Return to Transcripts main page

CNN Newsroom

Accused Soldier to Meet with Attorney; Pressure to Leave Afghanistan Early; Cruise Ship Collision Off Vietnam; Numbers Game For GOP Nomination; Wild And Crazy Weather; Witness Accounts of Massacre; Knowing The Afghan Victims

Aired March 19, 2012 - 12:00   ET

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

SUZANNE MALVEAUX, CNN ANCHOR: Live from CNN headquarters in Atlanta, it is 12:00 noon here and 9:00 a.m. on the west coast. I'm Suzanne Malveaux. I want to get you up to speed for this Monday, March 19.

The American soldier accused of massacring 16 Afghan civilians is expected to meet with his lawyer for the first time today. Army Staff Sergeant Robert Bales is being held at the U.S. military prison in Ft. Leavenworth, Kansas. That is where the military is preparing the charges against him.

A gunman opens fire at a Jewish school in southern France, killing four people, including three children. Police say he drove away on a scooter. Now, the attack may be linked to two other incidents in the past 10 days in which a man on a motorcycle fired on ethnic minorities.

French President Nicolas Sarkozy calls the shootings a national tragedy. Jewish communities around the world are now stepping up their security.

Another cruise ship incident. An iReporter on board the Silversea's Silver Shadow says the liner collided with a container ship off Vietnam today.

Now, he says it broadsided the other boat, in a thick fog, causing severe damage. The silver shadow has a hole in the bow. Full extent of the damage is yet not known. We're going to have more on this developing story and a live report just minutes ahead.

And Apple holding almost $100 billion in cash reserves. Well, this morning, the company announced what it would do with some of that cold cash. Apple announced a $10 billion stock buyout that could begin in October. Also said it would begin giving shareholders a quarterly dividend, rather, for first time since 1995.

And this is a first for the duchess of Cambridge today. A touring of a children's hospice in Ipswich, England, meeting with patients, family, staff. She gave her first official speech as a member of royalty. She's come a long way from the days she was just Kate Middleton.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

CATHERINE, DUCHESS OF CAMBRIDGE: What you do is inspirational. It is a shining example of the support and the care that is delivered not just here but in the children's hospice movement at large up and down the country.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

MALVEAUX: This American soldier accused of going on a deadly shooting and stabbing rampage in two Afghan villages. Well, he's expected to meet with his attorney for the first time today. Staff Sergeant Robert Bales is accused of massacring 16 Afghan civilians, including nine children.

Ted Rowlands, he is live in Ft. Leavenworth, Kansas. That is where Bales is being held in a military prison there. And, Ted, what have we heard about this meeting that's to take place between Bales and his attorney?

TED ROWLANDS, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Well, his attorney, Suzanne, John Henry Browne, says this will be the first time that he has a chance to actually talk about the facts of the case with his client. He says he's had conversations over the phone with Staff Sergeant Bales, but they have not talked about the case at all. So, he'll do that today here at Ft. Leavenworth, and then proceed from there in terms of a strategy.

When he landed in Kansas City last night, he talked about the complexity of this case moving forward. Take a listen.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

JOHN HENRY BROWNE, STAFF SGT. BALES' ATTORNEY: I think there's an effort to try to paint him as someone who rather than having a serious brain injury and maybe he shouldn't have been there to begin with, had some other factors. His financial situation, for all of us, it's stressful, I think. But, you know, nobody goes and kills women and children because they had financial stresses.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

ROWLANDS: So, clearly, Suzanne, there are a lot of things, a lot of questions out there. The premiere question, what caused this otherwise well-respected member of the military to apparently go berserk and do this? And he's looking for those answers, just like everybody else.

MALVEAUX: Ted, you know, does it seem odd to you as a journalist -- it seems odd to me -- that the attorney is doing so much talking to reporters before he's had some real serious in-depth conversations with his client? Do you suppose he's trying to get ahead of the game because he knows this guy is going to be tried in the court of public opinion as well?

ROWLANDS: I think there's a lot to that, to sort of defend the image of this young man or 38-year-old staff sergeant who does have a good military record. I think he's doing that to help out the family and also having met him on previous occasions and interviewing with him, this is a guy that likes to talk.

Some people don't like to speak with the media, but this is one attorney, John Henry Browne, that does like it, and he does it very well in that he does interject things without obvious facts, which is a clear example that you just pointed out. He hasn't even seen the facts and he's talking about it. So, I think it's a lot of personality here that is behind this.

MALVEAUX: And, Ted, do we know anything about the facts from the military's standpoint, what they might be charging him with?

