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CNN Newsnight Aaron Brown

U.S. Marine Battalions Engaged in Fierce Fighting of War Against Iraqi Paramilitary Units, regular forces in Nasiriyah

Aired March 28, 2003 - 23:00   ET

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

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


AARON BROWN, CNN ANCHOR: On a day of images, the image of the terrible civilian casualties in Baghdad, and then you see these dolphins clearing minds. And it just -- and I'll give you another image, actually, coming up. For those of you, though, who are just joining in, we want to take a step back and give a broader look at how the day played out, some of the major developments of the day.
And Wolf Blitzer does that for us now.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

WOLF BLITZER, CNN ANCHOR (voice-over): In the South, two cities that allied forces cannot seem to secure: Basra, Iraqi paramilitary units fire machine guns and mortars at hundreds of civilians trying to flee the city over a bridge. An unknown number are wounded. British forces fire on the Iraqi militia, killing some.

Nasiriyah, a hornet's nest for Marines. Three U.S. Marine battalions engaged in some of the fiercest fighting of the war against Iraqi paramilitary units and regular forces. Four more Marines reported missing today in Nasiriyah, in addition to 12 Marines that went missing there yesterday.

Elsewhere in the South, U.S. forces move on to an abandoned Iraqi air base, scramble to get the air base ready for A-10 Warthog Attack Planes.

CNN's Bob Franken reports it's a crucial strategic prize.

BOB FRANKEN, CNN CORRESPONDENT: This is a base that is also about 155 -- about 150 miles north of Kuwait. And so it is much closer to the action.

BLITZER: Now signs the Iraqis won't go quietly in the North either. CNN's Kevin Sites, in the Kurdish controlled town of Chamchamal, reports the town has come under artillery fire from nearby Iraqi units.

In Central Iraq, the weather is clearing, and U.S.-led forces pound away at Republican Guard units ahead of an assault on Baghdad.

U.S. military source tell CNN's Barbara Starr heavy allied air strikes have degraded the Republican Guard's Medina division south of Baghdad to 65 percent capacity. That division now needs help. U.S.- led ground forces near Baghdad are also being reinforced rapidly, the climactic battle possibly just days away.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

BROWN: That was Wolf Blitzer reporting that. We were talking about images; here's another one. Marines, of course, have a motto, "leave no comrade behind." It faced a tough test in the fighting around the southern Iraqi city of Nasiriyah and Alessio Vinci of our staff did the reporting on that.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

ALESSIO VINCI, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Hostilities in Nasiriyah prevented the Marines from recovering the bodies of their foreign comrades earlier, most still lying in the burned out armored vehicle five days after one of the bloodiest battles of the war in Iraq.

Officers say they have found the body parts of at least seven Marines, but the current total of troops killed in Nasiriyah is now 16. More are still missing.

Captain Scott Dyer helped recover his friends and colleagues.

CAPT. SCOTT DYER, U.S. MARINE CORPS: When we got down into there, the forces that were there recovered five of the bodies that were there. And then some civilians came out, showed us where they had buried two others and returned to us the personal effects of at least one of the Marine that was there, some photographs, some mail, things like that.

VINCI: Struggling to keep his emotions in check, the commanding officer personally oversaw the recovery effort, making sure the bodies were treated with dignity and respect, even under the tough conditions of the front lines.

Medics performed the first field examination to identify some of the victims. A DNA test will be performed for final positive identification.

(on camera): From here, the bodies will be flown to a staging area and prepared for a final journey back home.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We ask for your blessing, oh God almighty.

VINCI (voice-over): A Marine chaplain led the troops in prayer, a moment of solace and comfort for many here.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Marines care for their own. And that's in life and in death. And so they see their duty not complete until they're resting in their homeland with their families.

VINCI: City Marines here say the Nasiriyah fight was the fiercest the Marines Corps has been involved in since (INAUDIBLE) in Vietnam and promised that Marines missing will be found and returned home -- Alessio Vinci, CNN, with the U.S. Marines in Nasiriyah, Iraq.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

BROWN: General, quickly some day we're going to understand the dimensions -- some day soon, I think, the dimensions of this battle in Nasiriyah. But it's obviously a major fight that has yet to really be, I guess, thoroughly understood or reported.

CLARK: I think that's true. There are stories coming out in the print media. It's very hard to get a feel for this visually.

It's clearly a significant fight. There are about three battalions of Marines tied up in there. The losses, in military casualty terms, you could only call, from that many men tied up, as light.

They're not -- these are not heavy losses. They're terribly heavy for the people...

BROWN: Of course.

CLARK: ... and the families, but in terms of military significance, it's not clear that this can't be reduced in a few more days. We just -- we can't -- you can't assume that this is something that's going to go on for months and months and months fighting for this one city.

BROWN: For this one city. Is it -- should it be a surprise at all that it's taken as many days as it has?

CLARK: It depended on the enemy's battle plan. I mean if his battle plan was to defend this city, then he's doing so. And we're trying to take the city without destroying the city or killing the innocent civilians. So that should be no surprise.

What was the -- what was unexpected, apparently, is the fact that he chose to defend in this city this far forward, that he used the Fedayeen and possibly reinforced some of them Republican Guards, that far south.

BROWN: And a quick one here. Did the weather, the two days of the heavy weather, do we, in any way, see the effect of that on what's happened since?

CLARK: That's a good point. Probably we do. Number one, it delayed the logistics, convoys getting up because they just had a hard time mucking ahead through that heavy weather.

Number two, as we said on the program, it gave some -- the marginal advantage went to the Iraqis in that because it took away our air cover. Maybe they got some reinforcements in for this period.

BROWN: The -- it does seem to us that this whole story has now so many different pieces. And the secretary of defense threw another piece of it on the table today when he strongly warned Syria to be very careful about sending night vision goggles into Iraq and strongly warned Iran and any Iranians found in Iraq would be treated as enemy combatants. All of this came out of the Pentagon today and was reported by Barbara Starr.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

BARBARA STARR, PENTAGON CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): It was a public warning to Iraq's neighbors to stay out of the fight. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld warning Syria and Iran that the U.S. is watching their activities.

The secretary had the sharpest criticism of the Damascus government. He said Syria is shipping military supplies, including night vision goggles, into Iraq.

DONALD RUMSFELD, U.S. DEFENSE SECRETARY: We consider such trafficking as hostile acts and will hold the Syrian government accountable for such shipments.

STARR: Rumsfeld refused to be drawn into a discussion of whether the U.S. would move against Syria.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: So are you threatening military action against Syria?

RUMSFELD: I am saying exactly what I said. It was carefully phrased.

STARR: Syria said Rumsfeld's statements were an attempt to divert attention from civilian Iraqi casualties in the war. A Syrian spokeswoman said Rumsfeld's charge is an absolutely unfounded irresponsible statement.

Sources tell CNN there is no new smoking gun with Syria. It is more a long-standing controversy about Syria's weapons proliferation. It also came on a day when Syria, at the United Nations, voted with the U.S. to restart the Iraqi Oil For Food program.

On Iran, Secretary Rumsfeld said there are now hundreds of fighters backed by Iran on the Iraqi battlefield.

RUMSFELD: We have seen Badr Corps people moving into Iraq, and they report up through the Revolutionary Guard, and they're armed. And there are some additional ones that are close to the border. And my statement, I believe and I hope, said something like this: That to the extent they interfere with General Franks' activities, they would have to be considered combatants.

STARR (on camera): While Secretary Rumsfeld's statements against Iran and Syria appeared surprising, sources tell CNN the White House knew he would make the statement and put both countries on notice -- Barbara Starr, CNN, the Pentagon.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

BROWN: Our embedded reporters, we continue to wait. We expect to hear from a couple of them soon. This is Baghdad on a Saturday morning, just a little bit past 7:00 in the morning in Baghdad, a city that was again rocked last night. And, in fact, the largest explosion, or at least one closest to the -- one of the camera positions last night. The smoke still on horizon line, as the camera pans across the river.

We take a short break. Our coverage continues in a moment. This is CNN.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BROWN: If you watch this war unfold on your TV screen, it's not a bad idea to keep in mind that the distances, in many cases, we're talking about are not very far. It's about 80 miles from Basra, as the crow flies, about 80 miles from Basra to Kuwait City, for example. It's not far from Kuwaiti border to Central Iraq, if you were to go there by plane. But if you're not, if you're traveling in convoy with an anti-missile unit, it's a long and complicated ride.

CNN's Lisa Rose Weaver filed a report on the rigors of getting from point A to point B. She's with the Army's 5th Corps.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We need to move, preferably.

LISA ROSE WEAVER, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): What sounded like artillery had just hit about 100 meters from this camp in Central Iraq. No one was hurt, as the soldiers sprung into a defensive position.

It turned out to be a U.S. Air Force F-16 that shot a radar seeking missile at the Air Defense Battery on the ground. U.S. forces hadn't expected a Patriot Missile Battery to be so close to the front line.

A few days later, elements of the 52nd Air Defense Artillery were on the road again, headed north. Yet another dust storm cut visibility as night set in.

The convoy, including some Patriot Missile Launchers took 12 hours to travel about 50 miles. Twenty-one-year-old specialist, Brook Wicky (ph) does most of the driving, especially at night, rarely revealing the mounting pressure as the convoy enters territory, where there have been reports of ambushes. News from further north comes over the radio.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Right now, the Iraqis are trying to take advantage of the weather, and they're replacing a whole bunch of their tanks and stuff up 20 miles south of Baghdad...

WEAVER: Air defense units, like the 52nd Artillery, usually enter areas already cleared and in the control of ground forces. While the route north does have a U.S. military presence, lots of unknowns remain.

Night falls; the convoy has already stopped several times to pull missile launchers out of the stand. The convoy manages to get through without incident and gets to its destination, likely only to head north yet again -- Lisa Rose Weaver, CNN, on the road in Central Iraq.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

BROWN: That's Lisa Rose Weaver, who's embedded with that anti- missile group. Bob Franken is at a Forward Air Base in Iraq. We won't be more specific than that. And they've got some work to do -- Bob.

FRANKEN: Well, a lot of work going on here, as a matter of fact. This is what was an Iraqi air base, although it has not been used since the Gulf War I. And it's interesting to come back here.

You see buildings that have been unoccupied, really, to a large degree, since then. The runway, however, is in pretty good shape. There was a small contingence of Iraqis that the government kept here. They were captured, by the way, when they took over this base about a week ago.

