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American Morning

Warning The President; Stepping Aide; Midwest Flooding; End Of The Blair Era

Aired May 10, 2007 - 06:00   ET

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

KIRAN CHETRY, CNN ANCHOR: Warning shot. Moderate Republicans confront President Bush on Iraq. What it means for the war and a new debate on Capitol Hill today.
Plus, a new day dawning in the U.K. British Prime Minister Tony Blair's major announcement in the next hour on this AMERICAN MORNING.

And good morning to you. It's Thursday, May 10th. I'm Kiran Chetry.

JOHN ROBERTS, CNN ANCHOR: And I'm John Roberts. Thanks for joining us.

We've got a lot on our a.m. radar this morning.

Moderate Republicans over at the White House the other day, granted they were mostly junior Republicans, but still the house minority leader, John Boehner, was there with them, warning the president that support for the Iraq War among Republicans is beginning to slip and any more involvement in Iraq without progress is going to start to hurt the fortunes of the Republican Party. So a very loud warning shot fired across the bow at the president.

CHETRY: Well, it will be interesting to see how this impacts the war funding debate because some of these people just squeaked back to re-election because many of their constituents were so angry about the Iraq War. We're going to talk more about that.

Also coping in disaster. The state of emergency in Missouri. Imagine having to take a row boat to work. This is the situation for some people after the intense flooding that the area got. And they got news yesterday of some levee breaches, and that caused the waters to rise yet again.

ROBERTS: Amazing that they even had work to go to.

CHETRY: That's true too.

And Rudy Giuliani wanting to set the record straight, articulating his views on abortion. We're going to have more on that today.

ROBERTS: Yes. Let's say the campaign made a decision that sort of waffling long answers like he gave at the debate a week ago just weren't cutting it for him and leaving too many questions unanswered. And Don Imus back in the public eye. An awkward encounter at a book signing for his wife. He was asked what it was like to be back in the public eye. Didn't seem to like the question too much, even through it sounded like pretty much of a soft ball.

We begin, though, with an extraordinary meeting at the White House and the most significant pressure yet on President Bush to change his policy on Iraq. A group of moderate House Republicans sat down with the president this week and in a "candid and frank discussion," they told him that the voters back home are running out of patience and want positive results soon. Ed Henry is live in Washington outside the White House this morning.

And, Ed, this was a group of junior moderate Republicans. Still, though, they went over to the White House with the House majority leader, John Boehner. So, you know, and they came out and talked about it publicly. So this really would seem to be some sort of an elevation in the resistance that President Bush is getting to continue presence in Iraq without showing real progress.

ED HENRY, CNN CORRESPONDENT: No doubt about it, John. I mean the bottom line here is, that while Democrats have been raising concern for months, maybe even years now, you're absolutely right. When you have more Republicans coming out, this shows growing angst in the Republican Party about the slow pace of progress in Iraq.

It also shows President Bush, as you noted, when you have the House minority leader, John Boehner, joining that meeting at the White House on Tuesday afternoon, even if he didn't speak out, but the fact that he had lent his presence there as a leader, it clearly shows that the clock is ticking for the president. Republicans are getting nervous. So not just looking at the timelines about withdrawing troops, they're looking at another timeline, which is a 2008 election. Republicans nervous about their nominee being pulled down by the war, but also John Boehner, and Mitch McConnell in the Senate, those leaders worried about their candidate going down in 2008, losing more seats in the House and Senate.

So I think that's the bottom line there, that this clearly shows there's a political earthquake that's bubbling. The question is, where is it on the political Richter scale? It might only be a 3.0, 4.0 right now. But as you know, this can get up to a 7.0, 8.0 pretty fast if people like Boehner start joining these moderates. They're not there yet. But if they start getting there and saying, look, Mr. President, this is just not working.

ROBERTS: Yes, when those fault lines start to split apart, quickly they can escalate.

It's not just the juniors and the moderates though. People like Boehner himself, earlier this week, saying that if there's no progress by the fall, people are going to be asking, where's the plan b? Trent Lott, the whip in the Senate, said something similar. And take a listen to what Arlen Specter said yesterday at this hearing with the defense secretary.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

SEN. ARLEN SPECTER, (R) PENNSYLVANIA: There's a sense here, certainly by the Democrats and growing among Republicans, that there has to be some progress, significant progress to sustain it beyond September.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

ROBERTS: So there he says it's growing among Republicans. So when we talk about these fractures, how quickly could they spread?

