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American Morning
Four Days Before Iraq Election and No Letup From Insurgents; Democrats Venting Frustration About War, Debating Whether to Confirm Condoleezza Rice
Aired January 26, 2005 - 07:00 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.
SOLEDAD O'BRIEN, CNN ANCHOR: Four days before the Iraq election and no letup from insurgents, now attacking schools where people will vote.
CNN Security Watch: very real threats from terrorists with shoulder-fired missiles. And a high tech plan to protect airplanes may not work.
And plaster right in your own home beneath a layer of ice. The blizzard of '05 keeping New England in a winter lockdown on this American morning.
ANNOUNCER: From the CNN broadcast center in New York, this is AMERICAN MORNING with Soledad O'Brien and Bill Hemmer.
BILL HEMMER, CNN ANCHOR: Good morning, everyone. Good to have you along with us today. 7:00 here in New York. The Iraqi elections come on Sunday, four days away, as you mentioned, on the minds of everyone over there.
Also in Washington, Democrats venting frustration yesterday about the war, debating whether or not to confirm Condoleezza Rice. All this coming to an end later this morning, though. We'll look at whether or not the final vote will even be close there in the Senate chamber.
Also from the file, nobody saw this coming. In Ohio, a 300-pound deer comes out of the woods, bursts into a home through their living room window, wrecks the house and then pins an 84-year-old man against the wall and gores him. He's OK this morning. We're going to talk to two of the people who came to his rescue about what happened.
HEMMER: Jack Cafferty back with us.
Good morning, Jack.
JACK CAFFERTY, CNN ANCHOR: Good morning. We've got a radio station here in New York City that suffered a collective brain freeze a few days ago. They parodied the "We Are The World" song and in the process made fun of and ridiculed the victims of the tsunami; 200,000 people dead in South Asia, and these lunatics at this radio station in New York thought that was comedy material. So we're going to play you a little bit of the song and talk about exactly what went down. It's pretty lame stuff. And then we'll figure out what you think ought to be done with them in a minute or two. HEMMER: They're getting a lot of attention.
CAFFERTY: Unbelievable. It's just stupid.
O'BRIEN: It's sort of a new low.
CAFFERTY: Yes, exactly, a new low.
O'BRIEN: Which is hard to do in this day and age, but they did it.
CAFFERTY: It's makes us look good here, though. I mean, you always like when somebody else gets to the bottom of the barrel.
O'BRIEN: You know what, you're joking, they really did.
All right, Jack, thanks.
Iraqi insurgents not backing down on promises of increased violence leading up to Sunday's elections. Today, four car bombs, three of them just within an hour's time.
CNN's Jeff Koinange live in Baghdad for us this morning.
Jeff, good morning.
JEFF KOINANGE, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Good morning, Soledad.
I'll get to the car bombings in a moment. First, a U.S. Marine helicopter crashed west of Iraq on the border with Jordan. No reports yet whether that was a hostile attack or an accident. The U.S. Army spokesman on the ground is still to get back to us on that information. But a helicopter has crashed west of Iraq.
To the car bombs. Three of them, like you mentioned, in just the space of an hour. This was west of the town of Kirkuk, a town by the name of Riyadh. The first car bomb exploding outside of a police station, killing three policemen, wounding several others.
The second targeting the mayor's office in the same town. So far, we're hearing so far that two Iraqi soldiers are dead in that and several more wounded.
And a third one targeted a multinational convoy in that area. So far, we have no reports of injuries or causalities in that incident.
And in Baghdad, early Wednesday, yet another car bomb. This one targeting also multinational forces. We understand, so far, four soldiers have been injured in that. We don't know their nationalities of the soldiers right now. Schools are being targeted. As you well know, Soledad, schools are going to be used as polling centers in elections just four days away. According to Baghdad police, insurgents fired RPGs and grenades into the schools, extensively damaging three of them, no report of any casualties -- Soledad.
O'BRIEN: Well, Jeff, they certainly did promise that they would keep the pressure up, the insurgents that is, keep the pressure up and keep the violence going as well in that area until the elections.
Jeff Koinange for us in Baghdad this morning. Jeff, thank you -- Bill.
HEMMER: Iraq is our top stories. With the rest of the headlines now, here's Carol Costello across town in New York City.
Good morning, Carol.
CAROL COSTELLO, CNN ANCHOR: Good morning, Bill. Thank you. And good morning to all of you.
Now in the news, more developments this hour in the road to peace in the Middle East. Palestinian/Israeli officials wrapped up a meeting last hour on mutual security and political issues. It's the first round of high level talks in almost two years.
In the meantime, Palestinian sources say their security forces will fully deploy to southern Gaza within 24 hours in keeping with a cease-fire agreement.
Dozens of people in Yonkers, New York are homeless this morning. A late night fire ravaged a seven-story building. It took almost 100 firefighters to tame the blaze. Yonkers officials telling CNN at least two firefighters are injured. Still not clear what sparked the blaze.
A million and a half residents in Phoenix, Arizona are being told to boil their water and not to panic. Recent storms forced muddy water into one of the city's treatment plants. Health and city officials say the warning is only a precaution, and there's no serious health threat. Final test results are expected later today. We'll talk with the mayor of Phoenix later on AMERICAN MORNING.
