See who made our list for the ''Ten Most Wanted: Culprits of the Collapse''

Anderson Cooper

Over the last couple of weeks we’ve heard politicians tell us that now is not the time to point fingers and blame people for the financial crisis. I remember them saying that in the days after Hurricane Katrina as well.

The truth is that’s what politicians always say. They mean that now is the time to fix the problem, but once the world’s attention moves on, the time for hold people accountable never seems to arrive. Politicians point fingers at members of the opposite party, but no one ever seems to take real responsibility.

So who is to blame for this financial fiasco?

That’s the question we’ve begun investigating. We’ve put together a list of the Ten Most Wanted: Culprits of the Collapse. This week and next week, every night, we will be adding a name to the list and telling you what they have done, and how much it’s costing you.

It’s a rogues gallery of Wall Street executives, politicians, and government officials who did not do their jobs. It’s time you know their names, their faces, it’s time they be asked to account for their actions.

See who made the list...

Editor’s note: CNN’s award-winning Planet in Peril returns this year to examine the conflict between growing populations and natural resources. Anderson Cooper, Dr. Sanjay Gupta, and Lisa Ling travel to the front lines of this worldwide battle. Ling has been a co-host of The View, correspondent for The Oprah Winfrey Show, National Geographic and Channel One. She filed this blog from Chad.
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Check out the amazing photographs from the Planet in Peril team’s trip to Chad

Lisa Ling
AC360° Special Correspondent

Today was a day filled with both extreme jubilation and utter horror.

I’m using the last bit of my computer battery whilst sitting under a mosquito net at the Tinga Camp in the Zakoma National Park in southeastern Chad. We are here to report on the astronomical reduction of Central African Elephants in the region. We’re with Wildlife Conservation Society biologist Mike Fay, who has conducted comprehensive surveys of the region’s elephants over the years. He says over the last four decades, the number of Central African elephants has dwindled from nearly two hundred thousand to several thousand: the pace of the loss has been hugely shocking and disturbing. The global demand for ivory combined with war in neighboring Sudan has nearly killed off the Central African elephant. These elephants are the largest land animals on earth and have roamed the region for thousands of years. They have proven, however, to be no match for man and his gun.

Our day started early. After fueling, we boarded a Cessna airplane in search of elephant herds. Fay says that having an airplane greatly impacts the ability to survey the elephant population but also to defend against poachers. People are not allowed to live in the park, but from the air, we saw camps of nomads living just beyond the borders.

We flew for about an hour and a half without seeing any elephants. I was starting to get sleepy-eyed when Fay surprised us by saying, “I’m seeing a lot of elephant activity.”

What he meant was that he was seeing huge tracts of grass that had been trampled–a sign of the presence of a lot of elephants. And then, we saw them: a huge herd of over two hundred giant grey beasts huddled together moving in collective formation. It was a truly awesome sight to see such an abundance of these massive animals in the wild. I was having a hard time containing my excitement until the plane started tilting so severely that I began to feel sick. I turned around to see our still photographer Jeff sitting in the seat behind me: he was green. Nevertheless, it was a spectacular experience to see these glorious animals and it was an image I will never forget. Fay said that seeing such a big herd made him feel “optimistc.”

Back at the lodge, we all dispersed to our rooms to rest when two French advisors to the anti-poaching patrol came to tell me that there was a dead elephant less than two miles away. They said it looked to be a recent kill as it was still gushing blood.

We rushed to the site and the smell was immediately impenetrable and unlike anything I had ever smelled before. We jumped out of the vehicle and followed the stench through the maze of tall grass. I literally started to gag as we rounded the corner and saw it: a huge mound of grey covered in maggots and crawling with flies: it was a female. Simply put, it was just gruesome. Though the blood was still fresh, Fay said that it looked to have been dead for a couple of days as its body was starting to bloat and vultures seemed to have gotten to it. He observed that it had several bullet wounds and that poachers probably shot into the herd and simply struck this particular elephant. This elephant, however, died for no reason. Its body was left totally intact. It had no tusks – no ivory. Fay thought it probably walked for a while before dying in the place we found it.

I was absolutely horrified by what I was saw and smelled. I asked Fay how many times he had seen this and sullenly replied, “a hundred times.”

It was hard to believe that this day that began with such excitement and hope could end in such tragedy. These magnificent creatures that predate man by thousands of years: victim to him and his mighty weapon.

'Al-Ekhlass' A website where many of al Qaeda's jihadist messages are posted is offline, having been replaced with the domain joker.com.

UPDATE FROM OCTAVIA: Thanks for the comments about the hacking vs. domain registration expiration. This is definitely a valid point. Our focus here is not to write a technical essay about hacking. It’s merely an attempt at showing how some people – we don’t know who – are fighting al Qaeda by attacking their websites. Al-Ekhlaas website has been down for months following years of operation. While today it redirects you to joker.com, tomorrow it might redirect you to another site. While we do not know who is hacking into the jihadi websites, there is no doubt they’re being hacked.

How do we know that?

On the jihadi sites that work, it is common practice to announce that “Site X has been downed by evil forces but we’re working on bringing it back up.” Or “Site Y was hacked but you can join us temporarily on this address.” To the dismay of the jihadist community and its supporters, the Al-Ekhlaas website has been downed/hacked/disabled – you choose the terminology that works for you. From the chatter about it, this doesn’t seem like this is a domain registration problem. Al-Ekhlaas has been on line uninterrupted for a long time. This is the first time it disappears abruptly and can’t get back on.
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Octavia Nasr | BIO
CNN senior editor for Arab affairs

A hacking war is raging on Jihadi websites. Radical Islamist sites have been attacking and getting attacked for quite some time. The website hacking practice was common in 2001 and 2002... Following the 9/11 attacks when al Qaeda used only one website to communicate its messages to supporters and foes alike. That website was called alneda.com. It was getting constantly hacked... sometimes several hackings a day. After every hacking the site managed to resurface on the net until it disappeared from the scene in 2004 to be replaced by other websites - What started as one al Qaeda-linked site mushroomed into dozens which branched out into hundreds of supporting sites that serve as dissemination centers over the internet.

Two well-known al Qaeda-linked sites are Al-Hesbah and Al-Ekhlaas. Al-Hesbah is the oldest and requires a username and password to access it. Its membership was open to the public in 2004 but became restricted over the years. This site became known as the first venue for uploaded al Qaeda messages - from Osama bin Laden video messages to statements and claims of responsibilities for attacks carried out in Afghanistan, Iraq or even Europe. Al-Ekhlaas followed with a sleeker image, and more technical bells and whistles.

The hacking war works both ways.
There are documented cases of extremist groups hacking into local websites that disagree with their messages. One case that drew the attention of western media took place about a month ago when a Sunni group hacked into the site of Shiite Iraqi Cleric Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani. The group posted a Bill Maher clip making fun of an edict the cleric had made concerning a sexual subject. The group's claim was that the cleric and his edicts are bringing shame to Islam and giving a good reason for the west to laugh at the Islamic religion.

Shortly before September of 2008, al Qaeda watchers started speculating about the next al Qaeda message which they expected to be released around the 9/11 anniversary - a practice al Qaeda and its video arm, As-Sahab, have been consistent about. The message never came partly because those websites were hacked into and completely disabled at times.

