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Britain Debates Striking ISIS in Iraq; New Terror Arrests in UK and North Africa; Iraqi PM Says His Intel Uncovered Plot; Fire in Air Traffic Control Tower Grounds Chicago Flights; More Details on Deaths at Iraqi Military Base

Aired September 26, 2014 - 09:00   ET

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

CAROL COSTELLO, CNN ANCHOR: British lawmakers are going toe-to-toe in a debate on whether to join the coalition's offensive, but if approved British warplanes would limit their strikes only to ISIS targets in Iraq, not in Syria.

Day four of the airstrikes, U.S. and Arab allies hammer 10 targets, all of them ISIS troops, weapons or facilities. Most of the targets were in Iraq, three in Syria.

And new this morning, police say they've broken up an ISIS sleeper cell, three different countries -- Britain, Spain and Morocco. That brings the two-day total of 20 arrests adding to the fears the group is plotting revenge.

Let's begin in London and an emergency vote by America's closest ally. In just a few hours British lawmakers will decide whether to join the coalition strikes on ISIS. Prime Minister David Cameron says the UK simply cannot afford not to.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DAVID CAMERON, BRITISH PRIME MINISTER: I believe, Mr. Speaker, it is also our duty to take part. This international operation is about protecting our people, too, and protecting the streets of Britain should not be a task that we are prepared to entirely subcontract to other air forces of other countries, so it is right for us to act.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

COSTELLO: In Great Britain just like the United States much of the concern revolves around this war escalating to the point of requiring ground troops.

Let's listen to some of that debate which took place just minutes ago.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

CAMERON: We are not prepared to put our own combat troops on the ground. We should be working with the Iraqis, working with the -- Kurds so they become more effective but we can't wait for that and allow minorities and others to be butchered and for the risk to our own country to increase without taking action.

Let me make some progress on why I believe military action is necessary before taking further interventions.

Frankly, without it, I don't believe there is a realistic prospect of degrading and defeating ISIL, and we should be frank there already is a military conflict taking place. ISIL have taken territory, they're butchering people in Iraq. Iraqi including Kurdish security forces are already fighting ISIL. We have to decide if we're going to support them and I believe that we should.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: If there's a consensus in here that we're going to soon be bombing Syria, the words don't mention boots on the ground but there's a consensus here that there will be boots on the ground. The only question -- the only question being, whose boots are they?

This debate has been characterized by members of parliament moving around the imaginary armies. The Free Syrian Army is a fiction which has been in the receipt of hundreds of millions of dollars, huge hundreds of tons of weapons, virtually all of which were taken from them by al Qaeda, which has now mutated into ISIL.

The Iraqi Army is the most expensively trained and most modernly equipped army in history. Hundreds, hundreds of billions of dollars have been expended on the Iraqi Army, which ran away, leaving its equipment behind it.

ISIL itself is an imaginary army. A former Defense secretary, no less, said we must bomb their bases. They don't have any bases.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

COSTELLO: Don't you wish that sort of thing happened within our own country in the halls of Congress? But it did not, because our lawmakers are of course campaigning.

Let's bring in CNN's Erin McLaughlin now. She's live in London.

So which way is parliament leaning, do you think?

ERIN MCLAUGHLIN, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Well, it looks like this is going to pass, Carol. All three of the major political parties, already expressing their support for this measure, for airstrikes over Iraq, but as you heard there, that hasn't stopped the very spirited debate that we're hearing, still ongoing on the floor of the House of Commons.

Listening to it, you do get a sense that lawmakers here are still wary of the perceived mistakes of the Iraq war. They have questions about mission creep. They also questions about the effectiveness of these strikes without a robust force on the ground there in Iraq, and again, as I mentioned, these airstrikes are restricted to Iraq.

Any sort of airstrikes that Britain would take part in over Syria would have to be subject to a separate parliamentary debate, but at the moment, Prime Minister David Cameron saying that he does not believe there's political consensus here for that, even though in his opinion there is a strong case for Britain to do, play more of a role in airstrikes over Syria. Now if and when this does in fact pass, it is possible that the six

British fighter jets in question could be over Iraqi air space in a matter of hours -- Carol.

COSTELLO: All right, Erin McLaughlin, we'll check back, thanks so much.

Back here at home, Secretary of State John Kerry is underscoring the need for an all-hands-on-deck approach when it comes to defeating ISIS. In a new op-ed in "The Boston Globe" Kerry writes, quote, "We face a common threat and it requires a common response. Acting together with clear objectives and strong will, we can protect the innocent, contain the danger and demonstrate that our ideals are more powerful than those who seek to impose their warped beliefs at the point of a gun.

"The Islamic State is odious but it is far from omnipotent. It will be defeated." End quote.

