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Fighting Continues in Fallujah; High Court Hears 'Enemy Combatant' Cases

Aired April 28, 2004 - 13:00 ET

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

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

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We've been playing patty-cake with these insurgents. We have not begun to do offensive operations.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

MILES O'BRIEN, CNN ANCHOR: Marines standing their ground in Fallujah. We'll take you inside the fight for Iraq.

BOB FRANKEN, CNN NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: I'm Bob Franken at the U.S. Supreme Court where the justices engaged in a rigorous debate with attorneys over one of the most important questions certainly of this term, do the people who are captured by the United States have any civil liberties or does the president have, in effect, limitless rights?

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Everything about your life seems to be just one Google away.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

O'BRIEN: Got Google? You've used it to dig up dirty secrets, should you cough up the cash and buy now that you have the chance?

And the razor's edge, Shrek (ph) the sheep finally has a date with the shears. We've got the final cut, so to speak.

From the CNN Center in Atlanta, I'm Miles O'Brien. Kyra Phillips is off today. CNN's LIVE FROM... starts right now.

Bombs explode, rifles crack, missiles streak across the sky in Fallujah while the whole world watches. But the coalition says these remarkable real-time images are defensive response by U.S. Marines, not the long threatened onslaught aimed at ending a two-week standoff with Sunni insurgents.

U.S. pool reporter Karl Penhaul gave us this firsthand account about two hours ago.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

KARL PENHAUL, POOL REPORTER: We're standing here in the roof of a U.S. Marine base on the northwest edge of Fallujah. To the east of where we're standing, you still see the plumes of gray smoke floating through the Fallujah evening sky.

That, the aftermath of a strike by U.S. Marine helicopters on insurgent positions earlier this afternoon. The firefight began about three hours ago now. A U.S. Marine sniper team had tried to move into position around Fallujah train station. That's the building on the left of your screen. The sniper team moved in there because over recent days Iraqi insurgents, according to Marine commander, had been taking position in and around the train station, trying to set up mortar positions from which they intended, it seems to attack Marine positions.

The U.S. sniper team though that went into the station to try and take out those insurgent positions today was, in fact, detect by insurgents, insurgents who appeared to have been holed up in buildings on the right-hand side of the main road. We see the insurgents open fire on the U.S. snipers with rocket-propelled grenades.

U.S. commanders tell us the sniper team then had to be extracted in heavily armored humvee vehicles by colleagues. And once they were taken to safety, Marines called in two helicopters. One, we're told, a U.S. Marine Cobra attack helicopter, the other, a Marine Huey gunship. And they went into action and we saw them pounding at least three buildings with machine gunfire and, also, with rockets and missiles.

In the course of about an hour-and-a-half, many missiles and rockets pounding those buildings, flames from three areas, and then plumes of smoke going up.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

O'BRIEN: U.S. pool reporter Karl Penhaul. Battles have raged in Fallujah on and off for three straight days while U.S. and Iraqi officials insist a negotiated solution and voluntary civilian disarmament are still a possibility. The issue came up at the White House today when President Bush sat down with the visiting prime minister of Sweden.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

GEORGE W. BUSH, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: The closer we come to passing sovereignty, the more likely it is that foreign fighters, disgruntled Baathists, or friends of the Shia cleric, will try to stop progress. That's what's happening. They want to kill innocent life to try to get us to quit and we're not going to. And our military commanders will take whatever action's necessary to secure Fallujah on behalf of the Iraqi people.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

O'BRIEN: For latest on the fighting, we turn to CNN's Barbara Starr, because she has the facts right at her fingertips there at the Pentagon.

Hello, Barbara. What do we know? BARBARA STARR, CNN PENTAGON CORRESPONDENT: Hello to you, Miles. Well, we've spoken to a senior official, very familiar with the situation on the ground and also with the thinking of General John Abizaid who is the top military official in the coalition. Now, what General Abizaid is telling the administration is, that there is, in fact, still some hope, he believes, that a political solution of some sort will be reached, that they still need to work on that angle, working with the city leaders of Fallujah, trying to work with the political leadership.

General Abizaid saying, the reason is, even as this fighting goes on, the military cannot be the ultimate solution for the problems in Fallujah. So even as we see these pictures of this ongoing fighting for the last several days, technically, strategically, indeed, yes. The cease-fire remains in place.

General Kimmitt in Baghdad talked about that earlier today.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

BRIG. GEN. MARK KIMMITT, U.S. ARMY: I can confirm that it is certainly the intention of the coalition forces that the cease-fire continues. What you're seeing today is a series of defensive responses. When we get shot at, we will respond. We will not sit there and take fire, even though there is a cease-fire ongoing. That is inconsistent with what we stand for. That is inconsistent with the inherent right of self-defense.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

STARR: So the inherent right of self-defense continues. Expect, by all accounts, to continue to see the fighting in Fallujah. But they are going to try and work this political track for some hours, or perhaps even days yet. They warn time is not infinite, of course, this cannot go on forever.

