options to own more of the company instead of having negotiated wages. it is all about people in power. the other thing i would like to ask is, your job. you answered it a bit ago that you work for the president. it is a politically appointed job. i am a board member in hancock county. we have three economic development people. we're in a depressed area. to tell the truth, i cannot figure out what people do, other than collect money. i do not mean that in a derogatory sense. this is part of the problem. thank you. guest: i do not know what to say about the comment on the local

economic development people. in general, many communities, many states have economic development staffs. it is their job, both to help people plan and think about and strategizing about the areas and how we think about assets and what we do well in this community, what is sometimes called, anchor institutions that could be everything from a local college to a hospital, and to think about how they move forward. they often play a role in attracting new businesses. part of my job is to work state and local efforts, differ communities, what white -- what might work best in one community is not necessarily the right way forward for another. we do not want a top-down approach, but a bottom-up approach. it we will work with their economic development people to

work -- to figure out what their strategy is. the federal government is just providing an overall framework, but the particular course for it is going to be picked community by community. host: how will you know if you are a success? guest: communities in this area start to return and grow. host: thank you for being with us. please come back as your progress continues along the way. thank you for being with us on this thursday morning. have a great fourth of july holiday weekend. we will continue our discussion on national policy issues. [captioning performed by national captioning institute] [captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2009] .

employers cut 467,000 jobs in june, reaching a 26-year high. the unemployment rate at 9.5%. the ap writing june's payroll reduction were deeper than the 363,000 but was expected. president obama will make comments this afternoon on the numbers and the economy. coming up at 2:20 p.m. we will have live coverage from the rose garden. reporting this morning, thousands of u.s. marines stormed deeper into taliban territory and an afghan river valley thursday it launching the biggest military offensive of barack obama's presidency. a report that a u.s. soldier has

been captured by the taliban in southeast afghanistan. to hear more -- we will hear more about that possibly in briefings we were -- will cover at the state department and white house. also covering the federal communications commission. they will get an update on making high-speed internet available across the country and on the transition last month to digital broadcast television. live coverage of the meeting at 11:00 -- 11:30 a.m. eastern. this holiday weekend, discussions of presidential domestic advisers from richard nixon to george w. bush. friday at 8:00, relations with the chief executive, saturday at 10:00 a.m., support for presidential agendas, and lesson learned from serving the president at 4:00 to 5:00 p.m. eastern now a conversation from mort zuckerman, editor in chief and followed by a chief foreign correspondent by abc news from this mornings "washington journal."

host: pieces written out of the freedom of information request about saddam hussein's last interviews before he met his death sentence. the headline on this version by eli lake at "the washington times, " said rahm denied bin laden ties. he told his fbi captives in 2004 that his government had condemned the september 11 attacks and had no connection with the sum of the modern, according to scram the transcripts. the interviews, obtained by george washington university's national security archives, quoted the now deceased directly as saying that he would reach out in a crisis to china or north korea rather than bin laden, whom he called a zealot. what is your reaction?

guest: well, you know, i think that in conjunction with something else, where he acknowledged that his bluster about his nuclear weapons capabilities was due to the fact that he was fearful of iran and wanted to have that as kind of an implicit threat to and it was something where he now expresses regret that he didn't have the u.n. observing the destruction of all of his weapons of mass destruction capability earlier on. what it all goes to, it seems, is the fact that we completely misjudged what was going on in iraq. and this is what led to the war in iraq, which was, in a sense, something that took place within a heightened concerns in the country after 9/11. so it just goes to show you that these things are never as clear as we thought they were, and it is unfortunate because the country has paid a huge price. host: put that into greater perspective for citizens who are

listening to that. a week when troops are beginning to pull out major areas of iraq and all of a national treasure and spilled blood. guest: yes, there has been a huge cost for the united states. not just in terms of treasure, but, of course, we lost many soldiers, more than anything else we lost the confidence of the country, the government lost the confidence of the country and the foreign policy decisions, and i think that anxiety over what the government may decide or not decide to do is something that i think is still a big part of our present politics. bush administration bush administration for good or the bush administration for good or for ill was almost completely discredited primarily because of the war in iraq. mass destruction which they refused to deal with in an appropriate way that prompted us to go to war in iraq. i'm not sure that was the real

