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CNN Newsnight Aaron Brown
War in Iraq: Day 20
Aired April 07, 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: Well, good evening again, everyone. Oddly, it seems we are back to the very first day of the war 20 days ago, when it all started with an attack on what was believed to be a leadership target, perhaps where Saddam Hussein, perhaps where his sons were. It's exactly where we are tonight. And so we begin quickly at the Pentagon and our senior Pentagon correspondent, Jamie McIntyre -- Jamie.
JAMIE MCINTYRE, CNN SR. PENTAGON CORRESPONDENT: Well, Aaron, it appears that the United States has made another attempt to kill Saddam Hussein and his sons and other top Iraqi leaders. Although at this hour it's not clear if they succeeded or if they were actually at the place that was targeted.
Here's what we know. The United States earlier today had intelligence that top Iraqi leadership, possibly including Saddam Hussein and his sons, were in a building in a residential section of Baghdad. Based on that intelligence, which we're told included human intelligence, that is, someone on the ground, they ordered a substantial air strike against this building, and I'm told a large amount of ordnance was dropped on it.
It was essentially taken out. The building was destroyed; presumably the people inside were killed. What they don't know now is exactly precisely who was inside.
It was an attempt to eliminate the senior Iraqi leadership. The belief is, the hope from the U.S. point of view is that Saddam Hussein and his sons were still there when the bombs hit. At this point, it'll just take some time to try to figure out through regular intelligence channels whether or not the bombs had their intended effect.
One other thing I should note is that earlier today there was a report of significant bomb damage in a residential area of Baghdad known as the Al Mansoor (ph) area. We don't know, but it's possible that this strike was actually in that neighborhood and may have accounted for that damage -- Aaron.
BROWN: Which leads to the question, do we know how long ago this strike was? It may have been many hours ago.
MCINTYRE: It probably was many hours ago, because I believe that it was -- it took place and there was daylight since the time it took place, because we've seen pictures of the neighborhood that was bombed there in the daylight. BROWN: Now there's some fairly wild reporting going on about this. So let's come back to the center. Pentagon officials do not now know if it was successful, correct?
MCINTYRE: Well they know it was successful in that they took out the intended target. What they don't know is precisely who was there and how successful that might have been in the attempt to wipe out the Iraqi leadership. The way it was phrased to me was that there was senior Iraqi leadership believed to be gathered in this building, perhaps including Saddam Hussein and his sons. And it was based on that that the building was taken out with a massive burst of air power.
BROWN: When they talk about senior Iraqi leadership, how many people do they talk about in the senior Iraqi leadership?
MCINTYRE: Well, I don't have a roster, but it's more than a handful. I mean, it's probably, you know, a 12 to maybe two dozen. But of course the ones that really count are the ones at the very top, and those are Saddam Hussein, his two sons. You know people like Tariq Aziz, the foreign minister, you know, that sort of thing. Those would qualify as senior Iraqi leaders. But again, the belief was that Saddam Hussein and his sons might have been among those senior Iraqi leaders and that's why the strike was ordered.
BROWN: Got it. Jamie, thank you. Jamie McIntyre, our senior Pentagon correspondent.
On the phone is our national security correspondent, David Ensor, who's been talking to his sources -- David.
DAVID ENSOR, CNN NATIONAL SECURITY CORRESPONDENT: Yes, Aaron. U.S. officials are saying -- really, I can't add very much to what Jamie just reported. But apparently they received some intelligence in the morning Iraqi time that suggested that later that day, in a particular timeframe, there might be a number of senior leadership, Iraqi leadership at this particular site.
So -- and the intelligence suggested that it might even include Saddam Hussein and one or more of his sons. So that was why the bombing was ordered up. And as Jamie said, they do not know now whether they hit anyone from the Saddam Hussein family or not, but that was certainly the goal.
BROWN: When you talk about morning, you're talking about Monday morning Iraq time?
ENSOR: That's right.
BROWN: OK. It's Tuesday morning there now. OK. David, thank you. And I know you'll keep working the phone. David Ensor, our national security correspondent.
So that is clearly the lead tonight. That's what's in play. An attack on what intelligence officials hope is where Saddam Hussein, his family, senior leadership was in a neighborhood in Baghdad. This will clearly take a fair amount of time to sort out.
It is just one of the things that happened today. A good many other things happened as well. Some may prove out to be really significant. Others may drift away as they often do in the fog of war. But here's a quick look at how the day went.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
BROWN (voice-over): The battle for Baghdad entered its fourth day with some American Army units staying in the city overnight, not pulling back to their base at the city's airport.
GEN. RICHARD MYERS, CHAIRMAN, JOINT CHIEFS OF STAFF: We've secured most of the major roads into and out of Baghdad. We visited two of Saddam's presidential palaces. Republican Guard divisions have only been able to conduct sporadic attacks on our forces.
BROWN: Some of the day's most tantalizing news came from the south of Baghdad, where these soldiers with the 101st Airborne reported finding a huge cache of chemicals. Could they be used for weapons? That's unclear. These barrels may just be pesticides. And the illnesses reported by some GIs examining them may have been heat exhaustion, not fumes from the chemicals.
One thing did seem certain: the death of the Iraqi General Hassan al Majeed, known as "Chemical Ali" for ordering a chemical weapons attack on the Kurds 15 years ago. He was killed, it is now believed, in an American air strike.
DONALD RUMSFELD, SECRETARY OF DEFENSE: We believe that the reign of terror of Chemical Ali has come to an end. To Iraqis who have suffered at his hand, particularly in the last few weeks in that southern part of the country, he will never again terrorize you or your families.
BROWN: Inside Baghdad, Iraqi resistance seemed intense at times, though scattered. An Arab television network took these pictures of an Iraqi defensive position inside the city. But again, as he had over the weekend, Iraq's information minister seemed to stand logic on its head, talking about the battles.
MOHAMMED SAEED AL-SAHAF, IRAQI INFORMATION MINISTER: They pushed a few of their armored carriers and some tanks with their soldiers. We besieged them and we killed most of them, and I think we will finish them soon.
BROWN: American artillery barrages just after nightfall were sustained, even as soldiers from the Army's 3rd Infantry Division got a close-up look at one of Saddam Hussein's many palaces. Some of those soldiers were on hand, too, when a statue of Saddam astride a horse was blown up. Ron Martz is with the "Atlanta Journal- Constitution."
RON MARTZ, "ATLANTA JOURNAL-CONSTITUTION": Hang on just a second. It sounds like -- I don't know if you can hear that, but that was the end of Saddam's statue. They hit it right in the horse's legs and it toppled over. Troops here are cheering. That was a tank round that hit it, some machine gun fire, and the statue was gone.
BROWN: On the eastern edges of the Iraqi capital American Marines built a temporary span to replaced a bombed-out bridge.
MARTIN SAVIDGE, CNN ANCHOR: Yes, I would say the (UNINTELLIGIBLE) force just from this vantage point was pretty...
BROWN: And along with CNN's Martin Savidge, we watched as Marine engineers deliberately destroyed what was left of the old bridge. There were pictures from the Syrian border, where you could see the evidence of attacks, not clear from whom, on a convoy carrying Russian diplomats out of the city of Baghdad and out of the country. And in the north bombs continued to fall on the Iraqi city of Mosul, a city where the Americans and their Kurdish allies have yet to enter.
Some of the day's biggest gains were far to the south. In Basra, British Marines followed their Challenger tanks inside another of Saddam's palaces. British units patrolled the streets of the city, and after two long weeks it seemed that, for the moment at least, the coalition has the upper hand there.
Parts of the city's Sheraton hotel were ablaze, and there was widespread evidence of looting. These people carrying just about anything they could manage. But British patience before entering Basra seemed to have paid off. No shots fired at the British today. And no shots from them either, according to the military.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
BROWN: That's the big picture of the day. Lots of little pictures now to weave through it all. Tonight some gunfire in Baghdad. It's clearly not a safe place, and don't think it is.
Lisa Rose Weaver is there. She's embedded with the Army's 5th Corps at the airport. Lisa, what are you reporting?
LISA ROSE WEAVER, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Aaron, actually, I'm embedded with air defense at the airport. In the last few hours -- it's quieted down just now, but in the last few hours very much intensified fighting. About roughly eight kilometers near the airport military sources here telling me that we were hearing Iraqi incoming rounds -- or rather the Iraqi response.
The ground vibrated. There were bright flashes on the horizon. Also, farther out, U.S. mortar, as well as heavy artillery. Earlier in the evening multiple launch rocket systems, missiles were fired into Baghdad. So a very wide variety of different kinds of armaments, extremely heavy pounding and intense barrages at certain points.
The U.S. forces involved are the 3rd Infantry Division and the 101st Infantry around and in Baghdad. Now I should point out that not being embedded with the infantry I'm not getting this directly from infantry commanders. This is what I am hearing.
I am embedded with Air Force defense. They have no direct link with what's going on with the infantry around them. But again, just the sounds and the barrage, it was very, very obvious, made it clear that there was certainly an intensified attack and fighting in the Iraqi capital -- Aaron.
BROWN: So how much is out there? Who is out there? It's just from your position hard to report tonight?
WEAVER: Exactly. Not in precise terms, no. Because, again, I'm not in contact with infantry commanders. Neither are -- is the military, with which I am embedded. But it was just very obviously an intense exchange of fire and attack on Baghdad -- Aaron.
BROWN: Lisa, thank you. Lisa Rose Weaver out at the airport. It's 12 miles from the center of the city.
Nic Robertson is farther away than that. He's at the border with -- or near the border of Jordan and Iraq. Nic, the headline tonight is another attack on what intelligence believes was a leadership meeting of sort in a neighborhood in Baghdad. Anybody that you're talking to know anything?