But the problem is this, the Marines have two options: either in an all-out offensive into the city and that urban warfare battle that they don't particularly want to get into; or they wait for peace to break out in Fallujah, and that doesn't seem imminent at the moment -- Miles.

O'BRIEN: Barbara, why could they -- how can they maintain their optimism on a negotiated settlement at this juncture, it hasn't worked this far?

STARR: Well, not very optimistic about it. But the feeling at this point is that there is still some room to play in that situation, in that political track. And the reason is this, General Abizaid and his top leaders have long before advocates that there must essentially be an Iraqi solution to Iraq's problems, that the U.S. can't solve it for Iraq and certainly U.S. military power can't solve it for Iraq.

General Abizaid is one very pragmatic general. His feeling is that the Iraqis must stand up and begin to take very front-line responsibility. That is why the U.S. feels it's so important to start those joint Marine Corps-Iraqi security patrols in Fallujah, put some Iraqi security face on it.

But they know this is a big problem because the Iraqi security forces are not particularly well trained and equipped at the moment, not particularly ready for this kind of mission. The U.S. is working very hard to make that happen. But the feeling really is, from the top leadership, they must try and get an Iraqi solution to all of this, especially because the turnover to sovereignty is now just a few weeks away. Very important, they say, to get those Iraqis out front -- Miles.

O'BRIEN: CNN's Barbara Starr at the Pentagon, thank you very much.

The war according to Condoleezza Rice, is getting under way on Capitol Hill this hour, this time before the crowd of Democrats from the House of Representatives. Rice won't do all the talking, lawmakers surely plan to ask about the surge in violence we've been telling you about, the transfer of power, and ultimately the cost to American taxpayers. The national security adviser gave parallel briefings last week to House and Senate Republican and Senate Democrats.

President Bush, said to be refreshing his memory ahead of his appearance tomorrow before the 9/11 panel at the White House. Mr. Bush and Vice President Cheney will appear in tandem in private, beginning at 9:30 a.m. Eastern time and ending whenever panelists run out of questions. The witnesses won't be sworn in and their answers won't be officially transcribed, though commission members may take notes.

Onto the judicial branch and two more cases of enemy combatants. Today, the Supreme Court is taking up appeals from U.S. citizens whose own government has locked them away with none of the rights and protections given criminal defendants. CNN's Bob Franken joins us with the points and counterpoints from the Supreme Court.

Hello, Bob.

FRANKEN: Hello, Miles. And had the time not run out, the Supreme Court justices probably would not have run out of questions. Very rigorous questioning today. And of course, the issues are that important, involving two U.S. citizens, Jose Padilla, born and raised in the United States, arrested at O'Hare Airport in Chicago, and charged with participating in a plot to create a dirty bomb. Yaser Hamdi, different circumstances, U.S. born, but raised in Saudi Arabia, arrested on the battlefield.

Nevertheless, the attorneys for both brought the same issue before the court, that the president's claim that he had almost absolute power in times of war, because he would designate enemy combatants, was one that they challenged, because they had had their rights to an attorneys, their rights to answer the charges denied.

The claim of administration also rests on legislation passed by Congress, which allows the president in this time of war to use all necessary force. And the justices focused a lot on that, including Justice Sandra Day O'Connor, questioning Hamdi's attorney, Frank Dunham.

(BEGIN AUDIO CLIP)

SANDRA DAY O'CONNOR, SUPREME COURT JUSTICE: It does say in this authorization, the president is authorized to use all necessary and appropriate force against persons he determines planned, authorized, committed, or aided the terrorist attacks.

FRANK DUNHAM, ATTORNEY FOR DETAINEE: If that is interpreted to mean that he can impose executive indefinite executive detention on anybody that he thinks is necessary in order to fulfill that command, we could have people locked up all over the country tomorrow, without any due process, without any opportunity to be heard. Because we know that this war that we're talking about here is going on worldwide and it's going on within our own borders.

(END AUDIO CLIP)

FRANKEN: Now the Bush administration says that it is necessary in times of war, to err on the side of giving the president authority. The arguments presented by the deputy solicitor general, Paul Clement.

(BEGIN AUDIO CLIP)

: PAUL CLEMENT, DEPUTY SOLICITOR GENERAL: The government categorically lacks the authority to hold Hamdi as an enemy combatant. But it has been well established and long established that the government has the authority to hold both unlawful enemy combatants and lawful prisoners of war captured on the battlefield in order to prevent them from returning to the battle.

Over 10,000 United States troops remain on the field of battle in Afghanistan. No principal of law or logic requires the United States to release the individual from detention so that he can rejoin the battle against the United States.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

FRANKEN: In addition, the solicitor general's representative argued that allowing attorneys to visit these men would have interrupted a very delicate interrogation process -- Miles.

O'BRIEN: Bob, how different are these cases? In other words, the fact that Padilla was picked up in the United States, at O'Hare Airport, does that change the facts of the case significantly?