In the meantime, another round of terror arrests is sparking new fears throughout the international community.

Let's bring in Atika Shubert with more on that.

Good morning, Atika.

ATIKA SHUBERT, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Yes, we've had some new arrests today. We've had two more arrests here in London and nine arrests in Spain and Morocco. The ones in Spain and Morocco, apparently one of them is a Spanish national who was arrested in the enclave of Melilla in Morocco. He's believed the leader of the group and the other eight were arrested in Moroccan territory. Now they're all arrested for suspected links to ISIS.

Now the arrests here in London were all basically around a group that believes to be centered around Anjem Choudary. You probably know him because he's appeared on our air several times. And he's appeared a number of media outlets. Very outspoken extremist preacher. He's been seen outside of the U.S. embassy burning American flags, handing out leaflets just a few weeks ago in support of ISIS.

So this is a very prominent figure, somebody who's very well-known, not really a surprise that he's been picked up. The big question is what is he going to be charged with? They can keep him for seven days without charge. At the moment they say he's been arrested on suspicion of either being a member of or supporting a banned organization, but they won't give us what details on what that organization is -- Carol.

COSTELLO: All right, Atika Shubert reporting live for us this morning. Thank you so much.

The FBI says it now knows the identity of this masked man. He's the English speaking ISIS militant who appeared in the beheading videos of two American journalists and a British aid worker. FBI Director James Comey says intelligence officials analyzed the man's eyes, his voice and hand movements in each video. They then compared the data to records of known Western terrorists. The FBI is not releasing the man's name while agents continue to search for him.

Also this morning, as British lawmakers debate joining the ISIS strikes, we have word of the coalition growing larger, with a new European nation joining in. Denmark is the latest to join. It has pledged sending seven F-16 fighter jets to strike ISIS targets but only in Iraq, not in Syria. The country's parliament still needs to approve this.

Perhaps the world is safer because so many countries are rounding up homegrown extremists but who knows? How safe we are is up in the air. If only because things are so confusing. Case in point the Iraqi prime minister, Haider al-Abadi, telling reporters at the United Nations that his country's intelligence agency had uncovered an imminent ISIS plot against New York subways.

New York officials scratched their heads, then said, all is well. Mayor de Blasio tweeting a picture of himself riding the subway with the casual, "You may be asked to open your bags. Don't be alarmed."

Still later the deputy assistant secretary of state for Iran and Iraq told CNN there is no credible threat. A tad confusing because why would the Iraqi prime minister tell reporters there's an ISIS plot against New York City if there isn't one?

It's a little unsettling. So let's talk about that with CNN law enforcement analyst Tom Fuentes.

Hi, Tom.

TOM FUENTES, CNN LAW ENFORCEMENT ANALYST: Hi, Carol.

COSTELLO: You're former FBI. So how do you think authorities reacted when the Iraqi prime minister laid that one on us?

FUENTES: I think with complete surprise, complete shock that he would blurt that out, whether it was true or untrue, that he would blurt it out, then later under pressure he more or less recanted that he knew of a specific plot, but you know, the U.S. has the largest embassy in its whole series of embassies in Baghdad with hundreds, hundreds of people working on security issues, including the FBI office there, the CIA office there, defense attaches, the new defense advisers, the deputy chief of mission, the ambassador.

Not one of them was told that this was going on or that there had been a threat received in the Iraqi system from Iraqi intelligence, much less disseminated to any American service here or in Europe. So this is completely ridiculous that he would release it in that manner, and then have it turn out to probably be completely untrue.

COSTELLO: Well, New York authorities say they've been on high alert forever.

FUENTES: True. COSTELLO: We see ISIS sympathizers placed under arrest in Britain and

Spain. We hear there are 100 Americans fighting for ISIS, then we heard this thing from the Iraqi prime minister.

How afraid should we be?

FUENTES: Well, I don't -- we shouldn't be in a constant state of fear because, you know, it's not helpful, I'll put it that way, after all these years since 9/11 to keep it constantly on alert, constantly being warned of stuff that may or may not happen. We have to have really pretty solid information. There's 5.5 million riders a day on the New York subway system.

What are they going to do? You know, how do they -- how do they deal with this? And it's a very diverse city, so you're going to see people from all over the world riding that subway, sitting next to you or standing next to you on the subway, and you can't just be in a constant state of fear. You can be alert. You can be careful, but you can't be just so afraid all the time. It's just not going to work.

COSTELLO: No. OK, so on a slightly different topic, the FBI says it now knows who beheaded James Foley, Steven Sotloff and David Haines, so what happens now?

