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Rumsfeld Backs President Bush on Intelligence Reform; Thousands of People Still on the Streets of Kiev Protesting Election Results
Aired November 27, 2004 - 10:00 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.
(NEWSBREAK)
BARBARA STARR, CNN PENTAGON CORRESPONDENT: Welcome to CNN's ON THE STORY where our journalists have the inside word on the stories we covered this week. I'm Barbara Starr on the story of open warfare in Washington over control of intelligence and whether the Pentagon gets its way.
SUZANNE MALVEAUX, CNN WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: I'm Suzanne Malveaux in Crawford, Texas covering the president and the challenges he faces getting his own Republican Party to back his policies.
ROSE ARCE, CNN CORRESPONDENT: I'm Rose Arce on the story of a U.S. soldier who joined up, had second thoughts, and is now on the run and wondering what punishment he faces.
ANDREA KOPPEL, CNN STATE DEPARTMENT CORRESPONDENT: And, I'm Andrea Koppel on the story of the soon-to-be out of work Secretary of State Colin Powell who makes a final attempt to broker Mid East peace.
We'll go to Iraq where Jane Arraf is on the story of the next challenge to root out insurgents and stop the violence.
Jill Dougherty has been watching the political drama play out on the streets of Kiev as huge crowds refuse to accept official election results.
And, after the brawl, can professional basketball and the fans cool down?
You can e-mail us at onthestory@cnn.com.
Now straight to Barbara Starr and the intelligence battle.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
DONALD RUMSFELD, DEFENSE SECRETARY: Needless to say, I'm a part of this administration. I support the president's position.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
STARR: Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld at a Pentagon briefing this week pledging he's part of the team but loyalty aside the plan to overhaul how the U.S. spies on the rest of the world and how it analyzes and shares the information that plan has hit a brick wall. MALVEAUX: And, Barbara, I'm very curious about a lot of the arm twisting that happened this past week because we know President Bush even got involved in this trying to push forward the 9/11 intelligence reform. We know that Cheney was involved and then the next day Rumsfeld comes out and says "I am behind the president."
The White House insists that they did not ask him to come forward and make such a public statement but it was rather curious to see him make such a public statement the day after here. What do you know about I guess some of the arm twisting that happened?
STARR: Well for the record, Suzanne, what the Pentagon says is they did not get involved in it that once this political debate reached the highest levels between Congress and the White House, the Pentagon stepped out of it, that they are behind the president. They support the White House, what a surprise, and it's just between the White House and Congress.
But, of course, there's so much more to it than that because there is the Joint Chiefs of Staff. The Chairman of the Joint Chiefs General Richard Myers, the entire Joint Chiefs of Staff has now come out publicly at the request of Congressman Duncan Hunter, Republican on the House side, who is against the intelligence reform bill.
The Joint Chiefs say they want to leave military tactical intelligence agencies under the control of the Pentagon. They think it's the best way to do business, and so there's this little problem. The Joint Chiefs think one thing and the White House thinks another.
KOPPEL: How unusual is it to have a secretary of defense who is not standing side-by-side with the Joint Chiefs?
STARR: Well, there's, you know, jokes in Washington often have that benefit of actually being true. The problem is the Joint Chiefs, unlike the politicians, have a statutory responsibility to tell Congress the truth what they really think about something.
So, they've all said that in their best military advice that they truly believe this, these military intelligence programs should be left in the Pentagon, not transferred to a new national intelligence director.
It's a very unusual circumstance. Usually these things are all done behind the scenes. And what you notice is Rumsfeld failed to take the public opportunity to side with the chiefs. He stayed silent on that question. He would only say that he supports the president, lots of politics, lots of big money at stake on how this all sorts out.
ARCE: Barbara, after the election you would have thought or you would have been looking at this and saying legislation is just going to be sailing through Congress now. You have this popularly elected president. He's got the Congress on his side. You know, you would have thought the administration would be in lock step. What happened here? STARR: This one I think -- Suzanne probably knows more about that than me in terms of the politics between the White House and Capitol Hill right now. This one I think is really different.
Intelligence reform is caught up a lot in the emotions of 9/11, the 9/11 families, the intelligence reform that they want. Nobody wants to be against solving the 9/11 problem but nobody is actually sure that this bill really does it, so it remains to be seen.
MALVEAUX: And, Rose, one of the things I guess on the political side, of course, is that this is hugely important for President Bush. It really is a very big test for him, one of the first tests for a second administration whether or not he can really give the people what they're looking for and there was a lot of pressure that was built up, as you know, from the 9/11 Commission families who say they are going for this full force.
Barbara, I wanted to ask you a question, however, about troop levels because I understand that that's going to be increasing. It's not a very popular thing for a lot of folks who realize that a lot of their loved ones are going to be sent overseas.
STARR: Indeed, Suzanne. That is the monster in the closet right now. The phone lines are burning up almost every day between top U.S. military commanders in Baghdad and the Pentagon what to do about troop levels between now and the end of January when Iraq is supposed to have elections.
What they're trying to calculate is to have safe and secure elections how many troops does it really take? That's a calculation. It's a math problem right now. What will the level of violence be? How will the Iraqi security forces play into all of this? Are there enough of them and are there enough U.S. troops or do they actually need to send more U.S. troops from the United States?
