Arson Wildfire in California; Rumsfeld on Iraq
SOLEDAD O'BRIEN, CNN ANCHOR: Morning. Welcome, everybody, it is Friday, October 27. I'm Soledad O'Brien.</s>MILES O'BRIEN, CNN ANCHOR: And I'm Miles O'Brien. Glad you're with us. Out top story, near Palm Springs, California, a deliberately set, deadly wildfire raging out of control this morning, 24,000 acres scorched in just a matter of hours. Four firefighters are dead, another is clinging to life. To the news wall now for some other stories we're following this morning.</s>S. O'BRIEN: President Bush meets with NATO's chief this morning. The worsening violence in Afghanistan is what is topping their agenda. And South Korea moving to enforce U.N. sanctions penalizing North Korea for testing that nuclear device. The measures include travel restrictions on some North Korean officials and a ban on some financial transactions.</s>M. O'BRIEN: In Iraq, an intensive search still under way for a kidnapped U.S. soldier in that country. The soldier, an Iraqi- American linguist, was visiting relatives when he was snatched at gunpoint. In Florida, a possible break in the killings of four members of one family beside a highway, police want your help finding a 1999 maroon Dodge conversion van.</s>S. O'BRIEN: First check of the weather with Chad Myers at the CNN Weather Center in Atlanta, he's watching the fires out west for us. Hey, Chad, good morning.</s>CHAD MYERS, CNN METEOROLOGIST: Good morning, Soledad.</s>S. O'BRIEN: All right, quite a mess coast to coast. Chad, thanks for watching it. Let's continue to talk about this fire in southern California, four firefighters dead, one critically injured. The search is on for an arsonist who now could face murder charges. It's called the Esperanza Fire. It's 90 miles east of L.A. It's not far from Palm Springs. It was deliberately set yesterday morning. It burned, in one day, 37 square miles. Let's get right to AMERICAN MORNING's Chris Lawrence. He is at the command center in Beaumont, California. Chris, good morning.</s>CHRIS LAWRENCE, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Good morning, Soledad. Here they are offering a $100,000 reward and one local politician is urging people here to -- quote -- "turn that scum in." Those are the kind of words more associated with a murder investigation then any simple wildfire.</s>LAWRENCE (voice-over): Teams are attacking this wildfire on two fronts, 1,000 firefighters trying to push the flames back from the front line.</s>GREG KEEFER, FIREFIGHTER: And if we can't hold this row, we're in for a world of hurt.</s>LAWRENCE: A smaller team of investigators searching for who started it.</s>CHIEF JOHN HAWKINS, CDF RIVERSIDE FIRE DEPT.: This is an arson fire. This is a deliberately set arson fire. A deliberately set arson fire that leads to the death of anyone constitutes murder.</s>LAWRENCE: By Thursday night, this fire had killed four. A team of five firefighters moved to a town west of Palm Springs trying to evacuate residents and protect their homes. At some point, the Santa Ana winds whipped up and suddenly changed direction.</s>KEEFER: The fire moved in to a grove of eucalyptus. And the next thing they knew it -- in eucalyptus, the oil can explode and cause a splatter. And what happened is the fire spread quickly around and got behind them, from what I understand, and that's a fireman's worse nightmare.</s>LAWRENCE: They were engulfed by the fire. Three died right there, another at the burn center. The fifth is in critical condition.</s>KEEFER: God bless those firefighters, you know.</s>LAWRENCE: Officials suspected arson after investigators read the burn patterns and traced the fire back to its area of origin.</s>HAWKINS: It was set in alignment with the wind, the slope and it was basically set to go.</s>LAWRENCE: Coming near the end of wildfire season, after no rain for months, there was nothing but dry brush to fuel it.