Return to Transcripts main page
Live From...
Jury Reaches Verdict on Six Charges Against Jayson Williams; Ten Americans Killed in Iraq
Aired April 29, 2004 - 15:00 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.
MILES O'BRIEN, CNN ANCHOR: Welcome back to LIVE FROM... I'm Miles O'Brien. Kyra Phillips is off today.
We begin in Somerville, New Jersey where jurors are considering the fate of former NBA star Jayson Williams in his manslaughter trial have indicated they've come to a verdict in six of the eight charges against him. But told the judge that they could not come to a verdict in the final two. He told them to try a little harder.
CNN's Deborah Feyerick is outside the courthouse with more on this -- Deb.
DEBORAH FEYERICK, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Miles, we are being told now that the jury has sent out another note to the judge. We're waiting to get details on what that is.
The judge did send them back into the jury deliberation room telling them that it is their duty to reach some sort of consensus on the two outstanding charges. So they went back in. We don't know what this note is, but we're all waiting again, as you mentioned.
Again, as you mentioned, six counts they've reached a verdict on. Let's go quickly over the counts. We don't which ones they have and have not agreed on.
The first is aggravated manslaughter. That is the most serious charge against Jayson Williams. That carries a maximum prison sentence of 30 years in prison. But the prosecutors have to have shown that Jayson Williams showed an extreme indifference to human life.
The next count, the next most serious count in reckless manslaughter. And that carries charges (ph) of anywhere between five to ten years. And (UNINTELLIGIBLE) has to show that in fact Jayson Williams acted recklessly when he picked up that shotgun and aimed it -- or didn't aim it just had it in his hands in a room with people, with guests he was showing around his big mansion.
The other charges, gun possession for an unlawful purpose. Now Jayson Williams was registered to hold those guns. However, when that gun fired killing the limo drive Gus Christofi, prosecutors say it was used for an unlawful purpose.
And the jury did have a question. What does it mean "used for an unlawful purpose"? The judge said you have to decide what that means. I cannot tell you.
The other charges, aggravated assault, hindering apprehension and tampering. So the jury going through all of the charges again. And we're just waiting to hear what the note says -- Miles.
O'BRIEN: We're just going to have stay plugged in. They obviously have some work ahead of them. Deb Feyerick, appreciate it.
And now the 9/11 Commission and the extraordinary meeting at the White House this morning. Lots of Q's, lots of A's on 9/11. The Q's were from the independent 9/11 Commission, the A's from President Bush and Vice President Cheney. It was a closed door, off the record interview in the Oval Office. This isn't tape of it. This is file tape. It lasted more than three hours, after which Mr. Bush dubbed it an important event, and the panel weighed in with extraordinary, forthcoming and candid.
Without giving details, the president said he answered every question that was put to him.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
GEORGE W. BUSH, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: If we had something to hide, we wouldn't have met with them in the first place. We answered all their questions. And, as I say, I came away good about the session, because I wanted them to know, you know, how I set strategy, how we run the White House, how we deal with threats.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
O'BRIEN: The panel is facing a July deadline for its final report.
In Iraq, it's been another deadly day for Americans, with 10 Americans killed, including eight in the bombing in south Baghdad. In Fallujah, more talks, more fighting. Today, U.S. aircraft continued to target insurgents in Fallujah and, at one point, fighter dispatched from an aircraft carrier dropped three bombs. The United States is not involved in direct talks with the insurgents. Intermediaries now include ex-Iraqi army officers, however.
Here with some perspective on all this is retired Army Lieutenant Colonel James Carafano, now with the Heritage Foundation as a senior research fellow in the areas of defense and homeland security.
Good to have you with us, Colonel Carafano.
RETIRED LT. COL. JAMES CARAFANO, U.S. ARMY: Thanks for having me.
O'BRIEN: All right, first give us a sense of your degree of optimism at this late latest rather confusing turn of events as to whether there's negotiations ongoing on or not. Read the tea leaves a little bit and tell us what you think.
CARAFANO: Well, I am fairly optimistic. I think we have to go back. First of all, I think this was an intentional on the part of these people. They wanted to pick a fight with Americans. They wanted to make it the Iraqis against the United States. And so I think fighters went there before the incident in which the Americans were killed. I think the incident in which the Americans were killed was designed to pick a fight.
I think originally the Marines went up there to give them a fight which I think is exactly what they wanted to.
(CROSSTALK)
O'BRIEN: So what you're suggesting is, is that the U.S. forces in this case fell right into their trap?
CARAFANO: Well, I think in a sense we did, because the solution here is political. We're not going to solve every battle. We're not going to get every terrorist. We're not going to have perfect security in this country. What we need to do and what we have to do is get the Iraqi government up and running, get the Iraqi security forces in the field, and turn the country back over to them.
Getting us involved in the middle of a war with a bunch of people is not going to do that. So that's what they wanted. And then I think we were right in a sense not to charge in and take the thing, because winning battles doesn't win wars. Winning wars is about the big picture.
(CROSSTALK)
O'BRIEN: And so it's not about seizing the geography of Fallujah, obviously. We're talking about a battle of hearts and minds here.
Let's talk for a moment about the message that it might send if the Marines fall back and sort of let the insurgency die its own death, if you will, one way or another, or to let them melt back into the civilian population. Isn't that a bad message?
