A Child's Story; Fight for Iraq
CAROL COSTELLO, CNN ANCHOR: And good morning to you, from the Time Warner Center in New York, I'm Carol Costello, along with Chad Myers. Here are the latest developments in the South Asia tsunami disaster. U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan says $1 billion is needed now to save the lives of people who survived the tsunamis. Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist says tsunami relief is not a short-term, feel-good project. After visiting a refugee camp in Sri Lanka, Frist says it will take mid-term and long-term funding to rebuild shattered South Asian communities. Sixteen Americans now confirmed dead in the South Asian tsunami and 20 more are missing and presumed dead. Sixty Germans and 52 Swedes are also dead, confirmed dead, I should say. The White House says President Bush has personally contributed $10,000 for tsunami relief in South Asia. Press Secretary Scott McClellan says the checks have been mailed to organizations listed on the USA Freedom Corps Web site. To the Forecast Center now and Chad.</s>CHAD MYERS, CNN METEOROLOGIST: Good morning, Carol.</s>MYERS: Carol, back to you.</s>COSTELLO: All right, thanks for the warning -- Chad.</s>MYERS: You're welcome.</s>COSTELLO: On the tsunami-damaged Thai island of Phuket, the first steps are being taken to rebuild homes and businesses. The more daunting, long-term project is rebuilding lives, especially young lives. CNN's Aneesh Raman reports on one child who has seen too much during the past 11 days.</s>ANEESH RAMAN, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Do not let the image fool you. Amidst this innocent scene of children back at school, smiling and playing, the horrors of last week lurk quietly everywhere. Like others today, 9-year-old Panutna (ph), surrounded by friends, tells her tale of what took place.</s>PANUTNA, TSUNAMI SURVIVOR (through translator): I was sleeping. My aunt (ph) knocked my door. I didn't get up. Then she kicked my door. I got up and packed (ph) with my mother and father and run out to the hill. The water was still coming, so we had to go even higher up. Water everywhere.</s>RAMAN: Her father (ph) was then thrown by the waves. As she speaks of that, translation can do no justice to a little girl's pain.</s>PANUTNA (through translator): Nanny Polo (ph) died.</s>RAMAN: What these eyes have seen, what the effects will be on a child's mind is nothing short of profound. Panutna, not even a teenager, already speaks of death with resignation.</s>PANUTNA (through translator): If I die, at least I die once.</s>RAMAN: But she is lucky, Panutna and her family survived. In her classroom, empty seats with those children yet to return. Their absence today is ominous. (on camera): Panutna's story is this island's story. The pain of what took place still so real, so fresh. But even for these children picking up school books left out to dry, the need to rebuild cannot be ignored. (voice-over): A new roof for a house destroyed. Panutna's father trying to provide a glimmer of hope that perhaps things can and will get better. Yet the most troubling question is the one she cannot answer, the one that she avoids, why this happened.</s>PANUTNA: I don't know.</s>RAMAN: Amidst friends, overcoming such an ordeal seems possible for Panutna. But as she walks home alone, there is no way to know the images playing in her mind, the emotions brewing. For children all across this region, digesting the hellish enormity of this disaster could be impossible. Aneesh Raman, CNN, Phuket, southern Thailand.</s>COSTELLO: And CNN looks deeper into the effects of this disaster of the young. Our prime time special, "SAVING THE CHILDREN," airs tonight at 10:00 p.m. Eastern, 7:00 p.m. Pacific Time. Today is Army Day in Iraq. It's also 24 days until Iraqis go to the polls. The attempts to intimidate would-be voters and derail the vote continues to ratchet up. Our senior international editor David Clinch joins us now from Atlanta with more details on this. And the violence has been heightened in the past several days -- David.</s>DAVID CLINCH, CNN SENIOR INTERNATIONAL EDITOR: Absolutely. And as predicted, the U.S. military and the Iraqis have been predicting that the violence, the level of violence, against, in particular, the Iraqi security forces will increase. A lot of these different strands and the story in Iraq are coming together now as we just get a few weeks away from the elections in Iraq at the end of the month. The question of whether the Iraqi forces will be in place to guard these polling stations in Iraq. The U.S. military making it clear that they won't be guarding the polling stations. It's not their election, they say, it's the Iraqi's elections and the Iraqis will need to be in place to guard the stations. Many of them aren't even trained yet. We're going to see Army Day today. Tens of thousands more are expected to graduate over the next few weeks, but just graduating doesn't mean that they'll be able to do the job, of course.</s>COSTELLO: But there will also be more American troops patrolling the streets, especially on election day. I heard the figure 35,000.</s>CLINCH: That's right, 35,000 in the Baghdad area alone. And the U.S. military making it very clear. We heard from General Meps (ph) today, one of the senior military commanders in the region, that his forces will be ready to respond to anything that might happen in and around election time. But again, as he's making clear, from their point of view, this is the beginning of the process, the elections, the beginning of the process of the Iraqis taking over their own country. And he wants to see the Iraqi forces guarding those polling stations and taking on the role. In his words, the Iraqis who are fighting for freedom, that is the security forces, will quash the thugs, and that's the militants, of course. And the elections will, as we of course all know, will be the first really serious testing ground of that theory. But the Iraqis can take over security in a meaningful way to get, not just those 35,000, but the 150,000 American troops out of Iraq slowly but surely after this election.</s>COSTELLO: OK, a final question for you. The interim Iraqi president is saying maybe the election should be postponed, but the interim prime minister is saying no, the elections will take place on January 30. Who has the final say, is it the interim Iraqi government, is it the United Nations, is it the United States?</s>CLINCH: Technically speaking, it's the Iraqi government. But of course if they were to do that, they would have to do it in coordination with the U.S. and the U.N. It's not going to happen. The Iraqis have now, Iyad Allawi, the Prime Minister, has made it clear. And the President Yawar, who made that comment, had a very interesting conversation on the phone with President Bush after he made that comment. President Bush making it absolutely clear any delay was not a good idea from his point of view.</s>COSTELLO: David Clinch, live in Atlanta, thank you.</s>CLINCH: All right.</s>COSTELLO: The lives of children have been ripped apart by the tsunami crisis, orphaned and alone. We'll tell you why the world's most precious gifts are in desperate need of protection. And later, be careful when playing around with a laser in your backyard, could bring the FBI to your front door. And our e-mail "Question of the Morning," Patriot Act: is it time to review it? We'll read some of your e-mails a little later. But first, here's a look at what else is making news this Thursday morning.