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Kerry Speech Focuses on Bush's Broken Promises; Russians Dealing with Beslan Aftermath; Genesis Crashes in Utah Desert

Aired September 08, 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.


KYRA PHILLIPS, CNN ANCHOR: Senator Kerry tells a crowd what he thinks "W" stands for. Is his campaign revived?
MILES O'BRIEN, CNN ANCHOR: Catch parts of a falling star and you put them in your pocket -- or not. NASA's dreams come crashing to earth in the Utah desert.

PHILLIPS: Russia wants to take the fight to the terrorists. We're going to take a closer look at what led to hundreds of deaths in that Russian school.

From the CNN Center in Atlanta...

O'BRIEN: From the CNN Center in Atlanta, I'm Miles O'Brien. Those stories and more are straight ahead. Here's Kyra.

PHILLIPS: All right, we're OK. And I'm Kyra Phillips. It's Wednesday, September 8th. CNN's LIVE FROM starts right now.

O'BRIEN: Well, it is a disaster in the desert. The Genesis capsule carrying solar wind samples crashed, landed on earth just about an hour ago in the Utah Salt Flats. The capsule hit the ground, tumbling as you can see here, traveling at the time about 100 miles an hour. Super slow-mo there giving you a sense of what happened as it impacted with those salt flats.

The parachute -- actually, two of them -- a drogue chute and then a parafoil -- failed to open, apparently. The plan was for a helicopter to snag the chute once it opened. A pair of Hollywood stunt pilots have been hired to pull off that mission. They have tried it several times, but never had a chance. The chute didn't open, the capsule spun wildly, as you see, crashing into the ground, and leaving very little hope for any sort of scientific recovery in this $264 million mission.

Right now, the team is looking very closely at the site. They're very concerned, as we look at that super slow motion of the capsule coming in, traveling at 100 miles an hour. They're concerned that there might be an unexploded mortar round in there, which was designed to put the parachute in motion. It may not have fired, and thus, there you see the impact there in the desert, as the dust comes up frame by frame -- that happening about an hour ago.

The investigation is under way, and a news conference is expected from NASA in an hour's time. We'll, of course, bring it to you live and keep you posted as we get more details on the loss of Genesis as the afternoon rolls on -- Kyra.

PHILLIPS: All right, switching gears a bit, does "K" stand for "kick start?" Well, down in the polls, battered by the Bush camp, John Kerry took his "W" stands for "wrong" message to Cincinnati today, to the very venue where Bush made the case for war in Iraq in 2002.

CNN's Ed Henry on the beat and on the phone with the details -- Ed.

ED HENRY, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Good afternoon, Kyra. That's right, the venue for this speech, the Cincinnati Museum Center at Union Terminal, that was not picked by accident. That's the very same spot where President Bush made the case for war back in October in 2002.

And what Senator Kerry was trying to do here is he was charging that the president did not follow through on the promises made in that speech, in particular the vow to go to war as a last resort, and to only go to war with key allies on board.

And there were two broader themes that Senator Kerry was trying to hit today. The first is there's been a lot of Democratic grumbling that Kerry is getting knocked around. He and John Edwards are not fighting back hard enough, hitting back at the Bush/Cheney ticket. And what aids say is that Kerry was trying to show a more aggressive, in-your-face style, be more hard-hitting with this speech.

And secondly, all week, Kerry has been stressing the domestic agenda. And even today, as he was discussing foreign policy, discussing Iraq, he kept shifting it back to domestic issues. In fact, at one point, he was talking about the cost of the war, and he put it in stark terms.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

SEN. JOHN KERRY (D), PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: We've added more debt under George Bush -- more debt to the national debt of our nation than we added from George Washington to Ronald Reagan. And that threatens social security, and that's what Alan Greenspan told us the other day.

In fact, they're raiding the social security trust fund in order to pay for their mistakes in Iraq.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

HENRY: Now, Senator Kerry was also talking about more than just financial costs. He said that the nation had just passed a tragic milestone with the one thousandth U.S. soldier dying in Iraq yesterday. He also talked politically about, as you mentioned, the letter "W."

He's been saying that all week, that "W" stands for wrong choices, wrong direction, particularly on Iraq, and that these financial costs are coming from the fact that the administration has been so focused on the war that they have left social security, education, and other domestic issues like healthcare, that they've left them in the dust.

Now, the Bush campaign, even before this speech, they were pointing out that two days after Mr. Bush's speech in 2002, John Kerry publicly announced his support for the Iraq War Resolution in Congress. They say that with this speech, John Kerry has flip-flopped yet again. He's now taken, by their count, his eighth position on the war -- Kyra.

PHILLIPS: Ed, I'm curious, for 90 minutes, as we remember, former President Bill Clinton, from his hospital bed, advised John Kerry from this point on, don't even bring up Vietnam. Did Vietnam come up?

