Clinton and Bush: The recovery effort is just starting
 |  Former Presidents George H.W. Bush and Bill Clinton. |
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|  VIDEO |
 Former Presidents Bush, Clinton discuss tour of tsunami-ravaged regions.
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(CNN) -- Former U.S. Presidents Bill Clinton and George H.W. Bush toured the heart of Asia's tsunami disaster area Sunday, meeting with survivors and Indonesian President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono in an effort to see first-hand how the region was affected by the massive waves.
Clinton and Bush spoke with CNN's Wolf Blitzer Sunday about the devastation they witnessed and what steps need to be taken to ensure the regrowth of the region.
WOLF BLITZER: President Bush, President Clinton, thanks very much for joining us on your mission.
Let me begin with you, President Bush. Give us your thoughts, what you have seen now in the tsunami-affected areas. Is it what you expected?
GEORGE H.W. BUSH: It's worse, it's worse than I expected. The devastation is greater. First, we can now -- most of the bodies have been accounted for, or at least have been picked up and put into these refrigerated vaults. So we didn't see any of that, but the devastation on the ground is worse than I expected. Just leveled, where there were schools and houses, it's just flat. Flat land. It was -- I've never seen anything like it, ever.
BLITZER: What about you, President Clinton?
BILL CLINTON: Wolf, we were in Thailand this morning and yesterday, and then we went to Aceh in Indonesia, and flew up and down the coast. They have only buried 110,000 people. Only. That sounds staggering. They think at least another 130,000 are dead that they haven't even been recovered yet.
We visited one little village where 6,500 people had lived, and only 1,000 survived. There are orphans everywhere. Nobody's got a home. Nobody's got a way to make a living. It's unbelievable.
But USAID officers there, all these wonderful NGOs are there, the U.N. agencies are there, they seem to be working together well. And the people are very brave. I mean, in this village, all the elderly people were killed because they couldn't get away from the wave, and new leaders have tried to step in and get the job done. It's like nothing I've ever seen, but it's heart-breaking and heartening at the same time.
BLITZER: President Bush, how is the recovery effort, based on what you can tell, coming along?
BUSH: The recovery effort really is just starting. They've been cleaning up until now, and trying to account for the bodies. But the recovery effort is just starting. In Aceh, there is not a lot of evidence that it's there. But talking to the people that are on the ground, they're all quite optimistic that the houses will start being built again, and schools being put up. So I say it's got a long way to go, but it's not because of negligence or because of inefficiency, it's just because of the enormity of the devastation.
BLITZER: President Clinton, what has surprised you the most? You saw a lot of this on television, you read about it, but now being on the ground, what was the most eye-opening moment, let's say, for you?
CLINTON: Seeing the orphans in their school uniforms yesterday at -- in Thailand, and standing in the street of a town where nothing, nothing was left except the mosque. Flying over the town and seeing the rice fields flooded with salt water from the ocean, and having a farmer say, it will be three years before they could grows crop again. Just the magnitude of it, you guys have done a wonderful job covering this. But no distant picture can convey the enormity of the human tragedy and the environmental destruction until you see it.
BLITZER: President Clinton, what do they need most right now? Do they still need money? Do they need expertise, do they need volunteers, manpower? What do you sense that they need most in the coming weeks and months?
CLINTON: Well, I think, first of all, every country needs a really good plan for what to do. And then, they need real coordination among the international agencies, the national agencies like USAID and the non-governmental organizations. There are a lot of people there. I think that we'll need more people as time goes on, and ones who are here will become exhausted or have to go back to their lives. And we'll need to keep a steady stream of cash up. The American people have been uncommonly generous, and the president has sent an aid package of $950 million with the Congress. Other countries have committed -- the total is about $7 billion, and people will need to keep their commitments, and then we'll probably need to raise a little more after that. But it will have to be given out in a disciplined fashion over, I would say, at least a three-year period.
BLITZER: President Bush, is that money being spent wisely? Are there audits? Because there can be, as you well know, corruption, there can be misuse of those funds, if given to the wrong people.
BUSH: I think it's very early to say what systems are set up now. Because we're just beginning to get into the reconstruction phase. Most of the money that President Clinton and I, you know, helped raise, has not been spent. It's not out in the field yet. And most of it will go into reconstruction.
But at present, you're right. When that starts, we want to be able to assure the donors that the money is being spent wisely, that there is not a lot of overhead between what they give and how it gets to the recipient, and there's no corruption out there. And the embassies are interested in this, the governments that we talk to -- for example, the Indonesians are interested in it -- and everybody I think is concerned that it not happen, and want to guarantee that it not happen. But in terms of one mechanism, there is no such one central mechanism on that.
CLINTON: Wolf, I think the biggest problem we had with that was early on, when people all over the world, Americans and others, were sending massive amounts of supplies into areas that were not equipped to deliver them all at the same -- simultaneously, and didn't have a good inventory system. The president of Indonesia told us today that he plans to set up a separate monitoring operation up there to make sure that that money was not wasted, squandered or stolen.