I will also tell you that there are tunnels under this base. And they found some of them in the tunnels. But the security people have gone. And they're assured that they have cleared the area.

There is heavy security around here because there's still a lot of fighting going on in this area, and they want to make sure this base is clear so the A-10s and the other aircraft who will begin operating out of here can come and go unencumbered.

We're expecting, within the next day or so, to see the A-10s starting to operate from here. The big advantage being that this is 150 miles north of their home base, much, much closer to the action, much closer for the rescue helicopters to where they might have to go to do their search and rescue operations.

So this is going to be what is considered vital to the war effort, according to the wing commander. It is something that is well under way, the preparations are.

You can see behind me the helicopters. We've seen a steady arrival of C-130s bringing equipment and various crews in here, turning this from a desolate, abandoned air base, for all practical purposes, into a fully operating one. That's going to happen very quickly, and it's going to have a major impact, Aaron, on the way that the fighting is done.

BROWN: And, Bob, for people who weren't with us in the last hour when you did talk about this, talk about the mission of the pilots who will be moving in there pretty soon.

FRANKEN: Well, the A-10 has been used mainly to support the ground troops. By now, we're all familiar with the plane that's called the Warthog. I've actually watched it in action, and it is awesome.

It's machine guns fire something like 6,000 rounds a minute or second or something like that. I wish I could tell you exactly. But it's -- they come out so fast it just sounds like a spurt. And they just rip tanks apart, and, of course, can just wreak havoc on troops on the ground.

They also fly low to the ground. They can go into deep dives. So they're really a devastating weapon, and they've been used extensively, operating from the other air base. Their ability to operate from here is just going to make them do their deadly work much more quickly -- Aaron.

BROWN: Bob, thank you very much. I hope we hear from you again before our morning is done -- Bob Franken, who's at a Forward Air base now in the southern part of Iraq.

One of the things that the television coverage has allowed is for families back home to see their, in many cases, their children or their spouses out in the field.

We'll take a short break. When we come back, a family reunion, in a moment.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BROWN: You might recall a few days ago, a Marine Corps pilot captured some riveting pictures of a strike on Iraq. Tonight, a portrait of him and, as it turns out, his family, is reported for us by CNN's Frank Buckley.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

FRANK BUCKLEY, CNN CORRESPONDENT: The man behind the visor, flying an F-18 Strike Fighter is Marine Corps Captain Chris Collins. He's only 28 years old, but he's already a veteran of war.

He just got back from a mission over Iraq. Dust storms made it difficult to see, but he eventually dropped bombs on artillery pieces, maybe on people, Iraqi soldiers.

CAPT. CHRIS COLLINS, STRIKE FIGHTER, MARINE CORPS: I thought that might affect me, you know, when I first came out here. But they're trying to kill me. So they're shooting at me. We're trying to shoot at them. And, you know, I guess that's what war is all about.

BUCKLEY: It's pretty intense stuff for a guy on his first air craft carrier deployment. Collins is what they call a "nugget." To his friends, he is "Kitty," the call sign his squadron gave him when he showed up with the tough guy call sign "mad dog."

To Jack and Barbara Collins, he is a son. Like the parents of so many young men and women in the gulf, they watch for news about their boy whenever they can.

We got word to them so they could watch when we interviewed Chris about the conditions pilots were facing. CHRIS COLLINS: When we can't see the ground, obviously we can't see the target.

BUCKLEY: They stay in touch by e-mail. Occasionally, they talk by phone. Chris knows his mom is worried.

CHRIS COLLINS: I feel like every time thinks she talks to me, it's going to be my last day talking to her, you know. And so -- you know, she always wants to know what I'm doing. And then I tell her and then she gets all worried. So now when she asks me, she's like, well, what have you been doing? I say, well, you don't want to know.

BUCKLEY: Chris' parents pray for their boy's safe return.

BARBARA COLLINS, MOTHER OF CAPT. CHRIS COLLINS: I'm OK. You know, I think Christopher is highly trained, as are all the pilots. I think he'll be fine.

BUCKLEY: And at the moment, he is, doing what he was trained to do, to fly and fight -- Frank Buckley, CNN, aboard the USS Constellation in the Persian Gulf.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

BROWN: And that's Chris Collins in front of you again. Chris, just one quick question or two before we bring your folks into this. Was combat as you expected it to be, as the training prepared you for?

CHRIS COLLINS: Yes, actually it's not as bad as I thought it was going to be. You know, the training kind of prepares us for everything and all the situations we're going to be presented with.

But, you know, of course, once you get out there, you know, your nerves stand up a little bit. You're a little bit more aware of the things that are going on around you. But I still think we're very well prepared for anything they can throw at us.

BROWN: Can you describe what it felt like when you came off that aircraft carrier the first time, knowing it was for real?

CHRIS COLLINS: Yes. I was pretty anxious the first time I went out there, first time you're carrying live missiles, live bombs, not knowing whether or not you're going to drop.

You know, I just got back from a strike about 20 minutes ago, and we were able to drop on some targets and destroy some of the targets, which is going to help the coalition effort move north and, hopefully, get rid of the Iraqi regime.

BROWN: And you just came back 20 minutes ago?

CHRIS COLLINS: That's correct, yes. I was a spare for a strike that went out and one of the other aircraft went down. So I got taxied up to the catapult and got shot off in the middle of the night.

BROWN: All right. Let me -- you've got better things to do than talk to me. Talk to your folks in that case.

Jack and Barbara Collins are with us. They're in Connecticut tonight. Mrs. Collins, I heard your son accusing you of acting like a mother. Is it -- having it on television, being able to see him, getting the e-mails, does it actually make it easier or does it, in some ways, make it more difficult?

BARBARA COLLINS: The fact that he just came back from a strike doesn't make me happy. But I'm glad to see him home and safe on board.

BROWN: We are, too. Anything -- why don't you talk to each other, and 3 million of us, I guess, will just eves drop.

BARBARA COLLINS: Chris?

CHRIS COLLINS: Hey, mom and dad. How are you guys doing?

BARBARA COLLINS: I just wanted to tell you -- I'm doing great right now that I can see you. You look fabulous.

JACK COLLINS, FATHER OF CAPT. CHRIS COLLINS: I think we have to stop meeting like this, Chris. I'd rather see you in San Diego soon.

BROWN: I bet you would. Mr. Collins, were you in the service? Were you in the military?

JACK COLLINS: I had a commission in the Navy during the Vietnam conflict. I sailed on merchant ships, bringing supplies over to Vietnam for a number of years.

BROWN: And when Chris decided to join, what were your feelings?

JACK COLLINS: I was proud of him. I realized, early on, that I was not a Marine. I was a Merchant Marine, and there's quite a bit of difference. We're very glad that our country has Marines like Chris.

BROWN: I suspect Chris reminds you that there's a very big difference between a Merchant Marine and the Marines, as well, from time to time.

Chris, what motivated you to join? Did you just want to fly?

CHRIS COLLINS: Well, it was kind of an accident. I always wanted to fly for the Navy. When I went to school, I ended up talking to a Marine recruiter. And the next thing I knew, I was going to Officer Candidates school for 12 weeks in Quantico, which, at the time, I thought was in Cuba. Evidently it's in Virginia.

BROWN: Just, do you know...

CHRIS COLLINS: Next thing...

BROWN: I'm sorry -- please, go ahead.

CHRIS COLLINS: Now and then I, once I got into the flight program, I always wanted to fly jets. And now I'm lucky enough to fly an F-18 for the Marine Corps, and then also fly them off boats, which is what I've always wanted to do.

BROWN: Do you know what tomorrow will bring? Do you ever know what tomorrow will bring?

CHRIS COLLINS: I'm sure it will involve flying and dropping bombs, but as far as where we're going and who we're supporting, you know, we usually don't find that out until about 12 hours in advance, just depending on how the battlefield is shaping at the current time.

BROWN: Mrs. Collins, I'll give you the last word here. He sounds so matter of fact about it. I can't imagine that mom feels very matter of fact about anything right now.

BARBARA COLLINS: The only thing that I've said to Chris in all my e-mails -- and I'll say it again, Chris -- you stay safe and you keep our troops safe over there.

BROWN: All of you. Thank you for your time, a lot. It's over the last days, there aren't many happy moments in that we get to report. And it's nice to be able to put your family together, at least briefly. Thank you.

JACK COLLINS: Thank you.

BARBARA COLLINS: Love you.

CHRIS COLLINS: Thank you.

BROWN: The Collins family of Darien, Connecticut. Chris just 20 minutes back from a mission safely.

We'll go to break here. As you can see, there is heavy smoke in Baghdad at about 7:30 on a Saturday morning there. We'll try and figure out what has happened. There was certainly heavy bombing overnight. Coming up on the bottom of the hour here, and our coverage continues in a minute.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

(NEWSBREAK)

BROWN: Heidi, thank you very much.

We have a number of partnerships here. "The New York Times" correspondents, also correspondents and reporters with "The Boston Globe." And Scott Nelson is one of them. And Scott's just called in.

We'll just not make him wait here; put him on the phone. He's somewhere in Central Iraq.

And, Scott, honestly, that's everything I know. So why don't you lay out the story that you're reporting now.

SCOTT NELSON, REPORTER, "THE BOSTON GLOBE": Well, I don't know what's going on in the rest of Iraq, but here, it's quieter than it's been in days. Last night, the Marines I'm with had their first full night's sleep in a long time, probably since a couple of days before this whole thing started.

The fighting militia, that had been fairly active in this area in the last couple of days, evidently moved away because, like I said, for the first time, no triplers (ph) were going up over night. There were no mortars being fired. The artillery was quiet. And Marines really got to settle down and get some sleep here.

And this morning, Saturday morning Iraq time, they're up and around and look eager to get moving north again. And it's possible now because Friday they finally got re-supplied. Their vehicles are fueled back up. They have food again, and they have water again.

And I can see a column of tanks moving past me to the north, which is a sign that maybe things are not stalled anymore and moving back in that direction.

BROWN: Was there concern -- had supplies run so low that they were concerned?

NELSON: Definitely. I mean, I don't think there was ever a danger of people not getting any food here. But there had been some units of the Marines that are near me that they had cut to one MRE a day. Those are the Meals Ready to Eat, the military meals. They'd been cut from three to one.

So there was definitely a tight supply. And people were rationing water. And a lot of the vehicles were down to quarter tank.