HENRY: Well, very quickly. And I think you're right to point right towards September, as Arlen Specter was suggesting there. That's pretty much the deadline. As you know, General Petraeus, the commander on the ground, has suggested that he's going to take a look and evaluate this increase of U.S. troops on the ground in Baghdad.

And I think the other significant development in the last 24 hours is the fact that Vice President Cheney has now stayed the night in Iraq. He stayed at a base near Tikrit. As you know, he was in Baghdad yesterday. The highest level U.S. officials to stay overnight in Iraq. They're clearly trying to show that, look, they believe there's some progress, but they're also trying to show they get the fact that Republicans are very nervous about what's going on in Iraq.

That's the major reason why Vice President Cheney was there. He delivered a tough message to Prime Minister Maliki, which is deep concern at the White House, as well, about the fact that the Iraqi parliament is now talk about a two-month summer break. As you know, that's a major reason why these moderate Republicans are concerned. They don't get how the Iraqi parliament can take a vacation while U.S. blood is being spilled (ph) in Baghdad.

John.

ROBERTS: And you know what's really weird about that, Ed, is that the foreign minister told us from Egypt last week that oh, no, that's all taken care of. But it doesn't seem like it is.

Ed Henry at the White House today. Thanks very much. Appreciate it. See you soon.

HENRY: Thank you.

CHETRY: British Prime Minister Tony Blair, America's closest ally in Iraq, and also under fire because of it, is making a major announcement in the next hour. He told his cabinet this morning that he is stepping down as head of the labor party. Mr. Blair will remain prime minister until the party chooses a new leader. An hour from now, he'll announce that to his constituents and we'll bring that to you live. Tony Blair will have served 10 years as prime minister. CNN's European political editor Robin Oakley is live at 10 Downing Street.

A decade ago Blair came, Robin, into office, greeted with euphoria and now he appears to be leaving under the cloud of the Iraq War. How much of this day has to do with the war in Iraq?

ROBIN OAKLEY, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Huge amount to do with Iraq, as you say, Kiran. And 10 years ago, Tony Blair came up this street in triumph. The people waiving flags. All his party supporters gathered this morning after telling the cabinet for his timetable of his departure, he slipped out of the back door to go up to his constituency in the north of England and make the formal announcement there that he will step down as prime minister.

It isn't the end for Tony Blair today. It's the beginning of the end. He will still attend a G8 Summit. He'll have a visit to Washington shortly to see President Bush. He'll go to another European summit in Brussels in the next few weeks.

But it is the beginning of the end for Tony Blair and the man who has been the labor party's greatest election winner in its history, two smashing election victories and a third one of a pretty significant magnitude has now become a vote loser for the labor party. And it is because of Iraq, it is because he is perceived here in Britain as George Bush's poodle. That he has become so unpopular that his own party will actually, in the end, see him go with relief.

Kiran.

CHETRY: All right. Robin Oakley, thank you. We're going to try to get the audio situation worked out so we can hear you a little better next time we check in with you. Thanks.

ROBERTS: Obviously sounds like pretty close quarters there. They've got correspondents sort of stacked up like cord word, I would think, out in front of 10 Downing Street this morning.

Firefighters in Los Angeles expect to have the fire in Griffith Park fully contained today. More than 800 acres of the park have burned. One hundred and fifty firefighters spent all night on the line there trying to get it under control. Investigators believe that the fire started on a golf course when somebody threw a cigarette into the brush. One man is being questioned but he is not considered a suspect.

Wildfires are still burning in Georgia and Florida this morning. About 200 homes were evacuated in north Florida. Two hundred plus fires burning across the state, scorching about 100,000 acres.

And those fires have left most of the state covered in a smoky haze. This is what it looks like in central Florida. The haze extends from Jacksonville all the way down to Miami. And very often it gets so thick that they've got to close Interstate 75, the Florida Turnpike, which is that major north-south route between Orlando and Miami.

CHETRY: Fires on the coast and flooding in the middle of the country. And water is finally starting to recede in Big Lake, Missouri, which quite literally turned into a big lake. And that's where AMERICAN MORNING's Sean Callebs is for us today.