And two space station astronauts are putting the final touches on exterior repairs to their orbiting home. You can see one of them floating there on the bottom part of the screen. They're installing an experimental robotic arm and inspecting air vents. The five-and-- half hour spacewalk is the first since the men arrived three months ago. Back to you, Bill.
HEMMER: Carol, thanks.
She is a cinch to be confirmed as secretary of state, but today's Senate vote on Condoleezza Rice will not be unanimous. Democrats using yesterday's debate on her nomination to renew their attack on the war in Iraq.
Joe Johns live on Capitol Hill. He starts our coverage there.
Joe, good morning.
JOE JOHNS, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Good morning, Bill.
A few Senate Democrats prolonged this debate to make a point about the Iraq war. But at the end of the day, the president is expected to get his choice for secretary of state, and the vote is not expected to be close.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
JOHNS (voice-over): With the outcome of the vote on the president's choice for secretary of state all but certain, a handful of Democrats morphed the record of Condoleezza Rice and the administration's record on Iraq into one big picture and debated them both.
SEN. EDWARD KENNEDY (D), MASSACHUSETTS: Dr. Rice was a key member of the national security team that developed and justified the rationale for war, and it's been a catastrophic failure, a continuing quagmire. In these circumstances, she should not be promoted to secretary of state.
JOHNS: It seemed as if some of the critics had zeroed in on Rice's call in her confirmation hearings not to have her credibility or her integrity impugned.
SEN. MARK DAYTON (D), MINNESOTA: I don't like to impugn anyone's integrity, but I really don't like being lied to, repeatedly, flagrantly, intentionally. It's wrong, it's un-Democratic, it's un- American and it's dangerous.
JOHNS: Because there was little to no doubt she has the votes to get the job, this was a public-relations war more than a confirmation battle.
Off the Senate floor, Republicans, seeking to make the defiant Democrats pay for prolonging the vote, focused on Rice's personal story, even enlisting help from some well-known African-Americans, including Democrat and former U.S. ambassador to the U.N. Andrew Young, and C. Dolores Tucker of the National Congress of Black Women.
On the floor, Republican Majority Whip Mitch McConnell argued that much of the criticism of Rice is misplaced, because it's the president who makes the policy that subordinates must execute.
SEN. MITCH MCCONNELL (R), MAJORITY WHIP: Of course, as America's top diplomat, Dr. Rice will be expected to bring her expertise on a wide variety of issues to the table. The president's chosen her because he values her opinion. But all foreign policy decisions ultimately rest with the president.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
JOHNS: Democrats said they had a constitutional obligation to debate this nomination fully, but they also realize this is a way to get their message out with their reduced numbers after the last election -- Bill.
HEMMER: Joe, thanks for that. We'll be watching from here. Live coverage of the confirmation vote now expected at 11:30 a.m. Eastern Time. The time might slide. That's what we have right now on our clock -- Soledad.
(WEATHER REPORT)
O'BRIEN: White washed from a weekend blizzard, and it's snowing again in New England today, as we just heard from Chad. The blizzard left its icy imprint on the coastal town of Hull, Massachusetts, about 10 miles from Boston. High winds and a powerful ocean spray coated seaside homes in ice.
Christie Smith joins us from outside her ice castle in Hull, Massachusetts. She's got her daughter along with her as well this morning.
Nice to see you both. Thanks for being with us. We've been looking at some of these pictures.
And if you don't know better, you'd say, gee, that looks like just a lot of snow piled on these homes, but it's not snow; it's ice.
Give me a sense, Christie, about what time you started having the thick ice glom on to your house.
CHRISITE SMITH: I would say probably at about 8:30 on Sunday, when the waves started splashing up against the sea wall and we were getting some ocean spray. It just would instantly hit the house and then start to freeze, and it just built on that.
O'BRIEN: It's a combination of wind and then, as you say, the sea water hitting the house and then freezing instantly. What does it sound like when you're inside?
SMITH: It would just -- well, it's hard to describe the sound of the waves, I guess, hitting the house. I would say that it was just like, I guess a million buckets of water hitting your house all at once.
O'BRIEN: Wow. Well, you must have been pretty nervous. I know you're laughing about it now, which is easy to do in hindsight, right, but were you nervous at the time?
SMITH: We were nervous. I kind of used the neighbors that have been here for a while longer than I had as a queue. Nobody was calling me yet to say that we were evacuating. So I actually probably was kind of smiling, even then, maybe out of nervousness. But it was exciting. It was an exciting day.
O'BRIEN: How tough is it to chip away? Again, it looks like a beautiful snowstorm has hit these homes, but this is ice, and how thick is it, and just how tough is it to chip that stuff off your house?
SMITH: Well, the only place I really wanted to chip anything off was so that I could see what was going on out of one window. Generally, I really think that it probably helped insulate the house a little bit from the winds that we were getting. So I wasn't really wanting to chip it off of the house.
O'BRIEN: Is there a big difference between an ice storm that comes about because of saltwater and an ice storm that maybe the rest of us are experienced who aren't along the water, where it was just an ice storm, but not saltwater?
SMITH: Yes, I think definitely the ice that would come from the ocean spray, because it is ocean water that's coating everything, it's much more -- it's opaque and it actually has maybe a little bit of a greenish-blue cast. It's not a clear ice. It's very opaque. Kind of like frosting, I guess.
