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CNN Live At Daybreak
7th Cavalry Crosses Euphrates River
Aired March 25, 2003 - 05:44 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.
CAROL COSTELLO, CNN ANCHOR: OK, we have lost Bill Hemmer now because of the weather in Kuwait. Apparently there's a fierce sandstorm going on, not only in Kuwait, but also in parts of Iraq, but that has not stopped the 7th Cavalry.
Central Iraq right now, Walter Rodgers.
I understand you are on the move, but it looks pretty nasty there, too.
WALTER RODGERS, CNN CORRESPONDENT: That's right, Carol, still elements of the U.S. Army's 7th Cavalry have now successfully fought their way across the Euphrates River. Senior officers in the unit here believe that Saddam's regime is now on the verge of losing all of southern Iraq from -- on the Annasar (ph) eastward to Basra.
The 7th crossed just a few hours ago. A Bone Crusher troop was the first to get across the Euphrates. It was followed by the Apache troop with which I am riding.
You can see that the -- there's a terrible sandstorm. Actually, that may have facilitated our crossing because we came under some reasonably serious mortar fire when we crossed the Euphrates River Bridge. Also, 50 caliber machine guns, and I can hear someone banging away at us off to the right with an AK-47 now. Still, the sandstorm has perhaps facilitated our crossing.
As I say, we are passing through a sandstorm now. You can hear shooting off to the left. We are moving as discreetly as we can. We're not sure if the Bradley's firing back at them. But in any event, we've had to travel through a fair amount of small arms fire and mortars to cross the Euphrates River. Still, major elements of the 7th Cavalry have fought their way across the Euphrates, and even that was not difficult.
The fight to the Euphrates the previous evening, yesterday evening, was very, very severe. We were in a convoy. We took rocket- propelled grenades. We took small arms fire. Again, all around us, even now, I'm hearing small arms fire. The sandstorm is also allowing the Iraqis to come up close to the road and it's difficult for the Bradleys and their larger guns to see them -- Carol.
COSTELLO: Walter, and you tell me when you have to go and we'll leave you immediately, but I just wondered what it must have felt like to finally get across that bridge over the Euphrates River?
RODGERS: Well it wasn't quite the relief you would think it was because we no sooner got across the bridge than mortars started falling around us. I heard a 50 caliber machine gun and I could heard when the mortars fell, the shrapnel going up in the date palms (ph) above us. It sounded like rain, of course, except the shrapnel goes upward.
We had a very, very serious fight last night, and we're extraordinarily fortunate -- more mortars behind us, perhaps you can hear them.
COSTELLO: I can hear them. I want to -- I want to say...
RODGERS: In any event,...
COSTELLO: Go ahead -- Walter.
RODGERS: In any event, last night we had a rocket-propelled grenade go right over the top of the CNN van we're riding in. And when my cameraman and I were in the dark standing outside just outside the vehicle, we heard a burst of machine gun fire from the tank in front of us. And an Iraqi soldier had crept up on his belly to the drainage ditch just beside us and was about to open up with an AK-47. Again, fortunately for the machine gunner, the gunner in the tank in front of us, fortunately for us, he was alert. He had his night vision goggles on, and they popped him off real fast -- Carol.
COSTELLO: I'd like to say a big welcome to our international viewers. We have joined CNN International right now, Walter. And you've just said a short time ago that coalition forces have now taken control of southern Iraq. Please say that again because that is a bit of positive news...
RODGERS: No.
COSTELLO: Go ahead, you did not say that. Please clarify then.
RODGERS: What I -- what I said was that elements of the 7th Cavalry have moved across the Euphrates River. They took a bridge. As they went across the bridge, the engineers discovered that it had heavy explosive charges on it but the Iraqis had not had time to rig the charges, therefore the 7th Cavalry was able to move across.
What I said was that a senior officer in the 7th Cavalry says this is a terribly important development because what it means is that Saddam Hussein is now in danger of losing all of southern Iraq, especially with the 7th Cavalry north of the Euphrates River now. And the line he drew was from Annasar in the northeast of where we are all the way over to Basra in the southeast. The indications are that the 7th Cavalry moving up is going to be supported followed on its flanks by other units. And the south of the country is in jeopardy, at least in terms of the regime of Saddam Hussein -- Carol.
COSTELLO: Understand.
Anderson Cooper is going to join us right now. He has a few questions for you, Walter. ANDERSON COOPER, CNN ANCHOR: Walter, the image we're looking at, can you describe to us what it is, and obviously there is a sandstorm going on? What sort of an impact, just for our international viewers who have just joined us, what sort of an impact has that had on the 7th Cavalry in the last several hours?
RODGERS: It's been both positive and negative. When we crossed the Euphrates River on a bridge, the sandstorm tended to screen us from -- tended to screen us. A lot of small arms fire off to the right there. They're shooting -- they're right up by the road. We're within 20 meters of people who are shooting at us. The reason you can't hear it is we're using a lip mike to reduce the automobile noise, but it's very, very loud next to us. The sandstorm is also allowing these Iraqi snipers to come right up next to the road where we are now -- Anderson.
COSTELLO: And Walter -- this is Carol Costello again.
We want to bring in General Grange right now to help us along in what we're seeing.
And as Walter said, General -- are you miked up yet or not?
COOPER: Walter, can you actually see these snipers?
RODGERS: I'm trying real hard not to stick my head out, General.
BRIG. GEN. DAVID GRANGE, CNN MILITARY ANALYST: I didn't ask you.
RODGERS: The visibility here is probably no more than 75 meters. But I can hear them, I can hear them literally in the drainage ditch below me.
COSTELLO: General, you are...
RODGERS: Now, is that our .50 call or theirs? Oh, that's our .50 cal, the unit behind us, the either Bradley, I think it's a Bradley, is firing a .50 -- or maybe it's a, they would have a .25 millimeter machine gun or Gatling gun. They're shooting out now in the direction to which the snipers were coming.
But we have been under heavy fire for the past couple miles, mostly small arms fire. But the sandstorm has enabled the Iraqis to come very close to the road, and if I sound a little nervous, it's because we're in a soft-skinned vehicle and everybody else is in armor -- back to you Carol or Anderson.
COSTELLO: We do have the general. General Grange is here now with us, Walter, and he's going to throw a few questions at you right now. I want to talk more about the weather and how it has helped and hurt.
GRANGE: OK. Well, first of all, yes, don't put your head up. Keep your head down and don't worry about that part of it. Just report from what you hear, the type of weapons you hear, like .50 caliber or 7.62. You don't need to put your head up in that weather or that fight to report that.
Can you hear me?
RODGERS: Mostly we're hearing 7.62. Yes, mostly we're hearing 7.62. There are some .50 calibers, but they're behind me and I can't tell whether they're coming from the Iraqis off to our right or whether they're being fired from the, let's say, the Abrams tanks behind us.
One question Anderson had a while earlier was does this hurt or help U.S. troops? I guess on balance it hurts, because at this point we would be calling in close air support. The helicopters, the Kiowas would be supporting us, defending our flanks. But there is no visibility whatsoever. Nothing can be seen beyond the length of a football field in the sandstorm, and, as I say, that gives the Iraqis cover to come right up close to the road. And judging by this fire, we can hear, the soldiers inside those Bradleys and the tanks can ear the Iraqi bullets dinging off the steel plating along the sides -- Carol, Anderson.
COSTELLO: And, Walter, there's -- Carol, too.
Those helicopters, they do have the capability to go up in such weather, but right now it wouldn't help anyway.
RODGERS: It would be very dodgy trying to fly a helicopter in a sandstorm like this, very dodgy. The reason being that they fly at 80 miles an hour and they could come upon a high tension line that they would not know was there. They are, they have to fly slower and closer to the ground. That makes them vulnerable to the small arms fire that the Iraqis have -- Carol.
GRANGE: Yes, the one thing, though, you have .25 millimeter cannon fire from those Bradleys. You've got great tanks. There's pretty good equipment there. Of course, the vehicle you're in is a little bit more vulnerable, but you've got those guys around you. So even though the enemy's tactics would be to hug your positions because of the sandstorm, you've got some very good equipment there with you and well trained troops.
So it's going to, you're going to be relying on their capabilities, and they're quite good.
RODGERS: Well, General, as I look out, let me describe this landscape to you. It's sandy. It's got dirt revetments, dirt berms that farmers have put up and an Iraqi soldier could be 50 meters out there, lying very, very low.
If he sticks his head up and if the Bradley gunner or the Abrams gunner sees him, then you can shoot back. But again last night, even with night vision goggles, one of those Iraqi soldiers got within no more than 20, 30 feet from us. We're getting more small arms fire over in off our right. There are a line of date palms. We don't know how far out they are. But, again, the farther out they are the better our chances, because the Kalashnikov's accurate range is about 400 meters and the visibility now is only about 100 or 150 meters. GRANGE: That's right...
RODGERS: But somebody is out there banging away.
GRANGE: Right. And the thing is in this kind of a situation, again, they're going to take advantage of the weather. They're going to try to get in close to you. It's all about security, security, security and those, the cavalry that you're with, those scouts understand that type of fight as well as long range firing with the tanks and Bradleys.
COOPER: Walter, it's Anderson...
RODGERS: That's right, General. But they're pretty impervious. They're inside steel plated vehicles and we're in a thin skin.
GRANGE: Right.
RODGERS: Yes, Anderson? What is it?
COOPER: Walter, the Iraqi troop who snuck up on the position, I believe it was last night you said, was he Iraqi Army? Was he dressed as an irregular? Do you know?
RODGERS: Well, I never saw him, although he had crept to within probably 25 or 30 feet, maybe even closer than that. He was crawling in on his belly. And fortunately the gunner in the tank ahead of us had a 7.62 millimeter machine gun and, more importantly, he had night vision goggles. I didn't have the night vision goggles. He just happened to look down, saw this guy creeping along in the ditch right beside us, stalking either the tank or stalking us.
And in both cases what happened was the -- well, in that case, at least, the machine gunner on the Abrams opened fire and cut this guy down very quickly. What uniform he was wearing I can't tell you. I didn't stop and inspect and I don't think anyone else did. We were under very, very fire even then.
They were firing RPGs in at the 7th Cavalry's convoy as it approached the Euphrates waterways. They were firing in .50 caliber machine guns. Those with the night vision goggles were telling us that they were seeing large flatbed trucks out in the field in the distance and the Iraqis were firing tracer shots in and then the convoy picked them up with the night vision goggles. The convoy returned fire and they were able to take most of them out very quickly because of the night vision goggles, the tracer fire and so forth.
Still, the Army, the 7th Cavalry had to call in Air Force support and then the A-10 Warthogs came in and just chewed up the ground considerably. Then they called an F-16 in with a very powerful bomb and that pretty well silenced the ambush which the Iraqis had set up for us on both sides of the road.
But it was a bit dodgy for a while there because the air was filled with tracers. You could see the Iraqis' incoming tracers deflecting off the steel shells of the Bradleys and tanks in front of us. They'd come in horizontally, the tracers, and then they'd shoot wildly up into the air.
Additionally, as we were going along, the vehicle in front of the Bradley -- or the vehicle in front of the tank we were following had a huge explosion to the right. We thought it was hit. But it was an RPG that just hit, fell short, hit the dirt beside the tank, did no damage at all. But it was an extraordinary bright flash of light.
What we're showing you now is the convoy in which we're riding, heading north, again, in the general direction of north in a very strong sandstorm -- Carol.
COSTELLO: Walter, I just wondered, we're seeing vehicles passing the other way. Some of them look like cars and pickup trucks.
Who are they?
RODGERS: They're Iraqi civilians. It's very difficult to police this road at this point because of the sandstorm. Again, if you imagine yourself standing on a football field, the sandstorm is so dense that if you were on the goal lie you probably couldn't see much beyond mid-field at this point, just yellow sand everywhere.
COSTELLO: Well, how does that...
RODGERS: And so preventing Iraqi vehicles from passing is impossible.
COSTELLO: I was just going to say how bizarre is that to be passing in your car a big convoy of Humvees and tanks?
RODGERS: Well, you have to consider what the options are and the only option for a convoy under fire is to shoot the vehicles, and that's not going to happen. There's no way you can deter them. There's no way you can wave them off short of running them off the road, and that doesn't seem something that the American Army is, should do, and they're not doing it.
GRANGE: Yes, Carol, this is, what Walter is experiencing is very similar to what the Marines are in Basra and the British -- or the British in Basra and the Marines in Nasiriya and other units. I mean you're in a very fluid battlefield that has, is inundated with civilians, what they call civilians on the battlefield, and it's very, very challenging for the troopers to identify friend or foe.
As, looking at your footage, as you're filming the back of the combat vehicle and the Bradley in front of you, the M3 Scout Bradley, you also have vehicles behind you. And what's key about this is, as Walter is describing the fight, the sporadic firing on this convoy is that these vehicles take care of each other. In other words, it's not a vehicle by itself. You have a wing man in another vehicle covering, and Walter knows that because he's embedded with this unit.
He's also embedded with a unit that is in this type of situation. This is a cavalry unit. They're the eyes and ears. And their job is to be in these kind of situations to try to assess what is going on, what's there, friend or foe, the terrain, and report those things back.
So this unit is doing what it's supposed to be doing. There's a lot of uncertainty. It's similar to combat, but even more so for this kind of unit. And Walter is in an unbelievable position, because he's with that kind of -- that outfit doing that type of mission.
COOPER: And how do they make that assessment? I mean, if they see a vehicle approaching them, it looks like a civilian vehicle, you know, there's not a road block up, they're not stopping, they're not checking, they've got to keep moving, how do you assess the security on a rolling situation like that?
GRANGE: Well, they're on a rolling situation like that in a column formation because they're getting to another point where maybe some other elements of these units are. And I don't want to get into that, but it's just not everybody on one road. I mean, there's other roads, there's other formations in other places around there, and we're just looking at one point in time with that organization.
It is hard. I mean, do you blast every civilian vehicle that comes into the area? No. And so they have to show a deadly act or the commander or that crew commander, that vehicle commander, the TC, the track commander, has to make a decision if that's a threat or not. And it's a tough situation, and they're on edge. They're right there under guns, waiting to make a decision, and then they could use those as cover. Absolutely.
COSTELLO: We want to pause for just a moment to remind viewers it's 6:01 Eastern Time. We're beginning, what, our fourth hour, Anderson, on the air. We're looking at the 7th Calvary in central Iraq. Walter Rodgers, our correspondent with them.
And, Walter, explain again for the viewers just joining us how this unit crossed over a bridge over the Euphrates River, and why this is important.
RODGERS: In a phrase, Carol, the unit crossed the bridge literally fighting its way to the bridge last night, and then crossing this morning following an advance unit -- that is Bone Crusher Troop.
How they got there, they were shooting much of the way well into the night and were able finally to cross, but there were substantial Iraqi resistance.
The significance of crossing the Euphrates River for the 7th Calvary is that it now means that you have U.S. Army elements moving north of a line that stretches from An Najaf in the east -- or excuse me -- in the west all the way down the Euphrates River over to Basra area. And the U.S. Army has now strongly sent a signal to Saddam Hussein that the Republican Guard units, the Fedayeen officers he sent to hold the Euphrates line have failed to do so.
The U.S. Army is rolling north now in the general direction of Baghdad, albeit in a very yellow sandstorm, but they have punched through Iraqi resistance -- Carol.
COSTELLO: And, of course, if you're just joining us, Anderson Cooper is along with me, along with General Grange.
Your thoughts, General, on these extraordinary pictures.
