CNN Late Edition With Wolf Blitzer Part I

SECTION: News; Domestic

LENGTH: 14038 words

HEADLINE: Interview With John Edwards; Interview With John Snow

GUESTS: John Edwards, Jay Rockefeller, Pat Roberts, Elizabeth Cheney, John Snow, Gene Sperling, Bill Richardson, Marc Racicot

BYLINE: Wolf Blitzer, Christiane Amanpour, Brent Sadler

HIGHLIGHT:
Interviews with John Edwards and John Snow.

BODY:
WOLF BLITZER, HOST: It's noon in Washington, 9 a.m. in Los Angeles, 7 p.m. in Baghdad, 8:30 p.m. in Kabul, Afghanistan. Wherever you're watching from around the world, thanks very much for joining us for "LATE EDITION."

We'll get to my interview with the Democratic vice presidential nominee, John Edwards, in just a few minutes.

First, though, let's go to CNN headquarters in Atlanta for a quick check of what's in the news right now.

(NEWSBREAK)

BLITZER: We begin in Afghanistan, where, one day after the first direct election, there are calls to nullify the results even before the votes have actually been counted.

Our chief international correspondent, Christiane Amanpour, is in Kabul. She's joining us now live with the latest.

Christiane?

CHRISTIANE AMANPOUR, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Well, Wolf, the stakes are exceptionally high, not just for the Afghan people, but for the United States as well. The U.S. ambassador and others have been in consultations trying to mediate this dispute by the opposition candidates, and it appears by this evening that some of them have modified their positions.

The election board here and the observers, the organizers, have declared that they will not nullify yesterday's vote despite the opposition candidates calling foul over indelible ink that, in fact, in some cases was not indelible, the ink used to mark a person's thumb to avoid fraud. They're saying that they cannot nullify an election based on a few complaints, but those complaints will be investigated.

And, of course, the Afghan people, who were so delighted to have been voting, say that they want this election to stand, and they want whatever the result is to stand, as well, and to be accepted.

President Karzai himself said he hopes that people will vote for him, he hopes that he does become the victor, but he also was very upset about the cries of foul yesterday.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

HAMID KARZAI, INTERIM PRESIDENT OF AFGHANISTAN: While millions of Afghan people were still lining there before the voting stations to vote, the boycott call came. This was very unfortunate, and it hurt me very much, hurt me as an Afghan, hurt my Afghan sentiment, my sentiment as a human being and as a person who had just gotten the right to vote and to confirm and affirm that right.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

AMANPOUR: Now, there were millions of people who turned out yesterday all over the country. In some parts it was snowing, others it was rainy.

Here in Kabul, it was very unseasonably chilly, with dust in the air.

And people are looking forward to the results. These are going to be quite slow in coming. They have only just started collecting the ballot boxes in Kabul from around the country. Voting will be by hand. Initial results perhaps not known for the next several days, and a final result not for the next few weeks.

BLITZER: Christiane Amanpour reporting for us from Kabul. History unfolding in that part of the world.

Thank you very much, Christiane.

Turning now to the U.S. presidential campaign, with just about three weeks to go until Election Day here in the United States, Democratic presidential nominee John Kerry and his running-mate, Senator John Edwards, are hoping to try to capitalize on some of the momentum they've been building from their debate performances.

The third and final presidential debate between the president and Senator Kerry set for Wednesday night in Tempe, Arizona.

Just a short while ago, I spoke with the Democratic vice presidential nominee, John Edwards.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

BLITZER: Senator Edwards, thanks very much for joining us. Welcome back to "LATE EDITION" from the campaign trail today in Milwaukee.

I want to get right to a key issue, namely Afghanistan. We saw dramatic pictures, hundreds of thousands of people lining up to vote in the elections this weekend. This has been a centerpiece of the Bush administration's policy.

Do they deserve credit for seeing this election get off the ground?

SEN. JOHN EDWARDS (D-NC), VICE PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: Well, of course the election taking place is a good thing, Wolf. The problem is -- it's been, as you know, postponed twice because of security concerns.

The problem is, there are still big chunks of Afghanistan that are not secure, under the control of drug lords and warlords. Afghanistan has gone back to its narcotics business. I mean, they're providing 75 percent of the world's opium now. So there's a very dangerous trend there. Parts of the country not secure; continuing to develop their narcotics business. I think the bottom line is that there's a great deal more to be done in Afghanistan.

And on top of that, one of our concerns, which John and I both talked about in these debates, is the fact that we had Osama bin Laden cornered at Tora Bora, and instead of using the finest military in the world -- we had the 10th Mountain Division just over the line in Uzbekistan -- we turned the job of capturing and killing him over to the Afghan warlords, the very people who had been protecting him a few weeks before, which we think was an enormous mistake.

BLITZER: You know, General Tommy Franks, who was the commander of the Central Command at that time, he denies that they knew for sure that Osama bin Laden was cornered in Tora Bora, because he said around the same time there were reports he was in Waziristan and other areas.

So he's dismissing -- he supports President Bush now, but he says at the time there was no hard evidence that he was there.

EDWARDS: Well, then, why in the world would we give the job of finding out whether he was there, if we thought there was a real chance he was there -- and I think there's a lot of evidence to the contrary -- why in the world would we turn that responsibility over to the very people who had been protecting him a few weeks before? Made no sense whatsoever.

