Bush Invokes ISG Ideas on Iraq; Search for 2 G.I.s Continues; 9/11 Death Toll Rises
DON LEMON, CNN ANCHOR: Every parent knows a child can hide almost anywhere -- oh no, this is something else. That's another thing, yes.</s>FREDRICKA WHITFIELD, CNN ANCHOR: No, you're getting ahead of yourself. But that beautiful piece of art on the floor that you saw a moment ago. It took two days for some Tibetan monks to pour sand and meticulously come up with a gorgeous design that this toddler just within minutes kind of destroyed as he walked beyond some police -- or I guess ropes, velvet ropes.</s>LEMON: How long had they been working on it? For days?</s>WHITFIELD: Two days.</s>LEMON: They spent two days ...</s>WHITFIELD: Look at that beautiful...</s>LEMON: ... cross-legged on the floor, meticulously...</s>WHITFIELD: Oh boy.</s>LEMON: ... pouring the sand into an intricate design and expression of their Buddhist faith. And they're doing all this to raise money for their monastery which is in...</s>WHITFIELD: And here comes mom scurrying in, oh, my God, junior, get out of here. That is one of my biggest fears, because I have got a 2-year-old, and oh my gosh, I could see him doing that.</s>LEMON: Oh, my gosh. Well, they said they're going to deal with it. They're work twice as hard.</s>WHITFIELD: Yes. They were very understanding.</s>LEMON: They said, they don't get upset. The next hour of the CNN NEWSROOM starts right now.</s>WHITFIELD: Hello everyone. I'm Fredricka Whitfield at the CNN World Headquarters in Atlanta.</s>LEMON: And I'm Don Lemon. Not plan B but BH. President Bush's term for the latest Iraq War strategy based in part on the Baker- Hamilton Commission. It's part military and part political. All subject to change.</s>WHITFIELD: And more than five-and-a-half years after 9/11, one more death is laid at the doorstep of the pulverized World Trade Center. You're in the</s>CNN NEWSROOM. LEMON: But first, we are going to start with some breaking news happening in the Chicago area. This is Harvey, Illinois, just south of Chicago. This is a fire and it was up to, at last check, five alarms. And according to officials there -- you can see we don't have control of that. That's a helicopter there from our affiliate WLS in Chicago. According to officials there, it broke out in a warehouse and then started jumping to some other businesses and they were having trouble keeping this fire under control or getting a hold on it because of the winds in the area. But again, this is just south of Chicago. A five-alarm fire. Spread through three buildings in an industrial area in Harvey. Ten municipal fire crews are at the scene of this fire and Chicago Fire Department is also helping out with this because it's just -- Harvey is a small town, just in a suburb of Chicago. This -- what you're looking at this earlier, was just going and raging right there. Larry Langford (ph), who is the fire department spokesperson there confirms that they are helping out as well with a number of crews and apparatus on the scene there. So this building warehouses a couple of different businesses, but, again, this fire still going in the Chicago area. We're keeping close watch on it as well as officials in Chicago keeping close watch on this fire -- Fredricka.</s>WHITFIELD: All right. In the nation's capital. The hotbed issue, the war in Iraq. The defense secretary and the top U.S. general both speaking to reporters a short time ago at the Pentagon, just outside of downtown Washington. Straight to our senior Pentagon correspondent Jamie McIntyre who was at that briefing. And, Jamie, any real headline?</s>JAMIE MCINTYRE, CNN SENIOR PENTAGON CORRESPONDENT: Well, Fredricka, the real question is whether or not this troop buildup of U.S. troops is actually accomplishing its mission of reducing violence. There are some indications, from the Iraqi health ministry, that the number of sectarian violence -- sectarian killings might be on the rise again. But the chairman of the joint chiefs, General Peter Pace, seen here coming in with Defense Secretary Bob Gates, disputed that, saying that from a high of about 1,400 deaths in January, 800 in February, that it had settled in to about the area of about 500. But he noted it's hard sometimes to tell the sectarian murders from the other deaths in Baghdad as well. One thing we heard from Defense Secretary Bob Gates is his own frustration that things in Iraq are not going better faster.</s>ROBERT GATES, DEFENSE SECRETARY: What we have to do is look at this over a period of time and that, frankly, just requires patience, on our part. I mean, we're as inpatient for this to turn into a positive direction as anybody, maybe more so. And, you know, I'd give anything to have to stop doing as many of these condolence letters as I'm writing. It's a terrible thing. And people are suffering. But we can't turn around overnight and we just have to have the patience to let this play out and see if General Petraeus' strategy is going to produce positive results.