KOPPEL: Well, do they know yet, Barbara, how the American troops will be operating on the ground with elections? There's all kind of concern that the U.S. not be seen as influencing the vote, so have they worked out what their orders are?
STARR: That's going to be an issue. They don't -- you're absolutely right, of course. The U.S. doesn't want to be seen as an occupation force. They want to let the Iraqi security forces be out front, be in the towns, be in the villages, really take on the security issue sort of on the street level and U.S. forces just operate behind the scenes.
But the violence that we see continuing in Iraq makes it difficult to see how that's going to happen and, of course, now in the last couple of days many political parties, especially the Sunni- backed parties, have come out and said they think elections should be delayed.
KOPPEL: So, what does that mean for troops? How long will they be there? STARR: It's hard to say. I mean, you know, talk about political capital, Suzanne. The president has staked it around the world on Iraq having elections at the end of January, hard to see that he would change his mind and sign up to this Sunni political view that the elections should be delayed. Are you hearing anything from the White House on that?
MALVEAUX: Well, Barbara, actually they're not changing their position on this at all because they really see it as a very big test of credibility here for the Bush administration. They have talked to Allawi. They have talked to a number of those leaders and said, "Look, you know, we believe keeping with that deadline is critical because otherwise this gives a signal to the insurgents that they've actually won."
This is not something that the White House feels it can budge on. I mean really they have put a lot of their credibility on the line when it comes to this. So, one thing that they realize, however, is that they have been in discussions with Allawi. They do realize that it is a very tense and very dangerous situation but they say short or shy of Allawi actually coming forward publicly and saying these elections need to be moved, they're not going to change their position.
KOPPEL: What's complicating matters is that Allawi's party has come out and said that they think elections should be postponed for six months but, of course, it's not just Iraq that's on the U.S. government's radar this week.
U.S. officials also were keeping tabs on the political impact in Ukraine where tens of thousands of people are on the march. Jill Dougherty is back on that story in just a moment.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
COLIN POWELL, SECRETARY OF STATE: This is a critical moment. It is time for Ukrainian leaders to decide whether they are on the side of democracy or not, whether they respect the will of the people or not.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
JILL DOUGHERTY, CNN MOSCOW BUREAU CHIEF (by videophone): U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell on these Ukrainian elections. The entire world is watching this one. On the streets of Kiev and other cities throughout Ukraine still thousands of demonstrators and today a major political victory by the opposition.
Welcome back. I'm Jill Dougherty on the story in Kiev, Ukraine.
ARCE: Jill, what is the situation there right now and where is this all going to go? What are the options? Could we be seeing the mother of all recounts? Is this guy just going to stay in power? Where do you think -- where do you think this could go? DOUGHERTY: Well, overall the most important thing would be the (UNINTELLIGIBLE). Are they going to redo these elections because, after all, there have been two rounds already? So, this would be the third round but that is what the opposition wants. The question is will they get it?
What's the situation right now? Six days straight, you know, it's evening here in Kiev and it has been six full days of hundreds of thousands of people on the streets, amazing, amazing thing because they brought that many people into the streets and it has been peaceful. There has been really no violence.
And then on the political side of it, Russia, the United States, the Europeans looking on, it's a story with multiple, multiple layers, a human story and a very, very big political story.
KOPPEL: Jill, we began your segment with that sound byte from Secretary Powell, highly unusual for the U.S. secretary of state to be weighing in publicly and criticizing the outcome of an election. Did Secretary Powell's comments, did the U.S. objection to the outcome have any impact there on the ground?
DOUGHERTY: You know, when you talk to let's say average people they are not necessarily paying attention to every word that he says but you can bet that the pressure that is being exerted by the United States, not only that by the Europeans, et cetera, is having some effect.
And, as I've been listening to these demos, demonstrations downtown, you often hear they saying, look there are people, in fact the other night they said, "Look, there are people in Los Angeles. There are people in Chicago. There are people in Canada who are rooting for us. Keep it up. Keep it up." So, the knowledge that there are other people around the world is another factor here.
STARR: Now, Jill, a lot of people looking at what's happening on the streets and, of course, sort of remembering the days of the fall of communism, the end of the Cold War. What's happening behind the scenes with the Kremlin? How is the Kremlin pulling the strings here?
DOUGHERTY: Amazing story. You know, President Putin himself came her twice and although he wouldn't say that he was campaigning, he was definitely campaigning and definitely many people would say interfering with this election.
Russia and Mr. Putin made it very clear that they wanted the government-backed candidate and now you're beginning to see a little bit of pull back on the Russian side thinking that maybe that wasn't such a very good idea because nobody else, really when you look at it, is on their side except for perhaps the president of Belarus.
But everybody else, the Europeans, the Americans, are all on the other side and it's not necessarily, you know, one candidate versus the other. It's what happened in those elections which most western observers would say were very, very flawed. MALVEAUX: And, Jill, you bring up a very good point because there is a lot of pressure from the Bush administration. It was just last week that President Bush met with Putin at the Apex Summit in Chile.
They had a conversation and senior administration officials tell us that this was really an unusual situation because President Bush again making his concerns known to Putin, saying, talking about that this is authoritative, that this is a centralized power, that they're trying to crush the media, all of these types of moves that Putin and Russia have been making in the past and then supporting these elections on top of it seen as a very big problem for the Bush administration and U.S.-Russia relations.