HENRY: Vietnam only came up sparingly. At one point, John Kerry was saying that he could, as he often says, wage a better war on terror in general. In general terms, he was saying, based on his service, he knows, John Kerry that is, knows that you have to have a plan to win the peace. And that was what he kept coming back to, is that he feels that the president scored a military victory, but did not have a plan to win the peace.

John Kerry mentioned his own Vietnam service very briefly in that context. But you're right, given that phone conversation with former President Clinton, but also, criticism by a lot of other top Democrats, John Kerry is talking less about Vietnam and focusing much more on the economy, healthcare, and education. Even in the middle of a speech on Iraq, he was talking about the domestic agenda, Kyra.

PHILLIPS: All right, Ed Henry, thanks so much -- Miles.

O'BRIEN: President Bush back in Florida this hour, and he hasn't come empty handed. Before setting out from the White House, he approved $2 billion in emergency aid for victims of Hurricanes Charley and Frances. Intelligence reform is also on the presidential radar screen today, as lawmakers scramble to codify the recommendations of the 9/11 investigators.

In a shift from his earlier position, Mr. Bush now says he supports giving a newly created intelligence tsar full control over the purse strings.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

GEORGE W. BUSH (R), PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: I will be submitting a plan to the Congress that strengthens intelligence reform, strengthens the intelligence services. We believe there ought to be a National Intelligence Director that has full budgetary authority.

We'll talk to members of Congress about how to implement that -- look forward to working with the members to get a bill to my desk as quickly as possible.

(END VIDEO CLIP) O'BRIEN: Bush declined to comment on a campaign trail remark yesterday from Dick Cheney, in which the vice president suggested a John Kerry victory in November might actually increase the risk of a terror attack. The Kerry camp says Cheney crossed the line.

Today, the "Boston Globe" and the Associated Press both running new investigative stories on Mr. Bush's Air National Guard service in the early '70s. Both reports cite new or overlooked documents suggesting Mr. Bush may not have met his obligations.

We'll have the full story, with White House reaction, of course, on "JUDY WOODRUFF'S INSIDE POLITICS." That's at 3:30 Eastern, 12:30 Pacific, right after LIVE FROM, right here on CNN.

PHILLIPS: Other news around the world now -- local police say 17 miners have died in a fire at a Turkish copper mine. The fire apparently started when welding equipment ignited other material in the mine, located about 100 miles north of Ankara. Ten miners were injured, and authorities are still trying to rescue seven others who remain trapped.

Advantage Bobby Fischer. The former chess champ won a major round today in his fight against deportation to the U.S. A Japanese court ruled that he can stay in Japan until a lawsuit challenging deportation order can be held.

And he looks pretty good for a 500-year-old man, doesn't he? Check it out. Michelangelo's masterpiece, "David," marking five centuries of standing around in his birthday suit. Considered a Goliath of Renaissance art, "David" draws more than a million tourists a year to Florence, Italy. Now, earlier this year, restoration took place, and it was painstakingly cleaned -- 17-foot tall statue, some called it a $600,000 sponge bath.

O'BRIEN: It's about time he had a bath. All right, we wanted to let you know that that news conference from NASA that we told you about on this very item here, which is the Genesis capsule, hurtling to earth, crash landing at 100 miles an hour, ending a mission, probably leaving very little science for it -- that news conference is going to be at 2:30 Eastern.

That's a change -- NASA just announcing that. So, that's about an hour and twenty minutes from now, and we'll keep you posted on that one.

Well, they say you shouldn't wake a sleeping giant. Tough talk from Russia's president after terrorists horrify the world (INAUDIBLE) on notice, next.

As President Bush checks out the hurricane aftermath in Florida, we get some personal stories from the frontlines of Hurricane Frances. And back and forth over some bad calls puts a Williams sister, and her funky little outfit -- I don't know if I'd say that to her face, though -- her funky little outfit on the sidelines.

LIVE FROM jumps the net after this. You'll love our commercials. (COMMERCIAL BREAK)

O'BRIEN: Well, if a picture's worth a thousand words, then there are really no words to adequately express the horror of what happened to the hostages in Beslan, Russia.

CNN's Matthew Chance reports the images seen in the video the terrorists apparently shot themselves, and we first showed you yesterday, have added fresh pain and stoked the outrage for survivors and family members.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

MATTHEW CHANCE, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): The chilling images appear to have been shot by the hostage takers in the first hours of the siege in Beslan. The cramped conditions and the looks of sheer terror on the faces of the victims, young and old, is horrifying to watch.

One grandmother turns away when the camera is pointed at her. She's clearly terrified. The children are still dressed in their new school uniforms. It was the first day of class for them. Later, they stripped down to their underwear as the summer heat made temperatures unbearable, and they were denied any water.

Survivors like the school sports teacher says this was pure evil, nothing less, and the people who did it worse than animals.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE (through translator): The taps were broken off, so the only option the children had was to drink their own urine. One boy was bayoneted for asking for a drink. These people were worse than animals.

