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American Morning

Middle East Crisis Continues; Kentucky Derby Winner Barbaro Takes Turn for the Worse

Aired July 14, 2006 - 07:30   ET

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

SOLEDAD O'BRIEN, CNN ANCHOR: Welcome back everybody, I'm Soledad O'Brien.
MILES O'BRIEN, CNN ANCHOR: And I'm Miles O'Brien. Thanks very much for being with us. We're watching very closely of course the crisis in the Middle East. And before we get into that, let's talk a little bit about the lay of the land, if you would. Take a look at our Google map technology and we'll just give you a sense of what a compact region this is, from stem to stern Israel is about the size of New Jersey. But let's zoom in and tell you where this kind of all began. June 25th it was Gaza to the south and we're talking about 130 miles south of the border where we're talking about a lot of the conflict this morning.

Gaza we should point out is home to 1.5 million Palestinians. It is one of the most densely populated places on the planet, 2146 people per kilometer. Alright let's fly 130 miles to the north and past the border with Lebanon and Israel. Beirut is only 55 miles from Israel's northern border. Population there is 1.7 million. A lot of focus in the southern regions right now because that is where it is believed some key Hezbollah officials including the Hezbollah leader live and as a result Israeli war planes have been leafleting, warning residents to flee that area because there may be attacks directed that way and that is what has caused a lot of people to flee.

Let's go now to Safad, which is where we saw an attack yesterday. It is 13 miles south of the border between Lebanon and Israel. And it was hit yesterday by Hezbollah firing the -- you can see the border up there. They're firing the (INAUDIBLE) rockets well with the range of those small (INAUDIBLE) rockets. One person was critically injured in that attack. Now Haifa was another site of attack. This surprised the Israelis a little bit. Look at the distances there. Haifa's is a port city of Israel, third largest city in Israel with a population of about 300,000. And it is about 22 miles south of that border. If we can go wide one more time there Brian just to show you real quickly. And that was considered a bit of a stretch for those (INAUDIBLE) rockets and perhaps people in Haifa are little more concerned today knowing that those rockets can reach them.

Let's just go wide to the Middle East region one more time for you and give you a sense. We're talking about a country in Israel which as he said is the size of New Jersey, 3.7 million square miles. The distances between all of the capitals and all of the key places there are so small that it underscores a lot of the tensions there. So just wanted to give you a sense of where things stand geographically as well as we look at things militarily and diplomatically too. All morning long we have been talking about this group Hezbollah. It means party of God in English. And it is, in fact, a political party. Although some would suggest it is a group bent on terror. We want to take a closer look now at what Hezbollah is and why it has such prominence in the Middle East, CNN'S Brian Todd with that.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

BRIAN TODD, CNN CORRESPONDENT: A classic Middle East contradiction, a political party gaining strength in seats in Lebanon's parliament. A party that runs schools, hospitals, charities in Lebanon and has a TV network with millions of viewers. That's Hezbollah. And according to the state department, so is this.

SEAN MCCORMACK, STATE DEPARTMENT SPOKESMAN: Hezbollah essentially are terror subcontractors for Damascus and Tehran.

TODD: Founded in 1982 and long listed as a terrorist group by the state department, experts say Hezbollah has cells all over the world including the United States. It has been lead for 14 years by a youthful charismatic militant named Hasan Misralah(PH) and gets some backing from Syria. But experts say most of Hezbollah's support, cash, rockets, training, comes from Iran.

MARTIN INDYK, FORMER U.S. AMBASSADOR TO ISRAEL: In these circumstances where Hezbollah initiated military action to kidnap these soldiers, I don't believe it would have done so without coordinating through the revolutionary guards with Iran.

TODD: An official at the Iranian mission at the United Nations says that charge is baseless. Created to counter Israel's operations in southern Lebanon, Hezbollah has been linked to a series of high profile attacks on Israel and the United States. Including the 1983 suicide bombing that killed 241 marines at their barracks in Beirut. The bombing of the U.S. Embassy in Beirut that same year and the embassy annex in 1984 as well as kidnappings of several westerners in Lebanon in the 1980s. Analysts believe Hezbollah has long given up its dream of establishing a Shiite regime in Lebanon. What does it want now?

