Return to Transcripts main page
Live From...
Orphaned Boy Adopted by Neighbors; World Leaders Hold Conference on Tsunami Relief; Judiciary Committee Grills Attorney General Nominee; Lieberman Proposes Global Tsunami Warning System; Congressional Objection Raised Over Ohio Vote Results
Aired January 06, 2005 - 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, CO-HOST: The children of the tsunami. Where are this boy's parents? We'll take you inside aid workers' efforts to help orphans and families reunite.
MILES O'BRIEN, CO-HOST: The huge disaster prompts a call for a global tsunami warning system. Would it prevent a disaster like this from happening again?
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
SEN. JOE BIDEN (D-DE), JUDICIARY COMMITTEE: I don't care about their judgment. I'm looking at yours.
ALBERTO GONZALES, ATTORNEY GENERAL NOMINEE: Sir, of course I conveyed to the president my own views about what the law requires.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
PHILLIPS: Senate sparks. A memo about torture of Iraqi detainees, comes back to haunt the president's nominee for attorney general.
O'BRIEN: And case overturned. A major development in the case of a Texas mother convicted of drowning her own children.
From the CNN Center in Atlanta, I'm Miles O'Brien.
PHILLIPS: And I'm Kyra Phillips. CNN's LIVE FROM starts right now.
O'BRIEN: Lost, alone, UNICEF estimates thousands of the youngest tsunami survivors fall into some or all of those categories. Many lost everything and everyone they ever knew.
Now come efforts to keep those kids from being victimized again by illness, deprivation or sheer evil. It's CNN focus in a prime time special tonight, and we'll explore the children's plight and prospects in this hour of LIVE FROM, as well.
A world away, really just a few hundred miles, the red carpets of Jakarta welcome regional leaders and other VIPs who welcomed the massive outpouring of aid.
More than $3.5 million has now been pledged by governments alone, but Kofi Annan says the region needs almost a billion of that in cash right now. Annan says the priority is preventing, in his words, a second wave of death, which could be as bad as the first.
The tsunamis claimed more than is 155,000 lives, and the State Department now says 17 of those, at a minimum, were Americans. Eighteen other Americans are now presumed dead.
And CNN remains uniquely positioned to bring you every development in this huge story: 19 correspondents and anchors all throughout the Asian subcontinent.
PHILLIPS: Banning travel, taking names: two ways Indonesian officials and U.N. volunteers are trying to reunite families, at best protect displaced children from predators or illicit adoptions, at least.
CNN's Atika Shubert reports from Aceh province.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
ATIKA SHUBERT, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Children play amid the wreckage while a government teams picks its way through. Their mission, to identify children whose parents have gone missing in the disaster.
Together with United Nations Children's Fund, or UNICEF, the government is trying to register tens of thousands of displaced children in the hope they can be reunited with family.
ANANDA MELVILLE, UNICEF: It's to try to prevent not only the issue of trafficking of children, but also to prevent very well- meaning people taking the children and putting them in institutions in other countries or in other parts of Indonesia where -- and without -- and later it could be very hard to find them.
SHUBERT: In each camp, the faces of the missing are plastered everywhere, most of them, children. Parents line up at UNICEF, clutching pictures of their sons and daughters.
(on camera) In this camp, there are makeshift shelters and there are makeshift families. In these two tents, a hobbled together community of neighbors who have lost their homes, mothers who have lost their children, and children who have lost their parents.
(voice-over) Twelve-year-old Igbal was registered with UNICEF by Khaidir Stamsul. They seem like father and son. But it was only by chance that Igbal was away from his family, playing near Khaidir's home when the tsunami struck. It saved Igbal's life, but his family is gone. Khaidir has taken him in.
"We're his parents as long as he's in this camp," he tells us. "We don't allow him to be left alone in silence, and my kids like him. Honestly, I couldn't give him away now even if someone wanted to adopt him."
While other children play, Igbal seems pensive. He says he wants to be a soldier when he grows up, not a doctor, as Khaidir suggests. The reason is understandable.
"I don't want to do that. I'm afraid of the ghosts from all of those dead bodies," he says.
Despite their smiling faces, the ghosts that will surely haunt these children for years to come.
Atika Shubert, CNN, Banda Aceh, Indonesia.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
PHILLIPS: And don't forget CNN's prime time special, "SAVING THE CHILDREN," airs at 10 p.m. Eastern, 7 Pacific. You can find the best of our coverage 24-7, of course, on CNN.com/tsunami.
O'BRIEN: Back in Jakarta, by necessity, decision makers focused today on the big picture and as always, of course, the money. CNN's John King is there.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
JOHN KING, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Sri Lanka to one side, the International Monetary Fund to the other, the United States in the middle and in the leadership role as the world responds to the tsunami disaster.
Set aside, at least for the moment, what has become standard fare at national gathering, criticisms about U.S. policy in Iraq and complaints that, as likeable a figure as Colin Powell may be, his boss seems to many in the world, to considers multilateralism a dirty word.
COLIN POWELL, SECRETARY OF STATE: We have not had one single discussion about Iraq. This has been the tsunami.
