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CNN Newsnight Aaron Brown

War in Iraq

Aired April 03, 2003 - 22:00   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: Friday morning in Baghdad, a night spent with the lights out, a haze over the city and just outside the city American troops. Not since the earliest days of the war has there been so much anxiety in the air. What will come next? How will it happen and at what cost?
Good evening again, everyone. We begin our time as always by laying out the shape of the puzzle and highlighting the pieces in play and there are many.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

BROWN (voice-over): In a speech he made before the war began, Saddam Hussein declared the Mongols of our age would face suicide at the gates of Baghdad. It wouldn't be the first time he's been proven wrong.

Tonight one of the gates of Baghdad is under heavy American fire and the capital itself spent the night in the dark.

As the lights were turned out in Baghdad intentionally perhaps by the Iraqi government, American troops moved ever closer to the capital. Some units according to the Pentagon are at the city's main international airport and air assaults too continued to hit the city.

WALTER RODGERS, CNN CORRESPONDENT: There's a rocket coming our way firing loose over the shoulder. There's a rocket dropping over our right shoulder.

BROWN: The Army's 3rd Division 7th Calvary, with whom CNN's Walter Rodgers is embedded, crept nearer and nearer to Baghdad. Tanks and armored vehicles drove past the wreckage of Iraqi tanks, largely unopposed much to the satisfaction of the Secretary of Defense.

DONALD RUMSFELD, SECRETARY OF DEFENSE: They've taken several outlying areas and are closer to the center of the Iraqi capital than many American commuters are from their downtown offices.

BROWN: A statement denied no matter how improbably by the Iraqi Minister of Information just before the power went out.

MUHAMMAD AL-SAHHAF, IRAQI MINISTER OF INFORMATION: They are not near Baghdad. Don't believe them.

QUESTION: (UNINTELLIGIBLE) could they be trapped?

AL-SAHHAF: They are trapped everywhere in the country.

BROWN: To the south of the Iraqi capital, elements of the 101st Airborne found themselves momentarily trapped in the crowded streets of Najaf with the gold dome of the Ali Mosque (ph) in the distance, a mosque sacred to Shiite Muslims. Angry crowds surrounded a small patrol. They believed the Americans were heading for the mosque. They were not. They were in route instead to a meeting with the mosque's leader. CNN's Ryan Chilcote was in the middle.

RYAN CHILCOTE, CNN CORRESPONDENT: No one apparently told the crowd of the soldiers' intentions and as you can probably see from this video, complete chaos ensued.

BROWN: The troops withdrew and the meeting rescheduled.

To the east of Baghdad, not far from the Iraqi city of Kut, Marines took away stacks of rifles after they moved through to the town and to ensure they would not be used again, an American tank went to work.

From U.S. Central Command, some new and intriguing pictures. Here American Special Forces raid one of Saddam Hussein's many palaces about 50 miles north of Baghdad. Nobody home but commanders say some documents were seized and American troops also seized an important dam before it could be destroyed by Iraqi troops.

New video too of that rescue of Private First Class Jessica Lynch. You can her being carried down the stairs of that hospital where she was found then loaded into the waiting helicopter. Her family says she is doing as well as can be expected.

SANJAY GUPTA, CNN CORRESPONDENT: I actually assisted in that particular operation. The mother was also operated on for significant abdominal injury.

BROWN: And the side story of the war, in a field hospital in central Iraq, CNN's Dr. Sanjay Gupta who is a neurosurgeon was called in to help when an Iraqi infant was wounded during an incident at an American checkpoint. Tragically, the child later died.

Northern Iraq saw more fighting. Here a Kurdish patrol accompanied by a small group of U.S. Special Forces found themselves in a firefight with Iraqi soldiers. American planes were called in on the Iraqi positions.

And at the opposite end of the country in Basra, the British were probing Iraqi defenses inside the city but as of yet have not entered.

And about those two American aircrafts lost yesterday, there is a suggestion now that the F-18 off the carrier Kitty Hawk may have been downed by friendly fire, a patriot missile and the cause of that Black Hawk helicopter crash continues to be investigated.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

BROWN: So that's the big picture of the day. We'll spend much of the rest of the time looking at the smaller pieces that make it up. Clearly much is in play, more to come. Anxiety, as we said, is in the air. Things seem to be moving especially quickly but for how long?

We'll move to CNN's Jamie McIntyre, senior Pentagon correspondent. Jamie, good evening.

JAMIE MCINTYRE, CNN SENIOR PENTAGON CORRESPONDENT: Just a short time ago, Aaron, I talked to a senior defense official who said the situation at the Saddam International Airport is a bit murkier now than it was earlier this afternoon when U.S. troops first arrived. The U.S. is securing that airport. According to this official, they think the situation will be fairly clear by tomorrow morning when the U.S. Central Command gives its briefing from Qatar.

What we do know is that the U.S. troops have moved in by ground and are in the process of securing the airport. There has been some resistance there. CNN is hearing that there may be some battles still ongoing but the reports from the scene indicate that perhaps several hundred Iraqi troops have already been killed there a substantial amount of equipment including anti-aircraft artillery and troop carriers has been seized by the American forces.

This came on a day, by the way, when Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld complained quite vehemently that outside influence from other countries, which he didn't name, but sources say are France and Russia where it's giving some false hope to the Iraqi regime that maybe a deal could be cut.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

RUMSFELD: There's no question but that some governments are discussing from time to time some sort of a cutting a deal and the inevitable effect of it, let there be no doubt, is to give hope and comfort to the Saddam Hussein regime and give them ammunition that they can then try to use to retain the loyalty of their forces with hope that one more time maybe he'll survive. One more time maybe he'll be there for another decade or so, for another 17 or 18 U.N. resolutions.

And as to the second question, there's not a chance that there's going to be a deal. It doesn't matter who proposes it. There will not be one.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

MCINTYRE: The Pentagon says only unconditional surrender will end this war.

Meanwhile Joint Chiefs Chairman, General Richard Myers, laid out a little bit of the U.S. strategy for carrying off that victory saying that the U.S. doesn't necessarily have to occupy every square inch of Baghdad but it can isolate the regime, taking some key targets and then he said the regime could be isolated in a way that they would only be worried about their own protection and have no influence over the Iraqi people. A senior defense official tonight also indicated that as soon as next week, we might see the beginning of the attempt to install a new government in Baghdad even before the war is over -- Aaron.

BROWN: Well, a couple of things you've laid out are storylines that will clearly dominate the evening.

Let's start with the airport. How far from the center of the city is the airport and to what degree is it also psychologically important to take it, as it would obviously have some strategic value?

MCINTYRE: Well, it's about 12 miles from the city center. It's a very important military target. Strategically you always want to take the airport first. It gives the U.S. a base of operations from which it can operate and psychologically it's a very powerful signal because as I've said, many military operation, when you're taking a city, the first thing you want is the major airport.

BROWN: And going now to General Myers' point today, we have watched over the last five days or six days the British in Basra, also a big city though a different layout if you will, very patiently probing, working but not storming. Is that the kind of thing he's talking about?

MCINTYRE: Well, it's slightly different although the key - the common thread is patience. The U.S. says it's not in any big hurry to engage in massive urban combat but it's not going to be necessarily slow probing. I think what you're going to see is again the seizure of key strategic targets, maybe even, you know, snatch teams going out and trying to get key leaders. We saw one of those teams this morning go into a - one of Saddam Hussein's residences and do a search there and that's the kind of thing that you may see in Baghdad even as the U.S. tries not to essentially occupy the whole city.

BROWN: Jamie, stay with us for a second. Just let me orient viewers a bit.

That picture, the picture you're looking at is of an American tank outside or near the airport -- at the airport that we've been talking about. The picture is provided by APTN, the news agency. You see American soldier moving in the area. Now airports obviously are large areas and that is one shot of one but you get a sense there that the Americans clearly have arrived at the airport in Baghdad.

Jamie, this is, as you were saying, it is important at almost every level.

MCINTYRE: That's right and one of the things that they've done is they specifically did not target the runways of this airport. We saw from the Pentagon earlier today how they used precision guided bombs to take out the barracks for the Special Republican Guard that were located at the south end of the airport but they left the runways in tact. That's obviously so they can begin to use the airport once they have secured it to fly in troops and additional personnel and equipment. It gives them a real ability to move things in quickly and quickly beef up their forces there in that area. BROWN: Jamie, thank you. Jamie McIntyre, our senior Pentagon correspondent, we'll stay with these pictures for as long as they last.

The Americans now, at least according to the Pentagon, Jamie, used the word murky. The situation there is a little murkier than it seemed early. There is some -- there are some -- there are some exchanges going on. You can hear some gunfire. Don't know how much it is, but you can hear it, some of it. You can hear also the vehicles moving around and sometimes they sound alike. Again, these pictures just coming in now live from APTN. You see there a -- one of the many, how many of these have we seen, posters of Saddam Hussein, at the Saddam International Airport in Baghdad, as Jamie said, just a dozen or so miles from the center of the city.

Let's just see if we can bring in Nic Robertson who is on our staff most familiar with the city itself. Nic is reporting from near the Jordanian Iraqi border.

Nic, I can't imagine you can see these pictures but you certainly know the area.

NIC ROBERTSON, CNN SR. INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Indeed actually, Aaron, I'm fortunately enough -- I was fortunate enough until just a second ago there to be able to see the pictures as they're coming in, that armored personnel carrier moving along the road and that huge moral that's so typical of Iraq of President Saddam Hussein on one of the ramps apparently near the airport there.

This will be a very, very clear signal for the people of Baghdad that coalition forces are so close. It is a modern highway that links the airport to downtown Baghdad. It's less than a 20 minute drive in a normal family car driving out to the airport.

BROWN: Nic, let me just interrupt.

You can see now an American soldier in an encounter with an Iraqi. The Iraqi walking out with his hands raised. The American we saw just a moment ago kind of stooping down a bit then getting up and now they appear to be searching this person, friend or foe they don't know. So they're just frisking him as you've done in a thousand police shows. Make sure he has no weapons and they take no chances. The other soldier keeping his rifle trained on him as his comrade does the pat down and we'll just see if they let him go or take him away. These pictures coming in live. They're kind of moving him out of the way and where they will take him and what they will do with him we don't know but they don't seem -- at this point they didn't handcuff him. That much we can say and Nic, I'll just keep my eye on the picture for a while and you go ahead and keep going.

ROBERTSON: Yes. Again, Aaron, a very, very clear indication for the people of Baghdad, when they wake up this morning in the fluid situation that as daylight now brings to that area, obviously any one -- any of the Iraqi forces choosing now to lay down their weapons with clarity of daylight and perhaps the safety that brings, being able to come out of their cover and turn themselves over. Obviously the question for the coalition is how quickly and will all the forces, if any, in the airport do it?

But for the people of Baghdad, as I was saying, literally a 20 minute drive down a modern highway. The highway that you would find in any country in Europe, any area of the United States. This, for the Iraqi people, will be a shock this morning to know that coalition forces are that close to the capital but for the Iraqi leadership, Aaron, clearly a huge level of psychological pressure. Through the past two weeks have spent so much time on Iraqi television telling the people that the coalition forces are being defeated, that they're in the desert, that the Iraqi troops control the cities of southern Iraq. Today is going to be very difficult to convince Iraqis in Baghdad that the Iraqi government is still in control. They will no longer be able to pull the wool, if you will, so easily over the eyes of the Iraqis.

So a huge step up in the level of psychological pressure at this time on the Iraqi authorities, Aaron.

BROWN: Word spreads in many different ways. Presumably Iraqi TV or the Information Minister is not going to go on the air and so, oh yea and they've taken the airport too but obviously some people are going to hear about it and they're going to tell some people and before you know it, people know.

Nic, thank you very much, Nic Robertson, reporting from the Jordanian or near the Jordanian Iraqi border.

Walt Rodgers is embedded with the 7th Cav and we have followed their journey into the country towards the capital and they must be very close now. I don't know how close.

Walt, good evening.

RODGERS: This is better (UNINTELLIGIBLE)

BROWN: Walt is near the airport.

Walt, are you able to hear us?

RODGERS: Yes. Aaron I hear you. I believe our cameraman Charlie Miller (ph) is pointing in the direction of a T-72 Iraqi tank, which is still burning slightly. It was knocked out within the last two hours. Behind that is a BMP, an armored personnel carrier. There's an Iraqi soldier lying dead in the road by the -- by the BMP and another one who's -- was killed in the turret of his T-72 tank.

It's dawn here in the Iraq in the suburbs of Baghdad. We are not from the -- from the Baghdad airport, the Saddam Hussein Airport, and for the last several hours there has been an attempted counterattack by an Iraqi tank company. It was a bad decision as one Iraqi -- excuse me, as one U.S. Army soldier told us, 400 Iraqis made a very bad decision in the last 24 hours. That bad decision was that they came out and tried to tackle the U.S. Army's 7th Calvary. It began -- the fight began about two hours ago. I think for chance you can still see the smoking vehicles in the direction in which the camera is pointed and what happened was the 7th Calvary, as I say, two to three hours ago began to get visual contact with a convoy of at least 10 Iraqi tanks. They called for close air support. The Air Force took out three of the Iraqi tanks.

The other six or seven tanks were taken out in direct fire by the 7th Calvary, the 120 millimeter guns atop the M1A1 Abrams tanks were firing throughout the evening here or at least throughout the past several hours and they simply put the Iraqi tanks out of action with no losses to the U.S. forces in the 7th Calvary. There is ammunition all over the road, 50 caliber machine guns and throughout the last half hour there has been continuous fire in this general direction, perhaps a mopping up action. We see Bradley Fighting Vehicles pointed around in a perimeter around the tanks, again, protecting the tanks from dismounted Iraqi soldiers.

We've been told that what the Iraqis are doing is they're filling pickup trucks with soldiers and filling dump trucks and then they come charging down the road with rifles blazing. Not very far in the distance, perhaps less than a kilometer, maybe half a mile or so but not much more, there is a what the Army's calling a suicide bus. The Iraqis sent down ...

BROWN: Walt, let me -- Walt, I need to interrupt you for a second. We'll just listen here to this soldier on the left. He's at the airport and if we could maybe take that full for a minute, that might help us orient.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: (UNINTELLIGIBLE) deal with the regime appropriately, and you know, save some future battle inside the city. (UNINTELLIGIBLE) message home, message to other soldiers, the soldiers are doing great. Morale is high, continuing on what we do -- what we do best and that's move in. And a message home, I love my wife and kids (UNINTELLIGIBLE) we're here doing the right thing (UNINTELLIGIBLE) infantry division.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: (UNINTELLIGIBLE).

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: No casualties here, and I received sporadic gunfire yesterday on the mission from before but this was basically an occupation (UNINTELLIGIBLE) we did use aircraft (UNINTELLIGIBLE) in order to identify some tanks working hand in hand with the Air Force (UNINTELLIGIBLE) before they (UNINTELLIGIBLE).

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Thank you very much.

BROWN: That's taking place at Saddam International Airport. The shot on the left in the small box is a shot taken from near the airport. The Americans, as you heard, are at least comfortable enough to talk to reporters at the airport. That tells you something. It doesn't tell you everything but it does tell you something about the situation there.

Walt Rodgers, who is reporting from near the airport, that would be the small picture on the left again, Walt was talking about how the Iraqi strategy, if you want to call it that, is to load pickup trucks and dump trucks with soldiers, race down the highway, guns blazing but you can see what they're meeting. This tank is still burning. This is some distance, I'm not sure how far from the airport it is but you can see it's still burning a bit. Walt, pick up your narrative. How much -- how difficult has it been or how easy has it been to get to the point you're at today?

RODGERS: Relatively easy within the last hour or so -- excuse me -- but yesterday afternoon I guess it would have been morning your time, Aaron, it was a very substantial push through a free fire zone here. There was firefight ambushes on both sides of the roads off to the left and I'm down on my knees because they're still shooting in this area. Off to my left there are more than a few -- I can see at least half a dozen or more foxholes that the Iraqi soldiers dug for themselves to crawl into in prone positions.

One of the reasons, by the way, that the Army assure that was a suicide bus they took out was because when they hit, it exploded and burned much more brightly than a -- than a normal bus moving in the direction of a tank would have exploded and burned. Having said that, this is still a fresh battle scene here. The burning T-72 tank you see there is a part of a company of tanks, 10 Iraqi tanks or perhaps nine tanks and an armored vehicle, all of that came charging down the road just a few hours ago at the U.S. Army's 7th Calvary. The first sighting was visual. The Apache troop of the 7th Calvary with its Bradleys quickly knocked out virtually all of the tanks except three. The Air Force was called for close air support. They took out three tanks. We're also given to believe that perhaps three other tanks might have gotten away so that was at least a company of Iraqi tanks that tried to counterattack, tried to push its way through the 7th Calvary's position in the -- in the Baghdad suburbs and I say, we're just a few kilometers from the airport itself. We continue to hear firing all about us but the worst of the tank battle seems to be over -- Aaron.

BROWN: Walt, just let me again orient viewers a bit. We're some kilometers or two kilometers or miles outside the airport, the shot you're looking at. If you look carefully even in the graininess and it's not terribly grainy of the videophone, you can see some flames still coming from that Iraqi tank, the kind of exchange that Walt was just talking about.

Walt, go back if you would please and talk again about the strategy the Iraqis have employed with the bus and the dump trucks and the rest.

RODGERS: Aaron, the Iraqis are employing everything that an irregular force can employ to try to stop the movement towards Baghdad of the 7th Calvary and other U.S. Army units. What they do -- what they did which was most surprising was to throw that company of tanks against the U.S. tank convoy but what we've been seeing increasingly is what you would call virtual suicide attacks where the Iraqis find a pickup truck, put 10, 12 soldiers aboard the pickup truck or a dump truck even and they come charging down the road in the direction of armored column.

Now of course, a dump truck even with a -- with a 20 mm cannon mounted on the back is no match for a Bradley Fighting Vehicle and the U.S. soldiers are on target virtually every -- all the time at least from what we've seen as we traveled through ambushes yesterday and as soon as they Iraqis are -- visual contact is made, the dump trucks, the suicide buses, the pickup trucks are knocked out of existence fairly fast.

As I say, a short while ago I was talking with one of the officers in the 7th Calvary and he said to me 400 Iraqis made a very bad choice in the past 24 hours. That's the number of Iraqis, which the 7th Calvary believes it has knocked out but the dump trucks and the pickup trucks and buses bring the Iraqi soldiers forward and then they unload and come charging toward the tanks. Again, I can see an Iraqi soldier lying dead in the road just ahead of me and I'm sure in that same armored personnel carrier there are more dead Iraqis as smoke continues to pour out. What you're looking at is what we believe is a burned out T-72. The small flames you can see are at the hatch. It was a direct hit by the -- by the 7th Calvary's tanks. A 120 millimeter gun just put it immediately out of existence. Again, the old Soviet vintage T-72s, G-62s are no match for an M1A1 Abrams in open combat -- Aaron.

BROWN: Just again with -- if we go back to the two pictures, this picture is just -- the picture on the right is just outside of the airport in Baghdad, a few miles outside. The picture on the left is at the airport itself. You can see the American soldiers and these would all be American soldiers this close to Baghdad working and we just -- that ends that shot.

We heard an American sergeant I believe, if I saw the insignia correctly on his helmet, say that they had suffered no casualties. His unit had no -- had suffered no casualties. They were still encountering some sporadic gunfire, that morale in his group was good. We are doing what we came here to do and that was take the airport and they -- whether it is completely taken or not is somewhat murky as Jamie McIntyre mentioned but clearly they have taken some and perhaps even much of it at this point.

Walt Rodgers is outside of the airport, some miles outside the airport with the 7th Calvary and how far we have come with that group in the last couple of weeks and they have been met with some combination of military tactic and almost terrorist tactic, if you will, loading up a suicide bus. He described that when one of those busses was hit, it exploded as if there were in fact explosives on it that perhaps that was an attempt to ram into American forces, a state of desperation, a desperation tactic, Walt, it sounds like to us.

RODGERS: Indeed that's the case, Aaron, but the Iraqis are desperate. Again, the much vaunted Republican Guard unit, unless this tank company last night was from the Republican Guard, the Republican Guard units have disappeared off the scope. There is speculation they've withdrawn into the city of Baghdad. We're on the suburbs. We are less than a few miles from the airport. We're a few kilometers from the airport. We're really close to the airport and as I say, about two hours actually less than three hours ago, the Iraqis did send out a company of tanks, a few armored vehicles as well, 10 or so. They started charging in the direction of the U.S. Army's 7th Calvary, the Apache troop. The Apache troop made optical sighting with its night vision goggles and began blasting away. Apache troop itself took out six of the Iraqi tanks as well as at least one armored vehicle. Additionally, the Air Force was called. Three more Iraqi tanks were taken out and the Air Force said it made visual contact with three other Iraqi tanks. At this point however, the contact seems to have declined. It is getting to be daylight. There is a tank very close to us, 100 meters and it has been blasting away intermittently with a 50 caliber machine gun.

