President Bush to Address Border Security Issues; Small Town Views of War
MILES O'BRIEN, CNN ANCHOR: More to the serious side of things, in Baghdad this morning, yet another delay in the Saddam Hussein trial as they go through what attorneys call discovery. Carol Costello, good morning.</s>M. O'BRIEN: President Bush heads to the border today. He's talking about immigration reform and border security in Tucson. AMERICAN MORNING's Bob Franken live now at the White House for us. Bob, this speech is really aiming right toward the political base, isn't it?</s>BOB FRANKEN, CNN NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Well, there you go again, Miles. Getting to the real story, aren't you?</s>M. O'BRIEN: The idea.</s>FRANKEN: Yes, yes, indeed. And yet that, of course, is what the president is doing, as he always does. The audience in real life is just a small part of the audience. This one is the bases -- you said the conservative base that has very strong feelings about immigration and strong feelings oftentimes that the president is not being harsh enough in his proposals. Now what about the president's proposal? The president is going to emphasize the tough security measures, including new programs with high tech surveillance along the borders. A new program that would return those who are caught illegally in the United States to the interior of Mexico, if that's where they came from, as opposed to just back to the more convenient border towns. But there is the guest worker program in the president's proposal that -- it includes three-year visas, worker visas, with a possibility of an extension before a person would have to return to his or her country for a year before reapplying. That is the one that has people on the right in such an uproar and that is the one that the president has the toughest time defending. The problem he has is that another of his important constituencies is the business community and that really supports a program where that kind of labor is available -- Miles.</s>M. O'BRIEN: All right, Bob. The president doing a little fundraising as well today. Tell us about that.</s>FRANKEN: Well, he's going to be showing that he may be involved in some hassles with members of his own party, his base. But he's still able to pack them in. It will be a fundraiser in Phoenix for Republican Senator John Kyle.</s>M. O'BRIEN: Bob Franken at the White House, thank you very much. CNN will carry the president's speech on border security and immigration, live today, 4:45 p.m. Eastern time -- Soledad.</s>SOLEDAD O'BRIEN, CNN ANCHOR: Well, several U.S. lawmakers are now saying the time has come to get U.S. troops out of Iraq. What do most Americans think? With that look at that, AMERICAN MORNING's Kelly Wallace joins us. Nice to see you, good morning.</s>KELLY WALLACE, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Good morning. Great to see you, Soledad. To get a sense, we really wanted to go out to the heartland, to small town America to hear what people are thinking and saying. And we headed to a place which knows all too well the heroism and the sacrifice of the Iraq war.</s>WALLACE (voice-over): In northeastern Pennsylvania, along the Susquehanna River, is the small town of Halstead, population just over 1,200, a place where the Iraq war hit close to home back in September. First, local boy, 22-year-old William "Billy" Evans (ph) of the Army National Guard was killed. Less than two weeks later, another shock. Five more soldiers from the area were killed, including Lee Weigand (ph), just 20, from a town right next to Halstead. The small, tight-knit community, where just about everyone knew one of the boys or their families, was stunned.</s>BARB STONE, SUPPORTS IRAQ WAR: It's open-ended, the grief is. You almost can't close it.</s>WALLACE: In a place where President Bush beat Senator Kerry by more than 20 points in the presidential election, emotions are high about the war and when the troops should start coming home. Kathy Estabrook, a mother of three, runs a bar in town where the two local boys' pictures are displayed. A registered Republican who voted for the president in November, she says her feelings have definitely changed.</s>KATHY ESTABROOK, QUESTIONS IRAQ WAR: Because in the beginning, I believed we were in danger. I thought there were weapons of mass destruction. With no weapons, we weren't justified. And I just feel like we should be trying to get our boys home.</s>WALLACE: But a different sentiment just one town over from Barb Stone, who runs a hardware store along with her husband. She still believes the U.S. was right to invade Iraq.