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American Morning

Troops in Iraq Prepare for Thursday Elections

Aired December 14, 2005 - 08:30   ET

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

SOLEDAD O'BRIEN, CNN ANCHOR: Good morning. Welcome, everybody. The sun has risen on a beautiful but very chilly day.
(NEWSBREAK)

S. O'BRIEN: Well, on the eve of Thursday's historic election in Iraq, U.S. and Iraqi troops are working to make the polls safe. Lieutenant Colonel Denton Knapp an army officer who's been training Iraq security forces. And in just a moment, he's going join us live from Baghdad, but first a background on this commander and a friend, too.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

S. O'BRIEN (voice-over): I came to know Lieutenant Colonel Denton Knapp through my former co-anchor David Bloom of NBC News. David was embedded with Knapp's unit at the start of the second Iraq war, the second brigade 3rd infantry division known as "The Point of the Sphere."

And when the U.S. coalition invaded Iraq in April 2003, it was the third I.D. that made the first thunder run into Baghdad in tanks and Bradley fighting vehicles. Just days later, David died of deep vein thrombosis, and Lieutenant Colonel Knapp and I became e-mail pen pals, me from New York, he from Baghdad.

Nearly two years later, Lieutenant Colonel Knapp returned to Iraq for a second tour with his third I.D., his job this time securing areas in and around Baghdad and training Iraqi security forces. Most recently, Lieutenant Colonel Knapp took command of an infantry battalion of National Guard who lost their commander to a bomb in October. Colonel William Wood was a friend of Knapp's and the highest ranking American fighter to die in Iraq.

Today, Knapp leads 800 soldiers who conduct daily patrols and raids like this one, carried out under the cover of darkness early Friday morning.

For Lieutenant Colonel Knapp, the road to Iraq began at West Point, where he graduated in 1987 and began his career as an infantry officer. He married Heather Dale from his Wyoming hometown and today home is Ft. Stewart, Georgia, where Heather and sons Brandon and Scott await their dad's safe return.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

S. O'BRIEN: We actually met in person back in September, when the Knapps had a little visit to New York.

Lieutenant Colonel Knapp joins us from Baghdad. Nice to see you, Lieutenant Colonel Knapp. Welcome to AMERICAN MORNING.

LT. COL. DENTON KNAPP, U.S. ARMY: Thank you, Soledad. How are you?

S. O'BRIEN: I'll well. Thank you. After all of our e-mailing, this really is the first time that we've had an opportunity to talk via satellite. Let's get right into it. The elections are underway and a big part of your job is security and has been security for a long time.

First, describe the mood for me. How do Iraqis feel? I mean, we look at this election as just absolutely historic. Is that the feeling you get where you are also?

KNAPP: It really is. We've been out the past couple of days with Iraq security forces, preparing the polling sites. I've got 73 just in our battalion area. And talking to the Iraqi people, both from the urbanized area and as well as down the rural areas, they're very excited about deciding their own destiny here for the national government.

And, in fact, we talked to some of the rural farmers yesterday -- and this is the first time they've had a polling site in their area. We've been able to establish that for the first time.

S. O'BRIEN: You've been training Iraqi security forces. Can they realistically manage to protect all of these polling sites, do you think?

KNAPP: You know, we've been working -- my battalion, at least -- with the public order brigade for the Iraqis and also the Iraqi army at the beginning of our stay here. And I'm very confident with what they're being able to do for the polling sites.

You know, we've had January elections when we first arrived, then the referendum on 15 October. And they conducted the security with us. The Iraqi police actually on the inner and then the public order brigade command was in Iraqi armor on the outer cordon and us assisting with quick reaction force. And it's very secure.

S. O'BRIEN: While we are talking, we're showing some of the pictures that you've been e-mailing to me over the last several months. One with some of the Iraqi forces holding the California republic flag inside of -- sort a funny shot there.

You know, I'm curious to know, as we debate here in this country, about the president's vision. Sort of the stay the course vision for the war in Iraq. How much of that trickles to the soldiers? And what's the take on that? Is it disturbing to have that debate -- should the forces stay, should the forces go -- be going on while you're there and putting your lives at risk every single day?

KNAPP: You know, every day, we get a chance to see the news on television, either in the dining facility, at lunch or breakfast. We get the newspapers and the magazines. And I also had an opportunity to watch some of the president's speech.