NIC ROBERTSON, CNN SR. INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: At this time, Aaron, it's still too early for me to be able to get a readout from Baghdad. Yes.
BROWN: OK. What else are you hearing out of there, then, when you're talking to people there?
ROBERTSON: Well, I think the interesting thing of the day, Aaron, was that when the coalition forces moved in, as the 3rd Infantry did right into the center of Baghdad, right into that presidential palace on the river there, was a lot of surprise from the residents in Baghdad. They really expected their Republican Guard to put up a better fight and keep the coalition forces out.
And the reason they believed that is because that's what their government had been telling them. That the coalition was being defeated and that their army was doing a good job. So this came as a real shock, and that shock was multiplied, if you will, when for some of the residents at least who could see some of the Republican Guard running away from that presidential palace compound, swimming across the river.
And I think the whole picture of Iraq's defense, as laid out by the Ministry of Information, that they're actually doing a good job and they're actually defeating the coalition forces, is beginning to ring very hollow. I'm told by people who were present at some of his press conferences during the day that even some of the people that work for him, the civil servants in the press center who work for the minister of information, don't believe the minister of information anymore.
So you have the residents of the city not believing the government. You have government workers not believing the government. So I think that's an emerging picture that the government's beginning to be. And this is only beginning to become isolated a little bit from the people -- Aaron. BROWN: Actually, I think it was on the day they got to the airport last week you talked about Baghdad as a place, like many places, where information, word of mouth travels pretty quickly.
ROBERTSON: Oh, it is, absolutely. And there's no doubt about it. I mean, even the people that weren't in the center of the city, the people on the outskirts would certainly hear about it.
The rumors that are traveling around at the moment are actually quite interesting. I don't know, it's never smart to debate rumors. But these are the rumors that people in Baghdad are talking to each other about at the moment, and that is potential for uprising in some of the Shia neighborhoods.
That massive slum city, Saddam City, a suburb of Baghdad. Rumors that maybe there will be a Shia uprising there, maybe in another Shia neighborhood. That's what the residents of the city are talking about. And we haven't heard this before, Aaron. And that again in itself is quite interesting.
BROWN: And just, again, to help people along here, the Shias and Saddam have never had much of a relationship, to say the least.
ROBERTSON: Oh, to say the least. No. I mean, they feel very much that they're repressed.
They're the majority in the country. Sixty percent in the country are Shia Muslims. Saddam is -- President Saddam Hussein is a member of that 20 percent Sunni Muslim that essentially dominate and run the country. And the Shias really felt they've been left out of the power metrics in the country, and they essentially, and many times have borne the brunt of aggression from the leadership.
Many of them have been killed off over the years. So no, no love lost. And they would be potentially quite a force if they were able to rise up and organize.
BROWN: Rise up is one thing. Organize is another. We'll bring General Clark in on that question in a little bit. Nic, thank you. Nic Robertson reporting on -- from his contacts in Baghdad.
Dana Priest writes about intelligence matters and other things for "The Washington Post," and she joins us now. First, are you hearing anything on this attack tonight?
DANA PRIEST, "THE WASHINGTON POST": Well, we're hearing that that's what they think they did, is caught Saddam Hussein. You know that's what they did the first night of the war. They need for that the most crucial real-time intelligence that they can get, which means not only intercepts and signals intelligence, but also usually human intelligence, informants on the ground who can make sure that the target, in this case Saddam Hussein, is where they think he is before they drop the munitions.
BROWN: Dana, you wrote over the weekend about all of this -- essentially an underground city in Baghdad, these tunnels and bunkers and the like. Presumably that would be a relatively safe place for the Iraqi president.
PRIEST: Well, it appears so, because of course he's their number one target, they've been bombing him for quite a number of days. And he seems to keep popping back up, which suggests that he's deep underground, in targets that are very hardened and hard to get, even with the bunker-busting bombs.
What we heard today also from U.S. intelligence sources and military officials, though, is that the hold on the government is feeble at best. And as one intelligence official said, we see vital signs, but they're brain dead. They're not very able to coordinate either their defense or their attack both militarily and the sort of close-in regime people like the Fedayeen Saddam and the other security services. So while they are acting, they're not acting in any coordinated way that has people very worried about that.
BROWN: I think it was late last week they were talking a lot about -- it seems like they're a day late with everything. That information, while it still may be going out, seems to be getting to where it's supposed to go a day later than it needs to.
PRIEST: Well, in fact, today they said that they heard some military commanders speaking to units that don't even exist anymore. And that was an indication to them that they're in great denial, and that perhaps they have control over small sectors of Baghdad, but certainly not any wider control than that.
BROWN: Talk a little bit more about these tunnels that run underneath the city. Do they run -- is it all over the city? Might it be under a residential neighborhood as much as it might be under a commercial or industrial part of the city?
PRIEST: Well, there's one thought that they're near the airport and they run out as escape routes. He had some foreign companies building a subway system that he apparently turned into some of these tunnels.
They're very deep. They're multilayered. They go down. There are tunnels underneath tunnels, and frankly they don't know where all of them are.
The U.S. intelligence community has spent a lot of resources in the last several years trying to find tunnels, and they have all sorts of devices to do that, including seismic devices and other gravimeters that help them decide from the air what might be underneath the ground. So they've spent a lot of assets to try to do that because they know that's where people like Saddam Hussein and the North Koreans and the Syrians all hide their weapons.
BROWN: So there's no myth about this. They know they exist, and they have some idea where they are, even if they don't know every inch of detail?
PRIEST: Well, yes. And they've gotten some cooperation by the foreign firms that helped build the tunnels. They've given them blueprints and some idea of what they left behind. They did a lot of the construction. It wasn't just Iraqis who did it.
And including some of the hardening of it, so they know what kind of materials some of them are made out of. It makes it a little bit easier to pinpoint where he might be hiding. Then again, you saw the troops go into some of these really deep tunnels today and yesterday for the first time, and you got a look at just how awesome that task might be, to actually try to sneak in there and come out OK.
BROWN: And just finally, will it be human intelligence that tells them that Saddam is dead? Is that how they'll -- if that's what happens? Or is it just a whole range of possibilities?
PRIEST: They've been very cautious. And every time they strike what they think is Saddam Hussein -- and really they are cautious because they feel they need that level of proof in order to make that kind of statement. And, yes, they need human beings on the ground looking at the rubble, or underneath the rubble, and for whatever reason they haven't been able to get to those sites yet to be able to be 100 percent certain.
BROWN: Dana, thank you. It seems like every time you're here something happens just about the time you sit down. Thank you. Dana Priest, who writes about intelligence for "The Washington Post."
General Wesley Clark is with us. General Clark is in Washington. A fair amount going on, General.
Let's start with the tantalizing bit of news but certainly incomplete bit of news. If Saddam were in fact to be killed, does then the whole regime collapse in your view?
GEN. WESLEY CLARK (RET.), CNN MILITARY ANALYST: Well, that's really a very interesting question, and it's probably the key question, Aaron. I would think that if Saddam were killed and we could assure that people knew that he'd been killed, it would definitely pull at least one leg out, although "The New York Times" is carrying headlines today that says that we're listening to one of Saddam's sons direct the battle.
So it's not clear that Qusay doesn't have enough power to hold that regime together at least for some. But I think you get at least a partial collapse if not a total collapse.
BROWN: When I was coming down to sit here tonight, I was trying to think what I would ask you first. And I sort of settled on, give me the sense of what Baghdad is like now, when we know that there are American soldiers, a fair number of them, going to spend the night there. But it's a big city. So what is the state of play as best you read it?
CLARK: Well, as best I can tell, of course, the soldiers are there, they're safe. There's a lot of shooting going on. There's artillery. There's air strikes against key targets still. There's the smell that must be in the air, and residents must be concerned about this. On the other hand, it's all word of mouth communication. And so if they're not directly seeing the American forces coming through their streets, there's probably rumors and concerns and misunderstandings, and there's no telling really what they're saying.
BROWN: And just on the one thing that Nic Robertson brought up, the possibility of a Shia uprising, is that helpful or complicating to the Americans?
CLARK: I think it would be very helpful at this point, provided that we know who's in charge of it and we can put our Special Forces guys in to work with them.
BROWN: Because otherwise it just creates even a more chaotic situation than is already there?
CLARK: We'd like to prevent the revenge taking, but we would like the help of the local populace in identifying key intelligence targets and key personnel.
BROWN: General Clark, good to see you and good to have you with us. We'll be back to you shortly.
CLARK: Good to be with you, Aaron.
BROWN: We'll take a short break, and our coverage continues on a busy night in just a moment.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
BROWN: Tuesday morning in Baghdad. Lots of smoke, and some mystery in the air on a Tuesday morning. What, if anything, who, if anything, was in the bunker that the Americans hit with a massive air strike? These are pictures of the city provided by Al Arabiya, Saudi Arabia's answer to Al-Jazeera, the Saudi television network.
You can see some smoke and fire there. It is still quite dark, 6:25 in the morning now. And where that smoke precisely is coming from is hard to tell.
When historians take the measure of the day, they'll write about a pair of discoveries south of Baghdad. Whether it ends up to be a book, a chapter, or a very small footnote depends on what happens in a lab somewhere in the days and hours ahead. Reporting for us, CNN's Ryan Chilcote.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
RYAN CHILCOTE, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Soldiers from the 101st Airborne have been inspecting two sites for the presence of chemical agents. The first site, an agricultural complex where they found a large weapons cache three days ago. And also, behind a building at that compound, they also found two bunkers with several drums with some kind of chemical inside.
