ptioning sponsoredy macneil/leer productions >> ifill: goodvening. i'm en ifill. president obama id today he's getting 95% of what wanted on health care,s the u.s. senate prepares to vote >> woodruff: and i judy woodruff. on thenewshour" tonight, jim lehrer's fl interview with the president, conducted at e white use this afternoon. >> this tion that somehow the health carbill that is emergi should be grudgingly acceptedy democrats as half a

loafs simply incorrect. this is 9-nths of a loaf. >> ifill: also tonightpublic outrage in mexo, where criminal gangs mdered four members of a soldi's family-- payback for his role in a ug raid. >> woodrf: then to somalia and its going crisis: we get an inside look, repted by john lee derson of "the new yorker." >> ifill: an he wasn't just a great compos. ♪ it turns o handel was a smart invest too. >> this wathe route to becomi rich quickly and handel was young, he was eager beaver. >> ifill: that's all ahead o tonighs "pbs newshour." major nding for the pbs newshour iprovided by:

♪ ( laughter ) >> we are intel, sponsors of tomorrow.

>>hevron. this ithe power of human energy. and by toyota. and moanto. the national sence foundation. supporting education and research acrosall fields of science and engineering. and withhe ongoing support of these institutions and foundations. and... is program was made possible by the corpotion for puic broadcasting. and by contributions to ur pbs station from viewers like yo thk you. >> ifill: president obama toy defeed the health care reform bill as the senate clearedhe y for a final vote tomorrow morning. he spoke to jim hrer in a wide-rangingnterview conducted in the white house m room this

ternoon. here is at interview, in its entirety. welcome. >> tha you so much for having me. >>ehrer: so you are completely satisfyed with the health form bill that the sena is about to pass >> im never completely satisfied, but i am ve tisfied. look, when i madthat speech in the joint sessioof congress, i set out me criteria for what in my mind would quafy as reform bas on the conversation theyay had with families all acro the country, and the leeres that i was refugee -- receing about people going throh a tough time in the alth care system. i said we wanted tmake sure the pele who didn't have health insurance cld get health insuranceand this bill cove 30 million people who don't have it. i said for people whhave health iurance we have to end inrance company abuses where they ban yourom getting health insurance becausof preexisting

conditionsr they've got fine printhat sets up lifetime limits on what youan spend so if you really get sick youay lose your use, even though you thinyou have health insurance. y we have the strongest alth inrance reforms we have ever seen. e argument about the patient bill of rights in the 19 90s this ithe patient bill of rightsn steroids. i said it had to be defici neutral. it doesn't just meet tt criteria. it actually reduces thdeficit. i said we had to make su we were starting to g a better bang for our bk so doctors, hospals, nurses, provider s all were focused owhat provides quality care and not just mo expenseef care serpower and we have all of those ga-changers inside the bill. when you look the criteria i set forth, this is a good al. now, are there provisionhere, provisions there i wld love to have ithe bill? course. but ovall, i think that ve

seen 95%f what will work r the erican people , for small businesses, and for the government budget that i w seekg from the beginning. lehrer: 95% of what you wanted? >> absolutely. >> lehrer: now, do youeel the same waybout the house version that passea few weeks--. >> you kw what, what's interesting ishe house version and e senate version are almost intical. there are some differencesn how they pay f particular provision but the same pnciple of setting up anxchange where small business and indivuals can buy npool their purchasi power toet a better deal from insurance companies. that's in bo bills. the insurance reforms are bo in the house andhe senate versions. e of the things they think i importt to remember is that ev though the exchange . -- the pooling that i'm talkg about doesn't start foseveral ars, lot of the insurance reforms start reet awa chilen, for example, won't beably to be baredrom getting alth insurance even if they have a pexisting condition as

soon as i sign thabill and we get th form in place. so there are a lot of prisiones that are both in the senate and the hse bill. i actually thi that renciling them is not going to be as difficult some people may anticipate. >> lehrer:re you going to be volved in the reconciliation >> absolutely. >> lehrer: in a hands- way? >> absoluty. >> lehre are you going to actively participate? >> we hopeo have a whole bush of folks over here in the st wing and i'll be rolling umy sleeves and spendsing some te before the full congress en gets into sessn because the amican people need it now. i mean, something that gotten lost, ji during the course of this debate --s that you because this is how shington works-- it ends up being, ell, the president ns on that one. dihe lose on that one? what is joe liebermadoing today? what is mitch mcconneldoing tomorrow?" right now, there are filys when don't havhealth insurance

