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American Morning
Rumsfeld's Defense; Winter Freeze; Space Diet
Aired December 23, 2004 - 9:00 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.
BILL HEMMER, CNN ANCHOR: Survivors of the attack. The wounded from Mosul now recovering a in Germany, and many more now headed home.
Too close for comfort. New rules have airport screeners changing the way they touch and search female passengers.
And with the harsh winter weather, where are they headed today? Snow and ice yesterday, we saw it. Now rain and wind today on this AMERICAN MORNING.
ANNOUNCER: From the CNN Broadcast Center in New York, this is AMERICAN MORNING with Bill Hemmer and Soledad O'Brien.
SOLEDAD O'BRIEN, CNN ANCHOR: Good morning. Welcome, everybody.
Before the Mosul attack this week, Donald Rumsfeld was already on the defensive over comments he made to troops. In just a few moments, how has he been handling the controversies? Can he survive the criticism? We'll talk with retired General Don Shepperd about the job Secretary Rumsfeld is doing.
HEMMER: Also this hour, he is not in space, but Miles O'Brien is living like an astronaut. He eats what they eat, he exercises like they do, and he's doing it all right here on planet Earth. We'll find out how difficult it is. Miles checks in this hour, as well.
JACK CAFFERTY, CNN ANCHOR: Is there any chance we can actually shoot him into space at some point?
HEMMER: You would like that?
CAFFERTY: Well, no. I just thought it was just an idea.
There's this company out in California, something Savings and Clone they call themselves. Made this lady a cat out of the DNA of her old dead cat. They made her a new little kitten and charged her $50,000 for the -- for the operation, the procedure.
They're working on a dog. They say they'll have it ready for delivery in May. Where do you draw the line at cloning animals is the question we're monkeying with this morning.
HEMMER: Fifty grand, huh?
CAFFERTY: AM@CNN.com.
HEMMER: She likes that kitty. CAFFERTY: Three and four million dogs and cats are put to sleep in this country every year. You know how many of them could be supported until maybe they found an adopted home with $50,000?
HEMMER: Right.
CAFFERTY: I mean, this is just another self-indulgent activity for people with too much money and not enough...
O'BRIEN: Common sense.
CAFFERTY: ... time to figure out what they ought to be doing with it.
HEMMER: We'll get to it. Thank you, Jack.
CAFFERTY: Yes.
HEMMER: Carol Costello is also here.
Carol, good morning to you.
CAROL COSTELLO, CNN ANCHOR: Good morning to you. Good morning, everyone.
"Now in the News," the condition of American soldiers wounded in Tuesday's attack at a mess hall in Mosul, Iraq, being updated this morning. The U.S. military says a vast majority of the 35 soldiers and civilians being treated in Landstuhl, Germany, are expected to recover.
Some arrived at the military hospital yesterday. The commander at Landstuhl says she's hoping to have most of the wounded return home to the United States in time for the holidays.
Here in the states, the woman accused of killing a pregnant woman and stealing her baby may be transferred to another state. Lisa Montgomery back in court today after a preliminary hearing earlier this week.
Authorities are trying to extradite her case from Kansas to Missouri. This as the suspect's ex-husband is apparently speaking out about his wife, his ex-wife. He has reportedly said she faked pregnancies in the past to get attention.
Washington State Republicans say they are prepared for a legal battle in a close governor's race. Yesterday, the state Supreme Court gave election officials the OK to hand count more than 700 absentee ballots. The extra ballots are expected to widen the Democratic candidate's 10-vote lead. Final results are expected later today.
And a welcome change for many travelers at the airport security gates. Starting this morning, screeners can no longer pat down a passenger's breast area. This change comes after hundreds of travelers, mostly women, complained the procedure was too intrusive. They can only go around the perimeter now. O'BRIEN: A lot of women will be cheering that news. People are very -- some people were very upset about that.
COSTELLO: It's true.
O'BRIEN: Yes.
COSTELLO: I don't mean to laugh about it, but it's just bizarre.
HEMMER: You've been laughing about it all morning.
O'BRIEN: It's hard to talk about it, right?
HEMMER: Come on, Carol.
O'BRIEN: I mean, you know.
COSTELLO: Well, like sometimes feeling around the perimeter is just as bad. Especially when you're out in the open and everybody's looking at you. I mean, don't you feel sometimes you're like in some sort of...
O'BRIEN: Yes. It's just like being naked in front of the screeners, for the most part.
COSTELLO: Exactly.
O'BRIEN: Kind of. All right, Carol. Thank you.
Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld is again on the offensive over -- offense, rather, over claims of insensitivity toward American troops in Iraq and for families of the troops killed in action.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
DONALD RUMSFELD, DEFENSE SECRETARY: I am truly saddened by the thought that anyone could have the impression that I or others here are doing anything other than working urgently to see that the lives of the fighting men and women are protected and are cared for in every way humanly possible.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
O'BRIEN: Earlier this week, Secretary Rumsfeld said he would begin personally signing letters to family members of those killed in action. The latest wave of harsh criticism began earlier this month over a response from the secretary to a soldier who asked him why troops weren't giving the Army -- the armor, rather, they need for military vehicles.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
RUMSFELD: As you know, you go to war with the Army you have, not the Army you might want or wish to have at a later time.
(END VIDEO CLIP) O'BRIEN: Some people upset with that response. In Phoenix this morning, CNN military analyst, retired Major General Don Shepperd.
Good morning, General. Nice to see you. Do you think Donald Rumsfeld, certainly in the press conference that he held yesterday, was -- it sounded like he was striking a different tone. Do you think that that helps him at this time?
