Chaos Overseas; Interview with Representative Peter King of New York; Little Giant; Helping Disabled Athletes
SOLEDAD O'BRIEN, CNN ANCHOR: Good morning. Welcome, everybody. STARTING POINT this morning: chaos overseas. Overnight, violence raged in Pakistan, Iraq and outside the U.S. embassy in Afghanistan. Hundreds of protests in the streets after a deadly weekend for U.S. troops, including American soldiers were killed by insurgents dressed as American military members. And the perversion files. Literally, that's what it was called. A new report claims hundreds of cases of sex abuse in the Boy Scouts were covered up for more than 20 years. Plus, no class for 350,000 students. Chicago teachers are back on those picket lines this morning. Now, Mayor Rahm Emanuel is taking it to the courts. It's Monday, September 17th. And STARTING POINT begins right now.</s>O'BRIEN: Welcome. Our team this morning: Ron Brownstein is the editorial director of "The National Journal". Bridget Siegel is the author of "Domestic Affairs", former finance director for John Kerry's presidential campaign. Will Cain is a columnist for TheBlaze.com. John Berman is the anchor of "EARLY START". He's helping us out with the news this morning. Nice to have you all. Our STARTING POINT this morning is chaos overseas in the latest hot spots. Protests have become angry and violent near U.S. bases and NATO bases in Kabul. An Afghan police official says at least 15 officers have been injured in the protests against an offensive anti- Islam film. Anti-U.S. sentiment is also flaring in Pakistan. Police spent the weekend pushing back protesters who were trying to storm the U.S. consulate in Karachi. One person was killed. In Iraq, a suicide bomber drove his car into a check point in one of the Green Zones in Baghdad. He killed at least seven people. Let's go right to Anna Coren. She's live for us in Kabul. What's the latest, Anna, where you are?</s>ANNA COREN, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Well, Soledad, you know, we've seen this violence spread across the Muslim world. And it's been some days before it's hit Afghanistan. But early this morning, there were protests -- some 300 people trying to make their way to the U.S. embassy. But they were stopped by police and there were violent clashes that ensued. Some 15 police officers were injured including the commander. Protesters attacked police cars. They turned them on fire and were burning at tires. So, violent things down there. We got within a couple hundred meters of those protests. But we got reports people were firing shots and targeting Westerners, so we could only get so close to what was going on. But certainly people are angry about this film, this inflammatory film. And despite the best efforts of the president and his government to suppress or try and stop people viewing that video, they've put a ban on it on YouTube, obviously that has not worked. And people have got word of what has been going on and they have taken it to the streets here in Kabul.</s>O'BRIEN: Anna Coren with an update for us this morning from Kabul. Thanks, Anna. Appreciate it. Let's bring in Congressman Peter King. He's a Republican representing New York. He's also the chairman of the Homeland Security Committee. It's nice to see you, sir. Thanks for talking with us. You heard Anna's report there.</s>REP. PETER KING (R), NEW YORK: Thank you, Soledad. Thank you.</s>O'BRIEN: We also know over the weekend, from Friday to Sunday, you had attackers who were dressed as Afghan police forces who pulled off attacks. And also attackers who were dressed in U.S. military outfits who pulled off attacks. This is strategy with the U.S. military outfits we haven't seen in two years. How concerned are you as you see this strategy resurface?</s>KING: We have to be concerned, because this is one way they've been able to penetrate our defenses. We have to find a way to stop it. I don't believe that this should force us to leave Afghanistan any earlier. We can't allow tactics like this to change our ultimate mission. But the fact is that American lives are being lost and I've actually called on the DNI, director of national intelligence, working with all the intelligence agencies, to find out why this is happening. I know we had a meeting with General Petraeus on Friday. I know the CIA is giving it a lot of attention. But we have to stop -- we have to stop this now, because we can't allow -- it's still a handful of people to drive a policy in Afghanistan or to stop our policy in Afghanistan. But, again, I lost a constituent of mine several weeks ago in one of these attacks. It's bad enough when you're killed in battle. But to have it by people sneaking in or actually people supposedly on our side turning against us, this can't be tolerated. We have to find out a way to stop it.</s>O'BRIEN: Do we know at this point -- do we know the attackers are actually U.S.-trained or is it sort of sneaking in and just getting access to military uniforms? We're told -- my CNN colleagues have seen those U.S. military uniforms for sale in open bazaars.</s>KING: Yes. In this particular case, it could have been people just buying uniforms. Again, I don't want to go into all the details. General Petraeus gave us a pretty good breakdown. An arithmetic breakdown as to what's inside, what's outside, who have been trained by us, who haven't. The fact is it is somewhat of a complex situation but it is one we have to be able to address. We can't allow American troops to --</s>O'BRIEN: So you lost me there for a second.</s>KING: -- we shouldn't allow be to be killed in any fashion, but certainly not like this.