GRANGE; Yes, talking to Walter -- and again, you know, we don't need to know what bridge it is on the Euphrates -- but getting across the Euphrates, capturing that bridge intact before it could be detonated with explosives is quite an accomplishment. That is well done by that unit because, again, a key piece of terrain. And how they got to the bridge, you know, if you just think about movies, capturing bridges on "Bridge Too Far," paratroopers, you know, it's how key those positions are.
And so what Walter is experiencing is a very significant accomplishment by coalition forces right there.
COOPER: Walter, are you still hearing gunfire?
RODGERS: It appears to have abated somewhat. The reason for that, Anderson, is we're now back in desert. Before, we were in alluvial farmland. In the desert, there's less cover for the Iraqi soldiers to creep close to the road.
I need to point out again several very important things which the general was touching on. That bridge was heavily packed with explosives. The Iraqis had just moved too slowly in terms of wiring the explosives, but it is entirely possible the United States Army could have been denied access to that bridge. It may have been only a matter of minutes.
The 7th Calvary literally had to run something of a night ambush on both sides of the road last night, crossing one of the canal bridges that preceded the Euphrates River, and that fight was, as I say, more than significant. There were machine gun tracer bullets going out on either side of the road. Every Bradley, every tank was firing. We had other -- the armored vehicles were all firing their 50-caliber machine guns.
We had incoming -- there were rocket-propelled grenades. One sailed just a few feet above our vehicle. We didn't know it at the time, but a soldier in a Bradley told us about it this morning when we were chatting with him. We've seen RPGs exploding up the road in front of us.
Again, no injuries. It's been -- it's truly remarkable. It attests, among other things, to the training of these soldiers. But they literally ran a gauntlet of fire last night, with the help of the U.S. Air Force who brought in some magnificent and spectacular close- air support.
An F-16 dropped a very powerful bomb that was so strong it blew the door of our Humvee closed, and then the A-10s came in, fired their Gatling guns and just chewed up everything on the ground.
So the combined efforts of the Army's artillery, the Army's machine guns, and the Air Force made it possible for the 7th Calvary to punch through in the direction of the Euphrates River bridge. And now the 7th Calvary is across the Euphrates, and again, pushing northward -- Carol, Anderson.
COSTELLO: And, again, Walter, just to make our viewers understand clearly what they are seeing, those vehicles passing the other way are actually Iraqi civilians. And there's really nothing they can do about that as far as the American military is concerned.
RODGERS: That's right. And one of the reasons you're seeing that is that the Army has just taken control of this road. That is to say there are no troops ahead of where we are to screen out any Iraqi civilian vehicles which might want to drive down this road. The Iraqis are driving down a road which to them is normally an open road.
The problem, of course, is they're probably more than a little surprised when they see this huge convoy of scores and scores of Bradley fighting vehicles and main battle tanks and other armored vehicles rolling, again, northward down a highway in a sandstorm. But there's nothing the Army can do about that, because it really doesn't hold this territory. It's just punching a fist through it in the general direction of Baghdad -- Carol.
COOPER: General Grange, these -- Walter Rodgers is with basically the tip of the spear.
GRANGE: He's with the tip of the spear. There are other tips of spears out there.
RODGERS: Did we drop out, Charlie?
COOPER: No, we've still got you, Walter.
COSTELLO: We're still with you, Walter.
COOPER: General Grange is just talking a little bit about your position.
GRANGE: Yes, just he's one of the tips -- one tip of the spear of the coalition forces.
A couple of things he brought up if I may quickly say. One is that the civilians seeing -- the civilian vehicles seeing coalition troops in this area, they understand that this thing is moving along, and important to the coalition effort.
No. 2, though, let's say air would be degraded right now. Helicopter -- attack helicopters, artillery could be called in. I don't want to get into where artillery is located, but artillery could still be called in. Remember, they have the ability to know exactly where they are through instrumentation.
The second thing is the sandstorm in this regard, Walter talked about where they received most of the fire. It's when they got through built-up areas or areas that were cultivated, not in the open desert area where people could get in closer to them to try to negate the long-range capability of these weapon systems which are quite capable, but then the camp has short-range capabilities as well.
So I think those things were all essential to clearly to what he's doing and he's seeing right now.
COSTELLO: Well, here's a question for you, and if I understood Walter correctly, and, Walter, correct me if I'm wrong, you said nobody is ahead of you scouting things out. You're just driving straight ahead. Is that right?
RODGERS: That is correct, Carol. We are the tip of the tip of the spear. Actually, Bone Crusher, another troop, was ahead of us earlier, but they're moving in a slightly different direction. Again, no one is out there -- in other words, the territory on both sides of the road is not held by the 7th Calvary or any U.S. troops at this point. This is a spear moving forward.
Bone Crusher Troop went out earlier. They took the bridge first, Apache followed. I'm riding with the Apache Troop. Bone Crusher is headed towards one objective. Apache is headed towards a slightly different objective -- Carol.
COSTELLO: I guess I was wondering, because the helicopters aren't able to fly ahead of you to inform the troops what's up ahead, and, you know, I guess it's just kind of nerve-wracking, isn't it?
GRANGE: It's nerve-wracking. There's other -- that Calvary -- those Calvary commanders are getting other information, though, from other assets above that can pick up things and report those to the troop that Walter is with. It's just some of the assets are degraded, but other assets can report things they can see regardless of the sandstorm.
COOPER: Walter, there's a question I know you cannot answer, but I'm just curious about your own knowledge. Do you know how far you are from Baghdad? I'm not asking you how far you are. I'm just wondering, do you know how far you are?
RODGERS: I do have a pretty good idea, yes. That is to say, yes, I do know approximately how far we are.
COOPER: OK, the second question is -- and again, I'm not sure if you can answer it -- the bridge you crossed over from the Euphrates, you said it was heavily packed with explosives. You said it was a pretty intense fire fight going across. The Bone Crusher unit went first. You guys I think were in -- were after them. Is that bridge secure? Did -- are there still -- did the 7th Cavalry leave elements behind to maintain the security of the bridge? I don't know if you can say anything on it, but what do you know?
RODGERS: Let me think for a second. I don't think anything is secure in what you would call this hostile environment or nothing's totally secure. Again, we're hearing more small arms fire ahead of us. You can hear the 50 caliber machine gun of a -- of a tank up ahead of us. They are firing out now.
You're -- we're traveling through hostile territory. We're encountering hostile horses (ph). There are small arms units shooting at us and we are traveling in a thick sandstorm. It's a confusing environment. But in terms of security, there's not a lot of security out here.
What's behind us with Crazy Horse troop is yet another element, but they -- I believe they have crossed the bridge, too. It's just a matter of time now.
Off to my right we're hearing a lot of firing. You can also hear the Bradley firing.
COOPER: Want to just...
RODGERS: Back to you -- Anderson.
COOPER: Want to just inform our viewers, we just showed a map on the side of the screen, Walter, we still kept your picture up. But we still -- we showed a map on the side of the screen, there it is, that shows the Euphrates River. I just want to point out that is not -- we are not saying that is the position that Walter and the 7th Cavalry crossed over, very important to make this point. We have in no way said, nor do we know, the positioning that Walter crossed over with it.
COSTELLO: But we can see the tank firing now, Anderson, and hear it clearly.
GRANGE: The Bradley.
COOPER: Bradley, the Bradley.
COSTELLO: Bradley.
RODGERS: I've put on a different microphone to give you more (ph) elements of the bang bang. It's really much louder than you can hear. (UNINTELLIGIBLE) out the window and sit here for a couple of seconds. I'll let you continue talking, and then if the firing continues, you can hear it.
COSTELLO: We're having a little trouble hearing you right now, Walter.
COOPER: I see it.
COSTELLO: OK, he's hanging -- he's hanging his...
COOPER: Microphone.
COSTELLO: ... microphone out the window so that we can better hear what's happening. So let's listen.
RODGERS: (UNINTELLIGIBLE) what I did was change microphones, one which will give you more ambient sound as opposed to the direct sound of my nalition (ph).
Again, we're traveling in a convoy in the general direction north from the Euphrates River. The commander of the 7th Cavalry gave us permission to say that we had crossed the river after indeed that was a feit acompli. That's why we're reporting that. More specifically, however, we're not going to report our location. Again, the permission to report that we had crossed the Euphrates, that is to say 7th Cavalry, came from the -- from the unit commander when we were going over the attack plans late yesterday afternoon -- Carol, Anderson.
COSTELLO: Walter, I wanted -- Walter, I wanted to ask you again about the feeling that the troops that you're with had when they finally got to cross that bridge?
RODGERS: Well I think -- I think they felt there were (UNINTELLIGIBLE) accomplishing their mission. More importantly, however, is the sense of exhilaration these young soldiers had. Most of them their first baptism under fire. I was talking to one young soldier in a tank -- in a tank. He was the tank driver. He stuck his up -- his head up through the tank's hatch, and I asked him how it was? He said I'm doing fine. And then all of a sudden...
COSTELLO: Walter. Walter, do you...
RODGERS: ... his two hands, he's waving a Bible.
COSTELLO: Walter, this is really important information that I think that our audience needs to hear. Can you adjust your microphone so that we can hear not so much of the ambient noise but you, because we really want to know how American troops felt as they finally crossed that bridge?
RODGERS: OK, Carol, how's this, better?
COSTELLO: Perfect. Take it away.
RODGERS: OK. I was mixing with the troops this morning as they were approaching the bridge and talking to them after they'd crossed the canals. This was their first baptism of fire for many of them. And they were excited, especially pleased to have escaped that far unscathed. They came under very heavy fire last night. The 7th Cavalry's convoy was ambushed on both sides of the road. There was a lot of shooting. There were bullets, tracers bouncing off, ricocheting off their -- off their armored vehicles.
One young soldier who was driving a main Bradley tank, very interesting, I asked him how he was doing. And all of a sudden these two hands come up out of the tank and he's holding a Bible in his hand, said I'm doing just fine. Others were laughing, and none of them was particularly boastful. They were all just excited that they had survived the incident, survived their baptism under fire. And they were -- they were pleased that they had been able to shoot back and show -- make a good show of themselves -- Carol.
COSTELLO: And continue their forward movement.
I want to bring General Grange in here right now.
I mean this must be very important for American troops to feel this exhilarated at this point because they've been very frustrated.
GRANGE: Yes, I think what Walter explained just then is the camaraderie, the brotherhood, the brotherhood of war between troopers when they experience that for the first time. It's a sense of fear, obviously. Everyone's as scared. But at the same time, they comes -- they bond so close together because of having experienced that. And you get this sense of joking, because it's almost like a relief from the stress to do that. And this is the human factor of combat that he's reporting on. It's so important for people to understand.
COOPER: Let's talk about that human factor a little bit, and we want Walter Rodgers to stay with -- Walter, stay with us as long as you can as General Grange is talking.
Take us inside that Bradley fighting vehicle that we are looking at and have been looking at now for several minutes. You know the pictures can only tell so much. Tell us a little bit about -- I mean as you are sitting in that thing, as you are looking out, as the sand is surrounding you, you're not sure where you're going, you're not sure who's on either side of you, what is that like?
GRANGE: OK, that's a -- that's a great point and that well deserving its explanation because we're looking at a hunk of steel.
COSTELLO: Yes.
GRANGE: We're looking at a -- at a -- not a -- not a human piece of equipment, you know the human factor of this, so we're going to take you inside of that thing.
First of all, in there you have a guy driving this vehicle that is very tired. These people have been up for days, very tired. He's exhilarated. He's got that surge of energy, so he's alert, but he's -- has this still tired after days and days. Soldiers never get enough sleep. You're always tired.
Second, you've got a vehicle commander that his head is out of the hatch or it's in the hatch, depending on enemy fire, but he'll come in and out of that thing.
COSTELLO: And you can see him right now.
GRANGE: Yes.
COSTELLO: Is that him?
GRANGE: Because he wants situational awareness. Inside they have great equipment to see in the night, the day, but he wants situational awareness and he wants to smell, he wants to hear, he wants to see the battlefield.
COSTELLO: And that would be frightening because there's sniper fire going on.
GRANGE: There's fire going on, but still, to save his vehicle, to save his troopers, he'll do that to get that situational awareness. The other thing is you have a gunner. He's working this 25- millimeter Bush Master canon, a very devastating weapon. Not like as big as a tank round, but it'll go through most of the stuff the Iraqis have out there. It's a tremendous weapon.
COOPER: And are they communicating with each other via radio or are they just talking?
GRANGE: Internal...
COOPER: Are they yelling? Are they...
GRANGE: No, they're talking on intercom to each other inside the Bradley. And then they have the 7.62 machine gun. You've heard that some -- as well. Like a -- the tank is called a coax (ph). It's a 7.62 machine gun as well. And they also fire toes (ph), a missile to take out tanks.
COOPER: Right.
GRANGE: So there's a lot of firepower in those vehicles. And then in the back you have two to three scouts, depends, there may be more in there, I don't know. But when you get to a thing like objective, like the bridge, they would get out to do the searching of the bridge of explosives. They're the ones that say this bridge can carry a tank, this bridge cannot carry a tank we need to go to another bridge. They're the ones that may get out and look for a sniper in a ditch. And...
COSTELLO: Well how cramped is it inside that tank?
GRANGE: It gets cramped because when you put all your equipment -- now you see a lot of stuff hung on the outside of the -- of the Bradley fighting vehicle. It's -- and this is -- it's an infantry fighting vehicle. This version is for scouts. It's called the M3 instead of the M2. But it's -- it is -- it does get cramped. Water, food, ammunition, a lot of extra ammunition.
COSTELLO: And they've been together in there for a very long time. We're just seeing like the tip of the spear here. What does it look like behind Walter, behind that first tank that we're seeing?
GRANGE: I'm hoping a tank or another Bradley behind Walter, I hope.
COOPER: And I -- and I'm sure Walter Rodgers is hoping that as well. He joins us again live on the phone while this is going on.
Walter, we've been continuing to look at your just extraordinary pictures. Give us -- you know we -- General Grange was talking a little bit about the human element which so much of this comes down to. So much of what happens on a battlefield comes down to what is in the mind and the heart of the soldiers and the Marines and the airmen who are fighting. Tell us a little bit about what you have experienced, what you have heard from the others in the 7th Cavalry about their mood, about their morale and about what they see ahead of them.
RODGERS: I will, Anderson, but first, let me give you an idea. I think you've been looking at pictures of the terrain here. We're now going through an Iraqi farming village. And behind any one of those buildings could be an Iraqi soldier with an RPG ready to shoot out at the convoy you now see in front of you.
On any of those building roofs you could have someone with a Kalashnikov rifle. We experienced that very same sort of ambush and screening yesterday morning when we were looking for a route around al-Samowa (ph), and it was found to be impossible because the Iraqis were screening these, screening the civilians, using them as a kind of protection, banking that the Army would not fire on civilian dwellings.
Last night in our fire fight -- and this is an important point to bring up -- last night in our fire fight, as we were driving along, it was total darkness, pitch black, not even starlight because the sandstorm was moving in and there was a haze in the darkness.
COSTELLO: Oh, wait, Walter.
RODGERS: Suddenly one of the -- one of...
COSTELLO: We just passed some civilians. That's what they looked like. I just wondered if you'd seen them, Walter.
RODGERS: Yes, we've seen them along the way. Let me continue because this is a story which involves civilians. There was fire coming at the column last night as we were approaching one of the canal bridges, heavy fire, and it came from a civilian building. Of course, under those circumstances, the Army's convoy is, has permission to return fire. It did.
I have since heard that what happened was an Iraqi soldier moved into a civilian dwelling to shoot at the convoy. There were children in there and, of course, the convoy had no way of knowing that. But one soldier told me this morning that he had heard that when the convoy returned fire, it resulted in the collapse of a wall, killing two small Iraqi children inside.