O'BRIEN: Well, I tell you, I think that's a good way to put it, because it looks really pretty, but boy, do you have a big job ahead of you when you decide you're going to start chipping all this stuff away, Christie Smith and...
SMITH: Well, with the eight inches of snow -- I'm sorry.
O'BRIEN: Go ahead. Eight inches of what?
SMITH: I was just going to say, with the snow that we're getting today, again, yes, because this is all really frozen slushy snow now, and then with the snow we're getting today, yes, that's going to be a job.
O'BRIEN: Well, you know what, you've got Devin there. She can help you out.
SMITH: She will too. She's good. She was good through the store.
O'BRIEN: I bet she is. Christie Smith and daughter Devin joining us this morning from Hull, Massachusetts with some pretty amazing pictures we're looking it -- Bill.
HEMMER: The last thing they wanted, huh, more snow flakes coming.
O'BRIEN: Yes, that's great news.
HEMMER: Wow.
In a moment here, man versus nature, a 300-pound deer attacking a man in his own home. Meet the police officer, and believe it or not, the cab driver who helped save his life.
O'BRIEN: Also, violence in Iraq, anxiety at home. How are military families handling the days before Iraq's elections? One family will share their story.
HEMMER: Also, a shoulder-launched missile could cripple America's airline industry, but do not expect a system of protection anytime soon. We'll explain in a moment here on AMERICAN MORNING.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
HEMMER: As we get closer to Sunday, we want to continue to explain what we expect to happen on the calendar for Iraq as the Iraqi citizens head to the polls. More than 14 million Iraqis at home are registered to vote. A million Iraqis around the world are eligible, including many in five different cities in this country. The ballot is extensive, some 18,000 candidates, affiliated with some 256 political parties. Voters will elect a 275-member national assembly and 18 provincial councils. The national assembly then selects a president and two vice presidents. The president then appoints a prime minister. And the other major task of the national assembly is to put together a constitution by august of 2005, later in this year, to be approved by the people in Iraq by October, next fall, again, 2005.
Iraqi insurgents have vowed to punish candidates and voters in that election with acts of violence. In fact, four car bombs exploded today. So in these final days prior to the election, what is on the minds of relatives of those serving now overseas in Iraq?
We first introduced you to Katie Pender and her father-in-law, Gary Pender, last month. Katie's husband, specialist Jason Pender, has been stationed with the U.S. army in Mosul since September, and Katie and Gary Pender are back with us today in Cincinnati, Ohio.
Good morning to both of you. Thanks for your time for coming back and spending it with us.
And Katie, I know you speak with your husband I guess just about every night by way of e-mail.
KATIE PENDER, HUSBAND SERVING IN IRAQ: Yes.
HEMMER: By way of telephone, what, two or three times a week? Is that about right on the number?
PENDER: yes.
HEMMER: What is he telling you, Katie, about what he expects or what his job might be this weekend?
PENDER: Well, I don't think his job's going to change very much from what he normally does, but I know he said -- I talked with him last night about it, asked him what he thought. He said he thinks, you know, a lot of people would like to see the election happen, but a lot of people are scared at the same time. They're afraid, you know, the threats that the insurgents have been putting out, and rightly so.
HEMMER: Did he describe the mood? And if he described it, did he use the word "fear," as you just explained to us?
PENDER: Well, he said mostly, it's just scared, which I guess pretty much is the same as fear. He doesn't really get a chance to talk with a lot of locals, like some of the soldiers do.
HEMMER: I see.
Gary, you served in Vietnam. Your brother was killed in that conflict.
GARY PENDER, SON-IN-LAW SERVING IN IRAQ: Right.
HEMMER: What do these elections mean to you and your family?
G. PENDER: I think from the very start, this was the plan to have free elections. I think it's very important for excellent turnout of the Iraqi people. Without that, it's going to put shadows on the election. I know there's a lot of fear over there, but it's important that the people come out and vote and show the terrorists that this is what we really do want as a country.
HEMMER: As a family, or even within military families you have discussions with, do you talk much about the violence in Iraq and about your own fears?
K. PENDER: I know I do. I have several spouses that I keep in contact with. And yes, it's probably a fairly regular discussion sometimes for us to talk about, you know, our worries about our husbands being over there, you know, the times that, you know, maybe a day or two goes in between when we get to talk to them. It's a very nerve-wracking thing, and we worry that, you know, that the violence that goes on, you know, especially when we don't get to talk to our spouses, that it's a very scary thing.
HEMMER: Mr. Pender, do you have the same? Knowing that you have a military background.
G. PENDER: Absolutely. I have a lot of empathy for the families of soldiers that have died and I know there's a number today that have died in a copter crash. And having lost a brother in Vietnam, yes, it's a struggle to deal with on a daily basis, but we're there. We need to make it work. We need to make it happen.
HEMMER: Katie, you have three young children under the age of 5.
K. PENDER: Yes.
HEMMER: What do you tell them about where dad is?
K. PENDER: Well, my 2-year-old, I think, gets really -- he gets really excited whenever he sees pictures of daddy, and I try to ask him, you know, do you remember where daddy is? And I tell him that he's in Iraq, that he's working hard, that he's trying to help people have a better life. And, I mean, we probably talk about him at least once a day, whether they get a chance to talk with him when we talk on the Internet or not, or whether it's just at night when we're going to bed and say prayers and ask that the lord will bless daddy.
