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CNN Newsnight Aaron Brown

Coalition Strikes Again at Top Iraqi Leaders

Aired April 07, 2003 - 23:00   ET

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

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


AARON BROWN, CNN ANCHOR: Well, the chief headline at this hour, for those of you who just may be joining us, another air strike aimed at the generals and the intelligence community's calling a target of opportunity. This is the way the war began on the 19th of March. Tantalizing to think that it might, in some significant way, end this way as well, but we don't know the answer to that yet, whether Saddam Hussein, his leadership is alive.
CNN's Chris Plante has the duty at the Pentagon tonight, and we are now getting some detail on what happened.

CHRIS PLANTE, CNN PENTAGON CORRESPONDENT: That's right, Aaron.

Now, we know at this point that the U.S. intelligence apparatus had developed some information from sources including human beings, from human intelligence on the ground there, that there would be a gathering of senior, very senior Iraqi leadership, probably, they believe, including Saddam Hussein himself and his sons, Uday and Qusay. They said that the intelligence was time-sensitive.

They moved against the target. They launched a B1-B bomber, which is a Lancer. It dropped four bombs, 2,000 pounds apiece, it's a GDU-31/32, actually, JDAM bomb, which is a 2,000-pounder, generally configured as a bunker-buster, which means it can penetrate through thick layers of concrete and steel-reinforced concrete. It's a very heavy blow to any location. This was in a residential area.

The B-1 bomber has been reconfigured to drop a whole range of munitions, including these JDAMs, in very large quantities.

With people on the ground intelligence on the ground, perhaps eyes on the target, as they say, they do have a very high level of confidence. We're told that there's a sense of optimism that major players were at the location.

Now, officials don't want to go so far as to say that they are certain that Saddam Hussein and his sons were at this location, but there is optimism. They do believe that there's a very good chance that this strike, as you said, much like the decapitation effort of the 19th, which launched this military action, that this may have been successful in decapitating the regime, which could, of course, be a defining moment in this conflict and change the course of the event.

We did see these pictures earlier today from this residential neighborhood, and, of course, initially, very disturbing signs that it may have been an errant strike on a residential neighborhood, killing civilians. Now it's turning a little bit. It may be that Saddam Hussein, his sons, and other senior leaders in the regime may have been effectively killed in this strike.

Very important turn of events, quite potentially, Aaron.

BROWN: (UNINTELLIGIBLE), we would underscore "may" and "quite potentially," because we don't really have the end of the paragraph. We know that the bombs landed, and presumably, from the pictures, they landed where they were supposed to. But what we don't know yet is if the right people, in the American view, if the right people were there.

PLANTE: Well, that's right, and we wouldn't want to jump to any conclusions at this early stage. It's similar to the strike on the home of Chemical Ali down in Basra. You believed that he was there, you took the action because you believed that he's there. In this case, Saddam Hussein, his sons, and other senior leaders. It's obviously a very controversial decision when you go into a residential neighborhood.

And obviously the confidence level was very high at the time. Confidence level is high now. But they don't want to go to the extent of saying that they're certain that they have effectively decapitated the regime. As we know, Saddam Hussein has doubles, has used doubles before in public, and he's been a very elusive character over the course of the last 12 years.

So no one wants to walk out to the end of the limb and say that they're certain that they got him, but there is a certain level of confidence that they may have effectively pulled this off, Aaron.

BROWN: Chris, thank you. Chris Plante at the Pentagon.

You're looking, by the way, at live pictures of the Iraqi capital on a Tuesday morning. These are Al Jazeera's pictures. And how the picture, in fact, has changed over time as we look out on there, and it's now just a little bit past 7:00 in the morning on Tuesday.

General Clark, the choice of weapons that were delivered, even if they hit precisely where they were supposed to hit, is it also likely that there would be, given it's a neighborhood, damage to civilians, death to civilians, injury to civilians? They're not that perfect, are they?

GEN. WESLEY CLARK (RET.), CNN MILITARY ANALYST: Well, it would probably hit exactly -- within five or six feet of where it was aimed at the house. The question is how deeply did it go before it exploded, and what were the proximity of the houses. It might have done very little damage, but it actually may not have gone deep enough to get Saddam and his boys in their bunker.

BROWN: Because he -- in the construction you're shaping, he wasn't sitting in a living room with 30 intelligence officials, he was down in some safe underground part of this restaurant, if that's what it was. CLARK: That's exactly right. And it may have been an underground-underground of the restaurant. As far as we know, he has places that may be 200, 300 feet deep.

BROWN: These bombs go that deep?

CLARK: No. Not unless there's an open cavity in there to go through. They wouldn't be set to penetrate that deep. They might go through six or eight floors, but if they've taken turns and moved it sideways, and they've got blast doors...

He's surviving for a reason there. I mean, he's prepared this. So it's unlikely that he's going to allow himself to be vulnerable.

BROWN: There's no answer to this, I suppose, but you sort of wonder what he's surviving for, in a sense. What does he think he can pull off at this point in terms of retaining control of his country?

CLARK: I think he thinks he can make a strong stand and then come back and undercut any American occupation with a resistance movement fed by his neighbors and anti-Americanism.

BROWN: So he's trying to stay alive to fight another day.

CLARK: My guess.

BROWN: Thank you, general, very much. General Wesley Clark.

We'll be joined in a bit by Amy Smithson, a chemical weapons expert, director of the Henry L. Stimson Center in Washington.

First, though, to make, make her relevant to this conversation, CNN's Ryan Chilcote, who's off with the 101st Airborne, reported today -- excuse me -- on the discovery of a site east of Karbala, Karbala, in central Iraq. Soldiers turned up a number of drums that had chemicals in them, and early tests came back positive for a nerve agent and a blister agent. But the results are not considered conclusive. Other experts have asked -- been asked, rather, to do further analysis.

Which brings us to our expert in this case, Miss Smithson. It's nice to see you again.

Anything about, I mean, given, I said earlier, we do tend to hyperventilate a little bit when these -- when the word "chemical" is used in any context. So anything about what came up today give you reason to believe one thing or another?

AMY SMITHSON, CHEMICAL WEAPONS ANALYST: Well, there has been a great deal of hyperventilation over gas masks, over powderous substances, over bottles with the label "Tabun" on them. But in this case, we've gone through a couple of preliminary tests, and these are tests that are meant to give soldiers signals that it's time to put on protective gear. We've gone past that to a positive ID by a Fox vehicle, which is a bit more definitive. It's still not the last word. They're going to have to get this stuff in a laboratory and run it through a gas chromatograph mass spectrometer. And then the answer will come from somebody with a laboratory coat on, and we'll know whether or not this is the real deal.

BROWN: Anything about where or how it was stored, sitting in these big metal drums, offer a clue one way or another?

SMITHSON: I don't think that's going to be definitive one way or another, either because there are a number of cases where inspectors who went to these sites earlier, let's just say they raised an eyebrow in terms of the lack of safety around some of the munitions site. They weren't following the type of procedures that our military would follow to take precautions to protect the health and well-being of the workers there.

I think we can conclude that there's a variance of patterns out there in terms of how they hide things. And while it's not a great deal of material, it could be a place where they've chosen to secrete a bit away.

BROWN: In the conversation with David Albright, we were talking about ultimately to get all of it, as supposed to sort of randomly coming upon it, if that's the object, and it should be, you would think, that you have to find either the government official who ordered it someplace or the scientists, that sort of thing.

Is that do-able?

SMITHSON: I'm hoping that there are not hit squads out there now trying to kill the scientists and the officials who were involved in this program, so that we can get to the bottom of this. It'll take a considerable amount of time, and I would support David's suggestion that we get international inspectors in there at the earliest possible opportunity to assist with this activity.

Quite frankly, we're going to have to take this case in front of the world court of opinion. And to the extent that there are already some who would whisper that the United States or coalition troops might plant evidence in this regard, who are very confused by the varying reports that they're hearing, I think it would be very helpful to have international inspectors in there to sort this out.

BROWN: Given the bad taste in the mouths of many in this country over the inspectors, the inspection program and the rest, is that likely to happen?

SMITHSON: I don't know exactly how the Bush administration would receive that type of a suggestion. Probably they'd look askance at it. But they need to take a bigger picture into consideration here. It's not just the American public that we're speaking to at this point. We're talking to the citizens of the world who are in many countries very, very skeptical about the legitimacy of this war.

And we need to be able to present to them evidence that indeed there were munitions there, there was a reason to argue that Saddam Hussein did not disarm previously, and here are the goods.

BROWN: The -- this is more a political question than a scientific question, certainly. I saw a poll today where -- I think the number was 58, 58 percent of Americans said whether they find the weapons or not, the war was right, because getting rid of Saddam in and of itself, people are coming to believe, was legitimate enough. That is not the case when you leave the borders of the United States.

SMITHSON: I would agree with you there. It appears to be that the coalition, while there's a -- they keep on talking about the coalition of the willing. That doesn't necessarily reflect widespread world opinion, and that there are significant numbers of people out there who think this war is not just.

BROWN: And will they be convinced by a barrel found in some shed in southern Iraq? Or do they need to see a factory, or do they need to see warheads that -- with weaponized chemicals and biological agents and the like?

SMITHSON: This is -- beauty is in the eye of the beholder. I think we're beginning to find pieces of a puzzle here. There are -- there's pieces of evidence that were left over from the United Nations special commission inspections, and the parts that we already know about.

But as this search for these weapons unfolds, whether it's just coalition troops or it's assisted by international inspectors in addition I think we'll find additional pieces of that puzzle coming into play, hopefully assisted by the scientists and officials who no longer fear that there will be -- they'll lose their lives if they speak about this.

BROWN: Amy, thank you. Amy Simpson, good -- Smithson, good to have you with us. Sorry.

SMITHSON: Thank you.

BROWN: Thank you. I apologize.

We'll take a break. Our coverage continues in a moment.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BROWN: For those of you who just may be joining us, and that may be a fair number of you, we hear there's a basketball game of some import going on tonight that may have you flipping back and forth.

Here's the lead of the night. American war plane, an American B- 1 bomber, dropping four bombs on a -- what "The Washington Times," at least, is reporting to be a restaurant in Baghdad where Saddam Hussein and leaders of his regime, including as many as 30 intelligence officials, were believed to have been, very much a replay of what started this war back on the 19th of March.

It took place in the -- an area we've been looking at much of the day. It took place in the afternoon, Monday afternoon Baghdad time. And Arab TV put out these pictures of that neighborhood. And we presume, though we can't be absolutely certain, but we presume this is the site where those four JDAMs hit.

It is -- this neighborhood is also the neighborhood where last Friday Saddam Hussein, or someone who looks just like him, did a walkabout of sorts, meeting with people.

This is a graphic on the kind of bomb that was used. Four of them were dropped based on very good intelligence, they believe, that this was a leadership target. And in the words of CentCom, was "struck very hard."

And again, the source telling "The Washington Times" that senior Ba'ath Party leaders were there, and as many as 30 intelligence officials were in a facility behind or beneath -- and the beneath here is pretty important.

General Wesley Clark, just a few moments ago, talking about, and Dana Priest earlier in the hour, talking about this network of bunkers that lies underneath the city, and some of these bunkers go many, many, many stories deep, whether these quite powerful 2,000-pound bombs could get deep enough is problematic.

As you saw, you could see the damage. It certainly didn't go many, many stories. And in any case, American intelligence officials telling CNN's David Ensor and senior Pentagon correspondent Jamie McIntyre that it will be some time before they can sort through the intelligence on this to know who was there and who survived it, if anyone survived it, and who did not.

But that's the lead tonight, is that, like the 19th of March that started the war, Americans went after Saddam Hussein, his two sons, and leaders of the Iraqi regime.

This is a live picture now that we're looking at from Al Jazeera. How lonely a position that must be for that Iraqi soldier or irregular or civilian who found his way into a hardhat, a helmet, for the day Tuesday morning in Baghdad.

British forces, for those of you just catching on now, say they control much of Basra, the second-largest city in the country, to the south, about 2 million people there. That cannot be said of many of the spots in the northern part of the country, where the fighting continues to be fierce, Kurdish fighters doing most of the fighting there, though they're getting help from Americans. And they say they have something the Iraqis do not have, they have patience.

We're joined from northern Iraq by CNN's Ben Wedeman tonight. Ben, good evening.

BEN WEDEMAN, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Yes, good evening, Aaron. The north relatively quiet compared to the south. However, Mosul, the main commercial hub of the north, was hit severely on Monday morning, a series of large blasts heard from that city.

Now, we saw pictures on the Al Jazeera network of massive blasts, explosions, in that city. According to Al Jazeera, the target hit there, among others, was an ammunitions dump belonging to the Iraqi army.

Now, in addition to those morning air raids, there were other severe air raids elsewhere in the north. According to coalition sources, 50 sorties flown over targets.