But here again, this was the direct consequence of the Iraqis taking up position in civilian dwellings -- Anderson, Carol.
COOPER: Walter, and you were talking about those A-10 Warthogs that earlier foiled an Iraqi ambush. What was, when something like, when the Warthog, I mean, comes into play, when it arrives on the scene, what goes through the minds of the people on the ground? Or at least what are they saying to you? Is there a sense of excitement, a sense of relief that they are getting the close air support?
RODGERS: That's an excellent description of it, Anderson, and I was, you know, under fire last night and when everyone saw that Warthog coming in and it lets out a loud belch when the Gatling gun comes off and then you see forward of it and all of a sudden it just chews up the whole ground. It's like a magnificent fireworks display. And, of course, anything there is going to be destroyed and the fires were burning where the Warthogs hit for at least an hour or more afterwards. And there were whole patches of fire, fields of fire out beyond the convoy where the Warthog had strafed with that Gatling gun.
COOPER: General Grange?
GRANGE: Yes...
RODGERS: You asked earlier, Anderson, about the move...
COOPER: Go ahead, Walter.
RODGERS: You had asked earlier about the troops. What we have seen here is these soldiers sort of pitting themselves against, in combat, and feeling rather pleased with themselves that they didn't flinch. Everyone of them admitted that he was scared and any intelligent soldier would admit that he was scared, but they survived the challenge of fear, they fired their guns, the column maintained its position and it punched on through.
So they were very pleased with themselves in that sense. And anyone who's ever been in combat will recognize this feeling. But each of them had his own hair raising tale to tell. One was bragging about the machine gunner, actually, an Air Force enlisted man who was flying in the tactical air command post, which is to say, the armored vehicle which calls in the air strikes, and they were bragging about him because he was up there with his .50 caliber machine gun in the dark, very little armor around him as he was outside the turret, and he was banging away the whole time.
I went up to that, I went up to the machine gunner from the Air Force Tactical Air Command vehicle and I said to him how did you do last night? And he held up three fingers, unmeaning he killed three of the Iraqis -- Anderson.
COOPER: General, you had a comment on that.
GRANGE: Yes, Walter's brought up three great points, real briefly. One, talking about the combat air controller who calls in the air strikes in support of this cavalry unit is a great example of individual jointness on the battlefield, the relationship between, in this case, the Air Force and the Army with this unit. And then the ability to participate in the situation as it's encountered. In other words, here's a fire fight, small arms, the guy's job is working radios, calling in air strikes. Yet he grabbed the machine gun to, because he's part of this unit. He's part of this team. And he feels that. And that's very important.
The other thing he talked about is the feeling of the A-10 coming in and expending ammunition on any positions. There's a couple things, sights and sounds that someone in combat loves. One is close air support. When you bring in the close air support and you hear it crackling on the radio, the guy's call sign, this is Bandit 2, coming in hot, and you hear the rounds leaving the aircraft and then impacting on the ground or an enemy target, the sense of relief, the sense of power that your force is applying and its protection and support of you is just, it's so relieving it just really gets -- it just, it's great, I can tell you that.
COOPER: And you know, you've been in quite a few of those situations.
GRANGE: A few of those. And the other is that -- we haven't talked about it, maybe Walter has a story or two -- and the other sight and someone you always want around you is the medics, you know, the medical personnel. In Vietnam they called them the boxy (ph). That's for, you know, Vietnamese for the doctor. You always sit, you know, hear in movies that "Medic! Medic!" You always hear those stories and you want those guys around you because if you're hurt or something happens to you or one of your friends, they're very important people.
COSTELLO: OK, Walter, comment on that aspect of this operation.
COOPER: The medic.
RODGERS: Well, the General is absolutely right. But then Generals always are. But to me it's this, when I saw those A-10s coming in, when I saw the A-10s coming in chewing up the ground, my one word answer was amen. Every one of us was extraordinarily relieved because imagine looking out into total darkness in an agricultural area. You can't see, oh, more than 40 or 50 meters without night vision goggles. And you know there are people out there. We had no idea how many people were out there, but it turned out to be several hundred, 300, 400 Iraqi dismounts -- that's infantry soldiers -- were out there shooting at the 7th Cavalry's convoy last night.
And so, you know, they were more than pleased with that.
What was your other point, General?
GRANGE: Well, did you have any experiences yet on medics, the use of medical personnel to support any of your people?
RODGERS: Well, lest I wax theological before the chaplain gave us his best wishes several days ago, before we crossed from Kuwait into Iraq, the chaplain, Steve Baloug (ph), an Episcopal minister, told a very large volunteer audience, god is watching over you. And until this last skirmish, this unit has been extraordinarily fortunate. The only injury has been one soldier who had a hatch close, a Bradley hatch close on his hand.
Unless we took something in the past half hour which we haven't had a chance to check on, there have been no wounded and this convoy is extraordinarily fortunate, moving through hostile territory, encountering hostile forces while the tank, the tanks and the Bradleys have the advantage of firepower and air support.
You have to remember that the enemy always has a vote on the battlefield and that's what we're seeing here today. The Iraqis are running up, taking advantage of the sandstorm, dashing up, firing in the direction of the convoy. Again, we don't know whether anyone was hit. They haven't fired much big that could take out a Bradley or a tank this morning. That is the largest thing we've heard coming in the direction of the convoy was mortars. But they were falling very close to us. One just after we got off the Euphrates River crossing bridge, there were mortar fragments flying upwards into the palm fronds above. And it sounded like rain, except it wasn't coming down, it was going up.
So this is still a dodgy situation -- Carol, Anderson.
GRANGE: Yes, Walter, one thing you said there, I think it's important for everybody to understand that regardless of the weather that your force that you're participating in, regardless of that weather, the word mutual support, I can assure you, and I'm sure that you feel this way now that you've been embedded in that unit for so long, that regardless of that weather, if the situation gets grim, because of the feeling of mutual support, that if pilots are asked to provide anything to you in those conditions, they'll be there. And you know that.
RODGERS: Well, that's true, general. The only problem is that the sandstorm has enabled the Iraqi snipers to get closer to the road than they normally would be. And, in fact, if the Air Force were called in, they would be strafing close to our position on the road even as we move along, simply because the sandstorm is acting as a smokescreen, which is giving the Iraqis a fair amount of tactical advantage, at least in terms of small arms fire -- Anderson.
GRANGE: No, I understand that, and again...
RODGERS: Carol.
GRANGE: ... the snipers is the -- of course, the snipers and anybody getting close like that. But I'm talking about if you encounter a larger force, they have other capabilities to drop stuff on those and take them down.
And you also use the great word/phrase that they use in military war fighters all of the time, and you're really getting into this stuff when you said "the enemy has a vote." You're starting to really pick up some of these key phrases that all of the military leadership uses in combat.
COOPER: What do they mean by that?
COSTELLO: Well, let me interrupt everyone for just a second to do a time check. It's 6:30 Eastern Time if you're just joining us, and we want to tell our viewers what's happening right now.
You're taking a look at the 7th Calvary. They're in central Iraq now. The important thing to keep in mind here is that they have finally been able to cross the Euphrates River using one of those bridges. The bridge was loaded heavily with explosives, but yet they're on their way towards Baghdad, we presume.
As you can see, a sandstorm is going on right now, which is making things rather dangerous for the troops. And, Walter, I wanted to talk, too, about the surreal nature of passing through what essentially are neighborhoods on the way to Baghdad.
RODGERS: Well, I think you find that almost in any war now. It was certainly the case in Vietnam. It was certainly the case in the Middle East, all of the Middle Eastern wars I've covered. Certainly the case in Chechnya.
Increasingly, you find that the hostile forces will seek cover, seek protection, use civilian populations to screen their own maneuvers and to give themselves some shield from the larger fire power, in this case of the U.S. Army 7th Calvary. But you do see problems with the civilian population.
Let me give you an example. We were going through a village late last night. An elderly Arab came out in one of his long dresses, and he is said to have had a rifle in his hands, and he started waving it to soldiers. Now, you have to ask yourself, and this is what every soldier who saw him was confronted with. Here you have a man appearing to be friendly, he's got a rifle in his hands. Is he the village elder saying, here, follow me, I'll show you a way through the village? Or is he someone who is sympathetic to the Iraqi regime in Baghdad saying, here, follow me, I'm going to lead you into an ambush?
This is a very, very complicated situation, and every soldier with his finger on a trigger has to make instantaneous and wise and correct decisions; otherwise, we face tragedies all along this road -- Carol, Anderson.
COSTELLO: So, Walter, what happened to the elderly man, then, who was waving the rifle?
RODGERS: I got that story from soldiers forward in the column. I do not believe he was fired upon. I also am sure he was not followed.
It's just one of those situations where you don't know. I had a situation yesterday morning where a young Iraqi fellow comes up to me and starts saying, "Hello," and I spoke to him in a few phrases of Arabic. He spoke back to me, and said, "I speak English." I chatted him up. He wanted to denounce Saddam Hussein to me. He denounced Saddam right and left, and of course, as a reporter, you don't know whether he's telling the truth or not.
And then he wanted to go over to a Bradley fighting vehicle just a few meters away, like 20 meters away. And I prevented him physically from going over there, because I knew if he approached the vehicle, he was going to get -- he was going to be told to stop. And if he kept approaching, he would be shot, because Saddam Hussein has said he will use suicide bombers to stop the Americans. I didn't put my hands on the guy's hip to see if he had dynamite, but that was a very real possibility. Was this young Arab civilian anything more or less than he appeared to be?
I can tell you that within seconds after that, probably less than five minutes actually, within less than five minutes after that, suddenly they were firing on us, the Iraqi army irregulars were firing on our column with rocket-propelled grenades, small arms fire. We dove to our vehicle and drove away.
This is a situation you encounter in almost any conflict anywhere in the world now. Certainly the Russians are encountering this in Chechnya. You just don't know whether these civilians are what they appear to be or not -- Carol, Anderson.
COSTELLO: Yes, and the other thing we've been seeing, Walter, as you're bringing us these extraordinary pictures, a short time ago we were actually seeing civilian vehicles passing the other way, because you're literally on a roadway through central Iraq.
RODGERS: Well, that's true, but this is their highway. Having said that, this is also the highway the 7th Calvary has elected to use as it punches north of the Euphrates River in the general direction of Baghdad. Having said that, there are many Iraqis who normally would be driving this road, or a few because there's sandstorm.
But there have been a few civilian vehicles, and they just drive widely by with their lights on, because it is a sandstorm. And it's up to the individuals in each of those Bradley fighting vehicles and tanks to make a prudent and calculated decision as to whether these civilians are what they appear to be, or whether they're a hostile force using a civilian car to get close and take a couple of shots at the Calvary -- Carol, Anderson.
COOPER: Walter, it's Anderson. I want to just mention something. CNN's Gary Striker, who is embedded with troops on the USS Roosevelt, was reporting earlier that there's going to be something of a shift in the use of aircraft so far, sort of moving away from bombing missions and more into flying into air interdiction zones and providing that close air support to ground troops that we had been talking about just a short time ago.
And I'm interested to know, actually from General Grange, if that is in fact the case, if we're going to be seeing less sort of bombing runs and more taking out targets of opportunity, close air support of troops. Do you think that's -- is it fair to say that that is because they no longer are finding that they have already hit the positions they had wanted to? Or that something has shifted in the military campaign, in the military strategy that they feel now, OK, it's more important to go to close air support?
GRANGE: Yes, they're going to continue to hit the operational- level targets. In other words, ministries of defense, airfields, those types of things if need be. But these targets of opportunity, what that means is as things are reported on the battle field, either from the Calvary unit that we're watching right here, or other units, or let's say a Predator, or signals intercept, or whatever the case may be, these orbiting strike aircraft will then swoop in and hit those targets that emerge on a battle field as it's developing. So that's the targets of opportunity.
COOPER: So in a sense, and correct me if I'm wrong, General Grange, there will be at all times planes just sort of flying around, I guess, in these area interdiction zones, who can be called upon at any time by the people traveling with Walter, by the Air Force liaison officer who calls in the close air support, and they just -- they leave their interdiction zone and just go in...
(CROSSTALK)
GRANGE: Yes, there are planes interdicting targets of maybe enemy forces moving, but the close air support package is up there right now. Walter might not know that, and maybe he does, but it's up there. And if they are needed and they can get in, and like you said, the sandstorm (UNINTELLIGIBLE) get in the gate using 30mm strafing runs. But they may be able to drop a bomb on, let's say, buildings in a village that he passes through that they're taking fire from, as an example, or the far side of a bridge. They can do that on a moment's notice.
COOPER: OK, now, Walter, just for the viewers, both here in the United States and internationally who are watching this, you are in a Humvee. You are shooting -- the cameraman is shooting outside I imagine the front windshield of the Humvee. That's a Bradley fighting vehicle ahead of you. You have been moving really nonstop, and then we have sporadically being hearing small arms fire from either side of the road.
Tell us just a little bit, Walter. It seems that whatever small arms fire you are encountering, it does not seem to be stopping the forward movement of the 7th Calvary.
RODGERS: It doesn't, but as we have been pointing out all morning in this broadcast, there are Iraqi civilian vehicles traveling on the other side of the road. And I should point out that while the Calvary is traveling northward on a deliberate pace, the Iraqi civilian vehicles hearing those small arms shots, that is AK-47s and perhaps light machine guns, they're driving like 60 to get out of the way, because imagine driving down a highway and knowing people are shooting across that highway at the 7th Calvary's convoy.
Again, it has not slowed the progress of the convoy. In a situation like this, there isn't much you can do, except go forward, at least under these weather conditions.
If I might add something to what General Grange was saying on Gary Striker's comments. What Gary is describing is precisely what we anticipate will happen. That is to say a different bombing function for the Air Force and Navy jets, which will be flying these missions. The reason being that as the Army and the Marines and other units push further towards Baghdad, the Iraqi forces, particularly the Republican Guard, will draw in a tighter circle.
Those are extraordinary professional soldiers, and it's going to be a force-on-force situation in which this armor goes up against the Iraqi armor. Those are very professional soldiers there, capable of putting up a very, very good fight, and the Air Force, the Navy jets as well, are all going to be needed to punish those Iraqi divisions which are dug in at this point -- Anderson, Carol. COSTELLO: Walter, this is Carol Costello talking to you again. I think that maybe this is the appropriate time to talk about this supposed red line around Baghdad as you're racing ever faster towards that. Can you tell us at all what the troops have been told about that?
RODGERS: I don't think the troops have been told much by way of specifics on what you call the red line around Baghdad. And I would be a little careful in describing us as racing toward Baghdad. We are moving northward in that general direction, but this is not going to be a sudden fist which appears in the face of the Iraqi units around Baghdad. Remember there's -- this is a very coordinated attack on all fronts.
We have Army brigades to our left that is to the west. We have, I believe, Army brigades to the east and southeast. We have U.S. Marines and British forces to the southeast. This unit is not on a race to beat everyone else to Baghdad. It would never do that sort of thing.
What it's doing is moving deliberately northward along a highway in the general direction of Baghdad. It is not about to knock on the gates of Baghdad, at least not just yet, because that's not its mission. It is probing ahead, looking for Iraqi strengths and weaknesses and radioing back to the other units which may be following on. But be careful about suggesting that this unit is rolling on to Baghdad, because it isn't really quite the military situation. I can't go into more detail. But what I can say is it is moving deliberately in that direction. But remember, we have been moving in that direction for several days and sometimes we're told to pause and stop and we sit in an attack position and wait for other units to leapfrog around us, above us, on either side of us.