KING: All tsunami and, at least so far, considerable praise for the front line U.S. role in the response. A commitment of $350 million to the relief effort. And not counted in that, a U.S. military contribution that includes war ships launching helicopters to deliver desperately needed food, water and medicine.
Consider this from the United Nations official who initially suggested the United States and other wealthy nations were being stingy.
JAN EGELAND, UNITED NATIONS: And we're very, very happy.
KING: U.S. military personnel carrying sick children in a country with the world's largest Muslim population, and former President Bush helping raise money he hopes does more than just bring aid to tsunami survivors.
GEORGE H.W. BUSH, FORMER PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: I am that in convinced in the Muslim world, for example, they will see that we have a heart and that we don't discriminate because of somebody's religion.
KING: Snapshots of America to at least for a moment supercede a much more controversial image.
Anti-American protests are hardly uncommon in Indonesia. Mr. Powell, in fact, is staying in a hotel bombed 17 months ago by terrorists believed to be targeting it because of its American affiliation.
Still for all the smiles, the U.S. role in tsunami relief has not been controversy free. A top U.S. relief official angered Paris by saying the French traditionally are not major players in humanitarian relief efforts.
And some at the United Nations saw an Iraq-style disagreement brewing when the White House announced it was forming a coalition of its own to lead a tsunami relief effort.
But Secretary Powell on Thursday announced that so-called core group is folding. He says it got the aid pipeline up and running but that the United Nations is now ready to take the lead.
(on camera) Others suggested it was proof the group was a mistake to begin with, but that by disbanding it the Bush White House has now left the United Nations with no one else to blame if the relief effort falters.
John King, CNN, Jakarta, Indonesia.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
O'BRIEN: Visiting Sri Lanka today, the leader of the U.S. Senate sees a need for long-term investment, not just short-term aid. Majority leader -- medical doctor as well -- Bill Frist says the immediate needs are daunting but the shattered economies and infrastructure cannot be ignored.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
SEN. BILL FRIST (R-TN), MAJORITY LEADER: We will be looking at ways that we can participate in the longer term to help the people of Sri Lanka who have been hurt, who have -- will have long-term psychological scars, and in terms of that long-term reconstruction, we will be looking at things of economic development, return to jobs and the like.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
O'BRIEN: Frist says he's relieved there haven't been widespread cases of cholera or diarrhea just yet.
PHILLIPS: On Capitol Hill today, the sometimes torturous process of confirming a cabinet nominee centers on, largely, torture. It's the highly fraught hearing on President Bush's choice for second term attorney general.
CNN's Ed Henry fills us in. Hi, Ed.
ED HENRY, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Good afternoon, Kyra. That's right, Judge Gonzales has been nominated to be the 80th attorney general in the nation's history, the first Hispanic attorney general ever.
There's a break right now in the action. They're coming back at 2 p.m. Eastern Time after -- after lunch.
But most of the morning has shown a lot of Democrats really grilling Alberto Gonzales, zeroing in on his time as White House counsel. They're concerned about memos either written or approved by Judge Gonzales dealing with the issue of torture and the handling of prisoners in the war on terror.
And Democrats are raising questions whether any of these memos and the interpretation of policy, whether or not that opened the door to abuses at prisons like Abu Ghraib in Iraq.
Here's an exchange between Democrat Senator Pat Leahy and Judge Gonzales.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
SEN. PATRICK LEAHY (D-VT), JUDICIARY COMMITTEE: As attorney general would you believe the president has the authority to exercise a commander in chief override and immunize acts of torture?
ALBERTO GONZALES, ATTORNEY GENERAL NOMINEE: First of all, sir, the president has said we are not going to engage in torture under any circumstances.
And so you're asking me to ask -- to answer a hypothetical that is never going to occur. This president has said we're not going to engage in torture under any circumstances. And therefore, that portion of the opinion was unnecessary and was the reason that we asked that that portion be withdrawn.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
HENRY: Now Democrats insist that they're not beating up on Judge Gonzales. They're just trying to ask what they perceive to be fair questions about what the administration policy is on torture, on the handling of prisoners in the war on terror.
Here's Democratic Senator Joe Biden.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
SEN. JOE BIDEN (D-DE), JUDICIARY COMMITTEE: This is not about your integrity. This is not a witch-hunt. This is about your judgment. That's all we're trying to do. And so when I get to ask my questions, I hope you'll be candid about it, because -- not that it's relevant -- I like you. I like you. You're a real -- you're the real deal.
(END VIDEO CLIP) HENRY: And Republicans are saying that they believe Democrats overall are just trying to politicize the issue. They're using this confirmation hearing to go after Judge Gonzales and go after the administration through Judge Gonzales.
And when all is said and done, even Democrats are acknowledging, as you heard Joe Biden, there, they tend to like Gonzales. And at the end of the day most of the Democrats, even on this committee, may end up supporting his nomination. They just want to answer some tough questions. But when all is said and done, he's going to be confirmed -- Kyra.
PHILLIPS: All right. Ed Henry on Capitol Hill, thanks so much -- Miles.
