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With Election Just Two Days Away, Stakes in Iraq at All-Time High; Close to 26,000 Iraqis Registered to Vote in United States

Aired January 28, 2005 - 13:31   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: In the headlines this hour, once again live pictures via WSBN. About 30 people, including some infants were discovered this afternoon, stranded off this island off the coast of Miami. U.S. border patrol boats are shuttling them now, a few at a time, off this island. Who they are, how they got there, how long they've been there, not sure. More questions than answers right now. Not sure if the migrants had come by themselves or had been brought in by smugglers. We're following it. We'll bring you information as we get it.
That's madam secretary, thank you very much. She's been on the job for two days already. But now, it's official. Condoleezza Rice formally sworn in as secretary of state this morning. No sitting around for her. Next week, she's off on a seven-day, nine-nation trip to Europe and the Middle East.

Details from Iraq still sketchy, but a U.S. Army helicopter crashed today in southwest Baghdad. The aircraft was a OH-58 Kiowa, often used as a scout for airstrike scout missions. The status of the two-person crew is unknown. Additionally today, five American soldiers died in separate hostile-fire incidents in and around Baghdad.

MILES O'BRIEN, CNN ANCHOR: With the election just two days away, the stakes in Iraq had at an all-time high.

Our Nic Robertson recently spent some time embedded with an Army unit, searching for insurgents in the city of Mosul.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We got two males, two kids.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We got some magazines.

ROBERTSON: With an election date now set the stakes for eradicating intimidation have been raised making the success of raids like this even more critical.

I was assigned to Mosul in mid-November and I'd been covering the offensive in Falluja but it appeared when that offensive began that trouble began to start in Mosul. The vast majority of the city is about a 4,000 police force had deserted their posts. Many police stations now are just shells. Many of them have walls blown out. Their vehicles have been set on fire. Mosul was a place that the Ba'ath Party drew quite a lot of its senior members from. They did very well under Saddam Hussein and they live in some of the more prosperous parts of Mosul.

(voice-over): These are the places that the troops are going in to target.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Tell me where the hidden stuff is.

ROBERTSON: You have these sort of richer former Ba'ath Party members who they believe are sort of behind the inspiration and funding for the insurgency. The first thing that I witnessed what's known as a rock drill and this is where there's an operation planned and the streets are marked out on the ground with while tape and little wooden replica houses are put out there with the target house clearly marked and the soldiers walk through it.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We go over all of the types of risk that we might see out on any objective.

ROBERTSON (on camera): Captain Robert Lackey (ph) was the commander of the unit that I was embedded with.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: On top of building 20...

ROBERTSON: Task Force Olympia, which is a striker brigade.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: OK, are we clear?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Yes, sir.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Go ahead and start moving out.

ROBERTSON: It was very impressive to watch him going through the briefings checking, checking, checking but all the men under his command understood what they had to do, not just out of professionalism getting the job done but out of the personal concern to make sure that everyone comes back alive from every operation, that everybody is safe.

The idea of the rock drill is to prepare the soldiers for what's going to happen but it was raining. The rain was coming down. It was the beginning of winter. It was really beginning to feel cold and, you know, it was clear that this was going to be an uncomfortable operation for the troops.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: All right. You need to tell your guys suck it up and (expletive) do your job. They're going to be cold. They're going to be wet but coming back to a warm bed.

ROBERTSON: They were only at that stage only two months into a 12-month tour, ten months to go, you know, just before Christmas.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We need to get their hands, get their hands down when you set them up. ROBERTSON (voice-over): As we went through on the first few raids it became apparent literally the first house we went into after about 15 minutes it became apparent that while they were on the right street they had the wrong house.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: No, nobody from my family.

ROBERTSON (on camera): What was very interesting about being on that raid and this was all about trying to find somebody who was involved in intimidating Iraqis.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Do you know where the house is or do one of these gentlemen know?