But we watch it, understand the debate back home, a democracy just like we're establishing here. And we have our mission, we'll continue on to work and train the security forces and keep this safe until it's time to come home.

S. O'BRIEN: I know a large part of your job, or part of your job, is to communicate with the families when there's a loss. And you've had some very big losses at times and we've e-mailed about that. How do you write a letter that explains the sacrifice of a loved one in somebody else's land, in another nation?

You know, how do you make it -- how do you explain to a mother or a wife or sister or daughter that the loss was worth it when it's really the focus on Iraqi people and not necessarily defending your own land? That's got to be hard.

KNAPP: It's probably one of the hardest things I've ever done, Soledad. I had to write four since I've taken command. From everyone from a private up to a full colonel. And it's hard to describe the sacrifice, the love of the unit that the soldiers had for their brothers and sisters that are serving there with them, and also their families back home.

It's very tough to describe and you try to do your best to explain that they believed in what they were doing and they believed it was well was worth the sacrifice.

S. O'BRIEN: Well, we appreciate you checking in with us. We're going to hopefully talk to you on and off over the next couple of weeks. I talked to your wife Heather a fair amount. Any final word for her before we lose our satellite here?

KNAPP: I'm sorry, what was that, Soledad?

S. O'BRIEN: I said any final word for Heather before I run out of satellite time here?

KNAPP: Yes. We have our anniversary on the 19th, so first of all, I say happy anniversary and I love you very much.

S. O'BRIEN: Oh, so sweet. I'm sure she'll appreciate that. All right, Denton. Lieutenant Colonel Denton Knapp in Baghdad. Stay safe and we'll talk again, OK?

KNAPP: OK.

S. O'BRIEN: Iraq's crucial parliamentary election is going to be held tomorrow. We're going to have complete coverage right here on AMERICAN MORNING and that begins at 6:00 a.m. Eastern.

MILES O'BRIEN, CNN ANCHOR: He knows about soldiering and husbanding, too. Good work. Good work, Colonel.

S. O'BRIEN: Good memory. You don't want to forget that one.

M. O'BRIEN: Good work. Excellent work.

All right. We want to show you some amazing home video. This one comes from Arkansas. It was just released -- yesterday it came out. The incident happened back in October. You're looking at Shayna Richardson with that swirling parachute. And what you're seeing there is the back-up chute, which did not improperly unfurl as it should, giving her a nice soft touchdown there in Arkansas, as this happened. Instead, she was hurdling toward the ground at about 50 miles an hour with no real alternatives and really thinking, almost certainly, this was it!

And there you see -- that was slow motion. Now you see the real speed and you can get a sense of it. Let's take a look at Google Earth here and give you sense of what we're talking about. This about 10,000 feet. That's the airport over there. And keep your eye on that X right there. That's where we're headed. Take us down, Ted Fine (ph). We don't know if this is about 50 miles an hour, but give or take.

And as you can see, she went right down for this parking lot, not the most forgiving of landing zones, given the fact that it is asphalt. Well, did she live to tell the tale? Not only did she live to tell the tale, she fell right on her face.

She ended up with 15 plates in her face. And in the midst of being treated -- there you see the actual landing there. In the midst of being treated, doctors do some tests, of course, and discover she's pregnant. Is the baby OK? Yes. Will she skydive again? Yes. All of these you can hear from her own lips, in addition to other questions we'll ask her in our next hour right here on AMERICAN MORNING.

So, please, please stay tuned for that.

S. O'BRIEN: She looks great. I mean, if you consider she face- planted on the pavement.

M. O'BRIEN: I can't imagine.

S. O'BRIEN: And she described it as her face just egg-shelling, just cracking all around. I mean, she looks good, and she -- and her attitude also is just great. It will be interesting to talk to a little bit later this morning. Wow, what a remarkable story.

(WEATHER REPORT)

S. O'BRIEN: Andy is "Minding Your Business" just ahead. What you got going on?

ANDY SERWER, "FORTUNE" MAGAZINE: Soledad, former Enron bigwig Ken Lay speaks. You'll want to hear his version of the truth, coming up next on AMERICAN MORNING.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK) S. O'BRIEN: In New Zealand. The yellow car, keep you eye on it. Ooh, there goes the car. One thing you may not have noticed, if we back this up and roll it again. Right there!

