the president knew he could. take a break from his job in washington without acknowledging thousands of americans who are desperate for work right now. the number of first-time filers for unemployment insurance climbed to half a million people last week. that's the highest level in nine months. stocks tumbled on the news. the dow jones industrial has closed down, more than 140 points. with the economy still shaky and the midterm election approaching mr. obama renewed his call for senate republicans to stop blocking a jobs bill for small businesses. >> a majority of senators are in favor of the bill, and yet the obstruction continues. it's obstruction that stands in the way of small business owners getting the loans, the tax cuts that they need to prosper. it's an obstruction that defies common sense. so let me just make this simple point. there will be plenty of time between now and november to play politics, but small business owners i met with this week, the ones that i met with across the country this year, they don't have time for political games. >> let's bring in cnn's mary snow. she's in new york. she's watching all of this unfold. the number of first-time filers, raising some serious red flags, mary. >> and, wolf, when we usually talk about the unemployment rate, we mostly talk about the monthly rate. but this weekly jobless number stands out for a couple of reasons. for one thing it caught economists off guard. over the last week, an additional 12,000 americans filed for unemployment, bringing the total to a half million people last week. and another worrisome sign is the highest we've seen since 2009. what's also making economists nervous is with the economy already sluggish, there's been a rise in new jobless claims in the past few weeks. we spoke with economists who say we're seeing results of what happened three or four months ago when the economy started slowing. >> the thing that really derailed us was the european debt crisis because with that crisis is it took down stock prices 10%, 15%. and that undermine confidences with households that owned stocks and more so the businesspeople. they look at that as a signal as to when to go out and hire and invest. think the debt crisis and the weaker stock market really hit us at just the worst time. >> mary, the unemployment number remains at about 9.5% nationally. a lot of companies are showing a lot of strong earnings but they're not really hiring new people. what's going on? >> yeah. and that's one of the very big problems. i asked mark zandi when he thinks they'll start hiring. he thinks at least six months. companies have been holding back on hiring, sitting on cash, making due with fewer employees, looking for signs that the economy is recovering. adding to their uncertainty is what health care will mean to their bottom line and for financial companies they're thing how financial regulation will pan out. with this jobless picture that's nothing but ugly, now there's less to hire. >> mary snow krcrunching the numbers for us. we'll speak with mark zandi to get more. high fives to mark. a new milestone on the war in iraq. members of the last u.s. combat brigade rolled out of the country and into kuwait. that leaves about 52,000 u.s. soldiers in iraq right now, primarily to advise and assist local forces but many of them are combat-ready troops that could be called to fight if necessary. president obama's goal was to bring that number down to 50,000 troops in the country by september 1st. our pentagon correspondent chris lawrence is watching all of this unfold. what happens technically at the end of the month, september 1st, when combat operations are supposed to be over? >> those 50,000 troops are going to break down into six advise and assist teams. what does that mean? well, basically, one, they're going to be protecting state department officials and workers as the americans sort of hand over to the iraqis. the department of defense is also handing over sort of control of the operation to the department of state. so they'll be supporting and defending a lot of what the state is doing. two, they're still going to try to train and support the iraqi army where necessary. a lot of it say an intel officer in the army will be working with his iraqi counterpart showing the ways united states do things, showing him how to look out for this or look out for that. you're going to see troops going after al qaeda operations there. these teams are going to be broken up basically two in the north, two around the central part of the country, and two around the anbar province. but i'm told a lot of the focus is going to be north, especially where the state is controlling a lot of efforts because that's where you've got the tensions between the kurds, the turks, and the iraqi arabs and that's going to be playing out over the next months to a year. >> what are officials there telling you about the state of readiness of the iraqi militant? >> it certainly has improved. i was speaking with an official yesterday that when we saw the last combat brigade roll out of iraq, iraqi army units actually helped to sort of secure that route going down south. three divisions of iraqi army units. so they definitely improved their capabilities but as an iraqi official said, they may not be able to stand up on their own until 2020. american official mace have a rosier outlook than that, but there are still things they're going to have to provide. unmanned drones, technology that the iraqi army doesn't have. >> thanks very much. chris lawrence working the pentagon for us. the white house is making a new statement about president obama's religion. why do so many americans believe that he's a muslim and is a that a serious problem tr the president? also, a giant discovery beneath the gulf of mexico. what we're learning right now about those mysterious plumes. and millions of eggs recalled. what you should know so you don't get sick. stay with us here in "the situation room." ♪ just one bite onsa rlof d ♪ with tasty grilled flavor and goodness to savor ♪ ♪ friskies grillers blend. ♪ feed the senses. introducing total plus omega-3 honey almond flax cereal. all the nutrition of total, plus 10% daily value omega-3 ala, and a delicious honey almond crunch. new total plus omega-3. that's why every new toyota comes with the star safety system standard. it's is a combination of five accident avoidance technologies. the star safety system is something that's standard on 100 percent of toyota vehicles. we always think of safety, even in the concept design of our vehicles. [ male announcer ] the star safety