So, they definitely made their views known and they are keeping a very close eye on how this all turns out because they really, they look at this in the big picture as perhaps even a struggle between the east and the west.
DOUGHERTY: Yes, it shouldn't be that way but, boy, there are more and more irritants in the relationship between President Bush and President Putin. Just think of it. You have not only what's going on here in Ukraine. You have the situation with Yukos Oil Company. Mr. Khodorkovsky of Yukos Oil Company sitting in jail, the administration not happy about that.
You have Chechnya. You have, remember a year ago, Georgia, another former Soviet Republic that had their own rose revolution and I'm reminded I have to say since I covered that story too it has some of the same feeling, so there are a lot of irritants here between Bush and Putin.
ARCE: Jill, who are some of these thousands and thousands of people we see on the streets? Are there women? Are there children? How diverse are they and what are some of the emotions that you're sensing out there? Is there still optimism after this many days?
DOUGHERTY: It is incredible. Optimism doesn't even do it justice. I mean if you could hear some, maybe over the back you can hear the sounds, it is like a football game, like the biggest football game you ever heard that they won and they've been doing this for six days in a row.
It is young people. It's middle-aged people. There are some children. There are students. There are police cadets who went over the other side and went over up to the police, actually up to the guards and said, "Come on over to the side of the people."
It's remarkable, too, because they are -- it's not an angry crowd. This is not, you know, taking pitch forks and attacking buildings. It's very peaceful, very mellow and very positive. These people know what they want.
KOPPEL: Jill, if there are hundreds of thousands of Ukrainians on the streets, has the country kind of ground to a stop? DOUGHERTY: Here in Kiev it kind of is. I mean, you know, things are still functioning but if you drive down the main streets in Kiev, the capital, there are cars and people and seas of people moving from place to place and then these demonstrations that are taking place down in the main square and all over the place.
And, you know, it's not only people from Kiev. It's people from all over Ukraine, some of whom are camping out. People are bringing food and clothes, preparing, you know, to help out the people who are here stuck for days on end. Nobody knows when this is going to end but I've been told by more people that they're going to stick in until the bitter end.
MALVEAUX: And, Jill, we know you have to get back on the story but tell us what's up for you in the next coming days?
DOUGHERTY: Well, the big question is what will happen? Are they going to get new elections? And I think that's the crucial issue. It's hard to think that the government would go along with that because they've said these were legitimate elections but that is a possibility and, if that happens, it will send a very, very potent political symbol, a message not only through Ukraine but I think throughout the former Soviet Union and including Russia.
MALVEAUX: We wish you the very, very best luck there, Jill. And, of course, President Bush is watching the developments there but also watching developments in Iran and Iraq. I'm back on that story.
ANNOUNCER: Suzanne Malveaux is a CNN White House Correspondent. Earlier, she reported for NBC for six years covering the Pentagon and the Clinton administration. She has degrees from Harvard and Columbia.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
BUSH: Adios. That means goodbye.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
MALVEAUX: That's President Bush the day before Thanksgiving in a very good mood and what you're seeing there is the royal treatment, Texas style, only the way the President Bush can do it.
He is seen there greeting the king and queen of Spain. We saw him. He pulled up in his pickup truck. He had his father by his side, the first lady in the back. He pulls up and he says, "Hola."
They exchange greetings and then, of course, the king jumps in with him shotgun and they ride back to the Crawford Ranch for a turkey feast, this of course all a part of President Bush's new initiatives, continued initiatives working on those diplomatic skills.
KOPPEL: It's interesting, Suzanne, that the president invited the king and queen of Spain. They don't hold any formal power in the country and it's clearly a stick in the eye to the new prime minister of Spain who withdrew all of Spain's troops from Iraq.
MALVEAUX: You could see it that way as well because what the Bush administration has had a tough time with, as you know, with Spain's new leadership, Prime Minister Zapatero. He ran on the platform that he was going to pull out Spain's troops. That is exactly what his has done.
Zapatero has picked up the phone to congratulate President Bush on his win. The White House taking a step back, not returning his calls, and then it took the president a little while. He sent a congratulatory note to Zapatero saying, hey, you know, let's work together. We believe we can improve relations here.
Both sides, both the king and the queen and the president believe that this initiative will at least begin to jumpstart or perhaps warm the chill between those two leaders.
It was the king's idea, however. He initiated this visit. He said, "I'm in town. I'm in Seattle, Washington. Why don't I come over by the Crawford Ranch?" And hopefully what the Bush administration really is looking to do is really warm that relationship.
ARCE: Suzanne, you see him reaching out to the Spanish opposition but what about to the opposition here at home? Are we going to be seeing any ride in the pickup truck for Ted Kennedy or John Kerry or anyone like that anytime soon?
MALVEAUX: You know, everyone's talking that they're going to have this new sense of bipartisanship. We're really going to have to wait and see. What the president is dealing with now and perhaps somewhat surprising for him as well as his team is his own party, the Republican Party because, as you know, very powerful in Congress now.
They gained these seats. They really thought they were going to be able to at least push through some of their main initiatives and that's going to be a very big test over the next couple of years. We've already seen really a blow to the president, to the administration, in looking at that intelligence reform.
