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Senate Passes Two-Month Extension of Payroll Tax Cut; Des Moines Register Endorses Mitt Romney; U.S. Troops Move Out of Iraq

Aired December 17, 2011 - 22:00   ET

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

DON LEMON, CNN ANCHOR: I'm Don Lemon. Thank you so much for joining us. I am live in the CNN Headquarters in Atlanta.

We begin tonight with developing news as we look at these live pictures from Washington tonight, where a tense stand-off over the money in your pockets is happening as we speak. The Senate passing an extension to payroll tax cut, but only for two months instead of a full year like many had hoped for. The president is ready to put his signature on the temporary fix. But first it has to pass the House where a vote is scheduled for Monday night. And many of those House Republicans reportedly are not happy with the deal, even if it goes through, we will likely be right here in February talking about it all over again. President Barack Obama encouraged by the action in the Senate still wants to see more.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

BARACK OBAMA, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA: I'm very pleased to see the work that the Senate has done. While this agreement is for two months, it is my expectation, in fact it would be inexcusable for Congress not to further extend this middle class tax cut for the rest of the year. It should be a formality and hopefully it's done with as little drama as possible when they get back in January.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

LEMON: If, if the payroll tax cut extension doesn't go through, 160 million Americans would take home less pay starting on January First. In the meantime the Senate also passed a nearly trillion dollar spending bill to keep the government operating through September 30th. The president is expected to sign that bill this week.

And now to the Republicans who want to unsit the president. Sobriety, wisdom and judgment -- qualities cited in a major endorsement for Mitt Romney ahead of the Iowa caucuses. The Des Moines Register announced its support for Romney just a short time ago, with just 17 days to go before the first major test for the candidates in the Iowa caucuses. CNN's political reporter Peter Hamby is standing by live for us in Des Moines now. Peter, Romney is not even in Iowa right now, but what does this endorsement mean for him?

PETER HAMBY, CNN CORRESPONDENT: He is not, and that's a very good point you make, Don. Because Romney has not been here a lot this year, and yet the Des Moines register is endorsing him. They endorsed him tonight. You know, like you said, pointed out that he has the right experience for the office. What does this mean? Any candidate would want this. It's good. It makes for a nice talking point. You can use it in a TV ad. Will it move a lot of votes? That remains to be seen. Probably not.

But also as important as who they did endorse, is what they said about some of Romney's rivals. Listen to what they wrote about Newt Gingrich and Ron Paul, Romney's two chief rivals and the top three here in Iowa. This is what they wrote about Romney. "He stands out especially among candidates now in the top tier. Newt Gingrich is an undisciplined partisan who would alienate, not unite, if he reverts to mean-spirited attacks on display as House speaker. Ron Paul's libertarian ideology would lead to economic chaos and isolationism, neither of which this nation can afford. Those are very harsh words fro the "Des Moines Register" that are being planted in voters' brains. You know, just two weeks ahead of Iowa caucuses. Not good news for either of those two candidates, Don.

LEMON: Hey, let's take a look, now, Peter, at the latest American research group poll of likely Iowa caucus scores. Gingrich is on top. You see him there with 22 percent. Romney tied for second place with Ron Paul at 17 percent. Can an endorsement like this shake up the polls?

HAMBY: You know, I talked to a lot of Republicans tonight about whether or not this means anything. Most of them said probably not. Again, it's a good talking point, but these endorsements don't have very much predictive power. In 2000 they endorsed George W. Bush. That was the last time "The Register" got the candidate right. In the last campaign they endorsed John McCain. He finished in forth place, Don. So, you know, not a ton of power here with "The Register."

LEMON: Where is the front runner? Where is Newt Gingrich in all of this?

HAMBY: Yeah, Mitt Romney is in South Carolina and Newt Gingrich is in Washington. Everyone accuses him of not having an organization in Iowa, not campaigning hard enough here, and yet he takes the weekend off with 17 days left to the caucuses. He was doing a book signing today, which was the exact opposite of meeting voters in Iowa. Republican insiders think that is, frankly, a ridiculous strategy, this far out. But as we know now, Newt Gingrich wants to do things his own way, and he is, as you know, confident, Don. So, we will see if this pays off for him.

LEMON: Peter Hamby in a colorful Des Moines tonight. Thank you very much, Peter.