MAJ. GEN. DONALD SHEPPERD, U.S. AIR FORCE (RET.): Well, it probably helps him at this time, Soledad. He's got a lot of critics out there. He's also got broad shoulders, and it's very clear that the war in Iraq is not going well. But if we try to replace the secretary of defense every time things aren't going well, we're going to be in a hopeless cycle.
A year ago, Afghanistan was not going well. Now it's going better. We need to tough this out, because it's not only his war, it's our war, the president's war, Congress' war. And we need to get this done and not start firing people every time it takes a dip.
O'BRIEN: Is it bad for the troops' morale every time these -- the questioning of the secretary of defense goes on, makes headlines?
SHEPPERD: Soledad, the troops don't think about Secretary Rumsfeld. They're glad to see any high-level visitor, whether it's General Myers, Secretary Rumsfeld, the President, anyone else. They're glad to see him, and they'll ask tough questions, as we saw.
But they don't sit around thinking about Secretary Rumsfeld. They think about their sergeants, their officers and their buddies as they go out on these missions and do the tough things they're doing over there. This secretary is not on their mind.
O'BRIEN: You say the war's not going well. So then why wouldn't you argue that, in fact, you should replace Secretary Rumsfeld?
SHEPPERD: Because wars have good times, they have bad times. Again, Afghanistan a year ago was a mess. And now it's certainly looking better.
We're going to go through some more tough times. We're going to go through some more times that we have things like we had happen yesterday. And that's just the nature of warfare.
You react to what's happening in the field. You can't -- you can't make everything come out right. And you can't fire everybody every time something goes wrong. You look for what went wrong. You try to fix it, including the people. But you don't just start firing people willy-nilly.
O'BRIEN: One of the things that seemed to have gone wrong in the attack in Mosul was the fact that maybe the soldiers were complacent about that some of the people in their midst, the Iraqis who were working with them, if, indeed, it was an Iraqi worker who pulled off the suicide attack. Is that something that you have seen consistently, that people get comfortable, that IDs are not checked in the mess hall, as one reporter told us?
SHEPPERD: Well, you do get comfortable. And that -- you know, that's really a danger in combat everywhere.
In Vietnam, we had Vietnamese workers on the base all the time in the numbers of hundreds. We assumed they were all Vietcong or Vietcong sympathizers. We knew they could throw grenades at any time. We were wary, but you learned to live with it.
Same thing in Iraq. You have to be very careful and very cautious. Something went wrong yesterday, Soledad.
O'BRIEN: Yes, something clearly went wrong. Do you think when you've seen and heard about this -- this bombing, do you think it's the work of one person, one suicide bomber, or does it sound to you like it's more than one person?
SHEPPERD: Absolutely not. It has to be more than one person. And that's why it's important to handle this like a police investigation.
You've got to find out who vetted him, who he worked for, who hired him, who supported him. You've got to look at his family, who he's associated with, because this cannot be the work of one man.
He had to have a lot of help either getting this thing in or wearing this thing in, one or the other. And we've got to find out what it was and correct that in the system. But even when we do, they'll find other ways.
O'BRIEN: Major General Don Sheppard joining us this morning. Thanks.
SHEPPERD: Pleasure.
O'BRIEN: And CNN's going to have an exclusive interview with the Mosul-based commander, General Carter Ham. That's at 12:30 p.m. Eastern Time -- Bill.
HEMMER: About eight minutes past the hour. A much different topic, but a big story again today is the weather outside. Snow and ice storms continue to punch right through the country's midsection. Our own meteorologist, Jacqui Jeras, rather intrepid, too, still freezing outside in the cold of Evansville, Indiana.
Jacqui, good morning to you. How much snow came down there in southwestern Indiana?
JACQUI JERAS, CNN METEOROLOGIST: Well, it really varies. It's very spotty.
We've got about maybe a foot, foot and a half, right here where we're standing, which is in northern Vanderburgh County right near I- 64. But you had maybe 10 miles south just across the river into Kentucky, and it was two feet of snow. So it's really variable throughout the region. Now, the snow has finally stopped here. However, the trouble far from being over. I-64 is now closed from the Illinois-Indiana state line, all the way over to U.S. 231. That's about a 56-mile stretch, and there are hundreds of people who are stranded because of it.
Now, this is also turning into a very long-duration event. This all began in the overnight hours on Tuesday night, and it looks like these folks are going to be sitting here throughout much of the afternoon.
This event will continue across parts of the East over the next couple of days. And this is turning into a record storm.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
JERAS (voice-over): The first powerful winter storm of the season turned a trip to grandmother's House into a holiday headache. Travelers from Texas to Terre Haute braving the snow and ice. Areas near the Ohio River were hardest hit, with one to two feet of snow on the ground near Evansville, Indiana, stranding motorists, causing dozens of accidents, even jeopardizing Christmas deliveries.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: We have another horse to pick up to deliver with the other pony, and they're going to be Christmas presents for some twins in Michigan. Hopefully we get them there before Christmas.
JERAS: Snowy conditions in Amarillo put cars into ditch and temperatures dropped into the teens. St. Louis missed the brunt of the storm, but just south on I-55, some were actually happy to get hit.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Well, you know, day off from work, and get to play in the snow with my four-wheel drive.
JERAS: In Ohio, the problem was ice, then snow, then ice again, and still more snow. And it's not over yet.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
JERAS: Much of central Ohio still getting the heavy snow at this hour. The good news is that the storm system is picking up speed, and it should be over and done with for everybody by later on for tonight -- Bill.
HEMMER: Get yourself a nice cup of hot chocolate or something, Jacqui. Come on inside.
JERAS: Yes, they're very friendly here, I must say. In fact, there's some truckers, Bill, by the way, from Florida. Their workers couldn't get here to this truck stop and some truckers, they had nothing better to do, they just pitched in. They're cleaning plates and giving people coffee.
