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CNN Newsnight Aaron Brown
War in Iraq: War Winding Down
Aired April 14, 2003 - 22:00 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
AARON BROWN, CNN ANCHOR: Good evening again. We are back in New York.
The war, in terms of the big battles at least, is over. At least according to the Pentagon. The smaller fights and the larger issues of the future for Iraq, though, are still very much in play. We start things off tonight with the events in Iraq clearly shifting to a new phase. And we begin our overview with the final big battle that in many ways never really happened.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
BROWN (voice-over): American Marines moved into the Iraqi stronghold of Tikrit; their light armored vehicles setting up checkpoints and rumbling past a presidential palace. Overhead, Cobra helicopters patrolled the skies. And by day's end, the fighting was largely over. Every major city in the country now is under coalition control.
The Pentagon says major ground combat in Iraq is at an end. But there continues to be pressure by the administration on Syria. Two senior cabinet officials sounding unusually blunt today. The secretary of defense even saying Syria was suspected of testing chemical weapons.
DONALD RUMSFELD, SECRETARY OF DEFENSE: We have seen a chemical weapons test in Syria over the past 12, 15 months. And second, that we have intelligence that shows that Syria has allowed Syrians and others to come across the border into Iraq. People armed and people carrying leaflets, indicating that they will be rewarded if they kill Americans and members of the coalition.
COLIN POWELL, SECRETARY OF STATE: We believe in light of this new environment, they should review their actions and their behavior. Not only with respect to who gets haven in Syria and weapons of mass destruction, but especially the support of terrorist activity.
BROWN: In Damascus, the Syrians strongly deny the assertions. And the British say there is no plan to attack Syria next.
South of Baghdad, where elements of the 101st Airborne last week found what they said were suspicious chemicals, chemicals that turned out to be pesticides, another find. A collection of mobile laboratories buried underground. The military calls them ConExes.
BRIG. GEN. BENJAMIN FREAKLY, 101ST AIRBORNE: In Karbala, when we were fighting there with the 2nd Brigade, the 2nd Brigade found about 11 buried ConExes. Large metal 20 by probably 20-foot vans buried in the ground. They are dual-use chemical labs, biological and chemical.
About 1,000 pounds of documentation were found in that. And they were close to an artillery ammunition plant.
BROWN: Both the paperwork and the labs themselves are to be examined further.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I love you all, Marines.
BROWN: A few more pictures, these from the government, of the seven freed American prisoners of war. All will head home soon, according to the Pentagon.
In Baghdad, itself, outbreaks of lawlessness continued. This in an Iraqi bank set afire after a round from a rocket-propelled grenade when crashing inside. But the Marines showed up, cordoned off the area, arrested two men.
Another fire as well. This at the main Baghdad library. No telling what was lost.
In Washington, the Bush administration promised it would try to repair and even replace any artifacts lost either at the library or at the Iraqi National Museum, looted and ransacked late last week.
These are Iraqi police cars, and this is a Baghdad traffic cop. Both cars and cops out for the first time, accompanied by American Marines.
Some Iraqi police officials showed up, too, ready for work, they said. Markets opened up in some areas. And in other parts of the city, huge stockpiles of weapons continued to be unearthed.
Pictures as well today from inside a house once owned by Uday Hussein, one of the former president's sons. Bottles of scotch, personalized stationery.
In the Iraqi north, plenty of American troops on the ground in Kirkuk. And visible presence outside the oil fields, too. American officials say every one of the country's oil wells was under coalition control.
And two developments that seem to mark the ending of the war. The Pentagon announcing that Monday was the last day when combat missions would be flown from all five of its aircraft carriers in the region. And homecomings. These are British soldiers. Their war is over.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Do you want to see your daddy?
(END VIDEOTAPE)
BROWN: That's the big picture tonight. We'll begin the small pieces of that picture with Syria. If not a formal member of the president's axis of evil, Syria is increasingly being treated as a prime accessory. And many now wonder if the full-court press is also a prelude to something more serious where Syria is concerned.
CNN's Andrea Koppel joins us tonight from the State Department. Andrea, good evening.
ANDREA KOPPEL, CNN STATE DEPARTMENT CORRESPONDENT: Good evening, Aaron. Well, as you know, the drumbeat against Syria has been sounding off already for days. But today that drumbeat got a little louder.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
KOPPEL (voice-over): Ramping up the rhetoric, Secretary of State Powell delivered the toughest warning shot yet across Syria's bow.
POWELL: Of course we will examine possible measures of a diplomatic, economic or other nature as we move forward. We are in touch with Syrian authorities.
