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CNN Live Today

Saddam Hussein On Trial; Gifts of Giving Tips

Aired November 28, 2005 - 10:00   ET

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

MILES O'BRIEN, CNN ANCHOR: Early, late, (INAUDIBLE), depending on which way you look at it.
SOLEDAD O'BRIEN, CNN ANCHOR: And you're the science guy. That's reassuring.

MILES O'BRIEN: And we'll be joined by Mike Wallace.

SOLEDAD O'BRIEN: Yes, that's right.

MILES O'BRIEN: I'm getting ready for some really tough questions for him because he is Mike Wallace, after all.

SOLEDAD O'BRIEN: Good. We'll (INAUDIBLE) him.

MILES O'BRIEN: I really am not qualified to carry his briefcase, but I'm going to talk to him anyhow.

SOLEDAD O'BRIEN: That's ahead tomorrow. We'll see you then at 6:00 a.m. Eastern.

Let's get right to Tony Harris. He's at the CNN Center, going to take you through the next couple of hours.

Hey, Tony, good morning.

TONY HARRIS, CNN ANCHOR: Hey, good morning to you. Expanded hours. Great job. Fortitude stamina by that team. Get job. Get some rest.

SOLEDAD O'BRIEN: Thank you, Tony.

HARRIS: All right. Take care, everybody.

Well, it happened while many of us slept. A defiant former dictator, Saddam Hussein, adamant and vocal in a Baghdad courtroom. Live coverage as the former Iraqi president answers to charges he ordered the deaths of scores of people back in 1982, ahead on CNN LIVE TODAY.

First, though, a check of other stories happening right "Now in the News."

Drug maker Merck announced this morning that it will cut some 7,000 jobs or about 11 percent of its worldwide staff. Half of the job cuts will take place in the United States. The company will also sell or close five of its manufacturing plants. Merck is facing thousands of liability lawsuits from its recalled painkiller Vioxx.

Later today, President Bush will renew his call for immigration reform and highlights new enforcement measures at the border. Mr. Bush will first visit Tucson, Arizona, today and El Paso, Texas, tomorrow. Congress has shelved a comprehensive immigration strategy and even the president's own party has been divided. CNN will have live coverage of the president's speech now scheduled at 4:45 Eastern time.

Dozens are dead and even more trapped after a coal mine explosion in northeast China. Officials there say the blast last night killed at least 68 miners. Another 79 are believed to be trapped underground. China's coal miners are considered the deadliest in the world. Those mines kill thousands each year.

Kidnappers abducted four western aid workers in Iraq over the weekend. No word yet on the victims' names. But they are described as an American, two Canadians and a Brit. Also, no details of the abduction are being released, nor is the name of the agency for which they worked.

Good morning, everyone. I'm Tony Harris at the CNN Center in Atlanta, sitting in today for Daryn Kagan.

Iraqis who waited weeks for the Saddam Hussein trial to resume now face another wait for justice. The trial of Hussein and his seven co-defendant resumed today after a 40-day recess. But after less than three hours of hearings, the judge ordered another delay so defendants could find new attorneys. Before the adjournment, though, Hussein showed some of the fire he's displayed during earlier court proceedings. He complained to the judge about being brought to the courtroom in handcuffs and shackles by foreign guards.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

SADDAM HUSSEIN, (through translator): Mr. Judge, I don't want you to (INAUDIBLE). I want you to order them. They are on our land. Our -- you have the servant. You are Iraqi and there are foreigners and occupiers and invaders.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

HARRIS: We have extensive coverage of the Hussein trial this morning. We'll hear from our Senior International Correspondent, Nic Robertson, who was inside the courtroom, and Michael Scharf, who served as legal adviser to the Hussein tribunal and is a professor at Case Western Reserve University. We begin with Nic in Baghdad.