We go to New York now, where Wall Street was reoccupied for today. Today's demonstration marked three months since the movement began. The protesters were cleared out of this area of New York last month and are no longer allowed to sleep there. The church that owns this property says it supports the movement but warns the re-occupation could result in "legal and police action."

To the Philippines now, where they are reeling tonight from a large tropical storm.

More than 400 people are dead, hundreds more are missing. The storm dumped a month's worth of rain in about 12 hours, triggering flash floods and landslides. The U.S. has signaled it is ready to help with recovery efforts, because they're going to need it. We turn now to our meteorologist Jacqui Jeras. One month worth of rain?

JACQUI JERAS, METEOROLOGIST: Yes, it was an incredible amount of rain. And we're talking about maybe ten inches, and you would think the Philippines are used to this kind of weather, not so much. This is kind of area for them to get tropical storm. That all happened so quickly despite warning, this happened in the middle of the night. So, it caught many people off guard. You know, all that rain collects up in the mountains here, it has nowhere to go, right, so it funnels down the mountains, it goes into the rivers and streams and then goes down into the valley. And the water just raised so very quickly it reached up to the rooftops. So, it gave people very, very little time to get out in this situation.

LEMON: Yes. So, it's going to take a while for all of this to run off, and so we still don't know the complete damage of this -- because people are still missing as well.

JERAS: Yes, people are still missing. They have already rescued about 2,000 people from my understanding, there may be about 400 additional people are unaccounted for at this time.

LEMON: Oh, boy.

JERAS: You know, no power, roads are cut off. It's going to be difficult to get in there and clean up.

LEMON: I appreciate it. Jacqui Jeras. Thank you very much.

JERAS: OK.

LEMON: We're going to Cairo now where they are bracing for Sunday after another violent day in Egypt's capital. The picture is outraging many people. A defenseless woman nearly naked to the waist dragged off by officers. She was just one of the victims of a crackdown on the latest wave of dissent there. The clashes left ten people dead and hundreds wounded. Protesters are demanding that the interim prime minister quit. Prime minister Kamal Ganzouri. He has refused so far, he's also blaming the demonstrators for torching a library in Cairo. Officials say the blaze destroyed irreplaceable manuscripts that are over 200 years old.

Also today, Leon Panetta became the first U.S. Secretary of Defense to visit Libya. He didn't try to sugarcoat the challenging facing Libya's new leaders. Panetta said, the transition to democracy will be long and difficult. But the secretary said he believed Libya's future would be prosperous. He also called Libya a source of inspiration for the world.

U.S. troops are heading out of Iraq, facing a deadline at the end of this month. A war that began more than eight years ago draws to a close. Straight ahead here, on CNN.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

LEMON: Hello everyone, I'm Don Lemon, again. Live here at the CNN headquarters in Atlanta. This is our special coverage of the end of the U.s. war in Iraq. And joining me now for the broadcast, is CNN international anchor Hala Gorani, who is in Washington with us tonight. And we also want to welcome our viewers around the world. Our Pentagon correspondent Chris Lawrence joins us now from Washington. Chris. U.S. president Barack Obama has said this what happened at the end of the year. It is quickly coming up on the end of the year now.

CHRIS LAWRENCE, CNN PENTAGON CORRESPONDENT: That's right, Don. And you know, we learned a couple of weeks ago that most of the troops if not all of the troops would be home by the middle of this month. They would be out early and get home in time for Christmas. We had a chance to talk to a lot of those troops as they were coming back to places like Fort Hood, reuniting with their families. I think it was especially poignant for those troops who had done three, four and five tours. Who had been there in the earlier days in some of the most violent years in the middle. Because what you really take away from it is your experience in Iraq really depends on when you were there and where you where when you were there. If you were there, say, in early 2004, there were only 14 insurgent attacks a day. If you were there in the middle of 2007 that number had gone up to 163. So, you've got a lot of soldiers, Marines, sailors, airmen who have very different experiences with the war.

But the one thing that the United States and the military will really take away from it, is not only the experiences of these troops in having such intense combat experiences, but the money that the United States will be paying over the next 30, 40, 50 years. You know, when this war started, the estimates were anywhere between 50 and $80 billion for the war. In fact, the White House official was dismissed early on, because he actually suggested that the war could cost 200 billion. Well, as it turns out, the war has cost around $800 billion. And that's just direct cost, Don. I mean when you take a look down the road, this could be well over a trillion dollars in health care cost down the road.