and as aonsequence of somebody getting sickn their family have been bankrupt. right now, the are small businesses who have be doing the rit thing by their employees and just got aotice from their insurce companies th their premiums went up 25 p30 0%, and that business owner is having to maka decision, do i start dpping coverage for my employs, or do i have to lay ofone employee to keep coverage for evebody else? those kinds of decisionsre happing right now. i intend to rk as hard as i ha to work, especially after coming this far ov the course of the year, tmake sure we finally close the al. >> lrer: you're not going to sit down athe table with conferees, list-- spoken or unspok-- of your own killer provisions, you have to t them out thereof or aavorite provision that youant in there yo own preference? >> obviously, ve got some very smart people who are he woing day to day on the issu.

i am, though, coulting have been closely with health ce economists, foexample, to make surehat , for ample, the provisios that will chan how doctors, hospita, other provider provide care so that it'sore patient centered and it's not fused on how many tests cawe do, but rather wh's going to bruce produce the bestuality outcomes. hocoo we redugs medil errors in helps which costs y ousands of lives every year. and we know at will prevent them--imple checklists spital can do. those arthe things i have enough interest inhat i say to the confer ease you guysave to make surthat's included cause part of the deal here not just providingore coverage or more subsidy, bute keep on spending twees as mu as every other advanced coury and have

worse outcom. part of our go is to spend our money more wisely. if we don't do that, idoesn't matter howany subsidies we have in there, sooneor later we run out of ney. itobbles more and more of our federal budget and family budgets. lehrer: let's say, for instance, the blic option plan it's in the house versioand not thsenate version. at's going to be your position? >> look, i've been in vor of the publicption. ening the more choice, the me competitiowe have, the better. on the other hand, think that the exchange ielf, the system that we're setti up that forces insurance comnies to essentially bit fothree million or four million orive million ople's business, that and of itself is going to have a displining effect. would i leek one of the options to be the public optn? yes. do i think it mas sense, as me have argued, that without the public option,e dump all these other extraordinary

reforms and y to the 30 million people who don'tave coverage, you know"sorry, we dn't get exactly what we wanted?" i don't think th makes sense. >> lrer: so that's not a deal breaker r you in any way, either way? >> ihink right now, that the senate and t house bills, if you look at their overp, the % th they agree on , that bill was presentedo me, i uld sign it. >> lehrer:r. president, as you kn, this context, health car and other things too, people are suggestinghat maybe you back off too quickly on some ofhe positions, like whether it heth care reform, the public option, me of these other things. what dyou think-- how do you respd to that? >> i thinkeople who say that aren't paying atteion. as i saibefore, if you compare where we a now on health care to where i started athe

begiing of the year, or what i sa during my campaign, i'm getting 95% of what i wa. now, i might not be gettg 95% of what somether folks want. and tentimes what happens is people whore frustrated because they haven't gotn what they want suddenly s,, he's compromising i'veeen very consistent in what i think iachieve expabl very good for amican families. so ts notion that somehow the health care bill that emerging should berudgingly accepted by decrats as a hal a loafs simply incorrect. this is .9 of a loaf. and for a family out therehat reet now doe't have health insurance , it is a great deal. it is a full loaf foa lot of

famili out there who right now have nothing to fall bk on if they get io a medical emergency, and for peoplwho have health care reet w , this is a good deal weapon wre now you're getting less insurce than you thinkou're getting less secity than you think you're getting. atny point the insurance company can say you knowhat? actually, we think thadid you noinform us of that gallstone that you h removed a while ck. mae you forgot, but we coider that prekpefting condition, so we're not gog to cover-up youor the leukemia you were just diagnosed th. those are stories that happe l the time. and wh we're saying is patients he rights. people who are buyg insurance shouldet what they pay for, anthis is going to give them a level of securitthey have not seen before an frankly, we have been ghting for, for years on bipartisan

basis. many rublicans were in favor of the patients bill orights in the 9, and unfortunately, i think you've seen grter polarization-- lot of the debate this year has bn more about scoring pointshan actually getng something done. >> lehrer: how do you fe about the way th 60-vote filibuster rule has been employed ding the debate? >> i'm very frtrated. right now, that's thway things are erating, and we've had to make sure thate fight through ose issues. i think harry reid hasone a very good b grinding it out. but as somebody who serv in the senate, who lues the traditionsf the senate, who thinks that institution s been e world's greatest deliberateive fwod to see the filibuster rule, which poses a ikt-vote supermajority on legislation, tsee that invoke