O'BRIEN: The other pressing business for the brand new Congress today: counting votes from November 2. Live pictures now as we look at the House of Representatives. The vice president presiding. To his left, the speaker of the house, Denny Hastert.
You may think the 2004 election is old news. Mostly you're right. But today brings the formal tally of electoral votes on Capitol Hill.
This time it's not a mere formality. A few House Democrats and a sole Democratic senator are challenging the votes from Ohio, where irregularities led to a recount that the president won by more than 100,000 votes.
The challenge means both chambers will have to hold a two hours of debate. But with Republicans in firm control there is a chance that is precisely zero that the outcome will change.
John Kerry isn't even in town today. He's in Iraq thanking G.I.'s for their service there.
PHILLIPS: Straight ahead, a court throws out the conviction of a Texas mother on charges she murdered her children. What's the next move in the Andrea Yates case? We'll talk about it.
A call for a worldwide warning system for tsunamis. Ahead, how a it might work to prevent a future disaster.
DANIEL SIEBERG, CNN CORRESPONDENT: I'm technology correspondent Daniel Sieberg. Here at the consumer electronics show there are a lot of phones, but the ones we're going to be talking about are pretty smart. I think it belongs to Mensa. We'll have that here live from Las Vegas as CNN's LIVE FROM continues.
ANNOUNCER: You're watching LIVE FROM on CNN, the most trusted name in news.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
(WEATHER REPORT)
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
PHILLIPS: The enormous death total from the tsunami disaster could have been much lower, critics say, if there had been a system in place to warn them that danger was on the way.
Well, today Senator Joe Lieberman proposed legislation to create a global early warning system that could prevent a repeat of that disaster. Lieberman says the benefit of a warning system could certainly outweigh the cost.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
SEN. JOE LIEBERMAN (D), CONNECTICUT: Of course, the costs are remarkably small. The cost of 40 to 60 sensors, which the experts at NOAA estimate would be required to establish the global network, we're talking about is around $10 million.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
O'BRIEN: Now, scientists and engineers will tell you there are no technological hurdles to installing just such a system, a global tsunami warning system, but there are some concerns about the best way to build it and, more importantly, the best way to safely and effectively get the word out that something like this, you see here, is coming, is bearing down on a populated place.
For more on how a tsunami propagates and spreads out and how that knowledge can lead to better warning systems, we're joined on the line now by Erland Rasmussen, who is a tsunami expert and a software engineer at an outfit called DHI Water and Environment from Denmark. He joins us on the line from there.
Erland, good to have you with us.
ERLAND RASMUSSEN, TSUNAMI EXPERT: Thank you, Miles.
O'BRIEN: I want to show some people some of these animations which you've developed at DHI. Let's roll the first one, which shows a big picture of the Indian Ocean and just how this particular tsunami propagated. Red is where the water is high; deep blue where there's sort of a trough.
And as you watch that propagation of those waves, you clearly see the two impact points. There's Phuket up in there. This is the Aceh province that we've been talking about. And of course, that's the island nation of Sri Lanka.
You see, first of all, how quickly it reaches those places to the eastern part of the Indian Ocean and how much time in Sri Lanka for word to get out. It took at least a couple of hours, didn't it?
RASMUSSEN: Yes, that's correct.
O'BRIEN: What have you been able to learn by looking at this, using this U.S. Geological Survey data, as you look at the way the waves propagated out? RASMUSSEN: What we did was basically we took out something from (ph) our global model that we were running and then we put in the information that we got from USGS. And that would basically tell us how the earth move is, and how that impacts the surface elevation. And then the model itself which basically propagated the tsunami waves towards the coastline.
O'BRIEN: All right. And I'm trying to get them to put the next animation up if we can do that. And we have a closer view now. This shows specifically what happened in Phuket. That -- this area right here is Phuket. And as you see that red come in, that's the peak of the waves. How high were those peaks, roughly?
RASMUSSEN: A couple of meters roughly. But it builds up when it approaches the shallow areas. And then we get what we call a shoaling effect. And the interesting part here is actually to see how the tsunami wave hits the west coast of Phuket, first, and then it's spinning around the Phuket Island.
O'BRIEN: This is the interesting thing here. On the east side you would think it would be protected and you get this ripple effect. And that becomes even more evident as we look at the Sri Lankan close up, which is the next animation we'd like to play for folks.
As we look at Sri Lanka, take a look what happens as this red high wave several meters high comes in, takes some time for it to get there. And as it comes in, what you see behind it on the west coast of Sri Lanka, is rather dramatic.
Here comes the first kind of ripple waves. The larger waves are coming in, and what happens on the backside is the waves kind of wrap around. What is exactly happening that causes that to occur?
RASMUSSEN: That's the refraction effect that you get when we're talking about wave modeling here. So basically a wave that's hitting an island like that, will bend around the island and then meet on the other side.
O'BRIEN: Well, and so what you get is you get a lot of damage on what a sailor would call the leeward side of the island. If you were white water rafter, you'd call it a hydraulic, if you will.
The damage can be just as severe, though, even though you would think it would be protected.