ROWLANDS: We don't know, but obviously we're anticipating several murder charges, 16 murder charges to be exact. Now, where it goes from here, there are a lot of questions that we don't have answers to. Will he stay here at Ft. Leavenworth or will they transfer him possibly to the West Coast to Seattle? Or will they move him somewhere else? Will the actual court-martial, once they get to that point after the Article 32 hearing, will that take place here?

A lot of those we just don't have answers to. Hopefully, we'll get those in the next few days after the charges have been preferred.

MALVEAUX: All right. Ted Rowlands -- thank you, Ted.

Because of this massacre, there is pressure that is mounting for U.S. troops to get out of Afghanistan earlier than the current time table that is of 2014.

I want to bring in our Chris Lawrence from the Pentagon.

So, Chris, we saw over the weekend it was a bit of back and forth here. Afghan President Hamid Karzai demanding that the U.S. troops withdraw from the villages, return back to these big bases immediately.

We also heard from Retired General Spider Marks who spoke to Don Lemon over the weekend about how American forces could conceivably get out of Afghanistan.

I want you to listen to this.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

GEN. JAMES "SPIDER" MARKS, U.S. ARMY (RET.): Don, first of all, you know that President Karzai has directed that all forces leave the villages and return to forward operating bases, the larger bases. That doesn't take place immediately. It doesn't take place overnight.

So, there has to be a relief in place with Afghan forces and security forces. So that takes about a week. They've been into it -- the forces in Afghanistan have been into that about a week.

But if those forces are not -- those U.S. forces are not going to come back into the villages and resume those missions, the United States' mission is fundamentally changed, and our commanders on the ground will determine that probably within about another week.

So within a couple weeks it would not be unusual if there has not been a change in our posture inside those bases that you could see U.S. forces coming back. It's not inconceivable that that could happen.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

MALVEAUX: So, Chris, listening to him, that seems pretty significant. What are your sources telling you about the timetable, perhaps a new timetable for U.S. troops leaving Afghanistan?

CHRIS LAWRENCE, CNN PENTAGON CORRESPONDENT: Yes, Suzanne. I spoke with a senior military official in Afghanistan this morning, and his first words to me were not true, not happening. He said the operations on the ground there have not changed. Another U.S. official is telling me that there have been no changes to the deployment schedule in response to President Karzai's demand.

Just a little bit of context here also as well, a senior defense official who was traveling in Afghanistan last week said right before President Karzai made some of these remarks, he had sent his own investigative team to the village to talk to some of the villagers, the survivors of that attack. That investigative team had just come back and briefed him, and the defense official said that briefing and what he heard from his team was clearly on President Karzai's mind before he made some of these statements.

Now, an official I spoke with last week said, look, Karzai has a history of making very, very tough demands and then backing down. The U.S. has a history of sort of ignoring some of those demands and then negotiating nuance in there. I think you're already starting to see Afghan officials tone it down a bit, back off. An official just this weekend speaking to our own Candy Crowley even suggested that this demand to get out of the villages is something that will be worked out over perhaps months of negotiation.

So already hinting this isn't something that's going to happen today or tomorrow, but will involve months of negotiations, and then after the negotiations, even then, you have got a timetable for implementing the change.

MALVEAUX: And, Chris, how is the Pentagon reacting to what the American people want? Are they listening to what everyday folks are saying in terms of the mission in Afghanistan? It seems to be a lot of people really kind of tired of this.

LAWRENCE: Interesting poll by Gallup, Suzanne, that was taken after this attack in the village of Afghanistan. It asked about the American people's preference for the military preference in Afghanistan.

About 24 percent say stick with the timetable, which would be get out in a few years, 2014. Fifty percent say speed it up, bring the troops home sooner. And about 21 percent say stay until the job is done.

So, a split among the American people, although clearly the largest percentage would like to see the troops brought back home sooner.

MALVEAUX: All right. Chris, thank you very much.

So, here is a rundown of some of the stories we're covering.

First, chilling 911 tapes released in the shooting death of a Florida teen.

(BEGIN AUDIO CLIP)

GEORGE ZIMMERMAN: This guy looks like he's up to no good, or he's on drugs or something.

(END AUDIO CLIP)

MALVEAUX: And John McCain says it is the nastiest campaign he has ever seen. See what he thinks and why the super PACs are destroying American politics.

And then, put away the winter coats, break out the short sleeves, unless you're in the Southwest. That's right. We got some crazy weather going on.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

MALVEAUX: Another cruise ship accident. An iReporter on board the Silversea's Silver Shadow says the ship hit a container ship off of Vietnam today.

Brian Todd, he's joining us from our D.C. bureau with some of the details.

Brian, you are following this developing story. What do we know about this?

BRIAN TODD, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Suzanne, we just spoke to that passenger you mentioned, Andrew Lock, who apparently took some of those pictures we're going to see. We can put up that one you just showed. Now, that apparently according to Mr. Lock is a picture of the damaged bridge of a container ship which this cruise ship struck on Friday.

