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On the Story

Iraqi Elections Provide Hope; U.S. Officials Learn Counterterror Tactics in Israel; Tsunami Region Revisited

Aired December 17, 2005 - 19:00   ET

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

CAROL LIN, CNN ANCHOR: Good evening. I'm Carol Lin and here's what's happening right now in the news.
In Hong Kong, anarchy and violence and hundreds of arrests. Angry protesters are trying to disrupt the World Trade Organization meeting. And Congress is working this weekend. It is trying to push through several measures before the end of the year. Everything from the (audio gap) to Alaska oil drilling is on the docket.

And Vice President Dick Cheney is starting a five day trip abroad. He is visiting American allies in the war on terrorism. Stops include Afghanistan, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia and Egypt.

Now, coming up next on ON THE STORY, CNN correspondents give you an inside look at the Iraqi vote and the tsunami, one year later.

And at 8:00 p.m. Eastern, the battles, the bloodshed and the politics fro the first 1,000 days of the Iraq War. That's on CNN PRESENTS, "1,000 Days in Iraq."

I'm Carol Lin. Now, ON THE STORY.

ALI VELSHI, CNN CORRESPONDENT: This is CNN and we are ON THE STORY from the campus of the George Washington University in the heart of the nation's capital. Our correspondents have the story behind the stories they're covering.

Christiane Amanpour is ON THE STORY in Iraq. The election and what's down the road. Barbara Starr went to Mississippi with U.S. troops training for what awaits them in Iraq.

Elaine Quijano is ON THE STORY of the president taking responsibility for going to war. Kelli Arena was in Israel, ON THE STORY of U.S. law enforcement going there to learn the hard lessons about terrorism.

Alex Quade went back to Indonesia a year after the devastating tsunami and Internet reporter Abbi Tatton is ON THE STORY online. How bloggers view the news of the week.

Welcome. I'm Ali Velshi. With me here, Elaine Quijano, Barbara Starr and Kelli Arena. All of our correspondents will be taking questions from our studio audience drawn from visitors, college students, Washingtonians, people from across the United States and across the world. In Iraq this week, a new vote, new hope and a break in a deadly drumbeat of violence. CNN's chief international correspondent Christiane Amanpour has been covering the election. Here's Christiane's notebook.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

CHRISTIANE AMANPOUR, CNN CORRESPONDENT: I think it's difficult here to cover an election in a meaningful way because you can't really go out campaigning with the candidates. It's very, very dangerous. The candidates themselves don't really go out and campaign as you would expect in other countries. We know that about a dozen campaign workers and candidates have been killed in attacks. You can see behind me a lot of Iraqi security. The Iraqis have been the ones who have taken the lead in securing and making these polling stations safe.

Many of the police have actually been sleeping in these schools which have been turned into voting centers.

Eighty percent of those who are registered to vote here did cast their ballot.

I feel that it's much less tense this time around. Nobody really knew what to expect last January. We, the journalists, didn't know what to expect. Could we go out with being blown up as the insurgents had threatened on all the leaflets that they had left in people's neighborhoods, but still, it's not as emotional, it's not as dramatic. People are much more matter-of-fact, calmer, about the whole process.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

VELSHI: Christiane Amanpour joins us now from Iraq and Christiane, we do tend to take it for granted that you'll be there and talking to us after every major event that you cover. It is good to see that you're safe, because these things do get a little challenging out there and I know you'll tell us a little more about that, but first I want to go right to our audience where we've got a question for you.

Your name, sir, and where you're from.

QUESTION: Hi. My name is Hugh (ph) from Silver Spring, Maryland. My question is after witnessing the Iraq War over the past two years and the first round of elections, how is Thursday's atmosphere different considering the increased Sunni participation in the election?

AMANPOUR: Well, it's a marked difference and it's a huge step forward if you talk about politically and socially because a whole group of people that make up about a quarter of the population here, that is the Sunni minority, who as you know have felt very marginalized since the fall of Saddam. They actually turned out.

We don't yet know the full numbers that they came to the polls, but, and it's a big but, this does not mean that the miraculous lull in violence in the election period is going to continue. American commanders telling me that yes, they secured the countries by blanketing with force, by closing down the roads, by closing down the borders, by really having very heavy security but you cannot maintain that on a daily basis so nobody is saying that the insurgency or the terrorists or the violence is going to stop soon.

VELSHI: Christiane, after a week like this, you know we have all got a lot of questions but I want to keep them in the audience right now because we have a chance to talk within our own system.