If we thought there was a serious chance that Osama bin Laden was at Tora Bora -- and I think there's a lot of evidence that that's exactly where he was -- we should never have stopped using our own forces, the finest military in the world, to flush him out, kill him or capture him.

BLITZER: Well, on that point, he also says -- and I've interviewed him on this program not that long ago, and I pressed him on that -- he says that they never turned over complete authority to the warlords or the drug lords or anyone else, that the U.S. had extensive military capabilities in that area.

And he says they could do the job in Afghanistan, at the same time as they were preparing for the war in Iraq. But we're not going to get into the whole debate over that issue right now, since we're limited with the amount of time.

Let's move on from the elections in Afghanistan, which have taken place, although there are still serious questions about how free and fair these elections were, to the elections scheduled for the end of January in Iraq.

Do you believe that, if these elections can in fact take place, that will have proven that this war was the right thing to do?

EDWARDS: No.

First of all, I think there are really serious issues with these elections taking place. And if you look at what's happening on the ground right now, we have about 30-some odd -- I believe, about 35 is the last number I saw -- U.N. personnel on the ground.

The U.N.'s responsible for conducting this election. You know, the U.N. conducted the election in East Timor, a much smaller country, and had over 200 people on the ground. It's absolutely impossible to conduct this election with that number of people.

And of course, the reason there aren't more there is because it's so dangerous. And, you know, we've lost over a thousand troops, and we've got Americans being kidnapped and, in one case, beheaded, and have these insurgents and terrorists flowing into Iraq from all over the world. Parts of the country under the control of insurgents.

No, I think the reality is that this president -- our military has done everything they've been asked to do, Wolf; they've been extraordinary; our men and women in uniform have been heroic -- but the president had a responsibility to plan for this stage, to provide a plan to win the peace. And it's now absolutely clear he didn't have a plan, and the results are catastrophic.

BLITZER: But let me press you on this point, though. If, in fact, there are free and fair elections in Iraq and democracy takes hold there, why do you say the war would not have been justified? You get rid of Saddam Hussein, and at the same time you create a democracy for the first time in the Arab world. What's wrong with that?

EDWARDS: Well, here's what I'm saying. I'm saying, first of all, that what's happened is Osama bin Laden is still at large, al Qaeda has reconstituted itself. They are now in 60 different countries around the world. They were the people who attacked us on September 11th, first.

Second thing is, if you look at what's happening on the ground in Iraq right now, and I think even the administration people would say there is a serious issue about whether these elections can take place as planned.

Our responsibility, and John Kerry's laid this out very clearly, is we do believe we have to be successful in Iraq. It's important because they've turned Iraq into something it wasn't before the invasion. They've turned it into a haven for terrorists.

And the result of that is, we have a responsibility, along with the rest of the world, to ensure that we don't have an Iraq in the middle of the Middle East which is a haven for terrorists, which means we have to be successful there.

BLITZER: Let me read one excerpt, one quote, from the Charles Duelfer report, nearly a thousand pages on weapons of mass destruction in Iraq or lack thereof.

Among other things, he writes this: "By 2000-2001, Saddam had managed to mitigate many of the effects of sanctions and undermined their international support. Iraq was within striking distance of a de facto end to the sanctions regime."

He goes on to say, "Saddam wanted to recreate Iraq's WMD capability which was essentially destroyed in 1991, after sanctions were removed."

In other words, what he is saying is, if the U.S. would have simply allowed the status quo to go forward, the sanctions would have been removed sooner rather than later and then he would have recreated his WMD capability and potentially shared it with terrorists.

EDWARDS: But the point of all this is that Iraq had no weapons of mass destruction. They didn't even have an ongoing system to create weapons of mass destruction.

You know, so, the Bush administration's explanation is we invaded a country because at some point in the future they might get weapons of mass destruction?

I mean, Iran and North Korea, the other two parts of what George Bush labeled the "Axis of Evil," they have nuclear capability. Iran has moved forward their nuclear weapons program. North Korea has gone from one to two nuclear weapons to as many as six to eight nuclear weapons.

All that has happened on their watch, and they have done nothing -- they have abdicated responsibility for confronting Iranians to the Europeans. They did the same thing with North Korea, abdicated responsibility to the Chinese. And both those countries have nuclear capability.

I mean, the bottom line is this is a convoluted logic to try to justify in hindsight what we now know wasn't true.

Here's what we believe. We believe that...

BLITZER: Well, let me interrupt, Senator, for one second, because the president repeatedly says that in the post-9/11 world you can't take any chances about that. It is better to err on the side of action as opposed to inaction.

EDWARDS: It is better to have good judgment, Wolf. It's better to make the right judgments that don't cost the American people and doesn't severely damage our credibility around the world.

I mean, we have a couple of examples. Al Qaeda's now in 60 different countries. So, I mean, how many of those countries are we going to invade?

Iran and North Korea clearly have significantly more capability than Iraq had at the time of the invasion. And what are we going to do about Iran and North Korea?

I mean, that's great rhetoric, but at the end of the day what you want in a president of the United States is somebody who takes the information and the intelligence available to them and exercises good judgment.