Today Al-Ekhlaas is off line, having been replaced with the domain joker.com. Trying to go to their site, you get a message saying that "this domain was registered with Joker.com."

Al-Hesbah and a few other al Qaeda-linked sites remain in operation, not because they escaped hacking, but because they manage to resurrect themselves under different names and continue to post messages mainly from al Qaeda enthusiasts. So the drop in al Qaeda-released videos is evident, the lack of messages from al Qaeda leadership is obvious. What is not obvious is whether al Qaeda has decided to slow down production and release of videos or the hacking is so severe and pointed that it paralyzed the media activity of the terror group.

Editor's Note: CNN has establish a national voter hotline for individuals to report potential voting problems and irregularities on Election Day. On air, viewers will see a map that highlights irregularities across the country. In addition, CNN.com users can zero in on specific counties in each state experiencing the largest number of Election Day complaints, as well as the most commonly occurring type of problems. The toll-free voter hotline number will be

1-877-GO-CNN-08

(1-877-462-6608)
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David Mattingly | BIO
AC360° Correspondent

Election day is two weeks away...TWO WEEKS.

Imagine my surprise to find a TWO HOUR WAIT to vote early (see photo...that's me on the lower right). My home precinct is just outside Atlanta and in previous elections there had been a line on occasion but nothing like this.

Everyone I talk to is excited about this election. They believe this is a critical time for the country. Some are very worried about the future of the economy and their jobs.

Others say they want to be part of history. No one is complaining about the long line that snakes it way through the corridors of this massive government building. It's interesting to see the looks of amazement as people turn a corner at the end of a hallway only to find a longer line ahead of them.

One voter told me she believes this is the best alternative. It took her four hours to vote in 2000 and was worried it would be worse this time. Personally, I'm very happy to be in this line...officials tell me it was even longer yesterday!

Haitian-born singer Wyclef Jean and actor Matt Damon distribute food to flood victims after four tropical storms hit the area in Gonaives, Haiti, Sunday, Sept. 14.

Edittor's Note: Yéle Haiti is a movement led by Wyclef Jean that is helping to bring hope back to Haiti. Projects are designed to make a difference in the fields of education, health, environment and community development. The power and reach of music, sports and the media is used to increase the impact of these project

Wyclef Jean
Musician,
Yéle Haiti Foundation

I was born in a village called LaSerre. LaSerre is a village in a region called Croix-des-Bouquets, just a few miles east of Port-au-Prince. LaSerre might as well be 100 miles away from Haiti’s largest city. It is a very small rural village that still does not have a paved road.

I have returned to that village many times over the past few years. I have a lot of dreams of what we can do to make sure that other children like me can get the opportunities that I did. I would have had them, had my father not had vision. Not gone against the odds, not taken risks, and not believed.

In August of this year, four hurricanes hit the island of Haiti in less than two weeks time. I was traveling on tour when this occurred, similar to when Hurricane Jeanne hit Haiti in 2004. Then I was in Paris touring with the Fugees and what was happening in my homeland just took me completely out of myself. It was very difficult to continue on.

Similarly, this time I was touring in Canada myself, and returned to New York. I gathered the Executive Committee of my foundation, YÉLE HAITI, and made a decision that we must take action in accessing the accurate status of the people in the outlining areas of the country. The reports were horrifying.

I returned to Toronto for an annual Gala for a partner of YÉLE’s, ONE X ONE. At the Gala, I shared the devastation of Haiti with my friend and remarkable human being, Matt Damon. I was concerned that Hurricane Ike which was approaching Texas, along with all the Presidential election coverage including the announcement of the Republican Vice Presidential candidate would take all the media attention away from the four hurricanes that had really devastated not only Haiti, but many other Caribbean islands, such as Cuba. Thousands of people had lost their homes, children, family members, and were left without food and water.

Imagine Katrina’s impact on New Orleans and multiply it by 1000.

What pains me most, and much like most Americans were angered by the response to Katrina, is that these are poor people without means. Matt immediately volunteered to come with me so we could gain global media attention. Five days later, we were in Haiti.

SEPTEMBER 15, 2008:

5:00am – I awakened with a lot of anxiousness. Driving to the airport in New Jersey, I had a lot running through my mind.

7:00am - Board a plane in New Jersey with my cousin Jerry and One X One team, Frank McKenna, and Joey Adler.

10:00am - Land in Miami to pick up Matt Damon.

12:30pm – As I landed in Port-au-Prince, it felt very different from the countless times I had come before. In fact, I had just been there 8 weeks prior for a visit with my Yéle team on the ground. I knew that what I would see would be devastating even to me.

2:00pm – We immediately got into vehicles and drove to a town called Cabaret. Cabaret is a town that was flooded by a river that overflowed. More than 40 mothers lost their children in the flood. Swept away in the middle of the night as the waters gushed through their homes. Grandparents loosing grandchildren. Farmers lost their only harvest for the year. There is no water, no food, no seed, and no fertilizer. Nothing left.
My country was once the richest in the Western Hemisphere. All of these thoughts run through my mind as I sit next to Matt. Matt is excited that he is finally seeing Haiti after all we have spoken about it over time. Deep in my heart I wished I had gotten a chance to bring him here under different circumstances.

Upon our arrival in Cabaret, we stopped to visit many of the people. A mother described how her child was literally pulled out of her hands by the water. I thought of my daughter, and what if that had happed to me, and got swept from my hands in a storm. I could not so much as even wrap my mind around how that would impact me. She asked me to promise that when I get back to America that I will tell everyone what I saw. She asked me to promise to help and send as much help as possible for them. She asked me to promise to come back.

We had arrived with our team from YÉLE HAITI and our partners, the World Food Programme, Pan American Development Foundation with assistance from the United Nations Development Fund and our friends from ONE X ONE.

We had planned a food distribution for that day in the town. But, for a moment I froze before speaking to this woman that had just shared her darkest life moment. I then said to her, “not only will we be back, but we will help you get your house back, we can not bring back your child, but I will make sure she will get the proper funeral as her soul must rest in peace.”

Then I met a couple that was over 100 years old. The man was 106 to be exact. I leaned over to speak to the couple and said, “How are you holding up?” They told me that they had lost everything, but that the highest power will provide a way for them. WOW! Faith I said to myself. Then I asked the man who had no eyesight, but could hear very well. “What’s the secret to a long life?” He responded, “Whatever your wife says, she is always right!” A moment of complete disaster, but yet they find a way to laugh. What a strong group of people!

It then hit me that these people have been in this water for days with nothing on and no food. There is no clinic or hospital to care for them. It had been washed away too. We need to act now I kept saying to myself, but how can I get people outside of Haiti, with no attachment to Haiti to care? How do I get them to pay attention to the forgotten?

8:00pm – On the way back to Port-au-Prince from Cabaret we stopped by the Prime Ministers office, Michèle Duvivier Pierre-Louis. She had just been appointed and her first weeks of working were under the most challenging environmental conditions. The country was obviously in a state of emergency and we were asked to continue the plight to get everyone in the world to help Haiti. We immediately began to reach out to the media and began a campaign at YÉLE.org where just five dollars could make a difference. That way anyone can do their part. As human beings we are put on the planet so that we can better one another; learn from one another; work with one another, and live for each other.