FRANKEN: Significantly, as a matter of fact, many people believe that this may be the weakest case for the government. The government argues, however, that September 11 showed the whole world is a battleground, including, as we found out so tragically, the United States.

O'BRIEN: CNN's Bob Franken, at the Pentagon -- excuse me, the Supreme Court, appreciate it.

News across America now, tragedy in Georgia, police have arrested a 12-year-old boy in the killing of an eight-year-old girl. Amy Yates disappeared while riding her bike to a friend's house Monday night. She was found dead hours later. Police say she was strangled.

Cave exploring turns deadly in Minnesota. Three teenagers died of apparent carbon monoxide poisoning while delving through a series of caves yesterday. A fourth teen survived and alerted authorities. Another boy was rescued and is in serious condition.

Honoring a fallen hero, a sports card company has found a jersey worn by Pat Tillman, the Arizona Cardinal safety, who was killed last week in Iraq (sic). Instead of selling it or making what could amount to millions in profit, the Donruss Company has decide to donate it to Tillman's family.

On a mission in Iraq...

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Fourteen-year-old kid ran over and picked up an AK-47 and pointed it at him and he had to kill him. Well, he came to me and he said, listen, I'm having nightmares. I had to kill him, he's the age of my kids and I feel so badly about it.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

O'BRIEN: Combat psychologists helping soldiers cope.

And let's go inside the battle for Fallujah. What's it really like on the ground there? We'll get some insight from a CNN producer who has been there.

And later, admit it, you've Googled. And now the online search engine reportedly is ready to click you in on some action here. We'll click on that one a little later on LIVE FROM..., stay with us.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

O'BRIEN: Fallujah appears to be the wild card in the coalition's efforts to bring stability to Iraq. It has become the center of Iraqi violence. CNN producer Thomas Etzler know the danger all too well. He was wounded there recently, and he is here to give us literally the lay of the land in Fallujah.

Thomas, good to have you with us, first of all, hope you're feeling better.

THOMAS ETZLER, CNN PRODUCER: I feel much better, thank you very much, yes.

O'BRIEN: Good, let's get right to the satellite imagery from Keyhole and Digital Globe. And zoom in on Iraq, and ultimately into Fallujah. Fallujah, first of all, 35 to 45 miles to the west of Baghdad. Zoom in on it. It's a city of about how many people, Thomas?

ETZLER: It's city of approximately 300,000 people. It's a city lying on a very important freeway between Baghdad and the Jordanian capital Amman.

O'BRIEN: And that would be this one, that goes right through the middle there, right?

ETZLER: No, what goes through the middle is the main street in Fallujah.

O'BRIEN: Oh, this one here.

ETZLER: Yes. That's the freeway. This street you pointed out before, it's the main street for Fallujah, which used to be the main entry into the city which is now completely blocked off by American Marines.

O'BRIEN: Let's go a little bit to the east of the city. This is a place called Camp Fallujah. Tell me what goes on there, it's really out here, it's sort of in the middle of nowhere, a lot of old buildings here.

ETZLER: This area, it's Camp Fallujah, this is basically a center of operations for the U.S. Marines in al-Anbar Province. Before that it was the center of operations for the 82nd Airborne Division.

O'BRIEN: OK, and how far is that from the center of town?

ETZLER: This is -- from the center of town, I would say six or seven miles.

O'BRIEN: Six to seven miles. OK, now, so that remains a center of operation. And you're still a little bit outside the town. Let's go a little bit closer to Camp Baharia (ph).

ETZLER: Yes, Camp Baharia, it's a former amusement park of...

O'BRIEN: This water-world are here, right.

ETZLER: Yes, and it's another camp where the Marines are stationed right now, and it's also a camp where most of the convoys to Fallujah are assembled.

O'BRIEN: Now, as we get closer to the city, this is the Combat Operation Center we're going to now. What goes on in this location roughly?

ETZLER: This is like a major operation center, major combat operation center. It's like one of those -- also very important gate, I would say, to Fallujah. Many convoys going to Fallujah, equipment convoys, food convoys, are going through the center.

O'BRIEN: Scott (ph), if you could lose the banner for a minute, I want to point something out at the bottom of the screen. Right near the bottom of the screen, there's a berm there. That's an important for this particular operation. It protects these buildings from fire, doesn't it?

ETZLER: Yes, it's a 20-, 25-yard tall berm, it's a railway berm, which protects that whole facility from the direct fire from Fallujah.

O'BRIEN: All right. Let's get a little bit closer, we'll go to the area where these cameras are, that we've been seeing these live pictures of over the past couple of days. This is, generally speaking -- the area in the foreground is the area where the cameras are and where the Marines are. And this essentially right here is the front line, isn't it?

ETZLER: That's absolutely correct. The area north, you know, closer to us, it's -- where you correctly pointed, is where the Marines are, and the camera pool, the correspondent pool is moving from -- between the houses in this area.

O'BRIEN: And the part I highlighted there, that's where you were injured, in the courtyard of that school.

ETZLER: Yes, this is the school which is -- daily, I see from the pictures which are coming out of Fallujah, daily under fire, daily fights around that school.