Yesterday, the supply lines seemed to catch up with all three of those things. Everybody's topped off and ready to go. And now they're just waiting for what everybody assumes will be the big push to Baghdad.

BROWN: And the encounters that the group you're traveling with, Marines you're traveling with have had, you are pretty certain are mostly with militia, as opposed to Iraqi regulars?

NELSON: There have been some of both, but mostly the militia. What the Marines have been told here -- and I haven't seen this with my own eyes, so I can't verify it. But what the Marines have been told that I'm camping with is that there is a Fedayeen training camp, or what had been a Fedayeen training camp, less than a mile from here and that this area is fairly heavily populated with militia and militia sympathizer.

What I can say is that the first couple of days we were in the area, there were repeated incidents of small arms fire and mortar fire from locals. Whether those were organized militia or just sympathizers or people who didn't want the Americans in the area, somebody was firing on the Marines at a fairly regular clip. And they usually -- the Marines returned fire fairly heavily in most cases.

BROWN: Any losses in the group you're traveling with? Has everything been OK in that regard?

NELSON: There have been Marines killed, not in large numbers, and it's not always clear because rumors run like crazy out here where information is scarce.

But on the fake (ph) toward Baghdad that this group made on Thursday -- we drove about 30 miles north and then turned around and came back -- two Marines were killed in that operation.

They did encounter some Iraqi armored personnel carriers. Cobra Helicopters eventually destroyed those personnel carriers. The two Marines were killed in the encounter.

The day before, a couple Marines were killed in an ambush that the fighting militia pulled using small arms fire. The Marines came forward to meet it, and then they got mortared. A Navy Corpsman, a medic was killed in that, along with a couple of Marines.

So Marines are being killed, not in large numbers, but people are dying. And it's a real war.

BROWN: It's a real war indeed. Is it -- do you have the sense that the people who are attacking these Marines are doing so in kind of an ad hoc way, or does there seem to be some central strategy at work?

NELSON: You might say it's just from riding along. It was an ad hoc way. But I talked to two infantry sergeants who really are in charge of platoons of men on the front line, and they disagreed with me. They said, last night, that they think that militia was very disciplined, very well trained, relatively well armed and knew what they were doing.

They were impressed with the professionalism, if you would, of the militiamen. So, you know, I guess, from where they're standing, these guys they're fighting know what they're doing.

BROWN: Were they surprised at the discipline, professionalism, whatever adjective you want to apply? Were they surprised by that?

NELSON: They seemed to be, although they weren't overwhelmed by it. There's a sense of inevitability here among the Marines that, hey, if this is all these guys can do is sort of swipe at us from the bushes, then there's nothing they can do to stop us. You know, we can roll all the way in. They're not even going to try and fight us out into the open, man-to-man, as it were. They're just going to try to swipe at us from the side. There's nothing they can do to stop us. That's sort of the attitude among the Marines here. They're very cock-sure (ph).

BROWN: They're Marines. Scott, nicely done tonight. And please check in again any time -- Scott Nelson, who's helping us and also reporting for "The Boston Globe," which pays his salary.

The country is going through this war, watching it on television in record numbers, somewhat of an addiction, I think, in some respects. It's sort of television addiction. And all of the ups and downs -- and what's interesting, Bill Schneider can point out, is that the country may see the ups and downs, but doesn't necessarily react to the ups and downs. Right?

BILL SCHNEIDER, CNN SR. POLITICAL ANALYST: That's right. There's very little wavering in public opinion. Poll after poll shows that. In that way, I think the polls are kind of a reality check.

We asked people, did you expect the war to go better than it has? And you can see here the answer was overwhelmingly, no; 71 percent said the war is going about as well as they expected. In fact, another 2 percent said it's going better than they expected.

A lot of the commentary, a lot of the discussion of the war sort of started out in Persian Gulf mode. This was going to be a dramatic, brilliant victory, and then it seemed to shift instantly to something like Vietnam War mode. But throughout this, the American public has not wavered.

BROWN: Even on the day-to-day -- do we see, from one day to the next, depending on sort of what the new cycle has laid out, any particular changes in the mood, in the expectation, anything?

SCHNEIDER: We do see a change in expectations. You do see people resigned to a tougher, longer fight.

Most people, when we ask them, how long do you think this war's going to last, they now say it's going to last one to six months. Only 15 percent of Americans say it's going to be over within a month; 52 percent one to six months; a quarter say it's going to take longer than six months.

And, you know, I checked those figures and found that, within -- people within each category, a majority support the war no matter how long they think this war's going to last.

There is no evidence here that Americans are dismayed by the fact that the U.S. and the coalition is facing tough resistance. And that's why I say the polls are a kind of reality check.

BROWN: I want to talk about the president in a second. But before that, we are a week-and-a-half into this, so tell me -- I mean you've been looking at polls your whole professional life -- how meaningful, I guess, at this stage, a reality check is it? What is it telling us, in a sense, this soon?

SCHNEIDER: It's telling us this -- what it is telling us is that the day-to-day coverage, the setbacks, the problems, what people are seeing on television, may dismay them in the sense that they think it's not going as fast as they'd like. But it doesn't change their basic underlying resilience, their support for this war. It's still strong.

I mean it takes a long time for people to give up on a venture like this. It took three years in Vietnam. So you shouldn't expect -- when people have made up their minds that this is something we have to do and it's going to be tough and they have some basic understanding of war, you don't expect them to give up this quickly.

BROWN: No, I certainly would not.

Now, the president -- president usually, in these moments, do get a surge of popularity. I assume that's true here.

SCHNEIDER: It is indeed. And we looked at President Bush compared with some other world leaders. And the figures were kind of interesting. These are personal favorability ratings.

President Bush 67 percent favorable personally. That's very strong. Tony Blair is 72 percent. That's a little higher than Bush. He's widely admired in the United States. Remember this is...

BROWN: This is among Americans?

SCHNEIDER: This is among Americans. And remember, of course, unlike President Bush, he has no partisan enemies in the United States.

BROWN: Right.

SCHNEIDER: So you can expect democrats to be critical of the president. But Blair is still very strong.

Russian President Vladimir Putin has taken a big hit, just 15 percent favorable. A year ago, he was at 35. And, of course, French President Jacques Chirac, I'd say he's French toast.

BROWN: I would say he's French toast. Or freedom toast, if you want.

SCHNEIDER: Well, in his case, I think it's fair to call him French toast.

BROWN: Or just toast. I guess people admire that Mr. Blair -- how Mr. Blair has handled himself in the face of such strong domestic opposition. That's the only thing that sort of makes sense in that.

SCHNEIDER: Sure. Even the British admire him. And he's turning the polls around in Great Britain. He confronted his most vocal critics in public forums. He took them on. He didn't always satisfy them, but at least he confronted them. And he went through all those parliamentary debates, eloquently defending his point of view. And that's something President Bush really never quite did.

BROWN: Mr. Schneider -- thank you, sir. We'll take a break. Our coverage continues on this camera in a moment.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BROWN: We try to keep gauging in a variety of ways how Americans are viewing the war, what they're concerned about, what they're talking about. So we brought together each night some voices from across the country. And we do again tonight.

Liz Dolan is in Los Angeles tonight. She's one of the satellite sisters from the program of the same name on ABC Radio. Barack Obama is in Chicago, state legislator in the state of Illinois. And in Philadelphia tonight, Tom Adkins. He is publisher of CommonConservative.com.

It's nice to have all of you with us. We'll go top to bottom here at first. I'm curious, out on the West Coast, is this what everyone is talking about?

LIZ DOLAN, CO-HOST, "SATELLITE SISTERS": The war you mean?

BROWN: Yes.

DOLAN: I think the most interesting discussion we've been having on our show is sort of the long-range implications for the United States. You were just talking about Tony Blair in the previous poll. And we've had that discussion.

I think Americans are trying to balance U.S. leadership -- and they feel good about that, the U.S. sort of stepping out and doing what they believe the government should be doing to protect our national security -- but also unilateralism, which doesn't make them as comfortable.

And so I think the reason you see this Americans for Tony Blair movement is because people like the way he gives voice to both leadership and multilateralism at the same time.

BROWN: In the middle now, in Illinois Mr. Obama, do you get the same sort of concerns in the state of Illinois? Are there concerns about Americans being too alone in the world, or are you hearing other things?

BARACK OBAMA, ILLINOIS STATE LEGISLATURE: Well, I think that, obviously, the overriding concern right now is safety of the troops. And, you know, I've been traveling around the state and at least once or twice a day, I'll have people come up to me whose son's were reservists who have been called up, daughters who have been called up. And, obviously, people really are concerned about making sure they're safe. And that's true across the board, whether people support or do not support the war.

But I do think there's an underlying anxiety, in part because of their concerns about America's role in the world and the aftermath of the war. And, in part, because they're concerned about domestic policy and how this war is going to impact the economy, which is going through very tough times in Illinois.

BROWN: And, Mr. Atkins, are conservatives -- I assume you hear from lots of them, given that it's CommonConservative.com. Are they unhappy with either the way the war is being prosecuted or the war is being reported? TOM ADKINS, PUBLISHER, COMMONCONSERVATIVE.COM: I think you'll find that conservatives have very little problem with the way the war is being prosecuted. The fog of war, once it starts, there's no rules; there's no law; there's no "this is the certain time schedule you must follow." You do your best to fight the enemy. And sometimes they get one over on you. Sometime you get one over on them.

But the biggest conversation I hear among conservative, ironically enough, is not necessarily the war. It's the protesters. And I live here in a typical, fiscal-conservative, socially liberal area, the typical Northeast city. And you have -- the city is very liberal. The suburbs are much more conservative. And the big debate here is how much can the protesters get away with.

BROWN: Meaning -- what do you mean get away with?

ADKINS: Well, doing things like laying down in the street, blocking traffic, blocking doors to public buildings, tying up emergency resources, that sort of thing.

BROWN: They get arrested when they do that, don't they? I mean I'm not -- I'm serious. It's -- I guess I'm trying to figure out what you mean or what your callers mean here.

ADKINS: Well, in Philadelphia -- in Philadelphia, the mayor has let them protest and tie up traffic. And it's happening in a number of cities. I really thought the debate would be a little higher, but that's really what the talk of the town is.

