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Iraq Chaos Distressing for Veterans; U.S. Poised for Iraq Intervention; Netflix Adds Original Programming; Lucy Li Qualified to Play in U.S. Open

Aired June 19, 2014 - 09:30   ET

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

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POPPY HARLOW, CNN ANCHOR: Good morning. I'm Poppy Harlow, in today for Carol Costello. Thanks so much for joining us.

As troubling as it is for all of us to see what is happening in Iraq, it is likely even more difficult for the men and women who served there. Troops who have spent one, two, three tours on the ground. Brian Castner is torn between competing perspectives on Iraq. He is a former lead bomb technician for the Air Force, also author of "The Long Walk." It is a memoir about his time serving in Iraq and Afghanistan. He also is a contributor to "The New York Times." And he writes in his piece, I want to read you this. It's long, but it's important. So, listen.

"If you are a veteran who long ago lost faith that our actions in Iraq contributed to some greater good, if you despair that your friends died for nothing, then the events of last week simply confirm your view. But if you are a veteran who needs to find meaning after so much bloodshed, who thinks that we built something worthy, crafted a voting populace and democratic government and that therefore your buddies died for a purpose, then this unravel is particularly difficult. No wonder so many are angry, seeking to pin the blame on the president who innovated or the one who left, or both."

Brian Castner joins me now.

Good morning to you, sir.

BRIAN CASTNER, CONTRIBUTOR, "THE NEW YORK TIMES": Good morning. Thank you for having me.

HARLOW: Thank you for coming in. I was really struck when I read this, this week. Let's just talk about first what you're feeling, what you're battling right now.

CASTNER: I think it is some competing perspectives. On one hand, you have this intellectual curiosity, you know these places, you recognize all the monuments. But on the other hand, there's definitely this sense of distance. You're still just watching it on TV, like anybody else and, you know, your connections are really tenuous at this point. I don't have any desire to go back and fix it somehow. That there's any work left undone there. HARLOW: You know, you - you write and you talk a lot about the

parallels that you see between Vietnam and Iraq, saying they're undeniable. And you write, quote, "before my first tour, I honestly thought I could help the local people, but no noble cause withstood the scrutiny of the war's daily reality." Given what we're seeing now unfold in Syria, in Iraq, the growing threat of ISIS, what do you think the United States should do right now? Aside from what you want to do, what do you think this country should do?

CASTNER: I think that there is - I think we're in the middle of a mess and I don't know - I honestly don't know what the solution to the mess is. I know that the service that my brothers and I, the loyalty that we had to each other, none of that's undone by what we saw or what we see now. We fought for each other while we were there. And, you know, our -- the meaning that we talk from that is what we do going forward. It's -- we don't have control over Iraq now and if we try to find meaning there, I just think it's an exercise in futility.

HARLOW: I'm interested in your perspective, what you think when you watch on television and read in the newspapers, lawmakers in Washington pointing fingers at one another, blaming one administration, blaming the other administration. Many looking to al Maliki and saying he has failed to unite his country. What do you think when you see all that finger pointing?

CASTNER: I think that it -- while we were there, it had very little to do with what we were doing on the ground and that, I don't know, this might be a little disappointing, but when we were sitting around the fire at night talking about missions, it was what we were going to do the next day, not about what the latest speech was in Washington. And there is just such a distance. You really get the sense while you're there of how little control you have. And maybe that's the key, that you get this sense that, if you're in the middle of the fight, and there's very little that you can do to stop these sides from killing each other, then what's being done with fingerprinting or a new policy or a new speech.

HARLOW: You write in the op-ed you end it by talking about a friend of yours who is a contractor and you talk about the fact that you haven't heard from him via e-mail, you haven't heard from him on Facebook. Is he OK? I mean he's there right now. Is he OK?

CASTNER: He is OK as far as we know. He's been in contact with his wife. But, of course, social media is shut down in Iraq, so we can't really get a hold of him personally. But he's a bomb technician. He was in the Army for 20 something years. I trust him to take care of himself. And he knows how to stay safe and get himself out if he needs to.

HARLOW: Yes, we certainly have to think about the perspective from the people like your friend and the others on the ground there. Very difficult, especially for you and those who served right now. Thank you for your service. We appreciate it very much, Brian.

CASTNER: Thank you for having me.

HARLOW: Sure.

Well, as government forces battle Islamic militants for control of Iraq, both sides have claimed the upper hand. Terrorist supporters area also waging a propaganda war online, posting a photoshopped mockery of the first lady's Twitter campaign to free those girls kidnapped in Nigeria. Instead of saying, "bring back our girls," the hash tag reads, bring back our Humvee. A reference to ISIS's threat - theft, rather, of a truckload of U.S. made Humvees that happened last week.

