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CNN Live Today
Coalition Closing in on Baghdad
Aired April 04, 2003 - 10:51 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.
PAULA ZAHN, CNN ANCHOR: I'm going to try to get a little input right now from Colonel Mike Turner. For those of you watching who've been watching us for weeks now, he's always a permanent fixture around this place, always giving us his perspective on military action of the day.
Welcome back, Colonel Mike Turner. Just a point of reference, you used to brief General Norman Schwarzkopf during Desert Storm.
Welcome back.
First of all, your reaction to this national address just seen on Iraqi Television and replayed here?
COL. MIKE TURNER (RET.), CNN MILITARY ANALYST: Well, it's certainly a wild card. This morning at breakfast, I was musing with my wife about the fact all the indications to me would be that he's dead, and that he's been dead for sometime. So this is a surprise. I think what you'll find as the noose begins to tighten, that essentially, you've got a funneling down of his options, and the regime's options to respond to what we do on the ground. That's good and bad. It narrows their options, but it also means there is a much higher likelihood I think in the coming days of these sorts of strange occurrences happening that are coming from left field so to speak, into this funnel and may or may not get more extreme as that noose begins to tighten, or as the funnel narrows down, and we'll start to see these kinds of things more often, almost I suspect, on a daily basis. So it's tough to tell what it means.
ZAHN: Put into context for us some of the things we heard from the Iraq information minister earlier today, a chilling warning that tonight at sometime an unconventional kind of attack will be carried out. He said not by the military. And he said, I don't think anybody will surrender quickly, and basically, he sort of intimated that no one would survive this attack, and then minutes later went on to say he was not talking about weapons of mass destruction.
Now we know in the past that so much of what has been said at those briefings is shot down by CENTCOM. But was there anything that you took seriously and what the Iraqi information minister warned about tonight?
TURNER: Candidly, no. We saw this during desert storm. This is the way the Iraqis function. He needs to say that. It plays to the fears of his civilian population, it plays to the concerns of American -- of a military leadership. So I don't put a lot of stock in that, other than the fact that, again, as we narrow down their options, we drive them necessarily to perhaps more extreme options.
Now the other possibility is we've already broken their back and this is just rhetoric. That's certainly a real possibility. But again, you'll begin to see the comments in extremist, if you will, as we get tighter around Baghdad, and it's just very, very difficult to put any credence into it.
Obviously, if we have a significant and particularly damaging act, the credibility of these kinds of claims will go up substantially. And again, we'll just have to wait an see.
ZAHN: Finally, colonel, we've just got about 10 seconds left. Walt Rodgers reporting from outside that perimeter area of the airport in downtown Baghdad that there is, in his words, substantial Iraqi movement around that perimeter area. Just a final thought on that this morning and what that might signify.
TURNER: The airport is a key issue, a key location. They know it, we know it, and that battle will rage, I suspect, for sometime yet.
ZAHN: Colonel Mike Turner. Thank you, back to Bill.
TO ORDER A VIDEO OF THIS TRANSCRIPT, PLEASE CALL 800-CNN-NEWS OR USE OUR SECURE ONLINE ORDER FORM LOCATED AT www.fdch.com
Aired April 4, 2003 - 10:51 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
PAULA ZAHN, CNN ANCHOR: I'm going to try to get a little input right now from Colonel Mike Turner. For those of you watching who've been watching us for weeks now, he's always a permanent fixture around this place, always giving us his perspective on military action of the day.
Welcome back, Colonel Mike Turner. Just a point of reference, you used to brief General Norman Schwarzkopf during Desert Storm.
Welcome back.
First of all, your reaction to this national address just seen on Iraqi Television and replayed here?
COL. MIKE TURNER (RET.), CNN MILITARY ANALYST: Well, it's certainly a wild card. This morning at breakfast, I was musing with my wife about the fact all the indications to me would be that he's dead, and that he's been dead for sometime. So this is a surprise. I think what you'll find as the noose begins to tighten, that essentially, you've got a funneling down of his options, and the regime's options to respond to what we do on the ground. That's good and bad. It narrows their options, but it also means there is a much higher likelihood I think in the coming days of these sorts of strange occurrences happening that are coming from left field so to speak, into this funnel and may or may not get more extreme as that noose begins to tighten, or as the funnel narrows down, and we'll start to see these kinds of things more often, almost I suspect, on a daily basis. So it's tough to tell what it means.
ZAHN: Put into context for us some of the things we heard from the Iraq information minister earlier today, a chilling warning that tonight at sometime an unconventional kind of attack will be carried out. He said not by the military. And he said, I don't think anybody will surrender quickly, and basically, he sort of intimated that no one would survive this attack, and then minutes later went on to say he was not talking about weapons of mass destruction.
Now we know in the past that so much of what has been said at those briefings is shot down by CENTCOM. But was there anything that you took seriously and what the Iraqi information minister warned about tonight?
TURNER: Candidly, no. We saw this during desert storm. This is the way the Iraqis function. He needs to say that. It plays to the fears of his civilian population, it plays to the concerns of American -- of a military leadership. So I don't put a lot of stock in that, other than the fact that, again, as we narrow down their options, we drive them necessarily to perhaps more extreme options.
Now the other possibility is we've already broken their back and this is just rhetoric. That's certainly a real possibility. But again, you'll begin to see the comments in extremist, if you will, as we get tighter around Baghdad, and it's just very, very difficult to put any credence into it.
Obviously, if we have a significant and particularly damaging act, the credibility of these kinds of claims will go up substantially. And again, we'll just have to wait an see.
ZAHN: Finally, colonel, we've just got about 10 seconds left. Walt Rodgers reporting from outside that perimeter area of the airport in downtown Baghdad that there is, in his words, substantial Iraqi movement around that perimeter area. Just a final thought on that this morning and what that might signify.
TURNER: The airport is a key issue, a key location. They know it, we know it, and that battle will rage, I suspect, for sometime yet.
ZAHN: Colonel Mike Turner. Thank you, back to Bill.
TO ORDER A VIDEO OF THIS TRANSCRIPT, PLEASE CALL 800-CNN-NEWS OR USE OUR SECURE ONLINE ORDER FORM LOCATED AT www.fdch.com