But despite all of this, seen from the trenches of northern Iraq, it certainly is relatively quiet.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

WEDEMAN (voice-over): Kurdish fighters dig in at the front and watch and wait, wait for Saddam Hussein's army to pull back. Since the war began, Iraqi forces have retreated a grand total of three miles along this road. Mosul is still 25 miles away.

It's like this up and down the northern front. After days of American air strikes, Iraqi troops have yet to be pried from their new positions here and can still lob a few artillery rounds back.

Kurdish fighters, known as Peshmerga, or "those who face death," are lightly armed but enthusiastic warriors.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We have a strong morale because we have a case (UNINTELLIGIBLE) we believe that our case is true right.

WEDEMAN: Taking up arms to defend their land is considered a sacred duty among the Kurds, regardless of age. They have no tanks, no war planes, no big guns. Their weapons of choice, the AK-47 assault rifle, rocket-propelled grenades, and light artillery.

They're now backed up by a modest contingent of U.S. troops who work closely with the Kurds to coordinate air strikes.

But strong friends and courage will get you only so far.

(on camera): The northern front is, at best, moving forward in fits and starts. The Kurds just don't the weapons, and the Americans simply don't have the numbers to drive back the Iraqi army.

(voice-over): Across the north, Iraqi forces have retreated after being pounded by punishing coalition air strikes. And the Peshmerga have rushed in to take their place. But the Kurds are barely able to hold onto their new gains.

"Since 1991, we've been fighting the Iraqi army," says this Kurdish commander. "Even if the two sides aren't equal, we've been able to fight until now without American or British support."

Even with that support, there's little sense of urgency here. Rather than pushing ahead, the Kurds are biding their time, drinking their tea, and waiting.

(END VIDEOTAPE) WEDEMAN: Now, Aaron, we understand that a group of U.S. special forces are gradually making their way to a strategic highway that links Mosul with the oil-rich city of Kirkuk. Now, this may indicate the strategy that's being pursued in the north, which is essentially to cut off every one of these cities and somehow isolate them, rather than going into these cities, which certainly, for Kurdish fighters, would be somewhat politically problematic, Aaron.

BROWN: Ben, well, just finish the thought. It would be problematic because?

WEDEMAN: Because, for instance, the Turks, the neighbors of Iraq, are extremely sensitive about the possibility that the Kurds would take over Kirkuk and its oil field, providing that (UNINTELLIGIBLE), providing them with the sort of wealth that would allow for the creation of what they fear would be an independent Kurdish state.

Now, that's a -- very much a red line for the Turks. They're worried very much about their restive Kurdish population. So they've made it very clear they don't want a Kurdish state in northern Iraq, an independent Kurdish state.

Mosul another problem, because it's a largely Arab Sunni city, and their opposition would certainly be intense if columns of Kurdish fighters were to enter the city, Aaron.

BROWN: Ben, thank you. Ben Wedeman in northern Iraq.

General Clark, how different that would all look had the Turkish parliament made a decision that was different from the one in May?

CLARK: That's exactly right, and now we have to recognize, Aaron, that the special forces, and maybe that assault from the 173rd that took the air strip, are not to be seen purely in the military context but in the political context, to keep the Turks out, to keep the Kurds busy, to put a little distraction in there, and to show U.S. engagement in the north.

BROWN: I'm -- let me make sure I understand what you just said. It -- they're there to show the Kurds that the Americans care?

CLARK: Both care, and can deter any preemptory Kurdish moves to declare an independent state, to seize the oil fields, or to go too far in fractionating Iraq.

BROWN: So they -- they're sending a message, they want to control them without being very heavy-handed about it.

CLARK: It's U.S. engagement.

BROWN: I'll take that as a yes. Thank you, general.

Take a break. We'll give you the headlines of the day when our coverage continues in a moment.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BROWN: Well, the chief headline at this hour, for those of you who just may be joining us, another air strike aimed at the generals and the intelligence community's calling a target of opportunity. This is the way the war began on the 19th of March. Tantalizing to think that it might, in some significant way, end this way as well, but we don't know the answer to that yet, whether Saddam Hussein, his leadership is alive.

CNN's Chris Plante has the duty at the Pentagon tonight, and we are now getting some detail on what happened.

PLANTE: That's right, Aaron.

Now, we know at this point that the U.S. intelligence apparatus had developed some information from sources including human beings, from human intelligence on the ground there, that there would be a gathering of senior, very senior Iraqi leadership, probably, they believe, including Saddam Hussein himself and his sons, Uday and Qusay. They said that the intelligence was time-sensitive.

They moved against the target. They launched a B1-B bomber, which is a Lancer. It dropped four bombs, 2,000 pounds apiece, it's a GDU-31/32, actually, JDAM bomb, which is a 2,000-pounder, generally configured as a bunker-buster, which means it can penetrate through thick layers of concrete and steel-reinforced concrete. It's a very heavy blow to any location. This was in a residential area.

The B-1 bomber has been reconfigured to drop a whole range of munitions, including these JDAMs, in very large quantities.

With people on the ground intelligence on the ground, perhaps eyes on the target, as they say, they do have a very high level of confidence. We're told that there's a sense of optimism that major players were at the location.

Now, officials don't want to go so far as to say that they are certain that Saddam Hussein and his sons were at this location, but there is optimism. They do believe that there's a very good chance that this strike, as you said, much like the decapitation effort of the 19th, which launched this military action, that this may have been successful in decapitating the regime, which could, of course, be a defining moment in this conflict and change the course of the event.

We did see these pictures earlier today from this residential neighborhood, and, of course, initially, very disturbing signs that it may have been an errant strike on a residential neighborhood, killing civilians. Now it's turning a little bit. It may be that Saddam Hussein, his sons, and other senior leaders in the regime may have been effectively killed in this strike.

Very important turn of events, quite potentially, Aaron.

BROWN: (UNINTELLIGIBLE), we would underscore "may" and "quite potentially," because we don't really have the end of the paragraph. We know that the bombs landed, and presumably, from the pictures, they landed where they were supposed to. But what we don't know yet is if the right people, in the American view, if the right people were there.

PLANTE: Well, that's right, and we wouldn't want to jump to any conclusions at this early stage. It's similar to the strike on the home of Chemical Ali down in Basra. You believed that he was there, you took the action because you believed that he's there. In this case, Saddam Hussein, his sons, and other senior leaders. It's obviously a very controversial decision when you go into a residential neighborhood.

And obviously the confidence level was very high at the time. Confidence level is high now. But they don't want to go to the extent of saying that they're certain that they have effectively decapitated the regime. As we know, Saddam Hussein has doubles, has used doubles before in public, and he's been a very elusive character over the course of the last 12 years.

So no one wants to walk out to the end of the limb and say that they're certain that they got him, but there is a certain level of confidence that they may have effectively pulled this off, Aaron.

BROWN: Chris, thank you. Chris Plante at the Pentagon.

You're looking, by the way, at live pictures of the Iraqi capital on a Tuesday morning. These are Al Jazeera's pictures. And how the picture, in fact, has changed over time as we look out on there, and it's now just a little bit past 7:00 in the morning on Tuesday.

General Clark, the choice of weapons that were delivered, even if they hit precisely where they were supposed to hit, is it also likely that there would be, given it's a neighborhood, damage to civilians, death to civilians, injury to civilians? They're not that perfect, are they?

GEN. WESLEY CLARK (RET.), CNN MILITARY ANALYST: Well, it would probably hit exactly -- within five or six feet of where it was aimed at the house. The question is how deeply did it go before it exploded, and what were the proximity of the houses. It might have done very little damage, but it actually may not have gone deep enough to get Saddam and his boys in their bunker.

BROWN: Because he -- in the construction you're shaping, he wasn't sitting in a living room with 30 intelligence officials, he was down in some safe underground part of this restaurant, if that's what it was.

CLARK: That's exactly right. And it may have been an underground-underground of the restaurant. As far as we know, he has places that may be 200, 300 feet deep.

BROWN: These bombs go that deep?

CLARK: No. Not unless there's an open cavity in there to go through. They wouldn't be set to penetrate that deep. They might go through six or eight floors, but if they've taken turns and moved it sideways, and they've got blast doors...

He's surviving for a reason there. I mean, he's prepared this. So it's unlikely that he's going to allow himself to be vulnerable.

BROWN: There's no answer to this, I suppose, but you sort of wonder what he's surviving for, in a sense. What does he think he can pull off at this point in terms of retaining control of his country?

CLARK: I think he thinks he can make a strong stand and then come back and undercut any American occupation with a resistance movement fed by his neighbors and anti-Americanism.

BROWN: So he's trying to stay alive to fight another day.

CLARK: My guess.

BROWN: Thank you, general, very much. General Wesley Clark.

We'll be joined in a bit by Amy Smithson, a chemical weapons expert, director of the Henry L. Stimson Center in Washington.

First, though, to make, make her relevant to this conversation, CNN's Ryan Chilcote, who's off with the 101st Airborne, reported today -- excuse me -- on the discovery of a site east of Karbala, Karbala, in central Iraq. Soldiers turned up a number of drums that had chemicals in them, and early tests came back positive for a nerve agent and a blister agent. But the results are not considered conclusive. Other experts have asked -- been asked, rather, to do further analysis.

Which brings us to our expert in this case, Miss Smithson. It's nice to see you again.

Anything about, I mean, given, I said earlier, we do tend to hyperventilate a little bit when these -- when the word "chemical" is used in any context. So anything about what came up today give you reason to believe one thing or another?

AMY SMITHSON, CHEMICAL WEAPONS ANALYST: Well, there has been a great deal of hyperventilation over gas masks, over powderous substances, over bottles with the label "Tabun" on them. But in this case, we've gone through a couple of preliminary tests, and these are tests that are meant to give soldiers signals that it's time to put on protective gear. We've gone past that to a positive ID by a Fox vehicle, which is a bit more definitive.

It's still not the last word. They're going to have to get this stuff in a laboratory and run it through a gas chromatograph mass spectrometer. And then the answer will come from somebody with a laboratory coat on, and we'll know whether or not this is the real deal.

BROWN: Anything about where or how it was stored, sitting in these big metal drums, offer a clue one way or another?

SMITHSON: I don't think that's going to be definitive one way or another, either because there are a number of cases where inspectors who went to these sites earlier, let's just say they raised an eyebrow in terms of the lack of safety around some of the munitions site. They weren't following the type of procedures that our military would follow to take precautions to protect the health and well-being of the workers there.

I think we can conclude that there's a variance of patterns out there in terms of how they hide things. And while it's not a great deal of material, it could be a place where they've chosen to secrete a bit away.

BROWN: In the conversation with David Albright, we were talking about ultimately to get all of it, as supposed to sort of randomly coming upon it, if that's the object, and it should be, you would think, that you have to find either the government official who ordered it someplace or the scientists, that sort of thing.

Is that do-able?

SMITHSON: I'm hoping that there are not hit squads out there now trying to kill the scientists and the officials who were involved in this program, so that we can get to the bottom of this. It'll take a considerable amount of time, and I would support David's suggestion that we get international inspectors in there at the earliest possible opportunity to assist with this activity.

Quite frankly, we're going to have to take this case in front of the world court of opinion. And to the extent that there are already some who would whisper that the United States or coalition troops might plant evidence in this regard, who are very confused by the varying reports that they're hearing, I think it would be very helpful to have international inspectors in there to sort this out.

BROWN: Given the bad taste in the mouths of many in this country over the inspectors, the inspection program and the rest, is that likely to happen?

SMITHSON: I don't know exactly how the Bush administration would receive that type of a suggestion. Probably they'd look askance at it. But they need to take a bigger picture into consideration here. It's not just the American public that we're speaking to at this point. We're talking to the citizens of the world who are in many countries very, very skeptical about the legitimacy of this war.

And we need to be able to present to them evidence that indeed there were munitions there, there was a reason to argue that Saddam Hussein did not disarm previously, and here are the goods.

BROWN: The -- this is more a political question than a scientific question, certainly. I saw a poll today where -- I think the number was 58, 58 percent of Americans said whether they find the weapons or not, the war was right, because getting rid of Saddam in and of itself, people are coming to believe, was legitimate enough. That is not the case when you leave the borders of the United States.

SMITHSON: I would agree with you there. It appears to be that the coalition, while there's a -- they keep on talking about the coalition of the willing. That doesn't necessarily reflect widespread world opinion, and that there are significant numbers of people out there who think this war is not just.

BROWN: And will they be convinced by a barrel found in some shed in southern Iraq? Or do they need to see a factory, or do they need to see warheads that -- with weaponized chemicals and biological agents and the like?

SMITHSON: This is -- beauty is in the eye of the beholder. I think we're beginning to find pieces of a puzzle here. There are -- there's pieces of evidence that were left over from the United Nations special commission inspections, and the parts that we already know about.

