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New Day

U.S. Disrupts Imminent Attack; More Than a Dozen ISIS Targets Hit; President to Address Nation Regarding Airstrikes

Aired September 23, 2014 - 08:30   ET

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

PHILLIP MUDD, CNN COUNTERTERRORISM ANALYST: Not yet. The reason is, there's conversation, including in the media in Washington about shock and awe. This is a mistaken way to perceive this operation. This is not about a hammer against ISIS. It's about a long-term multi-year ground campaign. I don't object to what I've seen so far, but the language we ought to be employing is to insure the American people understand that like the campaigns in places like Somalia and Pakistan, if we think this is a week or two before we throw up our hands and say, why aren't we succeeding, that is a mistake. Long, slow campaign, grind the adversary. This is not shock and awe.

CHRIS CUOMO, CNN ANCHOR: OK. I've used neither of those words, by the way, professor. However, Hillary, as I come to you, to use the government's own words, they said we were going big early. And they believe this sends a message. Do you, as someone who has said, be careful what message you send because it is subject to the ears that is receiving it, what message do you think this send?

HILLARY MANN LEVERETT, FORMER NATIONAL SECURITY COUNCIL MEMBER: Well, first, I think it's critically important to remember recent history, which is that we spent eight years, 125,000 American men and women sent to Iraq, $1 trillion spent in Iraq trying to defeat the precursor of ISIS, al Qaeda in Iraq, and we failed. This strategy of trying to use, whether it's shock and awe or pinprick strikes is a proven failure, proven in Iraq as a failure, proven in Afghanistan as a failure, proven in Libya as a failure. So, going forward, we know that this doesn't work.

And the problem that's even more profound I think for Americans that we face today is the threat that this posed. Not only did we fail in pursuing this kind of strategy in Iraq, Afghanistan and Libya, but each time the effect has been to turn grievances that people have in the Muslim world against their own governments, to turn those grievances into an American war against Islam that generates recruitment, surges recruitment to these jihadist organizations and makes the pool of the next group of suicide terrorist bombers here in the United States, the next pool for the next 9/11. Instead of being a few hundreds people, it's now tens of thousands of people.

CUOMO: So, Phillip -

LEVERETT: So the danger to the United States today is much more profound and we're looking at a strategy of proven failure.

CUOMO: Hillary's says this is going to make it worse. We're being told, this is supposed to make it better because it's different than the last time we went into Iraq, although that also started with a long and sustained air bombardment. So how is this time going to be different?

MUDD: Well, let's look at why we sent troops in initially. Incorrect, we were not there to fight insurgents. We were there to nation build. We're not here for the massive project of nation building, we're here against a relatively small group, that is ISIS. If you look at threats from other places where we've engaged, the travel areas of Pakistan, Yemen and Somalia. Anybody - anybody sitting in my shoes at the FBI, the CIA, and the White House today has got to say, we are in a better position in terms of threat than we were five years ago.

The world ain't perfect. This is going to be ugly. But to say that nonintervention is a good choice to my mind ignores the successes we've had in blunting al Qaeda in the nations where we've confronted them.

CUOMO: One other thing for you to deal with, Hillary -

LEVERETT: Successes?

CUOMO: Hillary, hold on second, let me give you the context of this all - all of Phillip's point.

LEVERETT: Sure.

CUOMO: The context is this. You make it seem as though, look, you tried this before and everybody wound up hating you for it.

LEVERETT: Right.

CUOMO: But this time you do have a different dynamic. This is about a fight for the soul of Islam, not just about who's the biggest man in the world -

LEVERETT: Right.

CUOMO: Which you could what the last time was about. And you do have a growing number of religious coming up saying, ISIS took a step too far calling themselves the caliphate. They are no good. They must go down. What about that dynamic? Doesn't that somehow change the balance of who's the good guy and who's the bad guy here and insulate the U.S.?

LEVERETT: Well, you know, and while we were playing around in Somalia and Yemen, really playing around while ISIS was generating recruits and becoming the most dangerous, the wealthiest, the most sophisticated terrorist organization we've ever seen while we were playing with this mythical war of using drones in Yemen and Somalia, not having a success but generating even more failure, even more threats to the United States, what's happened in the Sunni Muslim world is that there was initially some criticism of the tactics that ISIS was using.

But today you have the most powerful, the most - the most popular Sunni cleric in the Sunni Muslim world on TV saying, well, I did criticize ISIS' tactics before, but now that the United States is yet again bombing Muslims, this is an American war against Islam and every Sunni everywhere should join the fight. That's the danger.

CUOMO: Right. But, Phillip, there are many more coming forward. You have, even from Afghanistan, you know, their highest religious figure, he's coming out and he's saying, in Saudi Arabia you're hearing their religious figures come out and saying, ISIS has gone too far. They're more saying that than are saying go after the U.S. Isn't that true, Phillip?

