U.S. Marines, Including Women, Dead in Falluja; Iranian Election; China Floods
ZAIN VERJEE, CNN ANCHOR: Countering criticism and a lot of questions about Iraq, the U.S. president, George W. Bush, and Iraq's prime minister, Ibrahim al-Jaafari. The most significant thing coming out of this press conference, really, from the U.S. president, who said there are not going to be any timetables to a withdrawal of U.S. troops from Iraq. He also added, "Why have a timetable, then concede to the enemy, and have them wait us out?" He said the only timetable he knows of is a timetable to set up the Iraqi constitution. He emphasized we will continue to build up Iraqi forces and success will only occur when the political process moves forward and Sunnis are involved in the process. Asked by another reporter also about the rift between the civilian and the military leadership on the state of the insurgency in Iraq, the president said, "There is no question, the enemy wants to shake our will. We understand the nature of the enemy, but there is reason to be optimistic. There has been progress. There is a new democracy in Iraq." I'm Zain Verjee at the CNN Center.</s>JIM CLANCY, CNN ANCHOR: And I'm Jim Clancy. This is YOUR WORLD TODAY on CNN International. The White House meeting, as Zain was telling us, between these leaders of the U.S. and Iraq comes amid plummeting public approval ratings for the war in the United States. And daily insurgent attacks, including one reported this day, a suicide bombing in Falluja. Our coverage begins this hour with Jamie McIntyre at the Pentagon. Jamie, what can you tell us about this attack in Falluja? And who are the victims?</s>JAMIE MCINTYRE, CNN SR. PENTAGON CORRESPONDENT: Well, again, another reminder that the insurgents in Iraq still have the ability to launch deadly attacks against not just Iraqi civilians and Iraqi police, but U.S. military personnel as well. According to the U.S. military, a Marine convoy traveling in Falluja last night was hit by a suicide car bomber. As many as six Marines are believed to have been killed. In fact, two have been confirmed dead. And three Marines and a sailor are believed to be dead, but the identifications have not been completed. Thirteen also wounded in that incident. And we're also told that among the victims is a number of women, although we haven't been told exactly how many women are involved. This came, essentially, the same day the defense secretary, Donald Rumsfeld, flanked by his top commanders, made an appearance on Capitol Hill in Washington to defend the U.S. Policy in Iraq.</s>MCINTYRE (voice-over): Along with insurgents, U.S. commanders are now battling the growing perception that the U.S. is losing in Iraq.</s>DONALD RUMSFELD, DEFENSE SECRETARY: And any who say that we've lost this war, or that we're losing this war, are wrong. We are not.</s>MCINTYRE: Flanked by his commanders, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld told Congress the worst thing the U.S. could do now is set a deadline to get out of Iraq.</s>RUMSFELD: It would throw a lifeline to terrorists, who in recent months have suffered significant loses and casualties, been denied havens, and suffered weakened popular support.</s>MCINTYRE: But Rumsfeld's top commander seemed to break ranks with Vice President Dick Cheney's assessment that the insurgency is in its last throes, testifying there are now more foreign fighters in Iraq than there were six months ago.</s>GEN. JOHN ABIZAID, COMMANDER, CENTRAL COMMAND: In terms of the overall strength of the insurgency, I would say it's about the same as it was.</s>SEN. CARL LEVIN (D), MICHIGAN: So you wouldn't agree with the statement that it's in its last throes?</s>ABIZAID: I don't know that I would make any comment about that, other than to say there's a lot of work to be done against the insurgency.</s>MCINTYRE: Rumsfeld drew the ire of some senators. West Virginia's Robert Byrd accused him of sneering.</s>SEN. ROBERT BYRD (D), WEST VIRGINIA: The people out there want us to ask questions. So get off your high horse when you come up here.</s>MCINTYRE: But the most contentious exchange was with long-time adversary Senator Ted Kennedy.</s>SEN. EDWARD KENNEDY (D), MASSACHUSETTS: We are in serious trouble in Iraq, and this war has been consistently and grossly mismanaged. And we are now in a seemingly intractable quagmire. Our troops are dying, and there really is no end in sight.</s>MCINTYRE: In an exclusive interview with CNN, Vice President Dick Cheney told CNN's Wolf Blitzer that he stands by the assessment that the insurgency's in its last throe, but he did not offer any prediction of how long it would last -- Jim.</s>CLANCY: Jamie I'm going to ask you to stay right there. I want to talk with both you and Jane Arraf, who is embedded with U.S. troops in northern Iraq there near the Syrian border. And Jane, let me just ask you. You hear this debate that Jamie was outlining there. Is it being heard by the troops as well? What do they think about this debate and their morale?</s>JANE ARRAF, CNN SR. BAGHDAD CORRESPONDENT: Jim, in one sense, they are a bit far away from that debate that's going on in Washington, because they are actually living it. And when we speak to Marines who are there on the front lines, and pretty well everywhere in central Iraq these days, is the front lines. What they are more concerned about is really what their families think, whether their wives are going to stay married to them if they come back to Iraq for another deployment, whether they have the support of their parents. It's not really so much the opinion polls or anything like that. In fact, here, in the outer reaches of Iraq where this battle is really taking place, they don't have a lot of access to the Internet. They don't have a lot of access to phones. But they do know how their families feel about things. And that's what matters to them -- Jim.</s>CLANCY: Let me go back then to Jamie for a little bit and talk about something that came up in that White House press conference. It was mentioned first by the president, himself. Mr. Bush saying that the training and the equipping of Iraqi forces is going ahead. They are going to assume the fight. How does the Pentagon assess it's going?</s>MCINTYRE: Well, they say it's going fairly well, although they admit that many of the Iraqi units are not fully capable. But, you know, the interesting thing is, it's not just the training of the troops that's important, but it's, for lack of a better term, the bureaucracy that supports them. I mean, you can have fairly well-trained troops, but they need to have the whole government structure of a support system that's going to continue to feed that military and something that the military feels loyal to, to protect. So they really see going hand in glove, both the political progress and the military forces being built up. And they do believe that over time that combination will eventually defeat the insurgents, or at least bring it to a level which is much more acceptable than what they see today.