But as this search for these weapons unfolds, whether it's just coalition troops or it's assisted by international inspectors in addition I think we'll find additional pieces of that puzzle coming into play, hopefully assisted by the scientists and officials who no longer fear that there will be -- they'll lose their lives if they speak about this.

BROWN: Amy, thank you. Amy Simpson, good -- Smithson, good to have you with us. Sorry.

SMITHSON: Thank you.

BROWN: Thank you. I apologize.

We'll take a break. Our coverage continues in a moment.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BROWN: For those of you who just may be joining us, and that may be a fair number of you, we hear there's a basketball game of some import going on tonight that may have you flipping back and forth.

Here's the lead of the night. American war plane, an American B- 1 bomber, dropping four bombs on a -- what "The Washington Times," at least, is reporting to be a restaurant in Baghdad where Saddam Hussein and leaders of his regime, including as many as 30 intelligence officials, were believed to have been, very much a replay of what started this war back on the 19th of March.

It took place in the -- an area we've been looking at much of the day. It took place in the afternoon, Monday afternoon Baghdad time. And Arab TV put out these pictures of that neighborhood. And we presume, though we can't be absolutely certain, but we presume this is the site where those four JDAMs hit.

It is -- this neighborhood is also the neighborhood where last Friday Saddam Hussein, or someone who looks just like him, did a walkabout of sorts, meeting with people.

This is a graphic on the kind of bomb that was used. Four of them were dropped based on very good intelligence, they believe, that this was a leadership target. And in the words of CentCom, was "struck very hard."

And again, the source telling "The Washington Times" that senior Ba'ath Party leaders were there, and as many as 30 intelligence officials were in a facility behind or beneath -- and the beneath here is pretty important.

General Wesley Clark, just a few moments ago, talking about, and Dana Priest earlier in the hour, talking about this network of bunkers that lies underneath the city, and some of these bunkers go many, many, many stories deep, whether these quite powerful 2,000-pound bombs could get deep enough is problematic.

As you saw, you could see the damage. It certainly didn't go many, many stories. And in any case, American intelligence officials telling CNN's David Ensor and senior Pentagon correspondent Jamie McIntyre that it will be some time before they can sort through the intelligence on this to know who was there and who survived it, if anyone survived it, and who did not.

But that's the lead tonight, is that, like the 19th of March that started the war, Americans went after Saddam Hussein, his two sons, and leaders of the Iraqi regime.

This is a live picture now that we're looking at from Al Jazeera. How lonely a position that must be for that Iraqi soldier or irregular or civilian who found his way into a hardhat, a helmet, for the day Tuesday morning in Baghdad.

British forces, for those of you just catching on now, say they control much of Basra, the second-largest city in the country, to the south, about 2 million people there. That cannot be said of many of the spots in the northern part of the country, where the fighting continues to be fierce, Kurdish fighters doing most of the fighting there, though they're getting help from Americans. And they say they have something the Iraqis do not have, they have patience.

We're joined from northern Iraq by CNN's Ben Wedeman tonight. Ben, good evening.

BEN WEDEMAN, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Yes, good evening, Aaron. The north relatively quiet compared to the south. However, Mosul, the main commercial hub of the north, was hit severely on Monday morning, a series of large blasts heard from that city.

Now, we saw pictures on the Al Jazeera network of massive blasts, explosions, in that city. According to Al Jazeera, the target hit there, among others, was an ammunitions dump belonging to the Iraqi army.

Now, in addition to those morning air raids, there were other severe air raids elsewhere in the north. According to coalition sources, 50 sorties flown over targets.

But despite all of this, seen from the trenches of northern Iraq, it certainly is relatively quiet.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

WEDEMAN (voice-over): Kurdish fighters dig in at the front and watch and wait, wait for Saddam Hussein's army to pull back. Since the war began, Iraqi forces have retreated a grand total of three miles along this road. Mosul is still 25 miles away.

It's like this up and down the northern front. After days of American air strikes, Iraqi troops have yet to be pried from their new positions here and can still lob a few artillery rounds back.

Kurdish fighters, known as Peshmerga, or "those who face death," are lightly armed but enthusiastic warriors.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We have a strong morale because we have a case (UNINTELLIGIBLE) we believe that our case is true right.

WEDEMAN: Taking up arms to defend their land is considered a sacred duty among the Kurds, regardless of age. They have no tanks, no war planes, no big guns. Their weapons of choice, the AK-47 assault rifle, rocket-propelled grenades, and light artillery.

They're now backed up by a modest contingent of U.S. troops who work closely with the Kurds to coordinate air strikes.

But strong friends and courage will get you only so far.

(on camera): The northern front is, at best, moving forward in fits and starts. The Kurds just don't the weapons, and the Americans simply don't have the numbers to drive back the Iraqi army.

(voice-over): Across the north, Iraqi forces have retreated after being pounded by punishing coalition air strikes. And the Peshmerga have rushed in to take their place. But the Kurds are barely able to hold onto their new gains.

"Since 1991, we've been fighting the Iraqi army," says this Kurdish commander. "Even if the two sides aren't equal, we've been able to fight until now without American or British support."

Even with that support, there's little sense of urgency here. Rather than pushing ahead, the Kurds are biding their time, drinking their tea, and waiting.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

WEDEMAN: Now, Aaron, we understand that a group of U.S. special forces are gradually making their way to a strategic highway that links Mosul with the oil-rich city of Kirkuk. Now, this may indicate the strategy that's being pursued in the north, which is essentially to cut off every one of these cities and somehow isolate them, rather than going into these cities, which certainly, for Kurdish fighters, would be somewhat politically problematic, Aaron.

BROWN: Ben, well, just finish the thought. It would be problematic because? WEDEMAN: Because, for instance, the Turks, the neighbors of Iraq, are extremely sensitive about the possibility that the Kurds would take over Kirkuk and its oil field, providing that (UNINTELLIGIBLE), providing them with the sort of wealth that would allow for the creation of what they fear would be an independent Kurdish state.

Now, that's a -- very much a red line for the Turks. They're worried very much about their restive Kurdish population. So they've made it very clear they don't want a Kurdish state in northern Iraq, an independent Kurdish state.

Mosul another problem, because it's a largely Arab Sunni city, and their opposition would certainly be intense if columns of Kurdish fighters were to enter the city, Aaron.

BROWN: Ben, thank you. Ben Wedeman in northern Iraq.

General Clark, how different that would all look had the Turkish parliament made a decision that was different from the one in May?

CLARK: That's exactly right, and now we have to recognize, Aaron, that the special forces, and maybe that assault from the 173rd that took the air strip, are not to be seen purely in the military context but in the political context, to keep the Turks out, to keep the Kurds busy, to put a little distraction in there, and to show U.S. engagement in the north.

BROWN: I'm -- let me make sure I understand what you just said. It -- they're there to show the Kurds that the Americans care?

CLARK: Both care, and can deter any preemptory Kurdish moves to declare an independent state, to seize the oil fields, or to go too far in fractionating Iraq.

BROWN: So they -- they're sending a message, they want to control them without being very heavy-handed about it.

CLARK: It's U.S. engagement.

BROWN: I'll take that as a yes. Thank you, general.

Take a break. We'll give you the headlines of the day when our coverage continues in a moment.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BROWN: Major story of the night, CentCom confirming what is almost a deja-vu moment, an attack on Saddam Hussein and the Iraqi leadership. It took place in a neighborhood in Iraq. It took place on Monday afternoon there, about somewhere between 2:00 and 3:00 in the afternoon. A B-1 bomber and four JDAM bombs dropped on either a restaurant or the building behind a restaurant.

Whether the targets, the Ba'ath Party officials, Saddam Hussein, perhaps his two sons, were in the building or under the building in a series of bunkers is not known. It will take, according to intelligence officials, some time to conclude that. But they had, they believe, hard intelligence, including some human intelligence.

As we said, this took place some hours ago. It's now early in the morning on Tuesday morning. The attack happened Monday afternoon in Baghdad and was reported throughout the day as an attack in a residential neighborhood before this other piece of information that Saddam Hussein and the Ba'ath Party and 30 intelligence officials might be there.

Here is how Al Jazeera, the Arab TV network, reported the story throughout the day.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE (through translator): The goal of the American airplanes this time was a few houses in Mansoura. They were surprised by a bombardment before sunrise, and many victims under the rubbles were left, and many wounded at varying degrees.

We saw the airplanes in low altitudes, and we looked at it, we were used to -- we got used to the noise. But this was very low. And suddenly a very huge explosion under the airplanes, and missile went off very, very fast, and it hit the targets very close.

The shock of the explosion created a rattling in my house, although I was 500 meters away, and I saw children and women crying.

We are (UNINTELLIGIBLE) protect them, a very young was killed. The psychological impact is huge amongst the people who live close to the explosion.

The -- about seven or eight were -- are expected to have been here, maybe more. The explosion left a lot of damages in an area with around 500 meters around that area. This is close to 14th Street, 14th of Ramadan Street.

The shrapnel went all around, smoke, and to these houses, we came and we saw smoke all over. And people that were here were hurt as well. And we saw dead people, and we saw all -- the people in all directions. And in spite of the attempts by the national defense to lift the rubble to extract people from under it, but this is a very tiresome and hard work. They are trying their best to save.

This scene of damaged houses and big hole, does not indicate -- this does not indicate that there are any survivors.

Now all is mixed, the palm trees, the rubble, and the remains of people. While attempts to rescue people, airplanes are still flying in the sky.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BROWN: That's how Al Jazeera reported the bombing in the Al Mansour neighborhood earlier on Monday afternoon in Baghdad. Before it was known that Saddam Hussein and his leadership, and least according to American intelligence, was there, it was seen as simply another attack or errant bombing in a civilian neighborhood. And there certainly is evidence in those pictures that civilians were hurt, and some may well have died as well.

One of the best-known and most controversial Iraqi opposition leaders, someone who may play a huge role in the future of Iraq, is no longer in London, where he's usually based. Ahmad Chalabi is now in Iraq, apparently having been flown there by the U.S. military. Mr. Chalabi was interviewed last night on the CBS News broadcast "60 Minutes." Here's some of what he had to say to Lesley Stahl.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP, "60 MINUTES," CBS)

AHMAD CHALABI, IRAQI NATIONAL CONGRESS: Iraq is not Afghanistan. You cannot buy people. The Iraqi people have to feel that their leadership must -- must be seen to play an important role in this process of liberation.

I'm not a candidate for any position in Iraq, and I don't seek an office. I -- my -- I think my role ends with the liberation of the country.

The army did not fight to defense of them. The Marines and the U.S. (UNINTELLIGIBLE) division were cut like knife through butter, through two divisions of the Republican Guard near Baghdad in less than 24 hours.

The U.S. government publicly asked the Iraqi people not to do an uprising. They asked them to stay at home when military operations were going on. U.S. officials told opposition leaders specifically, No uprising.

The American military, I think, should stay in Iraq until the first elections are held and a democratic government is established. I'm not prepared to give a time frame, but we expect to have a constitution ratified within two years.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BROWN: That was last night on "60 Minutes" on CBS.

These are live pictures of Baghdad this morning. And you can see the smoke, or some smoke, in the air behind those trees. What is causing it, or what caused the fire that's causing the smoke, don't know. We'll try and find out. But this comes from Abu Dhabi TV.

We're joined now on the phone by Marie Colvin of "The London Sunday Times," who is at an air base outside of Nasiriyah with the free Iraqi forces that are being flown in to fight on the side of the coalition.

Marie, why don't you tell us a bit about who these people are and how many other groups are out there like them?

MARIE COLVIN, "THE LONDON SUNDAY TIMES" (on phone): This is a pretty unique force. It's -- right now, there's about 750 of the free Iraqi force soldiers here. Everyone's in uniform, armed. They were mixed of exiles from outside, and I know you just had Ahmad Chalabi on, who's the leader. Probably about 50 percent are people who've come from all over. I mean, there's a guy here who left his grocery store in Missouri to come fight.

And the other 50 percent are Iraqis from inside. One of the units here, for example, is led by an Iraqi Republican Guard who defected fairly recently and is now leading one of these platoons here, I guess you'd call it, (UNINTELLIGIBLE) they're divided up into 56 (UNINTELLIGIBLE) special -- American special forces here assigned to them.

All on a rather (UNINTELLIGIBLE) austere (UNINTELLIGIBLE) on this (UNINTELLIGIBLE). It was bombed by the Americans, and they're living in about -- in the buildings that are still unholed. And hoping to get involved.

BROWN: Are they more about symbolism than they are about any real help?

COLVIN: Well, it's kind of a combination. There's certainly symbolism. You know, as you know, a lot of the problems the American forces have faced is, you know, certainly very few except the forces who've been fighting would support Saddam. But they're suspicious or worried, you know, that, is this an American occupation? Are they really going to kick Saddam out?

