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Police Looking for Three U.K. Teen Girls Heading to Syria; Pentagon Telegraphs Major Ground Offensive in Iraq--Why?; Obama Addresses DNC Winter Meeting; Police Look for Second Suspect in Vegas Road-Rage Incident

Aired February 20, 2015 - 11:00   ET

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

JOHN BERMAN, CNN ANCHOR: Battle plans -- a huge offensive in the works to take back a crucial Iraqi city. The question is, if it's such an important military operation, why are they telling us before it happens? Whatever happened to surprise?

KATE BOLDUAN, CNN ANCHOR: We knew how bad he was, but we didn't know it was this bad. That from the husband of a woman shot and killed in a road-rage incident, the suspect no stranger to the family. New questions today as the suspect is now in custody.

BERMAN: Rudy Giuliani, the man who decides who loves America and just how much. New controversy over his comments and questioning the president's patriotism. He swears they weren't racist. Is he right?

Hello there, everyone. I'm John Berman.

BOLDUAN: I'm Kate Bolduan. Thanks for joining us, everybody.

Let's start out with breaking news out of London at this hour. Three teenage girls have gone missing. What's worse is London police say they may be on their way to Syria to possibly join up with ISIS. U.K. officials are asking anyone with information to help.

BERMAN: Let's get the latest on this news. I want to bring in senior international correspondent, Nima Elbagir. Nima, what do we know about this? What do we know about these girls?

NIMA ELBAGIR, CNN SENIOR INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: We know that the three are friends. Two are 15 and one is 16. They study together at a school in East London. One was traveling on her 17-year-old old sister's passport in order to try to risk not being asked too many questions about being an unaccompanied minor.

We also know that they arrived in Istanbul. Police say they arrived in Istanbul at 6:40 in the evening on Tuesday, and they believe that they are still there, John. And that's what's so critical about the window of opportunity that confronts authorities and their families.

Once they get into Syria, once they arrive inside Syria, the worry is of course that they will not be allowed to leave, that the Islamic State fighters, ISIS fighters, have been clear about the threats and the violence that they perpetrate on those who try and return home.

So for the families, for the authorities, this window now -- and that's why this appeal is going so hugely international. They are sending this out through social media. They are using the Turkish local media. Their hope is that someone will see the pictures, see the girls, and reach out to the families and authorities, John.

BERMAN: So many questions. How were these plans laid? Who met them?

BOLDUAN: Yeah, who's meeting them in Turkey?

BERMAN: When they landed?

BOLDUAN: Exactly right.

BERMAN: And, you know, is this a conveyer belt of people headed to that region right now that needs to be stopped.

Nima Elbagir, thank you so much. Really appreciate it.

New developments also to tell you about in the war against ISIS. Pentagon sources say that a major ground offensive is in the works to take back a crucial Iraqi city. The key question, will U.S. ground troops be necessary?

BOLDUAN: Here's what we know right now. Up to 25,000 Iraqi troops will be involved in a battle to retake Mosul. That's Iraq's second largest city, about the size of Philadelphia in population. The Iraqi forces will be trained by the U.S. military. The attack is set to be launched this spring.

Pentagon correspondent Barbara Starr has much more on all of this. Barbara, a couple key questions I know you're looking into. Why so much detail on this operation? Why is it being released, and how likely is it that U.S. troops will be involved on the ground?

BARBARA STARR, CNN PENTAGON CORRESPONDENT: Well, let's start with the U.S. troops, Kate and John. You know, at this point nothing has really changed on that. President Obama has ruled out U.S. forces on the ground in combat -- key words, in combat.

But there is the possibility that the military, the U.S. military, may recommend a small number of troops on the ground to assist with targeting, to help the Iraqi forces as they go in to pick out those ISIS targets. Mosul is a very densely populated area. They want to not risk civilian casualties. The Iraqis may need some help in picking out those targets.

U.S. troops can help from a distance. They may have to go right up close with the Iraqi forces. So the question always is, are they in combat? They're in a combat environment. The Pentagon will tell you their job will not be combat.