I want to talk about this with two of our panelists. Joining me, Brian Katulis, a senior fellow at the Center for American Progress, also CNN political commentator Will Cain.

Thank you both for being here.

Let me start with you, Will.

It's interesting, you know, I was reading, we were talking about this a bit last night and you say this is far beyond pointing fingers, it's far beyond blaming one of the administrations. You're not interested in doing that at this point.

WILL CAIN, CNN POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: No, I'm not interested. I think Brian actually had a wonderful perspective right there when talking to you. I think it's so narrow-minded to say, you know, this is the fault, as many conservatives would say, of President Obama for pulling us out of Iraq. And it's so narrow-minded to suggest this is Bush's fault as well for putting us into Iraq in the first place. We're look the an upheaval stretching from Afghanistan to Libya, from Syria down through Iraq. We're looking at sectarian, tribal, racial, ethnic divides exploding into chaos and violence. And I don't think in is any one president's incapability of controlling that (ph).

HARLOW: But can you learn - agreed (ph), pointing fingers does nothing -

CAIN: Right.

HARLOW: But can't you learn lessons from actions of past administrations or current administrations?

CAIN: Well, look, Poppy, we've tried full scale invasion and occupation in Iraq. We've tried limited bombing and air strikes in Libya. We've tried nonintervention in Syria. Which one can we point to as a success? Which one can we say is the model for going forward?

HARLOW: I hear you.

CAIN: None.

HARLOW: Brian, to you. You know, I was reading your paper last night talking about this, that you just posted this week and you warn of unintended consequences and you're very clear that you really want to do everything or make every advice in your power, not to -- for the U.S. not to get involved. But at the same time, you're not taking air strikes off the table. You think that the U.S. has to be prepared for that.

BRIAN KATULIS, SENIOR FELLOW, CENTER FOR AMERICAN PROGRESS: Well, I think the U.S. should be prepared for all options. But the thrust of what we should do is keep our eye on the ball. The first thing is we want to make sure that this dangerous group doesn't somehow attack the United States, and that's why we need, I think, the second thing is to support reliable partners. And I want to stress reliable because right now in Baghdad, the Iraqi government is not reliable. And I think it would be a mistake to just go back in there and get engaged in what essentially is, as Will said, a sectarian civil war that's got like deep historical connections here. So I think we need to be judicious about what kind of engagement we have and I think that's what the Obama administration is trying to do here.

HARLOW: You also talked about the fact that if the U.S. is going to do anything to aid the Iraqis, they have to have a promise, written agreement of inclusive government reforms. Serious reform that the Maliki government hasn't been willing to do.

KATULIS: Yes, because if we use our bombs on one side of the sectarian civil war, we could lead to the further fractures of Iraq as a nation state. And, look, I think it's good that we're demanding of Prime Minister Maliki that he's got to have a national unified response. But we've got to be modest about what we can expect from him because a leopard does not change his spots. I think we should make those demands, but we should be realistic that Maliki has governed this way for years.

HARLOW: Yes. Very quickly, we have to go. A quick, one-word answer, does Maliki have to go?

Will, to you first.

CAIN: He does, but to Brian's point, we're asking something impossible. When is the last time you had a democratic pluralistic in the Middle East? When is it?

HARLOW: He does. That's your one word.

To you, Brian, does Maliki have to go?

KATULIS: Yes, but the Iraqi people need to do that.

HARLOW: We appreciate your expertise, both of you gentlemen this morning, thank you.

Still to come here in the NEWSROOM, on a lighter note, Chelsea walking away from her cable talk show headed straight for the web. All the details on her near deal and oh so Chelsea statement about moving on. That's straight ahead.

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HARLOW: This just in to CNN. Passengers aboard a Houston bound flight had quite a scare yesterday. We just got the video. Take a look. A Southwest jet had just taken off from Tampa International Airport when it struck a number of birds. The damage to the plane, you see it right there on the wing, was so severe, the flight had to turn around, head back to the airport in Tampa. The flight did land safely. Passengers were rebooked on other flights.

Also this morning, Facebook hit with a global outage. It lasted just about 30 minutes. Some 6,000 users reported trouble either logging on to their Facebook or accessing the website at all. So far, no word on what the problem was, but, fear not, it is fixed.

All right, let's talk about Netflix. Netflix is working hard to become a huge, huge player. They really already are in original programming with series like "Orange is the New Black."

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UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Like what you've done with the place.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Sadly, it's starting to feel like home in here.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Three, two, one, go!

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: This is not how I imagined --

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HARLOW: Or my favorite, the political drama "House of Cards."

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UNIDENTIFIED MALE: So help me God.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: So help me God.