CARAFANO: No, I don't think so.
In a sense, what the Marines did by pulling back is we didn't give them what they wanted, which was a fight. Now they don't have the initiative anymore. And so what you saw, for example, is when we stopped going in after them, then you see these guys trying to come out and pick a fight with us. And then what happens is, is they get whacked.
And so I think a lot of the Marine repositioning, my guess, and, again, it's not a good idea to fight the war from Washington, but just based on the evidence we have, is the Marines are going so they can keep other people from coming into the city, keeping more bad guys out.
And also that, if these bad guys want to get to them, they have to come to the Marines and they will be exposed. At the meantime, they're trying to dig in, but at the same time, we're gaining intelligence. And as they root down and get into groups and build up defensive positions, then, in a sense, they really kind of become easy targets for us.
So now they're just kind of sitting there. The popular uprising hasn't happened. They're kind of on their own. They're surrounded and they got no place to go and nothing to do. So I don't see how they wind up the big winners here.
O'BRIEN: Couldn't this strategy, though, embolden other similar- minded people elsewhere in Iraq and create other Fallujahs?
CARAFANO: It could.
And if there are millions of people in Iraq that want to rise up and have a civil war, then there's nothing we can do to stop them. You know, this discussion about 100,000 troops, 200,000 troops, that's just silly. There's 25 million people there. There's not enough Americans in the United States Army to keep this country from fighting itself.
But if the majority of Iraqis don't want to fight, if they really do want their country back and if they'll just stand by and let us take care of these thugs, then I think everything will come out all right in the end.
O'BRIEN: Well, there's a couple of big ifs there, don't you think?
CARAFANO: Absolutely. There's nothing guaranteed.
And I think that's the big problem. People don't have very good historical perspective on this. They think, the war is over, everything should be easy. But you look at every occupation that we've ever done and most occupations in any postwar environment, they're never easy, frictionless and easy. If there was an easy way to do this, if there was a cookbook, a rule book, then people would do everything right. But it's not. It's complicated by reality.
(CROSSTALK)
O'BRIEN: Final thought here. A lot of people have said in the wake of all of this, this has laid bare a big gap in the administration's strategy in all of this, specifically the number of troops on the ground to handle the occupation, just not nearly enough. Would you go along with that?
CARAFANO: Yes, it's just a bad assessment. No.
First of all, it's unrealistic to expect that anybody could anticipate exactly what the post-conflict environment is going to be like. Second of all, the enemy gets a vote. If they want to fight, they're going to fight. And you're going to have to deal with it. And the third thing is, I don't care what administration is involved. Although you can't expect this thing to be perfect, it could be done better, but our forces structured for this. Our government isn't structured right for this mission.
We always ad hoc this mission. We've done that throughout out history. We're doing it again. If we learn one lesson from this, it's that we can structure our military forces and our government better to do these kinds of operations. And we have a legal and moral responsibility to do that. And it's good strategy to do it as efficiently as possible. So we ought to learn lessons how we can structure our forces better to do this so the next time we have to do this, which hopefully will be a long time in the future, we can do it more efficiently.
O'BRIEN: James Carafano is a retired Army lieutenant colonel. He's with the Heritage Foundation now. Thanks for your insights. Appreciate it.
CARAFANO: Thanks for having me.
O'BRIEN: A CNN/"USA Today"/Gallup poll is shedding some extraordinary light on the views of Iraqi citizens, be they Shiite, Sunni or Kurd.
For example, here's this: 57 percent of the more than 3,000 Iraqis polled in late March and early April said U.S. troops should leave immediately; 36 percent said they should stay at least for a while. The same number who want the troops out said they're afraid to leave their homes during the day. Four in 10 said they're not. A whopping nine in 10 said they weren't afraid to go out before the U.S. invaded.
As CNN's Ben Wedeman reports, the fight for the hearts and minds of the Iraqi people goes on.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
BEN WEDEMAN, CNN CAIRO BUREAU CHIEF (voice-over): Iraqis have a lot on their minds these days. And unlike in the past, they don't hesitate to share it all with you.
A good place to find out what's on people's minds is Rasheed Street, the old heart of Baghdad. A place where Iraqis, Shiites, Sunnis, Christians have intermingled for decades. Here the results of the CNN-USA Today-Gallup poll are echoed.
Disillusionment with the U. S. -led experiment in nation- building, frustration with efforts to reconstruct the country, concerns about security, much of it blamed on the Americans, increasingly seen as occupiers, not liberators. It's true, this man says, America got rid of a germ, Saddam. But now, they're our occupiers.
On this day, Saddam's birthday, little love for the old leader. But not much affection either for the man behind his ouster. We want to try Bush and try Saddam, says shop owner Ibrahim (ph), who calls them both war criminals.
For many, interaction with U.S. forces has been an unhappy experience. The Americans set up checkpoints, says Allah (ph), a tire salesman. They block traffic for hours and the soldiers, they just laugh at us.
Saddam knew his opponents and killed them, says shop owner Abu Hazan (ph), who says his two brothers were executed under the old regime. But the Americans, even if they don't mean it, don't know who is who. They put us all in danger.
And among all we spoke to, fear that law and order is breaking down. These days, I'm afraid, Hatan (ph), a retired army officer tells me. Afraid of being killed or shot.
