kerry is trying to have it both ways.
GREENFIELD: That fervor in turn sparked a push by Republicans for the Bush campaign to answer earlier and more forcefully.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
GREENFIELD: Now, it is hard to imagine that this can keep up for almost eight months. For one thing, it could be politically stupid. Voters rarely put angry candidates in the White House but with a closely divided electorate and with genuinely big things at stake and with the political parties far more polarized ideologically than in the past, maybe it can.And, by the way Mr. President and Senator Kerry, can you prove where you were the night the Lindbergh baby was kidnapped? Wolf, this could be the next big issues.
BLITZER: I'm just wondering about that as well. But if it does continue over the next several months, who stands to suffer the most?
GREENFIELD: I think John Kerry does because he is far less known to the public obviously than the president is. The president four years ago gained a lot from the fact that he was seen as less intense, a little more at ease than Al Gore, maybe a little less hungry for the job, maybe not hungry enough some people said.And the idea that this still new figure to many Americans who haven't followed this process might be starting off with this intensely negative hammer blow after hammer blow I think might interfere with Kerry's other goal, which is to get the public comfortable with him, to like him, to feel, yes, this is the kind of guy I want in my living room every night for the next four years -- Wolf.
BLITZER: Jeff Greenfield reporting from New York, thanks Jeff very much.
GREENFIELD: OK.
BLITZER: And coming up on NEWSNIGHT, Aaron will return with a look at some of the lessons learned in a number of ways by the U.S. military and military personnel in the year since the Iraq War began. Stay with us.
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BROWN: In conversations with senior military officials here today, they were very candid about the surprises they found in Iraq over the last year. The big surprise, of course, you already know, the failure to date to find any of those weapons of mass destruction but that's not the only surprise, not nearly.There was in some respects a failure to anticipate the degree to which there would be an insurgency, Saddam loyalists or foreign fighters attacking American forces but even that is not the only surprise, from the Pentagon tonight our Senior Pentagon Correspondent Jamie McIntyre.
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JAMIE MCINTYRE, CNN SR. PENTAGON CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Before going to war against Saddam Hussein, the U.S. knew more about Iraq than any previous adversary. After all, it defeated Iraq's Army in 1991, patrolled its no fly zones for a decade and had access to intelligence from U.N. inspectors on the ground but there was a lot the U.S. didn't know and didn't foresee.Last summer with U.S. casualties mounting, the Pentagon was still in denial that after winning the major combat phase of the war, it was facing what its own dictionary defined as guerrilla warfare.
DONALD RUMSFELD, DEFENSE SECRETARY: I knew I should have looked it up. I could die that I didn't look it up.
MCINTYRE (on camera): It's the Pentagon's own definition, a paramilitary operation conducted in enemy held or hostile territory by a regular (unintelligible) indigenous forces. This seems to fit a lot of what's going on in Iraq.
RUMSFELD: It really doesn't.
MCINTYRE (voice-over): More than 500 Americans have died in Iraq, almost half from hostile fire since the end of major combat. Another big reality check came when the U.S. got a firsthand look at Iraq's decrepit infrastructure. Electricity and water plants were suffering from years of neglect.
RICH BARTON, CENTER FOR STRATEGIC AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES: Part of it had been the sanctions. Part of it had been the gross and constant mismanagement of the Saddam Hussein regime.
MCINTYRE: Rick Barton led a team of experts from the Center for Strategic and International Studies on an inspection tour in Iraq last summer. They found the biggest miscalculation was what it would take to provide security.
BARTON: You have to start off strong and our inability to provide for public safety initially has created a complication that we've ended up having to live with.
MCINTYRE: Despite the Pentagon's insistence that looting was inevitable and that more U.S. troops would have only meant more U.S. targets, Barton and other experts argue having additional forces early on to secure armories and collect weapons might have made a big difference. And then there was the flawed idea that oil-rich Iraq could pay its own way quickly.
PAUL WOLFOWITZ, DEPUTY DEFENSE SECRETARY: We're dealing with a country that can really finance its own reconstruction and relatively soon.
MCINTYRE: While oil production is approaching prewar levels and exports have already brought in some $6 billion, that's still a fraction of the estimated $100 billion needed to put Iraq back on its feet. Jamie McIntyre, CNN, the Pentagon.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
BROWN: Central Command here is in the midst of a huge and hugely complicated rotation of troops. Thousands of new troops are coming in. Nearly 40 percent of them will be reservists and thousands more men and women are heading home. Most of them are anticipating and will find a very happy return. Some, more than you might expect, will find their return quite complicated.
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UNIDENTIFIED MALE: My name is Staff Sergeant Walston (ph). I'm originally from Harrisonburg, Virginia.
BROWN: Its formal name is the Warrior Transition Program, a sort of self-help group the Navy and Marines have set up to ease the adjustment from war zone to home.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: You get some of the yuck out to heal.
BROWN: They're called the Devil Docs, the front-line medical support during some of the worst, the bloodiest fighting in the war with Iraq.
CHAPLAIN RON RINGO, CAMP LEJEUNE: They saw the worst of the worst. They saw their fellow corpsman who were wounded or killed come in before them and then they had to perform surgery or zip them up in a body bag.
BROWN: War is hell, as they say, for everyone. But it seems especially hard if your job is to save lives.
SCOTT COON, BRAVO SURGICAL COMPANY: The night before the war started, I can remember putting together an ambulance crew and knowing that they were going to an exercise and knowing them and knowing their wives and their kids and knowing that they were being told they were going to an exercise, but having a pretty damn good idea that they were going in harm's way and that there's a chance that I would see their wives and their children and they wouldn't be back.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: You want some eggs, buddy?
BROWN: And it wasn't just their wives and their children Scott Coon worried about. His own marriage has suffered.
JULIE COON, WIFE OF SCOTT: It definitely has affected our relationship. I almost feel like it's kind of -- we've been married for 10 years and it's almost back to like it's back to when we were first dating. I think, to everybody else, we just kind of put on our happy face. But when we're home, it's the reality of, wow, what he's been through, what I've been through without him.
S. COON: If go into an environment that is stressful, it has human beings mutilated and killed, that's going to affect you. I don't know that I would call it combat stress, but I would say that it's a life-changing event.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: This is a total team effort.
BROWN: Julie Coon has gone through the Warrior Transition Program for spouses and it couple is now in counseling. And they are all too aware that divorce often follows long deployments. And so does post-traumatic stress. About 8 percent of Gulf War I vets suffer from it. And some worry that, with longer, more violent deployments this time around, it could be worse.
COL. CHARLES MILLIKEN, WALTER REED ARMY INSTITUTE OF RESEARCH: The challenges we face in the current war is that there's ongoing violence and that correlates with a higher incidence of combat stress. We also are having a lot more soldiers exposed to that violence. We're rotating through a lot of Guard and Reservists and the total number of folks that will be exposed to that violence is going to be high.