</s>CLANCY: Jane Arraf, there in northern Iraq, you get a chance to see it first-hand, close up. And you work with military commanders that work with those Iraqi forces. What are they saying? What's the analysis? All right, we may have lost Jane. We'll try that again and see if we can get Jane back. Just to answer the question of whether or not the U.S. military in the field sees that Iraqi forces are being trained. Do we have Jane back yet? No, Jane. I'm sorry. Jane Arraf, we've lost her. Jamie McIntyre, back at the Pentagon, when we're looking at all this situation, we really appreciate hearing from you and the Pentagon, getting some of the information that we are getting there on all these important issues. Jamie McIntyre there.</s>MCINTYRE: Well, Jim, let me just say that the -- this issue of how capable the Iraqi forces are came up during the briefing. And what's happened is, in recognition that perhaps the capabilities have been overstated in the past at the Pentagon, the military's come up with an actual rating system to be able to rate the forces in Iraq the same way the U.S. military is rated, based on capabilities in various areas. Unfortunately, that's classified. They don't want to give out basically how effective those forces are. And you saw some tension in the hearings yesterday by some members of Congress who say basically the American public has a right to know how well this is going, because that's the whole linchpin of the strategy for success. But the military commanders were unwilling to give the break down of how capable they thought those units were in a public sector.</s>CLANCY: Jamie McIntyre at the Pentagon. Again, Jamie, thank you.</s>VERJEE: Turning now to Iran. With a choice between a relatively moderate former president and Tehran's ultra Islamist mayor, Iranians are voting in a presidential runoff that could have major impact on nuclear talks with the west. Matthew Chance is in the Iranian capital, and he has more now on the two candidates, as well as the voting which was extended by two hours.</s>MATTHEW CHANCE, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): They came to vote, not just for a president, but for the path the Islamic republic should take. This is the most closely-fought election Iran has seen for decades. Supporters of both candidates out in force. "Ahmadinejad is a decisive man," says Abdullah, "and he has come to work for the people and to serve the people. He's come to chop off the hands of those who betrayed this country," he says. "The movement we started for freedom and democracy, Rafsanjani is following that," says Shiday (ph). "Ahmadinejad may not only stop this movement, he'll even turn it back, and we'll be suppressed again," she told me. Even by Iranian standards, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is considered a hard-liner. He has pledged to redistribute wealth and fight corruption, issues close to the heart of many of Iran's poor. But it's widely feared he'll freeze the modest social freedoms enjoyed by Iranians too, perhaps reintroducing male and female segregation in public places. It's a fear bolstering support for his opponent. Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani has been Iran's president twice before. In this election, the 70-year-old Islamic cleric can claim to be the moderate choice. Promises to extend social reforms, privatize industry and build ties with the west play well among Iran's rich. But in an election that's exposed wide gaps between rich and poor, Iran's next president may struggle to bridge the divide. (on camera): This election seems to have drawn a line straight through Iranian society, separating those that would like to see the reforms that have been achieved stay in place from those who would like to see Iran return to the fundamentalist principles of the Islamic revolution. The impact of Iran's choice could be widely felt. Matthew Chance, CNN, Tehran.</s>VERJEE: There's more on Iran's election on our Web site. Who's running, what do they stand for, who backs them, and what could lie ahead? Check it out at cnn.com/world.</s>CLANCY: Thousands of mourners fill the streets of Beirut, Lebanon, for the funeral of slain antis-Syrian politician George Hawi. The funeral procession for the former Lebanese communist leader wound through the capital streets before it reached a Greek Orthodox church at the city's center. Newly elected parliament member Saad Hariri attended the funeral. Like Hawi, Hariri's father, former Prime Minister Rafik Hariri, was killed in a bomb explosion. In southern China, hundreds are dead and more than a million people have been forced to flee their homes in some of the worst flooding in the last century. Andrew Stevens reports forecasters are warning this may only be the beginning.</s>ANDREW STEVENS, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): A dramatic rescue of flood victims in southern China captured by local TV. These students winched to safety from the roof of their primary school during a three-hour rescue operation. They were lucky. After two weeks of pounding torrential rain, flooding has taken the lives of more than 500 people in southern China. That's according to Chinese authorities. The hardest hit areas lie across six provinces in the south of the country. Farm land is under water, roads have been washed away, and hundreds of thousands people evacuated from low-lying areas. In Wuangzhou (ph), an industrial city about 200 kilometers west of the southern capital, Guangzhou, and scene of some of the worst flooding, the streets are under water. And the military have been called in to help divert flood waters. For many, it's already too late. Swollen rivers have burst their banks. Houses flattened, or now stranded in the middle of newly formed waterways. The heavy rains have extended as far south as China's enclave of Hong Kong, where there's also been flooding, but no injuries. Macou (ph) is also on high alert as the Pul River (ph) continues to rise. In southern China, it's known as the season of flooding. But this year looks unusually severe. Forecasters are warning that more heavy rain is on the way, as authorities warn the loss of life could continue to rise. Andrew Stevens, CNN, Hong Kong.</s>VERJEE: Signs of progress and relations between North and South Korea.</s>CLANCY: Also still ahead, we're going to tell you what is going on in Sudan today. Fighting in the northeast has broken out.