</s>MCINTYRE: And of course, there is great anticipation on what General Petraeus, along with U.S. Ambassador Ryan Crocker will report in September when they are due to give a progress report to President Bush about how things are going. Secretary Gates makes the point that this will be a very important factor in the president's decision, but it will not be the only factor that President Bush considers, as he decides whether another course correction is necessary. Meanwhile, of course, Secretary Gates is in consultation with General Petraeus as they refine the strategy going forward. The thinking now is that they need to spend more time trying to foster political reconciliation on the local level, much like has happened in Anbar province, and use that as a model, rather than put all of their eggs in the basket of a broad, national reconciliation -- Fredricka.</s>WHITFIELD: All right Jamie McIntyre at the Pentagon, thank you -- Don.</s>LEMON: He was impassioned at times. He was pleading and refused to give an inch on issues ranging from the war in Iraq to immigration reform. You saw President Bush's news conference live here on CNN just a short time ago. And our Ed Henry was there, he joins us now from the White House. Ed, the big issue certainly was Iraq today.</s>ED HENRY, CNN WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: That is right. And there was a stark warning from the president, Don, where he was warning Americans, trying to give them a heads-up that he believes this could be a very bloody summer in advance of General Petraeus progress report in September, as you heard Jamie talking about. Everyone anticipating what will the commander on the ground say about the increase of troops on the ground. The president saying extremists will try to take advantage of that, try to increase the level of violence in advance of that, try to shake the will of the American people. And it was also very interesting how the president went back to his old play book, the one he used in the 2004 presidential campaign, really tried to shift this from Iraq to 9/11, the threat from al Qaeda and Osama bin Laden. Take a listen to how he put it.</s>GEORGE W. BUSH, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: David Petraeus called al Qaeda public enemy number one in Iraq. I agree with him. And al Qaeda is public enemy number one in America. Seems like to me that if they are public enemy number one here, we want to help defeat them in Iraq.</s>HENRY: And it's also very interesting that the president, several times, had very warm words for the Baker-Hamilton group, their Iraq Study Group report. You will remember, it came out in December. The president was cool to a lot the recommendations back then, but now with the slipping support for the war, given all of the challenges on the ground, you just heard from Jamie at the Pentagon, the president seems to be embracing key elements of that report -- Don.</s>LEMON: And the war was top of the president's mind. But immigration certainly would be the next biggest factor, I would imagine.</s>HENRY: That's right. I mean, Iraq is, obviously, overshadowing much of the domestic agenda. But the president, as the clock winds down, is trying to find legacy items. He sees what he calls comprehensive immigration reform as a key element in his legacy. He is trying to get that done but it's a tough divide right now, trying to bridge it, because it's splitting his own party, it's splitting the Democrats to some extent, and you could hear him pleading with conservatives to give this deal a chance.</s>BUSH: Our immigration problems cannot be solved piecemeal. They must be all addressed together. And they must be addressed in logical order. So this legislation requires that border security and worker verification targets are met before other provisions of the bill are triggered.</s>HENRY: So you can hear the president stressing border security there, trying to convince conservatives that this is not amnesty, that he believes the fact that illegal immigrants would pay hefty fines and penalties that it is not amnesty. But he is also trying to convince them that they need to be compassionate. There needs to be some middle ground here. But again, so far conservatives in his own party are not really buying it -- Don.</s>LEMON: Ed Henry at the White House, thank you, Ed.</s>WHITFIELD: Well, now we know. A body found yesterday in the Euphrates river south of Baghdad is that of a U.S. soldier missing for almost two weeks now. Army Private First Class Joseph Anzack. His family in Torrance, California, got the news first. And this is how Anzack's friends and classmates are now remembering him today, with a very personal memorial to the 20-year-old graduate of South High School in Torrance. Anzack was one of three U.S. troops unaccounted for since a deadly ambush on their unit May 12th. The discovery of one missing soldier hasn't dampened the feverish search for the other two, specialist Alex Jimenez and Private Byron Fouty. CNN's Paula Hancocks has details now from Baghdad.</s>PAULA HANCOCKS, CNN CORRESPONDENT: After the body of one of the three missing U.S. soldiers has been retrieved, the search is still intensively going on. Now, we do know that that one body pulled out of the Euphrates River on Wednesday morning has been identified Thursday morning as Private First Class Joseph Anzack from California, a 20-year-old. His family has been informed. There has been forensic testing undergone on his body. But this search is by no means over. Four thousand U.S. troops, 2,000 Iraqi troops are still combing the area where this ambush took place two weeks ago. The area, south of Baghdad which has been nicknamed the "Triangle of Death," a very dangerous area, very difficult for this search to continue as it is a catalog of canals feeding into the Euphrates River, very narrow roads and very high brush. But we have been hearing from the U.S. military that they believe they have at least four detainees that they believe are directly involved with this particular ambush. They also say they have an important al Qaeda figure in the region. And they say the more they talk to these detainees, the more tips and evidence they retrieve from the area. The closer they think they are to understanding why and how this ambush, what came about and also more importantly, with particular insurgent group could have been responsible. Paula Hancocks, CNN, Baghdad.