BROWN: But according to Scott Coon, it's a human reaction to a very inhuman experience.
S. COON: You don't land bombs on people without mutilating them. And I can tell you that anybody who was out there that experienced what we experienced is going to have to cope with it.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We're here to help any way we can.
BROWN: Which is why the military says it is doing more than ever before to deal with combat stress, recognizing that even the healers can need healing, too. (END VIDEOTAPE) BROWN: We'll be back later in the program. When we come back, Wolf returns with more of the day's news. In Qatar, this is NEWSNIGHT.
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BLITZER: A quick look now at some other stories making news around the country. In California, seven people, including an infant and three toddlers, have been found dead in a Fresno home and a suspect is under arrest. The bodies were found when police responded to a custody dispute call earlier in the afternoon. Witnesses told officers a man had their children inside. He surrendered when a SWAT team arrived. No word on the exact cause of the deaths or his relationship to the children. In Utah, a woman who refused a cesarean section has been charged with murder. Doctors allegedly had warned her repeatedly that the twins she was carrying would likely die without operation. She didn't listen and one baby was stillborn.
Prosecutors allege the mother refused the C-section to avoid the scars from it. Today, she denied that charge, saying she had been afraid of the surgery itself. And another twist in the gay marriage fight today; 10 same-sex couples who had been denied marriage licenses in the past eight days filed suit against the state of New York. The mayor of Nyack, New York, and his partner are among the plaintiffs.
On to the "MONEYLINE Roundup," which begins tonight with Halliburton, the contractor telling investors today not to expect any more bad news relating to its work in Iraq, this a day after military auditors called the company's cost accounting substandard in a major way. Halliburton and subsidiaries are the military's largest civilian partner in Iraq, with about $18 billion in contracts so far. Shares of the company rose nearly 5 percent today, rebounding from the beating they took yesterday. And, in Chicago, a buyer has surfaced for the country's tallest office building. MetLife is selling the Sear's Tower. A group of New York investors will buy it. They'll pay upwards $800 million for the privilege. Consumers remain weary about the economy. The University of Michigan's consumers confidence index fell a fraction this month. And the professionals were expecting a slight gain. But because investors expected an even worse performance, markets were up, the Nasdaq especially, a happy ending to a pretty gloomy week. And, in a moment, we'll have more news and we'll return to the bombings in Spain and an important question: Just how vulnerable are we right here in the United States?
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BLITZER: The bombings in Spain were a painful reminder that it doesn't take anything all that exotic or sophisticated to cause mass casualties. Simplicity in this case works and sadly it isn't hard to find other simple ways of doing horrible damage. Here to talk about that, Elaine Shannon. She writes about crime and terrorism in "TIME" magazine. Elaine, thanks very much.
ELAINE SHANNON, "TIME": Thanks.
BLITZER: I know you're working on train safety right now, very high on the agenda. What are you learning? SHANNON: I'm learning that, first of all, al Qaeda's been very interested in rail, in trains. And we've known this from when we went into Afghanistan and even before from the '90s, when they were looking at tunnels, trains, bridges, all of that kind of stuff. And we also know that they tend to return to the same targets. They pick them out and then they go and go and go until they get one. And this worries the FBI and other people.
BLITZER: Just to be precise, we don't know if this was al Qaeda in Spain or it was ETA or anybody else. SHANNON: No, we don't.
BLITZER: It's all speculation at this point.
SHANNON: Yes, you can get plenty of people to speculate. And it could be a combination. We don't know.
BLITZER: The whole nature of the simplicity in terror, we hear about biological warfare, chemical and nuclear. But there's a lot of damage that can be done simply with explosives.
SHANNON: Exactly. And when I talk to people I say, what keeps you awake at night? And a guy said to me today who has to do this here in Washington, what keeps me awake is exactly this, trains, chemicals. There are chemicals on trains. You can blow up a car of chemicals on a train, pretty easy. You don't have to be in the car. You can just put something on the tracks. They're accessible. Plane, once you take it off, it's not that easy.
(CROSSTALK)
BLITZER: A lot of counter terrorism and law enforcement types have said to me since 9/11 that they're amazed -- they're thrilled, but they're amazed the kind of simple terrorism that you see elsewhere around the world hasn't really materialized here.
SHANNON: Truck bombs or just get a truck full of gasoline. Five gallons of gasoline can make a huge fireball. And if there's something else toxic next to it, that will make an even worse mess of fumes and incineration.And you can imagine that near the tracks that go through the Washington suburbs up the Atlantic Corridor into New York, into New Jersey, all that. You could be really destructive.
(CROSSTALK)
BLITZER: Do you get a sense, speaking to the authorities, the experts you're speaking to, that significant progress is being made or that everybody is sort of just treading water? SHANNON: Well, it's very -- nobody wants to pay the price of securing, getting on the metro and securing train stations. We're not going to put up with the kind of detectors that we do at airports. And so what they're doing is telling us all of us as citizens to pay attention to those knapsacks, pay attention if somebody pulls a bottle of something out of a knapsack and looks like they're going to spread it around and report it. A lot of it is going to be up to us.
BLITZER: But they do have certain techniques they use at subway stations beyond dogs that are sniffing the air, or whatever. They have other sensitive equipment, a lot of these facilities, that presumably help.
SHANNON: Yes, they do have sensors. And you can set those sensors off with certain household chemicals. And that can cause stampede and panic itself. And you can shut down a lot of Washington.I was writing tonight about an episode here right before Christmas when a guy called in some bomb threats on the D.C. subway system and it shut down the system for the day.
BLITZER: And that can happen.SHANNON: It was nothing.
BLITZER: Elaine Shannon, from our sister publication, "TIME" magazine, as usual, thanks. Horrible thoughts, but thanks for coming in.
(LAUGHTER)
BLITZER: Up next on NEWSNIGHT, another horrible thought, heroin, it's a problem that's moving to the suburbs. We'll take a look at this growing problem, especially in New England. From Washington, this is NEWSNIGHT.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
BLITZER: Every so often, a demographic bombshell turns conventional wisdom on its head. This is one of those times. It's about heroin and where the problem is worst. The latest government data points to six states, ones you might not expect. Together, they are New England. Together, they also have the highest rate of heroin use in the country. And many of the users are very young.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I know of probably 15 people in a small town that I could get OxyContin and heroin from.
BLITZER (voice-over): In the suburbs of Boston, heroin addicts are not found loitering in back alleys, but in high school hallways.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: I used to go to school and I'd buy my drugs in school, ask to go to the bathroom, you know. I sniffed them right off the sink in the bathroom or off my notebook in the stall. And I was good for the day.
BLITZER: The convergence of new smuggling routes, low prices and intense potency has fueled a new wave of young heroin users in the region.