CHANCE: The videotape seems to have been meant to show the Russian hostage negotiators the high stakes in this school siege. Explosive devices are shown strung from the basketball hoops in the gymnasium, where most of the hostages were being held.

A female militant is shown holding a pistol, and draped in black. Only a narrow slit reveals her humanity. So little of that was shown to the hostages themselves.

(on camera): It's hard to know what's worse -- the thought of what happened inside this devastated school, and so many people losing their lives, or the actual images showing the people suffering. What's clear is that regardless, these latest images are likely to compound the grief and the pain already being felt by this town, and this country.

Matthew Chance, CNN, Beslan, in southern Russia.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

Well, Miles, you join us now at school number one here in Beslan, where, although darkness has fallen, people are still coming out of their homes to pay their respects to the dead, laying floral tributes, also laying bottles of water, because, as we heard in that report, the children who died in the school here behind me were dying of thirst, first of all, before they were killed in the explosions and the gun battles that brought this siege to an end.

There's still a great deal of grief being felt amongst the people of Beslan. It seems that nearly one percent of the population of this town of around 50,000 people, less than 50,000 people, actually died in this terrorist outrage.

And so, there's a great deal of grief that's still being felt, and a great deal of anger as well, not just that their children, the teachers, and their parents have been killed, but also about the way the Russian government has handled this.

Many people are saying it should have been handled much more sensitively, much better than this -- Miles.

O'BRIEN: Matthew, whenever there is a tragedy like this that befalls anyone, one of the first question is: Why me? Have people in Beslan thought much and questioned much why their little town was singled out?

CHANCE: Well, I mean, that is a really good question, because there are so many little towns just like this so close to the breakaway republic of Chechnya, where, of course, these militants came from, allegedly. You know, yes, these towns are sort of on the frontline in southern Russia, you know, when it comes to these sort of Chechen militant outrages that have been committed in succession.

As a matter of fact, over the past several years, there have been several sort of hostage incidents. A hospital was taken over, a school was taken over previously, but this is the first time that it has ended in such a violent and bloody fashion.

In the past, the authorities, certainly when it comes to so many people involved in these hostile school sieges, they have been at pains to try and bring them to a peaceful end. This time, that did not happen, and people are very angry about that here.

O'BRIEN: Matthew, we've been talking an awful lot, when we speak of the casualties, of those who've died, but there are many others who were injured -- in some cases, horribly burned. Do we have any accurate numbers on how many were injured, how many are in very serious condition as we speak?

CHANCE: Well, the last figures we had are from 24 hours ago, which is where the hospitals were saying that just over 400 people are being treated in hospitals, not just here in Beslan, but in the entire region, because the hospitals are very badly supplied. They don't have many available beds. And so, the injured people have been spread out across the region.

Many of the people are injured with gunshot wounds. Many people shot in the back -- that was the main cause of death for these people, the children, the parents, the teachers alike. Other ones, as you say, severely mutilated by the explosions or by the flames that licked through these buildings, causing them terrible burns.

To that end, in order to try and resolve that to some extent, flights from U.S. bases in Europe have come in, delivering special medical equipment and specialist medical teams to give the Russian authorities whatever assistance they need to try and treat those burns victims.

But yes, you're absolutely right, over and above the number of people who have been killed, there are a good number of people who have been injured and maimed by this atrocity here.

O'BRIEN: Matthew Chance, the tragedy seems to compound on each day, the more we hear. Thank you very much for that report -- Kyra.

PHILLIPS: Well, I think it's safe to say that the video of the children taken hostage in Russia outraged the world -- outrage that has renewed a tremendous amount of interest in Russian-Chechen politics. Now, we ask the question, what role does the U.S. play in this conflict, and what effect will it have on the global war on terrorism?

Sara Mendelson is with the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, D.C. She knows the politics all too well. Sara, I'm glad to have you with us.

I want to ask you, first of all, the videotape, when you see those children, how do these killers think that using kids in the mission, whatever mission it is, will come to some sort of political solution, or is that what they're really trying to achieve?

SARAH MENDELSON, SENIOR FELLOW, CSIS: It's very hard to put yourself in the minds of these terrorists. It's not something that we do easily, or that we want to do. And, of course, it's sickening when you look at those pictures. But certainly, the events in Beslan have focused the world's attention on what has gone on in southern Russia for the last 10 years.

It's very striking to me that the only time that the international community speaks about the war in Chechnya is when these events happen. And I worry that in the minds of the terrorists, to the extent that they're thinking in a sort of logical way, that maybe this is part of what their calculation is, that if they do these horrific events, then people focus on it.