RASMUSSEN: Yes, it can. You can get -- it depends also on the local symmetry and so forth, because that can enhance the wave on the island.
O'BRIEN: All right. So final thought here, a global tsunami warning system. I know there's a lot of thought about putting buoys out. You would suggest it can be done using simply computer modeling. In other words, identify locations of earthquakes, which were -- we have sensors for already, and just using computers to predict these kinds of waves. RASMUSSEN: Yes. That's correct. What I'm suggesting is that you build up your database and then you do these scenarios beforehand. And basically, once you have an earthquake somewhere, you can then look up in the database and from that predict where the tsunami wave will hit the coastlines, and also what kind of lead time you have for the evacuation of these people.
O'BRIEN: All right. So maybe computer animations, maybe some buoys in the see, maybe a combination of both.
Erland Rasmussen, good work helping us visualize and understand the tremendous power of these tsunamis. We appreciate you joining us from Denmark.
RASMUSSEN: You're welcome.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
PHILLIPS (voice-over): Next on LIVE FROM, searching for the missing victims of the tsunami disaster. We're live from the U.S. State Department with more on the efforts to find Americans unaccounted for.
Later on LIVE FROM...
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: For me personally, it's really walking the walk and walking the talk.
PHILLIPS: One man's journey from his job as a financial consultant in New Hampshire to a tent hospital in Indonesia.
Tomorrow on LIVE FROM, Baghdad and Mosul prepare for the Iraq elections, but so do Nashville and Detroit. Find out why tomorrow.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
PHILLIPS: Live pictures now from our nation's capitol. What you're seeing here from the floor, Vice President Dick Cheney presiding, a group of House Democrats are planning to challenge the Ohio electoral votes. It's a story we've been talking about throughout the day.
Right now this -- the meeting, this mandated session taking place to count the electoral votes is taking place. They're reading off the various states. We're awaiting to hear the state Ohio, assuming that we're going to hear a number of Democrats come forward and protest, citing massive irregularities on election day.
Let's listen in.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: A member of the House of Representatives and a United States senator object to the counting of the electoral votes of the state of Ohio on the ground they were not under all of the known circumstances regularly given, signed Stephanie Tubbs Jones, state of Ohio, Barbara Boxer, state of California.
DICK CHENEY, VICE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: Are there further objections to the certificate from the state of Ohio? Sorry.
Chair hears none. The two houses will withdraw from the joint session. Each house will deliberate separately on the pending objection and report its decision back to the joint session. The Senate will now retire to its chamber.
PHILLIPS: All right. House Democrats involved in this year's protest worked for weeks to enlist the support of Senator Boxer. That's why you heard her name announced there as it was -- as part of the group when Democrats came forward to challenge the Ohio electoral vote.
Joe Johns monitoring this.
I guess, Joe, we were expecting to hear a little bit more of a ruckus.
JOE JOHNS, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Well, perhaps. Of course, this is something that really hasn't happened here on Capitol Hill since the late 1800s.
This is an objection by Congresswoman Stephanie Tubbs Jones of Ohio and Senator Barbara Boxer of California. There's a public law that indicates in the event of an objection, which has to be in writing, submitted at the time the ballot from the particular state in question is opened, both sides of the House and Senate will retire to their separate chambers, debate the issue of the objection for up to two hours, and then presumably dispose of it and come back and continue with the counting.
This, of course, is something that both Boggs -- I'm sorry, Boxer and Stephanie Tubbs Jones say is simply a protest to try to draw attention to questions surrounding the election in Ohio.
There have been a number of questions raised, particularly by House judiciary ranking member John Conyers, who's raised questions about the number of ballot machines that were available, the exceptionally long lines for voting in Ohio, as well as rulings by the secretary of state related to the election in Ohio, all of which, Democrats say, raise questions about the vote in that state.
No one I've heard yet insofar has suggested they think President Bush did not, in fact, win Ohio by a fairly substantial sum of over 100,000 votes.
Nonetheless, they want to raise attention to this. They are also doing this, in part, because four years ago there were a number of House members, particularly members of the Congressional Black Caucus, who wanted someone on the Senate side to raise the objection so this issue could be debated. And they were not able to find a single senator to do that, partly because Al Gore asked senators not to do it. That also was an issue where a number of media really, a lot of people said, underreported the story. All of this, of course, came out in the movie "Fahrenheit 9/11," and that is something now some senators suggest they may have been a little bit ashamed of, seeing themselves on the big screen and not doing anything.
Back to you, Kyra.
PHILLIPS: Joe, we've got to go to break, but just real quickly, because viewers might hear recount, electoral vote, Ohio, irregularities, and think oh, my gosh, are we going to have a recount? And could this change the outcome of the election?
And you are saying, plain and simple, this is just a protest?
JOHNS: This is just a protest. No one really believes there's any opportunity at all to overturn the election. They're trying to draw attention to this issue, also to get people in the media talking about it, because there are some people say Ohio is an important issue.
PHILLIPS: Got you. Joe Johns, live from the Hill. Thanks so much.