O'BRIEN: They call this sniper alley. What goes on down that?

ETZLER: American forces -- American Marines are receiving a lot of fire from that particular street. It's a very wide street. It's covered today with debris with burn vehicles, which provide a lot of protection for the fighters, for the shooters, either machine gun shooters, rifle shooters, or even RPG shooters.

O'BRIEN: Now this area roughly over here is where we saw that gunship battle last night. Let's zoom in on that. And we can talk a little bit about this general area. Did the -- this particular area strike you as being an area where there was a lot of insurgent activity before or is it fairly random?

ETZLER: You know, it's hard to -- I would say it's hardly random, it's hard to say, because, according to the pool correspondent, Karl Penhaul, who is there right now, he saw those explosions around 800 meters south of his position, and that would be approximately this area. As we can see, there are some...

O'BRIEN: About one-half mile.

ETZLER: Yes. There are some warehouses in that area, which would not be surprising if those warehouses were serving as storage, munitions storage for the insurgent forces.

O'BRIEN: All right. Now let's go and get back up sort of to a God's eye view here for a moment. Once again, North will be at the top of your screen here. And I just want to tell you where we've been. If you look in this area here, that's that area we were just telling you about, where the camera is, where Thomas he was wounded, and where there are Marines obviously located. But there are Marines all along the perimeter of this city, correct?

ETZLER: Yes. The Marines decided -- they surrounded the city to prevent two things, to prevent import to the city of more weapons and to prevent import of fighters, to prevent, you know, the fighter -- people coming into the city, into Fallujah to fight.

O'BRIEN: All right. This little area is owned by the Marines but this whole area out here, that is really no man's land if you're a U.S. Marine, correct?

ETZLER: That's correct. It's a place where at the moment nobody ventures, and it's in control of the Iraqi insurgents.

O'BRIEN: Thomas Etzler, thanks for giving us a little better understanding of what we're seeing through that narrow viewpoint of a camera. It helps quite a bit to help us understand. And we wish you well on your recuperation. Good to have you back.

ETZLER: Thank you very much, thank you.

O'BRIEN: All right. Seeing a buddy get shot, gunning down the enemy, they're traumatic events for even the most seasoned soldier, later on LIVE FROM..., we'll talk with combat psychologists supporting troops in Iraq.

And later, how do you tell the baby blues from full-fledged depression? Our Dr, Sanjay Gupta is on the case.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

O'BRIEN: Investors are Googling over this next story. The world's largest online search engine expected to register for an initial public offering, IPO, as you know it, by the end of this week. Google -- if you Google "CNN" and "technology," your first hit will undoubtedly be CNN's Daniel Sieberg.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

JANET MURRAY, GEORGIA TECH PROFESSOR: You could think of Google as the bulletin board for the global village.

DANIEL SIEBERG, CNN TECHNOLOGY CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Do you Google? These days, it seems who doesn't? Google comes from G-O- O-G-O-L, a math term that means one followed by 100 zeroes. It symbolizes the huge amount of data on the Internet. And its creators, Sergey Brin and Larry Page, two former Stanford students, are on a mission to organize all of it, from museum collections to Britney photos, even your home address.

MURRAY: Everything about your life seems to be just one Google away.

SIEBERG: Remember the card catalogs, the Dewey Decimal System, libraries? Well, not only did Google's founders find a way to search the billions of pages of information on the Internet in a fraction of the time, but they also made it easy to read, accurate and a little fun.

CHRIS SHERMAN, SEARCHENGINEWATCH.COM: Google calls their headquarters the Googleplex. And when you walk into the Googleplex, you immediately recognize that this is not just your ordinary corporation or computer place. Google has a grand piano in the lobby, for example. There are lava lamps all over the place. They play roller hockey in the parking lot.

SIEBERG: And that sense of doing Google-y things at their Mountain View, California, office, translates to their site.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Oh, you know what I love the most? I love how they do little logos for Christmas and different activities, different holidays. They do little graphics, sort of make fun of their logo.

SIEBERG: And it's not just looking for things. Sometimes it's people.

MURRAY: And I do the same thing with my daughter, when she has a new boyfriend, one of the first things I do is put his name in that search engine and see what comes up. I try to say very subtlety, oh, how do you spell that, dear?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I've never Googled myself. I'm afraid for what I might find.

SHERMAN: Google makes it as simple as sitting down, typing in a few words, and in most cases it will actually give a very good answer. And so I think that's the reason for its overwhelming popularity.

SIEBERG: Google still faces competition from the likes of Yahoo!, Alta Vista, Microsoft, and Ask Jeeves. Now it's branched out to include other functions, plus a Web-based e-mail service.

SHERMAN: In 50 years they'd ultimately like to have Google be the same kind of computer that you see in "Star Trek" right now, where it's basically everywhere, you speak to it, it gives you answers and so on. Whether they actually reach that goal or not remains to be seen. But it shows you that their ambitions are certainly quite high.

