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Crisis in the Middle East; The Human Toll Inside Gaza; Battle Nears MH17 Crash Site; Where's the Urgency in Washington?; Pope's First American Visit

Aired July 27, 2014 - 19:00   ET

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

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

MIGUEL MARQUEZ, CNN ANCHOR: You're in the CNN NEWSROOM. I'm Miguel Marquez.

DEBORAH FEYERICK, CNN ANCHOR: And I'm Deborah Feyerick. We want to welcome viewers watching us here in the United States and around the world.

MARQUE: It is a video that is raising a lot of eyebrows. New video from the Israeli Defense Forces showing what appears to be mortar round hitting a U.N. shelter in Gaza on Thursday. Israel has acknowledged what it describes as a quote, "single errant mortar" that landed in the shelter's courtyard. The IDF video is not high resolution enough and it's not clear if anyone was sitting in that courtyard at the time.

FEYERICK: Now, Israel says people may have been injured by the mortar, but they are not taking responsibility for anyone who may have been killed in that shelter. The U.N. has said that 16 people ultimately died at the shelter.

CNN teams have the story covered with the latest information. CNN's Karl Penhaul standing by in Gaza; Sara Sidner is in Jerusalem.

Sara, we're going to start with you in Jerusalem. You spoke with Israeli government spokesman, Mark Regev, a short while ago. And you asked him about what his government is calling this errant mortar. Take a listen to what he had to say.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

MARK REGEV, ISRAELI GOVERNMENT SPOKESMAN: We admit mistakes. We said errant fire. And this whole idea that Israel somehow doesn't come clean is not true. We had a terrible incident a week ago with four boys on the beach and we said straight away, it was us, it was our fault and we took -- we said we took responsibility and President Peres even apologized for that.

So let's be clear, when we make a mistake, we admit it. In this case, once again it's not clear, what was the ordnance that led to this terrible tragedy?

SARA SIDNER, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Last question on this particular situation, and that is that Israel is saying they believe it is Hamas that created the deaths there. We are talking about 16 people, according to the health ministry in Gaza.

REGEV: Let's be clear. The U.N. Secretary-General, not Israel, the U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon, has said that when Hamas terrorists turn a U.N. facility into a war zone by storing weapons, by putting their fighters there, by doing all sorts of things that we have seen unfortunately a consistent pattern of behavior, they are responsible for the casualties that ensue because they have turned what should be a neutral facility, what should be a humanitarian facility into a war zone, "a legitimate target", to use his words.

SIDNER: But to be fair this school that U.N. says did not have any kind of weapons inside it.

REGEV: No. We know for a fact that Hamas terrorists were using the vicinity of the school as a shield to shoot at our forces --

SIDENER: The area though, not the school itself.

REGEV: If you are standing by the front gate and shooting and you don't want to be shot back because there's a school behind you, it's the same.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

FEYERICK: And Sara Sidner, clearly, this is such a delicate distinction that the Israelis are making, that the mortar may have injured people but it didn't kill anyone. When you think about what the Israelis are trying to do which is the responsible thing, not targeting civilian areas, but in a way, in Gaza, all areas are civilian areas.

Does Israel have any more evidence besides this video in terms of what happened there on the ground, because they are suggesting that they don't know what ordnance killed these people, whether it was theirs or whether it was ordnance belonging to Hamas.

SIDNER: Well, I think they've been very, very clear that they do not believe it was their ordnance that killed people, but then made the distinction that they thought that it may have injured people. How they can tell from that vantage point whether some shrapnel injured someone or killed someone, we do not know. It is very hard to see exactly what happened.

Now, you can see above Beit Hanoun, you are looking at that the video from the IDF that they shared with the media and you will see in just a moment on the top right corner of your screen a puff of black, what appears to be smoke but it's actually from the dirt, from the impact of that mortar. And so you're seeing that now and seeing that mortar hitting the courtyard of the school.

Now, what Israel says is the court yard of the school was empty at the time. That is what their inquiry has found. And that no one was killed because of their mortar but could have been injured. That leaves a lot of questions. I asked the Israeli spokesperson for Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's office, who you just heard from, Mark Regev, about that. How can you tell from that vantage point? And he said there's a lot more to be known.

So he also made clear live here on CNN that indeed the inquiry may not be over, that these things tend to take quite a long time and you have to look at all the evidence. So far this is the only evidence that has been shared publicly. We do not know if there is other evidence that Israel had. We do know that they said that there were some rockets that were fired within the vicinity, not from the school itself, to be clear, but the vicinity of the school.