The tactics we're also seeing the Iraqis use is -- are basically the same as military irregulars anywhere. They take up positions in civilian housing.

BROWN: Walt, let me just tell viewers here for a second, Walt, that what they're seeing on the left now -- these are also pictures from the airport but this is tape that was shot earlier. Just to make sure that everybody knows where we are, the picture on the right is live. The picture on the left, the shot you're looking of Saddam Hussein, that poster, is tape. It is now coming in to us.

Walt, go ahead.

RODGERS: Aaron, as I say, 7th Calvary continues to hold a standing position after having knocked out a company of Iraqi tanks. Again, an Iraqi soldier lying beside an armored vehicle in the road beyond. The armored vehicle being an armored personnel carrier, a Soviet vintage BMP. It took a direct hit. We assume there are dead Iraqis in there.

The nearer vehicle which you're seeing we believe is a Soviet vintage T-72 tank. It took a direct hit. You can see still some flames inching around the hatch. Again, another dead Iraqi soldier there and probably assuming it has a crew of four, there are probably four dead Iraqis there. The 7th Calvary officers are estimating that between the tank convoy and the -- and the dismounts, that is to say the infantry soldiers who were sent forward to attack the 7th Calvary's armored column and the 7th Calvary is no more than 500 meters up the road from where I'm standing. It's estimated that perhaps 350 to 400 Iraqi lost their life in -- their lives in a counterattack on this unit.

The tactics, I should tell, you that the Iraqis used yesterday when we were traveling with ambushes both sides of the road were that they would dig themselves in foxholes or small bunkers. They would crawl into those bunkers with rocket-propelled grenades and they would try to fire at tanks and the Bradley fighting vehicles as the tanks moved northward in the direction was Baghdad suburbs.

Additionally, they would open up with small machine gunfire and be blazing away with rifles. Now that's really more a nuisance factor. It's not very effectual.

But again from where I'm standing I count, one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, perhaps a dozen foxholes that the Iraqis have dug along the side of road. These are foxholes where soldiers can lie prone and shoot at the oncoming vehicles of the 7th Cavalry.

Again, to no avail. The 7th Cavalry has pushed within a few kilometers of the Baghdad airport and been more than successful. To the best of however knowledge no casualties whatsoever in the 7th Cavalry, but as we say, one estimate by one soldier is 400 dead Iraqis in this encounter -- Aaron.

BROWN: Walt, hang on. We'll get back to you in a second.

Nic Robertson, briefly, you've been watching this come in. This is a taped picture on the left. A live picture on the right. The tape is at the airport. On the right is just outside, a few kilometers outside. Less than a few miles.

Nic, as you've been watching this, what do you see?

ROBERTSON: It's been very interesting to listen to description that Walter has given us of driving up, getting close to the airport. The small foxholes that Iraqi soldiers have been taking up position in, firing off at tanks and armored vehicles as they've gone by.

To the south of Baghdad when I've been out of city the week before the war began, I'd seen these positions dug at the side of road, not particularly good defensive positions. I'd seen an area a little south of that that appeared to be a major defensive line for the Iraqi forces.

I very much get the impression at this stage that the explosion has now blasted through, if you will, that Iraqi defensive line around Baghdad. That was the only line that I had seen that was defending Baghdad. We'd heard talk about multiple rings. It seems to me at this early stage that that line has been breached. Those small defenses that Walter is talking about has given their best shot and been defeated on the road to Baghdad.

And I'm standing here reflecting on the fact that my knowledge of that road between the airport and the center of Baghdad just two days before the war began, there were no such preparations on that highway to Baghdad. There were no such foxholes dug on that road.

It gives me the impression that if the coalition is now at the airport, there is very little in terms of defensive preparations that were made ready in the weeks before the war which standing between them and the center of the city.

That's what strikes me about this picture as we try and bring together all the pieces, all of the narratives that we hear, the preparations to the south of city and along the roads. I'd seen those. Those same preparations were not made on the highway and the airport and the center of Baghdad.

BROWN: Nic, thank you.

General David Grange, who's with us tonight. General, you've been watching all of this. In the big picture, where does it fit?

GEN. DAVID GRANGE, CNN MILITARY ANALYST: Well, just listen to Walter talk about this tank fight about ten Iraqi tanks, company size. One thing that comes to mind is the training of the American G.I., compared to the Iraqi soldier. They -- the training obviously is a big combat multiplier, not just the technology, not just the weapon systems, otherwise you would have more American casualties.

The other is that the Iraqi forces don't have sergeants. They don't have a non-commission officer corps, the NCO.

And continually from Walter's comments, he talks about the sergeant in this tank or the officer in that tank. Every one of these combat vehicles, every one of them on the coalition side is led by at least the sergeant or an officer. In the Iraqi army, you may have one officer to three tanks. That makes a difference in a fight.

BROWN: Why?

GRANGE: Because of the leadership, subordinate leadership. People who are trained with years of experience that can lead the way if someone else is killed.

If you kill an officer, and for instance, the old Soviet army with a tank platoon, three tanks, same in the Iraqi unit. The other soldiers don't know what to do. They don't have the leadership training to take charge and do anything. That's why they fight in groups, usually of three tanks. One officer. Everybody else is a private.

The United States Army, the British army, there's a leader in every combat vehicle just like there's a leader in every squad. And they can fight by themselves without orders just following the last order given by their senior commander.

BROWN: General, it's good to have you with us. Stay with us for a bit.

Walt, let me try -- let me just see if you can do this. Can you pan or have your guys pan the camera at all? Are you pretty much locked down in that position?

RODGERS: Aaron, we could pan the camera, but I think it would be better not too. And the reason, of course, is that we have topographical features...

BROWN: Fine.

RODGERS: ... which would enable the Iraqis to perhaps bring in artillery, so it's not a good idea at this point.

BROWN: End of discussion. Thank you. That's a perfectly acceptable answer there.

General, again, David Grange who's with us this evening. The ability of the Americans now, this all-American Army forces here to take the airport or at least to very nearly take the airport, depending on the reporting that's going on right now. You see the significance of it both psychologically and in terms of strategy here, correct?

GRANGE: Correct. The psychologically impact would be, you know, here like in Chicago, O'Hare Airport, falling into the enemy hands. It just, it's an icon of any metropolitan area, its loss has an effect not only on the enemy, but also on the civilian populous. So psychologically, yes.

Strategically, can be used to launch throughout the country, especially on the entrapments of Baghdad itself and the units around it. A key piece of terrain, and I would think from just what's been reported that coalition forces, at least controlled by fire, the international airport, realizing there's a lot of clearing of structures that still has to be done, probably between the international airport and the city of Baghdad itself.

BROWN: Have we learned anything in the last 37 minutes or in the run-up to it that answers the question, how willing are the Iraqis to fight?

GRANGE: You know, some of this is -- you're kind of bewildered in a way. But what's happening, I think is, yes, there are some suicide-minded people that want to be martyrs.

But I believe a lot of these forces that are moving against the coalition, they don't have -- even though, I mean, they know they're being bombed, obviously, from the all the intensive air strikes and artillery fire and that from coalition forces.

But they're being told, attack up this road, the American or the British unit is weak at that point. You'll get through. They're probably being briefed erroneously of what the condition is on the battle field and they just drive into their death. And I think you're seeing a lot of that.

Plus, this was at nighttime, I believe, and of course at nighttime they have almost zero situation awareness.

BROWN: So, let me play that back here. That says something about leadership, but it doesn't necessarily answer the question, how willing are they to fight if they don't know what it is precisely they're facing, right?

GRANGE: Well, yes, I mean, they're being lied to by what few leaders are out there.

BROWN: One of the great, still, I guess, unanswered questions is, as the outcome becomes more certain, Nic -- and it is certainly getting to that point, if it was ever in doubt, I don't know if anyone thought to be in doubt, what the outcome would be. The question was always at what cost and how long?

Will the remaining soldiers in the Republican Guard and the special Republican Guard, will they stand and fight? Your thoughts?

ROBERTSON: I think a lot of that is going to depend what they hear from Iraqi officials today in the center of Baghdad, and that's still very much in question at this time.

How are they going to explain away what's happened right on the periphery of the city? It seems so far that they've been able to give a message that is at least encouraging enough to make Iraqis continue to fight. It seems that this could be a significant turning point. It's very, very difficult to gauge.

So far they've certainly been in the position of pushing their troops forward, making them stand and fight, or sit in foxholes and, as Walter Rodgers has described very poorly defended foxholes, to fight against impossible odds.

It seems improbable that the Iraqi leadership can come up with a positive answer for the Iraqi people over why the airport has fallen so swiftly, in just one night, when coalition forces, they'd said, were still back in the desert. It seems hard to imagine that they would rally the morale of the average conscript troop.

I remember seeing a lot of soldiers come running out of a base just north of Baghdad on their lunch break a few weeks ago, and most of them went running by, happy because they were off for their lunch. They didn't seem like the sort of soldiers who would throw themselves forward in the face of overwhelming odds. It would seem unlikely soldiers like that could be convinced to go into this sort of fight.

The Republican Guard, another question, really. It is, I imagine, down to command and control and very much down today to how inspiring Iraq's officials can be -- Aaron.

BROWN: We began the program, just all of you please stay with us. We began earlier in the program we heard the Iraqi information minister putting out the message of the day from their point of view.

The Iraqi point of view, which was, it's not true. The Americans are not at the gates of Baghdad. They are not closing in, none of that is true. That's what the Iraqis have been hearing in one way, shape, or form.

Just to give context to what Nic was saying, it's going to be a little bit harder to spin this one, if you will, for the Iraqi government. But then these -- from the Iraqi government's point of view, clearly this is the end game, as well.

And you're going to say what you can say, and if people believe it so much the better. And if they don't, you haven't lost anything by the fact you've said it. They probably aren't believing a whole lot of this at this point anyway.

Walt, one question and just let me warn you that over at the Pentagon, Jamie McIntyre is working on a story, and as soon as he's confident in it, I'm going to break into your narration and get to him.

But what are the last 12 hours or so been like for the 7th Cav?

RODGERS: The last 12 hours, Aaron, have been nearly continuous fighting. They have pushed ever closer to Baghdad, facing ambushes on both sides of the road. Seventh Cavalry is now just a few kilometers from the airport.

If I can describe the picture you're seeing, you see a tank in the near ground, a T-72 that was knocked out by one of the Apache troops' tanks. And then a little further up the road you see a burned-out armored personnel carrier. Just to the right of that armored personnel carrier, you see something lying in the road. That is a dead Iraqi soldier.

One thing I'd like to add to the discussion you've been having with Nic Robertson and General Grange is that as this fighting gets closer to Baghdad, it could very easily stiffen the resolve of the Iraqis.

One thing, the Cavalry and at least the Cavalry has to operate in these close-in Baghdad suburbs without the Kiowa helicopters. Because there are so many places the Iraqis can hide, if they can shoot down helicopters with shoulder fired surface-to-air missiles.

So again, it is not going to necessarily be a cakewalk. There has been resistance for the last 12 hours all the way up this road and every road we've taken, intermittent resistance. But the Iraqis did manage to send out a company of tanks.

And remember, the closer you get to a city, the more buildings there are, that's more cover for defenders and that will mean that more and more shots can easily be fired at the incoming Americans, be it the 3rd Infantry Division or be it the 7th Cavalry, with whom I'm embedded -- Aaron.

BROWN: OK. Walt, just stand by.

On the left there is tape from the airport, the area of the airport. I believe, that's tape. Somebody correct me if it's not. On the right you're seeing a live picture from Walt. And Walt Rodgers and his team embedded with the 7th Cav.

Jamie McIntyre, weigh in here for a second. Just underscore something you mentioned briefly close to the top of the hour, which is that there are indications that the -- even before the Americans take the city, they may attempt to create a new government.

What does that mean?

McINTYRE: Well, the Pentagon, the State Department, the White House has been working on a plan to quickly have a -- some kind of an interim government in place that would involve Iraqis. So that would not seem that the U.S. was administering Iraq.

And we don't actually know what that plan is, but tonight I was discussing that notion with a senior -- very senior defense official here at the Pentagon. And he indicated to me that we may begin to see as early as next week what he called an organizing event that would bring that into sharper focus.

And I said you mean here in Washington? And he said, no, he meant in Baghdad.

So from that, I take that what they're talking about here is, perhaps even before all the fighting is over -- because of course Iraq is a large country and there may be pockets of resistance many places -- they may attempt to essentially declare that they're in charge, put a new government in effect, even while might be members of regime still holed up in Baghdad. Perhaps even Saddam Hussein's whereabouts would remain unknown.

BROWN: That has -- I'm sorry, does that have any -- in terms of who's running the country at any given moment -- does that have anything than symbolic value? Because it seems clearly that for the moment, for the time being, whether that is a few weeks or a few months, that it is an American military governor of some sort or another that will make the critical decisions.

McINTYRE: Well, I guess that remains to be seen to what extent they can show that this is actually some sort of Iraqi government. Presumably, it would involve Iraqi expatriates, perhaps some of opposition groups that the United States has been working with.

I'm told, though, by the same official that this is still very much under discussion. There's a lot of very controversial aspects to it. There's even, also, some tension between the Pentagon and the State Department over the best way to proceed and some tension, also, between the United States and Great Britain over what is the best way to organize a post-war government in Iraq.

So there are a lot of diplomatic hurdles to be solved there. But the point is, I guess, that there are plans to move sooner, rather than later, to get something like that in place in order to, you know, give the impression to the Iraqi people that the regime is gone.

And as I said, this could happen while the regime is still, you know, technically at large or holed up in some part of the city.

Clearly, if the United States were, for instance, to take over the information ministry and begin having its own press conferences, that would set send a pretty strong signal to the Iraqi people about who's really in charge, even if all the regime members haven't been rounded up.

BROWN: Jamie, thank you. Jamie McIntyre at the Pentagon.

Just to again orient you, the right is a live picture, a few miles, give or take, outside of the airport in Baghdad. The left is taped of the Americans as they were maneuvering around the airport.

There is some fighting still around the airport. General Grange described it as they have probably secured. in some sense, the airport itself. But now there are all of those buildings and all those hangars and all those places where, General, where Iraqi soldiers could be hiding, where danger still lurks?

GRANGE: Absolutely, Aaron, it just take awhile to do clearing operations and to secure an area this large. Because you have to have depth on all sides of the air field to really control it or especially if you're going to use it.

So they're going to have to clear, you know, several kilometers at least on all sides, especially towards Baghdad, before this airfield can be used.

But it's still symbolic to the coalition effort that it is secured.

And if you get a chance, the comment that Jamie made earlier about this interim government is a very critical piece to the capitulation, I believe, of Baghdad itself.

BROWN: Because when the Iraqi people hear this, they will -- what?

GRANGE: Well, here's the idea, if you had a coalition governor designated, which I believe which will happen. But it's made known to the Iraqi people of Baghdad, that there's a council of advisers from different ethnic groups that advises temporary coalition governor and his forces, that are going to help improve, you know, bring in the humanitarian assistance and this transition to some sort of democratic governance, and it can be relayed properly through broadcasts.

It'll have an effect to turn the Iraqi people against a hard core remnants of the Republican Guard, the special Republican Guards, and other special forces and death squads within the city of Baghdad itself. Because you need that swell of populous support in the city for it to truly fall without assuming a lot of casualties on the coalition's side.

BROWN: Going to bring another voice into all of this, as we keep our eye on the pictures, retired Marine Colonel Gary Anderson. His -- Colonel Anderson's specialty was urban warfare. He was involved in what they call war gaming on the point.

Colonel Anderson, I'm not sure if you heard Walt Rodgers, but Walt was talking about in not the too distant future, the small helicopters that the Cavalry uses to do reconnaissance, that sort of thing becomes ineffective because of danger of the danger of mobile missiles, shoulder launched missiles.

That's just one of the hazards of the next phase of this, correct?

COL. GARY ANDERSON, U.S. MARINES (RET.): That's correct. This is a very dangerous environment for helicopters when they are using the fire support role. I think they obviously need to be very careful because of the -- not only the threat of manned portable weapons but just the mass firing of helicopters, something like was done in that movie "Black Hawk down."

There are a couple of adaptive things you can do, however. We do have a lot of these now, these Predator Hellfire missiles, or at least have some of them. You can maybe, perhaps, use that when you really have a fire support problem, and that way if you lose a robot, so to speak, you don't lose an air crew, which could be very important in this type of situation.

BROWN: Colonel, I don't want to get too far ahead of ourselves here. But clearly, there are a couple of ways you can go about taking the city. You could take it by storming the city or you could deal with it in a more patient way.

As these things were war gamed out, were both possibilities considered and practiced or rehearsed?

ANDERSON: I wasn't involved in the actual war gaming of this particular plan, or this particular issue...

BROWN: I understand that.

ANDERSON: Yes, but we have -- we have been thinking about this for a long time. And it's really a matter of both.

You probe -- we talked a little bit about probing earlier on in the program. And you see if you've got a soft spot, particularly around a place like the airport or a key node like the water treatment plant or TV station. And if it appears that you've got a straight shot to it, and then you can go to it and grab it and sort of expand outwards from that.

So there's a couple of ways to skim the cat. I'd recommend against just blandly charging into the city like the Russians did in Grozny and from what I've heard of Colonel -- or General Wallace's interviews before this, he's going to be in charge of this, he apparently appears to have thought that through pretty well.

BROWN: When this sort of thing comings to mind, urban warfare, we think of Grozny, this was the Russian battle in Chechnya, and to a certain extent, I guess, Mogadishu, lessons learned from both?

ANDERSON: The big lessons learned from a tactical standpoint, and this is a sergeant lieutenant's war, I think Jamie said it earlier, one of the other reporters on the scene.

This is very much a sergeant's war, and think you're going to see a cross attachment, that's the military term for, instead of using mass tanks, giving a couple of tanks to an infantry platoon or even a squad. Letting the squad protect them and letting them support the infantry as they go forward, keeping an eye on all the possible places where the other fellow could shoot at you, just like they've been doing on the road to Baghdad.

Keeping 360-degree security, and not bunching up. It's really important to try to keep the soldiers and Marines involved in this thing spread out, because when you get bunched up, that's when somebody can pop up with a machine gun and take out potentially a whole squad or the whole fire team.

BROWN: Colonel Anderson, I hope you can stay with us a little longer.

Let me bring in one more voice now, as you look at this live picture, this is just outside the airport. Not far from the airport in Baghdad.

Ken Pollack, have we answered the question about the Republican Guards' ability or willingness perhaps to fight to the last man?

KEN POLLACK, MILITARY ANALYST: Well, Aaron, I think what you're seeing in these photographs, these incredible photographs that you're getting from Walt Rodgers' crew, illustrates both the strength and the weakness of the Republican Guard. You're seeing it right there.

The Republican Guard are extremely, committed disciplined troops. They consider themselves professional soldiers, and we've seen it from them time and again. When called upon to execute missions, which they even know to be suicidal, they will do so, because that's what professional soldiers do.

The problem with the Republican Guard is, again, what you're seeing. They will make these kind of charges, they will fight to the death, but they are not very skillful. So this kind of a blundering charge into U.S. forces is kind of their hallmark.

What they're good at is sitting in prepared positions and blazing away or mounting this kind of a frontal charge. They're not very sophisticated soldiers.

And you look at that MTLB, that Russian MTLB, armored personnel carrier, on your screen. You see the T-72. They came blundering down that road. It indicates that the Republican Guard is still there, that's an important point to make. The whole Republican Guard wasn't destroyed in those first two days. A bunch of them were able to escape into Baghdad, and you could be seeing more of this over the next two days. The guard will fight.

Now there's another force out there, which we only started to talk about a little bit. That's the special Republican Guard, who are probably standing behind the Republican Guard.

And my guess is that those soldiers that Nic Robertson said he saw in Baghdad, the ones who are rushing off to lunch, those were probably special Republican Guards.

The special Republican Guards are not true professional soldiers. They are internal security forces. They are riot control police. They are a goon squad that Saddam uses to keep control of the population of Baghdad to guard his person and palaces.

They are deeply devoted to Saddam for a whole variety of reasons, but they are not professional soldiers. And we've got to expect them, also, to be willing to fight and fight to the death. But they won't even bring the same level of skills that the Republican Guard will bring to the fight.