Your name and where you're from?

QUESTION: I'm Jasmine Leaf (ph) from Falls Church, Virginia. A year or so ago there was an independent report released saying that about 100,000 Iraqi civilians had been killed as a result of the invasion and President Bush just came out and said that 30,000 civilians had died. So, as a journalist, how do you reconcile these contradictory reports?

AMANPOUR: Well, it's extremely difficult. Most of those reports are based on media reports, based on informal counts or as much as possible body counts that Iraqi organizations do or such like. The Americans do not do Iraqi body counts but there have been really thousands of Iraqis killed and of course there's been 2,000 plus, about 2,200 American soldiers killed since the war here.

But the toll on the Iraqi civilians from the constant suicide car bombings, terrorism, insurgency, has been many, many times higher than that.

QUESTION: I'm Gel Fula (ph), I'm a student here at GW by way of Mattin (ph), Texas and I was wondering how do you prepare yourself mentally and physically to enter a war zone and report from a war zone?

AMANPOUR: Well, you know, I've been doing this for about 16 years now, so the mental and physical preparation is now second nature. I think more to the point is how do you actually get to the truth? It is hard to report these stories. It is hard to plow your way through the spin. It's hard to know what is absolutely the right thing to say, what is the real good news ,what is the bad news and I think we have a very hard job in telling the truth because often people don't want to hear the truth and they don't want to hear actually what's going on.

VELSHI: Christiane, we see you, as viewers and as colleagues, popping up all over the world and we all - when we travel, know that we have to hit the ground running but most of us check into a hotel, cleanup and get out. We saw you this week in vehicles driving around with Iraqi forces. Tell us a bit about that.

AMANPOUR: Well, you know, the U.S. exit strategy is based on the political development here but also on the military development and Barbara Starr certainly can talk more about that but the idea is to get a full Iraqi force up and running so we went out with some of the American advisors or trainers and went to see what a particular Iraqi unit was doing and there is a lot of controversy and a lot of confusion, a lot of contradictory statements about how ready they are.

The bottom line is that they are making progress, but according to American commanders here, they are not ready, certainly not the whole lot of them, to take over and to stand alone.

We went out, as you said, in that truck with them the other day and they don't even have armored trucks, they don't have body armor, most of them, they don't have the required amount of training or equipment yet. It's not just the forces on the ground, it's the whole Ministry of Defense. They don't have a Pentagon or a Ministry of Defense that is properly up and running and is capable of standing out a fully functional army.

So that's a big deal and then you've got the situation where there are a lot of militias, each faction has militias that have not been disbanded despite a law that was enacted here at the end of this war by the Americans to disband the militias. They have not been and some of them are responsible for this torture, these detention centers, this mass violation of human rights that the U.S. forces here and the U.S. ambassador here is so very angry about and needs to investigate and get to the bottom of.

BARBARA STARR, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Christiane, what's the read that you got on the morale of both U.S. troops and Iraqi troops? How are they, both sides, feeling right now about what's going on?

AMANPOUR: Well, these are people with jobs to do. They've been sent to do a job. They've been sent to fight to war and try to enforce a peace and they do their job.

If you talk to the American soldiers, they will always tell you that we have been sent here and we are here to do our job and for the most part they are upbeat and optimistic because they can't afford not to be and because they have to just keep going and doing it.

On the other hand, commanders tell us that look, it's a miracle that we're at this point right now and it's not worse. As you know, Barbara, the civilians, the ministry - the secretary of defense, they want to wage this war with two brigades of American soldiers. It took the uniformed chiefs of the army and the services to come in and now there are 19 brigades or so here in Iraq.

It's been a hard slog. There was by general consensus never enough soldiers here at the beginning to secure the peace, do the reconstruction, but they're doing the best they can.

The Iraqis, they are trying to do the best they can, too. Many of them are not properly trained. They don't get as much training, should I say, as the Americans or as you would at home, but they're doing their best. They're still not as disciplined or as fully formed as a proper fighting force should be.

But American soldiers we talked to said we're not trying to stand up an army that's going to project power, that's going to go into other countries and fight wars, no. What we're just trying to get is an army and a security force that can at least maintain security here at home, but again, it's going to take a while. They're not ready. They're not fully ready yet.

VELSHI: Christiane, it's always so good to see you. Stay safe out there. Christiane Amanpour joining us from Iraq. Whether it's election day or every day, U.S. troops in Iraq are in harm's way. Our Pentagon correspondent Barbara Starr is ON THE STORY of how they prepare for dangerous duty.

