Return to Transcripts main page

American Morning

President Bush Says U.S. Will Stay in Iraq Until Mission is Complete; Abortion Rights Group Pulls Controversial Advertisement

Aired August 12, 2005 - 08:00   ET

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

SOLEDAD O'BRIEN, CNN ANCHOR: President Bush says the U.S. mission in Iraq is to fight the terrorists and train Iraqis and that U.S. troops will stay there until that mission is complete.
An abortion rights group pulls a controversial advertisement criticizing Supreme Court nominee John Roberts. A new ad will be taking its place.

And tropical storm Irene could become hurricane Irene as early as today. Forecasters are keeping close tabs, on this AMERICAN MORNING.

ANNOUNCER: From the CNN broadcast center in New York, this is AMERICAN MORNING with Soledad O'Brien and Miles O'Brien.

O'BRIEN: Good morning.

Welcome, everybody.

Miles has the day off, and a couple more days, too. I guess he's got a little break there. But he deserves a little bit of a vacation there.

Happy Friday, of course.

CAROL COSTELLO, CNN ANCHOR: Oh, I echo that.

Happy Friday.

I'm Carol Costello in for Miles.

Coming up, home now for three days, the astronauts from the space shuttle Discovery should have their land legs back. We'll check in with them to see how they're adjusting in just a few minutes.

O'BRIEN: First, though, let's check the headlines with Fredricka Whitfield.

She's at the CNN Center this morning -- hey, Fred, good morning again.

FREDRICKA WHITFIELD, CNN ANCHOR: Good morning to you ladies.

An extradition hearing for the couple accused in this week's Tennessee courthouse shooting. George and Jennifer Hyatte face a long list of charges, including first degree murder, for the killing of a prison guard. They were caught in Ohio, which is where this morning's hearing is taking place. The funeral for the slain officer is set to be held later today.

British Airways is asking customers to check their flight status before coming to London's Heathrow Airport. Thousands of travelers remain stranded after British Airways canceled all of its flights out of Heathrow. A spokesman for the airline blames a labor dispute with the airline's caterer. Flights are expected to resume later on today.

An abortion rights group is dropping a television ad criticizing Supreme Court nominee John Roberts. The ad accused Roberts of supporting violent fringe groups and a convicted bomber. Senator Arlen Specter, the chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, had called the 30-second ad "blatantly untrue and unfair."

And third time is a charm for NASA. The space agency launched its Mars orbiter just about 15 minutes ago. The lift-off was postponed twice Thursday after some technical problems. The Mars orbiter blasting off just three days after the space shuttle Discovery returned to Earth. And we'll speak with the seven member crew just moments from now -- Carol.

COSTELLO: Such a cool picture, isn't it?

WHITFIELD: It is.

COSTELLO: I love that.

Thank you, Fredericka.

President Bush is downplaying talk of significant troop withdrawals from Iraq next spring.

Barbara Starr is live at the Pentagon -- Barbara, is the president at odds with his own commanders on the ground?

BARBARA STARR, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Well, Carol, that's what's really being watched here. Yesterday in Crawford, Texas, after meeting with Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, the president came out and talked to reporters, as he usually does. Topic number one, troop reductions in Iraq.

Now, military commanders have been talking for several weeks about the possibility of bringing a substantial number of troops home in the spring if the security situation improves.

The president took great pains to dampen those expectations.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

GEORGE W. BUSH, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: I suspect what you were hearing was speculation based upon progress that some are seeing in Iraq as to whether or not the Iraqis will be able to take the fight to the enemy.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

STARR: But if there was speculation, Carol, it was by General George Casey, the four star commander of the troops in Iraq, who had said publicly just several days ago that if the situation improved, he did hope that he could bring home a substantial number of troops in the spring or summer.

Now, the president also sent a very other important signal, if you will, yesterday, saying that he had heard and understood what some of the anti-war advocates in the country are saying, especially the mom, Cindy Sheehan, who is camped outside of his ranch, who lost her son in Iraq. He made, many times, the point that he understood what they were saying but that troops would continue to stay in Iraq until the job is done -- Carol.

COSTELLO: So is there any real recipe for getting some of those troops home any time soon, Barbara?

STARR: The recipe, Carol, absolutely remains the same, according to the president. That's getting those Iraqi security forces trained and ready.

So what does ready mean? Well, what the Pentagon is saying is that means that the Iraqi troops cannot only stand on their own in combat, but that they can really be a credible military force. They can have supplies, logistics, training, a command structure, a senior enlisted corps, all the things that make a credible military force, and that they can actually begin to operate in those four western provinces that still, to this day, very much remain an insurgency stronghold -- Carol.

