The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer

GWEN IFILL: Good evening. I'm Gwen Ifill. Jim Lehrer is on vacation. On the NewsHour tonight, two Africa stories: An update on the situation in Liberia, and a preview of the president's five- day, five-nation tour of the continent. Then: Regulating violent video games; a conversation with poet Linda Pastan; and a Roger Rosenblatt essay about a summer movie.

NEWS SUMMARY

GWEN IFILL: The U.S. Military's toll of dead and wounded rose again today after a weekend of violence in Iraq. Three American soldiers were killed in Baghdad in the last 24 hours. Four more were wounded Sunday. The U.S. already has 145,000 troops in Iraq, and the retiring war commander said today there's no need for a larger force. General Tommy Franks spoke to ABC on his last day on the job.

GEN. TOMMY FRANKS: The sense that I have right now is that it's not time to send in additional troops. What we want to do is we want to continue to move forward with establishing security by working with the Iraqis inside Iraq. And what we do, rather than basing our actions in Iraq on some time schedule, we do it based on conditions.

GWEN IFILL: Coalition forces still control Iraq, but a new Baghdad city council held its first meeting today. The group will advise the postwar administration, led by Paul Bremer. He said the meeting marked the resumption of a democratic system in Baghdad for the first time in 30 years. A newly elected city council in Najaf also had its first meeting today. The CIA Said today an audiotape of Saddam Hussein's voice released last week is probably genuine. But intelligence officials also said there's no way to prove the recording was made on June 14, as the voice on the tape claimed. British lawmakers criticized Prime Minister Blair's government today over prewar claims about Iraqi weapons. But a parliamentary committee found no evidence the government deliberately misled the public. The committee chairman said an intelligence report last September did not appear to be "doctored" after all.

DONALD ANDERSON, Labor Party: There were allegations that it was embellished or exaggerated in order to make a stronger case. The committee concludes on the basis of the evidence before it that this did not happen. We do, however, have concerns on the emphasis given to some of the points.

GWEN IFILL: Others on the committee also pressured the government to find tangible proof of Iraqi weapons of mass destruction.

JOHN STANLEY: The inescapable conclusion that we reached, and we reached it unanimously, that along the intelligence assessment of September 2002, the jury is still out. The longer the period, during which no weapons of mass destruction are found, and on the scale indicated in that September dossier, then the greater is going to be the concern.

GWEN IFILL: Foreign Minister Jack Straw defended the prewar intelligence. He said, "the evidence available at the time we took the decision to go to war was overwhelming." A U.S. Military team arrived in Liberia today, possibly to pave the way for a larger force. The team includes 20 civil affairs specialists and 15 marines trained to fight terrorists. They landed hours before president bush was leaving on his five-day trip to Africa. The president is still weighing whether to commit U.S. Troops to a peacekeeping force in Liberia. He has said Liberian President Charles Taylor must leave first. We'll have more on the situation in Liberia in a moment. Hong Kong's leader, Tung Chee Hwa, agreed today to delay a vote on a security bill. It would have imposed life prison terms for treason and other crimes. Last week, half a million protesters rallied in Hong Kong, saying the bill posed the greatest threat to civil liberties in the colony since it returned to Chinese control six years ago. Authorities in Oak Lynn, New Jersey, said today they'd foiled a mass murder plot by three teenage boys. The suspects were arrested Sunday and early today in the small town near Philadelphia. Police also found a stockpile of guns, knives, and swords. Today a local prosecutor described the alleged plot.

VINCENT SARUBBI, Camden County Prosecutor: They had identified three juveniles they planned to execute. Those juveniles, as I understand it, they had attended school with. Once they had completed that aspect of the plan, they were going to move on and randomly kill people throughout the borough of Oak Lynn.

GWEN IFILL: The suspects are 18, 15 and 14 years old. Prosecutors said the oldest teenager was the mastermind. Investigators have their strongest evidence yet in the space shuttle "Columbia" disaster. Today they test fired a chunk of insulation as part of a space shuttle wing and blew open a 16-inch hole. One member of the investigation said: One member of the investigation board said we have found the smoking gun. The working theory is that "Columbia" was damaged on launch, leading to its destruction in February. WorldCom will pay $750 million Securities & Exchange Commission. A federal judge in Washington approved the settlement today. The giant telecommunications has admitted it overstated revenues by billions of dollars. It filed for bankruptcy last year. On Wall Street today, the Dow Jones Industrial Average gained more than 146 points to close above 9216. The NASDAQ rose 57 points, nearly 3.5 percent, to close above 1720. That was its best finish in 14 months. Actor Buddy Ebsen died Sunday in Torrance, California. He'd been hospitalized there with an undisclosed illness. Ebsen was best known for his role as Jed Clampett in the 1960's TV series, "The Beverly Hillbillies," and later as the television detective "Barnaby Jones." But Ebsen began as a dancer in a series of films in the 1930's, including Captain January with Shirley Temple. He almost played the tin man in "The Wizard of Oz," but was forced to quit when the silvery makeup made him sick. Buddy Ebsen was 95 years old. That's it for the News Summary tonight. Now it's on to: A Liberia update; President Bush's Africa trip; regulating violent video games; poet Linda Pastan; and essayist Roger Rosenblatt.