Well today they brought the Fuchs vehicle, a very sophisticated, sensitive vehicle for testing for the presence of chemical agents out there, and they got positives back for both blister agent and nerve agent. They're still not entirely sure what they have. So they brought in -- or are bringing in another team of experts. This team from the U.S. Army's 5th Corps, because it is possible to get a false positive from pesticides.
We spoke a short while ago with the 101st Airborne's General Benjamin Freakly about this issue, what did they find. This is what he had to say.
GEN. BENJAMIN FREAKLY, 101ST AIRBORNE: This could be either some type of pesticides, because this was an agricultural compound and the literature inside the compound talked about dealing with mosquitoes and other type of airborne vermin, and was right along the Euphrates River, very close to the Euphrates River. But on the other hand, it could be a chemical agent, not weaponized.
CHILCOTE: You said this isn't weaponized. Explain the difference.
FREAKLY: Well, it's in your conventional 25 or 55-gallon drums. They are not military drums. They have no special marking on them whatsoever.
And weaponized, we would see it in probably a artillery projectile or in an artillery missile, or perhaps in an aircraft bomb or something that we could -- the enemy would spray troops with. And so it's a liquid chemical, but it hasn't been put in a delivery means or anything that could be dispersed against our soldiers.
CHILCOTE: Now that's not the only site they're testing at. They've been testing at a military training complex in the same area. Sunday morning, a group of U.S. soldiers that were guarding that area said they felt sick. They, among other things at that training complex, had found a large number of chemical protective suits.
That's why the 101st came in and did a series of tests, testing for nerve agents. So far they don't believe that there's anything more than insecticide in that area. The 101st saying those soldiers probably felt sick from heat exhaustion because they'd been on a long road march that day.
All of the soldiers now say they're feeling fine. Ryan Chilcote, CNN, with the 101st Airborne near Karbala, Iraq.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
BROWN: David Albright is a former weapons inspector, and David joins us now to talk more about what was found and what it may or may not be. There's a certain amount, David, of hyperventilating I think every time the word "chemical" is used out in the field. Based on where this was found, what it looks like, how it tested, everything you've heard today, what do you think?
DAVID ALBRIGHT, FMR. U.N. WEAPONS INSPECTOR: I think we have to be suspicious and wait for the better tests to take place and get some determination. I mean, the site itself doesn't look like a chemical weapons storage depot. I mean, finally these barrels are in what really is a trench more than a bunker, with kind of a crude roof and a tarp over the door.
And this may have been a site, if this turns out to be chemical weapons, where the Iraqis were actually hiding things from the inspectors. It doesn't look like a site where they would take the material and deploy it into the types of delivery systems that the general was talking about, or the soldier was talking about.
BROWN: In a sense where would you expect to find this sort of stuff? Obviously not sitting out in a shed somewhere, I don't think. What are you looking for?
ALBRIGHT: Well you would expect to find things in better protected facilities, marked more clearly. I mean, these are very dangerous materials if they're chemical weapons. And that it just -- it looks more like a place to hide it rather than to either make it or to have large stockpiles. And also, it isn't that many -- or it's not that much of chemical weapons that are in those barrels.
BROWN: I assume it's a combination of chemicals in some cases that makes it dangerous. And if you don't have all of the entire combination then you don't have the weapon. Is that how it works?
ALBRIGHT: Well, you need to -- again, we don't know. I mean it was tested in a preliminary way as an actual nerve agent or a mustard gas, as a finished agent, but not put into a weapon so it could be delivered.
I think that one of the broader issues here is that there's going to be a lot of work to try to figure out what Saddam Hussein has done on all the weapons of mass destruction and the ballistic missiles. And I do think it makes sense that the United States gets some help from the international inspectors. And I think what we're seeing now is a little bit of almost chaos developing, as these soldiers, who are very capable and are doing a very hard job very well, are trying to sort through what they're finding. And they're not trained very well.
And so I think that there is a need to organize this process better. The U.S. does need to get more people in there who can do these kind of investigations as the war winds down. And I think they can be helped in a very important way with the experience and knowledge of the international inspectors at UNMOVIC and at the International Atomic Energy Agency.
BROWN: Just quickly, someone said to us last week that, in their view, until they get to talk to the scientists who were involved in programs, until those scientists say, no, that stuff is located five miles east of here, they're never going to really know.
ALBRIGHT: Well, they may get lucky and find some important sites. But, certainly, the scientists need to be talked to. And there's thousands of them. And so that's going to be a very big job.
And, also, you want to try to, in a sense, corral them before some of them flee. I mean, they have very dangerous information in their heads. And some of them may have grudges against the United States when they leave. And so I think time is not on our side. And that's another reason to try to organize this thing more efficiently and to seek more help to try to get a better understanding and control over the weapons of mass destruction assets of Iraq.
BROWN: David, it's good to see you -- former weapons inspector David Albright with us tonight.
ALBRIGHT: Thank you.
BROWN: We'll take a short break. We'll update the day's headlines. We'll have more on this attack on the Iraqi leadership that took place on Monday in Baghdad -- that and more.
We break for a minute first.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
BROWN: A little more detail on this attack on what was believed to be a meeting of Saddam Hussein, possibly -- possibly -- his sons, the Iraqi leadership, coming from "The Washington Times," a U.S. military official telling "The Times" the allies bombed a restaurant, some buildings behind the restaurant at 3:00 in the afternoon, Monday afternoon, Baghdad time.
A source said Saddam and senior Baath Party leaders, perhaps as many as 30 Iraqi intelligence officials as well, were at this meeting. It took place in the same neighborhood where Saddam made his highly publicized walk on Friday. You saw a tape of that, and that that walk, as it was played on Iraqi TV, helped intelligence, American intelligence, figure out where he might have been, where he, Saddam, and these other Baath Party officials may have been at 3:00 in the afternoon, Monday afternoon, Iraqi time.
A little more on this, too, now from our senior White House correspondent, John King, who we have on the telephone -- John,
JOHN KING, CNN SR. WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: Hello, Aaron. Good morning from Belfast.
The Bush party is sound asleep here. I can assure you of that. But we are told by a senior administration official back in Washington that this -- he compared this to very much the same, this official said, as the initial strike that began the war, that the U.S., as our correspondents have been reporting, had time-sensitive intelligence suggesting that several senior Iraqi leaders and possibly Saddam Hussein and his two sons were at a Baghdad area location. And so plans were changed quickly and a strike ordered.
This official said the intelligence suggested that they would be there for -- quote -- "a decent stretch of time." And this official says they won't, of course, know the results for some time. But there is -- quote -- "a sense of optimism" that major players were at the location, again, perhaps the Iraqi leader, Saddam Hussein, and both of his sons; however, this official describing it for now as simply a -- quote -- "solid leadership hit" and says to characterize it as greater than that might be getting out ahead of the known facts.
But, certainly, they're optimistic that they scored, in some sense, in their efforts to target the Iraqi leadership tonight. And they are waiting for a better assessment of exactly who was in that building.
BROWN: Any more or less optimism than they were on March 19?
KING: Hard to say. I remember in the hours immediately after that strike how there was some confidence that Saddam Hussein was in the building, and then when we saw the videotapes and they tried to analyze those. Then we heard other statements and they tried to analyze those, and then, of course, the videotape of a man alleged to be Saddam Hussein walking around in Baghdad.
The administration thought they had a pretty good hit that night, but they also acknowledged that things change very quickly and that what they do say is that now they have real-time intelligence about the movement of Saddam Hussein. That is something they have not had in years. And they say that is based on better human intelligence inside Iraq, specifically inside Baghdad.
And, of course, now you have not only the U.S. forces we have seen in recent hours driving through the streets of Baghdad, but also a significant special operations presence inside Baghdad that the Pentagon, of course, is not talking about in any great detail.
BROWN: John, thank you -- senior White House correspondent John King. We'll have more from him a little bit later. John is in Belfast with the president, who meets with Tony Blair to work out a number of issues.
But for our plate tonight, at least, post-war Iraq, principal among them, we're joined now by Robin Wright, who's the chief diplomatic correspondent for "The Los Angeles Times," a noted author on the Middle East, and, we're pleased to say, a frequent contributor to the program.
It's good to see you again.
Mr. Blair and the president do not -- well, perhaps they broadly agree on the future of Iraq, but they're not necessarily in agreement on how to get there.
ROBIN WRIGHT, CHIEF DIPLOMATIC CORRESPONDENT, "L.A. TIMES": Absolutely.
This is really a pivotal meeting and, arguably, the most important they've held since they agreed jointly that they would confront Saddam Hussein together. This is the one, the moment for the two men to decide the post-war strategy and the structure of a government and what role particularly the United Nations will play in the process. And they're not agreed, basically, on any of those issues.
BROWN: All right. Let's talk about -- let's break that into pieces. The U.N.'s role, Mr. Blair would like more and the president takes the Pentagon's view, as opposed to the State Department's view here.
WRIGHT: That's right.
The administration basically says there is a role for the United Nations, but the United Nations will not rule post-war Iraq. Ironically, people at the State Department actually hope that Prime Minister Blair has influence in selling their own argument with the president.
BROWN: Is there any middle ground here?
WRIGHT: Probably not. I think the administration feels very bitter about the way the drama played out at the United Nations in the run-up to the war and the fact that key Security Council members balked, in the end, at giving -- either confronting Saddam Hussein together and then in authorizing the United States and Britain to use force.
I think that there is a strong feeling that the United States shed the blood and wants the ultimate final word on how Iraq is ruled in the run-up to a new government.
BROWN: Mr. Blair was an important ally. He had serious political problems at home. He hung in there. He has some weight to his argument that he ought to get something in these sort of meetings, doesn't he?
