Iraqi's Struggle with Federalism, Inclusion of Sunnis; Last of Gaza Settlements Evacuated Today
KYRA PHILLIPS, CNN ANCHOR, LIVE FROM: President Bush live this hour looking for your support for the war in Iraq. Is there anything he can say that will lift the sagging poll numbers? August 22nd could be a great day in Iraq's history, out -- or just another disappointing dispute. We'll keep an eye on the draft constitutions coming and going. See it all live as it happens.</s>TONY HARRIS, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Confessed serial bomber Eric Robert Rudolph is on his way to prison for the rest of his life, after his victims have their say. I'm Tony Harris live from the federal court building in downtown Atlanta.</s>PHILLIPS: From the CNN Center in Atlanta, I'm Kyra Phillips. CNN's LIVE FROM starts right now. World War II, September 11, the fight for Iraq; in just a few minutes, President Bush is expected to invoke the first two to bolster the support for the third. A fight increasingly fraught with discontent on the home front. Mr. Bush is speaking to the Veterans of Foreign Affairs (sic) in Salt Lake City at the bottom of the hour. You'll see it live here on CNN. You can bet he'll mention the post-war Iraqi constitution, a document that for the second Monday in a row, is going down to the wire. Week-long extension of the original deadline runs out three hours from now. The world still wonders will the Sunnis still sign on? CNN's Aneesh Raman joins me now live from Baghdad with the very latest. What can you tell us, Aneesh?</s>ANEESH RAMAN, CNN INT'L CORRESPONDENT: Kyra, good afternoon. We are one hour away from when Iraq's national assembly is set to convene. That could, of course, get delayed, but all expectations are that a draft constitution will be put forth today. This political process will move forward. The question is, at what cost? The document, we understand, ask is a result of an agreement between the Shia and Kurd coalition. They met earlier today along with the U.S. ambassador to Iraq, Zamed Kalizad (ph), and essentially hashed out a document that those two sides agree on. They have a majority of seats in the national assembly so that was a fallback position. They then went about, in the ensuing hours as they continue to do to this late hour, to bring the Sunnis on board. You'll recall the Sunnis do not have a large number of seats in the national assembly. They boycotted the January elections, but they are an essential ingredient to the legitimacy of this document and to curbing the insurgency. The insurgents are widely Sunnis, made up of Sunnis, so bringing them into the political fray is thought to be a key ingredient. So the three sides are still talking right now and will continue to do so until the late hour, until as late as they can go. We are getting a sense the document that will come forward will not enjoy the support of the Sunnis who were involved in the negotiations and that will immediately bring into question whether this document can pass muster with the Iraqi people, who have to vote on it by mid October. The Sunnis have well within their authority, the two-thirds vote, three provinces to reject this constitution. They are coming out very vocally, Kyra, already saying this is illegitimate document. The Shia and Kurd coalition, though, are saying if this goes through today they will embark on a concerted effort to engage the Sunni population and Iraqis at whole, that federalism, the issue that remains, is good for Iraq -- Kyra.</s>PHILLIPS: Aneesh, worst-case scenario, if a consensus -- if we don't see all three groups come together and agree on something, on this document, what is the worst-case scenario?</s>RAMAN: Well, in terms of technically what it means, it's really nothing. The Shia and Kurds, again, have the votes. The issue of federalism was exclusively the stumbling block. The Kurds want to maintain their autonomous region in the north. The Shia are essentially split. Some of them along the autonomous region in the south, others what a unified Iraq. But the Sunnis have been very vehement saying that federalism should only be discussed next year when a new government comes into office. So, worst-case scenario if a document goes forward today, the Sunnis come out, as they have already begun, and vocalize very vehement distrust in this document, saying they were not brought in for compromise. And then it fails in the referendum by mid October, which in turn starts this entire process all over again --Kyra.</s>PHILLIPS: If, indeed, that happens -- if, indeed, this has to start all over again, what happens in the meantime with regard to who is running Iraq and making the decisions and security in the country? Obviously, that means U.S. troops have no hopes of coming home?</s>RAMAN: Well, it will be essentially what happened when the interim government was in office. Iyad Allawi (ph) was prime minister. But you had already elected the transitional national assembly. The interim government stayed on as a caretaker government. By their own decision they could not activate any other negotiations with other countries. They could not make new decisions about security, as you mentioned, what the implications would be. But the key issue now will be whether the Shiite and Kurds can convince the Iraqi population that it federalism is a good thing. If they are able to do that, it keeps the process on track towards general elections in mid December. But if they do, deepen the divide between the Sunnis, who have already felt isolated from this government, and the other two groups, that could have very significant repercussions on the ground, Kyra.