Associated Press Worldstream
April 14, 2005 Thursday 8:36 PM Eastern Time

Turkish taboos falling as Turkey grapples with the World War I
massacre of Armenians

by LOUIS MEIXLER; Associated Press Writer

ANKARA, Turkey

When one of Turkey’s most respected authors shattered a deep taboo by
saying earlier this year that 1 million Armenians were murdered in
Turkey during World War I, the reaction was overwhelming.

Three lawsuits were filed against Orhan Pamuk, accusing him of acting
against the state. “He shouldn’t be allowed to breathe,” said one
nationalist group. In Istanbul, a school began collecting Pamuk’s
books from students to return to him. The vote was 4-1 on a news Web
site that Pamuk’s statement was “treacherous” rather than “freedom of
expression.”

Turkey’s mass expulsion of Armenians during World War I – which
Armenians say was part of a genocide that claimed 1.5 million lives –
is one of the most sensitive subjects in Turkey, a dark chapter of
history barely taught in school and rarely discussed.

But slowly the veil of silence is being lifted, in part because of
European Union pressure on Turkey to come to grips with its past.
Turkey, which vehemently denies the killings were genocide, is also
eager to counter Armenian diaspora groups that are pushing European
governments and the United States to declare the killings genocide.

Increasing democratization in Turkey is also encouraging more people
to both speak out and listen.

“We are mutually deaf to each other,” said Yasar Yakis, head of
parliament’s European Union Affairs Committee who has invited two
ethnic Armenians in Istanbul to address his committee.

“Perhaps if we can create a climate in which we listen to what the
other side has to say, we might meet in the middle,” Yakis said.

Intellectuals like Pamuk have played a key role in raising the issue,
and Turkish and Armenian groups have held meetings in recent years
aimed at breaking the ice between the two sides.

“The subject is more and more no longer a taboo in this country,”
said Hrant Dink, editor in chief of Agos, a weekly Armenian newspaper
in Istanbul. “The box has been opened. It cannot be closed anymore.”

Recently, both Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan and Foreign
Minister Abdulla Gul have addressed the issue, apparently in hopes of
heading off the Armenian push for international recognition. Erdogan
said that all countries should open their archives to scholars to
examine whether the event was genocide, and Gul called the claim of
genocide “pure slander.”

Over the years, Turkey has repeatedly denied the genocide claim,
saying that the Armenian death toll of 1.5 million is wildly inflated
and that both Armenians and Turks were killed in fighting during the
collapse of the Ottoman Empire.

But mostly there has been silence on the Turkish side.

“I grew up knowing nothing, absolutely nothing about the Armenians’
situation,” said Vamik Volkan, a member of the Turkish-Armenian
Reconciliation Committee. “It was not in the history books.”

The reconciliation committee, partly funded by the United States,
brought together leading Turks and Armenians starting in 2001 and has
fostered wider cultural exchanges.

Volkan, who was raised in the Turkish part of Cyprus, said he first
learned of the massacres in the 1950s after moving to the United
States and meeting an Armenian-American at a dinner. “He turned red
and had a seizure when I told him I was a Turk,” Volkan recalls.

He said the subject needs to be dealt with gently because “the
stubbornness on both sides is so great.”

For Turkey, the issue is not only confronting the killings of
Armenians, but looking back at the loss of the Muslim Ottoman empire.

As the empire faltered, minority Armenian Christians began asserting
their identity. During World War I, amid fears of Armenian
cooperation with the enemy army of Christian Czarist Russia,
Armenians were forced out of towns and villages throughout eastern
Anatolia, historians say. Many were killed, others died of disease
and starvation.

“The Armenians were relocated because they cooperated with the enemy,
the Russians, and they … killed Ottoman soldiers from behind the
lines,” Yakis said.

Volkan, a professor emeritus of psychiatry at the University of
Virginia, said that after the brutal war the new Turkish republic
“wanted to look forward and not backward.”

“This silence is not in relation to Armenians alone,” Volkan added.
“Turkish silence was that we lost an empire. Turks never mourned over
losing prestige and empire because the Turkish loss was incredible.
Millions died.”

Turkey also fears Armenians will use the genocide claim to press for
compensation – either money or lost land.

Still, editor Dink sees Turks moving toward confronting their past
“at a very slow pace and with great difficulty.”

“A real democracy does not have the luxury of hiding taboos under the
carpet,” he said, “and in this process of speaking a solution will be
found.”

Associated Press Worldstream
April 14, 2005 Thursday 8:35 PM Eastern Time

90 years after start of ‘Great Slaughter,’ Armenians still seek
recognition of genocide

MIKE ECKEL; Associated Press Writer

YEREVAN, Armenia

At 102, Gulinia Musoyan is still horrified when she thinks of what
happened to her as a child in Ottoman Turkey – rousted from her home
in the middle of the night, forced to trudge shoeless for days
through the desert alongside thousands of others, with the weak
killed or left to die in the blazing, rocky wastelands.

Ninety years later, the suffering endured by Musoyan and hundreds of
thousands of other Armenians is gaining sympathy worldwide, but not
the judgment sought by the victims and their descendants: that the
mass slayings of up to 1.5 million Armenians be declared a genocide
carried out by Turkey, which the Turks vehemently deny.

For Armenia and its diaspora, there is only one way to describe what
happened – “Mets Eghern,” the Great Slaughter.

Armenians demand that Turkey take responsibility for a
state-sponsored, premeditated attempt to liquidate this minority
people in the Ottoman Empire over four years starting in 1915.
Despite the passing of decades, Armenians say the issue must be
resolved, and they’re pressing the European Union to make Turkey’s
acknowledgment of genocide a condition for EU membership.

“The first tragedy is when you cause this atrocity. Second is when,
after 90 years, you don’t accept this tragedy,” said Nikolai
Hovhanisian, a scholar at the Armenian Academy of Sciences. “The
Armenians want their own Nuremberg.”

While some Turks have wavered in their views, officialdom has not.
Foreign Minister Abdullah Gul has called the genocide charge
slanderous. And Deniz Baykal, a leading opposition politician, said:
“We cannot accept these allegations Turkey won’t be held responsible
for something we never did.”

