Return to Transcripts main page

American Morning

President's War Strategy in Iraq Gets Put to Test; Airport Security Changing

Aired December 01, 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: I'm Soledad O'Brien. The president's war strategy in Iraq gets put to the test. Americans are reacting. New poll numbers to tell you about. And also two new offensives in Iraq to tell you about. We'll take you right to the White House just ahead.
MILES O'BRIEN, CNN ANCHOR: I'm Miles O'Brien. Airport security changing. scissors coming back aboard commercial planes. We'll tell you who is most upset about that.

S. O'BRIEN: And a developing story, two men in custody in the murder of a celebrated teenage father. The very latest on this investigation live from Philadelphia on this AMERICAN MORNING.

M. O'BRIEN: Good morning to you. We've been on the air for an hour now. If you hadn't gotten the memo. That's our new start time. We hope you join us every morning at 6:00.

S. O'BRIEN: Yes, you've already missed an hour of AMERICAN MORNING. Come on now.

M. O'BRIEN: Yes.

S. O'BRIEN: Welcome back, everybody.

Let's get right to what's happening in Washington D.C. President Bush is going to make three speeches about Iraq before the election there. He's trying to turn around U.S. public opinion. Right now, a majority of the Americans don't think the president has a plan for victory in Iraq. Take a look at the poll numbers. Most of the people surveyed didn't watch Wednesday's speech.

Let's get right to Kathleen Koch. She's live at the White House for us this morning. Hey, Kathleen, good morning to you. What else are the polls saying?

KATHLEEN KOCH, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Well, the polls are saying, Soledad, that frankly nothing very much has changed, despite the president's speech yesterday, most Americans 54 percent of them, still give him poor marks for his handling of the situation in Iraq. Just 44 percent of Americans say he's doing a good job. But most of those polled, 59 percent, do, however, side with President Bush in believing that the U.S. should withdraw troops from Iraq only when the goals there are achieved, and not on a specific timetable. In his speech at the Naval Academy yesterday, President Bush rebuffed those who say that now is the time to start bringing U.S. forces home. (BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

GEORGE W. BUSH, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: These decisions about troop levels will be driven by the conditions on the ground in Iraq and the good judgment of our commanders, not by artificial timetables set by politicians in Washington.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

KOCH: Well, that, an obvious reference to Democratic Congressman John Murtha who two weeks ago called for a swift withdraw from Iraq. The White House insisting that would be a recipe for disaster -- Soledad.

S. O'BRIEN: There are more calls from the Democrats as well, Kathleen, right?

KOCH: Quite so. And initially, very interesting, Soledad, the Democrats had been very cool to Murtha's call, but yesterday the House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi came out and said Murtha was, quote, "way ahead of the rest of us," adding she thinks many members will follow his lead.

S. O'BRIEN: Kathleen Koch for us. We should mention that later this hour, we're going to hear from Democratic Senator Joe Biden. In the next hour, we're going to be speaking, in fact, with the House Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi. All this coming as the U.S. military reports three more troop deaths in Iraq. One Marine killed on Wednesday in a combat operation in Fallujah, another died in a nonhostile accident northwest of Baghdad, and a third soldier shot north of Baghdad.

Meanwhile, two operations now under way are aimed at rounding up suspected insurgents. Operation Iron Hammer is taking place in the Anbar province, which is west of Baghdad. The other, which is called Operation Thunder Blitz, is in Southern Baghdad.

M. O'BRIEN: New developments on a story we're following in Philadelphia. Two arrests last night in a brutal shooting. The man killed was one who had turned his life around, and at just 18, he was caring for his 2-year-old daughter.

Chris Huntington live in Philadelphia with more -- Chris.

CHRIS HUNTINGTON, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Miles, good morning.

The arrest may lead to something of closure, if, in fact, they lead to convictions, and indeed a solving of the crime, but that doesn't really do anything to explain this senseless tragedy, especially to a 2-year-old girl who's lost her father forever.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

HUNTINGTON (voice-over): Philadelphia police last night arrested 20-year-old Antwon Riggins and 18-year-old Saul Rosario. They are suspected of shooting and killing Terrell Pugh, gunning him down outside his home in Philadelphia two weeks ago.

CHIEF INSPECTOR JOHN FOX, PHILADELPHIA POLICE: Riggins and the decedent, Pugh, knew and/or knew each other from a school which they attended tougher.

HUNTINGTON: Police say Riggins and Rosario conspired to kill Pugh, waiting for him to arrive home from work, then shooting him in the head. The police got a break last weekend when they recovered Pugh's Honda Civic, which had been missing since the night he was killed.

FOX: The car helped lead the arrest, as well as other sources, specifically other law enforcement sources.

HUNTINGTON: Terrell Pugh was an extraordinary man. Only 18 years old, a single parent, and full-time student who worked nights to support his 2-year-old daughter, Diamond.