LEVERETT: Well, you have Shaikh Cardoui (ph), who is the most popular, the most important Sunni cleric who has a - who has a platform on al Jazeera where he can speak to 900 million Muslims, telling them that this is now an American war on Islam. Now you may have some small figures in Afghanistan saying something different, or Saudi (INAUDIBLE) shaikhs or -

CUOMO: No, you have the Grand Mufti coming out too. You have some very --

LEVERETT: These are government-paid sheikhs in governments in Egypt and Saudi Arabia whose populations hate them. We ignore the threat that the popularity that these groups generate among their population. You know, I remember being in the Bush administration in the situation room when Secretary Rumsfeld, with whom - with whom, in the end, I profoundly disagreed, when he asked this critical but simple question, are we -- can we kill more terrorists than we create? The room went silent because there's no good answer to that.

CUOMO: Well, also - but you ask an interesting point. You make these points very vehemently. But you sat through two administrations that did the exact same thing if not worse than what's going on right now.

So do they have any part of it better now, Phillip, or is Hillary - you know, are we doomed to repeat the mistakes that Hillary made in those administrations?

MUDD: No, I don't think we're doomed to repeat them. We're not talking about the kind of invasion that we staged in Afghanistan and Iraq. We're talking about taking out targets against a relatively small adversary that right now poses a threat to the United States, I think over time will pose less of a threat as we take out leadership.

By the way, regardless of what the clerics say in Egypt and Saudi Arabia, I disagree, I think they are important. I've lived in Saudi Arabia. People listen to those clerics. Forget about them. We also have an al Qaeda leadership in Pakistan disavowing these folks, that is ISIS, because they're too violent. I love this, disagreement among terrorists about the right tactics. I think this campaign will be ugly. We will lose American lives. But to choose not to intervene against a group that is already targeted for beheading civilians in Australia, has targeted for strikes a synagogue in Europe, we've seen arrests in the United States, we can't sit there, as we did before 9/11, and say, let's wait to see a - it come to the homeland. You've got to intervene.

CUOMO: Phillip Mudd -

LEVERETT: But we have - we have the power to prevent that. And I also need to say that I did not support or have anything to do with the administrations, whether it's President Clinton or President Bush, attack these -- going into these invasions.

CUOMO: Well, you worked in the administration.

LEVERETT: I was a professional - I was a professional foreign service officer. I was a civil servant.

CUOMO: Right.

LEVERETT: A non-partisan. I did my job to protect and further U.S. interests as a non-partisan civil servant. And so what we are - what I'm trying to do now, what I argue inside government, is to make those same arguments now to the American people through academia and through the press. Arguments we should have had before we invaded Afghanistan, before we invaded Iraq and Libya, which have now brought us the most dangerous, wealthiest, most sophisticated terrorist organization we have ever seen.

CUOMO: Hey, I'm with you, Hillary, that's why I have you on the show.

LEVERETT: Thank you very much.

CUOMO: And they are the worst ones until the next ones, right, because each one gets worse than the last one. But, Hillary, Phillip, we will agree on one thing, this is just the beginning, it's going to be long and sustained, and if anybody thinks it's finished with just military action, they haven't been alive for the last 15 years. We all agree on that, so let's see how it moves forward and what big, important steps have to be done to make the threat actually be reduced. Thank you very much for being with us on the show.

All right, also, how does this lead into what the president's going to do when he gets to the United Nations. He did this before his big address. Why? Well, he's also going to speak this morning to you, 10:00 a.m. Eastern. He's going to address the nation about these strikes before he heads to the U.N. General Assembly to talk to these people who he very anxiously wants to get on his side in this coalition. What will that message be? We're going to have Wolf Blitzer join us live from the United Nations and give you a little sneak preview.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

JOHN BERMAN, CNN ANCHOR: All right, welcome back to NEW DAY.

And our breaking coverage of the United States launching its first air strikes against ISIS targets in Syria. And not just against ISIS in Syria. We're actually looking at strikes on two fronts, the aerial attacks on ISIS strongholds were done in conjunction with five nations, but perhaps just as important, there were attacks on an al Qaeda cell in Syria. Now, we've learned this morning that that group, Khorasan, was plotting an imminent attack on U.S. interests here in the United States, also possibly abroad. We're waiting to hear from President Obama. He will address the nation at 10:00 to discuss this operation.

Right now I want to bring back in CNN military analysts, retired Lieutenant Colonel Rick Francona.

Colonel, before I break down the different aspects of this, let me ask the big picture here. There were eight strikes against this al Qaeda group over here, 14 separate strikes against ISIS, 150 precision- guided missiles. This was a major operation. This, at a certain level, is war.

