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Legal View with Ashleigh Banfield

Gaza Market Turns Battlefield; U.S. Sells Israel More Ammo; Peace Corps Evacuates West Africa; Liberian Plans to Quarantine Sick, Burn Dead; NIH Doctor Looks at Ebola Containment Efforts and Likelihood of U.S. Outbreak; New Fears About American Jihadis Returning to U.S.

Aired July 31, 2014 - 12:00   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.


JIM SCIUTTO, CNN ANCHOR: Hello, everyone. I'm Jim Sciutto, in again today for Ashleigh Banfield. It is Thursday, July 31st, and welcome to LEGAL VIEW.

More Israeli troops, more U.S. ammunition, more war in Gaza causing many more Palestinian casualties. Today, the Israeli defense forces said it is calling up some 16,000 additional reservists. And CNN has learned the Pentagon is shoring up Israeli ammunition reserves all for what the Israeli prime minister now says is just the first phase of the planned demilitarization of Hamas-run Gaza.

We'll have much more on all of this in a moment. But first, I want to bring you some pictures that you may find very hard to watch. Yesterday's shelling of a crowded outdoor marketplace in Gaza. The Gaza health ministry says that 17 people were killed there. A photographer from Al-Mansara (ph) news agency was himself badly wounded on the scene. You'll see his camera drop only to be picked up by an assistant who keeps shooting. Have a look at this.

(VIDEO CLIP)

SCIUTTO: Just a riveting scene from inside the violence in Gaza.

I'm joined now by my CNN colleague, Karl Penhaul. He is in Gaza City.

Karl, that was video, that we've just aired for our viewers, of an attack on a market yesterday. Today we're hearing now of people hurt at a U.N. school -- another U.N. school housing Gaza refugees. Can you tell us what happened this time? These seem to be becoming almost a daily event there.

KARL PENHAUL, CNN CORRESPONDENT: They do seem to be becoming almost a daily event, Jim, and that really is a reflection of how dirty this war is becoming. What happened this morning, as far as we understand, is that some kind of round landed outside one of the U.N. schools being used as a shelter and caused injuries. It didn't, in fact, fall inside the school, and that is what saved some fatalities.

But it all does really go to highlight what the United Nations Relief Agency, the organization running those schools and shelters, is saying, and that is, that there is no longer any safe place, no safe haven anywhere in Gaza. So it's all good and well, the Israeli military trying to warn civilians to move out of the combat zone. But if that means they then go to another area, that then itself becomes engulfed in fighting, it means that the U.N. can no longer cope. And they're saying, in fact, that they're almost near breaking point. There's very little more that they can do to help the people of Gaza stay safe, Jim.

SCIUTTO: It also gets to the question, the weapons that the Israelis are using. It's a question we're going to get to shortly. But I want to share with our viewers another video that the IDF, the Israeli Defense Forces, have just released showing, they say, Hamas rockets being fired from a populated area inside Gaza. We're also hearing that one man was badly hurt on the Israeli side of the border today.

So, Karl, as you know, this is the Israeli argument here, that this fire, as we're seeing in this video we're showing now again from the Israeli military, Israelis say is coming from populated areas so that when they fire back, that in effect those Hamas militants are using civilians as, in effect, as human shields. Karl, I wonder if you could comment on that. You're on the ground there. You've witnessed many of these strikes and much of this fighting. What have you seen yourself in terms of the tactics that Hamas uses, you know, if it is true that what the Israelis say is right, that they use, in effect, fire from populated areas on purpose?

PENHAUL: Well, I think, of course, Hamas is firing rockets. And this afternoon, maybe an hour and a half ago, we saw another four rockets being fired from south of our position off towards Israel. I think if you look at that Israeli military video that you're referring to -- and it's good that they're putting this out, and, again, they also seem to be taking notice of our pleas to give us better resolution gun cam footage. But if you look at that video, it may not quite be as advertised.

If you look at it carefully, it seems that a lot of those rocket firing points come from orchards, small fields, small plots of land. Yes, of course, you do see buildings alongside those plots of land. And possibly, if you look very carefully, maybe one or two of those firing points are from inside a building compound itself. But when you look that there are orchards, when you look at there are fields, that, by Gaza standards, is sprawling countryside.

Why do I say that? Because there is not a lot of open area on the Gaza Strip. We're talking about an area that's about the size of metropolitan Las Vegas. And what the Israeli military has done as they come into Gaza, they've set up a buffer zone all around the borders of Gaza and Israel about 1.5 miles deep into Gaza. Now, that has the effect of pushing the militant factions back into the more heavily built-up areas given that the more countryside areas in Gaza are just on that border area. So it's pushing the militants back into the urban areas.