According to Andrew Lock, this passenger, the ship the Silver Shadow, a cruise ship a few hundred feet long at least containing a few hundred passengers, struck that container ship, basically broadside, on Friday morning. This was off Halong Bay in Vietnam.

This was on a cruise from Singapore to Hong Kong. They were almost finished with it. The cruise ship struck that container ship basically broadside and damaged that bridge there.

Mr. Lock says there were no injuries on board the cruise ship. I interviewed Andrew Lock via Skype a few moments ago. We'll see if we have that sound bite for you.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

ANDREW LOCK, CRUISE SHIP PASSENGER: There was a certain point in time where the foghorn at the front of the ship suddenly sounded and there was much, much louder, and it caused us to look up. And, in fact, we looked up straight out of the window and through the fog we -- to our horror we saw this Vietnamese container ship appear sideways on, and it was as if our ship was perfectly lined up to hit it in the side.

So, it was -- it was a horrifying moment, and in less than about five seconds after the ship appeared, we did, in fact, collide right in the side of it.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

TODD: Andrew Lock there describing the moment of impact on Friday when the crews ship, the Silver Shadow, hit a Vietnamese container ship which apparently did not have containers on it, but obviously had a manned crew on board. Andrew Lock said he did see some injured crew members on board their ship, but he said he did see some injured crew members on board that container ship lying on the deck of it.

I do have a statement here from the Silversea Line. It says, "Silver Shadow was involved in a minor incident on March 16th, as it was approaching the pilot station in Halong Bay, Vietnam. There was contact between Silver Shadow and a local commercial vessel.

Silver Shadow incurred limited minor dents, and guest safety was never compromised. The ship was fully operational and continued to its course to Halong Bay where all short tours operated normally."

And it says, Silversea -- that is the cruise line -- Silversea will carry out a full investigation into the incident, Suzanne. We're just getting some details on this incident on Friday.

We're going to be, of course, making a lot of calls and trying to find out --

MALVEAUX: Sure.

TODD: -- the nature of what happened onboard the container ship as well.

MALVEAUX: Right. And so, Brian, let me just make sure I have this clear. For the cruise ship, there were no injuries aboard the cruise ship.

TODD: That's right.

MALVEAUX: But actually the container ship, there were members of the crew on the container ship that did sustain injuries? Is that right?

TODD: Well, that is according to this passenger who we interviewed, Andrew Lock. He told me that he did see people lying on the deck of the container ship appearing to him to be injured. Again, this is -- we're just getting initial information on this. Some of this, of course, has to be confirmed. We're going to be making a lot of calls on this to see who, if anyone, was injured on the container ship.

But the way he described the impact, it was fairly severe. He thought at one point, he said, that his own vessel was going to go down, and again he said there was almost no visibility. The fog was very thick. Foghorns were going off all morning on board his vessel.

And then, as you heard him in the sound bite, describe the front foghorn of his vessel went off. The fog -- they came through the fog and literally five seconds from impact, they saw the other ship in front of them. So, there was really no visibility.

MALVEAUX: Brian, do we have any idea if radar played a part in this? Because obviously radar is used to help these ships navigate even in times of heavy fog.

TODD: That's correct. And we've done some training exercises with navigation trainers in Florida. And they'll tell you that radar is a big part of this. We don't know really anything yet as to whether radar played a part in this.

Obviously, visibility was very minimal. So, you would think they would use some radar, but it's unclear really whether that played any role on this or not.

MALVEAUX: All right. Brian, thanks. As you get more details, we'll get back to you. Thanks again, Brian.

TODD: Sure.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

CROWD: No justice, no peace! No justice, no peace! No justice, no peace!

(END VIDEO CLIP)

MALVEAUX: A Florida community is demanding justice on the case of an unarmed teen who was shot and killed. On February 26th, Trayvon Martin carrying nothing more than a bag of Skittles and an iced tea was killed by a neighborhood watch captain. Police say that George Zimmerman told them he shot the teen in self defense.

Well, now, 911 calls, they're out. They tell a much more complicated story.

David Mattingly reports.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

DISPATCHER: 911 police, fire or medical.

CALLER: Police, I just heard a shot right behind my house.

DAVID MATTINGLY, CNN NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Shock, confusion, and fear. You can hear it in the voices of every caller in the final moments of Trayvon Martin's young life.

CALLER: He just said he shot him dead. The person is dead, lying on the grass.

DISPATCHER: -- just because he's laying on the grass?

CALLER: Oh, my God.

MATTINGLY: Seven 911 calls in all beginning with this one from neighborhood watch captain, George Zimmerman.