Pugh's devotion to Diamond drew national attention this past summer, when he was profiled by "People" magazine as an outstanding single father. That acclaim led to an outpouring of donations to Terrell and Diamond, including money for rent and his car.

RICHARD NESBITT, TERRELL'S UNCLE: It has just been overwhelming. There's a major void right now, a major, major void, you know. It's part of it is missing. And that's the tragedy.

HUNTINGTON: Earlier this week, several hundred people attended a public memorial service for Terrell at Temple University, where family and friends celebrated the young father's life, cut tragically short.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: He inspired me, like, because I have a child on the way, and now I know that I should be a father like he was.

CHARLES ROWELL, TERRELL'S CLASSMATE: I wish I would have gave him more hugs instead of handshakes, and told him I loved him, you know, more, than saying, all right, I'll see you later.

HUNTINGTON: Now the family of Terrell Pugh hopes that justice will be served. The arrest may be a step toward solving the crime, but not in explaining a senseless murder.

NESBITT: You just don't find too many children with the initiative and responsibility. He was a diamond in the rough.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

HUNTINGTON: Now there is outrage in the African-American community here in Philadelphia. Terrell Pugh a shining example of a life that can go right, which started against -- in tough circumstances. I want to just quickly read you a quote he gave "People" magazine regarding his daughter Diamond. He said, "She's what I work for, what I live for, what I wake up for. She's everything. If something ever happens to me, no one can ever tell her that her dad didn't take care of her." He did, but he can't do it anymore. M. O'BRIEN: What a sweet little girl, Chris. What can you tell us about her mother?

HUNTINGTON: Her mother, thankfully, is around. Her name is Charmaine (ph) Houston. She was 15 years old when she had diamond. She and Terrell were boyfriend and girlfriend at the time, so she is around. She is part of a network of family members that are taking care of little Diamond. So if there's anything good to say about this awful story, it's that the mother and daughter are together.

M. O'BRIEN: Wow. And this little girl will be loved, too.

Chris Huntington, thank you very much -- Soledad.

S. O'BRIEN: The Transportation Security Administration is changing some post-9/11 flight rules that would allow banned items like scissors back onboard planes.

CNN's Jeanne Meserve is on the Security Watch this morning.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

JEANNE MESERVE, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): After box cutters were used in the 9/11 hijackings, a long list of items were banned from aircraft. More than 30 million have been confiscated from passengers since 2002, lighters, scissors, weapons and more. But now, the Transportation Security Administration is proposing changes.

(on camera): Some large scissors like this would still be prohibited, but some small scissors, under four inches, would be allowed, so would some tools under seven inches.

(voice-over): Some fliers may be relieved, but flight attendants are livid, believing crews and passengers will be vulnerable.

CHRISTOPHER WITKOWSKI, ASSOC. OF FLIGHT ATTENDANTS: This is ludicrous. TSA should not be allowing sharp objects or other dangerous items to be used as weapons aboard aircraft.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Police! Sit down!

MESERVE: Homeland Security officials say federal air marshals, reinforced cockpit doors and improved screenings make it possible for them to relax the rules on sharp objects, and allow screeners to give more attention to a greater threat, explosives. Several explosive- detection technologies are already in use at the nation's airports, but experts say none are foolproof.

HARVEY "JACK" MCGEORGE, PUBLIC SAFETY GROUP: All machines have some limitations regarding the chemistry of the explosive that they're trying to detect.

MESERVE: Officials say for that reason, the protocol screeners use to detect explosives will be modified, and procedures will become less predictable, so terrorists will find them harder to circumvent. Jeanne Meserve, CNN, Washington.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

S. O'BRIEN: The TSA hopes to have the new screenings procedures in place by December 20th. We're going to get reaction from the head of the Flight Attendant's Union in our next hour. You want to Stay with CNN day and night for the most reliable news about your security -- Miles.

(WEATHER REPORT)

M. O'BRIEN: Coming up a Christmas controversy will in Louisiana. Some folks are upset about a Katrina-themed holiday display. We'll talk to the man who designed it and find out why he did it.

S. O'BRIEN: Also, more on that crying Virgin Mary statue we were telling you about. Remember this? what does the Catholic Church have to say about this so-called miracle?

M. O'BRIEN: Plus, Andy is "Minding Your Business." If you use a Blackberry, you might be crying soon. That's ahead on AMERICAN MORNING.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

M. O'BRIEN: All right, the Blackberry. Really the Blackberry, in many respects, the thought of not having them becomes a national- security issue. It really is something that is so much a part of how we do business these days.

ANDY SERWER, "FORTUNE" MAGAZINE: Communication infrastucuture would be the technical phrase.