BROWN: Ken, we've got about a minute, a little less here. Are you surprised at how quickly this -- they've been able to take the airport?

It certainly shows that the air power that was applied over the last four days or so was effective.

POLLACK: Yes, absolutely. Honesty, Aaron, I'm not terribly surprised. What seems to have happened was the Iraqis deployed their four -- four of their best Republican Guard divisions along that line from Karbala to Al Kut. They realized almost at the 11th hour that that was not a good defensive position. They tried to pull the units back into Baghdad. Most of them got mauled in doing so by U.S. air power and U.S. ground forces.

And as a result, when they were treated back to Baghdad in piecemeal fashion, they weren't able to mount a cohesive fighting withdrawal. And as a result, it was pretty easy for U.S. forces to push back into Baghdad and get right up to the city.

BROWN: Ken, thank you. Ken Pollack will stay with us.

Retired Marine Colonel Gary Anderson, an expert in urban warfare, which is clearly, barring total capitulation on behalf of the Iraqi regime, is the next phase in all of this. And so Colonel Anderson's expertise will come into play tonight.

While Rodgers is on the scene of that shot you are looking at, he's with the 7th Cav, and he will join us again.

We need to take a break. We'll update the day's headlines, and our coverage continues in a moment.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

(NEWSBREAK)

BROWN: Heidi, thank you, and we'll reorient those of you who are just joining us to the pictures we have available to us as American forces are now at the airport just outside of Baghdad, about 12 miles outside of Baghdad.

This is an important moment both from a tactical point of view, it gives access once this area is cleared out and when we talk about the area here we are not talking about simply the airport but areas around it to make it secure and safe and that will take some time, how much time we'll leave that to the experts who are with us tonight.

The obvious psychological advantage though we can pass along. It is going to be very difficult now for the Iraqi government to say that the American forces, and these are American forces who are there, are not at the gates of Baghdad. They are at the airport, an important point in any city.

General Grange a while ago said imagine the psychological effect of forward forces at O'Hare or JFK or Los Angeles International. That's something the Iraqi people, the Iraqi regime, and the Iraqi soldiers who are still in the fight will have to consider.

But these pictures are from the scene. They are not easy to watch in some respects. It is one thing to look at the two tanks smoking or blazing. It's another thing to see a dead man of whatever nationality on the side of the road, but that is also the nature of war.

Walt Rodgers can describe better here what it has been like to get to this point. He is just kilometers from the airport itself embedded with the 7th Cav -- Walt.

RODGERS: Hello, Aaron. The pictures we're showing you now are of a burned out T72 tank. If you look closely at the near vehicle you can see flames licking at the turret. It took a direct hit. There are four Iraqi soldiers dead inside that T72.

Beyond that, you can see smoke rising from a Soviet vintage BMP, an armored personnel carrier. Again, just to the right of that you see a figure lying in the road. That is a dead Iraqi soldier.

The sun is up now in Baghdad. It has been up for some time and there is a thick pall of smoke just clinging to everything. You can smell the burning and the destruction which the previous night has brought to the Iraqi capital.

Throughout the night there were constant flashes of light in the direction of southern Baghdad, those flashes of light coming from Air Force bombing raids, U.S. Navy bombing raids on the Iraqi capital. The pressure, as I say, was constant through the night. If you sat in the dark and watched it, there was an enormous display of explosions.

A few hours ago, the vehicles you see in front of me, the burned out Iraqi vehicles, were sent in a counterattack of sorts in the direction of the 7th Cavalry. At least ten tanks were sent in the direction. They were spotted through the night vision goggles of the 7th Cavalry soldiers and officers.

Immediately, fire was called in. The cavalry itself dispatched six or seven tanks. The Air Force close air support cover, which we can still hear overhead now, took out three more tanks. Three others perhaps got away. It's estimated that there are 350 to 400 dead Iraqis as a result of that counterattack. Some of them actually tried to counterattack with suicide vehicles, suicide busses, trucks, dump trucks.

One of the reasons the Iraqis fought so hard in this particular area is that's it's just a few kilometers from the Saddam Hussein Airport where we believe U.S. forces are in control.

A short while ago, this U.S. Army soldier gave us the estimation of the situation at the Saddam Hussein Airport at this hour.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: In Baghdad, this is the first step, possibly many more. Hopefully, this is a sign that we're able to (unintelligible) to Baghdad that we're here and they can wise up and deal with the regime appropriately and save some future battles inside the city.

(END VIDEO CLIP) RODGERS: Now, you're looking at continuing pictures of what was left, or what is left of an Iraqi tank counterattack which was sent towards the 7th Cavalry, a company of Iraqi tanks completely taken out. You can see smoke rising from the BMP, the armored personnel carrier. That pall of smoke can be multiplied several million times.

There is a choking cloud of black smoke so much so it looks like a thunderstorm is hanging over the city of Baghdad, but of course it's not a thunderstorm. It's the dirt and debris which was thrown into the air, the smoke, the choking acrid smoke of the fires in Baghdad from last night's continuous bombing by the U.S. Navy jets and the U.S. Air Force.

Again, the 7th Cavalry is just a few kilometers from the airport. It has met fairly consistent resistance, nothing that it couldn't handle, but there's been a fair amount of shooting off and on for the past 12 hours or so -- Aaron.

BROWN: Walt, stay with us. Don't go anywhere. I wonder if we have a shot of Baghdad that we can put up that will help fill in that little blank of Walt's description what the city looks like.

Nic Robertson, from the airport on a clear day, a normal day, could you see the center of the city?

ROBERTSON: You would certainly see some of the taller buildings. You would certainly see one of the presidential palaces which is just a couple of kilometers from the airport as you head back into the city. It would be on the left-hand side and you would see one of the tall telecommunication towers certainly, and a couple of the other taller buildings. You would not see the smaller buildings, but you would certainly know that you were very, very close to the city -- Aaron.

BROWN: And, would the residents of Baghdad know by, give us your best guess, would the residents of Baghdad know looking back out towards the airport that something has significantly changed in the last -- since the sun went down?

ROBERTSON: Talking to people in Baghdad overnight, they were telling me that there was already beginning to be a sense of panic. Some families had left their homes in the city and moved into an area in the center of the city, just a few families.

We also understood from the same source that out around the airport, Iraqi government officials have been touring the area, telling people to leave their homes and head towards the airport. Now, anything like this will spread like one says like wildfire throughout the city.

Word of mouth at a time like this is essential for information to be spread throughout the city, and from my experience of that city and talking to the people I've been talking to recently, word is very likely all around the city at this time. The coalition forces are at the airport. Something substantial has happened there, although as people sit in their homes in the city, they will not be able to see other than the smoke hanging over the city.

I was talking to somebody in Baghdad just about an hour and a half ago and he told me that they could hear from the center of the city quite a lot of detonations coming from around the airport, so people very aware, Aaron, that there will have been something going on there last night by now.

BROWN: And just repeat, because I may have misheard you, people are being told to head out to the airport or to get away from the airport?

ROBERTSON: What I was being told last night, Aaron, was that the checkpoints around the city were closed, that nobody could leave the city of Baghdad, but that in a residential neighborhood quite close to the international airport, Iraqi government officials were touring the neighborhood and telling people to leave their homes and go towards the airport.

That is the information we were getting overnight, contradictory as it may seem to common sense that is what we were being told last night. Again, with the light of day, one hopes we can get a much clearer picture of what actually transpired in those neighborhoods and which direction people actually chose to move in.

BROWN: Colonel Anderson, Colonel Gary Anderson who is an expert in urban combat, if you're the American commanders on the ground the last thing, I would assume, or one of the last things that you'd like to see is a wave of civilians, a wave of innocents heading out to the airport getting in your way.

ANDERSON: Well, that's absolutely correct. That's obviously a very troubling scenario. It's the kind of thing that we saw deliberately done to our forces in Mogadishu and if in fact the next wave of counterattacks is going to be proceeded by a wall of civilians, it's a very troubling development.

BROWN: We've mentioned Mogadishu a couple of times, colonel. Tell me if this makes any sense at all that the one difference here is that in Mogadishu the Americans were essentially trying to get out of the city as opposed to getting into the city.

ANDERSON: That's correct but the asymmetric tactic of using civilians as shields goes both ways whether or not you're trying to stop...

BROWN: Right.

ANDERSON: ...people from coming in or go out. It's a -- hopefully that -- things are seldom as bad or as good as they first seem. It's one thing to tell people to go do something. It's another for them to do it. So, I wouldn't make too much of it until we see something that indicates that this is actually taking place.

BROWN: Actually, when I was mentioning Mogadishu there, I was just speaking more broadly that we have talked a lot about, we've drawn comparisons between Grozny and the Russian assault there and Mogadishu and the American experience there and that they're just not precise parallels. There are some similarities. There are lessons to be learned in both but neither scenario is exactly the scenario that the Americans face as they try and get to Baghdad.

ANDERSON: Yes, I would -- it appears to me that this scenario comes a little bit closer to Grozny than -- let me put it -- comes closer to Mogadishu than Grozny. In Grozny, a lot of the fighters were previously trained Russian soldiers who were -- had about the same degree of experience as the conscripts that they sent into the city so it was a more evenly matched situation.

Here what we've heard tonight is just an appalling lack of professionalism and combat skill on the part of the Iraqis. It's virtually, so far been virtually a slaughter much like the real heavy fighting in Mogadishu.

BROWN: What options did the Iraqis have? If you're a colonel or a general in the Iraqi Army what were your choices at this point?

ANDERSON: Give up you fool.

BROWN: Yes.

ANDERSON: But that's probably not what they're going to do. I think, you know, if they're going to embed themselves into the civilian population they're a lot better -- they're a lot better off fighting in the rubble or from the buildings than they are charging out into the open. It reminds me somewhat disturbingly of the old Japanese human wave tactics in World War II.

BROWN: Ken Pollack, take a minute if you will here and talk again about these Republican Guard troops, their professionalism if you will, their willingness to fight, their experience, their training, that sort of thing.

POLLACK: Sure. Well, Aaron, the Republican Guards are the elite of Iraq's armed forces. You've got to remember that's a relative statement. They are the best in Iraq and they believe it. They are given the best training in Iraq. They are given the best weapons in Iraq. They are also given the most perks and privileges, and most importantly they consider themselves a cut apart, a breed apart.

And, as a result, what we've seen of them is they are willing to stand and fight and die and launch attacks in these kind of suicidal circumstances. But, you know, what you were seeing out there is how the Republican Guard fights. They are not skillful at all. They are terribly unsophisticated.

If this were a U.S. force trying to mount the kind of attack that they did tonight, they would have attacked in a very different fashion. The Iraqis don't have those kind of skills. And, another point that's probably worth making here is the Iraqis are really making this up as they go along. They have never defended a city like this before.

In the Iran-Iraq War, they did defend the city of Basra on several occasions, in particular in 1982 and 1987 against the Iranians and what they did there was to build these multiple lines of long berms around the city more along the lines of what they were trying to do over the last few days with that defensive position 40 to 50 miles outside of Baghdad. This is something new for them and it's clear that they don't really know what they're doing.

BROWN: Ken, stay with us. Colonel Anderson, stay with us as long as you can. Let me bring another voice and to a certain extent a different conversation as we keep track of this.

Dana Priest is a reporter for the "Washington Post" who covers intelligence matters. She did some reporting on the Jessica Lynch story, the rescue of Private Lynch, and perhaps more importantly can also talk with us tonight about how the military, and the Central Intelligence Agency specifically, have cooperated in all of this. So, Dana welcome to you.

DANA PRIEST, "WASHINGTON POST": Thank you, Aaron.

BROWN: I'm not sure how long you've been watching this and I'm not sure that any of this is related necessarily to the kind of work you've been doing but if it is feel free. Otherwise, let's talk a bit about how the CIA and the military side have worked together in the last two and a half weeks.

PRIEST: Well, I think it's directly related because if you are watching tanks roll into the airport the next question we're all asking is when are they going to the center of Baghdad?

And, that question gets answered by a combination of not only how the military does, which you've been covering today, but how the regime does and that is not the military part of the regime but the inner circle of Saddam Hussein's regime and the security apparatus that really keeps the population afraid to support any kind of invasion.

And, that's what intelligence officials and military officials have been looking at very closely and, as we've had our discussion about where is Saddam Hussein, we don't know if he's dead, what they've tried to lay out today is who's in control?

And one of the things that they've said is they don't know and because they don't know, they don't know how soon you could get significant members of the Ba'ath Party and the inner regime to collapse. And so, one could think, and I've heard Pentagon officials say this that you could get a lot of probing action after this airport takeover before they actually decide to go in.

General Myers said today that you need to be patient and he also said that the notion of the siege is not the right mental picture and, of course, that is the worst case scenario. They don't want to have a siege in Baghdad that they're involved in, so I think they'll be testing the waters with these sorts of probes after tonight to see when is the best time to move in.

BROWN: Dana, whether Saddam is alive or not, setting that aside does the intelligence community still believe that the regime essentially has control?

PRIEST: Yes, in Baghdad. Outside of Baghdad, not so much but inside of Baghdad they don't see the loosening of control. They see more confusion. They definitely see a diminution of communications in the ways that they are looking at things, traffic analysis, message analysis, picking up e-mails.

A lot of that has gone away but they do not see a peeling away of the control within Baghdad. They're not sure why and they're not sure who has control. They can only assume that it is still somebody very close to Saddam Hussein unless it is himself.

BROWN: And they still seem to be uncertain whether it is Saddam Hussein himself?

PRIEST: Well, you know, ask that about 3,000 times a day.

BROWN: I'm sure.

PRIEST: Their answer still is he's either dead or he's injured and if he's exercising control he's doing it very quietly, very carefully. As one intelligence CIA veteran said to me, he's gone to ground one way or the other and I think they really do believe that after all these days.

They still believe that the messages that we're seeing, the tape recorded meetings that he's having with people and the audio tapes were probably made before the March 20th raid, so they still do think that it's a good chance that he's either not with us or he's injured.

BROWN: And they have, the intelligence community continues to have operatives of some sort on the ground and must have informants of all sorts on the ground in the city itself?

PRIEST: Well, we believe they did as of a few days ago. Can't say for sure now but as you know in the last year they've undertaken with the president's authority and lots of money a very covert and active effort to de-fang the regime and to get people to defect. They've used exiles. They've brought them to different parts of the Middle East to help communicate with potential defectors. They've set up phone trees.

That is still very active in the hope that they still can avoid the worst, which would be to go into Baghdad. So, they are still working on that. I don't think they feel like they've made as much progress certainly as they would have liked to have made, but it's not something they've given up on.

BROWN: And just one or two other things before you have to leave us. Do you when you're talking to your sources these days, do you detect in them a change in tone? Do they feel like -- does it seem to them like we really are at the very beginning -- very close to the end game?

PRIEST: Well, I would say close to the beginning of the really tough part and everybody is sort of holding their breath for that and that is entry into Baghdad, because that is the highest stakes. We don't know yet whether he'll use chemical weapons, as has been predicted. This would be the moment.

So, the stakes are really high. It could go to the worst case or it could go quite well and that is why they're trying to listen very closely to figure out so they don't rush too quickly and get involved in the kind of house-to-house urban combat that they're really trying to avoid. So, there is the great anticipation now that this could begin to be the beginning of the end.

BROWN: Dana, thanks a lot. It wasn't necessarily the conversation we thought we were going to have exactly but it's the perfect conversation for the night. Dana Priest who writes about intelligence matters for the "Washington Post" with us this evening.

Now, back to the pictures on the screen and what we're about to try and do. We're able to feed some tape while Walt Rodgers talks about the tape. There may be in this process a glitch here and there. Just bear with it. Walt, it's yours.

RODGERS: Aaron, we heard your guest talking about what the people of Baghdad are seeing this morning. I can tell you through the vantage of television they're seeing precious little. Because of the smoke from last night's bombing, the visibility in the area of Baghdad is now less than a mile. That is how heavy a pall of black smoke lies all about us in the suburbs of Baghdad.

Otherwise, it's a perfect clear day. The sun is up. I can look up and see blue skies but on the horizon it looks like again a summer thunderstorm except it is not a cloud of anything except smoke as a result of last night's bombing.

The U.S. Army (unintelligible) 7th Cavalry has now pushed to within a few kilometers of the airport. We're going to pause for just a second to change a cable, to give you an idea of what the pictures look like when we crossed the Euphrates Rivers with the 7th Cavalry yesterday.

Those are pictures of the 7th Cavalry moving forward. You can see the machine guns (unintelligible) as well as the 20mm guns tilting out to the right side of the road. This is north of the Euphrates River and on the approach to Baghdad.

Again, there was a gauntlet which this tank and our convoy was running pretty much most of the time for at least two hours straight. That gauntlet was small arms fire machine guns coming along on both sides of the road the tanks with the answering fire. Again, these are pictures or tape we're playing for you.

You can get a feel of what that convoy was like moving northward, north of the Euphrates River. That's the Mesopotamian Delta there between the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers. Remember Baghdad was, again, on the Tigris. And out in those cornfields you can see fire and smoke I believe and those are the areas where the Iraqi irregulars would hide and then fire their rocket-propelled grenades and other weapons at the column as it moved north. Again, it was a near constant ambush for about two hours. The heaviest weapons they would use would be rocket-propelled grenades and 20mm antiaircraft guns fired horizontally at the small, light artillery vehicles.

BROWN: Walt, we're just...

RODGERS: There's another picture of the tank column. These pictures are being shot from the CNN vehicle which has come under consistent fire and remarkably escaped any damage -- Aaron.

BROWN: We're just watching your pictures, Walt, as they come in. This was on the road toward the position Walt and his, the group he's embedded with, the 7th Cav, where they are now which is just a few kilometers from the airport itself. The airport itself, the airport proper appears to be under some measure of control. That seems a fair way to put it, some measure of control of the Americans.

There is still sporadic fighting going on, some a bit more than sporadic and there's a lot of work to be done by the Americans around it, a lot of buildings in an airport. This is a relatively modern airport. It's 12 miles outside of the city, lots of buildings, hangars, lots of places where people could hide, lots of places where danger lurks.

And then in the area around the airport, for several miles around the airport, all of that has to be secured before the airport could be safely used. There are in the world today hundreds, thousands of shoulder-launched rockets that could bring down a helicopter, could bring down a plane if it hit it right. They're not the most accurate things in the world but if they hit their mark they can do a lot of damage. All of that possibility has to be cleared out.

Walt's group, the 7th Cav, we followed literally since they crossed the border in the dusty desert and now moving down what looks almost to be a super highway that heads into the city or toward the airport at least in Baghdad -- Walt.

RODGERS: The pictures you're seeing are about 16 hours old. They were taken after the 7th Cavalry, along with the 3rd Infantry Division, crossed the Euphrates River not very far south of Baghdad and then the 3rd Infantry Division went one route, 7th Cavalry went another.

Again, the function of the 7th Cavalry is to stand off on the 3rd Infantry Division's flank to make sure there hasn't been a counterattack or that if there was a counterattack that it could be stopped in case the Iraqis try to move against the 3rd Division's flank.

This gives you a pretty good picture of what the 7th Cavalry passed through yesterday. There's a Bradley fighting vehicle. Now these vehicles have 25mm guns and there were times yesterday when they were shooting almost constantly off into the fields on either side. Again, some of these vehicles came under -- virtually all of these vehicles came under considerable fire. Again, the pictures you're seeing now are 16 hours old but you can generally tell by the condition of what you're seeing about you that the 7th Cavalry even before night last night had pushed very close to the suburbs of Baghdad, and if the Iraqis have any doubts at all about how close the U.S. Army is, they have only to see these pictures which I say are 16 hours old.

So, again, there was fire. There were ambushes along the road. No U.S. casualties at least in the 7th Cavalry that we're aware of. The people of Baghdad as they awaken this morning are awakening to choking clouds of thick acrid smoke blackening the horizon, limiting vision at least horizontally to less than a mile at this point, this because the Air Force delivered a terrible pounding.

There's another picture there. We're trying to show you some of the positions. This will give you a feel of the desert just south of Baghdad. As you look, you can see the Bradley fighting vehicles having to gnash their way across berms and the iron road markings along the way.

Again, throughout these pictures are intermittently, sporadically, the big 120mm guns on the Bradley tanks would be shooting, shooting as they roll. Interestingly, the accuracy of the tank's gun, the main gun, is supposed to increase as that tank goes faster. They were traveling at times 25 or 30 miles an hour -- Aaron.