rational but be that as it may that was the public rationale. saddam hussein was so unpopular in iraq. they would -- 2/3 would have voted to go to war because they didn't like saddam hussein. now you have a democratic ascendency in the congress and in the white house and it's real quite unique, probably hasn't happened since the 1930's. this is an enormous impact on this country and on the credibility of the government. there is such a relief that there is a new administration in and they have been given a great deal of shall we say leeway in terms of their assertions. i'm not sure this is going to be sustainable. and i believe a year from now we'll have a more normal presidency in which the administration is going to really have to fight in a very different way for its legislative and political

successes. host: mort zuckerman has two media holds. here's how you reach him. republicans can dial 202-737-0001. our line for democrats, 202-737-0002. and our line for independents is 202-628-0205. you can also send us an email or a twitter message if you'd like and we'll mix all those in during our discussion with him. your latest opinion piece is about u.s. policy toward iran. it's just come out today. and the headline is "the u.s. needs handshakes and an iron fist." you've chosen to wrote robert kaplan where he said this iranian struggle is "now as central to our foreign policy as that for democracy in eastern europe in the 1980's." why did that appeal to you? >> because the great threat to

the united states and to the stability of -- guest: because the great threat to the united states and to the stability of the national community really comes out of the muslim world. and parts of the muslim world that are really viewed by a sense of shall we say religious commitment and some would say even fanatic simple but their efforts are provoked by very deep set of religious beliefs that are very difficult to sort of engage in because we are not in that cultural mode as a country. we separated church and state a long time ago, but you have religious leadership particularly now in iran that is very scary. and they have clearly taken over the dominant role in iran. whatever hopes we may have had from the uprising that we saw graphically on many television screens and read a lot about

has proven to be totally inadequate to the forces against them against the grand ayatollah and ahmadinejad. and they now control a government which is benefiting from good oil prices, which is sort of the expansionist muslim country which is threatening the sunni countries, it being a shiite country, which is sponsoring terrorism all around the arab and muslim world. you may recall not too long ago because i happened to be in that country shortly after it was made public that a hezbollah cell was uncovered in egypt. and the purpose of that hezbollah cell was to blow up ships in the suez canal and to blow up sort of major tourist sites. these being the two major industries for egypt. and the hopes that the economic decline that would ensue would

destabilize the mubarak regime and bring in the muslim brotherhood which is much more closely affiliated with iran and with hamas. so you have a sense amongst the sunni countries of an expansionist iran operating through proxies, through hezbollah, through hamas. the leader of hamas actually publicly stated that he wanted the egyptian military to rise up against the mubarak government, and their hopes for a succession. mubarak being 82 or 83 right now. i don't know which. you have a situation now it's not just in egypt. it's true in the suddenan. it's true in lebanon. it's true in the hezbollah community. it's true in iraq where we're facing a lot of shiia-inspired activities. being a shiia country, we don't know where maliki comes out in terms of that particular struggle when the united states

forces pull back from the industries and may over a two-year period ultimately leave iraq completely. and we may be faced with a different kind of political access in that part of the world which tell -- let's not forget -- controls major sources of energy, oil and natural gas, which is critical to the industrial world of the west. they have tremendous control over us. if they are in the hands of religious radical leadership we will have extraordinarily complicated worlds to cope with and contend with. so we are in a very, very different period now. i think one of the most dangerous periods, and i believe that obama's foreign policy legacy will be determined on how he handled iran which is at the forefront of the forces that says the united states is the great satan. we don't know how to cope with that kind of the world during this stage of the game.

obama's policy seems to be an assumption of good will and charisma and rhetoric. the charisma and rhetoric coming from obama. coming from obama. and w if the offer us an open hand and said of a clenched fist. it is not enough. the restraint and the way the obama administration spoke respectfully of his regime in iran has not had any benefits to us at all. it has not diminished the radicalism in that regime and then into the tour the united states and the question is how do we deal with a country like that that is not a static country. they are really trying to expand their influence across the muslim and arab world. it is terrifying to sunni countries like saudi arabia, egypt, jordan -- jordan. an effort on the part of iran to develop terrorist networks

within their own countries and destabilize them in one form or another, and we don't know yet how we are going to cope. it is a very serious threat to the fundamentals of the western economies. host: of giving our viewers lots to reflect upon. before we get to phone calls, one more headline for our viewers sake from this morning's "new york times." europeans discussed joint iran responds. the reporters from paris -- iran risk diplomatic isolation from the european union and european officials discussed whether to withdraw the ambassadors of all 25 -- 27 member nations in a dispute over the detention of the british embassy's berlin in personnel. european diplomats said wednesday that they have made no formal decision but that the measure was an option as the european union, perhaps -- the biggest trading partner -- tried to work out how to defuse the dispute in a way. let us begin with a call from