on every single ece of gislation during the course th year is unheard of. mean, if you look historical back in the fests, the 60sthe 70s, the 80seven when there was sharp polical disagreements, when the democrats were in contl and rona reagan was president, you di't see even routine items subject tohe 60-vote rule. so i thi that ifhis pattern continues, y're going to see an inabili on the part of america to deal with b problems in a ry competitive world, and other countriesoing to start wrung circles around us. we're going toave to return to return to so sense that governance is moremportant than polics inside the senate. we're not there righnow. >> lehrer: is there anythingou can dos profit united states. is it a senate situation >> it's a matterf senate rules. look, the fact of e matter is,

if used udently, then i don't think it's harmful for o democracy. it's not bei using prudently right now and my hopwould be whether a senator in the majority or minority that they are startingo get a sense after lookg at this year that this can't be the way govement runs. anone of the things where i ink democrats and republican have to constaly do is try to puthemselves in the other person's shoes. if we had republican president right now and a republican-controlled sete, and democrats re doing me of thesthings, they'd be screaming bld murder. and at some poin i think the american peoplwant to see govement solve problems not just engaej in the gamesmanship that has become so customa in boston . lehrer:

copenhen-- it was a situation you d many others wanted done,nd none of it got done and yet you said that was a success. is that a loaf? >> i tnk copenhagen is tirely different from health care. i think that peoplere justified being disappointed abt the outcome in copenhagen. what i sd was essentially that rather than see a mplete collapse in copeen ha an in which nothing all got done and would have been'huge ckward step, at least we kin ofeld ground and there wasn't too much basliding from where we were. it dn't move us the way we need to. the sciee says that we've got to significany reduce emission overs the ne 40 years. there's nothing in the copenhagengreement that ensures that that ppens. what did occur was that at a

poinwhere there was about to be complete eakdown and the prime minister of india was heading to the airport, anthe chinese representatives were essentlly skipping negotiations ,is and everybody was screaming , what did happen was coolereads preveiled, and we wereably to at least age on non-lelly binding panthers for all countrs, not just the united states not just uraniu but also for chi and india which, projecting forwd are, the going to be the world's largest emiters. that w an important principle that everybody has to do something in order to soe this problem. but i make no claimsnd didn't make anylaims going in that somehow at was going to be everythi that we needed to do to solve climate change. and my main responsibilityere is to convin the american people at it is smart economics and it igoing to be

the enginef our economic grow for us to be a leader in clean energy. and if we pass a bill the senate, concile it with the use that says we are going t investn wend energy, and solar energy and we're going to behe guys producingend turbine and we are going to the folks producing solar panels o rooftops and we argoing to be the couny that is retrofitting all the hos and businesses so we are 30% more energy efficnt than we arright now, that prodes jobs which can't be exported. it ruces our dependence on foreign oil. it is good economics. it will increase o exports. oh, and by the way, it ao solves the climate proem. and that is, think, an argument that m going to be making roit not ju next year but r several years to come. >> lehre mr. president, on afghanista how much of what you said in rds and in theme in your nobel piece peace

acceptance speech isriven by the experience of e last year being president of the unid states, partularly having to ke rough decisions on afghanistan? >> there no doubt that the experience othis year , meetin with our tops, looking at intelligence, ing to dover to watch caets come ing in, had a profound impt on how i think about myesponsibilities. the general themof the nobel speech whichays that this is a dangerouworld where al evil kpefts out there, d that compelz us to casionally make very delveecisions about using force, that we shouldn't grify war but we shoulaccept there are mes where we have to defend our nation,rotect our values. that themes actually pretty consistent.

one of the interesng things people forget-- obably the first speech omine they actually got note in my politicacareer was back when i was a ate senator. and e run-up to the iraq war was occur, and i stood in th plaza, daley plaza, at an ti-wareralee. >> lehrer: this isn chicago >> in chicago. and there were allhese signs that said,war is not an opposition." and i tually started my speech saying i disagree withhose signs. sometis swar an option. world war ii had to be fout. the self war ipart of the reason why i can snd here on is podium. the estion is are we fighting the right wars in the ght ways and so in at sense, even in my opposition to iraq, for exple, evidence alws very clear about the ct that us going after osama n laden , dismantling al qda, us making sure that

people ro who are willinto leslature --laughter nntz have tbe stopped. mytion on something like rwandait makes sense for us to inrvene in genocide or humatarian efforts. those are viewes that are rm consistent. obviously, thexperience of the la . year being presidenteepens and enrich that general philosophy. buit's one that i have held for some time. >> lehrer: you brought tho into the presency. they were just hone by ts experien. >> absutely. i thk if you look at my previous speeches and itings, th're fairly consistent. it is very important for think ose of us who desperately wa peac , who e war as at some level breakdown , a

