[ Applause ]

You can hold your applause till the end. He won't be insulted. To his right is one of the stars of "Buffy the Vampire Slayer," Tuesdays at 8:00 - sounds like our old show now. Except that I know that James Marsters is a really, really intelligent guy. And that's why we brought him here. Your show is now on UPN.

James: Yes, it is.

[ Applause ]

Bill: Now, I don't wanna talk about anthrax, because everyone's talking about anthrax. And I know it's scary, but I don't think it's as scary as the media - I think the media makes it worse. So, let's get on to something else - which is censoring bin Laden. I think this is an interesting topic. Now, last week, the five major news organizations agreed to use restraint in airing the videotapes that they get from bin Laden. We saw the one, October 7th - whenever we started the bombing, he had a tape for us. I'm not sure what the administration is afraid of. I don't think they should be afraid that we're going to come over to his side. Right? Hello? [ Light laughter ] Assure me, please. Everyone.

James: Why else - why else?

Bill: Well, the one reason they put forth these - he's putting - perhaps giving coded messages.

Deborah: Right, right. That's the problem.

Bill: Which I think - that's the problem? Well, first of all, all of his compatriots would watch him on Al-jazeera, not on CNN probably. Second of all, you know, come on - he's wearing the turban backwards. Ooh, we know what that means. [ Light laughter ] I mean, that's not really a credible -

James: He's flashing signs.

Bill: Yeah. White turban after Labor Day. [ Laughter ] Come on. Do you really think that that's a credible problem?

Deborah: Well, yeah, it is a problem, because, the last I checked, we couldn't get Al-jazeera here, domestically. So you're still speaking -

Bill: I get it.

Deborah: You do?

Khaled: Yes, of course. DISH network carries over here.

Bill: Yes, get it on a dish. Anyone can get it.

Khaled: "The Washington Post," there's an article today that - intelligence experts have studied the tapes and they could not find any messages. And I think it's unlikely. I think the problem in the Middle East is that you need more democracy. And less democracy is what we are pressuring them to do. Mulaf Kettle was in Washington ten days ago, and four members of Congress from the International Immigrations Committee were pressuring him to shut the video down. I think that's ridiculous.

Bill: Well -

James: Yeah, freedom is something that we would be fighting for, or have fought for.

Tavis: I think the problem, Bill, is that the administration is sending mixed messages here. And maybe it's politically incorrect these days to offer any kind of dissent when it comes to the bush administration. But, I respectfully take exception on this one. We did a show last week, as a matter of fact. I was in Atlanta hosting on CNN. We did a whole show about Al-jazeera. And it's fascinating to me how all these questions came out last week about "Who is Al-jazeera?" "What is Al-jazeera?" "Are they a mouthpiece for bin Laden?" And, yet, all of the networks are taking footage from Al-jazeera. How bad can they be if you're gonna use all their footage, number one? And, number two, you can't tell me out of one side of your mouth that this network is a spokesperson - a spokes network, if you will, for bin Laden, use their footage on the other hand. And the bush administration actually sent people from the administration to be interviewed on the network. Colin Powell has been interviewed. Condi Rice was about to be interviewed by them. Bush may be interviewed.

Bill: For people who may not be familiar with this network that we got on to talking about, Al-jazeera is the only independent, Arab broadcasting network.

Tavis: It's the CNN of the Middle East, if you well.

Bill: Okay - okay, but wait a second. That's not quite an accurate analogy, because here we - all our broadcast networks are relatively free. They are not government controlled. In the Middle East, this is an exception.

Khaled: Absolutely.

Bill: Which I think is important to note, because it is bin Laden's mouthpiece. It is viciously anti-American, anti-Israeli -

James: I think it's laughable that we even are talking about the newspaper. That's not the reason that the newspaper's taking that stance. The newspaper is taking the stance because it reflects its readership.

Bill: Exactly.

James: It's not government controlled. They hate us over there.

Bill: Exactly.

[ Talking over each other ]

James: And we don't wanna admit that it terrifies us.