SIEBERG: Want to know more? Well, you can always Google it.

Daniel Sieberg, CNN, Atlanta.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

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Aired April 28, 2004 - 13:00 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We've been playing patty-cake with these insurgents. We have not begun to do offensive operations.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

MILES O'BRIEN, CNN ANCHOR: Marines standing their ground in Fallujah. We'll take you inside the fight for Iraq.

BOB FRANKEN, CNN NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: I'm Bob Franken at the U.S. Supreme Court where the justices engaged in a rigorous debate with attorneys over one of the most important questions certainly of this term, do the people who are captured by the United States have any civil liberties or does the president have, in effect, limitless rights?

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Everything about your life seems to be just one Google away.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

O'BRIEN: Got Google? You've used it to dig up dirty secrets, should you cough up the cash and buy now that you have the chance?

And the razor's edge, Shrek (ph) the sheep finally has a date with the shears. We've got the final cut, so to speak.

From the CNN Center in Atlanta, I'm Miles O'Brien. Kyra Phillips is off today. CNN's LIVE FROM... starts right now.

Bombs explode, rifles crack, missiles streak across the sky in Fallujah while the whole world watches. But the coalition says these remarkable real-time images are defensive response by U.S. Marines, not the long threatened onslaught aimed at ending a two-week standoff with Sunni insurgents.

U.S. pool reporter Karl Penhaul gave us this firsthand account about two hours ago.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

KARL PENHAUL, POOL REPORTER: We're standing here in the roof of a U.S. Marine base on the northwest edge of Fallujah. To the east of where we're standing, you still see the plumes of gray smoke floating through the Fallujah evening sky.

That, the aftermath of a strike by U.S. Marine helicopters on insurgent positions earlier this afternoon. The firefight began about three hours ago now. A U.S. Marine sniper team had tried to move into position around Fallujah train station. That's the building on the left of your screen. The sniper team moved in there because over recent days Iraqi insurgents, according to Marine commander, had been taking position in and around the train station, trying to set up mortar positions from which they intended, it seems to attack Marine positions.

The U.S. sniper team though that went into the station to try and take out those insurgent positions today was, in fact, detect by insurgents, insurgents who appeared to have been holed up in buildings on the right-hand side of the main road. We see the insurgents open fire on the U.S. snipers with rocket-propelled grenades.

U.S. commanders tell us the sniper team then had to be extracted in heavily armored humvee vehicles by colleagues. And once they were taken to safety, Marines called in two helicopters. One, we're told, a U.S. Marine Cobra attack helicopter, the other, a Marine Huey gunship. And they went into action and we saw them pounding at least three buildings with machine gunfire and, also, with rockets and missiles.

In the course of about an hour-and-a-half, many missiles and rockets pounding those buildings, flames from three areas, and then plumes of smoke going up.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

O'BRIEN: U.S. pool reporter Karl Penhaul. Battles have raged in Fallujah on and off for three straight days while U.S. and Iraqi officials insist a negotiated solution and voluntary civilian disarmament are still a possibility. The issue came up at the White House today when President Bush sat down with the visiting prime minister of Sweden.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

GEORGE W. BUSH, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: The closer we come to passing sovereignty, the more likely it is that foreign fighters, disgruntled Baathists, or friends of the Shia cleric, will try to stop progress. That's what's happening. They want to kill innocent life to try to get us to quit and we're not going to. And our military commanders will take whatever action's necessary to secure Fallujah on behalf of the Iraqi people.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

O'BRIEN: For latest on the fighting, we turn to CNN's Barbara Starr, because she has the facts right at her fingertips there at the Pentagon.

Hello, Barbara. What do we know? BARBARA STARR, CNN PENTAGON CORRESPONDENT: Hello to you, Miles. Well, we've spoken to a senior official, very familiar with the situation on the ground and also with the thinking of General John Abizaid who is the top military official in the coalition. Now, what General Abizaid is telling the administration is, that there is, in fact, still some hope, he believes, that a political solution of some sort will be reached, that they still need to work on that angle, working with the city leaders of Fallujah, trying to work with the political leadership.

General Abizaid saying, the reason is, even as this fighting goes on, the military cannot be the ultimate solution for the problems in Fallujah. So even as we see these pictures of this ongoing fighting for the last several days, technically, strategically, indeed, yes. The cease-fire remains in place.

General Kimmitt in Baghdad talked about that earlier today.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

BRIG. GEN. MARK KIMMITT, U.S. ARMY: I can confirm that it is certainly the intention of the coalition forces that the cease-fire continues. What you're seeing today is a series of defensive responses. When we get shot at, we will respond. We will not sit there and take fire, even though there is a cease-fire ongoing. That is inconsistent with what we stand for. That is inconsistent with the inherent right of self-defense.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

STARR: So the inherent right of self-defense continues. Expect, by all accounts, to continue to see the fighting in Fallujah. But they are going to try and work this political track for some hours, or perhaps even days yet. They warn time is not infinite, of course, this cannot go on forever.

