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Where is Saddam?

Aired April 11, 2003 - 10:25   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: ... "The Case Against Saddam Hussein," Kenneth Pollack, of the Saban Center at Brookings Institution.
Welcome back, Ken.

KENNETH POLLACK, CNN ANALYST: Good morning, Paula.

ZAHN: I know you have an awful lot of theories to shoot down here today, but let's just tick them off, that he could have escaped into Syria, that he's hiding, that he could be holed up in the Russian embassy in Baghdad, that he could have gone home in Tikrit.

POLLACK: Any of this is possible, Paula. I think you have to add a couple more, that he's trying to make his way out to the western tribes, who are also very friendly to his regime, or as Secretary Rumsfeld suggested, he may still be in Baghdad. He may be one of the tunnels that are rumored to exist below the city. All that is possible. My guess if I had to guess is that if he is alive, he is probably trying to make his way to Tikrit, where is a place where we know he's got a number of boat (ph) holes, he's got a number of palaces and bunkers there, and it's probably the place where the people are going to be most willing to try to hide him.

ZAHN: That may be true, but Michael Ware of "Time" magazine just filed a report a short time ago where he described the city as being locked down, under siege, in a complete state of lawlessness.

POLLACK: Right. Well I don't think that there's any question that Tikrit may not be a great place for him to be. I think the question has got to be in his mind, where is a good place for him right now? We've known about Saddam in the past, is he believes that exile really isn't an option for him, that if he is not in power in Iraq, he is basically a dead man.

Now obviously, his incentive structure may have changed radically over the last few days, and he may be thinking that Syria does look better for to him, but typically, what we've seen of Saddam in the past is that he is looking to go some place where he's surrounded by his loyalists, and Tikrit is basically the only place left out there for him.

ZAHN: There are some analysis in a number of published reports this morning that say there is some expectation that perhaps if he is alive and in Tikrit, he has some kind of final last stand planned. What is it he would be capable of pulling off if he were alive?

POLLACK: In terms of morally, he's capable of doing anything. This is a man with no regard for human life whatsoever. The big issues out there is what capabilities does he have left? We just don't know what he has left. He may still have weapons of mass destruction hidden away in tunnels up in Tikrit, VX nerve agents, various biological agents. He may also have some SCUD missiles up there. There are concerns about what is located in Al Kayim (ph), which is a small town on the Syrian border, not terribly distant from Tikrit, that there are SCUD missiles hiding there as well.

And what we saw in 1991 was his plan was if Baghdad fell, he wanted to launch everything he had, including biological and chemically tipped missiles at Israel as one final salvo.

ZAHN: Do we have any idea when coalition forces will be able to penetrate any of the large bunker systems undergrowth?

POLLACK: I would think it probably is a matter of days or weeks, but it really is tough to tell. The first problem for the coalition is that they've got to find the bunkers, and that means locating Iraqis who actually know the entrances, know the locations, debriefing them, getting that information, and then being able to have enough force and the right kind of force to go into those bunkers, because no one knows what's in them. There might be chemical weapons in them. There might be biological weapons. There may just be a lot of Saddam's loyalists with a lot of firepower waiting down there.

If you can give me a short answer, there is an "L.A. Times" report suggesting that there is a nuclear site that has been left unguarded with a number of Iraqi civilians swirling around it, and some fear that with these unsecured areas, that some of the stuff has been very vulnerable to being stolen?

POLLACK: Right. Absolutely, Paula. This is one of the concerns going into this, was that once the regime came apart, that there would be a lot of chaos around these weapons of mass destruction sites, and you might have Iraqis or foreign agents going into those sites, grabbing stuff, and then taking them out to sell to foreign governments.

ZAHN: Kenneth Pollack, thanks for your perspective.

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 11, 2003 - 10:25   ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
PAULA ZAHN, CNN ANCHOR: ... "The Case Against Saddam Hussein," Kenneth Pollack, of the Saban Center at Brookings Institution.
Welcome back, Ken.

KENNETH POLLACK, CNN ANALYST: Good morning, Paula.

ZAHN: I know you have an awful lot of theories to shoot down here today, but let's just tick them off, that he could have escaped into Syria, that he's hiding, that he could be holed up in the Russian embassy in Baghdad, that he could have gone home in Tikrit.

POLLACK: Any of this is possible, Paula. I think you have to add a couple more, that he's trying to make his way out to the western tribes, who are also very friendly to his regime, or as Secretary Rumsfeld suggested, he may still be in Baghdad. He may be one of the tunnels that are rumored to exist below the city. All that is possible. My guess if I had to guess is that if he is alive, he is probably trying to make his way to Tikrit, where is a place where we know he's got a number of boat (ph) holes, he's got a number of palaces and bunkers there, and it's probably the place where the people are going to be most willing to try to hide him.

ZAHN: That may be true, but Michael Ware of "Time" magazine just filed a report a short time ago where he described the city as being locked down, under siege, in a complete state of lawlessness.

POLLACK: Right. Well I don't think that there's any question that Tikrit may not be a great place for him to be. I think the question has got to be in his mind, where is a good place for him right now? We've known about Saddam in the past, is he believes that exile really isn't an option for him, that if he is not in power in Iraq, he is basically a dead man.

Now obviously, his incentive structure may have changed radically over the last few days, and he may be thinking that Syria does look better for to him, but typically, what we've seen of Saddam in the past is that he is looking to go some place where he's surrounded by his loyalists, and Tikrit is basically the only place left out there for him.

ZAHN: There are some analysis in a number of published reports this morning that say there is some expectation that perhaps if he is alive and in Tikrit, he has some kind of final last stand planned. What is it he would be capable of pulling off if he were alive?

POLLACK: In terms of morally, he's capable of doing anything. This is a man with no regard for human life whatsoever. The big issues out there is what capabilities does he have left? We just don't know what he has left. He may still have weapons of mass destruction hidden away in tunnels up in Tikrit, VX nerve agents, various biological agents. He may also have some SCUD missiles up there. There are concerns about what is located in Al Kayim (ph), which is a small town on the Syrian border, not terribly distant from Tikrit, that there are SCUD missiles hiding there as well.

And what we saw in 1991 was his plan was if Baghdad fell, he wanted to launch everything he had, including biological and chemically tipped missiles at Israel as one final salvo.

ZAHN: Do we have any idea when coalition forces will be able to penetrate any of the large bunker systems undergrowth?

POLLACK: I would think it probably is a matter of days or weeks, but it really is tough to tell. The first problem for the coalition is that they've got to find the bunkers, and that means locating Iraqis who actually know the entrances, know the locations, debriefing them, getting that information, and then being able to have enough force and the right kind of force to go into those bunkers, because no one knows what's in them. There might be chemical weapons in them. There might be biological weapons. There may just be a lot of Saddam's loyalists with a lot of firepower waiting down there.

If you can give me a short answer, there is an "L.A. Times" report suggesting that there is a nuclear site that has been left unguarded with a number of Iraqi civilians swirling around it, and some fear that with these unsecured areas, that some of the stuff has been very vulnerable to being stolen?

POLLACK: Right. Absolutely, Paula. This is one of the concerns going into this, was that once the regime came apart, that there would be a lot of chaos around these weapons of mass destruction sites, and you might have Iraqis or foreign agents going into those sites, grabbing stuff, and then taking them out to sell to foreign governments.

ZAHN: Kenneth Pollack, thanks for your perspective.

TO ORDER A VIDEO OF THIS TRANSCRIPT, PLEASE CALL 800-CNN-NEWS OR USE OUR SECURE ONLINE ORDER FORM LOCATED AT www.fdch.com