BROWN: Walt, thank you, just keep feeding tape. Again, Walt is -- we figured out a way to essentially feed this tape while we talk and we may get a glitch or two along the way.

General David Grange is back with us. General, this kind of nuisance, if that's the right word, ambushes that Walt's talking about not a very serious threat to these, to these tanks and these Bradley fighting vehicles, correct?

GEN. DAVID GRANGE, CNN MILITARY ANALYST: Not a serious threat but they could inflict damage. You could injure a tank commander outside the turret as an example. You could cause damage to vision block sights, depending on where rounds hit. So there is a little bit of danger, but from the type of weaponry that Walter is talking about, not a lot of damage.

BROWN: Just tell me what you -- vision what?

GRANGE: Well, some of the sighting systems and visual systems in the tank itself, in the Bradley Fighting Vehicle, certain small caliber rounds, some of the stuff that Rodgers is talking about, could degrade capability on those systems in a tank or a Bradley Fighting Vehicle, and it could -- and a lucky round could hit a tank commander or a Bradley commander out of the turret.

So it's not safe, but it's not overwhelming danger with the type of weapons they're firing.

BROWN: Ken Pollack, back to something that Dana Priest (ph) was talking about. If not -- I mean, you've studied not just the military side of this but the political side of this government. If not Saddam, who is running the show?

POLLACK: It's a great question, Aaron.

I'll be honest with you. If Saddam Hussein is dead, in some ways that is more frightening to me than if he is alive, because we've always believed, and I'll say we've always hoped, that if Saddam did die, that this regime would start to come apart at the seams, that the differences among Saddam's top henchmen would immediately surface, it would be hard to keep the place together.

So if he died 14 or 15 days ago and someone has stepped in and held this government together, it demonstrates a degree of resiliency that I don't think that any of us really expected, certainly that no one hoped for.

There are at least two figures out there who might be able to do that. The first is his younger son Qusay, who is the head of the special security organization. He is basically Saddam's internal security czar and the chief of the Baghdad defensive region. There is some reason to believe that Qusay would be able to step into Saddam's shoes.

But it's also rumored that Qusay was in that bunker with Saddam and there are rumors that he may have been killed in that attack.

The other person who is out there who has a realistic chance of doing it is the person who is usually described as Saddam's personal secretary, a man by the name of Abid Hamid Hamoud (ph). Personal secretary really does not do justice to the man.

If Qusay is Saddam's right hand, Abid (ph) is Saddam's left. He is the gatekeeper. He is in charge of running all of the day to day affairs of the Iraqi government. He is also a tremendously powerful and ruthless figure, and those are really the only two who it would be easy to see stepping in to Saddam's shoes and saying to the rest of them, all right, the old man is dead, but we either hang together or we hang apart. And, you know, by God, you guys better rally around me.

If they're able to do that, though, as I said, that demonstrates a degree of resilience in this regime that I think certainly no one hoped to see.

BROWN: Ken, stand down for a second. Walt, just tell us what we're seeing here.

RODGERS: (UNINTELLIGIBLE) 7th Calvary. Again, that's -- what you're seeing (UNINTELLIGIBLE) is an antiaircraft division (UNINTELLIGIBLE) antiaircraft gun which was hit by the oncoming tank you see just to the right there. That, by the way, is Captain Cory Miles' (ph) tank. He is the commander of the Apache troop.

They fired at this antiaircraft installation which was placed along the way there, and you can see the smoke coming up. There is constant burning, and we were detained probably 15 or 20 minutes (AUDIO GAP) fire to calm down (AUDIO GAP) and it was a big of a dodgy situation there, because you can see how close we were to the tank (AUDIO GAP) who had, there's a blast off to the right (AUDIO GAP) some of the indications of the fire about us.

But as those shells were going off, we had no protection at all. We couldn't move forward before being shot by the exploding ammunition at that small antiaircraft battery. And yet at the same time, my cameraman, Sterling Miller (ph) and I, were sitting on the right side of the car and the Iraqis were firing AK47's at us. We could see the sparks of the bullets in the dust there.

Again, I'm not sure what the pictures are showing you, but the burning you saw was in point of fact something of a -- it was a 20-mm antiaircraft installation the Iraqis had setup beside the road, and that installation was trying to stop the advance of a convoy. It was taken out quickly, but it did slow our portion of the convoy, the reason being that the planes were setting off all sorts of ammunition about us. We couldn't go forward without being hit by the burning ammunition and to our back and rear we were being fired upon.

That was probably the CNN crew's dodgiest moment yesterday.

BROWN: Walt, stay nearby.

Nic Robertson, who knows the area best of all here, for having lived there now for a while, had lived there for a while.

Nic, you've been watching some of this play out, I know, from where you are, near the Jordan-Iraqi border.

ROBERTSON: Indeed, being able to watch it play out, very interesting to watch Walter drive through and past those defenses close to Baghdad. Very interesting, because just a week before the war I was able to drive out in that direction.

I think, as I was saying earlier, what I find interesting this time is the defensive positions that I had seen south of Baghdad were not substantial, exactly as Walter has described them now, but there were no -- there were no defensive positions north of that, if you will, and now that Walter and the 7th Calvary and other units have arrived very close and in fact at Saddam International Airport they appear to very much have come through those defenses.

From my knowledge of the city just before the war -- and of course I don't know what defenses may have been put in place between the airport and the city of Baghdad since the war began -- but from my knowledge before, no extensive defensive positions had been dug in between the airport and the center of Baghdad.

It would seem to suggest that there is very little in terms of fixed positions between this position at the airport now, where Walter is, and the center of Baghdad at this time. Very little between the coalition forces and essentially the center of the city -- Aaron.

BROWN: Nic -- Nic, thank you. We're going to get back -- we're going to move cables around here and get Walt back, live picture, I believe. And there may be a little glitch when that happens, but just bear with us while we do that. That's the glitch.

And, Walt -- that's the live picture. We can see it again.

Just take a minute, if you will, and recap for those people who are coming in now at 8:30 on the East Coast, where you are and what the last couple of hours have been for the 7th Cav., just in a minute or so.

RODGERS: Hello, Aaron.

We're a few kilometers from the Baghdad International Airport. The pictures you're looking at are of a burned out Iraqi T72 (ph) tank. Behind that, you can see smoke rising from an armored personnel carrier. Just to the right of the armored personnel carrier, you can see a dead Iraqi soldier in the road.

Over the course of the past several hours, that Iraqi armored company tried to push its way through the 7th Calvary. At least 10 Iraqi tanks were destroyed in combination with the Air Force and the 7th Calvary.

The 7th Calvary continues to stand, hold its line. No casualties, at least among the Apache troop that I am with.

At this point, the Iraqi counterattack has been stopped. And at this point, early morning in Baghdad, there is a thick plume (ph) of smoke over the city, very choking, limiting visibility to about a mile. The reason for that being the Air Force's and the Navy's heavy bombing of Baghdad last night -- Aaron.

BROWN: All right, Walt, stay with us.

General Grange, does it -- what does it tell you, that -- listening to Nic Robertson's description, that there wasn't a lot of defense setup by the Iraqis. From a military guy's point of view, what is that telling you?

GRANGE: Well, I think they had, earlier, when you get down by, for instance, Kabala and Najaf, all the way around Hillah and Al Kut, an outer defensive, a covered force, you may say in military talk, or an outer defensive ring. And then it kind of came back in, it appears, with small remnants to conduct the lay-in operations, which they failed at, on coalition forces, all the way back in, a little bit closer to Baghdad.

But I think that a lot of the forces were destroyed by air strikes, Apache helicopters, and then of course some by these ground elements. And either the other defensive positions, or hasty defensive positions it appears, because they don't look like they're very well prepared, pulled back into Baghdad or moved laterally around east and west, up to the north of Baghdad. It's hard to say.

But it doesn't look like much resistance in this part of the area.

BROWN: All right, General, thank you. Stay with us now for a while.

All of this is important because we are -- this picture you are looking at is just a few miles, less, from the airport itself, from Saddam International Airport. I don't know if we still have a picture, live or taped, but the Americans moved to the airport today.

We saw pictures that suggested some element of control. Jamie McIntyre at the Pentagon described the Pentagon's view of this as -- these are taped pictures from the airport itself -- as kind of mushy, whether they had absolutely control of it. But clearly that operation is not done. There is more to be done there, even if they had secured the airport itself, there would still be the buildings around the airport, the area around the airport, all of that, some distance around that, still needs to be secured. It still represents a danger to the American forces.

They have done this without bombing the runways at the airport, so when they get control of the area around it, that airport will be, in theory at least, they can use it. They can bring in supplies. They can bring in reinforcements. They can bring in aid. They can bring in anything they want. They have not damaged the runways to the airport to our knowledge.

Walt is just a bit behind that in the shot that you see now.

Let me bring in a few more voices, though, clearly unplanned in all of this. We have at this time of the night gathered around us people from different parts of the country to get a feel for how the country is reacting both to the day to day of this, and there is some mood shifting day to day in all of this, and also to the broader issues that the war clearly has generated.

And I'm not sure in what order we've got you all. Deborah Saunders is with the "San Francisco Chronicle." Deborah describes herself as a conservative writer in a liberal city. Neal Karlen, down at the bottom, that's an easy one. He's an author and freelance writer in the Twin Cities of Minneapolis and St. Paul. And Bobbie Jo Buel, and I hope, Bobbie Jo, I pronounced that right, at the "Arizona Daily Star."

Deborah, let me start with you and, quickly, we'll ask all of you the same thing here. You've all been sitting here watching this. This is what -- this is the living room war, isn't it?

DEBORAH SAUNDERS, "SAN FRANCISCO CHRONICLE": It certainly is, and I think it's made a lot of people who have been watching this war become very quiet.

It's not -- it's not something that you're reading about in the newspapers. It's not an issue you can haggle over. It's something you can actually watch. You can see the courage. You can see some of the atrocities and I think it's made people very quiet.

You know, at the "Chronicle," we had 850 letters to the editor on Monday. We had 800 letters Monday. We had 150 Tuesday.

People are riveted and speechless, I think.

BROWN: Are they -- in San Francisco -- San Francisco is, as you described it, this liberal town. It's had a vibrant anti-war movement going on. Has there been -- is in any sense the anti-war movement from your perspective been deflated through all of this?

SAUNDERS: Hugely. I mean, there was a time when there were -- there was a weekend when we had about 2,000 arrests. Yesterday I think there were about 250 protesters. This morning, I went to Market and Powell, where a lot of protesters are. There were just a handful of them.

People are pretty quiet here. I think that it has to do in part with the war. It also has to do with the fact that a lot of San Franciscans are very angry at the tenor of the demonstrators. I mean, signs like "We Support Our Troops When They Shoot Their Officers," I don't think that really works with a lot of people.

And then of course there was the fact that demonstrators were going after the most liberal city in the country, costing the city about $900,000 a day, stopping people, many of whom were anti-war, from getting to work, from taking public transit, getting into their offices.

So definitely, the steam seems to have run out.

BROWN: Bobbie Jo, your area perhaps more divided, I think, than some people might think. Been riveted by moments like this, though?

BOBBIE JO BUEL, "ARIZONA DAILY STAR": I think very much.

Here in Tucson, which is the most liberal part of the state but also has a very large military presence -- we have an air force base right here in the city and an army fort to the south of us, a lot of military retirees still very much in favor of the war, although in the early days most of the public presence in Tucson were peace protesters.

But that has certainly changed. Last weekend, for example, the largest protest of the weekend was a pro-troop rally with about 3,000 people.

BROWN: Do you think that -- I mean, given the shot that we are all looking at right now, and the shot that we have been looking at for about an hour and 45 minutes, has the reality of war, the horror of war -- forget whether you support it or oppose it, whether you thought it was the right thing or the wrong thing, do you think that that's come home?

BUEL: Oh, I do.

In my office, for example, I, last week, finally turned off the TV. I had had it on all the time. And the images are so powerful that you can just sit there sort of glued to it, hardly believing that what you're seeing is something like a war in real-time. It becomes just overwhelming. And in that sense, I think newspapers are a little different. We obviously don't have as many images, a lot more words. But I find myself that I can't just sit there and watch it as much as I did in the early days.

BROWN: Neal, I read in the pre-interview that you had turned your TV off or put it away a long time ago. Tell me the truth, have you not caught a glimpse of any of this over the last couple of weeks?

NEAL KARLEN, FREELANCE JOURNALIST: I caught about two minutes when I was in a restaurant a couple of days ago, but that's what totally blew me away about that was, that was truly the first scenes I'd seen. It was a mistake, sort of.

I didn't plan on not watching it on TV. I had pulled my TV out to finish a book, and after a couple of days I though, well, let me see if I can kind of do it like World War II, where I just listen to the radio fulltime, which is what I've been doing, and read a couple of magazines. All that's missing is sort of Ed Herlicke (ph), you know, with the "March of Time," and that actually blew me away. It sort of took my breath away.

When you listen to the radio, and I've been going from -- you're from here. We've got -- you know the range of stations, from Patriot Radio, what they're calling Red Diaper Doper Babies who should be arrested for sabotage, and then you turn to BBC Radio, where they're, you know, talking about the missile strikes and (UNINTELLIGIBLE) of the Iraqi defenses. And it all just feels like propaganda after a while, every single station.

But when you see those images, in some ways that was the first time the war really came home to me, when in fact I thought I was getting away from the propaganda by just listening to the radio, watching nothing, and just reading a couple of papers, like they did. And I thought, wow, this is really like World War II, the Blue Stars are going up again, you know, the Blue Star families.

But just seeing that has sort of changed everything for me.

BROWN: So as you've watched tonight for however long you've been sitting there in Minneapolis, do you in any sense feel like you've missed an important experience? And I mean that literally. That there's something about having watched this, for better or for ill, play out, that is an important marker in life?

KARLEN: I don't, really, because I still don't think we're going to know what this means, in the same way we didn't know what World War II means, and people are still writing hundreds of volumes half-a- century later. We don't know what those isolated shots really do mean. I mean, this will -- you know, there will be 10,000 Ph.D. theses written on this.

But it brought home to me, whoa, this is what a dead Iraqi soldier looks like. But I don't know what it means. I think that fall out will take a long time. It just -- that's what war means. When I think of World War II and D-Day, I know from "The Longest Day" and John Wayne, I wonder what cameras filming live would make of that. Would we think the Germans won or we won, you know.

I know in World War II the Germans showed their own people what they said was Normandy and it was actually other battles. Is that going on now? We won't know for a long time, but just the images of warfare, I think, will live for a long time.

BROWN: Deborah, is -- you're in the media. You're in the newspaper business. You're in the media. Do you think that this will have changed media at all?

SAUNDERS: You know, being a conservative columnist in the newspaper business and in San Francisco, of all places, you -- thinks sort of work a certain way when a story comes out.

Elian, Florida, the impeachment thing. There would be a time when I'd walk through the newsroom and people would just sort of come to me and yell at me about what they don't like, and I had to give the standard line. I'd say to them, you know, I'm sorry I'm the only Republican you know, but if you want to talk to me about my column, I'll talk to you. I can't speak for everybody else. Make a new friend and talk to them.

This is so different. I walk through the newsroom now, people are quiet. They'll tell me they're apprehensive. They're worried about our troops. They're worried about the future. They are speechless.

And so I think this is one of those times where it's so profound. It's not a fun partisan fight. It's a profound change. And I do think that people are very introspective right now.

Whether it will change the business, I don't know. I can just tell you, it feels so much different than anything I've experienced in the last 10 years.

BROWN: Bobbie Jo, I'll give you the last word here. From your perspective, in Tucson, do you feel like this has changed the way all of us in some respects see media, see government, see war, see our petty little political fights, all of that?

BUEL: I think especially what you just said, the last part, about our petty little political fights.

This isn't some abstract anymore, just a debate about your feelings, pro or con, with the war. You can sit there and watch it live, and that has to effect everybody in a much more personal, direct way, and I think makes you reconsider some of the petty things.

BROWN: Bobbie Jo, thank you. Deborah, Neal, thank you all. You were quite patient, waiting, and we appreciate that. Thanks a lot.

We will -- for those of you who may just be joining us, we'll update you on where we've been so far.

Oddly, we haven't moved at all, and we've been a lot of places.

We'll take a short break first.

Our coverage continues.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BROWN: The picture you are looking at is just a few kilometers outside the airport, in Baghdad. A live picture.

A senior army official has told Reuters, the news agency, quote, "we now control the airport." We'll get into more detail on what that means.

We've been with this now for almost two hours, and I want to set it aside, if we can set it aside for a bit, because there are a number of other things that happened today that also fit into the larger picture of what's to come.

And what's to come may not -- is not simply one tank sitting on the side of the road.

For example, today in one of the holiest places to Shiite Muslims, elements of the 101st found themselves in a jam, if you will, there are other ways and other words, perhaps. In the end, history books may record that they got out of that jam with the help of some quick diplomacy and a commanders order to smile.

This is reported by CNN's Ryan Chilcote.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

RYAN CHILCOTE, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): A tip leads the Bastogne (ph) Brigade's No Slack Battalion to this parking lot in Najaf where the Fedayeen are said to have stashed weapons.

The search turns up nothing. The only resistance comes from a Volvo.

The Shia population seems curious and friendly, but they don't get too close. This man agrees to be interviewed as long as his face isn't shown. The Iraqi government, he says, has satellite TV.

"Anybody could be an informer and punish us for talking to you, even my family," he tells me in Arabic.

The troops also keep their distance.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Yes, it's very uneasy out here. Don't know who's who.

CHILCOTE: Sergeant Rod Sutton (ph), from Indiana, on the corner of a street leading to the highly sensitive Imam Ali Shrine, one of the holiest sites in the world for Shia Muslims. (on camera): Does it make you nervous that you're like so close to the Ali mosque? Do you feel like you're tramping on...

SGT. ROD SUTTON (ph), BASTOGNE (PH) BRIGADE: Holy ground?

CHILCOTE: Yes.

SUTTON: To some extent, I feel fortunate that I'm here, because this is something I never would have seen before. And now that I see it I kind of understand some of the history behind it.

So, it makes me more appreciative of it. To the same extent, I don't want to be invasive with these people here. I don't want to trample on their holy ground, and I want to respect that as much as I can.

CHILCOTE (voice-over): Word comes from the Grand Ayatollah Sistani that he's willing to meet the American commander, but he asks first for soldiers to secure his compound, located halfway down the road to the mosque. But no one explains that to the crowd.

(on camera): There is no more striking example of the sensitivities that the U.S. soldiers face here than what is taking place on the streets right up from the Ali Mosque right now.

(voice-over): Chaos as the crowd apparently believes the soldiers want to approach the shrine.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: They don't want you to let inside the holy Shrine of Imam Ali.

CHILCOTE: Clerics appear with a message from the grand Ayatollah, but the message is drowned out. The colonel instructs his men to stay calm.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: They got to understand, he wants us here. Smile, relax.

CHILCOTE: His soldiers take a knee, their weapons brought down from the ready position. They do everything soldiers can to appear less hostile.

But the potential for confrontation remains. The commander makes the decision.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Turn around, just turn around and go.

CHILCOTE: He orders his men back to their compound to await cooler heads.

Ryan Chilcote, CNN with the 101st Airborne in Najaf, Iraq.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

BROWN: General David Grange, we talked about winning the war, and we talked about winning the peace, and there's an example of how difficult winning the peace might turn out to be. A small moment that told a lot.

GRANGE: Very much so. I mean, this reminds me of Bosnia. It reminds me of the discipline when you had situations like this.

Three key things, Aaron, comes out of this clip. One is the discipline of the individual soldier. Two is the leadership of -- from the battalion commander down to the other officers and the squad leaders, the sergeants on the ground, maintaining their cool and understanding the situation. And the last item is understanding the operational environment, the culture that you have been placed in as a combat force, and yet respecting that culture and adapting to what you find in that particular situation, and resolving it.

And that was a perfect example of those three criteria for a modern day army in this world.

BROWN: We've just got about 40 seconds here, but it's hard not to be impressed with the -- whether he was an officer or a noncommissioned officer, I didn't really notice, the way he walked around his troops and said smile, put your guns down. He's reading the situation, he understands the risks of the situation, to a degree, to his men, but more so to the civilians, and he makes judgments and decisions, and it was pretty impressive.

GRANGE: Yes, that was the battalion commander, a lieutenant colonel, you know, probably about 40 years old.

BROWN: So no kid was he, and he handled himself pretty well.

General, you'll be with us for a bit, I think. We're glad to have you with us.

We need to take a break. We'll update the headlines. Daryn Kagan will take care of that and our coverage will continue in just a moment.