</s>S. O'BRIEN: Such a tragedy. Chris Lawrence for us, watching it this morning. Thanks, Chris. A much different problem in Colorado where they are digging out this morning from a very big snowstorm. More than two feet of snow fell in some areas and the storm left tens of thousands of people without power. Shut down a big stretch of -- 150-mile-long stretch, actually, of I-70. It's the biggest October snowstorm to hit Colorado in several years. Great news, obviously, for ski resorts that are now getting a big old jumpstart on the season. Some of our viewers in Colorado have shared their pictures this morning with us. Let's begin with this home video, comes from Tammy McKhail's (ph) garage right there. These are pictures. Snow too deep to even get out the front door for Tammy. Thank you, Tammy, for sending this home video in. Be quite a mess there. Let's move on. This is Main Street. The ski area of Breckenridge. Look at that. Annie Hastain (ph) took this shot for us. She's one of the few people who made it in to work at this hotel. She says there's about 15 inches of snow there and it was still coming down when she took this shot. And Dianne LaGozono (ph) snapped this picture. Take a look at this. Estimated a foot-and-a-half of snow. This is Black Forest. Dianne is a schoolteacher. It's a snow day. Dianne is very excited. Dianne's children very excited as well. A big thanks to all our viewers who shared their shots for us. If you want to be able to say I report for CNN, if you witness a news event or if you have a tip or a story to share, just sent it to us at cnn.com/ireport -- Miles.</s>M. O'BRIEN: In Iraq it appears that horrible spasm of violence is tapering off, at least in Baghdad, now that the holy month of Ramadan is over. The numbers are grime. On average, 40 Iraqis died in sectarian violence every day. The death toll among American troops in October stands at 96. It's the most since last October when the same number died. Michael Ware is in the capital with more, -- Michael.</s>MICHAEL WARE, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Yes, Miles, we see that the -- whilst the violence does continue, as the American military points out, in the last couple of days there has been a lull here in Baghdad. Nonetheless, that has to be taken in a particular conference -- context. But let's have a look at what a U.S. military spokesman, Maj. Gen. William Caldwell, had to say yesterday about the drop in violence.</s>MAJ. GEN. WILLIAM CALDWELL, SPOKESMAN, MULTINATIONAL FORCE IRAQ: The violence is focused along Sunni-Shia ethnic fault lines, predominately outside the cleared focus areas. With the end of Ramadan, we have seen a decrease in the levels of violence; but this has only been in the past few days, and we'll have to wait to see if this decrease proves to be a trend.</s>WARE: Now, Gen. Caldwell has accurately hit the nail on the head. This lull is a direct result of the end of the holy month of Ramadan. We've just been through the Festival of Eve, which is essentially Christmas and Easter and the Fourth of July wrapped up together in a three-day festival. So the insurgents launched their month-long offensive. They're now taking their breath, literally, as their foot soldiers celebrate with their families. Also, this would not be a time for the insurgents to attack. It would play badly with their constituency, so this is just a moment of intake of breath. And Gen. Caldwell is right, we need to see if this continues. Meanwhile, violence around the city is continuing, 29 police officers were killed yesterday, just 45 minutes from the city -- Miles.</s>M. O'BRIEN: Michael Ware in Baghdad, thank you very much. The secretary of defense stepped into the line of fire yesterday meeting with reporters who pressed him to shed more light on the confusion over just what benchmarks and deadlines the Iraqi government has agreed to. Donald Rumsfeld was combative as ever, telling reporters to back off. Here's CNN's Barbara Starr.</s>BARBARA STARR, CNN PENTAGON CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld made it clear, this news conference was all about the mid-term elections less than two weeks away.</s>DONALD RUMSFELD, DEFENSE SECRETARY: Well it's a political season, and everyone is trying to make a little mischief out of this and make -- turn it into a foot -- political football and see if we can't get it on the front page of every newspaper.</s>STARR: The secretary was, as they say, reframing the debate, saying benchmarks for progress in Iraq don't mean deadlines and punishment for not meeting them.</s>RUMSFELD: You're looking for some sort of a guillotine to come flowing down if some date isn't met. That is not what this is about. So you ought to just back off, take a look at it, relax, understand that it's complicated, it's difficult.