General Petraeus Seeks Iraq Funding Bill Without Withdrawal Deadline; Texas Tornado Kills at Least Seven
DON LEMON, CNN ANCHOR: Hello. I'm Don Lemon, live at the CNN world headquarters in Atlanta.</s>SUZANNE MALVEAUX, CNN ANCHOR: And I'm Suzanne Malveaux, in for Kyra Phillips. America's top general in Iraq starts a tour of duty in Washington. General David Petraeus heads from the House to the Senate to push lawmakers for more money and less talk of timetables.</s>LEMON: And shell shock along the Texas-Mexico border, after a deadly tornado. We are live in the center of the search-and-rescue efforts in Eagle Pass, Texas. You are in the CNN NEWSROOM. And severe weather tops our news this hour, twisted metal, collapsed buildings, shattered dreams. A tornado ripped through the border city of Eagle Pass, Texas, overnight. It killed at least seven people. Five were from one family whose mobile home was pick up and slammed into a nearby school. And, just across the Mexican border, in Piedras Negras, more deaths, more destruction. Three people were killed by the same storm, almost 90 others hurt; 300 homes were damaged there. More stormy times are in the forecast today. Folks from Houston to Saint Louis are bracing for everything from downpours to possible tornadoes. And tracking it all for us, CNN's Jacqui Jeras in the Severe Weather Center -- Jacqui.</s>JACQUI JERAS, CNN METEOROLOGIST: Yes, Don, we just got a new tornado watch that was issued that includes northern parts of Louisiana and much of southern Mississippi, including the Jackson metro area. So, these strong thunderstorms developing in this region right here, across I-49, intensifying -- if any of these pull out ahead of that main line, we could start to see some rotation. So, that's something we are going to be watching very closely. But today's severe weather is very different from what was happening yesterday. Yesterday was the day when we had those big supercell type of thunderstorms. And I want to show you the satellite picture here from yesterday, and watch in this area right here. We went from almost nothing to a huge explosion of an isolated supercell. Watch as this thing gets larger and it crosses over the Rio. This is the approximate time of the touchdown, right about there. And notice that it gets dark. And that's because this is what we call a visible satellite. You actually have the sunshine to reflect off the clouds to be able to see that image. So, that's why it fades away, but you can kind of see this little bumpy area right in there. That's what we call the overshooting top of the big tall part of the thunderstorm -- so very near where that tornado was. Let's go ahead and go back to the map and show you where we are expecting some of the heaviest thunderstorms at this hour. They are just crossing out of Texas, moving into western parts of Louisiana. And flooding also a big issue, guys, on the northern part of this storm in Iowa -- Doppler radar estimating between eight and 10 inches of rainfall between Fort Dodge, Iowa, and Denison, Iowa -- so a lot of the rivers starting to fill up and come out of their banks. That could be a big story over the next couple of days.</s>LEMON: And that system just pushing -- pushing the water ahead of it, right? Is that what happens?</s>JERAS: Everything is continuing to push on out to the east.</s>JERAS: And the one good thing about this, Don, is that this is going to bring some drought relief a little bit to some folks in the Southeast.</s>LEMON: All right. Thank you very much, Jacqui. We will check back with you.</s>MALVEAUX: And, don, we have seen amazing destruction from tornadoes, but there are some who actually chase these tornadoes. Few of us do it on purpose. But those who do, they would not do anything else. Our CNN's Reynolds Wolf set out with a chase team in Kansas.</s>UNIDENTIFIED MALE: That's nice.</s>UNIDENTIFIED MALE: There we go. That's what we're looking for.</s>REYNOLDS WOLF, CNN METEOROLOGIST (voice-over): We followed tornado chaser Scott Ganson (ph) and Andrew Onaker (ph) nearly 400 miles, from Oklahoma City to outside Wichita, Kansas, to meet the storm.</s>UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Yes.</s>UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Oh, I love it.</s>WOLF (on camera): And what we are going to do is just get right behind it and look to the northeast, and hopefully get a good shot of the funnel. Let's keep our fingers crossed. Well, we have got a confirmed tornado on the ground. Even though the condensation funnel hasn't made contact, you can still see the condensation on one side, the debris on the bottom. And that is what is considered a tornado. And, in tornadoes, it's the debris that is the big killer. Now we are going into a chaser traffic jam, where you have everybody who's been trying to chase this storm all day. We got two tornadoes right now. We see two tornadoes right now, just the debris, one forming to the left. You will see another one forming to the right, just beyond a tree that you see on the horizon. We have seen five tornadoes today. That's our fifth one, the fifth one we have seen. You hit the jackpot, man. And, just as quickly as it formed, it all melted away, just another sign of the beauty and the mystery of these incredible storms. Near Nickerson, Kansas, Reynolds Wolf, CNN.