We have not yet seen evidence of that video, but we do know that the area was a very hotspot during that day. We also know it happened somewhere around 2:55 in the afternoon, when it would have been extremely warm in Gaza, but again, hard to tell exactly what happened, just from looking at that very short, about 10 seconds to 14 seconds video given out to the media just a few hours ago -- Deb.

FEYERICK: What about -- the suggestion though is that, look, Israel says we made a mistake, but the fact that they are not owning up to the possibility that someone was hurt, it doesn't necessarily suggest that there's some sort of ultimate conspiracy here, and in a way, by going through all those details, that is what I think people are left with.

SIDNER: Well, folks at the U.N. school said, look, they do know the coordinates of each and every U.N. school and U.N. area that is supposed to be a safe haven and they complained that they wanted to be able to evacuate that, if necessary, because the fighting was so intense and they did not get any word back on that particular request that day and in the day prior.

What we can tell you is Israel has said that it is possible that there were people injured, basically from the shrapnel. If you look at when it hits, you can see the shrapnel kind of blow out more to the left than it did to the right. And to the left, you can see some of the school, you can see a school building there, a structure there, where there could have been, for example, if no one in the courtyard, children and families standing just underneath that structure or playing just underneath that structure.

But again, we cannot tell ourselves from looking at that video, but Israel has said that it is not in its intention and never has purposely targeted any place that is supposed to be considered a safe haven and that includes U.N. facilities. They are very clear on that. And they do have the coordinates.

They also say though in the fog of war -- we heard that from the Israeli prime minister's spokesman -- in the fog of war, mistakes do happen and if this is their mistake if they did create this tragedy, they will own up to it, but there is more of an investigation to come -- Deb.

FEYERICK: All right, Sara Sidner, thanks so much. Clearly, the Israelis saying people may have been hurt but they dispute the claim that anyone was killed. Thanks, Sarah.

MARQUEZ: Our Dan Rivers is at a hospital in Gaza when victims from the school attack started pouring in. He captured powerful images of injured children and their frustrated families. Here's his heartbreaking report.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

DAN RIVERS, ITN CORRESPONDENT: They had come here seeking refuge, but today, the war came to this school. The playground peppered with shells, the results were devastating. A few minutes later we watched the first casualties arrive at the local hospital, child after bloody child.

This boy reeling in shock as doctors lost the battle to save a member of his family. For more than 30 minutes, the ambulance crews flooded this tiny hospital with more and more victims.

They are running out of room in this triage center as ambulance after ambulance arrive with dozens of injured people, including many children.

One of the youngest, this six-month old baby boy. Ahmed has shrapnel in his back. There's no time for anesthetic, his doctors pluck out the fragments of metal to make room for the next parent.

Near by the baby's father, (inaudible) is hysterical. The father of six tells me his family was waiting in the school playground to be evacuated by the Red Cross when suddenly, the shells rained down. He says his children were blown away like pieces of paper.

Everywhere we looked, faces contorted in pain, terrible news broken. For many, it was too much.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Do you want to tell me that Netanyahu made the responsible thing. Is that a responsible thing? To kill the children, the old women, the children, us. What?

RIVERS: The mayhem of this day will never be forgotten by these people. For many, the injuries will be life changing, agony too for those yet to live theirs. By the end, the injured children were simply being treated on the floor, so great were they in number. And most with the same injuries -- shards of metal lacerating their tiny bodies.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Multiple shrapnel.

RIVERS: Multiple shrapnel. How many children have been brought in?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Many -- so much.

RIVERS: The price of this war is etched on each and every face here staring blankly back in shock -- the innocent victims of this relentless conflict.

(END VIDEOTAPE) MARQUEZ: That was ITN's Dan Rivers reporting for us. Thank you very much.

We're going to bring back in Karl Penhaul. Karl, we see the images, they are extraordinarily difficult to see. I know you have probably seen more than you want to see out there. People are trying to -- looking to blame somebody.

You've been to that school. You've been to these hospitals. How great is the suffering there and is it well known to the Israelis where these various soft targets or soft areas are?

KARL PENHAUL, CNN CORRESPONDENT: It certainly is really known to the Israelis according to the United Nations. The United Nations says it routinely supplies the Israeli military with the coordinates, the precise coordinates, of each of its schools that is being used as a United Nations' shelter for displaced people here in Gaza.