STARR: Suzanne, back on the international foreign policy stage for a minute, what's the White House view about how they're going to deal with Iran in a second term?
MALVEAUX: Well, as you know of course, Iran has been a problem, a growing problem for the Bush administration. They have really been leaning on the European Union to take the lead here.
He talks a lot about Tony Blair, as well as the Germans and the French, putting pressure on Iran to come clean here, to say look "We're going to freeze our uranium enrichment program. We're going to freeze our nuclear program here."
And the Bush administration also saying, you know, prove it because Iran has said "We will cooperate. We'll go to the international community and prove that we're not going to pursue this" but they are very skeptical here.
You have the International Atomic Energy Agency going in and taking a look at this. They've got to verify it. The president and the White House are far from confidence that they are really going to abandon this program but, again, they are trying to as much as possible put it on the Europeans. Let them handle the main front of the diplomacy line.
KOPPEL: Suzanne, I know that you are one of the fortunate who got to spend her Thanksgiving away from home and at Crawford and we were hoping that you could, you could burst the bubble for our viewers and let us know what Thanksgiving on the ranch is like for those of you who are on the job.
MALVEAUX: Well, you know, it's funny because one of my colleagues with "USA Today" interviewed a lot of us about that very question and everyone was very polite saying oh, you know, it's not that bad.
We made phone calls to our families and hope that they felt sorry for us because we had -- we were in the gymnasium of the middle school nearby, about eight miles outside of the Crawford Ranch, Styrofoam, the turkey was from the local truck stop.
You know, I mean it really is the underbelly of I guess the glamorous life that people think we live but, again, you know, it's -- you got to do those things too.
STARR: Well, we thank you, Suzanne. We're all on the glamour beat some days. We're going to check in with Jane Arraf in northern Iraq in a moment for the latest there.
Andrea Koppel is on the story of Colin Powell on his way out but is it too late to breathe new life into Mid East peace talks?
And Rose Arce is on the story of a gung ho Army volunteer who went AWOL.
And, violence in sports, when it goes off the court into the stands.
And finally, a check on what's making news right now, all coming up, all ON THE STORY.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
(NEWSBREAK)
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: If you want to finish the fight up north, it starts here, throughout the home starts here, not just for us but for every U.S. soldier in Iraq.
(END VIDEO CLIP) JANE ARRAF, CNN BAGHDAD BUREAU CHIEF (by videophone): That was Lieutenant Colonel Pete Newell (ph) commander of Task Force 22, the Army's 1st Infantry Division and he had addressed the soldiers just before they headed off to Falluja.
Welcome back. I'm Jane Arraf in Muqtadiyah in the Sunni Triangle and welcome back to ON THE STORY.
STARR: Jane, tell us a little bit about where you are today, the unit that you're embedded with, the action that's going on where you are.
ARRAF: Well, we're in the home base, basically, this unit that we went into Falluja with. They were in there for 12 days, days that just ripped by. They were some of the most astounding things these soldiers had ever seen, certainly the most intense combat, the most artillery fired, the most firepower aimed at a city since Vietnam.
They were there for 12 days and they come back to their home base and their home base is in Muqtadiyah, which is about 60 miles northwest of Baghdad and, compared to Falluja, it is a paradise.
This is a former Iraqi Army camp. There's almost nothing here but it is relatively safe and they're glad to be back and they're just now coping with what they've seen, that intense battle, the loss of five of their men, four of them in combat, another one on the way home and it's all quite surreal still to a lot of them.
MALVEAUX: And, Jane, I know the elections are approaching very shortly, just weeks away. Give us a sense do you believe that this has any impact on how desperate perhaps these insurgents are getting or even the sense that you're getting from the soldiers. What is the morale like?
ARRAF: Well, in terms of the election, they plunged back here to their real jobs essentially. I mean these soldiers went to fight this very high level conflict, this intense combat as we said and they've come back here to a combination of this low level insurgency going on and essentially nation building, where they are trying to set the stage for elections to take place in this town, in the Sunni Triangle.
Now, there are a lot of obstacles before that. We've seen today that there are political parties calling for delay and here there's a lot of confusion. A lot of the Iraqis don't know how they're supposed to register, who they would vote for. The candidates haven't been declared, an awful lot to do before that happens.
And, the soldiers, they see -- they say they see progress every day, so they're a little more optimistic about the big picture than perhaps those on the outside tend to be but still there are an awful lot of challenges here.
KOPPEL: Jane, I was teasing Suzanne before the break about Thanksgiving for journalists who were covering the president at Crawford. But, in all seriousness, this is a holiday in the United States that's so important to many Americans and I'm sure it was one that was important to the troops that you were with. How did you guys celebrate it?
ARRAF: Well, the troops here went to their mess hall essentially where they got trucked in from another base turkey. It was an amazing menu I have to say and the military makes a huge deal, as you know, about Thanksgiving. No matter where these soldiers are they try to get them what they consider a proper Thanksgiving meal.
So, you can imagine this sort of very bare bones room, which again is a real step up from what they moved into eight months ago. There were mice and rats. There was a big slab on the table and that was where the food went.
But now it's a proper sort of cafeteria type place and the officers help dish out mashed potatoes and ham and roast beef and lobster tails, I have to say, and turkey and it went on and on and on.