—

Armenia once was a vast kingdom, extending from the Black Sea to the
Caspian, but by 1915 it had been subjugated and divided – parts of it
absorbed into Russia and others into Ottoman Turkey. As the Ottoman
Empire disintegrated among the blood and smoke of World War I,
Turkish nationalism soared and Armenians were regarded as potential
subversives. The Muslim Ottoman rulers feared the Christian Armenians
were siding with the Christian Russia of Czar Nicholas II, the enemy
of German-allied Turkey in the war.

On April 24, 1915, the Young Turks regime that was in power in
Ottoman Turkey ordered hundreds of Armenian intellectuals and
cultural leaders arrested in Constantinople, now Istanbul. Many
eventually were killed, and Armenians mark the date as Genocide
Remembrance Day.

Violence spread through Armenian regions in eastern and southern
Turkey.

Musoyan, 12 at the time, recalled that fearful rumors of attack –
“Those who will cut you will come” – circulated for months in her
village of Kessab along the Mediterranean coast north of Latakia in
present-day Syria.

Finally, soldiers came in the middle of the night, Musoyan said. By
daybreak, they had gathered some 6,000 Armenian women, children and
weak or older men and started driving them out of town, “like
beasts.”

“It was hot, the sun beat down on us, we were thirsty and they gave
us nothing to drink, we had only the bread we took from home,” she
said.

“The Turkish soldiers used whips and sabers to beat us. Those who
were too weak to keep up were killed or left for the dead,” she said.

Musoyan said it took days – maybe a week – for her, her older sister,
her younger brother and her mother to arrive at the town of Hamah,
Syria, some 160 kilometers (100 miles) southeast of Kessab.

Hundreds of thousands of Armenians were driven across the Syrian
desert to Deir ez-Zor, near the present-day border with Iraq, where
Armenian activists say many were slain or died of hunger and disease
in concentration camps.

Others managed to flee eastward, across the Araxas River into
Russian-held Armenia.

Varazdat Harutyunian, 95, says he and his family fled to Echmiadzin,
the town that is the seat of the Armenian Apostolic Church. He
remembers an endless procession of burials as thousands of people
died of cholera and hunger; in a cool basement near the cathedral
“bodies were stacked like firewood,” he said.

Turkey acknowledges many Armenians were killed, but says the numbers
are exaggerated and the victims died in civil unrest, not as a result
of genocide.

—

Huge numbers of Armenians fled to other countries, notably the United
States, France and Lebanon. But the tragedy of 1915-19 links the
far-flung diaspora communities and the Armenians still in their
historic homeland; it is a grim counterpart to the bright pride that
Armenians take in their unique alphabet, love of literature and
traditions of hospitality.

“The memory sits in every Armenian’s subconscious,” said Sonia
Mirzonian, vice director of the Armenian National Archives. “If
you’re Armenian, you can immediately see the fear and understanding
in any other (Armenian) you meet.”

Historian Ashot Melkonian, with the Armenian Academy of Sciences,
said the genocide is a prism through which the Armenians perceive
many events. For instance, the devastating 1988 earthquake that
killed 25,000 Armenians is often described as a genocidal cataclysm,
he said.

Armenians largely see the six-year war over the Armenian enclave of
Nagorno-Karbakh in Azerbaijan as a conceptual extension of Turkish
genocide, and broadly refer to the Muslim Azeris as “Turks.”

But although the deaths loom large for Armenians, they’ve received
comparatively little attention elsewhere. Historical evidence was
scattered and political considerations may have dampened
investigative energy.

The Armenians’ tragedy garnered wide attention in Europe and the
United States in the early 1920s. But it fell from notice as the
Great Powers redrew the postwar borders of the collapsed Ottoman
Empire and Russia convulsed in revolution and civil war.

Following World War II, as Turkey allied itself with the West against
the Soviet Union, Ankara was able to keep the issue dormant.
Armenians under Soviet rule could not openly discuss the events until
1965 when Moscow allowed the construction of a massive granite
memorial in Yerevan.

Richard Hovannisian, an Armenian historian at the University of
California, Los Angeles, called the lack of full understanding of the
Armenians’ plight “amnesia” or the “subversion of memory” – owing to
the complex politics following World War I and Turkey’s keystone
position in Cold War politics.

Armenia gained independence in 1991 with the collapse of the Soviet
Union, but the country has long languished due to the loss of
subsidies from Moscow, the war over Nagorno-Karbakh and the border
blockade by Turkey – Azerbaijan’s ally. Much of Armenia’s wealth now
comes from the support of the diaspora.

Now, Genocide Remembrance Day is observed annually on April 24 with
processions and speeches in Armenia and diaspora communities. A
growing number of countries – including France, Russia and Greece –
have officially acknowledged the killings as genocide. The United
States, which has one of the largest populations of expatriate
Armenians, has not – in large part, Armenians say, because Turkey is
a vital NATO ally it cannot afford to offend.

However, some scholars in Turkey and elsewhere say evidence is
accumulating that supports Armenians’ contentions.

Roger Smith, a genocide scholar and professor emeritus at the College
of William and Mary in Virginia, said a “convergence of evidence” now
supports a planned genocide.

“There is ample documentation of the genocidal intent of the Ottoman
authorities,” agreed Taner Akcam, a Turkish-born history scholar who
teaches at the University of Minnesota.

Akcam also said more Turks are coming to re-examine the events 90
years ago because they’ve become more interested in their own history
as a result of growing democratization and freedom of speech.

“Every day more intellectuals … publicly deplore the mass killing
of the Armenians,” Akcam said. “People want to know what really
happened. You cannot suppress this in a continuous way. The Turkish
people want to know.”

Agence France Presse — Spanish
April 13, 2005 Wednesday 9:48 PM GMT

Armenia está lista para perdonar, pero no para olvidar genocidio
(embajador)

BUENOS AIRES

Armenia “está lista para perdonar, pero no para olvidar” la masacre
perpetrada por turcos en 1915, afirmó este miércoles a la AFP el
embajador armenio en Argentina, Ara Aivazian.