Now, there are about 83 schools currently being used as shelters for displaced people and they're housing more than 160,000 Gazans right now who have had to flee their homes because of fighting around their homes and also because their homes have now been demolished. And so those coordinates are routinely provided to the Israeli military and one would guess to the militant factions as well. That so that they would insist on all the warring factions observing the neutrality.

Of course we do know that in the past few days, the United Nations has criticized Hamas for twice using two separate schools as storage sites for its rockets and also prior to this attack last Thursday, the United Nations also had accused the military of twice dropping artillery on two other UNRWA schools, U.N. schools here on the Gaza strip as well, Miguel.

MARQUEZ: I wanted to ask you about, the U.N. has been critical of Hamas for using some of these targets or some of these places as weapons depots or for their ammunition or for rockets. Have you seen any of that evidence yourself?

PENHAUL: To be clear, the U.N. has been critical of both the warring sides of not respecting the neutrality of civilians or respecting the neutrality of U.N. installations. Yes, it's correct, they have criticized Hamas for storing rockets in U.N. schools. They have also criticized Israel for targeting two other U.N. schools or at least hitting them, perhaps not intentionally. That was not specified.

We have not seen any specific evidence that Hamas has used schools to launch rockets. I know that that has been the position of the Israeli military; sometimes the gun camera footage that we are provided with, as was the case in this incident on Thursday, we can't tell too much from it. Certainly, that gun camera video that we have seen already today as has already been pointed out is a low resolution version of what should be very high resolution gun camera footage. It has also been sanitized perhaps for operational security reasons to get a lot of the data off. And quite critically, it doesn't extend another five or ten minutes. And that point we could maybe see if ambulances had actually arrived on the scene -- Miguel. MARQUEZ: Karl Penhaul for us in Gaza. Thank you very much. And keep

yourself safe. Thanks.

FEYERICK: And this deadly accident was a mistake according to the Israelis, but it's not necessarily an isolated incident. Things happen in the fog of war. Take a listen.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: One child has been killed each hour in Gaza over the past two days.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

FEYERICK: And we are going to be taking a look at the casualties of war in this Middle East conflict that seems to have no end.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

MARQUEZ: -- but despite intense international pressure, Israel and Hamas failed to agree to even a brief cessation of violence. And a short time ago Israel released this new video calling it proof it did not kill anyone when a mortar accidentally hit a U.N. school in Gaza Thursday. Hamas claims 16 people were killed there. Israel says the video shows the school yard was empty when the mortar hit.

Now, these Palestinians couldn't even escape the rocket fire while burying the dead. The most tragic victims of all -- children. CNN's Paula Hancocks reports.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

PAULA HANCOCKS, CNN CORRESPONDENT: More children than Hamas fighters have been killed so far in Gaza according to the United Nations, innocent victims of a conflict they were born into.

KYUNG WHA KANG, U.N. ASST. SEC. GEN. FOR HUMANITARIAN AFFAIRS: One child has been killed each hour in Gaza over the past two days. Each of these children had a name and a future and a life that was cut horribly short.

HANCOCKS: They went to the beach to play football. It cost them their lives. Four children, aged 9 to 11, killed by Israeli fire. Another father loses a son. Small bodies carried through the streets of Gaza, grief over lives barely begun yet already over.

Names of young victims were read out Tuesday at the U.N. by Palestinian observer Riyad Mansour. Children are often the biggest casualties in Gaza, unsurprising as almost half of the population is under the age of 14.

In the midst of one of the most densely populated territories on earth, there are few places for the young to run and hide. Even those without physical scars bear the invisible battle wounds of trauma. Losing parents or homes or simply listening to the macabre sounds of a battle port nearby. With such a large young population unable to leave Gaza, no one doubts that more small graves will be dug and filled before this fighting ends.

Paula Hancocks, CNN, New York.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

FEYERICK: And let's bring in CNN military analyst, Lieutenant Colonel Rick Francona and former CIA operative, Bob Baer.

Colonel, I want to start with you. Look, civilized people don't want to see anyone die, certainly not children, not teens, not grandparents -- nobody. But when do we get to peace, because isn't this what this is all about? How do you get two sides that cannot seem to find any sort of common ground and both sides making an argument that is sustainable? How do you get to peace?