Aired November 27, 2004 - 10:00 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
(NEWSBREAK)
BARBARA STARR, CNN PENTAGON CORRESPONDENT: Welcome to CNN's ON THE STORY where our journalists have the inside word on the stories we covered this week. I'm Barbara Starr on the story of open warfare in Washington over control of intelligence and whether the Pentagon gets its way.
SUZANNE MALVEAUX, CNN WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: I'm Suzanne Malveaux in Crawford, Texas covering the president and the challenges he faces getting his own Republican Party to back his policies.
ROSE ARCE, CNN CORRESPONDENT: I'm Rose Arce on the story of a U.S. soldier who joined up, had second thoughts, and is now on the run and wondering what punishment he faces.
ANDREA KOPPEL, CNN STATE DEPARTMENT CORRESPONDENT: And, I'm Andrea Koppel on the story of the soon-to-be out of work Secretary of State Colin Powell who makes a final attempt to broker Mid East peace.
We'll go to Iraq where Jane Arraf is on the story of the next challenge to root out insurgents and stop the violence.
Jill Dougherty has been watching the political drama play out on the streets of Kiev as huge crowds refuse to accept official election results.
And, after the brawl, can professional basketball and the fans cool down?
You can e-mail us at onthestory@cnn.com.
Now straight to Barbara Starr and the intelligence battle.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
DONALD RUMSFELD, DEFENSE SECRETARY: Needless to say, I'm a part of this administration. I support the president's position.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
STARR: Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld at a Pentagon briefing this week pledging he's part of the team but loyalty aside the plan to overhaul how the U.S. spies on the rest of the world and how it analyzes and shares the information that plan has hit a brick wall. MALVEAUX: And, Barbara, I'm very curious about a lot of the arm twisting that happened this past week because we know President Bush even got involved in this trying to push forward the 9/11 intelligence reform. We know that Cheney was involved and then the next day Rumsfeld comes out and says "I am behind the president."
The White House insists that they did not ask him to come forward and make such a public statement but it was rather curious to see him make such a public statement the day after here. What do you know about I guess some of the arm twisting that happened?
STARR: Well for the record, Suzanne, what the Pentagon says is they did not get involved in it that once this political debate reached the highest levels between Congress and the White House, the Pentagon stepped out of it, that they are behind the president. They support the White House, what a surprise, and it's just between the White House and Congress.
But, of course, there's so much more to it than that because there is the Joint Chiefs of Staff. The Chairman of the Joint Chiefs General Richard Myers, the entire Joint Chiefs of Staff has now come out publicly at the request of Congressman Duncan Hunter, Republican on the House side, who is against the intelligence reform bill.
The Joint Chiefs say they want to leave military tactical intelligence agencies under the control of the Pentagon. They think it's the best way to do business, and so there's this little problem. The Joint Chiefs think one thing and the White House thinks another.
KOPPEL: How unusual is it to have a secretary of defense who is not standing side-by-side with the Joint Chiefs?
STARR: Well, there's, you know, jokes in Washington often have that benefit of actually being true. The problem is the Joint Chiefs, unlike the politicians, have a statutory responsibility to tell Congress the truth what they really think about something.
So, they've all said that in their best military advice that they truly believe this, these military intelligence programs should be left in the Pentagon, not transferred to a new national intelligence director.
It's a very unusual circumstance. Usually these things are all done behind the scenes. And what you notice is Rumsfeld failed to take the public opportunity to side with the chiefs. He stayed silent on that question. He would only say that he supports the president, lots of politics, lots of big money at stake on how this all sorts out.
ARCE: Barbara, after the election you would have thought or you would have been looking at this and saying legislation is just going to be sailing through Congress now. You have this popularly elected president. He's got the Congress on his side. You know, you would have thought the administration would be in lock step. What happened here? STARR: This one I think -- Suzanne probably knows more about that than me in terms of the politics between the White House and Capitol Hill right now. This one I think is really different.
Intelligence reform is caught up a lot in the emotions of 9/11, the 9/11 families, the intelligence reform that they want. Nobody wants to be against solving the 9/11 problem but nobody is actually sure that this bill really does it, so it remains to be seen.
MALVEAUX: And, Rose, one of the things I guess on the political side, of course, is that this is hugely important for President Bush. It really is a very big test for him, one of the first tests for a second administration whether or not he can really give the people what they're looking for and there was a lot of pressure that was built up, as you know, from the 9/11 Commission families who say they are going for this full force.
Barbara, I wanted to ask you a question, however, about troop levels because I understand that that's going to be increasing. It's not a very popular thing for a lot of folks who realize that a lot of their loved ones are going to be sent overseas.
STARR: Indeed, Suzanne. That is the monster in the closet right now. The phone lines are burning up almost every day between top U.S. military commanders in Baghdad and the Pentagon what to do about troop levels between now and the end of January when Iraq is supposed to have elections.
What they're trying to calculate is to have safe and secure elections how many troops does it really take? That's a calculation. It's a math problem right now. What will the level of violence be? How will the Iraqi security forces play into all of this? Are there enough of them and are there enough U.S. troops or do they actually need to send more U.S. troops from the United States?