I suddenly felt like everything I have been doing was just not enough. We have to engage each other on a massive level. Haiti is a country that is in the back yard of so many powerful and rich countries, such as the United States. This is not some far away place! You can get there in 45 minutes from Miami, 2 hours from Texas, and 3 hours from New York!

12:00am - Went to sleep.

SUNDAY, SEPTEMBER 16, 2008:

6:00am – Breakfast and meeting with my YÉLE HAITI team to prepare everyone for the day.

8:00am - Depart hotel. We put on our boots to visit a town in the northern region of Haiti called Gonaives. The UN had provided helicopters for us to fly to the city which was hit the most. I was anxious about what I was going to see. After Hurricane Jeanne in 2004 I had gone to aid the people in refugee camps and it was some of the worst devastation I had seen. This time, the entire city was under water.

9:30am - Depart UN

It is a 40 minute helicopter ride from Port-au-Prince and I was told the food distributions in the city were not going well at all. This frustrated me. The people in Gonaives had not eaten for 12 days. The food distributions could not feed everyone and the people were attacking the aid workers. Then it hit me. The people of this city had not eaten in two weeks and have been in the water for the same amount of time. The food distribution was being done late at night and people were on the tin roofs of houses waiting for aid and rescue.

Once again, my stomach started to hurt. My eyes began to cry as I looked out the helicopter upon our approach to the city under water. This time I thought, “this is Katrina times a million!” We got out of the helicopters and I could immediately smell dead bodies throughout the village. We drove the trucks through the city. I broke my silence by saying to Matt, “people are not supposed to live like this.” As I looked further I saw a kid without clothes on. He was walking in the water that was filled with body parts, dead cats, and remains. I cried when I looked into the child’s eyes. I saw myself.

12:00pm – Helped with food distribution.

2:00pm – Meeting with officials of Gonaives and UN commanders

6:00pm – Depart for Port-au-Prince.

7:00pm – Take Matt to the airport to return to the United States. There is nothing better a friend could have done than what he did over those two days. I am eternally grateful.

8:00pm – Meeting with YÉLE HAITI staff and World Food Programme to discuss food distribution for the next month throughout the country but particularly Gonaives strategy, as it was hit the hardest.

9:30p – Dinner.

12:00am – Bedtime.

MONDAY, SEPTEMBER 17, 2008:

6:00am – Breakfast.

8:00am - Meet with YÉLE HAITI staff.

10:00am - Depart for airport.

This time, I feel like this trip has changed me forever. There is so much more to life than yourself. I only hope we can get people to follow us.

www.yele.org

For what’s in the program take a look at tonight’s Evening Buzz.

Don’t forget to watch Erica Hill’s webcast during the commercials. LINK TO WEBCAST

And take a look at Anderson and Erica on our live web camera from the 360° studio. We’ll turn the camera on at 945p ET and turn it off at 11p ET. LINK TO THE BLOG CAMERA

Wondering why some comments are posted while others aren’t? Here’s a post that may help: LINK TO COMMENTS POST

We’ll start posting comments at 10p ET and stop at 11p ET.

Editor's Note: Rebekah Sanderlin is a mother, an Army wife and a freelance journalist. She lives near Fort Bragg, Norh Carolina and writes a blog about military family life called “Operation Marriage” for The Fayetteville Observer newspaper. Her husband is currently on his third deployment to Afghanistan.

Rebekah Sanderlin
"Operation Marriage”

If the American military went to war and America went shopping, then seven years later the war wages on but America is home from the shopping spree with her credit cards maxed out and her head aching from buyer’s remorse.

The war didn’t change and the fighting force didn’t change, but the people back home are over it. War, it seems, went out of style in 2003.

In the military community we roll our eyes when we hear that Americans are war weary. Just what, we wonder, are you all weary of? Hearing about the war? Seeing stories in the news? Most Americans don’t even know anyone in the military and won’t have any direct contact with the war besides seeing uniformed soldiers in the airport. You all haven’t been asked to do anything more to support this war than sit back and watch as your tax dollars are spent.

To us, civilian complaints about being war weary sound like the gripes of deadbeat dads: It’s a bummer to hear that things are going badly and you’re sick of being asked to pay for it, but you’re not doing any of the real work yourselves. Many of you believe that fighting this war is optional. You seem to think our nation could make everything okay by just sitting this one out.

And, in a way, that reasoning makes sense. Most of you haven’t been on the front lines or on the homefront. You haven’t looked into the eyes of the enemy and the innocents and you haven’t heard gunshots and mortar rounds in the background during a precious-but-short phone call. You haven’t had villagers beg you to stay or to adopt their children. And you haven’t heard your soulmate grapple with dueling guilt: Guilt that he’s leaving his family for so long and guilt that he isn’t deployed more frequently and for longer so that he could do more. You haven’t seen or heard any of this, so how could you possibly understand?

It’s not your fault. Nobody has asked you to do anything. Our leaders didn’t think you would be willing to make real sacrifices, so they never bothered to ask. They let you all think that shopping yourselves into debt was patriotic, that spending yourselves into bankruptcy and foreclosure was enough to keep our nation safe.

You are war weary because futility breeds weariness. When you feel like something is for no good reason and getting nowhere, it’s understandable that you’d be over it. But maybe you wouldn’t be so war weary if you, personally, had a stake in what was happening “over there.”

In the military community, the price tag for this war is much higher but the commitment level is much greater. Our country has not only asked for our tax dollars (and believe me, we’re paying monetarily for this war, too) but for our blood, our family time, our futures, our children’s happiness and our very lives. We have enlisted and reenlisted – and offered our support to our spouses who sign back up – because, soldier and spouse, we know the commitment level of the people who want to kill us and we know the desperate dependence of the people our nation has vowed to protect. We know that we have to be at least as committed as our enemy or our own children will be fighting this same war.

My husband has spent the bulk of our five-and-a-half-year marriage deployed. He’s missed most of our son’s life and our daughter has never even heard his voice – not even in utero. We won’t know for years what the long-term effects of these deployments will be on him, on us and on our kids. Last year he suffered a serious head injury and he’s lost most of the hearing in his right ear, the ear closest to his gun. We don’t know what the long-term effects of his injuries will be, either. This year, on his third deployment to Afghanistan, he missed my father’s death and funeral, our daughter’s birth, our son learning to ride a bike and catching his first fish, and countless other precious moments that cannot be reclaimed. There is no predicting what events he’ll miss in the future.

And we are the lucky ones.

My husband has lost more than 20 friends in this global war on terror and I have an ever-growing group of Army widow friends. They are young and beautiful and many have young children. They are also stunted. They hang around Army towns years after losing their soldiers because they say they don’t fit in anywhere else. They say they can no longer relate to what they see and hear in the civilian world.

They can’t reintegrate into the your world because there the people they meet don’t know what it’s like to sacrifice everything for something intangible. The widows say they don’t feel like they fit in where people don’t know how hard it is to break away from that last hug before a deployment. In the civilian world the widows, like all soldiers and military spouses these days, are treated as oddities, something to marvel or gawk at from a distance. People either fawn over us or try to ignore us. Our presence inspires either adulation or discomfort.