UPDATE - TURMOIL

GWEN IFILL: For more now on developments in Liberia I'm joined by New York Times correspondent Somini Sengupta. She joins us by telephone from the Liberian capital of Monrovia.

Somini, the big question seems to be: What's going to happen with Charles Taylor, the president of Liberia, who President Bush has asked to leave, where does that stand right now?

SOMINI SENGUPTA: I think only Charles Taylor knows at the moment where that stands right now. He announced yesterday in a very dramatic news conference with the Nigerian president, Olusegun Obasanjo, that he had accepted the Nigerian president's offer of a safe haven in Nigeria. He did not say when he would step down and go into exile. He said that he would do so only after peacekeeping forces arrived in the country, and he would not do it before peacekeeping forces arrive in the country, because he was afraid that there would be bedlam on the streets.

GWEN IFILL: Kofi Annan said today at the United Nations that his understanding is that Taylor wants 45 days to leave. Have you heard that?

SOMINI SENGUPTA: I haven't, and I have tried to determine whether he's ready to leave in one week or two weeks or three months after the arrival of the national force, and he has not specified, certainly not to reporters here. I spoke to him this afternoon in an interview and he did not specify to me, did not answer how quickly he would be willing to step down. He did say that he would do so in the shortest time possible.

GWEN IFILL: When you spoke to him this afternoon, did he give you an understanding of whether he expects accepting this haven in Nigeria that he will no longer be held responsible for war crimes?

SOMINI SENGUPTA: Well, certainly I think President Taylor and his supporters here want very much for the indictment by the special court in Sierra Leone to be lifted. As you know, he is charged with crimes against humanity, with war crimes in a 17-count indictment in connection to his alleged role in that war in neighboring Sierra Leone. President Taylor believes that it's a politically-motivated indictment. He does not believe that he has any obligation to appear before a court in a foreign country and stand trial. Meanwhile, the court in Sierra Leone, the prosecutor, who happens to be an American citizen, has said so far at least that he has nointention of dropping that indictment.

GWEN IFILL: President Bush has made it clear that he thinks that Charles Taylor has to leave before anything else happens, and Charles Taylor, in some of his comments seems to behave as if he is acceding to president bush's wishes. Did you get that impression in talking to him?

SOMINI SENGUPTA: Absolutely. And he's made it, he's made it in his comments to reporters he has said he is very pleased with the American interest in his country. He agrees that he should step aside for the sake of peace, and he has been making it very clear that it was his decision to step down, that he's not being forced by anyone-- not least President George Bush -- to do so. Now, it should be pointed out that while President Bush has said that President Taylor, Charles Taylor, should step aside, Mr. Bush has said absolutely nothing about whether he should stand trial in Sierra Leone.

GWEN IFILL: There are polls which show mixed feelings here in the United States about the possibility of American forces arriving in some sort of peacekeeping role. Do you have any sense on the ground there whether that would be welcomed by and large?

SOMINI SENGUPTA: That is presumably something that the military assessment team will have to determine. There was a group of American soldiers who landed today -- about 32 people whose mission they say is to do a humanitarian assessment of the humanitarian needs on the ground and not a military assessment. Just my impression - and this is really an anecdotal impression, is that people her, regardless of whether they're on Mr. Taylor's side or not, are very, very keen to see an American presence here. There have been demonstrations outside the U.S. Embassy several times. There have been peace activists here who have been calling for the presence of American peacekeepers, and they point to this country's historical ties with the United States. And they also point to what Britain and France have done in their respective colonies and West Africa, Britain of course having been very involved in peacekeeping in Sierra Leone, and France having done the same in Ivory Coast.

GWEN IFILL: Back to Charles Taylor for a moment, there has been some skepticism about his willingness to do what he says, that is to leave as he has apparently promised. What happens if he does leave, that is to say, who is there to succeed him, and what happens if he doesn't?

SOMINI SENGUPTA: What happens if he does leave, that question remained unanswered. There are peace talks going on in Ghana to determine the composition of a transitional government, but there is no agreement yet on what that transitional government would look like -- who would participate; which one of Charles Taylor's senior officials would remain in power; which ones, if any, of the rebel leaders would be able to share in power in that internal government? On the question of what happens if he doesn't leave, I don't think anyone wants to touch that question.

GWEN IFILL: Okay. Somini Sengupta, thank you very much and stay safe.

SOMINI SENGUPTA: Thank you.

FOCUS - INTO AFRICA

GWEN IFILL: Now more on Africa. President Bush leaves for the continent today. Ray Suarez has that.

RAY SUAREZ: While these are the images of Africa often seen in the West...this week President Bush's administration hopes to accentuate the positive during his five day tour of the continent. The president's five- nation trip is aimed at showcasing his administration's Africa agenda . .that includes a $15 billion program to fight the spread of AIDS, and a trade initiative.

CONDOLEEZZA RICE: It is a positive agenda. It deals not only with the humanitarian issues like AIDS and famine relief, but it deals with trying to bring the potential out in Africa, something like AGOA, the African Growth and Opportunity Act, which is doing amazing things for African products, so that markets are available for those products, and, therefore, supporting poverty alleviation in small villages in Africa.