KOPPEL: Well, do they know yet, Barbara, how the American troops will be operating on the ground with elections? There's all kind of concern that the U.S. not be seen as influencing the vote, so have they worked out what their orders are?
STARR: That's going to be an issue. They don't -- you're absolutely right, of course. The U.S. doesn't want to be seen as an occupation force. They want to let the Iraqi security forces be out front, be in the towns, be in the villages, really take on the security issue sort of on the street level and U.S. forces just operate behind the scenes.
But the violence that we see continuing in Iraq makes it difficult to see how that's going to happen and, of course, now in the last couple of days many political parties, especially the Sunni- backed parties, have come out and said they think elections should be delayed.
KOPPEL: So, what does that mean for troops? How long will they be there? STARR: It's hard to say. I mean, you know, talk about political capital, Suzanne. The president has staked it around the world on Iraq having elections at the end of January, hard to see that he would change his mind and sign up to this Sunni political view that the elections should be delayed. Are you hearing anything from the White House on that?
MALVEAUX: Well, Barbara, actually they're not changing their position on this at all because they really see it as a very big test of credibility here for the Bush administration. They have talked to Allawi. They have talked to a number of those leaders and said, "Look, you know, we believe keeping with that deadline is critical because otherwise this gives a signal to the insurgents that they've actually won."
This is not something that the White House feels it can budge on. I mean really they have put a lot of their credibility on the line when it comes to this. So, one thing that they realize, however, is that they have been in discussions with Allawi. They do realize that it is a very tense and very dangerous situation but they say short or shy of Allawi actually coming forward publicly and saying these elections need to be moved, they're not going to change their position.
KOPPEL: What's complicating matters is that Allawi's party has come out and said that they think elections should be postponed for six months but, of course, it's not just Iraq that's on the U.S. government's radar this week.
U.S. officials also were keeping tabs on the political impact in Ukraine where tens of thousands of people are on the march. Jill Dougherty is back on that story in just a moment.
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COLIN POWELL, SECRETARY OF STATE: This is a critical moment. It is time for Ukrainian leaders to decide whether they are on the side of democracy or not, whether they respect the will of the people or not.
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JILL DOUGHERTY, CNN MOSCOW BUREAU CHIEF (by videophone): U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell on these Ukrainian elections. The entire world is watching this one. On the streets of Kiev and other cities throughout Ukraine still thousands of demonstrators and today a major political victory by the opposition.
Welcome back. I'm Jill Dougherty on the story in Kiev, Ukraine.
ARCE: Jill, what is the situation there right now and where is this all going to go? What are the options? Could we be seeing the mother of all recounts? Is this guy just going to stay in power? Where do you think -- where do you think this could go? DOUGHERTY: Well, overall the most important thing would be the (UNINTELLIGIBLE). Are they going to redo these elections because, after all, there have been two rounds already? So, this would be the third round but that is what the opposition wants. The question is will they get it?
What's the situation right now? Six days straight, you know, it's evening here in Kiev and it has been six full days of hundreds of thousands of people on the streets, amazing, amazing thing because they brought that many people into the streets and it has been peaceful. There has been really no violence.
And then on the political side of it, Russia, the United States, the Europeans looking on, it's a story with multiple, multiple layers, a human story and a very, very big political story.
KOPPEL: Jill, we began your segment with that sound byte from Secretary Powell, highly unusual for the U.S. secretary of state to be weighing in publicly and criticizing the outcome of an election. Did Secretary Powell's comments, did the U.S. objection to the outcome have any impact there on the ground?
DOUGHERTY: You know, when you talk to let's say average people they are not necessarily paying attention to every word that he says but you can bet that the pressure that is being exerted by the United States, not only that by the Europeans, et cetera, is having some effect.
And, as I've been listening to these demos, demonstrations downtown, you often hear they saying, look there are people, in fact the other night they said, "Look, there are people in Los Angeles. There are people in Chicago. There are people in Canada who are rooting for us. Keep it up. Keep it up." So, the knowledge that there are other people around the world is another factor here.
STARR: Now, Jill, a lot of people looking at what's happening on the streets and, of course, sort of remembering the days of the fall of communism, the end of the Cold War. What's happening behind the scenes with the Kremlin? How is the Kremlin pulling the strings here?
DOUGHERTY: Amazing story. You know, President Putin himself came her twice and although he wouldn't say that he was campaigning, he was definitely campaigning and definitely many people would say interfering with this election.
Russia and Mr. Putin made it very clear that they wanted the government-backed candidate and now you're beginning to see a little bit of pull back on the Russian side thinking that maybe that wasn't such a very good idea because nobody else, really when you look at it, is on their side except for perhaps the president of Belarus.
But everybody else, the Europeans, the Americans, are all on the other side and it's not necessarily, you know, one candidate versus the other. It's what happened in those elections which most western observers would say were very, very flawed. MALVEAUX: And, Jill, you bring up a very good point because there is a lot of pressure from the Bush administration. It was just last week that President Bush met with Putin at the Apex Summit in Chile.
They had a conversation and senior administration officials tell us that this was really an unusual situation because President Bush again making his concerns known to Putin, saying, talking about that this is authoritative, that this is a centralized power, that they're trying to crush the media, all of these types of moves that Putin and Russia have been making in the past and then supporting these elections on top of it seen as a very big problem for the Bush administration and U.S.-Russia relations.