So we hunker down in our military towns, where regular pilgrimages to D.C. to visit loved ones at Arlington and Walter Reed are common. In military towns, we can laugh about all the dust and sand that comes into our homes after a deployment, carted thousands of miles from where it was picked up. We can complain about long lines at the post office during our weekly visits to send care packages. We can vent about news of another deployment, less than a year after the last one. If anyone in America should be war weary, it’s us.

And make no mistake: We are tired. We are stretched thin. Our marriages and our families are collapsing. Our children are emotionally damaged. They act out at school and cry at home. Everyday we wonder if we have the strength for even another day of this. We’re tired from the work, but we’re not weary of the mission.

This war is far from over, that’s something both candidates for the presidency have acknowledged. Whichever man finds himself in the Oval Office come January will be in a position to decide our fates in the military community in a way more personal and immediate than most Americans will experience. The next president will determine how much my husband and I will see each other for the next four years and whether or not he will have the tools and policies he needs when he is in harm’s way. The next president will determine our odds of continuing to be the lucky ones.

This war is far from over – that is an obvious truth in military communities. But our reality seems so very different from yours. For the last seven years our elected officials haven’t thought enough of you to ask you to pitch in. They haven’t, so I will.

My husband and I know that this is not his last deployment and we know that his odds of returning home get worse with each trip. The only way our family and other military families will get a break is if more Americans sign up to join the fight. News reports these days are full of stories of lay-offs and the high cost of health care. Well, guess what? There are no pink slips in the military and our excellent health care system is free.

So sign up. We want you. Your nation wants you. And we in the military community need you. My family deserves a break.

Program Note: Governor Sarah Palin said you can actually see Russia from an island in Alaska. Our Gary Tuchman went to find this island... Watch his full report tonight on AC360.

Gary Tuchman | BIO
AC360 Correspondent

When talking about what she says is her foreign policy experience, Sarah Palin told ABC news "...you can actually see Russia from land here in Alaska, from an island in Alaska."
That quote made us want to go to that island.

So we did.

The island is called Little Diomede. It looks like a rock plopped into the Bering Strait. Only about 150 Alaskans live on the whole island. And just about two miles away; in full view of every single house on the island is the nation of Russia. Specifically, it is the Russian Island of Big Diomede which sits about 25 miles from the Russian Siberian mainland (which you can also see from the American island.) Most everybody on Little Diomede had relatives who lived on Big Diomede.

But decades ago, the Russian government sent them all to the mainland, and today, Big Diomede is limited to a Russian military presence. It's also a full day in front of Little Diomede because it's on the other side of the International Date Line. Little Diomede is fascinating. It looks like the moon would if you built a lunar settlement. It's full of rocks, dirt, and craters. We were curious if Sarah Palin has ever visited this island. According to the natives, the answer is no.

As a matter of fact, no Alaska governor in the state's nearly 50 year history has ever visited the remote outpost that still has little running water. We were curious what the Little Diomeders thought about Palin's claim of foreign policy experience because of the proximity of Siberia. Interestingly, many of these Alaskans had no idea who Sarah Palin was! It turns out they have no TV on the island, and therefore, many don't follow the news.

The island's mayor has heard of her though. No American mayor resides in a city closer to Russia than Andrew Milligrock, and he says being two miles from Russia doesn't give him any foreign policy expertise.

He does say she seems like an okay governor, but exclaims she should probably pay a visit to Little Diomede sometime. It may not help her foreign policy experience says the mayor, but would definitely help her domestic policy experience. We hope you'll watch our story about this most unique American island tonight on AC360.

David Gergen | Bio
AC360° Contributor
CNN Senior Political Analyst

The vote by the House of Representatives today against the bailout bill was one of the worst mistakes I have ever seen the Congress make. It was shockingly irresponsible.

Yes, it is true that Americans are deeply offended by the idea of this bailout and yes, it is inconsistent with principles of a country that believes in free enterprise. But it represents an urgent and temporary intervention by the only institution in our country that can stabilize the financial markets and head off a potential calamity for millions of Americans.

Every Member who voted against the bill today should be held personally responsible at the polls this November if people are badly hurt by this.

In the meantime, one can only devoutly hope that our political leaders on both sides of the aisle can resurrect this bill and get it - or a close cousin - passed immediately. This is a dangerous moment for America.

David M. Reisner
AC360 Digital Producer

Ok so now we're cookin'! Thanks for watching the '360 Webcast' last night! The viewers are growing more and more each day. If you watched our online show last night you now know what all the fun is about.

We had our first repeat customer: Suze Orman. She came back to help us make sense of the lastest moves on Wall street. A day when the market ended UP 400 points doesn't mean we are out of the woods yet... and we asked Suze some extra questions about the market and your money during the break.

We talked birthdays too.... If you watched the show last night, Anderson talked about how embarassed he was for something he asked erica during the '360 Webcast.' I think it was an honest mistake, but hey, I'm not going to tell you what happened – its best you just see for yourself!

For those of you who didn't catch it – be sure to watch tonight – during commercial breaks!
all you have to do is click here - and the rest is magic!

Read more about what the '360 Webcast' is all about

Program Note: 5 former Secretaries of State tell Christiane Amanpour & Frank Sesno what advice they have for "The Next President."

Watch The Next President: A World of Challenges. Saturday, 9 p.m. ET

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Frank Sesno | BIO
CNN Special Correspondent

There we were, sitting alongside five people who had made history and shaped American foreign policy for nearly four decades. Vietnam and détente. Hot war with Iraq and Cold War with the Soviet Union. Mideast peace conferences and arms control. Kosovo and Iran. Rwanda and Iraq. The fall of the Berlin Wall and the scourge of drought, poverty and AIDS in the developing world. Henry Kissinger, James Baker, Warren Christopher, Madeleine Albright, Colin Powell. Five former American Secretaries of State. The conversation was remarkable for its candor, depth and realism.

We gathered at the George Washington University, where I teach, to talk about the challenges facing the next American president. Christiane Amanpour brought her experience and hard edge to the questioning. The list of challenges we asked about was daunting– from big global issues like climate change and poverty to decisions about how to deal with the new, more assertive Russia, how to handle Iraq and Afghanistan, whether to reach out to Iran, how to fight terrorism and fix America’s tattered image in the world.

Here’s what the secretaries’ bottom line was: get over it. Get real. Be smart. The world is a complicated place. America has to lead. Play down the ideology, they seemed to say, and approach the world rationally and with perspective. Imagine that.

They didn’t agree on everything but the points of consensus were striking – and refreshing, far from the attack soundbites of the campaign and the seductively quick-fix ideas we often hear from politicians and pundits. In fact, on more than one issue, it was clear that this conversation could not possibly take place in the hothouse of the campaign. Poll-driven comments and rapid reaction war rooms ready to pounce prevent candidates from admitting mistakes or embracing the nuance of the real world – even though it’s the real world in which we live.

Some of their suggestions were practical and incremental, some would be big departures from where we are today.