LEMON: Exactly. You took the words right out of my mouth. Hala Gorani has been covering this war from the very beginning, Chris. And Hala, you know, there are estimates that it is well over a trillion dollars.

HALA GORANI, CNN ANCHOR: Right. Well, those are the estimates. There are estimates of the number of Iraqi civilians killed as well, at least 160,000. Then, of course, you have the American military debts. But we shouldn't forget the American military injuries and all the post-traumatic stress that accompanies coming back from a war zone. Joining us now is retired General Wesley Clark, former supreme allied commander for NATO, and he's joining us live now from Little Rock, Arkansas. I believe we also have retired General Spider Marks, who ran the Army Intelligence Center in 2003 as the war in Iraq started. He is standing by in Washington. General Clark, I want to start with you. As we look back on these nine years, this war that many now are saying was based on faulty intelligence, was perhaps even a strategic mistake for the United States. What do we take away from it?

GEN. WESLEY CLARK, FORMER NATO SUPREME ALLIED COMMANDER: Well, first of all, I think the structure of the United States Army, the leadership and training and so forth, has been very, very strong. I don't think many observers would have thought that a volunteer force could have maintained this level of commitment, kept its strength up, kept its motivation, kept its families together as well as it's done for this kind of a commitment. So that's the first thing.

Secondly, we know some things could have been done better. We could have gone in with more Arabic speakers. We should have planned better for what happened after we got to Baghdad. We could have anticipated the insurgency and dealt more effectively with it and more smoothly. We should have had more diplomatic support in the region at the time.

But all things said and done, the Iraqis have a chance now to have a democracy. It's up to them, and I think our men and women should feel very proud of their accomplishments.

GORANI: Well, now that Iraq is having a political crisis of its own right now. The entire Sunni block is practically walking out of parliament, so that's a TBD situation politically. But I want to ask you, Spider Marks, what was looking back perhaps something that many people say, you know, firing the rank-and-file soldier, getting rid of the entire security infrastructure of Iraq might have been the biggest blunder of this war. Do you agree with that?

GEN. JAMES "SPIDER" MARKS (RET.): I agree, that was a huge blunder. Taking a theme from General Clark, clearly what we didn't have going into Iraq, I think upfront and I would -- I would hope that most folks would agree at this point is that we didn't have enough troop strength early on. Because frankly, as the senior intelligence guy going into combat, there was a lot that I just didn't know. Questions that I simply could not answer. And the best intelligence collector is a soldier on the ground, and we didn't have enough of those guys early on. So I think that was challenge number one.

And clearly when we took -- when the decision was made to completely dismantle the Iraqi military, which clearly was a professional force and the backbone of Iraqi civilization, and when those guys went away, we had a lot of disenfranchised young men who had nothing to do and a lot of great leadership that could have been used to great advantage, and that wasn't the case.

GORANI: So, Wesley Clark, what do you learn from that going forward, or has America at least for the foreseeable future lost its appetite for military intervention after this costly war, not just financially but also in terms of troop lives?

CLARK: Well, I was one of those who argued that this war wasn't a necessity in the first place. And there were a lot of those who thought that it could be done on the cheap, that we could go in quickly, with a very, very small footprint on the ground, and somehow magically democracy would appear. There were those who argued this was going to be like the liberation of Nazi Germany, and then the good people would rise up and everything would be fine.

We clearly didn't think through what is called phase four. Some of my friends on the inside at the time, when I warned about it in 2002, told me that they had been prevented from actually doing solid work on inside the Pentagon on phase four. Certainly the State Department tried to do it. Secretary Powell warned about the requirement to do it. But still, people are always caught up in something like this with the weapons, the targets, how it's going to work, the plans, the arrows on the maps. And the truth is that our armed forces are very, very good, but the hard work afterwards is the part that's not captured by arrows on the map and computer simulations and so forth. It just takes a lot -- as Spider Marks, said, it takes a lot of people. And we tried to do it a little bit thin as we went in.

LEMON; It's Don Lemon here in Atlanta. I want to ask you this, Spider Marks, whether or not, how this is going be regarded in history? I was reading something in the Christian Science Monitor this morning, and this is from a congressional research group, I'll give you a little quote here. It says, "The end of the former Iraq president Saddam Hussein's brutal regime represents a considerable global good, and a nascent democratic Iraqi republic partnered with the United States could potentially yield benefits in the future. But when weighing those possible benefits against the cost of the Iraq intervention, there is simply no conceivable calculus by which Operation Iraqi Freedom can be judged to have been a successful or worthwhile policy." Your thoughts on that.