But, look, it would be incredibly dangerous, and that's why if that decision is to come, it would be President Obama that would have to directly approve it. Now, why April, May? Why is the Pentagon talking so much about this? The Pentagon says this is the Iraqi plan. I can tell you already inside Iraq from Iraqi government officials, from Kurdish officials, they're out there saying, not so fast. Nothing is ready yet. It's not going to happen all that quickly. They are putting a lot of cold water on it.

The Pentagon is saying they are putting this out there because they want to demonstrate Iraqi resolve that this is a plan that the Iraqis will carry out. So maybe a little bit of psychological operations on all sides here.

BOLDUAN: Interesting, though, that they may not exactly be on the same page at least publicly at this point.

Barbara Starr at the Pentagon, getting all those details for you, Barbara, thank you so much.

STARR: Sure.

BOLDUAN: And also happening in just minutes, President Obama will be touting the economic success, the economic progress made during his time in office.

Why now? At least partly to push back against attacks from GOP presidential hopefuls who have recently been slamming him for -- blaming him for the growing income gap that we see in the country.

And he's also talking to a pretty friendly crowd, we should point out, the Democratic National Committee's 2016 winter meeting.

BERMAN: But wait, there's more. This morning, the president finds himself the target of a new controversy, the repeated comments now from former New York mayor Rudy Giuliani charging that the president does not love America.

So will President Obama respond to these charges head-on? Let's bring in CNN's White House correspondent Michelle Kosinski. Good morning, Michelle.

MICHELLE KOSINSKI, CNN WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: Hi there. Yeah, well, the White House, not the president himself, you remember yesterday he was talking about fighting terrorism, but the White House seemed reluctant to respond to these comments, saying -- they did add, though, when Giuliani first said it, he prefaced it by saying, I know this may be horrible to say, and the White House says they fully agree with that. They agree with his statement that it was horrible to say.

And they also said that he had the similar line of speaking during his fleeting, as they put it, run for the presidency. So it's unclear if the president will take time to address that. He may makes some jokes about it, as he has done with some pretty harsh Republican criticism lately.

But this is going to be talking to the base, talking about those issues that he's been pushing and pushing hard and at times defiantly over the last few months. Kind of like -- you remember the State of the Union, all about middle-class economics. He really wanted to shape it around that, continuing to grow the economy.

Now, that's not to say that all Democrats have agreed with everything lately, most recently in the passage of the budget extension. There was tension between party leadership even on whether the compromise should have gone the way it did on issues like campaign-finance reform, Wall Street reform, and it was Democrats that almost held that up from compromising and fully passing.

So we'll see what he has to say about that as well as this kind of counter message out there, seemingly, from Republicans also touting the need to raise Americans out of poverty, but it's the means of doing that that are different, and the president is expected to criticize the way that they're speaking about that.

We've heard that lately from Jeb Bush, from Mitt Romney before he decided not to run, talking about the fact that, yeah, the economy is going well, but there are still issues out there.

Critics and analysts out there have seen this Republican focus, if you want to call it, or this sort of angle that they're taking leading into 2016, on poverty in America as both a good thing and a bad thing. It's really kind of up for debate right now on what shape this is going to take moving forward.

BERMAN: All right. Michelle Kosinski for us at the White House. We're going to watch the speech as the president gives it. If he comments on Rudy Giuliani or just how much he loves America right now, of course we'll bring that to you.

Those are live pictures right now. That is Mayor Michael Nutter of Philadelphia.

BOLDUAN: Exactly right. Standing likely in front of -- maybe -- an American flag.

BERMAN: An American flag!

All right, still to come for us, a hunt for a second suspect in the apparent road-rage incident that left a mother dead, one suspect is behind bars. Now we know that he knew the victim. We'll have the latest on that case, next.

BOLDUAN: And Rudy Giuliani, not backing down, the former mayor, former GOP presidential hopeful is defending his harsh criticism of President Obama's patriotism. Some would call it something else.

Really, what was Giuliani getting at? We're going to talk about it.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BERMAN: Happening now, police on the hunt for at least one more suspect in the road-rage killing of a Las Vegas mother, this after authorities arrested Erich Nowsch, he is accused of fatally shooting Tammy Meyers outside her home. BOLDUAN: But in a very sad new development in this case, the Meyers

and Nowsches were neighbors.