“Para perdonar, el culpable debe pedir perdón”, dijo el diplomático,
consultado sobre la propuesta del primer ministro turco Recep Tayyip
Erdogan de crear con Armenia una comisión conjunta para estudiar la
masacre.

Aivazian dijo que “no es casual que en el umbral del 90 aniversario
del genocidio armenio, Turquía haga este anuncio”.

“En mi opinión –subrayó–, se persigue el objetivo de crear una
imagen ante la comunidad internacional de supuesto diálogo
reconciliatorio entre Armenia y Turquía para evitar el inminente
reconocimiento del genocidio armenio por parte de varios países, como
ya vienen haciendo otros Estados en el transcurso de los últimos
años”.

Turquía se niega a calificar de “genocidio” el exterminio de
armenios.

“Si Turquía quiere mostrar una flexibilización de su posición
tradicional –dijo el embajador–, debería manifestarlo con hechos
concretos como es la apertura de la frontera entre Turquía y Armenia
que está cerrada desde 1993”.

Dijo que “es la única frontera interestatal en Europa que está
cerrada por la presión de Turquía para que Armenia deje de perseguir
el reconocimiento internacional del genocidio”.

La comunidad armenia en Argentina, de unos 100.000 miembros, difundió
el miércoles un comunicado en el que señala que el Consejo Mundial de
Iglesias (CMI) dispuso que todas sus organizaciones del mundo
“recuerden en sus plegarias y oraciones del 24 de abril a las
víctimas del genocidio armenio”.

El CMI es una comunidad de 347 iglesias de más de 120 países y entre
sus miembros están casi todas las ramas del cristianismo, entre las
que se encuentran la Iglesia Apostólica Romana, la Iglesia Ortodoxa
Rusa y la Iglesia Apostólica Armenia.

La comunidad armenia dijo que “a 90 años del inicio del exterminio de
un millón y medio de armenios y la deportación de más de un millón de
habitantes, se seguirá recordando un delito de lesa humanidad impune
e imprescriptible”.

Agence France Presse — Spanish
April 13, 2005 Wednesday 1:19 PM GMT

Turquía propone crear una comisión conjunta sobre el genocidio armenio

ANKARA

El primer ministro turco Recep Tayyip Erdogan envió una carta al
presidente armenio Robert Kotcharian proponiendo la creación de una
comisión conjunta para estudiar la masacre de armenios en 1915,
declaró este miércoles el canciller turco, Abdullah Gul.

La creación de esta comisión sería un primer paso hacia la
normalización de las relaciones con Armenia, dijo el ministro de
Relaciones Exteriores.

Abdullah Gul hizo estas declaraciones durante un primer debate en el
Parlamento sobre los acontecimientos producidos entre 1915 y 1917,
durante los últimos años del imperio otomano, y que Turquía se niega
a calificar de “genocidio”.

“Les informamos que si nuestra propuesta era aceptada, estaríamos
dispuestos a negociar con Armenia la forma en que esta comisión será
instalada y cómo funcionará. Este tipo de iniciativa contribuirá a la
normalización de los lazos entre ambos países”, precisó el ministro.

Turquía reconoció la independencia de Armenia en 1991, pero sin
establecer relaciones diplomáticas debido al profundo diferendo sobre
el genocidio.

Athens News Agency, Greece
April 13, 2005

OPEN DISCUSSION ON DISPUTED 1915 SLAUGHTER OF ARMENIANS HELD ON
SIDELINES OF EUROPEAN PARLIAMENT

STRASBOURG (ANA – O. Tsipira) An open discussion on the large-scale
killings of Armenians in Turkey in 1915, which are disputed by
Turkey, was held on the sidelines of the European Parliament assembly
for the first time on Wednesday

Entitled “The Future of the Past: Armenians in Turkey”, the
discussion did not make any direct reference to an Armenian genocide
as such, but the entire discussion revolved around this issue

The discussion was an initiative of the Green group and was led by
the German Green party MEP Cem Ozdemir, who is of Turkish descent

Guest speakers included Turkish intellectuals of Armenian descent,
such as Dr

Taner Akcam from Minnesota University, who presented evidence from
the study of Ottoman records that he claimed supported the view of
genocide

Other speakers were journalist Etyen Mahcupyan, a columnist for the
Istanbul daily ‘Zaman’, and Hrant Dink, chief editor of the
bi-lingual Turkish-Armenian Istanbul weekly ‘Agos’

Armenian expatriates throughout the world are campaigning to make it
a condition of Turkey’s accession to the European Union that it first
recognise the Armenian genocide of 1915

Organisers were criticised, particularly by Turkish journalists that
attended the discussion, for failing to present the counter-arguments
to the Armenian side and promised to arrange a new discussion that
would present the views of both sides.

Associated Press Worldstream
April 14, 2005 Thursday 8:37 PM Eastern Time

Diaspora Armenians flourish as they remember events of 1915 With
Helping Hand

by JOSEPH PANOSSIAN; Associated Press Writer

ANJAR, Lebanon

As the Ottoman Turkish army was driving Armenians from their homes
during World War I, people from six villages along the Mediterranean
coast fled to the Musa Dagh peak and – with a few hundred rifles and
provisions they dragged up the mountain – held off attacks by the
Turks for more than 40 days.

Finally, surrounded by thousands of troops, the Armenians managed to
flee in September 1915 by getting word to a French warship below.
Their story, recounted in the popular novel “The Forty Days of Musa
Dagh” by Austrian writer Franz Werfel, became a symbol of resistance
by the Ottoman Empire’s Christian Armenian minority.

Ninety years later, many of the descendants of that epic defense live
in the village of Anjar in Lebanon’s Bekaa Valley near the Syrian
border. They are among an estimated 5 million to 6 million in a
worldwide Armenian diaspora that resulted largely from the expulsions
and massacres by Turks during World War I.

In Anjar, Vartouhi Sannakian, who was 7 when she fled Musa Dagh,
remembers trekking down the steep slopes of the 1,335-meter (nearly
5,000-foot) mountain to a rocky bay, joining thousands of other
villagers sailing into the Armenian diaspora.