So the important thing is that the elements of the 7th Cavalry did increase -- did indeed cross the Euphrates River this morning and that means that Saddam's grip on southern Iraq is greatly weakened. You recall he sent his elite troops down there, the Fedayeen commanders, plus his Republican Guard to hold cities like Al Najaf (ph) and Al Salman (ph) where we had been bogged down and down to Nasiriya and over to Basra. He gave orders that that Euphrates River line should be held and the 7th Cavalry has indeed punched through it. But we're still a good distance from Baghdad.
And as battlefield commanders, I hope General Grange can help me on this, as any battlefield commander will tell you, he'll send a unit forward just so far, hold that and then leapfrog other units to the east or west to move them forward, perhaps even ahead of us -- Carol.
ANDERSON COOPER, CNN ANCHOR: General Grange.
COSTELLO: General Grange.
BRIG. GEN. DAVID GRANGE, U.S. ARMY (RET.): Yes, what Walter is saying, it goes back to mutual support. You know always, even though this is the eyes and ears of that ground force, that in the west moving north, this is the eyes and ears. They're not moving up to attack Baghdad, they're the eyes and the ears, they're always going to have mutual support from other ground units or air units.
COOPER: And they cannot allow the fact that there are snipers or maybe snipers on either side of them taking shots at them, they can't allow that to stop them.
GRANGE: It's not effective enemy force being applied to their mission, so that's exactly right. They have a mission to go. They have certain objectives they're going to move to for that particular day or night or that phase of movement and that'll be reported back. And so they're the eyes and ears, and -- but it's -- it has to have a robust cap -- calm (ph). There we see an M1 Abrams tank, and you see that -- this reconnaissance element also has some very robust fire power along with it.
COOPER: OK, Walter, looks like you've stopped. What's going on?
RODGERS: Well this is the -- this is the way we leapfrog forward. And as I say, 7th Cavalry has taken a position here. The visibility is extraordinarily poor. They're not sure of what the road condition is ahead. For the past three-quarters of an hour or more they've taken mortar fire very close to the convoy, very close to us in our vehicle. They've taken rifle fire as well. We've all been shot at. And so they're pausing briefly now so they can assess the situation as best they can with visibility limited to no more than a 150 meters, a football field and a half -- Carol, Anderson.
COOPER: All right.
COSTELLO: We want to talk -- we want to talk more about the Abrams tank that we just mentioned. Want to bring the General in here to explain more about this particular tank.
GRANGE: Yes, the Abrams tank, it's the best tank in the battlefield. And I'm not saying that because I'm an American citizen, it definitely is. The British have a great tank, the Chieftain, the Germans, the Leopard, but this Abrams tank, a lot of the things that are being fired at Walter's column cannot penetrate that tank.
Does it have some vulnerabilities? Yes, I won't go into them. But the firing he's receiving will not hurt that tank. So right now that's not the Abrams tank that we're looking at right there, that's a -- that's a control vehicle.
But the Abrams tank is nothing that the Republican Guard division where they're going to. The way where they're -- it's located where they're headed can stop that Abrams tank at a distance or without multiple enemy weapons against it.
COOPER: OK.
COSTELLO: It was interesting when you were describing before about the men inside the tank and the human element of this.
GRANGE: Right.
COSTELLO: So how -- describe to us what the inside... GRANGE: Yes.
COSTELLO: ... of this Abrams tank...
GRANGE: Yes.
COSTELLO: ... looks like.
GRANGE: The inside of the Abrams tank is a four-man crew. Again, you have a driver. You have a loader loading the tank ammunition. You have a tank commander in the tank as well. And you have a gunner. And so this -- so it's a four-man crew. It has a 120 millimeter tank round which will kill any tank on a battlefield, any tank, a greater distance than any tank on the battlefield.
COOPER: All right.
COSTELLO: Understand.
COOPER: Walter, just so you know what we're going to do, we're going to get -- let you take a breather for just a minute or so. We're going to continue on your picture on the side of the screen, but we're just going to let our viewers get an update of all the latest developments at this hour. So, Walter, we'll come back to you probably in about a minute or two.
And here are the latest developments at this hour. In another location, a success for coalition forces. A British commander says the Iraqi port city of Umm Qasr has finally been secured. He also says aid could start flowing through the port within 48 hours.
Moving on to Basra where coalition forces are changing their strategy. Senior British military officials say the city has now become a -- quote -- "legitimate military target." They want to use the city as a point of entry for humanitarian aid. Basra residents have been without water and electricity for days.
Also, keep staying in southern Iraq, U.S. Marines are facing intense fighting again in Nasiriya. Two vehicles they were using got stuck in the mud, were abandoned, four others were destroyed by Iraqis. And a U.S. warplane hit another vehicle. No word yet on any possible injuries.
Iraq's Information Minister vows coalition forces are in for some shocking surprises from Iraqi fighters, in his words. He ridiculed the "Shock and Awe" bombing campaign saying the U.S. was dropping bombs that only made a loud noise in an attempt to scare Iraqis. The official said Iraqi soldiers returned coalition tactics against them.
And that's an update of what's going on at this hour.
We go back now to Walter Rodgers who is with the 7th Cavalry. We have been following Walter for over an -- for just about an hour now.
Walter, what's going on where you are? RODGERS: Anderson, the story remains the same here, but an important one that story is that elements of the U.S. Army's 7th Cavalry have crossed the Euphrates River within the past several hours. That means they have moved north of the Euphrates River defense line which Saddam Hussein's forces had more or less erected. It was not an easy crossing. They tried several days ago to cross in Ala Samwa (ph) but they were thwarted there. That's where the 7th Cavalry got bogged down. So a diversionary route was planned.
The diversionary route was taken. The Marines had to fight their way -- excuse me, the 7th Cavalry had to fight their way up to the canal bridges in a very forbidding fire fight last night. All vehicles coming under fire, putting out great cover fire as they tried to move forward. The Air Force had to be called in. Eventually the Iraqi ambush was quelled and then a canal bridge crossing was made.
And this morning the 7th Cavalry, with the help of a Bone Crusher troop, that's one of the three troops in this, punched across one of the Euphrates River's bridges. The engineers were called up. They discovered that the bridge had been heavily laced with explosives. The Iraqis did not have time to wire the explosives so, of course, the engineers dismantled that. That enabled Apache troop to come up.
But it has been a bit of a fight the entire way. When our vehicle was coming off the bridge, we could hear mortars falling to our left. We took a sharp left turn, another mortar fell very close to us. So close that you could hear the shrapnel from the mortar shell exploding upward into the palm fronds above it. And then small arms fire for the last hour or so pretty much -- Anderson.
COSTELLO: Walter. Walter, I could interrupt you. This is Carol again, interrupt you for just a second. We just saw a pickup truck pass that Bradley tank. It was a civilian pickup truck, because of course they're on a roadway there. And we saw the tank's -- the Bradley's, what do you call it,...
GRANGE: Bradley.
COSTELLO: ...the gun, the turret...
GRANGE: Yes.
COSTELLO: ... follow that pickup truck as it went by.
RODGERS: Well, that's always perhaps prudent or we don't know as he was deliberately following. He's constantly swinging that turret in a defensive, threatening mode to anything which might threaten his vehicle. I don't know as he was actually taking aim on that pickup truck. I can tell you all the civilian vehicles we see driving down this road are driving much more quickly than normal, especially through that canyon of small arms fire through which we just passed.
Every one of the drivers in the thin skinned vehicles, bus drivers, the taxi drivers and so forth, have been hearing that small arms fire, know that it's heading in the direction of the U.S. convoy. They also know that they're traveling down the same road so that accelerate hits the metal real fast and the Iraqis race on past as quickly as they can to get out of the line of fire, which has been directed at this convoy, small arms fire, snipers and so forth, oh, for the past hour or so -- Carol, Anderson.
COSTELLO: General, you saw what I saw. You're seeing it again. Describe in detail more of what we're seeing as civilian vehicles pass by these tanks.
GRANGE: Well, I think the point that -- I'm glad you brought that up about the gun turret, the .25 millimeter gun turret focusing on oncoming civilian vehicle. The gun turned. This is an example of discipline. This is an example of people not being overly exited, engage in something where it's not really a threat. And this is, these decisions on discipline have to be made in a second or two. In other words, the troop is disciplined enough not to engage something that's not a threat. But he may not know that until the last second.
And, so, yes, he's ready to fire, but he's disciplined enough not to fire if he doesn't have to.
COOPER: General Grange, I just want to point out to our viewers, we are going to put on the side of the screen another picture from Baghdad, where sandstorms -- there is also a sandstorm. We're about to bring that up. We're not going to go away from Walter Rodgers. We just want to bring it up to show the -- we've lost the picture. As soon as we get it back, we'll show you. Apparently a sandstorm hitting Baghdad.
COSTELLO: Yes, it's been nasty weather in much of Iraq.
COOPER: Yes.
COSTELLO: Also in Nasiriya, where an intense sandstorm and a rainstorm was going on at the same time.
COOPER: General, I just want to continue with you on that discipline you talked about, General Grange. I mean the few times I've been in sort of combat environments, the adrenaline that is pumping is extraordinary. And I suppose the more you are in it, the less that happens.
But how do you learn that discipline? I mean how do you learn -- I mean the person who is in that Bradley fighting vehicle that we are looking at right now that Walter Rodgers's cameraman is taking a picture of who has not slept, as he said, for hours or possibly days...
COSTELLO: For days.
COOPER: ... who is excited, who is hot, who is tired, how do you get that discipline?
GRANGE: OK. Discipline comes from two things, one, a unit that has the baseline value, norms, that value system or a creed or something that every soldier, Marine, airman, whatever, lives by. In other words, it's more important than you yourself, your self- interests. Second, training. Training and training and training, good training, and no one trains more than an American unit.
COSTELLO: We want to pause for a just a moment and listen.
GRANGE: They're in a fire fight (UNINTELLIGIBLE).
COOPER: Walter, if you can, feel free to tell us what's going on.
RODGERS: Well, we're still watching that Bradley fighting vehicle turret swing. I should tell you, that's not your ordinary Bradley. That's a fire control vehicle. I know the officer on board. I believe it's Lieutenant Wade (ph). And they are swinging that turret constantly because we're in a very harsh and difficult environment for combat or much else where. The sandstorm you've been mentioning greatly limits the visibility for the gunners aboard any of these vehicles, the tanks or the M-113s or, again, the Bradleys.
In other words, the Iraqis could be out in those fields and could be crawling up. Here's a time when night vision goggles don't help you and it's very difficult to see because the sand and the grit is constantly in your eyes. So it's possible for an Iraqi to creep on his belly through these alluvial fields, these agricultural fields, and come within, oh, 100 yards of that vehicle or with, perhaps even something as large as a rocket propelled grenade, which wouldn't do much damage to the Bradleys or the tanks, but any thin skinned vehicle like the one we're riding in would be in a sorry predicament -- Anderson, Carol.
COSTELLO: General, you wanted to add something?
GRANGE: Well, I wanted to finish that one comment, question that Anderson brought up, because it's extremely important. The discipline in a unit like this and our coalition forces like British units, and I've trained with the British. They have the same philosophy of discipline. That's not forced discipline. That's ingrained discipline and tried in a unit. Everybody wants to perform to a certain standard, totally different than the Iraqi Army discipline, which is forced by fear, fear from within their own leadership.
So here the discipline is expressed by not only the colonel in charge of this unit, but also the private that may be the driver or the gunner of that Bradley. So the discipline is self-discipline instilled by a sense of pride and training regimen in U.S. and British units. Totally different than the discipline in the Iraqi Army.
COSTELLO: Well, tell us about the discipline within the Iraqi Army and why that might break down, then.
GRANGE: It will break down. When the chips get down, when you have a situation where you have civilians on the battlefield, when you have uncertainty, when you have the presence of leadership being forced by the Fedayeen or other Gestapo type beds that are forcing these units to do things, as soon as that disappears, they just fall apart.
COOPER: And I think the comment that a lot of observers have been making over the last several days, really, has been that we see the difference between the Iraqi Army and the Fedayeen fighter, the so-called Fedayeen fighters or the Baath Party officials who have been sent down, that there is the sense among those fighters, I would seem, that they no other choice, that they have, that their days are numbered and therefore they might as well fight to the end.
GRANGE: Right, exactly. Exactly. Some people will not surrender because they know they have no future because the people that they're suppressing will get them at the end of the war.
COOPER: I should just very quickly bring in, again, we mentioned that sandstorm that we were told about in Baghdad. We now have that picture up. We're going to show it, I believe, on the left hand side of the screen. We're staying with Walter Rodgers, staying with his pictures.
COSTELLO: Yes, and, Walter, as we're looking at these pictures of Baghdad, describe for us again what being in a sandstorm like this is like.
RODGERS: For the unit, it's very difficult to describe. There's dust in your mouth. No matter, it's almost like your eyes run out of liquid to rinse the dirt and grit out of your eyes. You could put on a pair of goggles. We're all using ski goggles, except that within a matter of minutes they fog up so the goggles become virtually useless.
The camera's lens has to be cleaned constantly and every one of the pieces or armament aboard those tanks will have to be cleaned at the next nearest opportunity, because the sand and grit clog the weapons, particularly the M-16 rifles, and also the larger weapons.
So it's like a blizzard, except the darned stuff doesn't melt -- Carol.
COSTELLO: Yes, General Grange is nodding his head in agreement with you. Add to that.
GRANGE: Yes, I just wanted to say, Walter, and I don't want you to give too personal of an answer, but I'm sure there's sand in everything.
RODGERS: Well, let's start with the orifices.
COOPER: No, please, let's not.
RODGERS: We use cotton swabs all day long.
COSTELLO: Oh, my.
COOPER: Let's...
RODGERS: We use cotton swabs all day long. We have to use the cotton swabs to clear our ears out of dirt and grit. So bad is the dirt and grit in our ears, that we can't even get the IFB plug in our ears without often digging it out. Your eyes, as I say, you try so hard to just blink your eyes and wash the sand and grit out of your eyes that they, it's like running out of windshield wiper fluid on your automobile. You're just bone dry. And then there's nothing you can do.
You wish you had eye wash. There's neither time nor place for that here. And I think that'll, that's as far as I'll take that answer.
COSTELLO: Well, it must be hard to breathe, too, Walter.
RODGERS: It is. And you wonder about the long-term damage to the people of the deserts, the nomadic peoples like the Bedouins. Our driver...
COSTELLO: We have to interrupt you, Walter.
RODGERS: ... Paul Jordan is...
COSTELLO: Walter Rodgers, I'm sorry, we have to interrupt you because we have to begin our next hour.
You're going to stay with us, though, and continue this.
Right now, though, we want to toss to Leon Harris.
LEON HARRIS, CNN ANCHOR: Good morning, folks.
Yes, Leon Harris here in the CNN newsroom and watching these fascinating pictures and listening to these reports coming in from Walter. Talk about a front line image there.
Here now is just what we're following here this morning. Paula Zahn will be up here in just a moment. But first, we want to give you what's happening this hour as long as we continue to watch these pictures coming in from Walter's location with the 3-7th.
And as we've been seeing from these pictures, the U.S. Army's 3- 7th Calvary is crossing or has crossed the Euphrates River in central Iraq and it's advancing north in the general direction of Baghdad now. And our Walter Rodgers, who you hear in the background right there, he's embedded with the Calvary and he says that U.S. forces are using the cover of a blinding sandstorm to escape Iraqi gunfire. And Iraqis are using that sandstorm for cover to execute that gunfire, as well.
Now, coalition aircraft bombarded targets in the key northern city of Mosul for a fourth straight night.
Our Ben Wedeman is about 30 miles east of Mosul and he described it as the most violent night of bombing he's seen since he's been there.
Well, coalition forces have changed their strategy in the key southern city of Basra. British military officials say allied troops are treating the city now as a legitimate military target now that Iraqi forces have pulled back into the town, possibly to engage troops in urban warfare inside the city.
