Iowa: Four-Way Tie; Unofficial Pictures Of Hussein Circulate On Internet
AARON BROWN, CNN ANCHOR: Good evening again everyone. Maybe Iowa is more important than it ought to be. Maybe the state hardly mirrors the country. Maybe it really isn't the great political barometer we'd like to believe it is sometimes. Maybe all of that is true but still perception often trumps reality and so Iowa counts, not for everything but it counts and, as the caucuses draw near, it is clear that Iowa is a race, a real race and in some respects a telling race. It is Iowa that begins the program and starts the whip. It begins in Des Moines and our Senior Political Correspondent Candy Crowley, Candy a headline.</s>CANDY CROWLEY, CNN SR. POLITICAL CORRESPONDENT: Aaron, all of the politicians and most of the journalists say the polls don't mean much at this point but I can assure you everyone is watching them as they grow closer and closer and closer. And, of yes, the '04 Democrats have one less rival to worry about.</s>BROWN: Candy, we'll get to you at the top tonight. On now to Iraq and a political show of force there today, CNN's Karl Penhaul with the watch, Karl, a headline.</s>KARL PENHAUL, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Hi, Aaron. A cleric flexing his political muscles against the coalition and meanwhile it's Saddam's last day on the bank notes at least.</s>BROWN: Karl, thank you. Next to the complications back home, the president's top administrator in Iraq is now in Washington. He's at the White House tomorrow. Our Senior White House Correspondent John King is there tonight, John a headline.</s>JOHN KING, CNN SR. WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: At the White House tomorrow, Aaron, and then to the United Nations on Monday, the Bush administration which for months has kept the United Nations at arm's length now wants its help dealing with those problems with the political transition on the ground in Iraq -- Aaron.</s>BROWN: John, thank you. And finally to the Pentagon and what looks to be pictures of Saddam Hussein's first moments in captivity, Jamie McIntyre there for us, Jamie a headline.</s>JAMIE MCINTYRE, CNN SR. PENTAGON CORRESPONDENT: Well, Saddam's picture may be off the bank note in Iraq but new pictures of him are circulating around the Internet taken right after his capture. The Pentagon didn't release them and they won't say they're real but they appear to be and we'll show you what they do and do not show.</s>BROWN: Jamie, thank you. We'll get back to you and the rest shortly. Also coming up on the program tonight we'll celebrate Martin Luther King, Jr.'s birthday today by visiting some of the places now bear his name. This is a quite a cool story. Later we'll go "On the Rise" with Meet Up, a Web site that has changed the way people meet to discuss everything from politics to pugs. And we'll meet up with the rooster at the end of the program to check your morning papers for Friday, all of that and more in the hour ahead. But we begin tonight in Iowa. Four days to go until the caucuses, six candidates remaining and not enough space between four of them at least for the pollsters to hedge. This time there is no need to hype it. It's close and tonight at least there's no telling what Monday night will bring. We start with CNN's Candy Crowley.</s>CROWLEY (voice-over): In the depths of an Iowa winter comes a white hat presidential race, the promise of a free for all. The latest indication is a KCCI TV poll showing Dean, Kerry, Gephardt, Edwards within a four point range of each other. But you don't need numbers to tell you this thing is changing. You hear it in their voices. John Edwards was up ten points in a week.</s>JOHN EDWARDS (D), PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: Don't leave here today without signing up. We need you. I need you. I need every one of you at these caucuses on Monday night.</s>CROWLEY: You can see it in their TV ads. Richard Gephardt fell three points.</s>ANNOUNCER: How much do you really know about Howard Dean? Did you know Howard Dean called Medicare one of the worst federal programs ever?</s>CROWLEY: Nearly everything about them says things are moving. John Kerry showing upward movement hired a helicopter to drop in and out of Iowa's towns. Everything about them says home stretch, run it wide open.</s>HOWARD DEAN (D), PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: Stand up. Take on the special interests. Take on Washington. In 1992, Bill Clinton said it's the economy stupid. This time it's the people stupid. Washington is going to change and we're going to change it.</s>CROWLEY: People-powered Howard, as his campaign calls him, picked up one more person Wednesday in Carol, Iowa, get it?</s>CAROL MOSELEY BRAUN, FMR. DEMOCRATIC PRES. CANDIDATE: I'm here today to thank those Iowans who were prepared to stand for me in Monday's caucuses and ask that you stand instead for Howard Dean.</s>CROWLEY: She was broken nowhere in the polls but Carol Moseley Braun bowed out consoling herself with having gone further than any female presidential candidate.</s>BRAUN: We will get there one day.</s>CROWLEY: Braun's endorsement brought out the warm and fuzzy Howard Dean but as he stood with the support of former Senator Braun and Iowa's veteran Senator Tom Harkin it begged the question what's a beltway basher doing with all these insiders?</s>DEAN: I believe I can bring in the people who have been inside the beltway. They just simply -- they're all good Democrats. They're going to want to win. They just need to be retrained.</s>CROWLEY: The truth is Braun probably didn't have enough voters to make a difference but the picture was worth the plane flight for the Dean campaign as it fights the perception that the frontrunner has stalled.