You (UNINTELLIGIBLE) you've got -- the idea is, you've got to (UNINTELLIGIBLE) very large Iraqi Arab force, because, you know, of course, the Kurds up north, you know, (UNINTELLIGIBLE) their suspicions among the Iraqi Arab population (UNINTELLIGIBLE). (UNINTELLIGIBLE) the Iraqi Arab force here is to try to put a face on it, you know, this is a fight against Saddam, these are, you know, we're Iraqi opposition, we've come here to try to get Iraqi soldiers to defect to them.

More importantly, you know, any advance, they've left behind a lot of towns and villages that are essentially -- have no Americans in them. You still have the Ba'ath leadership there. These guys have a great (UNINTELLIGIBLE) of network they've built up for years, and they're, you know, hoping to get their people in those villages to take over.

They're not getting -- there seems to be quite a bit of rather internecine fighting in Washington. The Chalabi and this free Iraqi force have a lot of support at the top and certainly on the ground here from the Americans I've seen. But they want to move forward, and they're not -- there's attention on American supplies, and they're not getting that.

BROWN: Do these men -- and I assume they're all men -- do they have anything in common, other than a hatred for Saddam Hussein and the Ba'athist government? Is there an ideological component here?

COLVIN: It's a very good question. It's not ideological at all. They've pretty much come from everywhere around the globe, and also from inside Iraq, to -- their main goal is to get to Baghdad, get rid of Saddam. The leader, Chalabi, as you said, he's (UNINTELLIGIBLE) quite controversial. The Pentagon loves him, State Department doesn't, CIA is suspicious of him.

His goal is get rid of Saddam, you know, who's oppressed this country for going on 30 years now, and set up a democratic government.

I think where the -- there is not an ideological component except that we want a democratic government ruled by Iraqis. I think the controversy comes in where, you know, certain people in Washington want there to be an American military government. Chalabi's position is there should be American, you know, military presence here, obviously, because, you know, this place is going to need stability before you can do anything.

But he believes that the interim government should be Iraqi, and there's disagreement in Washington about that.

BROWN: Just one question on Mr. Chalabi, then. He -- I mean, in this government, this future of Iraq, he wouldn't mind leading it, would he?

COLVIN: Well, he's treated as, you know, certainly as a future leader of Iraq here. I mean, a lot of the local sheikhs are coming around in a kind of tribal way. I mean, he's obviously lived in the West for a while, but he's -- you know, the local sheikhs are coming around and treating him as a future leader. Certainly the...

BROWN: Marie, is he the Karzai...

COLVIN: ... men who are here do.

BROWN: I'm sorry. Is he in some ways the Karzai of Iraq?

COLVIN: That's a very good analogy. He's potentially the Karzai of Iraq. Certainly no one else has emerged. I mean, he has whatever, you know, is thought of him, pretty much loved or hated. He's worked for the last 20 years to do this. He was one of the first people in opposition. And he's had ups and downs, and he's just sort of worked his way through.

And he is here in Iraq with 700 people. (UNINTELLIGIBLE) they're part of the American war plan. I mean, (UNINTELLIGIBLE) never for them to work separately. They need the American cover.

But he's -- (UNINTELLIGIBLE) certainly going to play a large role in the future of Iraq. What that role is, I think we'll see when Saddam goes.

BROWN: I guess we will. Thank you, Marie. Marie Colvin is with "The London Sunday Times."

Quickly to the pictures of Baghdad. This is what they're seeing, these shots. This is Abu Dhabi TV, but there's more, and you can hear gunfire, can't you? It comes in fits and starts. Now, I'm going to -- Abu Dhabi TV focusing on it there. But we heard what sounded like machine gun sort of fire, small arms and machine gun sort of fire just a moment ago in this area, apparently. This is the Lebanese Broadcasting Company. I'm not precisely sure what they're focusing on, but they're back on that shot also.

Early Tuesday morning, that's Al Jazeera. You see the haze of the city and the sounds of combat in the city as well. It is not a peaceful place, not yet. It may not be for a while.

Our coverage continues in a moment.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BROWN: This time of night, we try and get a sense of where the country is, how the country's mood is shifting over the three weeks of the war. And we gather together people from around the country, and we have again tonight.

In Los Angeles, Josefa Salinas, who's a talk show host in Los Angeles, KHHT. In Chicago, Debbie Howlett is the Midwest correspondent for "USA Today." And Michael Medved is in Seattle. He's a film critic, and he also hosts a nationally syndicated radio talk show out of Seattle.

It's good to see all of you.

Ms. Salinas, the last time we talked with you, we were talking about where the (UNINTELLIGIBLE) -- this was, I guess, about 10 days ago. I'm curious if, as the war has progressed, if your audience, which is Latino principally but not exclusively, has shifted as well.

JOSEFA SALINAS, TALK SHOW HOST: Oh, most definitely. I think that there was a lot of opposition to the war initially, but once we were in and the fighting had begun, a lot of the sentiments went for the soldiers, were all very much in support of the soldiers. Nobody wants to be at war, but they definitely want the soldiers to know that as a community, that we're behind them.

We lost several Latino soldiers. In fact, Jose Gutierrez was laid to rest today in Los Angeles. He was one of the first Marines that was taken in the war.

So that it's shifted to more of a support. Now everyone's just interested in getting out. And then what are we going to do in Iraq once this is all over to show that we actually have gone in there to do what we said we were going to do?

BROWN: Is there a concern in your community that a hornets' nest has been stirred up here that may not be settled down very quickly and very easily?

SALINAS: Oh, I think that a lot of the concern is with the possibility that not only in Iraq, but the groups that support Iraq around the country could possibly be angry with America, and that this -- these ramifications may end up coming back to us, especially in Los Angeles being a key target, or so they say.

BROWN: Debbie, let me -- you've had interesting and difficult assignments from the newspaper, which has been -- when -- you've written some obituaries, I guess, for soldiers who have died and talked to a lot of families. Generally speaking, out in the Midwest, these families getting a lot of support, I would imagine.

DEBBIE HOWLETT, MIDWEST CORRESPONDENT, "USA TODAY": Oh, yes, it's amazing to see the support that small towns are rallying around these families of these young men and women who made the ultimate sacrifice for their country and died in Iraq. It's just been incredible to see the outpouring of support and love for these kids, and the understanding, which I think has usurped any opposition that was in these communities for the war.

It's just really hitting close to home with these people. And...

BROWN: Do people -- I'm sorry. Do people, when you talk to them, when you talk to the neighbors and the friends and the people in the community, do they see the war as still a search for weapons of mass destruction, or has it become incredibly personalized around Saddam Hussein?

HOWLETT: Well, one of the things, I think, that happens when -- in these small towns, when they know somebody who's been killed in action, is that it does get more personalized, and it does become more focused on Saddam Hussein. I think the people out there are -- understand viscerally what the war's about, and in a small town, the loss of one life is magnified more than it would be in a large city like Chicago.

BROWN: Certainly is.

Michael, you're in an interesting town in all of this, because Seattle has got a lot of military -- lot of men and women who work -- there are just -- Michael...

Let me explain to viewers. There are some war planes in the sky, and we've gone to -- we're trying to show the Al Jazeera.

Seattle has both a large military community and a large antiwar community. How has the mood shifted, if at all, over three weeks?

MICHAEL MEDVED, RADIO TALK SHOW HOST: Oh, I think the mood has shifted because a lot of the people who were hesitant about the war have gotten on board. But the left is still strident, and the left is still isolated. We had a big debate with the Seattle City Council, where the -- there's a local citizen, a social worker, actually, who had put forward a resolution just offering support for the troops.

And not a single member of the nine-member council wanted to support that simple resolution. They all wanted to insert things saying that this was a preemptive strike, that it was a first-strike invasion, that it was an illegitimate war.

And the fact that people on the left and callers to my radio show from around the country are still so bitter, are still so focused on conspiracy theories with President Bush, I think shows that there is a very strong isolated, small group of Americans who simply aren't on board with this and are creating a great distance between themselves and the American mainstream.

BROWN: Well, set them aside. Set the fringe aside for a second, if that's a fair way to describe them. There are still people who aren't on the fringe who also are not in support of the war.

MEDVED: Right. Well, there were people who questioned the war. They're in the support of the war now, in the sense that they want the United States to win. One of the things we did for the radio show is, we went around to demonstrations in different places and asked people, Well, OK, you're protesting the war. Would you still like to see the U.S. win, or doesn't it make any difference to you?

And it was shocking how many people actually wanted to see the U.S. lose at those demonstrations.

BROWN: Really?

MEDVED: Absolutely. And again, people have come on the radio show. They will call up, they will say that. Their hatred of George Bush is that deep, people saying that Bush is more dangerous than Saddam Hussein, that he's more of a threat to the world.

But this sort of thing, this obviously is just a tiny segment of the American population. Most people, even those who had doubts about the war, who were fearful about it, have gotten on board, partially because of the magnificent performance of our military in the Persian Gulf, which I think has erased a lot of doubts on the part of a lot of people.

BROWN: Josefa, let me give you the last word tonight. Do you think that the -- this concern that you talked about that we've stirred up a hornets' nest, that America's stirred up a hornets' nest, if this doesn't -- I don't mean the war, but if this postwar period doesn't end relatively quickly, you think that becomes a political problem in Los Angeles for President Bush (UNINTELLIGIBLE) in the Hispanic community?

SALINAS: I think that it could, because you have a large number of Latinos in the service, and a lot of families here waiting for these kids to come home. And people want to see some resolution. And if there are other ramifications that end up happening as a result of this, people could start questioning in four years whether or not -- well, less than that, actually -- whether or not, you know, where to place their vote.

He didn't do well in California on the last election, so he's got a long way to come back with us.

BROWN: That's an important constituency for him.

It's good to see you. Thank you for coming back.

SALINAS: Thank you.

BROWN: And Michael, it's always nice to see you.

MEDVED: Thank you.

BROWN: And Debbie, thanks for joining us tonight.

HOWLETT: Thank you.

BROWN: We'll take a break. Our coverage continues in a moment.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BROWN: That's Baghdad on a Tuesday morning. You can just barely make out in the center of your picture there a U.S. war plane. What sort of mission that plane is on or was on, and was it -- We'll just watch it for a minute and see what it's about to do. These are Al Jazeera's pictures. And it didn't stay in the frame long enough.

That's an F-18 up there, General Clark tells us. And you can certainly hear it. Can't see it. Now on the right of your screen, perhaps more than one up there. Sounds must be quite familiar by now to the 4 million, 5 million people in Baghdad.

Even in nonwar times, our program, "NEWSNIGHT," has a love affair with the work of still photographers. And we have been featuring their work through the course of the last three weeks. Tonight we feature the work of Robert Nickelsberg, whose work appears within the pages of "TIME" magazine. Robert is traveling with the 1st Marine Division. Last night he was just miles away from Baghdad, where the troops were getting ready for a taste of urban combat.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

ROBERT NICKELSBERG, PHOTOGRAPHER, "TIME" MAGAZINE: My name is Robert Nickelsberg. I'm with the 1st Marine Division. And I've been embedded with the 3rd Battalion, 4th Regiment. I'm with one particular group the whole way, where everyone gets to know each other.

With the embedding, it takes care of a lot of the uncertainty.

There, one of the aggressive units that the Marines has in the 1st Division. They're not here to take and hold targets, they're here to secure them and then move on. They're very familiar with this kind of terrain. They've trained extensively in urban warfare as well. They're very well coordinated, extremely confident, and I've been very impressed with how they conduct their day-to-day activities.

We've been able to move around quite freely, attend meetings, backgrounds, look at maps. So in a sense, we know what the mission is before it starts.

The basic objective is to get to the Ba'ath Party headquarters, part of their mission is to go in and look for documents, look for files, look for whatever information they have on the place that they're entering, secure the building, and then exit.

With their training, they've been able to pull it off with very few losses and injuries, which lets you work differently. You can run right alongside, and I wouldn't say there's a false sense security, certainly, but there's a different sense and a different amount of confidence that you can bring to the pictures.

When they feel they're in their element, this is what they thought the conflict would be about, and they're anxious to cut their teeth and follow through on their instructions. They're very agressive with this. There's no way of knowing until the end of the day, really, what will happen or what has happened. So it's a day-by-day, day in the life of this war.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

BROWN: Robert Nickelsburg shooting for TIME magazine some very powerful pictures there.

We'll take a break. Daryn Kagan updated the day's headlines. She joins us from Kuwait.

When we come back, we'll check at the Pentagon, the White House. Jack Lawrence, a former CBS and ABC correspondent, who's over in Iraq covering for National Public Radio and "Esquire" magazein joins us.