HEMMER: When do you hope to get him home?
K. PENDER: Probably not for good until at least September or so of this year. But he'll come home on leave sometime this summer, I hope.
HEMMER: Be patient. Best of luck to you. Thank you, Katie.
K. PENDER: Thank you. HEMMER: Thank you, Gary.
G. PENDER: Thank you.
HEMMER: The Penders in Cincinnati, Ohio -- Soledad.
O'BRIEN: In North Carolina, a crash victim is on life support after an emergency-services team declared him dead at the scene. Larry Green was taken to the county morgue in a body bag. Hours after the accident a medical examiner noticed, though, that he was breathing. Green was then rushed to Duke University Medical Center.
His family, of course, is wondering just what went wrong.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
STEVE GREEN, VICTIM'S BROTHER: Seeing your brother laying there with a sheet over the body, and come to find out that he was still alive a little bit, he's breathing. That's serious. It's so much mixed emotion inside. And I feel relieved, angry, praise God, everything.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
HEMMER: Several members of the Franklin County Emergency Services have been suspended pending the investigation now underway.
HEMMER: 21 minutes past the hour now.
An ex-corporate bigwig gets painted as Pinocchio in court. Andy has the lowdown, "Minding Your Business" right after this on AMERICAN MORNING. Back in a moment.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
O'BRIEN; Welcome back, everybody. After days of falling stocks, a little bit of good news for investors.
And the trial against WorldCom chairman Bernie Ebbers begins. Andy Serwer's "Minding Your Business" this morning.
You want to start with the market?
ANDY SERWER, "FORTUNE" MAGAZINE: I do. A minor miracle of sorts yesterday on Wall Street. The seas parted and stocks went up. Look at that, 92 up on the Dow, blue chips led the way on a percentage basis, you can see here. Health care stocks, like Merck, Pfizer and Johnson & Johnson in the fore. Biggest gains of the year. That's not surprising, considering what kind of stuff we've seen this year.
Now, meanwhile, also in lower Manhattan, opening statements in the trial of Bernie Ebbers, the former CEO of WorldCom. In kind of a novel defense, Bernie Ebbers seems to be pleading ignorance. At least that's what his defense attorney is trying to do, to say he's charismatic and a visionary, but that he didn't understand technology or money management at all, and that basically, his chief financial officer, Scott Sullivan, was in charge of that department, and it will be very interesting to see how jurors take to the stupid defense, as one New York writer termed it, which I think is fairly accurate.
O'BRIEN: Isn't that the ken lay defense, too?
SERWER: I just don't know.
CAFFERTY: In his case...
SERWER: ... that may be accurate, to finish your sentence, correct?
CAFFERTY: Yes.
SERWER: So it'll be fun to watch.
CAFFERTY: Tell you one thing, I'll bet you there ain't a jury they can empanel in this city that'll buy it. If they were trying him in Lancaster, Pennsylvania -- not in this town.
SERWER: Well, he would have wanted the trial to be down in Mississippi, because that's where he's from.
CAFFERTY: Sure.
SERWER: But it's didn't happen.
O'BRIEN: That's not going to happen.
SERWER: No.
O'BRIEN: Not this time around.
SERWER: No.
O'BRIEN: All right, Andy, thanks.
SERWER: You're welcome.
O'BRIEN: Question of the Day. Back to Jack here.
CAFFERTY: Thank you Bill. New York radio station Hot 97 is in trouble for airing a song parody of the tsunami that was filled with anti--Chinese slurs.
Listen.
(MUSIC)
CAFFERTY: That's pretty funny, right? 200,000 people killed over there. The song was bad enough. Then the radio host, some idiot named Tasha Jones, got mad when another news reader, Ms. Info, who is Asian, objected to the -- Ms. Info -- objected to the song during a live broadcast. One of the cohost, a clown named Todd Lynn (ph), interjected then saying, "I'm going to start shooting Asians." City council members and Asian-American advocacy groups furious, as they should be. The song played on the station's morning show several days, which is a tribute to the wisdom of the management over at that place. It was finally pulled on Friday.
The station is owned by MS Communications. They've apologized and Miss Jones and her staff have donated a week's salary to the tsunami relief efforts. Critics say it's not enough. They want federal fines, a stronger apology and for the morning show crew to be summarily fired.
Here's the question, how should radio station Hot 97, that aired the tsunami song, be punished. One guy said they ought to send them over to the tsunami area, where you were, for a week or so and let them see what happened as a result of this tragedy, and then have them come back and report on how funny they think it is.
SERWER: They could it work it out, you know, I think that's right.
HEMMER: They didn't play the song just once right?
CAFFERTY: No, they played it for several days.
O'BRIEN: Which is why, the management...
SERWER: What were they thinking?
O'BRIEN: At the risk of saying something inappropriate, I really am just going to say...
CAFFERTY: She's seldom at a loss for words.
O'BRIEN: You know, the management, what are they thinking about?
SERWER: Why don't they fine them? I mean, that's not a wardrobe malfunction; that's a brain malfunction. I mean, that's serious stuff.
CAFFERTY: So we're going to spend the next couple hours beating the hell out of that radio station.
O'BRIEN: Good. Here, here! I'm up for it.
