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Don Lemon Tonight

United States Starts Airstrikes In Syria

Aired September 22, 2014 - 23:00   ET

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

ANNOUNCER: This is CNN breaking news.

DON LEMON, CNN ANCHOR: It is the top of the hour. Of course, we want to update you on what's going on in breaking news tonight. The Pentagon says airstrikes against ISIS in Syria have begun.

This is CNN TONIGHT, everyone. I am Don Lemon.

ALISYN CAMEROTA, CNN ANCHOR: And I'm Alisyn Camerota.

U.S. jets began air strikes in the ISIS stronghold of Raqqah, Syria. This was just happening a few hours ago. All foreign partners participating in the strikes with the United States are Arab countries at the moment. This is a senior U.S. military official telling CNN. Those nations include Bahrain, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, and Jordan.

LEMON: Mm-hmm. The U.S. and partner nation forces -- that's what it's being called -- began striking ISIS targets using fighters, bombers, and Tomahawk missiles. That's according to Pentagon spokesperson Rear Admiral John Kirby. And the strikes are meant to target ISIS's ability to command, resupply, and to train. President Barack Obama being updated as he gets -- and he has notified Congress on this.

So we want to get now straight to CNN's Jim Sciutto who is in Washington. Also Jim Acosta joining us from Washington as well.

Gentlemen, thank you for joining us this evening. The information is coming in. Jim Sciutto, at first there were three nation states that we heard about, all Arab states. Now we're hearing about five. This is particularly significant because?

JIM SCIUTTO, CNN CHIEF NATIONAL SECURITY CORRESPONDENT: No question. Because you heard in recent days secretary of state John Kerry, President Obama talking about how they wanted to internationalize this effort, make it U.S.-led perhaps, but to have important partners in the region. And now you have five in the region taking part tonight in at least three of them, I'm told, in kinetic activity. That is, dropping bombs tonight, not just support flights, refueling flights, or surveillance. All important. But actually attacking ISIS targets alongside U.S. warplanes.

That's an extremely significant event. And that shows that the Obama administration reached one of their goals with this campaign. Some more details about tonight's strikes for our viewers who are just joining us. They began with tomahawk missiles launched from sea. They continued with fighters and bombers and drones as well. Striking targets that are meant to be key to command and control. I'm told of ISIS as well as resupplying and training. So we're talking about training camps, barracks, places where leadership might have been hiding as well as weapons depots, ammunition depots.

The strikes so far in Iraq have been relatively small bore. A convoy here and there. Some fighters grouped in other places. These meant to be more fixed targets. And I'm told that the wave of strikes tonight while certainly not the end of this air campaign, just the beginning, the wave of strikes tonight intended to be a very decisive, intense first step, perhaps a shock and awe 2.0 looking back to 2003. Granted, on a smaller scale than we saw in Iraq. But intended to be a very decisive blow. And with that participation from Arab nations on the ground.

We're going to see a lot more of this in coming days. Thirteen days after the president made that momentous speech to the nation saying he was going to order steps including airstrikes in Syria. Here we see them in very intense fashion.

LEMON: And of course we should mention the president will be in town here in New York tomorrow meeting with the United Nations to discuss this and to discuss ISIS.

ALISYN CAMEROTA, CNN ANCHOR: Yes. Let's bring in Jim Acosta now in Washington. Do we know what's going on inside the White House, Jim?

JIM ACOSTA, CNN SENIOR WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: Well, right now it's pretty dark over at the White House, which is why I'm sitting here in the studio in our D.C. bureau. They don't even allow reporters to be on air at the White House at this hour. And most of the press staff has gone home.

They're letting the department of defense and CENTCOM do the talking and this show of air power not only by the U.S. but by these Arab partners do the talking. And I just wanted to add a couple of things to what Jim Sciutto and everybody else has been talking about.

One of those things, it is very important to see what is in that John Kirby statement this evening, that this decision was made by CENTCOM commanders under authorization given to them by the president. One thing that has been relayed to us by senior administration officials over the last several days is that the president has given these military commanders the green light to conduct these airstrikes in both Iraq and Syria. That they don't need to call the president every time they want to launch airstrikes. This is the mission. The mission has been laid out. And now they have the green light to go ahead and do this. And by the way, now that they have these coalition partners I think we're going to be seeing more of this over the coming days.