LT. COL. RICK FRANCONA (RET.), CNN MILITARY ANALYST: Well, absolutely. These young men and women were in combat last night while they were dropping these bombs. They were being shot at. So I don't know how else you define that other than combat.

BERMAN: Right. Again, a major, major night with a lot going on. This is the area northwest of Aleppo, a very big Syrian city, where the U.S. alone, without its allies, targeted this al Qaeda offshoot called Khorasan.

FRANCONA: Yes. This is an al Qaeda-affiliated group, kind of shadowy, and they brought in a bunch of bombmakers and I think the threat is -- has always been going after aviation. Now, you've heard the reports that there was a specific threat. That may have been what is driving the timing. Why last night? What was so important about starting the operation last night just before the U.N. meetings and all that? It may have been this imminent threat.

BERMAN: Now, the Pentagon spokesman, Admiral Kirby, just told Chris Cuomo, they believe they hit what they were shooting at there, perhaps neutralizing whatever threat, or at least perhaps slowing it down what may have been targeting the United States.

Let's talk about the strikes against ISIS targets here. This is Raqqa. This is the headquarters right now, the capital of this so-called Islamic state.

FRANCONA: Right. And it's their stronghold. It's where they have the most people. It's where they have their command and control, a lot of storage of military equipment. A lot of the military equipment they took from the Iraqi army over in Mosul was brought back to Raqqa and put in storage there. There's a huge military depot just north of the city, and they were using it for that.

Now, we have seen them dispersed it a little bit.

BERMAN: Uh-huh.

FRANCONA: So it complicated our targeting somewhat. But the other targets were inside the city itself. That's why it was so important that we use precision-guided munitions because you want to hit exactly what you're aiming at when you're talking about a crowded city.

BERMAN: Now, one of the other targets that fascinates me is this one over here. This is right on the border with Iraq. If you cross the border into Iraq, it's near the town of Qaim -

FRANCONA: Right.

BERMAN: Which is a Sunni stronghold.

FRANCONA: Right.

BERMAN: It is an area where ISIS has been very strong. Is it possible that these strikes against ISIS inside Syria were really meant to disrupt what's going on over here in Iraq?

FRANCONA: Yes, absolutely, because the -- you know, ISIS came down the Euphrates Valley and they stopped at the border and then they went down the Tigris Valley and started coming up the Euphrates Valley. They were going to meet here. So this is an attempt to prevent them from controlling the entire Euphrates Valley.

BERMAN: And they've just been pounding the Iraqi military right now in this region.

FRANCONA: Yes.

BERMAN: The Iraqi military taking severe loss.

FRANCONA: Right. So this is taking some of the pressure off the Iraqi military. And we've got to give the Iraqi military time to stand up if they're going to take back the territory. Now we've pretty much blunted the offensive in Iraq, but we have not been able to roll back what's going on there.

BERMAN: Well, let's talk about what success, not ultimate victory, that's down the road, but what success in the short term might look like.

When and how will the U.S. and its coalition partners know that what they did overnight, with these 150 precision guided missiles, that it was successful?

FRANCONA: Well, if they're able to take pressure off of what's going on in Iraq. This is one target set, there are two portions of it. But ideally, you want to stop what's going on in Iraq and Syria.

So we've stopped what's going on in Iraq, stopped the momentum, but we haven't rolled it back. If we see the Iraqi Army and the Peshmerga starting to be able to roll this back up, that means that we've stopped ISIS from resupply by going down these valleys and going across the border crossings into Northern Iraq.

BERMAN: That's really interesting. You may see over here the results of what they did last night over here. Alright.

FRANCONA: Yes, one target set.

BERMAN: Lieutenant Colonel Rick Francona, great to have you with us. Appreciate it. Alright, in a little over an hour President Obama will address the

nation about these new strikes in Syria. He'll do that before heading to the United Nations. What is he expected to say? Well, Wolf Blitzer joins us to tell us right after the break. Wolf is at the United Nations.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BRIANNA KEILAR, CNN ANCHOR: Welcome back.

(BEGIN VIDEOCLIP)

KEILAR (voice-over): President Obama is set to address the nation in a little over an hour on those overnight air strikes against ISIS in Syria before he takes the stage at the United Nations.

More than a dozen ISIS targets were hit, and five Arab nations join the U.S. attack. So what should we expect to hear from the president this morning?

(END VIDEOCLIP)

KEILAR (on camera): Our Wolf Blitzer live for us from outside of the U.N. What do you think we're going to hear the president say, Wolf?

WOLF BLITZER, CNN HOST "THE SITUATION ROOM": The president is going to make the case why this is in America's national security interest to effectively go to war, to open up a new front in this war on terror. This time direct war in Syria.