Also ahead this morning, your dose of "90-Second Pop."
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
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Aired January 26, 2005 - 07:00 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
SOLEDAD O'BRIEN, CNN ANCHOR: Four days before the Iraq election and no letup from insurgents, now attacking schools where people will vote.
CNN Security Watch: very real threats from terrorists with shoulder-fired missiles. And a high tech plan to protect airplanes may not work.
And plaster right in your own home beneath a layer of ice. The blizzard of '05 keeping New England in a winter lockdown on this American morning.
ANNOUNCER: From the CNN broadcast center in New York, this is AMERICAN MORNING with Soledad O'Brien and Bill Hemmer.
BILL HEMMER, CNN ANCHOR: Good morning, everyone. Good to have you along with us today. 7:00 here in New York. The Iraqi elections come on Sunday, four days away, as you mentioned, on the minds of everyone over there.
Also in Washington, Democrats venting frustration yesterday about the war, debating whether or not to confirm Condoleezza Rice. All this coming to an end later this morning, though. We'll look at whether or not the final vote will even be close there in the Senate chamber.
Also from the file, nobody saw this coming. In Ohio, a 300-pound deer comes out of the woods, bursts into a home through their living room window, wrecks the house and then pins an 84-year-old man against the wall and gores him. He's OK this morning. We're going to talk to two of the people who came to his rescue about what happened.
HEMMER: Jack Cafferty back with us.
Good morning, Jack.
JACK CAFFERTY, CNN ANCHOR: Good morning. We've got a radio station here in New York City that suffered a collective brain freeze a few days ago. They parodied the "We Are The World" song and in the process made fun of and ridiculed the victims of the tsunami; 200,000 people dead in South Asia, and these lunatics at this radio station in New York thought that was comedy material. So we're going to play you a little bit of the song and talk about exactly what went down. It's pretty lame stuff. And then we'll figure out what you think ought to be done with them in a minute or two. HEMMER: They're getting a lot of attention.
CAFFERTY: Unbelievable. It's just stupid.
O'BRIEN: It's sort of a new low.
CAFFERTY: Yes, exactly, a new low.
O'BRIEN: Which is hard to do in this day and age, but they did it.
CAFFERTY: It's makes us look good here, though. I mean, you always like when somebody else gets to the bottom of the barrel.
O'BRIEN: You know what, you're joking, they really did.
All right, Jack, thanks.
Iraqi insurgents not backing down on promises of increased violence leading up to Sunday's elections. Today, four car bombs, three of them just within an hour's time.
CNN's Jeff Koinange live in Baghdad for us this morning.
Jeff, good morning.
JEFF KOINANGE, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Good morning, Soledad.
I'll get to the car bombings in a moment. First, a U.S. Marine helicopter crashed west of Iraq on the border with Jordan. No reports yet whether that was a hostile attack or an accident. The U.S. Army spokesman on the ground is still to get back to us on that information. But a helicopter has crashed west of Iraq.
To the car bombs. Three of them, like you mentioned, in just the space of an hour. This was west of the town of Kirkuk, a town by the name of Riyadh. The first car bomb exploding outside of a police station, killing three policemen, wounding several others.
The second targeting the mayor's office in the same town. So far, we're hearing so far that two Iraqi soldiers are dead in that and several more wounded.
And a third one targeted a multinational convoy in that area. So far, we have no reports of injuries or causalities in that incident.
And in Baghdad, early Wednesday, yet another car bomb. This one targeting also multinational forces. We understand, so far, four soldiers have been injured in that. We don't know their nationalities of the soldiers right now. Schools are being targeted. As you well know, Soledad, schools are going to be used as polling centers in elections just four days away. According to Baghdad police, insurgents fired RPGs and grenades into the schools, extensively damaging three of them, no report of any casualties -- Soledad.
O'BRIEN: Well, Jeff, they certainly did promise that they would keep the pressure up, the insurgents that is, keep the pressure up and keep the violence going as well in that area until the elections.
Jeff Koinange for us in Baghdad this morning. Jeff, thank you -- Bill.
HEMMER: Iraq is our top stories. With the rest of the headlines now, here's Carol Costello across town in New York City.
Good morning, Carol.
CAROL COSTELLO, CNN ANCHOR: Good morning, Bill. Thank you. And good morning to all of you.
Now in the news, more developments this hour in the road to peace in the Middle East. Palestinian/Israeli officials wrapped up a meeting last hour on mutual security and political issues. It's the first round of high level talks in almost two years.
In the meantime, Palestinian sources say their security forces will fully deploy to southern Gaza within 24 hours in keeping with a cease-fire agreement.
Dozens of people in Yonkers, New York are homeless this morning. A late night fire ravaged a seven-story building. It took almost 100 firefighters to tame the blaze. Yonkers officials telling CNN at least two firefighters are injured. Still not clear what sparked the blaze.
A million and a half residents in Phoenix, Arizona are being told to boil their water and not to panic. Recent storms forced muddy water into one of the city's treatment plants. Health and city officials say the warning is only a precaution, and there's no serious health threat. Final test results are expected later today. We'll talk with the mayor of Phoenix later on AMERICAN MORNING.