PHILLIPS: Well, President Vladimir Putin has come out a number of times now, making a couple of comments I want to get you to react to, one of them being -- there was a quote yesterday that the U.S. government is funding Chechen rebels, is supporting Chechen rebels, and that the U.S. government has offered asylum to one of the main leaders of this rebel movement. What can you tell us about that? Is there any truth to that?

MENDELSON: Not that I know of. I think it's ludicrous to say that the U.S. government is funding Chechen rebels. If he has evidence of that, then he should make it public. I think that sometimes, President Putin says things to silence people, or he will say things that the West wants to hear or his domestic population wants to hear.

And it's hard to figure out what he means by these comments, other than, on the one hand, he wants the West to, I think, write him a blank check, leave them alone, let them do what they want.

On the other hand, I think people are very frustrated outside of Russia, as well as inside of Russia, that the policy course the Kremlin has chosen, especially over the last four years, has been a poor one. It has led to a lot of death and destruction. So we're all sort of sitting back and horrified by what we're seeing, and we're trying to figure out what to do next.

And when the president of Russia says these kinds of things, I think he's partly wanting the U.S. government to completely agree with him and take his side.

PHILLIPS: Well, you say that he mentions a lot of things just to get a reaction. He was also quoted today as saying, "Wherever terrorists are, I'm coming after them." If there are Chechen rebels in the United States -- or does that mean that if there are Chechen rebels in the United States, or there's Chechen rebels somewhere in Russia, no matter where it is, he's going to go all out to track these men and women down.

MENDELSON: Well, in that threat, I take him at his word. I think he's also doing something, though -- he's conflating all Chechens, in some ways. In the case of -- when the United States has granted asylum to Chechens, the U.S. government didn't do it. It's a judicial decision.

So he's both conflating what the U.S. government has done, but then he's also -- he's painting a broad brush and saying the terrorists inside the school are the same as those who are in Great Britain or the United States.

PHILLIPS: So now, there have been mixed reports. We look at this videotape. The attention was drawn to the woman in the black veil. There's been talk about an Arab connection, that some of these militants were Arab mercenaries, that al Qaeda may have trained some of these rebels. Of course, that gets everybody on their toes and very sensitive to this situation.

So do policymakers here in the United States need to step up to the plate and appoint some sort of envoy or ambassador, or an individual to start talking about policy again when it comes to Russia and the Chechen fight?

MENDELSON: I think they do. I think that there needs to be a serious push. It may not be from the United States. But I think it would be a good place if we at least had some senior policymaker who had, as their job, to consult with the European powers and with Russia. This is going to be a very difficult thing.

I think it's important to understand we have not begun to do the kind of work that we need to do in order to reach some kind of -- even suggestion of what should go on. We have, by and large, the last 10 years, turned a blind eye to this. It's only when these events come up that we are forced to look at it. And we need to use this pain and this anguish to focus and do something on this.

PHILLIPS: Well, you can't turn a blind eye to those children in that gymnasium. Sarah Mendelson with CSIS out of Washington, thanks for your time today.

MENDELSON: Thank you.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

O'BRIEN: All right, that was the visual, as they say, as the Genesis capsule returned to earth not in the way scientists had hoped, by any stretch. Parachutes should have opened, helicopters should have snagged that parachute, and by now, some very precious samples of the solar wind -- and, hence, the origins of our solar system -- should have been being handled with tender loving care and on their way to a clean room in Houston.

Instead, there's an accident investigation under way in the Utah desert, as NASA tries to figure out why those parachutes didn't open, and why the scientific mission of Genesis appears to be -- appears to be, I underscore that, we don't know for sure, but appears to be lost.

Joining us on the line right now is Steve Squyres. He is the principal investigator on those two very successful Mars rover missions we've been telling you about since the first of the year. What you may or may not know is, prior to those successes, he's had a string of failures trying to get spacecraft to Mars, and he can attest to the risky nature of this business.

Dr. Squyres, good to have you back with us.

DR. STEVE SQUYRES, MARS SCIENTIST: Hi, Miles. How are you?

O'BRIEN: All right, watching that -- I assume you saw it...

SQUYRES: Yes, I did.

O'BRIEN: I assume it also brought back some bad memories for you.

SQUYRES: Well, yeah, it was rough. I mean, the planetary exploration business is a small game. Everybody knows everybody else. And when something good happens, everybody feels good. When something bad happens, everybody feels bad. So it's been a rough day.

O'BRIEN: First of all, give us a sense if you will -- and I know this isn't your scientific core expertise here -- but give us a sense of the scientific loss here.

SQUYRES: Well, it's too early to say how much of a loss there is. I think it's really premature to speculate on what the scientific loss has been, because we really know almost nothing at this time about the status of the samples inside that container. The science that we're going after with a mission like Genesis is helping to find out what the solar system is made of.

The planets, the asteroids, the stuff of which we are made is all the stuff that came from the solar nebula. And the sun is made of the very same material. And so, by doing a very high precision determination of the composition of the sun, we can do a very good determination of the material from which our solar system was born. That's where the name of the mission comes from, Genesis.