FUENTES: Well, what happens is to be working with the counterparts overseas and in that region, in particular, but also a lot of work to be done in England. These guys are believed to be from London, and, you know, now that they have the name of at least one, they could start looking at that person's complete background -- where he went to school, who he worked with, who the family are, neighbors, colleagues, all of that.

And also to see if any of them joined with him, see if he took additional people with him, and frankly, London has been a hotbed of radicalization for many, many years. Abdulmutallab, the Nigerian underwear bomber, was radicalized in London and later told the FBI that he and 19 other students from London went to Yemen to learn how to, you know, make underwear bombs and suicide vests and the like, and of course now he gets captured because his bomb didn't blow up.

But that's been a constant fear coming out of London, the radicalization of these individuals, so the fact that these have joined ISIS and have been identified helps expand the intelligence surrounding who else might have been radicalized and gone with them.

COSTELLO: Tom Fuentes, thanks as always. I appreciate it.

FUENTES: Thank you, Carol.

COSTELLO: Still to come in the NEWSROOM, the war on ISIS, the coalition strikes from the air. ISIS advances on the ground.

And we're learning about a stunning death toll in a siege on an Iraqi base. That's next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

COSTELLO: If you're flying into or out of Chicago, listen up. We understand there is a fire in an air traffic control tower in Aurora, Illinois. There's now a ground stop in place at both O'Hare and Midway. Southwest, we know, has already suspended their flights until at least noon Eastern Time.

Mary Schiavo is a Federal Aviation -- is our CNN airline expert. She joins us now. You've been following this situation. What is happening there, Mary?

MARY SCHIAVO, CNN AVIATION ANALYST (via telephone): Hi, Carol. Yes, what's happening is this is actually what's called the en route center, and this is the air traffic control center run by the Federal Aviation Administration of course that controls flights at the higher altitudes coming into, going out of, and across, the Chicago area air space. So it doesn't affect just one of the airports, not just O'Hare or Midway, but literally all of the traffic in the area.

And unfortunately, you know, when Chicago hiccups, the rest of the world convulses as well, because so much traffic goes through that area. so the fire is out. One person was taken to the hospital with smoke inhalation, works for the FAA.

So the situation's over, but the ripple effect is going to continue for some time. What the FAA did was simply hand off the traffic to another en route center, that's a higher altitude traffic center, but that has disrupted the system and the problems will continue for some time as they try to get back to regular flight patterns.

COSTELLO: What could cause a fire in an air traffic control tower?

SCHIAVO: Oh, this is the craziest thing of all -- it was a bathroom vent fire. It wasn't the computers burning down, you know, the FAA is going through this massive retooling as they put in next generation air traffic control systems. It wasn't an overheated computer; it wasn't even somebody doing something related to air traffic control. It was a fire in the bathroom basically.

COSTELLO: Oh, well, that's a little embarrassing, but I'm glad the fire it out and that things are under control. Mary Schiavo, thanks so much.

And, again, there is a ground stop in place at O'Hare and Midway in Chicago because of this fire in Aurora, Illinois, in an air traffic control tower there. Southwest Airlines has suspended its flights until at least noon. If we get any more information, of course we'll pass it along.

I'll be back in a minute.

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COSTELLO: As the U.S.-led coalition wraps up its fourth day of air strikes on ISIS targets, we're learning more about a brutal ISIS siege on an Iraqi military base, and it raises serious questions about the effectiveness of a force heavily trained and funded by Americans.

Iraq says at least 113 troops were killed, but other reports put the losses at 300 or more. Survivors say they pleaded for reinforcement for days, even though they were just an hour's drive from Baghdad. When they saw this approaching convoy, the Iraqis threw open the gates, only to discover all too late it was a string of ISIS- commandeered vehicles packed with explosives.

CNN's Ben Wedeman is in Erbil. He joins us live to tell us more. Hi, Ben.

BEN WEDEMAN, CNN SENIOR INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Hi, Carol. This siege began on Saturday afternoon. It lasted overnight and it really underscores the problems, the shortcomings, of the Iraqi army when fighting ISIS.

This base called Saqlawiyah is about 25 miles to the west of Baghdad in Anbar Province, and it was in an area effectively taken over by ISIS several weeks ago. They had besieged this base for quite some time. The soldiers were desperate for food, for water, and of course they need some relief. They had -- apparently one of the soldiers, who survived and managed to escape, said to Iraqi TV afterwards that they called their commanders in Baghdad, hoping to get some relief, and nobody even answered the phone.

Now, the Iraqi prime minister, Haider al-Abadi, is going to launch an investigation into why exactly this happened. But it seems to be a repeat of what happened back in Mosul in June when the Iraqi army essentially high-tailed it out of that city of several million, the second largest city in Baghdad (sic), once more underscoring the deficiencies in command within the Iraqi army, problems of corruption, incompetence. And it's raised a lot of questions as to whether the Iraqi army, which from 2003 to 2011 was the recipient of billions of dollars in training from the United States and equipment, is up to the task of fighting ISIS. Carol?