And two space station astronauts are putting the final touches on exterior repairs to their orbiting home. You can see one of them floating there on the bottom part of the screen. They're installing an experimental robotic arm and inspecting air vents. The five-and-- half hour spacewalk is the first since the men arrived three months ago. Back to you, Bill.
HEMMER: Carol, thanks.
She is a cinch to be confirmed as secretary of state, but today's Senate vote on Condoleezza Rice will not be unanimous. Democrats using yesterday's debate on her nomination to renew their attack on the war in Iraq.
Joe Johns live on Capitol Hill. He starts our coverage there.
Joe, good morning.
JOE JOHNS, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Good morning, Bill.
A few Senate Democrats prolonged this debate to make a point about the Iraq war. But at the end of the day, the president is expected to get his choice for secretary of state, and the vote is not expected to be close.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
JOHNS (voice-over): With the outcome of the vote on the president's choice for secretary of state all but certain, a handful of Democrats morphed the record of Condoleezza Rice and the administration's record on Iraq into one big picture and debated them both.
SEN. EDWARD KENNEDY (D), MASSACHUSETTS: Dr. Rice was a key member of the national security team that developed and justified the rationale for war, and it's been a catastrophic failure, a continuing quagmire. In these circumstances, she should not be promoted to secretary of state.
JOHNS: It seemed as if some of the critics had zeroed in on Rice's call in her confirmation hearings not to have her credibility or her integrity impugned.
SEN. MARK DAYTON (D), MINNESOTA: I don't like to impugn anyone's integrity, but I really don't like being lied to, repeatedly, flagrantly, intentionally. It's wrong, it's un-Democratic, it's un- American and it's dangerous.
JOHNS: Because there was little to no doubt she has the votes to get the job, this was a public-relations war more than a confirmation battle.
Off the Senate floor, Republicans, seeking to make the defiant Democrats pay for prolonging the vote, focused on Rice's personal story, even enlisting help from some well-known African-Americans, including Democrat and former U.S. ambassador to the U.N. Andrew Young, and C. Dolores Tucker of the National Congress of Black Women.
On the floor, Republican Majority Whip Mitch McConnell argued that much of the criticism of Rice is misplaced, because it's the president who makes the policy that subordinates must execute.
SEN. MITCH MCCONNELL (R), MAJORITY WHIP: Of course, as America's top diplomat, Dr. Rice will be expected to bring her expertise on a wide variety of issues to the table. The president's chosen her because he values her opinion. But all foreign policy decisions ultimately rest with the president.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
JOHNS: Democrats said they had a constitutional obligation to debate this nomination fully, but they also realize this is a way to get their message out with their reduced numbers after the last election -- Bill.
HEMMER: Joe, thanks for that. We'll be watching from here. Live coverage of the confirmation vote now expected at 11:30 a.m. Eastern Time. The time might slide. That's what we have right now on our clock -- Soledad.
(WEATHER REPORT)
O'BRIEN: White washed from a weekend blizzard, and it's snowing again in New England today, as we just heard from Chad. The blizzard left its icy imprint on the coastal town of Hull, Massachusetts, about 10 miles from Boston. High winds and a powerful ocean spray coated seaside homes in ice.
Christie Smith joins us from outside her ice castle in Hull, Massachusetts. She's got her daughter along with her as well this morning.
Nice to see you both. Thanks for being with us. We've been looking at some of these pictures.
And if you don't know better, you'd say, gee, that looks like just a lot of snow piled on these homes, but it's not snow; it's ice.
Give me a sense, Christie, about what time you started having the thick ice glom on to your house.
CHRISITE SMITH: I would say probably at about 8:30 on Sunday, when the waves started splashing up against the sea wall and we were getting some ocean spray. It just would instantly hit the house and then start to freeze, and it just built on that.
O'BRIEN: It's a combination of wind and then, as you say, the sea water hitting the house and then freezing instantly. What does it sound like when you're inside?
SMITH: It would just -- well, it's hard to describe the sound of the waves, I guess, hitting the house. I would say that it was just like, I guess a million buckets of water hitting your house all at once.
O'BRIEN: Wow. Well, you must have been pretty nervous. I know you're laughing about it now, which is easy to do in hindsight, right, but were you nervous at the time?
SMITH: We were nervous. I kind of used the neighbors that have been here for a while longer than I had as a queue. Nobody was calling me yet to say that we were evacuating. So I actually probably was kind of smiling, even then, maybe out of nervousness. But it was exciting. It was an exciting day.
O'BRIEN: How tough is it to chip away? Again, it looks like a beautiful snowstorm has hit these homes, but this is ice, and how thick is it, and just how tough is it to chip that stuff off your house?
SMITH: Well, the only place I really wanted to chip anything off was so that I could see what was going on out of one window. Generally, I really think that it probably helped insulate the house a little bit from the winds that we were getting. So I wasn't really wanting to chip it off of the house.
O'BRIEN: Is there a big difference between an ice storm that comes about because of saltwater and an ice storm that maybe the rest of us are experienced who aren't along the water, where it was just an ice storm, but not saltwater?
SMITH: Yes, I think definitely the ice that would come from the ocean spray, because it is ocean water that's coating everything, it's much more -- it's opaque and it actually has maybe a little bit of a greenish-blue cast. It's not a clear ice. It's very opaque. Kind of like frosting, I guess.