This president has made misjudgment after misjudgment. He made the wrong judgment about capturing or killing Osama bin Laden in Afghanistan. He made the wrong judgment to turn the focus away from the war on terror and the people who attacked us. And he made the wrong judgment in not having a plan to win the peace in Iraq.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

BLITZER: Coming up, more of my interview with Senator John Edwards. I'll ask him why he noted that Vice President Dick Cheney has a gay daughter during their debate.

Then, U.S. intelligence and Iraq: How could the Bush administration have gotten it so wrong? I'll ask the chairman and the vice chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee.

And later, who will win and who will lose? Bush-Cheney campaign chairman Marc Racicot and New Mexico Democratic Governor Bill Richardson weigh in on the second presidential debate and the home stretch of this campaign.

"LATE EDITION" continues right after this.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BLITZER: "LATE EDITION's" Web question of the week: Which candidate won the presidential debate Friday night? You can vote right now. Go to cnn.com/lateedition. We'll tell you the results later in our program.

Up next, more of my interview with Democratic vice presidential nominee John Edwards. I'll ask him why he didn't correct Dick Cheney when the vice president insisted they had never met before the debate.

You're watching "LATE EDITION," the last word in Sunday talk.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BLITZER: A beautiful day here in Washington, D.C. Welcome back to "LATE EDITION."

We return now to my interview with the Democratic vice presidential nominee, Senator John Edwards.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

BLITZER: When you debated Vice President Dick Cheney at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland this past week, he came out swinging. He was very tough in going after you, specifically your record in the United States Senate. Here is an excerpt of what he said:

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DICK CHENEY, VICE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: Senator, frankly, you have a record in the Senate that's not very distinguished. You have missed 33 out of 36 meetings in the Judiciary Committee, almost 70 percent of the meetings of the Intelligence Committee. You've missed a lot of key votes on tax policy, on energy, on Medicare reform...

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BLITZER: Was he telling the truth?

EDWARDS: No, no. As usual, it was misleading. He also said, by the way, which you didn't play, that he and I had never met before he walked on that stage last night. That's just black-and-white false.

BLITZER: Why didn't you correct him at the time when he said that? It seemed like a great opportunity for you to score some points.

EDWARDS: Now, wait a minute. You asked me one question, let me answer that one...

BLITZER: All right, go ahead and answer both.

EDWARDS: Let me go back to your first question.

The answer to his criticism is, first of all he is talking about -- when I was -- during the first two years I was in the Senate, I had an almost perfect attendance record.

And I fought for and worked on things that really matter in this country. I helped write the Patient's Bill of Rights. I fought for it, got it passed on the floor of the Senate. I helped write the law after September 11th to keep this country safe, and not only that I worked on and helped lead the fight on things like campaign finance reform, making sure that we do something about drug company ads on television. Every time we would be making progress, Bush and Cheney would block what we were doing.

So I came to the conclusion the only way to really fix this problem was to get Bush out of the White House, get George Bush out of the White House. So I made the decision to run for president.

So that's the period of time that he focused on with those comments. And the thing about coming onto the floor of the Senate to preside and not having spoken to me? You know, the truth is, Dick Cheney would come on to the floor of the Senate on the Republican side, sit at the presiding desk and then leave on the Republican side.

Now, I guess I could have chased him down from behind and shook his hand, but this is all -- as my wife's grandmother loves to say -- you know, the intent to deceive is the same as a lie, and that was a whole series of things that were intended to create an impression that's just not true.

BLITZER: Why didn't you correct him when he said he had never met you?

EDWARDS: Yes, I made the decision, wrong or right, in hindsight, I made the decision at the time that it was more important for us to be talking about the vice president's credibility and what's happening in Iraq, where men and women are dying, than to talk about whether Dick Cheney and I had ever met before.

So it was really pretty much that simple. So whether it was the right decision or not, that was the decision I made at the time.

BLITZER: I've got one final question, Senator. A comment that you made during the course of the debate with the vice president on the issue of same-sex marriage. Listen to what you said because it's caused somewhat of a stir. Listen to this.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

EDWARDS: I think the vice president and his wife love their daughter. I think they love her very much, and you can't have anything but respect for the fact that they're willing to talk about the fact that they have a gay daughter, the fact that they embrace her. It's a wonderful thing.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BLITZER: Now, he thanked you for that, but he didn't mention the fact himself that his daughter, Mary, is a lesbian. And some people are saying you wanted to sort of embarrass him by pointing that out in the debate and I want you to give us a chance -- to give yourself a chance to respond to that criticism.

EDWARDS: Oh, of course not. That's absurd. The vice president brought it up himself, if I remember correctly, either in his 2000 debate or at other times in his public life. I would never do anything like that.

The point was to recognize that the vice president, like millions of parents in this country, want their children to be happy, and they want them to be treated fairly and not be discriminated against, and that was the whole purpose of saying what I said. It was heartfelt.

BLITZER: And he did bring it up himself about a month before that debate. He publicly mentioned the fact that his daughter is gay.

Senator, we're all out of time. Thanks so much for joining us.

EDWARDS: Thanks, Wolf. Thanks for having me.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

BLITZER: We have to take a quick break.