GEORGE ZIMMERMAN, ACCUSED OF KILLING TRAYVON MARTIN: These (EXPLETIVE DELETED), they always get away.

MATTINGLY: That's Zimmerman's first impression watching Trayvon Martin walking alone and acting strangely.

ZIMMERMAN: This guy looks like he's up to no good or he's on drugs or something.

MATTINGLY: Zimmerman says Martin then comes toward him.

ZIMMERMAN: Something's wrong with him. Yes, he's coming to check me out. He's got something in his hands. I don't know what his deal is.

MATTINLY: Less than a minute later, Martin is running away. Zimmerman gets out of his car.

DISPATCHER: Are you following him?

ZIMMERMAN: Yes.

DISPATCHER: OK. We don't need you to do that.

ZIMMERMAN: OK.

MATTINGLY: But then just a few minutes later there's another call.

DISPATCHER: 911, do you need police, fire or medical?

CALLER: Maybe both, I'm not sure. There's someone screaming outside.

MATTINGLY: In the background, listen for the sound of a fight and a panicked voice yelling for help.

DISPATCHER: Is it a male or female?

CALLER: It sounds like a male.

DISPATCHER: And you don't know why?

CALLER: I don't know why. I think they're yelling help but I don't know. Send someone quick please. God.

MATTINGLY: Ten seconds later, the shrieking continues, then a gunshot.

DISPATCHER: So you think he's yelling help?

CALLER: Yes.

DISPATCHER: All right. What is --

CALLER: There's gunshots.

DISPATCHER: You just heard gunshots?

CALLER: Yes.

DISPATCHER: How many?

CALLER: Just one.

MATTINGLY: The identity of the person pleading for help is in dispute as well as the number of gunshots. But there is no doubt the calls captured the sounds of a deadly end to a tragic encounter.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

MALVEAUX: I want to bring in David here.

First of all, do we know why the Sanford police released the 911 tapes now?

MATTINGLY: Well, they released them -- it's actually the decision of the entire city, the mayor, the city manager, they all got together and decided to put these out there. The mayor saying it was in his power to do that. So, they wanted to because there was so much scrutiny on this case.

Police have been telling us they're very confident in the way they handled this case, perhaps looking for these 911 tapes to bolster their case in public. But at this point it doesn't appear that happened. The people who are of the opinion that this is not a case of self-defense came away from listening to those tapes unchanged.

MALVEAUX: The attorneys of the family, they have asked that the Justice Department actually get involved in this case. Do we know anything about whether or not they are going to step in?

MATTINGLY: Well, at this point, it's not only coming from the family, this request to the Justice Department. It's also from the local congresswoman and also the mayor of the city of Sanford who's gotten involved and said, yes, that's fine, let's talk.

The police department of Sanford is welcoming this kind of scrutiny, again showing the kind of confidence that they might have in how they've conducted this investigation.

MALVEAUX: David, thank you so much. Appreciate it.

Just getting some information here, this coming in from ESPN, as well as the NFL, tweets that they're sending out that the former Indianapolis Colts quarterback Peyton Manning has made a decision. He's going to sign with the Denver Broncos.

You may recall it was just recently that he appeared emotional with team officials of Indianapolis, saying that he was leaving the team. He had suffered several injuries. They had a big deal that was on the table. They came to a mutual decision that it was time for him to leave that team, and so he is moving on.

College grads make $650,000 more over their lifetimes than people who only go to high school, but as we know, college isn't cheap. Costs are going up. In the end, is it worth it? We're going to break it down.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

MALVEAUX: All right. College is pretty expensive. Any parent of a teen can tell you this. But is this degree worth the money? Well, the answer is it depends.

Christine Romans explains in today's "Smart is the New Rich."

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

CHRISTINE ROMANS, HOST, CNN'S YOUR BOTTOM LINE: So you can't afford to go to college, but you can afford not to either.

A Pew Research Center study finds typical college graduates made $650,000 more over their working lives than their peers who only finished high school. And a college degree, bachelor's degree or higher, has an unemployment rate of 4.2 percent, half that of high school grads.

Anthony Carnevale is director of the Georgetown University Center on Education and the Workforce.

Ali Velshi is CNN's chief business correspondent and host of "YOUR MONEY."

Tony, is college worth it?

ANTHONY CARNEVALE, GEORGETOWN UNIVERSITY ON EDUCATION AND THE WORKFORCE: It is, but it all depends on what you take. College in general is not worth it so much anymore. It's college in particular that you have to think about.

ROMANS: Ali, it has to be an investment, you have to think of it as an investment.

ALI VELSHI, CNN CHIEF BUSINESS CORRESPONDENT: Yes.

ROMANS: You have all this student debt. You're not going to be guaranteed a job coming out. You have to be training for the right job.