NIC ROBERTSON, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Well, Tony, I don't think anyone really in the courtroom expected the judge, when they went in this morning, expected the judge to be ordering a seven-day wait before the trial would restart again. This call came about because Taha Yassin Ramadan, the former vice president, stood up in the court and said that he objected to the court-appointed lawyers. He said in the last phase of the trial he'd come with three of his own lawyers. One of them had subsequently been shot dead, the other wounded in an assassination attempt. He said that lawyer and another lawyer have now left the country and that he wasn't going to use the court- appointed lawyers.

At that point, Saddam Hussein's half-brother, Barazan Ibrahim, stood up and said the same thing in the courtroom. He said he had the same lawyers and that he wasn't going to accept the court-appointed lawyers. The judge at that point really had no other choice, it seemed, than to call for this seven-day adjournment.

But even before he could do that, he was hearing criticisms and complaints from Saddam Hussein's former chief judge. Mr. Bandar stood up and criticized the judge, saying that I've written to you, I've complained that there are people in this court that have threatened to kill me and Saddam Hussein. You've done nothing about it, he said. Saddam Hussein got up and then criticized the judge saying, I've sent you letters, I've sent you memos, you haven't responded to those.

So the proceedings in the afternoon really taking a completely different turn to those in the morning. Largely, it seemed, because the defense lawyers and the defendants had been able to meet during lunch -- during the lunch period and after that they came out really fighting.

Tony.

HARRIS: Yes, you're right. A lot of fireworks today. I have to ask you about Ramsey Clark in the court and I'm wondering, is he there to actually be a part of the defense team that cross examines witnesses or is he there more to protect the process here?

ROBERTSON: He is there listed today in the court proceedings as an international adviser to Saddam Hussein. Now the judge was trying to get Ramsey Clark sort of fully sworn into the court. But because some of the documents couldn't be read by the translators, again just another one of the small sort of delays that crept in and confused the proceedings in the court, that couldn't happen. But it does appear as if Ramsey Clark will be coming in, essentially joining that defense team as an adviser to Saddam Hussein and will be able to influence directly the proceedings in the court. The judge today told Mr. Clark that when he came back to court the next time, he needed to have the defense lawyer's robes on. A clear indication that he is essentially accepting him in as part of the defense team.

HARRIS: And, Nic, the theatrics from Saddam Hussein, him coming in complaining, it does play to -- the theatrics do play to a particular constituency inside the country, don't they?

ROBERTSON: Absolutely. Those that still support Saddam Hussein, and there are people here who don't believe that he should be on trial but do believe he should still be the president of the country, and he was playing to that when he came into the court. Every other defendant that was called arrived within 30 seconds. It was six and a half minutes after he was called before he came into the courtroom. He walked in slowly, taking his time, very leisurely, turning around, smiling to some of his co-defendants, taking his time to take his place in the dock. And then when he berated the judge, really accusing him of kowtowing to what he described as the occupation, it really showed that he was there in part for theater and that he was going to enjoy the day. I saw him at times turning around in the court while it was in session and smiling at the other defendants. He seemed very relaxed today.

Tony.

HARRIS: Wow! Nic Robertson for us. Nic, thank you. A lot of theatrics indeed.

Let's turn now to Michael Scharf, who advise the judges trying Saddam Hussein. Michael joins us from Cleveland.

As always, Michael, good to talk to you.

MICHAEL SCHARF, LEGAL ADVISER TO HUSSEIN TRIBUNAL: Good to talk to you.

HARRIS: Well, Michael, what do you make of the adjournment today and the arguments made by the defense team?

SCHARF: Well, first of all, the adjournment, I think, was predictable. Although there had been 40 days given between the first day of the trial and today, the defense counsel really didn't take advantage of that time period. Instead, they went on a boycott. The boycott wasn't resolved until early last week when they worked out a compromise to give them some security that they could use.

They really haven't spent that time trying to develop the kinds of legal arguments that Ramsey Clark is there to provide assistance with. And now they have a week. The three lawyers that had been killed will be replaced by next week and the trial will begin again in seven days and go moving on from there.