So rather than still waiting for that to recede even more, they're still not able to go back to their homes and see what's left.

SEAN CALLEBS, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Oh, without question. I think that the water remains elevated here. So does the frustration.

I'm standing on Highway 111. Behind me you can see perhaps a large storage shed or barn back in there. A lot of people very frustrated in this area because they watched levees give away in certain areas and the water just come pouring in. So people saw their homes, and as well as their livelihoods, being threatened as the water just swamped this entire area.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

TOM BULLOCKS, BIG LAKE RESIDENT: I knew all that had to come down here.

CALLEBS, (voice over): Forty-nine-year-old Tom Bullocks guides his small boat over what just days ago was a healthy field of freshly sprouting corn. Now the flood has put a lot of likelihoods in peril.

But you've got to be angry, frustrated.

BULLOCKS: Well, I mean, I am, because -- you would be to if you could have had footage of the joke we have for a levee down there.

CALLEBS: As thousands of acres flooded, he watched helplessly. Like many in the Big Lake, Missouri, area, Bullocks makes a living in farming. And like so many here, Bullocks' reliving a nightmare.

BULLOCKS: It was in '93, we had a little bit of water.

CALLEBS: Just like the historic Midwest flood of 1993, Missouri River water came pouring in fast. Once this starts to recede, Bullocks wonders what will be next?

BULLOCKS: When the water starts doing down, it will have a pretty good current to it going south, back to the river, and hopefully a lot of this trash will float out of here with it.

CALLEBS: Then it's time for folks here to roll up their sleeves and get back to work.

BULLOCKS: I don't care where you go, farmers hang tight to each other. They'll put their neighbors ahead of theirself a lot of times.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

CALLEBS: It's interesting to watch are these guys come out and just take a look at this. As far as we know, Bullocks is the only one riding out the conditions in his home. But he says he's staying there not because he's concerned about looters, because he has so much in his freezer and his fridge. He has a generator there and he fires it up periodically just to keep everything fresh as can be under these kind of situations, Kiran.

And, interesting, you saw the boat that we were in with Tom yesterday. The last time he used that small outboard engine, back in 1993.

CHETRY: Right, when it was the other catastrophic flooding in the area. All right, Sean Callebs, thanks so much. They're also calling -- getting the Missouri Water Patrol to help people get in and feed their pets. Some people had to leave their pets in the house.

ROBERTS: Yes, I remember when we were in New Orleans, we collected a bunch of pets. We had a boat. We had 10 dogs on it at one point. It was really incredible.

Then there's also the big surprise off of the East Coast. The first named storm of the 2007 hurricane season. A season that hasn't even started yet. Her name? Andrea. Meteorologist Rob Marciano here in New York with us. He's got a look at the total extreme weather picture this morning.

And it is pretty extreme, Rob.

(WEATHER REPORT)

CHETRY: Well, Don Imus made his first public appearance in public since being fired last month. It's a little bit of an awkward one. He went out to support his wife's book. Her book tour was postponed last month, of course, when Imus was fired by CBS Radio. But the I-man wasn't up much for talking about it. Let's listen.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DON IMUS, FORMER RADIO SHOW HOST: (INAUDIBLE). So I'm happy about that.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: How does it feel to get back out in the public eye again?

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: (INAUDIBLE).

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: (INAUDIBLE) some mixed feelings then?

IMUS: No. OK. Thank you.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: All right. Thank you. Thank you.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CHETRY: No comment. I guess it was no comment.

ROBERTS: Imus with nothing to say.

CHETRY: Yes, well.

ROBERTS: You don't see that very often.

CHETRY: Maybe now you do because of what happened. But Imus, he hired a lawyer. We talked to his lawyer, actually, earlier this week. He plans to sue CBS Radio for $120 million for wrongful termination, saying that the language in his contract calls for him to be controversial and irreverent and they're arguing he was.

ROBERTS: And just to point out, that's three times what was left on his contract as well.

CHETRY: That's right.

ROBERTS: Hey, another awkward moment last night. Take a look at this. This one in Boston. Not a place you'd expect it to happen. Two men being pulled apart as they go at it last night. Where? On the balcony of the Boston Symphony Hall. It was the big opening night for the Boston Pops orchestra. The fight made such a ruckus that the Boston Pops conductor, Keith Lockhart, had to stop the music while the men were escorted out.