After learning of the arrest, the victim's husband was clearly emotional and later described how his wife knew the suspected gunman.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

ROBERT MEYERS, ROAD-RAGE VICTIM'S HUSBAND: Are you happy? You made my wife look like an animal and my son. There's the animal a block away! Are you happy?

My wife spent countless hours at that park consoling this boy. And he's probably watching this right now, and I know he's got to feel bad, because she was really good to him. She fed him. She gave him money. She told him to pull his pants up and to be a man.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BOLDUAN: Clearly that family is grieving right now.

Let's get to Ana Cabrera. She's on the scene for us. So, Ana, what are we hearing now about the latest?

ANA CABRERA, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Good morning, Kate. Good morning, John.

You know, it's just a sad situation all around, a tragic story that we have a mother of four dead and now a teenager whose future is uncertain and a lot of people in this community are just wondering why and how did all of this happen.

Right now we can tell you police are still looking for another person who they believe may have been involved in what they're calling a road-rage incident that led up to the deadly confrontation in front of the Meyers home, but they do believe that 19-year-old Erich Nowsch is the person who fired those fatal shots, who was the killer in this case.

Now there's been some additional developments about exactly what happened leading up to it. We can tell you that, again, this started with a 15-year-old having a driving lesson. Tammy Meyers was taking her daughter out in the evening near a high-school parking lot and was on her way home from that driving lesson when they confronted a driver on the road. There were words exchanged. Horns were honked.

When Meyers got home, she dropped off her daughter and then her 22- year-old son joined her in the car, and he had a firearm on him that was registered to him, and the two left.

Police have said that they believe that Meyers went out looking for that driver. But now her husband is saying that wasn't the case at all, that because she knew who that driver was, she was afraid. And she wanted to leave the house to hide the car to try to really get away from the situation, not going to try to confront him, and sadly we now know what happened is they did end up confronting each other again and those gunshots were exchanged.

John and Kate?

BOLDUAN: Ana Cabrera for us in Las Vegas, Ana, thank you so much.

BERMAN: Such a sad story.

BOLDUAN: Yeah.

BERMAN: Want to take you now to Washington, D.C. where President Obama has begun speaking at the Democratic National Committee winter meeting. He's speaking about the economy.

Will he talk about Rudy Giuliani and his love for America? Let's listen.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

BARACK OBAMA, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: Over the past five years, the longest stretch of private sector job creation in American history. Businesses adding nearly 12 million new jobs. And in -- perhaps the single most hopeful sign for middle class families in a very long time, wages are beginning to rise again. So America is coming back. We have risen from recession. We have the capacity to write our own future. We're better positioned than any other nation on earth. And all that's thanks to the hard work and the sacrifice of the American people who we serve. It's also thanks to the values and the policies at the core of this party that all of you have fought for. As Democrats, we believe in giving every child a world class education. And today, our younger students have earned the highest math and reading scores on record. Our high school graduation rate is at an all-time high. More Americans are graduating from college than ever before. As Democrats, we believe in reducing our dependence on foreign oil and protecting our planet. Today, America is No. 1 in oil, No. 1 in gas, No. 1 in wind power. Every three weeks we bring online as much solar power as we did in the entire year of 2008. Thanks to lower gas prices and higher fuel standards, the typical family should save about 750 bucks at the pump this year.

(APPLAUSE)

As Democrats, we believe in sensible rules that can prevent financial crisis and shield families from ruin and encourage fair competition. And today, we have got new tools to stop taxpayer funded bailouts, a new consumer watchdog to protect families from predatory lending, new law to protect families from getting ripped by credit card companies. We've extended the security and fundamental right to affordable, accessible healthcare to more than 10 million uninsured Americans, and we are counting each and every day --

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BOLDUAN: Right now, President Obama speaking before the Democratic National Committee Winter's Meeting in Washington D.C. As expected, he's touting economic progress made during his administration. Kind of pushing back on some of the criticism he's been facing amongst many GOP presidential hopefuls about the growing income gap between the wealthy and working class in this country. The president speaking to a very friendly crowd in Washington this morning.

BERMAN: We'll keep our eye on that. If he says anything else, we'll let you know.