Now bedridden, she speaks in short spurts of her escape from the
mountain in southern Turkey called Musa Ler, or the Mount of Moses,
in Armenian.

“We were hungry … we were thirsty. French soldiers came and carried
us and said, ‘Don’t be afraid, don’t be afraid,”‘ she said. French
warships took the fleeing Armenians to Egypt to wait out the war, and
later the French returned them home. But when a 1939 partition put
Musa Dagh in Turkish territory, France again stepped in, taking the
villagers to Lebanon.

Around the world, diaspora Armenians have flourished in business,
politics and the arts. Luminaries include former California Gov.
George Deukmejian, American author William Saroyan, painter Arshile
Gorky, Argentinian financier Eduardo Eurnekian, French singer Charles
Aznavour, former French Prime Minister Edouard Balladur, and
singer-actress Cherylyn Sarkissian, known to the world as Cher.

Though many have melted into their adopted lands, diaspora Armenians
say they still want modern Turkey to recognize atrocities committed
by its Ottoman predecessors. Armenians estimate 1.5 million people
died in massacres or forced marches.

“Acknowledgment of truth in totality is the first concrete step
toward a new beginning (with Turkey). Healing is generated primarily
through truth-telling,” Catholicos Aram I of the House Of Cilicia,
the spiritual head of about 2 million Armenian Orthodox in the
diaspora, said from his seat at Antelias just north of Beirut.

Anjar in the early 1900s was a stretch of arid land surrounding
Roman, Byzantine and Omayyad Muslim Ruins. Now it is the only
all-Armenian town outside the Republic of Armenia.

Most language in the town of 3,000 – from street signs to store ads –
is in Armenian, and the people speak a dialect few other Armenians
understand. All three Armenian religious denominations – Orthodox,
Catholic and Evangelical – have their own churches, schools and
clubs.

In the summer, Anjar’s population more than doubles, with people
returning for family reunions and ceremonies at a memorial for the 18
villagers killed in the 1915 fighting, according to Hagop Ainteblian
of Anjar’s municipal council. Visitors share traditional herissa
wheat and mutton soup – along with arak, an anise-flavored liquor.

The Armenian community throughout Lebanon once numbered 350,000, but
it’s shrunk to about 80,000-100,000 after emigration during the
country’s 1975-90 civil war. Among the largest Armenian communities
worldwide are the 2 million living in Russia and former Soviet
republics.

North America’s Armenian community, about 750,000 – nearly half in
southern California – is the largest in the West. It also is the most
active in demanding Turkey recognize the events 90 years ago as
genocide.

Today, many Armenians see dialogue as a way to finally overcome
Turkey’s long rejection of the genocide accusation.

“We must find a common language with the Turks. They are stronger and
more numerous than us,” 66-year-old retiree Antranig Chokeklian said
in the Beirut Armenian neighborhood of Bourj Hammoud.

IPR Strategic Business Information Database
April 14, 2005

PRESIDENT OFF TO SYRIA AS FOREIGN MINISTRY UNDERSECRETARY BEGINS TRIP
TO US

According to Turkiye, President Ahmet Necdet Sezer’ds controversial
visit to Syria is set to begin. During his contacts, Sezer is
expected to discuss international developments with his Syrian
counterpart Bashar Assad and express his satisfaction at the
withdrawal of Syrian troops from Lebanon. At the same time, Foreign
Ministry Undersecretary Ali Tuygan, accompanied by a delegation, will
travel to Washington to hold a series of contacts with top American
officials. Armenian genocide allegations, the Iran issue, as well as
bilateral ties are expected to dominate the talks. The Cyprus issue
will also be discussed. Tuygan will also urge US officials to end the
international isolation of the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus
(TRNC).

From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress

ITAR-TASS News Agency
TASS
April 14, 2005 Thursday 1:05 AM Eastern Time

Russia govt to consider 4 bills, accords with Armenia, Yemen

By Natalya Slavina

MOSCOW

The government of the Russian Federation meets here Thursday to
consider four Federal bills, with the one about a Special Economic
Area in Kaliningrad Region being the main of them. A report on the
subject is to be made by Gherman Gref, Minister of Economic
Development and Trade (MEDT), a government press service official has
told Itar-Tass.

Gref is also to brief the Cabinet on another two bills. The MEDT
suggests that the government approve ratification of agreements
between Russia and Armenia, as well as the one between Russia and the
Republic of Yemen on the encouragement and mutual protection of
capital investments.

Vladimir Yakunin, Deputy Minister of Justice, is to present his
proposals on a bill about State registration of the charters of
municipal entities.

Alexander Sokolov, Minister of Culture and Mass Communication Media,
is to speak on an item concerning the allocation of resources to the
Ministry from the govenrment’s reserve fund.

The Cabinet is also expected to decide on the allocation of the
government’s reserve-fund resources for the prevention and
elimination of the aftermath of emergencies and natural calamities in
the Chechen Republic and Kaliningrad Region. Ruslan Tsalikov, Deputy
Minister for Emergencies, is to speak on the subject. The
government’s meeting is expected to be chaired by Prime Minister
Mikhail Fradkov.

National Post, Canada
April 14 2005

Dubiously convicted prisoners may starve: amnesty group

MADRID – At least 70 prisoners risk starving to death in a prison in
Equatorial Guinea, where rations have been cut from a daily cup of
rice to almost nothing, Amnesty International said yesterday. The
human rights group said those most at risk included six Armenians and
five South Africans convicted last year of plotting a coup in the
tiny, oil-rich West African country, in a trial Amnesty described as
“grossly unfair.”

“Unless immediate action is taken, many of those detained at Black
Beach prison will die,” said Kolawole Olaniyan, director of Amnesty’s
Africa program, in a statement. Amnesty said the Armenians and South
Africans jailed at Black Beach for their part in the plot had their
wrists and ankles chained together at all times, and all the
prisoners were confined to their cells 24 hours a day. Equatorial
Guinea, a former Spanish colony, said the allegations were untrue and
accused Amnesty of seeking to tarnish its image.