WRIGHT: Absolutely.
And I think you may find, though, that the quid pro quo for the British, really, is on the Middle East peace process. This is where Blair really feels strongly that the United States has to take a leadership role now, now, now that the war is almost over in Iraq and would like to see the road map announced in the next few weeks and Secretary of State Powell head out to the region to begin the process of seeing the process implemented.
BROWN: Back to Iraq for a second, a sense of what -- is the United States in this -- in its current thinking, picking the players to give them at least a leg up on the future of Iraq?
WRIGHT: Well, there are certainly those at the Pentagon who have their favorites among the candidates to form part of the transition interim authority in the run-up to a new government. This is a very critical stage that could go anywhere from a few months to a couple of years. This is where, again, you see the huge division within the administration.
The State Department believes that any transition authority should include outsiders, Iraqi exiles, but also predominantly those from inside the country who've endured 24 years of Saddam Hussein's rule. This is where you're likely to see a lot of tension play out in the weeks ahead, because of this basic split over the process and the players. BROWN: Robin, thank you -- Robin Wright, the chief diplomatic correspondent for "The Los Angeles Times."
We've put a lot out there in 45 minutes. We'll take a break and we'll sort through it as we come back.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
BROWN: To southern Iraq next, and Basra, where British troops for weeks now have been making baby steps into the city, then pulling back, then back in, then back. The time for baby steps has clearly ended.
British forces today plowed into strongholds of Saddam Hussein. In some places, that was literally the case. And British officials said the coalition has now control of much of the city.
This day in Basra from British reporter Bill Neely.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
BILL NEELY, ITN REPORTER (voice-over): A new dawn in Basra today and Challenger tanks rumble through the ornate gates of the main presidential palace. The assaults on Iraq's second city, is just hours old. The tanks and the Marines behind them aren't stopping.
(on camera): This was said to have been the headquarters of the Fedayeen, Saddam's paramilitaries, but locals have told us that the palace is now empty of Iraqi soldiers. The gates are open so we're going to walk straight in.
(voice-over): They push forward across the most symbolic ground in southern Iraq. This palace, the seat of Saddam's power here, power that the Marines are smashing away, different building, different way in. If a hammer won't do, try this. It is the Marines who hold power now in Basra. The next task, to hunt down the men who fought and defended this city for a fortnight.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Rooms clear. Exit one to the outside.
NEELY: The Marines were convinced that if Saddam's men were to make a final stand anywhere in this site, they'd make it here. So orders were hushed.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: You two straight in first on the left.
NEELY: Just 12 hours earlier, a soldier with another unit in Basra was killed by a booby-trapped bomb. So, they moved cautiously through a dozen echoing buildings.
(on camera): Building by building, floor by floor, and there are a lot of them here. The Royal Marines are clearing this presidential palace, where Saddam Hussein has stayed and slept many times in the past. The Marines only too well aware that he may have left men behind here to ambush them. (voice-over): But they found little inside. Ornate bathrooms, but no people, no furniture, nothing for these looters who the Marines rounded up, in the grounds, just a few abandoned weapons, discarded helmets and uniforms. They even left behind the weapons they might have fought a guerrilla war with.
The tanks poured in. But here at the presidential palace, not a shot was fire. Not so a mile away. Dive for cover as Marines opened up on a target. A man had stolen a jeep from the hospital. Doctors shouted warnings to the Marines as he sped toward the tank. Marines believing he was a suicide bomber shot him. He died later in hospital. They're taking no chances here.
In all, three British soldiers have been killed in the assault on Basra. So, this afternoon, Royal Marines stopped these men at a roadblock and found with them a loaded automatic weapon, knives, and military identity cards.
(on camera): This is exactly the kind of thing these Marines are worried about, ambushes by soldiers who have simply taken their uniforms off.
(voice-over): But there's been little sign of resistance since the Marines entered the Saddam's southern power base on a sultry Sunday evening. Not a single shot was fired at the Marines, and not a shot fired by them. Instead, they were mobbed -- crowds jumping on the tanks, delirious with joy. And so it went on today. This may not last. These are, after all, foreign invaders, and some Iraqis would like to do a lot more than arm wrestle with them. But here in Basra, which rebelled against Saddam before, all the signs are of another rebellion, and Saddam's signs are going fast.
The Marines are braced tonight for guerrilla attacks. But in the center and on the streets of this sprawling city of 2 million, they are now in power, and they're showing it. Saddam's power is being torn away. The fall of Basra, the beginning of the end of his brutal regime.
Bill Neely with 4-2 Commando Royal Marines in Basra.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
BROWN: The day in Basra.
We've got some late information now on this attack on what was believed to be the Iraqi leadership, including perhaps Saddam Hussein. We'll get to that in a minute.
We need to take a quick break first.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
BROWN: A little more information now on this attack on a leadership meeting, as it's being described by U.S. Army officials and intelligence officials, a little discrepancy on the time, the Pentagon saying 3:00, CENTCOM saying 2:00, 2:00 Baghdad time, on Monday. A B-1 bomber dropped four JDAMs on a leadership target. According to CENTCOM, it was struck very hard. The target was located in the Al-Mansour neighborhood, Mansour neighborhood. Jamie McIntyre at the beginning of the program mentioned this. And we would underscore here, this is the same neighborhood where we saw pictures earlier today of -- what clearly was an attack of some sort. And now we know what that was, four JDAMs. So it was hit very hard.
This is also the neighborhood where Saddam Hussein on Friday did his little walkabout where he was giving high-fives and people were literally kissing his hand. It was the first real sighting of someone who either was Saddam Hussein or perhaps was someone who looked like Saddam Hussein, not to get into that debate yet again. But it's the same neighborhood.
And according to the reporting by "The Washington Times" today -- tonight, that picture, the picture of where he was on Friday, helped them isolate their attack today. There also was some human intelligence involved, according to David Ensor and Jamie McIntyre, working the Pentagon and national security sources, that Saddam, possibly his sons, was there as well, the same neighborhood.
General Clark, all of this sounds an awful lot like March 19 again.
RET. GENERAL WESLEY CLARK, CNN MILITARY ANALYST: We're now much closer to the heart of the regime. And one would think that the intelligence would be better and the range of alternative targets that would be available for Saddam to hide in would be much slimmer. So maybe there's a good chance here.
BROWN: He has fewer places where he can go, because there are literally tanks, American tanks in some parts of the city and chaos in others.
CLARK: You would think so. And I think it's a good sign that he's stayed in the city at this point, because that -- if he had wanted to get out, we would have had a much harder time keeping him from fleeing out on secondary roads into Syria or someplace in the mountains in eastern Iraq.
BROWN: There was always concern that he might head north to his tribal homeland, his ancestral homeland, where he has some -- he still has some control -- well, he still has control there.
CLARK: That's exactly right.
BROWN: Well, at least the Iraqis have control there. It's not clear he has control there.
CLARK: We don't know who's there. And it's one of the things that we lost when we lost the 4th Infantry Division, was the ability to put simultaneous pressure on Tikrit and Baghdad.
BROWN: Going back to a point David Albright and I were talking about, about the scientists and the need to locate them, you've been through this. How chaotic is it on the ground? How easy would it be for someone to simply slip out of the country?
CLARK: Well, I think it's probably pretty easy to get out of Baghdad. But to get out of the country, to go through the western desert, that's a different matter. And there really is only one good way out, as I understand it, through Jordan, at least. I'm not sure about the routes to Syria. But they're finite in number.
It's tough for off-road mobility. We could have had checkpoints out there. We could have been stopping people -- and we may be -- and searching and finding these scientists, so they don't flee, because the ones who are complicit with Saddam have every incentive to get out of Dodge now.
BROWN: General, back to you in a bit.
Martin Savidge is embedded with the Marines. And Marty's come up, so we want to get to him quickly.
Marty, as best you can, give us a location, go ahead. Marty...
MARTIN SAVIDGE, CNN CORRESPONDENT: We are in the southeast portion of the suburbs of Baghdad, if you can hear me, Aaron. And we are in specifically a village yesterday and the day before that was involved in a very heavy firefight, at times involving U.S. Marines of both the 3rd Battalion 4th Marines and also the 3rd Battalion 7th Marines.
This was essentially a fight for this village that went on for about 48 hours that included heavy artillery duels between Iraqis and U.S. Marines, also mortar fire. There was two missiles being fired, as well as heavy machine guns and M-16s going off. It caused quite a crescendo at some points. Plus, aviation assets of the coalition were being brought in to bear.
This village has been technically quiet for about the last 12, 18 hours, although there is a tense feeling about it right now. This convoy has come to a stop. It's part of the logistics as it builds up to cross over a canal that is up here. There was an Iraqi bridge in place. It was partially destroyed by retreating Iraqi troops. The Marines have now built a pontoon bridge. And that is what is being used to move equipment and personnel across a canal here -- it's not the Tigris -- to push farther east into the suburbs of Baghdad.
The convoy has already been warned. No vehicles will be allowed to approach the convoy. Any vehicle that attempts to will be shot on sight. There had been specific warnings about ambulances, Red Crescent ambulances, that you might think would transport the wounded or injured. They now are -- intelligence is telling the Marines that they may be used as suicide bombing attack vehicles -- Aaron.
BROWN: Marty, in 10 seconds, did this firefight seem to be an organized or disorganized attempt on the Marines?
SAVIDGE: It was pretty much disorganized. It was just mixed in within what you can see, a very built-up civilian area. That always makes it difficult for targeting and exact location. BROWN: Marty, thank you -- Martin Savidge with the Marines, the 1st Battalion 7th Marines.