</s>DEAN: First of all not much is happening in the polls and second of all the polls really don't matter in the last few days. It's all organization.</s>CROWLEY: And he is right about that and that is what begs the major question of the Dean campaign. Can Howard Dean take his cutting edge Internet-powered campaign and turn it into an old-fashioned grassroots turn out the vote machine -- Aaron.</s>BROWN: All right. Let me try and put two questions in one. Is the Edwards move attributable to anything other than the newspaper endorsement he received? Well, let's start there.</s>CROWLEY: I think so. He got a lot of good press and certainly we heard from people after the debates, people that were listening to them, that they thought he was very impressive in the debates. And, remember, this is a trial lawyer. He's very quick on his feet and a lot of people were impressed with how he handled himself in these debates. And, he's the one guy that hasn't gone -- I mean he's been Mr. Smiley, no negative ads, no tough words. This is all about, you know, thinking oh, all this anger, we don't need that. We need to look ahead. We need to have a vision. So, he's been very upbeat and I think that's helped him too.</s>BROWN: Someone said to me today, an Iowan said to me today that they thought that that played particularly well in Iowa, which is kind of a gentile state.</s>CROWLEY: Yes, absolutely and they -- and, you know, everyone here will tell you, look, the people here don't like the negative ads. They don't like all the negative talk. On the other hand, the candidates are still running those tough commercials and they are still talking tough so, at some level, it does work. I think it's when you reach that magic line and go over and become too mean but you got to figure out where that is.</s>BROWN: Candy, thank you. We'll talk tomorrow. I'll see you on Saturday. Other news to report now, in Iraq today tens of thousands of people took to the street in protest. They marched in Mosul in the northern part of the country. About 3,000 people turned out there calling for national unity and rejecting the American plan to start the transition to Iraqi self government by means of committees or caucuses. What many in this country would concede is an exotic way of picking a candidate isn't exactly going over that well in Iraq, so the marches in Mosul and larger marches elsewhere have turned up most of them inspired it seems by a somewhat reclusive figure who many believe holds true power in much of the country. Reporting on that CNN's Karl Penhaul.</s>PENHAUL (voice-over): No, no to the USA they chant, opposed to the U.S.-led occupation, opposed to the coalition blueprint for the handover of power. This is the political muscle of Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, spiritual leader of the Shia Muslim majority, now a key power broker. He once studied with America's arch enemy Ayatollah Khomeini who was regarded as a political moderate. Sistani is calling for general elections to choose an Iraqi transitional government. The coalition administrator said there's no time to organize that before a midyear deadline. They say the new leadership will be selected by a series of regional committees. But coalition officials and the Iraqi Governing Council are due to meet with the United Nations on January 19. Kofi Annan could be asked to step in and smooth the transition.</s>ADNAN PACHACHI, IRAQI INDEPENDENT GROUP, INC.: Well, of course this would be one of the things that we'll be discussing in New York, naturally, and we have no idea to what extent the United Nations is prepared to go and whether we can accommodate them or not.</s>PENHAUL: Away from the political storm clouds, Iraq's blazing a path to a new economic future, end of the road for 10,000 tons of old bank notes with Saddam Hussein's face on it. It's been swapped for the new dinar currency depicting history, nature and famous personalities. Politically symbolic but the Central Bank also says this is a cornerstone of economic regeneration. Maybe the measure is already working. The new dinar is getting stronger by the day, roughly 1,000 to the dollar, optimism of better economic things to come.</s>PENHAUL: Now Grand Ayatollah Sistani does have a cult following. He is also reclusive but he's not an Ayatollah Khomeini nor is he a Mullah Omar and so there's no sign at this stage that he is thinking about leaving any kind of armed resistance against the coalition to press his demands as in the kind of armed resistance that we're seeing in Sunni Muslim areas of Iraq. The thought is that because he's the spiritual leader of roughly 60 percent of this 25 million population here the thought is that by flexing those political muscles, by pushing his demands through social means, through peaceful means that he can gain what he's looking after -- Aaron.</s>BROWN: Karl, thank you. It's a considerable cult that is following him. If it's 60 percent of the population, as Karl just reported, how power is going to get handed over in Iraq will be the focus of a very important meeting at the U.N. on Monday. Paul Bremer will be there. His first stop though is Washington, D.C. CNN's John King joins us from the White House. John, I think we need to take the American side of what Karl just reported from Iraq. They take at the White House the ayatollah very seriously. He is a major player and he's not considered a bad guy.