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Aired September 8, 2004 - 13:00   ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
KYRA PHILLIPS, CNN ANCHOR: Senator Kerry tells a crowd what he thinks "W" stands for. Is his campaign revived?
MILES O'BRIEN, CNN ANCHOR: Catch parts of a falling star and you put them in your pocket -- or not. NASA's dreams come crashing to earth in the Utah desert.

PHILLIPS: Russia wants to take the fight to the terrorists. We're going to take a closer look at what led to hundreds of deaths in that Russian school.

From the CNN Center in Atlanta...

O'BRIEN: From the CNN Center in Atlanta, I'm Miles O'Brien. Those stories and more are straight ahead. Here's Kyra.

PHILLIPS: All right, we're OK. And I'm Kyra Phillips. It's Wednesday, September 8th. CNN's LIVE FROM starts right now.

O'BRIEN: Well, it is a disaster in the desert. The Genesis capsule carrying solar wind samples crashed, landed on earth just about an hour ago in the Utah Salt Flats. The capsule hit the ground, tumbling as you can see here, traveling at the time about 100 miles an hour. Super slow-mo there giving you a sense of what happened as it impacted with those salt flats.

The parachute -- actually, two of them -- a drogue chute and then a parafoil -- failed to open, apparently. The plan was for a helicopter to snag the chute once it opened. A pair of Hollywood stunt pilots have been hired to pull off that mission. They have tried it several times, but never had a chance. The chute didn't open, the capsule spun wildly, as you see, crashing into the ground, and leaving very little hope for any sort of scientific recovery in this $264 million mission.

Right now, the team is looking very closely at the site. They're very concerned, as we look at that super slow motion of the capsule coming in, traveling at 100 miles an hour. They're concerned that there might be an unexploded mortar round in there, which was designed to put the parachute in motion. It may not have fired, and thus, there you see the impact there in the desert, as the dust comes up frame by frame -- that happening about an hour ago.

The investigation is under way, and a news conference is expected from NASA in an hour's time. We'll, of course, bring it to you live and keep you posted as we get more details on the loss of Genesis as the afternoon rolls on -- Kyra.

PHILLIPS: All right, switching gears a bit, does "K" stand for "kick start?" Well, down in the polls, battered by the Bush camp, John Kerry took his "W" stands for "wrong" message to Cincinnati today, to the very venue where Bush made the case for war in Iraq in 2002.

CNN's Ed Henry on the beat and on the phone with the details -- Ed.

ED HENRY, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Good afternoon, Kyra. That's right, the venue for this speech, the Cincinnati Museum Center at Union Terminal, that was not picked by accident. That's the very same spot where President Bush made the case for war back in October in 2002.

And what Senator Kerry was trying to do here is he was charging that the president did not follow through on the promises made in that speech, in particular the vow to go to war as a last resort, and to only go to war with key allies on board.

And there were two broader themes that Senator Kerry was trying to hit today. The first is there's been a lot of Democratic grumbling that Kerry is getting knocked around. He and John Edwards are not fighting back hard enough, hitting back at the Bush/Cheney ticket. And what aids say is that Kerry was trying to show a more aggressive, in-your-face style, be more hard-hitting with this speech.

And secondly, all week, Kerry has been stressing the domestic agenda. And even today, as he was discussing foreign policy, discussing Iraq, he kept shifting it back to domestic issues. In fact, at one point, he was talking about the cost of the war, and he put it in stark terms.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

SEN. JOHN KERRY (D), PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: We've added more debt under George Bush -- more debt to the national debt of our nation than we added from George Washington to Ronald Reagan. And that threatens social security, and that's what Alan Greenspan told us the other day.

In fact, they're raiding the social security trust fund in order to pay for their mistakes in Iraq.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

HENRY: Now, Senator Kerry was also talking about more than just financial costs. He said that the nation had just passed a tragic milestone with the one thousandth U.S. soldier dying in Iraq yesterday. He also talked politically about, as you mentioned, the letter "W."

He's been saying that all week, that "W" stands for wrong choices, wrong direction, particularly on Iraq, and that these financial costs are coming from the fact that the administration has been so focused on the war that they have left social security, education, and other domestic issues like healthcare, that they've left them in the dust.

Now, the Bush campaign, even before this speech, they were pointing out that two days after Mr. Bush's speech in 2002, John Kerry publicly announced his support for the Iraq War Resolution in Congress. They say that with this speech, John Kerry has flip-flopped yet again. He's now taken, by their count, his eighth position on the war -- Kyra.

PHILLIPS: Ed, I'm curious, for 90 minutes, as we remember, former President Bill Clinton, from his hospital bed, advised John Kerry from this point on, don't even bring up Vietnam. Did Vietnam come up?