manifestion of human weakness, to undstand that sometimes it's necessary. to beay to balance two ideas the same time, that we are constantly striving for pee. we are doubling up on our plomacy. we are gng to actively engage. we are gng to try to see the world through otr people's eyes and notust our own. we will invest in things lik preventing clima change, that we're gointo invest in development ai not because it's charitybut because it's in our self-terest-- we're going to do all ose things and then there are going to be tes when there is a hitler. there are going to be ments like 9/11 where, deste our best effor stingz have still -- thengzs ve e still

emerge at are of danger not only to us but the things at we care for, that we'vgot to apply forc and that is a tough t of decisions make. that doesn negate our constant pursuit of peace, and or preferenceor nonviolence resolution of probms. >> lehrer: m president, almost a year in to your perezidenc what's your comfort comfort level in dealing with althese things we've just been talki abouand you've been dealing with this last yea >> you know, i havto tell that yo- i've spoken to some historyians, and i thinkhey will agree , that regardless of your political preferences tt we had as ch on our plate this year as any present has ever had in their first year. maybe since f.d.r. i think that

we have managed an economic crisis monumental proportions, t wars air, whole host of othechallenges very well. i am entirely dissatisfiedith wherwe are right now terms of jobs and the fact th families out there onhe eve of chstmas are still really worried about being ableo pay the bills or sentheir kids to coege or have health care for themselves. and so don't pat myself on the back at the end ofhis year, but what do have confidence in is that we've made goo decision, that we'vepplied sound judgment to me very difficult situatio. and that if we ay on a path where were in workingard , maintainina sense of possibily for the future,

we're willing noto defer tough decisions aroundealth care or energy or education so that somebody ee deals with them, that america wilbe strong again. and i thinthat i've shown this year that i can make hard decisions. even when theye not popular , and that i taka long view on these problems and i, ankly, think that's what america eds reet now. >> lehrer: mr. president, mey christmas, happy n year. thank you >> thank you, six, to you as well. thank you. >> woodruff: still to co on the "newshou tonight: the reisal killings that have shocked mexico; the olence that has derailed somalia d the investment strategies of great comper. but now, for the oth news of the day, here'hari sreenivasan in our newoom. hari. sreenivasan: president obama's plan to close thprison at guantanamo bay, ca has run to new delays. he new york times" and other reported todayhe site for terror detainees may n close until 2011, at the eliest. it could be april before congress approves money buy a

state prison in illiis. and it wl take more months to upgrade the ison. the president originallyanted guantanamo closewithin his first year in office the u.s. anti-drug effort afghanistan is failing. that verdict came toy from the state dertment's inspector general. his report said the near $2 billion program suffs from po oversight and rampant corruption among afgha official also today, there was word british ldier died tuesday in helmand province, in aoadside bombing. new violence epted in iran today. security forces confront supporte of the late grand ayatollah hossein almontazeri, the country's most senr dissident cler. we havmore from jonathan rugman of "independent levision news." >> reporter:hese photographs of iranian riopolice in isfahan peared on the facebook web site tay. as oppositiogroups claimed many protestors we injured and arrested during ashes involving tons and teargas,

while iran's pice chief warned of "fier confrontation" unless the protests stop. in isfah, one protestor dared toilm this rally using a mobile phone. "death to ruia!," the crowd shouted. a rerse of the usual "death to amera" and a round about way of shouting down t iranian regime itself. in the capal tehran, though students were far more bnt. "death to the dictat!"-- their rallying cryn pictures posted on youtube today. but as iran's president confronts e biggest domestic >> sreenivasaniran's state news agency denied t reports of clashes. instead, it accud the foreign news mediaf "staging a psychologicawar." a major storm moved er the middlef the country today, promising heavy holidasnow. a footr two was possible in kansas, coloradond elsewhere by christmasay. flig delays were already fouling avel plans, with more ncellations expected torrow.