MARK TROUVILLE, NEA SPECIAL AGENT: We have a huge heroin problem in New England. Colombian-based criminal organizations are dealing directly here with people in New England.
BLITZER: Street purity is between 70 and 90 percent, compared to national average of 57 percent.
TROUVILLE: They're flooding the market again. They're putting it out there that's more pure just so that the high is more intense.
DR. P.J. KISHORE, ADDICTION SPECIALIST: How old were you when you started? UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Seventeen, fresh out of high school.
BLITZER: Dr. P.J. Kishore has been treating addiction in Massachusetts for over two decades. Over the past few years, he's seen an alarming trend.
KISHORE: Addiction is a younger disease. They start experimentation around 13, 14. By the time they're 17 or 18, they're hooked. Heroin has a bad stigma to it. But when it comes to OxyContin, they see no problem with it. It starts the addiction process and they'll all go to heroin.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I was doing Oxy since I was like 15.
BLITZER: Erin (ph) is 18 and has been clean since October 20. She started high school as a star athlete and honor student.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: I always wasn't pretty enough, I wasn't smart enough, I wasn't skinny enough. And the drugs kind of gave me that self-confidence to be somebody that I wanted to be.
BLITZER: She says the majority of her classmates were doing OxyContin, heroin, or both.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: All the popular people of my grade, all of them ended up, you know, using. So, I'd say, probably about like seven out of 10 kids in my high school probably turned to them.
BLITZER: Like most of Dr. Kishore's young patients, she started off taking OxyContin, a highly addictive opiate which is easily available without a prescription.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: When I started shooting heroin, it was cheap. It was always around. I could get $5 bags of heroin or I would go and I would buy like a $40 bag or a $50 bag, which was, you know, a couple of good shots.
BLITZER: The heroin is so potent that the physical addiction takes hold almost immediately.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: It didn't register in my mind that, oh, my God, I'm shooting heroin. It's almost like I was happy because I had found something better, you know, something inexpensive, something that instantly made me feel the things I wanted to feel.
BLITZER: So what is being done to curb the flow of heroin into the area? The DEA says they're doing everything they can to cut off the supply.
TROUVILLE: Our long-range goals really are to go after the big international organizations that are causing all these drugs to flow into our country. And the local police who are tasked to work on these street corners and stuff, they simply have their hands full.
BLITZER: Once the heroin seeps into the suburban communities, it largely becomes a local problem, a problem communities and schools are just starting to come to grips with.
KISHORE: The name of the game in addictions is catch them young. Unless we have doctors, public health officials and community leaders working together, there will not be an answer.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
BLITZER: Pretty serious stuff. Aaron will return in a moment with a look at one of the key players at Central Command in Doha, Qatar. So I'll say good night for now. Hope to see you on Sunday in "LATE EDITION," the last word in Sunday talk. Among my guests, the defense secretary, Donald Rumsfeld. NEWSNIGHT continues in a moment.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
BROWN: Deep inside this complex is a unique command center. They keep track of both Iraq and Afghanistan there. And it is filled with one of the important tools of modern warfare, laptop computers. The man in day-to-day charge is unique as well. He's a helicopter pilot turned -- well, he describes it as orchestra leader. And you'll see why. He's a reserve officer with a very full plate.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
BROWN (voice-over): In this crowded room, more a trailer, really, than an office, Navy Captain Jim Stahlman is in his element, a key officer helping to oversee the American occupation of Iraq. (on camera): This room operates 24 hours a day.
CAPT. JAMES STAHLMAN, U.S. NAVY: Twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week. It's been operating that way since September 12 of two years ago.
BROWN: Is that right?
STAHLMAN: Yes, sir.
BROWN (voice-over): It is not easy. When his boss, the overall commander, General John Abizaid, testified in Washington last week, Stahlman had to anticipate the questions and come up with the answers.
STAHLMAN: Last week we had a great example. General Abizaid was up in front of Congress testifying. We had to provide answers to the questions that he was going to be asked. Interesting process that they go through to get those answers. But, basically, I play orchestra conductor back down here. I had 15 people all with a question or PowerPoint slide or something that they needed to work on, and I just direct the efforts.
BROWN: The military, as you would expect, says it is proud of the things it has accomplished in the year since the invasion. Fewer soldiers are dying from those improvised explosive devices. The 100 million tons of weaponry -- 100 million tons -- in Iraqi hands is slowly, but steadily being destroyed. New electrical generators are coming online.But, most of all, says Captain Stahlman, the military is proud of its people. (on camera): What do you think your country men and women back home (OFF-MIKE) don't know and need to know?
STAHLMAN: What they don't know is the level of effort of the kids on the ground that are 18 and 19 every day out there. BROWN: You don't think they know that?
STAHLMAN: I don't think that they do. I think they know that they're there, but I don't think they understand what it's like to put on a flak vest, put on a helmet, strap a backpack on that's got 10, 15, 16 clips of ammunition on it, put your gun over your shoulder and know that there is a pretty darn good chance that something is going to blow up or a bullet is going to go by your head tonight.That's a hard thing to do and those kids are doing it 16 hours a day up there.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
BROWN: Tomorrow, we head into Iraq. There are many issues facing the country, as the June 30 deadline approaches. That's the time when the Americans will give Iraq back the power and authority to remake itself, to redefine itself, to become the country it is trying to become. It is hardly, though, the end of the American presence there, but it is an important marker. And we'll be reporting on that, on the preparations, how it's going. That's next week on NEWSNIGHT. That's our report for tonight. Have a good weekend. And good night for all of us.
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AARON BROWN, CNN ANCHOR: Good evening from Central Command in Qatar. This is the launch point for a trip that will take us into Iraq and to Pakistan if all goes according to plan and it sometimes does.It's almost a year now since the launch of the war with Iraq. It seemed like a good time to take a look and over the next few days we shall. We'll talk with the men and women in charge of running that war. We'll talk to the civil affairs officers in Iraq who are trying to build the country. We'll talk to soldiers on the ground and we'll talk to Iraqi civilians about the good and the bad of the last year and there has been a little of both.When we arrived here last night the word of this horrible terrorist attack in Spain was just starting to spread and while Spain is not in the area of responsibility for the men and women here that attack was very much on their minds.Who did it? Was it homegrown? Was it something else? It may not be their problem today but it may be tomorrow. That seems to be the way the world works these days.We'll be back from here with more in just a bit but this is NEWSNIGHT and NEWSNIGHT begins with the whip no matter where we are and so, for that, we go to Wolf Blitzer in Washington.
WOLF BLITZER, CNN ANCHOR: Thanks very much, Aaron, and we'll return to Qatar later in the program.Our whip includes coverage, complete coverage, everything going on in Spain. Our Christiane Amanpour will join us on that.We'll also follow all the latest developments here in Washington as well, a toughening of security in this country. CNN's Jeanne Meserve on that angle of the story tonight, Jeanne the headline please.