BROWN: Just one more question, Tom, before we move back to some others. Is there any concern in the callers and -- if that's the right term, I guess, for an Internet talk show -- that the coalition is not aggressive enough? Someone argued on the program an hour or so ago that the coalition is simply too concerned with inflicting civilian casualties.

ADKINS: It's a good debate, but I think, for the most part, people have the faith that the generals know what they're doing and they understand that there's a political aspect of a war and there's a war aspect of the war. You have to kind of like marry the two of them together.

I think people, they grumble, but they understand that, at least on the conservative side. And for that matter, I think most people who are just paying attention to the war, which is just about everybody, I think most people kind of understand that.

BROWN: Mr. Obama, do people worry -- is it too early to hear any concerns about how much this is all costing or the sort of long-range implications, whether there's going to be money for prescription drugs and the rest, or is it just too early for that?

OBAMA: No, I don't think it's too early at all. I mean, here in Illinois, you've got 80 percent of the school districts are in deficit mode. I was up in Galesburg in Western Illinois, where they just saw a Maytag plant close with 1,300 jobs lost. So people are very concerned about it. They absolutely want to make sure that the troops have sufficient support to be able to win and make this as swift, with as few casualties as possible.

But I think they're all astonished, I think, in many quarters, about, for example, the recent Bush budget and the prospect that, for example, veterans benefits might be cut. And so there's discussion about that, I think, among both supporters and those who are opposed to the war. What kind of world are we building?

And I think that's -- the anxiety is about the international prospects and how we potentially reconstruct Iraq. And the costs there, then, tie in very directly with concerns about how we're handling our problems at home.

BROWN: And, Liz, just A kind of a snapshot question. I wonder if this comes up. Do you get callers who are surprised at how that the prominent role, or at the role that women have played so far in the war? Because I hear that all the time.

DOLAN: I don't know that our callers or our listeners are surprised. I think it's sort of -- there are two end of that spectrum. On the one hand, they're very proud. They love seeing the pictures of the women piloting helicopters or your journalists that are out there covering it. They love the fact that women are playing more roles in the military, and they're very proud of that.

But the other end of spectrum, of course, is the video footage of Shoshawna Johnson.

BROWN: Yes.

DOLAN: And you do get this pit in the bottom of your stomach when you see a POW, a woman like that, who really isn't a warrior, who was someone working in the rear areas. And I think people, obviously, are very concerned for her. And it really takes them aback to see that.

You know, one of the co-hosts of our show, my sister Julie, is in Moscow, Russia. And so she saw the entire videotape of that interview that didn't air in the United States. And she said it's totally gut wrenching.

And so I think that's -- on the one hand, women are very proud to see other women in those jobs. On the other hand, we're really set back when we see them in POW roles.

BROWN: Liz, all of you, thank you for joining us tonight. And I hope we'll just keep reconfiguring these panels and keep checking on the mood every night. Thank you very much.

ADKINS: Thanks so much, Aaron.

DOLAN: Thanks, Aaron.

OBAMA: Thank you. BROWN: Appreciate you having the time for us.

We'll take a break, and our coverage continues in just a moment.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BROWN: That's Baghdad on a Saturday morning. And you can see the smoke in the sky. We are still, I think, trying to sort out whether that is the smoke from this intensive explosion that we saw around dinnertime, about 3:00 in the morning Baghdad time, the biggest, loudest that we had seen. That has nothing to do, necessarily, with the ordnance that was used, as much as where it hit in relation to the camera, with that camera that we most often see with that low rise building.

This is a new shot for us, at least at daytime. And there is some traffic moving in the city on a Saturday morning. Whether that's civilian or not, obviously, we don't know. But as we pan across the Baghdad skyline, you can see it's still early in the morning on Saturday, a workday for -- under normal circumstances at least -- what it looks like there and what the smoke is. And this is what they've been living with.

It was a particularly bad day in the city because of, depending on who you believe, which version you believe, more than 50 civilians died today in a market place there.

Whenever we can, we've been bringing you video diaries of our reporters, seeing and experiencing things they obviously would not have imagined they would ever see and experience in their lives.

We're going to focus a bit now on Northern Iraq, and the diary tonight comes from Kevin Sites, who has been in the Kurdish controlled part of the country.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

KEVIN SITES, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Yes. I'm in Chamchamal, about 40 kilometers away from Kirkuk. We're in the middle of a sleet storm right now. They've got sandstorms down in the south. Here it's been raining all day. But that hasn't stopped the massive coalition air strike against this Iraqi position, which is just about 1,000 meters behind me.

About 5:49 this morning, there was a massive explosion up on the hill.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Here it comes.

SITES: Here it comes. Here it comes, guys.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: You got the hill. You got the hill.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: You got the hill.

SITES: OK. Guys, take us live. Take us live. UNIDENTIFIED MALE: If you can takes, guys, take us.

SITES: Guys, take us.

We heard a thunderous explosion. I mean this is the loudest explosion that I've heard in the three wars that I have covered. We were just -- we were just actually finishing up some live shots up here when a coalition plane came overhead and attacked the Iraqi position right behind us.

This is obviously the thing that we come to cover. We want to see the actual conflict. We want to bear witness to that conflict. And so when it happens in front of your eyes, it's pretty awe- inspiring.

What you're looking at is what we believe to be the crater of a 500-pound bomb. I want to go ahead and walk down in here just to give you an idea of just how deep this is. You can't tell from the ridge line, but this is about 15 feet deep. It completely swallows me up. I'm tripping over some ordnance (ph) here. This is a piece of the bomb itself.

These bombs started dropping at Kirkuk, which is about 40 kilometers from here. But there was an Iraqi position, just about two kilometers from us. And I think that they were frightened that they were going to be under attack next.

We're in Chamchamal, which is Kurdish controlled territory in northern Iraq. And we're operating as a unilateral, basically. This is a crew that is not embedded.

There have been reports that Special Operations Forces, American Special Operations Forces, have landed on air strips near Sulaymaniyah and also north near Mosul.

Conditions here are quite cold. You're not getting a whole lot of sleep. You're doing live shots all night. The conditions are as bad as they can get. But you also feed off that. The anticipation of getting here and covering this has gone on for so long that when it actually starts, you're somewhat gratified. At least you know there's a beginning now.

And yet, the uncertainty of when it's going to end will also weigh on us. You know, how much effort can we put every day? How long can we actually stay at reporting and doing our work before we have to get some rest? Is this going to be a marathon or is it going to be a sprint?

I don't see any tanks around here. I don't see any artillery. I don't even see any heavy weapons of any type. What are you going to do when they start firing tanks back at you? Are you going to shoot with your AK-47s?

Covering the Kurds here in northern Iraq has been an amazing experience so far. We get to get immersed in the culture. We get to work with the people very closely and understand what their motivations and their desires are.

They've suffered extremely under the regime of Saddam Hussein. We went to Halabja, which was the worst chemical weapon attack, where 5,000 Kurds were killed and 10,000 to 15,000 wounded. We went there on the 15th anniversary of that attack. And I guess what was gratifying for us there was to see a city that was still living, still alive.

One of the most poignant moments, I think, that we witnessed, we did a couple of live shots and then our fixers and our drivers just kind of got up and they did a spontaneous folk dance. And Bill turned the camera around. And we were still live. We were still sending out live picture back to Atlanta, just, you know, amazed that this kind of joy lives within these people, even in sometime horrible conditions. And it was interesting to see that resilience and see the kind of spirit that the Kurds have.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

BROWN: The experiences of reporter Kevin Sites over a period of several weeks now. He is not an embed. He just dropped in to the northern part of the country. And one word you may wonder about, he used the term fixer at one point. We hire people to help with translations and help us through checkpoints and that sort of thing, and the common word is fixer.

On now to the work of still photographers in Iraq. Tonight, it's a friend of the "Newsnight" broadcast, David Turnley, the Pulitzer Prize winning photographer who captured one of the most gripping images of the first Gulf War, a soldier realizing that his best friend had been killed.

David is now in northeastern Iraq, where people are struggling to go on with their lives, even though danger is all around them.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

DAVID TURNLEY, PULITZER PRIZE WINNING PHOTOGRAPHER: I'm David Turnley. I'm standing in a town called Kifri (ph), which is two kilometers from the northern front here on the eastern side of Iraq, near Iran. This is the furthest, forward most point in the north, about 180 kilometers from Baghdad.

I have come here to try to take a look at, to feel, to see, to sense the daily lives of the people here, what it's like to live in the midst of a war.

Many of the people here have been so concerned that this region in particular would be hit by chemical weapons. And many of them picked up their belongings and left the towns, as is the case with this particular town, with 74 people, 74 members of many generations of extended family.

I noticed, immediately, this young woman standing in front of a tent. She had this sort of carriage and bearing and sort of stare that I have seen so many times among refugees, the kind of look of someone who's just completely lost and yet who sort of has an intense need to maintain some sense of dignity.

In this case, this boy is wearing a shirt that says Nebraska on it. I had no sense whether he would have a clue where Nebraska is. But, of course, that was sort of the irony of this particular photograph and what made me stop and take a look and make that picture.

We noticed that there were these two traffic policemen, traffic cops, standing at this little concrete island in the middle of the street in this town. There aren't streetlights. There aren't stoplights. No one seemed to be taking these guys very seriously. It seemed to me that they were supposed to fulfill some pseudo function, but nothing that was really very obvious. More than anything else, they seemed to stand very proud in their uniforms.

Their market place here seems to fulfill a few functions. On the one hand, it's where people come to buy their daily food and supplies. The supplies that are on these little make-shift, entrepreneurial stands in these market places are certainly not filled with goods. You see, for example, a pile of lemons. You see a small pile of potatoes. You see a lot of kerosene and petrol.

On the other hand, it's where people come to congregate, to tell stories, to catch up on what they know is happening in the war and, I think, just sort of to find some solace in being with one another.

Just about everybody, certainly every adult male has some kind of weapon, whether it's a Kalashnikov or an AK-47 or some kind of antiquated rifle. And they sort of casually walk through the town, through the market place with these various weapons slung over their shoulders.

He was saluting You know, I think it's a as much as anything form of acknowledgement of me as an outsider and sort of a statement of, welcome to me.