sleet d freezing rain began icing roways. the tional weather service warned conditions could life threatening. u.s. safety inveigators headed to jamaica today aer an american alines plane overshot a runway, whiltrying to land. the jetlin skidded across the rain-soaked rmac into the grass lastight. it spped less than 15 feet from thearibbean sea and the selage cracked apart. more than 40eople were hurt. the colorado parents in th "balloon boy" hoax are goi to jail. thfather, richard heene, was sentenced today to 9days, partlyn work release. the mothermayumi, will serve 20 days,nce her husband's sentence is finished. last october, ey claimed their six-year-oldon had been carrieaway on a weather balloon. he was eventuallfound, back at the family home. prosecuts said the heenes had wanted a reality t.vshow. wall street had an up d down day. the dow jones industri average ended by gaining oneoint to close at 10,466. the nasdaq rose arly 17 points

to finish at 2,269. ose are some of the day's ma stories. i'll be back at the end the program with a preew of what you'll find toght on the "newshour's" web site. t for now, back to gwen. >> ifill: annow, violence in two nations, one far away,he other right next door. we start in mexico wre an ongoing dr war took a gruesome turn this week. ray suarez begins our covege. >> reporter: the wave drug killings spreading acrosmexico in rent years, invaded paradise monday night. thfamily of a navy commando was rdered in the gulf coast town of parais- spanish for "paradise"-- ian act of reprisal. gunmen broke into the me of ensign melisedet angulo córdova d gunned down his mother, brother, sisr and an aunt. just hours earlier, they had stood vigil as aulo was buried. he died duri the operation last week that killed arro beltran leyva, head ofne of mexico's large drug cartels.

xican president felipe lderon condemned the murders yesterday. >> ( translated ): it also my duty tod to express my most sincere condolces to the family of melquisedet anguloto the navy of mexico, foa horrible attack perprated in the night. >>eporter: the attorney general of the southn mexican statof tabasco said today a group allied to the ltran- leyva cartel carried o the monday murrs. said it was warning to the military: your famies are now targets. his death, beltran leyva wa among the most powerful mexico's drug lord- the self- proclaimed "boss of sses". he had conlidated his position through utal warfare with other drug runners, and withhe mexican governnt. mexico's attornegeneral said beltran-leyva's ath might now ad to a powestruggle. >> ( translat ): and this will for sure force them to restructe.

it's not unlikely th there will be violence witn the cartel until t new head is defined. >> reporte which can only mean moreisery for a country where drug-related violence s killed 15,000 people over theast three years. it was once rgely confined to e region near the u.s. borde -tijna, juarez, nuevo laredo-- but hanow spread nationwide. as the killingscalates, president calder has sent 45,000 troops intoeveral mexican states to reste order. and s. officials are working concert with mexican authories to runown the traffickers th south and north of the border. attorney general ec holder spoke in octob after raids in thu.s. netted 300 suspects. >> i think we have to ke hittinthem. the extent that they do gro back, i think we he to work withur mexican counterparts to cut off the ads of these akes, and get at the heads o the cartels. >> reporter: still, e cartels have billions of dolla at their disposal. they stepped io a void after the p colombian drug runners were taken down. ey now dominate the

distbution of marijuana, cocaine,eroin and methamphetamines in thunited states. turn, theexican groups bring back large cacheof weaps bought illegally in the u.s. alonghat's been dubbed "the iron river". ose weapons have so far allowed the carts to outgun the mexican forces st to stop them. >> wdruff: and for more on the mexi drug war, i'm joined by vid luhnow, "the wall street journal' latin america bureau chiein mexico city. david, first of all, what mo can you tell bus the gning down of this navcommando's family >> well, the operation emed to be well designed. just hours after theommando s buried with full military honors, a group nefit a desen hit men stormed the hous they broke open the or. they were armed with a47s, and assat rifles and shot up the entire family.

they left as quickly as th arved, and prosecutors, mexican prosecuts are now saying that they may havhad help from local police in find -- planning their getaway. it looks like a pret eier efficient operation, which shows is cartel run by arturoeltran leyva, is alive and kicking >>ow well publicized was the name of this navy coando? >> well, tt's a very good question. e name was publicized, and that's unusu in mexico. beuse normally, the military ldiers, both navy and army that take pa ofn these operations, their entities are ke secret. most wear ack masks to hide their identities. en they were killed, the government has up unl now released their nes and honored thems fallen heroes. the problem this tps revenge was taken. what it would suggest is t

drug cartel has formants within the mexican navy at gave them thinformation as to in man's family's whereautss and that's pretty worrome. >> woodruff: how usual is it for thcartel to go after family members like this? >> it's very unusual. it sort ofreaks one of the unwritterules of the war on drug down here in meco. the drug ctels have been getting increasingly viole. th've been resorting to ctics, very similar to the islamic terrorists in termof beading and videoted torture and taics of that nature to terrorize eir rivals and ordinary mexican citizens an the vernment. in this case going after t fami members of a soldier or policeman is an unprecedend step and a worrime one which may suggest theyay not stop at the actual peoplfighting them but they may go after their