LT. COL. RICK FRANCONA, CNN MILITARY ANALYST: Somebody from the outside has to sit them both down and provide them both with something they can walk away with, with some sort of a victory. What that looks like, it's hard to say right now, because I thought they were close, but the Israelis put conditions on the cease-fires that Hamas can't live with. Hamas puts conditions on the cease-fires that the Israelis can't live with. And so they are talking past each other. And when they do get a little bit of a humanitarian pause, as they are calling it one side will violate it. So, it's very, very difficult right now.

MARQUEZ: And Bob, out in California, the Israeli leadership being very, very clear that it -- wants to take the head off Hamas. It wants to end this once and for all. It doesn't want to come back and do this another two or three years. Is that a reasonable and rational point of view? What is -- what does a post-Hamas Gaza look like?

ROBERT BAER, FORMER CIA OPERATIVE: Well this has always been a dilemma for the Israelis. I mean they cut the head off of Fatah, a secular organization over the years, with various assassinations and attacks mostly in Beirut and what they ended up with in 1988 is Hamas, an organization worse.

What they should be scared about is if they cut the head of Hamas off or destroy the leadership, they are going to get an organization that's much more radical and much more difficult to deal with, that, for instance would go back to car bombings in Israel, which the Israelis, you know, suppressed that and so did the Palestinians. So the situation could actually get worse. The Israelis don't believe they've ever had an interlocutor in the Palestinians they could trust or work with. Palestinians have a different view of that. So it's a big risk going after now and attempting to destroy.

FEYERICK: Interestingly enough, you know President Shimon Peres, who recently stepped down, he said look, now they are going to negotiate with the head of the West Bank, President Mahmoud Abbas.

But look, Hamas was democratically elected. When you think though that they are out to now avenge the blood of all those who have died, how can you avenge the blood of a people and yet not do that without thinking of the future of those who are left? When does vengeance become about not looking forward but only looking back for justice?

BAER: Well, that's even a worse problem, because I connect the Palestinian problem today with what's happening in Syria and Iraq where you've got the Sunni sect is undertaking what I call a religious intifada across the Middle East and even goes into Nigeria with Boko Haram.

So you don't -- you see a community that's extremely damaged, Sunni Muslims, hitting back and the people doing the fighting are the most committed religiously, jihadists if you like. And they're doing the most damage and they are killing just as many Muslims as they are other people.

MARQUEZ: Colonel, I take it you see more civilian casualties ahead?

FRANCONA: I do and just following up with what Bob says. All these images we are seeing here is just driving it, it's fueling this Sunni recruitment throughout the Middle East. You know, look at what's going on, you know, with ISIS and al Qaeda. The Sunnis are standing up and when they see this, they say, see, there's no future in this, we ought to just sign up to be militants.

MARQUEZ: Gentlemen, thank you very much.

Just ahead, fighting in Ukraine intensifies, so much so investigators weren't able to reach the Malaysia Airlines crash site today, details just ahead.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

MARQUEZ: This just into CNN, the chairmen of the House and Senate Veterans Affairs Committees have reached a tentative deal on a bill to reform the VA health system. The bill is expected to address the short and long-term issues with the department which may include adding more doctors and nurses. A news conference is expected tomorrow. Both chambers would need to approve the deal before leaving for their August recess this week.

FEYERICK: And fresh fighting in eastern Ukraine may be creating more problems for those trying to investigate the crash site of Malaysia Airlines Flight 17. At least 13 people died in that region today, including two children, as government forces advanced on the rebel- held city of Horlivka.

Still the Malaysia Airlines crash site remains under rebel control and remember this is miles long. It is out of reach of investigators. The crash site just goes on and on.

MARQUEZ: And for the victims' families, the delayed investigation into the shoot-down of Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 is unacceptable, quite simply. Correspondent Kyung Lah has more on the fighting and the stalled investigation.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP) KYUNG LAH, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Rocket fire pounded the populated neighborhood of Horlivka a deadly day in the ground war between Ukraine and pro-Russian rebels. Separatist forces engaged in a months' long battle for ground reported at least 13, two of them children, were killed in the fighting. The bloody battle's intensifying and marching closer to the still-unsecured crash scene.

One rebel leader in a videoed statement pledged they will fight to the end.

"We are on our own land", says a spokesman for the Horlivka rebel unit. "Horlivka garrison will fight until the last bullet, until the last soldier."

Those battles, frustrating and blocking yet another attempt to secure the crash scene; Dutch and Australian police who had hoped to enter the crash site to collect evidence and bring out more remains were forced to stay out because of the fighting, a regional ground war impeding this international crime scene.

