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Iraqis: U.S. Bombs Killed 16 ISIS Fighters; ISIS Progress Very Rapid in Recent Weeks; Brutal ISIS Militants Known for Beheadings; Reluctant Obama Authorizes Airstrikes; U.S. Drops Food and Water to Stranded Iraqis; Fascination with Charles Manson

Aired August 09, 2014 - 17:00   ET

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

BROOKE BALDWIN, CNN ANCHOR: And here we go, you're in the CNN NEWSROOM. I'm Brooke Baldwin live here in New York. We have to begin of course with our complete coverage of what's happening on the ground in Iraq. The U.S. military destroying targets from the air again in Iraq, and now we have a casualty count. Look at the map with me and I'll tell you what we know right now.

Iraqi officials near the town of Erbil in far northern Iraq say, 16 fighters from the militant group ISIS are dead, they were killed when American warplanes dropped bombs on their artillery positions. ISIS as you very well know has been rolling unchecked all over much of the northern part of the country, taking control of cities, highways, infrastructure, with no organized forces on the ground really with the weaponry to be able to stop them. American planes are also dropping something else to those in dire need in Iraq as well.

Food, medical supplies, water, to these thousands of people, many, many children who have been forced to abandon their homes when ISIS fighters got dangerously close. For the first time since 2011, the United States military is back in the business of direct combat in Iraq. So, from the mountains of northern Iraq to Washington, D.C., CNN correspondents are covering this new chapter of hostilities.

We have senior international correspondent Ivan Watson in Erbil, Iraq for us. And we will here President Obama's comments from just this morning about the air strikes and the catastrophic humanitarian crisis. And how long he expects to be involved there. But we'll talk to Evan Perez, our justice correspondent in Washington in just a moment.

But Ivan Watson, we have to begin with you in Erbil. Tell me, President Obama said the air strikes near where you are were part of this long term struggle that will ultimately need Iraqis to fight ISIS. What's the response where you are?

IVAN WATSON, CNN SENIOR INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Well, I mean, he's put a lot of pressure, he said that the air strikes would be designed to try to give some breathing room for the Iraqis, to basically unify. There has been political deadlock for quite a long time. There are signs of some of that unification coming together. The new president of Iraq, the new speaker of the Iraqi parliament travelled up here to Erbil where they met with the president of the Kurdistan regional government. There had not been good dialogue in the past between Baghdad and Erbil.

Now, we're seeing some coordination between the Kurdish Peshmerga forces here in the north. And the Iraqi air force which is controlled by Baghdad. These are positive signs. Big question, what's going to happen with the Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al Maliki, who was criticized by many for helping create this crisis by pursuing a policy that favored Shiite Arab Iraqis and the ISIS uprising has been backed by many Sunni Arabs who felt disenfranchised as President Obama himself put it, the Kurdish officials here have said that they are also facing not only the hardcore, many foreign jihadi fighters of this ISIS movement, but also many Arab tribes men who have kind of jumped along the bandwagon and it really helped ISIS push forward and engage in what really looks like ethnic and sectarian cleansing of anybody who is not a Sunni, Muslim Arab in the areas that they've taken over, and that's driven hundreds of thousands of Iraqi Christians, Yazidis, Shiites, Kurds, Turkmen in the direction of the Kurdish north -- Brooke.

BALDWIN: Genocide is the word that the president and Secretary Kerry have both used in the last 24 hours. But let's just talk about the people, these families, you've talked to many of them in Erbil, fled from their homes, living out of construction sites and churches. And what we're talking about is the humanitarian relief arriving by airdrop. How much is it helping? How much more do they need?

WATSON: Well, I mean, the hundreds of thousands of people who have come to Kurdish towns and cities, those people are pretty much just in shock, and appear relieved to find a place where they're not in immediate harm's way of fighting or clashes or the ISIS militants. The bigger question what's next, nobody really had an answer though first thing that any kind of family that I would to that would come to mind was getting out of Iraq. Many of them resigned to the fact, were just pretty determined to give up on this country entirely, and hoping for sanctuary in Europe or the U.S. anywhere but Iraq right now.