All the schools have been shut down in function the war. You see kids in the streets, milling around the market place, playing. Kids seem to be kids everywhere. Of all of my travels I have never encountered a culture that enjoys being photographed as much as the Kurds. These people have just had such an -- a long experience with hardship and with war that they're not particularly worried or, if in fact it is their way of dealing with a particular anxiety of the moment.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

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Against Iraqi Paramilitary Units, regular forces in Nasiriyah>


Aired March 28, 2003 - 23:00   ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
AARON BROWN, CNN ANCHOR: On a day of images, the image of the terrible civilian casualties in Baghdad, and then you see these dolphins clearing minds. And it just -- and I'll give you another image, actually, coming up. For those of you, though, who are just joining in, we want to take a step back and give a broader look at how the day played out, some of the major developments of the day.
And Wolf Blitzer does that for us now.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

WOLF BLITZER, CNN ANCHOR (voice-over): In the South, two cities that allied forces cannot seem to secure: Basra, Iraqi paramilitary units fire machine guns and mortars at hundreds of civilians trying to flee the city over a bridge. An unknown number are wounded. British forces fire on the Iraqi militia, killing some.

Nasiriyah, a hornet's nest for Marines. Three U.S. Marine battalions engaged in some of the fiercest fighting of the war against Iraqi paramilitary units and regular forces. Four more Marines reported missing today in Nasiriyah, in addition to 12 Marines that went missing there yesterday.

Elsewhere in the South, U.S. forces move on to an abandoned Iraqi air base, scramble to get the air base ready for A-10 Warthog Attack Planes.

CNN's Bob Franken reports it's a crucial strategic prize.

BOB FRANKEN, CNN CORRESPONDENT: This is a base that is also about 155 -- about 150 miles north of Kuwait. And so it is much closer to the action.

BLITZER: Now signs the Iraqis won't go quietly in the North either. CNN's Kevin Sites, in the Kurdish controlled town of Chamchamal, reports the town has come under artillery fire from nearby Iraqi units.

In Central Iraq, the weather is clearing, and U.S.-led forces pound away at Republican Guard units ahead of an assault on Baghdad.

U.S. military source tell CNN's Barbara Starr heavy allied air strikes have degraded the Republican Guard's Medina division south of Baghdad to 65 percent capacity. That division now needs help. U.S.- led ground forces near Baghdad are also being reinforced rapidly, the climactic battle possibly just days away.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

BROWN: That was Wolf Blitzer reporting that. We were talking about images; here's another one. Marines, of course, have a motto, "leave no comrade behind." It faced a tough test in the fighting around the southern Iraqi city of Nasiriyah and Alessio Vinci of our staff did the reporting on that.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

ALESSIO VINCI, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Hostilities in Nasiriyah prevented the Marines from recovering the bodies of their foreign comrades earlier, most still lying in the burned out armored vehicle five days after one of the bloodiest battles of the war in Iraq.

Officers say they have found the body parts of at least seven Marines, but the current total of troops killed in Nasiriyah is now 16. More are still missing.

Captain Scott Dyer helped recover his friends and colleagues.

CAPT. SCOTT DYER, U.S. MARINE CORPS: When we got down into there, the forces that were there recovered five of the bodies that were there. And then some civilians came out, showed us where they had buried two others and returned to us the personal effects of at least one of the Marine that was there, some photographs, some mail, things like that.

VINCI: Struggling to keep his emotions in check, the commanding officer personally oversaw the recovery effort, making sure the bodies were treated with dignity and respect, even under the tough conditions of the front lines.

Medics performed the first field examination to identify some of the victims. A DNA test will be performed for final positive identification.

(on camera): From here, the bodies will be flown to a staging area and prepared for a final journey back home.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We ask for your blessing, oh God almighty.

VINCI (voice-over): A Marine chaplain led the troops in prayer, a moment of solace and comfort for many here.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Marines care for their own. And that's in life and in death. And so they see their duty not complete until they're resting in their homeland with their families.

VINCI: City Marines here say the Nasiriyah fight was the fiercest the Marines Corps has been involved in since (INAUDIBLE) in Vietnam and promised that Marines missing will be found and returned home -- Alessio Vinci, CNN, with the U.S. Marines in Nasiriyah, Iraq.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

BROWN: General, quickly some day we're going to understand the dimensions -- some day soon, I think, the dimensions of this battle in Nasiriyah. But it's obviously a major fight that has yet to really be, I guess, thoroughly understood or reported.

CLARK: I think that's true. There are stories coming out in the print media. It's very hard to get a feel for this visually.

It's clearly a significant fight. There are about three battalions of Marines tied up in there. The losses, in military casualty terms, you could only call, from that many men tied up, as light.

They're not -- these are not heavy losses. They're terribly heavy for the people...

BROWN: Of course.

CLARK: ... and the families, but in terms of military significance, it's not clear that this can't be reduced in a few more days. We just -- we can't -- you can't assume that this is something that's going to go on for months and months and months fighting for this one city.

BROWN: For this one city. Is it -- should it be a surprise at all that it's taken as many days as it has?

CLARK: It depended on the enemy's battle plan. I mean if his battle plan was to defend this city, then he's doing so. And we're trying to take the city without destroying the city or killing the innocent civilians. So that should be no surprise.

What was the -- what was unexpected, apparently, is the fact that he chose to defend in this city this far forward, that he used the Fedayeen and possibly reinforced some of them Republican Guards, that far south.

BROWN: And a quick one here. Did the weather, the two days of the heavy weather, do we, in any way, see the effect of that on what's happened since?

CLARK: That's a good point. Probably we do. Number one, it delayed the logistics, convoys getting up because they just had a hard time mucking ahead through that heavy weather.

Number two, as we said on the program, it gave some -- the marginal advantage went to the Iraqis in that because it took away our air cover. Maybe they got some reinforcements in for this period.

BROWN: The -- it does seem to us that this whole story has now so many different pieces. And the secretary of defense threw another piece of it on the table today when he strongly warned Syria to be very careful about sending night vision goggles into Iraq and strongly warned Iran and any Iranians found in Iraq would be treated as enemy combatants. All of this came out of the Pentagon today and was reported by Barbara Starr.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

BARBARA STARR, PENTAGON CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): It was a public warning to Iraq's neighbors to stay out of the fight. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld warning Syria and Iran that the U.S. is watching their activities.

The secretary had the sharpest criticism of the Damascus government. He said Syria is shipping military supplies, including night vision goggles, into Iraq.

DONALD RUMSFELD, U.S. DEFENSE SECRETARY: We consider such trafficking as hostile acts and will hold the Syrian government accountable for such shipments.

STARR: Rumsfeld refused to be drawn into a discussion of whether the U.S. would move against Syria.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: So are you threatening military action against Syria?

RUMSFELD: I am saying exactly what I said. It was carefully phrased.

STARR: Syria said Rumsfeld's statements were an attempt to divert attention from civilian Iraqi casualties in the war. A Syrian spokeswoman said Rumsfeld's charge is an absolutely unfounded irresponsible statement.

Sources tell CNN there is no new smoking gun with Syria. It is more a long-standing controversy about Syria's weapons proliferation. It also came on a day when Syria, at the United Nations, voted with the U.S. to restart the Iraqi Oil For Food program.

On Iran, Secretary Rumsfeld said there are now hundreds of fighters backed by Iran on the Iraqi battlefield.

RUMSFELD: We have seen Badr Corps people moving into Iraq, and they report up through the Revolutionary Guard, and they're armed. And there are some additional ones that are close to the border. And my statement, I believe and I hope, said something like this: That to the extent they interfere with General Franks' activities, they would have to be considered combatants.

STARR (on camera): While Secretary Rumsfeld's statements against Iran and Syria appeared surprising, sources tell CNN the White House knew he would make the statement and put both countries on notice -- Barbara Starr, CNN, the Pentagon.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

BROWN: Our embedded reporters, we continue to wait. We expect to hear from a couple of them soon. This is Baghdad on a Saturday morning, just a little bit past 7:00 in the morning in Baghdad, a city that was again rocked last night. And, in fact, the largest explosion, or at least one closest to the -- one of the camera positions last night. The smoke still on horizon line, as the camera pans across the river.

We take a short break. Our coverage continues in a moment. This is CNN.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BROWN: If you watch this war unfold on your TV screen, it's not a bad idea to keep in mind that the distances, in many cases, we're talking about are not very far. It's about 80 miles from Basra, as the crow flies, about 80 miles from Basra to Kuwait City, for example. It's not far from Kuwaiti border to Central Iraq, if you were to go there by plane. But if you're not, if you're traveling in convoy with an anti-missile unit, it's a long and complicated ride.

CNN's Lisa Rose Weaver filed a report on the rigors of getting from point A to point B. She's with the Army's 5th Corps.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We need to move, preferably.

LISA ROSE WEAVER, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): What sounded like artillery had just hit about 100 meters from this camp in Central Iraq. No one was hurt, as the soldiers sprung into a defensive position.

It turned out to be a U.S. Air Force F-16 that shot a radar seeking missile at the Air Defense Battery on the ground. U.S. forces hadn't expected a Patriot Missile Battery to be so close to the front line.

A few days later, elements of the 52nd Air Defense Artillery were on the road again, headed north. Yet another dust storm cut visibility as night set in.

The convoy, including some Patriot Missile Launchers took 12 hours to travel about 50 miles. Twenty-one-year-old specialist, Brook Wicky (ph) does most of the driving, especially at night, rarely revealing the mounting pressure as the convoy enters territory, where there have been reports of ambushes. News from further north comes over the radio.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Right now, the Iraqis are trying to take advantage of the weather, and they're replacing a whole bunch of their tanks and stuff up 20 miles south of Baghdad...

WEAVER: Air defense units, like the 52nd Artillery, usually enter areas already cleared and in the control of ground forces. While the route north does have a U.S. military presence, lots of unknowns remain.

Night falls; the convoy has already stopped several times to pull missile launchers out of the stand. The convoy manages to get through without incident and gets to its destination, likely only to head north yet again -- Lisa Rose Weaver, CNN, on the road in Central Iraq.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

BROWN: That's Lisa Rose Weaver, who's embedded with that anti- missile group. Bob Franken is at a Forward Air Base in Iraq. We won't be more specific than that. And they've got some work to do -- Bob.

FRANKEN: Well, a lot of work going on here, as a matter of fact. This is what was an Iraqi air base, although it has not been used since the Gulf War I. And it's interesting to come back here.

You see buildings that have been unoccupied, really, to a large degree, since then. The runway, however, is in pretty good shape. There was a small contingence of Iraqis that the government kept here. They were captured, by the way, when they took over this base about a week ago.