In the contested area, Ukraine holds territory to the west and north. Russia sits to the east. The pro-Russian rebels command the land in the middle. The crash site sits in the town of (inaudible) in the center of the rebel region. Ukrainian forces had encircled the city of Donetsk in an attempt to cut off the rebels. Fighting is heading north toward the crash scene.

The recent heavy fighting was in the town of Horlivka and the fighting there is nearing the crash scene from the west. The clashes are now just miles away.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We have been negotiating around the clock.

LAH: Ukraine says it will not fight in the crash site.

On CNN's "STATE OF THE UNION," the foreign minister says that's exactly what the pro-Russian rebels want, to destroy the evidence.

KLIMKIN: And exactly at this moment right now the terrorists fighting in order not to let our Dutch, Australian partners and our Ukrainian experts to the crash site. Because their way is simply to disrupt the passage and to wipe out any sort of traces at the crash site.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

FEYERICK: And I want to bring in correspondent Kyung Lah in Kiev, Ukraine.

And, Kyung, the Ukrainian forces in that region have been gaining ground. They got tent cities in and around Donetsk. Will Ukraine allow these independent monitors, the Dutch, to go in and look? Should they regain that territory or is it still too volatile?

LAH: Right now, still too volatile and it's in the territory of separatists who commanded and the fighting preventing the international observers from going in. What Ukraine is saying this is separatist territory if they take it over, of course, let them in. But while the separatists have control, they can't say whether the observers should be allowed to go in and they've also called for a unilateral cease-fire. They are not going to fight there because they want to make sure that any investigation takes place, so while that is in place, there is not going to be any fighting at the crash scene.

What we've seen, Deb, over the last six weeks is that Ukrainian forces have marched closer and closer to taking that territory but right now they just don't have control over it.

FEYERICK: And as for the rebels, do you see any sort of -- change there on the ground or are they just standing firm?

LAH: The rebels are certainly getting cut off. That's really the big difference that we've seen. In the last six weeks what Ukrainian forces have been able to do is to shrink that area that the rebels have control over, but here's the big wildcard. Russia continues to support the rebels and that's according to U.S. intelligence, that more weaponry is being given to the rebels, more support, more financial support, more bodies are coming across the border from Russia. And so that's the wildcard. If Russia keeps supplying all of that, then we're looking at a potential game changer.

FEYERICK: All right. Kyung Lah, thanks so much. Excellent reporting there from -- from Kiev. Thanks.

MARQUEZ: I want to bring in CNN safety analyst, David Soucie, author of "Why Planes Crash."

David, is the -- did the Flight 17 investigation -- extraordinarily difficult to get to this area, there is fighting there. It doesn't look like the Ukrainians are going to take that territory any time soon.

DAVID SOUCIE, CNN SAFETY ANALYST: Right.

MARQUEZ: Two things. The Malaysians have signed an agreement apparently.

SOUCIE: Yes.

MARQUEZ: To get in there and actually -- do you have any hope that that agreement has a chance of being carried out?

SOUCIE: The only hope it does have -- now I was just listening to that report, it says that Ukraine has agreed that this belongs to the separatists, to the rebels. The rebels say this is our land, we're fighting for it. Then why are they not letting the investigators get access to the site?

MARQUEZ: Well, the Malaysians say they have that deal with the separatists in order to do that.

SOUCIE: That's right.

MARQUEZ: You don't think it's going to happen? SOUCIE: It's not happening now.

(CROSSTALK)

MARQUEZ: On the black boxes, there are reports out there that the information so far off those black boxes is consistent with what would have been a missile strike. What would they be getting off those black boxes that would indicate that?

SOUCIE: Well, at this point, I'm not certain, because I haven't had -- actually heard that yet, and I haven't heard what's on the black boxes yet, but what could be on there is the fact the electricity going to the box would have been sustained after the missile hit. After that time it would have -- it would have indicated the movement of the aircraft from the missile strike. It also would have told us exactly what the aircraft did after that. So in -- in analyzing that you will be able to determine what exactly --

(CROSSTALK)

FEYERICK: And we'll also be able to know whether in fact the pilots or anyone on board that plane may have been alive, even for a few seconds after that missile struck.

SOUCIE: We'll know exactly.

FEYERICK: Which would be painful for everyone.

SOUCIE: Absolutely.

FEYERICK: David, thanks.