KOPPEL: In fact, Britain's deputy foreign secretary met with Syria's president, Bashar al-Assad, in Damascus Monday. The U.K. playing good cop to the U.S. bad cop. Both Washington and London looking to capitalize on their military success in removing the Iraqi regime to send a powerful signal to Iraq's neighbors.
ARI FLEISCHER, WHITE HOUSE PRESS SECRETARY: Gone is the brutal dictatorship of Saddam Hussein. Next, hopefully, is a re-examination by Syria and perhaps others about how they conduct their affairs.
KOPPEL: At issue, U.S. claims that Syria, a state sponsor of terrorism, may be allowing thousands of Syrian and other Arab fighters to cross into Iraq to fight coalition forces. Continuing its own chemical and biological weapons program, and providing safe haven to senior Iraqi Ba'ath Party officials, war criminals and scientists. A senior Syrian official told CNN his government has asked for but not received hard evidence proving these allegations.
ROSTOM AL-ZOUBI, SYRIAN AMBASSADOR TO THE U.S.: ... that all these accusations are baseless. We deny them. We don't have weapons of mass destruction.
KOPPEL: But the White House said President Bush is convinced and wants Syria's president to get the message.
FLEISCHER: President Bashar al-Assad is a young leader. He is an untested leader. He has a chance to be a leader who makes the right decisions. We hope he does.
KOPPEL: Saber rattling aside, the Bush administration has stopped short of saying Syria could be the next military target.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
KOPPEL: As one senior administration official explained, he said, "This is a chance to read Damascus the Riot Act, a chance to tell them that they have the opportunity to turn a new page." But Aaron, in this official's opinion, he said they are already showing that they are blowing that last chance -- Aaron.
BROWN: So there are no indications, despite a half a million troops on the border of Iraq, and all the words out of Washington, that Syria is in any way getting this message?
KOPPEL: Oh, I think they are getting the message. The question is whether or not they're going to do anything about that. They, of course, have denied any accusations of having either a chemical or a biological weapons program. They have denied that they have given any kind of safe harbor to Iraqi officials or others, or, for that matter, that they're letting Syrians or other Arabs go across the border into Iraq.
Nevertheless, this is an opportunity that the Bush administration wants to seize to really scare the bejesus out of Damascus, to say with those hundreds of thousands of troops on Syria's border, look what we just did next door. You better not become the Algeria of post-World War II and allow Iraqi officials to live in your country.
And really, the other concern, Aaron, is that this is a state sponsor of terrorism. They are known -- Syria is known to support Hezbollah and Hamas. And the last thing that the U.S. or Britain wants to see is any chemical or biological weapons ending up in the hands of those terrorists. As one official told me, he said, "We can have another al Qaeda on our hands."
BROWN: Andrea, thank you. Andrea Koppel at the State Department.
Early on in the war, a commander was asked why the Americans had yet to locate any chemical or biological weapons. His answer was simple and self evident. "They're too busy fighting," he said.
Then came the liberation of the Iraqi cities. And after that, the looting. And with the weapons issue seemingly fading from the headlines.
Well (UNINTELLIGIBLE) back today with word that members of the 101st Airborne had made an intriguing discovery outside Karbala. CNN's Ryan Chilcote has been traveling with the 101st, and Ryan joins us now. Ryan, good morning.
RYAN CHILCOTE, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Good evening, Aaron. The 101st Airborne Division has been inspecting several of these so-called sensitive sites, sites where the U.S. believes -- the U.S. Army believes that the Iraqis may have hidden elements of a chemical or biological weapons program.
We reported extensively on one such site about a week ago. That site turned out to be a false alarm. Today, I spoke with the Brigadier General of the 101st Airborne, Benjamin Freakly. We discussed both that site that turned out to be a false alarm and the new one that has caught their attention. Let's listen to what he had to say. (BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
FREAKLY: We talked before, you and I, about the site there at Objective MURI (ph), where we found the suspected chemicals. Those turned out after further analysis, as you and I had talked about, not being chemicals. They were high grade pesticides.
But in Karbala, when we were fighting there with the 2nd Brigade, the 2nd Brigade found about 11 buried ConExes. Large metal 20 by probably 20-foot vans buried in the ground. They are dual-use chemical labs, biological and chemical. About 1,000 pounds of documentation were found in that. And they were close to an artillery ammunition plant.
So this is consistent with the Iraqi denial, former Iraqi leadership denial of doing anything, any wrongdoing. And yet here's major chemical lab facilities, 11 different large sized ConExes buried in the ground, clearly marked so they could be found again. Dual use, chemical and biological. Close to an artillery factory that has empty shells. So we're exploring that further.