HEMMER: Wow. Good to hear.
O'BRIEN: Oh, that's nice. HEMMER: Thank you, Jacqui -- Soledad.
O'BRIEN: Let's get right to the weather. Chad Myers is at the CNN Center with the latest forecast.
Hey, Chad.
(WEATHER REPORT)
O'BRIEN: All right, Chad. Thanks.
HEMMER: Exercise and eat right and you'll be healthier, right? Turns out one-half of that advice does not hold water. We'll tell you about it.
O'BRIEN: And speaking of fitness and food, look, that's Miles O'Brien. He learned about the space diet the hard way. I think he looks like he put on a couple of pounds. That's ahead on AMERICAN MORNING.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
HEMMER: Later tonight, the crew of the International Space Station getting some badly needed food in time for Christmas. A re- supply ship is scheduled to launch later tonight to arrive on Christmas Day.
Miles O'Brien watching the story from Atlanta. He's working out this morning.
I understand you're taking us shopping today with the whole O'Brien family as well. Good morning to you.
MILES O'BRIEN, CNN SPACE CORRESPONDENT: Yes. Well, Bill, a little back story here.
They're running out of food on the space station. So this launch is very important. It should dock at the space station Christmas Day. It's an important Christmas present, because if that food doesn't come in time, and dock successfully, the space station crew will have to abandon ship.
Now, what I've been doing is trying to match their reduced calorie diet. And what I found out very quickly is reduction is a relative term.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
M. O'BRIEN (voice-over): The cupboards are going bare up there. So when I spoke to the station keepers yesterday, I was expecting them to look a little gaunt.
(on camera): But you guys look healthy, shall we say.
LEROY CHIAO, SPACE STATION COMMANDER: We've been keeping up with the calories. You know, they're not necessarily the things that we normally choose to eat.
M. O'BRIEN (voice-over): It turns out they're filling the calorie gap with a lot of sweets.
(on camera): In other words, this is the perfect diet for my 12- year-old son.
CHIAO: There's certainly a lot of kids down there that would love to be on the diet that we've been on.
M. O'BRIEN (voice-over): But would I love it?
(on camera): All right, kids. Let's go get some space station food, shall we?
(voice-over): With the space station menu in hand, the fam and I hit the supermarket.
(on camera): Let's get some soups. Come on.
(voice-over): It was a lot of food.
(on camera): So can you imagine trying to stock it in for six months or a year at a time? And then -- and then you have to jam it all in a spacecraft and send it up.
(voice-over): A freighter full of food is slated to arrive Christmas Day. They're drooling up there. And I know why. This diet is brutal. Too many calories, too many sweets.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: You'd have to eat three of these, which is still pretty gross. Would you like M&Ms for dessert?
M. O'BRIEN: How did she know?
(on camera): Food glorious food...
(voice-over): Lunch was a challenge, too. My daily salad morphed into a carbonanza.
(on camera): There's a space station lunch there gobbed on. That's creamy dressing, tons of pasta.
(voice-over): And up there, with all that floating around, you would think Leroy wouldn't need so much chow.
CHIAO: But it takes a lot of energy to operate in space.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
M. O'BRIEN: And then there's this: the exercise, Bill, two solid hours a day. And this is where the diet kind of fell down for me. I was OK on the consumption part. Finding two solid hours to be on the bike, or do some weights, well, at least -- at least I got the right clothes to be an astronaut, OK?
HEMMER: Yes? Oh, there you go.
M. O'BRIEN: I got the -- I got the NASA meatball. But other than that, I'm afraid I washed out of the astronaut school.
HEMMER: Yes. Hey, listen, hang in there, too. And we'll suck up to NASA for you on your behalf, Miles.
M. O'BRIEN: All right. Please, please do.
HEMMER: And a very cute family, too. So thanks for educating us.
M. O'BRIEN: Well, thank you. Thank you.
HEMMER: See you later, Miles.
M. O'BRIEN: My pleasure.
HEMMER: Enjoy the rest of your workout. Only an hour and 15 minutes more to go for you. We're counting. Take care -- Soledad.
S. O'BRIEN: And this morning we continue our series based on the song, "The Twelve Days of Christmas." It is day five, and Dan Lothian explains how wearing golden rings may stave off a particular ailment.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
DANA LOTHIAN, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): At the Little Swiss House Jewelry Store in Brookline, Massachusetts...
BARBARA SOIFER, JEWELRY STORE OWNER: There's a lot of gold here
LOTHIAN: ... owner Barbara Soifer has never had a customer demanding...
SOIFER: They don't want five golden rings.
LOTHIAN: How about a customer seeking gold rings to help arthritic fingers?
SOIFER: No one has actually said that.
LOTHIAN: The question may seem odd, but British researchers say this x-ray of a 62-year-old woman's hand is evidence that a gold band slows the progress of rheumatoid arthritis.
DAVID FREEMAN, ARTHRITIS FOUNDATION: And what they showed is that you had a gold ring on one finger, you had arthritis now in the joints, but this joint itself didn't seem to be affected.
LOTHIAN (on camera): The study conducted on 55 patients a few years ago concluded that, in fact, those wearing a gold ring had up to three times less erosion in that finger.
(voice-over): The theory that gold molecules seep through the skin and into the joints. Gold salt injections have been used since the 1920s to treat rheumatoid arthritis with mixed results.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: If you have arthritis already...
LOTHIAN: But Dr. Freeman, who for years administered the injections, says the gold standard became obsolete.
FREEMAN: It wasn't as effective as more medications that came out.
LOTHIAN: As he educates communities about more conventional treatments, researchers keep mining for medicinal possibilities, locked in a ring.