That's what people were telling me. And then there are more immediate needs that they have to face, how are they going to feed their families? How long can they sleep on the floors of schools, and churches and abandoned construction sites? Can the people hear of Iraqi Kurdistan help feed them? I was seeing ordinary Kurds kind of helping donate food and money to help these desperate people. So, it is a major humanitarian crisis, and there's no question that the needs to be international assistance to help deal with this wave of humanity.

BALDWIN: Ivan Watson. Thank you. It's a crisis the president has addressed. These airdrops and also airstrikes. And again, we saw the president again today this morning at the White House. He wasn't specific as far as what's next to Ivan's question or how long the U.S. airstrikes would continue or even where the next round of airstrikes would target.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

BARACK OBAMA, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: We're not moving our embassy anytime soon. We're not moving our consulate any time soon. And that means that given the challenging security environment, we're going to maintain vigilance and ensure that our people are safe.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BALDWIN: CNN's Justice Correspondent Evan Perez joins me from Washington. And I mean, it's obvious, you know, if you're the president, you're not going to tell the world publicly where you're going to strike, right? You need the element of surprise, as far as these ISIS militants in targets go. But as far as the timetable, he was very vague, saying it would be a protracted fight, long term. What's your read on that?

EVAN PEREZ, CNN JUSTICE CORRESPONDENT: Well, Brook, I think that's the big news out of what the president said today. I mean, what he is preparing the American public for essentially is that we're going to be doing this now for weeks, but for months and perhaps for years. I mean, obviously, there's some precedence to that. You know, that the U.S. carried out airstrikes for years in northern Iraq to prevent Saddam Hussein's military from attacking the Kurds and protecting the people out there. So, what he's setting up for is obviously the possibility that we're going to be doing this for some time.

Because A, he's trying to buy time for the government in Baghdad to get its act together to get an inclusive government that encourages Sunnis to go away from supporting ISIS as Ivan Watson was just telling you. And then he also wants obviously to give time for the Iraqi military to get its act together to be able to start fighting ISIS and to actually start winning back some of this territory. So, we're facing a long time of these types of strikes -- Brooke.

BALDWIN: So, that's long term. They have to elect the prime minister really runs the government there in Iraq. What about just more imminently, as far as -- I know you've talked to administration officials today, Evan. Are they sharing anything with you as far as objectives? Be it protecting those Americans in Erbil, at the consulate or stopping the siege in Mount Sinjar or even, you know, we have an American embassy in Baghdad?

PEREZ: Right. Well, you know, that's the other significant thing here, is obviously the president is saying that we're going to protect not only the consulate which is in Erbil, and where we have a lot of American advisers that are helping the Kurds and are trying to get a fix on the situation. But we also have a big presence in Baghdad and he's basically saying that we're going to make sure that ISIS does not advance on Baghdad. Which is a big undertaking frankly. So, we're looking again at a widening scope, and you're starting to hear some reluctance from some members of Congress who think that perhaps this is mission creep, I think this is a very difficult situation for the president, because obviously he was very reluctant to do this.

BALDWIN: Right.

PEREZ: But you know, the very few choices he had here -- Brooke.

BALDWIN: One of the platforms he ran on, ending the war in Iraq.

PEREZ: That's right. BALDWIN: And while some in Washington right say, this could be mission creep, others saying it's not enough.

PEREZ: Exactly.

BALDWIN: Evan Perez in Washington, thank you so much. The president is working with world leaders to come up with a plan to fight and not just stop, but destroy ISIS. But did the U.S. already miss its best chance to destroy them? Plus this.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

MARK ARABO, CHALDEAN-AMERICAN LEADER: Day by day, it's getting worse and worse. More children are being beheaded, mothers are being raped and killed, the fathers are being hung.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BALDWIN: You heard him. I mean, how do you fight an enemy who is so brutal they are beheading little girls and little boys, the families who refuse to convert to Islam? Disgusting. We'll be right back.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

PRES. BARACK OBAMA (D), UNITED STATES: Did we underestimate ISIL? I think that there is no doubt that their advance, their movement over the last several months has been more rapid than the intelligence estimates and I think the expectations of policy makers both in and outside of Iraq.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BALDWIN: So, the president there this morning, he's acknowledging that this militant group ISIS did surprise intelligence types with he said, more rapid with the speed in the east in which they rolled through Iraq.