CHETRY: How embarrassing. And who was taping up there in the balcony, anyway? A camera phone. That guy lost his shirt.

ROBERTS: Do you want Haden (ph) or do you want Mozart? You know, I don't know, who was best.

Looking for a job in Washington, by the way. The White House is hiring. A look at just how many senior staffers have left in the past 10 days alone, coming up.

Also, Rudy Giuliani may be facing his critics head on. He says he wants no one to mistake his stance on abortion.

And Al Sharpton tries to explain just what he meant by his comments about the Mormon faith.

You're watching AMERICAN MORNING. The most news in the morning is on CNN.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

ROBERTS: Welcome back to AMERICAN MORNING. The most news in the morning here on CNN.

Attorney General Alberto Gonzales is going to be on the House hot seat again today, answering questions about the firing of eight federal prosecutors. Members of the House Judiciary Committee are expected to ask Gonzales about whether his former top aide weighed the political affiliations of entry level prosecutors before hiring them. Three of the eight attorneys fired are calling for an independent investigation and some members from both parties are calling for Gonzales' resignation, though that talk is somewhat tamped down lately. Gonzales says the controversy is distracting his department from fighting crime.

Hang out the help wanted sign at the White House. Four senior officials have left in just the past 10 days, including J.D. Crouch, who was the deputy national security adviser, and Randall Tobias. He's the head of U.S. AID, who resigned in the D.C. madame scandal. President Bush also looking to fill the new position of war czar. But so far no takers for that one. CHETRY: All right. Well, in just about 30 minutes, Tony Blair will be revealing his personal plan. And he's stepping down as head of his party. He served as Britain's prime minister for a decade and he's been President Bush's most trusted ally. We're taking a closer look now at what's next for the U.S. and Britain. CNN's Jill Daugherty is live in Washington for us right now to explain how it works a little bit.

Jill, hi. Thanks for being with us.

JILL DOUGHERTY, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Hey, Kiran.

CHETRY: Well, how does it work in Britain, because it's not as if he lost an election or was mired in a huge scanned. So why is he stepping down now?

DOUGHERTY: Well, you know, he's had a really good run. You mentioned, he's been in power for 10 years. That's a very good run. And he already made it clear that he did want to step down.

So what happens now is he, in essence, is announcing his intention to step down as the head of the party, the labor party. And then there's a process that takes several weeks, probably about six, almost seven weeks, where they have to get a successor. And then at the end of that, he will formally go to the queen and say that he is stepping down as prime minister. So it takes quite a while. We'll probably see that coming in early July.

CHETRY: But it's really no secret about who his successor is going to be, that's Chancellor Gordon Brown. He's expected to replace him. So what does that mean for the United States?

DOUGHERTY: Well, if you look at Tony Blair, he really has been a very, very close ally of George Bush. In fact, it was so close that people called him Bush's poodle and criticized him for just following in the footsteps of what Bush wanted to do in Iraq. Actually he, himself, wanted to do what they did in Iraq.

But now Gordon Brown is a little bit different. He's a very experienced politician. And you're likely to see that he won't have as close an embrace. He certainly is a supporter of the United States and things American. In fact, he vacations in the United States on Cape Cod. But he knows what the polls are showing. He knows that that close embrace between Bush and Blair was really a political dynamite and very detrimental to Blair. So he won't be as close personally, you would I tend to think.

CHETRY: OK. And what about the close relationship between the U.S. and Britain in terms of seeing ideologically eye to eye on most things?

DOUGHERTY: Well, they continue to do that. You'd have to say, there's no question that they are very close allies. Always have been. There's that phrase, a special relationship and they tend to be very, very close on most issues. But, you know, now that the Iraq War is -- and the British presence will be winding down there. And there's nothing really much on the horizon at this point, you'd have to say, so that need for Bush to have a really, really close ally who's going to be with him through thick and thin in new ventures doesn't seem to be there at this point, at least.

CHETRY: All right. CNN's Jill Daugherty in Washington for us. Thank you.

And again, we're reminding people, in just about 30 minutes, Tony Blair is expected to make that announcement. We'll, of course, carry it live for you here on CNN.