MARKS: Don, that's a premature assessment. Clearly one that could be made and has been made, but I would say we need to give this some time before we really get a good assessment of what occurred in Iraq.

Now, look, Saddam was a bad guy and he needed to go away. And he did frankly our bidding for many years. He was a proxy of sorts in terms of our relationship relative to Iran. But Saddam needed to go away, absolutely. He brutalized his people, and he did, in fact, have weapons of mass destruction that he had used before. And again, when we went into Iraq, we began to determine what that weapons of mass destruction stockpile had looked like and what the capabilities were. They were not in a sufficiently discrete form when we got there, but he had every capability and folks available on his team within his ministries to put all that together.

So my point is history is going to have to judge this thing, and I think we're being extremely premature. And we shouldn't be beating up America right now in terms of this incredible success, irrespective of one's political leanings. We have seen an incredible activity on the part of our amazing military young men and women over the course of this last decade that we must focus on.

LEMON: And generals and Hala, it's amazing to see that video back in 2003 of that statue coming down. It certainly does bring back memories. So Hala and generals, stand by, we got a lot more. We want to get some other stuff and get to a break quickly here. As the war in Iraq ends, it is not clear when the U.S. war in Afghanistan will finish. NATO has scheduled to withdraw in 2004 (sic), but the leader of coalition forces there wants to keep a U.S. military presence beyond 2014. General John Allen says he intends to shift the U.S. presence to a more advisory role and -- advisory role, excuse me -- and follow through on that function through 2016, when the Afghan air force is supposed to be completed.

And tonight we want to talk about what matters in other news. Finding out what happened to one millionaire, a millionaire called the cornbread millionaire. That's a goal a Georgia woman set for herself in her quest to buy back her foreclosed home. Like millions of Americans, she has faced more hard times but she has not given up, hoping one day she will live up to the name she gave herself more than a year and a half ago.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

LEMON: Beverly Davis believes the recipe for success is in her hands.

BEVERLY DAVIS: This is the basic ingredient, which does have cornmeal.

LEMON: Her cornbread mix, she hopes, will one day help her rise out of her situation that hit bottom in 2010. That's when Davis lost her job and her home to foreclosure, forcing her into a homeless shelter.

DAVIS: Instead of like getting embarrassed and going somewhere and getting depressed, and you know, getting suicidal, I decided I'd fight back with faith.

LEMON: The first round of the fight looked promising. She called herself the Cornbread Millionaire, and created a web site under the same name. She was on several local and national newscasts talking about her ambition, to bake her way back into home ownership. The orders started coming in.

DAVIS: The business when I launched it, it did great for the first three months. Fantastic.

LEMON: But later Davis suffered some serious blows. First the three bedroom home she was trying to buy back went to a higher bidder at auction. And then came the sucker punch in October 2010 that Davis is still reeling from.

DAVIS: I have been unemployed for two and a half years. So there were creditors that still hadn't been paid because I'm still trying to get out there and get everything together so I could go back and take care of everything that I needed to take care of, but one of them couldn't wait.

LEMON: Davis said she had no choice but to pay the creditor.

DAVIS: It was ugly. And as a result, it shut down the business and it shut me down.

LEMON: She says she went into a type of post-traumatic stress.

DAVIS: Just shock. I'm like, OK, what do I do now? I don't have the ability to get financing. So I started praying. I am a prayerful, spiritual person.

LEMON: Her setback, Davis says, taught her she can't rely on a single way to make money. She's launched a second web site that pitches her corn bread as well as her story to good-hearted companies.

DAVIS: I'm seeking corporate sponsors to help with purchasing advertising for the debt free dream house.

LEMON: She has walked from storefront to storefront trying to sell ad space on her web site, which also features an apology to customers she failed to serve when her setback hit. Davis gets by doing odd jobs and selling popcorn while living with a friend. A key to survival now, staying positive and staying focused, she says, for a cornbread comeback. She hopes her mix will be back on sale and she will be back in a home of her own.

DAVIS: So I'm wiser for it. And you know what, I believe the next time around it is going to be a blast, because I know what to do and what not to do. And most entrepreneurs who have ever started a successful business will tell you they have a chapter on failure.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

LEMON: Davis says her new goal is to be back in her home, her own home by April of next year, in time for her 50th birthday. Good luck to her.