HENRY: Vietnam only came up sparingly. At one point, John Kerry was saying that he could, as he often says, wage a better war on terror in general. In general terms, he was saying, based on his service, he knows, John Kerry that is, knows that you have to have a plan to win the peace. And that was what he kept coming back to, is that he feels that the president scored a military victory, but did not have a plan to win the peace.

John Kerry mentioned his own Vietnam service very briefly in that context. But you're right, given that phone conversation with former President Clinton, but also, criticism by a lot of other top Democrats, John Kerry is talking less about Vietnam and focusing much more on the economy, healthcare, and education. Even in the middle of a speech on Iraq, he was talking about the domestic agenda, Kyra.

PHILLIPS: All right, Ed Henry, thanks so much -- Miles.

O'BRIEN: President Bush back in Florida this hour, and he hasn't come empty handed. Before setting out from the White House, he approved $2 billion in emergency aid for victims of Hurricanes Charley and Frances. Intelligence reform is also on the presidential radar screen today, as lawmakers scramble to codify the recommendations of the 9/11 investigators.

In a shift from his earlier position, Mr. Bush now says he supports giving a newly created intelligence tsar full control over the purse strings.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

GEORGE W. BUSH (R), PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: I will be submitting a plan to the Congress that strengthens intelligence reform, strengthens the intelligence services. We believe there ought to be a National Intelligence Director that has full budgetary authority.

We'll talk to members of Congress about how to implement that -- look forward to working with the members to get a bill to my desk as quickly as possible.

(END VIDEO CLIP) O'BRIEN: Bush declined to comment on a campaign trail remark yesterday from Dick Cheney, in which the vice president suggested a John Kerry victory in November might actually increase the risk of a terror attack. The Kerry camp says Cheney crossed the line.

Today, the "Boston Globe" and the Associated Press both running new investigative stories on Mr. Bush's Air National Guard service in the early '70s. Both reports cite new or overlooked documents suggesting Mr. Bush may not have met his obligations.

We'll have the full story, with White House reaction, of course, on "JUDY WOODRUFF'S INSIDE POLITICS." That's at 3:30 Eastern, 12:30 Pacific, right after LIVE FROM, right here on CNN.

PHILLIPS: Other news around the world now -- local police say 17 miners have died in a fire at a Turkish copper mine. The fire apparently started when welding equipment ignited other material in the mine, located about 100 miles north of Ankara. Ten miners were injured, and authorities are still trying to rescue seven others who remain trapped.

Advantage Bobby Fischer. The former chess champ won a major round today in his fight against deportation to the U.S. A Japanese court ruled that he can stay in Japan until a lawsuit challenging deportation order can be held.

And he looks pretty good for a 500-year-old man, doesn't he? Check it out. Michelangelo's masterpiece, "David," marking five centuries of standing around in his birthday suit. Considered a Goliath of Renaissance art, "David" draws more than a million tourists a year to Florence, Italy. Now, earlier this year, restoration took place, and it was painstakingly cleaned -- 17-foot tall statue, some called it a $600,000 sponge bath.

O'BRIEN: It's about time he had a bath. All right, we wanted to let you know that that news conference from NASA that we told you about on this very item here, which is the Genesis capsule, hurtling to earth, crash landing at 100 miles an hour, ending a mission, probably leaving very little science for it -- that news conference is going to be at 2:30 Eastern.

That's a change -- NASA just announcing that. So, that's about an hour and twenty minutes from now, and we'll keep you posted on that one.

Well, they say you shouldn't wake a sleeping giant. Tough talk from Russia's president after terrorists horrify the world (INAUDIBLE) on notice, next.

As President Bush checks out the hurricane aftermath in Florida, we get some personal stories from the frontlines of Hurricane Frances. And back and forth over some bad calls puts a Williams sister, and her funky little outfit -- I don't know if I'd say that to her face, though -- her funky little outfit on the sidelines.

LIVE FROM jumps the net after this. You'll love our commercials. (COMMERCIAL BREAK)

O'BRIEN: Well, if a picture's worth a thousand words, then there are really no words to adequately express the horror of what happened to the hostages in Beslan, Russia.

CNN's Matthew Chance reports the images seen in the video the terrorists apparently shot themselves, and we first showed you yesterday, have added fresh pain and stoked the outrage for survivors and family members.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

MATTHEW CHANCE, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): The chilling images appear to have been shot by the hostage takers in the first hours of the siege in Beslan. The cramped conditions and the looks of sheer terror on the faces of the victims, young and old, is horrifying to watch.

One grandmother turns away when the camera is pointed at her. She's clearly terrified. The children are still dressed in their new school uniforms. It was the first day of class for them. Later, they stripped down to their underwear as the summer heat made temperatures unbearable, and they were denied any water.

Survivors like the school sports teacher says this was pure evil, nothing less, and the people who did it worse than animals.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE (through translator): The taps were broken off, so the only option the children had was to drink their own urine. One boy was bayoneted for asking for a drink. These people were worse than animals.