I will also tell you that there are tunnels under this base. And they found some of them in the tunnels. But the security people have gone. And they're assured that they have cleared the area.

There is heavy security around here because there's still a lot of fighting going on in this area, and they want to make sure this base is clear so the A-10s and the other aircraft who will begin operating out of here can come and go unencumbered.

We're expecting, within the next day or so, to see the A-10s starting to operate from here. The big advantage being that this is 150 miles north of their home base, much, much closer to the action, much closer for the rescue helicopters to where they might have to go to do their search and rescue operations.

So this is going to be what is considered vital to the war effort, according to the wing commander. It is something that is well under way, the preparations are.

You can see behind me the helicopters. We've seen a steady arrival of C-130s bringing equipment and various crews in here, turning this from a desolate, abandoned air base, for all practical purposes, into a fully operating one. That's going to happen very quickly, and it's going to have a major impact, Aaron, on the way that the fighting is done.

BROWN: And, Bob, for people who weren't with us in the last hour when you did talk about this, talk about the mission of the pilots who will be moving in there pretty soon.

FRANKEN: Well, the A-10 has been used mainly to support the ground troops. By now, we're all familiar with the plane that's called the Warthog. I've actually watched it in action, and it is awesome.

It's machine guns fire something like 6,000 rounds a minute or second or something like that. I wish I could tell you exactly. But it's -- they come out so fast it just sounds like a spurt. And they just rip tanks apart, and, of course, can just wreak havoc on troops on the ground.

They also fly low to the ground. They can go into deep dives. So they're really a devastating weapon, and they've been used extensively, operating from the other air base. Their ability to operate from here is just going to make them do their deadly work much more quickly -- Aaron.

BROWN: Bob, thank you very much. I hope we hear from you again before our morning is done -- Bob Franken, who's at a Forward Air base now in the southern part of Iraq.

One of the things that the television coverage has allowed is for families back home to see their, in many cases, their children or their spouses out in the field.

We'll take a short break. When we come back, a family reunion, in a moment.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BROWN: You might recall a few days ago, a Marine Corps pilot captured some riveting pictures of a strike on Iraq. Tonight, a portrait of him and, as it turns out, his family, is reported for us by CNN's Frank Buckley.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

FRANK BUCKLEY, CNN CORRESPONDENT: The man behind the visor, flying an F-18 Strike Fighter is Marine Corps Captain Chris Collins. He's only 28 years old, but he's already a veteran of war.

He just got back from a mission over Iraq. Dust storms made it difficult to see, but he eventually dropped bombs on artillery pieces, maybe on people, Iraqi soldiers.

CAPT. CHRIS COLLINS, STRIKE FIGHTER, MARINE CORPS: I thought that might affect me, you know, when I first came out here. But they're trying to kill me. So they're shooting at me. We're trying to shoot at them. And, you know, I guess that's what war is all about.

BUCKLEY: It's pretty intense stuff for a guy on his first air craft carrier deployment. Collins is what they call a "nugget." To his friends, he is "Kitty," the call sign his squadron gave him when he showed up with the tough guy call sign "mad dog."

To Jack and Barbara Collins, he is a son. Like the parents of so many young men and women in the gulf, they watch for news about their boy whenever they can.

We got word to them so they could watch when we interviewed Chris about the conditions pilots were facing. CHRIS COLLINS: When we can't see the ground, obviously we can't see the target.

BUCKLEY: They stay in touch by e-mail. Occasionally, they talk by phone. Chris knows his mom is worried.

CHRIS COLLINS: I feel like every time thinks she talks to me, it's going to be my last day talking to her, you know. And so -- you know, she always wants to know what I'm doing. And then I tell her and then she gets all worried. So now when she asks me, she's like, well, what have you been doing? I say, well, you don't want to know.

BUCKLEY: Chris' parents pray for their boy's safe return.

BARBARA COLLINS, MOTHER OF CAPT. CHRIS COLLINS: I'm OK. You know, I think Christopher is highly trained, as are all the pilots. I think he'll be fine.

BUCKLEY: And at the moment, he is, doing what he was trained to do, to fly and fight -- Frank Buckley, CNN, aboard the USS Constellation in the Persian Gulf.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

BROWN: And that's Chris Collins in front of you again. Chris, just one quick question or two before we bring your folks into this. Was combat as you expected it to be, as the training prepared you for?

CHRIS COLLINS: Yes, actually it's not as bad as I thought it was going to be. You know, the training kind of prepares us for everything and all the situations we're going to be presented with.

But, you know, of course, once you get out there, you know, your nerves stand up a little bit. You're a little bit more aware of the things that are going on around you. But I still think we're very well prepared for anything they can throw at us.

BROWN: Can you describe what it felt like when you came off that aircraft carrier the first time, knowing it was for real?

CHRIS COLLINS: Yes. I was pretty anxious the first time I went out there, first time you're carrying live missiles, live bombs, not knowing whether or not you're going to drop.

You know, I just got back from a strike about 20 minutes ago, and we were able to drop on some targets and destroy some of the targets, which is going to help the coalition effort move north and, hopefully, get rid of the Iraqi regime.

BROWN: And you just came back 20 minutes ago?

CHRIS COLLINS: That's correct, yes. I was a spare for a strike that went out and one of the other aircraft went down. So I got taxied up to the catapult and got shot off in the middle of the night.

BROWN: All right. Let me -- you've got better things to do than talk to me. Talk to your folks in that case.

Jack and Barbara Collins are with us. They're in Connecticut tonight. Mrs. Collins, I heard your son accusing you of acting like a mother. Is it -- having it on television, being able to see him, getting the e-mails, does it actually make it easier or does it, in some ways, make it more difficult?

BARBARA COLLINS: The fact that he just came back from a strike doesn't make me happy. But I'm glad to see him home and safe on board.

BROWN: We are, too. Anything -- why don't you talk to each other, and 3 million of us, I guess, will just eves drop.

BARBARA COLLINS: Chris?

CHRIS COLLINS: Hey, mom and dad. How are you guys doing?

BARBARA COLLINS: I just wanted to tell you -- I'm doing great right now that I can see you. You look fabulous.

JACK COLLINS, FATHER OF CAPT. CHRIS COLLINS: I think we have to stop meeting like this, Chris. I'd rather see you in San Diego soon.

BROWN: I bet you would. Mr. Collins, were you in the service? Were you in the military?

JACK COLLINS: I had a commission in the Navy during the Vietnam conflict. I sailed on merchant ships, bringing supplies over to Vietnam for a number of years.

BROWN: And when Chris decided to join, what were your feelings?

JACK COLLINS: I was proud of him. I realized, early on, that I was not a Marine. I was a Merchant Marine, and there's quite a bit of difference. We're very glad that our country has Marines like Chris.

BROWN: I suspect Chris reminds you that there's a very big difference between a Merchant Marine and the Marines, as well, from time to time.

Chris, what motivated you to join? Did you just want to fly?

CHRIS COLLINS: Well, it was kind of an accident. I always wanted to fly for the Navy. When I went to school, I ended up talking to a Marine recruiter. And the next thing I knew, I was going to Officer Candidates school for 12 weeks in Quantico, which, at the time, I thought was in Cuba. Evidently it's in Virginia.

BROWN: Just, do you know...

CHRIS COLLINS: Next thing...

BROWN: I'm sorry -- please, go ahead.

CHRIS COLLINS: Now and then I, once I got into the flight program, I always wanted to fly jets. And now I'm lucky enough to fly an F-18 for the Marine Corps, and then also fly them off boats, which is what I've always wanted to do.

BROWN: Do you know what tomorrow will bring? Do you ever know what tomorrow will bring?

CHRIS COLLINS: I'm sure it will involve flying and dropping bombs, but as far as where we're going and who we're supporting, you know, we usually don't find that out until about 12 hours in advance, just depending on how the battlefield is shaping at the current time.

BROWN: Mrs. Collins, I'll give you the last word here. He sounds so matter of fact about it. I can't imagine that mom feels very matter of fact about anything right now.

BARBARA COLLINS: The only thing that I've said to Chris in all my e-mails -- and I'll say it again, Chris -- you stay safe and you keep our troops safe over there.

BROWN: All of you. Thank you for your time, a lot. It's over the last days, there aren't many happy moments in that we get to report. And it's nice to be able to put your family together, at least briefly. Thank you.

JACK COLLINS: Thank you.

BARBARA COLLINS: Love you.

CHRIS COLLINS: Thank you.

BROWN: The Collins family of Darien, Connecticut. Chris just 20 minutes back from a mission safely.

We'll go to break here. As you can see, there is heavy smoke in Baghdad at about 7:30 on a Saturday morning there. We'll try and figure out what has happened. There was certainly heavy bombing overnight. Coming up on the bottom of the hour here, and our coverage continues in a minute.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

(NEWSBREAK)

BROWN: Heidi, thank you very much.

We have a number of partnerships here. "The New York Times" correspondents, also correspondents and reporters with "The Boston Globe." And Scott Nelson is one of them. And Scott's just called in.

We'll just not make him wait here; put him on the phone. He's somewhere in Central Iraq.

And, Scott, honestly, that's everything I know. So why don't you lay out the story that you're reporting now.

SCOTT NELSON, REPORTER, "THE BOSTON GLOBE": Well, I don't know what's going on in the rest of Iraq, but here, it's quieter than it's been in days. Last night, the Marines I'm with had their first full night's sleep in a long time, probably since a couple of days before this whole thing started.

The fighting militia, that had been fairly active in this area in the last couple of days, evidently moved away because, like I said, for the first time, no triplers (ph) were going up over night. There were no mortars being fired. The artillery was quiet. And Marines really got to settle down and get some sleep here.

And this morning, Saturday morning Iraq time, they're up and around and look eager to get moving north again. And it's possible now because Friday they finally got re-supplied. Their vehicles are fueled back up. They have food again, and they have water again.

And I can see a column of tanks moving past me to the north, which is a sign that maybe things are not stalled anymore and moving back in that direction.

BROWN: Was there concern -- had supplies run so low that they were concerned?

NELSON: Definitely. I mean, I don't think there was ever a danger of people not getting any food here. But there had been some units of the Marines that are near me that they had cut to one MRE a day. Those are the Meals Ready to Eat, the military meals. They'd been cut from three to one.

So there was definitely a tight supply. And people were rationing water. And a lot of the vehicles were down to quarter tank.