Our live coverage of the end of the war in Iraq continues next, Hala.

GORANI: We're going to be speaking to our Nic Robertson, Don. He's live in London on the lessons learned from the war in Iraq, and also what happens next to that country as the United States leaves. We'll be right back.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

LEMON: Welcome back, everyone. I'm Don Lemon, live at the CNN world headquarters in Atlanta with special coverage on the withdrawal of U.S. troops from Iraq.

GORANI: And I'm Hala Gorani. And welcome to all our viewers in the United States and around the world. I'm in Washington, D.C., so welcome to you all and thanks for watching.

Our senior international correspondent Nic Robertson is standing by live in London. Nic Robertson of course covered the Iraq war for many years, and the British ended combat operations in Iraq two years ago. So as the United States is looking back -- and by the way for all our viewers watching, we are certainly going to be looking forward as well to what happens to Iraq after all this is over and what the U.S. military may have learned from it. But what about the Brits? What were the ramifications since then for them?

NIC ROBERTSON, CNN SR. INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Well, one of the things they've done is initiate an inquiry into Iraq, and the reasons that Britain went to war in Iraq. Britain at its peak had 46,000 troops in Iraq, and there was a lack of popular support for it, and there was a lot of criticism, and of the British Prime Minister Tony Blair at the time.

One of the interesting things that has emerged from this inquiry, so- called Chilcot inquiry, that's been going on for more than two years now and isn't expected to conclude until next summer, is that they have said that they don't believe that the information that Tony Blair went to war on or the assertions that he made that MI-6, Britain's intelligence services, had conclusive evidence of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, that that -- that doesn't hold water.

General Spider Marks can hear me. General, just now you were talking about WMD, clear evidence of it that he could, Saddam Hussein could rebuild it. But one of the things about -- and it has been too soon really to sort of look and analyze the situation, but from the British perspective, they are already essentially saying -- although the final conclusions of the report are not out -- they are essentially saying that the issue of WMD did not hold water, that this was more about regime change, and that was against the advice even the British government was being given.

MARKS: Nic, I need to tell you, early on in the war we conducted a number of operations to round up Saddam's top folks, you know, the top 55 as you could well imagine. And so we created -- and as a senior intel guy, we created the infrastructure for all those interrogations.

And within about 30 days, having gathered probably two-thirds of those top 55, we started to get some incredible insights in terms of capabilities that existed and were available to Saddam at the time. Clearly what we didn't find were stockpiles of shiny things that had already been militarized and were ready chemicals and/or other forms of WMD that were ready to be delivered. But Saddam had a very vast apparatus and incredibly talented folks who were in fact running this mechanism so that the WMD would be available. And he had done an awfully good job of trying to hide that both from his people and the international community, IAEA in particular, in terms of what his capabilities were. So he could not come clean, yet his folks revealed quite a bit. So I'm convinced that there was a great deal of evidence in terms of WMD absent a bunch of shiny things.

GORANI: Well, I was going to say, this is actually at this stage, I was going to say, General Spider Marks, this is actually a controversial thing to say. I mean, it has been found even at the top political levels in the United States that WMD was not a threat to America going into the war.

MARKS: Well, the point being is did the capability exist? Yes, the capability existed. And so that's what I'm commenting on is what did we find in terms of getting with the very smart guys that were responsible for this apparatus once we got into country. Beyond the existing intelligence that drove us in. LEMON: I think it's fairly interesting too, Spider Marks and Nic Robertson, we're talking about this, this Chilcot inquiry in Britain. But let's get back to what's happening now as the United States, all combat troops from the United States are coming home. And when you look at all these inquiries, when you look at the inquiry in Britain, so far the former defense secretary, the former vice president, even people in the current administration have said when it comes to the WMD, as you said, it's too far to look back on -- and they look at this and you can correct me if I'm wrong, Spider Marks -- as water under the bridge, at least where the U.S. is concerned.

MARKS: Oh, absolutely concur. I absolutely agree with you. Once we were into Iraq, we had a mission that then morphed very, very quickly. And as General Clark pointed out, absolutely spot on, we were not prepared -- ill-prepared, let me put it that way, for phase four, which was everything that follows major combat operations. And we bolted that on to our formation in order to try to address that and it wasn't done well. We didn't have enough boots on the ground in order to accommodate all of those missions.