HISHAM MELHEM, AN-NAHAR NEWSPAPER, LEBANON: They want to play an important role. They want to employ Shia's government, they want to invest in the infrastructure of the Shia areas and they want their place under the sun in Lebanon but definitely they don't want to disarm.

TODD: That pressure on the Lebanese government to disarm Hezbollah has come from Christian groups and other top political groups in Lebanon which don't want to hinder that nation's recent economic prosperity. The problem with that according to the experts, Lebanon has virtually no control over Hezbollah. Brian Todd, CNN, Washington.

(END OF VIDEOTAPE)

SOLEDAD O'BRIEN: With their connection to Hezbollah, is it then Iran and Syria that are to blame for this new crisis in the Middle East? CNN's senior political analyst Bill Schneider joins us, he's in Washington, D.C. To some degree there is a sense, I think Bill that this came out of nowhere. There is the immediate cause, those two soldiers being kidnapped, but clearly this has gone so far beyond that.

WILLIAM SCHNEIDER, CNN SENIOR POLITICAL ANALYST: Most observers believe all roads lead to Tehran. Tehran seems to be at the heart of this, they are supporters of the militant wing of Hamas which of course originally kidnapped the Israeli corporal. As you heard the ambassador say they are widely believed to have instigated the Hezbollah attacks on Israel which killed Israeli soldiers and captured two more that are now being held hostage. And remember that the Israelis at least argued that the Hezbollah are attempting or have been attempting to transfer those hostages to Iran of all places.

Iran of course has been making trouble in Iraq. They have connections to Iraqi militias they have connections to major Shia political parties. Hezbollah should be pointed out as Shia political organization and militant organization. And of course third crisis, Iran refuses to negotiate with the west about curbing its nuclear program. So they have become a significant regional power causing a lot of trouble right now.

SOLEDAD O'BRIEN: Israel hit the airport again as you well know. The idea is that they will try to, I think the word they used was defang Hezbollah by not allowing flights in and not allowing the weaponry to come in, the funding Israeli leaders to come in. What exactly is the link between Hezbollah -- what's happening now and the nuclear crisis that you just mentioned?

SCHNEIDER: Well Iran is kind of -- it doesn't want to negotiate, doesn't want to indicate that it's willing to curb its nuclear program but it does want to show its influence in other parts of the Middle East. Israel was attacking Gaza because of the Gaza firing -- Palestinians firing rockets on Israel. So Iran decided it's going to show its influence in that part of the Middle East. It's going to show it's a champion of the Palestinian cause. To divert attention from the nuclear crisis, to build support for its position and its leadership, and really to throw its weight around. Diverting attention throwing its weight around, absolutely crucial.

Now, remember, the United States overthrew the Saddam Hussein government in Iraq. Certainly a net gain for humanity. On the other hand, there has been no strong Iraqi state to replace it. You remember some time ago the Bush administration would talk about Iraq being a model of peace and democracy in the Middle East, now look what's happening. What has happened is -- what unintended consequence is it has left Iran in a far stronger position than it ever was and it is playing a role as a regional power and really causing an enormous amount of trouble.

SOLEDAD O'BRIEN: The response from Iran has eventually been to lay out how bad it could get. The Iranian president saying in fact that -- I think we have a quote from him. Let's throw that up on the screen guys right here. He says, "If the Zionist regime commits another stupid move and attacks Syria, this will be considered like attacking the whole Islamic world and this regime will receive a very fierce response." Do you think in fact that is the case that this could set off, trigger an Islamic war across this region?

SCHNEIDER: The radicals would love to see that happen, it's up to Israel, the United States, the rest of the world to make sure it does not. Iran has set itself up, is setting itself up as the leader of radical Islamic forces around the Middle East and around the world. That's the position it wants to be in. It includes Hamas where it controls a small militant wing of Hamas, it includes Hezbollah, it includes other terrorists groups, it includes an alliance with Syria. They see themselves as becoming the leader of radical Islam. Iran, not Iraq now but Iran.