Deborah: But, here's the important point.

James: But, it's not the freaks, it's not the fanatics who hate us. It's mom and pop.

Deborah: But, there's never been the other side -

Khaled: Just to be fair to Al-jazeera -

Deborah: Hang on one second. That's the point here, is that you bring up a very valid situation - is we're now going through the greatest history lesson of our life. We didn't know what Al-jazeera was just two weeks ago. We are learning about the fact that we've never even heard the other view, or people throughout the Middle East have only heard pro bin Laden propaganda. We've never heard the other side. That's in part our fault, is that we've not been out there in talking about and changing the beat of the drum from this anti-American, anti-Israel stance to telling people what the West is all about.

Khaled: You know, just to know the history of Al-jazeera - Al-jazeera was the first station to actually interview Israeli officials. The first Arabic station. And four years ago, and three years ago, it was accused of being an Israeli station. Last year and the year before, Libya pulled their ambassador from Morocco, Tunisia and Algeria - all Northern African countries. So every time they air something unpopular, it's accused of being anti that government. And that is not fair. Many Arab countries and many Arabic press, they attack the Al-jazeera for interviewing Israeli officials, which was a taboo. You could not do that. Now that they air bin Laden, we accuse them of being puppets or working for bin Laden as -

Bill: But that's because they are truly independent. But that doesn't mean that they don't also reflect, as you were saying, their viewership. And they have been viciously -

James: They're biased, but it's from the groundswell.

Bill: Right. I mean, they refer to Palestinians who die in terrorist attacks as martyrs. That's a little biased. They spread the rumor that the Jews in New York did not go to work in the World Trade Center on September 11th, feeding the idea, in a large part of the Islamic world that is was -

Tavis: But, Bill - but, Bill. I'm not here to defend or attack Al-jazeera. I don't know enough about them. What I'm suggesting that - who among us, if you talk about networks, is not biased. You're gonna tell me that the networks that we all represent aren't slanted? That the papers we read aren't slanted? That the editorials that we read aren't slanted? Who among us is not biased when it comes to news coverage? My point is that the administration - and, again, I've think done a good job on balance of managing these terror attacks against our country, these diabolical attacks. My point is, though, you can't have it both ways. You can't tell me that Al-jazeera is the devil incarnate and at the same time send Condi and send Colin Powell over there to be interviewed on their network. It seems to me you can't have it both ways.

Deborah: When they were promoting that we were the greatest satan out there, and there's only propaganda on one side, and they hate us so much to the point that they're willing to kill us, that's a problem. That's when you have to educate -

[ Talking over each other ]

James: The videotape of the women and children and young people -

Khaled: But, they're not doing that.

James: - Hopping up and down when they saw the World Trade Center go down. This is not propaganda. This is not from a centralized government that's coming to try to convince people -

Tavis: But to some degree, respectfully though, it is propaganda in this sense. In the sense that what you see on television does not represent the millions of folk who live in that part of the world. Again, I'm not here to defend people in the Middle East. What I'm suggesting is, if you have 1,000 or 2,000 or 3,000 people in the streets protesting, that is not necessarily the view that's held by the millions of folks who you don't see on television.

Bill: Correct, but it's not also just the people in the street, okay? It's not just a few thousand. Let's not kid ourselves about that either. I think the world is divided. But, it's divided a lot more evenly than we want to admit in this country, as you were saying.

Tavis: That's my point.

Bill: Now, let me ask again about the bin Laden tape. Isn't the correct answer to propaganda from the other side not to censor it, but to refute it? I mean, wouldn't it be easy for the president to get on and say to Mr. bin Laden - "Here are your points. Let me tell you why you're full of crap."