And this, of course, has turned into urban warfare, urban guerrilla warfare. We always knew this was the kind of fight that was going on in Gaza. You know, if you look at other instances of urban warfare even in recent history, Fallujah in Iraq could be a good example. If you want to go back right to Way (ph) City in Vietnam. So we know that when you push an enemy deep into a built-up area, then this is the kind of thing that is happening.

Describing it as use of human shield or not, I've heard those accusations. I haven't seen, with my own eyes, that kind of evidence. But if somebody is simply referring to the fact that there is a war going on in a heavily built-up area where civilians live, of course, that is the case. Both sides are fighting in the cities and in the towns, Jim.

SCIUTTO: As you say, Karl, that's the new place that we see war in cities, Iraq, Afghanistan and elsewhere. Thank you for that analysis, the kind you can only hear from someone who's right in the middle of it on the ground. We appreciate it from Karl Penhaul.

I want to talk more now about Israelis' ready supply of U.S. ammunition with our CNN Pentagon correspondent Barbara Starr, also CNN military analyst and retired Air Force Lieutenant Colonel Rick Francona.

Because, Barbara, as you know, and as Colonel Francona knows, you know, this ammunition question gets right to the question of Israeli tactics because, you know, is the U.S. supplying weapons that help Israel fight this war in an urban area and increases the danger of civilian casualties because I know, as you noted, Barbara, many of these weapons are not, in fact, precision-guided weapons. Can you explain to our viewers, you know, that distinction?

BARBARA STARR, CNN PENTAGON CORRESPONDENT: Well, sure. I mean, the U.S. regularly, and with the full authority of Congress, sells munitions to Israel all the time for their legitimate self-defense. That is the legal standard for selling weapons and ammunition to Israel. The country's right to defend itself.

What we're seeing now is that continuing flow of ammunition to Israel over the last couple of weeks. And, in fact, just yesterday, an announcement that more munitions were on the way, including 120- millimeter tank rounds, even more illumination rounds, those illuminations rounds we see over Gaza lighting up the sky at night so more strikes can be called in.

But the question of civilian casualties, these weapons, nothing is all that precise in war. That's the reality of it. But these are not satellite-guided weapons. They're not guided to a particular target. By all accounts, there's no Israeli intelligence on the ground at the sites where they hit guiding them in. They are tank, artillery, mortars firing from some distance away, firing into the populated areas that Karl was talking about. And that's the real challenge for Israel. They are firing right into the middle of civilian populations. That's their challenge right now.

SCIUTTO: Colonel, if I can ask you, you're a former intelligence officer. You've been involved in making targeting decisions, I'm sure. When Israel says they're doing everything to avoid civilian casualties, but at the same time using, as Barbara described, non- precision weapons, tank shells, mortar shells, many of which the U.S. is resupplying, is Israel, in fact, doing everything it can? RICK FRANCONA, MILITARY ANALYST: Well, they're doing everything they

can with the resources they have. If you're going to use artillery mortars and these unguided weapons, you're going to have civilian casualties, especially, as Karl points out, there's just no open space there. So any time you drop these kinds of high-explosive weapons into a

confined space, you're going to have collateral damage. It's just the way it is.

SCIUTTO: But don't you - don't you, colonel, have more collateral damage if you're using non-precision weapons? You would have less presumably if it was a guided munition as opposed to a shell, you know, that lands and covers a large area with its explosive radius.

FRANCONA: Right. Exactly. And so if you're looking at airstrikes, you can guide those. And they -- airstrikes are actually planned a lot more in advance than what we're seeing on the ground. And once you introduce ground troops, they're going to be using artillery mortars, tank rounds, and they're not going to have the time to do the research that we would like them to do.

What happens -- and I think has happened in the market exchange yesterday, the Israelis were taking incoming fire. They used their counterbattery radar to tell them where those rounds are coming from, and they send outgoing rounds right back at that location. Unfortunately, they're not as precise as they need to be. So you're going to encompass an area around your target. And that's where we get all of these civilian casualties.

Now, how do you stop that? You can tell the Israelis not to respond, but that's not going to happen because the Israelis believe their soldiers in the field have to have the ability to respond immediately because, as you know, the Palestinians use the old shoot and scoot. They're going to launch their mortars and they're going to be out of there. So if you don't take immediate action, you lose the opportunity to get back at them.

SCIUTTO: Yes, a sad fact of urban warfare, but certainly part of a debate that's going to continue. Thanks very much to Barbara Starr, former Lieutenant Colonel Rick Francona.