</s>LEMON: One more name is being added to the 9/11 death toll in New York. Felicia Dunn-Jones, a government lawyer who died in 2002, has just been declared a casualty of dust from the collapse of the World Trade Center. CNN's Randi Kaye is in New York with more for us. Hi, Randi.</s>RANDI KAYE, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Hi, Don. This is a really important day for so many would who say working on the pile at Ground Zero or simply running from the massive cloud of dust as the towers fell made them gravely ill. For the first time a New York City medical examiner has directly linked a person's death to exposure to World Trade Center toxins. Her name, as you said, is Felicia Dunn-Jones. She was an attorney with the U.S. Department of Education, just 42 years old, died five months after she had been trapped in the dust caused by the collapse of the first tower. The city medical examiner, Dr. Charles Hirsch, has ruled her death a homicide and her name has now been added to the official list of World Trade Center victims. Dr. Hirsch wrote this in a letter to the family: "Accumulating evidence indicates that in some persons, exposure to WTC dust has caused sarcoidosis, or an inflammatory reaction indistinguishable from sarcoidosis. It is likely with certainty beyond a reasonable doubt that exposure to WTC dust was contributory to her death." Sarcoidosis is a rare and debilitating disease which causes lesions, most of them appear in the liver, the lungs, the skin and the lymph nodes. Now before this, only Ocean County, New Jersey, had tied a death to exposure one to the World Trade Center dust. A pathologist there concluded in April of last year the death of retired Detective James Zadroga, who was just 34, was directly linked to recovery operations. Zadroga had spent close to 500 hours sifting through debris and came down with brain and respiratory ailments. He died January 2006. Of course, this landmark decision could have a major impact on so many other outstanding cases. I interviewed two former detectives last year who were also sick from the NYPD, they are represented by a lawyer who has 10,000 other clients in a class action suit. Attorney David Worby says 500 of his clients have cancer, 120 of them blood cell cancers like leukemia. Already more than 100 of his clients have died, several from sarcoidosis. The two NYPD detectives, Rich Volpe and John Walcott, they worked for months on that pile. Volpe's kidney function is now down to 35 percent, Walcott had leukemia, but is now in remission. Both blame their illnesses on the exposure to toxins like benzene and dioxin and asbestos. And this is what Walcott told us during our interview.</s>JOHN WALCOTT, FMR. NYPD DETECTIVE: You would take a shower and my shower would be -- look like a barbecue grill. Solid black. And you wake up in the middle of the night with -- in the corner of your eyes and would drip on your pillow would be like black liquid. And you know, same thing, you like clean your ears out and you just -- chunks and chunks of black would come out. I mean, your teeth, when you scrub your teeth, you spit in the sink and it would be literally like a barbecue grill.</s>KAYE: Worth noting here that in this latest case, Mrs. Dunn- Jones died of exposure after just one day. Now imagine the impact on those like Walcott and Volpe and the others who worked down there for months on end -- Don.</s>LEMON: And aren't there programs in New York that are studying the effects on these people and treating people for this? Have you heard from them?</s>KAYE: We have. We have interviewed them, actually. There are treatment and monitoring programs. Overall, 20,000 people around the U.S. have been screened as part of the World Trade Center monitoring program. We visited the center at Mount Sinai Hospital here in New York where 4,800 people are in treatment, probably about 1,000 more in treatment at other facilities. That brings the number to about 6,000 but that doesn't even include the firefighters. Mount Sinai can't tell us how many people have died in their program. But here's the problem, the program received federal funding last fall but they do anticipate running out of money. In fact, we're told that a panel has estimated $150 million annually will be needed to continue this treatment and monitoring. And there is no federally funded program, Don, for people like Dunn-Jones, the regular people, not the first responders, just average citizens who happened to be caught up in the dust cloud.</s>LEMON: Let's hope they're planning to do something about that. Randi Kaye, thank you.</s>KAYE: Thank you.</s>WHITFIELD: Well, we know you can't do anything about the price, but you can, perhaps, do something about how much you use. We're all about the gas here in the NEWSROOM.