Again, a little too early to tell, but clearly new equipment. A lot of money in the 2000 to the 2003 time period been spent in that camp. Probably over $1 million worth of chemical capability found in these 11 ConExes. And we continue to develop that with better expertise.
CHILCOTE: And you found it a while ago, but what was new? Yesterday you had people looking at it or...
FREAKLY: No. I think -- you know when it was found in Karbala, the 2nd Brigade was fighting there. And as the 2nd Brigade stabilized Karbala, then it was determined that these ConExes were found. They've had to have been dug up. And now the sense of sight teams that the military is using are using their expertise to pore through this.
And initial reports indicate that this is clearly a case of denial and deception on the part of the Iraqi government, and that these chemical labs are present. And now we just have to determine what, in fact, they were really being used for.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
CHILCOTE: Well Aaron, obviously, a very intriguing find. But it doesn't mean that they've found a smoking gun yet. As he said in that interview, they do have experts there checking out that site.
Those experts are from the U.S. Army's 5th Corps. They are the highest level of experts that the Army has in country here. This inspection at that site has gone all the way up, or all the way up the Army's hierarchy from the low level, from the company level, all the way now to the corps level. And undoubtedly, there will be a lot more inspection.
There's no one, obviously, that wants to find a chemical agent or elements of a chemical and biological program more than the U.S. Army in Iraq. So they're obviously going to be very careful. But very hard working in finding and trying to exploit that site -- Aaron.
BROWN: Let me throw a couple of things. Is it absolutely clear, without any question at all, that whatever it is that they found had to be a chemical or biological lab of some sort? Is that beyond dispute?
CHILCOTE: I don't think so, because he did not give -- although he does describe it as that, he did not give a definitive answer. And I think, like I said, there is no one that would like to give -- to sort of find the smoking gun more than the U.S. Army. So I don't think he's given a completely definitive answer that these are indeed underground labs.
You'll notice that he didn't mention that they found any chemical agent in that interview. I think that's also significant. What he is saying is -- what he is describing is a lab -- a dual-use lab. That could mean that it was also used for civilian purposes, although why would they bury it? Particularly in close proximity to an artillery factory, artillery shell factory?
But I think it's really important there that he describes what is a dual-use chemical laboratory, mobile chemical laboratory. But he never says that they found any chemical agent there or any weaponized chemical weapons or...
BROWN: Well we lost Ryan there briefly. We'll see if we get him back later, and we'll get more reporting on that.
In the meantime, we'll go to Baghdad, which today saw a semblance of order returning, along with some cops on the beat. CNN's Christiane Amanpour has the duty tonight, and she joins us from Baghdad -- Christiane.
CHRISTIANE AMANPOUR, CNN CHIEF INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Well, Aaron, they tried to get cops back on the beat. There was a large recruiting process going on. But it didn't quite turn out just as the Marines had wanted. They wanted to start putting some foot patrols on the street, but that's going to have to wait until late they are week because of a slightly chaotic situation at the recruiting process at the police academy in the morning.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
AMANPOUR (voice-over): These are the policemen and the officers who were supposed to be restoring order. It was, for a morning, almost as chaotic inside the police academy as on the streets. Saluting him last week, stomping on him today, it seemed the police were trying to purge themselves of Saddam Hussein's brutality that they had helped and perhaps were forced to enforce.
Staff Sergeant Jeremy Stafford, and the Marines who had come to get the first police patrol out on the beat, were overwhelmed.
STAFF SGT. JEREMY STAFFORD, U.S. MARINE CORPS: So I figured I'd let them have it. The only other way I could have stopped it was to start using force. And I'm not going to start using force on these people. I think they've had enough of that.
AMANPOUR: Indeed, just last week, they had discarded their uniforms for fear of being shot by Americans entering Baghdad. Now a few put them on again. All rushed to sign up for their old jobs. And feelings that had been bottled up for years poured forth.
"The regime used to have a sword at our neck," says Sergeant Fizal Mosen (ph). "If we didn't cooperate, we were fired or sent to prison on trumped up charges."
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I have refused to work with Saddam.
AMANPOUR: Hamid Mustafar (ph) was head of the traffic police back in 1983.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: And now I want to come back and work, and to save my people.
AMANPOUR: But not everyone here is reporting for duty, nor do they trust those who are. Hussein Jarala (ph) has come looking for the security forces who imprisoned and tortured him back in 1999.
"I was hung by my arms from the ceiling," he said. "Electrocuted and beaten with sticks." He came with a list of names. He didn't find them. But one army officer offered a mea culpa.
