Thomas Hamill Expected to be Back in U.S. Before End of Week
BILL HEMMER, CNN ANCHOR: All right. 8:30 here in New York. Welcome back to AMERICAN MORNING. Heidi is in for Soledad today. In fact, you're here all week, correct?</s>HEIDI COLLINS, CNN ANCHOR: I'm here all week.</s>HEMMER: Soledad's out until Friday, until next week, so it's good to have you here.</s>COLLINS: Well, thank you very much.</s>HEMMER: We have plenty to talk about.</s>COLLINS: Yes, we certainly do. In fact, just this morning, we've seen the first moving pictures of Thomas Hamill since he escaped his Iraqi captors. There he is there. But not far from his Mississippi home, there is no celebration. Sergeant Jeff Dayton is not coming home from Iraq. We'll have his story coming up in just a bit.</s>HEMMER: Also this hour here, yesterday we saw Dr. Gupta eating fire. Today, he's stepping into more danger. If you've ever wondered how these stunts are done -- some call them circus acts -- stay with us in a moment here. Sanjay's been to the circus. He'll stop by.</s>COLLINS: What happened to him? I used to know him.</s>HEMMER: You got a neurosurgeon over here and you got a guy eating fire. So we'll ask him about that very subject.</s>COLLINS: As long as he doesn't combine the two in the operating room, we're good. All right, want to move on to the news of the morning. The first wildfires of the season are raging in Southern California. Live pictures now coming to us from KTTV. You are looking at an area called Corona, about a 1600-acre blaze going on there. Firefighters are battling blazes scattered from Los Angeles to San Diego County. Hundreds of people have been ordered to evacuate and dozens of homes are threatened. Triple digit temperatures and erratic winds have made fighting the fires more difficult. These pictures coming to us just moments ago from KABC Los Angeles County, and Tim Mecula (ph) there. The so-called Mideast quartet will try to revive a stalled road map to peace. U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan is hosting today's meeting in New York. He'll be joined by senior representatives from the U.S., the European Union and Russia. The peace plan has been dashed in recent weeks, but continued violence and a rejection of Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's Gaza withdrawal plan. Mamdu Makmun Salim (ph), a former top aide to Osama bin Laden, is sentenced to 32 years behind bars for stabbing a corrections officer. Salim still faces trial and could life in prison if he is found guilty for his reported role in the 1998 U.S. embassy terrorist bombings in Africa. And the Material Girl and her husband head to court in California over a lawsuit stemming from their movie "Swept Away." Madonna and Guy Ritchie are expected to tell the judge the box office bomb was completely their own idea. A man is suing them for $10 million, though. He claims the concept to remake the Italian film was swept idea, was an idea he pitched to Madonna back in 1997.</s>HEMMER: Did you hear Carol Costello earlier on "DAYBREAK?" I didn't know anyone wanted to claim that.</s>COLLINS: Probably true. I have not seen that.</s>HEMMER: That's right. I have not either. I think we're saving our money wisely.</s>HEMMER: Mississippi native Thomas Hamill who we saw earlier today for the first time since his escape from Iraqi captors expected to be back in the U.S. before the end of this week. In fact, his wife is due to arrive in Germany on Wednesday. Bob Franken is in Hamill's hometown in Macon, Mississippi with more on his story, as well as another Mississippi family going through very different emotions today. Bob, good morning there.</s>BOB FRANKEN, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Good morning, Bill. This is the story of two men from the same part of Mississippi. Returning from Iraq, coming back to very different homecomings.</s>FRANKEN (voice-over): Two front page stories from Iraq in the local paper. One describes Tommy Hamill's escape from captivity and the exhilarating relief back home in Macon, Mississippi.</s>HAMILL: I will let you know I've spoke with my husband. He is fine. He's doing well.</s>FRANKEN: Less than 40 miles away in Columbus, Mississippi, the other story of another family and the knock on the door with crushing news.</s>JIM DAYTON, FATHER OF JEFF DAYTON: When those three sergeants came in and told me about Jeff, I mean my heart just felt like it was going to explode.</s>FRANKEN: Sergeant Jeff Dayton was another of the hundreds killed in Iraq his life now searingly painful memories of letters, pictures.</s>JIM DAYTON: I'll never get to talk to him again. I'll never get to hug him and it's just a helpless feeling.</s>JEREMY DAYTON, BROTHER OF JEFF DAYTON: I'm still in disbelief that it even happened. When I first found out I just, I don't know, I couldn't imagine going on.