VELSHI: That's correct. So, you have to decide what undergraduate you're going to take that's going to pay you unless you plan to be independently wealthy or have your parents finance you or marry rich.

At the point, you have to decide whether you need further education or whether you need further vocational education. If you're going to go for a degree beyond a bachelor's degree, then go to college for three years and go into that degree as opposed to four years. Lots of places allow you to accelerate.

But the bottom line is: while it may be expensive, we need to make sure we don't confuse that with valuable. It is expensive and it is valuable.

ROMANS: Tony, how do we make college more affordable for everyone?

CARNEVALE: The only way to do I think we can do that, because we don't have the money to buy all the college education we need is we can the need to urge people to know what the outcome will be, how they'll do to know before they go whether the degree will get them a job or not.

ROMANS: And the degree that will get them a job, Tony and Ali, is STEM, isn't it, science and technology, engineering and math?

VELSHI: Right. There are some exceptions to that. There are jobs that are degrees that will get you employed but they won't pay very much.

And for some people, that's OK. Some of these professions are things people want to do. The mistake you need to not make is going for something that's not going to get you a job, and that's not going to pay well, that was just something you chose because somebody told you to. There is research in there.

Tony makes that point. People can research. If you're going to school, you should be smart enough to get on to Google and figure out what it is.

ROMANS: And no more spending three or four years to finding yourself.

VELSHI: Right.

ROMANS: It's too expensive at 20 grand a year to do that.

Anthony Carnevale, Ali Velshi, thanks so much.

For "Smart is the New Rich", I'm Christine Romans.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

MALVEAUX: Mitt Romney thinks the economy is improving.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

MITT ROMNEY (R), PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: I believe the economy is coming back, by the way. We'll see what happens. It's had ups and downs. I think it's finally coming back.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

MALVEAUX: All right. You can bet the Democrats are going to pounce on that comment. We're going to hash it out with our political panel, up next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

SUZANNE MALVEAUX, CNN ANCHOR: All right, Republican candidates sharpening their attacks on each other a day before they face off in the Illinois primary. At a campaign stop this morning, Mitt Romney called Rick Santorum an economic lightweight, that's right, while Santorum said Romney doesn't have a core. Whoa. Want to bring in our political panelists here. Democratic strategist Kiki McLean and conservative independent Amy Holmes.

Good to see both of you this morning here, a Monday morning, trying to sort all this out. So it really is a game of the numbers here, right? We're talking about 1,144 delegates to win the nomination. Romney has got a big lead here, but can he get to the magic number before the Republican convention?

Amy, game this out for us? Do you think that's possible?

AMY HOLMES, CONSERVATIVE INDEPENDENT: Well, it is possible. And, of course, there's a lot of pressure being put on Newt Gingrich to drop out. I think one of the most interesting findings that we have is that Gallup found that this Gingtorum vote, Gingrich and Santorum vote, is really split pretty evenly between Newt -- if Newt Gingrich were to drop out between Rick Santorum and Mitt Romney. So, of course, the pressure is being brought to bear.

MALVEAUX: All right. So you're going to need one of these guys to drop out before the convention.

Kiki, weigh in here. Could President Obama be still wondering who his opponent is 160 days away with a possibility of this open convention?

KIKI MCLEAN, DEMOCRATIC STRATEGIST: Sure he could, because anything can happen. And what's interesting -- most interesting out of this is that you've got Santorum, who gets the headlines because he's got more delegates, and I participated in a primary in 2008 where it was a real delegate fight. You have Santorum who comes behind him and then Gingrich. So, why would either Santorum or Gingrich drop out? No real value.

For Gingrich, a former speaker of the House, you know, this is all about the inside rules, right? This is all about the machinations of things that most voters don't even know about. It's what he did as speaker of the House.

MALVEAUX: Right.

MCLEAN: It's what he loves.

MALVEAUX: Right.

MCLEAN: I suspect he doesn't drop out before then. But I think that it could, in fact, lead to a lot of uncertainty. And then the other question is, who is it, not only by name, that President Obama faces, but who is it substantively he faces? And the reality is, for weeks now these three candidates have done nothing but talk about process and they have had no message conversation whatsoever.

MALVEAUX: Well, let's talk about that, Amy, because if the Republican nominee is determined in August, that really gives whoever it is two months to fight what is likely going to be a $1 billion Obama machine. Is any of them in that position of strength to actually do that, to pull that off? Who would it be?

HOLMES: Well, it would certainly be, you know, a difficult uphill climb to be able to face a $1 billion machine. But as "The Washington Post" just reported, President Obama is actually facing some lower fund-raising numbers than one would have expected. More than where he was in 2008 and President Bush.

MALVEAUX: Yes, but out of the Republican candidates, who do you think -- who do you think, Amy, would be able to take him on with just two months left facing an Obama campaign?