So, they definitely made their views known and they are keeping a very close eye on how this all turns out because they really, they look at this in the big picture as perhaps even a struggle between the east and the west.
DOUGHERTY: Yes, it shouldn't be that way but, boy, there are more and more irritants in the relationship between President Bush and President Putin. Just think of it. You have not only what's going on here in Ukraine. You have the situation with Yukos Oil Company. Mr. Khodorkovsky of Yukos Oil Company sitting in jail, the administration not happy about that.
You have Chechnya. You have, remember a year ago, Georgia, another former Soviet Republic that had their own rose revolution and I'm reminded I have to say since I covered that story too it has some of the same feeling, so there are a lot of irritants here between Bush and Putin.
ARCE: Jill, who are some of these thousands and thousands of people we see on the streets? Are there women? Are there children? How diverse are they and what are some of the emotions that you're sensing out there? Is there still optimism after this many days?
DOUGHERTY: It is incredible. Optimism doesn't even do it justice. I mean if you could hear some, maybe over the back you can hear the sounds, it is like a football game, like the biggest football game you ever heard that they won and they've been doing this for six days in a row.
It is young people. It's middle-aged people. There are some children. There are students. There are police cadets who went over the other side and went over up to the police, actually up to the guards and said, "Come on over to the side of the people."
It's remarkable, too, because they are -- it's not an angry crowd. This is not, you know, taking pitch forks and attacking buildings. It's very peaceful, very mellow and very positive. These people know what they want.
KOPPEL: Jill, if there are hundreds of thousands of Ukrainians on the streets, has the country kind of ground to a stop? DOUGHERTY: Here in Kiev it kind of is. I mean, you know, things are still functioning but if you drive down the main streets in Kiev, the capital, there are cars and people and seas of people moving from place to place and then these demonstrations that are taking place down in the main square and all over the place.
And, you know, it's not only people from Kiev. It's people from all over Ukraine, some of whom are camping out. People are bringing food and clothes, preparing, you know, to help out the people who are here stuck for days on end. Nobody knows when this is going to end but I've been told by more people that they're going to stick in until the bitter end.
MALVEAUX: And, Jill, we know you have to get back on the story but tell us what's up for you in the next coming days?
DOUGHERTY: Well, the big question is what will happen? Are they going to get new elections? And I think that's the crucial issue. It's hard to think that the government would go along with that because they've said these were legitimate elections but that is a possibility and, if that happens, it will send a very, very potent political symbol, a message not only through Ukraine but I think throughout the former Soviet Union and including Russia.
MALVEAUX: We wish you the very, very best luck there, Jill. And, of course, President Bush is watching the developments there but also watching developments in Iran and Iraq. I'm back on that story.
ANNOUNCER: Suzanne Malveaux is a CNN White House Correspondent. Earlier, she reported for NBC for six years covering the Pentagon and the Clinton administration. She has degrees from Harvard and Columbia.
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BUSH: Adios. That means goodbye.
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MALVEAUX: That's President Bush the day before Thanksgiving in a very good mood and what you're seeing there is the royal treatment, Texas style, only the way the President Bush can do it.
He is seen there greeting the king and queen of Spain. We saw him. He pulled up in his pickup truck. He had his father by his side, the first lady in the back. He pulls up and he says, "Hola."
They exchange greetings and then, of course, the king jumps in with him shotgun and they ride back to the Crawford Ranch for a turkey feast, this of course all a part of President Bush's new initiatives, continued initiatives working on those diplomatic skills.
KOPPEL: It's interesting, Suzanne, that the president invited the king and queen of Spain. They don't hold any formal power in the country and it's clearly a stick in the eye to the new prime minister of Spain who withdrew all of Spain's troops from Iraq.
MALVEAUX: You could see it that way as well because what the Bush administration has had a tough time with, as you know, with Spain's new leadership, Prime Minister Zapatero. He ran on the platform that he was going to pull out Spain's troops. That is exactly what his has done.
Zapatero has picked up the phone to congratulate President Bush on his win. The White House taking a step back, not returning his calls, and then it took the president a little while. He sent a congratulatory note to Zapatero saying, hey, you know, let's work together. We believe we can improve relations here.
Both sides, both the king and the queen and the president believe that this initiative will at least begin to jumpstart or perhaps warm the chill between those two leaders.
It was the king's idea, however. He initiated this visit. He said, "I'm in town. I'm in Seattle, Washington. Why don't I come over by the Crawford Ranch?" And hopefully what the Bush administration really is looking to do is really warm that relationship.
ARCE: Suzanne, you see him reaching out to the Spanish opposition but what about to the opposition here at home? Are we going to be seeing any ride in the pickup truck for Ted Kennedy or John Kerry or anyone like that anytime soon?
MALVEAUX: You know, everyone's talking that they're going to have this new sense of bipartisanship. We're really going to have to wait and see. What the president is dealing with now and perhaps somewhat surprising for him as well as his team is his own party, the Republican Party because, as you know, very powerful in Congress now.
They gained these seats. They really thought they were going to be able to at least push through some of their main initiatives and that's going to be a very big test over the next couple of years. We've already seen really a blow to the president, to the administration, in looking at that intelligence reform.