</s>STARR: Mr. Rumsfeld also seemed to reframe the administration's explanation of what the Iraqi government has agreed to just two days after the U.S. ambassador to Iraq had laid it out.</s>ZALMAY KHALILZAD, U.S. AMBASSADOR TO IRAQ: Iraqi leaders must step up to achieve key political and security milestones on which they have agreed.</s>QUESTION: And have they agreed to establish this process by the end of the year as I think Ambassador Khalilzad said?</s>RUMSFELD: No.</s>QUESTION: They haven't agreed?</s>RUMSFELD: Well, they're still in discussions. One would have thought they might have announced that if they decided all of it.</s>STARR: But Rumsfeld, who was so confident throughout his press conference, seemed to struggle at one point. (on camera): Is it the job of the U.S. soldier to step in between Sunni and Shia violence, to step into civil unrest in that country?</s>RUMSFELD: I am not going to try to characterize in -- and begin at one end of the spectrum and go to the other end of the spectrum and say when is it or is it not appropriate for U.S. military personnel to be involved in the conflict.</s>STARR: The secretary said the mission for U.S. troops remains unchanged to help Iraqi forces take hold and stop the violence, a mission that is yet to be accomplished. Barbara Starr, CNN, the Pentagon.</s>S. O'BRIEN: We've got 11 days until the mid-term elections. A new CNN-Opinion Research Corporation poll just out this morning suggests that Americans don't care much for big government. When asked if the size of the federal government has grown over the past four years, 72 percent said yes, it had, 86 percent said they thought the government spending had gone up during the same period, a period in which Republicans have controlled the House, the Senate and the White House. As for the government's role in promoting traditional values, a slight majority there, 51 percent thought that was appropriate, 43 percent said the government shouldn't favor any particular set of values. Tonight at 8:00 p.m., our special series, "BROKEN GOVERNMENT," takes a look at the political missteps by the Republican Party. The best political team in TV investigates just how the right went wrong. That's tonight, 8:00 p.m. Eastern, right here on</s>CNN. M. O'BRIEN: The actor, Michael J. Fox, responding to Rush Limbaugh and insisting he was neither acting, nor off his medication, in that political ad supporting stem cell research. Fox, who suffers from Parkinson's disease, visibly displaying symptoms of the disease, the tremors. Now Limbaugh made the claim that it was an act on his radio show. In an interview with CBS's Katie Couric, Fox responded to Limbaugh's claim Democrats have a long history of exploiting victims.</s>KATIE COURIC, "THE CBS EVENING NEWS" ANCHOR: I called Rush Limbaugh, and he told me, "I believe Democrats have a long history of using victims of various things as political spokespeople because they believe they are untouchable, infallible. They are immune from criticism."</s>MICHAEL J. FOX, STEM CELL RESEARCH ADVOCATE: Well, first thing, you know he used the word victim. And in another occasion I heard him use the word pitiable. And understand nobody in this position wants pity. We don't want pity. I could give a damn about Rush Limbaugh's pity, right, or anyone else's pity. I'm not a victim. I'm somebody who is in this situation. I think I'm in this situation, along with millions of other Americans, and we have a right, if there's answers out there, to pursue those answers with the full support of our politicians. And so I don't need anyone's permission to do that.</s>M. O'BRIEN: Now Limbaugh has said he would admit he was wrong and apologize to Fox if he is proven wrong in calling the ad an act -- Soledad.</s>S. O'BRIEN: Some stories we're following for you this morning, authorities say it was arson. We're going to update you on that deadly wildfire in southern California. And the father of that little boy in Malawi that Madonna wants to adopt, well now he's saying he's backing the adoption. And New Jersey's gay former governor, James McGreevey, weighs in on that state's same-sex marriage ruling. Those stories and much more ahead on AMERICAN MORNING.