But beneath the anger and anxiety, the hopes and dreams on Rasheed Street aren't much different from anywhere else. Do you know what we want, Adnan (ph), the barber asked me? We want this street to prosper. We want to work. We want stability, security. That would put our minds at rest.
A modest hope, but one that, at least to the Iraqis we talked to, seems far from being realized.
Ben Wedeman, CNN, Baghdad.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
O'BRIEN: Life-and-death moments at sea, a scuba diver's desperation when his ship accidentally leaves him behind. He's calling what happened next a miracle.
Also ahead on LIVE FROM, it's a movie by one of America's most famous directors, but hardly anyone has ever seen it until now.
Stay with us.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
O'BRIEN: A possible tragedy turned into a happy ending off the coast of California thanks to some sharp-eyed, quick-witted Boy Scouts who put that official motto, be prepared, to life-saving use.
The troop was aboard the tall ship Argus and returning to port from a trip to Catalina Island. Scout Zack Mayberry was standing watch and he thought he saw something in the water and he grabbed some binoculars. Of course he was prepared. He had the binoculars, right? The something was 45-year-old Dan Carlock, a diver who had mistakenly been left behind by his dive group five hours earlier.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
DAN CARLOCK, SCUBA DIVER: I started waving that tube and waving the other arm and blowing the hell out of the whistle.
ZACK MAYBERRY, BOY SCOUT: I had to look through a pair of binoculars to even see him, because he was that far out. Everybody is saying I'm a hero. To tell you the truth, I don't really care. All I really care about is that this guy is safe. (END VIDEO CLIP)
O'BRIEN: All right, speaking of heroic efforts, the folks on the International Space Station, it's moving day today. Mike Foale and his colleague, Alexander Kaleri -- I'm trying to find the place on the International Space Station where this might occur.
This is a fanciful notion. This doesn't exist. NASA would like this to exist, but it's not going to happen, because this is the completed version. Excuse me. I'm still on the model. Stay with me for a moment, please, before you show those pictures. OK, Soyuz is this little black thing here at the end.
Anyway, and Foale and Kaleri and a Dutch astronaut by the name of Kuipers are inside that Soyuz right now going through their checklist after this goodbye to the next crew of station keepers, Expedition 9. Let's see if I can point them out here. There's Kaleri with the moustache there hugging Mike Fincke. And that's Foale right in there. He's the commander. He's now the most veteran of U.S. space farers. There's Kuipers back there. He was up there for only eight weeks.
Anyway, they're on their way back down. The undocking from the space station will occur a little before 5:00 Eastern, the landing a little after 8:00 p.m. Eastern.
Let's take a look at the animation we have showing you what happens when a Soyuz comes to Earth. First of all, what happens is, it kind of breaks apart into a couple of segments. That is the landing portion of it. Fires some retrorockets, which are basically to slow down its orbit in order for it to begin its descent to Earth.
It's aiming for the former Soviet Republic of Kazakhstan, the high step there. Down it comes. The guys inside are very cramped in custom-fitted couches pulling upwards six G's as they come down. Parachute opens and then, if all goes well, right before landing, to cushion the blow a little bit, some rockets fire to make it a nice smooth landing. We hope that happens a little later tonight.
Check out this image from the Hubble space telescope. This is the Bug Nebula. And you know what a nebula is, of course. It's a dying star, right? And this one -- temperature there, if you could be there, would be 250,000 degrees Centigrade. So bring your sunblock. It was expelled -- the nebula was expelled about 10,000 years ago, is when it first started nebulizing. As the star dies, it does that. It kind of flames out.
It's about 4,000 light years away, which means billions and billions of miles. And this is a combination of a series of images. But check out this image. This is the image of the day for my money here, Cassini on its way, seven-year journey to Saturn. This is perhaps the most ambitious planetary mission ever attempted by NASA and the Jet Propulsion Lab.
And this image is the last time we're going to be able to probably see a full view of the rings which across are 186,000 miles, but interestingly, only one half mile thick. Cassini will arrive in Saturn's orbit on July 1. And then, at the end of the year, it's going to drop a little probe on to one of Saturn's many moons, Titan, to see what's going on there. Believe it or not, Titan is filled with all kinds of organic material, which might be the same material which existed here on Earth right when life started taking hold. So stay tuned for all that.
Up next on LIVE FROM, a certain reality TV king, entrepreneur, and a man with just a terrible comb-over pops the question. Details as LIVE FROM plays hard to get after this.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
O'BRIEN: All right, checking entertainment headlines on this Thursday, it's all Trump all the time. "The Hollywood Reporter" trumpeting the news the Donald will launch a national radio show in June.
But, wait, there's more, Trump news you could use. It will blow your hair back, for that matter. Maybe he's hoping the third time is the charm in marriage. A spokesman says Trump is planning to marry longtime gal pal Melania Knauss. Hope I did that right, Lisa. Melania Knauss. No date announced. But may we humbly suggest Omarosa be considered as the wedding planner? That would be entertaining.
The Tribeca Film Festival begins this weekend in New York City and it features one of Hollywood's best known directors and his first feature flop. Stanley Kramer's "So This is New York" failed at the box office, but he went on to produce such screen gems as "Guess Who's Coming to Dinner," "The Defiant Ones," and one of my all-time favorites, "It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World."