So we have a lot to do. We'll take a break first. Our coverage continues in a moment.

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Aired April 7, 2003 - 23:00   ET
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AARON BROWN, CNN ANCHOR: Well, the chief headline at this hour, for those of you who just may be joining us, another air strike aimed at the generals and the intelligence community's calling a target of opportunity. This is the way the war began on the 19th of March. Tantalizing to think that it might, in some significant way, end this way as well, but we don't know the answer to that yet, whether Saddam Hussein, his leadership is alive.
CNN's Chris Plante has the duty at the Pentagon tonight, and we are now getting some detail on what happened.

CHRIS PLANTE, CNN PENTAGON CORRESPONDENT: That's right, Aaron.

Now, we know at this point that the U.S. intelligence apparatus had developed some information from sources including human beings, from human intelligence on the ground there, that there would be a gathering of senior, very senior Iraqi leadership, probably, they believe, including Saddam Hussein himself and his sons, Uday and Qusay. They said that the intelligence was time-sensitive.

They moved against the target. They launched a B1-B bomber, which is a Lancer. It dropped four bombs, 2,000 pounds apiece, it's a GDU-31/32, actually, JDAM bomb, which is a 2,000-pounder, generally configured as a bunker-buster, which means it can penetrate through thick layers of concrete and steel-reinforced concrete. It's a very heavy blow to any location. This was in a residential area.

The B-1 bomber has been reconfigured to drop a whole range of munitions, including these JDAMs, in very large quantities.

With people on the ground intelligence on the ground, perhaps eyes on the target, as they say, they do have a very high level of confidence. We're told that there's a sense of optimism that major players were at the location.

Now, officials don't want to go so far as to say that they are certain that Saddam Hussein and his sons were at this location, but there is optimism. They do believe that there's a very good chance that this strike, as you said, much like the decapitation effort of the 19th, which launched this military action, that this may have been successful in decapitating the regime, which could, of course, be a defining moment in this conflict and change the course of the event.

We did see these pictures earlier today from this residential neighborhood, and, of course, initially, very disturbing signs that it may have been an errant strike on a residential neighborhood, killing civilians. Now it's turning a little bit. It may be that Saddam Hussein, his sons, and other senior leaders in the regime may have been effectively killed in this strike.

Very important turn of events, quite potentially, Aaron.

BROWN: (UNINTELLIGIBLE), we would underscore "may" and "quite potentially," because we don't really have the end of the paragraph. We know that the bombs landed, and presumably, from the pictures, they landed where they were supposed to. But what we don't know yet is if the right people, in the American view, if the right people were there.

PLANTE: Well, that's right, and we wouldn't want to jump to any conclusions at this early stage. It's similar to the strike on the home of Chemical Ali down in Basra. You believed that he was there, you took the action because you believed that he's there. In this case, Saddam Hussein, his sons, and other senior leaders. It's obviously a very controversial decision when you go into a residential neighborhood.

And obviously the confidence level was very high at the time. Confidence level is high now. But they don't want to go to the extent of saying that they're certain that they have effectively decapitated the regime. As we know, Saddam Hussein has doubles, has used doubles before in public, and he's been a very elusive character over the course of the last 12 years.

So no one wants to walk out to the end of the limb and say that they're certain that they got him, but there is a certain level of confidence that they may have effectively pulled this off, Aaron.

BROWN: Chris, thank you. Chris Plante at the Pentagon.

You're looking, by the way, at live pictures of the Iraqi capital on a Tuesday morning. These are Al Jazeera's pictures. And how the picture, in fact, has changed over time as we look out on there, and it's now just a little bit past 7:00 in the morning on Tuesday.

General Clark, the choice of weapons that were delivered, even if they hit precisely where they were supposed to hit, is it also likely that there would be, given it's a neighborhood, damage to civilians, death to civilians, injury to civilians? They're not that perfect, are they?

GEN. WESLEY CLARK (RET.), CNN MILITARY ANALYST: Well, it would probably hit exactly -- within five or six feet of where it was aimed at the house. The question is how deeply did it go before it exploded, and what were the proximity of the houses. It might have done very little damage, but it actually may not have gone deep enough to get Saddam and his boys in their bunker.

BROWN: Because he -- in the construction you're shaping, he wasn't sitting in a living room with 30 intelligence officials, he was down in some safe underground part of this restaurant, if that's what it was. CLARK: That's exactly right. And it may have been an underground-underground of the restaurant. As far as we know, he has places that may be 200, 300 feet deep.

BROWN: These bombs go that deep?

CLARK: No. Not unless there's an open cavity in there to go through. They wouldn't be set to penetrate that deep. They might go through six or eight floors, but if they've taken turns and moved it sideways, and they've got blast doors...

He's surviving for a reason there. I mean, he's prepared this. So it's unlikely that he's going to allow himself to be vulnerable.

BROWN: There's no answer to this, I suppose, but you sort of wonder what he's surviving for, in a sense. What does he think he can pull off at this point in terms of retaining control of his country?

CLARK: I think he thinks he can make a strong stand and then come back and undercut any American occupation with a resistance movement fed by his neighbors and anti-Americanism.

BROWN: So he's trying to stay alive to fight another day.

CLARK: My guess.

BROWN: Thank you, general, very much. General Wesley Clark.

We'll be joined in a bit by Amy Smithson, a chemical weapons expert, director of the Henry L. Stimson Center in Washington.

First, though, to make, make her relevant to this conversation, CNN's Ryan Chilcote, who's off with the 101st Airborne, reported today -- excuse me -- on the discovery of a site east of Karbala, Karbala, in central Iraq. Soldiers turned up a number of drums that had chemicals in them, and early tests came back positive for a nerve agent and a blister agent. But the results are not considered conclusive. Other experts have asked -- been asked, rather, to do further analysis.

Which brings us to our expert in this case, Miss Smithson. It's nice to see you again.

Anything about, I mean, given, I said earlier, we do tend to hyperventilate a little bit when these -- when the word "chemical" is used in any context. So anything about what came up today give you reason to believe one thing or another?

AMY SMITHSON, CHEMICAL WEAPONS ANALYST: Well, there has been a great deal of hyperventilation over gas masks, over powderous substances, over bottles with the label "Tabun" on them. But in this case, we've gone through a couple of preliminary tests, and these are tests that are meant to give soldiers signals that it's time to put on protective gear. We've gone past that to a positive ID by a Fox vehicle, which is a bit more definitive. It's still not the last word. They're going to have to get this stuff in a laboratory and run it through a gas chromatograph mass spectrometer. And then the answer will come from somebody with a laboratory coat on, and we'll know whether or not this is the real deal.

BROWN: Anything about where or how it was stored, sitting in these big metal drums, offer a clue one way or another?

SMITHSON: I don't think that's going to be definitive one way or another, either because there are a number of cases where inspectors who went to these sites earlier, let's just say they raised an eyebrow in terms of the lack of safety around some of the munitions site. They weren't following the type of procedures that our military would follow to take precautions to protect the health and well-being of the workers there.

I think we can conclude that there's a variance of patterns out there in terms of how they hide things. And while it's not a great deal of material, it could be a place where they've chosen to secrete a bit away.

BROWN: In the conversation with David Albright, we were talking about ultimately to get all of it, as supposed to sort of randomly coming upon it, if that's the object, and it should be, you would think, that you have to find either the government official who ordered it someplace or the scientists, that sort of thing.

Is that do-able?

SMITHSON: I'm hoping that there are not hit squads out there now trying to kill the scientists and the officials who were involved in this program, so that we can get to the bottom of this. It'll take a considerable amount of time, and I would support David's suggestion that we get international inspectors in there at the earliest possible opportunity to assist with this activity.

Quite frankly, we're going to have to take this case in front of the world court of opinion. And to the extent that there are already some who would whisper that the United States or coalition troops might plant evidence in this regard, who are very confused by the varying reports that they're hearing, I think it would be very helpful to have international inspectors in there to sort this out.

BROWN: Given the bad taste in the mouths of many in this country over the inspectors, the inspection program and the rest, is that likely to happen?

SMITHSON: I don't know exactly how the Bush administration would receive that type of a suggestion. Probably they'd look askance at it. But they need to take a bigger picture into consideration here. It's not just the American public that we're speaking to at this point. We're talking to the citizens of the world who are in many countries very, very skeptical about the legitimacy of this war.

And we need to be able to present to them evidence that indeed there were munitions there, there was a reason to argue that Saddam Hussein did not disarm previously, and here are the goods.

BROWN: The -- this is more a political question than a scientific question, certainly. I saw a poll today where -- I think the number was 58, 58 percent of Americans said whether they find the weapons or not, the war was right, because getting rid of Saddam in and of itself, people are coming to believe, was legitimate enough. That is not the case when you leave the borders of the United States.

SMITHSON: I would agree with you there. It appears to be that the coalition, while there's a -- they keep on talking about the coalition of the willing. That doesn't necessarily reflect widespread world opinion, and that there are significant numbers of people out there who think this war is not just.

BROWN: And will they be convinced by a barrel found in some shed in southern Iraq? Or do they need to see a factory, or do they need to see warheads that -- with weaponized chemicals and biological agents and the like?

SMITHSON: This is -- beauty is in the eye of the beholder. I think we're beginning to find pieces of a puzzle here. There are -- there's pieces of evidence that were left over from the United Nations special commission inspections, and the parts that we already know about.

But as this search for these weapons unfolds, whether it's just coalition troops or it's assisted by international inspectors in addition I think we'll find additional pieces of that puzzle coming into play, hopefully assisted by the scientists and officials who no longer fear that there will be -- they'll lose their lives if they speak about this.

BROWN: Amy, thank you. Amy Simpson, good -- Smithson, good to have you with us. Sorry.

SMITHSON: Thank you.

BROWN: Thank you. I apologize.

We'll take a break. Our coverage continues in a moment.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BROWN: For those of you who just may be joining us, and that may be a fair number of you, we hear there's a basketball game of some import going on tonight that may have you flipping back and forth.

Here's the lead of the night. American war plane, an American B- 1 bomber, dropping four bombs on a -- what "The Washington Times," at least, is reporting to be a restaurant in Baghdad where Saddam Hussein and leaders of his regime, including as many as 30 intelligence officials, were believed to have been, very much a replay of what started this war back on the 19th of March.

It took place in the -- an area we've been looking at much of the day. It took place in the afternoon, Monday afternoon Baghdad time. And Arab TV put out these pictures of that neighborhood. And we presume, though we can't be absolutely certain, but we presume this is the site where those four JDAMs hit.

It is -- this neighborhood is also the neighborhood where last Friday Saddam Hussein, or someone who looks just like him, did a walkabout of sorts, meeting with people.

This is a graphic on the kind of bomb that was used. Four of them were dropped based on very good intelligence, they believe, that this was a leadership target. And in the words of CentCom, was "struck very hard."

And again, the source telling "The Washington Times" that senior Ba'ath Party leaders were there, and as many as 30 intelligence officials were in a facility behind or beneath -- and the beneath here is pretty important.

General Wesley Clark, just a few moments ago, talking about, and Dana Priest earlier in the hour, talking about this network of bunkers that lies underneath the city, and some of these bunkers go many, many, many stories deep, whether these quite powerful 2,000-pound bombs could get deep enough is problematic.

As you saw, you could see the damage. It certainly didn't go many, many stories. And in any case, American intelligence officials telling CNN's David Ensor and senior Pentagon correspondent Jamie McIntyre that it will be some time before they can sort through the intelligence on this to know who was there and who survived it, if anyone survived it, and who did not.

But that's the lead tonight, is that, like the 19th of March that started the war, Americans went after Saddam Hussein, his two sons, and leaders of the Iraqi regime.

This is a live picture now that we're looking at from Al Jazeera. How lonely a position that must be for that Iraqi soldier or irregular or civilian who found his way into a hardhat, a helmet, for the day Tuesday morning in Baghdad.

British forces, for those of you just catching on now, say they control much of Basra, the second-largest city in the country, to the south, about 2 million people there. That cannot be said of many of the spots in the northern part of the country, where the fighting continues to be fierce, Kurdish fighters doing most of the fighting there, though they're getting help from Americans. And they say they have something the Iraqis do not have, they have patience.

We're joined from northern Iraq by CNN's Ben Wedeman tonight. Ben, good evening.

BEN WEDEMAN, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Yes, good evening, Aaron. The north relatively quiet compared to the south. However, Mosul, the main commercial hub of the north, was hit severely on Monday morning, a series of large blasts heard from that city.

Now, we saw pictures on the Al Jazeera network of massive blasts, explosions, in that city. According to Al Jazeera, the target hit there, among others, was an ammunitions dump belonging to the Iraqi army.

Now, in addition to those morning air raids, there were other severe air raids elsewhere in the north. According to coalition sources, 50 sorties flown over targets.