MARQUEZ: All right, the U.S. seeking diplomatic solutions to fighting the Ukraine in the Middle East, but is that enough? We will have -- get to that coming up.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

FEYERICK: Amid the push for peace in the Middle East and the push for reduced tensions between Russia and Ukraine, how much is President Barack Obama's leadership helped in these dire situations?

Two top members of Congress offered starkly different characterizations today on CNN's "STATE OF THE UNION".

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

REP. NANCY PELOSI (D), MINORITY LEADER: And the president's leadership has been very strong. In the issues that you're dealing with this morning, the president was in the lead on supporting Iron Dome and asking for more resources now to help Israel defend itself, which it has a right to do.

SEN. LINDSEY GRAHAM (R), SOUTH CAROLINA: I think what we've learned from these changing times that without American leadership, the world disintegrates pretty rapidly. I said last week, America is the glue that holds the free world together and when you see us missing, or AWOL, as President Obama's been, you see fracturing on multiple fronts. Russia is more aggressive, not less. The sanctions clearly are not working. Hamas is demanding open borders. Show me a statement by Hamas leadership that recognizes the right for Israel to resist, then I would consider that request.

These are stark contrast and we are not responding. Passive responses to naked aggression all over the world is our foreign policy.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

FEYERICK: Well, let me bring in former White House adviser and CNN senior political analyst, David Gergen, in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

And, David, you hear really this fall straight down party lines. Is this passive or is the president simply following this emerging national security doctrine, which is we are not putting boots on the ground, that we're going to handle this diplomatically. We're going to do this in a way that doesn't necessarily jeopardize U.S. or U.S. interests. Is this the right way to go?

DAVID GERGEN, CNN SENIOR POLITICAL ANALYST: Well, Deborah, first of all, we have to realize that the president is facing an unbelievable set of crises around the world. While they don't directly threaten the United States, they certain threaten world stability. Secretary of State -- former secretary of state under Bill Clinton, Madeleine Albright, said today, and I think rightly, to put it mildly the world is a mess.

And if you look at it, Deborah, there are at least seven hot spots in -- not only in Europe but across the Middle East. Fires that are burning that do require an American response. The president is engaged, but there is concern on two fronts, frankly, about the president right now. One is that the press has been raising about whether he is starting to put -- have his eye on the midterms and on his post-presidential years more than he is on his current presidency, whether he is phoning it in, as has been put in the press. "New York Times," Politico and others have been writing about that.

The second issue is whether he is engaged, I think Secretary Kerry is certainly engaged. I think Kerry needs more help. We can talk about that. But the question is whether we are using American power in a way to lead, lead the world. I think that the president has been so eager around the country frankly, the population is so eager to stay out of conflicts that we are not really threatening much power and we're not using it, so Putin feels he can be aggressive and he doesn't face -- the European response has been extremely weak, at least President Obama spoke up and pushed sanctions.

But the world overall has not responded strongly to Putin and we have not responded strongly in Syria.

MARQUEZ: Well, David, that seems to be the strange place that we are at right now. There's a lot of frustration with where the world is and how things are going, but at the same time, the American public has very little interest in actually pushing any of these things abroad to the point where Americans are put in harm's way. I mean is it worth going -- going to the mat on Ukraine or even on the Mideast crisis?

What is your sense of this? How much more can the president have done? He has been fairly aggressive on Russia. Even when the U.S. was more aggressive on Russia, Putin went into Georgia and conducted a full-on war there. I don't see that we have many -- many arrows here in this quiver.

GERGEN: I disagree with that. It is understandable that we did not respond on Crimea. We did not want to get into a conflict with Russia in an area that's so close to the heart of Russia. But let's take -- let's take the air crash and Ukraine. It is unbelievable that the international community led by the United States and Europe couldn't put a small force in there and secure that crash site so we didn't have the awful desecration of bodies. It wouldn't take many troops and much muscle to do something very -- in the name of humanity for these bodies and for the families -- to secure the site, and I think that's a small example, but it's a telling example. I mean, it wasn't even considered as far as I can tell.

FEYERICK: All right, well, with everything that we just spoke about, does it appear that the U.S. is perhaps stepping away or changing the way it handles global affairs?

Our conversation with David Gergen, that's continuing, up next. Stay with us.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

FEYERICK: Well, let's bring the former U.S. military attache in Syria and Iraq, retired Lt. Col. Rick Francona, senior political analyst, David Gergen also with us.

David, I want to start with you. Look, we talk about the president and what he is or is not doing, but when it comes to American interests and the people here who may look at the rest of the world and say, what does it have to do with me? How is this going to help me get a job? How is this going to help me? Is the president handling the balance properly?