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CAROL COSTELLO, CNN ANCHOR: OK, we have lost Bill Hemmer now because of the weather in Kuwait. Apparently there's a fierce sandstorm going on, not only in Kuwait, but also in parts of Iraq, but that has not stopped the 7th Cavalry.
Central Iraq right now, Walter Rodgers.
I understand you are on the move, but it looks pretty nasty there, too.
WALTER RODGERS, CNN CORRESPONDENT: That's right, Carol, still elements of the U.S. Army's 7th Cavalry have now successfully fought their way across the Euphrates River. Senior officers in the unit here believe that Saddam's regime is now on the verge of losing all of southern Iraq from -- on the Annasar (ph) eastward to Basra.
The 7th crossed just a few hours ago. A Bone Crusher troop was the first to get across the Euphrates. It was followed by the Apache troop with which I am riding.
You can see that the -- there's a terrible sandstorm. Actually, that may have facilitated our crossing because we came under some reasonably serious mortar fire when we crossed the Euphrates River Bridge. Also, 50 caliber machine guns, and I can hear someone banging away at us off to the right with an AK-47 now. Still, the sandstorm has perhaps facilitated our crossing.
As I say, we are passing through a sandstorm now. You can hear shooting off to the left. We are moving as discreetly as we can. We're not sure if the Bradley's firing back at them. But in any event, we've had to travel through a fair amount of small arms fire and mortars to cross the Euphrates River. Still, major elements of the 7th Cavalry have fought their way across the Euphrates, and even that was not difficult.
The fight to the Euphrates the previous evening, yesterday evening, was very, very severe. We were in a convoy. We took rocket- propelled grenades. We took small arms fire. Again, all around us, even now, I'm hearing small arms fire. The sandstorm is also allowing the Iraqis to come up close to the road and it's difficult for the Bradleys and their larger guns to see them -- Carol.
COSTELLO: Walter, and you tell me when you have to go and we'll leave you immediately, but I just wondered what it must have felt like to finally get across that bridge over the Euphrates River?
RODGERS: Well it wasn't quite the relief you would think it was because we no sooner got across the bridge than mortars started falling around us. I heard a 50 caliber machine gun and I could heard when the mortars fell, the shrapnel going up in the date palms (ph) above us. It sounded like rain, of course, except the shrapnel goes upward.
We had a very, very serious fight last night, and we're extraordinarily fortunate -- more mortars behind us, perhaps you can hear them.
COSTELLO: I can hear them. I want to -- I want to say...
RODGERS: In any event,...
COSTELLO: Go ahead -- Walter.
RODGERS: In any event, last night we had a rocket-propelled grenade go right over the top of the CNN van we're riding in. And when my cameraman and I were in the dark standing outside just outside the vehicle, we heard a burst of machine gun fire from the tank in front of us. And an Iraqi soldier had crept up on his belly to the drainage ditch just beside us and was about to open up with an AK-47. Again, fortunately for the machine gunner, the gunner in the tank in front of us, fortunately for us, he was alert. He had his night vision goggles on, and they popped him off real fast -- Carol.
COSTELLO: I'd like to say a big welcome to our international viewers. We have joined CNN International right now, Walter. And you've just said a short time ago that coalition forces have now taken control of southern Iraq. Please say that again because that is a bit of positive news...
RODGERS: No.
COSTELLO: Go ahead, you did not say that. Please clarify then.
RODGERS: What I -- what I said was that elements of the 7th Cavalry have moved across the Euphrates River. They took a bridge. As they went across the bridge, the engineers discovered that it had heavy explosive charges on it but the Iraqis had not had time to rig the charges, therefore the 7th Cavalry was able to move across.
What I said was that a senior officer in the 7th Cavalry says this is a terribly important development because what it means is that Saddam Hussein is now in danger of losing all of southern Iraq, especially with the 7th Cavalry north of the Euphrates River now. And the line he drew was from Annasar in the northeast of where we are all the way over to Basra in the southeast. The indications are that the 7th Cavalry moving up is going to be supported followed on its flanks by other units. And the south of the country is in jeopardy, at least in terms of the regime of Saddam Hussein -- Carol.
COSTELLO: Understand.
Anderson Cooper is going to join us right now. He has a few questions for you, Walter. ANDERSON COOPER, CNN ANCHOR: Walter, the image we're looking at, can you describe to us what it is, and obviously there is a sandstorm going on? What sort of an impact, just for our international viewers who have just joined us, what sort of an impact has that had on the 7th Cavalry in the last several hours?
RODGERS: It's been both positive and negative. When we crossed the Euphrates River on a bridge, the sandstorm tended to screen us from -- tended to screen us. A lot of small arms fire off to the right there. They're shooting -- they're right up by the road. We're within 20 meters of people who are shooting at us. The reason you can't hear it is we're using a lip mike to reduce the automobile noise, but it's very, very loud next to us. The sandstorm is also allowing these Iraqi snipers to come right up next to the road where we are now -- Anderson.
COSTELLO: And Walter -- this is Carol Costello again.
We want to bring in General Grange right now to help us along in what we're seeing.
And as Walter said, General -- are you miked up yet or not?
COOPER: Walter, can you actually see these snipers?
RODGERS: I'm trying real hard not to stick my head out, General.
BRIG. GEN. DAVID GRANGE, CNN MILITARY ANALYST: I didn't ask you.
RODGERS: The visibility here is probably no more than 75 meters. But I can hear them, I can hear them literally in the drainage ditch below me.
COSTELLO: General, you are...
RODGERS: Now, is that our .50 call or theirs? Oh, that's our .50 cal, the unit behind us, the either Bradley, I think it's a Bradley, is firing a .50 -- or maybe it's a, they would have a .25 millimeter machine gun or Gatling gun. They're shooting out now in the direction to which the snipers were coming.
But we have been under heavy fire for the past couple miles, mostly small arms fire. But the sandstorm has enabled the Iraqis to come very close to the road, and if I sound a little nervous, it's because we're in a soft-skinned vehicle and everybody else is in armor -- back to you Carol or Anderson.
COSTELLO: We do have the general. General Grange is here now with us, Walter, and he's going to throw a few questions at you right now. I want to talk more about the weather and how it has helped and hurt.
GRANGE: OK. Well, first of all, yes, don't put your head up. Keep your head down and don't worry about that part of it. Just report from what you hear, the type of weapons you hear, like .50 caliber or 7.62. You don't need to put your head up in that weather or that fight to report that.
Can you hear me?
RODGERS: Mostly we're hearing 7.62. Yes, mostly we're hearing 7.62. There are some .50 calibers, but they're behind me and I can't tell whether they're coming from the Iraqis off to our right or whether they're being fired from the, let's say, the Abrams tanks behind us.
One question Anderson had a while earlier was does this hurt or help U.S. troops? I guess on balance it hurts, because at this point we would be calling in close air support. The helicopters, the Kiowas would be supporting us, defending our flanks. But there is no visibility whatsoever. Nothing can be seen beyond the length of a football field in the sandstorm, and, as I say, that gives the Iraqis cover to come right up close to the road. And judging by this fire, we can hear, the soldiers inside those Bradleys and the tanks can ear the Iraqi bullets dinging off the steel plating along the sides -- Carol, Anderson.
COSTELLO: And, Walter, there's -- Carol, too.
Those helicopters, they do have the capability to go up in such weather, but right now it wouldn't help anyway.
RODGERS: It would be very dodgy trying to fly a helicopter in a sandstorm like this, very dodgy. The reason being that they fly at 80 miles an hour and they could come upon a high tension line that they would not know was there. They are, they have to fly slower and closer to the ground. That makes them vulnerable to the small arms fire that the Iraqis have -- Carol.
GRANGE: Yes, the one thing, though, you have .25 millimeter cannon fire from those Bradleys. You've got great tanks. There's pretty good equipment there. Of course, the vehicle you're in is a little bit more vulnerable, but you've got those guys around you. So even though the enemy's tactics would be to hug your positions because of the sandstorm, you've got some very good equipment there with you and well trained troops.
So it's going to, you're going to be relying on their capabilities, and they're quite good.
RODGERS: Well, General, as I look out, let me describe this landscape to you. It's sandy. It's got dirt revetments, dirt berms that farmers have put up and an Iraqi soldier could be 50 meters out there, lying very, very low.
If he sticks his head up and if the Bradley gunner or the Abrams gunner sees him, then you can shoot back. But again last night, even with night vision goggles, one of those Iraqi soldiers got within no more than 20, 30 feet from us. We're getting more small arms fire over in off our right. There are a line of date palms. We don't know how far out they are. But, again, the farther out they are the better our chances, because the Kalashnikov's accurate range is about 400 meters and the visibility now is only about 100 or 150 meters. GRANGE: That's right...
RODGERS: But somebody is out there banging away.
GRANGE: Right. And the thing is in this kind of a situation, again, they're going to take advantage of the weather. They're going to try to get in close to you. It's all about security, security, security and those, the cavalry that you're with, those scouts understand that type of fight as well as long range firing with the tanks and Bradleys.
COOPER: Walter, it's Anderson...
RODGERS: That's right, General. But they're pretty impervious. They're inside steel plated vehicles and we're in a thin skin.
GRANGE: Right.
RODGERS: Yes, Anderson? What is it?
COOPER: Walter, the Iraqi troop who snuck up on the position, I believe it was last night you said, was he Iraqi Army? Was he dressed as an irregular? Do you know?
RODGERS: Well, I never saw him, although he had crept to within probably 25 or 30 feet, maybe even closer than that. He was crawling in on his belly. And fortunately the gunner in the tank ahead of us had a 7.62 millimeter machine gun and, more importantly, he had night vision goggles. I didn't have the night vision goggles. He just happened to look down, saw this guy creeping along in the ditch right beside us, stalking either the tank or stalking us.
And in both cases what happened was the -- well, in that case, at least, the machine gunner on the Abrams opened fire and cut this guy down very quickly. What uniform he was wearing I can't tell you. I didn't stop and inspect and I don't think anyone else did. We were under very, very fire even then.
They were firing RPGs in at the 7th Cavalry's convoy as it approached the Euphrates waterways. They were firing in .50 caliber machine guns. Those with the night vision goggles were telling us that they were seeing large flatbed trucks out in the field in the distance and the Iraqis were firing tracer shots in and then the convoy picked them up with the night vision goggles. The convoy returned fire and they were able to take most of them out very quickly because of the night vision goggles, the tracer fire and so forth.
Still, the Army, the 7th Cavalry had to call in Air Force support and then the A-10 Warthogs came in and just chewed up the ground considerably. Then they called an F-16 in with a very powerful bomb and that pretty well silenced the ambush which the Iraqis had set up for us on both sides of the road.
But it was a bit dodgy for a while there because the air was filled with tracers. You could see the Iraqis' incoming tracers deflecting off the steel shells of the Bradleys and tanks in front of us. They'd come in horizontally, the tracers, and then they'd shoot wildly up into the air.
Additionally, as we were going along, the vehicle in front of the Bradley -- or the vehicle in front of the tank we were following had a huge explosion to the right. We thought it was hit. But it was an RPG that just hit, fell short, hit the dirt beside the tank, did no damage at all. But it was an extraordinary bright flash of light.
What we're showing you now is the convoy in which we're riding, heading north, again, in the general direction of north in a very strong sandstorm -- Carol.
COSTELLO: Walter, I just wondered, we're seeing vehicles passing the other way. Some of them look like cars and pickup trucks.
Who are they?
RODGERS: They're Iraqi civilians. It's very difficult to police this road at this point because of the sandstorm. Again, if you imagine yourself standing on a football field, the sandstorm is so dense that if you were on the goal lie you probably couldn't see much beyond mid-field at this point, just yellow sand everywhere.
COSTELLO: Well, how does that...
RODGERS: And so preventing Iraqi vehicles from passing is impossible.
COSTELLO: I was just going to say how bizarre is that to be passing in your car a big convoy of Humvees and tanks?
RODGERS: Well, you have to consider what the options are and the only option for a convoy under fire is to shoot the vehicles, and that's not going to happen. There's no way you can deter them. There's no way you can wave them off short of running them off the road, and that doesn't seem something that the American Army is, should do, and they're not doing it.
GRANGE: Yes, Carol, this is, what Walter is experiencing is very similar to what the Marines are in Basra and the British -- or the British in Basra and the Marines in Nasiriya and other units. I mean you're in a very fluid battlefield that has, is inundated with civilians, what they call civilians on the battlefield, and it's very, very challenging for the troopers to identify friend or foe.
As, looking at your footage, as you're filming the back of the combat vehicle and the Bradley in front of you, the M3 Scout Bradley, you also have vehicles behind you. And what's key about this is, as Walter is describing the fight, the sporadic firing on this convoy is that these vehicles take care of each other. In other words, it's not a vehicle by itself. You have a wing man in another vehicle covering, and Walter knows that because he's embedded with this unit.
He's also embedded with a unit that is in this type of situation. This is a cavalry unit. They're the eyes and ears. And their job is to be in these kind of situations to try to assess what is going on, what's there, friend or foe, the terrain, and report those things back.
So this unit is doing what it's supposed to be doing. There's a lot of uncertainty. It's similar to combat, but even more so for this kind of unit. And Walter is in an unbelievable position, because he's with that kind of -- that outfit doing that type of mission.
COOPER: And how do they make that assessment? I mean, if they see a vehicle approaching them, it looks like a civilian vehicle, you know, there's not a road block up, they're not stopping, they're not checking, they've got to keep moving, how do you assess the security on a rolling situation like that?
GRANGE: Well, they're on a rolling situation like that in a column formation because they're getting to another point where maybe some other elements of these units are. And I don't want to get into that, but it's just not everybody on one road. I mean, there's other roads, there's other formations in other places around there, and we're just looking at one point in time with that organization.
It is hard. I mean, do you blast every civilian vehicle that comes into the area? No. And so they have to show a deadly act or the commander or that crew commander, that vehicle commander, the TC, the track commander, has to make a decision if that's a threat or not. And it's a tough situation, and they're on edge. They're right there under guns, waiting to make a decision, and then they could use those as cover. Absolutely.
COSTELLO: We want to pause for just a moment to remind viewers it's 6:01 Eastern Time. We're beginning, what, our fourth hour, Anderson, on the air. We're looking at the 7th Calvary in central Iraq. Walter Rodgers, our correspondent with them.
And, Walter, explain again for the viewers just joining us how this unit crossed over a bridge over the Euphrates River, and why this is important.
RODGERS: In a phrase, Carol, the unit crossed the bridge literally fighting its way to the bridge last night, and then crossing this morning following an advance unit -- that is Bone Crusher Troop.
How they got there, they were shooting much of the way well into the night and were able finally to cross, but there were substantial Iraqi resistance.
The significance of crossing the Euphrates River for the 7th Calvary is that it now means that you have U.S. Army elements moving north of a line that stretches from An Najaf in the east -- or excuse me -- in the west all the way down the Euphrates River over to Basra area. And the U.S. Army has now strongly sent a signal to Saddam Hussein that the Republican Guard units, the Fedayeen officers he sent to hold the Euphrates line have failed to do so.
The U.S. Army is rolling north now in the general direction of Baghdad, albeit in a very yellow sandstorm, but they have punched through Iraqi resistance -- Carol.
COSTELLO: And, of course, if you're just joining us, Anderson Cooper is along with me, along with General Grange.
Your thoughts, General, on these extraordinary pictures.
GRANGE; Yes, talking to Walter -- and again, you know, we don't need to know what bridge it is on the Euphrates -- but getting across the Euphrates, capturing that bridge intact before it could be detonated with explosives is quite an accomplishment. That is well done by that unit because, again, a key piece of terrain. And how they got to the bridge, you know, if you just think about movies, capturing bridges on "Bridge Too Far," paratroopers, you know, it's how key those positions are.