RAY SUAREZ: The president's trip takes him to Senegal, South Africa, Botswana, Uganda and Nigeria. The Bush administration's focus on Africa marks a turnabout from the comments he made about the continent while on the campaign trail. Candidate Bush had this to say on the NewsHour in February 2000.

GEORGE W. BUSH: At some point in time the president's got to clearly define what the national strategic interests are, and while Africa may be important, it doesn't fit into the national strategic interests, as far as I can see them.

RAY SUAREZ: But in a recent speech the president reassessed Africa's strategic importance.

PRESIDENT GEORGE W. BUSH: The United States believes in the great potential of Africa. We also understand the problems of Africa. And this nation is fully engaged in a broad concerted effort to help Africans find peace, to fight disease, to build the prosperity, and to improve their own lives.

RAY SUAREZ: There are some common themes among the country's President Bush is visiting: development of democratic institutions, combating the scourge of HIV AIDS. On Tuesday, the president will be in Senegal, one of Africa's oldest and most stable democracies, also with one of the lowest AIDS rates. On Wednesday, Mr. Bush will be in South Africa, which has one of the continent's most developed economies, but some 5 million of South Africa's more than 43 million people are living with HIV AIDS. The ADIS crisis and the political and economic turmoil in neighboring Zimbabwe are expected to figure prominently in President Bush's talks with South African President Thabo Mbeki. Next... it's South Africa's neighbor Botswana. While an economic success, four of every ten adults in diamond-rich Botswana are infected with the AIDS virus. In Uganda, where President Bush will be on Friday, the government of Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni has won acclaim for the great strides its made in reducing the spread of AIDS beginning in the 1980's while other African leaders ignored the problem. The president's final stop will be Nigeria... a close U.S. ally, with a democratically-elected government, Africa's largest population, with some 120 million inhabitants and it's the world's eighth-largest oil exporter. On this trip, President Bush will highlight Africa's role in the war on terrorism and anti-corruption initiatives

RAY SUAREZ: For more on the president's trip and what this administration hopes to accomplish in Africa, we get three views. Chester Crocker was assistant secretary of state for African affairs during the Reagan administration. He is now a professor of diplomacy at Georgetown University's school of Foreign Service. Salih Booker is the director of Africa Action, an organization that works for political, economic, and social justice in Africa. And Chris Fomunyoh is senior associate for Africa at the National Democratic Institute. He is a citizen of Cameroon.

Chester Crocker, why go now and why these countries?

CHESTER CROCKER: Well, these countries offer a lot of positive messages, which give the president a chance to showcase some of the initiatives that were cited a few moments ago in your show. They also indicate a kind of outreach to the regions and sub- regions of Africa where we want partnerships and we want to work closely with Africa and friends. So I think it makes a lot of sense; two of the countries I point out are very substantially Islamic countries, so it's an outreach to moderate Islam. Several of the countries are engaged in the war on terrorism in one way or another, and we intend, I think, to go forward with some more counterterrorism programs. So there's a range of messages here. Nigeria of course a major oil producer, South Africa a place we hope to do a major trade expansion, so that's part of the message as well. I think this is kind of a standard itinerary, but it's also, I think, pretty well-crafted itinerary.

RAY SUAREZ: Chris Fomunyoh?

CHRIS FORMUNYOH: Well, Ray, I'm hoping that this action provides an opportunity for the president not only to speak to Africans and get to know the continent and get to know the people and get a feel not just for the leadership, but for Africans as well, but also an opportunity for him to listen to Africans and to are them raise some of the concern is that have on issues of trade and security and conflict, but also in terms of democratization, which is an issue that most African countries have embraced in the last decade.

RAY SUAREZ: And Salih Booker?

SALIH BOOKER: Well, I think the trip is five days, five countries; it is a very small trip. It's a very small slice of Africa. It's insufficient, inadequate trip, but it is still good news because it focuses attention on African issues for a week. It encourages debate and discussion and education here in this country, and hopefully that will have an influence on policies. But the president is also taking a bit of a risk. He's made several big promises that are yet unfunded. And if he doesn't expend the political capital necessary to make sure Congress funds these initiatives on HIV/AIDS and on increasing development assistance, then this trip is going to be viewed as a rather callous manipulation of Africa's suffering to present the president as a compassionate conservative, and to present the United States as far more generous than it is in fact is.

RAY SUAREZ: What about that idea that it's a risk, Chester Crocker?

CHESTER CROCKER: Well, there's a risk that cuts both ways. I think when a president takes a major trip like this, he's also nailing himself told a platform of his own making, giving himself a bully pulpit and saying when I come home I spend to fight for these initiatives. My person accepts is that he's very committed to the millennium initiative and the HIV/AIDS.

RAY SUAREZ: Explain what that -

CHESTER CROCKER: The challenge account is a multi-level program starting at the request level of $1.3 billion and ramping up to a $5 billion level of requested support to expand our aid to the poorest countries that meet very, very stringent criteria for good governance, transparency. And some of these countries, hopefully a lot of them will be African, so it's a major boost potentially for foreign assistance going into the African region. Obviously Congress has to agree to fund this initiative, and that's where the rubber hits the road. How much will they fund, in what sequence, over what period of time? But I can't imagine this president having laid out this program then sort of letting it die after a trip like this.