GORANI: Well, let's look forward, because we have looked so back quite a bit here What happens now? I mean you have a country that has very shaky political leadership, to say the least, they have an entire Sunni faction that has walked out of parliament here. Militarily -- can they take care of their own security? What about the police force? What about ethnic and factional divisions? What's left after nine years of four?

MARKS: Let's move forward.

GORANI: Yeah.

MARKS: Your presumption. Let's get forward on this thing.

GORANI: Yeah.

MARKS: The government in Iraq is absolutely immature and it's growing. It's a burgeoning, we hope, and growing democracy in Mesopotamia. Who would have thought about that? There is not a long history of democracy in this part of the world.

GORANI: Well, some Iraqis will tell you -- some Iraqis will tell you had the U.S. not invaded we would have had our Arab Spring, we didn't need America to invade.

MARKS: Yeah, let's have -- we can draw a whole bunch of conclusions here.

GORANI: Right.

MARKS: And be very hypothetical.

GORANI: Sure.

MARKS: Very easily. What I'm addressing is what we see today.

GORANI: Sure.

MARKS: And we can have a future in Iraq. Even though they have told us they don't want us there any more. I would argue that they are our friend, they're currently not treating us like a friend, but we can have a significant influence there to insure that the primary issue right now, Iran, doesn't increase its influence in Iraq and elsewhere.

LEMON: And I'm going to be the one here planting the U.S. flag. I guess Hala works for international, so my mission is going to be to get to U.S. When these troops leave, General Wesley Clark, the door is really except for -- except for auxiliary people who are watching embassies and that sort of thing security, the door is pretty much shot to the U.S. for going back without another invasion of sorts or another declaration of war.

CLARK: I'm not sure that that's the case. I mean we have got some 20,000 people there. We have got training missions. We're collecting intelligence. We're providing the Iraqis an alternative to Iranian domination. And as much as there is Iranian influence in there, there is also a lot of concern even among the Shia population. They don't want to become another province of Iran. So this is a border country.

LEMON: Do you think American troops can end up back in that country? Come back troops?

CLARK: I think that there is -- well, I don't know. I mean I think that there is -- it's -- this is certainly not what anybody wants. But on the other hand, there are going to be lots of security linkage just in there. So, if there is a counter-terrorism that should have been done, yes, there might be some American troops that go in there in a very covert fashion.

So, I don't -- I wouldn't draw to much of this. The Iraqis want to be a separate nation. All of the blocks do. Nobody wants to become part of Iran. And what you have got is a game of chicken right now, where the various groups are pulling against each other, trying to posture, they're moving, they're shoving back and forth. And they know what the risks are because the risks that they are playing against is the division of the country. And a restart of sectarian violence.

LEMON: All right, but?

CLARK: This is their leverage.

LEMON: General, stand by. Hala, we're going to go back to where this all started. Remember, Baghdad? Baghdad. Our Arwa Damon is there.

GORANI: How are Iraqis reacting to U.S. troops leaving their country? We'll address also the points discussed there by Wesley Clark, what's the new balance of power there in Iraq, with regards to Iran. Those and other important questions, next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

LEMON: We need to get viewers in the U.S. caught up on some of the other headlines that are happening now. The Senate passed a two-month extension of the payroll tax cuts instead of a full year as many had hoped. The House scheduled to vote on the measure for Monday night, though many House Republicans are reportedly unhappy with the deal. Now, if the extension doesn't go through, 160 million Americans would take home less pay starting on January First.

Mitt Romney has won a coveted endorsement in Iowa. The "Des Moines Register" is endorsing him as its choice for the Republican presidential nomination. The biggest newspaper in Iowa picked Romney for his "sobriety, wisdom and judgment." Polling in Iowa shows him in second place behind former speaker of the House Newt Gingrich.

A powerful tropical storm in the Philippines is blamed for killing at least 436 people. Hundreds more are missing as the flashfloods swept through several villages. The storm dumped a month's worth of rain in just 12 hours. Secretary State Hillary Clinton says the U.S. is ready to assist in the recovery.

There are questions of Bradley Manning's gender identity. It came up today in his trial at Fort Meade, Maryland. Manning's attorneys brought up his online alter ego named Breanna. The Army private is accused of the biggest intelligence leak in U.S. history for passing secrets on to the WikiLeaks Web site. The charges could land the 24- year old in jail for life.