COSTELLO: Barbara Starr live at the Pentagon this morning.

O'BRIEN: We heard Barbara talking about Cindy Sheehan. It's been almost a week since she began her anti-war vigil outside of President Bush's Texas ranch. Sheehan's 24-year-old son, Army Specialist Casey Sheehan, died in Iraq in April of 2004. About 100 other people have joined Sheehan's protest now. On Thursday, the president said he understands her concerns.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

BUSH: Listen, I sympathize with Mrs. Sheehan. She feels strongly about her, about her position, and I -- she has every right in the world to say what she believes. This is America. She has a right to her position. And I thought long and hard about her position. I've heard her position from others, which is get out of Iraq now. And it would be a mistake for the security of this country.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

WHITFIELD: Let's get right to CNN's senior analyst Jeff Greenfield.

Do you think that Cindy Sheehan and her protest is changing public opinion on the war?

JEFF GREENFIELD, CNN CORRESPONDENT: You know, I really don't think so. And I think it's precisely because of the sheer overwhelming pain of losing a child. And any decent parent fears this in the most primal sense.

I think you could imagine that no matter how universally a war is supported, say World War 2, you could have found parents for whom the loss of a son just wiped out every other concern. And while this is probably going to sound unfeeling to some people, you can't measure the worth of the military engagement by this kind of loss, unless you're prepared to argue that no military effort is ever wroth the loss of a single life.

And, also, Soledad, we're already seeing in this case defenders of the president saying look, she's aligned herself with anti-war groups, with Michael Moore's Web site. So this thing gets pushed into one of those whose side are you on battles that apparently we can never avoid in these kinds of confrontations.

O'BRIEN: Do you think, though, that she's a symbol of eroding support in the U.S. for this war?

GREENFIELD: I don't think she's a symbol, but I think there are clear indications that the public is slowly but steadily turning more doubtful about the war and about the underlying reasons for the war, and, most seriously, about the president himself. When you look at the basic numbers -- and they're troubling for the president -- are things going well in Iraq? Fifty-six percent say they're going badly, only 43 percent say well.

But now go further. Was it worth going to war in Iraq, one recent poll asked? Fifty-four percent say no, only 44 say yes. And look at the key argument Bush has been making for more than two years, we have to fight over there to keep us safer here. Back in June, only 39 percent said the Iraq war made us less safe from terror. By early August, 57 percent of the public say that war has made us less safe.

And the steady drumbeat of news, I think, is the driving force here, not just the deaths and injuries, as serious as they are, but as we've just heard from Barbara, every time we hear a promise that the mission has a light at the end of the tunnel, we get other news that undercuts it. Apart from the president, just yesterday the "Washington Post" reported a top military official said forget it, the coming elections in December in Iraq are not going to mean anything as far as letting Americans leave it to Iraqis to fight.

O'BRIEN: Kind of tough when they talk about the insurgency being in the throes and then you could have increase...

GREENFIELD: The last, yes.

O'BRIEN: ... the last throes, then you have increased numbers.

GREENFIELD: Right. And where I think this is potentially the most damaging for the president lies at the core of his appeal. His appeal has always been he's a straight talking, honest guy. Maybe he's not the most glib talker, maybe he butchers the English language, but it's kind of like, I think, Gary Cooper -- he's a steady guy, he doesn't say much, he tells you what he thinks. As recently as last January, according to an A.P./Ipsos poll, about 53 percent of Americans described Bush as essentially honest. Now, by a slim margin, 50 to 48, more Americans say he's not. If that's more than a blip and if the doubts about the Iraq war spread into doubts about the president's fundamental credibility, then I think way more than the symbolic (UNINTELLIGIBLE), you've got, for the president, a very serious political problem.

O'BRIEN: I want to turn and ask you a question about this NARAL ad that was -- that's been yanked. You know, even people who support abortion rights say it's inappropriate and it's misleading and it's wrong.

GREENFIELD: Right.

O'BRIEN: So it's been yanked.

What do you think the bigger implications are?

GREENFIELD: What I could hope as an eternal optimist, the ad was technically correct and fundamentally dishonest. It was guilt by association. John Roberts wrote a brief in support of a particular interpretation of the law, which the Supreme Court adopted...

O'BRIEN: Ergo, he supports violent (UNINTELLIGIBLE)...