HOLMES: Well, with just two months left, you know, I guess the conventional wisdom is that Mitt Romney would be stronger because of his, you know, stronger ties even with the financial community. But, again, the question would be, would the GOP be able to rally around that candidate to generate the enthusiasm and, you know, be able to give that person money after this really lengthy battle up until August. So that has yet to be seen and has a lot of GOP rather worried actually that we need to -- the GOP needs to have its candidates soon.

MALVEAUX: I want to play a little bit of sound. Senator John McCain, over the weekend, saying this was really the nastiest campaign that he has seen. This is McCain on "Meet The Press."

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

SEN. JOHN MCCAIN (R), ARIZONA: This is the nastiest I have ever seen. And, again, when you have a Las Vegas casino mogul, by the way, who gets part of his money from a cow, pouring $20 million into one campaign, and most of those are negative ads, obviously that drives up people's unfavorable.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

MALVEAUX: Kiki, can these candidates -- is it too late for them to turn the tone, turn the message here and create more of a positive campaign so it's not turning off all these folks?

MCLEAN: No, it's not too late. Here's what happens. I actually think come Labor Day, at the end of the conventions, because Democrats will meet in Charlotte at Labor Day to re-nominate President Obama and Vice President Biden, there's almost this sort of -- you know the Miss America pageants when you get to the final 12, the scoring starts fresh?

MALVEAUX: Yes.

MCLEAN: We've all seen the different bumps candidates get out of a convention. And it's a totally whole new scoring system. And then more voters, people who'd never paid attention to the primaries, begin to pay attention. And it becomes a clean conversation at that point, all right?

And the question is, what kind of person do they view you as going into the race in the fall? Are you an honest broker? Do you tell it like it is? And then, what's your message? So I would actually say that I think the fall campaign will be close, regardless of who it is, because the Republicans will close ranks behind who they want. They've got a lot of money out there. They'll get it funneled (ph) together.

MALVEAUX: All right.

MCLEAN: And it starts anew come Labor Day.

MALVEAUX: Amy, you've got to weigh in here, because we've only got very little time here left.

HOLMES: Well, I -- you know, certainly come Labor Day, you know, that's when people start paying attention. Those independent and swing voters. But leading up until August, you know, we're going to keep seeing this fight. And I'm really curious to see if the media, as in the Democratic primary in 2008, is going to start putting pressure on Santorum or Gingrich to drop out, as they did on Hillary Clinton.

MALVEAUX: All right. And that was a battle to the end, the fierce end there. Amy, Kiki, good to see you both.

MCLEAN: Thanks.

MALVEAUX: Tomorrow's the first day of spring. Already feels a little bit like the first day of summer. What is with all the crazy weather? We're going to let you know.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

MALVEAUX: Here in Atlanta, we seem to have skipped right over winter and spring, landed right in the middle of summer. But we're not the only ones who are seeing kind of crazy weather. It is now, I understand, Chad, snowing in Arizona. Is that right?

CHAD MYERS, AMS METEOROLOGIST: Fifty-five inches of snow in Snowbowl, Arizona, which is Flagstaff. I have skied there in the past seven days.

MALVEAUX: That's crazy.

MYERS: And there are frost advisories for southern California. That's where the cold air is today. The warm air was in the Central Plains and it's going to get moved out. When cold air pushes out warm air, in the spring, almost spring tomorrow, you will get severe weather. And we will get tornadoes today.

We will definitely get severe weather as Gulf moisture comes in from the Gulf of Mexico, warms up the East Coast. We have hundreds of record highs across the east the past couple of days where the cold air has been back out to the west. The clash yesterday was from North Platte, where we had tornados there, all the way down to Texas and Oklahoma.

Tomorrow, it slides a little bit farther to the east. We could even see heavy rain into parts of Iowa and Missouri. Maybe into Illinois. Some of those storms could be strong to severe again.

We're worried about tornadoes today and also very large hail. The biggest cities in the way would be Oklahoma City, maybe now that it's rained so much, maybe we wrecked our atmosphere, you may be OK. But Dallas-Ft. Worth, Longview, Waco, all the way down to San Antonio, there could be baseball sized hail falling out of the sky in those big cities today. And when that happens, you can get an awful lot of damage to cars, buildings, and glass.

Here we go, Arizona Snowbowl, just the past couple of hours, it has put five more inches down totally 36 inches of snow. Were in Tupelo, Mississippi, yesterday was 83 degrees. St. Louis was 82. It's the warm and the cold. That same warm and the cold will clash. We even have spots here in the Central Plains, right there, that purple. That will be six to 10 inches of rainfall where flash flooding will happen. Especially at night, don't drive into water. You don't know how deep it is. And we will lose people if you drive into that water. Turn around. Don't drown in this flash flooding for today.