JEANNE MESERVE, CNN CORRESPONDENT: A visible increase in security, Wolf, but is it enough when just about anyone can walk on a train in this country carrying just about anything in their bags. Meanwhile, U.S. officials say it is just too early to say who was behind the carnage in Spain.
BLITZER: All right, Jeanne, we'll get back to you. Our Jeff Greenfield has also been looking at the political situation, one involving so-called smash mouth and trash mouth talking, Jeff a headline from you please.
JEFF GREENFIELD, CNN SR. ANALYST: Wolf, spring is not yet here but the campaign sounds a lot like fall with all the personal attacks. The question is why so nasty so early? We'll try to give you some answers later on.
BLITZER: All right, Jeff. We'll get back to you as well, get back to all of the others in just a few minutes.In our program tonight as well we'll take a close look at a program designed to ease the transition from war to peace for U.S. military personnel.And later, a look at the growing heroin, yes heroin problem among suburban teenagers, especially in New England, all that to come in the hour ahead.But we begin with a moment caught in the terror and confusion of the bombings in Spain, captured in a cell phone conversation a woman on one of the targeted trains as bombs go off and pandemonium erupts.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Montse, listen. I'm, I'm in Atocha. There's been a bomb in the train and we've had...(screams).
(END VIDEO CLIP)
BLITZER: The woman survived. Now she and many, many more have some terrible days to get through. Much as it was in this country on 9/12/01, Spaniards on 3/12/04 were every bit as devastated, just as numb, no less angry and, by the looks of it, no less ready to face up to the terror.About 11 million Spaniards took to the streets today to comfort one another and demand justice. Investigators, meantime, went about the hard work of finding answers, both stories now from CNN's Christiane Amanpour.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
CHRISTIANE AMANPOUR, CNN SR. INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT (voice- over): Spanish investigators continue to pick through the wreckage of blown up train carriages looking for anything that could pinpoint the perpetrators. Despite the reported denials by ETA, the Spanish prime minister says the Basque terrorist group remains the prime suspect in the devastating attacks and he angrily reminded people of recent ETA arrests and thwarted bombings.
JOSE MARIA AZNAR, SPANISH PRIME MINISTER (through translator): What were the group trying to do when they were trying to come into Madrid with 500 kilos of explosives?
AMANPOUR: Even though they found a van containing detonators and an Arabic tape of Koranic verses, the interior minister says they have no hard leads pointing to al Qaeda.
ANGEL ACEBES, SPANISH INTERIOR MINISTER (through translator): None of the services or the security forces that we contacted has given us any indication at this moment that it could be an Islamic terror group.
AMANPOUR: Still, he's not ruling anything out and many here are asking whether this was al Qaeda's payback for Spain joining the U.S. war in Iraq.(on camera): Even as the investigation continues, more than two million voices rose in protest here in Madrid as people in this capital city and all over Spain answered the call to rally in defiance of this terrorism.(voice-over): Millions turned out to denounce the bombers as assassins and to show support for the victims. Despite a continuous downpour, citizens kept marching for hours holding banners aloft chanting, singing and sometimes cheering for freedom, unity and victory against terrorism.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: People in Madrid and all around Spain is very sad and there were a lot of dead people yesterday and we're trying to cope with that.
AMANPOUR: Indeed many said this would galvanize them into voting in Sunday's national elections, voting against the terrorists whoever they are.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
AMANPOUR: What we can say is that people are really, really eager to know who did this. When we asked them would it make a difference if it was al Qaeda or ETA they said no. Whatever it is, whoever they are, they're just monsters and animals the people that did this to us but we need to know who it was and why.And so this investigation is really crucial for them to get to the bottom of it to know why and who struck at the very heart of Spanish dignity and Spanish nationality in those terrible hours on Thursday during the morning rush hour.
BLITZER: Christiane, is there a sense that you're getting from where you are that people not only in Spain but elsewhere in Europe, whether in France or Germany, England or Italy they're beginning to sense they too are vulnerable just as the Spaniards clearly are?
AMANPOUR: Well, you know, many parts of Europe, including Spain, know terrorism. There have been, as you call them, these homegrown independence groups or others that have attacked various European cities and capitals over the last several years and today there were many European politicians, ministers, government members here in solidarity with the Spanish prime minister and, of course, people are concerned.Even though they have been through it, they know what terrorism is. What happened on Thursday was so far and away bigger than anything that had happened in Europe for as long as people really remember that it does worry people. It does indeed and particularly they want to know who it is and therefore why it is.
BLITZER: Christiane Amanpour reporting from Madrid, thank you Christiane very much.As we reported about 11 million people took to the streets today all across Spain, one in three Spaniards grieving in a very public fashion, others carrying on today or trying to despite the haunting memories that have returned.Here's CNN's Alessio Vinci.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
ALESSIO VINCI, CNN ROME BUREAU CHIEF (voice-over): The day after in Madrid, it is not business as usual. There are fewer commuters on trains and many who do travel are scared."There is a degree of fear" he says "but nothing like what we felt yesterday.""It is just one day after" says Jose Manuel Sierra (ph) "and you can see terror in a lot of faces but we need to keep on going day after day. We cannot stop living because of this."There is less work today for Joseph Alvarez (ph), a porter. For five years he's been buying lottery tickets from a kiosk at the (unintelligible) station. Today the kiosk is closed, the lady who ran it gone. "They told us she's dead" he says. He still holds the last ticket she sold him.
Relatives collect their dead at a makeshift morgue outside of town. Some find the task just too overwhelming. This man collapsed. For others, the burden is not knowing. This woman is still looking for her niece."Up to now they have shown us pictures of faces" she says "and none of them is her. At the moment we have nothing."(on camera): To help forensic experts identify some of the bodies, relatives are being asked many questions. For example, did the victim have a tattoo or a scar? Was he or she wearing jewelry or piercing? In worst cases, however, officials here say dental records, as well as DNA tests may be necessary to identify the rest of the victims.(voice-over):
Hundreds of victims at hospitals. This man found his cousin badly injured. "It is very serious" he says. "The next 48 hours will be critical. We have to wait for progress on the injuries to his head. All we can do is try not to lose hope. You can't lose hope."Doctors appeal for blood donors and ask for help identifying one of the victims, a woman."Her hair is colored dark brown with shades of gray" he says. "She is between 55 and 60 years old and weighs about 50 kilos or 132 pounds."And Friday night in the rain thousands upon thousands of Spaniards take to the streets marching against terrorism with a promise and a plea, never again.Alessio Vinci, CNN, Madrid.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
BLITZER: In addition to being a human tragedy and a case of mass murder, yesterday's bombing is also clearly a wake-up call, especially in this country, a warning of how vulnerable railroads can be. Today came the response, not by any stretch of the imagination the last word in security, but just the same a fairly visible first step.Here's CNN's Jeanne Meserve.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
MESERVE (voice-over): U.S. transit systems were making a big show of the security they've laid on in response to the Madrid bombings and a bulletin from the Department of Homeland Security urging increased vigilance with special attention to unattended bags and backpacks. Why not move the country to threat level orange?