RAY SUAREZ: Well, we heard two very different views of the president's obligations, and the fact that these initiatives are still as yet unfunded.

CHRIS FORMUNYOH: I think that that's part of the problem, because a number of people in Africa must be asking themselves what do these initiatives mean. The millennium challenge has been talked about for over a year now, and people on the ground have still to see the benefits of that initiative. It's just been put in place. There's an expectation that benefits will flow from that initiative to people on the ground. I think the president is saying one minute Africans are really asking which Africa, what relationship should exist between Africa and the United States. Should they take people such as Secretary Colin Powell, who has been very adamant on African matters, quoting the president, or should they listen to some of the other folks within the administration who think to take a more strategic view of U.S. Relationships with other parts of the word. I will therefore say that Africa doesn't really count. So this is a unique opportunity for Africans to here directly from President Bush why he thinks Africa should be in the global framework of U.S. relations.

RAY SUAREZ: Well, just a moment ago, Salih Booker almost sounded like he minimized the impact of the trip: Five countries in five days. Indeed he'll be in Uganda for only a matter of hours. How does this look in Africa? When the President of the United States comes to the continent, is it significant, no matter how long he stays in one country?

CHRIS FORMUNYOH: I think it's very significant because we have to remember historically in post independent Africa President Carter was the first to go to Africa, Africans remember that and then it took another 20 years for President Clinton to go on a trip that was ten days, five or six countries in ten days. So President Bush will be the first Republican president to go to the African continent in modern times. And I think that's something that's also significant, irrespective of the amount of time that he ends up spending in one country. Obviously he's going to be talking to issues that are burning issues of the day, and I think the message will get across no matter how much time he spends in each one of those countries.

RAY SUAREZ: Well, noticeably absent from this itinerary, Salih Booker, are places where government has either ceased to exist or the idea of a state has ceased to exist, but will this trip create an opportunity to talk about those places, like Congo, like Somalia?

SALIH BOOKER: Well, it certainly will. President Bush is going to be in Senegal tomorrow meeting with a range of West African heads of state, and obviously on their priority list is going to be Liberia, because the instability and conflict in Liberia is infectious and having a very negative impact on neighboring countries, and there's a real concern there about whether the United States will contribute to international efforts the way the French and British and indeed the Nigerians and other West Africans have to multinational peacekeeping efforts. Indeed in Africa as elsewhere, the question is, is the United States pursuing unilateralist policies that are at odds with Africa's desire to see more international cooperation, more multilateralism, more sharing of the burdens? And Liberia, indeed, will be the priority. But I suspect strongly that the White House strategy is simply to delay on Liberia until they get through this trip. I don't think the Pentagon in any way wants to commit U.S. troops to that multinational effort in Liberia, and I think that's tragic.

RAY SUAREZ: Well, Chester Crocker, there have been some fairly forthright statements from the Bush administration about the need to restore order in Liberia. Has the administration created expectations about that place that might be tough to meet now?

CHESTER CROCKER: I think the president knows in his heart what he wants to do, he wants to see Americans participate in an efforts to help Liberia get back on its feet, but the precise definition of what that means in terms of numbers and in terms of rules of engagement probably haven't yet been fully worked out. I also think he's waiting until he gets there to make whatever decisions that he is making public, so that he's making those decisions visibly in concert with African leaders and perhaps even with allied leaders. I see several things coming together here that are actually rather hopeful. Salih mentioned the issue of working with partners and with allies, and I think the administration is beginning to recognize that when we have the Brits and the French and the U.N. pushing us and our African friends pushing us to get involved in Liberia and we want others to get involved with us in Iraq and Afghanistan, then maybe there's the basis for some, if you want to call it that, some horse-trading here, that we'll go in if they'll help us in some other places, and that's all to the good. I also think failed states are becoming part of the administration's agenda. I wish they had talked about it earlier, but that's the core of the problem we face around the world not just Africa. It's state collapse, state failure. So you go to successful countries and you talk about those that are not so successful. I think it's not a bad message.

RAY SUAREZ: A big part of this administration's posture toward Africa has involved emphasizing trade rather than aid. Has that worked so far?

CHRIS FORMUNYOH: I think it's worked in some regards, because if you look at the statistics on AGOA, which is the African Growth and Opportunity Act, that a lot of African countries have increased the amount of trade between those countries and the United States, and the feeling that the administration is going to expand, AGOA is well received. At the same time beneath the surface, I think there's some fundamental issues that will still need to be addressed. For example, the whole question of agricultural subsidies in the United States that make it difficult for African agricultural products to be competitive on the U.S. market, and we know that most of Africa is based, most of the African countries are based on agriculture. That also needs to addressed, the whole question of textiles, and take a country such as Mali, the largest cotton producing country on the African continent, but how much of Mali's cotton is going to be able to get access to U.S. markets? So I think that while the main themes, while there's consensus around the big themes, once you've scratched beneath the surface there are differences that we'll heat hopefully to be ironed out, and I really hope leaders in African will put this on the table in a very forthright manner.