CHANCE: The videotape seems to have been meant to show the Russian hostage negotiators the high stakes in this school siege. Explosive devices are shown strung from the basketball hoops in the gymnasium, where most of the hostages were being held.

A female militant is shown holding a pistol, and draped in black. Only a narrow slit reveals her humanity. So little of that was shown to the hostages themselves.

(on camera): It's hard to know what's worse -- the thought of what happened inside this devastated school, and so many people losing their lives, or the actual images showing the people suffering. What's clear is that regardless, these latest images are likely to compound the grief and the pain already being felt by this town, and this country.

Matthew Chance, CNN, Beslan, in southern Russia.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

Well, Miles, you join us now at school number one here in Beslan, where, although darkness has fallen, people are still coming out of their homes to pay their respects to the dead, laying floral tributes, also laying bottles of water, because, as we heard in that report, the children who died in the school here behind me were dying of thirst, first of all, before they were killed in the explosions and the gun battles that brought this siege to an end.

There's still a great deal of grief being felt amongst the people of Beslan. It seems that nearly one percent of the population of this town of around 50,000 people, less than 50,000 people, actually died in this terrorist outrage.

And so, there's a great deal of grief that's still being felt, and a great deal of anger as well, not just that their children, the teachers, and their parents have been killed, but also about the way the Russian government has handled this.

Many people are saying it should have been handled much more sensitively, much better than this -- Miles.

O'BRIEN: Matthew, whenever there is a tragedy like this that befalls anyone, one of the first question is: Why me? Have people in Beslan thought much and questioned much why their little town was singled out?

CHANCE: Well, I mean, that is a really good question, because there are so many little towns just like this so close to the breakaway republic of Chechnya, where, of course, these militants came from, allegedly. You know, yes, these towns are sort of on the frontline in southern Russia, you know, when it comes to these sort of Chechen militant outrages that have been committed in succession.

As a matter of fact, over the past several years, there have been several sort of hostage incidents. A hospital was taken over, a school was taken over previously, but this is the first time that it has ended in such a violent and bloody fashion.

In the past, the authorities, certainly when it comes to so many people involved in these hostile school sieges, they have been at pains to try and bring them to a peaceful end. This time, that did not happen, and people are very angry about that here.

O'BRIEN: Matthew, we've been talking an awful lot, when we speak of the casualties, of those who've died, but there are many others who were injured -- in some cases, horribly burned. Do we have any accurate numbers on how many were injured, how many are in very serious condition as we speak?

CHANCE: Well, the last figures we had are from 24 hours ago, which is where the hospitals were saying that just over 400 people are being treated in hospitals, not just here in Beslan, but in the entire region, because the hospitals are very badly supplied. They don't have many available beds. And so, the injured people have been spread out across the region.

Many of the people are injured with gunshot wounds. Many people shot in the back -- that was the main cause of death for these people, the children, the parents, the teachers alike. Other ones, as you say, severely mutilated by the explosions or by the flames that licked through these buildings, causing them terrible burns.

To that end, in order to try and resolve that to some extent, flights from U.S. bases in Europe have come in, delivering special medical equipment and specialist medical teams to give the Russian authorities whatever assistance they need to try and treat those burns victims.

But yes, you're absolutely right, over and above the number of people who have been killed, there are a good number of people who have been injured and maimed by this atrocity here.

O'BRIEN: Matthew Chance, the tragedy seems to compound on each day, the more we hear. Thank you very much for that report -- Kyra.

PHILLIPS: Well, I think it's safe to say that the video of the children taken hostage in Russia outraged the world -- outrage that has renewed a tremendous amount of interest in Russian-Chechen politics. Now, we ask the question, what role does the U.S. play in this conflict, and what effect will it have on the global war on terrorism?

Sara Mendelson is with the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, D.C. She knows the politics all too well. Sara, I'm glad to have you with us.

I want to ask you, first of all, the videotape, when you see those children, how do these killers think that using kids in the mission, whatever mission it is, will come to some sort of political solution, or is that what they're really trying to achieve?

SARAH MENDELSON, SENIOR FELLOW, CSIS: It's very hard to put yourself in the minds of these terrorists. It's not something that we do easily, or that we want to do. And, of course, it's sickening when you look at those pictures. But certainly, the events in Beslan have focused the world's attention on what has gone on in southern Russia for the last 10 years.

It's very striking to me that the only time that the international community speaks about the war in Chechnya is when these events happen. And I worry that in the minds of the terrorists, to the extent that they're thinking in a sort of logical way, that maybe this is part of what their calculation is, that if they do these horrific events, then people focus on it.

PHILLIPS: Well, President Vladimir Putin has come out a number of times now, making a couple of comments I want to get you to react to, one of them being -- there was a quote yesterday that the U.S. government is funding Chechen rebels, is supporting Chechen rebels, and that the U.S. government has offered asylum to one of the main leaders of this rebel movement. What can you tell us about that? Is there any truth to that?