Let's talk with that a little bit more with CNN military analyst retired Lieutenant Colonel Rick Francona and that's your point. That U.S. military, U.S. intelligence, they knew that ISIS would pose a threat, but the speed to which they have taken these towns has been the surprising part?

LT. COL. RICK FRANCONA (RET), CNN MILITARY ANALYST: It's a surprising part. It's not that we were underestimating ISIS, we were overestimating the Iraqi army. Because we have not had people embedded in these units since we left in 2011. So, we didn't have a real accurate assessment of how bad and how atrophied they'd become.

BALDWIN: OK. Let's look at maps, because I'm a visual person, so this helps me, and hopefully it will help you as well. So, let's take a look. This was June, and so the red parts here, as you can see this, these are the ISIS operational presence, ISIS control zones. Any color you see in the map, that's ISIS. And first to your point, just to explain to people, Erbil which we keep talking about is up here.

FRANCONA: Yes.

BALDWIN: Mosul is where this -- the Tigris River.

FRANCONA: Right to the south of the reservoir there, you can see in the north.

BALDWIN: OK. So, let's slash then, you understand this is June, and then you'll see all the color, once we flash forward to August.

FRANCONA: And a lot of the blank spaces down here particularly out in the west. The reason there's nothing colored there is because there's nothing there.

BALDWIN: Nothing to be taken.

FRANCONA: What ISIS has done is taken everything that's of value, they've come down the Tigris Valley, they have come down the Euphrates Valley, they've moved out to the border area, they've taken the key junctions in the roads, they controlled the border crossings, almost every border crossing on the Syrian border. The one official border crossing on the Jordanian border, they control now or they have a presence there. So, they're doing the right things. Now you see they're moving south of Baghdad, threatening the airport.

BALDWIN: OK. So, you bring up Baghdad, and I wanted to talk about that. Because what the president mentioned Baghdad this morning, where there's been so much focus. And as you can see on the map, because a lot of northern Iraq, much of a northern Iraq is under ISIS control. And the question as far as strategy goes for the president, is it not just, you know, protecting our 40 Americans in Erbil or stopping the siege to Mount Sinjar. But also, we have a massive U.S. Embassy in Baghdad, is that part of this?

FRANCONA: Yes, it is. And the president said that, he said, we're going to protect the American presence there, and he did make a reference to the embassy.

BALDWIN: He did.

FRANCONA: He said, we're not getting -- the embassy is not moving. He said, we're not pulling our people out of the embassy. So, if we're going to protect the embassy, that would mean that we're also going to be available to put air strikes just north of Baghdad because the ISIS people are threatening just north of Baghdad. You can see what they're trying to do, they're trying to come around the airport. That airport is critical, if we're ever going to have to evacuate Americans out of there, that airport is a key part of that, and that's why you saw after the initial assessment of how bad the Iraqi army was, we put troops into the airport.

BALDWIN: Can ISIS be stopped nearly by airstrikes, Colonel?

FRANCONA: They can be blunted.

BALDWIN: But is that good enough?

FRANCONA: If the Iraqis are able to get their act together if the army is able to reconstitute itself with our help.

BALDWIN: OK.

FRANCONA: And if we can give them time to regenerate their capabilities, air power can slow them down enough to do that. Can air power completely eliminate ISIS? Probably not.

BALDWIN: OK. Lieutenant Colonel Rick Francona, thank you very much. And we have seen these ruthless terrorists. But ISIS may proved to be more blood thirsty really many of them had witnessed before. How do you fight an enemy like this one? Do you need new rules in the war on ISIS? We'll discuss that after the break.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BALDWIN: ISIS militants are sending a brutal message to every religious minority in Iraq. Convert to ISIS radical religious views of Islam or be murdered, be slaughtered. ISIS is willing to behead anyone who refuses to join their plight including young children. This video shows desperate people stranded on top of this mountain, ISIS militants circling below ready to murder anyone who tries to descend. Now, this trapped men, women and children, they are members of Iraq's Yazidi sect. ISIS has become the world's most ruthless jihadist group. Chaldean-American leader talked to CNN International about their brutality.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

ARABO: Day by day, it's getting worse and worse. More children are being beheaded, mothers are being raped and killed, the fathers are being hung.

UNIDENTIFIED REPORTER: The atrocities committed by ISIS are well known, but still you're startling me with the severity of what you're describing. You say they are beheading children?