It’s time to engage Iran, the Secretaries said. Drop the preconditions and the political posturing. “The whole point is you try to … deal with countries that you have problems with.” said Madeleine Albright, who tried to pursue an opening with Iran when she was in office. From across the aisle, James Baker agreed. His advice to the next president: “You ought to engage.”

Engage the whole world, really. The secretaries agreed America’s image is a mess. And they laid out three things the next president should do to start to fix it: close Guantanamo, end torture and take the lead on climate change.

On Russia, the message was similarly realistic. Georgia fired the first shot in that little August war, they reminded us. Not to excuse it, or suggest Russia’s a benevolent, democratic place. Keep the pressure on. Make Russia feel international scorn. But keep perspective. Don’t overreact. “We need Russia for a solution of the Iranian problem,” said Henry Kissinger, father of détente. “We may need Russia if Pakistan evolves in some of the directions that it might… It is helpful to cooperate with Russia, not just on the proliferation question, but on the issues of energy.” His bottom line: “This Russia is not democratic, but is also not– what it was before.” Colin Powell said keep the strategic picture in mind. “The Russian Federation is not gonna become the Soviet Union again.”

One of the most poignant discussions was about ‘soft power,’ those activities we do in the world that don’t often attract headlines – development assistance, humanitarian aid, educational and cultural exchanges, that kind of thing. We need a lot more of it, they all said. Former Secretary of State Baker brought it home with a simple comparison. America has fewer people in the foreign service today, he said, than serve on one aircraft carrier. That’s got to change.

It was a challenge to the next president, who will face a world of them.

Video from Yemen TV shows burnt cars and blood on the ground following an attack on the U.S. Embassy.

Peter Bergen | Bio
AC360° Contributor
CNN National Security Analyst

After al Qaeda blew up the USS Cole in October 2000 killing seventeen American sailors, I visited Yemen to check out Osama bin ­Ladens’s ancestral village in the Hadramaut region, in the south of the country. His father, Mohammed, left there as a teenager in 1931 to seek his fortune in what is now Saudi Arabia.

I traveled through Wadi Doan, a 100 ­mile-­long valley in which the road is not much more than a rocky path. Black-­robed women flitted like wraiths down the alleys of the wadi towns, avoiding eye contact with foreigners. Out in the fields, women harvested crops while completely swathed in black, wearing distinctive conical hats made of straw. Attempts to photograph the Hadrami women produced such a volcanic explosion of rage by my local driver that I abandoned the enterprise.

The bin Laden village is tucked into the shade of honey-­colored cliffs that tower above the valley floor by a couple of thousand feet. It is a compact place, filled with laughing children who wander the streets between the high-­walled mud-­brick houses. The village is called al-Rubat ­Ba’eshn. There is a Bin Laden Street and a crumbling bin Laden mansion. There are even some bin Laden cousins who told me that they were not happy that the Americans on the Cole had been killed because they were “guests” of Yemen.

Peter Bergen outside the bin Laden family village in Yemen.

That, of course, represents the views of most Yemenis, yet Yemen, one of the poorest countries in the Arab world, has been an important center of al Qaeda activities for more a decade. A group with ties to al Qaeda kidnapped 16 western tourists in 1998, four of whom died in the “rescue” operation. (Memo to self: In the event of a kidnapping never get rescued by a Third World army.). That was followed in January 2000 by al Qaeda attempting to sink an American warship, the USS The Sullivans. That effort was unsuccessful and was followed nine months later by the Cole attack where suicide attackers piloting a bomb-laden boat blew a hole the size of a small house in the destroyer.

Since 9/11 the Yemeni government has attempted to crack down on its militants but this effort has been hampered by the fact that the central government is weak and doesn’t really control its own rugged, mountainous territory. Emblematic of that fact is that militants imprisoned for their roles in the Cole attack have escaped from Yemeni prison not once, but twice! Yemeni terrorists have also attacked ships off the coast of their country such as the attack on the French oil tanker, the Limburg, in 2002. In July 2007, terrorists killed eight Spanish tourists in the east of the country

Now comes the attack today at the U.S. Embassy, which is almost certainly the work of al Qaeda given the suicidal nature of the assault on the embassy compound which featured a car bomb and shooting by six militants who killed themselves and ten other Yemeni bystanders, but no Americans.

It is precisely this kind of attack in which Muslim civilians die that has led al Qaeda to lose much of it support in countries across the Islamic world. It will be interesting to see if a similar reaction now takes place in Yemen.

Editor's Note: We are devoting many posts today to the anniversary of 9/11, with first-hand accounts, insight, and commentary dedicated to that day seven years ago that changed our world. Arsalan Iftikhar is an international human rights lawyer, founder of themuslimguy.com and Contributing Editor for Islamica Magazine in Washington DC.
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Arsalan Iftikhar | BIO
Founder, themuslimguy.com

Mahatma Gandhi once said that, “I have nothing new to teach the world…Truth and nonviolence are as old as the hills.” Since time immemorial, our human experiment has revolved around the enlightened advancement of collective human thought. Within the current ungodly global mix of perpetual war, everlasting human poverty, extremist terrorism and global racism; our human race has completely and utterly lost its collective mind. Since our world has gone completely bonkers, the unquenchable thirst for social justice of this young American Muslim human rights lawyer and public diplomat must be positively channeled at this juncture of infinite global sadness towards a purpose-driven life guided down an untaken road called Islamic Pacifism.

9/11 was ten days after my twenty-fourth birthday. As a second year law student at the time, even though I had already lived more than two decades; in many ways, my life only truly began at 8:46 am EST on September 11, 2001. Because as an American Muslim, that would be the day that my country was attacked by people who would also infamously hijack my religion.

Since that fateful day seven Septembers ago, my life as a human rights lawyer, media troubadour and public diplomat has now become one big absurd game of television musical chairs and YouTube video clips. From CNN to The TODAY Show to BBC World News, I have spent a dizzying chunk of the last several years on the proverbial 'hot seat'; as a global Muslim public intellectual for over a billion mainstream Muslims who never want to be represented by the bobble-headed terrorist, Osama bin Laden.

So alas, with my trusty ThinkPad and red Swingline stapler, that day began my never-ending quest to condemn terrorism as an international media spokesperson, defeat hate crimes as a leading American Muslim civil rights lawyer, educate the general public about Islam and help create a millennial version of Islamic Pacifism for our entire global community today.

This revived gentle giant of global pacifism shall welcome all people; regardless of any race, religion or socioeconomic status. Whether you are white, black or purple, whether you are Christian, Jewish, Buddhist or celebrate Festivus; our next generation of youthful global pacifists can help reclaim our culture of humanity from sinister warmongering dinosaurs with names like Osama, Coulter, Hamas and Cheney.

Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. once said that, “Peace is not merely a distant goal that we seek, but a means by which we arrive at that goal.” By giving global pacifism a millennial makeover, we shall use the witty humor of Jon Stewart, the humanistic nuance of Noam Chomsky and the fearless determination of Nelson Mandela to quench our collective thirst for social justice.

With the hipster slyness of Danny Ocean to the groovy idealism of John Lennon, for anyone in the world who has ever earnestly prayed for a Muslim Gandhi; you can sleep peacefully at night knowing that the life memoirs of this young Muslim pacifist shall one day be playfully entitled ‘The Autobiography of Gandhi X’.