Charlie Rose Show Transcripts
April 13, 2005

DISCUSSION WITH SENATOR BOB DOLE – PART 1

by Charlie Rose

CHARLIE ROSE, HOST: Welcome to the broadcast. Tonight, Senator Bob
Dole talks not only about his war record, the subject of his new
book, but also about his time in the Senate, growing up in Kansas,
and the politicians he has known.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

BOB DOLE, FORMER U.S. SENATOR: Think about the Senate, in the House
there are so many — you have to wait a while to really make an
impact. In the Senate, from day one you can stand up and make
speeches. You can offer amendments in the House, but it s always a
different procedure, they have more flexibility than the Senate. But
you used to have great senators like Hubert Humphrey, who was one of
my dear friends and. CHARLIE ROSE: Was it painful for you to have to
step down, or not to know that you could run for president, the
greatest honor that can come, as the nominee of your party, but you
re going to have to leave the Senate?

BOB DOLE: You know, let s face it, every time — the Democrats —
politics is hardball, not beanbag. And they were bringing up all
these things for me to vote on. CHARLIE ROSE: To keep you there. BOB
DOLE: To keep me there, and also to let people know, this guy is
against this, he s against this, he s against this. And I decided
that, you know, not just to leave the Senate, but to give up my seat
and leave the Senate. I could have left and come back. CHARLIE ROSE:
But did you want to ever think about coming back?

BOB DOLE: No, I thought if you re the party s nominee for president,
it s the highest honor you can have, and then to go back, you know,
in my judgment it was not the appropriate thing to do. (END VIDEO
CLIP)

CHARLIE ROSE: Bob Dole for the hour, next. (COMMERCIAL BREAK)

CHARLIE ROSE: Bob Dole is here. He has been a life-long public
servant, first elected to the United States Senate from Kansas in
1968. His Senate career spanned 27 years. He spent eight of those
years as minority leader and three more as majority leader. He
remains the longest- serving Republican Senate leader in history.

In 1996, he retired from the Senate to run for president as the
Republican nominee. His new memoir, “One Soldier s Story,” chronicles
a near-fatal injury he sustained in the second world war, and his
long path to recovery. I m pleased to have Bob Dole back at this
table. Welcome back.

BOB DOLE: Charlie, thank you.

CHARLIE ROSE: Great to see you.

BOB DOLE: Thank you.

CHARLIE ROSE: Before we talk about what happened, tell me how this
shaped you, this — what happened to you and — in Italy, in terms of
who you are today.

BOB DOLE: I ve got to believe it changed my life. I mean, I don t
know precisely what I might have done had I gone through the war
unscathed, but probably going back to school, getting a degree in
something and ending up in business or back in Russell, Kansas. But I
think it did change my life. I couldn t use my hands, so I could use
my head. That was my theory. So maybe I should go to school, maybe go
to law school. And it s all because of what happened on April 14th,
1945.

CHARLIE ROSE: What happened?

BOB DOLE: Well, I was in the wrong place at the right time, and got
hit by a high-explosive shell that sort of tore into my body and
messed up my right shoulder. But also damaged my spinal chord. It
didn t sever it; it just damaged it, thankfully. And I couldn t walk.
I couldn t use either arm. I couldn t — my legs wouldn t function,
my bowels — nothing would work. But fortunately, as I said, it wasn
t severed; it was only bruised and I started gradually regaining — I
could feed myself in 11 months, I could kind of walk in six months. I
mean, I was very lucky as you look back on it.

CHARLIE ROSE: Did you think you were going to die?

BOB DOLE: I wasn t sure when I was lying there for about nine hours.
I didn t of course know it was nine hours. I was told later it was
nine hours, waiting for the medics to pick me up. And I had been
bleeding some. And I think the guys who sort of looked at me then
weren t too sure about my living.

I never even thought about death at the time. I thought about it a
couple of times later on. But on April 14th, and the few days after
that, I was sort of in and out of consciousness. And you know, I
thought I had been hurt. I thought I would be OK again. You know,
when you re 20 years old, that s the last thing you think about.

CHARLIE ROSE: Dying.

BOB DOLE: Yeah.

CHARLIE ROSE: This is what you said. “It s said often that my
generation is the greatest generation. It is not a title we claim for
ourselves. Truth be told, we were ordinary Americans, faced to
confront extraordinary tests. Every generation of young men and women
who dare to face the realities of war, fighting for freedom,
defending our country with the willingness to lay their lives on the
line is the greatest generation.”

BOB DOLE: That s right. And that s why I say Tom Brokaw in his book,
“The Greatest Generation,” was very kind to my age group. But now we
have a different generation doing the fighting, doing the dying,
being wounded, lying in hospitals, not knowing what s going to happen
the rest of their life. In my view, it s sort of a trophy. You pass
it on from one generation to the next. They re the greatest
generation now.

CHARLIE ROSE: Of today.

BOB DOLE: Today, right. CHARLIE ROSE: These are the people who have
been fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan.

BOB DOLE: Iraq, Afghanistan, the DMZ in Korea. Wherever they are, I
mean, you know, they re making a sacrifice.

CHARLIE ROSE: You know a young man named Craig Nelson.

BOB DOLE: I knew a young man named Craig Nelson. Still know of his
memory. Poor guy. You know, I ll give you the story if I can just
take a minute. Elizabeth and I were having — I was in the hospital
on Christmas day. And so she came out and we went down at Christmas
with the rest of the soldiers. Many were amputees. Many were — there
were men and women. And just as we were leaving, we heard someone
yell, “Senator Dole, Senator Dole.” And it turned out to be Craig
Nelson s mother, Lois, and his sister, Carly. And they wanted me to
go see Craig. They said he is upstairs. He s not very well. And I
know he would be thrilled to see you.

So I went up. I m not certain he recognized me, but I told him I
would pray for him. And he was in a great hospital, Walter Reed Army
Medical Center in Washington, D.C. It s a great hospital. And we said
a few other things, and then I left. And he didn t respond, but his
mother always — has told me since she felt — she feels sure that he
knew that I was there and I said something to him.

But the point is, he kind of took me back to where I was 60 years
ago, when I was lying flat on my back. But then I could speak. I wasn
t nearly as severely wounded as poor Craig was. And the bottom line
is, three days later he expired.