HARRIS: Well, Michael, part of what the defense would say if they were here right now is that, look, we've spent the last 40 days sort of trying to secure our surroundings. The surroundings for this trial to take place and, because of that, because of the deaths that you've mentioned, we haven't had an opportunity to focus on anything other than our own personal security.

SCHARF: Well, I mean, both sides are really to blame here. The United States and Iraq for not insisting on security and working harder to provide it in the early days of the boycott, and also the Iraqi defense team. They decided that they wanted their faces shown on TV and then they decided they didn't want to accept the security that was being provided by the United States.

Now, they now have it compromised where they have their own security guards who have been authorized to carry weapon, much like an entourage for a rock star or a rock band, and this seems to have worked out. Again, it's unfortunate that this has caused a delay in the trial. It's interesting, however, that Ramsey Clark has now shown up in court because one of the demands of the defense counsel in order to resume the proceedings and end their boycott was to have Ramsey Clark be given a visa. And not only was he given a visa, but he was given a right to sit next to the lead defense counsel, Delani (ph), right in the courtroom.

HARRIS: What do you make of that? The potential is there for some grandstanding. But what is he there for? Is he going to actually be a part of the defense team, putting the defense together for Saddam Hussein, or is he protecting the process here?

SCHARF: Well, both the prosecution and defense have spent a lot of time studying what went right and what went wrong in the Slobodan Milosevic case in the Hague. And the defense has focused especially on what Slobodan Milosevic has been able to do outside the courtroom through his attorneys in terms of rehabilitating his standing, becoming a martyr in his people, becoming very popular. Actually winning a national election in the landslide vote. And what some people might not realize is that Slobodan Milosevic's lead counsel outside the courtroom is none other than Ramsey Clark.

HARRIS: Right.

SCHARF: The first thing that Ramsey Clark did in the Milosevic case was he submitted a brief to discredit the court. And I think he's going to dust off that old brief, make a couple of changes and we'll see that being circulated to the news later in the week.

HARRIS: Michael, a couple of things. What we saw this morning, sort of the dusting off of this clip that we've seen a lot of, of Saddam Hussein in Dujail shortly after the assassination attempt, didn't seem to be particularly damning. And then there was other testimony on videotape from a witness who eventually died. And that didn't seem to point the finger directly at Saddam. What's going on here?

SCHARF: Well, I think I disagree with you. What you had in that testimony is an insider. Someone who was in the chain of command. He was actually a high-level security intelligence person who was explaining that after the Dujail incident, he investigated it and then he gave the order to round up the 400 people, including those that he knew weren't in any way involved, as a way of retaliating against the town.

He specifically said that the vice president of Iraq, who was sitting as one of the defendants in the courtroom, gave the order to demolish all of the dapalm (ph) groves, again as retaliation because the failed assassination plot were using the dapalm groves as cover. But, again, these are clear evidence of war crimes and it's going to be hard to beat that kind of testimony, even though this individual, unfortunately, has passed on by cancer and we only got to see what he had said in his last days on earth upon.

HARRIS: Michael, rebut this defense argument that I'm sort of anticipating, the attack on Saddam Hussein in Dujail was an attack on the national security of the country and what the president did was to take out a terror cell before that terror cell could launch further attacks against the country and the president.

SCHARF: Yes. I mean this is a legitimate argument and Saddam Hussein's lawyers are going to be pointing to the fact that the United States has been doing this in towns throughout Iraq and Afghanistan in their quest to try to root out the al Qaeda and the insurgents from Iraq. The difference, though, is this. After the people were taken into custody, then, according to the prosecutor's opening statement last month, was there a decision made to give them a summary trial without due process and to execute 140 of them. That is completely different than anything that a legitimate government can do to people who are disarmed and no longer a threat to them and that's where the conviction is going lie in this case.