We're going to take a quick break. Business news right after this.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
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 January 6, 2005 - 13:00 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
KYRA PHILLIPS, CO-HOST: The children of the tsunami. Where are this boy's parents? We'll take you inside aid workers' efforts to help orphans and families reunite.
MILES O'BRIEN, CO-HOST: The huge disaster prompts a call for a global tsunami warning system. Would it prevent a disaster like this from happening again?
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
SEN. JOE BIDEN (D-DE), JUDICIARY COMMITTEE: I don't care about their judgment. I'm looking at yours.
ALBERTO GONZALES, ATTORNEY GENERAL NOMINEE: Sir, of course I conveyed to the president my own views about what the law requires.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
PHILLIPS: Senate sparks. A memo about torture of Iraqi detainees, comes back to haunt the president's nominee for attorney general.
O'BRIEN: And case overturned. A major development in the case of a Texas mother convicted of drowning her own children.
From the CNN Center in Atlanta, I'm Miles O'Brien.
PHILLIPS: And I'm Kyra Phillips. CNN's LIVE FROM starts right now.
O'BRIEN: Lost, alone, UNICEF estimates thousands of the youngest tsunami survivors fall into some or all of those categories. Many lost everything and everyone they ever knew.
Now come efforts to keep those kids from being victimized again by illness, deprivation or sheer evil. It's CNN focus in a prime time special tonight, and we'll explore the children's plight and prospects in this hour of LIVE FROM, as well.
A world away, really just a few hundred miles, the red carpets of Jakarta welcome regional leaders and other VIPs who welcomed the massive outpouring of aid.
More than $3.5 million has now been pledged by governments alone, but Kofi Annan says the region needs almost a billion of that in cash right now. Annan says the priority is preventing, in his words, a second wave of death, which could be as bad as the first.
The tsunamis claimed more than is 155,000 lives, and the State Department now says 17 of those, at a minimum, were Americans. Eighteen other Americans are now presumed dead.
And CNN remains uniquely positioned to bring you every development in this huge story: 19 correspondents and anchors all throughout the Asian subcontinent.
PHILLIPS: Banning travel, taking names: two ways Indonesian officials and U.N. volunteers are trying to reunite families, at best protect displaced children from predators or illicit adoptions, at least.
CNN's Atika Shubert reports from Aceh province.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
ATIKA SHUBERT, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Children play amid the wreckage while a government teams picks its way through. Their mission, to identify children whose parents have gone missing in the disaster.
Together with United Nations Children's Fund, or UNICEF, the government is trying to register tens of thousands of displaced children in the hope they can be reunited with family.
ANANDA MELVILLE, UNICEF: It's to try to prevent not only the issue of trafficking of children, but also to prevent very well- meaning people taking the children and putting them in institutions in other countries or in other parts of Indonesia where -- and without -- and later it could be very hard to find them.
SHUBERT: In each camp, the faces of the missing are plastered everywhere, most of them, children. Parents line up at UNICEF, clutching pictures of their sons and daughters.
(on camera) In this camp, there are makeshift shelters and there are makeshift families. In these two tents, a hobbled together community of neighbors who have lost their homes, mothers who have lost their children, and children who have lost their parents.
(voice-over) Twelve-year-old Igbal was registered with UNICEF by Khaidir Stamsul. They seem like father and son. But it was only by chance that Igbal was away from his family, playing near Khaidir's home when the tsunami struck. It saved Igbal's life, but his family is gone. Khaidir has taken him in.
"We're his parents as long as he's in this camp," he tells us. "We don't allow him to be left alone in silence, and my kids like him. Honestly, I couldn't give him away now even if someone wanted to adopt him."
While other children play, Igbal seems pensive. He says he wants to be a soldier when he grows up, not a doctor, as Khaidir suggests. The reason is understandable.
"I don't want to do that. I'm afraid of the ghosts from all of those dead bodies," he says.
Despite their smiling faces, the ghosts that will surely haunt these children for years to come.
Atika Shubert, CNN, Banda Aceh, Indonesia.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
PHILLIPS: And don't forget CNN's prime time special, "SAVING THE CHILDREN," airs at 10 p.m. Eastern, 7 Pacific. You can find the best of our coverage 24-7, of course, on CNN.com/tsunami.
O'BRIEN: Back in Jakarta, by necessity, decision makers focused today on the big picture and as always, of course, the money. CNN's John King is there.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
JOHN KING, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Sri Lanka to one side, the International Monetary Fund to the other, the United States in the middle and in the leadership role as the world responds to the tsunami disaster.
Set aside, at least for the moment, what has become standard fare at national gathering, criticisms about U.S. policy in Iraq and complaints that, as likeable a figure as Colin Powell may be, his boss seems to many in the world, to considers multilateralism a dirty word.
COLIN POWELL, SECRETARY OF STATE: We have not had one single discussion about Iraq. This has been the tsunami.
KING: All tsunami and, at least so far, considerable praise for the front line U.S. role in the response. A commitment of $350 million to the relief effort. And not counted in that, a U.S. military contribution that includes war ships launching helicopters to deliver desperately needed food, water and medicine.