virginia. this is sandra on our independent line. caller: i have been watching this for quite a while on iraq. when bush wanted to go in the, theu. -- the u.n. inspector several weapons and he got tired and ended up quitting. during that time, if you watch the news, one story that there were weapons and if you watched the news and nighttime they were saying, no, they didn't have any and they were gone and they were already disposed of. so, come on. thank you. guest: i think if i interpret your comments correctly, your suggestion is there is a parallel between the false information on which we rely when we went into iraq and what we believe might be coming with iran in terms of nuclear weaponry. i don't think there is any denial at this stage of the game that iran is pursuing --

everything up to the point of with a call breakout capacity. develop nuclear weapons. nevada already been test firing long-range missiles which are the delivery systems for nuclear weapons. they have been quite open about the amount of sentry fugse and their ability to -- centrifuges and their ability to develop low enriched uranium. they are going to have high enriched uranium by next year to develop nuclear weapons. if that's the case we'll have a serious problem on our hands. and what we've been trying to do with iran to engage with them so they would not get to that point because their regime clearly is not the one that you would want to trust with nuclear weapons and the deliverable nuclear capacities which the long-range missiles would give to them. now, the real problem there is that in order to be able to

force them to do something we would need the kind of sanctions, frankly, that we imposed on iraq back in 1991 which were sort of catch-all provisions in which both economically and diplomatically and otherwise financially that might put the kind of pressure on them where they would be willing to engage. it makes not just the united states nervous. it makes the europeans nervous. on one level it would make the russians nervous. they would like to have a crisis in iran because it would raise oil prices in iran. which is what russia needs to bail out their economy. and secondly, the two largest producers in the world of natural gas are russia on iran, and they would like to have, shall we say, a cooperative relationship with them in terms of fixing natural gas prices because the whole russian economy rests on energy prices. and they have suffered a

catastrophic economic blow as a result of the collapse of energy prices at a time when they had gotten way too much debt on their books, both privately and through their government. so we don't have the capacity either with russia or china, both of whom have basically indicated they will not support the kind of sanctions regime that we need, particularly through the u.n., in order to pressure iran to cease and desist from this kind of -- discyst from this kind of weapons capacity. we are in a very difficult situation to do. this country does not want to go to war with iran, but if iran does develop nuclear weapons there will be a huge change in the global shift, and it will be against the united states and against the west and nobody knows quite how to deal with that. and the bush administration tried one approach which not only did it prove to have a false premise which is that saddam hussein had nuclear weapons and weapons of mass destruction, which did prove for false as the previous

speaker suggest, but whatever else the impact may be, it has really undermined the confidence of this country in those kinds of ventures. at some point we may have a real issue to deal with instead of what turned out to be a phony issue to deal with. this is what we pay presidents to make wise decisions on. host: thank you. next telephone call is from new jersey. this is mark, republican line. caller: good morning. you have two news outlets. i believe this argument on whether or not iraq had or didn't have weapons of mass destruction is misleading. i mean, iraq had the chemical capacity. they had warheads which they never disposed of for their weapons of delivery systems. they had illegal missile systems and everything else. and i believe in my personal own belief is that the liberal media has portrayed this as a further denouncement of the bush administration for in my

belief a positive policy. iraq had weapons of mass destruction. all they had to do is mix the chemicals and use the warheads and use the rockets. guest: i don't want to reargue this whole issue at this stage of the game. one could come up with various conclusions as to iraq's weapons of mass destruction capability. i do think as you know when our inspectors went through that whole country and investigated something like 283 sites that we had on the list of where they had potential weapons of mass destruction capability we found very, very little evidence to support that. this doesn't mean that we didn't think that it was there, that saddam hussein didn't want the world to think they had it, that in fact they had used chemical weapons against the kurds, that they had used chemical weapons against their own people so there was some credibility with his threat. and after all, they did have

the nuclear reactor which the israelis blew up in 1991. so there was that rational basis for assuming that they had some capacity. the fact that unfortunately for us was that we had inadequate intelligence. it was a huge intelligence mistake, but i will also say the u.n. inspectors left a report which i read in great detail in which they outlined as you were implying all sorts of unacknowledged supplies of chemical weapons and biological weapons which had not been in a sense answered to and answered by the iraqis. so there was some legitimate case. in the end it turned out they didn't have anything near the kind of capacity that would have justified going to war in order to eliminate that kind of capacity. at least at not at this stage of the game. therefore it undermined the credibility of the bush administration and the whole war in iraq. never mind that the war in iraq was terribly badly managed for all kinds of reasons that we don't have to go into.