HARRIS: OK. You're convinced there will be a conviction in this case?

SCHARF: Well, I think the evidence is very strong in this case and it's going to be a messy trial. There's already been a lot of mistakes. There will probably be other errors and missteps. But at the end of the day, when the people look at all the evidence, including this kind of videotaped testimony, they'll be convinced, I think, beyond a reasonable doubt.

HARRIS: OK. Michael Scharf, thank you. Good to talk to you.

And away from Saddam Hussein's trial and the tight security surrounding it, Iraqi police say gunmen today killed two Britains in an attack on a bus. A Muslim pilgrim south of Baghdad. Also a roadside bomb detonated next to a U.S. Army convoy traveling in northeastern Baghdad. A Bradley fighting vehicle caught fire. Iraqi police say three soldiers were injured and three mortar shells fell in and around Baghdad's green zone just hours before Saddam Hussein's trial began.

The U.S. military says a car bomb detonated near a U.S. military patrol in Baquba today. Three U.S. soldiers were slightly wounded. Witnesses say one vehicle was destroyed in that attack.

And we're told that two congressmen traveling in Iraq received minor injuries when their armored vehicle went off the road on Saturday. Representatives Tim Murphy and Ike Skeleton were treated and released from a combat hospital. Murphy was flown to a U.S. military hospital in Germany where he says an MRI indicated his injuries weren't as bad as first thought. A third congressman in the vehicle, Jim Marshall, was not hurt.

You've seen Saddam Hussein in court this morning. Although the former Iraqi leader is often accused of committing many atrocities during his reign, this trial is really only about one incident. Ahead on CNN LIVE TODAY, we take you back more than 20 years to the day Hussein visited Dujail and life there changed forever.

Also, severe weather moving across the U.S. It's been dangerous and deadly in the central U.S. And right behind the thunderstorm, snow, lots of it, creating nightmare conditions for many. Chad Myers details what you can expect in your city when CNN LIVE TODAY returns.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

HARRIS: Man, they're talking today about the strange weather in Kansas. And there it is. One of several tornados that rolled across the state yesterday afternoon. One ripped through more than 30 homes at Fort Riley. No one was hurt but 17 families had to find another place to sleep last night.

And take a look at what a tornado left behind in Plumerville, Arkansas. The twister apparently splinted a lumberyard, scattered wood across Interstate 40 and overturned a number of cars. Police say one person was killed when a car was swept into oncoming traffic.

Back to Kansas now where those who were not ducking tornados may be stranded by a blizzard that packed roads with snow and reduced visibility to less than a quarter mile. High winds caused near whiteouts and closed a 150-mile stretch of Interstate 70 from Denver, Colorado, to the Kansas state line. A lot of holiday travelers will be late getting home, that's for sure. Forced to a abandon the roads, hundreds of motorists are waiting it out at local shelters. Man.

Let's check in now with our severe weather expert, Chad Myers, upstairs in the CNN Weather Center.

And, Chad, those sections of the country, are they out of the woods?

(WEATHER REPORT)

HARRIS: Has the housing boom gone bust? Just in this morning, existing home sales fell in October more than 2 « percent. For more we turn to CNN Personal Finance Editor Gerri Willis She joins us from New York.

Good morning, Gerri.

GERRI WILLIS, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Hey, Tony, good to see you.

Well, I've got to tell you, I don't know if the boom's gone bust, but the boom couldn't last forever now, could it? There was a piece of good information if you're a person who already owns a home in that report today, Tony. Prices went up 16.6 percent to $218,000. That's the median price. So that's pretty rich.

Coming up next I'll be talking about charitable giving, Tony. What you need to know if you want to give charity to a charity rather than giving gifts this year.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

HARRIS: And just to give you another update on a story just in to CNN just a couple of minutes ago. The facade on the outside of the building of the U.S. Supreme Court in Washington, D.C., has collapsed. We are still working on getting pictures of that. But part of the facade has collapsed on to the steps leading into the building. No reports of injuries at this time. Once again, we will continue to (INAUDIBLE) those pictures for you and bring them to you as soon as we can.