GERGEN: Well, look, I -- I want to be fair to the president. I think he -- I think he does -- is trying to hard within his own sense of what the job entails. But let's go back to Miguel's point.

It is true, Miguel, that the country is fatigued with wars, wars that have been incompetently fought and they understandably don't want to put a whole lot of -- people around the country don't want to put a whole lot of confidence in new military endeavors, but we do have interest here. The -- if ISIS takes over a third or more of Iraq, for example, these militants, it's going to be a haven for a lot more terrorism around the world. We thought we had terrorism under control here in the last three or four years.

We were not going to be subject to some sort of big coordinated attacks. That's going to change if ISIS stays there. And if we don't get -- if we don't get Putin back in his cage where he belongs, I mean, the guy's a thug, and he and his forces, you know, feel they can be very aggressive now we've got to be forceful about that. America can't do that alone. But a leadership and a presidency is about more than paying attention to public opinion polls. It's about shaping public opinion. It's about persuading the public that we do have interests and that acting in a way that we secure American interests.

MARQUEZ: Colonel, you have so much personal experience and professional experience in all -- in this neighborhood, other than putting boots on the ground, other than having an extreme -- the extreme use of military force at almost every corner, is there anything else the U.S. can do from a muscular point of view?

(CROSSTALK)

LT. COL. RICK FRANCONA, CNN MILITARY ANALYST: Well, we're -- we're trying to do, we're trying to work with our alliances, you know, within NATO, the EU, other regional groupings, but it's just not working. And look at what's happening in Iraq, and you know, David's point is right on with the ISIS thing, whereas you could look at what's going -- what's going on in Syria with the civil war. But then once you shift that into ISIS where they actually control territory and you set up the trappings of a state, now you've got Afghanistan revisited, Afghanistan, 1996.

So now we have a real threat, not the -- the somewhat threat or an ambiguous threat. Now we've got a real threat. And now that has to be dealt with, so the trouble is we are fatigued with war, people are sick of this, but now we are faced with a real thing that we are going to have to stand up and respond to.

FEYERICK: And David, how is it, when you think about the responsibility that the president shoulders in terms of being a leader, showing the direction in which the world needs to go or should go in the president's opinion, do you think that the other countries have stepped up? Is the rest of Europe, is the rest of the world doing enough, or does this all, again, sort of fall to the United States to combat terrorism that is now apparently spinning out of control, to combat everything that's happening around the world?

GERGEN: Well, Colonel Francona is absolutely right in the way he described things. And the true answer is, Europe has not stepped up. It has been -- Secretary Albright said today, you know, it's just been really awful how they've failed to step up. You know, Italy and Germany in particular are so dependent upon energy supplies from Russia that they have just sort of danced around on this.

We haven't -- and we do need partners to make this work. And it's really -- it's really tough these days if the Europeans won't stand up for what is in our larger interest but, you know, we can't -- if they can't -- if they're not willing to do it, somebody's got to do it. Let's put together a coalition of the willing. That's what leadership is about. For 60 years, America has borne that mantle of leadership in the western world. And we need to continue on that because the world is a very, very unsafe, unstable place right now. MARQUEZ: Extraordinarily hard to do, though, Colonel, to put together

that coalition of the willing on these one-off issues like this, particularly after two wars, where a lot of our allies don't feel particularly great about America.

FRANCONA: It is hard to do. But we can't -- you can't outsource this. At some point what is in the U.S. national interest, the U.S. has to address itself head on and, you know, I harken back to some of the things we did early on in Afghanistan when we relied on the northern alliance to carry the water and it was a mistake.

If it's a U.S. national interest, if we are threatened, we need to respond to it.

MARQUEZ: Perhaps multilateralism is dead.

Colonel Francona, David Gergen, thank you very much.

Now American Catholics have some news they've been waiting for. Pope Francis is coming to Philadelphia. To the America, next year. What's on his agenda and are other stops possible for the pontiff? We'll talk about all that coming up.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

FEYERICK: We have now learned that a second American in Africa has tested positive for the deadly Ebola virus. The woman is an aid worker in Liberia who is helping a team that's treating Ebola patients.

This comes after word that an American doctor is now infected with Ebola. Thirty-three-year-old Kent Brantley was working in Africa treating these patients. The current outbreak of the disease is the deadliest ever in Africa.