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Aired April 3, 2003 - 22:00   ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
AARON BROWN, CNN ANCHOR: Friday morning in Baghdad, a night spent with the lights out, a haze over the city and just outside the city American troops. Not since the earliest days of the war has there been so much anxiety in the air. What will come next? How will it happen and at what cost?
Good evening again, everyone. We begin our time as always by laying out the shape of the puzzle and highlighting the pieces in play and there are many.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

BROWN (voice-over): In a speech he made before the war began, Saddam Hussein declared the Mongols of our age would face suicide at the gates of Baghdad. It wouldn't be the first time he's been proven wrong.

Tonight one of the gates of Baghdad is under heavy American fire and the capital itself spent the night in the dark.

As the lights were turned out in Baghdad intentionally perhaps by the Iraqi government, American troops moved ever closer to the capital. Some units according to the Pentagon are at the city's main international airport and air assaults too continued to hit the city.

WALTER RODGERS, CNN CORRESPONDENT: There's a rocket coming our way firing loose over the shoulder. There's a rocket dropping over our right shoulder.

BROWN: The Army's 3rd Division 7th Calvary, with whom CNN's Walter Rodgers is embedded, crept nearer and nearer to Baghdad. Tanks and armored vehicles drove past the wreckage of Iraqi tanks, largely unopposed much to the satisfaction of the Secretary of Defense.

DONALD RUMSFELD, SECRETARY OF DEFENSE: They've taken several outlying areas and are closer to the center of the Iraqi capital than many American commuters are from their downtown offices.

BROWN: A statement denied no matter how improbably by the Iraqi Minister of Information just before the power went out.

MUHAMMAD AL-SAHHAF, IRAQI MINISTER OF INFORMATION: They are not near Baghdad. Don't believe them.

QUESTION: (UNINTELLIGIBLE) could they be trapped?

AL-SAHHAF: They are trapped everywhere in the country.

BROWN: To the south of the Iraqi capital, elements of the 101st Airborne found themselves momentarily trapped in the crowded streets of Najaf with the gold dome of the Ali Mosque (ph) in the distance, a mosque sacred to Shiite Muslims. Angry crowds surrounded a small patrol. They believed the Americans were heading for the mosque. They were not. They were in route instead to a meeting with the mosque's leader. CNN's Ryan Chilcote was in the middle.

RYAN CHILCOTE, CNN CORRESPONDENT: No one apparently told the crowd of the soldiers' intentions and as you can probably see from this video, complete chaos ensued.

BROWN: The troops withdrew and the meeting rescheduled.

To the east of Baghdad, not far from the Iraqi city of Kut, Marines took away stacks of rifles after they moved through to the town and to ensure they would not be used again, an American tank went to work.

From U.S. Central Command, some new and intriguing pictures. Here American Special Forces raid one of Saddam Hussein's many palaces about 50 miles north of Baghdad. Nobody home but commanders say some documents were seized and American troops also seized an important dam before it could be destroyed by Iraqi troops.

New video too of that rescue of Private First Class Jessica Lynch. You can her being carried down the stairs of that hospital where she was found then loaded into the waiting helicopter. Her family says she is doing as well as can be expected.

SANJAY GUPTA, CNN CORRESPONDENT: I actually assisted in that particular operation. The mother was also operated on for significant abdominal injury.

BROWN: And the side story of the war, in a field hospital in central Iraq, CNN's Dr. Sanjay Gupta who is a neurosurgeon was called in to help when an Iraqi infant was wounded during an incident at an American checkpoint. Tragically, the child later died.

Northern Iraq saw more fighting. Here a Kurdish patrol accompanied by a small group of U.S. Special Forces found themselves in a firefight with Iraqi soldiers. American planes were called in on the Iraqi positions.

And at the opposite end of the country in Basra, the British were probing Iraqi defenses inside the city but as of yet have not entered.

And about those two American aircrafts lost yesterday, there is a suggestion now that the F-18 off the carrier Kitty Hawk may have been downed by friendly fire, a patriot missile and the cause of that Black Hawk helicopter crash continues to be investigated.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

BROWN: So that's the big picture of the day. We'll spend much of the rest of the time looking at the smaller pieces that make it up. Clearly much is in play, more to come. Anxiety, as we said, is in the air. Things seem to be moving especially quickly but for how long?

We'll move to CNN's Jamie McIntyre, senior Pentagon correspondent. Jamie, good evening.

JAMIE MCINTYRE, CNN SENIOR PENTAGON CORRESPONDENT: Just a short time ago, Aaron, I talked to a senior defense official who said the situation at the Saddam International Airport is a bit murkier now than it was earlier this afternoon when U.S. troops first arrived. The U.S. is securing that airport. According to this official, they think the situation will be fairly clear by tomorrow morning when the U.S. Central Command gives its briefing from Qatar.

What we do know is that the U.S. troops have moved in by ground and are in the process of securing the airport. There has been some resistance there. CNN is hearing that there may be some battles still ongoing but the reports from the scene indicate that perhaps several hundred Iraqi troops have already been killed there a substantial amount of equipment including anti-aircraft artillery and troop carriers has been seized by the American forces.

This came on a day, by the way, when Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld complained quite vehemently that outside influence from other countries, which he didn't name, but sources say are France and Russia where it's giving some false hope to the Iraqi regime that maybe a deal could be cut.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

RUMSFELD: There's no question but that some governments are discussing from time to time some sort of a cutting a deal and the inevitable effect of it, let there be no doubt, is to give hope and comfort to the Saddam Hussein regime and give them ammunition that they can then try to use to retain the loyalty of their forces with hope that one more time maybe he'll survive. One more time maybe he'll be there for another decade or so, for another 17 or 18 U.N. resolutions.

And as to the second question, there's not a chance that there's going to be a deal. It doesn't matter who proposes it. There will not be one.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

MCINTYRE: The Pentagon says only unconditional surrender will end this war.

Meanwhile Joint Chiefs Chairman, General Richard Myers, laid out a little bit of the U.S. strategy for carrying off that victory saying that the U.S. doesn't necessarily have to occupy every square inch of Baghdad but it can isolate the regime, taking some key targets and then he said the regime could be isolated in a way that they would only be worried about their own protection and have no influence over the Iraqi people. A senior defense official tonight also indicated that as soon as next week, we might see the beginning of the attempt to install a new government in Baghdad even before the war is over -- Aaron.

BROWN: Well, a couple of things you've laid out are storylines that will clearly dominate the evening.

Let's start with the airport. How far from the center of the city is the airport and to what degree is it also psychologically important to take it, as it would obviously have some strategic value?

MCINTYRE: Well, it's about 12 miles from the city center. It's a very important military target. Strategically you always want to take the airport first. It gives the U.S. a base of operations from which it can operate and psychologically it's a very powerful signal because as I've said, many military operation, when you're taking a city, the first thing you want is the major airport.

BROWN: And going now to General Myers' point today, we have watched over the last five days or six days the British in Basra, also a big city though a different layout if you will, very patiently probing, working but not storming. Is that the kind of thing he's talking about?

MCINTYRE: Well, it's slightly different although the key - the common thread is patience. The U.S. says it's not in any big hurry to engage in massive urban combat but it's not going to be necessarily slow probing. I think what you're going to see is again the seizure of key strategic targets, maybe even, you know, snatch teams going out and trying to get key leaders. We saw one of those teams this morning go into a - one of Saddam Hussein's residences and do a search there and that's the kind of thing that you may see in Baghdad even as the U.S. tries not to essentially occupy the whole city.

BROWN: Jamie, stay with us for a second. Just let me orient viewers a bit.

That picture, the picture you're looking at is of an American tank outside or near the airport -- at the airport that we've been talking about. The picture is provided by APTN, the news agency. You see American soldier moving in the area. Now airports obviously are large areas and that is one shot of one but you get a sense there that the Americans clearly have arrived at the airport in Baghdad.

Jamie, this is, as you were saying, it is important at almost every level.

MCINTYRE: That's right and one of the things that they've done is they specifically did not target the runways of this airport. We saw from the Pentagon earlier today how they used precision guided bombs to take out the barracks for the Special Republican Guard that were located at the south end of the airport but they left the runways in tact. That's obviously so they can begin to use the airport once they have secured it to fly in troops and additional personnel and equipment. It gives them a real ability to move things in quickly and quickly beef up their forces there in that area. BROWN: Jamie, thank you. Jamie McIntyre, our senior Pentagon correspondent, we'll stay with these pictures for as long as they last.

The Americans now, at least according to the Pentagon, Jamie, used the word murky. The situation there is a little murkier than it seemed early. There is some -- there are some -- there are some exchanges going on. You can hear some gunfire. Don't know how much it is, but you can hear it, some of it. You can hear also the vehicles moving around and sometimes they sound alike. Again, these pictures just coming in now live from APTN. You see there a -- one of the many, how many of these have we seen, posters of Saddam Hussein, at the Saddam International Airport in Baghdad, as Jamie said, just a dozen or so miles from the center of the city.

Let's just see if we can bring in Nic Robertson who is on our staff most familiar with the city itself. Nic is reporting from near the Jordanian Iraqi border.

Nic, I can't imagine you can see these pictures but you certainly know the area.

NIC ROBERTSON, CNN SR. INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Indeed actually, Aaron, I'm fortunately enough -- I was fortunate enough until just a second ago there to be able to see the pictures as they're coming in, that armored personnel carrier moving along the road and that huge moral that's so typical of Iraq of President Saddam Hussein on one of the ramps apparently near the airport there.

This will be a very, very clear signal for the people of Baghdad that coalition forces are so close. It is a modern highway that links the airport to downtown Baghdad. It's less than a 20 minute drive in a normal family car driving out to the airport.

BROWN: Nic, let me just interrupt.

You can see now an American soldier in an encounter with an Iraqi. The Iraqi walking out with his hands raised. The American we saw just a moment ago kind of stooping down a bit then getting up and now they appear to be searching this person, friend or foe they don't know. So they're just frisking him as you've done in a thousand police shows. Make sure he has no weapons and they take no chances. The other soldier keeping his rifle trained on him as his comrade does the pat down and we'll just see if they let him go or take him away. These pictures coming in live. They're kind of moving him out of the way and where they will take him and what they will do with him we don't know but they don't seem -- at this point they didn't handcuff him. That much we can say and Nic, I'll just keep my eye on the picture for a while and you go ahead and keep going.

ROBERTSON: Yes. Again, Aaron, a very, very clear indication for the people of Baghdad, when they wake up this morning in the fluid situation that as daylight now brings to that area, obviously any one -- any of the Iraqi forces choosing now to lay down their weapons with clarity of daylight and perhaps the safety that brings, being able to come out of their cover and turn themselves over. Obviously the question for the coalition is how quickly and will all the forces, if any, in the airport do it?

But for the people of Baghdad, as I was saying, literally a 20 minute drive down a modern highway. The highway that you would find in any country in Europe, any area of the United States. This, for the Iraqi people, will be a shock this morning to know that coalition forces are that close to the capital but for the Iraqi leadership, Aaron, clearly a huge level of psychological pressure. Through the past two weeks have spent so much time on Iraqi television telling the people that the coalition forces are being defeated, that they're in the desert, that the Iraqi troops control the cities of southern Iraq. Today is going to be very difficult to convince Iraqis in Baghdad that the Iraqi government is still in control. They will no longer be able to pull the wool, if you will, so easily over the eyes of the Iraqis.

So a huge step up in the level of psychological pressure at this time on the Iraqi authorities, Aaron.

BROWN: Word spreads in many different ways. Presumably Iraqi TV or the Information Minister is not going to go on the air and so, oh yea and they've taken the airport too but obviously some people are going to hear about it and they're going to tell some people and before you know it, people know.

Nic, thank you very much, Nic Robertson, reporting from the Jordanian or near the Jordanian Iraqi border.

Walt Rodgers is embedded with the 7th Cav and we have followed their journey into the country towards the capital and they must be very close now. I don't know how close.

Walt, good evening.

RODGERS: This is better (UNINTELLIGIBLE)

BROWN: Walt is near the airport.

Walt, are you able to hear us?

RODGERS: Yes. Aaron I hear you. I believe our cameraman Charlie Miller (ph) is pointing in the direction of a T-72 Iraqi tank, which is still burning slightly. It was knocked out within the last two hours. Behind that is a BMP, an armored personnel carrier. There's an Iraqi soldier lying dead in the road by the -- by the BMP and another one who's -- was killed in the turret of his T-72 tank.

It's dawn here in the Iraq in the suburbs of Baghdad. We are not from the -- from the Baghdad airport, the Saddam Hussein Airport, and for the last several hours there has been an attempted counterattack by an Iraqi tank company. It was a bad decision as one Iraqi -- excuse me, as one U.S. Army soldier told us, 400 Iraqis made a very bad decision in the last 24 hours. That bad decision was that they came out and tried to tackle the U.S. Army's 7th Calvary. It began -- the fight began about two hours ago. I think for chance you can still see the smoking vehicles in the direction in which the camera is pointed and what happened was the 7th Calvary, as I say, two to three hours ago began to get visual contact with a convoy of at least 10 Iraqi tanks. They called for close air support. The Air Force took out three of the Iraqi tanks.

The other six or seven tanks were taken out in direct fire by the 7th Calvary, the 120 millimeter guns atop the M1A1 Abrams tanks were firing throughout the evening here or at least throughout the past several hours and they simply put the Iraqi tanks out of action with no losses to the U.S. forces in the 7th Calvary. There is ammunition all over the road, 50 caliber machine guns and throughout the last half hour there has been continuous fire in this general direction, perhaps a mopping up action. We see Bradley Fighting Vehicles pointed around in a perimeter around the tanks, again, protecting the tanks from dismounted Iraqi soldiers.

We've been told that what the Iraqis are doing is they're filling pickup trucks with soldiers and filling dump trucks and then they come charging down the road with rifles blazing. Not very far in the distance, perhaps less than a kilometer, maybe half a mile or so but not much more, there is a what the Army's calling a suicide bus. The Iraqis sent down ...

BROWN: Walt, let me -- Walt, I need to interrupt you for a second. We'll just listen here to this soldier on the left. He's at the airport and if we could maybe take that full for a minute, that might help us orient.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: (UNINTELLIGIBLE) deal with the regime appropriately, and you know, save some future battle inside the city. (UNINTELLIGIBLE) message home, message to other soldiers, the soldiers are doing great. Morale is high, continuing on what we do -- what we do best and that's move in. And a message home, I love my wife and kids (UNINTELLIGIBLE) we're here doing the right thing (UNINTELLIGIBLE) infantry division.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: (UNINTELLIGIBLE).

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: No casualties here, and I received sporadic gunfire yesterday on the mission from before but this was basically an occupation (UNINTELLIGIBLE) we did use aircraft (UNINTELLIGIBLE) in order to identify some tanks working hand in hand with the Air Force (UNINTELLIGIBLE) before they (UNINTELLIGIBLE).

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Thank you very much.

BROWN: That's taking place at Saddam International Airport. The shot on the left in the small box is a shot taken from near the airport. The Americans, as you heard, are at least comfortable enough to talk to reporters at the airport. That tells you something. It doesn't tell you everything but it does tell you something about the situation there.

Walt Rodgers, who is reporting from near the airport, that would be the small picture on the left again, Walt was talking about how the Iraqi strategy, if you want to call it that, is to load pickup trucks and dump trucks with soldiers, race down the highway, guns blazing but you can see what they're meeting. This tank is still burning. This is some distance, I'm not sure how far from the airport it is but you can see it's still burning a bit. Walt, pick up your narrative. How much -- how difficult has it been or how easy has it been to get to the point you're at today?

RODGERS: Relatively easy within the last hour or so -- excuse me -- but yesterday afternoon I guess it would have been morning your time, Aaron, it was a very substantial push through a free fire zone here. There was firefight ambushes on both sides of the roads off to the left and I'm down on my knees because they're still shooting in this area. Off to my left there are more than a few -- I can see at least half a dozen or more foxholes that the Iraqi soldiers dug for themselves to crawl into in prone positions.

One of the reasons, by the way, that the Army assure that was a suicide bus they took out was because when they hit, it exploded and burned much more brightly than a -- than a normal bus moving in the direction of a tank would have exploded and burned. Having said that, this is still a fresh battle scene here. The burning T-72 tank you see there is a part of a company of tanks, 10 Iraqi tanks or perhaps nine tanks and an armored vehicle, all of that came charging down the road just a few hours ago at the U.S. Army's 7th Calvary. The first sighting was visual. The Apache troop of the 7th Calvary with its Bradleys quickly knocked out virtually all of the tanks except three. The Air Force was called for close air support. They took out three tanks. We're also given to believe that perhaps three other tanks might have gotten away so that was at least a company of Iraqi tanks that tried to counterattack, tried to push its way through the 7th Calvary's position in the -- in the Baghdad suburbs and I say, we're just a few kilometers from the airport itself. We continue to hear firing all about us but the worst of the tank battle seems to be over -- Aaron.

BROWN: Walt, just let me again orient viewers a bit. We're some kilometers or two kilometers or miles outside the airport, the shot you're looking at. If you look carefully even in the graininess and it's not terribly grainy of the videophone, you can see some flames still coming from that Iraqi tank, the kind of exchange that Walt was just talking about.

Walt, go back if you would please and talk again about the strategy the Iraqis have employed with the bus and the dump trucks and the rest.

RODGERS: Aaron, the Iraqis are employing everything that an irregular force can employ to try to stop the movement towards Baghdad of the 7th Calvary and other U.S. Army units. What they do -- what they did which was most surprising was to throw that company of tanks against the U.S. tank convoy but what we've been seeing increasingly is what you would call virtual suicide attacks where the Iraqis find a pickup truck, put 10, 12 soldiers aboard the pickup truck or a dump truck even and they come charging down the road in the direction of armored column.

Now of course, a dump truck even with a -- with a 20 mm cannon mounted on the back is no match for a Bradley Fighting Vehicle and the U.S. soldiers are on target virtually every -- all the time at least from what we've seen as we traveled through ambushes yesterday and as soon as they Iraqis are -- visual contact is made, the dump trucks, the suicide buses, the pickup trucks are knocked out of existence fairly fast.

As I say, a short while ago I was talking with one of the officers in the 7th Calvary and he said to me 400 Iraqis made a very bad choice in the past 24 hours. That's the number of Iraqis, which the 7th Calvary believes it has knocked out but the dump trucks and the pickup trucks and buses bring the Iraqi soldiers forward and then they unload and come charging toward the tanks. Again, I can see an Iraqi soldier lying dead in the road just ahead of me and I'm sure in that same armored personnel carrier there are more dead Iraqis as smoke continues to pour out. What you're looking at is what we believe is a burned out T-72. The small flames you can see are at the hatch. It was a direct hit by the -- by the 7th Calvary's tanks. A 120 millimeter gun just put it immediately out of existence. Again, the old Soviet vintage T-72s, G-62s are no match for an M1A1 Abrams in open combat -- Aaron.

BROWN: Just again with -- if we go back to the two pictures, this picture is just -- the picture on the right is just outside of the airport in Baghdad, a few miles outside. The picture on the left is at the airport itself. You can see the American soldiers and these would all be American soldiers this close to Baghdad working and we just -- that ends that shot.

We heard an American sergeant I believe, if I saw the insignia correctly on his helmet, say that they had suffered no casualties. His unit had no -- had suffered no casualties. They were still encountering some sporadic gunfire, that morale in his group was good. We are doing what we came here to do and that was take the airport and they -- whether it is completely taken or not is somewhat murky as Jamie McIntyre mentioned but clearly they have taken some and perhaps even much of it at this point.

Walt Rodgers is outside of the airport, some miles outside the airport with the 7th Calvary and how far we have come with that group in the last couple of weeks and they have been met with some combination of military tactic and almost terrorist tactic, if you will, loading up a suicide bus. He described that when one of those busses was hit, it exploded as if there were in fact explosives on it that perhaps that was an attempt to ram into American forces, a state of desperation, a desperation tactic, Walt, it sounds like to us.

RODGERS: Indeed that's the case, Aaron, but the Iraqis are desperate. Again, the much vaunted Republican Guard unit, unless this tank company last night was from the Republican Guard, the Republican Guard units have disappeared off the scope. There is speculation they've withdrawn into the city of Baghdad. We're on the suburbs. We are less than a few miles from the airport. We're a few kilometers from the airport. We're really close to the airport and as I say, about two hours actually less than three hours ago, the Iraqis did send out a company of tanks, a few armored vehicles as well, 10 or so. They started charging in the direction of the U.S. Army's 7th Calvary, the Apache troop. The Apache troop made optical sighting with its night vision goggles and began blasting away. Apache troop itself took out six of the Iraqi tanks as well as at least one armored vehicle. Additionally, the Air Force was called. Three more Iraqi tanks were taken out and the Air Force said it made visual contact with three other Iraqi tanks. At this point however, the contact seems to have declined. It is getting to be daylight. There is a tank very close to us, 100 meters and it has been blasting away intermittently with a 50 caliber machine gun.