Up next, we'll get a quick check of what's making news right now, including the latest on the alleged voting irregularities in Afghanistan.

Then, terror at Egypt's Taba resort. Did al Qaeda strike again? We'll talk to the chairman and the vice chairman of the U.S. Senate Intelligence Committee, Republican Pat Roberts and Democrat Jay Rockefeller.

More "LATE EDITION" straight ahead.

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(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

GEORGE W. BUSH, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: Our long-term security depends on our deep faith in liberty.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BLITZER: President Bush, making closing remarks at Friday night's debate in St. Louis. That second face-to-face meeting showcased dramatic differences between the president and Senator Kerry on Iraq, the war on terrorism, national security and other issues, as well.

Joining us now to talk about that, two guests: the chairman of the U.S. Senate Intelligence Committee, Republican Senator Pat Roberts of Kansas, and the committee's vice chairman, Democratic Senator Jay Rockefeller of West Virginia.

Senators, welcome back to "LATE EDITION."

SEN. PAT ROBERTS (R), KANSAS: Thank you, Wolf. It's good to be here.

BLITZER: Let's read a couple of little excerpts from the report, the nearly 1,000-page CIA-sponsored report by Charles Duelfer on WMD, weapons of mass destruction, in Iraq.

ROBERTS: Actually, it's 1,500 pages.

BLITZER: 1,500 pages. I stand corrected. Among other things he writes this: "The ISG, the Iraq Survey Group, which went in to look for WMD, judges that Iraq unilaterally destroyed its undeclared chemical weapons stockpile in 1991."

And then they say this: "Saddam Hussein ended the nuclear program following the Gulf War. The ISG found no evidence to suggest concerted efforts to restart the program."

Senator Roberts, you've looked into this as closely as anyone. How could the U.S. intelligence community, on such a critical issue involving war or peace, be so wrong?

ROBERTS: Well, basically, it's the same thing that Senator Rockefeller and I have been pointing out, after our 17-0 vote on the WMD investigation by the Senate Intelligence Committee, which pretty well is confirmed by the Duelfer report.

And we both said that this was a problem of group-think and assumption train, not only by the American intelligence community, but worldwide, every agency including the U.N. assumed that he had from past behavior -- that he had the weapons of WMD.

You mentioned the Duelfer report. It's almost encyclopedic in regard to the history of Iraq, what was going on in Saddam's head. But it also said that Saddam had a fetish about WMD.

The real question is, had he been able to end the sanctions and continue the oil-for-food program, would he have reconstituted that weaponry? I think he probably would.

BLITZER: But that was not the justification for going to war.

ROBERTS: No, not at that time.

BLITZER: The intent was -- the justification was the stockpiles.

ROBERTS: Yes, that's correct, and one of the things about intelligence -- I know we're having a great debate in the Senate now and the House about intelligence reform, and the military always says that they are the principal consumers. That's not right.

The principal consumer is the president of the United States and the Congress and the National Security Council and also the major consumer, which is the military. All of us, Jay and I, made very declarative statements and aggressive statements, as did the president, following that National Intelligence Estimate of 2002. The intelligence was wrong.

That's why it's so important to quit looking in the rearview mirror with 20-20 hindsight and get on with the business of intelligence reform which we're trying to do.

BLITZER: We're going to get into that in a minute, and I want to get on to the whole issue of what happens now.

At stake right now, Senator Rockefeller, as you well know, is U.S. credibility at home and around the world. If the U.S. government were tomorrow to say there's evidence of a nuclear bomb program in Iran, for example, and the U.S. is going to take it out or North Korea or Syria or any other place, wouldn't the United States have a serious problem with the world believing U.S. intelligence, given this record going into the Iraq war?

SEN. JAY ROCKEFELLER (D), WEST VIRGINIA: Not necessarily. If it was Iran or if it was North Korea, Syria, perhaps. Look, I mean, Iran is trying to get those weapons, nuclear weapons, North Korea definitely has them. If they use their third-stage missile they can actually put that into the west coast of the United States.

Our intelligence was terrible. And part of the reason was we didn't have anybody on the ground. I think part of the other reason was that -- something I've always believed -- that the Duelfer report, I think, in some ways confirms, that he destroyed, Saddam Hussein destroyed all of this stuff in the early '90s, because I think actually it was intended for Iran, as a defense against Iran. It had really nothing to do with us.

BLITZER: So when Tariq Aziz and other high-ranking Iraqis before the war insisted to the U.N., to the world, they had no weapons of mass destruction, they were telling the truth, weren't they?

ROCKEFELLER: Whether Tariq Aziz knew they had no weapons of mass destruction isn't clear, because Saddam Hussein kept everything from his leaders and generals. But, yes, I mean it's very clear now that it was true.

I mean, David Kay said that Saddam Hussein is delusional, said this last week. And then he said, so he has an intent or a desire, but that has nothing to do with capability. Duelfer makes it so clear, as did David Kay, he had no capability.

BLITZER: Do you regret voting for that resolution?

ROCKEFELLER: Yes.

BLITZER: Authorizing the president to go to war?

ROCKEFELLER: I've said a hundred times, I mean, I think, based on the intelligence at that time, but what, you know, Senator Pat Roberts and I have come to know since then and every other senator, I said it was a wrong vote on my part.