One heartbeat away from the presidency and not a single vote cast in my name. Democracy is so overrated.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

HARLOW: Now the streaming service is looking to break out the last as it announces a new deal with comedian Chelsea Handler. Our senior media correspondent Brian Stelter here with us breaking the news as always. I mean this just came out, you know, within the hour. What do you make of this move? I mean in terms of being a woman in comedy, this is a huge move for her.

BRIAN STELTER, CNN SENIOR MEDIA CORRESPONDENT: First of all, Chelsea Handler, the only woman with a late night TV show right now.

HARLOW: Right.

STELTER: It's on E! and it's ending in about two months. And she's been talking for a long time about wanting to leave E!. She isn't happy there. They probably went' happy with her there. But people wonder, where's she going to go next.

Netflix was at the top of the list but it wasn't clear if that was actually going to happen and now we know it is. She's going to have a talk show on Netflix, which raises the question, what is a talk show on Netflix?

HARLOW: Right. Right.

STELTER: You know, we're used to "Oranges is the New Black" binges (ph), we're used to scrolling through, finding old movies to watch. I watched "Titanic" the other night because there was nothing new on. So I went back to a film from the '90s. But this is going to brings new programming. This is going to bring topical programing to Netflix, which is a service we don't really think of as being there (ph).

HARLOW: And we don't know if it's going to be daily, what hour of the day it may be released, if it's going to be weekly.

STELTER: Right.

HARLOW: Tell us about what she said in her announcement. It was so Chelsea.

STELTER: Well - well, she said, if I'm going to continue working in the industry, I had to do something outside the box, she said. And this is definitely outside the box. And then she said that Netflix is the most forward-thinking, alert group I've sat down with in ages, no offense to the shaws (ph) of Sunset (ph), making fun of that Bravo reality show. And what I wonder about a Netflix deal is, how topical will she be? Will she be making jokes about news that happened that day? Will she have guests on that are there promoting a movie that weekend? That we don't know yet. But this won't come on until 2016, so she has some time to figure it out.

HARLOW: I wonder if you think any of this is a smart business move, keeps people paying for Netflix even when they're done bingeing on their favorite shows? And also, I mean isn't this huge for her in terms of global reach?

STELTER: It is. That's one of the interesting things about this. Her show, "Chelsea Lately," is on in the United States.

HARLOW: Right.

STELTER: So this will be on around the world in every country that Netflix is available in. They've been expanding quite a bit. They're in Canada, they're in Latin America, they're expanding to Europe now.

HARLOW: Yes.

STELTER: So it will be reaching in theory a wider audience but there's also a risk this is actually going to be narrow casting. If you don't have a television platform, if you're not in front of people on television every night, she may not be as visible. She may be speaking only to her existing fans and not finding new fans.

By the way a challenge for Paula Deen also; last week Paula Deen announced she's having a new online network so she's going around TV going to the Web. The danger for all of these sorts of celebrities who go to the Web is that they are going to be speaking to a narrow group of core fans but not finding new ones.

HARLOW: But you don't have to worry about ratings right. Netflix doesn't need ratings.

STELTER: That's right and Netflix already has 30 million to 40 million households signed up.

HARLOW: Right.

STELTER: So unlike this Paula Deen thing where she's hoping people will sign up just for her, Chelsea Handler is going somewhere where there's a giant audience on Netflix, you know everything is on demand. So how a talk show works in an on demand world is something were going to find out.

HARLOW: We'll be watching. Brian I appreciate it, thank you.

STELTER: Thanks.

HARLOW: And for more on the story check out Brian, he wrote a great column, go to CNNmoney.com, it is right there.

Well it could be the breakthrough that doctors are looking for to help prevent heart attacks. This is big and it's actually in the form of a gene mutation, two new studies show that people who have dramatically lower levels of triglycerides which is a fat that circulates in the bloodstream, those people were 40 percent less likely to have heart disease which means if doctors can mimic that with a drug they could cut the number of people suffering from strokes or heart attack or heart disease significantly.

Joining me now via Skype is cardiology professor Dr. Dan Roden to talk about this. I found this story and our whole team did absolutely fascinating when we read it this morning. Talk to me about how big this is because these are two independent studies that basically verified a smaller study from 2008.

DR. DAN RODEN, CARDIOLOGY PROFESSOR: Right, so the smaller study was a little genetic study in the Amish in Pennsylvania, and it had the provocative result that people who had this variation in the APOC3 gene had much lower triglycerides. And so the question about triglycerides has always been do they have anything to do with heart diseases? And it's been very, very difficult. We know about bad cholesterol so-called LDL, but we don't know about triglycerides. So this -- there are two big takeaway messages from these two studies,

one is that people with mutations in the APOC3 gene have much lower triglyceride levels and have much lower heart attack risks. So that links low triglycerides to heart attack risk and a pretty believable way for the first time. And the second thing is the mutations all seem to be mutations that destroyed function of the genes. So if you had a drug that blocked the protein that the gene encodes you had a drug that would mimic the genetic effect and might really reduce the instance of heart attack fantastically.