M. O'BRIEN: There you go.

SERWER: Three-point-six million Americans use Blackberries, and there is a possibility, a small one, a possibility that a judge is going to shut the network down because of a long-running patent suit between the maker of this wireless Internet device, a company called Research in Motion -- it's a Canadian company actually -- and a small outfit called NTP, which is a patent-holding company, which means the company that simply holds patents. They don't actually make a competing device. This has been going on for years and years. They were going to settle for $20 million, then $230 million, then $450 million. They haven't been able to reach an agreement.

Now the settlement could be a billion dollars. But there's a possibility the network would get shut down if they can't agree, but I don't think that's going to happen, Miles, because as you mentioned, it has kind of become critical to the way we communicate in this country, particularly government officials.

I don't know if you've seen this picture from earlier this year from "The Washington Post." There's Karl Rove in the middle, and a couple other big honchos from the government, and they're sitting there Blackberry-ing away, I mean, telling the president he's got to get on the plane, you have a security briefing. They're not going to shut this down. There's talk that they could let the government use it, and the rest of us not use it if they were shutdown. That's not going to happen, because a lot of top executives and people like yourself use it.

M. O'BRIEN: I was going to say that, looks like a meeting at CNN. Nobody talks to anybody anymore. They're all...

SERWER: Why bother.

M. O'BRIEN: Why bother When you can do that. You know, it's interesting, because the idea is to exempt the government from any potential shutdown, but that's a difficult thing to do, if pot impossible.

SERWER: Technically difficult, and then like I said, you'd have people like CEOs of large corporations saying, hey, we're important, and we're doing stuff that's important in terms of the government and the nation's well being as well.

M. O'BRIEN: And a final though, this company, NTP, is this one of those kind of harassment patent operations kind of thing?

SERWER: Well, some people say it is. I mean, they hold patents, they don't make devices, so...

M. O'BRIEN: It's all about our litigious society.

SERWER: Could be.

M. O'BRIEN: All right, Andy Serwer, thank you very much -- Soledad.

S. O'BRIEN: Well, you know, every few months we see a story like this one, reports of a miracle, and they usually involve in some way, shape or form the Virgin Mary. This time, the intriguing comes from Sacramento, California, and Rusty Dornin has the story.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

RUSTY DORNIN, CNN CORRESPONDENT: At first glance, the cool white alabaster of the Virgin Mary's face gives no hint of what's attracted the crowds at the Vietnamese Catholic Martyrs Church in Sacramento, California. But a closer look at her left side and down the front of her cloak reveal the mysterious brownish-red trail. The faithful here claim it's tears of blood.

Parishioners say the marks first appeared in early November, but were wiped clean by the parish priest. Then on Sunday, November 20th, church volunteer Anthony Nguyen saw it had returned.

ANTHONY NGUYEN, CHURCH VOLUNTEER: We see the eye, blood come out.

DORNIN (on camera): That was right before church you saw. NGUYEN: Yes.

DORNIN (voice-over): Now they come to sing, sometimes bearing gifts, more often just to pray, gaze riveted on what they can't explain.

Barbara Chancellor, a life-long Catholic, documented her visit.

DORNIN (on camera): Why did you come here today?

BARBARA CHANCELLOR, PARISHIONER: I think curiosity, and I get choked up. Even if it isn't a true miracle, I've never seen a miracle, but it just gives me a -- reinstates my faith and hope.

DORNIN (voice-over): A miracle, no the a word the Catholic Church wants to hear at this point.

Church spokesman Father James Murphy has not seen the statute.

(on camera): How do you handle something like this?

REV. JAMES MURPHY, SACRAMENTO ARCHDIOCESE: The church's position is always to be skeptical about these cases, because many times a natural explanation eventually emerges, many times.

DORNIN (voice-over): But some Catholics question that.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: It happens so often as far as I know, that they don't even bother investigating it anymore. But I believe they should. It pays to see whether it's a hoax or not.

DORNIN: And many here seem to have the patience.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I tend to believe it. But I'm hoping they can prove it's really blood. I'm hoping. I'm waiting.

DORNIN: Rusty Dornin, CNN, Sacramento, California.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

M. O'BRIEN: The Catholic dioceses of Sacramento says there's no plan at the moment to investigate the Virgin Mary mystery, at least for now.

Coming up, did Americans buy into the president's strategy for victory in Iraq? We'll look at what could be some troubling poll numbers for the administration. That's ahead on AMERICAN MORNING.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

S. O'BRIEN: It says right there, "Don't turn your back on AIDS." Today is World AIDS Day, and highlights the fact that, despite some progress, AIDS is still outstripping global efforts to contain the disease. There are some 40 million adults and children who are living with HIV this year, 2005. That is the highest level ever; 3.1 million people died of aids in 2005. More than half a million of those were children. Nearly five million people were newly affected with HIV in 2005. The president will be making remarks on this World AIDS Day, December 1st, 2005. We're going to see that at 9:55 a.m. this morning.