But despite all of this, seen from the trenches of northern Iraq, it certainly is relatively quiet.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

WEDEMAN (voice-over): Kurdish fighters dig in at the front and watch and wait, wait for Saddam Hussein's army to pull back. Since the war began, Iraqi forces have retreated a grand total of three miles along this road. Mosul is still 25 miles away.

It's like this up and down the northern front. After days of American air strikes, Iraqi troops have yet to be pried from their new positions here and can still lob a few artillery rounds back.

Kurdish fighters, known as Peshmerga, or "those who face death," are lightly armed but enthusiastic warriors.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We have a strong morale because we have a case (UNINTELLIGIBLE) we believe that our case is true right.

WEDEMAN: Taking up arms to defend their land is considered a sacred duty among the Kurds, regardless of age. They have no tanks, no war planes, no big guns. Their weapons of choice, the AK-47 assault rifle, rocket-propelled grenades, and light artillery.

They're now backed up by a modest contingent of U.S. troops who work closely with the Kurds to coordinate air strikes.

But strong friends and courage will get you only so far.

(on camera): The northern front is, at best, moving forward in fits and starts. The Kurds just don't the weapons, and the Americans simply don't have the numbers to drive back the Iraqi army.

(voice-over): Across the north, Iraqi forces have retreated after being pounded by punishing coalition air strikes. And the Peshmerga have rushed in to take their place. But the Kurds are barely able to hold onto their new gains.

"Since 1991, we've been fighting the Iraqi army," says this Kurdish commander. "Even if the two sides aren't equal, we've been able to fight until now without American or British support."

Even with that support, there's little sense of urgency here. Rather than pushing ahead, the Kurds are biding their time, drinking their tea, and waiting.

(END VIDEOTAPE) WEDEMAN: Now, Aaron, we understand that a group of U.S. special forces are gradually making their way to a strategic highway that links Mosul with the oil-rich city of Kirkuk. Now, this may indicate the strategy that's being pursued in the north, which is essentially to cut off every one of these cities and somehow isolate them, rather than going into these cities, which certainly, for Kurdish fighters, would be somewhat politically problematic, Aaron.

BROWN: Ben, well, just finish the thought. It would be problematic because?

WEDEMAN: Because, for instance, the Turks, the neighbors of Iraq, are extremely sensitive about the possibility that the Kurds would take over Kirkuk and its oil field, providing that (UNINTELLIGIBLE), providing them with the sort of wealth that would allow for the creation of what they fear would be an independent Kurdish state.

Now, that's a -- very much a red line for the Turks. They're worried very much about their restive Kurdish population. So they've made it very clear they don't want a Kurdish state in northern Iraq, an independent Kurdish state.

Mosul another problem, because it's a largely Arab Sunni city, and their opposition would certainly be intense if columns of Kurdish fighters were to enter the city, Aaron.

BROWN: Ben, thank you. Ben Wedeman in northern Iraq.

General Clark, how different that would all look had the Turkish parliament made a decision that was different from the one in May?

CLARK: That's exactly right, and now we have to recognize, Aaron, that the special forces, and maybe that assault from the 173rd that took the air strip, are not to be seen purely in the military context but in the political context, to keep the Turks out, to keep the Kurds busy, to put a little distraction in there, and to show U.S. engagement in the north.

BROWN: I'm -- let me make sure I understand what you just said. It -- they're there to show the Kurds that the Americans care?

CLARK: Both care, and can deter any preemptory Kurdish moves to declare an independent state, to seize the oil fields, or to go too far in fractionating Iraq.

BROWN: So they -- they're sending a message, they want to control them without being very heavy-handed about it.

CLARK: It's U.S. engagement.

BROWN: I'll take that as a yes. Thank you, general.

Take a break. We'll give you the headlines of the day when our coverage continues in a moment.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BROWN: Well, the chief headline at this hour, for those of you who just may be joining us, another air strike aimed at the generals and the intelligence community's calling a target of opportunity. This is the way the war began on the 19th of March. Tantalizing to think that it might, in some significant way, end this way as well, but we don't know the answer to that yet, whether Saddam Hussein, his leadership is alive.

CNN's Chris Plante has the duty at the Pentagon tonight, and we are now getting some detail on what happened.

PLANTE: That's right, Aaron.

Now, we know at this point that the U.S. intelligence apparatus had developed some information from sources including human beings, from human intelligence on the ground there, that there would be a gathering of senior, very senior Iraqi leadership, probably, they believe, including Saddam Hussein himself and his sons, Uday and Qusay. They said that the intelligence was time-sensitive.

They moved against the target. They launched a B1-B bomber, which is a Lancer. It dropped four bombs, 2,000 pounds apiece, it's a GDU-31/32, actually, JDAM bomb, which is a 2,000-pounder, generally configured as a bunker-buster, which means it can penetrate through thick layers of concrete and steel-reinforced concrete. It's a very heavy blow to any location. This was in a residential area.

The B-1 bomber has been reconfigured to drop a whole range of munitions, including these JDAMs, in very large quantities.

With people on the ground intelligence on the ground, perhaps eyes on the target, as they say, they do have a very high level of confidence. We're told that there's a sense of optimism that major players were at the location.

Now, officials don't want to go so far as to say that they are certain that Saddam Hussein and his sons were at this location, but there is optimism. They do believe that there's a very good chance that this strike, as you said, much like the decapitation effort of the 19th, which launched this military action, that this may have been successful in decapitating the regime, which could, of course, be a defining moment in this conflict and change the course of the event.

We did see these pictures earlier today from this residential neighborhood, and, of course, initially, very disturbing signs that it may have been an errant strike on a residential neighborhood, killing civilians. Now it's turning a little bit. It may be that Saddam Hussein, his sons, and other senior leaders in the regime may have been effectively killed in this strike.

Very important turn of events, quite potentially, Aaron.

BROWN: (UNINTELLIGIBLE), we would underscore "may" and "quite potentially," because we don't really have the end of the paragraph. We know that the bombs landed, and presumably, from the pictures, they landed where they were supposed to. But what we don't know yet is if the right people, in the American view, if the right people were there.

PLANTE: Well, that's right, and we wouldn't want to jump to any conclusions at this early stage. It's similar to the strike on the home of Chemical Ali down in Basra. You believed that he was there, you took the action because you believed that he's there. In this case, Saddam Hussein, his sons, and other senior leaders. It's obviously a very controversial decision when you go into a residential neighborhood.

And obviously the confidence level was very high at the time. Confidence level is high now. But they don't want to go to the extent of saying that they're certain that they have effectively decapitated the regime. As we know, Saddam Hussein has doubles, has used doubles before in public, and he's been a very elusive character over the course of the last 12 years.

So no one wants to walk out to the end of the limb and say that they're certain that they got him, but there is a certain level of confidence that they may have effectively pulled this off, Aaron.

BROWN: Chris, thank you. Chris Plante at the Pentagon.

You're looking, by the way, at live pictures of the Iraqi capital on a Tuesday morning. These are Al Jazeera's pictures. And how the picture, in fact, has changed over time as we look out on there, and it's now just a little bit past 7:00 in the morning on Tuesday.

General Clark, the choice of weapons that were delivered, even if they hit precisely where they were supposed to hit, is it also likely that there would be, given it's a neighborhood, damage to civilians, death to civilians, injury to civilians? They're not that perfect, are they?

GEN. WESLEY CLARK (RET.), CNN MILITARY ANALYST: Well, it would probably hit exactly -- within five or six feet of where it was aimed at the house. The question is how deeply did it go before it exploded, and what were the proximity of the houses. It might have done very little damage, but it actually may not have gone deep enough to get Saddam and his boys in their bunker.

BROWN: Because he -- in the construction you're shaping, he wasn't sitting in a living room with 30 intelligence officials, he was down in some safe underground part of this restaurant, if that's what it was.

CLARK: That's exactly right. And it may have been an underground-underground of the restaurant. As far as we know, he has places that may be 200, 300 feet deep.

BROWN: These bombs go that deep?

CLARK: No. Not unless there's an open cavity in there to go through. They wouldn't be set to penetrate that deep. They might go through six or eight floors, but if they've taken turns and moved it sideways, and they've got blast doors...

He's surviving for a reason there. I mean, he's prepared this. So it's unlikely that he's going to allow himself to be vulnerable.

BROWN: There's no answer to this, I suppose, but you sort of wonder what he's surviving for, in a sense. What does he think he can pull off at this point in terms of retaining control of his country?

CLARK: I think he thinks he can make a strong stand and then come back and undercut any American occupation with a resistance movement fed by his neighbors and anti-Americanism.

BROWN: So he's trying to stay alive to fight another day.

CLARK: My guess.

BROWN: Thank you, general, very much. General Wesley Clark.

We'll be joined in a bit by Amy Smithson, a chemical weapons expert, director of the Henry L. Stimson Center in Washington.

First, though, to make, make her relevant to this conversation, CNN's Ryan Chilcote, who's off with the 101st Airborne, reported today -- excuse me -- on the discovery of a site east of Karbala, Karbala, in central Iraq. Soldiers turned up a number of drums that had chemicals in them, and early tests came back positive for a nerve agent and a blister agent. But the results are not considered conclusive. Other experts have asked -- been asked, rather, to do further analysis.

Which brings us to our expert in this case, Miss Smithson. It's nice to see you again.

Anything about, I mean, given, I said earlier, we do tend to hyperventilate a little bit when these -- when the word "chemical" is used in any context. So anything about what came up today give you reason to believe one thing or another?

AMY SMITHSON, CHEMICAL WEAPONS ANALYST: Well, there has been a great deal of hyperventilation over gas masks, over powderous substances, over bottles with the label "Tabun" on them. But in this case, we've gone through a couple of preliminary tests, and these are tests that are meant to give soldiers signals that it's time to put on protective gear. We've gone past that to a positive ID by a Fox vehicle, which is a bit more definitive.

It's still not the last word. They're going to have to get this stuff in a laboratory and run it through a gas chromatograph mass spectrometer. And then the answer will come from somebody with a laboratory coat on, and we'll know whether or not this is the real deal.

BROWN: Anything about where or how it was stored, sitting in these big metal drums, offer a clue one way or another?

SMITHSON: I don't think that's going to be definitive one way or another, either because there are a number of cases where inspectors who went to these sites earlier, let's just say they raised an eyebrow in terms of the lack of safety around some of the munitions site. They weren't following the type of procedures that our military would follow to take precautions to protect the health and well-being of the workers there.

I think we can conclude that there's a variance of patterns out there in terms of how they hide things. And while it's not a great deal of material, it could be a place where they've chosen to secrete a bit away.

BROWN: In the conversation with David Albright, we were talking about ultimately to get all of it, as supposed to sort of randomly coming upon it, if that's the object, and it should be, you would think, that you have to find either the government official who ordered it someplace or the scientists, that sort of thing.

Is that do-able?

SMITHSON: I'm hoping that there are not hit squads out there now trying to kill the scientists and the officials who were involved in this program, so that we can get to the bottom of this. It'll take a considerable amount of time, and I would support David's suggestion that we get international inspectors in there at the earliest possible opportunity to assist with this activity.

Quite frankly, we're going to have to take this case in front of the world court of opinion. And to the extent that there are already some who would whisper that the United States or coalition troops might plant evidence in this regard, who are very confused by the varying reports that they're hearing, I think it would be very helpful to have international inspectors in there to sort this out.

BROWN: Given the bad taste in the mouths of many in this country over the inspectors, the inspection program and the rest, is that likely to happen?

SMITHSON: I don't know exactly how the Bush administration would receive that type of a suggestion. Probably they'd look askance at it. But they need to take a bigger picture into consideration here. It's not just the American public that we're speaking to at this point. We're talking to the citizens of the world who are in many countries very, very skeptical about the legitimacy of this war.

And we need to be able to present to them evidence that indeed there were munitions there, there was a reason to argue that Saddam Hussein did not disarm previously, and here are the goods.

BROWN: The -- this is more a political question than a scientific question, certainly. I saw a poll today where -- I think the number was 58, 58 percent of Americans said whether they find the weapons or not, the war was right, because getting rid of Saddam in and of itself, people are coming to believe, was legitimate enough. That is not the case when you leave the borders of the United States.

SMITHSON: I would agree with you there. It appears to be that the coalition, while there's a -- they keep on talking about the coalition of the willing. That doesn't necessarily reflect widespread world opinion, and that there are significant numbers of people out there who think this war is not just.

BROWN: And will they be convinced by a barrel found in some shed in southern Iraq? Or do they need to see a factory, or do they need to see warheads that -- with weaponized chemicals and biological agents and the like?

SMITHSON: This is -- beauty is in the eye of the beholder. I think we're beginning to find pieces of a puzzle here. There are -- there's pieces of evidence that were left over from the United Nations special commission inspections, and the parts that we already know about.