But the problem is this, the Marines have two options: either in an all-out offensive into the city and that urban warfare battle that they don't particularly want to get into; or they wait for peace to break out in Fallujah, and that doesn't seem imminent at the moment -- Miles.

O'BRIEN: Barbara, why could they -- how can they maintain their optimism on a negotiated settlement at this juncture, it hasn't worked this far?

STARR: Well, not very optimistic about it. But the feeling at this point is that there is still some room to play in that situation, in that political track. And the reason is this, General Abizaid and his top leaders have long before advocates that there must essentially be an Iraqi solution to Iraq's problems, that the U.S. can't solve it for Iraq and certainly U.S. military power can't solve it for Iraq.

General Abizaid is one very pragmatic general. His feeling is that the Iraqis must stand up and begin to take very front-line responsibility. That is why the U.S. feels it's so important to start those joint Marine Corps-Iraqi security patrols in Fallujah, put some Iraqi security face on it.

But they know this is a big problem because the Iraqi security forces are not particularly well trained and equipped at the moment, not particularly ready for this kind of mission. The U.S. is working very hard to make that happen. But the feeling really is, from the top leadership, they must try and get an Iraqi solution to all of this, especially because the turnover to sovereignty is now just a few weeks away. Very important, they say, to get those Iraqis out front -- Miles.

O'BRIEN: CNN's Barbara Starr at the Pentagon, thank you very much.

The war according to Condoleezza Rice, is getting under way on Capitol Hill this hour, this time before the crowd of Democrats from the House of Representatives. Rice won't do all the talking, lawmakers surely plan to ask about the surge in violence we've been telling you about, the transfer of power, and ultimately the cost to American taxpayers. The national security adviser gave parallel briefings last week to House and Senate Republican and Senate Democrats.

President Bush, said to be refreshing his memory ahead of his appearance tomorrow before the 9/11 panel at the White House. Mr. Bush and Vice President Cheney will appear in tandem in private, beginning at 9:30 a.m. Eastern time and ending whenever panelists run out of questions. The witnesses won't be sworn in and their answers won't be officially transcribed, though commission members may take notes.

Onto the judicial branch and two more cases of enemy combatants. Today, the Supreme Court is taking up appeals from U.S. citizens whose own government has locked them away with none of the rights and protections given criminal defendants. CNN's Bob Franken joins us with the points and counterpoints from the Supreme Court.

Hello, Bob.

FRANKEN: Hello, Miles. And had the time not run out, the Supreme Court justices probably would not have run out of questions. Very rigorous questioning today. And of course, the issues are that important, involving two U.S. citizens, Jose Padilla, born and raised in the United States, arrested at O'Hare Airport in Chicago, and charged with participating in a plot to create a dirty bomb. Yaser Hamdi, different circumstances, U.S. born, but raised in Saudi Arabia, arrested on the battlefield.

Nevertheless, the attorneys for both brought the same issue before the court, that the president's claim that he had almost absolute power in times of war, because he would designate enemy combatants, was one that they challenged, because they had had their rights to an attorneys, their rights to answer the charges denied.

The claim of administration also rests on legislation passed by Congress, which allows the president in this time of war to use all necessary force. And the justices focused a lot on that, including Justice Sandra Day O'Connor, questioning Hamdi's attorney, Frank Dunham.

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SANDRA DAY O'CONNOR, SUPREME COURT JUSTICE: It does say in this authorization, the president is authorized to use all necessary and appropriate force against persons he determines planned, authorized, committed, or aided the terrorist attacks.

FRANK DUNHAM, ATTORNEY FOR DETAINEE: If that is interpreted to mean that he can impose executive indefinite executive detention on anybody that he thinks is necessary in order to fulfill that command, we could have people locked up all over the country tomorrow, without any due process, without any opportunity to be heard. Because we know that this war that we're talking about here is going on worldwide and it's going on within our own borders.

(END AUDIO CLIP)

FRANKEN: Now the Bush administration says that it is necessary in times of war, to err on the side of giving the president authority. The arguments presented by the deputy solicitor general, Paul Clement.

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: PAUL CLEMENT, DEPUTY SOLICITOR GENERAL: The government categorically lacks the authority to hold Hamdi as an enemy combatant. But it has been well established and long established that the government has the authority to hold both unlawful enemy combatants and lawful prisoners of war captured on the battlefield in order to prevent them from returning to the battle.

Over 10,000 United States troops remain on the field of battle in Afghanistan. No principal of law or logic requires the United States to release the individual from detention so that he can rejoin the battle against the United States.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

FRANKEN: In addition, the solicitor general's representative argued that allowing attorneys to visit these men would have interrupted a very delicate interrogation process -- Miles.

O'BRIEN: Bob, how different are these cases? In other words, the fact that Padilla was picked up in the United States, at O'Hare Airport, does that change the facts of the case significantly?

FRANKEN: Significantly, as a matter of fact, many people believe that this may be the weakest case for the government. The government argues, however, that September 11 showed the whole world is a battleground, including, as we found out so tragically, the United States.