family as well. >> woouff: how are people responded to this? >>nfortunately, many are becong inured to the violence. mex kranz really becomg sort of austomed to the bldshed. in the last year ane, there have been 7,00to 8,000 people lled in drug-related violenc and thcity right across the border from el paso, tas, has the world's hight murder rate right now bthr times more violenthan baghdad, iraq. sohere's a daily toll with th kind of violence, but at the me time, other mexicans are really shoed by this. mexican thers, in particular, hold an alted place in mexico. mother's day dowhere is taken very seriously, anthe the fact that these gs went after this many's mother is really se beyond the pal woodruff: in the broader sense how supportive haseen the public been of therug crackdown

that ical initiate >> unfortunaly, many mexicans don't trustheir government. this is a untry where the governnt was there to protect itself and its allies and to enrich itself. many view what t government does, even if rrect, with a healthy dose of skepticismnd cynicism. polls show the majority people sort of supporthe drug wars. they knothe gainings are etty bad and they are not fully hind the u.s. government sglid filly, what difference do you tnk this killing upon this navy commando's fily could have on the drug w itself? or do you expect it to he an effect? >> well, think i think it's one of thesescalationes that 're seeing. every nth it seems there's a new levethat the drug gang

reach. and, uortunately, if this keeps going in this direion, we could see morand more civilians being taeted. we could see potential some assassinations of mexica officials. this couldecome much like what happened in coloia in the 80s when the war onrug cartels thercaused a lot of civilian casualties. >> woodruff: david luhk of the "wall street journal" joining us from mexico citythank you. >> ifill: next, vience in another pa of the world in t africanation of somalia. and to jeffrey brown. >> reporter: this was the sce la week when a suicide bomber blew himself up at a mical scol graduation in mogadishu, the somali capital. 22 people were kled, including three government ministe. solia has been plagued by civiwar, piracy off its shoresand massive violence for several decades. just in e last three years, ,000 civilians have been

killednd a milli and half displaced. the groubelieved to be behind the most recent atta, "al shabab", meaningyouth' in arabic controlthe southern part of the country and st of the capital. it also has tieso al qaeda. and that has raised w alarms. >> where al qaeda and s allies attempt to estlish a foothold -- whether in somalia or yen or elsewhere-- they st be confronted by gring pressure and strong ptnerships. reporter: amid the lawlessness and threatf dnapping, few foreigners travel to solia. one who has ison lee anderson, who wre about his experience in the "neyorker" magazine. >> you described somal as the wod's ultimate failed state. now ll in that picture, what does that mean? >> ts is a country that has been ignored, neected by the tside world for the past 20 year nearly 20 years. in that time, the state ch as it existed, it had already umbled and devolved into feuding militi, clan-based

militias. in essence, that'sarried on in e same fashion. >> rorter: so what do you see when you go to a failed ste? >> let's put ithis way, i flew in with e president of somalia. we landed on an rstrip where there was a crashed jet, and justcrub, you could see the ocean nearby, the indian oan. very, very low buildings all sun-bleached andovered with st. there were armored personn carriers and troops awaing us on the airstrip. they belongeto the african union. they were ugandans. i was immediately hustleinto e of those a.p.c.s that had two chine gunners on turrets on top. and , within a few minutes, had assembled a long convoy th armored cars. >> reporter: and thiis the present. >>his is his arrival home. the was not a street left unguded. we thewent through a series of an-suicide bomber barriers, past me sentries, and into the gates of the villa somia, which is theresidential

palace. that is the ly turf he controls. >> reporter: t president anderson accompaed is sheikh sharif ahmed-- w was himself once allied wi the "shabab". sinchis split with the group, the u.s. has lt financial and miliry support to hi government. this summer in kya, secretary of state clinton bece the most senior.s. official to meet the somalieader. not at long ago was considered a bad guy, rig? annow a lot seems to have been invested in the possibilitof what he couldo for somalia. "theood islamist" >> the good ismist. he's a man who h shown a certain amount of pragmati. the idea ithis: there are some uncomfortablmoments in the past. there were pitions he took. there were frids he had that nobodyeally wanted to go back there and talk about amore. i discusd this at length with him and with the americansnd