ROBERTSON (voice-over): He said the man in the house really was too afraid to want to give the troops any information.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Please don't put me in (UNINTELLIGIBLE).

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: I have to put you in this position.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: The fourth door you can shot.

ROBERTSON: And they did eventually manage to convince him that it would be better for the people of Mosul, better for the people of Iraq if he told them.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: The fourth door which way?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: With the name being hit over there and him pointing out this, that gives us enough information to action on this house as well.

ROBERTSON: Of course when they got to that house the men of the family weren't there. The women in the house said they were out in a farmhouse. The family was saying well these men are farmers. They didn't buy that story at all.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Is that it?

ROBERTSON: When the soldiers went out and, of course, we have to travel with them.

(on camera): We have to get out with them quick. They're the security in the area so when they go we have to go.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Can I ask you a question?

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Yes.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: When do they come in your house?

ROBERTSON (voice-over): OK, I'm going to stand here 30 seconds and I'm going to try and talk to this family and find out what they think about what the troops are doing.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: (UNINTELLIGIBLE) are shaking (UNINTELLIGIBLE).

(CROSSTALK)

ROBERTSON: When the soldiers come they think that they're trying to make Mosul safer.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: I know your people are calm people. I know that.

ROBERTSON (on camera): As I talked to this particular family they immediately associated me with the troops and I wasn't really confident that they were really opening up and telling me what they really thought. I think that they were telling me what they wanted me to hear.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Well, great job, great job, (UNINTELLIGIBLE).

ROBERTSON (voice-over): The more time I spent with this particular unit and the more time I spent with Captain Lackey the more I grew to respect the professionalism of the job that he was doing.

(on camera): And I said to him, you know, "What's really important for you in the months ahead? You have a long way to go here." And he said, "What I really want to be able to do is to get to bring all my men home alive" that he doesn't have to call relatives back home, that there aren't empty chairs around the next briefing.

And, of course, the day that I left I flew back to Baghdad and I heard that two soldiers were killed in Mosul and when the names were released and the unit name was released a couple of days later, I realized immediately that these were Captain Robert Lackey's men and I knew that this was -- this was what he really didn't want to happen.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

O'BRIEN: That piece was produced by Emily Probst and edited by Dave Harold -- Kyra.

PHILLIPS: Well, there are close to 26,000 Iraqis registered to vote in their country's elections from here in the United States. They're casting ballots in Chicago, Los Angeles, Washington, Nashville and Detroit. The bulk of those voters, more than 9,700 in all, will enter the voting booth in Detroit today.

Nick Najjar is one of them. He's an Iraqi-American who fled Baghdad for the U.S. some 27 years ago. He joins us from Southgate, Michigan to talk about what it was like to cast the ballot.

Great to see you again, Nick.

NICK NAJJAR, IRAQI-AMERICAN VOTER: Thank you, and thank you for having me here.

PHILLIPS: Well, we talked a lot about this when you were getting ready to register, getting ready to vote. You have now done it. How do you feel? NAJJAR: I feel great, and I feel very happy. I have a lot of joy, me and my family. We just came in and we vote. And it's an excellent day and a historical day.

PHILLIPS: Well, I know we've got some video of you as you went in. We followed you as you had a chance to vote. Tell me what the process was like as you were going through and talking with folks and getting your ballot, just tell me what was going through your mind?

NAJJAR: It's something that never happened before. As an Iraqi, as an American, I did this so many times. I became a U.S. citizen since 1987, and I voted in every election in America. But as an Iraqi, I never had that opportunity. I was never dreaming about it. The dream came true, and I have -- me and my family are very happy. And I'm thinking about the future of Iraq to be -- to prosper and the Iraqi people to live freely and have the same procedure we have here in America. They can vote and they can elect their president and their member of the government.

PHILLIPS: Now, I'm seeing video. Is this your son and your wife that's with you?

