Baghdad Struggles To Curb Violence With Strict Curfew; Sectarian Violence In Iraq Underscores Challenges Facing U.S. Pentagon Planners; Healthy Holiday Tips
T.J. HOLMES, CNN ANCHOR: Now in the news, a suspected bomb- making factory north of Baghdad hit today by coalition warplanes. The U.S. military says that the facility in Taji was destroyed. A live report from Baghdad is less than a minute away. Vice President Dick Cheney is in Saudi Arabia for a critical meeting with King Abdullah, they are expected to discuss the latest violence in Iraq as well as Iran's growing influence in the Middle East.</s>BETTY NGUYEN, CNN ANCHOR: I want you to take a look at these pictures maybe you have seen them. A Minnesota mother pleads for information about her two missing children. The two and four year old brothers disappeared Wednesday. The mother asking anyone who may have seen the boys to come forward. A man who has sparked a standoff in the "Miami Herald" is charged with aggravated assault, police say Jose Varela armed with a toy gun and a knife was arrested Friday after a two hour standoff. Varela is a freelance cartoonist with the "Herald's" sister paper "El Nuevo." His attorney says he wanted to expose a conflict of interest at the paper.</s>HOLMES: And you know it pretty much understood. Like Friday, folks you are going to be fighting traffic, but fighting each other that is kind of part of the holiday spirit as well. Our affiliate WSLS in Virginia had the cameras rolling outside this Best Buy store well as soon as the doors opened this started flying. Why? Witnesses say some shoppers tried to cut in line and that lead to punches. Reynolds, if I've been standing in line all night and you try to break in line, I might throw a little --</s>NGUYEN: You might get a black eye.</s>HOLMES: All right. Reynolds, thank you. We will see you soon, I'm sure. We run down the top stories every 15 minutes here on CNN SATURDAY MORNING with in depth coverage for you all morning long. Your next check of the headlines coming up at 9:15 Eastern.</s>NGUYEN: All right, just stop, just stop before you even step into a mall this holiday season, you will want to see today's "OPEN HOUSE." Coming up at the bottom of the hour, Gerri Willis shows you how to make a plan to become debt free, yes, debt free even in the middle of the holiday. Now that my friends is a plan.</s>HOLMES: Might be the most important "HOUSE CALL" that ever aired here at CNN. From the CNN Center in Atlanta, good morning . I'm T.J. Holmes, and this is</s>CNN SATURDAY MORNING. NGUYEN: Good morning everybody, I'm Betty Nguyen. We want to thank you for starting your day with us. Iraq is on edge this morning. In the last day, reports of more revenge attacks along sectarian lines with the numbers of the dead raising, Baghdad struggles to curb the violence with a strict curfew. For more on all of this, let's go now to CNN's Arwa Damon in Baghdad. Arwa, give us the latest not only on the violence but just as important what is being done to stop it?</s>ARWA DAMON, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Well, Betty, you know, the government slapped down that curfew that began at about 8:00 on Thursday, still ongoing here in the capital. But despite that, even though most Iraqis are staying at home, the killing has not come to an end. In fact, the most recent attack happened in a southeastern neighborhood of Baghdad a predominantly Shia neighborhood, there were two mortar rounds landed and wounded at least four Iraqis. This follows, over a period of 24 hours, number of attacks against Sunni neighborhoods. At least two dozen Sunni's have been wounded in those attacks. A number of individuals also have been killed. Most of them have been mortar rounds; some people have been killed in clashes between Sunnis and Shia militiamen. Perhaps the most horrific and chilling of all those attacks,, though is a report coming from the office of Iraq's Sunni deputy minister. An official in his office saying that in one of the Baghdad neighborhoods, a neighborhood where seven Sunni worshippers were torched by Shia militiamen. Now in that same neighborhood -- and this neighborhood is perhaps an example of what's going on in the bigger picture that is Iraq. It was, at one time in time, fairly balanced Sunni and Shia, however ethnic violence pushed most of the Sunni population out. There on Friday we saw four mosques attacked, two of them burned according to Iraqi officials and the other two hit with rocket propelled grenades. So, Betty, really the Iraqi government despite this curfew, despite the Iraqi security forces being out there, despite an increase U.S. military presence increased checkpoints and support of the Iraqi security forces, the violence here does continue, Betty.</s>NGUYEN: Yes it does. We understand that the prime minister is going to meet with President Bush next week. But I want you to explain to us how difficult this meeting could indeed be with Shiite Cleric Muqtada al-Sadr threatening this meeting.</s>DAMON: That threat came across on national television yesterday. It was actually one of his al-Sadr's spokesman who delivered it, saying quite simply that if Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki goes ahead with his scheduled meeting with U.S. President Bush, that the block would temporarily suspend its activities from within the government. Why is this such a difficult position for the prime minister to be in? Well on the one hand, he essentially owes his prime ministership to the support of al-Sadr's block. On the other hand, he cannot afford right now to alienate the United States. Now we have heard from the white House that this meeting is set to go ahead as scheduled but we have not heard anything from the Iraqi government despite numerous efforts on our part to contact his spokes people and his office directly -- Betty.</s>NGUYEN: We will be watching this week to see if it indeed happens. Arwa Damon joining us live in Baghdad, thank you from Baghdad.</s>HOLMES: The sectarian violence underscores the challenges facing the U.S. Pentagon planners are under pressure to figure out where to go from here. CNN's Kathleen Koch reports on the search for new ideas, as the situation on the ground in Iraq gets worse.