</s>O'BRIEN: I'm sorry. Are you saying that, yes, in fact that troops that we have trained, Afghan troops that we have trained are responsible for then turning and attacking American soldiers, or are you saying that these are some insurgents who've just gotten access to the uniforms? Which is it? Or both?</s>KING: It's a combination. I mean, obviously, there have been troops, there have been police in particular who have been trained by us, working with us who have turned against our troops. There have been others who have come in camouflaged as our allies and others somewhere in between. Others are Taliban who have infiltrated into it. But there definitely have been certainly with police, police, Afghan police, who have been trained by Americans who have turned their guns on Americans, yes.</s>O'BRIEN: Let's talk about Libya for a moment. We know that there have been some arrests. I guess there's a number of people brought in for questioning. Are we closer to tracking down the people who killed an American ambassador to Libya and three others?</s>KING: Yes. It's difficult to say because the FBI is over there. But it's hard to carry out an investigation on the ground right now. That is such a -- Libya itself is confusing. That Benghazi area is one of the most confusing of all. It's an al Qaeda stronghold out there. There's also Ansar al-Sharia, which is basically a conglomeration of jihadist paramilitaries. So I can't tell you with any real certainty how accurate these investigations are. A lot of people have been picked up by the Libyan authorities. How guilty they really are, I don't know. We're still in the fog of war. We're in an area where we don't have that many assets on the ground. We have a Libyan government which I think actually to give them credit, I think the Libyan government itself is trying to work with us. Unlike President Morsi in Egypt, Libyans are trying. But it's a very new government. It's ineffective government. Out in Benghazi, there's virtually no security. We're talking about a consulate which had, again, virtually no security. There were no military back-ups for our ambassador out there. That's almost a no man's land out there. So I'm, again, the Libyan authorities working with American authorities, but it's still difficult for the FBI, I think, to get a real take on who's responsible and who's not.</s>O'BRIEN: Let me play a little bit of what you said on Friday. You talked about the president going on an apology tour. I want to play a little chunk of that.</s>KING: Right.</s>KING: President Obama's policies in summer of 2009, he took his apology, I believe have not helped the United States. They have weakened our position in the Middle East. They have provided -- sent a very mixed message, a confusing message. Combine that with the way he treats Netanyahu and Israel, and the pulling troops out of Iraq without getting status of forces agreement, the apologies. You put it all together and I think what we saw this week is in many ways a logical result of all that.</s>O'BRIEN: Let's talk about that last line. What we saw this week is in many ways a logical result of all that. Are you saying that the president is responsible and his policies responsible for the death of American ambassador to Libya?</s>KING: I'm saying the president's policies have sent a confused message. For instance, take Egypt. Here is a country getting $1.6 billion in aid, annual aid, from the United States. You have President Morsi for the first day, the entire day of our embassy being under attack, did virtually nothing to protect us and was actually putting out statements in Arabic where he was sympathizing with the demonstrators and those attacking the American embassy. What it's done is it's created a climate, it's created an attitude in the Middle East where our allies don't trust us, where those who are undecided are starting to hedge their bets and turn against us. For instance in Iraq, the president talks about how he pulled out troops out of Iraq. The fact is he was given a glide path in Iraq. He pulled the truth out without get establish of forces agreement, leaving any troops behind. Now Iran is emerging as a major power in that region where if we had our troops there that would not happen.</s>O'BRIEN: But you've been talking about an apology tour. As you know that matches the framing of other people. Donald Rumsfeld says he's made a practice of trying to apologize for America, he's talking about the president. Mitt Romney has said I will not and never apologize for America. I don't apologize for America. Tim Pawlenty back in February was saying, Mr. President, stop apologizing. Where do you see an apology? You called it an apology tour. You said the apologies. What apologies are you specifically talking about?</s>KING: I would say when he was in Cairo in 2009, when he was basically apologizing for American policies, saying American policies sometimes have gone too far --</s>O'BRIEN: Never once in that speech, as you know, which I have the speech right here. That was -- he never once used the word apology. He never once said I'm sorry.</s>KING: Didn't have to. The logical -- any logical reading of that speech or the speech he gave in France where he basically said that the United States can be too aggressive --</s>O'BRIEN: That was on April 3rd in 2009. Right. But that's not apology. People --</s>KING: It is. I do consider it -- we're apologizing for -- we have nothing to apologize to the Muslim world at all. We have not sacrificed our ideals. He was overseas criticizing American officials and the CIA and others when he says that we lost our ideals. These are the people who kept us safe for eight, nine years against Islamic terrorists.