And so what Walter is experiencing is a very significant accomplishment by coalition forces right there.
COOPER: Walter, are you still hearing gunfire?
RODGERS: It appears to have abated somewhat. The reason for that, Anderson, is we're now back in desert. Before, we were in alluvial farmland. In the desert, there's less cover for the Iraqi soldiers to creep close to the road.
I need to point out again several very important things which the general was touching on. That bridge was heavily packed with explosives. The Iraqis had just moved too slowly in terms of wiring the explosives, but it is entirely possible the United States Army could have been denied access to that bridge. It may have been only a matter of minutes.
The 7th Calvary literally had to run something of a night ambush on both sides of the road last night, crossing one of the canal bridges that preceded the Euphrates River, and that fight was, as I say, more than significant. There were machine gun tracer bullets going out on either side of the road. Every Bradley, every tank was firing. We had other -- the armored vehicles were all firing their 50-caliber machine guns.
We had incoming -- there were rocket-propelled grenades. One sailed just a few feet above our vehicle. We didn't know it at the time, but a soldier in a Bradley told us about it this morning when we were chatting with him. We've seen RPGs exploding up the road in front of us.
Again, no injuries. It's been -- it's truly remarkable. It attests, among other things, to the training of these soldiers. But they literally ran a gauntlet of fire last night, with the help of the U.S. Air Force who brought in some magnificent and spectacular close- air support.
An F-16 dropped a very powerful bomb that was so strong it blew the door of our Humvee closed, and then the A-10s came in, fired their Gatling guns and just chewed up everything on the ground.
So the combined efforts of the Army's artillery, the Army's machine guns, and the Air Force made it possible for the 7th Calvary to punch through in the direction of the Euphrates River bridge. And now the 7th Calvary is across the Euphrates, and again, pushing northward -- Carol, Anderson.
COSTELLO: And, again, Walter, just to make our viewers understand clearly what they are seeing, those vehicles passing the other way are actually Iraqi civilians. And there's really nothing they can do about that as far as the American military is concerned.
RODGERS: That's right. And one of the reasons you're seeing that is that the Army has just taken control of this road. That is to say there are no troops ahead of where we are to screen out any Iraqi civilian vehicles which might want to drive down this road. The Iraqis are driving down a road which to them is normally an open road.
The problem, of course, is they're probably more than a little surprised when they see this huge convoy of scores and scores of Bradley fighting vehicles and main battle tanks and other armored vehicles rolling, again, northward down a highway in a sandstorm. But there's nothing the Army can do about that, because it really doesn't hold this territory. It's just punching a fist through it in the general direction of Baghdad -- Carol.
COOPER: General Grange, these -- Walter Rodgers is with basically the tip of the spear.
GRANGE: He's with the tip of the spear. There are other tips of spears out there.
RODGERS: Did we drop out, Charlie?
COOPER: No, we've still got you, Walter.
COSTELLO: We're still with you, Walter.
COOPER: General Grange is just talking a little bit about your position.
GRANGE: Yes, just he's one of the tips -- one tip of the spear of the coalition forces.
A couple of things he brought up if I may quickly say. One is that the civilians seeing -- the civilian vehicles seeing coalition troops in this area, they understand that this thing is moving along, and important to the coalition effort.
No. 2, though, let's say air would be degraded right now. Helicopter -- attack helicopters, artillery could be called in. I don't want to get into where artillery is located, but artillery could still be called in. Remember, they have the ability to know exactly where they are through instrumentation.
The second thing is the sandstorm in this regard, Walter talked about where they received most of the fire. It's when they got through built-up areas or areas that were cultivated, not in the open desert area where people could get in closer to them to try to negate the long-range capability of these weapon systems which are quite capable, but then the camp has short-range capabilities as well.
So I think those things were all essential to clearly to what he's doing and he's seeing right now.
COSTELLO: Well, here's a question for you, and if I understood Walter correctly, and, Walter, correct me if I'm wrong, you said nobody is ahead of you scouting things out. You're just driving straight ahead. Is that right?
RODGERS: That is correct, Carol. We are the tip of the tip of the spear. Actually, Bone Crusher, another troop, was ahead of us earlier, but they're moving in a slightly different direction. Again, no one is out there -- in other words, the territory on both sides of the road is not held by the 7th Calvary or any U.S. troops at this point. This is a spear moving forward.
Bone Crusher Troop went out earlier. They took the bridge first, Apache followed. I'm riding with the Apache Troop. Bone Crusher is headed towards one objective. Apache is headed towards a slightly different objective -- Carol.
COSTELLO: I guess I was wondering, because the helicopters aren't able to fly ahead of you to inform the troops what's up ahead, and, you know, I guess it's just kind of nerve-wracking, isn't it?
GRANGE: It's nerve-wracking. There's other -- that Calvary -- those Calvary commanders are getting other information, though, from other assets above that can pick up things and report those to the troop that Walter is with. It's just some of the assets are degraded, but other assets can report things they can see regardless of the sandstorm.
COOPER: Walter, there's a question I know you cannot answer, but I'm just curious about your own knowledge. Do you know how far you are from Baghdad? I'm not asking you how far you are. I'm just wondering, do you know how far you are?
RODGERS: I do have a pretty good idea, yes. That is to say, yes, I do know approximately how far we are.
COOPER: OK, the second question is -- and again, I'm not sure if you can answer it -- the bridge you crossed over from the Euphrates, you said it was heavily packed with explosives. You said it was a pretty intense fire fight going across. The Bone Crusher unit went first. You guys I think were in -- were after them. Is that bridge secure? Did -- are there still -- did the 7th Cavalry leave elements behind to maintain the security of the bridge? I don't know if you can say anything on it, but what do you know?
RODGERS: Let me think for a second. I don't think anything is secure in what you would call this hostile environment or nothing's totally secure. Again, we're hearing more small arms fire ahead of us. You can hear the 50 caliber machine gun of a -- of a tank up ahead of us. They are firing out now.
You're -- we're traveling through hostile territory. We're encountering hostile horses (ph). There are small arms units shooting at us and we are traveling in a thick sandstorm. It's a confusing environment. But in terms of security, there's not a lot of security out here.
What's behind us with Crazy Horse troop is yet another element, but they -- I believe they have crossed the bridge, too. It's just a matter of time now.
Off to my right we're hearing a lot of firing. You can also hear the Bradley firing.
COOPER: Want to just...
RODGERS: Back to you -- Anderson.
COOPER: Want to just inform our viewers, we just showed a map on the side of the screen, Walter, we still kept your picture up. But we still -- we showed a map on the side of the screen, there it is, that shows the Euphrates River. I just want to point out that is not -- we are not saying that is the position that Walter and the 7th Cavalry crossed over, very important to make this point. We have in no way said, nor do we know, the positioning that Walter crossed over with it.
COSTELLO: But we can see the tank firing now, Anderson, and hear it clearly.
GRANGE: The Bradley.
COOPER: Bradley, the Bradley.
COSTELLO: Bradley.
RODGERS: I've put on a different microphone to give you more (ph) elements of the bang bang. It's really much louder than you can hear. (UNINTELLIGIBLE) out the window and sit here for a couple of seconds. I'll let you continue talking, and then if the firing continues, you can hear it.
COSTELLO: We're having a little trouble hearing you right now, Walter.
COOPER: I see it.
COSTELLO: OK, he's hanging -- he's hanging his...
COOPER: Microphone.
COSTELLO: ... microphone out the window so that we can better hear what's happening. So let's listen.
RODGERS: (UNINTELLIGIBLE) what I did was change microphones, one which will give you more ambient sound as opposed to the direct sound of my nalition (ph).
Again, we're traveling in a convoy in the general direction north from the Euphrates River. The commander of the 7th Cavalry gave us permission to say that we had crossed the river after indeed that was a feit acompli. That's why we're reporting that. More specifically, however, we're not going to report our location. Again, the permission to report that we had crossed the Euphrates, that is to say 7th Cavalry, came from the -- from the unit commander when we were going over the attack plans late yesterday afternoon -- Carol, Anderson.
COSTELLO: Walter, I wanted -- Walter, I wanted to ask you again about the feeling that the troops that you're with had when they finally got to cross that bridge?
RODGERS: Well I think -- I think they felt there were (UNINTELLIGIBLE) accomplishing their mission. More importantly, however, is the sense of exhilaration these young soldiers had. Most of them their first baptism under fire. I was talking to one young soldier in a tank -- in a tank. He was the tank driver. He stuck his up -- his head up through the tank's hatch, and I asked him how it was? He said I'm doing fine. And then all of a sudden...
COSTELLO: Walter. Walter, do you...
RODGERS: ... his two hands, he's waving a Bible.
COSTELLO: Walter, this is really important information that I think that our audience needs to hear. Can you adjust your microphone so that we can hear not so much of the ambient noise but you, because we really want to know how American troops felt as they finally crossed that bridge?
RODGERS: OK, Carol, how's this, better?
COSTELLO: Perfect. Take it away.
RODGERS: OK. I was mixing with the troops this morning as they were approaching the bridge and talking to them after they'd crossed the canals. This was their first baptism of fire for many of them. And they were excited, especially pleased to have escaped that far unscathed. They came under very heavy fire last night. The 7th Cavalry's convoy was ambushed on both sides of the road. There was a lot of shooting. There were bullets, tracers bouncing off, ricocheting off their -- off their armored vehicles.
One young soldier who was driving a main Bradley tank, very interesting, I asked him how he was doing. And all of a sudden these two hands come up out of the tank and he's holding a Bible in his hand, said I'm doing just fine. Others were laughing, and none of them was particularly boastful. They were all just excited that they had survived the incident, survived their baptism under fire. And they were -- they were pleased that they had been able to shoot back and show -- make a good show of themselves -- Carol.
COSTELLO: And continue their forward movement.
I want to bring General Grange in here right now.
I mean this must be very important for American troops to feel this exhilarated at this point because they've been very frustrated.
GRANGE: Yes, I think what Walter explained just then is the camaraderie, the brotherhood, the brotherhood of war between troopers when they experience that for the first time. It's a sense of fear, obviously. Everyone's as scared. But at the same time, they comes -- they bond so close together because of having experienced that. And you get this sense of joking, because it's almost like a relief from the stress to do that. And this is the human factor of combat that he's reporting on. It's so important for people to understand.
COOPER: Let's talk about that human factor a little bit, and we want Walter Rodgers to stay with -- Walter, stay with us as long as you can as General Grange is talking.
Take us inside that Bradley fighting vehicle that we are looking at and have been looking at now for several minutes. You know the pictures can only tell so much. Tell us a little bit about -- I mean as you are sitting in that thing, as you are looking out, as the sand is surrounding you, you're not sure where you're going, you're not sure who's on either side of you, what is that like?
GRANGE: OK, that's a -- that's a great point and that well deserving its explanation because we're looking at a hunk of steel.
COSTELLO: Yes.
GRANGE: We're looking at a -- at a -- not a -- not a human piece of equipment, you know the human factor of this, so we're going to take you inside of that thing.
First of all, in there you have a guy driving this vehicle that is very tired. These people have been up for days, very tired. He's exhilarated. He's got that surge of energy, so he's alert, but he's -- has this still tired after days and days. Soldiers never get enough sleep. You're always tired.
Second, you've got a vehicle commander that his head is out of the hatch or it's in the hatch, depending on enemy fire, but he'll come in and out of that thing.
COSTELLO: And you can see him right now.
GRANGE: Yes.
COSTELLO: Is that him?
GRANGE: Because he wants situational awareness. Inside they have great equipment to see in the night, the day, but he wants situational awareness and he wants to smell, he wants to hear, he wants to see the battlefield.
COSTELLO: And that would be frightening because there's sniper fire going on.
GRANGE: There's fire going on, but still, to save his vehicle, to save his troopers, he'll do that to get that situational awareness. The other thing is you have a gunner. He's working this 25- millimeter Bush Master canon, a very devastating weapon. Not like as big as a tank round, but it'll go through most of the stuff the Iraqis have out there. It's a tremendous weapon.
COOPER: And are they communicating with each other via radio or are they just talking?
GRANGE: Internal...
COOPER: Are they yelling? Are they...
GRANGE: No, they're talking on intercom to each other inside the Bradley. And then they have the 7.62 machine gun. You've heard that some -- as well. Like a -- the tank is called a coax (ph). It's a 7.62 machine gun as well. And they also fire toes (ph), a missile to take out tanks.
COOPER: Right.
GRANGE: So there's a lot of firepower in those vehicles. And then in the back you have two to three scouts, depends, there may be more in there, I don't know. But when you get to a thing like objective, like the bridge, they would get out to do the searching of the bridge of explosives. They're the ones that say this bridge can carry a tank, this bridge cannot carry a tank we need to go to another bridge. They're the ones that may get out and look for a sniper in a ditch. And...
COSTELLO: Well how cramped is it inside that tank?
GRANGE: It gets cramped because when you put all your equipment -- now you see a lot of stuff hung on the outside of the -- of the Bradley fighting vehicle. It's -- and this is -- it's an infantry fighting vehicle. This version is for scouts. It's called the M3 instead of the M2. But it's -- it is -- it does get cramped. Water, food, ammunition, a lot of extra ammunition.
COSTELLO: And they've been together in there for a very long time. We're just seeing like the tip of the spear here. What does it look like behind Walter, behind that first tank that we're seeing?
GRANGE: I'm hoping a tank or another Bradley behind Walter, I hope.
COOPER: And I -- and I'm sure Walter Rodgers is hoping that as well. He joins us again live on the phone while this is going on.
Walter, we've been continuing to look at your just extraordinary pictures. Give us -- you know we -- General Grange was talking a little bit about the human element which so much of this comes down to. So much of what happens on a battlefield comes down to what is in the mind and the heart of the soldiers and the Marines and the airmen who are fighting. Tell us a little bit about what you have experienced, what you have heard from the others in the 7th Cavalry about their mood, about their morale and about what they see ahead of them.
RODGERS: I will, Anderson, but first, let me give you an idea. I think you've been looking at pictures of the terrain here. We're now going through an Iraqi farming village. And behind any one of those buildings could be an Iraqi soldier with an RPG ready to shoot out at the convoy you now see in front of you.
On any of those building roofs you could have someone with a Kalashnikov rifle. We experienced that very same sort of ambush and screening yesterday morning when we were looking for a route around al-Samowa (ph), and it was found to be impossible because the Iraqis were screening these, screening the civilians, using them as a kind of protection, banking that the Army would not fire on civilian dwellings.
Last night in our fire fight -- and this is an important point to bring up -- last night in our fire fight, as we were driving along, it was total darkness, pitch black, not even starlight because the sandstorm was moving in and there was a haze in the darkness.
COSTELLO: Oh, wait, Walter.
RODGERS: Suddenly one of the -- one of...
COSTELLO: We just passed some civilians. That's what they looked like. I just wondered if you'd seen them, Walter.
RODGERS: Yes, we've seen them along the way. Let me continue because this is a story which involves civilians. There was fire coming at the column last night as we were approaching one of the canal bridges, heavy fire, and it came from a civilian building. Of course, under those circumstances, the Army's convoy is, has permission to return fire. It did.
I have since heard that what happened was an Iraqi soldier moved into a civilian dwelling to shoot at the convoy. There were children in there and, of course, the convoy had no way of knowing that. But one soldier told me this morning that he had heard that when the convoy returned fire, it resulted in the collapse of a wall, killing two small Iraqi children inside.
But here again, this was the direct consequence of the Iraqis taking up position in civilian dwellings -- Anderson, Carol.