BLITZER: Was it a wrong vote on your part?

ROBERTS: I don't think so. I think if you still had Saddam Hussein there, he'd be paying $25,000 to attack the Israelis. I think if he were still there and efforts were made to lift the sanctions, he would have probably tried to reconstitute that weaponry.

It is interesting to note that on the Armed Services Committee, when we talked to two generals of the Iraqi of the Republican Guard, one general thought the other general had the WMD. I really think that probably Saddam Hussein thought he had WMD.

And in some ways, why, Dr. Kay also indicated -- or David Kay also indicated that the place was absolutely chaotic. It was sort of a grand central station with people who had expertise on WMD. I think that's a very unstable situation.

I think my vote would have been thought out on a little bit different, what, rationale than the immediate national security warning.

But we keep talking about U.S. intelligence. Wolf, this was a global intelligence failure. Even the French, even the Germans, not to mention the British -- everybody said that.

BLITZER: You know what they say, you know what they say. They say they made a major mistake because they were relying on the CIA, too.

ROBERTS: Well, that's fine, but it's a two-way street in terms of the cooperation that we have with intelligence with our allies. And sometimes our allies have some very compartmented material that they don't give us. Obviously, there are some times that we don't give them information.

Yes, the CIA is probably the lead well. It is the lead intelligence agency in the world.

BLITZER: I want to play a sound bite from what the president said Friday night on the -- looking back, he doesn't admit he made a mistake. He doesn't acknowledge he made a mistake. And he's very forceful on this point. Listen to this.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

BUSH: I wasn't happy when we found out there wasn't weapons. And we've got an intelligence group together to figure out why.

But Saddam Hussein was a unique threat, and the world is better off without him in power.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BLITZER: Is he right?

ROCKEFELLER: No. I think, first of all, he's the president of the United States. And so he is the person who, if something doesn't happen on his watch -- and this would have been on his and part of Clinton's watch -- then the president is wrong.

But I think the more important question on that is that he could not admit even to that person who asked him, name three mistakes. He would not admit one.

And I don't think, Wolf, that in life, until a leader recognizes that they've made a mistake like a little case in my vote, then I correct it. I don't think that you can lead properly unless you admit to a mistake. And for some reason, Dick Cheney and President Bush can never admit anything went wrong.

BLITZER: Ambassador Paul Bremer, the former chief of the U.S. operation in Iraq, says that he made a mistake. And he told a group of insurance executives in West Virginia earlier in the week, caused a big stir, "We paid a big price for not stopping it" -- referring to the looting -- "after the major combat ended because it established an atmosphere of lawlessness. We never had enough troops on the ground."

That's a very, very serious allegation that he makes, even though he supports the war, supports the president. For him to say that the U.S. never had enough troops on the ground and that's the cause of a lot of the problems the Iraqis and the United States and coalition partners are facing today, that's a major statement.

ROBERTS: Well, I don't know if you can have it both ways.

Number one, it isn't so much the number of troops you have on the ground, it's the kind of troops and what they're trained for.

I know there are people who say we need 10,000, 30,000 or 50,000 or whatever it was that General Shinseki said, but you need the troops who are trained to do that, you know, particular kind of job.

Now, we can go back and argue that number and talk to Tommy Franks, or we can talk to Richard Clarke, or we can talk to Wesley Clark, or all 20/20 hindsight in the rearview mirror. What we have to figure out now is how we train more Iraqi police and forces, and we're doing that, so they can take up the job.

It would be nice if we could look forward. We have both candidates saying we have a four-point plan. The only difference that I see in these plans is that somehow John Kerry thinks that in the near future after a summit the French are going to send the French foreign legion down to Iraq. I just don't think that's feasible.

BLITZER: All right. Let me let Senator Rockefeller...

ROBERTS: We ought to be looking forward -- both of us are doing that -- in terms of intelligence reform and train the Iraqis, so that they can defend their own country and their election and their future.

BLITZER: Are you upbeat, looking down the road to the scheduled elections at the end of January in Iraq?

ROCKEFELLER: I want them to work, as an American. I'm worried about them.

I don't think they're going to be ready for it. The military police that are being trained, the president keeps saying that we have 125 and we'll have 175. When Pat Roberts and I were over there on our last visit, they had something like 4,000 trained. And I just don't have confidence that enough are coming forward to protect their own country, so I'm worried about the elections.

BLITZER: The Senate is in session right now, a rare weekend session, in part to try to deal with intelligence reform.

ROCKEFELLER: Yes.

BLITZER: You passed major intelligence reform legislation, 96-2, I believe, 96-2, backing up most of the 9/11 Commission recommendations to restructure the intelligence community.

The House passed legislation as well, but as you know, very, very different pieces of legislation. You're now trying to come up with a compromise. Can you do it?

ROBERTS: I don't know about "very, very." I'll say "very."

What the House has done is that they have more emphasis on border control. They have more emphasis -- I think they do something with the Patriot Act, I may be wrong in that regard. They also give less authority to the national intelligence director.

You're looking at two people who, on the Intelligence Committee, believe the national intelligence director should have more power, not less. And so there's going to be some differences.

Jay is on that conference committee. I think we're going to have to iron them out. Delay is the worst enemy of reform. We've tried...