it makesor an interesting story. he's something new in perhap the muslim world, emergings a man who comes from a posion of military islam a has not rescinded his tiesith those who lookpon al qaeda with kind eyes. thunited states is now sending arms to sheikh sharif anthey are providing a ki of aerial securi, if you will, for his regime. and itooks like the partnership is here to sta assung he can survive in office. he now says... he ver says he was in favor of qaeda. but he now can see that me of his former allies were extremis and he could do nothing about it >> reporr: and how strong are those former allie what a their ties to al qaeda or their potenti ties to al qaeda? >> osama bin laden h appeared in a video laudi them and urgi fellow muslims to support th. to that extent they ve

received the kind eyof osama bin laden. structal links are more difficult to know abt. there are certainlsome foreign terrorists who have take sanctuary there. they are now doing jihadi vios like much as we've sn in pakistan and afghastsan and did at one point in aq, where theyere, where people were being headed. ere are now jihadi suicide bombers. this was unknown befor2007. they are now adoptg the tactics that wve seen with the most virulenform of extreme islam elsewhere, aqaeda. if they're not aqaeda they certainly want to be what you have is a socty where you have two generatns of youth who are ueployed, largely untaught imany cases and who, in thcollapse of the traditiol structure of the somalitate now seem to be dangerously susceptible tohe kind of siren call othe idea

of a global jihad. >> reporter: so somaa as a somalia as a potentialaven for al qaeda. >> somalia is very much potential haven. tohat degree it is at the moment istill an open question. what certainlys there is an insurgent force whicis, which has both in rhetic and action called up al qaedas a mentor force, as the standa it would follow and it's goa lot of people worried >> reporr: when i asked anderson wheer he returned from somalia wh hope or fear. he cited last week's scide bombing as wl as his own experience in mogashu. the setting was a prate university, estaished only recently to train ctors amid the chaos. and the the government ministers killed, he sd, were iaspora" somalis-- who'd fle thviolence, but later returned to hp their country.

so i came away with a stron feeling of hope on thene hand becae i saw diaspora somalis, somalithat had lived out comfortae lives in the west, but had rerned because they're patrtic, because they want to do something with theilives other than make money someere. d yet, you know, worried and anxis because of the ability the shabab to destroy so cle to the very heart of this very fragile state. so, ve mixed feelings. >> reporter:on lee anderson, thanks for talking with us >> tnk you. >> ifill: ited nations serity council today took stepto curb the arms shipments to theslamist insurgents in somalia, voting to impose sanctions oneighboring erita. the relution demanded eritrea stop "arming, traini and eqpping" al shabaab and other grou, a charge eritrea denies. >> woodruf finally tonight, one of the greatomposers and his nning investment stragies.

our ecomics correspondent paul soln has spent much of this year tryi to make sense of the current finanal news of our da but tonit he has a holiday story connected th the economiconditions of another era. 1, 2, 3. ♪ >> reporter: the handel an haydn society rehearsi the messiah at boston mphony hall. >> it's come the holiday piece hasn'tt? every major city, inact village, small towin the states all dmessiah just as the same in england. everybody does it. >> reporter: erybody does it, because everybody el buys tickets. the messiah is aort of savior of cash-strapped classal music. >> ♪ rejoice! rejoice!

♪ rejoice greatly! >> reporter: in fact, the li between the messiah anmoney goes bk a long ways. it turns out composer geor fridrick handel, which means "market in gman, was not only a musical iz, but an entrepreurial one. >> the domant pattern in the 17th century ahandel got started was you ther worked r the church or you worked for the nobility. >> rorter: harvard's mike herer has written a classic classical music and onomics: "quarternotes and banknos." "opera w the road to independence frothe patronage of court and clerg" he says. >> and the composers competed as freelances to ve their compositions choseto be operas. >> reporter: handel,n royal retainer in ndon, jumped into the game, according m.i.t. musicologist ellen hars. >> his first opera is "rindo," 1711, and itas a huge hit.

he probably woulhave gotten a flat fee forriting the opera and that probablwas about £200 and he wld have had a benefit night, so heould take the box office from thatne night. could haverought in £500-600. >> reporte the currency conversion web site, msuring worth, calculas that would be something like 800,000 pnds today, wl over a million dollars, out of whh, however, handel had to pay mo of the expenses of production. paying for the orchestral musicians, paying fosets, paying for ctumes. opera has ver been a really good money maker, we kw this today. >> repter: furthermore, in england back then, it s an art form impord from abroad. >> and with e importation of opera came themportation of these stendous sinrs both the women singers and e castrati who had these extraordinily high voices.