COOPER: Walter, and you were talking about those A-10 Warthogs that earlier foiled an Iraqi ambush. What was, when something like, when the Warthog, I mean, comes into play, when it arrives on the scene, what goes through the minds of the people on the ground? Or at least what are they saying to you? Is there a sense of excitement, a sense of relief that they are getting the close air support?
RODGERS: That's an excellent description of it, Anderson, and I was, you know, under fire last night and when everyone saw that Warthog coming in and it lets out a loud belch when the Gatling gun comes off and then you see forward of it and all of a sudden it just chews up the whole ground. It's like a magnificent fireworks display. And, of course, anything there is going to be destroyed and the fires were burning where the Warthogs hit for at least an hour or more afterwards. And there were whole patches of fire, fields of fire out beyond the convoy where the Warthog had strafed with that Gatling gun.
COOPER: General Grange?
GRANGE: Yes...
RODGERS: You asked earlier, Anderson, about the move...
COOPER: Go ahead, Walter.
RODGERS: You had asked earlier about the troops. What we have seen here is these soldiers sort of pitting themselves against, in combat, and feeling rather pleased with themselves that they didn't flinch. Everyone of them admitted that he was scared and any intelligent soldier would admit that he was scared, but they survived the challenge of fear, they fired their guns, the column maintained its position and it punched on through.
So they were very pleased with themselves in that sense. And anyone who's ever been in combat will recognize this feeling. But each of them had his own hair raising tale to tell. One was bragging about the machine gunner, actually, an Air Force enlisted man who was flying in the tactical air command post, which is to say, the armored vehicle which calls in the air strikes, and they were bragging about him because he was up there with his .50 caliber machine gun in the dark, very little armor around him as he was outside the turret, and he was banging away the whole time.
I went up to that, I went up to the machine gunner from the Air Force Tactical Air Command vehicle and I said to him how did you do last night? And he held up three fingers, unmeaning he killed three of the Iraqis -- Anderson.
COOPER: General, you had a comment on that.
GRANGE: Yes, Walter's brought up three great points, real briefly. One, talking about the combat air controller who calls in the air strikes in support of this cavalry unit is a great example of individual jointness on the battlefield, the relationship between, in this case, the Air Force and the Army with this unit. And then the ability to participate in the situation as it's encountered. In other words, here's a fire fight, small arms, the guy's job is working radios, calling in air strikes. Yet he grabbed the machine gun to, because he's part of this unit. He's part of this team. And he feels that. And that's very important.
The other thing he talked about is the feeling of the A-10 coming in and expending ammunition on any positions. There's a couple things, sights and sounds that someone in combat loves. One is close air support. When you bring in the close air support and you hear it crackling on the radio, the guy's call sign, this is Bandit 2, coming in hot, and you hear the rounds leaving the aircraft and then impacting on the ground or an enemy target, the sense of relief, the sense of power that your force is applying and its protection and support of you is just, it's so relieving it just really gets -- it just, it's great, I can tell you that.
COOPER: And you know, you've been in quite a few of those situations.
GRANGE: A few of those. And the other is that -- we haven't talked about it, maybe Walter has a story or two -- and the other sight and someone you always want around you is the medics, you know, the medical personnel. In Vietnam they called them the boxy (ph). That's for, you know, Vietnamese for the doctor. You always sit, you know, hear in movies that "Medic! Medic!" You always hear those stories and you want those guys around you because if you're hurt or something happens to you or one of your friends, they're very important people.
COSTELLO: OK, Walter, comment on that aspect of this operation.
COOPER: The medic.
RODGERS: Well, the General is absolutely right. But then Generals always are. But to me it's this, when I saw those A-10s coming in, when I saw the A-10s coming in chewing up the ground, my one word answer was amen. Every one of us was extraordinarily relieved because imagine looking out into total darkness in an agricultural area. You can't see, oh, more than 40 or 50 meters without night vision goggles. And you know there are people out there. We had no idea how many people were out there, but it turned out to be several hundred, 300, 400 Iraqi dismounts -- that's infantry soldiers -- were out there shooting at the 7th Cavalry's convoy last night.
And so, you know, they were more than pleased with that.
What was your other point, General?
GRANGE: Well, did you have any experiences yet on medics, the use of medical personnel to support any of your people?
RODGERS: Well, lest I wax theological before the chaplain gave us his best wishes several days ago, before we crossed from Kuwait into Iraq, the chaplain, Steve Baloug (ph), an Episcopal minister, told a very large volunteer audience, god is watching over you. And until this last skirmish, this unit has been extraordinarily fortunate. The only injury has been one soldier who had a hatch close, a Bradley hatch close on his hand.
Unless we took something in the past half hour which we haven't had a chance to check on, there have been no wounded and this convoy is extraordinarily fortunate, moving through hostile territory, encountering hostile forces while the tank, the tanks and the Bradleys have the advantage of firepower and air support.
You have to remember that the enemy always has a vote on the battlefield and that's what we're seeing here today. The Iraqis are running up, taking advantage of the sandstorm, dashing up, firing in the direction of the convoy. Again, we don't know whether anyone was hit. They haven't fired much big that could take out a Bradley or a tank this morning. That is the largest thing we've heard coming in the direction of the convoy was mortars. But they were falling very close to us. One just after we got off the Euphrates River crossing bridge, there were mortar fragments flying upwards into the palm fronds above. And it sounded like rain, except it wasn't coming down, it was going up.
So this is still a dodgy situation -- Carol, Anderson.
GRANGE: Yes, Walter, one thing you said there, I think it's important for everybody to understand that regardless of the weather that your force that you're participating in, regardless of that weather, the word mutual support, I can assure you, and I'm sure that you feel this way now that you've been embedded in that unit for so long, that regardless of that weather, if the situation gets grim, because of the feeling of mutual support, that if pilots are asked to provide anything to you in those conditions, they'll be there. And you know that.
RODGERS: Well, that's true, general. The only problem is that the sandstorm has enabled the Iraqi snipers to get closer to the road than they normally would be. And, in fact, if the Air Force were called in, they would be strafing close to our position on the road even as we move along, simply because the sandstorm is acting as a smokescreen, which is giving the Iraqis a fair amount of tactical advantage, at least in terms of small arms fire -- Anderson.
GRANGE: No, I understand that, and again...
RODGERS: Carol.
GRANGE: ... the snipers is the -- of course, the snipers and anybody getting close like that. But I'm talking about if you encounter a larger force, they have other capabilities to drop stuff on those and take them down.
And you also use the great word/phrase that they use in military war fighters all of the time, and you're really getting into this stuff when you said "the enemy has a vote." You're starting to really pick up some of these key phrases that all of the military leadership uses in combat.
COOPER: What do they mean by that?
COSTELLO: Well, let me interrupt everyone for just a second to do a time check. It's 6:30 Eastern Time if you're just joining us, and we want to tell our viewers what's happening right now.
You're taking a look at the 7th Calvary. They're in central Iraq now. The important thing to keep in mind here is that they have finally been able to cross the Euphrates River using one of those bridges. The bridge was loaded heavily with explosives, but yet they're on their way towards Baghdad, we presume.
As you can see, a sandstorm is going on right now, which is making things rather dangerous for the troops. And, Walter, I wanted to talk, too, about the surreal nature of passing through what essentially are neighborhoods on the way to Baghdad.
RODGERS: Well, I think you find that almost in any war now. It was certainly the case in Vietnam. It was certainly the case in the Middle East, all of the Middle Eastern wars I've covered. Certainly the case in Chechnya.
Increasingly, you find that the hostile forces will seek cover, seek protection, use civilian populations to screen their own maneuvers and to give themselves some shield from the larger fire power, in this case of the U.S. Army 7th Calvary. But you do see problems with the civilian population.
Let me give you an example. We were going through a village late last night. An elderly Arab came out in one of his long dresses, and he is said to have had a rifle in his hands, and he started waving it to soldiers. Now, you have to ask yourself, and this is what every soldier who saw him was confronted with. Here you have a man appearing to be friendly, he's got a rifle in his hands. Is he the village elder saying, here, follow me, I'll show you a way through the village? Or is he someone who is sympathetic to the Iraqi regime in Baghdad saying, here, follow me, I'm going to lead you into an ambush?
This is a very, very complicated situation, and every soldier with his finger on a trigger has to make instantaneous and wise and correct decisions; otherwise, we face tragedies all along this road -- Carol, Anderson.
COSTELLO: So, Walter, what happened to the elderly man, then, who was waving the rifle?
RODGERS: I got that story from soldiers forward in the column. I do not believe he was fired upon. I also am sure he was not followed.
It's just one of those situations where you don't know. I had a situation yesterday morning where a young Iraqi fellow comes up to me and starts saying, "Hello," and I spoke to him in a few phrases of Arabic. He spoke back to me, and said, "I speak English." I chatted him up. He wanted to denounce Saddam Hussein to me. He denounced Saddam right and left, and of course, as a reporter, you don't know whether he's telling the truth or not.
And then he wanted to go over to a Bradley fighting vehicle just a few meters away, like 20 meters away. And I prevented him physically from going over there, because I knew if he approached the vehicle, he was going to get -- he was going to be told to stop. And if he kept approaching, he would be shot, because Saddam Hussein has said he will use suicide bombers to stop the Americans. I didn't put my hands on the guy's hip to see if he had dynamite, but that was a very real possibility. Was this young Arab civilian anything more or less than he appeared to be?
I can tell you that within seconds after that, probably less than five minutes actually, within less than five minutes after that, suddenly they were firing on us, the Iraqi army irregulars were firing on our column with rocket-propelled grenades, small arms fire. We dove to our vehicle and drove away.
This is a situation you encounter in almost any conflict anywhere in the world now. Certainly the Russians are encountering this in Chechnya. You just don't know whether these civilians are what they appear to be or not -- Carol, Anderson.
COSTELLO: Yes, and the other thing we've been seeing, Walter, as you're bringing us these extraordinary pictures, a short time ago we were actually seeing civilian vehicles passing the other way, because you're literally on a roadway through central Iraq.
RODGERS: Well, that's true, but this is their highway. Having said that, this is also the highway the 7th Calvary has elected to use as it punches north of the Euphrates River in the general direction of Baghdad. Having said that, there are many Iraqis who normally would be driving this road, or a few because there's sandstorm.
But there have been a few civilian vehicles, and they just drive widely by with their lights on, because it is a sandstorm. And it's up to the individuals in each of those Bradley fighting vehicles and tanks to make a prudent and calculated decision as to whether these civilians are what they appear to be, or whether they're a hostile force using a civilian car to get close and take a couple of shots at the Calvary -- Carol, Anderson.
COOPER: Walter, it's Anderson. I want to just mention something. CNN's Gary Striker, who is embedded with troops on the USS Roosevelt, was reporting earlier that there's going to be something of a shift in the use of aircraft so far, sort of moving away from bombing missions and more into flying into air interdiction zones and providing that close air support to ground troops that we had been talking about just a short time ago.
And I'm interested to know, actually from General Grange, if that is in fact the case, if we're going to be seeing less sort of bombing runs and more taking out targets of opportunity, close air support of troops. Do you think that's -- is it fair to say that that is because they no longer are finding that they have already hit the positions they had wanted to? Or that something has shifted in the military campaign, in the military strategy that they feel now, OK, it's more important to go to close air support?
GRANGE: Yes, they're going to continue to hit the operational- level targets. In other words, ministries of defense, airfields, those types of things if need be. But these targets of opportunity, what that means is as things are reported on the battle field, either from the Calvary unit that we're watching right here, or other units, or let's say a Predator, or signals intercept, or whatever the case may be, these orbiting strike aircraft will then swoop in and hit those targets that emerge on a battle field as it's developing. So that's the targets of opportunity.
COOPER: So in a sense, and correct me if I'm wrong, General Grange, there will be at all times planes just sort of flying around, I guess, in these area interdiction zones, who can be called upon at any time by the people traveling with Walter, by the Air Force liaison officer who calls in the close air support, and they just -- they leave their interdiction zone and just go in...
(CROSSTALK)
GRANGE: Yes, there are planes interdicting targets of maybe enemy forces moving, but the close air support package is up there right now. Walter might not know that, and maybe he does, but it's up there. And if they are needed and they can get in, and like you said, the sandstorm (UNINTELLIGIBLE) get in the gate using 30mm strafing runs. But they may be able to drop a bomb on, let's say, buildings in a village that he passes through that they're taking fire from, as an example, or the far side of a bridge. They can do that on a moment's notice.
COOPER: OK, now, Walter, just for the viewers, both here in the United States and internationally who are watching this, you are in a Humvee. You are shooting -- the cameraman is shooting outside I imagine the front windshield of the Humvee. That's a Bradley fighting vehicle ahead of you. You have been moving really nonstop, and then we have sporadically being hearing small arms fire from either side of the road.
Tell us just a little bit, Walter. It seems that whatever small arms fire you are encountering, it does not seem to be stopping the forward movement of the 7th Calvary.
RODGERS: It doesn't, but as we have been pointing out all morning in this broadcast, there are Iraqi civilian vehicles traveling on the other side of the road. And I should point out that while the Calvary is traveling northward on a deliberate pace, the Iraqi civilian vehicles hearing those small arms shots, that is AK-47s and perhaps light machine guns, they're driving like 60 to get out of the way, because imagine driving down a highway and knowing people are shooting across that highway at the 7th Calvary's convoy.
Again, it has not slowed the progress of the convoy. In a situation like this, there isn't much you can do, except go forward, at least under these weather conditions.
If I might add something to what General Grange was saying on Gary Striker's comments. What Gary is describing is precisely what we anticipate will happen. That is to say a different bombing function for the Air Force and Navy jets, which will be flying these missions. The reason being that as the Army and the Marines and other units push further towards Baghdad, the Iraqi forces, particularly the Republican Guard, will draw in a tighter circle.
Those are extraordinary professional soldiers, and it's going to be a force-on-force situation in which this armor goes up against the Iraqi armor. Those are very professional soldiers there, capable of putting up a very, very good fight, and the Air Force, the Navy jets as well, are all going to be needed to punish those Iraqi divisions which are dug in at this point -- Anderson, Carol. COSTELLO: Walter, this is Carol Costello talking to you again. I think that maybe this is the appropriate time to talk about this supposed red line around Baghdad as you're racing ever faster towards that. Can you tell us at all what the troops have been told about that?
RODGERS: I don't think the troops have been told much by way of specifics on what you call the red line around Baghdad. And I would be a little careful in describing us as racing toward Baghdad. We are moving northward in that general direction, but this is not going to be a sudden fist which appears in the face of the Iraqi units around Baghdad. Remember there's -- this is a very coordinated attack on all fronts.
We have Army brigades to our left that is to the west. We have, I believe, Army brigades to the east and southeast. We have U.S. Marines and British forces to the southeast. This unit is not on a race to beat everyone else to Baghdad. It would never do that sort of thing.
What it's doing is moving deliberately northward along a highway in the general direction of Baghdad. It is not about to knock on the gates of Baghdad, at least not just yet, because that's not its mission. It is probing ahead, looking for Iraqi strengths and weaknesses and radioing back to the other units which may be following on. But be careful about suggesting that this unit is rolling on to Baghdad, because it isn't really quite the military situation. I can't go into more detail. But what I can say is it is moving deliberately in that direction. But remember, we have been moving in that direction for several days and sometimes we're told to pause and stop and we sit in an attack position and wait for other units to leapfrog around us, above us, on either side of us.
So the important thing is that the elements of the 7th Cavalry did increase -- did indeed cross the Euphrates River this morning and that means that Saddam's grip on southern Iraq is greatly weakened. You recall he sent his elite troops down there, the Fedayeen commanders, plus his Republican Guard to hold cities like Al Najaf (ph) and Al Salman (ph) where we had been bogged down and down to Nasiriya and over to Basra. He gave orders that that Euphrates River line should be held and the 7th Cavalry has indeed punched through it. But we're still a good distance from Baghdad.