MARQUEZ: Now the group responsible for kidnapping more than 200 school girls in Nigeria has struck again. This time Cameroon. According to Reuters, the militant group called Boca Haram stormed the vice -- vice prime minister's home in the northern part of the country. They killed at least three people and kidnapped the vice prime minister's wife as well.

Now Pope Francis has accepted an invitation to visit the U.S. in the fall of 2015. During the World Meeting of Families in Philadelphia, it would be the popular pontiff's first visit to the U.S. as Pope.

I want to bring in Professor Brent Strawn, who teaches religion and theology at Emory University and is also an ordained minister.

Professor, this is huge news for American Catholics. This is something that Benedict first agreed to then Francis said -- seems to have said yes to, but he's kind of walking into the lion's den here, isn't he?

BRENT STRAWN, PROFESSOR, RELIGION AND THEOLOGY, EMORY UNIVERSITY: There has been some scuttle, of course, with Pope Francis and the archbishop of Philadelphia, especially early on. The archbishop seemed to adopt a kind of wait-and-see attitude about the Pope. But that seems to have been smoothed over recently. The archbishop says he's never spoken ill of the holy father and will not critique the Pope, and they share a lot in common, including the fact that archbishop of Philadelphia lives very simply which is of course something also the Pope feels deeply about. So I think that that's smoothed over.

FEYERICK: You know, and you think about the groundswell of people who have emerged to greet past pontiffs. Do you think it's going to be larger when he does come to Philadelphia, given that he's reached out and extended olive branches on so many levels? Do you think that's going to look for -- going to result in larger crowds coming to greet him?

STRAWN: Yes, you know, the World Meeting of Families event was started in 1994 by John Paul II. It meets every three years. The last time it met in Milan in 2012, hundreds of thousands of people came to this event and over a million attended the Pope's mass. So you can expect I think similar numbers, if not even greater numbers here in the states, especially this is our first Pope from Latin America. And we have a huge Hispanic population in the United States, most of whom are Catholic and I'm sure many would love to hear the Pope speak to them, especially in their native language. So I expect huge crowds for sure.

MARQUEZ: But -- now despite Archbishop Chaput seemingly to have come back to the fold, as it were, and take back -- not take back necessarily, but he had previously said that conservatives were very concerned about Francis, not him, of course, and that this particular conference is on issues that it's not the Pope's bailiwick. It's on the family issues and gays and lesbian issues and gay marriage, and things the Pope has talked about and not made the archbishop's conference very happy with him.

How do you think this is going to go when he gets here?

STRAWN: Yes, I mean, I think the Pope's probably got a couple of things on the agenda when he comes. The main reason, of course, is the meeting itself. And the Pope has convened a Senate on the Family in Rome where they are to discuss divorce and contraception use and so on and so forth. But, you know, I think this Pope is an amazing Pope, right? He's one of the most exciting things that's happened to Christianity and to Catholicism for sure in the past few years.

And so wherever he goes, I think revitalization is a huge issue, and he will, you know, that's a big part of the agenda. The Francis effect, to see if that will pan out in America, people will come back to church because of the Pope.

Another thing, though, is his criticisms, as you have alluded. The Pope's criticisms of rampant consumerism and also, you know, his very heartfelt apologies about the sex abuse scandal, just recently, July 7th in a homily that he delivered.

Yes, those play out in the major ways here in the states and so it will be exciting to see how he treats those as part of his agenda here.

MARQUEZ: It will be very interesting. His visit also coincides with the U.N. General Assembly and there's also a standing invitation for him to address Congress. And this is a Pope who's really taken the world by storm. It could really make a giant impact while he is here, yes?

STRAWN: Yes, for sure. And there's rumors that he might visit other cities as well. We won't know, in fact, he won't confirm the visit to Philadelphia until probably about six months before the event takes place but -- you know, I'd like to put in a plug for Atlanta. We have a huge Christian population here.

(LAUGHTER)

and the Pope would be more than welcome down here.

MARQUEZ: Well done, Brent Strawn. Thank you very much.

STRAWN: Thank you. Thanks for having me.

MARQUEZ: Take care.

I'm Miguel Marquez.

FEYERICK: And I'm Deborah Feyerick.

Tonight at 10:00 Eastern, a special edition of the CNN NEWSROOM with Don Lemon.

MARQUEZ: But next, it's "THE HUNT WITH JOHN WALSH." "Murder in the Mountains." That's followed at 9:00 Eastern by "THE HUNT FAMILY ANNIHILATOR."

Thank you very much for watching.