</s>KING: Exactly right, Aaron, but they do take him quite seriously so one of the things Paul Bremer will be talking about with the president and the rest of the national security team tomorrow are refinements, the White House calls them, to that caucus plan. They say flat out that there can be no national election. There are no voter rolls. There has been no census in some time, so they say the ayatollah will not get what he wants, at least not in the short term for national elections and, if he holds out for national elections, the White House is saying back then the U.S. occupation will go on for a whole lot longer. They know Sistani does not want that, so what they're trying to do is somehow expand participation in the caucuses that meets with his approval. And, Aaron, the most interesting ripple of all this in trying to negotiate that agreement for the first time this administration is now prepared to go to Kofi Annan and ask for help.</s>BROWN: And let's talk about that. What is it? This time it's serious. I mean there's been some lip service paid to the U.N. in this but they, the White House, need the U.N. right now because?</s>KING: Because they need a broker, 30,000 people on the streets in Basra today, as Karl Penhaul just reported, the other demonstrations chanting no to America, no to America. The administration hopes if the United Nations comes in you bring the international stamp of approval, if you will, and that you have a middle man, somebody who can broker a negotiation. And, the administration says, this is proof. Some will call this a shift. Some will call it a flip-flop. The administration will call it an evolution and say it is listening to the members of the Iraqi Governing Council who say we're having a hard time resolving this. We need help. Let's go to the United Nations.</s>BROWN: And, finally, to what extent, if any, does this end of June deadline for turning the sort of day-to-day civil power over to the Iraqis, how much of that has to do with domestic political concerns for the president's reelection campaign?</s>KING: Well, the White House would say it has nothing to do with the president's reelection campaign but everything, of course, this president does now has ramifications on his reelection campaign. Nobody here denies that. They say they will not turn over power until they are confident they are turning power over to a solid, stable, secure new Iraqi government and that is the message, again, back to Ayatollah Sistani, that the United States will have to stay a lot longer if he holds out for national elections. Let's try to reach a deal here. But it is not secret this president needs to show progress in Iraq to the American people. The Democrats are saying what is happening right now is a dismal failure. The president has to show progress. One way to show progress is to have caucuses or some kind of elections and to turn over sovereignty on July 1. White House officials say that is still the plan but, Aaron, they do say that if they can't reach a deal on this that deadline could slip.</s>BROWN: John, thank you, John King, our Senior White House Correspondent tonight. On to other matters, now you see him, now you don't, now you do again. At the same time Saddam's picture disappeared from the new Iraqi currency, new photos of him taken just after his capture are circulating, where else, on the Internet. Pentagon officials didn't release the pictures, won't officially verify their authenticity but they do appear to be genuine, the story from CNN's Jamie McIntyre.</s>MCINTYRE (voice-over): Here's Saddam Hussein right after he was pulled from the infamous spider hole, held down by a U.S. soldier or perhaps a translator or other civilian working with the U.S. military. While some people have suggested this image may show Saddam bleeding from the mouth, the picture is inconclusive. The unofficial photographs were not released by the Pentagon, which is not commenting on them. They appear to have been taken by someone in or working closely with the U.S. military and seem to show Saddam Hussein as he's brought into one of his former palaces in Baghdad, now serving as a military headquarters as dozens of U.S. troops look on. While CNN has not independently verified the authenticity or source of the photos they do appear genuine according to a senior U.S. government official and key details match. For instance, Saddam appears to be wearing the same clothes and sports the same beard as seen in pictures released by the U.S. government. Another photograph of the box of U.S. currency found with Saddam matches the green case of $750,000 displayed by the U.S. military after his capture. And, the picture of the commander of the 4th Infantry Division's 1st Brigade, Colonel James Hickey, who commanded 600 troops who took part in the capture matches other known images of Hickey. The photos don't reveal much more about Operation Red Dawn but they do give a little more of a look at how Saddam Hussein was handled in the hours after his capture.</s>MCINTYRE: While the release of the photos was not authorized and the Pentagon was not happy that they're out there, it's not clear that anyone is going to be reprimanded. Considering that nearly every soldier in Iraq has a camera in his pocket these days it's unlikely whoever took the pictures will be identified -- Aaron.</s>BROWN: What does it matter to the Pentagon that these pictures are out there? I mean why a fuss over this at all?</s>MCINTYRE: Well, of course, there's always a question about what kind of -- whether the United States is adhering to the Geneva Conventions about parading prisoners of war or humiliating them or displaying their pictures. So, they carefully released only a few and, of course, these were probably taken by somebody basically as a souvenir who then passed them along and they just like to have control over those images but, as I said, it's unlikely anyone is going to be reprimanded about this.</s>BROWN: Jamie, thank you very much, Jamie McIntyre from the Pentagon tonight. Ahead on the program we go back to Iowa for the panel of political reporters and the latest developments in the presidential campaign. Later a tour of Martin Luther King, Jr.'s America, really neat story, a break first. From New York this is NEWSNIGHT.