NAJJAR: Yes. My son, the little one, the youngest one. I have two others, son and daughter. They are in school. They are not 18. They cannot vote, and my wife, and my mom and my sisters.

PHILLIPS: Your mom was there also?

NAJJAR: My mom and my two sisters and my wife and my son.

PHILLIPS: That's incredible. So, tell me, for your mom, I mean, this must have been just remarkable. I mean, she remembers life under Saddam Hussein. What did she say to you? How was it for her? Tell me about the conversation among all of you when you were in there.

NAJJAR: My mom, she came in and slept over last night at my house. She had so much -- she was talking, all night we were talking about today, the first day of the election voting. And she is so happy and she is for -- actually, the thing she said to me, I'm just saying what she said to me. She said if you go on radio or TV or any interview, I want you to personally thank every man and woman in uniform, every mother and father that have their sons in Iraq. The American soldiers, the one in Iraq and every mother and father there in America. She want to thank them personally. And she said without them, we couldn't see the day we're seeing today.

PHILLIPS: Wow. That's pretty amazing. You think about the men and women over there right now and here is your mother, an Iraqi in the United States, thanking soldiers for what she just did just a few minutes ago. That's pretty powerful, Nick. Have you talked with your family in Iraq? I know you've got family in Mosul, I think it was? That will vote.

NAJJAR: Yes. I have my sister and her husband and five children. I spoke to them yesterday, yes.

PHILLIPS: Now, are they getting nervous? Are they worried about their security or are they going to go for it?

NAJJAR: They are -- actually, I spoke to my brother-in-law. I spoke to him and he said even there, that Mosul is one of the not safe city. It's a dangerous city. But he said he is willing to take that risk and they're happy that it's the first time in the history. He is about 55 years old. And he's -- it's the first time in history he's gone voting. And he's going to take that risk. He said if in America, they send their soldiers to liberate us in Iraq to be free, we are willing to take that chance.

PHILLIPS: What about at work today? Was everybody supporting you and excited about what you were doing today?

NAJJAR: Yes. I went to the office this morning and everybody, all the colleagues, all the people who work with me, they saw me, I was smiling and I was happy and relaxed. Every person with me, they told me, good luck. We wish you good luck for you and your previous country or mother country, or whatever you call it. Good luck for you and we wish you good luck and for the Iraqi people good luck.

PHILLIPS: Nick Najjar. Thank you so much for coming back on with us today. Congratulations. Give your mother our best. I promise to pass on to every soldier that I talk to today that your mom thanks them.

NAJJAR: I would like to thank every person in America -- every American person and I'd like to thank every mother, like my mom said, I'd like to thank personally, I'd like to thank every American soldiers in Iraq. I'd like to thank every American in uniform in America or around the world. I would like to thank the government of the United States entirely, Democrat or Republic, for what they did to Iraq, and liberate Iraq from Saddam's dictatorship. Thank you very much.

PHILLIPS: Thank you, Nic. We'll talk to you soon -- Miles.

O'BRIEN: All right. You got a case of the fidgets? I do every now and then, if you know what I mean. It would be understandable if you took part in this study, the latest on what happens when scientists wired up some self-avowed couch potatoes with some high- tech underwear. Don't worry, folks, it's a family show. You have to stick around, don't you?

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

O'BRIEN: Medicare loosening the rules for paying for implantable heart defibrillators. The credit-card-sized devices are implanted to monitor and then sometimes jumpstart heartbeats, but of course, they can save lives. But to buy on your own would cost around $25,000.

Medicare's new policy will make them available for free for about half a million more patients. One condition, though. Folks whose receive them must give out certain medical details. The government says the information will go into a registry to help determine who the devices are helping the most. PHILLIPS: Well, your mother may have been wrong when she told you to sit still. How much you move in the course of your day, while not necessarily the gym, could determine if you are thin or overweight. CNN medical correspondent Elizabeth Cohen here with a study that's getting a lot attention.