GREENFIELD: ... therefore he sides with these evil people. It's, by the way, it's the argument that conservatives often make about a group like the ACLU. You're defending the constitutional rights of murderers, you're siding with the murderers.

One can hope that the fact that this group was slapped down by a group like Factcheck.org and by a lot of people in the press, maybe, as we get into the debate about John Roberts, maybe we can keep this debate about what's his judicial philosophy, what kind of judge would he be rather than finding some technical reason to call him, I don't know what, an enemy of all things good and decent or the embodiment of the best thing in the world.

Political discourse in America is never at the highest of level. When it comes to the Supreme Court, really, it's a reason to keep this at an honest intellectual level. I think NARAL crossed the line, they got slapped down for it. Maybe other groups, left and right, will say, you know, maybe we'd better try to be a little more honest about this debate.

O'BRIEN: I'm going to spare you from asking you about what you think the likelihood that that will happen is, because my guess would be that's not how these political ads work.

GREENFIELD: Oh...

O'BRIEN: But you're the optimist and I'm sorry to say I'm...

GREENFIELD: At such a tender, youthful age...

O'BRIEN: ... I'm just...

GREENFIELD: ... you've become so...

O'BRIEN: I do sound like the cynic. But, you know...

GREENFIELD: On the other hand, Mr. Dooley said politics ain't a beanbag.

O'BRIEN: That's true.

All right, thanks, Jeff, as always.

GREENFIELD: Thank you.

O'BRIEN: Carol.

COSTELLO: Ooh, I like that.

Let's head to Atlanta now to check on Irene -- Chad, is she still churning out there?

CHAD MYERS, CNN METEOROLOGIST: It is. It is still spinning, now 60 miles per hour south of Bermuda. This storm is -- it has such a storied past. This thing has been big, little, big, little, wobbling back and forth, sort of way out, almost by Africa, and now it's traveling to the south of Bermuda. And it is forecast to make a big right-hand turn, a big right-hand turn all the way around Bermuda, missing the United States completely. But it could be, by tonight, late tonight, even into tomorrow, it could be a hurricane already. That has to be 74 miles per hour or more to get there. Right now it's 60.

(WEATHER REPORT)

O'BRIEN: Up next, the entire crew of the space shuttle Discovery is going to join us live -- there they are -- to talk about the 14-day mission, the grounding of the shuttle program and what it's like to get back to real life.

COSTELLO: I know, are they ever not in their uniforms?

O'BRIEN: It's something to wear around the house. It's all right.

COSTELLO: Yes, I know...

O'BRIEN: It's cute.

COSTELLO: Also, one big city wants restaurants to cut the fat from their menus. We'll look at what foods have trans fats and why they're so bad for you.

That's just ahead on AMERICAN MORNING.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK) O'BRIEN: It's been three days since the space shuttle Discovery returned to Earth. Remember this perfect landing? Well, congratulations to all of them and welcome home are still in order for the seven astronauts. How are they doing? How do they feel about their mission?

The Discovery crew joins us from the Johnson Space Center in Houston.

Nice to see six of the seven of you.

We should mention that Mission Specialist Soichi Noguchi, I guess he's just still in bed or resting up now.

Nice to have the rest of you, though.

We sure appreciate it.

Hey, you know, you've got to get your rest sometimes.

Commander Collins, let's begin with you.

How does it feel to be back to gravity? I mean did you feel wobbly at first? Does it take a couple of days to get back to a normal feeling?

EILEEN COLLINS, DISCOVERY COMMANDER: I definitely felt a little bit wobbly. Fourteen days in space was my longest mission and I felt pretty good when I first got out of the shuttle. And we always like to do a walk around to look at the tiles and see the condition of the outside of the shuttle. But as I looked up, I found myself losing my balance.

So it's been two or three days now and I'm still getting my balance back and a little -- sore muscles. But I'll get there.

O'BRIEN: Jim Kelly, Miles, who's got the day off, you know, kept calling you Vegas, which I guess is your nickname and I'm sure there's a great story behind that. You know, in all seriousness, though, we all breathed this giant collective sigh of relief when you landed and everything was fine.

Did you feel that same way as you were getting ready to make the reentry?

JAMES KELLY, DISCOVERY PILOT: Well, yes, obviously the reentry became much more of a focus for our flight post-Columbia. And the one benefit that we had, obviously, that came from their sacrifice was the capability to look at our vehicle and make sure that it was good to reenter and land.