Dan Lothian, CNN, Boston.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
S. O'BRIEN: Our "Twelve Days of Christmas" series continues tomorrow with "Six Geese A Laying."
HEMMER: It turns out exercise may not be the best medicine after all. We'll explain that in a moment.
But before we go to break, this season's greetings from Rockapella. They stopped by the studio with their -- their wonderful harmonious sounds.
(MUSIC)
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
HEMMER: Back to the QOD, the "Question of the Day." And Jack with that.
CAFFERTY: Thank you, Bill.
And meet Nicky. This is little Nicky, price tag $50,000. Little Nicky is a clone from dead Nicky, which is the owner's previous cat who has used up all her nine lives and gone to that great hairball factory in the sky.
The California company that manufactured little Nicky has maybe the greatest corporate name ever, Genetic Savings and Clone. They're out in California.
They're working on making a dog. More money in dogs, I guess. The first one they say will be ready for shipment in May of next year.
Pet advocacy groups are fried about all this. They point out between three and four million of these dogs and cats are put to sleep in shelters every year.
So the question we're fiddling with here is, where do you draw the line when it comes to cloning animals?
Maureen from Milwaukee writes: "I'm glad to see a company taking on the cat shortage problem in this country."
James in Glenview, Illinois, "One of the most rewarding and probably the only socially redeeming thing I have ever done is adopt my pets from a shelter. Both dogs were and have been awesome. Cat people can be a little odd anyway. Why encourage them with cloning?"
(LAUGHTER)
CAFFERTY: Marilyn in Bethpage writes: "It's not bad enough millions of animals are put down every year. Everyone agrees cloning animals is generally bad for the species. What really burns me up is what charities could do with that $50,000."
"How many kids could we feed or vaccinate? How many books or computerless could it buy? How many police or fire departments could use that cash? It seems human selfishness knows no bounds."
And Dave in Wellington writes -- from Ohio -- "Jack an animal lover? Well, it's not the miracle that I asked for. But I got a miracle nonetheless. Lockjaw was more like what I had in mind."
Hey, Merry Christmas, Dave. You know what I mean?
S. O'BRIEN: Oh.
(CROSSTALK)
CAFFERTY: Wait until you hear the last e-mail of the day in the next batch.
HEMMER: Oh yes?
CAFFERTY: It is maybe the most tasteless e-mail I have ever gotten in the three years of reading this stuff.
S. O'BRIEN: Oh.
CAFFERTY: And it's a giant. I love it.
HEMMER: Are you here tomorrow?
S. O'BRIEN: I'm so looking forward to that.
CAFFERTY: Yes.
HEMMER: Maybe we should save it for tomorrow. I mean, the end of the week, for the holidays. A perfect time, right?
CAFFERTY: Do I tell you how to produce your part of this program?
S. O'BRIEN: I'm not here tomorrow. You've got to do it today.
CAFFERTY: I don't -- I mean, I don't come out here and say, you know, you should not run that story. You should keep until -- right?
I mean, you kind of do whatever you want. You make all your own decisions.
HEMMER: Yes, you're right.
CAFFERTY: Get off my back. Leave me alone. I'm reading it today. And it wouldn't work tomorrow because tomorrow the question will be something different.
HEMMER: Yes, that's right.
S. O'BRIEN: That's true.
HEMMER: Cheerio.
CAFFERTY: Hey, Merry Christmas.
HEMMER: Thank you, brother. You, too.
CAFFERTY: Can we do some more on that subject?
HEMMER: Oh yes.
CAFFERTY: Huh?
S. O'BRIEN: Can I -- can I get to our next story? "House Call," news for those who are fit but fat. They might actually be facing bigger health problems than their friends who are fit and lean.
Medical correspondent Elizabeth Cohen is at the CNN Center for us.
Hey, Elizabeth. Good morning.
ELIZABETH COHEN, CNN MEDICAL CORRESPONDENT: Hi. Good morning, Soledad.
Soledad, there's been this theory out there. Some researchers really believe that it is OK to be overweight, as long as you're exercising and keeping as fit as you possibly can.
The people have dubbed this the fit but fat theory. That it's -- again, it's OK to be overweight as long as you're working out and exercising. However, now a study out of Harvard University that's being published in "The New England Journal of Medicine" that says it's not OK.
What they did is they compared obese, active women to thin, active women. And what they found was that obese women were twice as likely to die during the course of the study, compared to their thin counterparts.
So according to the folks who did this research, they say that this shows that, yes, it's good to be fit, but that weight matters. That it's not enough to exercise. You also need to actually lose those pounds -- Soledad.
S. O'BRIEN: So, is the theory that it's better to be -- you have to exercise because, of course, many people have had that theory that as long as you're in good shape, even if you're overweight it doesn't really matter. And what are they counting as overweight? Is it obese or just somewhat overweight?
COHEN: The women in this study were actually -- and this is women, I should add -- the women in this study were actually obese. They weren't just overweight. They were obese. And I think researchers would say women, men, it doesn't really matter. They just happened to study women here.
And what they actually ended up doing was breaking people down into four groups, and they started with the ideal. They said, according to their statistics, the ideal is to be thin and active, to work out at least three to four hours a week.
The second choice would be to be thin and to be a couch potato. The third choice would be to be fat but active, work out several times a week. The fourth choice would be to be fat and be a couch potato.
So that sort of lays it out there. That you really need to not just exercise, but you need to lose the pounds, as well.
S. O'BRIEN: Elizabeth Cohen. Elizabeth, thanks.
COHEN: Thanks.
S. O'BRIEN: Well, President Bush and John Kerry went to the mat for the White House, but we think somebody else delivered the knockout blow in campaign 2004. Find out who.