The White House, on its Web site, USAFreedomCorps.gov, has given us a list of about three dozen charities that are completely reliable. The president gave us a list of a dozen that can handle bigger contributions. These NGOs are pretty trustworthy. And the U.N., for example UNICEF, gave up its normal administrative percentage, to put all of the money here, into the areas affected.
So I think we'll have to monitor it. We have to have good auditing systems as we go along. But I do believe the donors can be assured that these organizations to which they give their donations are not wasting money, and if you pick one off the reputable list, you'll know they're all honest, and that they're going to be out here trying to help people.
BLITZER: President Bush, there was a lot of concern expressed early on, in the immediate aftermath of the tsunami, that children might be kidnapped, sold for slave or sex trade purposes. What if anything, have you learned about those fears? Are they -- are they real?
BUSH: I didn't -- to be very honest with you, that subject, at least when I was present in meetings, never came up. And had it been of enormous concern to these government, I expect it would have. I read in the papers there have been some indications of that, but it's not -- at least the NGOs out there in Aceh, and the government leaders we've met with, none of them have presented that as a major problem at this point. Now, maybe you heard something about it.
CLINTON: I will say this, I think that it's going to be much more difficult to do, Wolf, as long as we have the kind of non-governmental organizations presence we've got there. We've met a young American today in this remote village, in his 20s, who have been in Indonesia for five years. He spoke the language wonderfully. And there are people like that that are physically present, from a lot of the religious groups, like World Vision and other groups like CARE.
It's going to be hard for people to get away with that without getting caught, as long as people of the world are contributing and these NGOs can afford to maintain a presence there and do something.
I can't say that none of it's happened, but I can tell you this, that it's something that -- next month, when I start working for the U.N., I am going to monitor it very closely. But I think that the NGOs, just their pure physical presence there, are going to make it more difficult for that to be done on any kind of scale.
BLITZER: President Bush, have you sensed that in the aftermath of the tsunami these past few weeks, there's been an improved American image in that part of the world, given the enormous amount of help that America, American private citizens as well as the U.S. government, have provided?
BUSH: I don't think there's a question, but the answer to that is yes. And we've heard it over and over again since we've been here, gratitude, for not just the money going through these NGOs and the money that's been given from out of the pockets of children and men and women in our country, but for the military. And there were some early stories that the military might be resented. And everything we've heard is that they came in there, done their job properly, that they were sensitive to the local cultures, and I'm very proud of the job that the military has done.
And I think a lot of that stems from the orders they got from General Brachman out in Guam -- we met him in Guam -- who is in charge of this area for the Marines. And he made them go in there, wanted them to go in, ordered them to go in, almost as partners in the recovery. And not "we're the U.S. Marines and we're going to do this." It is -- it was a wonderful thing, the way they've handled it.
CLINTON: They've been, Wolf. They went in without full battle gear into the troubled area in Aceh, where there has been a lot of violence, because they wanted to symbolize hope and help. They've coordinated 11 other countries that were actually involved militarily and 22 others that made contributions, and refused to establish America as the head of the group. They just tried to facilitate. They never took any credit for anything. They said they were just there to help and do the work the local people wanted. And as a result, the feeling about them and about our country has just soared.
And of course, people are hearing that -- I think other countries, they find it hard to believe that one-third of American households would actually give money. And over half of them gave it over the Internet, in small amounts, and these things have, I think, really touched the hearts of people in all these countries affected.
BUSH: Wolf, I'm not going to take credit for something, but I think the fact that Bill Clinton and I have different political persuasions in the past, are doing this, I know last night at the dinner with the -- with Thais, they were very, very appreciative of it, and they said, well, this couldn't happen in our country. And I think what we're trying to do is say this is -- this is bigger than politics. This is about saving lives. This is about children who've lost their families. And I must say, I'm getting a huge kick out of it.
BLITZER: Quick final question to both of you. President Clinton, first to you. How are you feeling? I know this must be a difficult kind of trip, given the surgery that you had not all that long ago.
CLINTON: I feel great. I confess, you know, it was tiring. We made the trip all the way over with two stops, one in Hawaii and one in Guam. But we both got a good night sleep last night, we had a long day today, and we feel good, and we're going out to meet the Sri Lankan leaders tonight, and we'll have a good day here tomorrow. So I feel good.
I think whatever exhaustion we might have felt was totally overcome by seeing the suffering that these people have gone through and the courage they've demonstrated in trying to put their lives back together. We just don't have much time for personal fatigue or personal feelings. It's just -- it's so -- it's overwhelming. I only wish every American who contributed to this effort could personally see the faces and the problems and the courage that we have seen.
BLITZER: What about you, President Bush?
BUSH: Well, I got a little age on President Clinton, I got a little age going, but you said it perfectly, and I don't feel like an old guy out there. I feel privileged to be a part of this, and exhilarated by the courage of these people that have been -- their lives have been devastated. And I guess for me, and I know it's probably true for President Clinton, because I've heard him say this, that the toughest thing is the children, when you see them, knowing that their mother and brother have been missing, or they lost their brothers, and one father standing there, says my wife and other children are killed, but this guy is still with me. It kills you. Very direct. And it certainly gets the focus away from one's own self, onto something far bigger and far more important.