[ Applause ]

Khaled: Absolutely. That's absolutely the point. Al-jazeera has said that - and they said that in different stations here in America and "The Washington Post" today - that they went after the State Department for the last few weeks asking someone to appeal Al-jazeera. And they refused. Two years ago, I was in Keta visiting with a congressional delegation. We met with the U.S. ambassador in Keta. And she complained to us about Al-jazeera. And we said simply, "Did you try to respond to the reports?" She said, "No." We had a meeting with Al-jazeera - we went there just the same day in the afternoon. And they said, "The U.S. embassy's complaining. Why aren't you fair?" They said, "Every time we have a report to ask them to respond, they refused. You do not send a spokesperson. They don't come." So the problem that -

Tavis: But, I can tell you this, though. In my conversation last week with one of the network executives - or an executive very high up at Al-jazeera, I asked them specifically - I had him on the same day, Bill, that Bush released those 22 photos of the 22 most wanted terrorists in the world. And I asked him point blank whether or not their network, Al-jazeera, was prepared to run footage of these 22 persons who are the most wanted - at least by U.S. standards. And he hemmed and hawed and hedged all around that question. I found that extremely troubling, that, if in fact you are a network that's trying to be biased - I mean, trying to be balanced rather, trying to be balanced, why you not air, as often as you could, these 22 faces?

Bill: I mean, come on. If they refer to people who we think are the suicidal terrorists as martyrs, obviously those people are not on a most-wanted list. They're on a most-desired list.

Khaled: Well, I think that's wrong if they did that. I don't know that -

Tavis: They ought to be running that footage. They ought to be running that. They ought to be running as often as they can if they really - I asked him, you know, "Would you run this?" He said - his response was, "If it has some news value." I said, "If it has news value?!" That's ridiculous to me. Of course it has news value!

Bill: I have to take something for commercial value. We'll be right back.

[ Applause ]

Bill: All right, let me follow up on something we were talking about here because it's nice to have you here. Someone saying what I've been saying here for many weeks. And people get mad at me for saying that, which is it's not just a few terrorists or a few cells, but it's a lot of people. It's not, of course, the entire Islamic world. But to kid ourselves and think it's not many millions of people, we're kidding ourselves.

James: It's a mainstream thinking of Islam to a lot of people. It's not freaks and not extremists.

Bill: Yes, I think Osama bin Laden, if you polled most people, would be rather popular in many countries of the Islamic world. Do you not agree?

Khaled: Well, I think his message - the strength of his message that he's a multimillionaire, wealthy man who gave up everything. It's not necessarily that few agree with him. They mostly agree with some ideas, but they don't, definitely, agree with the message he uses.

Bill: Okay.

Khaled: I think in general -

Tavis: But there's enough anger to support - to support his actions. They're angry at us for a reason. They're not crazy people. They don't need lithium. There are mom and pop with their kid and they hate America like the great satan. And my question is - why? Why is that?

[ Talking over each other ]

James: Who are the "they" you're talking about? We keep throwing this word "they" around. What "they" are you talking about?

Deborah: Here's the problem right now, too. When you talk about a place like Cairo, Egypt, where we provide almost $2 billion in foreign aid every year, and you can't even find anybody on the streets in Cairo who believe the FBI's version of the terrorist attacks. That's a problem. They think it was a ploy to attack -

Khaled: You know why? You know why? Because we invested so much pleasing dictators and we've ignored the people in the street.

James: We have been jacking their lunch money for 75 years. We are a bully. I hate to say it, but America - America for the last 75 years - [ Scattered applause ] - Has been getting our fingers in their pie and dictating to what they want to do. And I'm not saying -

Bill: No, we haven't.

James: We drew the boundaries on their land.

Bill: That's true. You're right. We're not exactly blameless. But, I mean, for them, in the year 2001, as they do, to say all our problems are really because of America is a copout. That's what people do in their lives. They blame something that they don't want to look to themselves.

[ Applause ]

These are their countries. We're not occupying Iraq. We're not occupying Syria.

Tavis: But we're back.

Bill: We're not occupying any of these countries. And they - not one person in them is brave enough to stand up, 'cause there is no dissent there. They'll kill ya.

Khaled: There is a truth in both sides. We give them $2.2 billion, but we don't pressure them to have elections. Two years ago when they had elections, 200 people were imprisoned just because they were running for election -

Bill: Where is this?

Khaled: - For Parliament in Egypt.