Suzanne.

MALVEAUX: And they got to be careful of that. I'm loving this weather, though, Chad, in Atlanta.

MYERS: The pollen --

MALVEAUX: Eighty degrees? Really?

MYERS: The pollen is a little bit crazy out there, but it's --

MALVEAUX: Yes, the pollen is pretty crazy.

MYERS: Yes. MALVEAUX: But the warm weather's nice. It's going to continue? Is that right?

MYERS: It will continue for us for three more days and then we'll get the severe weather by Thursday, Friday.

MALVEAUX: All right. Thank you, Chad.

MYERS: You're welcome.

MALVEAUX: They watch her every move. Now the Duchess of Cambridge, well, we all know her as Kate, she's giving her first speech.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

MALVEAUX: Today the Duchess of Cambridge did something that she has never done before. The former Kate Middleton gave her first official speech as a member of British royalty. She toured a children's hospital in Ipswich, England. Smiling, shaking hands with patients, families and staff. She also spoke for a few minutes starting with something kind of warm and personal.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

KATE MIDDLETON, DUCHESS OF CAMBRIDGE: I am only sorry that William can't be here today. He would love it here. A view of his that I share is that through teamwork so much can be achieved. What you have all achieved here is extraordinary. You, as a community, have built the treehouse. A group of people who have made every effort to support and help each other. When I first visited the hospice in (INAUDIBLE), I had a preconceived idea as to what to expect. Far from being a clinical, depressing place for sick children, it was a home. Most importantly, it was a family home. A happy place of stability, support, and care. It was a place of fun. Today I have seen again that the treehouse is all about family and fun. For many, this is a home from home. A lifeline enabling families to live as normally as possible during a very precious period of time.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

MALVEAUX: They witnessed a massacre, but not everyone saw the same thing that terrible night in Afghanistan.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

SARA SIDNER, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): "It was around 3:00 at night that they entered the room. They took my uncle out of the room and shot him after asking him, where is the Taliban?"

(END VIDEO CLIP)

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

MALVEAUX: People living in one of the Afghan villages where a U.S. soldier allegedly massacred 16 civilians, they are now speaking out about that horrible night. Sara Sidner, she spoke to them, and she's got their story.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

SARA SIDNER, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Graves in Najabinbaj (ph). A place now haunted by the memory of a massacre. Ali Ahmed (ph) describes what he saw. "It was around 3:00 at night that they entered the room. They took my uncle out of the room and shot him after asking him, where is the Taliban. My uncle replied that he didn't know."

Ahmed said the worst happened next door.

"Finally, they came to this room and martyred all the children in the room. There was even a two-month-old baby," he said.

Once the shooting stopped, the villagers said some of the dead were piled in a room and set on fire. At daybreak, in the back of trucks, evidence emerged of the burning of bodies and killing of babies. U.S. officials say this was the work of a single soldier acting on his own.

Army Staff Sergeant Robert Bales is under arrest, accused in the crime. Most of the villagers say they do not believe the U.S. version. But when it comes to actual eyewitnesses, their stories conflict. One of the young witnesses said, "he was an American." "It was just one person," the boy next to him chimes in. But some adults in the village tell us they have evidence more than one soldier was involved, but none of them have said more than one soldier was firing a weapon.

"They went through a field of wheat and there was more than one set of footprints. The villagers have seen them and signs of knee prints as well."

In an exclusive interview, a Taliban commander from the area told CNN, "we don't think that one American soldier was involved in the attack. The foreigners and the puppet regime are blind to the truth of what happened there. But if this was the act of one soldier, we want this soldier to be prosecuted in Afghanistan and according to Islamic law."

After the attack, the Taliban suspended initial peace talks with the U.S. He told us the reason was twofold. The burning of Korans in February by U.S. troops and he claimed the U.S. rescinded its offer to move five Taliban members from Guantanamo Bay prison to Qatar.

"Our peace talks with the Americans were limbed to discuss the prisoner deal," he said, "and those promises were not kept by the Americans."

But the U.S. State Department said it has not made any decisions on the transfer.

Back in the villages of Panjwai district, it isn't peace talks, but justice that's being demanded right now. Something the U.S. has repeatedly promised will be done. In the streets and in the Afghan presidential palace, anger and skepticism reign. So far, three protests have erupted in the last week with calls for justice and death to America.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

MALVEAUX: Sara joins us.

Sara, do we know anything more about the 16 victims?

SIDNER: Just a bit. We do know that in one household, 11 family members were killed and one of the villagers there had said that the village seems completely empty. As you might imagine, these villages aren't highly populated. There were another two families that were effected, three in another house and two in yet another house.