BLITZER: Is that Tom DeLay you're talking about?

(LAUGHTER)

ROBERTS: OK, you got me. Well, maybe.

(LAUGHTER)

But at any rate -- now you've completely ruined my train of thought.

(LAUGHTER)

OK, what we're going to try to do is get this done before the election.

And if the conferees can meet, and if the conferees can understand that we should be doing this before the election and not really pay that much attention to the people who say rush to judgment -- now, both Jay and I say we got to get it right.

I'm not particularly happy with the bill that was passed in the Senate. It's not the best possible bill, but it's the best bill possible.

BLITZER: We're out of time, but I want Senator Rockefeller -- you're on the conference. Can you work it out so that there will be a good bill that will emerge? Are you optimistic before the end of this session?

ROCKEFELLER: I'm not optimistic if they hold on to their current position that the national intelligence director can only recommend a budget and tasking and all the other authorities. We say that the national intelligence director does it.

BLITZER: All right. We'll leave it there, and we'll see you what you can do. In the past, there have been differences that have been resolved on these kinds of matters.

Senator Rockefeller, Senator Roberts, thanks very much to both of you.

ROBERTS: Wolf, thank you very much.

BLITZER: Good luck in this work.

Up next, behind the scenes of a political family. I'll speak with the Vice President Dick Cheney's daughter Liz about her father, life on the campaign trail and much more.

And don't forget our Web question of the week: Who won the presidential debate Friday night? You can vote right now. Go to cnn.com/lateedition.

And "LATE EDITION" will be right back.

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BLITZER: Welcome back to "LATE EDITION."

To some, Vice President Dick Cheney is a key weapon in the Bush campaign arsenal. Others, however, consider him a liability. Everyone, however, agrees he wields a vast amount of power and influence in the Bush administration.

Joining us now, the vice president's daughter, Liz Cheney. Earlier in this administration, she served as deputy assistant secretary of state for Near Eastern affairs.

Liz Cheney, thanks very much for joining us.

ELIZABETH CHENEY, VICE PRESIDENT RICHARD CHENEY'S DAUGHTER: Great to be here, Wolf. Thank you.

BLITZER: I'm going to read to you what your dad said after the first Gulf War -- I covered that war -- when he was secretary of defense. He said this on August 14, 1992. He said, "I would guess if we had gone in there" -- referring to Baghdad -- "I would still have forces in Baghdad. Today, we'd be running the country. We would not have been able to get everybody out and bring everybody home. And the question in my mind is, how many additional American casualties is Saddam Hussein worth? And the answer is, not very damned many."

Those were strong words by the then-defense secretary, your dad, after the first Gulf War that seemed to be pretty prophetic.

E. CHENEY: Well, I think, clearly, you've got a situation where we had 12 years of resolutions that Saddam Hussein flaunted. You also had 9/11.

And after 9/11, the president judged, and was absolutely right in judging, that Saddam Hussein's Iraq was the nexus, where those who want to kill Americans could get access to either the weapons or the capability to build those weapons.

And there was simply no other choice. If your objective is to do everything possible to keep America safe, then going in and taking down Saddam Hussein and liberating Iraq as we also did with taking down the Taliban and liberating Afghanistan was critically important.

BLITZER: How does the vice president feel about virtually all the intelligence he was given by the CIA and everyone else about WMD in Iraq turned out to be so wrong?

E. CHENEY: Well, the president and my dad have both said that we need to have an investigation to look at why the intelligence was not as accurate as it should have been, but it doesn't change the fact that going into Iraq, removing Saddam Hussein was absolutely critical to keeping America safe.

If you look at the Duelfer report, you see that. You see that Saddam Hussein was actively thwarting the sanctions. Saddam Hussein was working very hard to bribe key members of the Security Council and other governments to help him get around the sanctions, that he was still in touch with scientists who knew how to make these weapons.

And if you were charged with keeping this country safe, you have got to make sure that that technology and that know-how doesn't get into the hands of the terrorists, so that's what we've done.

BLITZER: During the debate in Cleveland at Case Western Reserve University...

E. CHENEY: A great debate, by the way.

BLITZER: It was a very strong debate. Both Edwards and Cheney were both very, very good. The whole issue of Halliburton, the company your dad used to run from '95 to 2000 came up. Edwards made a point of that.

The New Yorker magazine writes this: "Cheney earned $44 million during his tenure at Halliburton. Although he has said he severed all ties with the company, he continues to collect deferred compensation worth approximately $150,000 a year and he retains stock options worth more than $18 million. He has announced that he will donate proceeds from the stock options to charity."

When all the controversy over Halliburton comes up, does your dad understand why there are some who think he may be doing something wrong now?

E. CHENEY: He understands that the Democrats are using this as a political tool. And I would direct people to factcheck.org. It's become a famous Web site now.

BLITZER: That would be dot-org, not dot-com.

E. CHENEY: Dot-org.

But your characterization is not accurate, actually, Wolf. Before he became vice president, he donated all of those options to charity and he bought an insurance policy to ensure that he has absolutely no conflict of interest with respect to Halliburton.

It's an issue the Democrats bring up, as The Washington Post has pointed out, when they don't want to talk about health care, they don't want to talk about Iraq, they don't want to talk about education. It's become a smoke screen, and I think the American voters see through that.