Now to our other top story of the day, the deadly Ebola epidemic. Two Americans infected with the virus may be brought back to the United States. How do you keep them safe and their plane crew from catching the disease? We're going to take a look at that right after this break.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

SCIUTTO: As two Americans in Africa fate for their lives against the Ebola virus, the U.S. government is working to bring them home. U.S. officials are in talks about evacuating the aid worker's home on a CDC-outfitted Gulf Stream jet with an isolation pod inside. That's a picture of it there.

Whether they're stable enough to make that trip is the big unknown at this point.

Meantime, as the death toll rises in Western Africa, officials warn this epidemic will get worse before it gets better. Already at least 729 people have perished in what is now the highest death toll ever in an Ebola outbreak.

Now, the Peace Corps is evacuating some 340 volunteers from the region, this as two Peace Corps volunteers remain isolated after coming into contact with someone who ended up dying of Ebola.

CNN's Dr. Sanjay Gupta joins me now with the very latest.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

DR. SANJAY GUPTA, CNN CHIEF MEDICAL CORRESPONDENT: Jim, what we know about these Peace Corps volunteers, two of them, they seem to have come in contact with someone who was sick with Ebola without knowing it.

They weren't there for Ebola-related projects. Subsequently that person died of Ebola, and they went back and found all the contacts. Two of them were these Peace Corps volunteers.

So the process right now is that they into isolation, so in case they have the infection, they don't continue to spread it. And they have their temperature monitored every day. If they go without a fever for 21 days, then it's unlikely they have the infection.

But even as their colleagues are leaving the country, Jim, some 340 Peace Corps volunteers, they are staying behind for this isolation process.

Also, those two health care workers in Liberia, we've heard a couple days ago they were quite sick, even deteriorating in terms of their physical health at that point. A little bit of good news, they may have stabilized, even had slight improvements, although it is still very much touch-and-go with regard to their health.

But it does raise this question, Jim, that you and I had talked about. Could they be evacuated? And if so, how would that all happen?

Take a look at these images. This is sort of one of the evacuation- type pods, an infectious-disease pod, if you will. This is the sort of thing that would be used if they were to be evacuated.

You want to make sure that first of all they are medically stable. You want to make sure that the pod is set up in a way that they don't get other people sick, the people that are trying to transport them. And then obviously they need a country to go to as well.

Also, Jim, a lot of talk about travel bans and the impact that might have. It's unclear how much it would actually stem this infectious disease outbreak, but there is a lot more that is need in that area.

They need simple things like personal protective gear for the health care workers to go into these villages. They also need to be able to get to the place where Ebola is actually -- where the cause is occurring there. Make sure people are educated about how to prevent that disease from continuing to spread.

It's a lot more work to do out there, Jim. Back to you for now.

SCIUTTO: Yeah. The incredible steps necessary to contain this disease, thanks very much, Dr. Sanjay Gupta.

Quarantine the sick and burn the dead, that is the chilling plan at the heart of the Liberian president's plan. They've closed the schools, border crossings, and markets and set aside tomorrow for the disinfection and chlorination of all public facilities in that country.

CNN'S Richard Quest spoke with Liberian Information Minister Lewis Brown with the dire, deadly situation in his country.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

LEWIS BROWN, LIBERIAN INFORMATION MINISTER (via telephone): Health care workers are overtaxed and certainly overstressed. The matter here has reached a crisis point. It is now, rather than just a Liberian problem -- it's a Leonean and Guinean problem, and it evidently is an international problem.

We need all the international help and assistance we can get, and the dire prognosis is that it will get worse before it gets better.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

SCIUTTO: The Liberian president has also canceled a scheduled trip to Washington next week for a major African summit so that he can deal with the Ebola crisis.

Joining me now is Dr. Anthony Fauci at the National Institutes of Health. Thank you very much for coming back to join us again today, Dr. Fauci.

DR. ANTHONY FAUCI, NATIONAL INSTITUTES OF HEALTH: Good to be with you, Jim.

SCIUTTO: I just wanted to give you an assessment from Doctors Without Borders, their director of operations said the Ebola outbreak, in his words, is absolutely not under control.

Just knowing your experience, and again in responding to the AIDS virus, what is your view of the first line of defense, in effect, in what's happening in Africa right now? Are they doing everything that needs to be done to get this under control, reduce the risk that it spreads beyond there, perhaps even to the U.S.?

FAUCI: Well, they are certainly trying to do everything that needs to be done, but given the health care infrastructure and the unavailability of the kinds of equipment that you universally need when you have so many people, particularly in densely populated areas who are getting infected and spreading it particularly to the people who are trying to take care of them, to the family members and even to the people who are administering to the body.

So there are so many things that need to improve, again, through no fault of theirs. It's the poverty and the lack of health care infrastructure that they have there. You need to get the ability to handle people under the strict protocols of personal protective equipment.