RAY SUAREZ: Well, Africa has had a hard time keeping America's attention in a sustained way long enough for such these things to happen. Isn't that the way the last twenty, thirty years looks?

SALIH BOOKER: Well, it certainly is true. And this particular emphasis on trade is perhaps a bit misplaced. In fact, trade between Africa and the United States decreased by 15 percent last year, and the trade profile with Africa is largely about oil. And oil is very important to the United States and increasingly West African oil is important to the United States, not just for its energy consumption, but its geo- strategic vision of the world, its desire to reduce dependency on Middle Eastern oil. Some nearly 18 percent of our oil imports come from West Africa, that's projected to increase to maybe 25 percent in the coming decade. Now, with that, however, unfortunately comes a sort of geo-strategic vision of after that that looks at it as a piece of real estate. We want what's under the ground, oil, and we want to use its turf to project force into other parts of the world like the Persian Gulf or to protect our oil interests. So there's a growing U.S. military footprint in Africa, discussions of bases, the military camp in Jabuti, and again that's reminiscent of the cold war where the United States is not engaged with Africans based on their interest.

RAY SUAREZ: Very, very quickly, Chester Crocker, how do you change that picture?

CHESTER CROCKER: I think you do go aggressively forward on trade expansion on a regional and sub- regional basis, and that that is very much the part, the commitment of this administration, but I'd say also of this Congress. This is a bipartisan issue, there's no partisanship really about trade expansion with Africa. The problem is how far do you go in opening up market access and what do you say to your agricultural constituents, both here and in Europe and that's where the rub is. We are actually ahead of the Europeans in many of these areas where we're trying to shame them into lowering some barriers too. On the issue of expanding our influence and our power and using it in the war on terrorism, I think African friends understand perfectly well they don't want to see terrorism spread across their region, they're willing to work with us as long as we listen to their concerns. And I think the president leads to listen on this trip, as was said by Chris, as well as talk.

RAY SUAREZ: Gentlemen, thank you very much.

GWEN IFILL: Still to come on the NewsHour tonight, regulating violence in video games, a poetry conversation, and a Roger Rosenblatt essay.

FOCUS - VIOLENT VIDEO GAMES

GWEN IFILL: Lee Hochberg of Oregon Public Broadcasting has the video game story, but with this warning: Some viewers may find the content of these games offensive.

TEEN: Beat her up.

TEEN: Yeah, beat her up.

TEEN: Come back here, lady.

LEE HOCHBERG: Tons of millions of Americans, like these Seattle area teens, are enjoying video games on their summer vacation.

TEEN: Kill the cop. Oh, kill that guy. That's a nice swish on the wall.

LEE HOCHBERG: These boys are playing "Grand Theft Auto: Vice City," the top selling game in 2002. It's been praised by some video game reviewers for its innovative and astonishing game play. But what has horrified many is that the players are rewarded for beating and killing police officers and others. The state of Washington has just passed a law that fines video stores $500 for renting or selling games like this to children under 17. The law is slated to take effect this month. Its sponsor is Democrat Mary Lou Dickerson.

MARY LOU DICKERSON, Washington State Representative: A lot of these games are just plain sick. They're sick, they're violent, they're racist, and they really have no business in the hands of a 12-year-old.

LEE HOCHBERG: Though the law targets all games that portray violence against police, Dickerson said she's really going after 16 of the most violent ones. Some studies have linked them to aggressive behavior, and Dickerson says they generate much of the $10.3 billion the video game industry earned last year.

MARY LOU DICKERSON: We've been seeing a whole rash of shootings throughout this country and in Europe that relate back to kids who obsessively play violent video games. The kids involved as shooters in Columbine were obsessively playing violent video games. We know after the beltway sniper incident where the 17-year-old was a fairly good shot, but Mr. Mohammed, the police tell us, got him to practice on an ultra- violent video game in sniper mode to break down his hesitancy to kill.

LEE HOCHBERG: Dickerson showed us two of the games-- "Grand Theft Auto: Vice City," made by Rock Star Games and "Postal 2," produced by Arizona-based Running with Scissors.

LEE HOCHBERG: Now he's pouring...

MARY LOU DICKERSON: Pouring gasoline on him. You can hear him cry.

LEE HOCHBERG: He's setting the police officer on fire.

MARY LOU DICKERSON: Yeah. The player shot the victim set them on fire, and now he is urinating on them.

VOICE ON GAME: Mm, smells like chicken.

MARY LOU DICKERSON: And they get points for doing that. Different variations on beating women to death. The player gets points for having sex with a prostitute. Now they're getting out of the car, he's going to take his money back, and then beat the prostitute to death.

VIDEO GAME CHARACTER: Okay, you proved your point now get lost.

MARY LOU DICKERSON: Each one of those kicks generates a point. ( Gunshot )

VIDEO GAME CHARACTER: Oh, mommy.

MARY LOU DICKERSON: The player has a choice. Does he want to urinate on the victim or not? Does he want to shoot them or not? Does he want to take a shovel and decapitate them or not?

DOUG LOWENSTEIN, Interactive Digital Software Assn.: I would defy you to find any example of a kid who has played a video game and rushed out and gunned down policemen.