BLITZER: Listen to what John Edwards said at the debate. Listen to this.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

EDWARDS: While he was CEO of Halliburton, they paid millions of dollars in fines for providing false information on their company, just like Enron and Ken Lay. They did business with Libya and Iran, two sworn enemies of the United States. They're now under investigation for having bribed foreign officials during that period of time.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BLITZER: Is that true?

E. CHENEY: Well, I would just point to what I said before. This is an issue that the Democrats continue to raise. Go to factcheck.org. Look at The Washington Post piece on this. There is nothing here. There's no charge here. And I think people will see through it. And you have to sort of wonder why the Democrats raise it.

You know, if you look at the polls, the only people who care about this issue tend to be the base. They tend to be sort of the extreme left of the Democratic party. And if the Democrats are, in fact, spending so much talking about this, I think you've got to wonder about whether or not they're really trying to shore up their base. And what does that say for a party in October of an election year?

BLITZER: On the issue of same-sex marriage, your dad said this at the debate Tuesday night. Listen to what he said.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

RICHARD CHENEY, VICE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: I said then and believe today that freedom does mean freedom for everybody. People ought to be free to choose any arrangement they want. That's really no one else's business.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BLITZER: This must be a very difficult issue for your family to talk about. Is it?

E. CHENEY: No, I think this is an issue my dad's been very clear about. And, frankly, it's an issue that not a lot of Americans are spending a lot of time being focused on this election cycle. My family is out working very hard.

You know, I'm a security mom. I've got four little kids. And what I care about in this election cycle is electing a guy who is going to be a commander in chief, who will do whatever it takes to keep those kids safe.

So I spent a lot more time, frankly, talking to people and worried about Senator Kerry's record for the last 20 years being on the wrong side of every national security issue facing this nation. His record the last couple of years in this election campaign: not being able to stick to any one position on Iraq.

And, frankly, this new issue that came up in the debate a couple days ago about a global test and saying that somehow making sure that our president is popular in the halls of government in Paris, you know, is as important as keeping us safe. Those are the issues that America cares about.

BLITZER: He wanted to make that global test, he says, in order to get international support for U.S. troops.

E. CHENEY: But he said, Wolf, though, a global test before you use preemption. And that is a critical point that people may pay attention to.

BLITZER: Do you accept what John Edwards said on this program earlier today, that he wasn't trying to embarrass your dad or your family by bringing up the issue in the debate, that your sister Mary is gay.

E. CHENEY: Well, you know, at the time when he brought it up, it was not appropriate. And, you know, again I sort of can just think that...

BLITZER: Why wasn't it appropriate?

E. CHENEY: ... he didn't have a lot of substance to talk about on this issue. And so it seemed that, you know, he could eat up some of his time by, you know, raising my sister and talking about her rather than talking about the substance of the question he had been asked.

So I don't question his motives, but I do point out that on a number of questions in the debate, the senator seemed not to be as well-informed as people, you know, ought to expect their vice presidential candidates to be.

BLITZER: How is your dad feeling?

E. CHENEY: He feels great. He's working very hard. And we feel really good heading into the last weeks of this election.

BLITZER: How good exactly do you feel? You must be pretty nervous, given the tightness of the race.

E. CHENEY: Well, it's a tight race. We've known it was going to be tight all along. But I just, you know, I feel very good about this commander in chief, about my dad, about the direction the country is going in.

And, you know, getting out of Washington and talking to people all around this great nation who tell us they're praying for us, who tell us how important it is for us to support our troops, having the chance to meet many of those troops, it's really an honor and a privilege to be involved in this.

BLITZER: Elizabeth Cheney, although everybody calls you Liz, thanks very much for joining us.

E. CHENEY: Thanks, Wolf. Great to be here.

BLITZER: Say hello to your parents.

E. CHENEY: I will. Thank you.

BLITZER: Still ahead, is the U.S. economy poised to create more jobs? And what about the record high price of oil? I'll speak money matters with the treasury secretary, John Snow. He'll join me.

"LATE EDITION" will continue right after this.

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BLITZER: Welcome back to "LATE EDITION." We'll talk with the U.S. treasury secretary, John Snow, about jobs, tax cuts, the price of oil and much more in just a few minutes.

First though, let's go to CNN headquarters in Atlanta for a quick check of what's in the news right now.

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BLITZER: Let's get back to Iraq now, where there is no let up in the terror attacks. A pair of suicide bombings today killed more than a dozen people. The violence came amid a surprise visit to Iraq by the U.S. defense secretary, Donald Rumsfeld.

CNN's Brent Sadler is in Baghdad. He's following all of these developments. Brent is joining us now live.

Brent?

BRENT SADLER, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Thanks, Wolf.

Yesterday, two more deadly car bombs, suicide car bombs in the center of the Iraqi capital. In one of those explosions, a U.S. soldier from Task Force Baghdad died from injuries suffered in one of those suicide car bomb blasts.

In a second explosion close to a police academy, at least six Iraqis were killed in that blast, some of them police recruits. This, a familiar theme in insurgent attacks, trying to undermine the morale and recruiting levels among Iraqi security forces, not least the police.