I'm Don Lemon at the CNN headquarters in Atlanta with special coverage of the end of the U.S. war in Iraq. And joining us for the broadcast is CNN international anchor, Hala Gorani. She's in Washington tonight, and we both welcome our viewers from around the world tonight. And you know, Hala, Arwa Damon has been reporting extensively from Baghdad throughout this war.

GORANI: Right. And she joins us from the Iraqi capital as the war winds down. And also our Nick Robertson is live in London. And we're going to start with Arwa Damon. It looks like daybreak there in the Iraqi capital for you, Arwa Damon. So, as all this is unfolding, the president promising the return or the removal or the exit of all U.S. military presence before the end of the year, Iraqis, what are they saying about all of this? And specifically I'm interesting in the Ira who works on U.S. military bases, who worked with the American presence in Iraq? What of them now?

ARWA DAMON, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Well, Hala, they are actually in a fair amount of trouble because although there is this process whereby which they can apply to be refugees in the United States, it has been incredibly slow and you've ended up with thousands of Iraqis who have worked on U.S. bases, anything from translators to contractors, to even the people who were doing laundry, selling CDs and other bits and pieces, they have all been left behind, they say, they've been completely abandoned. And they are viewed as being traitors by any number of insurgent groups here, and many of them are utterly convinced that they have an impending death sentence that is looming over their heads. They don't know where to go. They don't know who to turn to. They don't trust the Iraqi security forces to protect them. They are in an incredibly difficult position. Just to give you an example, we covered the story of the translators who worked on the U.S. bases a few years ago, we wanted to go back and revisit some of those that we had spoken to or at least speak to some of the others who are still here in Iraq waiting to go the U.S. No one, Hala, was willing to talk to us even if we were going to be concealing their identities, they are quite simply that afraid.

GORANI: All right. And so some of them are, Arwa, you are saying, are waiting for the paperwork to make it to the U.S. or other countries? What's the status with regards to that?

DAMON: Well, the process has always been criticized for being incredibly slow, and now it seems to have drawn to a near standstill. In fact, one of our employees was just about to get on an airplane, literally at the airport about to get on the plane, that trip was canceled. She, her family have now been waiting in Iraq for a year. Bearing in mind that because they thought they were going to be traveling, they sold off everything. And now they are having to scramble, trying to make it day by day, because they also gave up their jobs thinking they were going to America, the land of opportunity.

GORANI: OK. Arwa Damon is live in Baghdad and we will rejoin Arwa a little bit later for more on this political crisis that is unfolding as well in Iraq. Don, back to you.

LEMON: Absolutely. And you know, Hala, you mentioned this earlier. Iraqi civilian deaths estimated at a total of 103,000 upwards to maybe 116,000. So there is a major impact there.

We'll continue more of this conversation on the other side of the break, the end of the U.S. war in Iraq, our special coverage coming up in moments.

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LEMON: If you're just joining us, I'm Don Lemon at the CNN World Headquarters with special coverage of the final days of the U.S. war in Iraq. And joining us for the broadcast is CNN International anchor Hala Gorani. She is in Washington tonight, helping us out. She knows a lot about this because she's covered it for our international unit since the very beginning. And we want to welcome our viewers from around the world, Hala.

You know, Hala, earlier this week, Defense Secretary Leon Panetta said that the cost was high, but the Iraq war was not in vain. George State Representative Scott Holcomb served our country in Iraq, and he joins us now from New York to share his emotions and his perspective.

And I'm learning something very interesting. You actually served with Spider Marks at one point.

GEORGE STATE REP. SCOTT HOLCOMB, IRAQ WAR VETERAN: That's correct. I was on the command staff of the coalition forces during the invasion in 2003. And in fact, General Marks and I sat next to each other at midnight mass at Camp Doha in 2002.

LEMON: You want to reminisce about that? You guys care to share -- go ahead, General Marks. MARKS: I was going to say, I remember that mass, absolutely honestly, I remember that mass exceptionally well. And father gave a great little homily, but let me be frank, he was kind of an odd duck, wasn't he?

HOLCOMB: I can never speak bad about the priesthood, General Marks--

MARKS: I'm in trouble, I know it.

HOLCOMB: -- especially (inaudible) Christmas.

LEMON: All right, guys, let me get into here, because I want to say that, Representative, you served in Bosnia from 2000 to 2001, Afghanistan from '01 to '02, Iraq from '02 to '03, so you have done three deployments here. Does it seem surreal that these troops, all of the combat troops, combat troops will be home by the end of the year?