ASA HUTCHINSON, UNDERSECRETARY, DEPARTMENT OF HOMELAND SECURITY: It would be the wrong decision to make at this time. We want to know whether this is an incident that was directed at Spain that is no threat to the United States, whether this is an al Qaeda incident.
MESERVE: U.S. military and intelligence officials doubt ETA, if responsible, could have carried out the Madrid attacks alone and the simultaneous explosions could point to al Qaeda. Al Qaeda has in the past expressed interest in striking subways and, if it's involvement is established, that would change the U.S. response.
HUTCHINSON: You then recognize, of course, that this shows their continued capability and would certainly enhance the security even more.
MESERVE: For now there is this.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: The bombing in Madrid, Spain reminds us that terrorist attacks are still a reality.
STEVEN TAUB, WASHINGTON METROPOLITAN AREA TRANSIT AUTHORITY: Something that we continually stress that everybody needs to be on guard and to look for anything unusual and that's why we constantly make these station announcements.
MESERVE: But tightly securing the sprawling rail system is a huge challenge. For example, more than 700,000 people a day stream through Grand Central Terminal unscreened but there is no move towards airport type security.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
MESERVE: Meanwhile, the FBI has offered to assist in the Madrid investigation. As yet the Spaniards have not taken up the offer -- Wolf.
BLITZER: Why not simply do at train stations what's done at airports?
MESERVE: Logistically and financially it would be incredibly difficult. When you're looking at an airport there are a limited number of big airports. There are very few intermediate stops on flights, so you get people on. You can take them to where they're going.When you look at the rail system, it's a really sprawling system, hundreds, even thousands of points of entrance, many more people using it in the course of the average day. If you started screening the way you do at airports, it probably would paralyze the system. That's the way it looks now at least.
BLITZER: All right, a daunting challenge. Thanks very much Jeanne Meserve reporting.More now on the signs and signals that speak to who's responsible. What are Spanish investigators looking for right now? What does the early evidence show? And, for those who make it their business to know, what are their guts telling them tonight?We'll ask Brian Jenkins of the Rand Corporation. He's joining us tonight from Los Angeles. Brian, you've studied this for decades, terrorism. What does your gut tell you?
BRIAN JENKINS, RAND CORPORATION, TERRORISM ANALYST: It's still too early to say, Wolf. I mean certainly ETA has to be at the top of the list, although there are also some contradictory signals from this particular event. If it is ETA, it represents an order of magnitude escalation in the violence. I think their largest incident previously involved 21 deaths. We're talking about 200 deaths here. They simply have not gone in for this large scale indiscriminate violence.And at least one of the ETA spokespersons issued a denial. That doesn't let them off the hook and there is the possibility that it could be a very violent faction of ETA.
ETA, in fact, is prone to factions, has split a number of times over the years and that's a dynamic we see in terrorist organizations. We can't exclude at this point either the possibility that this is somehow related to the global jihad that these are individuals connected to or inspired by the events in the Middle East by Spain's participation in the coalition forces in Iraq.Spain already was a target of a bombing in Iraq and this could be an extension of that. Certainly, there is much that puts Spain on the list going all the way back to the Reconquista, to the eight centuries of warfare between the Spanish and what at that time were called the Moors. There's a lot of history there. That seems to be very, very ancient history but it is not so in the minds of the current jihadist.
BLITZER: Brian, what about the possibility that there could be collaboration between ETA and al Qaeda or some sort of Islamist group like that?
JENKINS: It, again it can't be ruled out. I would say at this point that it seems to be a remote possibility. We don't have a precedent for that kind of collaboration between al Qaeda or the jihadist groups and non-Muslim groups nor do we have any evidence for ETA seeking support from the Muslim groups.ETA does have a history of cooperating with the IRA but those were two like-minded organizations. If indeed it did turn out to be that, that would be an ominous development because it would suggest that this global jihad can mutate and can transcend the current boundaries of Islamic extremism.
BLITZER: And Brian, finally, if it were simply ETA, homegrown terrorists, it would be one thing but if there is an al Qaeda connection, it bodes very, very ominously for everyone, not only in Europe but here in the U.S. as well, wouldn't you agree?
JENKINS: I would agree with that. In fact, I think this attack really bodes ill in either case because what it suggests that if it turns out to be ETA, unconnected with al Qaeda, it confirms a long term trend that we have seen and that is a trend towards the increasing incidence of large scale indiscriminate violence.Al Qaeda may be setting the path but other organizations are saying if that's what it takes to get attention, to make ourselves heard, to exert pressure, then we will operate at that level.
BLITZER: Brian Jenkins joining us tonight. Brian thanks very much, lots to consider based on what you said.
JENKINS: Thank you.
BLITZER: And just ahead on the program tonight, we'll turn to presidential politics and get our Jeff Greenfield, his expert opinion on what the presidential campaign has turned into and why it's apparently a little bit ugly so early.And later, Aaron will report from Central Command in Qatar with a look at some of the lessons the U.S. military has learned in the year since the war began. From Washington this is NEWSNIGHT.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
BLITZER: In the virtual slugfest, also known as presidential campaigning, John Kerry hit back today, a counter punch to the one President Bush threw yesterday when he attacked Senator Kerry on taxes and defense.The new Kerry campaign ad accuses the president of misleading the country. A lot of people are talking about how ugly the campaigning already has become, which raises the question is the tit-for-tat meaner than usual and, if so, why so mean so early?Here's CNN's Senior Analyst Jeff Greenfield.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
SEN. JOHN KERRY (D), PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: These guys are the most crooked, you know, lying group of people I've ever seen.
GREENFIELD (voice-over): From John Kerry's unguarded rhetoric...
ANNOUNCER: And he wanted to delay defending America until the United Nations approved.
GREENFIELD: To George Bush's tough new ad, this campaign has turned very harsh very early. Indecision kills, Vice President Cheney said of Kerry's alleged uncertainties.
KERRY: Bad rushed decisions kill too.
GREENFIELD: Bad rushed decisions kill, Kerry said of the Bush administration's war on Iraq. (on camera): Now, a word of caution is in order. The press loves to label every campaign bitter even if the candidates are just politely disagreeing on the issues but this time it is different tougher, blunter, way, way early. The question is why. The answer lots of reasons.(voice-over): First, in the old days candidates battled within their parties for the nomination. It took until the summer to sort this out. Now the contenders are picked in early March.Second, when incumbent presidents have the wind at their backs they can set a sunny upbeat tone.