So we're talking about several different houses. And that is partly why the villagers are convinced that this was the work of more than one person. But again and again, what you're hearing is, they believe it's more than one person but they've not said that more than one person was actually firing at them.

Suzanne.

MALVEAUX: And do we know anything more about the families? What they did or who they were or people talking about them?

SIDNER: Many of them farmers. The village elders came in and spoke with the president on Friday. They were quite adamant that, you know, how can this keep happening to us? We've been trying to make a living and now people come in and they do this to us, referring to the Americans. And President Karzai responded in Pashto saying, you know, we're caught between two evils. And he was referring to NATO and the Taliban.

Suzanne.

MALVEAUX: All right, Sarah, thank you very much. Excellent reporting, as always. Thank you, Sara.

We're learning more and more about Staff Sergeant Robert Bales. His friends say he was a nice guy, he had a wife, two kids, but what do we know about the people he's accused of killing in Afghanistan? We're going to give you a side of the story that you are actually not hearing.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

MALVEAUX: How much do we know about the 16 Afghan civilians who were massacred allegedly by a U.S. soldier? Not much. And that really troubled by next guest, Dean Obeidallah. He's joining us from New York. He is the co-founder of the Arab American Comedy Festival and a frequent contributor to cnn.com.

So, Dean, nice to have you here.

DEAN OBEIDALLAH: Thanks.

MALVEAUX: You wrote an op-ed piece this morning and it caught our attention. I want to read just a little bit of it here for our viewers. "The U.S. media has treated the 16 victims as statistics, not human beings. If they were human, we would at least know their names and ages. We might even have heard from their classmates or family members about the kind of people they were. Maybe they, too, were happy-go-lucky like Sergeant Bales."

And why do you suppose that the media, in general, we have not heard more about the victims in this case?

OBEIDALLAH, COFOUNDER, ARAB-AMERICAN COMEDY FESTIVAL: You know, that's my question, Suzanne, why don't we? We have a full portrait of Robert Bales. He's 38. He has two children. We hear about him vacationing, playing high school football. We've heard testimonials from friends and fellow soldiers. We've heard every -- we haven't heard his religion, but we can safely assume it's not Muslim, because if it was, that would be the headline.

But we haven't heard anything more about the 16 people. We've heard them described as villagers and civilians. As nine women -- nine children and three women. But what about their names, their ages. Let's hear about them as human beings and not statistics. Why the media doesn't do it? I think party it's because they don't think we want to hear it. Maybe part it's a struggle in Afghanistan, in the defense of the media.

But now, a week later, it's time. Let's hear about them. Let's put a human face on this loss caused undisputedly by U.S. hands. And this soldier, or the soldier with others, we're not sure. But I don't think there's any dispute about the U.S. involvement in this. So, we should hear about the people that our soldiers, sadly, have killed.

MALVEAUX: Dean, do you think it's possible that Americans see the Afghans as a whole as the enemy? That people are not distinguishing the Afghan people from the extremists, from al Qaeda, from the Taliban?

OBEIDALLAH: I think that's one of the consequences of not learning about the other side. It's very easy to demonize the other when they don't have a human face. When you don't know about their dreams and hopes, like you hear about ours. If someone loses their child, you hear about their story, their back story. And I think it's easy to view it monolithically. All brown people, all Muslims, they're bad. We don't know much about them. And that's why it really moves me to say that we need to hear more about them. It does paint a different, more full human picture for my fellow Americans about who these people are.

MALVEAUX: What do you think that is? Do you think that's racism? Do you think that's just people who are focused on their own lives and they're not really paying attention to people who look different than themselves?

OBEIDALLAH: I think, for the average American, we look to you, the media, to give us that information. People -- Americans, obviously, are busy people. It's a tough economy and making ends meet. They're not going to go out and investigate the people in Afghanistan or across the Middle East.

That's where we need the media to fill in that gap. I don't think Americans are inherently racist, no, but I think if they have no information to balance it, they're only going to see the negative. And that's why -- to me, that's why I wrote the op-ed, to try to inspire the media to come forward and paint a human picture. Let's hear from their classmates. Let's hear about what they were going to do with their lives. Let's hear about the family members. We don't even know their names. I mean, you look it up, it's so hard to find. The Wazer and the Jan family, the two biggest families that lost relatives, but that was so hard to even find in any mainstream media.

MALVEAUX: All right. Well, we do have Sara Sidner, who's doing a pretty good job of explaining --

OBEIDALLAH: Yes. She's doing great.

MALVEAUX: Who they are on the ground. But, clearly, it looks like more context and more profiles are need.

OBEIDALLAH: (INAUDIBLE).

MALVEAUX: Dean, thanks again. Appreciate your time.

OBEIDALLAH: Thanks, Suzanne.