so iran may be a very different situation, but the same kind of skepticism that exists in the american public today may transfer to iran, and iran clearly is doing a lot of things that are very, very, very difficult for us to deal with. and for the muslim and arab world to deal with, namely, trying to undermine regimes that don't in a sense follow their line. they are certainly trying to undermine the regime in lebanon. they are certainly trying to do it in egypt. they are certainly trying to do it in sudan. and there is a sort of export of a coined of radical muslim -- kind of radical muslim belief. by the way, saudi arabia has a large role in that because of their export of the wahabi dimensions of islam which many people think is a fairly radical regime. but it's something we have to find, we as a country and the

west as a group of countries are going to have to find some way to deal with and to particularly if it turns out that iran's regime is as radical as they sound. and they do have the weapons of mass destruction, even without using them, it will give them immense power throughout the region. nobody is going to want to take iran on if they seize several of the smaller gulf countries that do also have oil capacity. i'll give you an example. qatar is a country that has become completely subservant to iran. their news media, al-jazeera, is influential throughout the world. they are fearful of an attack of iran. there are small countries. they have very limited military capabilities. they do have a lot of energy. and the question is, are they going to follow iran's lead in one form of another rather than be taken over by iran in one form or another?

and how are we going to cope with that? because these are not issues that are going to cause the united states as a country to stand up and say we have to go to war against this country. there was' no real appetite for that in this country. there may be that kind of an appetite in some sort of foreign policy circles who deal in this kind of hard edge realism. but we do have a burgeoning problem here and there's no way of escaping it. we can't talk it away. host: we are going to change topics on you here. we're already halfway through your discussion with you. and i want to show the audience what "the new york daily news" looked like after bernie madoff's sentence. big front-page story. listed as the pariah. rarely in memory has a man become such a planetary pariah. not a single person, no member of his family, no friend of a lifetime stepped forward to

attest to madoff. they have warned of madoff. lawyer raised alarm and was pointed elsewhere. this is zachary goldfarb's piece. they warned superiors as far back as 2004 of irregular parking lots that bernie madoff's financial firm, but was told to focus on unrelated matter, according to agency documents and sources familiar with the investigation. genevievette walker-light foot, a lawyer in the s.e.c.'s office, suggested a set of questions to ask the firm. several questions directly challenged madoff's activities that turned out to be elements of his massive fraud. with the agency under pressure to look for wrongdoing in the mutual fund industry, she wasn't able to continue

pursuing madoff and two people familiar with the investigation. this is a personal story for you. you were among those who were hit with madoff's scams. what's your reaction when you hear this story today in the "post"? guest: my only hope with respect to the 150-year sentence, madoff a name that could never have been made up to describe his own activities. my hope is he'll live every year to live out that 150-year sentence. i had never mattered of bernie madoff. i suffered some substantial financial plosses because one of the people who've now being sued by the attorney general of new york state for civic fraud, a man by the name of merckan, ran a fund which was supposed to be a fund to various kinds of investments. he put the vast bulk of those in with madoff.

whatever that relationship is. and he's being sued by andrew cuomo, the attorney general of the united states. i happened to be one of the others that's suing for misrepresentation and fraud. so i give you that by way of background. listen, i do think what happened with madoff is a real statement of default on the part of the s.e.c. under chris cox. it wasn't only this particular moment. this was one of the other moments when it should have been brought up to a level where he would have been properly investigated but a man by the name of harry marcopolis, whom i never heard of until this all exploded, presented a 17-page analysis of madoff's alleged form of investing and proved it could not be done. he went i think to the s.e.c. four or five times. the s.e.c. was in the mode in

those days of basically letting whatever financial world was under their supervision and review to run amuck. i mean, the one thing that was even more important tha that was when they basically allowed the investment banking firms to go from a leverage that's a debt to equity ratio to 12-is to as much as 30-1 to 40-1. that overwhelming amount of debt in relationship to equity which was a major contributor to the financial crisis that we are now going through. are now going through. and so the the whole regulatory system -- to regulate legal activity was dramatically inadequate to the challenge of that time and to the management of an intelligent financial world. and we are now paying a huge price as a country as a result of that. president obama is coming forth president obama is coming forth with a new system of financia