ANNOUNCER: It's morning again in America.
GREENFIELD: Reagan's "Morning in America" in 1984.
ANNOUNCER: Building a bridge to the 21st Century.
GREENFIELD: Bill Clinton's "Bridge to the 21st Century" in 1996, though Clinton did run ads linking GOP nominee Bob Dole to House Speaker Gingrich.But the mood of America right now is darker. Four years ago most Americans said they were satisfied with how things were going. Today, most are not. This means the Bush campaign cannot stay above the fray, not when the polls show him even with or trailing his opponent.Third...
REP. DICK GEPHARDT (D), MISSOURI: In such a partisan way.
GREENFIELD: Four years ago the country was clearly hungry for a change from the pitched warfare of the Clinton years. Then Governor Bush ran on changing the tone in Washington. Instead of feeding red meat to the GOP convention, he said...
GEORGE W. BUSH, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: I have no stake in the bitter arguments of the last few years.
GREENFIELD: And his take on Clinton was almost sympathetic.BUSH: So many talents, so much charm, such great skill but, in the end, to what end?
GREENFIELD: This year by contrast the Democrats found themselves with a primary base steeped in intense dislike of President Bush. Howard Dean's rise was fueled in large measure by his insistence that the party confront the president head on.BUSH: Once again, Senator Kerry is trying to have it both ways.
GREENFIELD: That fervor in turn sparked a push by Republicans for the Bush campaign to answer earlier and more forcefully.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
GREENFIELD: Now, it is hard to imagine that this can keep up for almost eight months. For one thing, it could be politically stupid. Voters rarely put angry candidates in the White House but with a closely divided electorate and with genuinely big things at stake and with the political parties far more polarized ideologically than in the past, maybe it can.And, by the way Mr. President and Senator Kerry, can you prove where you were the night the Lindbergh baby was kidnapped? Wolf, this could be the next big issues.
BLITZER: I'm just wondering about that as well. But if it does continue over the next several months, who stands to suffer the most?
GREENFIELD: I think John Kerry does because he is far less known to the public obviously than the president is. The president four years ago gained a lot from the fact that he was seen as less intense, a little more at ease than Al Gore, maybe a little less hungry for the job, maybe not hungry enough some people said.And the idea that this still new figure to many Americans who haven't followed this process might be starting off with this intensely negative hammer blow after hammer blow I think might interfere with Kerry's other goal, which is to get the public comfortable with him, to like him, to feel, yes, this is the kind of guy I want in my living room every night for the next four years -- Wolf.
BLITZER: Jeff Greenfield reporting from New York, thanks Jeff very much.
GREENFIELD: OK.
BLITZER: And coming up on NEWSNIGHT, Aaron will return with a look at some of the lessons learned in a number of ways by the U.S. military and military personnel in the year since the Iraq War began. Stay with us.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
BROWN: In conversations with senior military officials here today, they were very candid about the surprises they found in Iraq over the last year. The big surprise, of course, you already know, the failure to date to find any of those weapons of mass destruction but that's not the only surprise, not nearly.There was in some respects a failure to anticipate the degree to which there would be an insurgency, Saddam loyalists or foreign fighters attacking American forces but even that is not the only surprise, from the Pentagon tonight our Senior Pentagon Correspondent Jamie McIntyre.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
JAMIE MCINTYRE, CNN SR. PENTAGON CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Before going to war against Saddam Hussein, the U.S. knew more about Iraq than any previous adversary. After all, it defeated Iraq's Army in 1991, patrolled its no fly zones for a decade and had access to intelligence from U.N. inspectors on the ground but there was a lot the U.S. didn't know and didn't foresee.Last summer with U.S. casualties mounting, the Pentagon was still in denial that after winning the major combat phase of the war, it was facing what its own dictionary defined as guerrilla warfare.
DONALD RUMSFELD, DEFENSE SECRETARY: I knew I should have looked it up. I could die that I didn't look it up.
MCINTYRE (on camera): It's the Pentagon's own definition, a paramilitary operation conducted in enemy held or hostile territory by a regular (unintelligible) indigenous forces. This seems to fit a lot of what's going on in Iraq.
RUMSFELD: It really doesn't.
MCINTYRE (voice-over): More than 500 Americans have died in Iraq, almost half from hostile fire since the end of major combat. Another big reality check came when the U.S. got a firsthand look at Iraq's decrepit infrastructure. Electricity and water plants were suffering from years of neglect.
RICH BARTON, CENTER FOR STRATEGIC AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES: Part of it had been the sanctions. Part of it had been the gross and constant mismanagement of the Saddam Hussein regime.
MCINTYRE: Rick Barton led a team of experts from the Center for Strategic and International Studies on an inspection tour in Iraq last summer. They found the biggest miscalculation was what it would take to provide security.
BARTON: You have to start off strong and our inability to provide for public safety initially has created a complication that we've ended up having to live with.
MCINTYRE: Despite the Pentagon's insistence that looting was inevitable and that more U.S. troops would have only meant more U.S. targets, Barton and other experts argue having additional forces early on to secure armories and collect weapons might have made a big difference. And then there was the flawed idea that oil-rich Iraq could pay its own way quickly.
PAUL WOLFOWITZ, DEPUTY DEFENSE SECRETARY: We're dealing with a country that can really finance its own reconstruction and relatively soon.
MCINTYRE: While oil production is approaching prewar levels and exports have already brought in some $6 billion, that's still a fraction of the estimated $100 billion needed to put Iraq back on its feet. Jamie McIntyre, CNN, the Pentagon.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
BROWN: Central Command here is in the midst of a huge and hugely complicated rotation of troops. Thousands of new troops are coming in. Nearly 40 percent of them will be reservists and thousands more men and women are heading home. Most of them are anticipating and will find a very happy return. Some, more than you might expect, will find their return quite complicated.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: My name is Staff Sergeant Walston (ph). I'm originally from Harrisonburg, Virginia.
BROWN: Its formal name is the Warrior Transition Program, a sort of self-help group the Navy and Marines have set up to ease the adjustment from war zone to home.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: You get some of the yuck out to heal.
BROWN: They're called the Devil Docs, the front-line medical support during some of the worst, the bloodiest fighting in the war with Iraq.
CHAPLAIN RON RINGO, CAMP LEJEUNE: They saw the worst of the worst. They saw their fellow corpsman who were wounded or killed come in before them and then they had to perform surgery or zip them up in a body bag.
BROWN: War is hell, as they say, for everyone. But it seems especially hard if your job is to save lives.
SCOTT COON, BRAVO SURGICAL COMPANY: The night before the war started, I can remember putting together an ambulance crew and knowing that they were going to an exercise and knowing them and knowing their wives and their kids and knowing that they were being told they were going to an exercise, but having a pretty damn good idea that they were going in harm's way and that there's a chance that I would see their wives and their children and they wouldn't be back.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: You want some eggs, buddy?