Barbara is back on that story right after this.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

VELSHI: We're ON THE STORY here at the George Washington University. The Iraqi election fired up new questions about when U.S. troops could return from Iraq, but today, like every day, more U.S. soldiers are preparing to go to Iraq. Our Pentagon correspondent Barbara Starr went to Mississippi to watch their training. Here's her reporter's notebook.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

BARBARA STARR, CNN CORRESPONDENT: It was actually during Hurricane Katrina that we first got the idea of doing this story. General Honore even in New Orleans in the middle of the disaster was still in charge of training National Guard troops, getting ready to go to Iraq. During our trip there, looking at the training, being with the soldiers out in the field, it is very realistic.

We knew the blasts were coming, we knew the attacks were coming, but we still found ourselves twitching just a bit.

Things like Warlock (ph), what's the experience for how it actually works for the soldiers in the field?

It's a vital part of being a Pentagon correspondent, getting out of the Pentagon, going to the field and talking to the soldiers. We talked to a number of them while we were working on this story. They all know about the insurgency, they know about the roadside bombs they may be casing, but they all say that this type of training in the field will be really useful for them. It will allow them to make mistakes in Mississippi and learn from those mistakes before they get to Iraq and face the real fight.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

VELSHI: Wow, what a story. Barbara Starr, Pentagon correspondent. Let's go straight to our audience for their questions.

What's your name and where are you from?

QUESTION: My name is Eileen (ph) and I'm from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania and my question is, did watching the troops prepare for deployment change your perspective on covering the war?

STARR: Not at this time. I've been to Iraq a few times. Like so many other reporters. Not on a broad sense, but there is in fact - it's a good question, because there is one difference and that's IEDs, improvised explosive devices. Three years ago, when this war started, I don't think anybody in this room could have told you what an IED is. Now we all know and this is really the focus of this training, to teach these young troops to recognize IEDs, look for them, trying to not get entangled in an IED situation. That is the major thing that they work on now.

ELAINE QUIJANO, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Barbara, I know obviously they are looking at the physical aspects of training and what it's like actually on the battlefield. I wonder, is there any kind of psychological preparation that goes hand in hand with that as well? I mean, some of those folks looked awfully young, and as we know, a lot of the forces are in Iraq.

Is there any component of the mental aspect of war that goes into their training?

STARR: Well, you know, what they tell us is this type of very intense training is both in and of itself physical and psychological but the best morale booster for someone who's an 18-year-old soldier who is about to go off to war is to give him training, training, training, because it helps build their confidence. It makes them feel that they can get through it, that they can stay alive, that they can come home and that's the best psychological medicine that they can give them.

VELSHI: Sir. Your name and where you're from.

QUESTION: My name is Dave from Chesapeake Beach, Maryland. My question is how difficult is it to get the real story for federal employees and armed service personnel, when often we're told we're not supposed to talk to the media?

STARR: When you say we, does that mean you work for the federal government?

QUESTION: Yes, I do, and I was with FEMA in Mississippi last month, and that's what they told us very clearly.

VELSHI: What a great perspective from somebody who - and you have to deal with that from both sides.

STARR: Absolutely and I think Elaine and Kelli would also agree with me, and Ali. This is an administration that operates under very tight political control. Every day in Washington starts with what is the message that the administration wants to put out and they don't tolerate people who deviate from message. So the best you can do is rely on your personal integrity as a journalist and try and ask as many people as many questions as you can and hope that you can derive a reasonable sense of what is actually going on.

But it's always the difference between news and history, as they say. We can only give you the first pass at it.

KELLI ARENA, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Barbara, what are you hearing - now that the election is over in Iraq, what are you hearing at the Pentagon, and where do we go from here? Are we talking possible troop deployment? Where are we?

STARR: Well, the general word in the hallways in the 17.5 miles of corridors in the Pentagon.

(CROSSTALK)

STARR: Is by the end of the year we should see the generals making a recommendation to Defense Secretary Rumsfeld, who will then go to the president and by this time next year, they hope to have just about 100,000 troops in Iraq, but as you heard from Christiane, no one is predicting - the election was good news, progress is being made, no one is yet predicting the insurgency is over.