Bill: Egypt.

Khaled: We give them aid, $2.2 billion, then we are to apply some pressure for democracy, for freedom of press. But we don't do that. So America, for them, represents this government there that gets funding for ruling with corruption, dictatorship and all these bad things.

Tavis: I'm just concerned again about this amorphous "they." And I think that President Bush is certainly right about this, Bill, that we've got to be very, very careful and very prudent about whether or not - about when and how we talk about the Muslim faith. And I - the only exception I take to what you say, respectfully, is, if you're making - if your point is that all persons of Muslim faith believe what bin Laden believes -

Bill: No, we're not saying all.

Tavis: You're not attacking their faith?

Bill: We're saying - of course we're not saying all.

[ Talking over each other ]

Tavis: You keep saying "they," though.

James: - The mainstream accepted philosophy in the Middle East to consider America the great satan. And my point is, why? The reason being, that they have some legitimate grievances.

Bill: Yes, but it's not - you know, it's like people who want to kill want to kill. They'll find a reason. Osama bin Laden just wants to kill. He's that kind of a guy.

James: No, no, no, no. It's wrong to vilify any specific person. We have to look at the underlying reasons for why so many -

Tavis: No, no, no. Time out! Time out!

James: Yeah, that's a different story.

Tavis: Time out! No, time out! Time out! Time out! Time out! It's wrong to vilify bin Laden? It's time to put down the crack pipe. [ Laughter ] No. Bin Laden - I mean, come on.

[ Scattered applause ]

James: I wouldn't know what one looks like.

Tavis: How can anybody say it's wrong to vilify bin Laden with the information and the evidence that we have? I don't think that any of us -

Bill: He didn't mean that. He meant -

James: Of course you vilify him. But it's like pounding the nail twice. Of course he's an idiot. Of course he's a villain. Of course he's a murderer. We can get over that. My question - why are so many people in the Middle East agreeing with him? And that's very troubling to me.

Bill: That's a better point.

Deborah: Wait a minute. These people -

Bill: Why do millions of people - [ Scattered applause ]

Deborah: Let me tell you why, all right? These people have been brainwashed by propaganda when we don't even have -

James: No.

Deborah: Absolutely. And when you have such a young population below 18 and you have nothing to look forward to -

James: This is why the Marshal Plan -

Deborah: - You have no hope and you're starving - and you're starving, and you have nothing to look forward to, of course you're gonna be willing to kill.

James: You should know this. If you destabilize any - if you destabilized any region, you set yourself up for dictators and extremists to take power. Isn't that right?

Bill: Yes.

James: And we have been destabilizing the Middle East and Africa ever since what, 1914?

Tavis: These are legitimate -

Deborah: This has been going on for thousands of years. I mean, you're -

Khaled: Well, if I may, if you want to end these problems, because you can create another problem unless you have a long-term policy. We did not. We armed Afghans. We spent $45 billion. Half of the arms they have, we gave them. Then when the Russians left, we just disappeared. So we left a vacuum. That's what happened there. We armed Iraq against Iran, then we left. Then Iraq attacked Kuwait. Then we sent over planes, killing 200,000 civilians. In Middle East, they mean lives to them. For us in America, they're numbers. It doesn't mean anything in America. But for people in the Middle East, 200,000 civilians were killed in 1991. Every year, 200,000, 300,000, according to the U.N., children die from starvation, lack of medicine. For people in the Middle East, that means something. There is some brainwash, but there is some truth.

James: The sad irony -

Khaled: You have to look at the problem. You have to look why people can be brainwashed.

James: My point is - see, this is like a bar fight. Okay.

[ Applause ]

Bill: Really well said. James, I got to take a commercial. We'll be back to that in a second.

[ Applause ]

Bill: All right. We're trying to understand this other part of the world. And let me read something from Pakistani's leader. He was quoted in the paper today. And this just shows you, I think, the difference between our countries. And he's our ally. He's our big friend. But they asked him about maybe he's gonna have a coup. He said, "The people love me." Can you imagine Bush saying that? He said, "The people love me. I'm a popular leader wherever I go. Those who are protesting against me are idiots. They don't know anything."