BROWN: And it wasn't just their wives and their children Scott Coon worried about. His own marriage has suffered.
JULIE COON, WIFE OF SCOTT: It definitely has affected our relationship. I almost feel like it's kind of -- we've been married for 10 years and it's almost back to like it's back to when we were first dating. I think, to everybody else, we just kind of put on our happy face. But when we're home, it's the reality of, wow, what he's been through, what I've been through without him.
S. COON: If go into an environment that is stressful, it has human beings mutilated and killed, that's going to affect you. I don't know that I would call it combat stress, but I would say that it's a life-changing event.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: This is a total team effort.
BROWN: Julie Coon has gone through the Warrior Transition Program for spouses and it couple is now in counseling. And they are all too aware that divorce often follows long deployments. And so does post-traumatic stress. About 8 percent of Gulf War I vets suffer from it. And some worry that, with longer, more violent deployments this time around, it could be worse.
COL. CHARLES MILLIKEN, WALTER REED ARMY INSTITUTE OF RESEARCH: The challenges we face in the current war is that there's ongoing violence and that correlates with a higher incidence of combat stress. We also are having a lot more soldiers exposed to that violence. We're rotating through a lot of Guard and Reservists and the total number of folks that will be exposed to that violence is going to be high.
BROWN: But according to Scott Coon, it's a human reaction to a very inhuman experience.
S. COON: You don't land bombs on people without mutilating them. And I can tell you that anybody who was out there that experienced what we experienced is going to have to cope with it.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We're here to help any way we can.
BROWN: Which is why the military says it is doing more than ever before to deal with combat stress, recognizing that even the healers can need healing, too. (END VIDEOTAPE) BROWN: We'll be back later in the program. When we come back, Wolf returns with more of the day's news. In Qatar, this is NEWSNIGHT.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
BLITZER: A quick look now at some other stories making news around the country. In California, seven people, including an infant and three toddlers, have been found dead in a Fresno home and a suspect is under arrest. The bodies were found when police responded to a custody dispute call earlier in the afternoon. Witnesses told officers a man had their children inside. He surrendered when a SWAT team arrived. No word on the exact cause of the deaths or his relationship to the children. In Utah, a woman who refused a cesarean section has been charged with murder. Doctors allegedly had warned her repeatedly that the twins she was carrying would likely die without operation. She didn't listen and one baby was stillborn.
Prosecutors allege the mother refused the C-section to avoid the scars from it. Today, she denied that charge, saying she had been afraid of the surgery itself. And another twist in the gay marriage fight today; 10 same-sex couples who had been denied marriage licenses in the past eight days filed suit against the state of New York. The mayor of Nyack, New York, and his partner are among the plaintiffs.
On to the "MONEYLINE Roundup," which begins tonight with Halliburton, the contractor telling investors today not to expect any more bad news relating to its work in Iraq, this a day after military auditors called the company's cost accounting substandard in a major way. Halliburton and subsidiaries are the military's largest civilian partner in Iraq, with about $18 billion in contracts so far. Shares of the company rose nearly 5 percent today, rebounding from the beating they took yesterday. And, in Chicago, a buyer has surfaced for the country's tallest office building. MetLife is selling the Sear's Tower. A group of New York investors will buy it. They'll pay upwards $800 million for the privilege. Consumers remain weary about the economy. The University of Michigan's consumers confidence index fell a fraction this month. And the professionals were expecting a slight gain. But because investors expected an even worse performance, markets were up, the Nasdaq especially, a happy ending to a pretty gloomy week. And, in a moment, we'll have more news and we'll return to the bombings in Spain and an important question: Just how vulnerable are we right here in the United States?
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
BLITZER: The bombings in Spain were a painful reminder that it doesn't take anything all that exotic or sophisticated to cause mass casualties. Simplicity in this case works and sadly it isn't hard to find other simple ways of doing horrible damage. Here to talk about that, Elaine Shannon. She writes about crime and terrorism in "TIME" magazine. Elaine, thanks very much.
ELAINE SHANNON, "TIME": Thanks.
BLITZER: I know you're working on train safety right now, very high on the agenda. What are you learning? SHANNON: I'm learning that, first of all, al Qaeda's been very interested in rail, in trains. And we've known this from when we went into Afghanistan and even before from the '90s, when they were looking at tunnels, trains, bridges, all of that kind of stuff. And we also know that they tend to return to the same targets. They pick them out and then they go and go and go until they get one. And this worries the FBI and other people.
BLITZER: Just to be precise, we don't know if this was al Qaeda in Spain or it was ETA or anybody else. SHANNON: No, we don't.
BLITZER: It's all speculation at this point.
SHANNON: Yes, you can get plenty of people to speculate. And it could be a combination. We don't know.
BLITZER: The whole nature of the simplicity in terror, we hear about biological warfare, chemical and nuclear. But there's a lot of damage that can be done simply with explosives.
SHANNON: Exactly. And when I talk to people I say, what keeps you awake at night? And a guy said to me today who has to do this here in Washington, what keeps me awake is exactly this, trains, chemicals. There are chemicals on trains. You can blow up a car of chemicals on a train, pretty easy. You don't have to be in the car. You can just put something on the tracks. They're accessible. Plane, once you take it off, it's not that easy.
(CROSSTALK)
BLITZER: A lot of counter terrorism and law enforcement types have said to me since 9/11 that they're amazed -- they're thrilled, but they're amazed the kind of simple terrorism that you see elsewhere around the world hasn't really materialized here.
SHANNON: Truck bombs or just get a truck full of gasoline. Five gallons of gasoline can make a huge fireball. And if there's something else toxic next to it, that will make an even worse mess of fumes and incineration.And you can imagine that near the tracks that go through the Washington suburbs up the Atlantic Corridor into New York, into New Jersey, all that. You could be really destructive.
(CROSSTALK)
BLITZER: Do you get a sense, speaking to the authorities, the experts you're speaking to, that significant progress is being made or that everybody is sort of just treading water? SHANNON: Well, it's very -- nobody wants to pay the price of securing, getting on the metro and securing train stations. We're not going to put up with the kind of detectors that we do at airports. And so what they're doing is telling us all of us as citizens to pay attention to those knapsacks, pay attention if somebody pulls a bottle of something out of a knapsack and looks like they're going to spread it around and report it. A lot of it is going to be up to us.
BLITZER: But they do have certain techniques they use at subway stations beyond dogs that are sniffing the air, or whatever. They have other sensitive equipment, a lot of these facilities, that presumably help.
SHANNON: Yes, they do have sensors. And you can set those sensors off with certain household chemicals. And that can cause stampede and panic itself. And you can shut down a lot of Washington.I was writing tonight about an episode here right before Christmas when a guy called in some bomb threats on the D.C. subway system and it shut down the system for the day.