</s>FRANKEN: Jeff was a hero to his younger brother Jeremy. The family is trying to cope with his loss by telling the world how proud they were of him, they are of him, yet embracing the spirit of the celebration down the road.</s>JEREMY DAYTON: It feels good knowing that some people can get some relief.</s>FRANKEN: But now the first questions are registering.</s>JIM DAYTON: Once you lose a son, I don't know it's funny, you have to think, gee, this is -- you feel helpless and it's almost senseless.</s>FRANKEN: Tommy Hamill will be coming back here to Macon to a parade. Jeff Dayton returns to Columbus, Mississippi down the road for final farewells -- Bill.</s>HEMMER: Bob, thanks for that sobering report, again out of Mississippi -- Heidi.</s>COLLINS: The fallout is continuing from the alleged mistreatment of prisoners in Iraq. The classified report on the alleged abuses obtained by CNN says, quote -- "egregious acts and grave breaches of international law occurred at the Abu Ghraib Prison." So how common is the use of abuse and even abuse on enemy prisoners during wartime. Former U.S. Army Colonel David Hackworth served in Vietnam and the Korean War. He's also written the book "Steel My Soldiers' Hearts." He joins us this morning. Thanks so much for being with us, colonel. Appreciate your time this morning. What do you make of what happened at this prison? And of course we are not saying that torture went on here. The alleged abuse, how do you see it when you look at those pictures?</s>COL. DAVID HACKWORTH (RET.), U.S. ARMY: There's an old Army saying, that there are no bad units, only bad leaders. This is a reflection of bankrupt leadership from maybe the White House, but certainly the secretary of defense, right down to the corporal in charge of a particular detail within that prison. It reflects that the unit was not well disciplined, was not well trained, and didn't have even adult supervision.</s>COLLINS: You had a chance to listen a little bit earlier today to Brigadier General Janice Karpinski, of course the woman in charge of the prison. She agrees that there are just bad people, but she said this was not bad leadership. What do you make of that?</s>HACKWORTH: She's wrong. I can't believe a military police general would be running in this direction. She was the general in charge. She should have been down there. There were reports within her headquarters months before. I have an organization called SFTT.org. We have been advertising on our Web site to the members of the units involved for months that -- to come to us with the inside information, and we've been break this story for months. This thing is just not a sudden occurrence. The first atrocity known was a year ago, May of '03. You'd think that would have rang some alarm bells at the senior headquarters, and that's why I say the top generals and maybe the secretary of defense are responsible. They should have said, wait, in May of '03 we had these atrocities, let's get in there and investigate. Why didn't they?</s>COLLINS: All right, let's talk about specifics a little bit with your experiences in your career. How effective would you say abuse or torture -- and abuse meaning sleep deprivation, all these different things we've heard about -- how effective is that? Aren't the prisoners just going to basically tell their captors exactly what they want to hear in order to get the pain to stop, if you will?</s>HACKWORTH: I think you are right. I played this game eight years on battlefields, and i've gone by the simple rule, but for the grace of God there go I. If I took a prisoner, I treated him well, gave him a cigarette, gave him a can of cigarettes and some water, and the guy sang like a canary. But if you start torturing people and doing some of the insidious things that good soldiers don't do. If we have 150-odd thousand soldiers in Iraq right now who have done such a valiant job, few of those people are these kind of animals. Few of those people would do these kind of things. But these kind of things wouldn't be done you didn't have inept leadership, and that's what went down here.</s>COLLINS: All right, very good point to make this morning. We certainly appreciate your time. Colonel Hackworth, thanks once again -- Bill.</s>HEMMER: In a moment here, Heidi, what makes people risk life and limb to perform amazing feats?</s>UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I wish I had someone here that wanted to learn how to do this. I could teach them and -- hey, doctor.</s>HEMMER: A doctor is on call in a much different way. Sanjay in his "Life Beyond Limits" series in a few moments. Today, the issue is glass on the skin.</s>COLLINS: And getting tough with a Microsoft chief. Andy joins us with more on Bill Gates' huge fine. Also, the Midwest bus tour continues today for the White House and the president. What do out of work Americans in Ohio and Michigan have to say for him? Up next, here on AMERICAN MORNING.