The shopping season is underway and with it the search for that perfect gift. With a year filled with disasters, the tsunami, hurricanes, earthquakes and tornados, how about the gift of giving to a worthy cause? CNN Personal Finance Editor Gerri Willis joins us now with her "Top Five Tips" for charitable donations this year.

And Gerri, good to see you again.

WILLIS: Good to see you again, Tony.

HARRIS: Well, I like this idea. Your first tip. I like this idea of feeding a family. A lot of option out there to do that and it's not as expensive as you might think.

WILLIS: Well, imagine spending $30 and buying two bags of groceries for an American family who maybe is having a hard time of it. You can do that by going altgifts.org. And, Tony, imagine, you can give that as a gift to someone else so they're actually making the donation.

HARRIS: All right. And, yes, that's a great idea.

And you say donate an animal? What kind of animals are we talking about here, Gerri?

WILLIS: Well, we're not talking about puppy dogs.

HARRIS: OK.

WILLIS: OK. What I'm talking about is, you can give groceries and that lasts for a week, maybe two weeks. But if you give a family that lives in the country an animal, then they can feed themselves for weeks and weeks and weeks. An alpaca, a chicken, a goat. You name it. Even a cow. If you go to the Web site, worldvision.org, you can buy this for a family and help them out over the long term instead of the short haul.

HARRIS: And you know when making a donation, I like this idea, make it personal.

WILLIS: You should make it personal. If you're giving a gift to someone else to give to the charity, sometimes they want some choices.

HARRIS: Right.

WILLIS: They don't want to give to your favorite charity. Maybe they have something in mind that they really like. One easy way to do that, justgive.org will let your recipient choose from the many charities that they hook up with. Or you can get a charitable gift basket, believe it or not, so they can make several choices.

HARRIS: Oh, OK. And make it a family affair this year.

WILLIS: You know, I think a great idea this year, you know, kids are asking, I want this, I want that. Tony, I bet your kids have a long list that of things that they definitely want for Christmas.

HARRIS: Oh, yes. WILLIS: Well, if you go to secretsanta.org you can have your kids drop off those extra toys that they already have, that they're not using, for somebody else who really needs them and may not be able to afford them. It's secretsanta.org. A great place to hook up with somebody who's going to give your toys to someone who needs them.

HARRIS: That's great.

And, you know, there are a lot of Web sites out there. First of all, there are a lot of charities and thankfully there are a lot of Web sites that you can go to and visit to find out if those charities are doing the job they're supposed to do.

WILLIS: Well, you know what the big problem here is, is that some of these charities, not much of your money, frankly, goes to the people who need it most.

HARRIS: Right.

WILLIS: That's what you need to check out. Now you can do that at Web sites like guidestar.org, charitynavigator.org or give.org. All of those will help you evaluate the charity that you want to give to. Keep in mind that you want at least 60 percent of your dollar to go right to the people who need it. And don't forget, Tony, this is a tax break for you. Even though you're giving it away as a gift, you get to write it off.

HARRIS: Oh, that's right. Love it! Love it!

And here's the thing, forgo the tie to dad this year. Trust me, forego the tie to dad this year and give too a worth charity.

WILLIS: That's right. I think it's a great sentiment, right?

HARRIS: It is. Is really is.

All right, Gerri, good to see you.

WILLIS: Good to see you.

HARRIS: Take care.

WILLIS: Bye-bye.

HARRIS: Saddam Hussein standing before a judge today in Baghdad. The former Iraqi lead or trial for crimes against humanity. More on today's proceedings just ahead.

Life in prison or death? Sentencing begins for the man convicted of kidnaping and killing a young girl in Florida. We're going to go in-depth on this case. Live pictures now of the proceedings. More when CNN LIVE TODAY returns.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

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