ARABO: They're systematically beheading children, and mothers and fathers. The world hasn't seen an evil like this for generations. There's actually a park in Mosul that actually beheaded children and put their heads on the stick and they have them in the park. This is crimes against humanity.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BALDWIN: Beheading children. How can ISIS be defeated when its members have no limits clearly on brutal violence?

Let me bring in Kimberly Dozier, contributing writer to The Daily Beast. And Michael Weiss, contributor for Politico Magazine.

Let me just begin on that man's final thought. Michael, to you. And I sat here watching that saying to you, how do you behead a child? It speaks to the brutality of their organization, and they're getting young people involved in their group.

MICHAEL WEISS, POLITICO MAGAZINE CONTRIBUTOR: Yes. They're creating child soldiers. Vice News actually had a very powerful documentary, I think two out of six parts of which have been exhibited thus far. Showing a great amount of access to ISIS control of Iraka (ph), the easternmost province in Syria. And they were interviewing children, I think as young as six and seven years old, chanting what was very clearly brainwashed slogans about the caliphate that's been establishment. They want to kill the kafir, ie infidels. They want to wage war on the west and all these things.

And actually was a nice member who is from Belgium who spoke to his young child on camera and said, what do you want to be when you grow up, a suicide bomber or jihadist? And the child replies, I want to be a jihadist. Probably those situations the wiser one but still, I mean, this is what they're doing. This is an extraordinarily ideological organization that is destroying generations of young Arab- Muslims.

BALDWIN: I was talking to a writer the other day with the Daily Beast, who talked to a 14-year-old who was kidnapped out of Aleppo, out of Syria, brought into Iraq and was at the beginning of the brainwashing and talked about this torture room, these kids are put in when they don't, you know, do what they're supposed to do, and he ended up running away.

WEISS: Yes.

BALDWIN: But just to the point of the youth. Kimberly Dozier, to you, can America realistically defeat ISIS when we talk about looking at the map of the territory and speediness of these cities they have taken? Is it possible to not just blunt them, but destroy them by airstrikes?

KIMBERLY DOZIER, CNN GLOBAL AFFAIRS ANALYST: Well, one of the things that ISIS has done, the mistake it's made is to give the White House a clear example, a black and white example of what they're doing wrong in a way that the U.S. can do something to stop it, with those tens of thousands of Yazidis civilians trapped on Sinjar, that means that the U.S. can go in and make a significant difference. Now what I think you're seeing is, President Obama is setting up the situation where it's going to be like Yemen or like Pakistan. Where the model is the U.S. works through local forces, bolsters them with intelligence and with advisers, but doesn't actually commit combat troops on the ground.

The air strikes will not drive ISIS out. But they'll be a great force multiplier, they'll really help boost the confidence of the Kurdish or Iraqi forces. The U.S. has also made clear that it's not going to make decision of when to go after Sinjar Mountain and drive ISIS forces away. The president said he's going to leave that to the Kurds and his advisers say, they're going to leave that to the Iraqi army to decide when to move forward.

BALDWIN: But here's the issue with that, the Kurds at Peshmerga and also the Iraqi army Michael, they don't have the weaponry that ISIS has. And you just co-wrote a piece with somebody who has embedded with the Peshmerga talking about, yes, they have American weaponry, American tanks, but it's also the Russians who provided some of that.

WEISS: Yes. Well, see, this is I think a huge point. We've all seen the sensationalistic headlines and photographs, ISIS standing in front of -- tanks. ISIS standing in front of Humvees. And I mean, it's terrifying to think that they've controlled, you know, hundreds of millions of dollars of U.S. made material. The problem is, this equipment is very, very difficult to operate, it requires an enormous amount of maintenance, you need consultants, you need servicemen on the ground. I don't think, the piece I co-wrote with Michael Pregens (ph) who has embedded as you say with the Peshmerga, we don't think this is really the problem. The real problem is, Soviet Era weaponry. Particularly doshka anti-aircraft machine guns, which have been used to great effect to take down helicopters, I think there was a report today in fact that they had shot down either an Iraqi or Kurdish helicopter trying to deliver aids to apply --

(CROSSTALK)

Right. So, this is what we need to worry about. As far as the U.S. staff is concerned, actually there's an in built advantage here. U.S. fighter pilots are very familiar with the heat signatures of U.S. made weaponry.