LEE HOCHBERG: The video game industry's Doug Lowenstein maintains some studies have shown no link at all between violent games and aggression.

DOUG LOWENSTEIN: We haven't seen a rash of kids jumping... 16-year-olds jumping into their cars and running over police cars the last I've looked.

SPOKESMAN: Anybody seen Lauren...

LEE HOCHBERG: And he discounts the argument that the columbine tragedy or D.C. snipings were prompted by video games.

DOUG LOWENSTEIN: Anybody who suggests that the kids in columbine carried out their heinous crimes because they played video games is really demagoguing the issue. These kids, I think we all know, had acutely serious problems. Passing a law that says a child can't buy a violent video game, if you think for a minute that that's going to reduce the violence we have in our culture and our society, I think you're kidding yourself.

SPOKESMAN: No, wrong turn.

LEE HOCHBERG: The industry points, in fact, to studies that suggest video games actually give kids a harmless way to release aggressions, an idea with which these high school students agree.

STUDENT: This game doesn't make me want to go out and kill people.

STUDENT: Yeah. Or just run over people in my car.

STUDENT: What I can't do in real life, I do in video games. ( Laughter )

STUDENT: I don't think you would... like, make you more violent towards other people. Like, I think it just makes you more violent in the game.

SINGING: ...And I don't know why I came here tonight...

LEE HOCHBERG: The video game industry has sued Washington State, arguing the new law infringes on its freedom of speech. It argues its games are no different than violent movies, like this, which are protected under the First Amendment.

DOUG LOWENSTEIN: The definition of art isn't whether we like it. There are paintings that people regard as trash, there are books that people regard as trash, but we regard them as protected nonetheless.

LEE HOCHBERG: Dickerson doubts video games were what the framers of the constitution had in mind.

MARY LOU DICKERSON: I don't believe that when we're talking about ultra- violent video games where players get points for decapitating people or beating people to death, I don't believe that's covered by the First Amendment.

LEE HOCHBERG: Cities that have passed laws restricting access to violent games, like Indianapolis and St. Louis, have been turned back in the courts. A federal appeals court last month struck down St. Louis' law, arguing it was: "a regulation of speech based on content, and does not survive strict scrutiny." Dickerson says Washington State's law, with a narrow, clearly stated goal of protecting police, will survive a legal challenge. But some constitutional lawyers doubt it. Seattle attorney Paul Lawrence:

PAUL LAWRENCE, Constitutional Lawyer: In the First Amendment area, there's a strong burden on the government to actually prove the evidence of what they're trying to do. They can't just rely on general notions that there is some aggressiveness that results from video games, therefore we have a right to regulate them. The number of kids that play video games like these, you know, 99.9 percent of them are not violent and do not shoot cops.

LEE HOCHBERG: And if there is 0.01% that do?

PAUL LAWRENCE: That's just not enough to regulate free speech.

BOB THURSTON: I don't care what the attorney says. You know what, how many attorneys have been shot down in the middle of a night stopping a car?

LEE HOCHBERG: Police organizations, convinced the games put them at risk, support Washington's law. Bob Thurston heads the 1,000- member Washington State Patrol Troopers Association.

BOB THURSTON: If this prevents one police officer from being killed, then I think it's worth it. A life is worth a hell of a lot more than a video game.

LEE HOCHBERG: The state hopes testimony from child psychologist Connie Umphred influences the court hearing the industry challenge. Umphred says because they are interactive, the games affect youth differently than any book or movie.

CONNIE UMPHRED, Ph.D., Child Adolescent Psychologist: The pressing of the buttons, the sounds, the instant gratification, the association between pressing a button and causing violent things to happen to a human-like form are reinforcers. It's just a tiny step away from reality at that point, while, for instance, watching a movie is just passively observing someone else doing it.

LEE HOCHBERG: The industry will argue the law is unneeded, its own rating system should keep kids from the games. "Grand Theft Auto" is marked "M" on its box. That means it's suitable for persons 17 and older, and retailers aren't supposed to sell it to minors. Yet when a Seattle citizens group recently sent children into stores to try to buy "Grand Theft Auto," 15 of 17 had no trouble. We watched as 12-year-old Jeremy Kohlenberg purchased it at a Best Buy store.

JEREMY KOHLENBERG: She looks at me and she says, "Are you sure you should be buying this game? You look kind of under-aged." I said, "well, it's a really cool game and all my friends have it." So she goes off to her phone and she dials up her manager. So she said, "okay," staples this receipt, and she hands me the game, and I walked out the door.

LEE HOCHBERG: Best Buy says it's in the process of reviewing its policies, and will make adjustments as needed. The game industry says it's encouraging retailers to do that, but it adds kids buying video games isn't really a problem. It cites a 2000 Federal Trade Commission study that says 83 percent of violent games are purchased by adults.

DOUG LOWENSTEIN: If a parent looks at the rating and ignores the fact that the game is, you know, significant violence, strong language, sexual themes, and buys that game anyway, I'm sorry, that's not something that is a failure of ratings. That is a failure of parenting.