CHARLIE ROSE: And it meant to you…

BOB DOLE: It meant to me — it meant to me a lot to see this young
man, strapping 6 1″, 185 pounds, good-looking kid, and his life was
just snuffed out because of the conflict in Iraq.

CHARLIE ROSE: He answered the call.

BOB DOLE: Yes. He answered the call. And I had talked to his mother
as recently as two days ago. And she is very proud of what he did.
And they started a scholarship fund in Bossier City, Louisiana. And I
m going to go down there and do the commencement at the junior
college, where they re going to honor Craig. And we re going to take
the proceeds from the book and put it into the scholarship fund.

CHARLIE ROSE: The scholarship fund. You ve contributed, I ve read
somewhere, $ 5,000.

BOB DOLE: Well, I ve done that, but we are going to take this book s
proceeds.

CHARLIE ROSE: Additional. BOB DOLE: Yes. CHARLIE ROSE: Is it fair —
is it the correct thing to say that men and women who fight, you
know, as you just said, each is the greatest generation. I mean,
there is nothing finer that you can do for your.

BOB DOLE: Country, yes. CHARLIE ROSE: For your country, and for
yourself is to…

BOB DOLE: But not all people can do that. You have to understand that
there are men and women who can t be in uniform. They re teaching, or
they re raising crops to keep feeding the troops that are out there,
and some people make the mistake that if you are not in uniform,
somehow you re not serving your country. I don t think many men and
women in uniform feel that way. They chose to be in the service, it s
a volunteer army. And that s what they wanted to do. And with it come
a lot of risks. And they re willing to make those, take those risks.

CHARLIE ROSE: What happened when you came back from the service?

BOB DOLE: Well, I was still in the service until 1948. And of course,
all the good doctors had gone home by then. And so I went outside and
ran across this great Armenian-American named Dr. Hampar Kelikian —
k- e-l-i-k-i-a-n — in Chicago. And he took me under his wing and he
operated on me I think six or seven times. Never let me pay him. He
lost a brother in War World II, and he had been a major himself. He s
a great orthopedic surgeon. His son, Armen, is now an orthopedic
surgeon in Chicago.

And he s the one who told me in effect — he always called me
captain. I was only a lieutenant, so I was very flattered. “Captain,
you ve got to grow up,” is what he said, “you ve got to grow up.”

CHARLIE ROSE: He promoted you. BOB DOLE: Yeah. Grow up and live with
what you have, and go out and do the best you can with what you have
left, which was great advice. Because I was looking for a miracle. I
wanted to play basketball again, I wanted to run around the track
again.

CHARLIE ROSE: So it was a reality check for you?

BOB DOLE: A reality check, and he was man enough to give it to me. I
think he — because I think he loved me in a way that men do
sometimes. He respected me and he knew my family, and he sort of, as
I said, took me under his wing. And he wanted to give me some good
advice. So I did. I went on with my life and did a few good things.

CHARLIE ROSE: Notwithstanding how my original question, were you so
shaped by the war and what happened there, and coming back, and
recovering, and the impact of that process on you, you also say that
if you want to understand Bob Dole, go to Russell, Kansas.

BOB DOLE: Go to Russell, Kansas. CHARLIE ROSE: What am I going to
find in Russell, Kansas?

(CROSSTALK)

BOB DOLE: Well, you may not remember the old “Saturday Evening Post”.
It s like one of those covers on “Saturday Evening Post,” with a
little idyllic town of 5,000. It was up to 8,000 at one time. Where
you don t lock your doors at night and you don t take the keys out of
your car. Maybe now they do, but when I was growing up, you know,
nobody bothered anybody. When somebody died, everybody rushed to the
home with food, and they still do that in the cities and rural areas.

But it was that way. When I came home the first time, we had to shut
off visitors. I mean, everybody wanted to come and say, you know, we
re sorry, Bob, we re sorry this happened. One fellow, Mr. Wiggly (ph)
brought me a live duck. He didn t have any money, so he brought me a
live duck, which we ate, of course. I mean, just an outpouring from
— you know, I wasn t politics. It wasn t Democrat or Republican.
Just people. Some had lost their sons in World War II, and I think
they saw me as, you know, maybe somebody who was wounded rather
seriously and could still make a go of it.

CHARLIE ROSE: They clearly saw that. There were also people when were
you in the service that performed heroically to save your life.

BOB DOLE: Yes. Three that I know precisely. One was this Frank
Carafa, who was in New Rochelle, still alive. He has kidney dialysis
about three times a week, just lost his wife a few months ago. He is
the one who really pulled me back to safety. And I think he pulled me
by my right arm, which wasn t a very good idea at the time. And he
feels guilty that he may have caused more damage, but I don t…

CHARLIE ROSE: You feel like he saved your life?

BOB DOLE: I feel like he probably saved my life. And then there was
Sergeant Kuschik, and Ollie Manninen, who was an Olympic skier later
on, and Ed McBreyer (ph). Those are kind of the three guys who — or
four guys who kind of looked after me that day. They weren t supposed
to. McBreyer (ph) stayed with me for a while. And you re supposed to
move with the troops. You don t stand — if everybody waited on a
wounded guy, you d never get anywhere. And I was a second lieutenant.

CHARLIE ROSE: A 90-day wonder, you were.

BOB DOLE: I was at Benning school for boys, and some of these tough
guys, these regular 10th Mountain guys, you know, lieutenants come
and go, you know, it s like presidents. And we re going to be here
forever. So — but they were nice to me.

CHARLIE ROSE: You had never skied before you went in the Army.

BOB DOLE: I didn t ski then. Imagine, Kansas is as flat as this
table. So how would Bob Dole ever learn to ski? I don t know, well,
this is a very elite division. Not when I got in it, but it started
off by a fellow named Minnie Dole, who sold the War Department on we
needed ski troops to go into the mountains of Italy. And he finally
sold the War — the Defense Department, and they came up with this —
and you had to have letters of recommendation to get in the Army,
believe it or not. Because they wanted the best of the best. But they
weren t a bunch of rich boys looking for some easy way out, because
they had heavy casualties in Italy. But they were great skiers. A
fellow named Torvil Torkel (ph), who was a great skier, I saw his
body after he had been shot and killed. Just many of the famous
skiers came back and started the ski industry in this country.