Plus, this week, the weather was frightful. But will it turn delightful in time for Christmas morning? Ahead on AMERICAN MORNING.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
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Aired December 23, 2004 - 9:00 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
BILL HEMMER, CNN ANCHOR: Survivors of the attack. The wounded from Mosul now recovering a in Germany, and many more now headed home.
Too close for comfort. New rules have airport screeners changing the way they touch and search female passengers.
And with the harsh winter weather, where are they headed today? Snow and ice yesterday, we saw it. Now rain and wind today on this AMERICAN MORNING.
ANNOUNCER: From the CNN Broadcast Center in New York, this is AMERICAN MORNING with Bill Hemmer and Soledad O'Brien.
SOLEDAD O'BRIEN, CNN ANCHOR: Good morning. Welcome, everybody.
Before the Mosul attack this week, Donald Rumsfeld was already on the defensive over comments he made to troops. In just a few moments, how has he been handling the controversies? Can he survive the criticism? We'll talk with retired General Don Shepperd about the job Secretary Rumsfeld is doing.
HEMMER: Also this hour, he is not in space, but Miles O'Brien is living like an astronaut. He eats what they eat, he exercises like they do, and he's doing it all right here on planet Earth. We'll find out how difficult it is. Miles checks in this hour, as well.
JACK CAFFERTY, CNN ANCHOR: Is there any chance we can actually shoot him into space at some point?
HEMMER: You would like that?
CAFFERTY: Well, no. I just thought it was just an idea.
There's this company out in California, something Savings and Clone they call themselves. Made this lady a cat out of the DNA of her old dead cat. They made her a new little kitten and charged her $50,000 for the -- for the operation, the procedure.
They're working on a dog. They say they'll have it ready for delivery in May. Where do you draw the line at cloning animals is the question we're monkeying with this morning.
HEMMER: Fifty grand, huh?
CAFFERTY: AM@CNN.com.
HEMMER: She likes that kitty. CAFFERTY: Three and four million dogs and cats are put to sleep in this country every year. You know how many of them could be supported until maybe they found an adopted home with $50,000?
HEMMER: Right.
CAFFERTY: I mean, this is just another self-indulgent activity for people with too much money and not enough...
O'BRIEN: Common sense.
CAFFERTY: ... time to figure out what they ought to be doing with it.
HEMMER: We'll get to it. Thank you, Jack.
CAFFERTY: Yes.
HEMMER: Carol Costello is also here.
Carol, good morning to you.
CAROL COSTELLO, CNN ANCHOR: Good morning to you. Good morning, everyone.
"Now in the News," the condition of American soldiers wounded in Tuesday's attack at a mess hall in Mosul, Iraq, being updated this morning. The U.S. military says a vast majority of the 35 soldiers and civilians being treated in Landstuhl, Germany, are expected to recover.
Some arrived at the military hospital yesterday. The commander at Landstuhl says she's hoping to have most of the wounded return home to the United States in time for the holidays.
Here in the states, the woman accused of killing a pregnant woman and stealing her baby may be transferred to another state. Lisa Montgomery back in court today after a preliminary hearing earlier this week.
Authorities are trying to extradite her case from Kansas to Missouri. This as the suspect's ex-husband is apparently speaking out about his wife, his ex-wife. He has reportedly said she faked pregnancies in the past to get attention.
Washington State Republicans say they are prepared for a legal battle in a close governor's race. Yesterday, the state Supreme Court gave election officials the OK to hand count more than 700 absentee ballots. The extra ballots are expected to widen the Democratic candidate's 10-vote lead. Final results are expected later today.
And a welcome change for many travelers at the airport security gates. Starting this morning, screeners can no longer pat down a passenger's breast area. This change comes after hundreds of travelers, mostly women, complained the procedure was too intrusive. They can only go around the perimeter now. O'BRIEN: A lot of women will be cheering that news. People are very -- some people were very upset about that.
COSTELLO: It's true.
O'BRIEN: Yes.
COSTELLO: I don't mean to laugh about it, but it's just bizarre.
HEMMER: You've been laughing about it all morning.
O'BRIEN: It's hard to talk about it, right?
HEMMER: Come on, Carol.
O'BRIEN: I mean, you know.
COSTELLO: Well, like sometimes feeling around the perimeter is just as bad. Especially when you're out in the open and everybody's looking at you. I mean, don't you feel sometimes you're like in some sort of...
O'BRIEN: Yes. It's just like being naked in front of the screeners, for the most part.
COSTELLO: Exactly.
O'BRIEN: Kind of. All right, Carol. Thank you.
Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld is again on the offensive over -- offense, rather, over claims of insensitivity toward American troops in Iraq and for families of the troops killed in action.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
DONALD RUMSFELD, DEFENSE SECRETARY: I am truly saddened by the thought that anyone could have the impression that I or others here are doing anything other than working urgently to see that the lives of the fighting men and women are protected and are cared for in every way humanly possible.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
O'BRIEN: Earlier this week, Secretary Rumsfeld said he would begin personally signing letters to family members of those killed in action. The latest wave of harsh criticism began earlier this month over a response from the secretary to a soldier who asked him why troops weren't giving the Army -- the armor, rather, they need for military vehicles.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
RUMSFELD: As you know, you go to war with the Army you have, not the Army you might want or wish to have at a later time.
(END VIDEO CLIP) O'BRIEN: Some people upset with that response. In Phoenix this morning, CNN military analyst, retired Major General Don Shepperd.
Good morning, General. Nice to see you. Do you think Donald Rumsfeld, certainly in the press conference that he held yesterday, was -- it sounded like he was striking a different tone. Do you think that that helps him at this time?