Now, these attacks came on a day that U.S. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld was in Iraq. His first visit here since the hand over of power to Iraqi interim government authorities three months ago. Mr. Rumsfeld visited U.S. Marines, about 1,500 of them, at an aircraft hangar in the western desert of Iraq.

He told them that attacks, terror attacks, were likely to escalate before planned elections at the end of January in Iraq. He also said that U.S. forces and Iraqi forces were not engaged in a conventional battle here.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DONALD RUMSFELD, U.S. SECRETARY OF DEFENSE: The innocent people that are being killed, Iraqi people, are not incidental or accidental casualties. In many instances, they are the targets, because this is not a battle against large armies and navies and air forces, this is a test of wills that we're engaged in.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

SADLER: Well, one of those test of wills may come to an end pretty soon with news from Iraq that the bloody battles that have been going on for the past several weeks in Sadr City on the outskirts of the capital may come to an end through peaceful means.

Militants loyal to Muqtada al-Sadr, the radical Shia Muslim cleric, say they'll start handing over heavy and medium weapons Monday during a five-day grace period.

Some of their loyalists were seen dismantling heavy machine gun Sunday, ahead of that five-day handover period. If this goes ahead smoothly, the surrender of weapons, and regaining of control of Sadr City by central government forces, then this, say Iraqi officials, will indeed be a breakthrough.

Wolf?

BLITZER: Brent Sadler in Baghdad.

Thanks very much, Brent, for that report.

Over the last week here in the United States, we saw a sputtering stock market, record-high oil prices, and a lackluster jobs report, the last one we'll get before Election Day.

The man overseeing Bush administration economic policy, the treasury secretary, John Snow, joined me here earlier today. He was in Richmond, Virginia.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

BLITZER: Secretary Snow, thanks very much for joining us. Welcome back to "LATE EDITION".

JOHN SNOW, SECRETARY OF THE TREASURY: Hey, thank you, Wolf. Good to be on with you again.

BLITZER: We have a lot to go over. Let's begin with jobs right now, a key issue in this presidential campaign, certainly high interest to Americans out there.

Only 96,000 created last month, less than expected by Wall Street analysts, and certainly not enough to give this administration a net plus in jobs creation over the past four years. Why the anemic jobs recovery?

SNOW: Well, Wolf, let me say, on last Friday's numbers, first of all, they're estimates. And most of those estimates get revised upwards.

Secondly, the estimates occurred at a time that covered a period when we had those hurricanes in the Southeast. That clearly had a negative effect on the jobs. When Floyd hit in '99, which was a smaller hurricane, it knocked out about 57,000 jobs.

So if you add the jobs that would have been there into the number we got, I'm confident we had a much better number.

BLITZER: But you know that there are some economists who say that hurricane and disaster relief actually creates jobs, because it gives opportunities to hire people to go in and rebuild.

SNOW: Well, Wolf, that's right, but that's in the next estimation period. I think we'll see October numbers much stronger, as the rebuilding occurs. But the first month, when they hit, is always negative, as the Floyd experience indicates.

BLITZER: Why is it that -- and the Kerry people keep pointing this out -- this is the first administration in 72 years, since the administration of Herbert Hoover, that's had a net loss, about 800,000 jobs, over the past four years?

SNOW: Well, if you use the so-called establishment survey, the number is about 580,000.

But remember, this economy has been through the most serious set of negative body blows any economy has faced in a four- year period, going back to the meltdown of the equity markets, the bursting of the bubble, the recession that the president inherited, 9/11, the corporate scandals and so on.

But even, Wolf...

BLITZER: Well, let me interrupt for a second. Franklin Roosevelt had to deal with a depression, a world war. Those were pretty serious economic dislocations as well.

SNOW: Well, they were, and he had a long time to deal with them, as you know.

If you look at, Wolf, and this is important to make -- a point to make. If you look at the broader survey of work, the most inclusive survey of jobs in America, the household survey, we've picked up 3.2 million jobs since the president took office.

Now, that's the survey that's used to put -- to make the estimate on unemployment. It's the survey that includes all jobs. It's the survey that is more reliable in dealing with new businesses being established and with the self-employed.

So, you know, when people say you've lost jobs, they're not looking at the whole job picture. They're looking at this narrower survey that deals with establishments and firms that have been around for a while.

BLITZER: What people are also looking at, though, is the quality of jobs and the pay that people are getting for the jobs.

There is an interesting article in today's Los Angeles Times that compared the minimum wage of today, what is it, $5.15, in 2003 dollars. In 1978, that minimum wage would have been the equivalent, they say of, of $7.48, meaning people are working harder, making less today for equal kind of jobs.

Do you accept that notion?

SNOW: No, Wolf, I reject it out of hand. American standard of living is higher today than it's ever been. More Americans own their own homes than ever before. Real disposable income is the highest in the history of the country. Looking at the household survey, more Americans are working than ever before.

And I'll go back to the fundamental fact that real disposable income, what people have in their pockets after they leave work every two weeks or month, is the highest in the history of the country. It's risen about 10 percent since the president took office.

So, no, I reject out of hand this suggestion that the jobs that are being created are these so-called hamburger-flipper jobs. The fact -- there is no evidence to support that. In fact, the evidence points quite the other way.

Continued