The tactics we're also seeing the Iraqis use is -- are basically the same as military irregulars anywhere. They take up positions in civilian housing.

BROWN: Walt, let me just tell viewers here for a second, Walt, that what they're seeing on the left now -- these are also pictures from the airport but this is tape that was shot earlier. Just to make sure that everybody knows where we are, the picture on the right is live. The picture on the left, the shot you're looking of Saddam Hussein, that poster, is tape. It is now coming in to us.

Walt, go ahead.

RODGERS: Aaron, as I say, 7th Calvary continues to hold a standing position after having knocked out a company of Iraqi tanks. Again, an Iraqi soldier lying beside an armored vehicle in the road beyond. The armored vehicle being an armored personnel carrier, a Soviet vintage BMP. It took a direct hit. We assume there are dead Iraqis in there.

The nearer vehicle which you're seeing we believe is a Soviet vintage T-72 tank. It took a direct hit. You can see still some flames inching around the hatch. Again, another dead Iraqi soldier there and probably assuming it has a crew of four, there are probably four dead Iraqis there. The 7th Calvary officers are estimating that between the tank convoy and the -- and the dismounts, that is to say the infantry soldiers who were sent forward to attack the 7th Calvary's armored column and the 7th Calvary is no more than 500 meters up the road from where I'm standing. It's estimated that perhaps 350 to 400 Iraqi lost their life in -- their lives in a counterattack on this unit.

The tactics, I should tell, you that the Iraqis used yesterday when we were traveling with ambushes both sides of the road were that they would dig themselves in foxholes or small bunkers. They would crawl into those bunkers with rocket-propelled grenades and they would try to fire at tanks and the Bradley fighting vehicles as the tanks moved northward in the direction was Baghdad suburbs.

Additionally, they would open up with small machine gunfire and be blazing away with rifles. Now that's really more a nuisance factor. It's not very effectual.

But again from where I'm standing I count, one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, perhaps a dozen foxholes that the Iraqis have dug along the side of road. These are foxholes where soldiers can lie prone and shoot at the oncoming vehicles of the 7th Cavalry.

Again, to no avail. The 7th Cavalry has pushed within a few kilometers of the Baghdad airport and been more than successful. To the best of however knowledge no casualties whatsoever in the 7th Cavalry, but as we say, one estimate by one soldier is 400 dead Iraqis in this encounter -- Aaron.

BROWN: Walt, hang on. We'll get back to you in a second.

Nic Robertson, briefly, you've been watching this come in. This is a taped picture on the left. A live picture on the right. The tape is at the airport. On the right is just outside, a few kilometers outside. Less than a few miles.

Nic, as you've been watching this, what do you see?

ROBERTSON: It's been very interesting to listen to description that Walter has given us of driving up, getting close to the airport. The small foxholes that Iraqi soldiers have been taking up position in, firing off at tanks and armored vehicles as they've gone by.

To the south of Baghdad when I've been out of city the week before the war began, I'd seen these positions dug at the side of road, not particularly good defensive positions. I'd seen an area a little south of that that appeared to be a major defensive line for the Iraqi forces.

I very much get the impression at this stage that the explosion has now blasted through, if you will, that Iraqi defensive line around Baghdad. That was the only line that I had seen that was defending Baghdad. We'd heard talk about multiple rings. It seems to me at this early stage that that line has been breached. Those small defenses that Walter is talking about has given their best shot and been defeated on the road to Baghdad.

And I'm standing here reflecting on the fact that my knowledge of that road between the airport and the center of Baghdad just two days before the war began, there were no such preparations on that highway to Baghdad. There were no such foxholes dug on that road.

It gives me the impression that if the coalition is now at the airport, there is very little in terms of defensive preparations that were made ready in the weeks before the war which standing between them and the center of the city.

That's what strikes me about this picture as we try and bring together all the pieces, all of the narratives that we hear, the preparations to the south of city and along the roads. I'd seen those. Those same preparations were not made on the highway and the airport and the center of Baghdad.

BROWN: Nic, thank you.

General David Grange, who's with us tonight. General, you've been watching all of this. In the big picture, where does it fit?

GEN. DAVID GRANGE, CNN MILITARY ANALYST: Well, just listen to Walter talk about this tank fight about ten Iraqi tanks, company size. One thing that comes to mind is the training of the American G.I., compared to the Iraqi soldier. They -- the training obviously is a big combat multiplier, not just the technology, not just the weapon systems, otherwise you would have more American casualties.

The other is that the Iraqi forces don't have sergeants. They don't have a non-commission officer corps, the NCO.

And continually from Walter's comments, he talks about the sergeant in this tank or the officer in that tank. Every one of these combat vehicles, every one of them on the coalition side is led by at least the sergeant or an officer. In the Iraqi army, you may have one officer to three tanks. That makes a difference in a fight.

BROWN: Why?

GRANGE: Because of the leadership, subordinate leadership. People who are trained with years of experience that can lead the way if someone else is killed.

If you kill an officer, and for instance, the old Soviet army with a tank platoon, three tanks, same in the Iraqi unit. The other soldiers don't know what to do. They don't have the leadership training to take charge and do anything. That's why they fight in groups, usually of three tanks. One officer. Everybody else is a private.

The United States Army, the British army, there's a leader in every combat vehicle just like there's a leader in every squad. And they can fight by themselves without orders just following the last order given by their senior commander.

BROWN: General, it's good to have you with us. Stay with us for a bit.

Walt, let me try -- let me just see if you can do this. Can you pan or have your guys pan the camera at all? Are you pretty much locked down in that position?

RODGERS: Aaron, we could pan the camera, but I think it would be better not too. And the reason, of course, is that we have topographical features...

BROWN: Fine.

RODGERS: ... which would enable the Iraqis to perhaps bring in artillery, so it's not a good idea at this point.

BROWN: End of discussion. Thank you. That's a perfectly acceptable answer there.

General, again, David Grange who's with us this evening. The ability of the Americans now, this all-American Army forces here to take the airport or at least to very nearly take the airport, depending on the reporting that's going on right now. You see the significance of it both psychologically and in terms of strategy here, correct?

GRANGE: Correct. The psychologically impact would be, you know, here like in Chicago, O'Hare Airport, falling into the enemy hands. It just, it's an icon of any metropolitan area, its loss has an effect not only on the enemy, but also on the civilian populous. So psychologically, yes.

Strategically, can be used to launch throughout the country, especially on the entrapments of Baghdad itself and the units around it. A key piece of terrain, and I would think from just what's been reported that coalition forces, at least controlled by fire, the international airport, realizing there's a lot of clearing of structures that still has to be done, probably between the international airport and the city of Baghdad itself.

BROWN: Have we learned anything in the last 37 minutes or in the run-up to it that answers the question, how willing are the Iraqis to fight?

GRANGE: You know, some of this is -- you're kind of bewildered in a way. But what's happening, I think is, yes, there are some suicide-minded people that want to be martyrs.

But I believe a lot of these forces that are moving against the coalition, they don't have -- even though, I mean, they know they're being bombed, obviously, from the all the intensive air strikes and artillery fire and that from coalition forces.

But they're being told, attack up this road, the American or the British unit is weak at that point. You'll get through. They're probably being briefed erroneously of what the condition is on the battle field and they just drive into their death. And I think you're seeing a lot of that.

Plus, this was at nighttime, I believe, and of course at nighttime they have almost zero situation awareness.

BROWN: So, let me play that back here. That says something about leadership, but it doesn't necessarily answer the question, how willing are they to fight if they don't know what it is precisely they're facing, right?

GRANGE: Well, yes, I mean, they're being lied to by what few leaders are out there.

BROWN: One of the great, still, I guess, unanswered questions is, as the outcome becomes more certain, Nic -- and it is certainly getting to that point, if it was ever in doubt, I don't know if anyone thought to be in doubt, what the outcome would be. The question was always at what cost and how long?

Will the remaining soldiers in the Republican Guard and the special Republican Guard, will they stand and fight? Your thoughts?

ROBERTSON: I think a lot of that is going to depend what they hear from Iraqi officials today in the center of Baghdad, and that's still very much in question at this time.

How are they going to explain away what's happened right on the periphery of the city? It seems so far that they've been able to give a message that is at least encouraging enough to make Iraqis continue to fight. It seems that this could be a significant turning point. It's very, very difficult to gauge.

So far they've certainly been in the position of pushing their troops forward, making them stand and fight, or sit in foxholes and, as Walter Rodgers has described very poorly defended foxholes, to fight against impossible odds.

It seems improbable that the Iraqi leadership can come up with a positive answer for the Iraqi people over why the airport has fallen so swiftly, in just one night, when coalition forces, they'd said, were still back in the desert. It seems hard to imagine that they would rally the morale of the average conscript troop.

I remember seeing a lot of soldiers come running out of a base just north of Baghdad on their lunch break a few weeks ago, and most of them went running by, happy because they were off for their lunch. They didn't seem like the sort of soldiers who would throw themselves forward in the face of overwhelming odds. It would seem unlikely soldiers like that could be convinced to go into this sort of fight.

The Republican Guard, another question, really. It is, I imagine, down to command and control and very much down today to how inspiring Iraq's officials can be -- Aaron.

BROWN: We began the program, just all of you please stay with us. We began earlier in the program we heard the Iraqi information minister putting out the message of the day from their point of view.

The Iraqi point of view, which was, it's not true. The Americans are not at the gates of Baghdad. They are not closing in, none of that is true. That's what the Iraqis have been hearing in one way, shape, or form.

Just to give context to what Nic was saying, it's going to be a little bit harder to spin this one, if you will, for the Iraqi government. But then these -- from the Iraqi government's point of view, clearly this is the end game, as well.

And you're going to say what you can say, and if people believe it so much the better. And if they don't, you haven't lost anything by the fact you've said it. They probably aren't believing a whole lot of this at this point anyway.

Walt, one question and just let me warn you that over at the Pentagon, Jamie McIntyre is working on a story, and as soon as he's confident in it, I'm going to break into your narration and get to him.

But what are the last 12 hours or so been like for the 7th Cav?

RODGERS: The last 12 hours, Aaron, have been nearly continuous fighting. They have pushed ever closer to Baghdad, facing ambushes on both sides of the road. Seventh Cavalry is now just a few kilometers from the airport.

If I can describe the picture you're seeing, you see a tank in the near ground, a T-72 that was knocked out by one of the Apache troops' tanks. And then a little further up the road you see a burned-out armored personnel carrier. Just to the right of that armored personnel carrier, you see something lying in the road. That is a dead Iraqi soldier.

One thing I'd like to add to the discussion you've been having with Nic Robertson and General Grange is that as this fighting gets closer to Baghdad, it could very easily stiffen the resolve of the Iraqis.

One thing, the Cavalry and at least the Cavalry has to operate in these close-in Baghdad suburbs without the Kiowa helicopters. Because there are so many places the Iraqis can hide, if they can shoot down helicopters with shoulder fired surface-to-air missiles.

So again, it is not going to necessarily be a cakewalk. There has been resistance for the last 12 hours all the way up this road and every road we've taken, intermittent resistance. But the Iraqis did manage to send out a company of tanks.

And remember, the closer you get to a city, the more buildings there are, that's more cover for defenders and that will mean that more and more shots can easily be fired at the incoming Americans, be it the 3rd Infantry Division or be it the 7th Cavalry, with whom I'm embedded -- Aaron.

BROWN: OK. Walt, just stand by.

On the left there is tape from the airport, the area of the airport. I believe, that's tape. Somebody correct me if it's not. On the right you're seeing a live picture from Walt. And Walt Rodgers and his team embedded with the 7th Cav.

Jamie McIntyre, weigh in here for a second. Just underscore something you mentioned briefly close to the top of the hour, which is that there are indications that the -- even before the Americans take the city, they may attempt to create a new government.

What does that mean?

McINTYRE: Well, the Pentagon, the State Department, the White House has been working on a plan to quickly have a -- some kind of an interim government in place that would involve Iraqis. So that would not seem that the U.S. was administering Iraq.

And we don't actually know what that plan is, but tonight I was discussing that notion with a senior -- very senior defense official here at the Pentagon. And he indicated to me that we may begin to see as early as next week what he called an organizing event that would bring that into sharper focus.

And I said you mean here in Washington? And he said, no, he meant in Baghdad.

So from that, I take that what they're talking about here is, perhaps even before all the fighting is over -- because of course Iraq is a large country and there may be pockets of resistance many places -- they may attempt to essentially declare that they're in charge, put a new government in effect, even while might be members of regime still holed up in Baghdad. Perhaps even Saddam Hussein's whereabouts would remain unknown.

BROWN: That has -- I'm sorry, does that have any -- in terms of who's running the country at any given moment -- does that have anything than symbolic value? Because it seems clearly that for the moment, for the time being, whether that is a few weeks or a few months, that it is an American military governor of some sort or another that will make the critical decisions.

McINTYRE: Well, I guess that remains to be seen to what extent they can show that this is actually some sort of Iraqi government. Presumably, it would involve Iraqi expatriates, perhaps some of opposition groups that the United States has been working with.

I'm told, though, by the same official that this is still very much under discussion. There's a lot of very controversial aspects to it. There's even, also, some tension between the Pentagon and the State Department over the best way to proceed and some tension, also, between the United States and Great Britain over what is the best way to organize a post-war government in Iraq.

So there are a lot of diplomatic hurdles to be solved there. But the point is, I guess, that there are plans to move sooner, rather than later, to get something like that in place in order to, you know, give the impression to the Iraqi people that the regime is gone.

And as I said, this could happen while the regime is still, you know, technically at large or holed up in some part of the city.

Clearly, if the United States were, for instance, to take over the information ministry and begin having its own press conferences, that would set send a pretty strong signal to the Iraqi people about who's really in charge, even if all the regime members haven't been rounded up.

BROWN: Jamie, thank you. Jamie McIntyre at the Pentagon.

Just to again orient you, the right is a live picture, a few miles, give or take, outside of the airport in Baghdad. The left is taped of the Americans as they were maneuvering around the airport.

There is some fighting still around the airport. General Grange described it as they have probably secured. in some sense, the airport itself. But now there are all of those buildings and all those hangars and all those places where, General, where Iraqi soldiers could be hiding, where danger still lurks?

GRANGE: Absolutely, Aaron, it just take awhile to do clearing operations and to secure an area this large. Because you have to have depth on all sides of the air field to really control it or especially if you're going to use it.

So they're going to have to clear, you know, several kilometers at least on all sides, especially towards Baghdad, before this airfield can be used.

But it's still symbolic to the coalition effort that it is secured.

And if you get a chance, the comment that Jamie made earlier about this interim government is a very critical piece to the capitulation, I believe, of Baghdad itself.

BROWN: Because when the Iraqi people hear this, they will -- what?

GRANGE: Well, here's the idea, if you had a coalition governor designated, which I believe which will happen. But it's made known to the Iraqi people of Baghdad, that there's a council of advisers from different ethnic groups that advises temporary coalition governor and his forces, that are going to help improve, you know, bring in the humanitarian assistance and this transition to some sort of democratic governance, and it can be relayed properly through broadcasts.

It'll have an effect to turn the Iraqi people against a hard core remnants of the Republican Guard, the special Republican Guards, and other special forces and death squads within the city of Baghdad itself. Because you need that swell of populous support in the city for it to truly fall without assuming a lot of casualties on the coalition's side.

BROWN: Going to bring another voice into all of this, as we keep our eye on the pictures, retired Marine Colonel Gary Anderson. His -- Colonel Anderson's specialty was urban warfare. He was involved in what they call war gaming on the point.

Colonel Anderson, I'm not sure if you heard Walt Rodgers, but Walt was talking about in not the too distant future, the small helicopters that the Cavalry uses to do reconnaissance, that sort of thing becomes ineffective because of danger of the danger of mobile missiles, shoulder launched missiles.

That's just one of the hazards of the next phase of this, correct?

COL. GARY ANDERSON, U.S. MARINES (RET.): That's correct. This is a very dangerous environment for helicopters when they are using the fire support role. I think they obviously need to be very careful because of the -- not only the threat of manned portable weapons but just the mass firing of helicopters, something like was done in that movie "Black Hawk down."

There are a couple of adaptive things you can do, however. We do have a lot of these now, these Predator Hellfire missiles, or at least have some of them. You can maybe, perhaps, use that when you really have a fire support problem, and that way if you lose a robot, so to speak, you don't lose an air crew, which could be very important in this type of situation.

BROWN: Colonel, I don't want to get too far ahead of ourselves here. But clearly, there are a couple of ways you can go about taking the city. You could take it by storming the city or you could deal with it in a more patient way.

As these things were war gamed out, were both possibilities considered and practiced or rehearsed?

ANDERSON: I wasn't involved in the actual war gaming of this particular plan, or this particular issue...

BROWN: I understand that.

ANDERSON: Yes, but we have -- we have been thinking about this for a long time. And it's really a matter of both.

You probe -- we talked a little bit about probing earlier on in the program. And you see if you've got a soft spot, particularly around a place like the airport or a key node like the water treatment plant or TV station. And if it appears that you've got a straight shot to it, and then you can go to it and grab it and sort of expand outwards from that.

So there's a couple of ways to skim the cat. I'd recommend against just blandly charging into the city like the Russians did in Grozny and from what I've heard of Colonel -- or General Wallace's interviews before this, he's going to be in charge of this, he apparently appears to have thought that through pretty well.

BROWN: When this sort of thing comings to mind, urban warfare, we think of Grozny, this was the Russian battle in Chechnya, and to a certain extent, I guess, Mogadishu, lessons learned from both?

ANDERSON: The big lessons learned from a tactical standpoint, and this is a sergeant lieutenant's war, I think Jamie said it earlier, one of the other reporters on the scene.

This is very much a sergeant's war, and think you're going to see a cross attachment, that's the military term for, instead of using mass tanks, giving a couple of tanks to an infantry platoon or even a squad. Letting the squad protect them and letting them support the infantry as they go forward, keeping an eye on all the possible places where the other fellow could shoot at you, just like they've been doing on the road to Baghdad.

Keeping 360-degree security, and not bunching up. It's really important to try to keep the soldiers and Marines involved in this thing spread out, because when you get bunched up, that's when somebody can pop up with a machine gun and take out potentially a whole squad or the whole fire team.

BROWN: Colonel Anderson, I hope you can stay with us a little longer.

Let me bring in one more voice now, as you look at this live picture, this is just outside the airport. Not far from the airport in Baghdad.

Ken Pollack, have we answered the question about the Republican Guards' ability or willingness perhaps to fight to the last man?

KEN POLLACK, MILITARY ANALYST: Well, Aaron, I think what you're seeing in these photographs, these incredible photographs that you're getting from Walt Rodgers' crew, illustrates both the strength and the weakness of the Republican Guard. You're seeing it right there.

The Republican Guard are extremely, committed disciplined troops. They consider themselves professional soldiers, and we've seen it from them time and again. When called upon to execute missions, which they even know to be suicidal, they will do so, because that's what professional soldiers do.

The problem with the Republican Guard is, again, what you're seeing. They will make these kind of charges, they will fight to the death, but they are not very skillful. So this kind of a blundering charge into U.S. forces is kind of their hallmark.

What they're good at is sitting in prepared positions and blazing away or mounting this kind of a frontal charge. They're not very sophisticated soldiers.

And you look at that MTLB, that Russian MTLB, armored personnel carrier, on your screen. You see the T-72. They came blundering down that road. It indicates that the Republican Guard is still there, that's an important point to make. The whole Republican Guard wasn't destroyed in those first two days. A bunch of them were able to escape into Baghdad, and you could be seeing more of this over the next two days. The guard will fight.

Now there's another force out there, which we only started to talk about a little bit. That's the special Republican Guard, who are probably standing behind the Republican Guard.

And my guess is that those soldiers that Nic Robertson said he saw in Baghdad, the ones who are rushing off to lunch, those were probably special Republican Guards.

The special Republican Guards are not true professional soldiers. They are internal security forces. They are riot control police. They are a goon squad that Saddam uses to keep control of the population of Baghdad to guard his person and palaces.

They are deeply devoted to Saddam for a whole variety of reasons, but they are not professional soldiers. And we've got to expect them, also, to be willing to fight and fight to the death. But they won't even bring the same level of skills that the Republican Guard will bring to the fight.