ROBERTS: You bet. Coming up to 21 minutes after the hour now. In the past week we've seen tornadoes, drought, floods, even a subtropical storm. What's causing all of this extreme weather? Is it global warming, El Nino or even some people believe it might be the apocalypse. Meteorologist Rob Marciano is going to break it down for us coming up.

And the Dow jumps again and it's got a lot to do with the Fed's decision on interest rates. What it could mean for you coming up next.

You're watching AMERICAN MORNING.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

ROBERTS: Live pictures there of Tony Blair shaking hands in his home district north of London. It's expected that Tony Blair is going to make an announcement in about 35 minutes or so to say that he is going to step down as the leader of the labor party. What will happen after that is that they'll have a convention, they'll choose a new leader of the party. It's expected to be Gordon Brown, who's currently the chancellor of the Exchequer.

That person, under the British parliamentary system, will become the next prime minister of Britain. And then there will be a face off between the labor party and the conservatives in the next general election to determine who, in fact, will be the prime minister of England. But that might not come for a little while, though. They've still got some time before the (INAUDIBLE) election.

CHETRY: And he hardly looks like someone leaving under a cloud. He looks pretty excited and happy to be greeting . . .

ROBERTS: Yes, there are a lot of people who like him, particularly in his home district. But overall in England, there was, you know, obviously there was enough pressure for him to step down.

CHETRY: Very true.

All right, 25 past the hour now. Stephanie Elam "Minding Your Business."

The Fed decided to hold interest rates steady. What does it mean for us folks?

STEPHANIE ELAM, CNN CORRESPONDENT: That was pretty much what we expected, too, Kiran. And 5.25 percent is where the Fed kept rates. And that made the markets feel pretty good yesterday. The markets actually closing up. But we'll talk about that in a second.

Let's take a look at what this means here. We see, there are the numbers, up 53 points. So we have a new, fresh record for the Dow, 13,362. And it really was driven by the Fed going ahead and raising interest rates. The real move up was because of -- not raising interest rates was because of this -- the Fed moving here, keeping things steady, which is showing that they are really concerned about inflation, not so much about the economy slowing any further.

They're saying, they're keeping their eyes on it, but for right now they're OK. This is the seventh straight meeting where they kept their rates right in point with where they were. So yesterday we saw the markets come back and raise.

So you're wondering, what is all behind the markets continuing to see these new highs every single day? Well, that has to do with the fact that corporate earnings are strong. We see mergers going on. We're also seeing some buybacks as far as stocks are concerned. And along with the Feds saying things still look OK, well, then you get what we've got today, the markets moving up. So, there we go.

CHETRY: So gas prices on the rise and some of those jitters are not affecting the market?

ELAM: Well, they play into it as far as people watching it overall. But as long as it seems like companies are still spending, then we see the markets lift, and that's what we're been seeing here.

CHETRY: Stephanie, thanks.

ELAM: Sure.

ROBERTS: It will be interesting to see how the markets react if gasoline does start to climb toward that $4 a gallon mark, though.

ELAM: Right. Exactly. Well, we'll talk about that later on.

ROBERTS: Twenty-six minutes after the hour.

Still to come, no more dancing around. Rudy Giuliani sets the record straight, what he thinks about abortion and how that might effect his campaign.

Plus, tornadoes, flooding, drought, even a sup tropical storm. What's causing all this wild weather? Rob Marciano will be here to explain.

And it's down to the final three on "American Idol." We'll tell you who got the big kiss off ahead on AMERICAN MORNING.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK) ROBERTS: High water, high emotions. A tough, new setback for flood victims in the heartland.

Plus, strengthening wildfires down south and a coastal storm turning deadly in Florida.

A nation of extremes when it comes to weather on this AMERICAN MORNING.

And good morning to you. It is Thursday, May the 10th.

I'm John Roberts.

CHETRY: And I'm Kiran Chetry.

Thanks so much for joining us.

(NEWSBREAK)

ROBERTS: Slowly, ever so slowly, waters in the flooded Midwest are beginning to recede. Big Lake, Missouri, was literally turned into a big lake when levees along the Missouri River gave way. There are still worries about flooding there, though, when smaller creeks start flowing into the larger rivers.

Today, the Missouri water patrol will be going to homes to try to rescue pets that had been left behind when the floodwaters came. A similar situation to that which we saw in New Orleans a couple of years back.

