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American Morning
Analysis of Taking Prisoners of War
Aired March 21, 2003 - 07:52 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
BILL HEMMER, CNN ANCHOR: Now we want to get to the issue that Brent mentioned, and Christiane talked about it as well. In Umm Qasr, about 250 Iraqi soldiers have surrendered to U.S. Marines and another 30, we're told, have surrendered to British Marines.
This follows a string of stories over the past 12 or 14 hours, reports of Iraqi soldiers turning over themselves to U.S. and British troops coming across the border. And in some cases we hear about Iraqi soldiers crossing the border south into Kuwait in order to lay down their weapons.
Let's talk about the issue right now with Major General Don Shepperd, our CNN military analyst, with us here on AMERICAN MORNING.
There was a question here, Don, as to whether or not a large influx of Iraqi soldiers, if indeed they're going to lay down their arms, what happens in terms of the flow and strategy of the U.S. military? Could this, in fact, impede their movement?
MAJ. GEN. DON SHEPPERD, CNN MILITARY ANALYST: Bill, the United States military has been planning for this for a long time. There are all sorts of ways to handle prisoners.
Let me call up a baseball card that we've got on how you basically handle prisoners, and the prisoners basically are the responsibility of the military police in the various elements of the forces here. The first thing you do is you seize the prisoners. The second thing you do is you segregate the prisoners. You silence them. Speed is an element and then safety.
Basically what you have to do is you have to get these guys under control and make sure they understand they're under control, separate them from each other, separate them from their officers, and then you handle them.
Now, there are all sorts of ways you can handle them once you have them under your control. One way is you can simply let them go home. Another thing you can do is establish a POW camp. Some of each of this will be done, but basically we've told all of these prisoners what they need to do, and we've dropped videos and leaflets from aircraft explaining to them how to surrender and what they have to do.
We've got some videos. This happens to be a commando solo airplane here that is shown dropping videos. And then on the leaflets themselves, it tells the potential prisoners what they exactly have to do. They basically have to park their vehicles in squares. They have to stow their artillery in the travel configuration. They've got to display white flags, gather in groups a kilometer from their vehicles. And the officers can retain their side arms, but everyone else has to disarm, and don't approach the coalition forces. Let the coalition forces approach you. If you do these things you will be safe.
Now, again, this is all a great idea, but it's very, very dangerous. You have to be extremely careful when you're capturing POWs to keep them under your control.
We also, if you remember, have some videos of Mazar-e-Sharif in northern Afghanistan. This was a situation in which everything went wrong. The five S's of seize, seizure, separate, et cetera, were not applied. The prisoners were not searched well, and it went terribly, terribly wrong, and you had a POW uprising in which many Afghan forces were killed up there. So it was just a terrible situation.
The point being is this war is different. Most wars you want to destroy infrastructure and war-making capability, and you want to kill as many of the enemy as possible. This war we want to destroy no infrastructure and we do not want to kill anyone. We'd like to separate the regime from the soldiers, take the soldiers prisoner, and basically have surrenders and not combat -- Bill.
HEMMER: Yes, Don, you make some interesting points there. We are told that some of these Iraqi soldiers actually had the leaflets in their hands, the leaflets with instructions on how to surrender to U.S. and British forces that had been dropped over the past two months. And certainly this is something that we were...
PAULA ZAHN, CNN ANCHOR: Sorry, gentlemen, to interrupt both of you, Bill. I know you can't hear from here.
TO ORDER A VIDEO OF THIS TRANSCRIPT, PLEASE CALL 800-CNN-NEWS OR USE OUR SECURE ONLINE ORDER FORM LOCATED AT www.fdch.com.
Aired March 21, 2003 - 07:52 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
BILL HEMMER, CNN ANCHOR: Now we want to get to the issue that Brent mentioned, and Christiane talked about it as well. In Umm Qasr, about 250 Iraqi soldiers have surrendered to U.S. Marines and another 30, we're told, have surrendered to British Marines.
This follows a string of stories over the past 12 or 14 hours, reports of Iraqi soldiers turning over themselves to U.S. and British troops coming across the border. And in some cases we hear about Iraqi soldiers crossing the border south into Kuwait in order to lay down their weapons.
Let's talk about the issue right now with Major General Don Shepperd, our CNN military analyst, with us here on AMERICAN MORNING.
There was a question here, Don, as to whether or not a large influx of Iraqi soldiers, if indeed they're going to lay down their arms, what happens in terms of the flow and strategy of the U.S. military? Could this, in fact, impede their movement?
MAJ. GEN. DON SHEPPERD, CNN MILITARY ANALYST: Bill, the United States military has been planning for this for a long time. There are all sorts of ways to handle prisoners.
Let me call up a baseball card that we've got on how you basically handle prisoners, and the prisoners basically are the responsibility of the military police in the various elements of the forces here. The first thing you do is you seize the prisoners. The second thing you do is you segregate the prisoners. You silence them. Speed is an element and then safety.
Basically what you have to do is you have to get these guys under control and make sure they understand they're under control, separate them from each other, separate them from their officers, and then you handle them.
Now, there are all sorts of ways you can handle them once you have them under your control. One way is you can simply let them go home. Another thing you can do is establish a POW camp. Some of each of this will be done, but basically we've told all of these prisoners what they need to do, and we've dropped videos and leaflets from aircraft explaining to them how to surrender and what they have to do.
We've got some videos. This happens to be a commando solo airplane here that is shown dropping videos. And then on the leaflets themselves, it tells the potential prisoners what they exactly have to do. They basically have to park their vehicles in squares. They have to stow their artillery in the travel configuration. They've got to display white flags, gather in groups a kilometer from their vehicles. And the officers can retain their side arms, but everyone else has to disarm, and don't approach the coalition forces. Let the coalition forces approach you. If you do these things you will be safe.
Now, again, this is all a great idea, but it's very, very dangerous. You have to be extremely careful when you're capturing POWs to keep them under your control.
We also, if you remember, have some videos of Mazar-e-Sharif in northern Afghanistan. This was a situation in which everything went wrong. The five S's of seize, seizure, separate, et cetera, were not applied. The prisoners were not searched well, and it went terribly, terribly wrong, and you had a POW uprising in which many Afghan forces were killed up there. So it was just a terrible situation.
The point being is this war is different. Most wars you want to destroy infrastructure and war-making capability, and you want to kill as many of the enemy as possible. This war we want to destroy no infrastructure and we do not want to kill anyone. We'd like to separate the regime from the soldiers, take the soldiers prisoner, and basically have surrenders and not combat -- Bill.
HEMMER: Yes, Don, you make some interesting points there. We are told that some of these Iraqi soldiers actually had the leaflets in their hands, the leaflets with instructions on how to surrender to U.S. and British forces that had been dropped over the past two months. And certainly this is something that we were...
PAULA ZAHN, CNN ANCHOR: Sorry, gentlemen, to interrupt both of you, Bill. I know you can't hear from here.
TO ORDER A VIDEO OF THIS TRANSCRIPT, PLEASE CALL 800-CNN-NEWS OR USE OUR SECURE ONLINE ORDER FORM LOCATED AT www.fdch.com.