O'BRIEN: Well, I tell you, I think that's a good way to put it, because it looks really pretty, but boy, do you have a big job ahead of you when you decide you're going to start chipping all this stuff away, Christie Smith and...
SMITH: Well, with the eight inches of snow -- I'm sorry.
O'BRIEN: Go ahead. Eight inches of what?
SMITH: I was just going to say, with the snow that we're getting today, again, yes, because this is all really frozen slushy snow now, and then with the snow we're getting today, yes, that's going to be a job.
O'BRIEN: Well, you know what, you've got Devin there. She can help you out.
SMITH: She will too. She's good. She was good through the store.
O'BRIEN: I bet she is. Christie Smith and daughter Devin joining us this morning from Hull, Massachusetts with some pretty amazing pictures we're looking it -- Bill.
HEMMER: The last thing they wanted, huh, more snow flakes coming.
O'BRIEN: Yes, that's great news.
HEMMER: Wow.
In a moment here, man versus nature, a 300-pound deer attacking a man in his own home. Meet the police officer, and believe it or not, the cab driver who helped save his life.
O'BRIEN: Also, violence in Iraq, anxiety at home. How are military families handling the days before Iraq's elections? One family will share their story.
HEMMER: Also, a shoulder-launched missile could cripple America's airline industry, but do not expect a system of protection anytime soon. We'll explain in a moment here on AMERICAN MORNING.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
HEMMER: As we get closer to Sunday, we want to continue to explain what we expect to happen on the calendar for Iraq as the Iraqi citizens head to the polls. More than 14 million Iraqis at home are registered to vote. A million Iraqis around the world are eligible, including many in five different cities in this country. The ballot is extensive, some 18,000 candidates, affiliated with some 256 political parties. Voters will elect a 275-member national assembly and 18 provincial councils. The national assembly then selects a president and two vice presidents. The president then appoints a prime minister. And the other major task of the national assembly is to put together a constitution by august of 2005, later in this year, to be approved by the people in Iraq by October, next fall, again, 2005.
Iraqi insurgents have vowed to punish candidates and voters in that election with acts of violence. In fact, four car bombs exploded today. So in these final days prior to the election, what is on the minds of relatives of those serving now overseas in Iraq?
We first introduced you to Katie Pender and her father-in-law, Gary Pender, last month. Katie's husband, specialist Jason Pender, has been stationed with the U.S. army in Mosul since September, and Katie and Gary Pender are back with us today in Cincinnati, Ohio.
Good morning to both of you. Thanks for your time for coming back and spending it with us.
And Katie, I know you speak with your husband I guess just about every night by way of e-mail.
KATIE PENDER, HUSBAND SERVING IN IRAQ: Yes.
HEMMER: By way of telephone, what, two or three times a week? Is that about right on the number?
PENDER: yes.
HEMMER: What is he telling you, Katie, about what he expects or what his job might be this weekend?
PENDER: Well, I don't think his job's going to change very much from what he normally does, but I know he said -- I talked with him last night about it, asked him what he thought. He said he thinks, you know, a lot of people would like to see the election happen, but a lot of people are scared at the same time. They're afraid, you know, the threats that the insurgents have been putting out, and rightly so.
HEMMER: Did he describe the mood? And if he described it, did he use the word "fear," as you just explained to us?
PENDER: Well, he said mostly, it's just scared, which I guess pretty much is the same as fear. He doesn't really get a chance to talk with a lot of locals, like some of the soldiers do.
HEMMER: I see.
Gary, you served in Vietnam. Your brother was killed in that conflict.
GARY PENDER, SON-IN-LAW SERVING IN IRAQ: Right.
HEMMER: What do these elections mean to you and your family?
G. PENDER: I think from the very start, this was the plan to have free elections. I think it's very important for excellent turnout of the Iraqi people. Without that, it's going to put shadows on the election. I know there's a lot of fear over there, but it's important that the people come out and vote and show the terrorists that this is what we really do want as a country.
HEMMER: As a family, or even within military families you have discussions with, do you talk much about the violence in Iraq and about your own fears?
K. PENDER: I know I do. I have several spouses that I keep in contact with. And yes, it's probably a fairly regular discussion sometimes for us to talk about, you know, our worries about our husbands being over there, you know, the times that, you know, maybe a day or two goes in between when we get to talk to them. It's a very nerve-wracking thing, and we worry that, you know, that the violence that goes on, you know, especially when we don't get to talk to our spouses, that it's a very scary thing.
HEMMER: Mr. Pender, do you have the same? Knowing that you have a military background.
G. PENDER: Absolutely. I have a lot of empathy for the families of soldiers that have died and I know there's a number today that have died in a copter crash. And having lost a brother in Vietnam, yes, it's a struggle to deal with on a daily basis, but we're there. We need to make it work. We need to make it happen.
HEMMER: Katie, you have three young children under the age of 5.
K. PENDER: Yes.
HEMMER: What do you tell them about where dad is?
K. PENDER: Well, my 2-year-old, I think, gets really -- he gets really excited whenever he sees pictures of daddy, and I try to ask him, you know, do you remember where daddy is? And I tell him that he's in Iraq, that he's working hard, that he's trying to help people have a better life. And, I mean, we probably talk about him at least once a day, whether they get a chance to talk with him when we talk on the Internet or not, or whether it's just at night when we're going to bed and say prayers and ask that the lord will bless daddy.