MAJ. GEN. DONALD SHEPPERD, U.S. AIR FORCE (RET.): Well, it probably helps him at this time, Soledad. He's got a lot of critics out there. He's also got broad shoulders, and it's very clear that the war in Iraq is not going well. But if we try to replace the secretary of defense every time things aren't going well, we're going to be in a hopeless cycle.
A year ago, Afghanistan was not going well. Now it's going better. We need to tough this out, because it's not only his war, it's our war, the president's war, Congress' war. And we need to get this done and not start firing people every time it takes a dip.
O'BRIEN: Is it bad for the troops' morale every time these -- the questioning of the secretary of defense goes on, makes headlines?
SHEPPERD: Soledad, the troops don't think about Secretary Rumsfeld. They're glad to see any high-level visitor, whether it's General Myers, Secretary Rumsfeld, the President, anyone else. They're glad to see him, and they'll ask tough questions, as we saw.
But they don't sit around thinking about Secretary Rumsfeld. They think about their sergeants, their officers and their buddies as they go out on these missions and do the tough things they're doing over there. This secretary is not on their mind.
O'BRIEN: You say the war's not going well. So then why wouldn't you argue that, in fact, you should replace Secretary Rumsfeld?
SHEPPERD: Because wars have good times, they have bad times. Again, Afghanistan a year ago was a mess. And now it's certainly looking better.
We're going to go through some more tough times. We're going to go through some more times that we have things like we had happen yesterday. And that's just the nature of warfare.
You react to what's happening in the field. You can't -- you can't make everything come out right. And you can't fire everybody every time something goes wrong. You look for what went wrong. You try to fix it, including the people. But you don't just start firing people willy-nilly.
O'BRIEN: One of the things that seemed to have gone wrong in the attack in Mosul was the fact that maybe the soldiers were complacent about that some of the people in their midst, the Iraqis who were working with them, if, indeed, it was an Iraqi worker who pulled off the suicide attack. Is that something that you have seen consistently, that people get comfortable, that IDs are not checked in the mess hall, as one reporter told us?
SHEPPERD: Well, you do get comfortable. And that -- you know, that's really a danger in combat everywhere.
In Vietnam, we had Vietnamese workers on the base all the time in the numbers of hundreds. We assumed they were all Vietcong or Vietcong sympathizers. We knew they could throw grenades at any time. We were wary, but you learned to live with it.
Same thing in Iraq. You have to be very careful and very cautious. Something went wrong yesterday, Soledad.
O'BRIEN: Yes, something clearly went wrong. Do you think when you've seen and heard about this -- this bombing, do you think it's the work of one person, one suicide bomber, or does it sound to you like it's more than one person?
SHEPPERD: Absolutely not. It has to be more than one person. And that's why it's important to handle this like a police investigation.
You've got to find out who vetted him, who he worked for, who hired him, who supported him. You've got to look at his family, who he's associated with, because this cannot be the work of one man.
He had to have a lot of help either getting this thing in or wearing this thing in, one or the other. And we've got to find out what it was and correct that in the system. But even when we do, they'll find other ways.
O'BRIEN: Major General Don Sheppard joining us this morning. Thanks.
SHEPPERD: Pleasure.
O'BRIEN: And CNN's going to have an exclusive interview with the Mosul-based commander, General Carter Ham. That's at 12:30 p.m. Eastern Time -- Bill.
HEMMER: About eight minutes past the hour. A much different topic, but a big story again today is the weather outside. Snow and ice storms continue to punch right through the country's midsection. Our own meteorologist, Jacqui Jeras, rather intrepid, too, still freezing outside in the cold of Evansville, Indiana.
Jacqui, good morning to you. How much snow came down there in southwestern Indiana?
JACQUI JERAS, CNN METEOROLOGIST: Well, it really varies. It's very spotty.
We've got about maybe a foot, foot and a half, right here where we're standing, which is in northern Vanderburgh County right near I- 64. But you had maybe 10 miles south just across the river into Kentucky, and it was two feet of snow. So it's really variable throughout the region. Now, the snow has finally stopped here. However, the trouble far from being over. I-64 is now closed from the Illinois-Indiana state line, all the way over to U.S. 231. That's about a 56-mile stretch, and there are hundreds of people who are stranded because of it.
Now, this is also turning into a very long-duration event. This all began in the overnight hours on Tuesday night, and it looks like these folks are going to be sitting here throughout much of the afternoon.
This event will continue across parts of the East over the next couple of days. And this is turning into a record storm.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
JERAS (voice-over): The first powerful winter storm of the season turned a trip to grandmother's House into a holiday headache. Travelers from Texas to Terre Haute braving the snow and ice. Areas near the Ohio River were hardest hit, with one to two feet of snow on the ground near Evansville, Indiana, stranding motorists, causing dozens of accidents, even jeopardizing Christmas deliveries.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: We have another horse to pick up to deliver with the other pony, and they're going to be Christmas presents for some twins in Michigan. Hopefully we get them there before Christmas.
JERAS: Snowy conditions in Amarillo put cars into ditch and temperatures dropped into the teens. St. Louis missed the brunt of the storm, but just south on I-55, some were actually happy to get hit.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Well, you know, day off from work, and get to play in the snow with my four-wheel drive.
JERAS: In Ohio, the problem was ice, then snow, then ice again, and still more snow. And it's not over yet.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
JERAS: Much of central Ohio still getting the heavy snow at this hour. The good news is that the storm system is picking up speed, and it should be over and done with for everybody by later on for tonight -- Bill.
HEMMER: Get yourself a nice cup of hot chocolate or something, Jacqui. Come on inside.
JERAS: Yes, they're very friendly here, I must say. In fact, there's some truckers, Bill, by the way, from Florida. Their workers couldn't get here to this truck stop and some truckers, they had nothing better to do, they just pitched in. They're cleaning plates and giving people coffee.