M. O'BRIEN: It's hard to see!

S. O'BRIEN: There a guy there, he's a photographer, wearing white, kind of hard to see, and it looks like he's been hit head-on by the yellow car. You guys want to do it again. Maybe if you can just circle it, Miles.

OK, again, follow the yellow car, right there.

M. O'BRIEN: Freeze it.

S. O'BRIEN: The little white spot, that's a guy on a platform.

M. O'BRIEN: Michael, freeze it right now. Freeze it right now if you can.

There we go.

All right, now here is the guy, and there is the car. Now we can advance it. Go. Watch that white spot.

S. O'BRIEN: Takes him out.

M. O'BRIEN: And, boom! there he goes. Down he goes. All right, freeze it again if you can.

S. O'BRIEN: That car is traveling at 124 miles an hour, and the cameraman is trying to get that great head-on shot obviously. Well, looks like it killed the guy. They didn't at all. It apparently only got some minor cuts and bruises, and says, yes, he wants to get back out there. It doesn't deter him at all from what he loves, which is shooting these...

M. O'BRIEN: Did you see what he said, Robert Mill (ph) -- he said, "I heard a small tire squeal."

S. O'BRIEN: Don't do the accent.

M. O'BRIEN: "From behind me, which I really didn't pay attention to, and then all of a sudden, a big bang. Next thing I know, I'm looking at the sky and just doing a big backflip backwards, and then just crash-land on the ground.

S. O'BRIEN: Probably The backflip is probably what saved him.

M. O'BRIEN: Maybe so.

S. O'BRIEN: Because if he had been hit on and been crushed, he'd be dead, but he was sort of knocked up and over.

SERWER: It was like the magnet was drawing that car to him, the way it just went right to him. S. O'BRIEN: Yes, isn't it amazing. Crazy.

Business news now? Ken Lay back in the news.

SERWER: Ken Lay, back, yes, he was in Houston yesterday, Soledad, his hometown, speaking publicly before business executives, and really had some interesting things to say, of course, about Enron. His trial begins January 17th, talked a lot about the truth and his version of the truth.

Let's listen in to hear what he had to say.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

KEN LAY, ENRON FOUNDER: The truth is a great rock. Whether it will continue to be submerged by a wave, a wave of terror by the Enron task force will be determined by former Enron employees. It will only take a few brave individuals who are willing to stand up and say it's time for the truth to come out.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

SERWER: I think he used the 'T' word about 75 times in his remarks. Interesting, the wave of terror. I mean, that's kind of an insightful.

S. O'BRIEN: All right, I'll stand up and say it's time for the truth to come out.

M. O'BRIEN: You can't handle the truth!

SERWER: And how about this one. Right, another great line, "We must create our own wave of truth." (INAUDIBLE). Well, maybe people would suggest that part of his problem was creating a wave of truth of his own versions, I guess you could say. "We trusted Andy Fastow, and tragically that trust turned out to be fatally misplaced."

M. O'BRIEN: Ooh, the finger is pointed firmly.

SERWER: Yes, that's the former chief financial officer. A crowd of 250 was apparently somewhat happy to see him. They applauded politely. But...

M. O'BRIEN: No heckling from the crowd?

SERWER: No heckling from the crowd.

M. O'BRIEN: I wonder how many Enron employees who lost all of their 401k money were in that audience.

SERWER: I don't think so many.

S. O'BRIEN: Probably not that many, yes. That's what I'd guess.

All right, Andy. Oh, you want to take a look at the markets? SERWER: Yes, let's just do that quickly. Yesterday a good day for the markets, the day the Federal Reserve raised interest rates, signaling perhaps that the campaign may be ending. This morning, though, futures are lower. The trade deficit hits another record in October.

S. O'BRIEN: All right, thank you very much.

SERWER: Thank you.

M. O'BRIEN: Thank you, Andy.

Still to come on the program, the road to recovery in New Orleans.

Naturally it's going to be long and expensive, you know that. Now one senator is threatening to keep Congress working through Christmas if she doesn't get what she wants. We'll ask her about that, ahead on AMERICAN MORNING.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

S. O'BRIEN: It's time to check out what's happening at CNN.com. Let's take a look at the top story today. We're talking about Iraq on AMERICAN MORNING and of course it's our top story, too, on our Web site.

And this report of bogus ballots, as well. The ballots that were found apparently coming in from Iran. U.S. forces, as we heard earlier in an interview, trying to confirm that, in fact, those are the case and in fact that these ballots were even close to looking like the real thing and just how close that attempt was to actually being able to be pulled off.