VELSHI: Wow. And obviously these questions go through the Pentagon, they go through the different parts of the administration, and they often end up with the president. Questions about Iraq do end up with the president. Elaine Quijano was at the White House this week and back ON THE STORY after this.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

VELSHI: CNN is ON THE STORY and our Elaine Quijano has been following the president as he gave a series of speeches spelling out his strategy to win in Iraq and this week taking responsibility for leading the U.S. into war. Here's Elaine's reporter's notebook.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

QUIJANO: Sometimes it's not just what the president says but it's how he says it, as well. The perfect example of that, of the president in his last three out of the big four speeches that he was delivering on Iraq, chose a different audience.

GEORGE W. BUSH, U.S. PRESIDENT: How many Iraqi civilians have died in this war? I would say 30,000 more or less have died.

QUIJANO: When he answered that question, the very first one out of the gate about the Iraqi casualty figure, the 30,000 figure is something we certainly haven't heard out of the Bush administration, not, certainly, out of the president himself and it's pretty interesting as well that immediately after that question and answer session, senior administration officials told reporters and were very quick to say that was not an official U.S. government estimate.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

VELSHI: That's Elaine's reporter's notebook. Sir, your name and where you're from.

QUESTION: Hi, my name is Val Albert (ph) and I'm from Arlington, Virginia. I have a question. What is the main result that President Bush hopes to achieve through his series of speeches?

QUIJANO: Well, his poll numbers have been way down in large part by Iraq. Iraq has been the issue, really, sort of the cloud hanging over all the other things the president has tried to get done. And they understand that. They know that when people see on TV reports of casualties and bombings, that that stuff gets to people, of course and when you start to have local papers writing about individual soldiers who have died, that's the sort of thing that has caused his poll numbers to really sag.

So they, especially at this moment in time, because you have the Iraq parliamentary elections, a history moment for the Iraqi people. Whether or not you support the war, everybody can agree on that. They wanted to create some momentum and try and stop the slide and there is an evidence that they were able to do that. That the president's approval rating has gone up a little bit in the past couple of weeks and they're hoping that if he gets out and talks to the American people that they can continue to turn those numbers around.

VELSHI: Can I cheat and just ask - it's kind of for the three of you and part of the question, I think, that Val is asking. This is spin, good or bad. The fact is they are trying to get a message out. We all know as reporters, that's the goal. The goal is they've got to get a message out. But things come in the way of that. Other news, other things happen. How do you make that decision on a daily basis that, I'm going to cover the thing that they're meaning to do and you have a responsibility to do that versus this news that actually grabbed the headlines?

QUIJANO: I think that's where you just kind of have to take a step back, a lot of times and ask yourself, why are they pushing this message now and then look at the big picture and see what else is going on. A perfect example of this, on the day that the parliamentary elections happened, President Bush sat down in the Oval Office with Senator John McCain, someone he had been deadlocked with, really. The White House had been trying to come to some kind of agreement with - on the torture amendment and in the end it was that story that ended up leading a lot of the newscasts, is the fact that the White House after months of threatening a presidential veto on this amendment was sitting down and saying they were accepting the language.

And that's the kind of thing, obviously, that the White House has no control over. They have been trying to stand firm and they finally realized the political reality of the situation.

Another example? The story that I know Kelli has been working on about the National Security Agency, the story in the "New York Times" about domestic spying. That's another story. The day after the parliamentary elections, that has really sort of overshadowed, in a sense, the president's message on Iraq and the success of the parliamentary elections, relatively little violence.

So you have to kind of put things into context and we try to do that. It's not always easy to do when you only have a minute and 15 seconds but - as we all know - we've all been there.

ARENA: So, barring any major developments, what do we expect him to say this weekend? That's been different? That's different from what we've heard in the last four speeches? QUIJANO: That's an excellent question because that has been a primary criticism of some folks is that he has remained to firm, in fact, in his message, that he has not come out and really told the American people anything different.

Well, that's what these speeches before the parliamentary elections were all about. He was trying to say, hey look, we've made some adjustments. I know that there are critics out there who think that we've tried to paint to rosy a picture but I understand that there have been adjustments in our approach and I want you to understand that I understand it as well and I think what we might be hearing from the president, an effort to put a more realistic kind of face, if you will, on sort of what is happening with Iraq, but at the same time, again, of course, as Ali said, it's all about getting the message out, letting the American people know that in the administration's view, they see this parliamentary election as a major, major step, that things are moving forward in Iraq.

QUESTION: Hi. I'm Brian (ph) from Silver Spring, Maryland. I wanted to know how does the media decide whether or when to air a story that contains sensitive national security information which the White House has specifically requested not to be publicly disclosed.