AMERICAN MORNING'S Sean Callebs is in Big Lake, Missouri, for us today.

Sean, you were standing in the water yesterday. It looks like you're still there today. But how quickly is it going down?

SEAN CALLEBS, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Well, the word "quick" does not come into the lexicon when you're talking about what the water here in Big Lake is doing.

Ken, my cameraman, can zoom in just a little bit. You can see the yellow line here.

Yesterday, we were on Highway 159, which pretty much runs east and west. Today, we're on Highway 111, which runs perpendicular, north and south. And you can see this road is still completely flooded.

A train is going by. We saw some rail officials out earlier today putting a lot of stone down, trying to bolster areas that are basically right up to the edge in water.

I've got to be careful walking back this way. Yesterday, we were able to walk a certain degree. There's a sharp, sharp drop-off there today. But once the levees gave way -- the Missouri is about two miles from us -- this entire area simply swamped. We talked to some locals who were out here who went through 1993, John. They said it took about a month for all the water to go away back then, and they are worried this is going to stay here for weeks this time -- John.

ROBERTS: Yes. Well, you know, Sean, the only thing I guess going for them is the fact that it wasn't raining for weeks and weeks and weeks like it was in 1993. So perhaps the ground isn't as saturated as it was back then, and may go down a little more quickly.

Sean Callebs for us in Missouri this morning, Big Lake -- living up to its name.

Sean, thanks very much -- Kiran.

CHETRY: Yes, unfortunately it is.

Well, in just the past week, deadly tornadoes, we've seen the effects of the flooding. Sean brought that to us first hand. Drought, wildfires, and now the first named subtropical storm of the hurricane season.

What is causing all of this extreme weather? Well, we have the guy who can answer that for us. It's meteorologist Rob Marciano

(WEATHER REPORT)

ROBERTS: Coming up, Defense Secretary Gates hints at a possible troop withdrawal by the end of the year.

Plus, Vice President Dick Cheney visits troops in Iraq. We'll tell you what he had to say.

And Reverend Al Sharpton blames someone else for his controversial comments about Mitt Romney. Who was he pointing the finger at?

You're watching AMERICAN MORNING. The most news in the morning is on CNN.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

ROBERTS: Defense Secretary Robert Gates is leaving the door open to possible troop withdrawals from Iraq later on this year. Gates told the Senate subcommittee that he would decide on it when he reviews the status report from Iraq in September. Gates says political reconciliation, not violence levels, will drive that decision.

In Tikrit this morning, Vice President Dick Cheney met with U.S. troops stationed near former Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein's home town. He had breakfast with the troops and was briefed by military commanders. The vice president defended the Bush administration's decision to extend military deployments to 15 months, calling it, "vital to the mission".

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

RICHARD CHENEY, VICE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: We are here, above all, because the terrorists who have declared war on America and other free nations have made Iraq the central front in that war.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

ROBERTS: The vice president also in Iraq to pressure Iraqi leaders.

John Burns is the Baghdad bureau chief for "The New York Times". He joins us now from Baghdad to talk more about the vice president's mission.

And John, there's a new sense of urgency here, it would appear, by the White House to get these Iraqi leaders moving on this issue of reconciliation.

Do you read it that way?

JOHN BURNS, BAGHDAD BUREAU CHIEF, "NEW YORK TIMES": There certainly is that. And we've heard messages of urgency being pressed on the Iraqi leaders in the last three weeks by Secretary Gates, by Secretary Rice, and now by the vice president in Baghdad. The question, of course, is how much urgency is felt by the Iraqi leaders? And that's still very much an open question.

ROBERTS: Well, that's what I was wondering about. The vice president said yesterday he did get a sense that they appreciate the urgency of this, but is the Iraqi government likely to respond? You know, it's been years now that the White House has been calling for moves on this reconciliation.

BURNS: Well, his remarks -- if he passed his remarks yesterday, they were very tentative. And Mr. Maliki's response, public response, was also very tentative and stressed Iraqi sovereignty.