And as battlefield commanders, I hope General Grange can help me on this, as any battlefield commander will tell you, he'll send a unit forward just so far, hold that and then leapfrog other units to the east or west to move them forward, perhaps even ahead of us -- Carol.
ANDERSON COOPER, CNN ANCHOR: General Grange.
COSTELLO: General Grange.
BRIG. GEN. DAVID GRANGE, U.S. ARMY (RET.): Yes, what Walter is saying, it goes back to mutual support. You know always, even though this is the eyes and ears of that ground force, that in the west moving north, this is the eyes and ears. They're not moving up to attack Baghdad, they're the eyes and the ears, they're always going to have mutual support from other ground units or air units.
COOPER: And they cannot allow the fact that there are snipers or maybe snipers on either side of them taking shots at them, they can't allow that to stop them.
GRANGE: It's not effective enemy force being applied to their mission, so that's exactly right. They have a mission to go. They have certain objectives they're going to move to for that particular day or night or that phase of movement and that'll be reported back. And so they're the eyes and ears, and -- but it's -- it has to have a robust cap -- calm (ph). There we see an M1 Abrams tank, and you see that -- this reconnaissance element also has some very robust fire power along with it.
COOPER: OK, Walter, looks like you've stopped. What's going on?
RODGERS: Well this is the -- this is the way we leapfrog forward. And as I say, 7th Cavalry has taken a position here. The visibility is extraordinarily poor. They're not sure of what the road condition is ahead. For the past three-quarters of an hour or more they've taken mortar fire very close to the convoy, very close to us in our vehicle. They've taken rifle fire as well. We've all been shot at. And so they're pausing briefly now so they can assess the situation as best they can with visibility limited to no more than a 150 meters, a football field and a half -- Carol, Anderson.
COOPER: All right.
COSTELLO: We want to talk -- we want to talk more about the Abrams tank that we just mentioned. Want to bring the General in here to explain more about this particular tank.
GRANGE: Yes, the Abrams tank, it's the best tank in the battlefield. And I'm not saying that because I'm an American citizen, it definitely is. The British have a great tank, the Chieftain, the Germans, the Leopard, but this Abrams tank, a lot of the things that are being fired at Walter's column cannot penetrate that tank.
Does it have some vulnerabilities? Yes, I won't go into them. But the firing he's receiving will not hurt that tank. So right now that's not the Abrams tank that we're looking at right there, that's a -- that's a control vehicle.
But the Abrams tank is nothing that the Republican Guard division where they're going to. The way where they're -- it's located where they're headed can stop that Abrams tank at a distance or without multiple enemy weapons against it.
COOPER: OK.
COSTELLO: It was interesting when you were describing before about the men inside the tank and the human element of this.
GRANGE: Right.
COSTELLO: So how -- describe to us what the inside... GRANGE: Yes.
COSTELLO: ... of this Abrams tank...
GRANGE: Yes.
COSTELLO: ... looks like.
GRANGE: The inside of the Abrams tank is a four-man crew. Again, you have a driver. You have a loader loading the tank ammunition. You have a tank commander in the tank as well. And you have a gunner. And so this -- so it's a four-man crew. It has a 120 millimeter tank round which will kill any tank on a battlefield, any tank, a greater distance than any tank on the battlefield.
COOPER: All right.
COSTELLO: Understand.
COOPER: Walter, just so you know what we're going to do, we're going to get -- let you take a breather for just a minute or so. We're going to continue on your picture on the side of the screen, but we're just going to let our viewers get an update of all the latest developments at this hour. So, Walter, we'll come back to you probably in about a minute or two.
And here are the latest developments at this hour. In another location, a success for coalition forces. A British commander says the Iraqi port city of Umm Qasr has finally been secured. He also says aid could start flowing through the port within 48 hours.
Moving on to Basra where coalition forces are changing their strategy. Senior British military officials say the city has now become a -- quote -- "legitimate military target." They want to use the city as a point of entry for humanitarian aid. Basra residents have been without water and electricity for days.
Also, keep staying in southern Iraq, U.S. Marines are facing intense fighting again in Nasiriya. Two vehicles they were using got stuck in the mud, were abandoned, four others were destroyed by Iraqis. And a U.S. warplane hit another vehicle. No word yet on any possible injuries.
Iraq's Information Minister vows coalition forces are in for some shocking surprises from Iraqi fighters, in his words. He ridiculed the "Shock and Awe" bombing campaign saying the U.S. was dropping bombs that only made a loud noise in an attempt to scare Iraqis. The official said Iraqi soldiers returned coalition tactics against them.
And that's an update of what's going on at this hour.
We go back now to Walter Rodgers who is with the 7th Cavalry. We have been following Walter for over an -- for just about an hour now.
Walter, what's going on where you are? RODGERS: Anderson, the story remains the same here, but an important one that story is that elements of the U.S. Army's 7th Cavalry have crossed the Euphrates River within the past several hours. That means they have moved north of the Euphrates River defense line which Saddam Hussein's forces had more or less erected. It was not an easy crossing. They tried several days ago to cross in Ala Samwa (ph) but they were thwarted there. That's where the 7th Cavalry got bogged down. So a diversionary route was planned.
The diversionary route was taken. The Marines had to fight their way -- excuse me, the 7th Cavalry had to fight their way up to the canal bridges in a very forbidding fire fight last night. All vehicles coming under fire, putting out great cover fire as they tried to move forward. The Air Force had to be called in. Eventually the Iraqi ambush was quelled and then a canal bridge crossing was made.
And this morning the 7th Cavalry, with the help of a Bone Crusher troop, that's one of the three troops in this, punched across one of the Euphrates River's bridges. The engineers were called up. They discovered that the bridge had been heavily laced with explosives. The Iraqis did not have time to wire the explosives so, of course, the engineers dismantled that. That enabled Apache troop to come up.
But it has been a bit of a fight the entire way. When our vehicle was coming off the bridge, we could hear mortars falling to our left. We took a sharp left turn, another mortar fell very close to us. So close that you could hear the shrapnel from the mortar shell exploding upward into the palm fronds above it. And then small arms fire for the last hour or so pretty much -- Anderson.
COSTELLO: Walter. Walter, I could interrupt you. This is Carol again, interrupt you for just a second. We just saw a pickup truck pass that Bradley tank. It was a civilian pickup truck, because of course they're on a roadway there. And we saw the tank's -- the Bradley's, what do you call it,...
GRANGE: Bradley.
COSTELLO: ...the gun, the turret...
GRANGE: Yes.
COSTELLO: ... follow that pickup truck as it went by.
RODGERS: Well, that's always perhaps prudent or we don't know as he was deliberately following. He's constantly swinging that turret in a defensive, threatening mode to anything which might threaten his vehicle. I don't know as he was actually taking aim on that pickup truck. I can tell you all the civilian vehicles we see driving down this road are driving much more quickly than normal, especially through that canyon of small arms fire through which we just passed.
Every one of the drivers in the thin skinned vehicles, bus drivers, the taxi drivers and so forth, have been hearing that small arms fire, know that it's heading in the direction of the U.S. convoy. They also know that they're traveling down the same road so that accelerate hits the metal real fast and the Iraqis race on past as quickly as they can to get out of the line of fire, which has been directed at this convoy, small arms fire, snipers and so forth, oh, for the past hour or so -- Carol, Anderson.
COSTELLO: General, you saw what I saw. You're seeing it again. Describe in detail more of what we're seeing as civilian vehicles pass by these tanks.
GRANGE: Well, I think the point that -- I'm glad you brought that up about the gun turret, the .25 millimeter gun turret focusing on oncoming civilian vehicle. The gun turned. This is an example of discipline. This is an example of people not being overly exited, engage in something where it's not really a threat. And this is, these decisions on discipline have to be made in a second or two. In other words, the troop is disciplined enough not to engage something that's not a threat. But he may not know that until the last second.
And, so, yes, he's ready to fire, but he's disciplined enough not to fire if he doesn't have to.
COOPER: General Grange, I just want to point out to our viewers, we are going to put on the side of the screen another picture from Baghdad, where sandstorms -- there is also a sandstorm. We're about to bring that up. We're not going to go away from Walter Rodgers. We just want to bring it up to show the -- we've lost the picture. As soon as we get it back, we'll show you. Apparently a sandstorm hitting Baghdad.
COSTELLO: Yes, it's been nasty weather in much of Iraq.
COOPER: Yes.
COSTELLO: Also in Nasiriya, where an intense sandstorm and a rainstorm was going on at the same time.
COOPER: General, I just want to continue with you on that discipline you talked about, General Grange. I mean the few times I've been in sort of combat environments, the adrenaline that is pumping is extraordinary. And I suppose the more you are in it, the less that happens.
But how do you learn that discipline? I mean how do you learn -- I mean the person who is in that Bradley fighting vehicle that we are looking at right now that Walter Rodgers's cameraman is taking a picture of who has not slept, as he said, for hours or possibly days...
COSTELLO: For days.
COOPER: ... who is excited, who is hot, who is tired, how do you get that discipline?
GRANGE: OK. Discipline comes from two things, one, a unit that has the baseline value, norms, that value system or a creed or something that every soldier, Marine, airman, whatever, lives by. In other words, it's more important than you yourself, your self- interests. Second, training. Training and training and training, good training, and no one trains more than an American unit.
COSTELLO: We want to pause for a just a moment and listen.
GRANGE: They're in a fire fight (UNINTELLIGIBLE).
COOPER: Walter, if you can, feel free to tell us what's going on.
RODGERS: Well, we're still watching that Bradley fighting vehicle turret swing. I should tell you, that's not your ordinary Bradley. That's a fire control vehicle. I know the officer on board. I believe it's Lieutenant Wade (ph). And they are swinging that turret constantly because we're in a very harsh and difficult environment for combat or much else where. The sandstorm you've been mentioning greatly limits the visibility for the gunners aboard any of these vehicles, the tanks or the M-113s or, again, the Bradleys.
In other words, the Iraqis could be out in those fields and could be crawling up. Here's a time when night vision goggles don't help you and it's very difficult to see because the sand and the grit is constantly in your eyes. So it's possible for an Iraqi to creep on his belly through these alluvial fields, these agricultural fields, and come within, oh, 100 yards of that vehicle or with, perhaps even something as large as a rocket propelled grenade, which wouldn't do much damage to the Bradleys or the tanks, but any thin skinned vehicle like the one we're riding in would be in a sorry predicament -- Anderson, Carol.
COSTELLO: General, you wanted to add something?
GRANGE: Well, I wanted to finish that one comment, question that Anderson brought up, because it's extremely important. The discipline in a unit like this and our coalition forces like British units, and I've trained with the British. They have the same philosophy of discipline. That's not forced discipline. That's ingrained discipline and tried in a unit. Everybody wants to perform to a certain standard, totally different than the Iraqi Army discipline, which is forced by fear, fear from within their own leadership.
So here the discipline is expressed by not only the colonel in charge of this unit, but also the private that may be the driver or the gunner of that Bradley. So the discipline is self-discipline instilled by a sense of pride and training regimen in U.S. and British units. Totally different than the discipline in the Iraqi Army.
COSTELLO: Well, tell us about the discipline within the Iraqi Army and why that might break down, then.
GRANGE: It will break down. When the chips get down, when you have a situation where you have civilians on the battlefield, when you have uncertainty, when you have the presence of leadership being forced by the Fedayeen or other Gestapo type beds that are forcing these units to do things, as soon as that disappears, they just fall apart.
COOPER: And I think the comment that a lot of observers have been making over the last several days, really, has been that we see the difference between the Iraqi Army and the Fedayeen fighter, the so-called Fedayeen fighters or the Baath Party officials who have been sent down, that there is the sense among those fighters, I would seem, that they no other choice, that they have, that their days are numbered and therefore they might as well fight to the end.
GRANGE: Right, exactly. Exactly. Some people will not surrender because they know they have no future because the people that they're suppressing will get them at the end of the war.
COOPER: I should just very quickly bring in, again, we mentioned that sandstorm that we were told about in Baghdad. We now have that picture up. We're going to show it, I believe, on the left hand side of the screen. We're staying with Walter Rodgers, staying with his pictures.
COSTELLO: Yes, and, Walter, as we're looking at these pictures of Baghdad, describe for us again what being in a sandstorm like this is like.
RODGERS: For the unit, it's very difficult to describe. There's dust in your mouth. No matter, it's almost like your eyes run out of liquid to rinse the dirt and grit out of your eyes. You could put on a pair of goggles. We're all using ski goggles, except that within a matter of minutes they fog up so the goggles become virtually useless.
The camera's lens has to be cleaned constantly and every one of the pieces or armament aboard those tanks will have to be cleaned at the next nearest opportunity, because the sand and grit clog the weapons, particularly the M-16 rifles, and also the larger weapons.
So it's like a blizzard, except the darned stuff doesn't melt -- Carol.
COSTELLO: Yes, General Grange is nodding his head in agreement with you. Add to that.
GRANGE: Yes, I just wanted to say, Walter, and I don't want you to give too personal of an answer, but I'm sure there's sand in everything.
RODGERS: Well, let's start with the orifices.
COOPER: No, please, let's not.
RODGERS: We use cotton swabs all day long.
COSTELLO: Oh, my.
COOPER: Let's...
RODGERS: We use cotton swabs all day long. We have to use the cotton swabs to clear our ears out of dirt and grit. So bad is the dirt and grit in our ears, that we can't even get the IFB plug in our ears without often digging it out. Your eyes, as I say, you try so hard to just blink your eyes and wash the sand and grit out of your eyes that they, it's like running out of windshield wiper fluid on your automobile. You're just bone dry. And then there's nothing you can do.
You wish you had eye wash. There's neither time nor place for that here. And I think that'll, that's as far as I'll take that answer.
COSTELLO: Well, it must be hard to breathe, too, Walter.
RODGERS: It is. And you wonder about the long-term damage to the people of the deserts, the nomadic peoples like the Bedouins. Our driver...
COSTELLO: We have to interrupt you, Walter.
RODGERS: ... Paul Jordan is...
COSTELLO: Walter Rodgers, I'm sorry, we have to interrupt you because we have to begin our next hour.
You're going to stay with us, though, and continue this.
Right now, though, we want to toss to Leon Harris.
LEON HARRIS, CNN ANCHOR: Good morning, folks.
Yes, Leon Harris here in the CNN newsroom and watching these fascinating pictures and listening to these reports coming in from Walter. Talk about a front line image there.
Here now is just what we're following here this morning. Paula Zahn will be up here in just a moment. But first, we want to give you what's happening this hour as long as we continue to watch these pictures coming in from Walter's location with the 3-7th.
And as we've been seeing from these pictures, the U.S. Army's 3- 7th Calvary is crossing or has crossed the Euphrates River in central Iraq and it's advancing north in the general direction of Baghdad now. And our Walter Rodgers, who you hear in the background right there, he's embedded with the Calvary and he says that U.S. forces are using the cover of a blinding sandstorm to escape Iraqi gunfire. And Iraqis are using that sandstorm for cover to execute that gunfire, as well.
Now, coalition aircraft bombarded targets in the key northern city of Mosul for a fourth straight night.
Our Ben Wedeman is about 30 miles east of Mosul and he described it as the most violent night of bombing he's seen since he's been there.
Well, coalition forces have changed their strategy in the key southern city of Basra. British military officials say allied troops are treating the city now as a legitimate military target now that Iraqi forces have pulled back into the town, possibly to engage troops in urban warfare inside the city.
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