But also, there's the cultural issues of people being terrified and often afraid to bring people into health care facilities and trying to manage them at home, having the unfortunate effect of infecting family members rather than getting people the proper isolation under the care of physicians who have the capability of using these personal protective approaches.

SCIUTTO: Dr. Fauci, you've made the smart point that I think our viewers should pay attention to, that the U.S. does not have those same challenges as Africa does. It has a much better health care system, more able to respond quickly to this sort of thing which makes a spread like we're seeing there unlikely to happen here.

But this would be something new for the healthcare industry here, E.R. doctors, et cetera, to respond to. How confident are you that hospitals, doctors, if they see the symptoms, they can identify them properly and react quickly to contain -- contain it if the virus came to the U.S.?

FAUCI: I am confident, Jim, in that because right now certainly everyone is on high alert. Particularly if people are coming in from West Africa, we have the capability of putting into effect isolation procedures and having people taken care of by the protocols that the CDC has very carefully developed.

So I do have confidence that given our structure, our infrastructure that we have and our resources, that we will be able to take care of if, in fact, someone happens to, as the scenario keeps getting put together in the media, which is not an unreasonable thing that sometime someone may come over here on a plane who was infected in one of the West African countries was not sick there and then arrived here and got sick.

I have confidence that given our system, there will not be outbreak spread of it. That we'll be able to adequately take care of that individual.

SCIUTTO: As you were speaking there, we were showing the map of the 20 quarantine stations that exist around the country to respond to this kind of thing, identify this kind of thing. But I want to, before I let you go, Dr. Fauci, what do you think differentiates this outbreak from others? Why has this one been the deadliest so far?

FAUCI: Well, the reason I think, Jim, is that the others have been outbreaks that have been in relatively isolated rural areas where the epidemic essentially burned itself out. And when people came in to take care of the infected individuals, there wasn't that spread that was so easily seen. Right now you have three very poor countries with poor resources. You have porous borders between the countries. And importantly, that has established itself in highly populated areas, which is distinctly different from the isolated pockets that we saw from the first outbreaks that were identified in Zaire in 1976.

SCIUTTO: Now all those populated areas easily connected by so many international flights these days, another challenge.

Thank you very much to Dr. Anthony Fauci. Always good to have you on.

SCIUTTO: There are new fears that American jihadists will start attacking the United States. Listen to this.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

MONER MOHAMMAD ABU-SALHA, AMERICAN SUICIDE BOMBER IN SYRIA: And the ones who are guided, who are (inaudible), are the ones of (inaudible) of mujahidin, who fight for Allah, who die for Allah, and those are the successful.

You will see --

(END VIDEO CLIP)

SCIUTTO: An angry online rant by a Florida man who ultimately became a suicide bomber in Syria. There are growing concerns about the threat that Western fighters like him will pose if they decide to attack back at home.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

SCIUTTO: A familiar accent, the look of a college kid that lives just across the street, hardly the stuff that conjures up images of terrorism.

Until you realize the face of terror is changing today and hitting much closer to home.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

SCIUTTO: It is a chilling warning from a terrorist born and raised in America.

ABU-SALHA: We are coming for you. Mark my words!

SCIUTTO: In this video posted online this week, an American jihadist destroys his passport and warns his home country is not safe from attack.

ABU-SALHA: My name is (inaudible). I'm from America. I'm 22-years-old.

SCIUTTO: He is Moner Mohammad Abu-Salha, a college dropout from Florida who traveled to Syria to join extremists in the fight against the regime of Syrian president Bashar al-Assad.

Then, this May, he died a suicide bombing, detonating a bomb-laden truck.

ABU-SALHA: You will never win! You will never defeat us!

SCIUTTO: More than three years into a civil war in Syria that has killed tens of thousands and now spilled into neighboring Iraq, thousands of foreign fighters have been drawn to the battle, among them, an estimated 1,000 Westerners, including more than 100 Americans.

U.S. and European officials are now gravely concerned about what could happen next. Intelligence has found these fighters are being trained to carry out attacks when they return home, including to America.

JOHN CARLIN, U.S. DEPARTMENT OF JUSTICE: The number of foreign fighters that are already in place in Syria and the number of Westerners in that group is one that's unprecedented and I think is a larger number than we ever saw in the ungoverned spaces of Pakistan and Afghanistan region.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

SCIUTTO: Driving home the threat from homegrown jihadis, we've now learned that Abu-Salha, the Florida-born suicide bomber, actually did return to the U.S. for several months before carrying out his mission in Syria.

Joining me now with his insights and his expertise, CNN national security analyst Peter Bergen. Thanks for coming, Peter.

Peter has written this very in-depth piece on the threat from jihadis like Abu-Salha, and you make a great point there just about the propaganda value of having an American recruited to this cause and, you know, sending his message to the world.