Consider this from the United Nations official who initially suggested the United States and other wealthy nations were being stingy.
JAN EGELAND, UNITED NATIONS: And we're very, very happy.
KING: U.S. military personnel carrying sick children in a country with the world's largest Muslim population, and former President Bush helping raise money he hopes does more than just bring aid to tsunami survivors.
GEORGE H.W. BUSH, FORMER PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: I am that in convinced in the Muslim world, for example, they will see that we have a heart and that we don't discriminate because of somebody's religion.
KING: Snapshots of America to at least for a moment supercede a much more controversial image.
Anti-American protests are hardly uncommon in Indonesia. Mr. Powell, in fact, is staying in a hotel bombed 17 months ago by terrorists believed to be targeting it because of its American affiliation.
Still for all the smiles, the U.S. role in tsunami relief has not been controversy free. A top U.S. relief official angered Paris by saying the French traditionally are not major players in humanitarian relief efforts.
And some at the United Nations saw an Iraq-style disagreement brewing when the White House announced it was forming a coalition of its own to lead a tsunami relief effort.
But Secretary Powell on Thursday announced that so-called core group is folding. He says it got the aid pipeline up and running but that the United Nations is now ready to take the lead.
(on camera) Others suggested it was proof the group was a mistake to begin with, but that by disbanding it the Bush White House has now left the United Nations with no one else to blame if the relief effort falters.
John King, CNN, Jakarta, Indonesia.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
O'BRIEN: Visiting Sri Lanka today, the leader of the U.S. Senate sees a need for long-term investment, not just short-term aid. Majority leader -- medical doctor as well -- Bill Frist says the immediate needs are daunting but the shattered economies and infrastructure cannot be ignored.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
SEN. BILL FRIST (R-TN), MAJORITY LEADER: We will be looking at ways that we can participate in the longer term to help the people of Sri Lanka who have been hurt, who have -- will have long-term psychological scars, and in terms of that long-term reconstruction, we will be looking at things of economic development, return to jobs and the like.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
O'BRIEN: Frist says he's relieved there haven't been widespread cases of cholera or diarrhea just yet.
PHILLIPS: On Capitol Hill today, the sometimes torturous process of confirming a cabinet nominee centers on, largely, torture. It's the highly fraught hearing on President Bush's choice for second term attorney general.
CNN's Ed Henry fills us in. Hi, Ed.
ED HENRY, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Good afternoon, Kyra. That's right, Judge Gonzales has been nominated to be the 80th attorney general in the nation's history, the first Hispanic attorney general ever.
There's a break right now in the action. They're coming back at 2 p.m. Eastern Time after -- after lunch.
But most of the morning has shown a lot of Democrats really grilling Alberto Gonzales, zeroing in on his time as White House counsel. They're concerned about memos either written or approved by Judge Gonzales dealing with the issue of torture and the handling of prisoners in the war on terror.
And Democrats are raising questions whether any of these memos and the interpretation of policy, whether or not that opened the door to abuses at prisons like Abu Ghraib in Iraq.
Here's an exchange between Democrat Senator Pat Leahy and Judge Gonzales.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
SEN. PATRICK LEAHY (D-VT), JUDICIARY COMMITTEE: As attorney general would you believe the president has the authority to exercise a commander in chief override and immunize acts of torture?
ALBERTO GONZALES, ATTORNEY GENERAL NOMINEE: First of all, sir, the president has said we are not going to engage in torture under any circumstances.
And so you're asking me to ask -- to answer a hypothetical that is never going to occur. This president has said we're not going to engage in torture under any circumstances. And therefore, that portion of the opinion was unnecessary and was the reason that we asked that that portion be withdrawn.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
HENRY: Now Democrats insist that they're not beating up on Judge Gonzales. They're just trying to ask what they perceive to be fair questions about what the administration policy is on torture, on the handling of prisoners in the war on terror.
Here's Democratic Senator Joe Biden.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
SEN. JOE BIDEN (D-DE), JUDICIARY COMMITTEE: This is not about your integrity. This is not a witch-hunt. This is about your judgment. That's all we're trying to do. And so when I get to ask my questions, I hope you'll be candid about it, because -- not that it's relevant -- I like you. I like you. You're a real -- you're the real deal.
(END VIDEO CLIP) HENRY: And Republicans are saying that they believe Democrats overall are just trying to politicize the issue. They're using this confirmation hearing to go after Judge Gonzales and go after the administration through Judge Gonzales.
And when all is said and done, even Democrats are acknowledging, as you heard Joe Biden, there, they tend to like Gonzales. And at the end of the day most of the Democrats, even on this committee, may end up supporting his nomination. They just want to answer some tough questions. But when all is said and done, he's going to be confirmed -- Kyra.
PHILLIPS: All right. Ed Henry on Capitol Hill, thanks so much -- Miles.
O'BRIEN: The other pressing business for the brand new Congress today: counting votes from November 2. Live pictures now as we look at the House of Representatives. The vice president presiding. To his left, the speaker of the house, Denny Hastert.