BALDWIN: How about that?

WEISS: So, we will be destroying our own stuff. But again, I'm not as worried about that. Michael Pregens estimates that I think 50 percent of the stuff they took was probably immobile. And of the remaining 50 percent, you have you to deal with these, you know, conditions in the Middle East, heat and sand getting into the works, who do they have on the ground to help them with that? And I would just make one final point. The reason these guys know how to use Russian made material, driving tanks and Humvee vehicles, a lot of the ISIS command core used to be Iraqi army soldiers. They used to be in the macabre, they came from Saddam's regime.

BALDWIN: Yes.

WEISS: This is a point that I think really is not being emphasized enough. That means that they are professionally trained military. That's why if you look at the way they're pouring in, the convoys and sort of the operational capability, this is not a rag tag militia. This is a professional army.

BALDWIN: No one thought they were clearly. No one thought they were.

WEISS: Yes.

BALDWIN: Where can we find your major piece?

WEISS: Well, we haven't placed it yet.

BALDWIN: OK. We'll get preview then. OK. Michael Weiss, thank you so much. WEISS: Sure, my pleasure.

BALDWIN: Kimberly Dozier, thank you as well. The airstrikes and the fighting in Iraq has not stopped President Obama from taking some time away with his family. His aid say, listen, he's the president, he can do his job wherever he is. Q, golf video with the president from Martha's Vineyard. Does this matter optically? Can he do his job? We'll discuss that, next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BALDWIN: President Obama has made it crystal clear that he did not want to get involved militarily in Iraq. He first made a name for himself, in fact he got elected to the White House by promoting his opposition to the U.S. military role in Iraq. And so now as he's heading toward his final two years in office, he finds himself ordering targeted airstrikes in Iraq on targets near Irbil.

Irbil, by the way, is home to a U.S. consulate and near where Christians and other religious minorities are under direct threat by this militant group. And the president said just this morning, this operation will take some time.

Is he acting for the right reasons? Should he have done this sooner? And should the U.S. be doing this at all?

Let's ask CNN political commentators Ben Ferguson and Marc Lamont Hill.

Happy Saturday to both of you. Welcome.

MARC LAMONT HILL, CNN POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: Happy Saturday.

BEN FERGUSON, CNN POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: Happy Saturday.

BALDWIN: All right, gentlemen. Before we roll forward, let me just play some sound. I want you both to listen to a comments the president made. This is actually near the end of Thursday night's airstrike announcement.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

BARACK OBAMA, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: Over the last several years we have brought the vast majority of our troops home from Iraq and Afghanistan. And I have been careful to resist calls to turn time and again to our military because America has other tools in our arsenal than our military. We can also lead with the power of our diplomacy, our economy and our ideals.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BALDWIN: Marc, first to you. You heard the president say he resisted calls, quote-unquote, "time and time" again in the past to go in militarily. You know, he says that he should use what he calls the power of diplomacy.

Did his -- did his reluctance to deploy the military before allow ISIS to gain such a strong foothold that they have right now in Iraq?

HILL: Well, I think that's part of the equation. There are a lot of factors here we have to consider. When the president decided to draw down in Iraq, it was as much a political move as it was a strategic one. The nation, and really the globe, didn't have an appetite for war. They no longer have an appetite for boots on the ground. So surely the president understood that that was -- that it was politically advantageous to do so.

But there was also a sense here that the Iraqi troops, Iraqi forces were going to take the reins, that they were going to be appropriately positioned to deal with this and Nouri al-Maliki was positioned to be the opposite of Saddam Hussein, to be the opposite of someone who engaged in sectarian violence and sectarian repression.

So Nouri al-Maliki turned the corner on us, creating a different kind of environment in Iraq. U.S. troops weren't guaranteed the level of security that they normally are guaranteed when they're in a place of providing security. That was an issue. And I think the president quite honestly was a little too hasty in getting security forces out of Iraq. I think that mixed together made things awful.

BALDWIN: Well, bottom line, a couple of years ago, you know, the U.S. left and here we are today and the president, I don't know, you know, kicking and screaming but maybe begrudgingly, you know, having to start this U.S. airstrike campaign because of the, quote-unquote, "genocide", Ben Ferguson. I mean, what did you make of the word genocide that he used and the timing?