We'll update the day's headlines. We'll take a short break. We'll be right back.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
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AARON BROWN, CNN ANCHOR: Well, good evening again, everyone. Oddly, it seems we are back to the very first day of the war 20 days ago, when it all started with an attack on what was believed to be a leadership target, perhaps where Saddam Hussein, perhaps where his sons were. It's exactly where we are tonight. And so we begin quickly at the Pentagon and our senior Pentagon correspondent, Jamie McIntyre -- Jamie.
JAMIE MCINTYRE, CNN SR. PENTAGON CORRESPONDENT: Well, Aaron, it appears that the United States has made another attempt to kill Saddam Hussein and his sons and other top Iraqi leaders. Although at this hour it's not clear if they succeeded or if they were actually at the place that was targeted.
Here's what we know. The United States earlier today had intelligence that top Iraqi leadership, possibly including Saddam Hussein and his sons, were in a building in a residential section of Baghdad. Based on that intelligence, which we're told included human intelligence, that is, someone on the ground, they ordered a substantial air strike against this building, and I'm told a large amount of ordnance was dropped on it.
It was essentially taken out. The building was destroyed; presumably the people inside were killed. What they don't know now is exactly precisely who was inside.
It was an attempt to eliminate the senior Iraqi leadership. The belief is, the hope from the U.S. point of view is that Saddam Hussein and his sons were still there when the bombs hit. At this point, it'll just take some time to try to figure out through regular intelligence channels whether or not the bombs had their intended effect.
One other thing I should note is that earlier today there was a report of significant bomb damage in a residential area of Baghdad known as the Al Mansoor (ph) area. We don't know, but it's possible that this strike was actually in that neighborhood and may have accounted for that damage -- Aaron.
BROWN: Which leads to the question, do we know how long ago this strike was? It may have been many hours ago.
MCINTYRE: It probably was many hours ago, because I believe that it was -- it took place and there was daylight since the time it took place, because we've seen pictures of the neighborhood that was bombed there in the daylight. BROWN: Now there's some fairly wild reporting going on about this. So let's come back to the center. Pentagon officials do not now know if it was successful, correct?
MCINTYRE: Well they know it was successful in that they took out the intended target. What they don't know is precisely who was there and how successful that might have been in the attempt to wipe out the Iraqi leadership. The way it was phrased to me was that there was senior Iraqi leadership believed to be gathered in this building, perhaps including Saddam Hussein and his sons. And it was based on that that the building was taken out with a massive burst of air power.
BROWN: When they talk about senior Iraqi leadership, how many people do they talk about in the senior Iraqi leadership?
MCINTYRE: Well, I don't have a roster, but it's more than a handful. I mean, it's probably, you know, a 12 to maybe two dozen. But of course the ones that really count are the ones at the very top, and those are Saddam Hussein, his two sons. You know people like Tariq Aziz, the foreign minister, you know, that sort of thing. Those would qualify as senior Iraqi leaders. But again, the belief was that Saddam Hussein and his sons might have been among those senior Iraqi leaders and that's why the strike was ordered.
BROWN: Got it. Jamie, thank you. Jamie McIntyre, our senior Pentagon correspondent.
On the phone is our national security correspondent, David Ensor, who's been talking to his sources -- David.
DAVID ENSOR, CNN NATIONAL SECURITY CORRESPONDENT: Yes, Aaron. U.S. officials are saying -- really, I can't add very much to what Jamie just reported. But apparently they received some intelligence in the morning Iraqi time that suggested that later that day, in a particular timeframe, there might be a number of senior leadership, Iraqi leadership at this particular site.
So -- and the intelligence suggested that it might even include Saddam Hussein and one or more of his sons. So that was why the bombing was ordered up. And as Jamie said, they do not know now whether they hit anyone from the Saddam Hussein family or not, but that was certainly the goal.
BROWN: When you talk about morning, you're talking about Monday morning Iraq time?
ENSOR: That's right.
BROWN: OK. It's Tuesday morning there now. OK. David, thank you. And I know you'll keep working the phone. David Ensor, our national security correspondent.
So that is clearly the lead tonight. That's what's in play. An attack on what intelligence officials hope is where Saddam Hussein, his family, senior leadership was in a neighborhood in Baghdad. This will clearly take a fair amount of time to sort out.
It is just one of the things that happened today. A good many other things happened as well. Some may prove out to be really significant. Others may drift away as they often do in the fog of war. But here's a quick look at how the day went.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
BROWN (voice-over): The battle for Baghdad entered its fourth day with some American Army units staying in the city overnight, not pulling back to their base at the city's airport.
GEN. RICHARD MYERS, CHAIRMAN, JOINT CHIEFS OF STAFF: We've secured most of the major roads into and out of Baghdad. We visited two of Saddam's presidential palaces. Republican Guard divisions have only been able to conduct sporadic attacks on our forces.
BROWN: Some of the day's most tantalizing news came from the south of Baghdad, where these soldiers with the 101st Airborne reported finding a huge cache of chemicals. Could they be used for weapons? That's unclear. These barrels may just be pesticides. And the illnesses reported by some GIs examining them may have been heat exhaustion, not fumes from the chemicals.
One thing did seem certain: the death of the Iraqi General Hassan al Majeed, known as "Chemical Ali" for ordering a chemical weapons attack on the Kurds 15 years ago. He was killed, it is now believed, in an American air strike.
DONALD RUMSFELD, SECRETARY OF DEFENSE: We believe that the reign of terror of Chemical Ali has come to an end. To Iraqis who have suffered at his hand, particularly in the last few weeks in that southern part of the country, he will never again terrorize you or your families.
BROWN: Inside Baghdad, Iraqi resistance seemed intense at times, though scattered. An Arab television network took these pictures of an Iraqi defensive position inside the city. But again, as he had over the weekend, Iraq's information minister seemed to stand logic on its head, talking about the battles.
MOHAMMED SAEED AL-SAHAF, IRAQI INFORMATION MINISTER: They pushed a few of their armored carriers and some tanks with their soldiers. We besieged them and we killed most of them, and I think we will finish them soon.
BROWN: American artillery barrages just after nightfall were sustained, even as soldiers from the Army's 3rd Infantry Division got a close-up look at one of Saddam Hussein's many palaces. Some of those soldiers were on hand, too, when a statue of Saddam astride a horse was blown up. Ron Martz is with the "Atlanta Journal- Constitution."
RON MARTZ, "ATLANTA JOURNAL-CONSTITUTION": Hang on just a second. It sounds like -- I don't know if you can hear that, but that was the end of Saddam's statue. They hit it right in the horse's legs and it toppled over. Troops here are cheering. That was a tank round that hit it, some machine gun fire, and the statue was gone.
BROWN: On the eastern edges of the Iraqi capital American Marines built a temporary span to replaced a bombed-out bridge.
MARTIN SAVIDGE, CNN ANCHOR: Yes, I would say the (UNINTELLIGIBLE) force just from this vantage point was pretty...
BROWN: And along with CNN's Martin Savidge, we watched as Marine engineers deliberately destroyed what was left of the old bridge. There were pictures from the Syrian border, where you could see the evidence of attacks, not clear from whom, on a convoy carrying Russian diplomats out of the city of Baghdad and out of the country. And in the north bombs continued to fall on the Iraqi city of Mosul, a city where the Americans and their Kurdish allies have yet to enter.
Some of the day's biggest gains were far to the south. In Basra, British Marines followed their Challenger tanks inside another of Saddam's palaces. British units patrolled the streets of the city, and after two long weeks it seemed that, for the moment at least, the coalition has the upper hand there.
Parts of the city's Sheraton hotel were ablaze, and there was widespread evidence of looting. These people carrying just about anything they could manage. But British patience before entering Basra seemed to have paid off. No shots fired at the British today. And no shots from them either, according to the military.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
BROWN: That's the big picture of the day. Lots of little pictures now to weave through it all. Tonight some gunfire in Baghdad. It's clearly not a safe place, and don't think it is.
Lisa Rose Weaver is there. She's embedded with the Army's 5th Corps at the airport. Lisa, what are you reporting?
LISA ROSE WEAVER, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Aaron, actually, I'm embedded with air defense at the airport. In the last few hours -- it's quieted down just now, but in the last few hours very much intensified fighting. About roughly eight kilometers near the airport military sources here telling me that we were hearing Iraqi incoming rounds -- or rather the Iraqi response.
The ground vibrated. There were bright flashes on the horizon. Also, farther out, U.S. mortar, as well as heavy artillery. Earlier in the evening multiple launch rocket systems, missiles were fired into Baghdad. So a very wide variety of different kinds of armaments, extremely heavy pounding and intense barrages at certain points.
The U.S. forces involved are the 3rd Infantry Division and the 101st Infantry around and in Baghdad. Now I should point out that not being embedded with the infantry I'm not getting this directly from infantry commanders. This is what I am hearing.
I am embedded with Air Force defense. They have no direct link with what's going on with the infantry around them. But again, just the sounds and the barrage, it was very, very obvious, made it clear that there was certainly an intensified attack and fighting in the Iraqi capital -- Aaron.
BROWN: So how much is out there? Who is out there? It's just from your position hard to report tonight?
WEAVER: Exactly. Not in precise terms, no. Because, again, I'm not in contact with infantry commanders. Neither are -- is the military, with which I am embedded. But it was just very obviously an intense exchange of fire and attack on Baghdad -- Aaron.
BROWN: Lisa, thank you. Lisa Rose Weaver out at the airport. It's 12 miles from the center of the city.
Nic Robertson is farther away than that. He's at the border with -- or near the border of Jordan and Iraq. Nic, the headline tonight is another attack on what intelligence believes was a leadership meeting of sort in a neighborhood in Baghdad. Anybody that you're talking to know anything?