Karen Kramer is the widow of the legendary Stanley Kramer. She joins us live from Los Angeles to talk about her late husband and the festival and first and foremost, the Donald.
You watched "The Apprentice," didn't you?
KAREN KRAMER, WIDOW OF STANLEY KRAMER: I always watched "The Apprentice." I never would miss it. I'm a big fan of the show. But, first of all, a flop? Stanley Kramer, a flop? I heard that, Miles.
O'BRIEN: I was trying to buffer the flop comment with that, hoping you would just let it go.
KRAMER: I'm going to get that in just a minute.
(CROSSTALK)
O'BRIEN: Well, you know what it is? When a guy, when you're talking about Stanley Kramer, with such tremendous success, it's not that it was flop. It's just that it was more closer to average, right?
KRAMER: No, what it was, was a satire. And, in 1947, when he made this film and it was released in 1948, and it played the Midwest, well, planes didn't take off everyday like they do today to go to New York. So, actually, the Midwesterners just didn't get it.
O'BRIEN: Yes.
KRAMER: But you know, it's like George Kaufman, the critic and of course the great writer. He said, a satire is what opens on Saturday and closes on Sunday. And apparently this did all over the West. But it never really played in New York.
(CROSSTALK)
O'BRIEN: And of course the irony is the fact that it didn't play in Peoria, the story was about Midwesterners coming to New York and not quite getting it.
KRAMER: That's right.
O'BRIEN: As a matter of fact, let's look at this clip here. We're going to have to lose the banner, please, lose the banner, because otherwise we'll miss the whole joke, as this group, this family from the Midwest arrives in New York and talks to a cabby, or tries to.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP, "SO THIS IS NEW YORK")
UNIDENTIFIED ACTOR: And it was then that we had our first contact with a foreign language spoken only in New York.
UNIDENTIFIED ACTOR: Hey, Mac, I can't wait for you all day to choose up sides. Do you want a hack or don't you, hey?
UNIDENTIFIED ACTOR: Beg your pardon?
UNIDENTIFIED ACTOR: What you waiting for, 2 cents (INAUDIBLE) I got to make a buck, too, hey. So make up your mind. Either you do or you ain't.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
O'BRIEN: He's not quite getting it there, is he? I guess that the point. It kind of reminds me of that great scene from "Airplane" when Potsie's mom says, it's OK, I speak jive and translates.
KRAMER: You have to understand, though, in New York, we still have a problem. We have multicultural cab drivers.
O'BRIEN: Yes, indeed.
KRAMER: And you can't understand them. And they don't even know where to take you because they don't even understand the address. So you you're have some of the same problems today as you did back in the '40s.
O'BRIEN: It's kind of universal.
KRAMER: Oh, absolutely. It's too expensive, hard to get a room, always a convention. So all these things kinds of still exist and we always think the grass is greener than in our own backyard.
So they're looking for money and to marry off the family sister. And, of course, they end up back income in Bend, Indiana, where she finally marries the old boyfriend after all.
O'BRIEN: Where she finds true love and so on and so forth.
KRAMER: Exactly. But it's a fun film and it was Stanley's first film. And I would like to say something else, history-wise.
O'BRIEN: Yes.
KRAMER: Those are the days of the producer. Of course, you know today we have producers, there's 19 of us, we don't know what we all do.
But in those days, it was the producer's medium. And everybody makes a contribution to a film, but it's Stanley Kramer's "So This is New York." And of course, he used to say to me, maybe I shouldn't tell them that my very, very first film was "So This is New York" because it kind of failed in a way.
O'BRIEN: Yes.
KRAMER: But he said then, of course, maybe I should tell them because "Mad World" was a big success, and so they thought it wasn't be a total loss that my first film wasn't so bad after all.
Well, Martin Scorsese and Peter Scarlet with Tribeca Films Festival is going to open the day at 6:00 on Saturday with this film. And Martin Scorsese is going to announce it. And I think Stanley would have been very pleased that this film finally made it home to New York.
O'BRIEN: Well, it does belong there. And we hope it does well at the film festival.
KRAMER: Well, I hope so, too.
O'BRIEN: And can folks -- is it on DVD? Can folks get it if they want to see it?
KRAMER: No, it is not on DVD. I'm hoping that they will rerelease it and this may encourage them to do so. But at this time it's not available.
O'BRIEN: All right, for now, if you want to see it on DVD, you've got to find the big W.
(CROSSTALK)
KRAMER: Or come to New York. We welcome to you come and see the film.
O'BRIEN: All right.
KRAMER: If you are in New York, please come and see it on Saturday night at 6:00 at the Pace.
O'BRIEN: All right. And you'll be there, right?
KRAMER: I'll be there. And God bless Robert De Niro and Jane Rosenthal and that whole gang for doing such a creative festival to really put a positive spin on New York. And I think this festival will eventually eclipse Cannes, as well as Sundance. It's been very successful these last two years.
O'BRIEN: Karen Kramer.
KRAMER: So wish us a lot of luck. Thank you.
O'BRIEN: Thanks for your time. Appreciate it.