QUIJANO: That's a very interesting question and some of my colleagues, perhaps, would be in a better position to answer that. It doesn't always happen that we at the White House get our hands on that kind of information simply because it is so sensitive.

A lot of the times you can't get anybody to even call you back when it comes to those kinds of stories but you just have to weigh, I think for a lot of people you have to way the benefits, the greater benefit, if you will.

VELSHI: From the war in Iraq to the war on terrorism, our justice correspondent Kelli Arena followed U.S. law enforcement officials to Israel and that's part of her story that's she's going to be back with in a moment. We're on the story from here in Washington to the Middle East, Southeast Asia and elsewhere. Take a look.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

STAN GRANT, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Cries for justice of residents of Dungjao (ph) village. Here police opened fire last week on protesters demanding compensation for land seized to build a new government power plant. Villagers claim as many as 30 people shot dead. Official Chinese media puts the death toll at only three.

TERENCE BURKE, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Speaking before reporters in southern Iran this Wednesday, hard line President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad challenged the reality of the Holocaust. His Holocaust denial emphasized his previous calls to quote, "Wipe Israel off the map and his suggestion that the Jewish state should not exist at the expense of the Palestinians."

JEFF KOINANGE, CNN CORRESPONDENT: They laid out the bodies of victims of Sosalito (ph) flight 1145 under a hot African sun for family members and relatives to identify and claim.

But the overall grief is slowly turning to anger in Port Harcourt as parents, relatives and friends start to prepare for more than 100 funerals for victims of an accident that many here say should have been avoided with a little more attention to safety.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

LIN: Good evening. I am Carol Lin with a look at what's happening right now in the news. President Bush says he told the NSA to listen in on people in this country and he says he'd do it again. He says it involved people linked to terror groups abroad.

In Iraq, a Sunni politician reaches out to Shiites. His bloc is expected to win a lot of seats in parliament but he vows to work with other groups to form a government.

And in the Carolinas, nearly a half million homes are still dark this evening after Thursday night's ice storm knocked out power across the South. It still could be days before the power is restored.

And coming up at 8:00 Eastern, CNN PRESENTS, "1000 Days in Iraq." The battles, the bloodshed and the politics from the first 1,000 days of the Iraq War. I'm Carol Lin. Now back to ON THE STORY.

VELSHI: We are ON THE STORY here at the George Washington University in the heart of the nation's capital. Some U.S. cops, eager for advice in the war on terrorism, are looking overseas. A delegation of U.S. law enforcement officers just visited terrorism experts in Israel and our justice correspondent Kelli Arena tagged along. Here's Kelli's reporter's notebook.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

ARENA: The Israelis were very cautious because these are conversations they have in private. These are conversations and information that is usually held very close to the vest. They are still fighting this war. They want to maintain an edge against the terrorists.

We had a foreign information officer who kept very close tabs on what we were taping, what we were hearing, what we were seeing, where we were going. And I'm not here for a commercial, I'm here to tell a story. I'm here to really find out what the benefit of this program for law enforcement and if there's anything that they can use in a practical way back in the United States.

So we had a push, they pushed back, and I think the end result is at least - we did get, I think, a realistic view of what they were exposed to. Do I know everything that they heard? No. Did I hear enough? I think so.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

VELSHI: Our justice correspondent Kelli Arena on a very interesting exercise. ARENA: It was interesting.

VELSHI: I - these are the kind of things that allow us to learn a little bit more about how our own colleagues do things but I see already we have a lot of questions in the audience, so let's go right to the audience. Sir?

QUESTION: Yes, Bill from Silver Spring. How does the Israeli approach to combating terrorism differ from ours and do you think there is anything we can learn from their approach?

ARENA: I think we can. But their biggest difference is the relationship between the public sector and the private sector. We went to the Jerusalem mall, for example, and the security officers there get real time intelligence information from the Israeli police. If they have any intelligence about a suicide bomber that has entered into the country or anything that they think that they need to know. It goes straight into a pager device that they have so that they are completely on the alert.

That's one thing. Obviously, Israel is a much smaller country than we are, about the size of New Jersey. They have one police force, as opposed to 17,000 here in the United States so the line of communication is much more direct. But their proactive stance, guarding soft targets like malls and hospitals, for example, where they do make people go through metal detectors and they do check your bags before you enter are probably things that we could incorporate here but they affect the bottom line, because most of those places are owned by the private sector, as you know.