OK, just by fidgeting, I'm not going to lose, you know, five pounds.

ELIZABETH COHEN, CNN MEDICAL CORRESPONDENT: You know, fidgeting can actually burn calories. Ad when you put fidgeting -- you're always moving around, other little things can burn up calories. What folks at the Mayo Clinic did was they took ten people who were obese and ten people who weren't. And none of them exercised, none of them went to the gym, none of them played tennis, none of them did any of that, they all said they were couch potatoes.

Well, they measured every single little movement they made and what they found was that the thinner ones actually were doing a lot more movement, even though they weren't formally exercising. For example, they might have walked across the room to talk to someone rather than send that person an e-mail in their office. Or maybe they took the stairs rather than the escalator. And all those little things added up.

Let's see what kind of a difference it made. What they found is that obese people in this study were sitting down for two and a half hours more each day and therefore, they burned 350 fewer calories. And again, these were not the unobese people, the lean people.

It wasn't like they were going out and getting on the treadmill. It was just little things they were doing every day, like perhaps they parked their car a little farther away and so they were walking farther in order to get into the mall or something like that. Just those little things really added up. And even fidgeting, even fidgeting can burn calories.

PHILLIPS: Now, how did they measure the movement each day? Is that how they did it?

COHEN: They did. They used wired underwear. Believe it or not, I am not joking. They used wired underwear.

PHILLIPS: Does it give you a little lift?

COHEN: Well, we've been calling it wonderwear. Wired underwear. There it is. That measured every single little twitch and movement that that person did. And that's how they could tell every little calorie burned by twitching and moving and getting up off your rear- end, as you can see there.

PHILLIPS: I bet it kind of felt good, too.

COHEN: I don't know about that.

PHILLIPS: All right. Elizabeth Cohen, thank you. COHEN: Thanks.

PHILLIPS: Miles.

O'BRIEN: All right. Well, he helped expose Princess Diana's troubled royal marriage to the world. Now, Andrew Morton is turning his spotlight on the media frenzy that some critics claim led to her death. We'll talk with him about the power of the paparazzi in our next hour of LIVE FROM.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

KAGAN: Skating into history. When 25-year-old Angela Ruggiero (ph) laces up tonight, she will become the first woman to play a position other than goalie in the central hockey league game. Ruggiero is a double Olympic medalist in women's ice hockey. She just signed a contract to play defense for the Tulsa, Oklahoma Oilers. Tonight, she plays alongside her brother Bill, who happens to be the Oilers goalie. They will become the first brother and sister to play together in a professional hockey game.

Hockey history, the focus of today's CNN special series, "Then and Now." One of the stars of the Miracle on Ice talks about what his team's Olympic victory in 1980 meant to him and the country.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We weren't in a very good situation as a country.

JIMMY CARTER, FMR. PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: The center of this crisis of the American spirit are all around us.

The hostages were in Iran, Soviets had invaded Afghanistan, inflation was absurd. People were waiting in line to get gasoline.

CARTER: It is a crisis of confidence.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Things weren't looking good and everybody was depressed and despondent. All of a sudden, a group of young college kids proved to the world if you believe in something and you work hard for it, you can accomplish it.

I just think we brought back the spirit of the nation. I think we brought back the pride and made people feel proud to be an American.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Make sure we hit the net. You want to warm up the goalies, right? Hit the net.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I help out at high school as an assistant hockey coach. I've done that. This will be my fourth year. Two of my kids play. It has changed me enough with the business and the travel I do, but it hasn't changed the person that I am, and I think that's more important for me. You got to have faith, and you got to believe, and I think we did that as a hockey team, and I think a nation might have saw that and took that and brought it back to what it should be.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

(STOCK MARKET REPORT)