</s>O'BRIEN: Everybody keeps talking about this apology tour and apologies from the president.</s>KING: It is.</s>O'BRIEN: I'm trying to find the words I'm sorry, I apologize in any of those speeches. Which I have the text of all those speeches in front of me. None of those speeches at all, if you go to factcheck.org which we check in a lot, they all say the same thing. They fact check this.</s>KING: I don't care what fact check says.</s>O'BRIEN: There are fact checks. You may not care, but they're a fact checker. I'm reading the speeches.</s>KING: No. Soledad, what I'm saying is any common sense interpretation of those speeches, the president's apologizing for the American position. That's the apology tour. That's the way it's interpreted in the Middle East. If I go over and say that the U.S. has violated its principles, that the United States has not shown respect for Islam, that's an apology. How else can it be interpreted?</s>O'BRIEN: I think plenty of people are interpreting it as a nuanced approach to diplomacy is how some people are interpreting it. So I don't think that everybody agrees it's apology.</s>KING: I don't interpret it that way.</s>O'BRIEN: Clearly.</s>KING: More importantly, our enemies don't interpret it that way.</s>O'BRIEN: I don't know that that's necessarily the case. I think that's what we're trying to figure out.</s>KING: I think it is. That's where we have an honest difference of opinion.</s>RON BROWNSTEIN, NATIONAL JOURNAL: Congressman, Ron Brownstein, can I ask you one quick question? If there was a Republican administration today, a President Romney, what would they be doing differently in response to this wave of protests that's emerged?</s>KING: First of all, we knew before the September 11th demonstrations in Cairo that they were going to occur. We would have -- sure, I hope that President Morsi was told that he had to have his security forces out on the street, don't dare let anyone near the American embassy, don't let them tear down the American flag, don't let them put up an al Qaeda flag. I would hope. And again, this s-- I had to play Monday morning quarterback on security issue. I hope we would have had more security in Benghazi when the ambassador went there. That to me on September 11th, you had no extra security in an al Qaeda stronghold in Libya, to me, appears to have been irresponsible. Again, I'm holding back on that only a little because I hate to be a Monday morning quarterback on security issues. As far as President Morsi in Egypt, we had 24 to 48 hours' notice there would be demonstrations in Egypt. We should have made sure that President Morsi moved and acted and did not allow that time to go by as he did, putting American lives at risk.</s>O'BRIEN: Peter King, part of the reason we have you on is so you can do a little Monday morning quarterbacking for us. We appreciate your time this morning. Thanks for talking with us.</s>KING: Thank you.</s>O'BRIEN: You bet.</s>KING: Soledad, thank you.</s>O'BRIEN: You bet. The rest of the top stories, let's get right to John Berman. You got that.</s>JOHN BERMAN, CNN ANCHOR: Thanks, Soledad. Striking teachers in Chicago may be forced to go back to work if Mayor Rahm Emanuel has his way. Emanuel is expected to seek a court order today to force them back into the classroom. This is the second week of the strike now, 350,000 students are out of class. The two sides did reach an agreement this weekend, but the teachers union says it needs time to explain the details to members. They've delayed any vote until tomorrow. President Obama is filing an unfair trade complaint against China with the World Trade Organization. The White House claims Beijing is trampling on trade laws by imposing more than $3 billion in duties on U.S. auto exports, creating an unfair advantage for China's automakers and parts manufacturers. The president will make that announcement today while he's campaigning in Ohio, a state that relies heavily on the auto parts industry for job. Also a swing state. Mitt Romney for his part campaigns in southern California today taking his message directly to Hispanic business owners. Romney will address the U.S. Hispanic Chamber of Commerce Annual Conference in Los Angeles. But it may not be the friendliest of audiences. President Obama is outpolling Romney 2-1 among Hispanic voters. Fifty days now until the election. And "Saturday Night Live" has a new President Obama. "SNL" kicked off its new season with cast member Jay Pharoah taking over the reins from Fred Armisen.</s>JAY PHAROAH, ACTOR: So, America, I know you're not in love with me anymore. But I want you to know that my heart still beats for you. And I can prove it. I, so in love with you. That was fun, right? So do you want that or this? E-I-E-I-O</s>JOHN BERMAN, CNN CORRESPONDENT: That is Jason Sudeikis who is still playing Mitt Romney. Taran Killam will be Paul Ryan, and Jay Pharaoh, man is he good at President Obama.</s>SOLEDAD O'BRIEN, CNN ANCHOR: Yes. He's great. Black guy playing the Black guy. I like that. That's an interesting thing. He looks really good. Apparently, they had to do his ears, right? You know, I got little secrets from "SNL." Yes, they gave him bigger ears. If you look at his before and after, the makeover pictures, it's pretty good work they did. All right. We've got to take a break. Still ahead this morning, probably not a good idea to post your favorite sports team on Facebook if you're supposed to be a ref in the game when one of the teams is playing. We'll tell you how one official got himself tossed before the game even started. It's our "Tough Call" this morning. Yes, it is. It is.