O'BRIEN: CNN's Bob Franken, at the Pentagon -- excuse me, the Supreme Court, appreciate it.

News across America now, tragedy in Georgia, police have arrested a 12-year-old boy in the killing of an eight-year-old girl. Amy Yates disappeared while riding her bike to a friend's house Monday night. She was found dead hours later. Police say she was strangled.

Cave exploring turns deadly in Minnesota. Three teenagers died of apparent carbon monoxide poisoning while delving through a series of caves yesterday. A fourth teen survived and alerted authorities. Another boy was rescued and is in serious condition.

Honoring a fallen hero, a sports card company has found a jersey worn by Pat Tillman, the Arizona Cardinal safety, who was killed last week in Iraq (sic). Instead of selling it or making what could amount to millions in profit, the Donruss Company has decide to donate it to Tillman's family.

On a mission in Iraq...

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Fourteen-year-old kid ran over and picked up an AK-47 and pointed it at him and he had to kill him. Well, he came to me and he said, listen, I'm having nightmares. I had to kill him, he's the age of my kids and I feel so badly about it.

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O'BRIEN: Combat psychologists helping soldiers cope.

And let's go inside the battle for Fallujah. What's it really like on the ground there? We'll get some insight from a CNN producer who has been there.

And later, admit it, you've Googled. And now the online search engine reportedly is ready to click you in on some action here. We'll click on that one a little later on LIVE FROM..., stay with us.

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O'BRIEN: Fallujah appears to be the wild card in the coalition's efforts to bring stability to Iraq. It has become the center of Iraqi violence. CNN producer Thomas Etzler know the danger all too well. He was wounded there recently, and he is here to give us literally the lay of the land in Fallujah.

Thomas, good to have you with us, first of all, hope you're feeling better.

THOMAS ETZLER, CNN PRODUCER: I feel much better, thank you very much, yes.

O'BRIEN: Good, let's get right to the satellite imagery from Keyhole and Digital Globe. And zoom in on Iraq, and ultimately into Fallujah. Fallujah, first of all, 35 to 45 miles to the west of Baghdad. Zoom in on it. It's a city of about how many people, Thomas?

ETZLER: It's city of approximately 300,000 people. It's a city lying on a very important freeway between Baghdad and the Jordanian capital Amman.

O'BRIEN: And that would be this one, that goes right through the middle there, right?

ETZLER: No, what goes through the middle is the main street in Fallujah.

O'BRIEN: Oh, this one here.

ETZLER: Yes. That's the freeway. This street you pointed out before, it's the main street for Fallujah, which used to be the main entry into the city which is now completely blocked off by American Marines.

O'BRIEN: Let's go a little bit to the east of the city. This is a place called Camp Fallujah. Tell me what goes on there, it's really out here, it's sort of in the middle of nowhere, a lot of old buildings here.

ETZLER: This area, it's Camp Fallujah, this is basically a center of operations for the U.S. Marines in al-Anbar Province. Before that it was the center of operations for the 82nd Airborne Division.

O'BRIEN: OK, and how far is that from the center of town?

ETZLER: This is -- from the center of town, I would say six or seven miles.

O'BRIEN: Six to seven miles. OK, now, so that remains a center of operation. And you're still a little bit outside the town. Let's go a little bit closer to Camp Baharia (ph).

ETZLER: Yes, Camp Baharia, it's a former amusement park of...

O'BRIEN: This water-world are here, right.

ETZLER: Yes, and it's another camp where the Marines are stationed right now, and it's also a camp where most of the convoys to Fallujah are assembled.

O'BRIEN: Now, as we get closer to the city, this is the Combat Operation Center we're going to now. What goes on in this location roughly?

ETZLER: This is like a major operation center, major combat operation center. It's like one of those -- also very important gate, I would say, to Fallujah. Many convoys going to Fallujah, equipment convoys, food convoys, are going through the center.

O'BRIEN: Scott (ph), if you could lose the banner for a minute, I want to point something out at the bottom of the screen. Right near the bottom of the screen, there's a berm there. That's an important for this particular operation. It protects these buildings from fire, doesn't it?

ETZLER: Yes, it's a 20-, 25-yard tall berm, it's a railway berm, which protects that whole facility from the direct fire from Fallujah.

O'BRIEN: All right. Let's get a little bit closer, we'll go to the area where these cameras are, that we've been seeing these live pictures of over the past couple of days. This is, generally speaking -- the area in the foreground is the area where the cameras are and where the Marines are. And this essentially right here is the front line, isn't it?

ETZLER: That's absolutely correct. The area north, you know, closer to us, it's -- where you correctly pointed, is where the Marines are, and the camera pool, the correspondent pool is moving from -- between the houses in this area.

O'BRIEN: And the part I highlighted there, that's where you were injured, in the courtyard of that school.

ETZLER: Yes, this is the school which is -- daily, I see from the pictures which are coming out of Fallujah, daily under fire, daily fights around that school.

O'BRIEN: They call this sniper alley. What goes on down that?