And so we expected it to go smoothly and it did. But I realize there was a collectively sigh of relief all around the country. And I've heard stories from many family members of all the hopes and prayers and thoughts coming around the country. And we really felt those on board. And so thank you to everyone in America that was thinking about us as we came back and helping us make it home.

O'BRIEN: I'll tell you, you know, that's nice of you to say, because I think that's really true. Everybody was thinking about that.

James Camarda, you were -- your family, really, was kind enough to let us hang out with your daughter and follow her as she waited for your return. I'm curious to know how much you were thinking about the Columbia astronauts who, of course, lost their lives in that terrible reentry.

Tell me about that.

CHARLES CAMARDA, MISSION SPECIALIST: Well, we think about them all the time. Ever since the tragedy we've had their pictures up. And I know as we worked to return to flight efforts, they're always on our -- in our thoughts and in our prayers, especially for their family. Eileen posted a picture up on the flight deck of the Columbia crew and we saw them. They were in our prayers. We lost seven colleagues, three classmates I lost, and we think about them all the time. And we're going to make sure that that doesn't happen again.

O'BRIEN: Steve Robinson, you know, we were kind of laughing, because at the same time that we were talking about your repair mission, we were also covering this panda cam. And the pictures from space were so much better than the Web cam on the panda, we were like hey, you know, how come your cam pictures are so much better than what we can see at some museum -- at some -- I'm curious -- at some zoo, rather.

I'm curious to know, though, what it was like to be just tacked down at the feet and you're kind of hanging out there.

Was it unnerving? Could you -- did you get a sense of where you were in space, so to speak?

STEPHEN ROBINSON, MISSION SPECIALIST: Now, did you ask the panda these questions, too?

O'BRIEN: I did a much tougher interview with the panda, I want you to know.

ROBINSON: OK. All right. All right. Good.

I want to get this straight.

I have the better camera, remember.

No, it wasn't unnerving at all, you know? It was a fantastic personal experience. You know, I've never seen anything like that and neither has anybody else. But it wasn't unnerving. I felt very, very solid and secure. I had my crew, Wendy Lawrence and Jim Kelly, who were flying me on the arm and Andy was supervising and Soichi was watching over me and Eileen was taking pictures and the whole, I don't know how many people on the ground were all in the team, too.

So I felt completely secure and well supported and very focused, also.

O'BRIEN: Yes, it seemed that way. And it was just amazing, really, when you just plucked it out. It seemed just incredible to watch, and watch it live, as well, with very good shots.

Wendy Lawrence, I want to ask you a question about the future shuttle missions. The foam problem is obviously not resolved and so the fleet's been grounded. And it's scheduled to be retired in 2010.

Do you think that there will be future shuttle missions?

WENDY LAWRENCE, MISSION SPECIALIST: Oh, most certainly I think there will be future shuttle missions. We do have a commitment to our international partners to complete the International Space Station. And the shuttle is really the only vehicle that will allow us to do that. I mean it's a phenomenal vehicle in terms of its ability to get large payloads both to space and back down to the ground. And what people don't realize a lot about this mission is the fact that one of our major objectives was to resupply the International Space Station and bring home a significant amount of scientific experiments.

And so the space shuttle is the vehicle that allows us to bring home as much as we bring up.

O'BRIEN: The final question goes to Andrew Thomas. And I know you thought you were going to get away with no questions, right? But no.

I want to know, you're back to real life now and obviously back to the kids and back to the bills. And I read that some of you guys actually got called for jury duty while you were up in space.

Is that right?

ANDREW THOMAS, MISSION SPECIALIST: Apparently a couple of my colleagues did. Yes, that's actually the problem you have when you go to space. All the bills pile up and things like that. On my long flight some years ago, it was over the April 15th and I didn't file a tax return, which caused all kinds of problems and trying to explain to the IRS why I couldn't actually file a tax return.

O'BRIEN: You know they don't care. They're like...

THOMAS: They don't care at all.

O'BRIEN: They're like we don't care if you were in space.

THOMAS: It was completely a (UNINTELLIGIBLE).

O'BRIEN: You -- we're going to audit you if you don't get that return in.

You guys, congratulations.

It was truly a remarkable mission.

Thank you so much for being with us and sharing that with us.

We appreciate it.

COLLINS: Thanks.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Thanks.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Thank you.

O'BRIEN: Carol.