Yesterday, the supply lines seemed to catch up with all three of those things. Everybody's topped off and ready to go. And now they're just waiting for what everybody assumes will be the big push to Baghdad.

BROWN: And the encounters that the group you're traveling with, Marines you're traveling with have had, you are pretty certain are mostly with militia, as opposed to Iraqi regulars?

NELSON: There have been some of both, but mostly the militia. What the Marines have been told here -- and I haven't seen this with my own eyes, so I can't verify it. But what the Marines have been told that I'm camping with is that there is a Fedayeen training camp, or what had been a Fedayeen training camp, less than a mile from here and that this area is fairly heavily populated with militia and militia sympathizer.

What I can say is that the first couple of days we were in the area, there were repeated incidents of small arms fire and mortar fire from locals. Whether those were organized militia or just sympathizers or people who didn't want the Americans in the area, somebody was firing on the Marines at a fairly regular clip. And they usually -- the Marines returned fire fairly heavily in most cases.

BROWN: Any losses in the group you're traveling with? Has everything been OK in that regard?

NELSON: There have been Marines killed, not in large numbers, and it's not always clear because rumors run like crazy out here where information is scarce.

But on the fake (ph) toward Baghdad that this group made on Thursday -- we drove about 30 miles north and then turned around and came back -- two Marines were killed in that operation.

They did encounter some Iraqi armored personnel carriers. Cobra Helicopters eventually destroyed those personnel carriers. The two Marines were killed in the encounter.

The day before, a couple Marines were killed in an ambush that the fighting militia pulled using small arms fire. The Marines came forward to meet it, and then they got mortared. A Navy Corpsman, a medic was killed in that, along with a couple of Marines.

So Marines are being killed, not in large numbers, but people are dying. And it's a real war.

BROWN: It's a real war indeed. Is it -- do you have the sense that the people who are attacking these Marines are doing so in kind of an ad hoc way, or does there seem to be some central strategy at work?

NELSON: You might say it's just from riding along. It was an ad hoc way. But I talked to two infantry sergeants who really are in charge of platoons of men on the front line, and they disagreed with me. They said, last night, that they think that militia was very disciplined, very well trained, relatively well armed and knew what they were doing.

They were impressed with the professionalism, if you would, of the militiamen. So, you know, I guess, from where they're standing, these guys they're fighting know what they're doing.

BROWN: Were they surprised at the discipline, professionalism, whatever adjective you want to apply? Were they surprised by that?

NELSON: They seemed to be, although they weren't overwhelmed by it. There's a sense of inevitability here among the Marines that, hey, if this is all these guys can do is sort of swipe at us from the bushes, then there's nothing they can do to stop us. You know, we can roll all the way in. They're not even going to try and fight us out into the open, man-to-man, as it were. They're just going to try to swipe at us from the side. There's nothing they can do to stop us. That's sort of the attitude among the Marines here. They're very cock-sure (ph).

BROWN: They're Marines. Scott, nicely done tonight. And please check in again any time -- Scott Nelson, who's helping us and also reporting for "The Boston Globe," which pays his salary.

The country is going through this war, watching it on television in record numbers, somewhat of an addiction, I think, in some respects. It's sort of television addiction. And all of the ups and downs -- and what's interesting, Bill Schneider can point out, is that the country may see the ups and downs, but doesn't necessarily react to the ups and downs. Right?

BILL SCHNEIDER, CNN SR. POLITICAL ANALYST: That's right. There's very little wavering in public opinion. Poll after poll shows that. In that way, I think the polls are kind of a reality check.

We asked people, did you expect the war to go better than it has? And you can see here the answer was overwhelmingly, no; 71 percent said the war is going about as well as they expected. In fact, another 2 percent said it's going better than they expected.

A lot of the commentary, a lot of the discussion of the war sort of started out in Persian Gulf mode. This was going to be a dramatic, brilliant victory, and then it seemed to shift instantly to something like Vietnam War mode. But throughout this, the American public has not wavered.

BROWN: Even on the day-to-day -- do we see, from one day to the next, depending on sort of what the new cycle has laid out, any particular changes in the mood, in the expectation, anything?

SCHNEIDER: We do see a change in expectations. You do see people resigned to a tougher, longer fight.

Most people, when we ask them, how long do you think this war's going to last, they now say it's going to last one to six months. Only 15 percent of Americans say it's going to be over within a month; 52 percent one to six months; a quarter say it's going to take longer than six months.

And, you know, I checked those figures and found that, within -- people within each category, a majority support the war no matter how long they think this war's going to last.

There is no evidence here that Americans are dismayed by the fact that the U.S. and the coalition is facing tough resistance. And that's why I say the polls are a kind of reality check.

BROWN: I want to talk about the president in a second. But before that, we are a week-and-a-half into this, so tell me -- I mean you've been looking at polls your whole professional life -- how meaningful, I guess, at this stage, a reality check is it? What is it telling us, in a sense, this soon?

SCHNEIDER: It's telling us this -- what it is telling us is that the day-to-day coverage, the setbacks, the problems, what people are seeing on television, may dismay them in the sense that they think it's not going as fast as they'd like. But it doesn't change their basic underlying resilience, their support for this war. It's still strong.

I mean it takes a long time for people to give up on a venture like this. It took three years in Vietnam. So you shouldn't expect -- when people have made up their minds that this is something we have to do and it's going to be tough and they have some basic understanding of war, you don't expect them to give up this quickly.

BROWN: No, I certainly would not.

Now, the president -- president usually, in these moments, do get a surge of popularity. I assume that's true here.

SCHNEIDER: It is indeed. And we looked at President Bush compared with some other world leaders. And the figures were kind of interesting. These are personal favorability ratings.

President Bush 67 percent favorable personally. That's very strong. Tony Blair is 72 percent. That's a little higher than Bush. He's widely admired in the United States. Remember this is...

BROWN: This is among Americans?

SCHNEIDER: This is among Americans. And remember, of course, unlike President Bush, he has no partisan enemies in the United States.

BROWN: Right.

SCHNEIDER: So you can expect democrats to be critical of the president. But Blair is still very strong.

Russian President Vladimir Putin has taken a big hit, just 15 percent favorable. A year ago, he was at 35. And, of course, French President Jacques Chirac, I'd say he's French toast.

BROWN: I would say he's French toast. Or freedom toast, if you want.

SCHNEIDER: Well, in his case, I think it's fair to call him French toast.

BROWN: Or just toast. I guess people admire that Mr. Blair -- how Mr. Blair has handled himself in the face of such strong domestic opposition. That's the only thing that sort of makes sense in that.

SCHNEIDER: Sure. Even the British admire him. And he's turning the polls around in Great Britain. He confronted his most vocal critics in public forums. He took them on. He didn't always satisfy them, but at least he confronted them. And he went through all those parliamentary debates, eloquently defending his point of view. And that's something President Bush really never quite did.

BROWN: Mr. Schneider -- thank you, sir. We'll take a break. Our coverage continues on this camera in a moment.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BROWN: We try to keep gauging in a variety of ways how Americans are viewing the war, what they're concerned about, what they're talking about. So we brought together each night some voices from across the country. And we do again tonight.

Liz Dolan is in Los Angeles tonight. She's one of the satellite sisters from the program of the same name on ABC Radio. Barack Obama is in Chicago, state legislator in the state of Illinois. And in Philadelphia tonight, Tom Adkins. He is publisher of CommonConservative.com.

It's nice to have all of you with us. We'll go top to bottom here at first. I'm curious, out on the West Coast, is this what everyone is talking about?

LIZ DOLAN, CO-HOST, "SATELLITE SISTERS": The war you mean?

BROWN: Yes.

DOLAN: I think the most interesting discussion we've been having on our show is sort of the long-range implications for the United States. You were just talking about Tony Blair in the previous poll. And we've had that discussion.

I think Americans are trying to balance U.S. leadership -- and they feel good about that, the U.S. sort of stepping out and doing what they believe the government should be doing to protect our national security -- but also unilateralism, which doesn't make them as comfortable.

And so I think the reason you see this Americans for Tony Blair movement is because people like the way he gives voice to both leadership and multilateralism at the same time.

BROWN: In the middle now, in Illinois Mr. Obama, do you get the same sort of concerns in the state of Illinois? Are there concerns about Americans being too alone in the world, or are you hearing other things?

BARACK OBAMA, ILLINOIS STATE LEGISLATURE: Well, I think that, obviously, the overriding concern right now is safety of the troops. And, you know, I've been traveling around the state and at least once or twice a day, I'll have people come up to me whose son's were reservists who have been called up, daughters who have been called up. And, obviously, people really are concerned about making sure they're safe. And that's true across the board, whether people support or do not support the war.

But I do think there's an underlying anxiety, in part because of their concerns about America's role in the world and the aftermath of the war. And, in part, because they're concerned about domestic policy and how this war is going to impact the economy, which is going through very tough times in Illinois.

BROWN: And, Mr. Atkins, are conservatives -- I assume you hear from lots of them, given that it's CommonConservative.com. Are they unhappy with either the way the war is being prosecuted or the war is being reported? TOM ADKINS, PUBLISHER, COMMONCONSERVATIVE.COM: I think you'll find that conservatives have very little problem with the way the war is being prosecuted. The fog of war, once it starts, there's no rules; there's no law; there's no "this is the certain time schedule you must follow." You do your best to fight the enemy. And sometimes they get one over on you. Sometime you get one over on them.

But the biggest conversation I hear among conservative, ironically enough, is not necessarily the war. It's the protesters. And I live here in a typical, fiscal-conservative, socially liberal area, the typical Northeast city. And you have -- the city is very liberal. The suburbs are much more conservative. And the big debate here is how much can the protesters get away with.

BROWN: Meaning -- what do you mean get away with?

ADKINS: Well, doing things like laying down in the street, blocking traffic, blocking doors to public buildings, tying up emergency resources, that sort of thing.

BROWN: They get arrested when they do that, don't they? I mean I'm not -- I'm serious. It's -- I guess I'm trying to figure out what you mean or what your callers mean here.

ADKINS: Well, in Philadelphia -- in Philadelphia, the mayor has let them protest and tie up traffic. And it's happening in a number of cities. I really thought the debate would be a little higher, but that's really what the talk of the town is.

BROWN: Just one more question, Tom, before we move back to some others. Is there any concern in the callers and -- if that's the right term, I guess, for an Internet talk show -- that the coalition is not aggressive enough? Someone argued on the program an hour or so ago that the coalition is simply too concerned with inflicting civilian casualties.

