Counterattack: President Bush's Veto Threat; Showdown Over Iraq; Danger Zone?
LOU DOBBS, HOST: Tonight, President Bush's counterattack as Congress moves ahead with a deadline for bringing our troops home from Iraq. A sudden surge of attacks in Baghdad's secure area. The so- called Green Zone looks now like a danger zone. And dramatic developments in the standoff over Iran's capture of 15 British sailors and marines, including the first video of the captives. We'll have those stories, all the day's news, much more, straight ahead here tonight.</s>ANNOUNCER: This is LOU DOBBS TONIGHT, news, debate and opinion for Wednesday, March 28th. Live from Washington, Lou Dobbs.</s>DOBBS: Good evening, everybody. President Bush today launched a counteroffensive a day after the Senate voted to support a deadline for bringing our troops home from Iraq by next March. In a stinging speech, President Bush repeated his veto threat and ridiculed both houses of Congress for loading Iraq war spending bills with pork. On Capitol Hill, Democratic leaders urged President Bush to calm down and accused him of being out of touch with reality. Ed Henry tonight reports on the president's call for an end to congressional meddling in the military. Dana Bash reports from Capitol Hill on the angry rhetoric coming right back at the president and the Democrats' next move. Jamie McIntyre reporting from the Pentagon on the disturbing rise of attacks inside the one place in Iraq that is supposed to be safe and secure, the fortified Green Zone. We begin tonight with Ed Henry at the White House -- Ed.</s>ED HENRY, CNN WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: Lou, this is an old threat from the president. He's just repeating what he has already said. What was new is that the language, the rhetoric was more strident.</s>GEORGE BUSH, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: Not a bad introduction by a cowboy.</s>HENRY (voice-over): As the president addressed the National Cattlemen's Beef Association, a bit of the Bush swagger was back.</s>BUSH: Now, some of them believe that by delaying funding for our troops they can force me to accept restrictions on our commanders that I believe would make withdrawal and defeat more likely. That's not going to happen. If Congress fails to pass a bill to fund our troops on the front lines, the American people will know who to hold responsible.</s>HENRY: The president accused Democrats of meddling with military strategy and vowed again to veto any bill that sets a spring 2008 timetable for bringing U.S. troops home.</s>BUSH: It's unclear what the military significance of this date is. What is clear is that the consequences of imposing such a specific and random date for withdrawal would be disastrous.</s>HENRY: Mr. Bush also lampooned pork projects loaded up in the war funding bill.</s>BUSH: There's $3.5 million for visitors to tour the Capitol and see for themselves how Congress works. I'm not kidding you.</s>HENRY: And he used an unconventional example to claim progress on the ground.</s>BUSH: I want to share with you how two Iraqi bloggers -- they have bloggers in Baghdad just like we've got here -- describe it. Displaced families are returning home. Marketplaces are seeing more activity. Stores that were long shuttered are now reopening. We feel safer about moving in the city now.</s>HENRY: Now, in the short term, the White House feels good about the fact that it's clear the Democrats do not have the votes to override a veto, but in the long term, the White House has to be very concerned that each time there's a vote on the Hill over a timetable, the vote tally keeps increasing and increasing, and, in fact, the number of lawmakers that are opposing and latching out at the president's policy also increasing -- Lou.</s>DOBBS: Ed, thank you very much. Ed Henry from the White House. On Capitol Hill today, Democrats struck right back at the president. They're giving no ground in their intention to bring our troops home next year. Dana Bash has our report.</s>DANA BASH, CNN CONGRESSIONAL CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Less than an hour after the president accused Democrats of meddling in his war strategy and endangering U.S. troops, the House speaker responded with two words -- calm down.</s>REP. NANCY PELOSI (D-CA), SPEAKER OF THE HOUSE: I would extend a hand of friendship to the president, just to say to him calm down with the threats. There's a new Congress in town. We respect your constitutional role. We want you to respect ours.</s>BASH: Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid was more blunt: "Why doesn't he get real with what's going on in the real world?," Reid said of the president. "His arrogance is getting real out of touch with what's going on with reality." Emboldened by majority votes in the House and Senate to withdraw troops from Iraq, Democrats say the president is going to have to compromise in order to get money for the war.</s>PELOSI: This president is not getting any more blank checks from the Congress. This Congress will hold him accountable for the conduct of this war and we will have legislation that will give him every dollar he asks for our troops -- and more -- but with accountability in there.</s>BASH: But for all their tough talk, Democratic sources say they have not yet settled on a strategy for after the president makes good on his promise to veto any Iraq War funding bill with a deadline for withdrawal. Democrats will then be faced with the question of how far to take this political standoff while troops who need the funding are in combat.</s>BASH: Democrats are also pushing back on the president's warning today that if he doesn't sign a war funding bill by mid-April, the Iraq mission and the troops there will be at risk. What Democrats say is that the military won't have real financial problems until mid-May. And Democrats also, Lou, are accusing the president of being the one to put the military in this weak position because they say that he has mismanaged the war -- Lou.</s>DOBBS: Dana, thank you very much. Dana Bash from Capitol Hill. Insurgents have killed another of our troops in Iraq. A Marine died in combat in Al Anbar Province. Seventy-nine of our troops have been killed in Iraq so far this month. 3,244 of our troops have been killed since this war began. 24,314 of our troops wounded, 10,841 of them seriously. Among this week's war dead is an American soldier who was killed in a rocket attack in what is supposed to be the secure Green Zone in Baghdad. A government contractor was also killed in that attack. This is just the latest in an unusual surge of violence in the heavily fortified zone where U.S. operations are based. Senior Pentagon Correspondent Jamie McIntyre has the report.