[ Scattered applause ]

Deborah: I think that -

Bill: I mean, can you imagine, in a democracy, a leader thinking that way, just saying that? "The people - they're idiots. They don't know anything. The people love me."

Tavis: Maybe he ought to put down the crack pipe, I don't know.

[ Light laughter ]

The problem though - what concerns me - what concerns me is that there are all kinds of legitimate questions that we raised here tonight and questions that have been raised on this show any number of nights that need to be addressed. Without question, this is a defining moment for America. The question is - can we take this defining moment and redefine America to make America a better place? I'm not so sure we can do that, because the patriotism has become so all engulfing. And I love America like anybody else. But I believe that patriotism demands debate. It sometimes demands dissent. But you can't get that in this environment. So the question is - how do we ultimately - when we do come out of this - to take Mr. Bush's words, when we hunt him down and smoke him out and life returns to some sense of normalcy in the country, will we have made America a better country if we don't deal with some of these dissenting questions, some of the debate that too many of us don't want to be a part of right now?

Deborah: But now is not necessarily the time to do that. And there will be a point that we'll look back and we'll reflect on the history of what happened. This is the Pearl Harbor of the 21st century. Now, right now, we have to employ the best strategies to make sure we can eradicate terrorism as best we can, 'cause we know we have an enormous problem on our hands.

Tavis: I'm all for that. But long-term - I'm all for that.

Bill: We're talking about two different things.

Tavis: I'm all for that. But here's a question for you. Long-term, are you really hopeful that we're gonna take this defining moment and redefine America or, sooner or later, are we gonna return to business as usual in this country?

Bill: I think we've returned to business as usual. I mean, I think the media has not been especially laudable. I don't think advertising has. I think a lot of people are exploiting this in a horrendous way. What's that?

James: Dinty Moore. They ran a big article saying, we feel for all the people in the Sears Tower - excuse me, in the twins towers. And, by the way, buy Dinty Moore.

Bill: Yeah. I mean, and they're not the only ones. We shouldn't just single them out.

James: Exactly.

Bill: I mean, there's a lot of that going on. There's a lot of people, I think, who act like this happened to them personally. We've had a lack of patriotism over time.

Bill: Patriotism is -

James: I'd like to finish a point if I could. I don't think this is about patriotism. I think - I think of this as a bar fight, okay? There's no white hats and black hats here. It's all about grays. If I go drinking with a buddy, and he drinks too much, and he's a jerk when he's drunk, and he picks a fight with a Hell's Angel, okay? He was - his fault. He was being a jerk. He's wrong. But when the fight breaks out, I back him up. Right? I don't think he's right. I don't make any mistakes about that. But I have to protect my own. That's where we are right now. But the next day, you go back to your friend and you say, "That's unacceptable. I'm not going drinking with you. Things have got to change. We got to change the situation or I'm not hanging with you." So what I'm saying is - I would go to my friend and say, "Who got me into this mess?"

Bill: So bin Laden is the Hell's Angel? [ Laughter ] Let me just get - bin Laden's a Hell's Angel.

Khaled: I believe that. I believe that, too.

James: I'm not saying we're right. I'm saying we have to go to a fight right now, maybe. I hope not - maybe. We may have to fight. But, at the end of the day, we have to change the situation and change how we got into this mess.

Tavis: And how long can we keep the politics out of it? I said earlier, and I agree, I still feel the same way that I did ten minutes ago, that the Bush administration, by and large, has done a good job of handling this. But what he says in a cabinet meeting, though, to Congress, "You need to pass my energy bill so that we can protect all Americans and make them secure," the politics is creeping in.

Bill: It sure is. We have to take a break. We'll be right back. You're right about that.

[ Applause ]

Bill: Okay, in the break, we're all joking about what sponsors we're all going to lose now. Folks, try to remember that this censorship belongs in the dictatorships we're fighting and not here on the home front. Thank you.