COSTELLO: Still to come on AMERICAN MORNING, the fight against fat. One big city takes unprecedented action to make sure diners like you have healthier options. That's next on AMERICAN MORNING.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

COSTELLO: New York City health officials want restaurants in the Big Apple to cut the fat from their menus, specifically, trans fats, which experts say are the most hazardous to your health.

Dr. Dean Ornish, clinical professor of medicine at the University of California San Francisco is here to talk about it and how a low fat diet may slow prostate cancer.

Welcome, doctor.

DR. DEAN ORNISH, CLINICAL PROFESSOR OF MEDICINE, UCSF: Thank you.

It's good to be here.

COSTELLO: So, you probably like this idea, because 20 years ago you came up with the idea that diet and exercise are really good for you.

But before we get into that, I want you to explain to viewers what trans fat exactly is.

ORNISH: Well, trans fats are the most dangerous type of artery clogging fats and most experts agree on that. Even Dr. Atkins and I agreed on that one. What they tend to do is they raise your bad cholesterol, they lower your good cholesterol, and then they're most strongly linked with illness like heart disease.

COSTELLO: So restaurants and bakeries use trans fats because it burns better than butter, because, I guess, butter burns the food and it's a lot cheaper?

ORNISH: It's cheaper. It tends to increase the shelf life of the products. But they decrease the shelf life of the people who eat them, that's the problem.

COSTELLO: Well, can you tell if a restaurant like, let's say a restaurant says it's not using trans fats but really is. I mean is there any way to tell by taste? ORNISH: Not so much by taste. There have been changes in the food labeling so when you go to the grocery store, they now have to disclose that. And there's a lot of discussion now about whether restaurants should have to, as well.

I'm in favor of full disclosure because I think people need to know what they're eating and what they do about it, of course, is their own business.

COSTELLO: So that should be right on the menu?

ORNISH: I think so.

COSTELLO: Oh, that would be great, wouldn't it?

Let's talk about this article you wrote in the "Journal of Urology" about diet, exercise and stress and how they affect prostate cancer, your prostate.

ORNISH: Yes, well, Dr. Peter Caroll at UCSF and Dr. Bill Fair, the late Dr. William Fair from Sloan Kettering and I and our group at the Preventive Medicine Research Institute studied men who had biopsy proven prostate cancer and who had elected, for reasons unrelated to our study, not to have conventional treatment. We randomly divided them into two groups and we asked half of them to make the same kinds of diet and lifestyle changes that we found in our earlier research could reverse heart disease.

After a year, we found that six of the patients in the comparison group needed conventional treatment like surgery and radiation, but none of the experimental group patients who made lifestyle changes did. And we found that their PSA levels, which is a marker for prostate cancer, went down in the group that changed their lifestyle or got better, whereas they went up or got worse in the comparison group.

COSTELLO: And when you're talking about the diet associated with this, we're taking the trans fats out of the diet?

ORNISH: Well, it's more than just the trans fats. It's a diet of predominantly fruits, vegetables, whole grains, legumes, soy products, things like that. And the reason is, it's not only what you exclude from your diet that's harmful, but also what you include that's beneficial. And there are at least 1,000 substances that are protective in fruits and vegetables and whole grains.

We also found in our study, when we added the blood from the patients who made these changes to prostate tumors growing in tissue culture that the tumors were inhibited 70 percent in the group that made these changes but only in 9 percent of the control group. And the more they changed, the better they got.

So I think these findings are giving new hope and new choices to many people. And even if people have conventional treatments -- we're not saying in any way that they shouldn't -- they could also benefit from making these changes to help prevent recurrence. COSTELLO: Well, I did want to ask you about that, because some researchers say that the results of your study weren't dramatic enough to warrant not using more traditional means to fight prostate cancer.

ORNISH: Well, we're not saying that people shouldn't do that. We're saying that in addition to traditional means, this can help prevent recurrence. And you don't have to be so strict to prevent prostate cancer or heart disease as you do to help reverse it. It's the ounce of prevention and the pound of cure.

And I think one of the reasons why no one had shown that you could actually stop or perhaps even reverse the progression of prostate cancer until now is that they didn't go far enough. In order to stop the progression of the disease, you have to make bigger changes than you do to help prevent it.

COSTELLO: Dr. Dean Ornish, thank you for joining us this morning.

ORNISH: Thanks a lot.

O'BRIEN: Still to come this morning, an experimental drug may have saved the life of a little girl with a rare form of cancer. So why did the drug company stop making it? We're "Paging Dr. Gupta" for his special series, "The War On Cancer."

That story is ahead on AMERICAN MORNING.

Stay with us.

(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