</s>LEMON: All right, Reynolds.</s>LEMON: Dollars without deadlines, that's what the top U.S. commander in Iraq is fighting for right now on Capitol Hill. But Democrats are dead set on giving David Petraeus a war chest with a major string attached. Our Barbara Starr is watching it all unfold at the Pentagon -- Barbara.</s>BARBARA STARR, CNN PENTAGON CORRESPONDENT: Well, Don, General David Petraeus is now on Capitol Hill, arrived a little while ago, is moving from the House to the Senate side, talking to members of Congress. And, as you say, what he wants is no deadlines, no timetables for troop withdrawal from Iraq. And he wants that supplemental war funding. But these briefings, these closed-door, secret briefings for members of Congress, are pretty unusual. They are different than when we usually see these open public hearings, the public testimony. The doors will be shut. The material will be classified. General Petraeus is going to make a very brief opening presentation, and, then, on both sides of the Hill, spend about 90 minutes, we are told, taking questions from members of Congress. The feeling is, with no TV cameras there, nobody playing to the cameras, nobody playing to the news media, they will get down to business, and there will be a lot of tough questions and answers back and forth. General Petraeus is expected, throughout this series of meetings , today to lay out the basic security situation as it now stands. In Baghdad, where there are more U.S. troops on the ground, the violence is receding. They are seeing progress there. Out in the west, Al Anbar Province, the so-called Sunni Triangle, violence is down there -- the people, by all accounts, the Iraqi people who live there, getting pretty sick and tired of the attacks, and beginning to make some efforts towards real progress, but a lot of challenges, to say the least -- in Diyala Province, along the eastern border with Iran, a very serious uptick in violence there. Of course, just a day or so ago, we saw that suicide car bomb attack that killed nine U.S. troops. And it is suicide car bomb attacks, Don, that now, commanders say, are one of the major threats in the country. This comes at a very tough time for General Petraeus, because April now has shaped up as the deadliest month of the year for the troops in Iraq -- Don.</s>LEMON: And, Barbara, I have got a question for you. John Negroponte -- why was John Negroponte there?</s>STARR: Well, you know, it may be Mr. Negroponte's questions and answers that will be the most interesting behind the scenes. As the deputy secretary of stat state, he is going to talk about reconstruction, building, political progress, oil-sharing, all of the other efforts, all of the non-military efforts. What General Petraeus has been saying is, that's the stuff that's needed to make real progress in Iraq, that the war will certainly not be won militarily, so they need the State Department effort -- a lot of people saying, OK, we have the troop surge now, but where is the State Department surge? So, Mr. Negroponte is certainly expected to get a very -- a lot of very tough questions, because the U.S. troops won't be able to come home, the military says, until that other non-military political progress is made -- Don.</s>LEMON: CNN's Barbara Starr at the Pentagon -- thank you so much for that, Barbara. They sacrificed their lives, and their deaths now being ignored -- are they being ignored? Yes, says U.S. Army sergeant Jim Wilt at Bagram military base in Afghanistan. In a rare opinion piece issued by the Bagram public affairs officer, Wilt writes that, when a service member is killed, flags should be lowered to half-staff at the base where the soldier was working and in his or her home state. Well, Wilt notes that Bagram lowered its flags to mourn the victims of the Virginia Tech massacre, but he says the death of a soldier is devalued by sheer volume. Wilt writes: "It is a daily occurrence these days to see X number of U.S. troops killed in Iraq or Afghanistan scrolling across the ticker at the bottom of the TV screen. People have come to expect the casualty counts in the nightly news."</s>MALVEAUX: He chain-locked three public entrances to a classroom building from the inside. And, then, for nine minutes, Cho Seung-Hui fired at least 170 rounds, leaving more than 50 fellow students and teachers dead or wounded. We heard lots of new details today when investigators talked to reporters about the April 16 campus massacre at Virginia Tech. We can now tell you they found live ammunition near Cho's dead body. Witnesses place Cho outside West Ambler Johnston dorm just before the first shooting, around 7:00 a.m. And there are no known links thus far between Cho and any of his victims.</s>WENDELL FLINCHUM, VIRGINIA TECH POLICE CHIEF: The gunman was found by officers in a classroom among his victims. A .9-millimeter handgun and a .22-caliber handgun were found near his body. At this stage of investigation, officers have determined that Cho fired more than 170 rounds within Norris Hall. At this time, there's also no evidence to link Cho to the bomb threats made on the campus in the weeks prior to the April 16 shootings.