My own feeling is that just as events on Capitol Hill have pressed the Bush administration to a new sense of urgency about political reconciliation in Iraq, so the Iraqi leaders reading the same, if you will, cards, concluding that American troops will go, will go within the next two to three years, and that this is likely to have to be settled in the end by force of arms. In short, by a civil war, and that that acts as a considerable deterrent to their taking some of the steps that the United States is now urging on them in matters of an oil law, constitutional revisions, of changing the debaathifcation, and all of them aimed at making a wider space for Sunnis in the political arena here, and thus, one might hope, drawing down the war.

ROBERTS: John, where do the Iraqis stand with this idea of a two-month break this summer? We talked with the foreign minister, Hoshyar Zebari, at this conference in Sharm el Sheikh Egypt last week, and he said, oh, that's all taken care of. But it doesn't appear to have been. BURNS: Well, I think it probably has been taken care of right now, because the vice president made a very direct point of that yesterday, for the Iraqi parliament to take a two-month recess during the summer. Not unreasonable, in some respects, because the temperature here in Baghdad goes up to between 120 and 130 degrees. But I think they got the message. I think they'll take a short recess, probably in July.

The question is, even if they're sitting, are they going to need -- are they going to do what needs to be done? And over that hangs a very large question mark.

ROBERTS: And one thing that I found very troubling yesterday, John, was this truck bombing that killed 14 people up in the Kurdish region in the city of Irbil. That had been a fairly stable area, a fairly peaceful area. And you go to Iraq and people say, hey, the one group of people that really have their stuff together are the Kurds up there.

How disturbing is it that maybe we're seeing the violence spreading throughout Kurdistan now?

BURNS: Well, there's tremendous potential for trouble, both between the Sunnis and the Kurds in the north, the Turkmen and the Sunnis and the Kurds over rights over Kirkuk. And there's even potential for trouble between the Kurds themselves. So, I don't think we can assume that Kurdistan and its principal city, Irbil, is going to be immune to all of this.

The other thing we have to bear in mind is that as American military pressures build up in Baghdad, so the bad guys, as the Americans call them, looking -- go looking for trouble elsewhere. And some of these suicide bombings in places that we haven't seen many of before may be a result of that kind of, if you will, metastasis that's going on in the insurgency.

ROBERTS: Yes. All right.

John Burns from "The New York Times," the Baghdad bureau chief.

John, it's always good to see you. Thanks very much, my friend.

CHETRY: Al Sharpton is under fire for some comments he made about candidate Mitt Romney. But now he's firing back. He's pointing the finger of blame at somebody else.

We're going to talk more about that coming up next.

And Rudy Giuliani tries to make it clear just where he stands on abortion. We're going to hear from him, talk about some of the implications of getting the nomination ahead on AMERICAN MORNING.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

CHETRY: Well, John is always on the Google Earth search engine.

So do you know exactly where this is, this morning?

ROBERTS: Why don't you tell me?

CHETRY: I think it's a beautiful shot of some place in Manhattan, I think, on the upper west side.

Am I right?

ROBERTS: There you go but -- a little local knowledge is always helpful.

CHETRY: It sure is.

Welcome back to AMERICAN MORNING.

Reverend Al Sharpton under fire and firing back about his comments about presidential candidate Mitt Romney. Here are the words that started it all.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

REV. AL SHARPTON, NATIONAL ACTION NETWORK: And as for the one Mormon running for office, those that really believe in God will defeat him, anyway, so don't worry about that. That's a temporary -- that's a temporary situation.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

MITT ROMNEY (R), PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: His comment was a bigoted comment. It shows that bigotry still exists in some corners. And I thought it was a most unfortunate comment to make.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CHETRY: Well, Sharpton made that comment during a debate with atheist author Christopher Hitchens, and last night, he told Paula Zahn that it's Hitchens Romney should be mad at.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

SHARPTON: I'm telling you what I meant and I'm telling you what I said. I'm also telling you what Hitchens said.

Hitchens, according to what you just played, attacked the Mormons. Hitchens did. It's strange that Romney didn't attack Hitchens. Hitchens is not attacking Romney.

I'm the one that belongs to a race that couldn't join the Mormons. And I'm the one that's the bigot.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CHETRY: All right. Well, what he was saying is that Hitchens posed the question to Al Sharpton, which was how he felt about the fact that until 1965, the Mormon Church did not accord full status to black members. And Hitchens, for his part, also told Paula Zahn that he believes Sharpton was referring to Romney, not Hitchens.