BLITZER: And that can happen.SHANNON: It was nothing.
BLITZER: Elaine Shannon, from our sister publication, "TIME" magazine, as usual, thanks. Horrible thoughts, but thanks for coming in.
(LAUGHTER)
BLITZER: Up next on NEWSNIGHT, another horrible thought, heroin, it's a problem that's moving to the suburbs. We'll take a look at this growing problem, especially in New England. From Washington, this is NEWSNIGHT.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
BLITZER: Every so often, a demographic bombshell turns conventional wisdom on its head. This is one of those times. It's about heroin and where the problem is worst. The latest government data points to six states, ones you might not expect. Together, they are New England. Together, they also have the highest rate of heroin use in the country. And many of the users are very young.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I know of probably 15 people in a small town that I could get OxyContin and heroin from.
BLITZER (voice-over): In the suburbs of Boston, heroin addicts are not found loitering in back alleys, but in high school hallways.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: I used to go to school and I'd buy my drugs in school, ask to go to the bathroom, you know. I sniffed them right off the sink in the bathroom or off my notebook in the stall. And I was good for the day.
BLITZER: The convergence of new smuggling routes, low prices and intense potency has fueled a new wave of young heroin users in the region.
MARK TROUVILLE, NEA SPECIAL AGENT: We have a huge heroin problem in New England. Colombian-based criminal organizations are dealing directly here with people in New England.
BLITZER: Street purity is between 70 and 90 percent, compared to national average of 57 percent.
TROUVILLE: They're flooding the market again. They're putting it out there that's more pure just so that the high is more intense.
DR. P.J. KISHORE, ADDICTION SPECIALIST: How old were you when you started? UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Seventeen, fresh out of high school.
BLITZER: Dr. P.J. Kishore has been treating addiction in Massachusetts for over two decades. Over the past few years, he's seen an alarming trend.
KISHORE: Addiction is a younger disease. They start experimentation around 13, 14. By the time they're 17 or 18, they're hooked. Heroin has a bad stigma to it. But when it comes to OxyContin, they see no problem with it. It starts the addiction process and they'll all go to heroin.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I was doing Oxy since I was like 15.
BLITZER: Erin (ph) is 18 and has been clean since October 20. She started high school as a star athlete and honor student.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: I always wasn't pretty enough, I wasn't smart enough, I wasn't skinny enough. And the drugs kind of gave me that self-confidence to be somebody that I wanted to be.
BLITZER: She says the majority of her classmates were doing OxyContin, heroin, or both.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: All the popular people of my grade, all of them ended up, you know, using. So, I'd say, probably about like seven out of 10 kids in my high school probably turned to them.
BLITZER: Like most of Dr. Kishore's young patients, she started off taking OxyContin, a highly addictive opiate which is easily available without a prescription.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: When I started shooting heroin, it was cheap. It was always around. I could get $5 bags of heroin or I would go and I would buy like a $40 bag or a $50 bag, which was, you know, a couple of good shots.
BLITZER: The heroin is so potent that the physical addiction takes hold almost immediately.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: It didn't register in my mind that, oh, my God, I'm shooting heroin. It's almost like I was happy because I had found something better, you know, something inexpensive, something that instantly made me feel the things I wanted to feel.
BLITZER: So what is being done to curb the flow of heroin into the area? The DEA says they're doing everything they can to cut off the supply.
TROUVILLE: Our long-range goals really are to go after the big international organizations that are causing all these drugs to flow into our country. And the local police who are tasked to work on these street corners and stuff, they simply have their hands full.
BLITZER: Once the heroin seeps into the suburban communities, it largely becomes a local problem, a problem communities and schools are just starting to come to grips with.
KISHORE: The name of the game in addictions is catch them young. Unless we have doctors, public health officials and community leaders working together, there will not be an answer.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
BLITZER: Pretty serious stuff. Aaron will return in a moment with a look at one of the key players at Central Command in Doha, Qatar. So I'll say good night for now. Hope to see you on Sunday in "LATE EDITION," the last word in Sunday talk. Among my guests, the defense secretary, Donald Rumsfeld. NEWSNIGHT continues in a moment.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
BROWN: Deep inside this complex is a unique command center. They keep track of both Iraq and Afghanistan there. And it is filled with one of the important tools of modern warfare, laptop computers. The man in day-to-day charge is unique as well. He's a helicopter pilot turned -- well, he describes it as orchestra leader. And you'll see why. He's a reserve officer with a very full plate.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
BROWN (voice-over): In this crowded room, more a trailer, really, than an office, Navy Captain Jim Stahlman is in his element, a key officer helping to oversee the American occupation of Iraq. (on camera): This room operates 24 hours a day.
CAPT. JAMES STAHLMAN, U.S. NAVY: Twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week. It's been operating that way since September 12 of two years ago.
BROWN: Is that right?
STAHLMAN: Yes, sir.
BROWN (voice-over): It is not easy. When his boss, the overall commander, General John Abizaid, testified in Washington last week, Stahlman had to anticipate the questions and come up with the answers.
STAHLMAN: Last week we had a great example. General Abizaid was up in front of Congress testifying. We had to provide answers to the questions that he was going to be asked. Interesting process that they go through to get those answers. But, basically, I play orchestra conductor back down here. I had 15 people all with a question or PowerPoint slide or something that they needed to work on, and I just direct the efforts.
BROWN: The military, as you would expect, says it is proud of the things it has accomplished in the year since the invasion. Fewer soldiers are dying from those improvised explosive devices. The 100 million tons of weaponry -- 100 million tons -- in Iraqi hands is slowly, but steadily being destroyed. New electrical generators are coming online.But, most of all, says Captain Stahlman, the military is proud of its people. (on camera): What do you think your country men and women back home (OFF-MIKE) don't know and need to know?
STAHLMAN: What they don't know is the level of effort of the kids on the ground that are 18 and 19 every day out there. BROWN: You don't think they know that?
STAHLMAN: I don't think that they do. I think they know that they're there, but I don't think they understand what it's like to put on a flak vest, put on a helmet, strap a backpack on that's got 10, 15, 16 clips of ammunition on it, put your gun over your shoulder and know that there is a pretty darn good chance that something is going to blow up or a bullet is going to go by your head tonight.That's a hard thing to do and those kids are doing it 16 hours a day up there.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
BROWN: Tomorrow, we head into Iraq. There are many issues facing the country, as the June 30 deadline approaches. That's the time when the Americans will give Iraq back the power and authority to remake itself, to redefine itself, to become the country it is trying to become. It is hardly, though, the end of the American presence there, but it is an important marker. And we'll be reporting on that, on the preparations, how it's going. That's next week on NEWSNIGHT. That's our report for tonight. Have a good weekend. And good night for all of us.
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