SOLEDAD O'BRIEN: Bill Schneider for us this morning. Bill thanks, he's our senior political analyst. Miles?

MILES O'BRIEN: A little bit of breaking news coming to us from the Middle East. We have reports that there is yet another shelling targeting the Beirut International Airport. Let's bring you down and give you a sense of what the Israelis are doing. In each case they have been aiming either missiles or shells at the runways of the Beirut airport. A matter of fact those runways have been repaired. I don't know if we can zoom down and show people the airport or not.

In any case, we are told there is additional shelling aimed at keeping that airport shut down. The Israelis are concerned about Hezbollah being re-supplied. There you see the airport prior to the attacks obviously that's when this satellite photo was taken. The Israeli army also saying that Israel has shelled the road between Habush and Iklam Al Tufa(PH), that is in southern Lebanon. So more shelling in southern Lebanon as well as targeting the Beirut International Airport. We're watching it as it all unfolds.

Say it ain't so Barbaro. The gutsy colt who won the Kentucky Derby, won our hearts and then broke his right hind leg in the Preakness, may not make it after all. And the problem is in his supposedly good left hind leg. Brianna Keilar now with more on that. Brianna good morning.

BRIANNA KEILAR, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Good morning and poor Barbaro, right. He wins the derby by an amazing distance, about 6 1/2 lengths and going into the Preakness because of that it looked like he was a very good contender for the Triple Crown. But of course Barbaro shattered his leg in that race. Doctors secured his bones with screws and titanium plates and gave him a 50-50 chance of survival. For more than six weeks they were optimistic and then yesterday they announced things have taken a turn for the worse.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

DR. DEAN RICHARDSON, UNIVERSITY OF PA, NEW BOLTON CTR.: If you asked me two weeks ago I really thought -- I really thought we were going to make it two weeks ago. Today I am not as confident.

KEILAR: In the minutes after the announcement, a huge outpouring on the internet. From coast to coast new prayers for Barbaro posted every few seconds. Somehow this hard knock horse has found its way into the hearts of many Americans.

ASHLEY HOLZER, RIVERDALE EQUESTRIAN CTR.: I think Americans want to have that hero. They believe in that hero and to see an animal hurt like that trying to be great for people I think really does strike an emotional cord in a lot of people.

KEILAR: Ashley Holzer an Olympic bronze medal winner runs the Riverdale Equestrian Center in New York City. She understands the heartbreak of losing a promising horse like Barbaro.

HOLZER: No one likes to see a good man go down.

KEILAR: This isn't the first time we pulled for an underdog of a racehorse. The movie "Seabiscuit" based in part on a true story was a box office hit.

Oh my saints alive, you guessed it, man oh man did you ever guess it.

KEILAR: For Barbaro though, the odds of a miraculous comeback are slim. Right now the biggest threat is a life threatening inflammation of tissues in his left hind foot.

HOLZER: It's a very painful disease, it can be kept under control with pain medication which I'm sure they're giving him, but horses have to stand on their feet so it would be like this happening to you but you have to stand on your fingernails.

KEILAR: But for one little girl, Ashley's daughter Emma, there is still hope.

EMMA: I hope he gets better.

KEILAR: Were you watching the race when Barbaro was injured?

EMMA: Yes. That was a critical event, I hated it. It was just really, really sad.

(END OF VIDEOTAPE) KEILAR: Barbaro's vet Dr. Richardson said yesterday that Barbaro's ears were up and that he was bright and looking around. But Richardson also said it's possible that Barbaro could be euthanized as early as today Miles if things get worse. It just breaks your heart doesn't it?

MILES O'BRIEN: It does, it does.

SOLEDAD O'BRIEN: Everyone was pulling for this horse.