But I was only there seven weeks. It s not that I had worn myself out
in that division a long time. If you re in the wrong place, it doesn
t take long.

CHARLIE ROSE: So you never skied?

BOB DOLE: Never skied. My wife skis. She s a pretty good skier. When
I was running for president, she would go up and ski in New
Hampshire. I would stand at the bottom of the hill, waiting for her.

CHARLIE ROSE: That s Elizabeth up there. BOB DOLE: Vote for me
because Elizabeth is skiing.

CHARLIE ROSE: She likes New Hampshire so much, she comes here to ski.

BOB DOLE: She comes here to ski. And she had done it before, before
she ever met me, yes.

CHARLIE ROSE: The recovery, before we move beyond this. The recovery,
what made it possible?

BOB DOLE: I think my mother.

CHARLIE ROSE: Really?

BOB DOLE: And the doctors and the nurses.

CHARLIE ROSE: But your mother.

BOB DOLE: I think my mother. If you boil it all down, because she was
— she moved into a place in Topeka, Kansas. And I was in Winter
General Hospital, an Army hospital. She moved about three blocks from
the hospital. She was there every day and every night. Everything I
wanted, you know, she talked to my dad every night, give him a
report. I only saw her sob uncontrollably once in my life, and that s
when she walked in for the first time to see me, weighing 120-some
pounds, from 190-some pounds, and then this body cast from my neck to
my hips. And I asked her if I could have a cigarette, and she
detested smoke, anyway she couldn t stand cigarettes. But I think it
was my mother, with my father s influence, and my sisters. My brother
was serving in New Guinea.

But you know, when we found these letters, we weren t — we didn t
have a book until we found these letters about two years ago. There s
always somebody in every family who hordes everything.

CHARLIE ROSE: I know, I know. BOB DOLE: So my sister Gloria collected
all these letters, and apparently put them under her bed for 25 or 30
or 40 years. She said, would you like to look at these letters? It
was two years ago. I said, I could have used those in my campaign.
Anyway, so that made the book.

CHARLIE ROSE: Now I ll use them in my book. BOB DOLE: That made the
book, yeah, the letters. My mother s letters to me, my father wrote
about I think four letters in his lifetime. And one of them was to
me.

CHARLIE ROSE: I wonder if it is going to change now that we have e-
mail and people don t write as many letters as they used to.

BOB DOLE: I (UNINTELLIGIBLE) it s going to be, yeah. CHARLIE ROSE: I
know. (CROSSTALK)

CHARLIE ROSE: You can t save your e-mail the same way. BOB DOLE:
Yeah, right. But you know, I told somebody the other day, the last
time I visited Walter Reed, I met a couple of guys. One was a double
amputee and the other had lost one leg. But standing beside them,
down in the physical therapy room, were their mothers. It tells you a
lot about who really carries the burden. It s the mother. It s her
husband, it s her son, it s her son-in-law, it s her grandson. And
she quietly worries and worries and takes care of them.

CHARLIE ROSE: I think some of the most heroic people, and I know you
do, too, in America, are single mothers who, for whatever reason.

BOB DOLE: That s right. CHARLIE ROSE: . are courageously working two
jobs, worrying about their son or their daughter getting to school
safely, worried about them getting the best education possible. Those
are the people. BOB DOLE: Well, worrying about. CHARLIE ROSE: They re
American heroes.

BOB DOLE: Oh, they are.

(CROSSTALK)

BOB DOLE: They re the unsung heroes, too. Because you don t. — maybe
you do on your program. I watch it quite often, but you know, there s
a story there that ought to be told about mothers and the burden they
carry. And right now, who really suffers in the Iraqi conflict? We
don t make any sacrifices here or in Afghanistan.

CHARLIE ROSE: It s the mothers who send their children.

BOB DOLE: The mothers who send their children.

CHARLIE ROSE: Their sons and daughters. BOB DOLE: . the fathers. But
again, the father sometimes, he s kind of a macho guy. You know, I
was in the service, nothing like that ever happened to me. But the
mother, it s different.

CHARLIE ROSE: In your career, you once said to me that you thought
the second greatest job in Washington was being the majority leader
of the Senate when the opposition was in the White House.

BOB DOLE: Right. Then you could fire at will. Just get out your gun
and start firing. Yeah, that s pretty — it gives you a lot of
influence too with the White House, if you re in the majority and you
ve got the president of a different party there. And — because he
needs your support.

CHARLIE ROSE: Lyndon Johnson and Ike — and President Eisenhower come
to mind.

BOB DOLE: Yeah. Of course, Lyndon had 68 senators, too. But he and
Eisenhower had a great relationship. He and Everett Dirksen had a
great relationship. And Dirksen sitting there with…

CHARLIE ROSE: When Lyndon was president and Dirksen was then Senate
majority leader.

BOB DOLE: Right, yeah. Minority leader.

CHARLIE ROSE: Minority leader, right. BOB DOLE: I think he had 33 —
33 little Republicans. He hardly had enough for, you know, a squad in
the infantry.

But I think being a senator is one of the greatest jobs in the world.

CHARLIE ROSE: Was it painful for you to have to step down or not to
know that you — you could run for president, the greatest honor that
could come, as the nominee of your party, but you had to leave the
Senate.

BOB DOLE: I didn t have to leave.

CHARLIE ROSE: I know, but you made the choice.

BOB DOLE: I made the choice.

CHARLIE ROSE: That s what I mean. I mean, you made the choice so you
had to leave, because you felt like you couldn t run effectively and
do both jobs effectively.

BOB DOLE: That, and plus, you know, let s face it. Every time the
Democrats — politics is hardball, not beanbag. And they were
bringing up all these things for me to vote on.

CHARLIE ROSE: To keep you there. BOB DOLE: To keep me there, and also
let people know, this guy is against this, he s against this, he s
against this.

And I decided that, you know, not just to leave the Senate, but to
give up my seat and leave the Senate. I could have left and come
back.

CHARLIE ROSE: But did you want to ever think about coming back?