At the mall, for example, they spend 33 percent of their budget on security and I asked around here and I heard that the average is less than five percent, sometimes two or three.

So, unfortunately a lot of the people there that we spoke to said that it will take a suicide bombing, or a series of drastic attacks here before we see some of the proactive measures put in place here, as you see there.

VELSHI: You all work in - you mentioned early, slightly controlled environments and I wouldn't want to venture as to whose is more controlled but I would venture to say that working with national security and justice, yours is more controlled than mine as a business reporter but what's with the guy who was with you all the time?

ARENA: Well, it wasn't a bad looking guy.

VELSHI: A nice looking guy, but he was minding your business.

ARENA: Yes. And he was a - the foreign intelligence officer and this was something that they had never done before. The trip was actually sponsored by a private group. JINSA, the Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs and when we got there he popped up on the scene all of the sudden and said, oh, I'm here as - to accompany you. And I said, what am I, in Baghdad? What are you doing? Anyway, we - he pushed, I pushed, and he said, no, no, no you can't go into this briefing because it's secure and I would say, well, wait a minute, because yesterday I was told I could and so they were just very concerned because they wanted to be able to speak to the law enforcement officials there very freely and give them useful information and sometimes, what's useful for them is not something you want broadcast on CNN internationally so you can understand ...

VELSHI: That's hard to judge I guess.

ARENA: Very hard, yes. Sure.

QUESTION: I'm Tom from Burke, Virginia.

ARENA: Hi, Tom.

QUESTION: Kelli, a question for you. You had two big national security stories this week. One, the U.S. military is monitoring U.S. war protests in this country and secondly the National Security Agency is monitoring U.S. communications without court orders.

ARENA: Right.

QUESTION: Does this surprise you as a seasoned CNN correspondent?

ARENA: I was surprised by the fact that there was spying going on domestically of U.S. citizens without warrants because in all the reporting I have done, I have never been told that it's particularly difficult to get a warrant from the court that issues those warrants, the FISA court for those of you who are more familiar.

So that was a concern but, then again, ever since the September 11th attacks we have seen things done in a very different way and sometimes I get the fact that people were sort of doing it off the cuff and trying to figure out and say, OK, well, does this work and there was a lot of panic, if you remember in those days about a second wave, possibly people in the United States that - so I can understand the rationale but the protection of civil liberties is very, very important. I mean, that's what we're all out there fighting for, isn't it?

So I think that the balance of those two issues is something that we will probably be debating in our society that is so open and that values its freedoms as much as we do for as long as this war on terrorism goes on.

And unfortunately, I don't think we're ever going to see an end to that.

VELSHI: Kelli's reports are one of the reasons to stay tuned day and night for the most reliable news about your security. Her reports on her trip to Israel are set to roll out on Wolf Blitzer's SITUATION ROOM over the course of the coming week.

Now from terrorism to one of the biggest stories that we witnessed in 2005, the tsunami that battered Southern Asia. Alex Quaid is back on that story in a moment.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

VELSHI: CNN is ON THE STORY. December 26th marks one year since the devastating tsunami killed more than 200,000 people in Southern Asia. CNN correspondent Alex Quade was there in the immediate aftermath of the disaster and she just returned to the hardest hit region, Banda Aceh. Here's her reporter's notebook.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

ALEX QUADE, CNN CORRESPONDENT: I went back to Banda Aceh to try to track down some of the children that I had met right after the wave struck. I went back to a refugee camp trying to find one boy in the middle of 4,500 tsunami victims. The people living there thought he may have gone to another camp about an hour away into the mountains. And miraculously, we found him.

Thirteen-year-old Masir (ph) told me it's been a daily struggle living at the camp. I asked him what helped him through this year and he showed me a monkey he had found that he turned into basically his best friend at the camp.

One of the places that CNN cameraman David Alberton (ph) and I went back to was the mass graves. Now, when we were here a year ago, it was horrible. Fifty-four thousand tsunami victims were buried here. They were basically dumped here without identification. A young man named Wallace (ph) came up to me and he just wanted to practice his English so I asked him what he'd been doing here at the mass grave and he says to me, he thinks that 200 members of his family, including his mother, are buried here.

His pain, his suffering, it completely broke through the language barrier.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

VELSHI: Wow. Alex Quade is back. Now she's joining us from Atlanta. It's a tough story and you've been on it for a while. Barbara Starr has a question for you, Alex.