FERGUSON: Yes. Well, you know, for one, I think he's doing this to make sure that he has enough cover because he has been absolutely the "I'm not going to war" president, and the problem is when you paint that picture, you get yourself in awkward situations like he's in right now, but make no mistake about this. Part of this was a massive miscalculation. ISIS didn't get bad yesterday. They were doing the same beheading of children in Syria and they were able to do what they've done in Syria which they're now doing in Iraq after we didn't act there.

When President Barack Obama came out, and I've said this before, I never want any United States president to ever fail when it comes to foreign policy and national security. And many people support him when he said, if you use chemical weapons, America will act. And when we did not act, ISIS came together. And other fighters came in with them. And they started taking hold in Syria, they had the same atrocities against Christians in Syria.

They're now doing in Iraq and the reason why they're doing it so boldly and why so many people have been recruited to come with them now that are true military individuals, they're crazies but they are a military, they're an army is because --

(CROSSTALK)

BALDWIN: Well, they're also brainwashing kids, by the way. They're brainwashing kids, by the way. FERGUSON: Sure. But they are also --

BALDWIN: And I think -- but hang on. Talking to a lot of very smart military types, and listening to the president, I think that the U.S. intelligence was that absolutely ISIS was a threat, but no one had any idea how quickly the speed to which they took these towns over the last couple of months and finally followed up by this one religious minority stuck on top of a mountain --

FERGUSON: But let me say this.

BALDWIN: Nobody saw that.

HILL: I think that's exactly right and I'm not --

(CROSSTALK)

FERGUSON: Right. But I'll say this, the other problem here is when you don't want to deal with it.

BALDWIN: Hang on, hang on. Ben, you finish, and then Marc.

FERGUSON: Yes. When you don't want to deal with it, then you are surprised. We've had two plus months of warning. We saw how quick they were able to go into certain towns, we could have gotten involved then and that's one of the other issues. We continue to have a foreign policy where we lead from behind instead of look at this enemy and saying, we're going to deal with it now. We're dealing with it two months after they've -- really organized and that's a big failure on our part.

BALDWIN: Marc, I want you to respond.

HILL: I think Ben is half right. I think there have been -- there have been moments where we painted ourselves into a corner. Syria certainly be an example of that. We can't -- we draw red lines and redraw red lines and redraw red lines, and we still end up with these issues.

I think it's improper, though, to compare what ISIS is doing in Iraq and what ISIS did in Syria. There's other competing counter-forces in Syria. There are a lot of other issues at play with regard to Syria and how they strategically (INAUDIBLE) in the region. I think it's apples and oranges when it comes to the Middle East, when you compare Syria to Iraq on this particular issue.

Also, I don't think -- I don't think it's that President Obama was committed to acting from behind on Iraq. I think he very wisely wanted Iraq to take the reins. He wanted Iraq to exercise leadership. But I think we're at a point now where we see in almost unanticipatable fashion that ISIS was able to come in and take over the region. They're able to go to Mosul, they're able to go north now. They're able to really completely box the Yazidis and completely dismantle any potential -- Kurdistan state.

All of this stuff is happening relatively quickly. I'm not saying the president did this entirely -- made no mistakes here. Again I think he should --

(CROSSTALK)

FERGUSON: But even today --

BALDWIN: Final thought, Ben. We got to go.

FERGUSON: I'll say this. Even today, look at what Barack Obama did. He put himself in a corner by saying under no circumstances are we going to have boots on the ground or have anything to deal with a war. Yet we're going to be bombing.

Why give that to your enemy? Why not let them wonder what America may or may not do instead of saying, we're only going to act from the air and there's nothing else we're going to do. I think that again puts him in a really bad position with his foreign policy. And again I want him to be successful on this --

(CROSSTALK)

FERGUSON: I'm rooting for him to do well because these people are going to be dying.

BALDWIN: I think we're all on the side of wanting to help these people and to get these people the humanitarian aid they need.

HILL: Right.

BALDWIN: But the bottom line is --

FERGUSON: Absolutely.

BALDWIN: You know, the U.S. only wants to do so much with these targeted airstrikes. The other issue is Iraq. Iraq needs to step up and help with destroying of ISIS.