TO ORDER A VIDEO OF THIS TRANSCRIPT, PLEASE CALL 800-CNN-NEWS OR USE OUR SECURE ONLINE ORDER FORM LOCATED AT www.fdch.com
Aired April 29, 2004 - 15:00 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
MILES O'BRIEN, CNN ANCHOR: Welcome back to LIVE FROM... I'm Miles O'Brien. Kyra Phillips is off today.
We begin in Somerville, New Jersey where jurors are considering the fate of former NBA star Jayson Williams in his manslaughter trial have indicated they've come to a verdict in six of the eight charges against him. But told the judge that they could not come to a verdict in the final two. He told them to try a little harder.
CNN's Deborah Feyerick is outside the courthouse with more on this -- Deb.
DEBORAH FEYERICK, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Miles, we are being told now that the jury has sent out another note to the judge. We're waiting to get details on what that is.
The judge did send them back into the jury deliberation room telling them that it is their duty to reach some sort of consensus on the two outstanding charges. So they went back in. We don't know what this note is, but we're all waiting again, as you mentioned.
Again, as you mentioned, six counts they've reached a verdict on. Let's go quickly over the counts. We don't which ones they have and have not agreed on.
The first is aggravated manslaughter. That is the most serious charge against Jayson Williams. That carries a maximum prison sentence of 30 years in prison. But the prosecutors have to have shown that Jayson Williams showed an extreme indifference to human life.
The next count, the next most serious count in reckless manslaughter. And that carries charges (ph) of anywhere between five to ten years. And (UNINTELLIGIBLE) has to show that in fact Jayson Williams acted recklessly when he picked up that shotgun and aimed it -- or didn't aim it just had it in his hands in a room with people, with guests he was showing around his big mansion.
The other charges, gun possession for an unlawful purpose. Now Jayson Williams was registered to hold those guns. However, when that gun fired killing the limo drive Gus Christofi, prosecutors say it was used for an unlawful purpose.
And the jury did have a question. What does it mean "used for an unlawful purpose"? The judge said you have to decide what that means. I cannot tell you.
The other charges, aggravated assault, hindering apprehension and tampering. So the jury going through all of the charges again. And we're just waiting to hear what the note says -- Miles.
O'BRIEN: We're just going to have stay plugged in. They obviously have some work ahead of them. Deb Feyerick, appreciate it.
And now the 9/11 Commission and the extraordinary meeting at the White House this morning. Lots of Q's, lots of A's on 9/11. The Q's were from the independent 9/11 Commission, the A's from President Bush and Vice President Cheney. It was a closed door, off the record interview in the Oval Office. This isn't tape of it. This is file tape. It lasted more than three hours, after which Mr. Bush dubbed it an important event, and the panel weighed in with extraordinary, forthcoming and candid.
Without giving details, the president said he answered every question that was put to him.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
GEORGE W. BUSH, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: If we had something to hide, we wouldn't have met with them in the first place. We answered all their questions. And, as I say, I came away good about the session, because I wanted them to know, you know, how I set strategy, how we run the White House, how we deal with threats.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
O'BRIEN: The panel is facing a July deadline for its final report.
In Iraq, it's been another deadly day for Americans, with 10 Americans killed, including eight in the bombing in south Baghdad. In Fallujah, more talks, more fighting. Today, U.S. aircraft continued to target insurgents in Fallujah and, at one point, fighter dispatched from an aircraft carrier dropped three bombs. The United States is not involved in direct talks with the insurgents. Intermediaries now include ex-Iraqi army officers, however.
Here with some perspective on all this is retired Army Lieutenant Colonel James Carafano, now with the Heritage Foundation as a senior research fellow in the areas of defense and homeland security.
Good to have you with us, Colonel Carafano.
RETIRED LT. COL. JAMES CARAFANO, U.S. ARMY: Thanks for having me.
O'BRIEN: All right, first give us a sense of your degree of optimism at this late latest rather confusing turn of events as to whether there's negotiations ongoing on or not. Read the tea leaves a little bit and tell us what you think.
CARAFANO: Well, I am fairly optimistic. I think we have to go back. First of all, I think this was an intentional on the part of these people. They wanted to pick a fight with Americans. They wanted to make it the Iraqis against the United States. And so I think fighters went there before the incident in which the Americans were killed. I think the incident in which the Americans were killed was designed to pick a fight.
I think originally the Marines went up there to give them a fight which I think is exactly what they wanted to.
(CROSSTALK)
O'BRIEN: So what you're suggesting is, is that the U.S. forces in this case fell right into their trap?
CARAFANO: Well, I think in a sense we did, because the solution here is political. We're not going to solve every battle. We're not going to get every terrorist. We're not going to have perfect security in this country. What we need to do and what we have to do is get the Iraqi government up and running, get the Iraqi security forces in the field, and turn the country back over to them.
Getting us involved in the middle of a war with a bunch of people is not going to do that. So that's what they wanted. And then I think we were right in a sense not to charge in and take the thing, because winning battles doesn't win wars. Winning wars is about the big picture.
(CROSSTALK)
O'BRIEN: And so it's not about seizing the geography of Fallujah, obviously. We're talking about a battle of hearts and minds here.
Let's talk for a moment about the message that it might send if the Marines fall back and sort of let the insurgency die its own death, if you will, one way or another, or to let them melt back into the civilian population. Isn't that a bad message?
CARAFANO: No, I don't think so.