( singg ) >> reporter: danietaylor is neither a castrato n a woman of course, but a count-tenor. >> their breath control was enormous and they had larg ranges and they had enmous flexibility, so they coulding these long, ng runs. ( singing ) d they were really the superstarsf the day. reporter: expensive. and, to the enish, somewhat ofputting. >> the british pubc didn't ke these people who were strutting along and beg pains in the necand everything. so handel, always the businessman, aays the opportunt, thought, "right, i'm going to solve thione. i'm gog to write, i'm going to change toratorio." >> reporter: oratorios likthe messiarequired no sets; no costumes; cheaper singers. >> he began ing exclusively english singers so he haa very different cost ratio to hi

performancesand its only with the oratorios thate began making really big moy. reporter: and it's the ssiah that marks the turning point. >> it's with messiahthat he goes exclusivelyo oratorio performae. and he never does another era after messiah. reporter: but it wasn't jus handel ching in that caught our attentio it was the success of hand, the investor, in t hot-money security of s day-- the south sea company, formed to hel financthe nearly broke english crown. the plan was they would be laely responsible for transporting african slas from the afcan coast, to the west ines or to the colonies. but that certainly was not haening in the 1710s and '20s and ey basically had no capital. what they did have was aromise of future turns-- somewhere, somehow. so shares inhe south sea company were in a nse the

mortgage-backed securities o georgian england and people mobbed to y them in london's exchange alley >>t's not so different from the kind of dodgy de that people were investing here in the past five and 10 yea, when there wano there there. and is idea that this was the route to becoming rich quily, and hand was young, he was an eagebeaver. he saw all t upper cla doing it >> reporter: isa newton did . >> eveone did it. >> reporter: becausehe serities kept rising in value. like this lord, sharinhis winningsith his servants, handel, o left london on business, cashed out soon aft, south sea bubble burst. panic reigned. investors were dpping like stones; they were underwater and handel was not involved in that because heot his money out. >> reporter: in the nextew years, the south sea company cked by the equivalent of ou

fed, reorganized itself-- jailing the directors, and eating a new bond issue, payi a secure, government- backed 3-5% for now safety conscious investors like geoe frideric handel. does that suggest that he sobered up after the bube burst and that why he changed his investment strategy? >> yes, he was willi and eager to take a risknd won early on and then when erything fell apart and the rebuding process begins, he does not hesita a minuteo reinvest in the market, but he uses a re conservative strategy by gng for bonds, rather th for stock. and he does that for theest of his life. >>eporter: but for all her love of handel and his investnt history, ellen harris thinks our use of the ssiah to tell y about it might be something of a setch. >> it's like sayinhe lost his

popular se of support so... ♪ he wadespised, despised and reject. ♪ but then, he died rich man - ♪ hallelujah! it's not what the messiais about. >> ♪ hallelujah! >> reporter: to , however, george fridrick handel's a and business success is a causfor celebration. >> handel waunusually successful and endedp leaving fortune, on the order £20,0 pounds sterling which, in those days, w a lot of money. >> reporter: many millio, in fact, suorting charities to this very day and setting example for composers for er afte ♪

>> ifill: again, the mor developments othe day: present obama said he's getting % of what he wanted on health care. he spoke with the ewshour's" jim lehrer, as t senate eared the way for a final vote tomorrow. th"newshour" is alwaysnline. hari sreenivasan, our newsroom, previe what you'll nd there. hari. >>reenivasan: on our web site tonight, you c compare how people who le in different types of economies a faring this holidayeason. our "patchwork nion" hardship dex measures gas prices, foclosures and unemployment. on our "worlview" page, we've asked the heads of threelobal aid organizationto describe the worst and leascovered humanitarian crises of009. and someood news from elkhart, all at and more is on our web si, newshour.pbs.org. >> ifill: and th's the "newshour" for tonight. i'm gwen ifill >> woouff: and i'm judy woodruff. we'll see you -line. and again re tomorrow evening. thank you and od night. major funding r the pbs

newshour is ovided by: >> what thworld needs now is energy. the energy to t the economy humming again. the ergy to tackle challenges like climate cnge. wh is that energy came from an engy company? everyd, chevron invests $62 million in people, in ideas-- seeking, teaching, buildg. fueling owth around the world to move usll ahead. th is the power of human energy. chron.

and e william and flora hewlett foundation, working solve soci and environmental problems at home and arounthe world. and with the ongoing suppo of these institions and fountions. and... this program was made possib by the cporation for public brocasting. and by contributio to your pbs statiofrom viewers like you. thank you. captioning sponsored by macneil/lehrerroductions captio media access group at wg access.wgbh.org