MILES O'BRIEN: I don't think a lot of us knew that a horse needed all four legs to live until this. And now how unusual is it in these cases to end up with this thing, laminitis?

KEILAR: Laminitis is actually pretty common from what vets say. And actually Secretariat, the 1973 Triple Crown winner was euthanized in 1989 after he suffered laminitis. There are several causes but in Barbaro's case he was standing too much on his left hind leg and that caused the inflammation.

MILES O'BRIEN: Wow, wow. Maybe they will still pull it out but it doesn't look good. Does it?

KEILAR: No. But it's definitely worth keeping your fingers crossed.

MILES O'BRIEN: Alright, Brianna Keilar, thank you very much. Coming up on the program, the impact of the Mideast crisis on gas prices here at home. You can guess what that will be. We'll tell what you to expect.

SOLEDAD O'BRIEN: Also a result of hurricane Katrina is driving up real estate prices in some gulf coast towns. We'll take a look this morning.

MILES O'BRIEN: The space shuttle "Discovery" gearing up to undock from the international space station. And they have a crucial test that lies ahead. We'll check in with them, see how they're doing up there in space ahead on AMERICAN MORNING.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

MILES O'BRIEN: We have some new pictures just in. This is in the northern parts of Israel, (INAUDIBLE) is the name of this location. Actually these are live pictures. This is an Israeli site where some armored vehicles obviously are encamped and there's been some shelling in this activity as Israel continues to ratchet up the pressure on Hezbollah. Primarily in southern Lebanon but really as Israel said the other day, any and all targets are fair game they have deemed it in Lebanon because it is believed that the Lebanese government, according to Israel, is aiding and abetting Hezbollah, the party of God, which Israel accuses of terrorism and which some would say is simply a political party, a political voice in Lebanon. In either case, the reprisals, the tit for tat violence continues today. We're watching it every step of the way for you.

A relatively quiet day in space for the crew of the space shuttle "Discovery." The crew will begin yet another inspection of the shuttle heat shield to ensure it hasn't been dinged by space junk during the 11 days so far of this mission. Ground controllers are also watching some problems with two of the shuttle's crucial auxiliary power units. One of them has a low pressure indication and one of them has a problem apparently with a thermostat. Those auxiliary power units are crucial because they power the space shuttle's aero surfaces, computers and everything during re-entry. So we'll watch that problem very closely for you, as well. There is one other thing we have to tell you about. Astronaut Piers Sellers in one of his space walks created yet another satellite, man-made satellite, a little putty knife. We asked him about all these things just a while ago.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE) MILES O'BRIEN: First of all let me introduce everybody to the crew as they hurdle above us 200 miles above us, 17,500 miles an hour. Right here there is the pilot Mark Kelly. There's Pablo Vinegrado(PH) from the international space station. Jeff Williams of the international space station. Mike Fossum, space walker extraordinaire. Lisa Norwak, mission specialist, Stephanie Wilson, mission specialist and Piers Sellers the guy who lost his putty knife. We'll talk about that in just a few moments. But first of all, I want to talk to Mark Kelly about this problem we heard about the auxiliary power units. We hear you're looking at a couple of problems. That's a critical system. How concerned should we be about it?

MARK KELLY, DISCOVERY PILOT: We do have a couple of problems. Fortunately we have -- still we have three good APUs, they are pretty minor problems. We have three APUs, auxiliary power units for redundancy and these are the things that generate the hydraulic power to power our flight control system. APU1 has a small heater problem and a little loss of redundancy there, but we can take care of that by putting the shuttle at a certain latitude. And then APU3 has a slight hydrogene or (INAUDIBLE) leak but it's pretty minor.

MILES O'BRIEN: I want to ask you about this late inspection which is coming up later today Mark. You're going to actually look over the heat shield one more time because out of concern that "Discovery" might have been struck by a micro meteorite or some space debris. How big a risk is that and how concerned should we be about that one?