HOLCOMB: It really does. And I am so happy that the president has made this decision and that our troops are coming home. I spent three straight deployments overseas, and it's really difficult. And for the families now to be able to wake up and spend the holidays with their loved ones is something that we should all be really happy about. And what really warms my heart is the knowledge that a young child at Camp Lejeune isn't going to have to go to bed next Saturday night worrying about the safety of their mom or dad in Iraq. And a family at Ft. Stewart, Georgia, isn't going to have to worry about an unwelcome knock on the door on Christmas day.

So this is really a great thing that our troops are coming home.

LEMON: I spoke earlier, Representative, to someone who had done two tours of duty there, and he said, you know, it's like seeing Santa Claus, really, Santa Claus is really real, coming out of the airport when you see those homecomings. And it's amazing. We can't get enough of it.

And much has been made of this from some conservatives saying that this is a political move by the president and so on. Regardless of how you feel about the politics of it, your heart certainly warms when you see the images of these troops coming home to their families.

Representative?

HOLCOMB: I'm sorry. I didn't hear you, Don.

LEMON: I'm sorry?

HOLCOMB: I'm sorry, Don, I couldn't hear you.

LEMON: I was talking about the politics of this. Much has been made about the politics, saying that this is politics by the U.S. president to bring these troops home now, especially when we're just ahead of an election year. Regardless of how you feel, wherever you are on the political spectrum, your heart warms when you see these troops coming home to their families if you witness this in an airport, if you see it on television.

HOLCOMB: Absolutely. I witnessed it in an airport today flying up from Atlanta to New York. And it was so wonderful to know that the troops are coming this way as opposed to heading into harm's way.

And with respect to the politics, the president made the right decision, without question. We have been at war for a long time. We have accomplished our objectives. The objectives that were laid out by President Bush on March 19th of 2003 when this war started were to remove the threat. That's been done. And to restore the control of the country to the Iraqi people. That, too, has been accomplished.

And the other thing that President Bush said when he started the war was that our forces would come home as soon as they accomplished these tasks. And they've accomplished these tasks, and it's time for us to welcome them home with open arms.

LEMON: And this is a deal, as many have said, made under the Bush administration, and that the Obama administration, Representative, was merely carrying out those orders made then.

HOLCOMB: And I don't hear a large cry to say let's extend the war longer. The war is finished. The mission has been met. And it is time to come home. This is the right decision. And it's also nice in a time where there's so much inability to tackle problems and accomplish tasks and goals, that we're finishing something. It is the end of the Iraq war. So now we can focus on America.

LEMON: We're up against a break here. Thank you very much. Live to Baghdad when we come right back.

HOLCOMB: Thank you.

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LEMON: We are witnessing an American war coming to a close soon at the end of the year. That's what the U.S. President Barack Obama has said. I'm Don Lemon. Thank you for joining us.

This is our special coverage, CNN's special coverage of the final days of the U.S. war in Iraq. With me for the broadcast, and I'm glad that she's here, is CNN International anchor Hala Gorani. We both welcome our international audience tonight. Hala, you have been to Iraq and you know the place. You've reported on it.

GORANI: Right, and it's really within the context of what's going on this year that I look at Iraq, as well, Don, because it's indistinguishable as an Arab nation from every other Arab country that has gone over the last year or so. Today is the one-year anniversary of the self-immolation of that young Tunisian fruit vendor who set off the Arab spring. So when you look at Iraq, you look at a country that's gone through almost nine years of war, this occupation. The more than 100,000 Iraqi civilian deaths, the injuries, the destruction to the infrastructure, and now a government that is having a very hard time functioning as a democracy. And the question is really, as I saw several years ago at the height of the insurgency, what is the security situation going to be? And importantly, Don, this is a big question not just for Iraq, but for western nations as well. The Iraq of Saddam Hussein was a counterweight to Iran. That is now removed. So now what is the new picture going to be? What influence will Iran have with its allies? Syria, for instance?

And I think we have to look at it within that context. It's a regional picture.

LEMON: Yeah. I look forward to more of your thoughts. It's interesting you being there saying it was a counterweight to other countries in the area. We're talking about Syria, and all of those places there. And I think next if we are to be doing this soon, obviously, it will be Afghanistan, and we don't know when that's going to happen for sure. But right now, we know, as the U.S. president has said, by the end of the year, all combat troops out of Iraq, and more of our coverage with Hala Gorani moments away. Don't go anywhere.

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