Well, we're going to get much more on the controversy for the Mitt Romney campaign. We're going to be talking with Roland Martin, one of our contributors, about this whole debacle and the question that's being raised, do Christians, the majority of them, believe that Mormons are Christians?

We're going to talk about that a little later as well.

Meantime, Romney's campaign confirming that in 1994, his wife gave $150 to Planned Parenthood. That year, Romney ran for the Senate, supporting abortion rights. Now, since then, he has changed his views. He now says he is pro-life. He defines himself as anti- abortion.

ROBERTS: Rudy Giuliani wants to make it clear that he does support abortion rights. Giuliani took some heat for how he answered the abortion question in the Republican presidential debate last week.

Since then, he has been besieged with questions about his stand on the issue. But during a campaign stop in Alabama, he didn't mince words.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

RUDY GIULIANI (R) PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: I oppose abortion as a matter of morality, as personal morality, would advise a person if they asked for my advice not to have an abortion, and would give them all the support they needed to make another choice, and would hope they had the information available to make that choice. I want women to be able to make a choice. I think that's fair, I think that's the way it should be done.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

ROBERTS: A little less nuanced position than the one he took at the debate last Thursday. Observers say Giuliani's stand could be a tough sale to many conservative Republican voters.

We're just minutes away from Tony Blair's major announcement. It will affect not only his future, but the future of Great Britain and British-U.S. relations.

We'll bring it to you live.

Plus, we'll be joined by CNN's Christiane Amanpour. That begins at the top of the hour.

It's called Shigellosis, and we're going to tell you about an outbreak of it at a day care center. What is it and how dangerous is it to your children?

Dr. Sanjay Gupta has got the details.

And Dale Earnhardt racing. He's going to have to learn to get along without, well, a guy named Dale Earnhardt.

You're watching AMERICAN MORNING. The most news in the morning is on CNN.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

ROBERTS: It may sound strange, but Dale Earnhardt Jr. is leaving Dale Earnhardt Incorporated. Junior was expected to announce his departure from the racing team that was started by his father. He is expected to start his own racing team next year.

Junior's stepmother, Teresa Earnhardt, holds the controlling stake in DEI, but the two sides couldn't reach an agreement on a new contract. Imagine, can't reach an agreement on a contract with your mom.

CHETRY: Right. Well, stepmom. That's a blow to the family. You know, they were just a racing empire.

All right. Well, "American Idol" wannabe, Lakisha Jones, could not stay alive in the singing competition. The 27-year-old from Michigan got booted off last night.

The judges called her rendition of the Bee Gees classing "Staying Alive" weak. That's a hard song to sing.

The singers were coached by Barry Gibb. Blake Lewis, Jordin Sparks and Melinda Doolittle survived the elimination. And, of course, Stephanie and I were talking about this in the break. She got the kiss of death by Simon Cowell because last week he said she was so great that he had to kiss her.

STEPHANIE ELAM, CNN CORRESPONDENT: But I want to know, have you actually tried to sing the Bee Gees' song? How do you know it's difficult to sing?

CHETRY: Only by myself in the shower. I don't want to torture others.

ELAM: OK. That was actually more interesting there, yes.

CHETRY: And the rest of the human race.

(CROSSTALK)

ROBERTS: News about HBO this morning?

ELAM: We do have some news here coming in about the chairman and CEO of HBO. He is stepping down, and this is effective immediately.

Chris Albrecht has stepped down. I should mention also that HBO is owned by Time Warner, and that is the parent company of CNN, as well.

Three days after he was arrested in Las Vegas, this news came out on suspicion of assaulting his girlfriend. He was released after spending the night in jail.

At first, he was supposed to take a leave of absence. He blamed the incident on his return to drinking. He said two years ago he decided he could drink again and that clearly he was wrong. And he was now committed to sobriety.

But then the "Los Angeles Times" reported yesterday that at one point, HBO paid $400,000 in a settlement in 1991 to a female subordinate with whom he was alleged involved with romantically, and he was accused -- or she claimed that he had shoved, kicked and choked her. And so because of that, this news coming out, then it seems like a pattern, and therefore he stepped down effective immediately.

He had been in the post since 2002, and as of now, the operating chief will step into this role, Bill Nelson.

He had been with HBO for close to 22 years.

The next hour of AMERICAN MORNING starts right now.

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