KELLY: Any ionic space craft in orbit always has a certain amount of risk of being hit with something. There's a lot of objects in earth orbit, also things, you know micrometeorites that come from outside of the earth's orbit, so there is always the possibility of contacting one of those and by doing a late inspection we mitigate that risk a little bit. We're going to inspect one wing today and then tomorrow the nose cap and the other wing. It will slightly reduce a risk of damage to our thermal protection system. At least if the damage was to happen, we would know about it.

LISA NOWAK, DISCOVERY CREW MEMBER: We've actually learned a lot while we've been up here. We received great training for a couple years before we came. There's some thing we just couldn't quite train on the ground, like learning just how dark it gets when the sun goes down and adjusting with different cameras. We're told we had to do that but it was dramatic just how dark it got and how quickly we needed to bring up other (INAUDIBLE). The late inspection is basically the same procedures except the port wing we'll being doing that docked, which wasn't the case before but we think it will probably go a little more efficiently this time.

MILES O'BRIEN: Piers you were out working on some techniques for repairing the leading edge of the wing, the reinforced carbon. I am a little curious about what happened to the putty knife. But I'm also more curious really how those tests seemed to work.

PIERS SELLERS, DISCOVERY CREW MEMBER: With regards to the putty knife, we had this big bag full of tools. Mike and I take turns in tending it and of course it was my turn so I have no one to blame but myself. And while getting something in and out of the bag I must have bumped the little hook that holds the spatula of the putty knife to my work station. And when Mark went and looked at the movie later again, you can see that little guy making his escape three feet away between my feet later on. And he just crept away from me. I think he had been planning his escape for a while. In terms of repairs, the temperatures were a little colder than we expected. So Mike and I were working the stuff hard. It became kind of stiff. We would like to have seen warmer temperatures. But we think we did as good a repair test as we could given the temperature conditions. We're excited to see what the results will be when we get them back to Houston and test them under simulated entry conditions, see how they hold up.

(END OF VIDEOTAPE)

MILES O'BRIEN: Some of the "Discovery" astronauts, we wish them a safe return home. If the weather holds, you will see it right here on AMERICAN MORNING on Monday morning. The actual landing a little after 9:00 eastern, but our coverage will begin 6:00 a.m. eastern. We'll have former shuttle commander Eileen Collins with us to bring "Discovery" home. So you'll want to join us for that.

Andy's minding your business after a break. Stay with us.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

SOLEDAD O'BRIEN: Some bad news over at chip maker Intel. Andy Serwer is "Minding Your Business" this morning. Good morning?

ANDY SERWER, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Good morning Soledad. All about chips here this morning. Let's start with Intel. In fact, the company is saying they will be slashing 1,000 management jobs over the next couple of days. That's a lot. And in fact, some are speculating that 9,000 more job cuts are coming over the next couple months. This obviously as Intel struggles to compete with AMD, which has been eating its lunch basically over the past couple of years. Now, this is another chip story to tell you about this morning. The New York State Attorney General's office, Eliot Spitzer of course is the New York State AG, is suing various memory chip makers including companies like affinion, alpedia, hinicks, Samsung and others.

SOLEDAD O'BRIEN: On what grounds?

SERWER: Not Samsung actually, correct that, on Micron. This goes going back to a long standing investigation by the Justice Department alleging price fixing, saying that these companies got together colluded to fix prices to keep them high obviously. And what that means is that companies that made PCs such as Dell and Hewlett Packard and companies that made electronics charged higher prices to consumers. So we paid while they colluded to fix prices or so the lawsuit said, alleges. 30 other states are expected to follow suit.

SOLEDAD O'BRIEN: We pay, that's always the way it works, isn't it?

SERWER: Yeah that's right.

SOLEDAD O'BRIEN: So what's ahead this morning?

SERWER: More news on Mentos and Diet Coke. Of course you don't want to miss that.

SOLEDAD O'BRIEN: A story that never goes away.

SERWER: It really doesn't and it shouldn't.

SOLEDAD O'BRIEN: Alright Andy, thanks. A look at the day's top stories coming up right after this short break.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

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