Finally proving that the pen is indeed mightier than the sword, everyone can rest easy knowing that Barack Obama is not the only brown civil rights lawyer from Chicago with the audacity of hope running through his every vein.

Do not worry, ladies and gentlemen, a billion Muslim pacifist sisters and brothers continue to challenge those who hijacked Islam and we will spend our lives serenely hijacking it back; by any peaceful means necessary.

Even though some Americans may mistakenly think that Muslims only know recipes for Molotov cocktails; here are some other societal contributions of Muslims to modern civilization:

For example, it was Muslims who invented algebra.

Most people would also probably be surprised to learn that it was a Muslim who designed the Sears Tower in my sweet home of Chicago.

Even more surprising is the fact that 4 out of 57 Muslim nations on earth have already elected female heads-of-state; something that we as Americans have been unable to do thus far in history.

Additionally, the greatest American boxer ever, Muhammad Ali; and the funniest dude in America, Dave Chappelle, are both Muslims.

Most importantly, 3 out of the last 5 Nobel Peace Prize winners have been Muslims; one for fighting poverty in Bangladesh, one for disarming nuclear weapons and Shrin Ebadi, the Iranian Muslim human rights lawyer valiantly fighting for the rights of women worldwide.

But more important than Nobel Peace Prizes, Muslim culture has brought crunchy falafel, henna tattoos and yummy hummus to our American shores.

But all because of one terrorist cave-dweller, 1400 years of Pan-Islamic cultural and societal progress goes down the drain.

Thanks a lot, Osama…

Your ‘Gandhi X’ has also been cast in an upcoming Leonardo DiCaprio Hollywood spy movie thriller (Body of Lies with Russell Crowe) and has also emerged victorious at The Doha Debates in front of 300 million BBC World television viewers.

Honoring the fact that two Nobel Peace Prize winners and an American president (Bill Clinton) had also previously graced that same stage in Doha; this Muslim pacifist used that same global stage to call for the complete eradication of every form of global racism in the world, including Islamophobia and Anti-Semitism.

Black. White. Muslim. Jew. It doesn’t matter. It’s all wrong.

Nonetheless, I still get called a 'terrorist' by knucklehead racists because of my unabashed love of Islam and am still called a Muslim 'hippy' by knucklehead extremists for my unabashed platform of peace.

Well, since Islam means 'peace' anyway, I shall proudly wear the 'Islamic Peacenik' label as a badge of honor. Because with such seething hatred in the world today, the only thing that anyone can condemn me for is my seething love.

As the Religious Lefty or whatever other silly names Osama and Coulter can conjure in their puny little brains; this Islamic pacifist will continue to reclusively perch atop the shadowy rooftops of the world somberly awaiting the next global light beacon from the Muslim Bat-Signal in the form of silly Danish cartoons, ungodly acts of terrorism or diplomatic calls for reconciliation.

In explaining the utter human simplicity of my global pacifism, we should be reminded of the sage words of Albert Einstein: “My pacifism is an instinctive feeling; a feeling that possesses me because the murder of men is disgusting…My attitude is not derived from any intellectual theory but is based on my deepest antipathy to every kind of cruelty and hatred…”

It should be no secret that our world is in darkness tonight. A pacifist Mozart to every racist Salieri out there, by successfully turning the world into a United Colors of Benetton advertisement, we can ensure that the only thing that all the beautiful babies of the world will ever need to worry about is filling their cute tummies, pooping in their smelly diapers and deciding which color Nerf ball to play with today.

Alas, everyone on all sides should now lay down their bombs and/or water-boards for one moment and contemplate whether we collectively wish to take a path towards perpetual war or coexistent peace and align ourselves with devilish racist warmongers or choose to be on the side of loving warrior angels.

Until that wondrous day when racist warmongers worldwide are overcome with the righteous ferocity of global peacemakers, this Islamic Pacifist welcomes one and all to our globally-warmed Sherwood Forest as our merry band of billion pacifist believers continue to gently comfort the afflicted, ruthlessly afflict the comfortable and lovingly wonder if God will ever forgive us for what we have done to each other.

Nic Robertson
Senior International Correspondent

It's been over a year since I've been in Pakistan.

For the longest time I couldn't get a visa, my reporting on former President Musharraf's failed policies to take on the Taliban had apparently won me powerful enemies Pakistani insiders told me. But that's all changed now.

The former military dictator is out of power and the new government says it wants to open it's doors to all reporters. Political leadership isn't the only thing that's changed. When I was last here Spring 2007 the Taliban were a growing problem in the border region, now they are much stronger and the government is waging an increasingly violent war against them.

When I pick up the daily news papers here the headlines are dominated by reports of pro government tribes taking on the Taliban, government jets bombing Taliban hide outs. It was never this way before.

But lest I convey the wrong image here that the government is winning handily senior officials tell me they are deeply concerned about progress in this fight. There is a feeling despite their efforts they are only treading water, not beating the Taliban. The big challenge they tell me is getting popular support for a war Musharraf only ever characterized as an extension of the US war on terror.

To win officials tell me they need to sell the message to Pakistanis, particularly those in the Afghan border region that this fight is their fight. That Pakistan is not blindly fighting the war on terror for the United States but is tackling a very real threat to it's own stability and future.

Two ministers and a High Commissioner all told me nothing undermines those efforts more than US air strikes in Pakistan. So when we started getting reports US troops had come by helicopter and conducted a ground attack inside Pakistan it was clear reaction there would be an angry official reaction.

When the Foreign Minister issued a statement "strongly condemning the assault" calling it "unacceptable" a "gross violation of Pakistan's territory" and a "grave provocation" I was some what surprised when a retired Pakistani army General here told me the anger expressed could have been far greater.

He told me it was the first time he'd heard reports of US ground troops in such an attack in Pakistan. It forced him he said to consider something most Pakistanis might find hard to swallow, perhaps the new government, eager to bolster their grip on power and secure US support had signaled an increased willingness for US troops to conduct cross border operations. If it were true he said it's so sensitive it would never be announced. The government would always have plausible deniability.

I'm certainly not getting any hints of such a deal from officials, although they all convey with a very real passion an extreme dislike for the Taliban.

What's clear now that I'm back in Pakistan; the dynamic is far more fluid than before I left, after all, only today the Prime Minister's armored limo was shot up on a busy highway.

The stakes could not be higher, the government is still fragile, the Taliban getting stronger, I'm in no doubt any perceived mistakes by the new leaders will be exploited by their enemies, military and political. And that could directly impact the United States if what little gains have been achieved against the Taliban leech away as support for the government falls.

Everyone here is telling me now is the time for Pakistan, Afghanistan and the United States to accept this is a regional war, trust each other, work together, to defeat a common enemy.

What's worrying me, we've heard all this before. And I see little indication the compromises necessary to achieve cooperation between the three countries have even entered public dialogue, never mind won support from Pakistan's people.

Anderson Cooper

I'm sitting at a bar.

I know, I know, there's a massive storm coming. Don't worry, I’m not drinking. I hadn't eaten all day and this is the only place I could find open in the French Quarter.