In a sense, what the Marines did by pulling back is we didn't give them what they wanted, which was a fight. Now they don't have the initiative anymore. And so what you saw, for example, is when we stopped going in after them, then you see these guys trying to come out and pick a fight with us. And then what happens is, is they get whacked.
And so I think a lot of the Marine repositioning, my guess, and, again, it's not a good idea to fight the war from Washington, but just based on the evidence we have, is the Marines are going so they can keep other people from coming into the city, keeping more bad guys out.
And also that, if these bad guys want to get to them, they have to come to the Marines and they will be exposed. At the meantime, they're trying to dig in, but at the same time, we're gaining intelligence. And as they root down and get into groups and build up defensive positions, then, in a sense, they really kind of become easy targets for us.
So now they're just kind of sitting there. The popular uprising hasn't happened. They're kind of on their own. They're surrounded and they got no place to go and nothing to do. So I don't see how they wind up the big winners here.
O'BRIEN: Couldn't this strategy, though, embolden other similar- minded people elsewhere in Iraq and create other Fallujahs?
CARAFANO: It could.
And if there are millions of people in Iraq that want to rise up and have a civil war, then there's nothing we can do to stop them. You know, this discussion about 100,000 troops, 200,000 troops, that's just silly. There's 25 million people there. There's not enough Americans in the United States Army to keep this country from fighting itself.
But if the majority of Iraqis don't want to fight, if they really do want their country back and if they'll just stand by and let us take care of these thugs, then I think everything will come out all right in the end.
O'BRIEN: Well, there's a couple of big ifs there, don't you think?
CARAFANO: Absolutely. There's nothing guaranteed.
And I think that's the big problem. People don't have very good historical perspective on this. They think, the war is over, everything should be easy. But you look at every occupation that we've ever done and most occupations in any postwar environment, they're never easy, frictionless and easy. If there was an easy way to do this, if there was a cookbook, a rule book, then people would do everything right. But it's not. It's complicated by reality.
(CROSSTALK)
O'BRIEN: Final thought here. A lot of people have said in the wake of all of this, this has laid bare a big gap in the administration's strategy in all of this, specifically the number of troops on the ground to handle the occupation, just not nearly enough. Would you go along with that?
CARAFANO: Yes, it's just a bad assessment. No.
First of all, it's unrealistic to expect that anybody could anticipate exactly what the post-conflict environment is going to be like. Second of all, the enemy gets a vote. If they want to fight, they're going to fight. And you're going to have to deal with it. And the third thing is, I don't care what administration is involved. Although you can't expect this thing to be perfect, it could be done better, but our forces structured for this. Our government isn't structured right for this mission.
We always ad hoc this mission. We've done that throughout out history. We're doing it again. If we learn one lesson from this, it's that we can structure our military forces and our government better to do these kinds of operations. And we have a legal and moral responsibility to do that. And it's good strategy to do it as efficiently as possible. So we ought to learn lessons how we can structure our forces better to do this so the next time we have to do this, which hopefully will be a long time in the future, we can do it more efficiently.
O'BRIEN: James Carafano is a retired Army lieutenant colonel. He's with the Heritage Foundation now. Thanks for your insights. Appreciate it.
CARAFANO: Thanks for having me.
O'BRIEN: A CNN/"USA Today"/Gallup poll is shedding some extraordinary light on the views of Iraqi citizens, be they Shiite, Sunni or Kurd.
For example, here's this: 57 percent of the more than 3,000 Iraqis polled in late March and early April said U.S. troops should leave immediately; 36 percent said they should stay at least for a while. The same number who want the troops out said they're afraid to leave their homes during the day. Four in 10 said they're not. A whopping nine in 10 said they weren't afraid to go out before the U.S. invaded.
As CNN's Ben Wedeman reports, the fight for the hearts and minds of the Iraqi people goes on.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
BEN WEDEMAN, CNN CAIRO BUREAU CHIEF (voice-over): Iraqis have a lot on their minds these days. And unlike in the past, they don't hesitate to share it all with you.
A good place to find out what's on people's minds is Rasheed Street, the old heart of Baghdad. A place where Iraqis, Shiites, Sunnis, Christians have intermingled for decades. Here the results of the CNN-USA Today-Gallup poll are echoed.
Disillusionment with the U. S. -led experiment in nation- building, frustration with efforts to reconstruct the country, concerns about security, much of it blamed on the Americans, increasingly seen as occupiers, not liberators. It's true, this man says, America got rid of a germ, Saddam. But now, they're our occupiers.
On this day, Saddam's birthday, little love for the old leader. But not much affection either for the man behind his ouster. We want to try Bush and try Saddam, says shop owner Ibrahim (ph), who calls them both war criminals.
For many, interaction with U.S. forces has been an unhappy experience. The Americans set up checkpoints, says Allah (ph), a tire salesman. They block traffic for hours and the soldiers, they just laugh at us.
Saddam knew his opponents and killed them, says shop owner Abu Hazan (ph), who says his two brothers were executed under the old regime. But the Americans, even if they don't mean it, don't know who is who. They put us all in danger.
And among all we spoke to, fear that law and order is breaking down. These days, I'm afraid, Hatan (ph), a retired army officer tells me. Afraid of being killed or shot.