</s>PHILLIPS: Aneesh Raman, live from Baghdad, thank you so much. Well, in the foreground -- or maybe the foreground, more attacks, more deaths. Baghdad police say two civilians were killed today in a suicide car bombing apparently targeting a U.S. military convoy. Others reports suggest the bomb was set off remotely. A HUMVEE and several cars were incinerated but no GIs were hurt. His swords are long gone, but Saddam Hussein's pen is generating some mighty headlines with a vow to sacrifice all for his homeland. Over the weekend a heavily censored jailhouse letter to an unidentified friend found its way to Ba'ath Party donors conference in Amman, Jordan, then it</s>DANA BASH, CNN WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: Hi, Kyra. Well, this speech here in Utah and one he'll give on Wednesday in Idaho have been on the schedule for quite sometime. But the president has been out of the spotlight completely for eight days. He's been at his Texas ranch. And as you just mentioned, the anti-war protesters outside the ranch have certainly been grabbing the spotlight successfully. So Bush aides are quite happy that this is on his schedule. As one senior official said, it's an important opportunity, they know, to continue to make the case that he believes that Iraq is still crucial and staying the course, there is crucial. Now here, in Utah, Mr. Bush will be speaking to veterans and, according to a senior aide, we expect him to try to, as this aide put it, broaden Iraq to look at it through the lens of another struggle, and that is World War II, to look back at that particular war, to talk about how that was perhaps a little bit longer than people had expected. And that is something the president is likely to touch on. Interesting that that could be a theme later today and that comes as one prominent Republican and veteran of the Vietnam war over the past several days has said that Iraq is looking more and more like the war that he fought in. That is certainly not the kind of thing that this White House wants to hear. They're going to also talk, Kyra, about how they believe and speaking to veterans that this mission should also be framed in regard to the troops, supporting the troops, expect to hear a lot about that. Also as we lead up to the anniversary of 9/11, expect the president, as he has done many times in the past, to try to frame Iraq, once again, as part of the broader war on terrorism. Talk about the ideology of the terrorists in Iraq and say that those terrorists share the same ideology of those who attacked the U.S. on 9/11, almost four years ago -- Kyra.</s>PHILLIPS: Dana Bash, we will follow that speech, in addition to the protests that are about to take place there also. Dana Bash, thank you. The president's speech is scheduled for 1:35 p.m. Eastern, about 25 minutes from now. And LIVE FROM will bring it to you live. U.S. troops in Afghanistan report more than two dozen side-by- side engagements with Afghan soldiers, resulting in dozens of dead insurgents. Operation Whalers, as it's called, took place in the Konar Province, near the Pakistani boarder, in advance of local and parliamentary elections next month. A statement puts the number of insurgent dead at more than 40, quote, "over the last few weeks." Well, it's a new day in Gaza; 38 years after Israeli forces seized and occupied that narrow slice of Palestinian Territory, the settlers are gone. The last of Gaza's 21 Jewish settlements to empty out was Netzarim. And CNN's Matthew Chance is in the nearby Israeli town of Kussufim, with the latest -- Matthew.</s>MATTHEW CHANCE, CNN INT'L CORRESPONDENT: Thanks a bunch, Kyra. Well all the 21 of the Jewish settlements across the Gaza Strip have now been evacuated by the Israeli defense forces, just five days after they began their operation to disengage from that occupied Palestinian territory. There have been scenes over the past few days of great anger, a great sense of bitterness from many people in this country, not the least of course the actual Jewish settlers who were evicted from their homes. Today at Netzarim, perhaps the most controversial and isolated settlements in the Gaza Strip, the events of today, the evictions, the evacuations, went off without any real violence. People were emotional very emotional at the sight, at the time, at the scene. Soldiers and settlers embracing, and crying together before carrying out what they had to do. Over the course of the past five days, 8,500 people evacuated from the Gaza Strip. All of them Jewish settlers and the era of Jewish settlements in that part of the world now very much seeming to come to a close, Kyra.</s>PHILLIPS: Matthew, we saw all of this take place just a few days ago, you couldn't help but see in the back and forth, the chemicals being tossed on the Israeli police and army, and seeing these innocent individuals being taken from their homes. You couldn't disregard the human side of all of this. Has that seemed to completely settle down right now? And where are these individuals living? What are they saying to you now a few days later?</s>CHANCE: Well, of course, the Jewish settlers who have been living in these settlements for many of them for several decades, and people who are ideologically motivated to live in these settlements, because they believe God gave the Jews that land, this has been a great upheaval for them. Of course, there are Israelis themselves who believe that the very presence of these settlements, particularly in Gaza, some of them isolated like Netzarim surrounded by 1.3 million Palestinians with them themselves an obstacle to peace. This is an issue that is pretty much divided the Israeli society. It's not something that has driven a wedge between two sides of the society. When people saw the scenes on television, the anger, the frustration being expressed by the Jewish settlers as some of them were torn from the rooftops by the Israeli defense forces. People were very concerned about what the effect of those kind of images were. I think what we saw today in Netzarim was very much an act pouring of sort public sympathy for those people who were -- remember were encouraged to live in these Jewish outposts, these Jewish settlements by previous Israeli governments. Now, from their point of view, they've been betrayed by this Israeli government because basically the land on which they were living with the approval of the Israeli government -- even though that approval was illegal under international law, of course -- has now been withdrawn and they have been found to be homeless. Some of them have taken up temporary accommodation inside the state of Israel. Others decided to relocate in other settlements, not in Gaza, but the West Bank. So, there is soon to be expected to be more controversy to follow all of this.</s>PHILLIPS: Matthew Chance, thank you.</s>ANNOUNCER: Next on LIVE FROM, a young football play puts up some confusing numbers, 6'3", 300 pounds, 1981 to 2005. He seemed fine on game day. What killed Thomas Herrion (ph)? Later, sacrificial Saddam? His jailhouse letters stir the Palestinian pot with talk of love, martyrdom and his soul. A closer look coming up. Also ahead -- 60 and loving it.</s>ERIC CLAPTON, GUITARIST: I'm quite happy. Actually, I feel more content now than I've ever done really.</s>ANNOUNCER: A new CD, a new family, a new attitude.</s>CLAPTON: I came from place where it wasn't OK to have vulnerable feelings.</s>ANNOUNCER: Getting sensitive with guitar legend Eric Clapton later today from</s>LIVE FROM. CLAPTON (singing): Want a revolution.