LEE HOCHBERG: Yet the same FTC study the industry uses to build a case for its rating system also makes one against it. The report charges: "The aggressive marketing of violent games to children undermines the credibility of the industry's ratings and frustrates parents' attempts to make informed choices." The challenge to Washington's law was heard in a Seattle courtroom today. Congress, meanwhile, is debating a national bill to levy fines of $5,000 against stores that sell or rent violent games to minors.

CONVERSATION

GWEN IFILL: Now, a conversation with a prize-winning poet, and to arts correspondent Jeffrey Brown.

JEFFREY BROWN: Flip through the 30 years worth of poetry in Linda Pastan's collection, "Carnival Evening," and you'll find titles that sound a lot like life itself. A grandmother studying the face of "Anna at 18 Months" in the '90s. A middle-aged daughter facing "The Death of a Parent" in the '80s. A young mother writing "Notes From the Delivery Room" in the '70s.

LINDA PASTAN: "Strapped down, victim in an old comic book. I have been here before. This place where pain winces off the walls like too-bright light. 'Bear down,' a doctor says. Foreman to sweating laborer. But this work, this forcing of one life from another is something that I signed for at a moment when I would have signed anything. Babies should grow in fields, common as beets or turnips. They should be picked and held root end up, soil spilling from between their toes. And how much easier it would be later returning them to earth. Bear up, bear down. The audience grows restive and I'm a new magician who can't produce the rabbit from my swollen hat. 'She's crowning,' someone says. But there is no one royal here, just me quite barefoot greeting my barefoot child."

JEFFREY BROWN: At age 71, Linda Pastan is author of 11 volumes of poetry. And she is this year's winner of the Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize, given for lifetime achievement and at $100,000, one of the largest around. The prize is administered by "Poetry" Magazine. I talked with Linda Pastan recently outside her home in the woods in the suburbs of Washington, D.C., where she's lived for 30 years.

Linda Pastan, welcome and congratulations.

LINDA PASTAN: Thank you.

JEFFREY BROWN: $100,000 is a lot of money for a poet.

LINDA PASTAN: It is. It's a lot of money for anybody, and it's more money than... than I've ever made from all of my 11 books and readings and everything put together.

JEFFREY BROWN: When I read poems from throughout your career, there's a consistent style: Concise, clear, short, small moments captured.

LINDA PASTAN: Well, I have a natural impulse to condense. I'd like to write long narrative poems. I'd like to write a novel. And any time I start anything long, I keep trying to take out anything extraneous, anything that doesn't belong, and I end up with a small lyric poem that just happens.

JEFFREY BROWN: As I read your poetry there was a kind of ease to your writing. Is it easy to achieve that ease?

LINDA PASTAN: No, there is no ease in writing. The job is to make it by the end feel as if it flows easily. But each poem of mine goes through something like 100 revisions.

JEFFREY BROWN: A hundred?

LINDA PASTAN: Yeah, yeah, easily.

JEFFREY BROWN: What is it that you're looking for?

LINDA PASTAN: Well, I want every word to have to be there. I want a certain kind of impact on the reader or on myself when I read it, the sort of condensed energy that can then go out.

JEFFREY BROWN: You write a lot about your life, domestic issues, real-life issues.

LINDA PASTAN: I have always written about what's around me, both the surroundings here in the woods, but I mean, there's always something changing. When my children were small, there were a lot of small children running through the poems. As friends and family have started to age and die, there's a lot more darkness and death in them. But I think I've always been interested in the dangers that are under the surface, but seems like simple, ordinary domestic life. It may seem like smooth surfaces, but there are tensions and dangers right underneath, and those are what I'm trying to get at.

JEFFREY BROWN: But the dangers of ordinary life?

LINDA PASTAN: Right.

JEFFREY BROWN: We're sitting here on a beautiful day in a beautiful place, but you feel dangers lurking?

LINDA PASTAN: Always, yes, yes. I feel the cells starting to multiply someplace inside me. I feel when the phone rings, is somebody calling to say something terrible has happened. I've just always been very conscious of the fragility of life and relationships.

JEFFREY BROWN: One of the poems that captures that is called "After Minor Surgery." Could you read that for us?

LINDA PASTAN: And I wrote this when I was much younger than I am now. And, well. "After Minor Surgery." "This is the dress rehearsal, when the body like a constant lover flirts for the first time with faithlessness. When the body like a passenger on a long journey hears the conductor call out the name of the first stop. When the body in all its fear and cunning makes promises to me it knows it cannot keep."

JEFFREY BROWN: Now, I read that you had started writing, you got married, you had children, and you stopped writing for many years.

LINDA PASTAN: Right. I was a product of the '50s -- what I called the perfectly polished floor syndrome. I had to have a homemade dessert on the table for my husband every night, and this was when I was in college I was married and then in graduate school. And I felt that I couldn't be the perfect wife and mother that I was expected to be, and commit myself to something as serious as my poetry, and I wasn't going to do that half-heartedly. It was all or nothing. And I stopped writing for almost ten years, and I was very unhappy about it during those years. And my husband finally said he was tired of hearing what a good poet I would have been if I hadn't gotten married. Let's do something about it.

JEFFREY BROWN: Now, you just have been given a lifetime achievement award, so I want to ask you, as you look back at your lifetime of work, what do you see?