But beneath the anger and anxiety, the hopes and dreams on Rasheed Street aren't much different from anywhere else. Do you know what we want, Adnan (ph), the barber asked me? We want this street to prosper. We want to work. We want stability, security. That would put our minds at rest.
A modest hope, but one that, at least to the Iraqis we talked to, seems far from being realized.
Ben Wedeman, CNN, Baghdad.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
O'BRIEN: Life-and-death moments at sea, a scuba diver's desperation when his ship accidentally leaves him behind. He's calling what happened next a miracle.
Also ahead on LIVE FROM, it's a movie by one of America's most famous directors, but hardly anyone has ever seen it until now.
Stay with us.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
O'BRIEN: A possible tragedy turned into a happy ending off the coast of California thanks to some sharp-eyed, quick-witted Boy Scouts who put that official motto, be prepared, to life-saving use.
The troop was aboard the tall ship Argus and returning to port from a trip to Catalina Island. Scout Zack Mayberry was standing watch and he thought he saw something in the water and he grabbed some binoculars. Of course he was prepared. He had the binoculars, right? The something was 45-year-old Dan Carlock, a diver who had mistakenly been left behind by his dive group five hours earlier.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
DAN CARLOCK, SCUBA DIVER: I started waving that tube and waving the other arm and blowing the hell out of the whistle.
ZACK MAYBERRY, BOY SCOUT: I had to look through a pair of binoculars to even see him, because he was that far out. Everybody is saying I'm a hero. To tell you the truth, I don't really care. All I really care about is that this guy is safe. (END VIDEO CLIP)
O'BRIEN: All right, speaking of heroic efforts, the folks on the International Space Station, it's moving day today. Mike Foale and his colleague, Alexander Kaleri -- I'm trying to find the place on the International Space Station where this might occur.
This is a fanciful notion. This doesn't exist. NASA would like this to exist, but it's not going to happen, because this is the completed version. Excuse me. I'm still on the model. Stay with me for a moment, please, before you show those pictures. OK, Soyuz is this little black thing here at the end.
Anyway, and Foale and Kaleri and a Dutch astronaut by the name of Kuipers are inside that Soyuz right now going through their checklist after this goodbye to the next crew of station keepers, Expedition 9. Let's see if I can point them out here. There's Kaleri with the moustache there hugging Mike Fincke. And that's Foale right in there. He's the commander. He's now the most veteran of U.S. space farers. There's Kuipers back there. He was up there for only eight weeks.
Anyway, they're on their way back down. The undocking from the space station will occur a little before 5:00 Eastern, the landing a little after 8:00 p.m. Eastern.
Let's take a look at the animation we have showing you what happens when a Soyuz comes to Earth. First of all, what happens is, it kind of breaks apart into a couple of segments. That is the landing portion of it. Fires some retrorockets, which are basically to slow down its orbit in order for it to begin its descent to Earth.
It's aiming for the former Soviet Republic of Kazakhstan, the high step there. Down it comes. The guys inside are very cramped in custom-fitted couches pulling upwards six G's as they come down. Parachute opens and then, if all goes well, right before landing, to cushion the blow a little bit, some rockets fire to make it a nice smooth landing. We hope that happens a little later tonight.
Check out this image from the Hubble space telescope. This is the Bug Nebula. And you know what a nebula is, of course. It's a dying star, right? And this one -- temperature there, if you could be there, would be 250,000 degrees Centigrade. So bring your sunblock. It was expelled -- the nebula was expelled about 10,000 years ago, is when it first started nebulizing. As the star dies, it does that. It kind of flames out.
It's about 4,000 light years away, which means billions and billions of miles. And this is a combination of a series of images. But check out this image. This is the image of the day for my money here, Cassini on its way, seven-year journey to Saturn. This is perhaps the most ambitious planetary mission ever attempted by NASA and the Jet Propulsion Lab.
And this image is the last time we're going to be able to probably see a full view of the rings which across are 186,000 miles, but interestingly, only one half mile thick. Cassini will arrive in Saturn's orbit on July 1. And then, at the end of the year, it's going to drop a little probe on to one of Saturn's many moons, Titan, to see what's going on there. Believe it or not, Titan is filled with all kinds of organic material, which might be the same material which existed here on Earth right when life started taking hold. So stay tuned for all that.
Up next on LIVE FROM, a certain reality TV king, entrepreneur, and a man with just a terrible comb-over pops the question. Details as LIVE FROM plays hard to get after this.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
O'BRIEN: All right, checking entertainment headlines on this Thursday, it's all Trump all the time. "The Hollywood Reporter" trumpeting the news the Donald will launch a national radio show in June.
But, wait, there's more, Trump news you could use. It will blow your hair back, for that matter. Maybe he's hoping the third time is the charm in marriage. A spokesman says Trump is planning to marry longtime gal pal Melania Knauss. Hope I did that right, Lisa. Melania Knauss. No date announced. But may we humbly suggest Omarosa be considered as the wedding planner? That would be entertaining.
The Tribeca Film Festival begins this weekend in New York City and it features one of Hollywood's best known directors and his first feature flop. Stanley Kramer's "So This is New York" failed at the box office, but he went on to produce such screen gems as "Guess Who's Coming to Dinner," "The Defiant Ones," and one of my all-time favorites, "It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World."
