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American Morning

Northern Alliance Forces Now in Control of Konduz; 'Here's What I Don't Get'

Aired November 26, 2001 - 08:33   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
MILES O'BRIEN, CNN ANCHOR: Northern Alliance forces say they are now in control of Konduz, the Taliban's last stronghold, in the northern part of Afghanistan. A Taliban commander says hundreds of troops left for a district west of Konduz. Still, sporadic gunfire can be heard.

CNN's Satinder Bindra is there.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

SATINDER BINDRA, CNN CORRESPONDENT: I'm standing in the town square of Konduz and can confirm that Konduz is now firmly in control of the Northern Alliance. A few hours ago, a senior Northern Alliance commander, General Mahmed Dauod (ph) addressed the media, and he said all the Taliban fighters has fled Konduz and gone west of here. He said that negotiations are still ongoing with these Taliban fighters to convince therm to surrender.

Now here inside of Konduz, the only Taliban fighters we've seen are either POWs or they were dead. Several hours ago, we counted three dead Taliban fighters. They're bodies were lying in pools of blood just by the side of the road. Large crowds had gathered around them. Now, as night has fallen, Northern Alliance soldiers are conducting house-to-house searches. They're scared some Taliban could still be hiding inside homes, and they could stage surprise attacks.

Now Northern Alliance commanders are telling us they set up a special commission to ensure there are no law and order problems inside Konduz.

Satinder Bindra, CNN, Konduz.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

(NEWS BREAK)

PAULA ZAHN, CNN ANCHOR: I'm joined by Jack Cafferty. He's back from a nice little rest over the holidays, and you've got something that's got you a little ticked off.

JACK CAFFERTY, CNN CORRESPONDENT: I used to smoke cigarettes, so I don't know which side of this thing to come down on. I was a three- pack-a-day smoker for a lot of years, until I had a collapsed young, and that was the clue that maybe it was time to quit. So about 12 years ago, I quit.

But you know, the government and the folks who are charged with watching out -- over our collective welfare, I guess, hot on the trail of people who smoke cigarettes in Montgomery County. That's in Maryland, just outside the nation's capital, which is the home of a certain amount of noxious emissions that don't have anything to do with cigarettes. They have approved an anti-smoking ordinance there that goes farther than a rational person might suggest it should. Residents now can be fined $750 for lighting a cigarette in their own home, or in their back yard, if a neighbor complains.

ZAHN: What? No, wait, wait, wait, wait.

CAFFERTY: Local residents, as you might expect, had some interesting things to say about this.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: It sounds ridiculous to me. I mean, you can't -- now they are going to confine in your house, and even in you are in your house, you can get penalized for that, too. I mean, that's ridiculous. I mean, what are they going to take from us next?

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: That is an invasion of privacy. What I do in my own home -- it's like see, what I do -- it's your own business.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

ZAHN: She's got a point there, sex is your own business.

But what I don't get, the title of your segment, is how you catch people. So what? A neighbor has to complain. You have to be smoking an awful lot for your neighbor to smell the smoke.

CAFFERTY: One of the county commissioners, one of the architects behind this piece of legislative brilliance says, here it is -- this does not mean you can not smoke in your house. What it does say is that your smoke cannot cross property lines.

ZAHN: How much would you be smoking for it to cross property lines?

CAFFERTY: If you're smoking in the backyard, it could blow over to another house, yes.

ZAHN: How could it possibly leave your home?

CAFFERTY: You've got automobile emissions. You've got people that barbecue in the summer time. You are going out to get a surveyor now, and get that property line lined up so that you know exactly where the -- I mean, isn't it comforting to know that the people in this county in Maryland are paying these clowns to sit in a closed room and come up with garbage like this, and say, we're doing our job as elected representatives of the people.

ZAHN: Let me ask you this though -- you were relaxing in your backyard, you gave up smoking a while ago, you needed to, and a neighbor started smoking and the wind wafted toward your backyard. You'd be sensitive to that, yes, you could smell it.

CAFFERTY: I live in New York City, you kidding me? I mean, you walk down the street in New York, you've got your garbage fumes, you've got your bus fumes, you've got your cab fumes, you've got your car fumes, you're your cigarette fumes, you've got your cigar fumes, you've got people that some a pipe. If you're down around Washington Square Park, you've got your marijuana fumes, you've got your, you know, crack pipe fumes. I mean, How do you pick out the cigarette fumes? I think it's ridiculous. I think it's patently ridiculous. It's just silly.

In a restaurant or in a place where people have no choice, then I think you have to respect the nonsmoker, and I find the odor of cigarette smoke offensive now that I've been off it for 12 years. But it's a -- 10 years before it bothered me at all, because for 10 years, I missed them.

ZAHN: You also have some thoughts about the new opposition lined against Osama bin Laden.

CAFFERTY: Oh yes, U2, Bono, the Irish rock singer, I did, I think, one of the very first television interviews with these kids when they first broke on the American science about 15 years ago.

He likens Bono to what did he call them, "a spoiled middle-class brat." He compares Osama bin Laden to some of the guys that Bono and his friends despised in the IRA. He said they were political science students who saw ideas as more valuable than human life, and he said, we grew up to despise them. So interesting criticism from -- one other note, the squeegee guys are back in New York.

ZAHN: Oh, they are? They're working again.

CAFFERTY: One of the tabloids had a picture of the squeegee people, these mutants that hang out on the street corners who want to wash your windows, whether you want them washed or not.

ZAHN: I say, no, don't touch them.

CAFFERTY: One of the first things that Rudy Giuliani did is his assault on what he called "quality of life" crime, was to get the squeegee guys off the street. Well, they're back.

ZAHN: What are they charging?

CAFFERTY: I don't know.

ZAHN: Used to be like five bucks. That's pretty expensive.

CAFFERTY: To wash your windshield? I think they just ask for pocket change. But of some of them get aggressive if you don't give them money.

How did you turkey turn out? ZAHN: Well, if I had used your advice, it probably would have turned out a little bitter. I didn't go for the chestnuts this year. That was far too complicated, but the turkey was fine and we did a small one. So we only got two meals out of it this year instead of 14 the previous year. By the 7th day, most of the leftovers look pretty bad, as most of America knows.

Good to see you, Jack. See you a little bit later on this morning.

CAFFERTY: All right.

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