ETZLER: American forces -- American Marines are receiving a lot of fire from that particular street. It's a very wide street. It's covered today with debris with burn vehicles, which provide a lot of protection for the fighters, for the shooters, either machine gun shooters, rifle shooters, or even RPG shooters.

O'BRIEN: Now this area roughly over here is where we saw that gunship battle last night. Let's zoom in on that. And we can talk a little bit about this general area. Did the -- this particular area strike you as being an area where there was a lot of insurgent activity before or is it fairly random?

ETZLER: You know, it's hard to -- I would say it's hardly random, it's hard to say, because, according to the pool correspondent, Karl Penhaul, who is there right now, he saw those explosions around 800 meters south of his position, and that would be approximately this area. As we can see, there are some...

O'BRIEN: About one-half mile.

ETZLER: Yes. There are some warehouses in that area, which would not be surprising if those warehouses were serving as storage, munitions storage for the insurgent forces.

O'BRIEN: All right. Now let's go and get back up sort of to a God's eye view here for a moment. Once again, North will be at the top of your screen here. And I just want to tell you where we've been. If you look in this area here, that's that area we were just telling you about, where the camera is, where Thomas he was wounded, and where there are Marines obviously located. But there are Marines all along the perimeter of this city, correct?

ETZLER: Yes. The Marines decided -- they surrounded the city to prevent two things, to prevent import to the city of more weapons and to prevent import of fighters, to prevent, you know, the fighter -- people coming into the city, into Fallujah to fight.

O'BRIEN: All right. This little area is owned by the Marines but this whole area out here, that is really no man's land if you're a U.S. Marine, correct?

ETZLER: That's correct. It's a place where at the moment nobody ventures, and it's in control of the Iraqi insurgents.

O'BRIEN: Thomas Etzler, thanks for giving us a little better understanding of what we're seeing through that narrow viewpoint of a camera. It helps quite a bit to help us understand. And we wish you well on your recuperation. Good to have you back.

ETZLER: Thank you very much, thank you.

O'BRIEN: All right. Seeing a buddy get shot, gunning down the enemy, they're traumatic events for even the most seasoned soldier, later on LIVE FROM..., we'll talk with combat psychologists supporting troops in Iraq.

And later, how do you tell the baby blues from full-fledged depression? Our Dr, Sanjay Gupta is on the case.

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O'BRIEN: Investors are Googling over this next story. The world's largest online search engine expected to register for an initial public offering, IPO, as you know it, by the end of this week. Google -- if you Google "CNN" and "technology," your first hit will undoubtedly be CNN's Daniel Sieberg.

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JANET MURRAY, GEORGIA TECH PROFESSOR: You could think of Google as the bulletin board for the global village.

DANIEL SIEBERG, CNN TECHNOLOGY CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Do you Google? These days, it seems who doesn't? Google comes from G-O- O-G-O-L, a math term that means one followed by 100 zeroes. It symbolizes the huge amount of data on the Internet. And its creators, Sergey Brin and Larry Page, two former Stanford students, are on a mission to organize all of it, from museum collections to Britney photos, even your home address.

MURRAY: Everything about your life seems to be just one Google away.

SIEBERG: Remember the card catalogs, the Dewey Decimal System, libraries? Well, not only did Google's founders find a way to search the billions of pages of information on the Internet in a fraction of the time, but they also made it easy to read, accurate and a little fun.

CHRIS SHERMAN, SEARCHENGINEWATCH.COM: Google calls their headquarters the Googleplex. And when you walk into the Googleplex, you immediately recognize that this is not just your ordinary corporation or computer place. Google has a grand piano in the lobby, for example. There are lava lamps all over the place. They play roller hockey in the parking lot.

SIEBERG: And that sense of doing Google-y things at their Mountain View, California, office, translates to their site.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Oh, you know what I love the most? I love how they do little logos for Christmas and different activities, different holidays. They do little graphics, sort of make fun of their logo.

SIEBERG: And it's not just looking for things. Sometimes it's people.

MURRAY: And I do the same thing with my daughter, when she has a new boyfriend, one of the first things I do is put his name in that search engine and see what comes up. I try to say very subtlety, oh, how do you spell that, dear?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I've never Googled myself. I'm afraid for what I might find.

SHERMAN: Google makes it as simple as sitting down, typing in a few words, and in most cases it will actually give a very good answer. And so I think that's the reason for its overwhelming popularity.

SIEBERG: Google still faces competition from the likes of Yahoo!, Alta Vista, Microsoft, and Ask Jeeves. Now it's branched out to include other functions, plus a Web-based e-mail service.

SHERMAN: In 50 years they'd ultimately like to have Google be the same kind of computer that you see in "Star Trek" right now, where it's basically everywhere, you speak to it, it gives you answers and so on. Whether they actually reach that goal or not remains to be seen. But it shows you that their ambitions are certainly quite high.

SIEBERG: Want to know more? Well, you can always Google it.

Daniel Sieberg, CNN, Atlanta.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

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