PHILLIPS: In the second hour of LIVE FROM, from Damascus to Dearborn, Iraqis are making history. We'll have live reports from around the world on the first phase of the Iraq elections. LIFE FROM's hour of power begins 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 28, 2005 - 13:31   ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
KYRA PHILLIPS, CNN ANCHOR: In the headlines this hour, once again live pictures via WSBN. About 30 people, including some infants were discovered this afternoon, stranded off this island off the coast of Miami. U.S. border patrol boats are shuttling them now, a few at a time, off this island. Who they are, how they got there, how long they've been there, not sure. More questions than answers right now. Not sure if the migrants had come by themselves or had been brought in by smugglers. We're following it. We'll bring you information as we get it.
That's madam secretary, thank you very much. She's been on the job for two days already. But now, it's official. Condoleezza Rice formally sworn in as secretary of state this morning. No sitting around for her. Next week, she's off on a seven-day, nine-nation trip to Europe and the Middle East.

Details from Iraq still sketchy, but a U.S. Army helicopter crashed today in southwest Baghdad. The aircraft was a OH-58 Kiowa, often used as a scout for airstrike scout missions. The status of the two-person crew is unknown. Additionally today, five American soldiers died in separate hostile-fire incidents in and around Baghdad.

MILES O'BRIEN, CNN ANCHOR: With the election just two days away, the stakes in Iraq had at an all-time high.

Our Nic Robertson recently spent some time embedded with an Army unit, searching for insurgents in the city of Mosul.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We got two males, two kids.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We got some magazines.

ROBERTSON: With an election date now set the stakes for eradicating intimidation have been raised making the success of raids like this even more critical.

I was assigned to Mosul in mid-November and I'd been covering the offensive in Falluja but it appeared when that offensive began that trouble began to start in Mosul. The vast majority of the city is about a 4,000 police force had deserted their posts. Many police stations now are just shells. Many of them have walls blown out. Their vehicles have been set on fire. Mosul was a place that the Ba'ath Party drew quite a lot of its senior members from. They did very well under Saddam Hussein and they live in some of the more prosperous parts of Mosul.

(voice-over): These are the places that the troops are going in to target.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Tell me where the hidden stuff is.

ROBERTSON: You have these sort of richer former Ba'ath Party members who they believe are sort of behind the inspiration and funding for the insurgency. The first thing that I witnessed what's known as a rock drill and this is where there's an operation planned and the streets are marked out on the ground with while tape and little wooden replica houses are put out there with the target house clearly marked and the soldiers walk through it.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We go over all of the types of risk that we might see out on any objective.

ROBERTSON (on camera): Captain Robert Lackey (ph) was the commander of the unit that I was embedded with.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: On top of building 20...

ROBERTSON: Task Force Olympia, which is a striker brigade.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: OK, are we clear?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Yes, sir.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Go ahead and start moving out.

ROBERTSON: It was very impressive to watch him going through the briefings checking, checking, checking but all the men under his command understood what they had to do, not just out of professionalism getting the job done but out of the personal concern to make sure that everyone comes back alive from every operation, that everybody is safe.

The idea of the rock drill is to prepare the soldiers for what's going to happen but it was raining. The rain was coming down. It was the beginning of winter. It was really beginning to feel cold and, you know, it was clear that this was going to be an uncomfortable operation for the troops.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: All right. You need to tell your guys suck it up and (expletive) do your job. They're going to be cold. They're going to be wet but coming back to a warm bed.

ROBERTSON: They were only at that stage only two months into a 12-month tour, ten months to go, you know, just before Christmas.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We need to get their hands, get their hands down when you set them up. ROBERTSON (voice-over): As we went through on the first few raids it became apparent literally the first house we went into after about 15 minutes it became apparent that while they were on the right street they had the wrong house.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: No, nobody from my family.

ROBERTSON (on camera): What was very interesting about being on that raid and this was all about trying to find somebody who was involved in intimidating Iraqis.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Do you know where the house is or do one of these gentlemen know?