HEMMER: Wow. Good to hear.
O'BRIEN: Oh, that's nice. HEMMER: Thank you, Jacqui -- Soledad.
O'BRIEN: Let's get right to the weather. Chad Myers is at the CNN Center with the latest forecast.
Hey, Chad.
(WEATHER REPORT)
O'BRIEN: All right, Chad. Thanks.
HEMMER: Exercise and eat right and you'll be healthier, right? Turns out one-half of that advice does not hold water. We'll tell you about it.
O'BRIEN: And speaking of fitness and food, look, that's Miles O'Brien. He learned about the space diet the hard way. I think he looks like he put on a couple of pounds. That's ahead on AMERICAN MORNING.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
HEMMER: Later tonight, the crew of the International Space Station getting some badly needed food in time for Christmas. A re- supply ship is scheduled to launch later tonight to arrive on Christmas Day.
Miles O'Brien watching the story from Atlanta. He's working out this morning.
I understand you're taking us shopping today with the whole O'Brien family as well. Good morning to you.
MILES O'BRIEN, CNN SPACE CORRESPONDENT: Yes. Well, Bill, a little back story here.
They're running out of food on the space station. So this launch is very important. It should dock at the space station Christmas Day. It's an important Christmas present, because if that food doesn't come in time, and dock successfully, the space station crew will have to abandon ship.
Now, what I've been doing is trying to match their reduced calorie diet. And what I found out very quickly is reduction is a relative term.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
M. O'BRIEN (voice-over): The cupboards are going bare up there. So when I spoke to the station keepers yesterday, I was expecting them to look a little gaunt.
(on camera): But you guys look healthy, shall we say.
LEROY CHIAO, SPACE STATION COMMANDER: We've been keeping up with the calories. You know, they're not necessarily the things that we normally choose to eat.
M. O'BRIEN (voice-over): It turns out they're filling the calorie gap with a lot of sweets.
(on camera): In other words, this is the perfect diet for my 12- year-old son.
CHIAO: There's certainly a lot of kids down there that would love to be on the diet that we've been on.
M. O'BRIEN (voice-over): But would I love it?
(on camera): All right, kids. Let's go get some space station food, shall we?
(voice-over): With the space station menu in hand, the fam and I hit the supermarket.
(on camera): Let's get some soups. Come on.
(voice-over): It was a lot of food.
(on camera): So can you imagine trying to stock it in for six months or a year at a time? And then -- and then you have to jam it all in a spacecraft and send it up.
(voice-over): A freighter full of food is slated to arrive Christmas Day. They're drooling up there. And I know why. This diet is brutal. Too many calories, too many sweets.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: You'd have to eat three of these, which is still pretty gross. Would you like M&Ms for dessert?
M. O'BRIEN: How did she know?
(on camera): Food glorious food...
(voice-over): Lunch was a challenge, too. My daily salad morphed into a carbonanza.
(on camera): There's a space station lunch there gobbed on. That's creamy dressing, tons of pasta.
(voice-over): And up there, with all that floating around, you would think Leroy wouldn't need so much chow.
CHIAO: But it takes a lot of energy to operate in space.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
M. O'BRIEN: And then there's this: the exercise, Bill, two solid hours a day. And this is where the diet kind of fell down for me. I was OK on the consumption part. Finding two solid hours to be on the bike, or do some weights, well, at least -- at least I got the right clothes to be an astronaut, OK?
HEMMER: Yes? Oh, there you go.
M. O'BRIEN: I got the -- I got the NASA meatball. But other than that, I'm afraid I washed out of the astronaut school.
HEMMER: Yes. Hey, listen, hang in there, too. And we'll suck up to NASA for you on your behalf, Miles.
M. O'BRIEN: All right. Please, please do.
HEMMER: And a very cute family, too. So thanks for educating us.
M. O'BRIEN: Well, thank you. Thank you.
HEMMER: See you later, Miles.
M. O'BRIEN: My pleasure.
HEMMER: Enjoy the rest of your workout. Only an hour and 15 minutes more to go for you. We're counting. Take care -- Soledad.
S. O'BRIEN: And this morning we continue our series based on the song, "The Twelve Days of Christmas." It is day five, and Dan Lothian explains how wearing golden rings may stave off a particular ailment.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
DANA LOTHIAN, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): At the Little Swiss House Jewelry Store in Brookline, Massachusetts...
BARBARA SOIFER, JEWELRY STORE OWNER: There's a lot of gold here
LOTHIAN: ... owner Barbara Soifer has never had a customer demanding...
SOIFER: They don't want five golden rings.
LOTHIAN: How about a customer seeking gold rings to help arthritic fingers?
SOIFER: No one has actually said that.
LOTHIAN: The question may seem odd, but British researchers say this x-ray of a 62-year-old woman's hand is evidence that a gold band slows the progress of rheumatoid arthritis.
DAVID FREEMAN, ARTHRITIS FOUNDATION: And what they showed is that you had a gold ring on one finger, you had arthritis now in the joints, but this joint itself didn't seem to be affected.
LOTHIAN (on camera): The study conducted on 55 patients a few years ago concluded that, in fact, those wearing a gold ring had up to three times less erosion in that finger.
(voice-over): The theory that gold molecules seep through the skin and into the joints. Gold salt injections have been used since the 1920s to treat rheumatoid arthritis with mixed results.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: If you have arthritis already...
LOTHIAN: But Dr. Freeman, who for years administered the injections, says the gold standard became obsolete.
FREEMAN: It wasn't as effective as more medications that came out.
LOTHIAN: As he educates communities about more conventional treatments, researchers keep mining for medicinal possibilities, locked in a ring.