The other important point is that there are these two independent studies, one done in Denmark, one done across the United States, they have pretty much the same result and that really makes it much more believable.

HARLOW: Right. Absolutely.

You know what I was thinking though when I read this is it's one thing to find this and that is fantastic if this really proves out. But it takes a long time for the R&D to go into successful drug development. How far out could we be from that?

RODEN: The answer, I don't know, and nobody knows but because this APOC3 has been around for a little while, companies are already sort of nosing around thinking about how to attack it. But we do have a precedent. So this isn't the first time genetics has informed the way we develop drugs. There's a similar story with the gene called PCSK9 which in the mid 2000s, 2005, 2006, we had a similar story. People with variants of the PCSK9, about 2 percent of the population had much lower bad cholesterol levels, LDL cholesterol levels and much, much, much lower heart attack risk. And so that was in 2006, the first report. And in 2012, we have the first reports of a drug that actually lowers PCSK9 levels and looks like it lowers LDL cholesterol pretty dramatically. So five to ten years, something like that.

HARLOW: we'll take it. I mean we'd like it this year but we'll take it. Really fascinating studies -- thank you for the expertise, Doctor, in joining us. We appreciate it. Dr. Dan Roden there.

RODEN: Thank you.

HARLOW: Still to come here in the NEWSROOM, too young to play? I don't think so. An 11-year-old tees off in today's U.S. Women's Open but, of course, not all the players are so happy about that.

Andy Scholes has the story.

ANDY SCHOLES, CNN SPORTS: yes. Lucy Li is making history today in Pinehurst, North Carolina. But not everyone is happy about it. I'll explain after the break.

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HARLOW: Golf fans, get to know this name, Lucy Li. She is teeing off in today's opening round of the U.S. women's open and she is just 11 years old. The sixth grader is the youngest ever to qualify for the tournament.

Our Andy Scholes joins me now. Andy, I didn't know an 11-year-old could play in the U.S. Open.

SCHOLES: yes. It's incredible, right? Poppy, you know, anyone can qualify for the U.S. Open. All you have do is go win one of those smaller qualifying tournaments around the country and that's exactly what Lucy Li did. You know, she can't even buy a ticket to a PG-13 movie but she sure can hold her own out on the golf course.

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SCHOLES: 11-year-old Lucy Li is making history. Sporting pigtails and braces, she's the youngest to ever qualify for a U.S. Women's Open and Lucy is embracing this big stage, despite still being a kid.

LUCY LI, GOLFER: I like everything -- math, science and history. I love doing a lot of things, but reading is my favorite.

SCHOLES: Who could imagine, a sixth grader from California, who's barely 5 feet tall will accomplish something Tiger Woods won't on the golf course this year. That's tee it up at Augusta National and Pinehurst Number Two.

LI: I mean Pinehurst and Augusta National in two months, I mean that's just amazing. It's mind blowing for me.

SCHOLES: Lucy became serious about the game of golf when she was only seven years old.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Can your dad beat you?

LI: no.

SCHOLES: All laughter aside, there are varying views if an 11-year- old is too young to compete at the highest level.

STACEY LEWIS, LPGA GOLFER: I'm not a big fan of it. You know, she qualified so we can't say anything about that. You know, you qualify for an open, it's a great thing, but if you qualify for an open at 11, what do you do next? I don't know. If it was my kid I wouldn't let her play in an open qualifier at 11 but that's just me.

LEXI THOMPSON, GOLFER: This is what she wants to do for her life, she'll learn off the other players and see what she needs to improve on. I mean she's 11 years old.

SCHOLES: Regardless of age, Lucy is very carefree about her expectations this week.

LI: I just want to go out there and have fun and play the best I can. I really don't care about the outcome. It's just -- I want to have fun.

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SCHOLES: Lucy got off to a bit of a rough start in round one this morning but Poppy, like she said, this week is all about having fun and learning from this just incredible experience she's having.

HARLOW: just a classic moment when she said that her dad couldn't beat her. Clearly not media trained yet and I love it. I love the authenticity. I'm rooting for her.

SCHOLES: What's amazing is she sat up there for 20 minutes and took questions from the media like a champ. 11 years old. I couldn't have done that.

HARLOW: That is phenomenal. We're cheering her on. Thanks, Andy. Appreciate it.

SCHOLES: All right.

HARLOW: The next hour of CNN NEWSROOM with Don Lemon begins right here after a quick break.

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