system. standard. because we know, there's nothing more important to you than your safety. all our new safety features are at toyota.com/safety. jack cafferty is here with the cafferty file. >> sometimes no answer can be an answer. when asked if a portion of the $100 million needed to build a mosque and an islamic community scepter near ground zero in new york city might come from saudi arabia or iran, the developers refused to comment. this only adds to the heated controversy around this. remember the 15 hijackers responsible for the deaths of nearly 3,000 people and the destruction of the world trade center on september 11th came from saudi arabia, and the u.s. considers iran to be a sponsor of terrorism. nonetheless new york governor david paterson, one of the few rational voices in the conversation has told cnn he's still trying to work on finding a compromised site for the mosque and islamic center away from ground zero. the developer has said the prox imtoif the planned mosque and center is not an issue. really. if the people behind this project are sincere about community relations, you'd think they'd do something about improving community relations and talk to governor paterson about a compromise. this isn't about freedom of religion. nobody's suggesting the muslims can't practice their religion. this is about innocence activity to what happened on 9/11 and an affront to the city and the country. the murders of 3,000 people were committed by muslim extremists. that's the reason for the outcry from the families of the victims, from the rescue workers, and from new yorkers in general, two-thirds of whom are opposed to this thing. it's slim unrealistic to think you can build a muslim house of worship two blocks from where this awful thing happen and not get a negative reaction. but then i think the developers probably already know that. here's the question. what's the real reason the muslim community doesn't want to relocate the mosque and islamic center planned near ground zero? go to cnn.com/caffertyfile and post a comment on my blog. >> jack, thanks very much. dan simon is out in san francisco. he's been working a story at the san francisco international airport. there was an incident involved an american airlines flight, flight 24 from san francisco to new york that was held up. apparently somebody had phoned in some sort of threat. dan, first of all, update our viewers on what the situation is right now. i understand you have one of the passengers who just deplaned. >> reporter: right, wolf. we know that all the passengers are now off the airplane, and a lot of them are about to catch other flights to new york city. we have one of them right here. this is derek johnston who was headed to new york for his cousin's wedding. derek, tell me what it was like for you to be on that plane. >> slow process. a lot of us just wanted to get off the plane. >> reporter: when did you first get an indication that something was wrong? >> we had pulled off from the airport and we were sitting on the tarmac for a couple of hours. the crew wasn't telling us much. they were telling us of the thre threat. >> reporter: so you're sitting on the plane for four hours. >> unfortunately we've lost that signal from san francisco airport. bottom line right now is that all the passengers, all the cree, they're off the plane. the plane was inspected. they're interviewing some of the passengers. they're going to be rerouted to new york on other flights. it looks like this incident is over with right now. they're investigating, though, the phone threat, what it was all about. once we get some more information, we'll share it for you. bottom line, though, everyone is okay. it looks like this incident is over. they're going to find out who made this phone threat, what that's all about. it did cause an enormous delay for these passengers on flight 24 from san francisco to new york. let's get back to the drawdown of u.s. troops in iraq right now. as we reported the last few of the u.s. combat brigade is in kuwait after rolling out overnight. david gergen is joining us now. david, as we look at the overall mission in iraq, going back to march of 2003, 4,400 american troops dead, many than 25,000 came home injured, many of them critically injured. cost probably a trillion if not more. and we don't know if this is all going to work out when all the dust settles in the next few years. >> we certainly don't, wolf. it's been seven years and five months since the americans went in there. we found it was over two months later when president bush reported to the country all the substantial conflicts are all over. it turned out not to be the case. this is an important milestone. president obama has met his pledge of having all combat troops out of iraq by the end of this month, august. but we're still going to have 50,000 people on the ground to aid and assist as it's called. there's still going to be some deaths as we were reminded today by both the pentagon and the white house. >> when we talk about the 50,000 troops that were supposed to be there until the next year, the end of 2011. they're supposed to be trainers and advisers. you know, there are still thousands of special operations and forces who will remain in iraq whether green berets or navy seals or whatever because their mission is to go after iraq or others and kill them. that'ser issous combat, no matter what you want to call them. >> i think there are a couple of things that have to be said. you know, we made a lot of progress and thank goodness for what our troops have done. the surge did work better than what people expected. we still have a very fragile situation in iraq. as you know, it's been five months. they still don't have a government. the amount of violence is actually going up again now as al qaeda and others are committing acts of violence as we depart. and then i think the surprise story today in "the new york time times", the lead story, it's now anticipated there's going to be a surge of contractors under the state department of all things after we get all our troops out of there at the end of the year, we're going to send 5,000 troop, they souchbld like mercy nairs, they're going to go in there and protect our diplomats. we're going to have americans' lives on the line for some time to come and no certainty how it's going to come out. progress, yes, but lots of questions. >> what worries me, and i've studied this story over there for a long time. the longer there's no new government, the potential for the ethnic rivalries for sunnis and kurds, tr more that they can get