</s>JAMIE MCINTYRE, CNN SR. PENTAGON CORRESPONDENT (voice over): In the now familiar video from a week ago, new U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon flinches as an insurgent rocket lands nearby during a press briefing. Rocket attacks like this one that left a cloud of smoke over central Baghdad this week are frequent enough to show that the secure Green Zone is not so secure after all, especially lately. A deadly attack Tuesday killed two Americans, a contractor and a soldier, and wounded five others, underscoring the danger. The Green Zone, officially called the International Zone, is a heavily-guarded, walled-in section of Baghdad that is the site of the Iraqi government and parliament, as well as the sprawling U.S. Embassy. The plan is to shrink the secure area over the coming months as some streets are reopened and turned over to Iraqi control under the new Baghdad security plan. But that plan has U.S. contractors and other private workers, including some members of the western news media, worried that a bad situation is about to get worse. Safety, after all, is often a matter of perception.</s>BRIG. GEN. JAMES "SPIDER" MARKS, U.S. ARMY (RET.): Is there routine intervention into the Green Zone by bad guys? Of course. Of course there is, both on the ground and through mortar fire, and through indirect fire. I mean, that stuff kind of happens.</s>MCINTYRE: Still, the U.S. military denies there are any plans to start moving nonessential workers out of the Green Zone because of any increased threat. The last known American death in the Green Zone was in February, when a contractor was killed in a checkpoint shooting.</s>MCINTYRE: The U.S. military doesn't have a good explanation for the recent uptick in so-called indirect fire attacks. One senior military official told CNN it could be due to the detention of several leaders of a radical cell of Muqtada al-Sadr's Mehdi army. Another military official said that Tuesday's deadly attack was simply a lucky shot -- Lou.</s>DOBBS: And is the U.S. military preparing any tactical response, looking at new ways in which to fortify and reinforce the so-called Green Zone?</s>MCINTYRE: Well, in fact, they're looking at just the opposite. They're looking at ways to increase the turnover of parts of the Green Zone to the -- to the Iraqis because, after all, if they can't secure the government buildings in that area, how is the overall Baghdad security plan supposed to work? But for the moment they're not making any immediate changes.</s>DOBBS: Thank you very much. Jamie McIntyre, from the Pentagon. Iranian state television today aired video of some of the 15 British sailors and marines that were captured at sea last week. Tehran claims they were in Iranian territorial waters when they were captured. British officials deny that, and British officials say they have proof that the group was in Iraqi territory conducting a legitimate inspection of a cargo ship. Tonight, Iran's foreign minister says his country will look into releasing the only female captive as soon as possible. Tomorrow, the investigation into the firings of eight U.S. attorneys takes another step forward. Kyle Sampson, the former chief of staff to Attorney General Gonzales, who resigned in the wake of this scandal, he will testify before the Senate Judiciary Committee tomorrow. But today, more documents relating to those firings were released. Democrats now are again wondering whether the Bush administration is hiding something. Kelli Arena is here with more -- Kelli.</s>KELLI ARENA, CNN JUSTICE CORRESPONDENT: Lou, these documents just keep coming, and the plot just thickens. Today, in this document dump, there's a letter from a Justice official admitting that some statements made to Congress were contradicted by evidence in documents that were released later. First, officials said that the department wasn't aware that Karl Rove played any role in the decision to appoint his former associate, Tim Griffin, as U.S. attorney in Arkansas, but subsequent documents suggest that Justice staffers knew that it was very important to Rove that his buddy get a job. Now, Senator Schumer jumped right on that, saying that it seems Justice rarely acts without the knowledge and approval of the White House. So hopefully tomorrow there's going to be more clarity here. That's when Kyle Sampson, the attorney general's former chief of staff, testifies before the Senate Judiciary Committee. Now, senators are hoping to find out what led to those firings and why there were so many conflicting explanations coming out of the Justice Department. People close to Sampson say he remains very loyal to this attorney general, but say that he is going to explain that he was not acting in a vacuum and that other Justice officials were very aware of what was going on -- Lou.</s>DOBBS: Well, it seems clear from the e-mails already, as you put it -- as the term of art here in Washington, "dumped," that there were contradictions, if not outright lies. Particularly on the part of the attorney general. The idea that there were other Justice officials involved is straightforward. That meeting held that the attorney general apparently forgot about had to involve other Justice officials. What is difficult to understand here is why any -- any one of these officials would be taking the Fifth Amendment and why this should be an issue at all.</s>ARENA: Well, as we know, Monica Goodling, the only one so far, right, that's taking the Fifth. But Sampson is going voluntarily -- Lou.</s>DOBBS: It's going to be fascinating to watch. At the same time, the injection, again, of administration partisanship into policy, public policy -- in this case one of the most sacrosanct of all of the branches of the executive department, the Justice Department, is reason for all of us to be concerned, whether Republican, Democrat, or whatever. Kelli, thank you very much. Kelli Arena. Coming up here next, my testimony today before Congress on the devastating impact that so-called free trade agreements have had on our working men and women in this country and families. And there finally may be a move to force China's hand to end its currency manipulation that makes it impossible for American companies, they say, to compete fairly. There's more to it than that. But we'll have it. And the battle to close the loophole that allows American companies to do business with countries that sponsor terrorism. Yes, do business with countries sponsoring terrorism. In our special edition at 8:00 p.m. Eastern here on CNN, "The War Within". Thirty years after this nation declared a war on drugs, we'll take a look at why we as a nation and a people are still losing that war and too many of our youth are in the grip of drug and alcohol addiction. Live at George Washington University tonight, 8:00 p.m. We'll be right back. Please stay with us.