BOLDUAN: Exactly right. Coming up for us, you can call it a pretty unusual move by the Pentagon. Officials revealing details of a military plan in the works to take back Iraq's second largest city from ISIS, including who, how, and when. So why are they doing that? That's next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BOLDUAN: Major battle plans are in the works to take back Iraq's second largest city from ISIS militants. The element of surprise seems to be gone.

BERMAN: Because they told us.

BOLDUAN: That's right, John. Now one of many big questions: Will U.S. forces be sent to the battlefield alongside Iraqi military?

BERMAN: Pentagon sources say the U.S. will play a key role in planning the assault. U.S. forces will train and equip up to 25,000 Iraqis for the offensive. It will be launched, we are told, in April or May.

Joined now by global affairs analyst Kimberly Dozier. Kimberly, why do we know so much about this? It does feel unusual to be told of military plans before they happen.

KIMBERLY DOZIER, CNN GLOBAL AFFAIRS ANALYST: You know, if this were a raid of two dozen highly trained operatives hopping into a remote location, maybe you could keep it a secret. The fact of the matter is we're talking about moving 20,000 to 25,000 Iraqi forces plus Kurdish forces. They have their own lines of communication. They have their own sort of -- they don't really keep good operational security. The word of this is going to get out anyway. So what you have U.S. forces doing is using something called psychological operations. They are telegraphing to the approximately 1,000 to 2,000 ISIS fighters that are believed to be inside Mosul and saying, you know what? 20,000 to 25,000 Iraqis backed by our planes and our intelligence are going to be coming to a city near you. You might want to think about moving. Now they have several weeks to think about it.

BOLDUAN: On that point, I do wonder how effective psychological operations, I think you called it, or basically scaring them -- how effective a scare tactic would be with ISIS, when we've heard, especially over the past week, so many analysts talk about ISIS as they are not rational actors. They don't act rationally. They think their -- many of them think that they are in an end of days scenario and end of days apocalyptic battle. Would it be as effective with them, do you think?

DOZIER: True, not rational actors, perhaps, but they do live to fight another day. They do kind of make those decisions, where if they think that the ground is not worth fighting for and that they can fall back to a position inside Syria - Look, that's what they did with the town of Kobani inside Syria. When they saw it was too tough to keep, they said, "We're retreating, we'll come back another day." We're also hearing that some of the fighters are getting paid as consistently as they had been. There's a little bit of unrest. There is a possibility that some of those people could retreat. The other thing is this is going to be a long fight. Mosul is 2 million people in a densely packed city. It's probably going to go neighborhood by neighborhood, house to house. So exactly which day that's going to start, that's not going to matter so much.

BERMAN: It's a city that's a largely Sunni city, as well, Kimberly. Do you have any sense of whether the people in Mosul right now will welcome this Iraqi troop invasion?

DOZIER: One thing that might be on their minds is if the new strongmans come into town, it's time to start making deals. What U.S. intelligence will be hoping for is that some people within the city, sick of ISIS and emboldened by this coming invasion, will start sharing intelligence, sneaking that word out so that the U.S. will know perhaps which neighborhoods, which areas to hit first, that will become strongholds to build from there.

BOLDUAN: Do you think - At this point, there's a lot of questions of how well-trained and how capable the Iraqi forces are at this point. The United States say they will be training a large part of these forces. Do you trust that Iraqi forces can handle a fight like this without having U.S. boots on the ground with them?

DOZIER: What U.S. officials have always said is they need just a few American officers or American non-commissioned officers with those forces on the ground, at least feeding them intelligence, feeding them the kind of information that gives them the confidence to keep fighting, and once you have a few wins in their corner, that they'll have the confidence to keep moving forward. It's a very different situation than when ISIS swept through Mosul the first time and the Iraqis felt like they had no one to turn to. Now at least they have the U.S. and other allied air forces.

BERMAN: Well, this Iraqi military does need to prove itself (inaudible). Kimberly Dozier, thanks so much for being with us. Really appreciate it.

DOZIER: Thank you.

BERMAN: Rudy Giuliani, he suggests that he knows who loves America and Barack Obama, he says, does not. Is he right? Is he wrong? Is he racist? The political firestorm next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)