involved, making the situation good for them, not necessarily good for iraq. >> that's a very good point. i do believe there was a time when iraq was actually against iran. now we've got a lot of iranians who are really quite loyal, iraqis aligning with the iranians. i thought i was symbolic when the stryker brigade left and came into kuwait by land, they had to travel by night. they couldn't travel those roads in the south during the day. it was partly because of an agreement with the iraqi government. but it was always for security reasons. northwa in other words, we're leaving and it's so insecure for our troops to go down the highways in southern iraq to get out of there, they travel by night. >> they still can't go to iraq without any advance word. they have to sneak in and then tell everybody they're there 7 1/2 years after this war has started. so there's still plenty of problems in iraq. we can only hope things work out. david, thanks very much. we'll stay on top of this story and update you as we get more information. an alarming and potential discovery in the gulf of mexico. will it help answer questions about where all the oil has gone? and new concerns about a suspicious commercial flight route out of iran. could it be used to plot attacks against the united states? what's going on? right now, brian todd investigating. to get a great on a new cadillac cts sport sedan... ..the most acclaimed vehicle in its class and a car and driver 10 best third year in a row. summer brings out the best in all of us, so now's the perfect time to get behind the wheel of a brand new cadillac. now during cadillac's summer's best sales event... get zero percent apr financing for 72 months or this attractive lease offer on a cts sport sedan. basic.? preferred. okay. at meineke i have options, and 50% off brake pads and shoes. my money. my choice. my meineke. we're following some of the others. gulf of mexico headlines happening today. what else is going on in the gulf of mexico. >> emotional testimony today on capitol hill from some of those feeling the effects of the gulf oil spill. sitting before a house committee on energy and commerce hearing, a louisiana fisherman described his life in the months since the disaster. >> for 28 years of my life i've had a product that's always been known as the best because it was the best, and i'd just like the perception of the american public to know it's the best again, you know. we work -- you know, in our business we don't work 9:00 to 5:00. we work 5:00 to 9:00. we work seven days a week. it's my life. i guess i'd say like tony hayward, i pretty much want my life back. i want my life back. they took everything that i worked for all these years with one company who don't know what they're doing, cut too many corners and putting me out of business. it just ruined my whole life. and nobody's -- nobody's being held responsible but me. >> emotional there. and also an end to the spill could now be just a few weeks away actually. national incident commander retired thad allen says if all goes as planned, the so-called bottom kill procedure to permanently seal the ruptured well should be done shortly after labor day. allen also authorized bp to replace the site's existing blowout preventer ahead of the operation. and scientists say they've detected a huge plume of oil deep in the gulf of mexico. researchers say the oil plume is at least, get this, 22 miles long, more than a mile wide and about 650 feet high. and it's more than 3,000 feet below the surface. that's big. the finding by the woods ocean graphic institution could provide at least a partial answer. you know that's been a big question for many people, wolf. >> it certainly has, and it's not been answered yet, kate. thanks very much. the president has been in office for more than a year and a half, yet more people now are confused about his religion. what does he need to do to set them straight? also, the possible benefits of extending the bush tax cuts for all americans. and a food staple and the risk of salmonella. stand by for the latest on the major egg recall. ring ring. progresso. why does it say box tops for education on your soup? oh, it's a program that raises money for schools. that's great, but this is a can. yes it is. you can't have a box 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[ male announcer ] progresso. you gotta taste this soup. there's no way to hide it. sir, have you been drinking tonight? if you ride drunk, you will get caught... and you will get arrested. a somewhat unusual send-off for president obama as he begins a family vacation at martha's vineyard. the white house was compelled today to remind the nation that mr. obama is a, quote, committed christian. the new reason, a new pew poll showing one in five americans actually believe the president is a muslim. that figure is higher than last year. our white house correspondent dan lothian is already in martha's vinyard. he's joining us for more. this is one thing the white house doesn't need. >> reporter: it is a headache. it's a big spike from last year. 18% who believe he's a muslim compared to last year at 11%. the white house was trying to knock it down before he became president. back on the campaign trail, some thought he was a muck limb. all this time later, a lot think that continues. pew research were surprised by the sudden spike. who are the people who believe the president is a muslim? take a listen. >> people on both ends of the political spectrum tend to look and listen and watch media that supports their point of view. and a lot of this is probably coming over the internet or coming over cable chat shows where you have the expressions of a public opinion that's pretty harsh and judgment mental about president obama. >> president obama isn't one to always speak publicly about his faith, but over the easter holiday, he did have some christian leaders at the white house for a prayer breakfast there. he spelled out exactly what he believes. back in 2008 he sat down for an interview with rick and gave some details about exactly what he believes. >> what's it mean to you to trust in christ and what does that mean on a daily basis? i mean what does that really look like? >> well, as a starting point it means i believe in -- that jk died for my sins and that i am redeemed through him. that is a source of strength and sustenance on a daily basis. yeah, i know that i don't walk alone. >> now, responding to the poll, it was said, quote, president obama is a committed christian and faith is an important part of his daily life. he prays every day, he