MENDELSON: Not that I know of. I think it's ludicrous to say that the U.S. government is funding Chechen rebels. If he has evidence of that, then he should make it public. I think that sometimes, President Putin says things to silence people, or he will say things that the West wants to hear or his domestic population wants to hear.

And it's hard to figure out what he means by these comments, other than, on the one hand, he wants the West to, I think, write him a blank check, leave them alone, let them do what they want.

On the other hand, I think people are very frustrated outside of Russia, as well as inside of Russia, that the policy course the Kremlin has chosen, especially over the last four years, has been a poor one. It has led to a lot of death and destruction. So we're all sort of sitting back and horrified by what we're seeing, and we're trying to figure out what to do next.

And when the president of Russia says these kinds of things, I think he's partly wanting the U.S. government to completely agree with him and take his side.

PHILLIPS: Well, you say that he mentions a lot of things just to get a reaction. He was also quoted today as saying, "Wherever terrorists are, I'm coming after them." If there are Chechen rebels in the United States -- or does that mean that if there are Chechen rebels in the United States, or there's Chechen rebels somewhere in Russia, no matter where it is, he's going to go all out to track these men and women down.

MENDELSON: Well, in that threat, I take him at his word. I think he's also doing something, though -- he's conflating all Chechens, in some ways. In the case of -- when the United States has granted asylum to Chechens, the U.S. government didn't do it. It's a judicial decision.

So he's both conflating what the U.S. government has done, but then he's also -- he's painting a broad brush and saying the terrorists inside the school are the same as those who are in Great Britain or the United States.

PHILLIPS: So now, there have been mixed reports. We look at this videotape. The attention was drawn to the woman in the black veil. There's been talk about an Arab connection, that some of these militants were Arab mercenaries, that al Qaeda may have trained some of these rebels. Of course, that gets everybody on their toes and very sensitive to this situation.

So do policymakers here in the United States need to step up to the plate and appoint some sort of envoy or ambassador, or an individual to start talking about policy again when it comes to Russia and the Chechen fight?

MENDELSON: I think they do. I think that there needs to be a serious push. It may not be from the United States. But I think it would be a good place if we at least had some senior policymaker who had, as their job, to consult with the European powers and with Russia. This is going to be a very difficult thing.

I think it's important to understand we have not begun to do the kind of work that we need to do in order to reach some kind of -- even suggestion of what should go on. We have, by and large, the last 10 years, turned a blind eye to this. It's only when these events come up that we are forced to look at it. And we need to use this pain and this anguish to focus and do something on this.

PHILLIPS: Well, you can't turn a blind eye to those children in that gymnasium. Sarah Mendelson with CSIS out of Washington, thanks for your time today.

MENDELSON: Thank you.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

O'BRIEN: All right, that was the visual, as they say, as the Genesis capsule returned to earth not in the way scientists had hoped, by any stretch. Parachutes should have opened, helicopters should have snagged that parachute, and by now, some very precious samples of the solar wind -- and, hence, the origins of our solar system -- should have been being handled with tender loving care and on their way to a clean room in Houston.

Instead, there's an accident investigation under way in the Utah desert, as NASA tries to figure out why those parachutes didn't open, and why the scientific mission of Genesis appears to be -- appears to be, I underscore that, we don't know for sure, but appears to be lost.

Joining us on the line right now is Steve Squyres. He is the principal investigator on those two very successful Mars rover missions we've been telling you about since the first of the year. What you may or may not know is, prior to those successes, he's had a string of failures trying to get spacecraft to Mars, and he can attest to the risky nature of this business.

Dr. Squyres, good to have you back with us.

DR. STEVE SQUYRES, MARS SCIENTIST: Hi, Miles. How are you?

O'BRIEN: All right, watching that -- I assume you saw it...

SQUYRES: Yes, I did.

O'BRIEN: I assume it also brought back some bad memories for you.

SQUYRES: Well, yeah, it was rough. I mean, the planetary exploration business is a small game. Everybody knows everybody else. And when something good happens, everybody feels good. When something bad happens, everybody feels bad. So it's been a rough day.

O'BRIEN: First of all, give us a sense if you will -- and I know this isn't your scientific core expertise here -- but give us a sense of the scientific loss here.

SQUYRES: Well, it's too early to say how much of a loss there is. I think it's really premature to speculate on what the scientific loss has been, because we really know almost nothing at this time about the status of the samples inside that container. The science that we're going after with a mission like Genesis is helping to find out what the solar system is made of.

The planets, the asteroids, the stuff of which we are made is all the stuff that came from the solar nebula. And the sun is made of the very same material. And so, by doing a very high precision determination of the composition of the sun, we can do a very good determination of the material from which our solar system was born. That's where the name of the mission comes from, Genesis.

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