NIC ROBERTSON, CNN SR. INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: At this time, Aaron, it's still too early for me to be able to get a readout from Baghdad. Yes.
BROWN: OK. What else are you hearing out of there, then, when you're talking to people there?
ROBERTSON: Well, I think the interesting thing of the day, Aaron, was that when the coalition forces moved in, as the 3rd Infantry did right into the center of Baghdad, right into that presidential palace on the river there, was a lot of surprise from the residents in Baghdad. They really expected their Republican Guard to put up a better fight and keep the coalition forces out.
And the reason they believed that is because that's what their government had been telling them. That the coalition was being defeated and that their army was doing a good job. So this came as a real shock, and that shock was multiplied, if you will, when for some of the residents at least who could see some of the Republican Guard running away from that presidential palace compound, swimming across the river.
And I think the whole picture of Iraq's defense, as laid out by the Ministry of Information, that they're actually doing a good job and they're actually defeating the coalition forces, is beginning to ring very hollow. I'm told by people who were present at some of his press conferences during the day that even some of the people that work for him, the civil servants in the press center who work for the minister of information, don't believe the minister of information anymore.
So you have the residents of the city not believing the government. You have government workers not believing the government. So I think that's an emerging picture that the government's beginning to be. And this is only beginning to become isolated a little bit from the people -- Aaron. BROWN: Actually, I think it was on the day they got to the airport last week you talked about Baghdad as a place, like many places, where information, word of mouth travels pretty quickly.
ROBERTSON: Oh, it is, absolutely. And there's no doubt about it. I mean, even the people that weren't in the center of the city, the people on the outskirts would certainly hear about it.
The rumors that are traveling around at the moment are actually quite interesting. I don't know, it's never smart to debate rumors. But these are the rumors that people in Baghdad are talking to each other about at the moment, and that is potential for uprising in some of the Shia neighborhoods.
That massive slum city, Saddam City, a suburb of Baghdad. Rumors that maybe there will be a Shia uprising there, maybe in another Shia neighborhood. That's what the residents of the city are talking about. And we haven't heard this before, Aaron. And that again in itself is quite interesting.
BROWN: And just, again, to help people along here, the Shias and Saddam have never had much of a relationship, to say the least.
ROBERTSON: Oh, to say the least. No. I mean, they feel very much that they're repressed.
They're the majority in the country. Sixty percent in the country are Shia Muslims. Saddam is -- President Saddam Hussein is a member of that 20 percent Sunni Muslim that essentially dominate and run the country. And the Shias really felt they've been left out of the power metrics in the country, and they essentially, and many times have borne the brunt of aggression from the leadership.
Many of them have been killed off over the years. So no, no love lost. And they would be potentially quite a force if they were able to rise up and organize.
BROWN: Rise up is one thing. Organize is another. We'll bring General Clark in on that question in a little bit. Nic, thank you. Nic Robertson reporting on -- from his contacts in Baghdad.
Dana Priest writes about intelligence matters and other things for "The Washington Post," and she joins us now. First, are you hearing anything on this attack tonight?
DANA PRIEST, "THE WASHINGTON POST": Well, we're hearing that that's what they think they did, is caught Saddam Hussein. You know that's what they did the first night of the war. They need for that the most crucial real-time intelligence that they can get, which means not only intercepts and signals intelligence, but also usually human intelligence, informants on the ground who can make sure that the target, in this case Saddam Hussein, is where they think he is before they drop the munitions.
BROWN: Dana, you wrote over the weekend about all of this -- essentially an underground city in Baghdad, these tunnels and bunkers and the like. Presumably that would be a relatively safe place for the Iraqi president.
PRIEST: Well, it appears so, because of course he's their number one target, they've been bombing him for quite a number of days. And he seems to keep popping back up, which suggests that he's deep underground, in targets that are very hardened and hard to get, even with the bunker-busting bombs.
What we heard today also from U.S. intelligence sources and military officials, though, is that the hold on the government is feeble at best. And as one intelligence official said, we see vital signs, but they're brain dead. They're not very able to coordinate either their defense or their attack both militarily and the sort of close-in regime people like the Fedayeen Saddam and the other security services. So while they are acting, they're not acting in any coordinated way that has people very worried about that.
BROWN: I think it was late last week they were talking a lot about -- it seems like they're a day late with everything. That information, while it still may be going out, seems to be getting to where it's supposed to go a day later than it needs to.
PRIEST: Well, in fact, today they said that they heard some military commanders speaking to units that don't even exist anymore. And that was an indication to them that they're in great denial, and that perhaps they have control over small sectors of Baghdad, but certainly not any wider control than that.
BROWN: Talk a little bit more about these tunnels that run underneath the city. Do they run -- is it all over the city? Might it be under a residential neighborhood as much as it might be under a commercial or industrial part of the city?
PRIEST: Well, there's one thought that they're near the airport and they run out as escape routes. He had some foreign companies building a subway system that he apparently turned into some of these tunnels.
They're very deep. They're multilayered. They go down. There are tunnels underneath tunnels, and frankly they don't know where all of them are.
The U.S. intelligence community has spent a lot of resources in the last several years trying to find tunnels, and they have all sorts of devices to do that, including seismic devices and other gravimeters that help them decide from the air what might be underneath the ground. So they've spent a lot of assets to try to do that because they know that's where people like Saddam Hussein and the North Koreans and the Syrians all hide their weapons.
BROWN: So there's no myth about this. They know they exist, and they have some idea where they are, even if they don't know every inch of detail?
PRIEST: Well, yes. And they've gotten some cooperation by the foreign firms that helped build the tunnels. They've given them blueprints and some idea of what they left behind. They did a lot of the construction. It wasn't just Iraqis who did it.
And including some of the hardening of it, so they know what kind of materials some of them are made out of. It makes it a little bit easier to pinpoint where he might be hiding. Then again, you saw the troops go into some of these really deep tunnels today and yesterday for the first time, and you got a look at just how awesome that task might be, to actually try to sneak in there and come out OK.
BROWN: And just finally, will it be human intelligence that tells them that Saddam is dead? Is that how they'll -- if that's what happens? Or is it just a whole range of possibilities?
PRIEST: They've been very cautious. And every time they strike what they think is Saddam Hussein -- and really they are cautious because they feel they need that level of proof in order to make that kind of statement. And, yes, they need human beings on the ground looking at the rubble, or underneath the rubble, and for whatever reason they haven't been able to get to those sites yet to be able to be 100 percent certain.
BROWN: Dana, thank you. It seems like every time you're here something happens just about the time you sit down. Thank you. Dana Priest, who writes about intelligence for "The Washington Post."
General Wesley Clark is with us. General Clark is in Washington. A fair amount going on, General.
Let's start with the tantalizing bit of news but certainly incomplete bit of news. If Saddam were in fact to be killed, does then the whole regime collapse in your view?
GEN. WESLEY CLARK (RET.), CNN MILITARY ANALYST: Well, that's really a very interesting question, and it's probably the key question, Aaron. I would think that if Saddam were killed and we could assure that people knew that he'd been killed, it would definitely pull at least one leg out, although "The New York Times" is carrying headlines today that says that we're listening to one of Saddam's sons direct the battle.
So it's not clear that Qusay doesn't have enough power to hold that regime together at least for some. But I think you get at least a partial collapse if not a total collapse.
BROWN: When I was coming down to sit here tonight, I was trying to think what I would ask you first. And I sort of settled on, give me the sense of what Baghdad is like now, when we know that there are American soldiers, a fair number of them, going to spend the night there. But it's a big city. So what is the state of play as best you read it?
CLARK: Well, as best I can tell, of course, the soldiers are there, they're safe. There's a lot of shooting going on. There's artillery. There's air strikes against key targets still. There's the smell that must be in the air, and residents must be concerned about this. On the other hand, it's all word of mouth communication. And so if they're not directly seeing the American forces coming through their streets, there's probably rumors and concerns and misunderstandings, and there's no telling really what they're saying.
BROWN: And just on the one thing that Nic Robertson brought up, the possibility of a Shia uprising, is that helpful or complicating to the Americans?
CLARK: I think it would be very helpful at this point, provided that we know who's in charge of it and we can put our Special Forces guys in to work with them.
BROWN: Because otherwise it just creates even a more chaotic situation than is already there?
CLARK: We'd like to prevent the revenge taking, but we would like the help of the local populace in identifying key intelligence targets and key personnel.
BROWN: General Clark, good to see you and good to have you with us. We'll be back to you shortly.
CLARK: Good to be with you, Aaron.
BROWN: We'll take a short break, and our coverage continues on a busy night in just a moment.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
BROWN: Tuesday morning in Baghdad. Lots of smoke, and some mystery in the air on a Tuesday morning. What, if anything, who, if anything, was in the bunker that the Americans hit with a massive air strike? These are pictures of the city provided by Al Arabiya, Saudi Arabia's answer to Al-Jazeera, the Saudi television network.
You can see some smoke and fire there. It is still quite dark, 6:25 in the morning now. And where that smoke precisely is coming from is hard to tell.
When historians take the measure of the day, they'll write about a pair of discoveries south of Baghdad. Whether it ends up to be a book, a chapter, or a very small footnote depends on what happens in a lab somewhere in the days and hours ahead. Reporting for us, CNN's Ryan Chilcote.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
RYAN CHILCOTE, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Soldiers from the 101st Airborne have been inspecting two sites for the presence of chemical agents. The first site, an agricultural complex where they found a large weapons cache three days ago. And also, behind a building at that compound, they also found two bunkers with several drums with some kind of chemical inside.