And then we've got this news. Cell phone bandit. Remember her? Candice Martinez? Nineteen years old.

M. O'BRIEN: She cops a plea.

S. O'BRIEN: Yes, she pleads guilty. And now she is facing life in prison. She is 19 years old, but you know, as you mentioned earlier, you knock over banks, those are federal charges. That is some major, major problems that she's going to have, legally speaking. Her boyfriend is -- who she was talking to, other end of the phone -- and he faces big problems, as well.

And then, of course, we have the president of Iran, who is a big turn from the moderate leadership of his predecessor. He says that the Holocaust is a myth, apparently forgetting the six million Jews and many others who perished in the Holocaust. And he says he thinks that Israel essential should be moved over to Europe.

M. O'BRIEN: Wipe for the map, he said, and placed in Europe.

S. O'BRIEN: Yes. M. O'BRIEN: Because the -- the interesting -- here is the flaw in the argument. He says the Holocaust didn't happen. But then he says those responsible for the Holocaust were the Europeans, and therefore the Jewish state should be in Europe. So there's a little hole in that logic.

S. O'BRIEN: It's not necessarily the most well thought-out argument.

CAROL COSTELLO, CNN ANCHOR: Well, I think it just takes care of everyone, from his perspective.

S. O'BRIEN: Yes. And wiping it off and moving it to Europe is also kind of a bizarre thought. But we digress.

M. O'BRIEN: Let's talk about land marshals. Air marshals grounded, and actually sea marshals, too. The "Washington Post," "New York Times" this morning out with a story they're going to redeploy some of these sky marshals. Of course we -- the sky marshals are in the news because of that incident last week in Miami, where they actually had to use deadly force with a passenger who was acting suspiciously.

But the idea now, and there's been a lot of criticism about the Transportation Security Administration spending such tiny amounts of money on ground transportation. So here they are, they're going to put a few of these air marshals, take them off the planes, put them in bus terminals.

S. O'BRIEN: But Carol said just two, it looks like, for each station, which -- I mean, if you look at a big station, train station or bus station...

M. O'BRIEN: Yes.

S. O'BRIEN: That's not going to work.

COSTELLO: It makes you think, why didn't they do this a long time ago? Did they just suddenly discover that it might be necessary? Because every time you ride a train, you think of it. Every time you ride the subway, you think of that. And you thought, well maybe after the London bombings, maybe something will happen. But it's taken a long time for that to happen.

M. O'BRIEN: I think $4 billion is spent on aviation security and I think there's going to be approximately, I want to say, round numbers, 10 million on ground transportation security.

Doug Laird (ph), who's a security consultant quoted in the "Post" piece says: "In one word, this is absurd. Clearly responsibility of the local jurisdictions. They don't have enough air marshals to carry out the mission they're supposed to do. To spread them even thinner dilutes the reason they are there in the first place." Good point. It's a good point.

COSTELLO: Well, a lot of things are confusing about our security these days.

S. O'BRIEN: Yes, no question about that.

Ahead this morning, we're talking about the morning "House Call." For years, we've been hearing about the high fiber diet, right? It helps protects you against colon cancer. Maybe not. Conventional wisdom may not be true after all. We're going to take a look at that story, just ahead on AMERICAN MORNING.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

M. O'BRIEN: Coming up, we'll tell you the story of a precipitous fall with a happy ending. A parachute -- actually two chutes that didn't open properly.

S. O'BRIEN: Talk about luck.

M. O'BRIEN: Yes. A woman who landed on her face in a parking lot lived to tell the tale. And as a matter of fact, was pregnant and the baby is fine. We'll check in with her and ask her what that was like a little bit ahead on AMERICAN MORNING.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

M. O'BRIEN: Good morning, I'm Miles O'Brien. In just a couple of hours, President Bush with his last in a series of speeches in Iraq. Is it the best chance yet to turn around public opinion on the war? We have a live report for you.

S. O'BRIEN: I'm Soledad O'Brien. On the eve of free elections in Iraq, will the discovery of thousands of phony ballots cast a shadow on the results? We're live in Baghdad.

M. O'BRIEN: And an urgent plea for more money to pay for Katrina relief. Emotions running high in Congress and in the city of New Orleans, on this AMERICAN MORNING.

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