</s>KATHLEEN KOCH, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): More sectarian violence in Baghdad as U.S. forces make airstrikes, taking out rocket launchers in the Sadr City enclave. Tasked with finding a new way forward in Iraq is something Pentagon official's call the strategic dialogue group. Rather than a full-scale review of options, say officials, the 16 members are engaged in a largely secret brainstorming exercise. Some just back from Iraq, the top officers are giving the Joint Chiefs of Staff inside advice and an unvarnished reality check.</s>GEN. PETER PACE, JOINT CHIEFS CHAIRMAN: I think what's important is that we look at the objectives that we have set for ourselves in this nation and that we, in the military, take a look at what is going right and should be reinforced, what's going wrong and should be changed.</s>KOCH: The president now speaks frequently about the internal review underway.</s>GEORGE W. BUSH, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: As you know, General Pace is the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and in the process of evaluating a lot of suggestions from the field and from people involved with the Central Command as well as at the Pentagon.</s>KOCH: Some lawmakers have insisted sending more troops should be one option, and the top U.S. commander in the Middle East does want more U.S. troops to train and back Iraqi forces. But General John Abizaid has told Congress that sending 20,000 more would only help temporarily and be something the military could not sustain. (on camera): It's unclear when the Pentagon review will be complete. The findings could act to either bolster or counter the recommendations due out next month from the bipartisan Iraq Study Group. Kathleen Koch, CNN, the Pentagon.</s>NGUYEN: Switching gears, we now know what killed former Russian Agent Alexander Litvinenko. But the who, why and how well that is still very much a mystery. British anti-terrorism forces have joined other agencies to investigate. Litvinenko died of polonium poisoning Thursday in London, and that radioactive killer now has health British health officials concerned forcing them to close off several buildings where Litvinenko went before his death. His killer as we mentioned also a mystery. Litvinenko friends and family say Russian President Vladimir Putin is at the center of the suspect list.</s>MARK TREVELYAN, REUTERS SECURITY CORRESPONDENT: Many people would say and certainly the dead man's friends by pointing the finger at Moscow directly at Putin, that they are blaming him for this poisoning. On the other hand there are people who say maybe things have been set up precisely to look like that to frame the Russian security services in order to discredit Putin and his government.</s>HOLMES: The Russian government denies any involvement in Litvinenko's death but the concept isn't that far fetched. In the old days of the KGB it was almost expected that Kremlin critics and Russian dissidents could be targeted. CNN's Ryan Chilcote picks up the story from Moscow.</s>RYAN CHILCOTE, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): This fall, Russia's president was forced to deny accusations that he ordered the assassination of a critic.</s>VLADIMIR PUTIN, RUSSIAN PRESIDENT (through translator): I hope the British authorities won't fuel any groundless political scandals that have nothing to do with reality.</s>KOCH: The Kremlin freely admits to killing its opponents abroad in Soviet days. One of the more notable hits: Leon Trotsky, who broke with Stalin, got a pickax in the head in Mexico in 1940 -- the last one acknowledged by the Kremlin, Stepan Bandera, a Ukrainian nationalist sprayed with poisoned in Germany in 1959. A spokesman for Russia's spy agency, granting a rare interview, tells me the Kremlin's agents abandoned that practice half-a-century ago, and wouldn't even consider such a move for someone as insignificant as Alexander Litvinenko.</s>SERGEI IVANOV, RUSSIAN FOREIGN INTELLIGENCE: We had nothing to do, because we have no reason to do it. That's simple.</s>CHILCOTE (on camera): And no reason because he was a nobody?</s>IVANOV: He was a nobody.</s>CHILCOTE (voice-over): Litvinenko was among a growing number of Kremlin critics to wind up dead, disfigured, or otherwise disposed of. Anna Politkovskaya, a journalist and fierce Putin critic, was shot dead in Moscow last month. Russian agents were convicted of blowing up Chechen separatist leader Zelimkhan Yandarbiyev in the Persian Gulf nation of Qatar three years ago, and claimed responsibility for the recent poisoning death of an Arab militant in the breakaway Russian republic of Chechnya. Add to these a long list of Kremlin opponents who have ended up behind bars or fled the country, and the mysterious poisoning of disfigured Ukrainian President Viktor Yushchenko, all of this has given Russia an image problem, and this, says former KGB spy Stanislav Lekarev, makes the Kremlin an unlikely suspect in this latest killing. Lekarev says it's more likely Russia's being set up.</s>STANISLAV LEKAREV, KGB VETERAN: I'm about 80 percent sure that this was planned by the people who don't like Russia, who hate Russia, who want to change the regime in Russia.</s>CHILCOTE: When Litvinenko fled Moscow, people here stopped talking about him and his fierce criticism of the Russian president. Perhaps ironically, now with the allegations that the Kremlin may be behind his death the people that work in the building behind me now fully expect to hear a lot more talk about him. Ryan Chilcote, CNN, Moscow.</s>NGUYEN: So from poison to immense pressure, yes the pressures of the holiday season sometimes make you just want to scream. You are not alone, coming up in the next hour of CNN SATURDAY MORNING we will talk with an expert about how to truly enjoy the season of giving.</s>HOLMES: And also don't forget to give us your answers to today's e-mail question. What stresses you out during the holiday season? Send it to that e-mail address right there.</s>NGUYEN: It's a long list. But first in ten minutes our fitness guru Jerry Anderson tells you how to finish those cakes and pies and still trim your thighs.</s>HOLMES: And today a progress report on an experimental program to get you through airport security lines faster.</s>UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: If I haven't been able to be a registered traveler I would not have made it. I was really frantic. Hair on fire.