STARR: Alex, we all saw such horrifying things and such destruction just a year ago. What was it like as a correspondent going back to Banda Aceh a year later? How did you get in, how did you move around, how did you do the work you needed to do?

QUADE: Going back to Banda Aceh, we really did not know what to expect. The first thing we noticed getting off the plane is the smell. We know longer had to shove Vic's Vapo-Rub up our noses or wear surgical masks like we had to do last year when we were following the body-baggers.

And we had little logistical issues, little restrictions. We had a seven day journalist visa, which actually ends up meaning that we have five days to actually do all the stories on the ground because it takes a day to get in and out of the country. And it was just little things. I did not understand Indonesia, so we had a fixer - basically a translator and when we were at the mass grave, for instance, this young man, Wallace, he comes up to me and he just wants to practice his English. I don't understand Indonesian but you could see he was crying, he was just so distraught and that just completely breaks the - any language barrier.

VELSHI: We have a question from the audience here, sir?

QUESTION: My name Anthony Penzara (ph) from New City (ph), New York, a Cornell University alum. I have a question about covering news. When you're covering stories about tragedy, how do you ensure that you're not exploiting people in distress?

QUADE: That's - it's a real tough thing to really, really make sure that you're really getting the humanness of what's happening.

When I go to places like this, to conflict zones, war zones, to places where disaster has happened, I'm looking for what is relatable. I'm trying to find people I can talk to who can tell me their stories. I really try to find the things that are going to mean something to everybody, that everybody can relate to.

QUESTION: Hi, Alex. My name is Dana (ph) from right here in Washington, DC. I'm wondering how influential do you believe the tourism industry has been in rebuilding Southeast Asia since the tsunami.

QUADE: Ah. Good question. You know, for Banda Aceh itself, and that's the area that I covered, tourism is not back yet. They still are trying to get more aid and volunteer groups back in, but tourism is going to take a while. It's going to take as much as 10 years to really get the full recovery underway.

QUJANO: Alex, do you find that it's difficult to really sort of capture the magnitude of something like this? I mean, even a year later, to still capture, really, the enormity of the recovery that's going on. Did you find yourself trying to struggle between this element or this person's story or this picture to include in your final stories?

QUADE: You really just cannot do everything. I mean, there is so many people that you would love to talk to and everybody has a story and for instance I saw this young boy and he was beating his stick at the water and I was trying to figure out what the heck is this kid doing and so I said - I tried to get him over and we talked and it turns out that this young - this little boy, he's only 12 or 13 and he's beating the water to try to scare the fish so he can catch them and he has to catch fish to try to support his family.

Now, I thought, this is interesting, this is something that you have to do, is this something that you just enjoy doing and he says, no, he has to, he has to try to support what's left of his family and today was a good day. He managed to catch two fish. It was like the first time in about a week and he only made 5,000 rupiah, which is about 50 cents American and he says he hates being in this water because this is the water that took the rest of his family away from him.

ARENA: Alex, I know you weren't in an area that is well know for tourism, but did you see signs of reconstruction?

QUADE: There is reconstruction. There - it's amazing to go back and see that all of the rubble - there would be rubble that was as high as two or three stories. The rubble has been cleared and there's grass growing and there are still damaged houses but there's hope there. And people - there's even - they're trying to make it a wireless Internet city, so, I mean, there's projects going on.

VELSHI: Hey, Alex, quick question, do you like your cameraman?

QUADE: I do like my cameraman. It's my husband, David Albritton (ph) and he's a little bit mad because while we were interviewing Masir, Masir's pet monkey ran up and crawled up and attacked the microphone and ate the windscreen right off his microphone and was lunging at his camera, so some of the things you have to deal with out there ON THE STORY.

VELSHI: I'm in big trouble for going over my time, but I needed to get that out, Alex.

Good to see you again, Alex Quade. Look for Alex's reports on her trip and her look back at the tsunami next Friday on ANDERSON COOPER 360, 10:00 p.m. Eastern and a special CNN PRESENTS on New Year's weekend.

Coming up, we're ON THE STORY online with Internet reporter Abbi Tatton. How the bloggers reacted to the stories of the week. It's coming up straight ahead. Stay with us.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

VELSHI: We're ON THE STORY online. The big stories of the week. The election in Iraq. The Iraq policy speeches by President Bush. They were echoing across the Internet. Keeping watch was our Internet reporter, Abbi Tatton. Hello, Abbi.

ABBI TATTON, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Hi, Ali. How are you?