But as this search for these weapons unfolds, whether it's just coalition troops or it's assisted by international inspectors in addition I think we'll find additional pieces of that puzzle coming into play, hopefully assisted by the scientists and officials who no longer fear that there will be -- they'll lose their lives if they speak about this.

BROWN: Amy, thank you. Amy Simpson, good -- Smithson, good to have you with us. Sorry.

SMITHSON: Thank you.

BROWN: Thank you. I apologize.

We'll take a break. Our coverage continues in a moment.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BROWN: For those of you who just may be joining us, and that may be a fair number of you, we hear there's a basketball game of some import going on tonight that may have you flipping back and forth.

Here's the lead of the night. American war plane, an American B- 1 bomber, dropping four bombs on a -- what "The Washington Times," at least, is reporting to be a restaurant in Baghdad where Saddam Hussein and leaders of his regime, including as many as 30 intelligence officials, were believed to have been, very much a replay of what started this war back on the 19th of March.

It took place in the -- an area we've been looking at much of the day. It took place in the afternoon, Monday afternoon Baghdad time. And Arab TV put out these pictures of that neighborhood. And we presume, though we can't be absolutely certain, but we presume this is the site where those four JDAMs hit.

It is -- this neighborhood is also the neighborhood where last Friday Saddam Hussein, or someone who looks just like him, did a walkabout of sorts, meeting with people.

This is a graphic on the kind of bomb that was used. Four of them were dropped based on very good intelligence, they believe, that this was a leadership target. And in the words of CentCom, was "struck very hard."

And again, the source telling "The Washington Times" that senior Ba'ath Party leaders were there, and as many as 30 intelligence officials were in a facility behind or beneath -- and the beneath here is pretty important.

General Wesley Clark, just a few moments ago, talking about, and Dana Priest earlier in the hour, talking about this network of bunkers that lies underneath the city, and some of these bunkers go many, many, many stories deep, whether these quite powerful 2,000-pound bombs could get deep enough is problematic.

As you saw, you could see the damage. It certainly didn't go many, many stories. And in any case, American intelligence officials telling CNN's David Ensor and senior Pentagon correspondent Jamie McIntyre that it will be some time before they can sort through the intelligence on this to know who was there and who survived it, if anyone survived it, and who did not.

But that's the lead tonight, is that, like the 19th of March that started the war, Americans went after Saddam Hussein, his two sons, and leaders of the Iraqi regime.

This is a live picture now that we're looking at from Al Jazeera. How lonely a position that must be for that Iraqi soldier or irregular or civilian who found his way into a hardhat, a helmet, for the day Tuesday morning in Baghdad.

British forces, for those of you just catching on now, say they control much of Basra, the second-largest city in the country, to the south, about 2 million people there. That cannot be said of many of the spots in the northern part of the country, where the fighting continues to be fierce, Kurdish fighters doing most of the fighting there, though they're getting help from Americans. And they say they have something the Iraqis do not have, they have patience.

We're joined from northern Iraq by CNN's Ben Wedeman tonight. Ben, good evening.

BEN WEDEMAN, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Yes, good evening, Aaron. The north relatively quiet compared to the south. However, Mosul, the main commercial hub of the north, was hit severely on Monday morning, a series of large blasts heard from that city.

Now, we saw pictures on the Al Jazeera network of massive blasts, explosions, in that city. According to Al Jazeera, the target hit there, among others, was an ammunitions dump belonging to the Iraqi army.

Now, in addition to those morning air raids, there were other severe air raids elsewhere in the north. According to coalition sources, 50 sorties flown over targets.

But despite all of this, seen from the trenches of northern Iraq, it certainly is relatively quiet.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

WEDEMAN (voice-over): Kurdish fighters dig in at the front and watch and wait, wait for Saddam Hussein's army to pull back. Since the war began, Iraqi forces have retreated a grand total of three miles along this road. Mosul is still 25 miles away.

It's like this up and down the northern front. After days of American air strikes, Iraqi troops have yet to be pried from their new positions here and can still lob a few artillery rounds back.

Kurdish fighters, known as Peshmerga, or "those who face death," are lightly armed but enthusiastic warriors.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We have a strong morale because we have a case (UNINTELLIGIBLE) we believe that our case is true right.

WEDEMAN: Taking up arms to defend their land is considered a sacred duty among the Kurds, regardless of age. They have no tanks, no war planes, no big guns. Their weapons of choice, the AK-47 assault rifle, rocket-propelled grenades, and light artillery.

They're now backed up by a modest contingent of U.S. troops who work closely with the Kurds to coordinate air strikes.

But strong friends and courage will get you only so far.

(on camera): The northern front is, at best, moving forward in fits and starts. The Kurds just don't the weapons, and the Americans simply don't have the numbers to drive back the Iraqi army.

(voice-over): Across the north, Iraqi forces have retreated after being pounded by punishing coalition air strikes. And the Peshmerga have rushed in to take their place. But the Kurds are barely able to hold onto their new gains.

"Since 1991, we've been fighting the Iraqi army," says this Kurdish commander. "Even if the two sides aren't equal, we've been able to fight until now without American or British support."

Even with that support, there's little sense of urgency here. Rather than pushing ahead, the Kurds are biding their time, drinking their tea, and waiting.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

WEDEMAN: Now, Aaron, we understand that a group of U.S. special forces are gradually making their way to a strategic highway that links Mosul with the oil-rich city of Kirkuk. Now, this may indicate the strategy that's being pursued in the north, which is essentially to cut off every one of these cities and somehow isolate them, rather than going into these cities, which certainly, for Kurdish fighters, would be somewhat politically problematic, Aaron.

BROWN: Ben, well, just finish the thought. It would be problematic because? WEDEMAN: Because, for instance, the Turks, the neighbors of Iraq, are extremely sensitive about the possibility that the Kurds would take over Kirkuk and its oil field, providing that (UNINTELLIGIBLE), providing them with the sort of wealth that would allow for the creation of what they fear would be an independent Kurdish state.

Now, that's a -- very much a red line for the Turks. They're worried very much about their restive Kurdish population. So they've made it very clear they don't want a Kurdish state in northern Iraq, an independent Kurdish state.

Mosul another problem, because it's a largely Arab Sunni city, and their opposition would certainly be intense if columns of Kurdish fighters were to enter the city, Aaron.

BROWN: Ben, thank you. Ben Wedeman in northern Iraq.

General Clark, how different that would all look had the Turkish parliament made a decision that was different from the one in May?

CLARK: That's exactly right, and now we have to recognize, Aaron, that the special forces, and maybe that assault from the 173rd that took the air strip, are not to be seen purely in the military context but in the political context, to keep the Turks out, to keep the Kurds busy, to put a little distraction in there, and to show U.S. engagement in the north.

BROWN: I'm -- let me make sure I understand what you just said. It -- they're there to show the Kurds that the Americans care?

CLARK: Both care, and can deter any preemptory Kurdish moves to declare an independent state, to seize the oil fields, or to go too far in fractionating Iraq.

BROWN: So they -- they're sending a message, they want to control them without being very heavy-handed about it.

CLARK: It's U.S. engagement.

BROWN: I'll take that as a yes. Thank you, general.

Take a break. We'll give you the headlines of the day when our coverage continues in a moment.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BROWN: Major story of the night, CentCom confirming what is almost a deja-vu moment, an attack on Saddam Hussein and the Iraqi leadership. It took place in a neighborhood in Iraq. It took place on Monday afternoon there, about somewhere between 2:00 and 3:00 in the afternoon. A B-1 bomber and four JDAM bombs dropped on either a restaurant or the building behind a restaurant.

Whether the targets, the Ba'ath Party officials, Saddam Hussein, perhaps his two sons, were in the building or under the building in a series of bunkers is not known. It will take, according to intelligence officials, some time to conclude that. But they had, they believe, hard intelligence, including some human intelligence.

As we said, this took place some hours ago. It's now early in the morning on Tuesday morning. The attack happened Monday afternoon in Baghdad and was reported throughout the day as an attack in a residential neighborhood before this other piece of information that Saddam Hussein and the Ba'ath Party and 30 intelligence officials might be there.

Here is how Al Jazeera, the Arab TV network, reported the story throughout the day.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE (through translator): The goal of the American airplanes this time was a few houses in Mansoura. They were surprised by a bombardment before sunrise, and many victims under the rubbles were left, and many wounded at varying degrees.

We saw the airplanes in low altitudes, and we looked at it, we were used to -- we got used to the noise. But this was very low. And suddenly a very huge explosion under the airplanes, and missile went off very, very fast, and it hit the targets very close.

The shock of the explosion created a rattling in my house, although I was 500 meters away, and I saw children and women crying.

We are (UNINTELLIGIBLE) protect them, a very young was killed. The psychological impact is huge amongst the people who live close to the explosion.

The -- about seven or eight were -- are expected to have been here, maybe more. The explosion left a lot of damages in an area with around 500 meters around that area. This is close to 14th Street, 14th of Ramadan Street.

The shrapnel went all around, smoke, and to these houses, we came and we saw smoke all over. And people that were here were hurt as well. And we saw dead people, and we saw all -- the people in all directions. And in spite of the attempts by the national defense to lift the rubble to extract people from under it, but this is a very tiresome and hard work. They are trying their best to save.

This scene of damaged houses and big hole, does not indicate -- this does not indicate that there are any survivors.

Now all is mixed, the palm trees, the rubble, and the remains of people. While attempts to rescue people, airplanes are still flying in the sky.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BROWN: That's how Al Jazeera reported the bombing in the Al Mansour neighborhood earlier on Monday afternoon in Baghdad. Before it was known that Saddam Hussein and his leadership, and least according to American intelligence, was there, it was seen as simply another attack or errant bombing in a civilian neighborhood. And there certainly is evidence in those pictures that civilians were hurt, and some may well have died as well.

One of the best-known and most controversial Iraqi opposition leaders, someone who may play a huge role in the future of Iraq, is no longer in London, where he's usually based. Ahmad Chalabi is now in Iraq, apparently having been flown there by the U.S. military. Mr. Chalabi was interviewed last night on the CBS News broadcast "60 Minutes." Here's some of what he had to say to Lesley Stahl.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP, "60 MINUTES," CBS)

AHMAD CHALABI, IRAQI NATIONAL CONGRESS: Iraq is not Afghanistan. You cannot buy people. The Iraqi people have to feel that their leadership must -- must be seen to play an important role in this process of liberation.

I'm not a candidate for any position in Iraq, and I don't seek an office. I -- my -- I think my role ends with the liberation of the country.

The army did not fight to defense of them. The Marines and the U.S. (UNINTELLIGIBLE) division were cut like knife through butter, through two divisions of the Republican Guard near Baghdad in less than 24 hours.

The U.S. government publicly asked the Iraqi people not to do an uprising. They asked them to stay at home when military operations were going on. U.S. officials told opposition leaders specifically, No uprising.

The American military, I think, should stay in Iraq until the first elections are held and a democratic government is established. I'm not prepared to give a time frame, but we expect to have a constitution ratified within two years.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BROWN: That was last night on "60 Minutes" on CBS.

These are live pictures of Baghdad this morning. And you can see the smoke, or some smoke, in the air behind those trees. What is causing it, or what caused the fire that's causing the smoke, don't know. We'll try and find out. But this comes from Abu Dhabi TV.

We're joined now on the phone by Marie Colvin of "The London Sunday Times," who is at an air base outside of Nasiriyah with the free Iraqi forces that are being flown in to fight on the side of the coalition.

Marie, why don't you tell us a bit about who these people are and how many other groups are out there like them?

MARIE COLVIN, "THE LONDON SUNDAY TIMES" (on phone): This is a pretty unique force. It's -- right now, there's about 750 of the free Iraqi force soldiers here. Everyone's in uniform, armed. They were mixed of exiles from outside, and I know you just had Ahmad Chalabi on, who's the leader. Probably about 50 percent are people who've come from all over. I mean, there's a guy here who left his grocery store in Missouri to come fight.

And the other 50 percent are Iraqis from inside. One of the units here, for example, is led by an Iraqi Republican Guard who defected fairly recently and is now leading one of these platoons here, I guess you'd call it, (UNINTELLIGIBLE) they're divided up into 56 (UNINTELLIGIBLE) special -- American special forces here assigned to them.

All on a rather (UNINTELLIGIBLE) austere (UNINTELLIGIBLE) on this (UNINTELLIGIBLE). It was bombed by the Americans, and they're living in about -- in the buildings that are still unholed. And hoping to get involved.

BROWN: Are they more about symbolism than they are about any real help?

COLVIN: Well, it's kind of a combination. There's certainly symbolism. You know, as you know, a lot of the problems the American forces have faced is, you know, certainly very few except the forces who've been fighting would support Saddam. But they're suspicious or worried, you know, that, is this an American occupation? Are they really going to kick Saddam out?