LINDA PASTAN: From the time, and I was about 30 when I started writing again seriously, I've written a lot of poems. I like to think that they're good enough for someone to have given me an award for them, but you never know. Writers, I think, vary from thinking their work is absolutely wonderful to thinking it's absolutely terrible, why is anyone reading it? And I think most artists go through that... that time of doubt and time of assurance. And it feels good that someone from the outside says "Yes, it's okay, you're doing okay."

JEFFREY BROWN: Now, I don't usually get to ask this of poets, but what will you do with $100,000?

LINDA PASTAN: I have seven grandchildren who are going to need some kind of help with college. So I'm going to do something serious with some of that money. But I felt that I had to do something really fun for myself, and since I am a compulsive reader, I am giving myself permission to buy any books I want to buy. I used to write them down when I read about them or read reviews and wait a year until they came out in paperback. Now when they come out in hardback, if I want them I'm going to let myself buy them.

JEFFREY BROWN: Well, Linda Pastan, congratulations and thank you for talking to us.

LINDA PASTAN: Thank you.

ESSAY - A MIGHTY WIND

GWEN IFILL: Finally tonight, essayist Roger Rosenblatt goes to the movies, and has a nostalgia attack.

ROGER ROSENBLATT: I went to see "A Mighty Wind" for the second time, in the fanciful hope that they might have changed the ending. I wanted the movie to end where the fictional folk singers sing "A mighty Wind" at the conclusion of their fictional concert down at town hall, shown on-- what else?-- PBS. They call it PBN.

SINGING: A mighty wind's a-blowing it's kicking up the sand...

ROGER ROSENBLATT: There is some funny stuff in the movie's epilogue, but for me the movie ends perfectly when it recalls something less funny but more moving. Like the two earlier wonder works by Christopher Guest and his gang of comic artists, "Best in Show" and "Waiting for Guffman," "A Mighty Wind" is a gentle send-up, this time of the folk singers and their audiences of the 1950s and 1960s.

ACTOR: They had no hole in the center of the records.

ACTOR: And if you punched a hole in them, you'd have a good time.

ACTOR: Yeah.

ROGER ROSENBLATT:: The difference is that in this sendoff, today's audience is sent drifting back to a time when the catchwords of the songs-- peace, love, and equality-- were not a joke. Funny to see and hear this all again, genuinely funny and sentimentally funny.

SINGING: Last night I had the strangest dream I never dreamed before....

ROGER ROSENBLATT: We took it all so seriously back then, the real concerts at Carnegie Hall and town hall, where one sat rapt before the Weavers and Oscar Brand, and the songs that foolishly touted communism, but were nonetheless inspired by heartfelt thoughts of community and fair play, followed by the Kingston Trio, the Limelighters, Peter, Paul and Mary, and others; songs about the working man and about tropical islands, and of course about "love between my brothers and my sisters, all over this land." It was a kind of music hard to sustain, I suppose, easily overtaken by rock and roll and by a sound more various than that produced by bass, banjo, and guitar. Perhaps the ideas were harder to sustain than the sounds. Folk music was so big, and then it went.

ACTOR: To try a retro thing, it must just look kind of...

ACTOR: To do that... I mean, to do then now would be retro. To do then then was very now- tro.

ROGER ROSENBLATT: Christopher Guest and company catch the silliness of the movement, but they clearly love its sweetness, too, and so they honor what they mock. They seem to appreciate that the old singers, whatever their limitations, meant what they sang. And to be fair, their songs were no more or less foolish than those of lusty and thoughtless patriotism today.

SINGER: My daddy served in the army he lost his right eye but he flew a flag

out in our yard till the day that he died...

ROGER ROSENBLATT: With a war still smoldering and terror alerts the color of orange, "A Mighty Wind" played to welcoming crowds who might have been on a nostalgia trip attached to an unspoken wish. Peace, love, and equality are more difficult to define than their opposing forces, much less to achieve, but one believes in them still.

SINGING: It's a different time a time to pray...

ROGER ROSENBLATT: Sitting in the dark in the movie house away from the news, one dreamt back to a more hopeful time, errors and all, ridiculous, corny, lovely.

SINGING: A mighty wind's a-blowing...

ROGER ROSENBLATT: I'll see the movie one more time when it's available on tape. Maybe they will have changed the ending. But that's the last thing one hears, is the song that wished the world well.

SINGING: For the land and across the sea it's blowing peace and freedom it's blowing equality.

ROGER ROSENBLATT: I'm Roger Rosenblatt.

RECAP

GWEN IFILL: Again, the major developments of the day: The U.S. Military's casualties in Iraq rose again. Three American soldiers were killed in Baghdad in the last 24 hours. British lawmakers criticized the Blair government over prewar claims about Iraqi weapons, but they found no evidence the government deliberately misled the public. And a U.S. Military team arrived in Liberia, possibly to pave the way for a larger force.

RECAP

GWEN IFILL: And again, to our honor roll of American service personnel killed in Iraq. We add names when the deaths are official and photographs become available. Here, in silence, are four more.

GWEN IFILL: We'll see you online and again here tomorrow evening. I'm Gwen Ifill. Thank you, and good night.