Gentlemen, Marc Lamont Hill and Ben Ferguson, thank you both very much for me on this Saturday afternoon.

Coming up, thousands of Iraqis are stuck. They are trapped on top of this mountain in northern Iraq. They are surrounded on the base of the mountain by these terrorists. They're being told they have to convert to Islam or die. You will hear from a UNICEF worker who has been entirely working to get these people, these families the help they need.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BALDWIN: You're watching CNN, I'm Brooke Baldwin.

Until the airdrops began, they had no food. These people had no water and as these mothers and fathers, the children are passing the hours atop this mountain, Mount Sinjar, in the scorching summer heat, there was no escape for some 40,000 desperate people in the mountains of northwestern Iraq, hiding from the killers surrounding them on the ground below. ISIS fighters overran the northern Iraqi city of Sinjar last weekend.

They forced a group of Yazidis -- this is a religious minority, this group, they're about 600,000 across the country -- to flee into the surrounding mountains in fear of their lives. Some did not make it, prompting concerns of a potential genocide.

And I spoke with Marzio Babille. He is a UNICEF representative there for Iraq. He has been to Sinjar district. He has talked to these people. He has seen firsthand what's happening there. I talked to him just a little while ago.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

MARZIO BABILLE, UNICEF REPRESENTATIVE FOR IRAQ: We need to consider that these children have no food, water or even clothing to be protected, given the characteristics of these terrain. These mountains are surrounded by stone desert. There is no vegetation. With the heat and the high temperature we have these days, dehydration has caused unfortunately more than 60 children that are dying unnecessarily.

BALDWIN: And many of those children who are dying atop that mountain are being buried in shallow graves because of the terrain, because of the rocky terrain. That's what their mothers and fathers are having to do. They need the food and the water and the medical supplies.

Can you just talk to me, Marzio, about the decisions that these families are having to make, whether it's to stay home and force death by ISIS or leave and take their chances?

BABILLE: Yes, this is exactly true. The medical supplies, food and water and fortunately enough started arriving into some hamlets, particularly in the eastern part of the mountain region after the more or increased precision of airdropping done by the United States Air Force, which is something that actually the authorities of the Kurdistan autonomous region praised very much.

It is hopeful and this is actually a reason to be pretty optimistic for small communities who can be reached. But unfortunately we have a bigger problem. We are running out of time for thousands of them who can obviously not be reached by these airdrops that are limited in number. And as I already said, the United Nations, but particularly UNICEF, is appealing the international opinion to push for the opening and the securing of humanitarian corridor over land.

We have a strategic plan, we are ready with the supplies, commodities and medical care. The government of Kurdistan already committed medical teams. We need a corridor to take out how many thousands of people we can. They will join the already 200,000 who are actually safe in the safe haven in (INAUDIBLE) in northern Kurdistan.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

BALDWIN: Huge kudos to organizations like UNICEF for trying to help these people. That was Marzio Babille, UNICEF representative in Iraq, talking to me via phone. So if they cannot go around ISIS, will these people -- will the

Yazidis have to go through them? We'll talk to a former NATO commander general, Wesley Clark, about how difficult that will be next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BALDWIN: Let's get right to him, retired four-star general, Wesley Clark. He is a former NATO Supreme Allied commander.

General, welcome.

GEN. WESLEY CLARK (RET.), FORMER NATO SUPREME ALLIED COMMANDER: Thank you, Brooke.

BALDWIN: Right before the break, I don't know if you caught this but I talked to a man by the name of Marzio Babille. He's a UNICEF representative working out of Iraq and so he was talking, really hammering home this desperate need for this humanitarian corridor through northern Iraq to help get the supplies to the families trapped, to start the process of rescuing people, getting people out. So I know that's just one issue of the broader ISIS, stopping ISIS, destroying ISIS.

U.S. says, you know, absolutely no boots on the ground. When we think of a U.S. airstrikes. Is that it?

CLARK: Well, I think what you've got to have is you've got to have the local people, in this case the Peshmergas of the Kurds. They've got to establish the corridor. They've got to be reinforced by Iraqis air force which has apparently gone a little bit up there. And the United States has the capacity to use its air powers as a combat multiplier in this case.