ADKINS: It's a good debate, but I think, for the most part, people have the faith that the generals know what they're doing and they understand that there's a political aspect of a war and there's a war aspect of the war. You have to kind of like marry the two of them together.

I think people, they grumble, but they understand that, at least on the conservative side. And for that matter, I think most people who are just paying attention to the war, which is just about everybody, I think most people kind of understand that.

BROWN: Mr. Obama, do people worry -- is it too early to hear any concerns about how much this is all costing or the sort of long-range implications, whether there's going to be money for prescription drugs and the rest, or is it just too early for that?

OBAMA: No, I don't think it's too early at all. I mean, here in Illinois, you've got 80 percent of the school districts are in deficit mode. I was up in Galesburg in Western Illinois, where they just saw a Maytag plant close with 1,300 jobs lost. So people are very concerned about it. They absolutely want to make sure that the troops have sufficient support to be able to win and make this as swift, with as few casualties as possible.

But I think they're all astonished, I think, in many quarters, about, for example, the recent Bush budget and the prospect that, for example, veterans benefits might be cut. And so there's discussion about that, I think, among both supporters and those who are opposed to the war. What kind of world are we building?

And I think that's -- the anxiety is about the international prospects and how we potentially reconstruct Iraq. And the costs there, then, tie in very directly with concerns about how we're handling our problems at home.

BROWN: And, Liz, just A kind of a snapshot question. I wonder if this comes up. Do you get callers who are surprised at how that the prominent role, or at the role that women have played so far in the war? Because I hear that all the time.

DOLAN: I don't know that our callers or our listeners are surprised. I think it's sort of -- there are two end of that spectrum. On the one hand, they're very proud. They love seeing the pictures of the women piloting helicopters or your journalists that are out there covering it. They love the fact that women are playing more roles in the military, and they're very proud of that.

But the other end of spectrum, of course, is the video footage of Shoshawna Johnson.

BROWN: Yes.

DOLAN: And you do get this pit in the bottom of your stomach when you see a POW, a woman like that, who really isn't a warrior, who was someone working in the rear areas. And I think people, obviously, are very concerned for her. And it really takes them aback to see that.

You know, one of the co-hosts of our show, my sister Julie, is in Moscow, Russia. And so she saw the entire videotape of that interview that didn't air in the United States. And she said it's totally gut wrenching.

And so I think that's -- on the one hand, women are very proud to see other women in those jobs. On the other hand, we're really set back when we see them in POW roles.

BROWN: Liz, all of you, thank you for joining us tonight. And I hope we'll just keep reconfiguring these panels and keep checking on the mood every night. Thank you very much.

ADKINS: Thanks so much, Aaron.

DOLAN: Thanks, Aaron.

OBAMA: Thank you. BROWN: Appreciate you having the time for us.

We'll take a break, and our coverage continues in just a moment.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BROWN: That's Baghdad on a Saturday morning. And you can see the smoke in the sky. We are still, I think, trying to sort out whether that is the smoke from this intensive explosion that we saw around dinnertime, about 3:00 in the morning Baghdad time, the biggest, loudest that we had seen. That has nothing to do, necessarily, with the ordnance that was used, as much as where it hit in relation to the camera, with that camera that we most often see with that low rise building.

This is a new shot for us, at least at daytime. And there is some traffic moving in the city on a Saturday morning. Whether that's civilian or not, obviously, we don't know. But as we pan across the Baghdad skyline, you can see it's still early in the morning on Saturday, a workday for -- under normal circumstances at least -- what it looks like there and what the smoke is. And this is what they've been living with.

It was a particularly bad day in the city because of, depending on who you believe, which version you believe, more than 50 civilians died today in a market place there.

Whenever we can, we've been bringing you video diaries of our reporters, seeing and experiencing things they obviously would not have imagined they would ever see and experience in their lives.

We're going to focus a bit now on Northern Iraq, and the diary tonight comes from Kevin Sites, who has been in the Kurdish controlled part of the country.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

KEVIN SITES, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Yes. I'm in Chamchamal, about 40 kilometers away from Kirkuk. We're in the middle of a sleet storm right now. They've got sandstorms down in the south. Here it's been raining all day. But that hasn't stopped the massive coalition air strike against this Iraqi position, which is just about 1,000 meters behind me.

About 5:49 this morning, there was a massive explosion up on the hill.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Here it comes.

SITES: Here it comes. Here it comes, guys.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: You got the hill. You got the hill.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: You got the hill.

SITES: OK. Guys, take us live. Take us live. UNIDENTIFIED MALE: If you can takes, guys, take us.

SITES: Guys, take us.

We heard a thunderous explosion. I mean this is the loudest explosion that I've heard in the three wars that I have covered. We were just -- we were just actually finishing up some live shots up here when a coalition plane came overhead and attacked the Iraqi position right behind us.

This is obviously the thing that we come to cover. We want to see the actual conflict. We want to bear witness to that conflict. And so when it happens in front of your eyes, it's pretty awe- inspiring.

What you're looking at is what we believe to be the crater of a 500-pound bomb. I want to go ahead and walk down in here just to give you an idea of just how deep this is. You can't tell from the ridge line, but this is about 15 feet deep. It completely swallows me up. I'm tripping over some ordnance (ph) here. This is a piece of the bomb itself.

These bombs started dropping at Kirkuk, which is about 40 kilometers from here. But there was an Iraqi position, just about two kilometers from us. And I think that they were frightened that they were going to be under attack next.

We're in Chamchamal, which is Kurdish controlled territory in northern Iraq. And we're operating as a unilateral, basically. This is a crew that is not embedded.

There have been reports that Special Operations Forces, American Special Operations Forces, have landed on air strips near Sulaymaniyah and also north near Mosul.

Conditions here are quite cold. You're not getting a whole lot of sleep. You're doing live shots all night. The conditions are as bad as they can get. But you also feed off that. The anticipation of getting here and covering this has gone on for so long that when it actually starts, you're somewhat gratified. At least you know there's a beginning now.

And yet, the uncertainty of when it's going to end will also weigh on us. You know, how much effort can we put every day? How long can we actually stay at reporting and doing our work before we have to get some rest? Is this going to be a marathon or is it going to be a sprint?

I don't see any tanks around here. I don't see any artillery. I don't even see any heavy weapons of any type. What are you going to do when they start firing tanks back at you? Are you going to shoot with your AK-47s?

Covering the Kurds here in northern Iraq has been an amazing experience so far. We get to get immersed in the culture. We get to work with the people very closely and understand what their motivations and their desires are.

They've suffered extremely under the regime of Saddam Hussein. We went to Halabja, which was the worst chemical weapon attack, where 5,000 Kurds were killed and 10,000 to 15,000 wounded. We went there on the 15th anniversary of that attack. And I guess what was gratifying for us there was to see a city that was still living, still alive.

One of the most poignant moments, I think, that we witnessed, we did a couple of live shots and then our fixers and our drivers just kind of got up and they did a spontaneous folk dance. And Bill turned the camera around. And we were still live. We were still sending out live picture back to Atlanta, just, you know, amazed that this kind of joy lives within these people, even in sometime horrible conditions. And it was interesting to see that resilience and see the kind of spirit that the Kurds have.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

BROWN: The experiences of reporter Kevin Sites over a period of several weeks now. He is not an embed. He just dropped in to the northern part of the country. And one word you may wonder about, he used the term fixer at one point. We hire people to help with translations and help us through checkpoints and that sort of thing, and the common word is fixer.

On now to the work of still photographers in Iraq. Tonight, it's a friend of the "Newsnight" broadcast, David Turnley, the Pulitzer Prize winning photographer who captured one of the most gripping images of the first Gulf War, a soldier realizing that his best friend had been killed.

David is now in northeastern Iraq, where people are struggling to go on with their lives, even though danger is all around them.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

DAVID TURNLEY, PULITZER PRIZE WINNING PHOTOGRAPHER: I'm David Turnley. I'm standing in a town called Kifri (ph), which is two kilometers from the northern front here on the eastern side of Iraq, near Iran. This is the furthest, forward most point in the north, about 180 kilometers from Baghdad.

I have come here to try to take a look at, to feel, to see, to sense the daily lives of the people here, what it's like to live in the midst of a war.

Many of the people here have been so concerned that this region in particular would be hit by chemical weapons. And many of them picked up their belongings and left the towns, as is the case with this particular town, with 74 people, 74 members of many generations of extended family.

I noticed, immediately, this young woman standing in front of a tent. She had this sort of carriage and bearing and sort of stare that I have seen so many times among refugees, the kind of look of someone who's just completely lost and yet who sort of has an intense need to maintain some sense of dignity.

In this case, this boy is wearing a shirt that says Nebraska on it. I had no sense whether he would have a clue where Nebraska is. But, of course, that was sort of the irony of this particular photograph and what made me stop and take a look and make that picture.

We noticed that there were these two traffic policemen, traffic cops, standing at this little concrete island in the middle of the street in this town. There aren't streetlights. There aren't stoplights. No one seemed to be taking these guys very seriously. It seemed to me that they were supposed to fulfill some pseudo function, but nothing that was really very obvious. More than anything else, they seemed to stand very proud in their uniforms.

Their market place here seems to fulfill a few functions. On the one hand, it's where people come to buy their daily food and supplies. The supplies that are on these little make-shift, entrepreneurial stands in these market places are certainly not filled with goods. You see, for example, a pile of lemons. You see a small pile of potatoes. You see a lot of kerosene and petrol.

On the other hand, it's where people come to congregate, to tell stories, to catch up on what they know is happening in the war and, I think, just sort of to find some solace in being with one another.

Just about everybody, certainly every adult male has some kind of weapon, whether it's a Kalashnikov or an AK-47 or some kind of antiquated rifle. And they sort of casually walk through the town, through the market place with these various weapons slung over their shoulders.

He was saluting You know, I think it's a as much as anything form of acknowledgement of me as an outsider and sort of a statement of, welcome to me.

All the schools have been shut down in function the war. You see kids in the streets, milling around the market place, playing. Kids seem to be kids everywhere. Of all of my travels I have never encountered a culture that enjoys being photographed as much as the Kurds. These people have just had such an -- a long experience with hardship and with war that they're not particularly worried or, if in fact it is their way of dealing with a particular anxiety of the moment.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

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Against Iraqi Paramilitary Units, regular forces in Nasiriyah>