"We never close," the bartender yelled out as he waved me inside. "I knew you would be here," the chef said, rushing into the kitchen, "I'm going to make you up some crabcakes."

How could I say no? It's a small place called the Oceana Grill, and it’s packed with cops and reporters. That's a good sign, it means most of the residents and tourists have left. The Quarter is empty, boarded up, calm. I've spent today walking and driving around, checking up on evacuations and preparations.

So far the differences between the response to this storm and Katrina are obvious. Lessons seem to have been learned. The governor appears on top of the evacuations, city officials seem to be working together.

We haven't gotten a final count on how many of the estimated 30,000 people who needed help to leave have actually gotten out. But there have been buses evacuating people since early yesterday. As for the levees, we simply don't know. The work on them is not completed, and there are serious concerns about how strong they really are. we will be watching them closely.

We will be broadcasting a two hour special tonight. We have a large presence here, and are ready to cover whatever happens. We have staked out multiple locations to be at during the storm, and we hope to stay on the air as long as possible even during the worst of it.

"How long are you staying open for?" I ask the bartender as I pay my check...
"til," he says.
"til what?"
"til we get tired."

David M. Reisner
AC360° Digital Producer

Three years ago, it was the failed levee system that inflicted the most damage to New Orleans.
Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff said his concerns for New Orleans related to areas of potential weakness in the levee system.

There were over 50 levee breaches 3 years ago. Rebuilding the levees is still a work in progress.
In fact, New Orleans’ levee infrastructure is not expected to be complete until 2011.

When you hear the term ‘levee breach,’ what does that mean exactly? A levee breach can come from any number of scenarios. I put together a slideshow to show you all the different ways a levee can fail. Take a look:

Editor's Note: Anderson Cooper 360° is in New Orleans tonight, as Tropical Storm Gustav barrels toward the Gulf of Mexico, expected to reach Category 3. We'll look at whether New Orleans is ready, after being devastated by Hurricane Katrina exactly three years ago today. Watch our special report tonight at 10p ET.

David M. Reisner
AC360° Digital Producer

The Hurricane season has picked up this past week, with one storm headed for the Gulf Coast, and another on course to become the 8th named storm of the year.

General Honoré was known best for serving as commander of ‘Joint Task Force Katrina.’ He was responsible for coordinating military relief efforts for Hurricane Katrina-affected areas across the Gulf Coast. Now retired, he spends much of his time in the region, and works to prepare families for future natural disasters.

I caught up with the general as he was traveling from his Georgia home to New Orleans last week. Our conversation covered as much ground as the general did, and we will share with you parts of that conversation over the course of the day.

We talked about how families readiness. How people can't simply rely on the government to bail them out, as we saw in Katrina. He provides us with 3 rules that every family in a danger zone should follow, and plan for.

________

You’ve taken hurricane preparedness to the next level – how can people prepare themselves?

I’m a Red Cross volunteer, so i follow that doctrine. It’s time proven, and the Red Cross is the gold standard for family readiness.

• Rule # 1: Have a plan. If you live in a hurricane prone area, you must have a plan as to where you are going to evacuate to… and what time you should leave. If you live in Tampa and say the storm gets to Key West, say ‘we have to leave.’ Now you don’t have to leave at that point , but if you don’t, guess what, you can spend 12-15 hours sitting on the road trying to get out of the hurricane danger zone. You saw on this week with “Fay”, people leaving Key West – a lot of people were stuck in traffic 4-5-6 hours. Everybody tried to leave at the same time. If you look at most of the deaths from hurricane Rita, it came from people who were trying to evacuate Houston... not from the storm itself. So having a plan and determining when you are going to leave and where you are going.
  
• Rule #2: Stay informed. We stay informed by watching TV, and watching local news, but they key to staying informed is to have a weatherproof radio. One of those radios that will wake you up in the middle of the night, if there is a tornado warning, or it alerts you that the eye of the hurricane is coming and will be of danger…
  
• Rule #3: Have an emergency kit. Have a 3 day supply of food and water and have an emergency preparedness kit. If you have to leave in a hurry you grab that kit and leave. The key parts of that that kit are food water and emergency rations, important papers and documents, and maybe a fresh set of clothes for you to wear.

The first two rules don’t really cost you money; having a plan and staying informed.

What is the biggest threat we pose to ourselves?

I think the biggest thing that makes a difference is personal readiness, family readiness. There is only so much the government can do. You expect your government to have good roads, levees, bridges, and hospitals but – when you look at preparedness for hurricanes, if families don’t prepare, and they are not prepared to spend 3 days to be rescued or waiting for the power to come on, that’s the biggest threat I see. Because the government is not going to put a generator in everybody's home. Katrina closed the roads, it’s flooded the city, it destroyed the cell towers. it prevented us from being able to flush toilets. Katrina did all of that. If families aren’t prepared then it will take the government a long time to help them.

According to the Red Cross for every dollar you invest in preparedness, you save six dollars after disaster during recovery. That’s a pretty powerful statement isn’t it. if people do self preparedness its going to increase their chance of survival, and saving their property during and right after disaster.

Then we need to look at policy – there are things the government has not done, that we have learned from Katrina. Particularly along the gulf coast. We made specific recommendations that drug stores be required to have generators. You might say, well why is that? After Katrina, we saw perfectly good drug stores that couldn’t stay open to sell to customers and give out medicines. We need to fix that.

When a drug store license is issued, we need to say ‘OK, you have to have a generator before we give you your license. Oh by the way, we are going to give you an incentive, a tax credit on that generator when you buy it. Because you’ve put a generator in and you've made our community more resilient. Same is true for gas stations.

In an exclusive CNN interview with CNN's Matthew Chance, Russian PM Vladimir Putin claims a U.S. role in the Georgia conflict.

Matthew Chance
CNN Senior International Correspondent, Moscow

Something strange and unexpected is happening in Russia. In the aftermath of the war in across the border in Georgia, I am suddenly being granted access to the country’s leadership. Remember, this is nation where Western journalists are barely given the time of day by the Kremlin. That is until now.

The call to interview Russian president Dmitry Medvedev came on Tuesday afternoon, out of the blue (although we of course have long standing requests in for a meeting). By Wednesday morning, we were on a two hour flight from Moscow to the Black Sea city of Sochi, with an appointment to have a sit down, one-on-one, interview. We have never interviewed Medvedev since he was elected in March, so we jumped at the chance.

We were corralled into the Sochi press centre, told we had 4 hours to setup our gear, and would be granted 7 minutes of the president’s time. As I struggled to decide which questions I should ask in such a short window, Medvedev appeared on Russian state television, somberly announcing his unexpected decision to recognize as independent states the breakaway Georgian regions of South Ossetia and Abkhazia – obscure territories which swept to prominence earlier this month when Russian and Georgia went to war over them.

Minutes later, Medvedev was sitting in front of me, explaining why he had recognized them in the face of international, in particular American, opposition.

Ok, good days work. But there was more: the phone rang and on the end of the line was Dmitry Peskov, Vladimir Putin’s press flak. The main man, Prime Minister Putin, wanted to give us an exclusive. A full length, sit down interview.