Well today they brought the Fuchs vehicle, a very sophisticated, sensitive vehicle for testing for the presence of chemical agents out there, and they got positives back for both blister agent and nerve agent. They're still not entirely sure what they have. So they brought in -- or are bringing in another team of experts. This team from the U.S. Army's 5th Corps, because it is possible to get a false positive from pesticides.
We spoke a short while ago with the 101st Airborne's General Benjamin Freakly about this issue, what did they find. This is what he had to say.
GEN. BENJAMIN FREAKLY, 101ST AIRBORNE: This could be either some type of pesticides, because this was an agricultural compound and the literature inside the compound talked about dealing with mosquitoes and other type of airborne vermin, and was right along the Euphrates River, very close to the Euphrates River. But on the other hand, it could be a chemical agent, not weaponized.
CHILCOTE: You said this isn't weaponized. Explain the difference.
FREAKLY: Well, it's in your conventional 25 or 55-gallon drums. They are not military drums. They have no special marking on them whatsoever.
And weaponized, we would see it in probably a artillery projectile or in an artillery missile, or perhaps in an aircraft bomb or something that we could -- the enemy would spray troops with. And so it's a liquid chemical, but it hasn't been put in a delivery means or anything that could be dispersed against our soldiers.
CHILCOTE: Now that's not the only site they're testing at. They've been testing at a military training complex in the same area. Sunday morning, a group of U.S. soldiers that were guarding that area said they felt sick. They, among other things at that training complex, had found a large number of chemical protective suits.
That's why the 101st came in and did a series of tests, testing for nerve agents. So far they don't believe that there's anything more than insecticide in that area. The 101st saying those soldiers probably felt sick from heat exhaustion because they'd been on a long road march that day.
All of the soldiers now say they're feeling fine. Ryan Chilcote, CNN, with the 101st Airborne near Karbala, Iraq.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
BROWN: David Albright is a former weapons inspector, and David joins us now to talk more about what was found and what it may or may not be. There's a certain amount, David, of hyperventilating I think every time the word "chemical" is used out in the field. Based on where this was found, what it looks like, how it tested, everything you've heard today, what do you think?
DAVID ALBRIGHT, FMR. U.N. WEAPONS INSPECTOR: I think we have to be suspicious and wait for the better tests to take place and get some determination. I mean, the site itself doesn't look like a chemical weapons storage depot. I mean, finally these barrels are in what really is a trench more than a bunker, with kind of a crude roof and a tarp over the door.
And this may have been a site, if this turns out to be chemical weapons, where the Iraqis were actually hiding things from the inspectors. It doesn't look like a site where they would take the material and deploy it into the types of delivery systems that the general was talking about, or the soldier was talking about.
BROWN: In a sense where would you expect to find this sort of stuff? Obviously not sitting out in a shed somewhere, I don't think. What are you looking for?
ALBRIGHT: Well you would expect to find things in better protected facilities, marked more clearly. I mean, these are very dangerous materials if they're chemical weapons. And that it just -- it looks more like a place to hide it rather than to either make it or to have large stockpiles. And also, it isn't that many -- or it's not that much of chemical weapons that are in those barrels.
BROWN: I assume it's a combination of chemicals in some cases that makes it dangerous. And if you don't have all of the entire combination then you don't have the weapon. Is that how it works?
ALBRIGHT: Well, you need to -- again, we don't know. I mean it was tested in a preliminary way as an actual nerve agent or a mustard gas, as a finished agent, but not put into a weapon so it could be delivered.
I think that one of the broader issues here is that there's going to be a lot of work to try to figure out what Saddam Hussein has done on all the weapons of mass destruction and the ballistic missiles. And I do think it makes sense that the United States gets some help from the international inspectors. And I think what we're seeing now is a little bit of almost chaos developing, as these soldiers, who are very capable and are doing a very hard job very well, are trying to sort through what they're finding. And they're not trained very well.
And so I think that there is a need to organize this process better. The U.S. does need to get more people in there who can do these kind of investigations as the war winds down. And I think they can be helped in a very important way with the experience and knowledge of the international inspectors at UNMOVIC and at the International Atomic Energy Agency.
BROWN: Just quickly, someone said to us last week that, in their view, until they get to talk to the scientists who were involved in programs, until those scientists say, no, that stuff is located five miles east of here, they're never going to really know.
ALBRIGHT: Well, they may get lucky and find some important sites. But, certainly, the scientists need to be talked to. And there's thousands of them. And so that's going to be a very big job.
And, also, you want to try to, in a sense, corral them before some of them flee. I mean, they have very dangerous information in their heads. And some of them may have grudges against the United States when they leave. And so I think time is not on our side. And that's another reason to try to organize this thing more efficiently and to seek more help to try to get a better understanding and control over the weapons of mass destruction assets of Iraq.
BROWN: David, it's good to see you -- former weapons inspector David Albright with us tonight.
ALBRIGHT: Thank you.
BROWN: We'll take a short break. We'll update the day's headlines. We'll have more on this attack on the Iraqi leadership that took place on Monday in Baghdad -- that and more.
We break for a minute first.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
BROWN: A little more detail on this attack on what was believed to be a meeting of Saddam Hussein, possibly -- possibly -- his sons, the Iraqi leadership, coming from "The Washington Times," a U.S. military official telling "The Times" the allies bombed a restaurant, some buildings behind the restaurant at 3:00 in the afternoon, Monday afternoon, Baghdad time.
A source said Saddam and senior Baath Party leaders, perhaps as many as 30 Iraqi intelligence officials as well, were at this meeting. It took place in the same neighborhood where Saddam made his highly publicized walk on Friday. You saw a tape of that, and that that walk, as it was played on Iraqi TV, helped intelligence, American intelligence, figure out where he might have been, where he, Saddam, and these other Baath Party officials may have been at 3:00 in the afternoon, Monday afternoon, Iraqi time.
A little more on this, too, now from our senior White House correspondent, John King, who we have on the telephone -- John,
JOHN KING, CNN SR. WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: Hello, Aaron. Good morning from Belfast.
The Bush party is sound asleep here. I can assure you of that. But we are told by a senior administration official back in Washington that this -- he compared this to very much the same, this official said, as the initial strike that began the war, that the U.S., as our correspondents have been reporting, had time-sensitive intelligence suggesting that several senior Iraqi leaders and possibly Saddam Hussein and his two sons were at a Baghdad area location. And so plans were changed quickly and a strike ordered.
This official said the intelligence suggested that they would be there for -- quote -- "a decent stretch of time." And this official says they won't, of course, know the results for some time. But there is -- quote -- "a sense of optimism" that major players were at the location, again, perhaps the Iraqi leader, Saddam Hussein, and both of his sons; however, this official describing it for now as simply a -- quote -- "solid leadership hit" and says to characterize it as greater than that might be getting out ahead of the known facts.
But, certainly, they're optimistic that they scored, in some sense, in their efforts to target the Iraqi leadership tonight. And they are waiting for a better assessment of exactly who was in that building.
BROWN: Any more or less optimism than they were on March 19?
KING: Hard to say. I remember in the hours immediately after that strike how there was some confidence that Saddam Hussein was in the building, and then when we saw the videotapes and they tried to analyze those. Then we heard other statements and they tried to analyze those, and then, of course, the videotape of a man alleged to be Saddam Hussein walking around in Baghdad.
The administration thought they had a pretty good hit that night, but they also acknowledged that things change very quickly and that what they do say is that now they have real-time intelligence about the movement of Saddam Hussein. That is something they have not had in years. And they say that is based on better human intelligence inside Iraq, specifically inside Baghdad.
And, of course, now you have not only the U.S. forces we have seen in recent hours driving through the streets of Baghdad, but also a significant special operations presence inside Baghdad that the Pentagon, of course, is not talking about in any great detail.
BROWN: John, thank you -- senior White House correspondent John King. We'll have more from him a little bit later. John is in Belfast with the president, who meets with Tony Blair to work out a number of issues.
But for our plate tonight, at least, post-war Iraq, principal among them, we're joined now by Robin Wright, who's the chief diplomatic correspondent for "The Los Angeles Times," a noted author on the Middle East, and, we're pleased to say, a frequent contributor to the program.
It's good to see you again.
Mr. Blair and the president do not -- well, perhaps they broadly agree on the future of Iraq, but they're not necessarily in agreement on how to get there.
ROBIN WRIGHT, CHIEF DIPLOMATIC CORRESPONDENT, "L.A. TIMES": Absolutely.
This is really a pivotal meeting and, arguably, the most important they've held since they agreed jointly that they would confront Saddam Hussein together. This is the one, the moment for the two men to decide the post-war strategy and the structure of a government and what role particularly the United Nations will play in the process. And they're not agreed, basically, on any of those issues.
BROWN: All right. Let's talk about -- let's break that into pieces. The U.N.'s role, Mr. Blair would like more and the president takes the Pentagon's view, as opposed to the State Department's view here.
WRIGHT: That's right.
The administration basically says there is a role for the United Nations, but the United Nations will not rule post-war Iraq. Ironically, people at the State Department actually hope that Prime Minister Blair has influence in selling their own argument with the president.
BROWN: Is there any middle ground here?
WRIGHT: Probably not. I think the administration feels very bitter about the way the drama played out at the United Nations in the run-up to the war and the fact that key Security Council members balked, in the end, at giving -- either confronting Saddam Hussein together and then in authorizing the United States and Britain to use force.
I think that there is a strong feeling that the United States shed the blood and wants the ultimate final word on how Iraq is ruled in the run-up to a new government.
BROWN: Mr. Blair was an important ally. He had serious political problems at home. He hung in there. He has some weight to his argument that he ought to get something in these sort of meetings, doesn't he?