Karen Kramer is the widow of the legendary Stanley Kramer. She joins us live from Los Angeles to talk about her late husband and the festival and first and foremost, the Donald.
You watched "The Apprentice," didn't you?
KAREN KRAMER, WIDOW OF STANLEY KRAMER: I always watched "The Apprentice." I never would miss it. I'm a big fan of the show. But, first of all, a flop? Stanley Kramer, a flop? I heard that, Miles.
O'BRIEN: I was trying to buffer the flop comment with that, hoping you would just let it go.
KRAMER: I'm going to get that in just a minute.
(CROSSTALK)
O'BRIEN: Well, you know what it is? When a guy, when you're talking about Stanley Kramer, with such tremendous success, it's not that it was flop. It's just that it was more closer to average, right?
KRAMER: No, what it was, was a satire. And, in 1947, when he made this film and it was released in 1948, and it played the Midwest, well, planes didn't take off everyday like they do today to go to New York. So, actually, the Midwesterners just didn't get it.
O'BRIEN: Yes.
KRAMER: But you know, it's like George Kaufman, the critic and of course the great writer. He said, a satire is what opens on Saturday and closes on Sunday. And apparently this did all over the West. But it never really played in New York.
(CROSSTALK)
O'BRIEN: And of course the irony is the fact that it didn't play in Peoria, the story was about Midwesterners coming to New York and not quite getting it.
KRAMER: That's right.
O'BRIEN: As a matter of fact, let's look at this clip here. We're going to have to lose the banner, please, lose the banner, because otherwise we'll miss the whole joke, as this group, this family from the Midwest arrives in New York and talks to a cabby, or tries to.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP, "SO THIS IS NEW YORK")
UNIDENTIFIED ACTOR: And it was then that we had our first contact with a foreign language spoken only in New York.
UNIDENTIFIED ACTOR: Hey, Mac, I can't wait for you all day to choose up sides. Do you want a hack or don't you, hey?
UNIDENTIFIED ACTOR: Beg your pardon?
UNIDENTIFIED ACTOR: What you waiting for, 2 cents (INAUDIBLE) I got to make a buck, too, hey. So make up your mind. Either you do or you ain't.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
O'BRIEN: He's not quite getting it there, is he? I guess that the point. It kind of reminds me of that great scene from "Airplane" when Potsie's mom says, it's OK, I speak jive and translates.
KRAMER: You have to understand, though, in New York, we still have a problem. We have multicultural cab drivers.
O'BRIEN: Yes, indeed.
KRAMER: And you can't understand them. And they don't even know where to take you because they don't even understand the address. So you you're have some of the same problems today as you did back in the '40s.
O'BRIEN: It's kind of universal.
KRAMER: Oh, absolutely. It's too expensive, hard to get a room, always a convention. So all these things kinds of still exist and we always think the grass is greener than in our own backyard.
So they're looking for money and to marry off the family sister. And, of course, they end up back income in Bend, Indiana, where she finally marries the old boyfriend after all.
O'BRIEN: Where she finds true love and so on and so forth.
KRAMER: Exactly. But it's a fun film and it was Stanley's first film. And I would like to say something else, history-wise.
O'BRIEN: Yes.
KRAMER: Those are the days of the producer. Of course, you know today we have producers, there's 19 of us, we don't know what we all do.
But in those days, it was the producer's medium. And everybody makes a contribution to a film, but it's Stanley Kramer's "So This is New York." And of course, he used to say to me, maybe I shouldn't tell them that my very, very first film was "So This is New York" because it kind of failed in a way.
O'BRIEN: Yes.
KRAMER: But he said then, of course, maybe I should tell them because "Mad World" was a big success, and so they thought it wasn't be a total loss that my first film wasn't so bad after all.
Well, Martin Scorsese and Peter Scarlet with Tribeca Films Festival is going to open the day at 6:00 on Saturday with this film. And Martin Scorsese is going to announce it. And I think Stanley would have been very pleased that this film finally made it home to New York.
O'BRIEN: Well, it does belong there. And we hope it does well at the film festival.
KRAMER: Well, I hope so, too.
O'BRIEN: And can folks -- is it on DVD? Can folks get it if they want to see it?
KRAMER: No, it is not on DVD. I'm hoping that they will rerelease it and this may encourage them to do so. But at this time it's not available.
O'BRIEN: All right, for now, if you want to see it on DVD, you've got to find the big W.
(CROSSTALK)
KRAMER: Or come to New York. We welcome to you come and see the film.
O'BRIEN: All right.
KRAMER: If you are in New York, please come and see it on Saturday night at 6:00 at the Pace.
O'BRIEN: All right. And you'll be there, right?
KRAMER: I'll be there. And God bless Robert De Niro and Jane Rosenthal and that whole gang for doing such a creative festival to really put a positive spin on New York. And I think this festival will eventually eclipse Cannes, as well as Sundance. It's been very successful these last two years.
O'BRIEN: Karen Kramer.
KRAMER: So wish us a lot of luck. Thank you.
O'BRIEN: Thanks for your time. Appreciate it.
TO ORDER A VIDEO OF THIS TRANSCRIPT, PLEASE CALL 800-CNN-NEWS OR USE OUR SECURE ONLINE ORDER FORM LOCATED AT www.fdch.com