BROWN: Ken, we've got about a minute, a little less here. Are you surprised at how quickly this -- they've been able to take the airport?

It certainly shows that the air power that was applied over the last four days or so was effective.

POLLACK: Yes, absolutely. Honesty, Aaron, I'm not terribly surprised. What seems to have happened was the Iraqis deployed their four -- four of their best Republican Guard divisions along that line from Karbala to Al Kut. They realized almost at the 11th hour that that was not a good defensive position. They tried to pull the units back into Baghdad. Most of them got mauled in doing so by U.S. air power and U.S. ground forces.

And as a result, when they were treated back to Baghdad in piecemeal fashion, they weren't able to mount a cohesive fighting withdrawal. And as a result, it was pretty easy for U.S. forces to push back into Baghdad and get right up to the city.

BROWN: Ken, thank you. Ken Pollack will stay with us.

Retired Marine Colonel Gary Anderson, an expert in urban warfare, which is clearly, barring total capitulation on behalf of the Iraqi regime, is the next phase in all of this. And so Colonel Anderson's expertise will come into play tonight.

While Rodgers is on the scene of that shot you are looking at, he's with the 7th Cav, and he will join us again.

We need to take a break. We'll update the day's headlines, and our coverage continues in a moment.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

(NEWSBREAK)

BROWN: Heidi, thank you, and we'll reorient those of you who are just joining us to the pictures we have available to us as American forces are now at the airport just outside of Baghdad, about 12 miles outside of Baghdad.

This is an important moment both from a tactical point of view, it gives access once this area is cleared out and when we talk about the area here we are not talking about simply the airport but areas around it to make it secure and safe and that will take some time, how much time we'll leave that to the experts who are with us tonight.

The obvious psychological advantage though we can pass along. It is going to be very difficult now for the Iraqi government to say that the American forces, and these are American forces who are there, are not at the gates of Baghdad. They are at the airport, an important point in any city.

General Grange a while ago said imagine the psychological effect of forward forces at O'Hare or JFK or Los Angeles International. That's something the Iraqi people, the Iraqi regime, and the Iraqi soldiers who are still in the fight will have to consider.

But these pictures are from the scene. They are not easy to watch in some respects. It is one thing to look at the two tanks smoking or blazing. It's another thing to see a dead man of whatever nationality on the side of the road, but that is also the nature of war.

Walt Rodgers can describe better here what it has been like to get to this point. He is just kilometers from the airport itself embedded with the 7th Cav -- Walt.

RODGERS: Hello, Aaron. The pictures we're showing you now are of a burned out T72 tank. If you look closely at the near vehicle you can see flames licking at the turret. It took a direct hit. There are four Iraqi soldiers dead inside that T72.

Beyond that, you can see smoke rising from a Soviet vintage BMP, an armored personnel carrier. Again, just to the right of that you see a figure lying in the road. That is a dead Iraqi soldier.

The sun is up now in Baghdad. It has been up for some time and there is a thick pall of smoke just clinging to everything. You can smell the burning and the destruction which the previous night has brought to the Iraqi capital.

Throughout the night there were constant flashes of light in the direction of southern Baghdad, those flashes of light coming from Air Force bombing raids, U.S. Navy bombing raids on the Iraqi capital. The pressure, as I say, was constant through the night. If you sat in the dark and watched it, there was an enormous display of explosions.

A few hours ago, the vehicles you see in front of me, the burned out Iraqi vehicles, were sent in a counterattack of sorts in the direction of the 7th Cavalry. At least ten tanks were sent in the direction. They were spotted through the night vision goggles of the 7th Cavalry soldiers and officers.

Immediately, fire was called in. The cavalry itself dispatched six or seven tanks. The Air Force close air support cover, which we can still hear overhead now, took out three more tanks. Three others perhaps got away. It's estimated that there are 350 to 400 dead Iraqis as a result of that counterattack. Some of them actually tried to counterattack with suicide vehicles, suicide busses, trucks, dump trucks.

One of the reasons the Iraqis fought so hard in this particular area is that's it's just a few kilometers from the Saddam Hussein Airport where we believe U.S. forces are in control.

A short while ago, this U.S. Army soldier gave us the estimation of the situation at the Saddam Hussein Airport at this hour.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: In Baghdad, this is the first step, possibly many more. Hopefully, this is a sign that we're able to (unintelligible) to Baghdad that we're here and they can wise up and deal with the regime appropriately and save some future battles inside the city.

(END VIDEO CLIP) RODGERS: Now, you're looking at continuing pictures of what was left, or what is left of an Iraqi tank counterattack which was sent towards the 7th Cavalry, a company of Iraqi tanks completely taken out. You can see smoke rising from the BMP, the armored personnel carrier. That pall of smoke can be multiplied several million times.

There is a choking cloud of black smoke so much so it looks like a thunderstorm is hanging over the city of Baghdad, but of course it's not a thunderstorm. It's the dirt and debris which was thrown into the air, the smoke, the choking acrid smoke of the fires in Baghdad from last night's continuous bombing by the U.S. Navy jets and the U.S. Air Force.

Again, the 7th Cavalry is just a few kilometers from the airport. It has met fairly consistent resistance, nothing that it couldn't handle, but there's been a fair amount of shooting off and on for the past 12 hours or so -- Aaron.

BROWN: Walt, stay with us. Don't go anywhere. I wonder if we have a shot of Baghdad that we can put up that will help fill in that little blank of Walt's description what the city looks like.

Nic Robertson, from the airport on a clear day, a normal day, could you see the center of the city?

ROBERTSON: You would certainly see some of the taller buildings. You would certainly see one of the presidential palaces which is just a couple of kilometers from the airport as you head back into the city. It would be on the left-hand side and you would see one of the tall telecommunication towers certainly, and a couple of the other taller buildings. You would not see the smaller buildings, but you would certainly know that you were very, very close to the city -- Aaron.

BROWN: And, would the residents of Baghdad know by, give us your best guess, would the residents of Baghdad know looking back out towards the airport that something has significantly changed in the last -- since the sun went down?

ROBERTSON: Talking to people in Baghdad overnight, they were telling me that there was already beginning to be a sense of panic. Some families had left their homes in the city and moved into an area in the center of the city, just a few families.

We also understood from the same source that out around the airport, Iraqi government officials have been touring the area, telling people to leave their homes and head towards the airport. Now, anything like this will spread like one says like wildfire throughout the city.

Word of mouth at a time like this is essential for information to be spread throughout the city, and from my experience of that city and talking to the people I've been talking to recently, word is very likely all around the city at this time. The coalition forces are at the airport. Something substantial has happened there, although as people sit in their homes in the city, they will not be able to see other than the smoke hanging over the city.

I was talking to somebody in Baghdad just about an hour and a half ago and he told me that they could hear from the center of the city quite a lot of detonations coming from around the airport, so people very aware, Aaron, that there will have been something going on there last night by now.

BROWN: And just repeat, because I may have misheard you, people are being told to head out to the airport or to get away from the airport?

ROBERTSON: What I was being told last night, Aaron, was that the checkpoints around the city were closed, that nobody could leave the city of Baghdad, but that in a residential neighborhood quite close to the international airport, Iraqi government officials were touring the neighborhood and telling people to leave their homes and go towards the airport.

That is the information we were getting overnight, contradictory as it may seem to common sense that is what we were being told last night. Again, with the light of day, one hopes we can get a much clearer picture of what actually transpired in those neighborhoods and which direction people actually chose to move in.

BROWN: Colonel Anderson, Colonel Gary Anderson who is an expert in urban combat, if you're the American commanders on the ground the last thing, I would assume, or one of the last things that you'd like to see is a wave of civilians, a wave of innocents heading out to the airport getting in your way.

ANDERSON: Well, that's absolutely correct. That's obviously a very troubling scenario. It's the kind of thing that we saw deliberately done to our forces in Mogadishu and if in fact the next wave of counterattacks is going to be proceeded by a wall of civilians, it's a very troubling development.

BROWN: We've mentioned Mogadishu a couple of times, colonel. Tell me if this makes any sense at all that the one difference here is that in Mogadishu the Americans were essentially trying to get out of the city as opposed to getting into the city.

ANDERSON: That's correct but the asymmetric tactic of using civilians as shields goes both ways whether or not you're trying to stop...

BROWN: Right.

ANDERSON: ...people from coming in or go out. It's a -- hopefully that -- things are seldom as bad or as good as they first seem. It's one thing to tell people to go do something. It's another for them to do it. So, I wouldn't make too much of it until we see something that indicates that this is actually taking place.

BROWN: Actually, when I was mentioning Mogadishu there, I was just speaking more broadly that we have talked a lot about, we've drawn comparisons between Grozny and the Russian assault there and Mogadishu and the American experience there and that they're just not precise parallels. There are some similarities. There are lessons to be learned in both but neither scenario is exactly the scenario that the Americans face as they try and get to Baghdad.

ANDERSON: Yes, I would -- it appears to me that this scenario comes a little bit closer to Grozny than -- let me put it -- comes closer to Mogadishu than Grozny. In Grozny, a lot of the fighters were previously trained Russian soldiers who were -- had about the same degree of experience as the conscripts that they sent into the city so it was a more evenly matched situation.

Here what we've heard tonight is just an appalling lack of professionalism and combat skill on the part of the Iraqis. It's virtually, so far been virtually a slaughter much like the real heavy fighting in Mogadishu.

BROWN: What options did the Iraqis have? If you're a colonel or a general in the Iraqi Army what were your choices at this point?

ANDERSON: Give up you fool.

BROWN: Yes.

ANDERSON: But that's probably not what they're going to do. I think, you know, if they're going to embed themselves into the civilian population they're a lot better -- they're a lot better off fighting in the rubble or from the buildings than they are charging out into the open. It reminds me somewhat disturbingly of the old Japanese human wave tactics in World War II.

BROWN: Ken Pollack, take a minute if you will here and talk again about these Republican Guard troops, their professionalism if you will, their willingness to fight, their experience, their training, that sort of thing.

POLLACK: Sure. Well, Aaron, the Republican Guards are the elite of Iraq's armed forces. You've got to remember that's a relative statement. They are the best in Iraq and they believe it. They are given the best training in Iraq. They are given the best weapons in Iraq. They are also given the most perks and privileges, and most importantly they consider themselves a cut apart, a breed apart.

And, as a result, what we've seen of them is they are willing to stand and fight and die and launch attacks in these kind of suicidal circumstances. But, you know, what you were seeing out there is how the Republican Guard fights. They are not skillful at all. They are terribly unsophisticated.

If this were a U.S. force trying to mount the kind of attack that they did tonight, they would have attacked in a very different fashion. The Iraqis don't have those kind of skills. And, another point that's probably worth making here is the Iraqis are really making this up as they go along. They have never defended a city like this before.

In the Iran-Iraq War, they did defend the city of Basra on several occasions, in particular in 1982 and 1987 against the Iranians and what they did there was to build these multiple lines of long berms around the city more along the lines of what they were trying to do over the last few days with that defensive position 40 to 50 miles outside of Baghdad. This is something new for them and it's clear that they don't really know what they're doing.

BROWN: Ken, stay with us. Colonel Anderson, stay with us as long as you can. Let me bring another voice and to a certain extent a different conversation as we keep track of this.

Dana Priest is a reporter for the "Washington Post" who covers intelligence matters. She did some reporting on the Jessica Lynch story, the rescue of Private Lynch, and perhaps more importantly can also talk with us tonight about how the military, and the Central Intelligence Agency specifically, have cooperated in all of this. So, Dana welcome to you.

DANA PRIEST, "WASHINGTON POST": Thank you, Aaron.

BROWN: I'm not sure how long you've been watching this and I'm not sure that any of this is related necessarily to the kind of work you've been doing but if it is feel free. Otherwise, let's talk a bit about how the CIA and the military side have worked together in the last two and a half weeks.

PRIEST: Well, I think it's directly related because if you are watching tanks roll into the airport the next question we're all asking is when are they going to the center of Baghdad?

And, that question gets answered by a combination of not only how the military does, which you've been covering today, but how the regime does and that is not the military part of the regime but the inner circle of Saddam Hussein's regime and the security apparatus that really keeps the population afraid to support any kind of invasion.

And, that's what intelligence officials and military officials have been looking at very closely and, as we've had our discussion about where is Saddam Hussein, we don't know if he's dead, what they've tried to lay out today is who's in control?

And one of the things that they've said is they don't know and because they don't know, they don't know how soon you could get significant members of the Ba'ath Party and the inner regime to collapse. And so, one could think, and I've heard Pentagon officials say this that you could get a lot of probing action after this airport takeover before they actually decide to go in.

General Myers said today that you need to be patient and he also said that the notion of the siege is not the right mental picture and, of course, that is the worst case scenario. They don't want to have a siege in Baghdad that they're involved in, so I think they'll be testing the waters with these sorts of probes after tonight to see when is the best time to move in.

BROWN: Dana, whether Saddam is alive or not, setting that aside does the intelligence community still believe that the regime essentially has control?

PRIEST: Yes, in Baghdad. Outside of Baghdad, not so much but inside of Baghdad they don't see the loosening of control. They see more confusion. They definitely see a diminution of communications in the ways that they are looking at things, traffic analysis, message analysis, picking up e-mails.

A lot of that has gone away but they do not see a peeling away of the control within Baghdad. They're not sure why and they're not sure who has control. They can only assume that it is still somebody very close to Saddam Hussein unless it is himself.

BROWN: And they still seem to be uncertain whether it is Saddam Hussein himself?

PRIEST: Well, you know, ask that about 3,000 times a day.

BROWN: I'm sure.

PRIEST: Their answer still is he's either dead or he's injured and if he's exercising control he's doing it very quietly, very carefully. As one intelligence CIA veteran said to me, he's gone to ground one way or the other and I think they really do believe that after all these days.

They still believe that the messages that we're seeing, the tape recorded meetings that he's having with people and the audio tapes were probably made before the March 20th raid, so they still do think that it's a good chance that he's either not with us or he's injured.

BROWN: And they have, the intelligence community continues to have operatives of some sort on the ground and must have informants of all sorts on the ground in the city itself?

PRIEST: Well, we believe they did as of a few days ago. Can't say for sure now but as you know in the last year they've undertaken with the president's authority and lots of money a very covert and active effort to de-fang the regime and to get people to defect. They've used exiles. They've brought them to different parts of the Middle East to help communicate with potential defectors. They've set up phone trees.

That is still very active in the hope that they still can avoid the worst, which would be to go into Baghdad. So, they are still working on that. I don't think they feel like they've made as much progress certainly as they would have liked to have made, but it's not something they've given up on.

BROWN: And just one or two other things before you have to leave us. Do you when you're talking to your sources these days, do you detect in them a change in tone? Do they feel like -- does it seem to them like we really are at the very beginning -- very close to the end game?

PRIEST: Well, I would say close to the beginning of the really tough part and everybody is sort of holding their breath for that and that is entry into Baghdad, because that is the highest stakes. We don't know yet whether he'll use chemical weapons, as has been predicted. This would be the moment.

So, the stakes are really high. It could go to the worst case or it could go quite well and that is why they're trying to listen very closely to figure out so they don't rush too quickly and get involved in the kind of house-to-house urban combat that they're really trying to avoid. So, there is the great anticipation now that this could begin to be the beginning of the end.

BROWN: Dana, thanks a lot. It wasn't necessarily the conversation we thought we were going to have exactly but it's the perfect conversation for the night. Dana Priest who writes about intelligence matters for the "Washington Post" with us this evening.

Now, back to the pictures on the screen and what we're about to try and do. We're able to feed some tape while Walt Rodgers talks about the tape. There may be in this process a glitch here and there. Just bear with it. Walt, it's yours.

RODGERS: Aaron, we heard your guest talking about what the people of Baghdad are seeing this morning. I can tell you through the vantage of television they're seeing precious little. Because of the smoke from last night's bombing, the visibility in the area of Baghdad is now less than a mile. That is how heavy a pall of black smoke lies all about us in the suburbs of Baghdad.

Otherwise, it's a perfect clear day. The sun is up. I can look up and see blue skies but on the horizon it looks like again a summer thunderstorm except it is not a cloud of anything except smoke as a result of last night's bombing.

The U.S. Army (unintelligible) 7th Cavalry has now pushed to within a few kilometers of the airport. We're going to pause for just a second to change a cable, to give you an idea of what the pictures look like when we crossed the Euphrates Rivers with the 7th Cavalry yesterday.

Those are pictures of the 7th Cavalry moving forward. You can see the machine guns (unintelligible) as well as the 20mm guns tilting out to the right side of the road. This is north of the Euphrates River and on the approach to Baghdad.

Again, there was a gauntlet which this tank and our convoy was running pretty much most of the time for at least two hours straight. That gauntlet was small arms fire machine guns coming along on both sides of the road the tanks with the answering fire. Again, these are pictures or tape we're playing for you.

You can get a feel of what that convoy was like moving northward, north of the Euphrates River. That's the Mesopotamian Delta there between the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers. Remember Baghdad was, again, on the Tigris. And out in those cornfields you can see fire and smoke I believe and those are the areas where the Iraqi irregulars would hide and then fire their rocket-propelled grenades and other weapons at the column as it moved north. Again, it was a near constant ambush for about two hours. The heaviest weapons they would use would be rocket-propelled grenades and 20mm antiaircraft guns fired horizontally at the small, light artillery vehicles.

BROWN: Walt, we're just...

RODGERS: There's another picture of the tank column. These pictures are being shot from the CNN vehicle which has come under consistent fire and remarkably escaped any damage -- Aaron.

BROWN: We're just watching your pictures, Walt, as they come in. This was on the road toward the position Walt and his, the group he's embedded with, the 7th Cav, where they are now which is just a few kilometers from the airport itself. The airport itself, the airport proper appears to be under some measure of control. That seems a fair way to put it, some measure of control of the Americans.

There is still sporadic fighting going on, some a bit more than sporadic and there's a lot of work to be done by the Americans around it, a lot of buildings in an airport. This is a relatively modern airport. It's 12 miles outside of the city, lots of buildings, hangars, lots of places where people could hide, lots of places where danger lurks.

And then in the area around the airport, for several miles around the airport, all of that has to be secured before the airport could be safely used. There are in the world today hundreds, thousands of shoulder-launched rockets that could bring down a helicopter, could bring down a plane if it hit it right. They're not the most accurate things in the world but if they hit their mark they can do a lot of damage. All of that possibility has to be cleared out.

Walt's group, the 7th Cav, we followed literally since they crossed the border in the dusty desert and now moving down what looks almost to be a super highway that heads into the city or toward the airport at least in Baghdad -- Walt.

RODGERS: The pictures you're seeing are about 16 hours old. They were taken after the 7th Cavalry, along with the 3rd Infantry Division, crossed the Euphrates River not very far south of Baghdad and then the 3rd Infantry Division went one route, 7th Cavalry went another.

Again, the function of the 7th Cavalry is to stand off on the 3rd Infantry Division's flank to make sure there hasn't been a counterattack or that if there was a counterattack that it could be stopped in case the Iraqis try to move against the 3rd Division's flank.

This gives you a pretty good picture of what the 7th Cavalry passed through yesterday. There's a Bradley fighting vehicle. Now these vehicles have 25mm guns and there were times yesterday when they were shooting almost constantly off into the fields on either side. Again, some of these vehicles came under -- virtually all of these vehicles came under considerable fire. Again, the pictures you're seeing now are 16 hours old but you can generally tell by the condition of what you're seeing about you that the 7th Cavalry even before night last night had pushed very close to the suburbs of Baghdad, and if the Iraqis have any doubts at all about how close the U.S. Army is, they have only to see these pictures which I say are 16 hours old.

So, again, there was fire. There were ambushes along the road. No U.S. casualties at least in the 7th Cavalry that we're aware of. The people of Baghdad as they awaken this morning are awakening to choking clouds of thick acrid smoke blackening the horizon, limiting vision at least horizontally to less than a mile at this point, this because the Air Force delivered a terrible pounding.

There's another picture there. We're trying to show you some of the positions. This will give you a feel of the desert just south of Baghdad. As you look, you can see the Bradley fighting vehicles having to gnash their way across berms and the iron road markings along the way.

Again, throughout these pictures are intermittently, sporadically, the big 120mm guns on the Bradley tanks would be shooting, shooting as they roll. Interestingly, the accuracy of the tank's gun, the main gun, is supposed to increase as that tank goes faster. They were traveling at times 25 or 30 miles an hour -- Aaron.