WRIGHT: Absolutely.
And I think you may find, though, that the quid pro quo for the British, really, is on the Middle East peace process. This is where Blair really feels strongly that the United States has to take a leadership role now, now, now that the war is almost over in Iraq and would like to see the road map announced in the next few weeks and Secretary of State Powell head out to the region to begin the process of seeing the process implemented.
BROWN: Back to Iraq for a second, a sense of what -- is the United States in this -- in its current thinking, picking the players to give them at least a leg up on the future of Iraq?
WRIGHT: Well, there are certainly those at the Pentagon who have their favorites among the candidates to form part of the transition interim authority in the run-up to a new government. This is a very critical stage that could go anywhere from a few months to a couple of years. This is where, again, you see the huge division within the administration.
The State Department believes that any transition authority should include outsiders, Iraqi exiles, but also predominantly those from inside the country who've endured 24 years of Saddam Hussein's rule. This is where you're likely to see a lot of tension play out in the weeks ahead, because of this basic split over the process and the players. BROWN: Robin, thank you -- Robin Wright, the chief diplomatic correspondent for "The Los Angeles Times."
We've put a lot out there in 45 minutes. We'll take a break and we'll sort through it as we come back.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
BROWN: To southern Iraq next, and Basra, where British troops for weeks now have been making baby steps into the city, then pulling back, then back in, then back. The time for baby steps has clearly ended.
British forces today plowed into strongholds of Saddam Hussein. In some places, that was literally the case. And British officials said the coalition has now control of much of the city.
This day in Basra from British reporter Bill Neely.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
BILL NEELY, ITN REPORTER (voice-over): A new dawn in Basra today and Challenger tanks rumble through the ornate gates of the main presidential palace. The assaults on Iraq's second city, is just hours old. The tanks and the Marines behind them aren't stopping.
(on camera): This was said to have been the headquarters of the Fedayeen, Saddam's paramilitaries, but locals have told us that the palace is now empty of Iraqi soldiers. The gates are open so we're going to walk straight in.
(voice-over): They push forward across the most symbolic ground in southern Iraq. This palace, the seat of Saddam's power here, power that the Marines are smashing away, different building, different way in. If a hammer won't do, try this. It is the Marines who hold power now in Basra. The next task, to hunt down the men who fought and defended this city for a fortnight.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Rooms clear. Exit one to the outside.
NEELY: The Marines were convinced that if Saddam's men were to make a final stand anywhere in this site, they'd make it here. So orders were hushed.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: You two straight in first on the left.
NEELY: Just 12 hours earlier, a soldier with another unit in Basra was killed by a booby-trapped bomb. So, they moved cautiously through a dozen echoing buildings.
(on camera): Building by building, floor by floor, and there are a lot of them here. The Royal Marines are clearing this presidential palace, where Saddam Hussein has stayed and slept many times in the past. The Marines only too well aware that he may have left men behind here to ambush them. (voice-over): But they found little inside. Ornate bathrooms, but no people, no furniture, nothing for these looters who the Marines rounded up, in the grounds, just a few abandoned weapons, discarded helmets and uniforms. They even left behind the weapons they might have fought a guerrilla war with.
The tanks poured in. But here at the presidential palace, not a shot was fire. Not so a mile away. Dive for cover as Marines opened up on a target. A man had stolen a jeep from the hospital. Doctors shouted warnings to the Marines as he sped toward the tank. Marines believing he was a suicide bomber shot him. He died later in hospital. They're taking no chances here.
In all, three British soldiers have been killed in the assault on Basra. So, this afternoon, Royal Marines stopped these men at a roadblock and found with them a loaded automatic weapon, knives, and military identity cards.
(on camera): This is exactly the kind of thing these Marines are worried about, ambushes by soldiers who have simply taken their uniforms off.
(voice-over): But there's been little sign of resistance since the Marines entered the Saddam's southern power base on a sultry Sunday evening. Not a single shot was fired at the Marines, and not a shot fired by them. Instead, they were mobbed -- crowds jumping on the tanks, delirious with joy. And so it went on today. This may not last. These are, after all, foreign invaders, and some Iraqis would like to do a lot more than arm wrestle with them. But here in Basra, which rebelled against Saddam before, all the signs are of another rebellion, and Saddam's signs are going fast.
The Marines are braced tonight for guerrilla attacks. But in the center and on the streets of this sprawling city of 2 million, they are now in power, and they're showing it. Saddam's power is being torn away. The fall of Basra, the beginning of the end of his brutal regime.
Bill Neely with 4-2 Commando Royal Marines in Basra.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
BROWN: The day in Basra.
We've got some late information now on this attack on what was believed to be the Iraqi leadership, including perhaps Saddam Hussein. We'll get to that in a minute.
We need to take a quick break first.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
BROWN: A little more information now on this attack on a leadership meeting, as it's being described by U.S. Army officials and intelligence officials, a little discrepancy on the time, the Pentagon saying 3:00, CENTCOM saying 2:00, 2:00 Baghdad time, on Monday. A B-1 bomber dropped four JDAMs on a leadership target. According to CENTCOM, it was struck very hard. The target was located in the Al-Mansour neighborhood, Mansour neighborhood. Jamie McIntyre at the beginning of the program mentioned this. And we would underscore here, this is the same neighborhood where we saw pictures earlier today of -- what clearly was an attack of some sort. And now we know what that was, four JDAMs. So it was hit very hard.
This is also the neighborhood where Saddam Hussein on Friday did his little walkabout where he was giving high-fives and people were literally kissing his hand. It was the first real sighting of someone who either was Saddam Hussein or perhaps was someone who looked like Saddam Hussein, not to get into that debate yet again. But it's the same neighborhood.
And according to the reporting by "The Washington Times" today -- tonight, that picture, the picture of where he was on Friday, helped them isolate their attack today. There also was some human intelligence involved, according to David Ensor and Jamie McIntyre, working the Pentagon and national security sources, that Saddam, possibly his sons, was there as well, the same neighborhood.
General Clark, all of this sounds an awful lot like March 19 again.
RET. GENERAL WESLEY CLARK, CNN MILITARY ANALYST: We're now much closer to the heart of the regime. And one would think that the intelligence would be better and the range of alternative targets that would be available for Saddam to hide in would be much slimmer. So maybe there's a good chance here.
BROWN: He has fewer places where he can go, because there are literally tanks, American tanks in some parts of the city and chaos in others.
CLARK: You would think so. And I think it's a good sign that he's stayed in the city at this point, because that -- if he had wanted to get out, we would have had a much harder time keeping him from fleeing out on secondary roads into Syria or someplace in the mountains in eastern Iraq.
BROWN: There was always concern that he might head north to his tribal homeland, his ancestral homeland, where he has some -- he still has some control -- well, he still has control there.
CLARK: That's exactly right.
BROWN: Well, at least the Iraqis have control there. It's not clear he has control there.
CLARK: We don't know who's there. And it's one of the things that we lost when we lost the 4th Infantry Division, was the ability to put simultaneous pressure on Tikrit and Baghdad.
BROWN: Going back to a point David Albright and I were talking about, about the scientists and the need to locate them, you've been through this. How chaotic is it on the ground? How easy would it be for someone to simply slip out of the country?
CLARK: Well, I think it's probably pretty easy to get out of Baghdad. But to get out of the country, to go through the western desert, that's a different matter. And there really is only one good way out, as I understand it, through Jordan, at least. I'm not sure about the routes to Syria. But they're finite in number.
It's tough for off-road mobility. We could have had checkpoints out there. We could have been stopping people -- and we may be -- and searching and finding these scientists, so they don't flee, because the ones who are complicit with Saddam have every incentive to get out of Dodge now.
BROWN: General, back to you in a bit.
Martin Savidge is embedded with the Marines. And Marty's come up, so we want to get to him quickly.
Marty, as best you can, give us a location, go ahead. Marty...
MARTIN SAVIDGE, CNN CORRESPONDENT: We are in the southeast portion of the suburbs of Baghdad, if you can hear me, Aaron. And we are in specifically a village yesterday and the day before that was involved in a very heavy firefight, at times involving U.S. Marines of both the 3rd Battalion 4th Marines and also the 3rd Battalion 7th Marines.
This was essentially a fight for this village that went on for about 48 hours that included heavy artillery duels between Iraqis and U.S. Marines, also mortar fire. There was two missiles being fired, as well as heavy machine guns and M-16s going off. It caused quite a crescendo at some points. Plus, aviation assets of the coalition were being brought in to bear.
This village has been technically quiet for about the last 12, 18 hours, although there is a tense feeling about it right now. This convoy has come to a stop. It's part of the logistics as it builds up to cross over a canal that is up here. There was an Iraqi bridge in place. It was partially destroyed by retreating Iraqi troops. The Marines have now built a pontoon bridge. And that is what is being used to move equipment and personnel across a canal here -- it's not the Tigris -- to push farther east into the suburbs of Baghdad.
The convoy has already been warned. No vehicles will be allowed to approach the convoy. Any vehicle that attempts to will be shot on sight. There had been specific warnings about ambulances, Red Crescent ambulances, that you might think would transport the wounded or injured. They now are -- intelligence is telling the Marines that they may be used as suicide bombing attack vehicles -- Aaron.
BROWN: Marty, in 10 seconds, did this firefight seem to be an organized or disorganized attempt on the Marines?
SAVIDGE: It was pretty much disorganized. It was just mixed in within what you can see, a very built-up civilian area. That always makes it difficult for targeting and exact location. BROWN: Marty, thank you -- Martin Savidge with the Marines, the 1st Battalion 7th Marines.
We'll update the day's headlines. We'll take a short break. We'll be right back.
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