ROBERTSON (voice-over): He said the man in the house really was too afraid to want to give the troops any information.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Please don't put me in (UNINTELLIGIBLE).

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: I have to put you in this position.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: The fourth door you can shot.

ROBERTSON: And they did eventually manage to convince him that it would be better for the people of Mosul, better for the people of Iraq if he told them.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: The fourth door which way?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: With the name being hit over there and him pointing out this, that gives us enough information to action on this house as well.

ROBERTSON: Of course when they got to that house the men of the family weren't there. The women in the house said they were out in a farmhouse. The family was saying well these men are farmers. They didn't buy that story at all.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Is that it?

ROBERTSON: When the soldiers went out and, of course, we have to travel with them.

(on camera): We have to get out with them quick. They're the security in the area so when they go we have to go.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Can I ask you a question?

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Yes.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: When do they come in your house?

ROBERTSON (voice-over): OK, I'm going to stand here 30 seconds and I'm going to try and talk to this family and find out what they think about what the troops are doing.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: (UNINTELLIGIBLE) are shaking (UNINTELLIGIBLE).

(CROSSTALK)

ROBERTSON: When the soldiers come they think that they're trying to make Mosul safer.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: I know your people are calm people. I know that.

ROBERTSON (on camera): As I talked to this particular family they immediately associated me with the troops and I wasn't really confident that they were really opening up and telling me what they really thought. I think that they were telling me what they wanted me to hear.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Well, great job, great job, (UNINTELLIGIBLE).

ROBERTSON (voice-over): The more time I spent with this particular unit and the more time I spent with Captain Lackey the more I grew to respect the professionalism of the job that he was doing.

(on camera): And I said to him, you know, "What's really important for you in the months ahead? You have a long way to go here." And he said, "What I really want to be able to do is to get to bring all my men home alive" that he doesn't have to call relatives back home, that there aren't empty chairs around the next briefing.

And, of course, the day that I left I flew back to Baghdad and I heard that two soldiers were killed in Mosul and when the names were released and the unit name was released a couple of days later, I realized immediately that these were Captain Robert Lackey's men and I knew that this was -- this was what he really didn't want to happen.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

O'BRIEN: That piece was produced by Emily Probst and edited by Dave Harold -- Kyra.

PHILLIPS: Well, there are close to 26,000 Iraqis registered to vote in their country's elections from here in the United States. They're casting ballots in Chicago, Los Angeles, Washington, Nashville and Detroit. The bulk of those voters, more than 9,700 in all, will enter the voting booth in Detroit today.

Nick Najjar is one of them. He's an Iraqi-American who fled Baghdad for the U.S. some 27 years ago. He joins us from Southgate, Michigan to talk about what it was like to cast the ballot.

Great to see you again, Nick.

NICK NAJJAR, IRAQI-AMERICAN VOTER: Thank you, and thank you for having me here.

PHILLIPS: Well, we talked a lot about this when you were getting ready to register, getting ready to vote. You have now done it. How do you feel? NAJJAR: I feel great, and I feel very happy. I have a lot of joy, me and my family. We just came in and we vote. And it's an excellent day and a historical day.

PHILLIPS: Well, I know we've got some video of you as you went in. We followed you as you had a chance to vote. Tell me what the process was like as you were going through and talking with folks and getting your ballot, just tell me what was going through your mind?

NAJJAR: It's something that never happened before. As an Iraqi, as an American, I did this so many times. I became a U.S. citizen since 1987, and I voted in every election in America. But as an Iraqi, I never had that opportunity. I was never dreaming about it. The dream came true, and I have -- me and my family are very happy. And I'm thinking about the future of Iraq to be -- to prosper and the Iraqi people to live freely and have the same procedure we have here in America. They can vote and they can elect their president and their member of the government.

PHILLIPS: Now, I'm seeing video. Is this your son and your wife that's with you?