But the other fascinating part of all of this is this comes at somewhat sensitive diplomatic time. You mentioned that the president is going to be at the United Nations later on this week. One would think that this would have to be a time sensitive target, meaning, that if they didn't strike tonight, at perhaps the target of opportunity might not be there in a week from now. But I'm told by a senior U.S. official that this was not a time-sensitive target, that these are hard targets, these are critically important buildings in Raqqa, that they had their sights set on. And so, they decided to take out these targets.

But it does set up a very interesting scenario with some drama I think for later on this week, Don and Alisyn, when the president sits down with the U.N. security council on this subject of ISIS, having conducted these airstrikes. And now both of these countries with a coalition that is growing.

The president is going up to New York to try to build on that coalition, make it bigger, get some of these countries that are perhaps sitting on the fence a little bit to make a commitment. And to have these Arab countries come forward and say yes, we'll be part of this coalition that will only bolster his case and strengthen his hand I think.

LEMON: I want to ask Jim Sciutto something. Jim, Syrian opposition official talking to you said this to you -- thank God, thank God, what a momentous day. What else did he tell you if anything?

SCIUTTO: He told me just -- I think you see in those comments, it was quite a long answer to my question. How did he react to this? But full of that kind of emotion. Thank God, we've been waiting for this for so long. But also saying in his statement that they know this is the beginning, this is just the beginning of what's going to be a protracted campaign against ISIS because he makes the point, as U.S. officials have made the point, that the air campaign is just a component and you need an element on the ground. That element on the ground is the moderate Syrian opposition, rebel fighters.

Another key part of the strategy is training those fighters. And we've heard from military officials in recent days that the goal is to train 5,000 of them and that the training of that 5,000 might take as long as a year. So, we've got a campaign starting tonight. That's very intense. You can imagine some progress tonight. But the ground component that everyone agrees is necessary to gain back territory from ISIS inside Syria, take away some of the safe haven, that's going to be a long time coming.

And even at the end of that process, which could take as long as a year, you'll have 5,000 fighters. We heard from intelligence, U.S. intelligence officials in the last week that the estimate, the new higher estimate of the total ISIS fighting strength is 20,000 to 31,500.

So this is just the first step. It's going to be a long fight. The Syrian opposition knows that. I think it's something that the American public has to prepare for that as intense as the strikes are this evening. This is just the beginning. It's going to take some time.

One other thought I might just add in terms of regional participation in this. While you have those five Arab countries taking part which is significant, Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates, Jordan, Qatar, and Bahrain, two countries in the region not taking part -- one, Turkey. NATO ally. Lots of sensitivities there but certainly would be a vital partner if they chose to take part. But two also, of course, Syria. Syria had said before this campaign started that the U.S. must ask for Syrian permission. Syrian officials had even offered to cooperate with the U.S. against ISIS. The U.S. said no, we're not going to cooperate with Syria. We're not even going to let them know when this is happening.

So it's interesting to think, Don and Alisyn, that going forward one entity that may very well profit from the U.S. and Arab strikes against ISIS frankly is the government of Bashar al-Assad. Because remember, while the U.S. government is against Bashar al-Assad, so is ISIS. So as you hit ISIS, you conceivably give an advantage to Bashar al-Assad in this ongoing three-year-old civil war inside Syria. It just shows the great intensity and complexity of this conflict.

One last detail I can add is that I'm told that f-22, the f-22 raptor, which is a U.S. fighter bomber, was scheduled to take part in tonight's airstrikes. That would be the first time that the f-22, a very advanced stealth aircraft, has been used in combat operations. It's been a very troubled weapons program, took forever to get to theater, had a lot of cost overruns, some other questions and problems. So we'd be seeing the f-22 in action for the first time tonight.

LEMON: So reportedly f-22, b-1 bombers, f-16s, f-15s, fa-18s and on, and then the aircraft carriers as well. Jim Sciutto, thank you very much.

CAMEROTA: Our military panel's ears perked up when they heard raptor.