Yes, Iraq continues to be one of the most hotly debated topics and the blogosphere this week is no exception. Liberal blogs continue week after week to go after the administration on everything from pre- war intelligence to a timetable for troop withdrawal. One of the biggest liberal bloggers out there, one of the most widely read is crooksandliars.com and its host, John Amato is joining us today via Web cam from his home in Los Angeles.

John, thanks very much for joining us.

JOHN AMATO, CROOKSANDLIARS.COM: Hi, Abbi. How are you?

TATTON: Very well, thanks.

Now, I'm just going to start with your site. It's called crooksandliars.com and if you go on it and read some of the things that your readers are contributing, it can get pretty wild out there. Let me ask you, are you contributing anything constructive to the Iraq debate?

AMATO: Yeah, I certainly am, because what I am able to do is show what I believe is true where there is a lot of disinformation going on and what's great with the comments that you talk about is that people want to be engaged and they want to have a voice so they can come on a site and they can actually put a comment in where there's a lot of big conservative sites that don't allow you to comment but on my site you are allowed to comment and that's very constructive.

TATTON: Let me take this week, for example. This week had some good news out of Iraq. The Iraq elections had high turnout, relative peace, but yet, on your side I was looking through what you've written, not much focus on the good news at all. Actually, you took to task Democrats for supporting Republicans and you said that they were sucking up to the Republicans. Can you accept no good news coming out of Iraq?

AMATO: No. I'm very happy that the violence is down, but remember, we had another election a while ago and that was supposed to be the turning point, the tipping point and what happened after that election? There was more violence, there was more American troops killed. There were more Iraqis killed.

So for me, I was not convinced that this election would change much and I thought that Joe Biden was just kowtowing to the GOP when he put the purple on his finger and I thought that he shouldn't have done that.

VELSHI: All right. We've got an audience question here. What's your name and where are you from?

QUESTION: My name is Owen (ph) and I'm from Buffalo, New York. Can you tell us how online reaction to current events affects polls and public opinion? How much impact do these bloggers have?

TATTON: John, what kind of impact are you having?

AMATO: Well, I think we're having a great impact because now we have more and more of us, the mainstream media is looking at us, people looking at us. We're filling this void because some people believe that they're not getting the full story, they're not getting all the information and bloggers are able to highlight issues that maybe aren't being highlighted so that it definitely is creating - there is a big buzz going on and you can see - now my site, I started with 5,000 hits, now I'm getting 100, 200,000 hits a day, so it is creating a buzz and it is affecting the public.

QUESTION: Hi, my name is Leslie (ph), I'm from Arlington, Virginia. I wanted to know if you think that bloggers should receive the same First Amendment protections as traditional journalists.

AMATO: Yes, I do. I treat my site as if I'm a journalist and I try to use those ethics so more and more now bloggers are also getting tips and we're getting sources and we're getting information that the mainstream media and newspapers aren't getting so I believe we should be covered. And if I did print something, I would go to jail to protect a source.

TATTON: John Amato of crooksandliars.com. Thanks very much for joining us. Ali?

VELSHI: Abbi, thanks very much. John, stay out of jail.

We'll be back with a preview of what our correspondents are facing ON THE STORY next week. Stay with us.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

VELSHI: Keep yourself ON THE STORY at cnn.com. Our Web site tells you about the panel, the topics and how to get tickets to join our audience.

Now let's take a quick look ahead ON THE STORY. See what everybody's doing in the coming weeks if you can sense that far ahead what's going on. Elaine?

QUIJANO: Well, of course, the big primetime Oval address this weekend - Oval Office address, I should say. The president talking about Iraq and then perhaps, perhaps, perhaps, we don't have confirmation, but we'll be looking at a press conference possibly before the president heads to Crawford for the holidays.

VELSHI: All right ...

STARR: The generals start talking to Defense Secretary Rumsfeld. He starts talking to the press a bit about the real possibility of bringing some of the troops home next year.

VELSHI: They said the end of year, there's not a lot of days left to the end of the year.

STARR: That's right.

VELSHI: Kelli?

ARENA: PATRIOT Act. What the heck is going on with that thing?

VELSHI: And you're going to keep on digging and looking for answers.

Thanks so much to my colleagues, thanks to our audience here at the George Washington University and thank you for watching ON THE STORY. We're back New Year's Eve. New Year's Day. With a look back at 2005 and ahead to 2006. That's when it is.

Straight ahead, a check on what's making news right now.

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