NAJJAR: Yes. My son, the little one, the youngest one. I have two others, son and daughter. They are in school. They are not 18. They cannot vote, and my wife, and my mom and my sisters.

PHILLIPS: Your mom was there also?

NAJJAR: My mom and my two sisters and my wife and my son.

PHILLIPS: That's incredible. So, tell me, for your mom, I mean, this must have been just remarkable. I mean, she remembers life under Saddam Hussein. What did she say to you? How was it for her? Tell me about the conversation among all of you when you were in there.

NAJJAR: My mom, she came in and slept over last night at my house. She had so much -- she was talking, all night we were talking about today, the first day of the election voting. And she is so happy and she is for -- actually, the thing she said to me, I'm just saying what she said to me. She said if you go on radio or TV or any interview, I want you to personally thank every man and woman in uniform, every mother and father that have their sons in Iraq. The American soldiers, the one in Iraq and every mother and father there in America. She want to thank them personally. And she said without them, we couldn't see the day we're seeing today.

PHILLIPS: Wow. That's pretty amazing. You think about the men and women over there right now and here is your mother, an Iraqi in the United States, thanking soldiers for what she just did just a few minutes ago. That's pretty powerful, Nick. Have you talked with your family in Iraq? I know you've got family in Mosul, I think it was? That will vote.

NAJJAR: Yes. I have my sister and her husband and five children. I spoke to them yesterday, yes.

PHILLIPS: Now, are they getting nervous? Are they worried about their security or are they going to go for it?

NAJJAR: They are -- actually, I spoke to my brother-in-law. I spoke to him and he said even there, that Mosul is one of the not safe city. It's a dangerous city. But he said he is willing to take that risk and they're happy that it's the first time in the history. He is about 55 years old. And he's -- it's the first time in history he's gone voting. And he's going to take that risk. He said if in America, they send their soldiers to liberate us in Iraq to be free, we are willing to take that chance.

PHILLIPS: What about at work today? Was everybody supporting you and excited about what you were doing today?

NAJJAR: Yes. I went to the office this morning and everybody, all the colleagues, all the people who work with me, they saw me, I was smiling and I was happy and relaxed. Every person with me, they told me, good luck. We wish you good luck for you and your previous country or mother country, or whatever you call it. Good luck for you and we wish you good luck and for the Iraqi people good luck.

PHILLIPS: Nick Najjar. Thank you so much for coming back on with us today. Congratulations. Give your mother our best. I promise to pass on to every soldier that I talk to today that your mom thanks them.

NAJJAR: I would like to thank every person in America -- every American person and I'd like to thank every mother, like my mom said, I'd like to thank personally, I'd like to thank every American soldiers in Iraq. I'd like to thank every American in uniform in America or around the world. I would like to thank the government of the United States entirely, Democrat or Republic, for what they did to Iraq, and liberate Iraq from Saddam's dictatorship. Thank you very much.

PHILLIPS: Thank you, Nic. We'll talk to you soon -- Miles.

O'BRIEN: All right. You got a case of the fidgets? I do every now and then, if you know what I mean. It would be understandable if you took part in this study, the latest on what happens when scientists wired up some self-avowed couch potatoes with some high- tech underwear. Don't worry, folks, it's a family show. You have to stick around, don't you?

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O'BRIEN: Medicare loosening the rules for paying for implantable heart defibrillators. The credit-card-sized devices are implanted to monitor and then sometimes jumpstart heartbeats, but of course, they can save lives. But to buy on your own would cost around $25,000.

Medicare's new policy will make them available for free for about half a million more patients. One condition, though. Folks whose receive them must give out certain medical details. The government says the information will go into a registry to help determine who the devices are helping the most. PHILLIPS: Well, your mother may have been wrong when she told you to sit still. How much you move in the course of your day, while not necessarily the gym, could determine if you are thin or overweight. CNN medical correspondent Elizabeth Cohen here with a study that's getting a lot attention.