COSTELLO: And just to be clear about what exactly what happened, so we know that ISIS troops, so to speak, stole all of these military vehicles from the Iraqi military. So when those same vehicles headed toward these Iraqi soldiers, they thought it was their own guys. Is that sort of how it happened?

WEDEMAN: That's essentially it. They came in as like a Trojan Horse. According to a statement put out by ISIS, one of these armored vehicles, presumably as you said lifted from the Iraqi army in June in Mosul, was packed with two tons of high explosives, which explains the death toll. And as you said, the death toll may be far higher than the 113 Iraqi army officers told CNN.

Sso really just another shocking incident of an army really under extreme pressure, and not really dealing with it very well. Carol?

COSTELLO: All right, Ben Wedeman, reporting live for us this morning. thank you.

Let's talk about what all of this means. Lieutenant Colonel Rick Francona is a retired U.S. Air Force intelligence officer now serving as a CNN military analyst. and Jim Sciutto our CNN national security correspondent. Welcome to you both.

LT. COL. RICK FRANCON (RET.), CNN MILITARY ANALYST: Good morning.

JIM SCIUTTO, CNN NATIONAL SECURITY CORRESPONDENT: Thank you.

COSTELLO: All right, so Colonel Francona, this just seems embarrassing. It's sad and it's horrible but embarrassing as well, isn't it?

FRANCONA: There are so many things wrong on so many levels, it's almost hard to contemplate how bad the Iraqi army has become. I mean, the last thing Ben was talking about, and you mentioned, the vehicles drove up, you know, there are protocols to make sure that they're actually who they say they are. And all this has broken down. There seems to be no command structure left; the entire chain of command from the headquarters all the way down to this battalion level unit just doesn't exist anymore.

COSTELLO: Even if you don't have great commanders, though, wouldn't common sense tell you, since so many military vehicles have been stolen, you better check it out?

FRANCONA: Exactly, you would think so. So where are the junior officers? Where are the captains and the majors? They either aren't there or they have replaced by people that are incompetent.

This just shows the level of degradation of the Iraqi military in the three years since we left. from 2011 to 2014 they basically have been turned into this corrupt-ridden army, because the competent leaders have been removed.

COSTELLO: OK, so, Jim, as you well know, billions of dollars have been spent training the Iraqi military by Americans, and we're going to spend lots and lots more money. And should we?

SCIUTTO: Well, listen, it gets at the whole strategy here, because the administration's strategy is to have the air campaign, both over Iraq and Syria, and rely on local forces on the ground, because the president's made a commitment for no U.S. ground troops, as you know, and none of the countries joining the coalition now, whether it's France or Belgium, Denmark just today, they're all offering aircraft.

So the one place you have a ground force is in Iraq; you've got about 120,000 Kurdish fighters and 200,000 or more Iraqi military fighters. But the U.S. military has judged only half of the Iraqi brigades as being up to the fight. So -- but even with that 200,000 or so troops all together, you've had six weeks of an air campaign, it hasn't gained a lot of ground back from ISIS. And if you have units failing like this Iraqi unit, it raises hard questions about how effective a U.S. and foreign-led air campaign, how much of a difference that's going to make if the troops on the ground aren't up to the task.

And Syria is an entirely different story, because you have nothing near a couple hundred thousand troops there. They're going to train just 5,000 and that's going to take about a year. How much is that going to change the calculus on the ground in Syria?

I think that's one of the reasons why people here in the Pentagon are preparing Americans for a campaign, an air campaign that's going to last years.

COSTELLO: And a final thought. If most of the competent Iraqi commanders have, like, left the Iraqi military, you got to replace them with someone, Colonel Francona. And wouldn't it be reasonable to think that those someones might be Americans?

FRANCONA: Yes, Jim laid out the strategy just right, and the problem is there is no leadership in this ground force, so how do you replicate that? How do you replace them very quickly? You can use U.S. advisers, but let me tell you, you push U.S. advisers down to the battalion level you are defining two things -- mission creep and boots on the ground.

COSTELLO: Colonel Francona, Jim Sciutto, thanks to both of you. I appreciate it.

SCIUTTO: Thank you.

COSTELLO: Still to come in the NEWSROOM, for days, coalition forces have been hitting terrorist targets in Iraq and Syria. Now there are new fears those punishing air strikes may not have been as damaging as military officials might have hoped. Why some fear al Qaeda affiliates are still plotting revenge against the homeland.

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