Dan Lothian, CNN, Boston.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
S. O'BRIEN: Our "Twelve Days of Christmas" series continues tomorrow with "Six Geese A Laying."
HEMMER: It turns out exercise may not be the best medicine after all. We'll explain that in a moment.
But before we go to break, this season's greetings from Rockapella. They stopped by the studio with their -- their wonderful harmonious sounds.
(MUSIC)
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
HEMMER: Back to the QOD, the "Question of the Day." And Jack with that.
CAFFERTY: Thank you, Bill.
And meet Nicky. This is little Nicky, price tag $50,000. Little Nicky is a clone from dead Nicky, which is the owner's previous cat who has used up all her nine lives and gone to that great hairball factory in the sky.
The California company that manufactured little Nicky has maybe the greatest corporate name ever, Genetic Savings and Clone. They're out in California.
They're working on making a dog. More money in dogs, I guess. The first one they say will be ready for shipment in May of next year.
Pet advocacy groups are fried about all this. They point out between three and four million of these dogs and cats are put to sleep in shelters every year.
So the question we're fiddling with here is, where do you draw the line when it comes to cloning animals?
Maureen from Milwaukee writes: "I'm glad to see a company taking on the cat shortage problem in this country."
James in Glenview, Illinois, "One of the most rewarding and probably the only socially redeeming thing I have ever done is adopt my pets from a shelter. Both dogs were and have been awesome. Cat people can be a little odd anyway. Why encourage them with cloning?"
(LAUGHTER)
CAFFERTY: Marilyn in Bethpage writes: "It's not bad enough millions of animals are put down every year. Everyone agrees cloning animals is generally bad for the species. What really burns me up is what charities could do with that $50,000."
"How many kids could we feed or vaccinate? How many books or computerless could it buy? How many police or fire departments could use that cash? It seems human selfishness knows no bounds."
And Dave in Wellington writes -- from Ohio -- "Jack an animal lover? Well, it's not the miracle that I asked for. But I got a miracle nonetheless. Lockjaw was more like what I had in mind."
Hey, Merry Christmas, Dave. You know what I mean?
S. O'BRIEN: Oh.
(CROSSTALK)
CAFFERTY: Wait until you hear the last e-mail of the day in the next batch.
HEMMER: Oh yes?
CAFFERTY: It is maybe the most tasteless e-mail I have ever gotten in the three years of reading this stuff.
S. O'BRIEN: Oh.
CAFFERTY: And it's a giant. I love it.
HEMMER: Are you here tomorrow?
S. O'BRIEN: I'm so looking forward to that.
CAFFERTY: Yes.
HEMMER: Maybe we should save it for tomorrow. I mean, the end of the week, for the holidays. A perfect time, right?
CAFFERTY: Do I tell you how to produce your part of this program?
S. O'BRIEN: I'm not here tomorrow. You've got to do it today.
CAFFERTY: I don't -- I mean, I don't come out here and say, you know, you should not run that story. You should keep until -- right?
I mean, you kind of do whatever you want. You make all your own decisions.
HEMMER: Yes, you're right.
CAFFERTY: Get off my back. Leave me alone. I'm reading it today. And it wouldn't work tomorrow because tomorrow the question will be something different.
HEMMER: Yes, that's right.
S. O'BRIEN: That's true.
HEMMER: Cheerio.
CAFFERTY: Hey, Merry Christmas.
HEMMER: Thank you, brother. You, too.
CAFFERTY: Can we do some more on that subject?
HEMMER: Oh yes.
CAFFERTY: Huh?
S. O'BRIEN: Can I -- can I get to our next story? "House Call," news for those who are fit but fat. They might actually be facing bigger health problems than their friends who are fit and lean.
Medical correspondent Elizabeth Cohen is at the CNN Center for us.
Hey, Elizabeth. Good morning.
ELIZABETH COHEN, CNN MEDICAL CORRESPONDENT: Hi. Good morning, Soledad.
Soledad, there's been this theory out there. Some researchers really believe that it is OK to be overweight, as long as you're exercising and keeping as fit as you possibly can.
The people have dubbed this the fit but fat theory. That it's -- again, it's OK to be overweight as long as you're working out and exercising. However, now a study out of Harvard University that's being published in "The New England Journal of Medicine" that says it's not OK.
What they did is they compared obese, active women to thin, active women. And what they found was that obese women were twice as likely to die during the course of the study, compared to their thin counterparts.
So according to the folks who did this research, they say that this shows that, yes, it's good to be fit, but that weight matters. That it's not enough to exercise. You also need to actually lose those pounds -- Soledad.
S. O'BRIEN: So, is the theory that it's better to be -- you have to exercise because, of course, many people have had that theory that as long as you're in good shape, even if you're overweight it doesn't really matter. And what are they counting as overweight? Is it obese or just somewhat overweight?
COHEN: The women in this study were actually -- and this is women, I should add -- the women in this study were actually obese. They weren't just overweight. They were obese. And I think researchers would say women, men, it doesn't really matter. They just happened to study women here.
And what they actually ended up doing was breaking people down into four groups, and they started with the ideal. They said, according to their statistics, the ideal is to be thin and active, to work out at least three to four hours a week.
The second choice would be to be thin and to be a couch potato. The third choice would be to be fat but active, work out several times a week. The fourth choice would be to be fat and be a couch potato.
So that sort of lays it out there. That you really need to not just exercise, but you need to lose the pounds, as well.
S. O'BRIEN: Elizabeth Cohen. Elizabeth, thanks.
COHEN: Thanks.
S. O'BRIEN: Well, President Bush and John Kerry went to the mat for the White House, but we think somebody else delivered the knockout blow in campaign 2004. Find out who.
Plus, this week, the weather was frightful. But will it turn delightful in time for Christmas morning? Ahead on AMERICAN MORNING.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
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