OK, just by fidgeting, I'm not going to lose, you know, five pounds.

ELIZABETH COHEN, CNN MEDICAL CORRESPONDENT: You know, fidgeting can actually burn calories. Ad when you put fidgeting -- you're always moving around, other little things can burn up calories. What folks at the Mayo Clinic did was they took ten people who were obese and ten people who weren't. And none of them exercised, none of them went to the gym, none of them played tennis, none of them did any of that, they all said they were couch potatoes.

Well, they measured every single little movement they made and what they found was that the thinner ones actually were doing a lot more movement, even though they weren't formally exercising. For example, they might have walked across the room to talk to someone rather than send that person an e-mail in their office. Or maybe they took the stairs rather than the escalator. And all those little things added up.

Let's see what kind of a difference it made. What they found is that obese people in this study were sitting down for two and a half hours more each day and therefore, they burned 350 fewer calories. And again, these were not the unobese people, the lean people.

It wasn't like they were going out and getting on the treadmill. It was just little things they were doing every day, like perhaps they parked their car a little farther away and so they were walking farther in order to get into the mall or something like that. Just those little things really added up. And even fidgeting, even fidgeting can burn calories.

PHILLIPS: Now, how did they measure the movement each day? Is that how they did it?

COHEN: They did. They used wired underwear. Believe it or not, I am not joking. They used wired underwear.

PHILLIPS: Does it give you a little lift?

COHEN: Well, we've been calling it wonderwear. Wired underwear. There it is. That measured every single little twitch and movement that that person did. And that's how they could tell every little calorie burned by twitching and moving and getting up off your rear- end, as you can see there.

PHILLIPS: I bet it kind of felt good, too.

COHEN: I don't know about that.

PHILLIPS: All right. Elizabeth Cohen, thank you. COHEN: Thanks.

PHILLIPS: Miles.

O'BRIEN: All right. Well, he helped expose Princess Diana's troubled royal marriage to the world. Now, Andrew Morton is turning his spotlight on the media frenzy that some critics claim led to her death. We'll talk with him about the power of the paparazzi in our next hour of LIVE FROM.

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KAGAN: Skating into history. When 25-year-old Angela Ruggiero (ph) laces up tonight, she will become the first woman to play a position other than goalie in the central hockey league game. Ruggiero is a double Olympic medalist in women's ice hockey. She just signed a contract to play defense for the Tulsa, Oklahoma Oilers. Tonight, she plays alongside her brother Bill, who happens to be the Oilers goalie. They will become the first brother and sister to play together in a professional hockey game.

Hockey history, the focus of today's CNN special series, "Then and Now." One of the stars of the Miracle on Ice talks about what his team's Olympic victory in 1980 meant to him and the country.

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UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We weren't in a very good situation as a country.

JIMMY CARTER, FMR. PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: The center of this crisis of the American spirit are all around us.

The hostages were in Iran, Soviets had invaded Afghanistan, inflation was absurd. People were waiting in line to get gasoline.

CARTER: It is a crisis of confidence.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Things weren't looking good and everybody was depressed and despondent. All of a sudden, a group of young college kids proved to the world if you believe in something and you work hard for it, you can accomplish it.

I just think we brought back the spirit of the nation. I think we brought back the pride and made people feel proud to be an American.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Make sure we hit the net. You want to warm up the goalies, right? Hit the net.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I help out at high school as an assistant hockey coach. I've done that. This will be my fourth year. Two of my kids play. It has changed me enough with the business and the travel I do, but it hasn't changed the person that I am, and I think that's more important for me. You got to have faith, and you got to believe, and I think we did that as a hockey team, and I think a nation might have saw that and took that and brought it back to what it should be.

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PHILLIPS: In the second hour of LIVE FROM, from Damascus to Dearborn, Iraqis are making history. We'll have live reports from around the world on the first phase of the Iraq elections. LIFE FROM's hour of power begins right after this.

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