HEMMER: When do you hope to get him home?
K. PENDER: Probably not for good until at least September or so of this year. But he'll come home on leave sometime this summer, I hope.
HEMMER: Be patient. Best of luck to you. Thank you, Katie.
K. PENDER: Thank you. HEMMER: Thank you, Gary.
G. PENDER: Thank you.
HEMMER: The Penders in Cincinnati, Ohio -- Soledad.
O'BRIEN: In North Carolina, a crash victim is on life support after an emergency-services team declared him dead at the scene. Larry Green was taken to the county morgue in a body bag. Hours after the accident a medical examiner noticed, though, that he was breathing. Green was then rushed to Duke University Medical Center.
His family, of course, is wondering just what went wrong.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
STEVE GREEN, VICTIM'S BROTHER: Seeing your brother laying there with a sheet over the body, and come to find out that he was still alive a little bit, he's breathing. That's serious. It's so much mixed emotion inside. And I feel relieved, angry, praise God, everything.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
HEMMER: Several members of the Franklin County Emergency Services have been suspended pending the investigation now underway.
HEMMER: 21 minutes past the hour now.
An ex-corporate bigwig gets painted as Pinocchio in court. Andy has the lowdown, "Minding Your Business" right after this on AMERICAN MORNING. Back in a moment.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
O'BRIEN; Welcome back, everybody. After days of falling stocks, a little bit of good news for investors.
And the trial against WorldCom chairman Bernie Ebbers begins. Andy Serwer's "Minding Your Business" this morning.
You want to start with the market?
ANDY SERWER, "FORTUNE" MAGAZINE: I do. A minor miracle of sorts yesterday on Wall Street. The seas parted and stocks went up. Look at that, 92 up on the Dow, blue chips led the way on a percentage basis, you can see here. Health care stocks, like Merck, Pfizer and Johnson & Johnson in the fore. Biggest gains of the year. That's not surprising, considering what kind of stuff we've seen this year.
Now, meanwhile, also in lower Manhattan, opening statements in the trial of Bernie Ebbers, the former CEO of WorldCom. In kind of a novel defense, Bernie Ebbers seems to be pleading ignorance. At least that's what his defense attorney is trying to do, to say he's charismatic and a visionary, but that he didn't understand technology or money management at all, and that basically, his chief financial officer, Scott Sullivan, was in charge of that department, and it will be very interesting to see how jurors take to the stupid defense, as one New York writer termed it, which I think is fairly accurate.
O'BRIEN: Isn't that the ken lay defense, too?
SERWER: I just don't know.
CAFFERTY: In his case...
SERWER: ... that may be accurate, to finish your sentence, correct?
CAFFERTY: Yes.
SERWER: So it'll be fun to watch.
CAFFERTY: Tell you one thing, I'll bet you there ain't a jury they can empanel in this city that'll buy it. If they were trying him in Lancaster, Pennsylvania -- not in this town.
SERWER: Well, he would have wanted the trial to be down in Mississippi, because that's where he's from.
CAFFERTY: Sure.
SERWER: But it's didn't happen.
O'BRIEN: That's not going to happen.
SERWER: No.
O'BRIEN: Not this time around.
SERWER: No.
O'BRIEN: All right, Andy, thanks.
SERWER: You're welcome.
O'BRIEN: Question of the Day. Back to Jack here.
CAFFERTY: Thank you Bill. New York radio station Hot 97 is in trouble for airing a song parody of the tsunami that was filled with anti--Chinese slurs.
Listen.
(MUSIC)
CAFFERTY: That's pretty funny, right? 200,000 people killed over there. The song was bad enough. Then the radio host, some idiot named Tasha Jones, got mad when another news reader, Ms. Info, who is Asian, objected to the -- Ms. Info -- objected to the song during a live broadcast. One of the cohost, a clown named Todd Lynn (ph), interjected then saying, "I'm going to start shooting Asians." City council members and Asian-American advocacy groups furious, as they should be. The song played on the station's morning show several days, which is a tribute to the wisdom of the management over at that place. It was finally pulled on Friday.
The station is owned by MS Communications. They've apologized and Miss Jones and her staff have donated a week's salary to the tsunami relief efforts. Critics say it's not enough. They want federal fines, a stronger apology and for the morning show crew to be summarily fired.
Here's the question, how should radio station Hot 97, that aired the tsunami song, be punished. One guy said they ought to send them over to the tsunami area, where you were, for a week or so and let them see what happened as a result of this tragedy, and then have them come back and report on how funny they think it is.
SERWER: They could it work it out, you know, I think that's right.
HEMMER: They didn't play the song just once right?
CAFFERTY: No, they played it for several days.
O'BRIEN: Which is why, the management...
SERWER: What were they thinking?
O'BRIEN: At the risk of saying something inappropriate, I really am just going to say...
CAFFERTY: She's seldom at a loss for words.
O'BRIEN: You know, the management, what are they thinking about?
SERWER: Why don't they fine them? I mean, that's not a wardrobe malfunction; that's a brain malfunction. I mean, that's serious stuff.
CAFFERTY: So we're going to spend the next couple hours beating the hell out of that radio station.
O'BRIEN: Good. Here, here! I'm up for it.
Also ahead this morning, your dose of "90-Second Pop."
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
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