You (UNINTELLIGIBLE) you've got -- the idea is, you've got to (UNINTELLIGIBLE) very large Iraqi Arab force, because, you know, of course, the Kurds up north, you know, (UNINTELLIGIBLE) their suspicions among the Iraqi Arab population (UNINTELLIGIBLE). (UNINTELLIGIBLE) the Iraqi Arab force here is to try to put a face on it, you know, this is a fight against Saddam, these are, you know, we're Iraqi opposition, we've come here to try to get Iraqi soldiers to defect to them.

More importantly, you know, any advance, they've left behind a lot of towns and villages that are essentially -- have no Americans in them. You still have the Ba'ath leadership there. These guys have a great (UNINTELLIGIBLE) of network they've built up for years, and they're, you know, hoping to get their people in those villages to take over.

They're not getting -- there seems to be quite a bit of rather internecine fighting in Washington. The Chalabi and this free Iraqi force have a lot of support at the top and certainly on the ground here from the Americans I've seen. But they want to move forward, and they're not -- there's attention on American supplies, and they're not getting that.

BROWN: Do these men -- and I assume they're all men -- do they have anything in common, other than a hatred for Saddam Hussein and the Ba'athist government? Is there an ideological component here?

COLVIN: It's a very good question. It's not ideological at all. They've pretty much come from everywhere around the globe, and also from inside Iraq, to -- their main goal is to get to Baghdad, get rid of Saddam. The leader, Chalabi, as you said, he's (UNINTELLIGIBLE) quite controversial. The Pentagon loves him, State Department doesn't, CIA is suspicious of him.

His goal is get rid of Saddam, you know, who's oppressed this country for going on 30 years now, and set up a democratic government.

I think where the -- there is not an ideological component except that we want a democratic government ruled by Iraqis. I think the controversy comes in where, you know, certain people in Washington want there to be an American military government. Chalabi's position is there should be American, you know, military presence here, obviously, because, you know, this place is going to need stability before you can do anything.

But he believes that the interim government should be Iraqi, and there's disagreement in Washington about that.

BROWN: Just one question on Mr. Chalabi, then. He -- I mean, in this government, this future of Iraq, he wouldn't mind leading it, would he?

COLVIN: Well, he's treated as, you know, certainly as a future leader of Iraq here. I mean, a lot of the local sheikhs are coming around in a kind of tribal way. I mean, he's obviously lived in the West for a while, but he's -- you know, the local sheikhs are coming around and treating him as a future leader. Certainly the...

BROWN: Marie, is he the Karzai...

COLVIN: ... men who are here do.

BROWN: I'm sorry. Is he in some ways the Karzai of Iraq?

COLVIN: That's a very good analogy. He's potentially the Karzai of Iraq. Certainly no one else has emerged. I mean, he has whatever, you know, is thought of him, pretty much loved or hated. He's worked for the last 20 years to do this. He was one of the first people in opposition. And he's had ups and downs, and he's just sort of worked his way through.

And he is here in Iraq with 700 people. (UNINTELLIGIBLE) they're part of the American war plan. I mean, (UNINTELLIGIBLE) never for them to work separately. They need the American cover.

But he's -- (UNINTELLIGIBLE) certainly going to play a large role in the future of Iraq. What that role is, I think we'll see when Saddam goes.

BROWN: I guess we will. Thank you, Marie. Marie Colvin is with "The London Sunday Times."

Quickly to the pictures of Baghdad. This is what they're seeing, these shots. This is Abu Dhabi TV, but there's more, and you can hear gunfire, can't you? It comes in fits and starts. Now, I'm going to -- Abu Dhabi TV focusing on it there. But we heard what sounded like machine gun sort of fire, small arms and machine gun sort of fire just a moment ago in this area, apparently. This is the Lebanese Broadcasting Company. I'm not precisely sure what they're focusing on, but they're back on that shot also.

Early Tuesday morning, that's Al Jazeera. You see the haze of the city and the sounds of combat in the city as well. It is not a peaceful place, not yet. It may not be for a while.

Our coverage continues in a moment.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BROWN: This time of night, we try and get a sense of where the country is, how the country's mood is shifting over the three weeks of the war. And we gather together people from around the country, and we have again tonight.

In Los Angeles, Josefa Salinas, who's a talk show host in Los Angeles, KHHT. In Chicago, Debbie Howlett is the Midwest correspondent for "USA Today." And Michael Medved is in Seattle. He's a film critic, and he also hosts a nationally syndicated radio talk show out of Seattle.

It's good to see all of you.

Ms. Salinas, the last time we talked with you, we were talking about where the (UNINTELLIGIBLE) -- this was, I guess, about 10 days ago. I'm curious if, as the war has progressed, if your audience, which is Latino principally but not exclusively, has shifted as well.

JOSEFA SALINAS, TALK SHOW HOST: Oh, most definitely. I think that there was a lot of opposition to the war initially, but once we were in and the fighting had begun, a lot of the sentiments went for the soldiers, were all very much in support of the soldiers. Nobody wants to be at war, but they definitely want the soldiers to know that as a community, that we're behind them.

We lost several Latino soldiers. In fact, Jose Gutierrez was laid to rest today in Los Angeles. He was one of the first Marines that was taken in the war.

So that it's shifted to more of a support. Now everyone's just interested in getting out. And then what are we going to do in Iraq once this is all over to show that we actually have gone in there to do what we said we were going to do?

BROWN: Is there a concern in your community that a hornets' nest has been stirred up here that may not be settled down very quickly and very easily?

SALINAS: Oh, I think that a lot of the concern is with the possibility that not only in Iraq, but the groups that support Iraq around the country could possibly be angry with America, and that this -- these ramifications may end up coming back to us, especially in Los Angeles being a key target, or so they say.

BROWN: Debbie, let me -- you've had interesting and difficult assignments from the newspaper, which has been -- when -- you've written some obituaries, I guess, for soldiers who have died and talked to a lot of families. Generally speaking, out in the Midwest, these families getting a lot of support, I would imagine.

DEBBIE HOWLETT, MIDWEST CORRESPONDENT, "USA TODAY": Oh, yes, it's amazing to see the support that small towns are rallying around these families of these young men and women who made the ultimate sacrifice for their country and died in Iraq. It's just been incredible to see the outpouring of support and love for these kids, and the understanding, which I think has usurped any opposition that was in these communities for the war.

It's just really hitting close to home with these people. And...

BROWN: Do people -- I'm sorry. Do people, when you talk to them, when you talk to the neighbors and the friends and the people in the community, do they see the war as still a search for weapons of mass destruction, or has it become incredibly personalized around Saddam Hussein?

HOWLETT: Well, one of the things, I think, that happens when -- in these small towns, when they know somebody who's been killed in action, is that it does get more personalized, and it does become more focused on Saddam Hussein. I think the people out there are -- understand viscerally what the war's about, and in a small town, the loss of one life is magnified more than it would be in a large city like Chicago.

BROWN: Certainly is.

Michael, you're in an interesting town in all of this, because Seattle has got a lot of military -- lot of men and women who work -- there are just -- Michael...

Let me explain to viewers. There are some war planes in the sky, and we've gone to -- we're trying to show the Al Jazeera.

Seattle has both a large military community and a large antiwar community. How has the mood shifted, if at all, over three weeks?

MICHAEL MEDVED, RADIO TALK SHOW HOST: Oh, I think the mood has shifted because a lot of the people who were hesitant about the war have gotten on board. But the left is still strident, and the left is still isolated. We had a big debate with the Seattle City Council, where the -- there's a local citizen, a social worker, actually, who had put forward a resolution just offering support for the troops.

And not a single member of the nine-member council wanted to support that simple resolution. They all wanted to insert things saying that this was a preemptive strike, that it was a first-strike invasion, that it was an illegitimate war.

And the fact that people on the left and callers to my radio show from around the country are still so bitter, are still so focused on conspiracy theories with President Bush, I think shows that there is a very strong isolated, small group of Americans who simply aren't on board with this and are creating a great distance between themselves and the American mainstream.

BROWN: Well, set them aside. Set the fringe aside for a second, if that's a fair way to describe them. There are still people who aren't on the fringe who also are not in support of the war.

MEDVED: Right. Well, there were people who questioned the war. They're in the support of the war now, in the sense that they want the United States to win. One of the things we did for the radio show is, we went around to demonstrations in different places and asked people, Well, OK, you're protesting the war. Would you still like to see the U.S. win, or doesn't it make any difference to you?

And it was shocking how many people actually wanted to see the U.S. lose at those demonstrations.

BROWN: Really?

MEDVED: Absolutely. And again, people have come on the radio show. They will call up, they will say that. Their hatred of George Bush is that deep, people saying that Bush is more dangerous than Saddam Hussein, that he's more of a threat to the world.

But this sort of thing, this obviously is just a tiny segment of the American population. Most people, even those who had doubts about the war, who were fearful about it, have gotten on board, partially because of the magnificent performance of our military in the Persian Gulf, which I think has erased a lot of doubts on the part of a lot of people.

BROWN: Josefa, let me give you the last word tonight. Do you think that the -- this concern that you talked about that we've stirred up a hornets' nest, that America's stirred up a hornets' nest, if this doesn't -- I don't mean the war, but if this postwar period doesn't end relatively quickly, you think that becomes a political problem in Los Angeles for President Bush (UNINTELLIGIBLE) in the Hispanic community?

SALINAS: I think that it could, because you have a large number of Latinos in the service, and a lot of families here waiting for these kids to come home. And people want to see some resolution. And if there are other ramifications that end up happening as a result of this, people could start questioning in four years whether or not -- well, less than that, actually -- whether or not, you know, where to place their vote.

He didn't do well in California on the last election, so he's got a long way to come back with us.

BROWN: That's an important constituency for him.

It's good to see you. Thank you for coming back.

SALINAS: Thank you.

BROWN: And Michael, it's always nice to see you.

MEDVED: Thank you.

BROWN: And Debbie, thanks for joining us tonight.

HOWLETT: Thank you.

BROWN: We'll take a break. Our coverage continues in a moment.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BROWN: That's Baghdad on a Tuesday morning. You can just barely make out in the center of your picture there a U.S. war plane. What sort of mission that plane is on or was on, and was it -- We'll just watch it for a minute and see what it's about to do. These are Al Jazeera's pictures. And it didn't stay in the frame long enough.

That's an F-18 up there, General Clark tells us. And you can certainly hear it. Can't see it. Now on the right of your screen, perhaps more than one up there. Sounds must be quite familiar by now to the 4 million, 5 million people in Baghdad.

Even in nonwar times, our program, "NEWSNIGHT," has a love affair with the work of still photographers. And we have been featuring their work through the course of the last three weeks. Tonight we feature the work of Robert Nickelsberg, whose work appears within the pages of "TIME" magazine. Robert is traveling with the 1st Marine Division. Last night he was just miles away from Baghdad, where the troops were getting ready for a taste of urban combat.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

ROBERT NICKELSBERG, PHOTOGRAPHER, "TIME" MAGAZINE: My name is Robert Nickelsberg. I'm with the 1st Marine Division. And I've been embedded with the 3rd Battalion, 4th Regiment. I'm with one particular group the whole way, where everyone gets to know each other.

With the embedding, it takes care of a lot of the uncertainty.

There, one of the aggressive units that the Marines has in the 1st Division. They're not here to take and hold targets, they're here to secure them and then move on. They're very familiar with this kind of terrain. They've trained extensively in urban warfare as well. They're very well coordinated, extremely confident, and I've been very impressed with how they conduct their day-to-day activities.

We've been able to move around quite freely, attend meetings, backgrounds, look at maps. So in a sense, we know what the mission is before it starts.

The basic objective is to get to the Ba'ath Party headquarters, part of their mission is to go in and look for documents, look for files, look for whatever information they have on the place that they're entering, secure the building, and then exit.

With their training, they've been able to pull it off with very few losses and injuries, which lets you work differently. You can run right alongside, and I wouldn't say there's a false sense security, certainly, but there's a different sense and a different amount of confidence that you can bring to the pictures.

When they feel they're in their element, this is what they thought the conflict would be about, and they're anxious to cut their teeth and follow through on their instructions. They're very agressive with this. There's no way of knowing until the end of the day, really, what will happen or what has happened. So it's a day-by-day, day in the life of this war.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

BROWN: Robert Nickelsburg shooting for TIME magazine some very powerful pictures there.

We'll take a break. Daryn Kagan updated the day's headlines. She joins us from Kuwait.

When we come back, we'll check at the Pentagon, the White House. Jack Lawrence, a former CBS and ABC correspondent, who's over in Iraq covering for National Public Radio and "Esquire" magazein joins us.

So we have a lot to do. We'll take a break first. Our coverage continues in a moment.

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