You may think the 2004 election is old news. Mostly you're right. But today brings the formal tally of electoral votes on Capitol Hill.
This time it's not a mere formality. A few House Democrats and a sole Democratic senator are challenging the votes from Ohio, where irregularities led to a recount that the president won by more than 100,000 votes.
The challenge means both chambers will have to hold a two hours of debate. But with Republicans in firm control there is a chance that is precisely zero that the outcome will change.
John Kerry isn't even in town today. He's in Iraq thanking G.I.'s for their service there.
PHILLIPS: Straight ahead, a court throws out the conviction of a Texas mother on charges she murdered her children. What's the next move in the Andrea Yates case? We'll talk about it.
A call for a worldwide warning system for tsunamis. Ahead, how a it might work to prevent a future disaster.
DANIEL SIEBERG, CNN CORRESPONDENT: I'm technology correspondent Daniel Sieberg. Here at the consumer electronics show there are a lot of phones, but the ones we're going to be talking about are pretty smart. I think it belongs to Mensa. We'll have that here live from Las Vegas as CNN's LIVE FROM continues.
ANNOUNCER: You're watching LIVE FROM on CNN, the most trusted name in news.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
(WEATHER REPORT)
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
PHILLIPS: The enormous death total from the tsunami disaster could have been much lower, critics say, if there had been a system in place to warn them that danger was on the way.
Well, today Senator Joe Lieberman proposed legislation to create a global early warning system that could prevent a repeat of that disaster. Lieberman says the benefit of a warning system could certainly outweigh the cost.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
SEN. JOE LIEBERMAN (D), CONNECTICUT: Of course, the costs are remarkably small. The cost of 40 to 60 sensors, which the experts at NOAA estimate would be required to establish the global network, we're talking about is around $10 million.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
O'BRIEN: Now, scientists and engineers will tell you there are no technological hurdles to installing just such a system, a global tsunami warning system, but there are some concerns about the best way to build it and, more importantly, the best way to safely and effectively get the word out that something like this, you see here, is coming, is bearing down on a populated place.
For more on how a tsunami propagates and spreads out and how that knowledge can lead to better warning systems, we're joined on the line now by Erland Rasmussen, who is a tsunami expert and a software engineer at an outfit called DHI Water and Environment from Denmark. He joins us on the line from there.
Erland, good to have you with us.
ERLAND RASMUSSEN, TSUNAMI EXPERT: Thank you, Miles.
O'BRIEN: I want to show some people some of these animations which you've developed at DHI. Let's roll the first one, which shows a big picture of the Indian Ocean and just how this particular tsunami propagated. Red is where the water is high; deep blue where there's sort of a trough.
And as you watch that propagation of those waves, you clearly see the two impact points. There's Phuket up in there. This is the Aceh province that we've been talking about. And of course, that's the island nation of Sri Lanka.
You see, first of all, how quickly it reaches those places to the eastern part of the Indian Ocean and how much time in Sri Lanka for word to get out. It took at least a couple of hours, didn't it?
RASMUSSEN: Yes, that's correct.
O'BRIEN: What have you been able to learn by looking at this, using this U.S. Geological Survey data, as you look at the way the waves propagated out? RASMUSSEN: What we did was basically we took out something from (ph) our global model that we were running and then we put in the information that we got from USGS. And that would basically tell us how the earth move is, and how that impacts the surface elevation. And then the model itself which basically propagated the tsunami waves towards the coastline.
O'BRIEN: All right. And I'm trying to get them to put the next animation up if we can do that. And we have a closer view now. This shows specifically what happened in Phuket. That -- this area right here is Phuket. And as you see that red come in, that's the peak of the waves. How high were those peaks, roughly?
RASMUSSEN: A couple of meters roughly. But it builds up when it approaches the shallow areas. And then we get what we call a shoaling effect. And the interesting part here is actually to see how the tsunami wave hits the west coast of Phuket, first, and then it's spinning around the Phuket Island.
O'BRIEN: This is the interesting thing here. On the east side you would think it would be protected and you get this ripple effect. And that becomes even more evident as we look at the Sri Lankan close up, which is the next animation we'd like to play for folks.
As we look at Sri Lanka, take a look what happens as this red high wave several meters high comes in, takes some time for it to get there. And as it comes in, what you see behind it on the west coast of Sri Lanka, is rather dramatic.
Here comes the first kind of ripple waves. The larger waves are coming in, and what happens on the backside is the waves kind of wrap around. What is exactly happening that causes that to occur?
RASMUSSEN: That's the refraction effect that you get when we're talking about wave modeling here. So basically a wave that's hitting an island like that, will bend around the island and then meet on the other side.
O'BRIEN: Well, and so what you get is you get a lot of damage on what a sailor would call the leeward side of the island. If you were white water rafter, you'd call it a hydraulic, if you will.
The damage can be just as severe, though, even though you would think it would be protected.
RASMUSSEN: Yes, it can. You can get -- it depends also on the local symmetry and so forth, because that can enhance the wave on the island.