</s>STONE: To me, Saddam Hussein was a weapon of mass destruction. The mass murders that he did of his own people, that either didn't agree with him or wanted religious freedom -- that, to me, is a weapon of mass destruction.</s>WALLACE: At Mandy's Cafe, where neighbors catch up over coffee and homemade pie, friends Leland Cook and Robin Houston (ph) told us they have been against the war from the beginning, but they don't necessarily agree with calls to start pulling the troops out now.</s>LELAND COOK, QUESTIONS IRAQ WAR: I think they ought to just go clean it up, send more guys and get it over with.</s>WALLACE (on camera): So you're willing to send more U.S. troops in there if that is what's needed?</s>COOK: If that's what it takes. I don't think they should leave. You know, I don't think they should do what they did in Vietnam. They left.</s>WALLACE (voice-over): But back to Kathy, the war supporter turned war critic with the question with the minds on just about everyone we met here.</s>ESTABROOK: Everything you read is we can't pull out, we can't pull out. How can we, would be my question then. If we can't, I understand that, but how can we get there?</s>WALLACE: And that is a question this still grieving community hopes can be answered, Soledad, before it loses any more of its own.</s>S. O'BRIEN: Are the people there feeling very involved in the debate that's going on in Washington, D.C. about whether to pull the troops out or do they feel, as many do outside of the beltway, that that has nothing to do with their feelings?</s>WALLACE: More of the latter, really. You know, they're not following sort of the incremental tit-for-tat, you know, Democrats versus Republicans and the fighting that's going on. And they sort of roll their eyes when you ask them about it. But they are paying attention to the bigger issues. I mean, this issue that Democratic Congressman John Murtha, but his, you know, call to start pulling out the troops -- they knew about it, they had heard it. So they were paying attention. Also the debate over whether the administration misled the American people when it comes to intelligence. They're paying attention to the bigger issue, not necessarily the in-fighting that we're seeing on a daily basis.</s>S. O'BRIEN: Is there a feel that there is a shift toward people who supported the president, voted for the president, believed in the war at first now beginning to step away? As your bartender we saw?</s>WALLACE: I think she's the most telling in our piece. Because you have the people who supported the war from the beginning and are still supporting the war. You have the couple that questioned the war and are still questioning it. But that woman, Kathy Estabrook, she said she really rallied behind the president. She thought he handled September 11 brilliantly. So she was for him, voted for him, and she feels very, very frustrated over the intelligence, no weapons of mass destruction. She thinks this is really a false war. She supports the troops while they're there, but thinks, again, the plan should be to bring them home as soon as possible.</s>S. O'BRIEN: It should be interesting to see how many other places that same thing is playing out across the nation.</s>WALLACE: Sure.</s>S. O'BRIEN: Kelly, thanks, nice piece. Miles?</s>M. O'BRIEN: The protest against the war may be getting louder, but President Bush isn't likely to change his mind. That's what the "New Yorker"'s investigative reporter Seymour Hersh told Wolf Blitzer on CNN's "LATE EDITION."</s>SEYMOUR HERSH, "THE NEW YORKER": This president, in private, at Camp David with his friends -- the people that I'm sure call him George -- is very serene about the war. He's upbeat. He thinks he's going to be judged not in five years or ten years, maybe even 20 years. He's committed to the course. He believes in democracy. He believes that he's doing the right thing and he's not going to stop until he gets -- either until he's out of office or it falls apart or he wins.</s>WOLF BLITZER, CNN ANCHOR: But this has become, you're suggesting, a religious thing for him?</s>HERSH: Some people think it is. Other people think he's actually committed, as I say, to the idea of democracy. He's been sold on this notion. He's a utopian, you can say, in a world where maybe he doesn't have all of the facts and all the information he needs and isn't able to change.</s>M. O'BRIEN: And you can watch "LATE EDITION" with Wolf Blitzer Sundays, 11:00 a.m. to 1:00 p.m. Eastern time.</s>S. O'BRIEN: Andy is "Minding Your Business" just ahead. What's coming up?</s>ANDY SERWER, "FORTUNE" MAGAZINE: Soledad, I'm going to talk about that big layoff announcement from Merck. Plus, the stock market that just keep on ticking. Stay tuned to AMERICAN MORNING.