I should emphasize at this point how big this is for us. Vladimir Putin has virtually single-handedly transformed Russia into a powerful, confident, maybe even aggressive state. He is a former KGB spy, and the former Russian president who eased his protégé and hand-picked successor into the Kremlin job. He denies it, but word is he, not Medvedev, still calls the shots in Russia.

And what’s more, he rarely gives interviews. Very rarely. CNN hasn’t spoken to him for more than 7 years!!! To get him now, at a time like this, when Russia is so priominent in the minds of Americans and the world, was incredible, fascinating.

And Putin doesn’t disappoint. The guy is short, stocky, a KGB trained judo black belt with a cold stare, and his critics would say, more than a little blood on his hands. He made Russia’s ruthless crackdown on Chechen separatists into an almost personal vendetta.

He doesn’t care for the US much at the moment, either. One of the first things he told me is that he blames Washington for the war in Georgia – for actually orchestrating it to help a particular candidate in the presidential contest. He wouldn’t say which one, but the Kremlin has been increasingly shifty about John McCain and what they see as his anti-Russian rants.

There was more, too – the stunning accusation that Americans helped Georgian forces fight the Russians this month! Apparently, some Russian soldiers found a US passport after wiping out some Georgian special forces unit in South Ossetia. What was he doing there? The white house insists Putin is talking rubbish.

But the next revelation is definitely true. As the world debates the possibility of economic sanctions on Russia, Russia has announced what amount to a few of its own on America: Putin says 19 US poultry exports have been found to be in breach of Russian health and safety standards and have been banned. Another 29 are on a watch list. No big deal, I suppose, but not great news in such an economic downturn. Putin said it had nothing to do with the diplomatic tensions, but I’m not sure anyone entirely believes him!

Anyway, point is, things have changed, and here’s why from a source who knows: Putin was in Beijing watching the opening ceremony when the war in Georgia erupted. He was constantly watching CNN to see how the conflict was being reported, and he didn’t like it. He hated it. He hated seeing Mikheil Saakashvili appealing for Western support, he hated that there was no one on TV putting across the Russian version of events.

Why was there no one? Because there is no access in Russia, we were not allowed to go to the Russian side of the conflict zone. No Russian officials were available to talk to us, as usual. Georgia played the media game, Russia did not.

A decision was taken then to change tack, to engage with the Western media, to aggressively argue Russia’s side. The Kremlin, which constantly complains of a bad press, could have learned this lesson years ago. But hopefully they see the value of us now. Doesn’t mean we agree with them, or that appearing on CNN will convert the West to Russia’s line. But at least they are in the debate now, and that can’t be bad for Russia.

Cal Perry
International Correspondent

After a week of no sleep in Tbilisi Georgia, covering the war with Russia, I was finally checking in for my flight to Munich on Monday. All I could think about was getting on the plane, and getting some very necessary sleep.

While waiting for my flight to board, I sat in the business lounge enjoying a relaxing drink. Finally, an opportunity to simply listen to my iPod and clear my head. All of a sudden I look up – and walking towards me is Joseph Biden (D) from Delaware.

Are you freaking kidding me, I thought?

I wandered over, introduced myself – said, “Senator, my name is Cal Perry, I’m a reporter from CNN and just wanted to say hello.” He immediately smiled and asked me to sit with him while we waited for the flight.

The conversation immediately turned to Iraq – a place I spent four years covering for CNN. He peppered me with questions – How are things going there do you think? Who are the most important and reliable politicians, in your opinion? Do you think Abdul Aziz Hakim is the man who wields the most power?

He told me about his trips to Iraq – saying how amazed he was at the bravery of US troops. How young they are – and how they have to make life and death decisions on a daily basis. We spoke at length about Combat Hospitals in Iraq – somewhere I’ve spent a great deal of time. You could see it in his eyes – a veteran himself, he cares so deeply for the young men and women stationed overseas.

After giving him my opinion – I of course asked him the obvious question: do you think you’ll be named as the running mate for Barack Obama? His answer “that question is the reason I’m not doing interviews while in Georgia.”

As I boarded my plane with Senator Biden I could not help think: did I just meet the next Vice President of the United States. If so, what a cool flight to Munich.

All of those small dots represent Wildebeest. The annual Wildebeest migration is an event tourists flock to see... its also bringing out many more poachers. Watch our David McKenzie's report
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David McKenzie | BIO
CNN Correspondent

It’s one of the natural wonders of the world.

Over a million animals trek annually across the African plains. They cross national boundaries, forge rivers thick with crocodiles, and find the greener pastures of Kenya’s Masai Mara.

And it’s happening right now. Just imagine it for a second: herds thousands strong streaming through the golden grass of the savanna. There is always a single file of Wildebeest in the lead with a deluge following behind. Some of the herds are so massive that their front is in Kenya and their back in Tanzania.

This annual migration is now under threat by poachers.

And the Mara Triangle, on the border of Tanzania, is on the front lines. Around 40 rangers are responsible for patrolling the Mara Triangle-but their funding has all but dried up and they have cut back on vital patrols.

A portion of the entrance fees paid by tourists fund the anti-poaching patrols. The violence in Kenya earlier this year caused many people to cancel their trips. And though Kenya has been peaceful for months, occupancy rates in the Mara are less than 20 percent. The shortfall of tourists has hammered anti-poaching funding.

Joseph Kimunjino, one of the head rangers of the conservancy, has been involved in those efforts for over 20 years and he has never seen it this bad. I spoke to him in a plan surrounded by Wildebeest, Zebra and Topi Gazelles.

“If we can not run our operations as normal,” he told me, “then we fear that poachers may invade the park, kill the animals and then at the end of the day we do not have animals. They will eventually destroy the whole Mara.”

It sounds alarmist, but the facts back him up. Every herd requires a critical mass to survive and to move. Experts believe that between 40,000 to a 100,000 wildebeest are poached a year. If the poaching increases to a certain level, it could spell disaster.

“If the numbers of animals in the migration were to reduce below a certain number,” says Brian Heath, the CEO of the Mara Conservancy, “then that migration may not be sustained into Kenya. And that would have a huge and devastating effect on Kenya’s tourism.”

All is not lost though. Tourism could pick up and the shortfall could be met. But the Rangers aren’t waiting for that.

As is typical for ordinary Kenyans, they have tried to find a solution.

Joseph, after 20 years at the park, has started a blog to try and raise money for the anti-poaching efforts. They have managed to raise around 60,000 dollars. But seeing that they have a shortfall of almost 50,000 every month, they have a long way to go.

Without their efforts, the migration would certainly be under threat and one of the most breathtaking scenes of nature could disappear forever.

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Here are some snapshots from the Masai Mara Reserve:

(WARNING: Some images are graphic)

Over a million wildebeest cross the East African savanna each year in search of pasture.

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Captured poachers display hippo meat. Poachers mostly come from Tanzania and kill animals for bushmeat that they sell back in their country.

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Poachers set steel snares amongst the thorn trees to capture wildebeest headed on the migration.

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A zebra felled by a poachers arrow in the Mara Triangle

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The snares are meant for wildebeest, but even the mighty elephant is caught.

Miraculously, this elephant survived the ordeal.

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