</s>COLONEL STEVEN FLAHERTY, SUPERINTENDENT, VIRGINIA STATE POLICE: At this point in time in the investigation, there is no link, in our evidence at this particular point in time, that links Cho to his first victims, either of his first victims. We are still continuing to pursue leads, look at evidence, and pursue this particular issue. Witnesses do place Cho outside of West Ambler Johnston Hall just prior to 7:00 on Monday morning, near one of the entrances. Evidence also indicates that he returned to his residence hall some time after the first shooting. The videos mailed to NBC later that same morning, we know now, were made prior to April 16, and not during the period of time between the first shooting incident and the second shooting incident. Ballistics tests that were conducted by the ATF lab in Maryland confirm for us that the .9-millimeter handgun that was used in Norris Hall was also used in the first shooting event.</s>MALVEAUX: And police say they have processed more than 500 pieces of evidence just from Norris Hall, and the investigation is far from over.</s>LEMON: New York State Police have a suspected cop killer surrounded at a rural farmhouse near the town of Margaretville in New York. Now, they have identified the man as 23-year-old Travis Trim. Trim allegedly began his shooting spree yesterday, when an officer approached him as he sat in his car. The trooper was wearing body armor and wasn't seriously hurt. Then, today, as a manhunt closed in, police say Trim shot two more troopers, one of them fatally.</s>UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: We were so close, 10 feet away. I mean, if we left a second earlier or walked a little faster, we would have been right behind the cop. So, it's pretty -- pretty nerve-wracking to know that something like this is happening here.</s>UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Everywhere, it's just cop cars all over the place. We drove by the -- the fire hall, and it's just, you know, 60 cop cars just parked all along the streets.</s>LEMON: And we are staying on top of the standoff and will bring you all the latest developments as they happen.</s>MALVEAUX: In southwest Texas, a tornado ripped through the border city of Eagle Pass. Border Patrol agents and National Guard troops are helping search-and-rescue. Our own CNN's Ed Lavandera is joining us from Eagle Pass. Ed, we understand that the governor is going to be talking about this very shortly, trying to give the latest details on the extent of the damage.</s>ED LAVANDERA, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Right. And he will also be meeting with city and county officials here just outside of Eagle Pass, who are already requesting that this area that has been leveled by this tornado be classified as a disaster area, where -- this is just one of the 20 or so homes that were leveled by this -- home. This is actually a living room here that you are looking at. These two walls right here essentially blown apart, as well as the roof blown off this house. We can see over here, on the wall over here, the -- where search crews have come over here and marked that this house has been cleared out. We have seen this in various homes around this area as well. And we understand that search teams continue going through this 1,500-acre area, looking at all the homes that have been destroyed, making sure that there still aren't people trapped in the rubble or that there aren't people who were killed by the storm in there as well. Seven people here in the town just south of Eagle Pass were killed by this tornado. Five of them in one time were inside of a mobile home. It was picked up and tossed about 150 yards, up against a school. Those five people were killed there. The tornado continued southward, into Mexico, where another three people were killed. So, in all, 10 people killed by this storm that touched down here about 7:00 last night. Many of the folks around here outside of siren warning range only had the warnings come over their cable television. So, many of them did not have adequate time to get ready for this storm. So, there are about 350 people who will be living in shelters here tonight on the U.S. side. They have been left homeless by this storm, as search teams and crews continue to work through these areas and through these neighborhoods, trying to clean up whatever they can.</s>MALVEAUX: Ed, a familiar sight, almost. You look at the -- the devastation, almost looks like Hurricane Katrina in some ways. Ed Lavandera in Eagle Pass, Texas, thanks again. We are looking forward to the -- getting some more details from the governor.</s>LEMON: In the Republican race for the White House, one of the top contenders, well, he makes it official today. You will hear from him straight ahead in the</s>CNN NEWSROOM. MALVEAUX: And floating forecasters -- hurricane trackers send buoys to do a meteorologist's job. Where are the buoys now? -- coming up in the CNN NEWSROOM.