But you're not going to be able to put U.S. troops in on the ground. And you don't want to in this case. These are -- this is a region that's going to be in turmoil and chaos for years and possibly a couple of decades. We are going to have to intervene continuously to try to make sure the right guys win and the bad guys don't. And that's going to mean diplomacy, economic power, strengthening our energy exports, we reduce our reliance on oil coming from the region, and take the pressure of money and wealth out of the area.

And it means occasionally we're going to use military power. Hopefully not ground troops very often because there is no decisive objective here.

BALDWIN: But, General, I mean, more immediately with these, you know, 40,000 people, families stuck on top of a mountain. More immediately, what military we have -- you know, we've seen the effectiveness of several rounds of airstrikes. But what can be done? What should be done to stop ISIS?

CLARK: Well, you know, we don't know what's going on behind the scenes, Brooke. But I would imagine that we've got a lot of U.S. activity behind the scenes from our special forces. We're probably up there in Kurdistan. We have communications. We have C-130s that can drop air. But the Kurdish forces themselves have to organize themselves for an offensive push to, as you say, open some kind of a corridor.

Now that's not an easy corridor to open. Six hundred thousand people, or however many -- 40,000 people, it's a lot of people to walk across the desert because there is no transportation for them. And if you just figure that each one of those people needs a gallon or two of water a day and that water has got to be brought in, that's a lot of air drops. And so there is a lot of logistics in this. I'm sure that we've got a lot of people working on that at this very moment.

BALDWIN: We know that these militants, their goal and perhaps this is why they want some of these dams is to create their own Islamic state. And you have said it before that they would like to create this area. Really your wording was create a launch pad against Western interests worldwide. What do you mean by that?

CLARK: Well, we've always said that we don't want a terrorist state to re-emerge. And so -- and when we -- when we are threatened with that of course we're going to intervene as we're starting to do right now. So we don't want a state that has instrumentalities of a government that takes taxes off then collects revenues and trains kids and trades internationally and then is a terrorist state that then uses terrorists to attack other states and especially not the United States.

So it makes it an enemy of the United States and of really the civilized world. We don't want that to take form there. So -- but that -- the first line of effort there is the Kurdish forces, the Iraqi forces, the other forces in the region, have got to step up and work against this.

BALDWIN: General Wesley Clark, thank you, as always, for your expertise. I appreciate it.

And we have to take a quick break. You're watching CNN.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BALDWIN: Ahead on CNN tonight, go inside the lives of Charles Manson and his followers. Some 45 years after the murders that absolutely shocked the nation, Americans are still intrigued by the events that unfolded back in August of 1969.

Here now is CNN's Ted Rowlands.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

TED ROWLANDS, CNN NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): San Francisco 1967, summer of love was at its peak.

Free love, free drugs, free living for hippies escaping the mainstream. A 32-year-old Charles Manson arrived with much darker ambitions. JEFF GUINN, AUTHOR, "MANSON": You get these kids, these children

coming in to Ashbury, and here is someone, Charlie Manson, saying how much he loves them and he wants to take care of him. It was made to order for him and he took full advantage.

ROWLANDS: Manson's destructive course through life was fixed from the start. He spoke to CNN from prison in 1987.

CHARLES MANSON, CULT LEADER: I spent the best part of my life in boy schools, prisons and reform schools because I had nobody.

ROWLANDS: He blamed his mother for his troubled youth. Kathleen Maddox gave birth to Manson in Cincinnati, Ohio, at the age of 16 and went to prison when Charlie was 5 years old.

MANSON: She got out of my life early and let me scuffle for myself. And then I became my own mother.

ROWLANDS: But author Jeff Guinn says there is one explanation for the life of Charles Manson.

GUINN: Charles Manson was born evil.

ROWLANDS: In 2013 Guinn landed exclusive interviews with Manson's sister and cousin.

GUINN: Little Charlie was taken in by loving relatives, his grandmother, his uncle, his aunt, his cousin Joanne. But he always had people who loved him. The problem was that Charlie himself was a rotten little kid from the word go.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

BALDWIN: Hope you watch tonight. "CNN SPOTLIGHT: CHARLES MANSON" 7:30 p.m. Eastern and Pacific right here on CNN.

That does it for me. I'm Brooke Baldwin. Live in New York. But stay right here. My colleague Jake Tapper will be live tonight at 7:00 Eastern live from Jerusalem but for now, "SMERCONISH" begins.