BOB DOLE: No, I thought if you re the party s nominee for president,
that s the highest honor you can have. And then to go back, you know,
in my judgment, it was not the appropriate thing to do. I mean, what
else do I want? I mean, I was honored by my party. I think I worked
hard for my party over the years. I ran unsuccessfully. It s time —
there s a time to go, and I think some people haven t gotten that
message in Washington.

CHARLIE ROSE: Like who, for example?

BOB DOLE: I won t give an example. But you know, there is a theory in
Congress that if you ve been there for at least 20 years, you never
want to leave, because you have to pack. So go ahead and serve until
you drop dead, and then somebody else has to pack everything.

CHARLIE ROSE: Was it you who once said something, I can t remember
what, about Strom Thurmond?

BOB DOLE: I don t know about Strom, I don t think he s — I know he
is in heaven now somewhere, looking down on us.

CHARLIE ROSE: But I mean, he was going to serve — he was determined
to serve for a long, long time.

BOB DOLE: He wanted to do it to be 100, and he did.

CHARLIE ROSE: And he did. BOB DOLE: And he did. And right after that,
I think he was satisfied. But he served the last two years living at
Walter Reed Hospital. He would go into the Senate from the hospital.

CHARLIE ROSE: Because he wanted to reach 100.

BOB DOLE: He wanted, and he did.

CHARLIE ROSE: The — Jack Kennedy once wrote a book called “Profiles
in Courage.”

BOB DOLE: I ve read it, yeah, a long time ago.

CHARLIE ROSE: And somebody who was a senator, and other people. Who
are the profiles in courage for you in terms of the people you served
with? Who are those that you would say, these were the finest of
legislators and the finest men and women I knew in politics?

BOB DOLE: I think you would have to break it down in categories. I
mean, there are different skills in the Senate. One is knowing the
rules. And there s only one master of the rules. BOB DOLE: Robert
Byrd. BOB DOLE: . and that s Robert Byrd of West Virginia. And it s
Robert, it s not. CHARLIE ROSE: Who s still serving. BOB DOLE: Yeah,
and it s not Bob Byrd. It s Robert Byrd.

CHARLIE ROSE: You don t call him Bobby, do you?

BOB DOLE: No. And he was kind of suspicious of me at first, when I
became the minority leader, but we later became very good friends.

And Everett Dirksen, again I think he would probably be number one as
far as collegiality is concerned and reaching across the aisle, even
though he didn t have much gunpowder. He had 33 votes. And — but he
— on the civil rights bill, for example, he was the key.

CHARLIE ROSE: Without him, there would have been no civil rights
bill.

BOB DOLE: Probably would have been by now, but the iron was hot, that
s when you want to strike.

CHARLIE ROSE: Lyndon Johnson after the assassination. BOB DOLE: Yeah,
Lyndon Johnson. And you get into the contemporary ones — certainly,
Howard Baker, Dirksen s son-in-law. CHARLIE ROSE: Because he was a
great what?

BOB DOLE: Because he was a good, moderate Republican who could bring
people together. He wasn t a strident partisan. Though he was
partisan. You don t become a leader if you don t carry the flag for
your party. And Howard did that very well, and we took over the
Senate when Reagan was elected. Howard was just the perfect guy to
step in and do that.

On the Democratic side, Russell Long. Russell Long knew more about
everything than anybody in the Senate.

CHARLIE ROSE: Especially tax policy.

BOB DOLE: And he would say — when it was getting late like midnight,
and he wanted to get finished the bill, he would say, I ll take your
amendment. Yes, sir, it s a very fine amendment. He had no idea of
ever getting the amendment passed. He said, I ll take it, and then
they d go to what they call a conference with the House, and he puts
them all in the wastebasket, and comes back and says, well, I couldn
t, I couldn t hold it for you in the conference.

But he was a great guy. CHARLIE ROSE: You know what amazes me about
Russell Long is how much he idolized his father, didn t he, Huey
Long?

BOB DOLE: Yeah, oh. CHARLIE ROSE: Idolized him. BOB DOLE: He used to
talk about him in the Finance Committee.

CHARLIE ROSE: Is that right?

BOB DOLE: Don t tax you, don t tax me, tax that fellow behind the
tree. That was one of Russell Long s great lines. When I first became
chairman of the Finance Committee, he had been chairman 17 years. And
we had the first vote under my leadership. When they said, “Mr.
Chairman,” he voted. He said, oh, I. CHARLIE ROSE: I forgot. BOB
DOLE: . now I vote for my chairman — with my chairman — I vote for
my chairman. He was quick on the uptake.

CHARLIE ROSE: I know people, and I think Sam Nunn might be among
them.

BOB DOLE: Oh, Sam is another one, yeah.

CHARLIE ROSE: A great one. BOB DOLE: Senator Russell, another one,
from Georgia.

CHARLIE ROSE: OK, let me get to Russell in a second, but Sam Nunn was
a guy who, after he was no longer chairman of the Armed Services
Committee, because it had become a Republican majority, something was
taken out of it, I always assumed, for him. If you weren t chairman
of the Armed.

BOB DOLE: It s got to be, it s got to be. CHARLIE ROSE: . Services
Committee, it was hardly worth it, once you had had that kind of
power.

BOB DOLE: It s almost — it s politically born again when you become
in the majority, when you ve been in the minority as long as
Republicans had been. And suddenly, you known, we re in charge? Who
is going to tell us what to do? How do you rap the gavel?

CHARLIE ROSE: All of a sudden, you re running things. You have real
power. BOB DOLE: Yeah, I go to the chairman — I go to the Finance
Committee, I m the boss, I m the chairman. I am going to write all
these tax bills — I don t know much about taxes — oh, yeah, we got
good staff.

CHARLIE ROSE: But does the — I want to come back to Russell Long and
others, but does — I mean, to senator from Georgia, Richard Russell.
Do you have to make a decision when you come to the Senate, either I
want to find fame as a chairman, I want to find power from being a
chairman, Armed Services, Finance, Judiciary, Foreign Relations — or
B, do you say I want to be part of the leadership, I want to go that
route? George Mitchell went that route. You went that route.