STARR: Suzanne, back on the international foreign policy stage for a minute, what's the White House view about how they're going to deal with Iran in a second term?
MALVEAUX: Well, as you know of course, Iran has been a problem, a growing problem for the Bush administration. They have really been leaning on the European Union to take the lead here.
He talks a lot about Tony Blair, as well as the Germans and the French, putting pressure on Iran to come clean here, to say look "We're going to freeze our uranium enrichment program. We're going to freeze our nuclear program here."
And the Bush administration also saying, you know, prove it because Iran has said "We will cooperate. We'll go to the international community and prove that we're not going to pursue this" but they are very skeptical here.
You have the International Atomic Energy Agency going in and taking a look at this. They've got to verify it. The president and the White House are far from confidence that they are really going to abandon this program but, again, they are trying to as much as possible put it on the Europeans. Let them handle the main front of the diplomacy line.
KOPPEL: Suzanne, I know that you are one of the fortunate who got to spend her Thanksgiving away from home and at Crawford and we were hoping that you could, you could burst the bubble for our viewers and let us know what Thanksgiving on the ranch is like for those of you who are on the job.
MALVEAUX: Well, you know, it's funny because one of my colleagues with "USA Today" interviewed a lot of us about that very question and everyone was very polite saying oh, you know, it's not that bad.
We made phone calls to our families and hope that they felt sorry for us because we had -- we were in the gymnasium of the middle school nearby, about eight miles outside of the Crawford Ranch, Styrofoam, the turkey was from the local truck stop.
You know, I mean it really is the underbelly of I guess the glamorous life that people think we live but, again, you know, it's -- you got to do those things too.
STARR: Well, we thank you, Suzanne. We're all on the glamour beat some days. We're going to check in with Jane Arraf in northern Iraq in a moment for the latest there.
Andrea Koppel is on the story of Colin Powell on his way out but is it too late to breathe new life into Mid East peace talks?
And Rose Arce is on the story of a gung ho Army volunteer who went AWOL.
And, violence in sports, when it goes off the court into the stands.
And finally, a check on what's making news right now, all coming up, all ON THE STORY.
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UNIDENTIFIED MALE: If you want to finish the fight up north, it starts here, throughout the home starts here, not just for us but for every U.S. soldier in Iraq.
(END VIDEO CLIP) JANE ARRAF, CNN BAGHDAD BUREAU CHIEF (by videophone): That was Lieutenant Colonel Pete Newell (ph) commander of Task Force 22, the Army's 1st Infantry Division and he had addressed the soldiers just before they headed off to Falluja.
Welcome back. I'm Jane Arraf in Muqtadiyah in the Sunni Triangle and welcome back to ON THE STORY.
STARR: Jane, tell us a little bit about where you are today, the unit that you're embedded with, the action that's going on where you are.
ARRAF: Well, we're in the home base, basically, this unit that we went into Falluja with. They were in there for 12 days, days that just ripped by. They were some of the most astounding things these soldiers had ever seen, certainly the most intense combat, the most artillery fired, the most firepower aimed at a city since Vietnam.
They were there for 12 days and they come back to their home base and their home base is in Muqtadiyah, which is about 60 miles northwest of Baghdad and, compared to Falluja, it is a paradise.
This is a former Iraqi Army camp. There's almost nothing here but it is relatively safe and they're glad to be back and they're just now coping with what they've seen, that intense battle, the loss of five of their men, four of them in combat, another one on the way home and it's all quite surreal still to a lot of them.
MALVEAUX: And, Jane, I know the elections are approaching very shortly, just weeks away. Give us a sense do you believe that this has any impact on how desperate perhaps these insurgents are getting or even the sense that you're getting from the soldiers. What is the morale like?
ARRAF: Well, in terms of the election, they plunged back here to their real jobs essentially. I mean these soldiers went to fight this very high level conflict, this intense combat as we said and they've come back here to a combination of this low level insurgency going on and essentially nation building, where they are trying to set the stage for elections to take place in this town, in the Sunni Triangle.
Now, there are a lot of obstacles before that. We've seen today that there are political parties calling for delay and here there's a lot of confusion. A lot of the Iraqis don't know how they're supposed to register, who they would vote for. The candidates haven't been declared, an awful lot to do before that happens.
And, the soldiers, they see -- they say they see progress every day, so they're a little more optimistic about the big picture than perhaps those on the outside tend to be but still there are an awful lot of challenges here.
KOPPEL: Jane, I was teasing Suzanne before the break about Thanksgiving for journalists who were covering the president at Crawford. But, in all seriousness, this is a holiday in the United States that's so important to many Americans and I'm sure it was one that was important to the troops that you were with. How did you guys celebrate it?
ARRAF: Well, the troops here went to their mess hall essentially where they got trucked in from another base turkey. It was an amazing menu I have to say and the military makes a huge deal, as you know, about Thanksgiving. No matter where these soldiers are they try to get them what they consider a proper Thanksgiving meal.
So, you can imagine this sort of very bare bones room, which again is a real step up from what they moved into eight months ago. There were mice and rats. There was a big slab on the table and that was where the food went.
But now it's a proper sort of cafeteria type place and the officers help dish out mashed potatoes and ham and roast beef and lobster tails, I have to say, and turkey and it went on and on and on.