This is not what President Obama wanted the last two years of his administration, Brianna, as you well know. The president was hoping to the end the war in Iraq, to end the war in Afghanistan, to move on, deal with other international, and domestic issues, economic issues.

But now he finds himself, like his predecessor President George W. Bush, in this new war. I think its fair to say this has become President Obama's war, this war against ISIS. Not only in Iraq, but now expanding into Syria.

So the president is going to make that case to the American people once again before he leaves the White House, comes here to New York, addresses the United Nations general assembly, he's making a major speech here at the U.N. general assembly tomorrow morning. Later tomorrow afternoon he convenes, he will preside over a special session of the United Nations Security Council. The U.S. this month as the president of the Security Council.

The President will make a point of trying to enlist international support. But he has managed, as we've been reporting all day, he has managed to put an impressive initial Arab coalition together in this initial round of air strikes against ISIS targets. Not only in Iraq, but in Syria as well.

KEILAR : He's looking, Wolf, for this international support. He wants the international community to really take action against people who may be in transit to fight with ISIS.

How does it help him that he's coming to summit with leaders and that he's trying to enlist their help? How does it help him that these air strikes have happened on the eve of his visit, and that he has this strong support from five Arab nations?

BLITZER: I think that is going to, the support he is getting from these five Arab nations is going to, I think, help his effort to even expand that coalition. It'll put pressure on other countries, certainly Turkey which has so far been reluctant to do anything militarily as far as this effort against ISIS is concerned.

Certainly on France and the UK, other NATO allies. They're being basically being told by these Arab countries it's really important to the region that all of the world get involved in the struggle against this militant form of terrorism that ISIS represents. Other terror groups in the region as well.

So the president's - I think his hand has been strengthened as he comes here to the United Nations general assembly and tries to expand that international support for what the U.S. is trying to do. But make no mistake about this, Brianna, this has become President Obama's war. The war against ISIS, not only in Iraq, but in Syria as well.

KEILAR: Yes, and not where he wanted to be. And not only that, there are strikes, there continue to be strikes with Arab nations against ISIS targets in Syria. But then there's also the Khorasan group that the U.S. went it alone against when it came to air strikes overnight, Wolf.

Do you think we'll hear President Obama talk about why that was necessary? We've heard there was an imminent threat, do you think perhaps we'll learn anything else or he'll make his case for that?

BLITZER: He'll make his case for it, but he is not going to release information that could compromise U.S. intelligence, compromise sources or methods for example, how the U.S. found out about what they're now saying was an imminent from this Khorasan terror conglomerate, if you will. This Khorasan group.

They're not that anxious apparently to strike at various targets inside Iraq and Syria. They want to go outside, especially towards the West, especially towards the United States. The president, I'm sure, will get into these issues. He wants to be, I'm told by his aides, as transparent as possible with the American people and of course with the world about what the U.S. is up to right now. He's going to start that dialogue today.

Its a new phase in this war. Over the past several weeks the U.S. has launched nearly 200 air strikes against ISIS targets inside Iraq. But now, there's a new phase and it's going to be just the beginning.

I don't think anyone should get carried away in terms of the success so far until - - This is going to be a long, drawn-out process. Not days, not weeks, but months. And it's going to take a long, long effort. They're watching very carefully. Right now they're in the process of assessing how much damage was done

to these terror groups inside to this ISIS base, if you will, inside Syria. It's just the beginning, and there is going to be a whole lot more, I'm told.

KEILAR: I wonder, Wolf, a lot of people were surprised when they heard that the U.S. gave the Syrian government, the regime of Bashar al Assad, obviously not a friend of the U.S., far from it, a head's up when it came to the strikes on ISIS in Syria. Is that something that strikes you as surprising?

BLITZER: It was not coordination. The U.S. officials are making it clear, not any kind of collaboration, if you will. It was simply a diplomatic dialogue, if you will, telling the Syrian regime of President Bashar al Assad hey, the U.S is going after ISIS targets. ISIS is your enemy inside Syria. ISIS wants to destroy the Bashar al Assad regime, they also want to destroy so much of what the U.S. supports in that part of the world.

But here's a little head's up, after diplomatic channels right here at the United Nations, they informed the Syrians that this was about to take place. Don't launch any anti aircraft missiles or anything along those lines, because you will pay the price if that happens. The U.S. obviously has a much stronger air capability than the Syrian Air Force does.

KEILAR: Yes, precaution more than anything. Wolf Blitzer at the U.N., thank you so much. And we will have much more on our breaking coverage of the U.S. air strikes in Syria. The president is set to speak about the operation in one hour, and Wolf will pick up our coverage right after the break.