M. O'BRIEN: And it was at 9:45 a.m. yesterday morning that we showed you the president of the United States as he made his pitch for a victory plan for the war in Iraq. We have done a poll since then, acting very quickly, and perhaps the most telling thing about the poll is that 90 percent of those surveyed had not seen the speech. Two- thirds hadn't even heard about it at all.

CNN senior political analyst Bill Schneider live now in Boston with more on that.

Bill, good to have you with us.

The CNN/"USA Today"/Gallup team working very fast to get us these numbers. We appreciate that. Let's get the numbers up there.

First question is, does Bush have a plan that will achieve victory in Iraq? Fifty-five percent say no; 41 percent say yes.

WILLIAM SCHNEIDER, CNN SR. POL. ANALYST: Well, remember the wallpaper, if you were watching the speech behind the president, that's become conventional in presidential speeches, it said "strategy for victory." But Americans don't think he had a strategy for victory. They didn't hear a great deal that was new in the president's speech. What they have heard about over the last number of months is increasing casualties, mounting violence, so they're rather pessimistic about that. The one thing that could turn it around, of course, December 15th there's an election in Iraq to elect a regular government, and every time there's been an election in Iraq, and there've already been two this year, in January and October, American optimism rises. We'll see if that happens again this month.

M. O'BRIEN: Interesting. You know, a lot of talk about whether the president would have some sort of timetable. Many people insisting on benchmarks of some kind. The American people don't really want this. Look at these numbers here. U.S. should withdraw troops only when goals achieved, 59 percent, which is what the president said, or on a specific timetable, 35 percent. That's good news for the administration.

SCHNEIDER: It is. The president said we don't want artificial timetables, he called it. This is a common sense answer. Americans were asked, do you think that the president should stick to a timetable for withdraw, regardless of conditions, and Americans said no, that doesn't sound reasonable, because it's really not common sense. They don't want the policy to be too rigid.

M. O'BRIEN: All right, let's go to the next set of numbers, and this one is this. Iraq will prevent terrorists from using that country as a base of operations. This is an interesting point, because that is the crux of the administration debate here, that by taking the war to terror to Iraq, we are somehow made safer here. People are not believing that because only -- 63 percent say it is unlikely that it will prevent terrorists from using the country's base of operations.

SCHNEIDER: This is a shocking finding here, because it says Americans think it is unlikely in the next few years that Iraq will be able to prevent their country from becoming a base of operations for terrorists who are planning attacks against the United States. If Iraq can't do that, then the United States has lost the whole reason for this invasion. That's what victory means, preventing Iraq from becoming a base of operations. This is a striking level of pessimism in the American public about what's happening.

M. O'BRIEN: How you define victory certainly has changed quite a bit since this all began, and as there is talk about withdraw, the measure of how the U.S. would win is sort of embedded in all of that. And any withdraw is dependent on how you measure a win, right?

SCHNEIDER: Yes, that's right. Both sides agree, I think, both the Democratic critics and the Bush administration, on two objectives. One, the United States has to win, in the sense that it has to prevent Iraq from becoming a base of terrorism. The U.S. has to win, and the U.S. has to withdraw. Americans want to win and get out.

Democrats, key Democrats, including Senator Kennedy, Senator Kerry yesterday, argued that in order to win, the United States has to withdraw. Because they say, the presence of U.S. troops in Iraq is creating a target for the insurgents. And we can't win as long as U.S. troops are there. The Bush administration argues that in order to withdraw, the United States has to win, the reverse of those priorities. We can't leave until we win. So what did the president say yesterday? Essentially he said, well, we're beginning to see, or smell victory in Iraq, that we're making progress, that the Iraqi security forces are more and more able to take over, and therefore, maybe we can begin to think cautiously about withdrawing. But that's really the difference between the two sides, not what we want to achieve, but which order to do it.

M. O'BRIEN: All right. We need to clarify one thing. I think we had a graphic up there that was transposed. Do we have it fixed? We don't have it fixed. Just to underscore the point, the question was, Iraq will prevent terrorists from using that country as a base of operations, a statement; 33 percent say that is likely, 63 percent say unlikely, just to clarify, because I think we had it mixed up.

SCHNEIDER: And that's nearly two to one. That is really the most shocking finding in this poll.

M. O'BRIEN: Bill Schneider, thanks -- Soledad.

SCHNEIDER: Sure.

S. O'BRIEN: Still to come this morning, much more on the subject of the president's strategy in Iraq. Senator Joe Biden will weigh in on Mr. Bush's plan when AMERICAN MORNING returns.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

TO ORDER A VIDEO OF THIS TRANSCRIPT, PLEASE CALL 800-CNN-NEWS OR USE OUR SECURE ONLINE ORDER FORM LOCATED AT www.fdch.com