BROWN: Walt, thank you, just keep feeding tape. Again, Walt is -- we figured out a way to essentially feed this tape while we talk and we may get a glitch or two along the way.

General David Grange is back with us. General, this kind of nuisance, if that's the right word, ambushes that Walt's talking about not a very serious threat to these, to these tanks and these Bradley fighting vehicles, correct?

GEN. DAVID GRANGE, CNN MILITARY ANALYST: Not a serious threat but they could inflict damage. You could injure a tank commander outside the turret as an example. You could cause damage to vision block sights, depending on where rounds hit. So there is a little bit of danger, but from the type of weaponry that Walter is talking about, not a lot of damage.

BROWN: Just tell me what you -- vision what?

GRANGE: Well, some of the sighting systems and visual systems in the tank itself, in the Bradley Fighting Vehicle, certain small caliber rounds, some of the stuff that Rodgers is talking about, could degrade capability on those systems in a tank or a Bradley Fighting Vehicle, and it could -- and a lucky round could hit a tank commander or a Bradley commander out of the turret.

So it's not safe, but it's not overwhelming danger with the type of weapons they're firing.

BROWN: Ken Pollack, back to something that Dana Priest (ph) was talking about. If not -- I mean, you've studied not just the military side of this but the political side of this government. If not Saddam, who is running the show?

POLLACK: It's a great question, Aaron.

I'll be honest with you. If Saddam Hussein is dead, in some ways that is more frightening to me than if he is alive, because we've always believed, and I'll say we've always hoped, that if Saddam did die, that this regime would start to come apart at the seams, that the differences among Saddam's top henchmen would immediately surface, it would be hard to keep the place together.

So if he died 14 or 15 days ago and someone has stepped in and held this government together, it demonstrates a degree of resiliency that I don't think that any of us really expected, certainly that no one hoped for.

There are at least two figures out there who might be able to do that. The first is his younger son Qusay, who is the head of the special security organization. He is basically Saddam's internal security czar and the chief of the Baghdad defensive region. There is some reason to believe that Qusay would be able to step into Saddam's shoes.

But it's also rumored that Qusay was in that bunker with Saddam and there are rumors that he may have been killed in that attack.

The other person who is out there who has a realistic chance of doing it is the person who is usually described as Saddam's personal secretary, a man by the name of Abid Hamid Hamoud (ph). Personal secretary really does not do justice to the man.

If Qusay is Saddam's right hand, Abid (ph) is Saddam's left. He is the gatekeeper. He is in charge of running all of the day to day affairs of the Iraqi government. He is also a tremendously powerful and ruthless figure, and those are really the only two who it would be easy to see stepping in to Saddam's shoes and saying to the rest of them, all right, the old man is dead, but we either hang together or we hang apart. And, you know, by God, you guys better rally around me.

If they're able to do that, though, as I said, that demonstrates a degree of resilience in this regime that I think certainly no one hoped to see.

BROWN: Ken, stand down for a second. Walt, just tell us what we're seeing here.

RODGERS: (UNINTELLIGIBLE) 7th Calvary. Again, that's -- what you're seeing (UNINTELLIGIBLE) is an antiaircraft division (UNINTELLIGIBLE) antiaircraft gun which was hit by the oncoming tank you see just to the right there. That, by the way, is Captain Cory Miles' (ph) tank. He is the commander of the Apache troop.

They fired at this antiaircraft installation which was placed along the way there, and you can see the smoke coming up. There is constant burning, and we were detained probably 15 or 20 minutes (AUDIO GAP) fire to calm down (AUDIO GAP) and it was a big of a dodgy situation there, because you can see how close we were to the tank (AUDIO GAP) who had, there's a blast off to the right (AUDIO GAP) some of the indications of the fire about us.

But as those shells were going off, we had no protection at all. We couldn't move forward before being shot by the exploding ammunition at that small antiaircraft battery. And yet at the same time, my cameraman, Sterling Miller (ph) and I, were sitting on the right side of the car and the Iraqis were firing AK47's at us. We could see the sparks of the bullets in the dust there.

Again, I'm not sure what the pictures are showing you, but the burning you saw was in point of fact something of a -- it was a 20-mm antiaircraft installation the Iraqis had setup beside the road, and that installation was trying to stop the advance of a convoy. It was taken out quickly, but it did slow our portion of the convoy, the reason being that the planes were setting off all sorts of ammunition about us. We couldn't go forward without being hit by the burning ammunition and to our back and rear we were being fired upon.

That was probably the CNN crew's dodgiest moment yesterday.

BROWN: Walt, stay nearby.

Nic Robertson, who knows the area best of all here, for having lived there now for a while, had lived there for a while.

Nic, you've been watching some of this play out, I know, from where you are, near the Jordan-Iraqi border.

ROBERTSON: Indeed, being able to watch it play out, very interesting to watch Walter drive through and past those defenses close to Baghdad. Very interesting, because just a week before the war I was able to drive out in that direction.

I think, as I was saying earlier, what I find interesting this time is the defensive positions that I had seen south of Baghdad were not substantial, exactly as Walter has described them now, but there were no -- there were no defensive positions north of that, if you will, and now that Walter and the 7th Calvary and other units have arrived very close and in fact at Saddam International Airport they appear to very much have come through those defenses.

From my knowledge of the city just before the war -- and of course I don't know what defenses may have been put in place between the airport and the city of Baghdad since the war began -- but from my knowledge before, no extensive defensive positions had been dug in between the airport and the center of Baghdad.

It would seem to suggest that there is very little in terms of fixed positions between this position at the airport now, where Walter is, and the center of Baghdad at this time. Very little between the coalition forces and essentially the center of the city -- Aaron.

BROWN: Nic -- Nic, thank you. We're going to get back -- we're going to move cables around here and get Walt back, live picture, I believe. And there may be a little glitch when that happens, but just bear with us while we do that. That's the glitch.

And, Walt -- that's the live picture. We can see it again.

Just take a minute, if you will, and recap for those people who are coming in now at 8:30 on the East Coast, where you are and what the last couple of hours have been for the 7th Cav., just in a minute or so.

RODGERS: Hello, Aaron.

We're a few kilometers from the Baghdad International Airport. The pictures you're looking at are of a burned out Iraqi T72 (ph) tank. Behind that, you can see smoke rising from an armored personnel carrier. Just to the right of the armored personnel carrier, you can see a dead Iraqi soldier in the road.

Over the course of the past several hours, that Iraqi armored company tried to push its way through the 7th Calvary. At least 10 Iraqi tanks were destroyed in combination with the Air Force and the 7th Calvary.

The 7th Calvary continues to stand, hold its line. No casualties, at least among the Apache troop that I am with.

At this point, the Iraqi counterattack has been stopped. And at this point, early morning in Baghdad, there is a thick plume (ph) of smoke over the city, very choking, limiting visibility to about a mile. The reason for that being the Air Force's and the Navy's heavy bombing of Baghdad last night -- Aaron.

BROWN: All right, Walt, stay with us.

General Grange, does it -- what does it tell you, that -- listening to Nic Robertson's description, that there wasn't a lot of defense setup by the Iraqis. From a military guy's point of view, what is that telling you?

GRANGE: Well, I think they had, earlier, when you get down by, for instance, Kabala and Najaf, all the way around Hillah and Al Kut, an outer defensive, a covered force, you may say in military talk, or an outer defensive ring. And then it kind of came back in, it appears, with small remnants to conduct the lay-in operations, which they failed at, on coalition forces, all the way back in, a little bit closer to Baghdad.

But I think that a lot of the forces were destroyed by air strikes, Apache helicopters, and then of course some by these ground elements. And either the other defensive positions, or hasty defensive positions it appears, because they don't look like they're very well prepared, pulled back into Baghdad or moved laterally around east and west, up to the north of Baghdad. It's hard to say.

But it doesn't look like much resistance in this part of the area.

BROWN: All right, General, thank you. Stay with us now for a while.

All of this is important because we are -- this picture you are looking at is just a few miles, less, from the airport itself, from Saddam International Airport. I don't know if we still have a picture, live or taped, but the Americans moved to the airport today.

We saw pictures that suggested some element of control. Jamie McIntyre at the Pentagon described the Pentagon's view of this as -- these are taped pictures from the airport itself -- as kind of mushy, whether they had absolutely control of it. But clearly that operation is not done. There is more to be done there, even if they had secured the airport itself, there would still be the buildings around the airport, the area around the airport, all of that, some distance around that, still needs to be secured. It still represents a danger to the American forces.

They have done this without bombing the runways at the airport, so when they get control of the area around it, that airport will be, in theory at least, they can use it. They can bring in supplies. They can bring in reinforcements. They can bring in aid. They can bring in anything they want. They have not damaged the runways to the airport to our knowledge.

Walt is just a bit behind that in the shot that you see now.

Let me bring in a few more voices, though, clearly unplanned in all of this. We have at this time of the night gathered around us people from different parts of the country to get a feel for how the country is reacting both to the day to day of this, and there is some mood shifting day to day in all of this, and also to the broader issues that the war clearly has generated.

And I'm not sure in what order we've got you all. Deborah Saunders is with the "San Francisco Chronicle." Deborah describes herself as a conservative writer in a liberal city. Neal Karlen, down at the bottom, that's an easy one. He's an author and freelance writer in the Twin Cities of Minneapolis and St. Paul. And Bobbie Jo Buel, and I hope, Bobbie Jo, I pronounced that right, at the "Arizona Daily Star."

Deborah, let me start with you and, quickly, we'll ask all of you the same thing here. You've all been sitting here watching this. This is what -- this is the living room war, isn't it?

DEBORAH SAUNDERS, "SAN FRANCISCO CHRONICLE": It certainly is, and I think it's made a lot of people who have been watching this war become very quiet.

It's not -- it's not something that you're reading about in the newspapers. It's not an issue you can haggle over. It's something you can actually watch. You can see the courage. You can see some of the atrocities and I think it's made people very quiet.

You know, at the "Chronicle," we had 850 letters to the editor on Monday. We had 800 letters Monday. We had 150 Tuesday.

People are riveted and speechless, I think.

BROWN: Are they -- in San Francisco -- San Francisco is, as you described it, this liberal town. It's had a vibrant anti-war movement going on. Has there been -- is in any sense the anti-war movement from your perspective been deflated through all of this?

SAUNDERS: Hugely. I mean, there was a time when there were -- there was a weekend when we had about 2,000 arrests. Yesterday I think there were about 250 protesters. This morning, I went to Market and Powell, where a lot of protesters are. There were just a handful of them.

People are pretty quiet here. I think that it has to do in part with the war. It also has to do with the fact that a lot of San Franciscans are very angry at the tenor of the demonstrators. I mean, signs like "We Support Our Troops When They Shoot Their Officers," I don't think that really works with a lot of people.

And then of course there was the fact that demonstrators were going after the most liberal city in the country, costing the city about $900,000 a day, stopping people, many of whom were anti-war, from getting to work, from taking public transit, getting into their offices.

So definitely, the steam seems to have run out.

BROWN: Bobbie Jo, your area perhaps more divided, I think, than some people might think. Been riveted by moments like this, though?

BOBBIE JO BUEL, "ARIZONA DAILY STAR": I think very much.

Here in Tucson, which is the most liberal part of the state but also has a very large military presence -- we have an air force base right here in the city and an army fort to the south of us, a lot of military retirees still very much in favor of the war, although in the early days most of the public presence in Tucson were peace protesters.

But that has certainly changed. Last weekend, for example, the largest protest of the weekend was a pro-troop rally with about 3,000 people.

BROWN: Do you think that -- I mean, given the shot that we are all looking at right now, and the shot that we have been looking at for about an hour and 45 minutes, has the reality of war, the horror of war -- forget whether you support it or oppose it, whether you thought it was the right thing or the wrong thing, do you think that that's come home?

BUEL: Oh, I do.

In my office, for example, I, last week, finally turned off the TV. I had had it on all the time. And the images are so powerful that you can just sit there sort of glued to it, hardly believing that what you're seeing is something like a war in real-time. It becomes just overwhelming. And in that sense, I think newspapers are a little different. We obviously don't have as many images, a lot more words. But I find myself that I can't just sit there and watch it as much as I did in the early days.

BROWN: Neal, I read in the pre-interview that you had turned your TV off or put it away a long time ago. Tell me the truth, have you not caught a glimpse of any of this over the last couple of weeks?

NEAL KARLEN, FREELANCE JOURNALIST: I caught about two minutes when I was in a restaurant a couple of days ago, but that's what totally blew me away about that was, that was truly the first scenes I'd seen. It was a mistake, sort of.

I didn't plan on not watching it on TV. I had pulled my TV out to finish a book, and after a couple of days I though, well, let me see if I can kind of do it like World War II, where I just listen to the radio fulltime, which is what I've been doing, and read a couple of magazines. All that's missing is sort of Ed Herlicke (ph), you know, with the "March of Time," and that actually blew me away. It sort of took my breath away.

When you listen to the radio, and I've been going from -- you're from here. We've got -- you know the range of stations, from Patriot Radio, what they're calling Red Diaper Doper Babies who should be arrested for sabotage, and then you turn to BBC Radio, where they're, you know, talking about the missile strikes and (UNINTELLIGIBLE) of the Iraqi defenses. And it all just feels like propaganda after a while, every single station.

But when you see those images, in some ways that was the first time the war really came home to me, when in fact I thought I was getting away from the propaganda by just listening to the radio, watching nothing, and just reading a couple of papers, like they did. And I thought, wow, this is really like World War II, the Blue Stars are going up again, you know, the Blue Star families.

But just seeing that has sort of changed everything for me.

BROWN: So as you've watched tonight for however long you've been sitting there in Minneapolis, do you in any sense feel like you've missed an important experience? And I mean that literally. That there's something about having watched this, for better or for ill, play out, that is an important marker in life?

KARLEN: I don't, really, because I still don't think we're going to know what this means, in the same way we didn't know what World War II means, and people are still writing hundreds of volumes half-a- century later. We don't know what those isolated shots really do mean. I mean, this will -- you know, there will be 10,000 Ph.D. theses written on this.

But it brought home to me, whoa, this is what a dead Iraqi soldier looks like. But I don't know what it means. I think that fall out will take a long time. It just -- that's what war means. When I think of World War II and D-Day, I know from "The Longest Day" and John Wayne, I wonder what cameras filming live would make of that. Would we think the Germans won or we won, you know.

I know in World War II the Germans showed their own people what they said was Normandy and it was actually other battles. Is that going on now? We won't know for a long time, but just the images of warfare, I think, will live for a long time.

BROWN: Deborah, is -- you're in the media. You're in the newspaper business. You're in the media. Do you think that this will have changed media at all?

SAUNDERS: You know, being a conservative columnist in the newspaper business and in San Francisco, of all places, you -- thinks sort of work a certain way when a story comes out.

Elian, Florida, the impeachment thing. There would be a time when I'd walk through the newsroom and people would just sort of come to me and yell at me about what they don't like, and I had to give the standard line. I'd say to them, you know, I'm sorry I'm the only Republican you know, but if you want to talk to me about my column, I'll talk to you. I can't speak for everybody else. Make a new friend and talk to them.

This is so different. I walk through the newsroom now, people are quiet. They'll tell me they're apprehensive. They're worried about our troops. They're worried about the future. They are speechless.

And so I think this is one of those times where it's so profound. It's not a fun partisan fight. It's a profound change. And I do think that people are very introspective right now.

Whether it will change the business, I don't know. I can just tell you, it feels so much different than anything I've experienced in the last 10 years.

BROWN: Bobbie Jo, I'll give you the last word here. From your perspective, in Tucson, do you feel like this has changed the way all of us in some respects see media, see government, see war, see our petty little political fights, all of that?

BUEL: I think especially what you just said, the last part, about our petty little political fights.

This isn't some abstract anymore, just a debate about your feelings, pro or con, with the war. You can sit there and watch it live, and that has to effect everybody in a much more personal, direct way, and I think makes you reconsider some of the petty things.

BROWN: Bobbie Jo, thank you. Deborah, Neal, thank you all. You were quite patient, waiting, and we appreciate that. Thanks a lot.

We will -- for those of you who may just be joining us, we'll update you on where we've been so far.

Oddly, we haven't moved at all, and we've been a lot of places.

We'll take a short break first.

Our coverage continues.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BROWN: The picture you are looking at is just a few kilometers outside the airport, in Baghdad. A live picture.

A senior army official has told Reuters, the news agency, quote, "we now control the airport." We'll get into more detail on what that means.

We've been with this now for almost two hours, and I want to set it aside, if we can set it aside for a bit, because there are a number of other things that happened today that also fit into the larger picture of what's to come.

And what's to come may not -- is not simply one tank sitting on the side of the road.

For example, today in one of the holiest places to Shiite Muslims, elements of the 101st found themselves in a jam, if you will, there are other ways and other words, perhaps. In the end, history books may record that they got out of that jam with the help of some quick diplomacy and a commanders order to smile.

This is reported by CNN's Ryan Chilcote.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

RYAN CHILCOTE, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): A tip leads the Bastogne (ph) Brigade's No Slack Battalion to this parking lot in Najaf where the Fedayeen are said to have stashed weapons.

The search turns up nothing. The only resistance comes from a Volvo.

The Shia population seems curious and friendly, but they don't get too close. This man agrees to be interviewed as long as his face isn't shown. The Iraqi government, he says, has satellite TV.

"Anybody could be an informer and punish us for talking to you, even my family," he tells me in Arabic.

The troops also keep their distance.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Yes, it's very uneasy out here. Don't know who's who.

CHILCOTE: Sergeant Rod Sutton (ph), from Indiana, on the corner of a street leading to the highly sensitive Imam Ali Shrine, one of the holiest sites in the world for Shia Muslims. (on camera): Does it make you nervous that you're like so close to the Ali mosque? Do you feel like you're tramping on...

SGT. ROD SUTTON (ph), BASTOGNE (PH) BRIGADE: Holy ground?

CHILCOTE: Yes.

SUTTON: To some extent, I feel fortunate that I'm here, because this is something I never would have seen before. And now that I see it I kind of understand some of the history behind it.

So, it makes me more appreciative of it. To the same extent, I don't want to be invasive with these people here. I don't want to trample on their holy ground, and I want to respect that as much as I can.

CHILCOTE (voice-over): Word comes from the Grand Ayatollah Sistani that he's willing to meet the American commander, but he asks first for soldiers to secure his compound, located halfway down the road to the mosque. But no one explains that to the crowd.

(on camera): There is no more striking example of the sensitivities that the U.S. soldiers face here than what is taking place on the streets right up from the Ali Mosque right now.

(voice-over): Chaos as the crowd apparently believes the soldiers want to approach the shrine.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: They don't want you to let inside the holy Shrine of Imam Ali.

CHILCOTE: Clerics appear with a message from the grand Ayatollah, but the message is drowned out. The colonel instructs his men to stay calm.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: They got to understand, he wants us here. Smile, relax.

CHILCOTE: His soldiers take a knee, their weapons brought down from the ready position. They do everything soldiers can to appear less hostile.

But the potential for confrontation remains. The commander makes the decision.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Turn around, just turn around and go.

CHILCOTE: He orders his men back to their compound to await cooler heads.

Ryan Chilcote, CNN with the 101st Airborne in Najaf, Iraq.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

BROWN: General David Grange, we talked about winning the war, and we talked about winning the peace, and there's an example of how difficult winning the peace might turn out to be. A small moment that told a lot.

GRANGE: Very much so. I mean, this reminds me of Bosnia. It reminds me of the discipline when you had situations like this.

Three key things, Aaron, comes out of this clip. One is the discipline of the individual soldier. Two is the leadership of -- from the battalion commander down to the other officers and the squad leaders, the sergeants on the ground, maintaining their cool and understanding the situation. And the last item is understanding the operational environment, the culture that you have been placed in as a combat force, and yet respecting that culture and adapting to what you find in that particular situation, and resolving it.

And that was a perfect example of those three criteria for a modern day army in this world.

BROWN: We've just got about 40 seconds here, but it's hard not to be impressed with the -- whether he was an officer or a noncommissioned officer, I didn't really notice, the way he walked around his troops and said smile, put your guns down. He's reading the situation, he understands the risks of the situation, to a degree, to his men, but more so to the civilians, and he makes judgments and decisions, and it was pretty impressive.

GRANGE: Yes, that was the battalion commander, a lieutenant colonel, you know, probably about 40 years old.

BROWN: So no kid was he, and he handled himself pretty well.

General, you'll be with us for a bit, I think. We're glad to have you with us.

We need to take a break. We'll update the headlines. Daryn Kagan will take care of that and our coverage will continue in just a moment.

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