O'BRIEN: All right. So final thought here, a global tsunami warning system. I know there's a lot of thought about putting buoys out. You would suggest it can be done using simply computer modeling. In other words, identify locations of earthquakes, which were -- we have sensors for already, and just using computers to predict these kinds of waves. RASMUSSEN: Yes. That's correct. What I'm suggesting is that you build up your database and then you do these scenarios beforehand. And basically, once you have an earthquake somewhere, you can then look up in the database and from that predict where the tsunami wave will hit the coastlines, and also what kind of lead time you have for the evacuation of these people.
O'BRIEN: All right. So maybe computer animations, maybe some buoys in the see, maybe a combination of both.
Erland Rasmussen, good work helping us visualize and understand the tremendous power of these tsunamis. We appreciate you joining us from Denmark.
RASMUSSEN: You're welcome.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
PHILLIPS (voice-over): Next on LIVE FROM, searching for the missing victims of the tsunami disaster. We're live from the U.S. State Department with more on the efforts to find Americans unaccounted for.
Later on LIVE FROM...
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: For me personally, it's really walking the walk and walking the talk.
PHILLIPS: One man's journey from his job as a financial consultant in New Hampshire to a tent hospital in Indonesia.
Tomorrow on LIVE FROM, Baghdad and Mosul prepare for the Iraq elections, but so do Nashville and Detroit. Find out why tomorrow.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
PHILLIPS: Live pictures now from our nation's capitol. What you're seeing here from the floor, Vice President Dick Cheney presiding, a group of House Democrats are planning to challenge the Ohio electoral votes. It's a story we've been talking about throughout the day.
Right now this -- the meeting, this mandated session taking place to count the electoral votes is taking place. They're reading off the various states. We're awaiting to hear the state Ohio, assuming that we're going to hear a number of Democrats come forward and protest, citing massive irregularities on election day.
Let's listen in.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: A member of the House of Representatives and a United States senator object to the counting of the electoral votes of the state of Ohio on the ground they were not under all of the known circumstances regularly given, signed Stephanie Tubbs Jones, state of Ohio, Barbara Boxer, state of California.
DICK CHENEY, VICE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: Are there further objections to the certificate from the state of Ohio? Sorry.
Chair hears none. The two houses will withdraw from the joint session. Each house will deliberate separately on the pending objection and report its decision back to the joint session. The Senate will now retire to its chamber.
PHILLIPS: All right. House Democrats involved in this year's protest worked for weeks to enlist the support of Senator Boxer. That's why you heard her name announced there as it was -- as part of the group when Democrats came forward to challenge the Ohio electoral vote.
Joe Johns monitoring this.
I guess, Joe, we were expecting to hear a little bit more of a ruckus.
JOE JOHNS, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Well, perhaps. Of course, this is something that really hasn't happened here on Capitol Hill since the late 1800s.
This is an objection by Congresswoman Stephanie Tubbs Jones of Ohio and Senator Barbara Boxer of California. There's a public law that indicates in the event of an objection, which has to be in writing, submitted at the time the ballot from the particular state in question is opened, both sides of the House and Senate will retire to their separate chambers, debate the issue of the objection for up to two hours, and then presumably dispose of it and come back and continue with the counting.
This, of course, is something that both Boggs -- I'm sorry, Boxer and Stephanie Tubbs Jones say is simply a protest to try to draw attention to questions surrounding the election in Ohio.
There have been a number of questions raised, particularly by House judiciary ranking member John Conyers, who's raised questions about the number of ballot machines that were available, the exceptionally long lines for voting in Ohio, as well as rulings by the secretary of state related to the election in Ohio, all of which, Democrats say, raise questions about the vote in that state.
No one I've heard yet insofar has suggested they think President Bush did not, in fact, win Ohio by a fairly substantial sum of over 100,000 votes.
Nonetheless, they want to raise attention to this. They are also doing this, in part, because four years ago there were a number of House members, particularly members of the Congressional Black Caucus, who wanted someone on the Senate side to raise the objection so this issue could be debated. And they were not able to find a single senator to do that, partly because Al Gore asked senators not to do it. That also was an issue where a number of media really, a lot of people said, underreported the story. All of this, of course, came out in the movie "Fahrenheit 9/11," and that is something now some senators suggest they may have been a little bit ashamed of, seeing themselves on the big screen and not doing anything.
Back to you, Kyra.
PHILLIPS: Joe, we've got to go to break, but just real quickly, because viewers might hear recount, electoral vote, Ohio, irregularities, and think oh, my gosh, are we going to have a recount? And could this change the outcome of the election?
And you are saying, plain and simple, this is just a protest?
JOHNS: This is just a protest. No one really believes there's any opportunity at all to overturn the election. They're trying to draw attention to this issue, also to get people in the media talking about it, because there are some people say Ohio is an important issue.
PHILLIPS: Got you. Joe Johns, live from the Hill. Thanks so much.
We're going to take a quick break. Business news right after this.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
TO ORDER A VIDEO OF THIS TRANSCRIPT, PLEASE CALL 800-CNN-NEWS OR USE OUR SECURE ONLINE ORDER FORM LOCATED AT www.fdch.com