"Regrettably, as the army, we were a tool of repression of the Iraqi people," says Lieutenant Colonel Adnan Rashid (ph). "When we joined up, we thought we'd secure our future and our children's future, but it didn't turn out like that. God willing, we'll make up for the past and correct our relationship with our people."
And just to make sure they are recruiting good cops, Marines had called for only a couple of hundred to come today.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Unfortunately, somehow the word got out there was a breach in the security some place. The word got out. So we had a couple of thousand of them show up, versus a couple of hundred.
AMANPOUR (on camera): But that's good. You want lots of people.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Well, we do. Unfortunately, you know, these things have to be done in baby steps.
AMANPOUR (voice-over): A baby step like this: one Iraqi police car with a two-vehicle armed Marine escort. Desperate city residents immediately clamor for a stop to the looting.
Meantime, back at the academy, an exhausted officer tells everyone to go home and report back Thursday morning. Restoring order to the city will have to wait a while longer.
(END VIDEOTAPE) AMANPOUR: And just to illustrate the fact that things aren't as stable as everybody would like them to be quite yet, we just heard what we think is tank fire from the Marines outside in response to a threat that we can't tell right now, since we're up here. There have also been helicopters hovering over the mosque behind me. We understand that that is perhaps because they're looking to see whether there is any threat, any looting or any firing coming from behind there.
And certainly, after that show at the police academy yesterday, there was a brazen attack on the central bank in Iraq, in which robbers burst in, set fire to part of the building and stole a lot of money before the Marines came and tried to break that up. So it's still pretty unstable in many parts of this town -- Aaron.
BROWN: All right. Go back to the police for a second. How are they being vetted? How are they deciding whether someone is legitimate? I assume some Ba'athist Party members are not being disqualified.
AMANPOUR: Well, yes. I mean, basically, what we were talking with the commanders -- the Marine commanders there, is precisely -- you know, they were talking about baby steps? You can't have all these people flooding in at the same time, because they actually need to screen them. And they had all these people who they were talking to.
I guess a couple of commanders that have come on side over the last week or so are helping them go through names. But, you know, there were 40,000 police officers in Baghdad before the war. And it's going to be quite a challenge to go through all of those and to pick out who is who and what's what.
And they need very desperately, the Marines admit, to get these people back out on to the streets. And right now, everybody seems willing to do that. So it is going to be a bit of a challenge, and perhaps some people will slip under the radar, and even without the proper credentials and vetting go back on the streets. But the Marines are trying to do what they can to make sure that doesn't happen.
BROWN: Christiane, thank you. Christiane Amanpour, who is in Baghdad tonight.
We're joined, as always the last month, with retired General Wesley Clark. General Clark joins us tonight from Washington. It's good to see you, General. The battle for Tikrit never really happened.
GEN. WESLEY CLARK (RET.), CNN MILITARY ANALYST: It really didn't. We had the Marines go up. They pushed on it a little bit and it fell apart. Demoralization set in after apparently a lot of air power was applied.
BROWN: Air power that went on for quite some time. But in the end, it seems like once the regime cracked last week, then any real resistance cracked with it.
CLARK: That's exactly the way I read it, Aaron. Before that, despite what we'd heard about no effective command and control in the Iraqi forces, there was something there at least that kept people fighting. It could have and should have cracked earlier had there been no command and control. But after the strike on the restaurant, whether Saddam was killed in that or not, everything changed.
BROWN: And that, as I remember it, was Monday. So it's basically been...
CLARK: Right.
BROWN: ... a week of this. How -- if you're the military commander, what has gone really well in the last week? That's the easy part. And what concerns you at this point?
CLARK: Well, you're getting guidance from the political leadership in Washington if you're the military commander. And that's going to really drive your concerns. Obviously, the move into Baghdad, the maneuvering of the troops moving up to Tikrit, collecting the surrender of the Iraqis in the northern area, all that's gone very well.
You would be worried about looting. It depends really on the political sensitivities of the command to this. I will say this, Aaron, that this force is lighter in proportion to the tasks than other peacekeeping forces who've had similar responsibilities in the past. But that's the function of political guidance and the direction that they've been given.
The commander's primary concern is to execute that guidance and also to protect his troops. And so one of the things that all the military leaders of every level have to be concerned about is the next sniping incident, the next suicide bomber, and how to do this task of restoring order without needlessly exposing the troops to the holdouts that may still be there.
BROWN: The plan, as best we knew it, always required more soldiers on the ground after the war than it did during the war itself. And they are coming in, aren't they?
CLARK: Well, they are. Of course, we've never seen the plan. We really don't know what it is. But it seemed to have talked about a staged buildup to a larger force.
What we don't know is how large that force will eventually be. Or, other than the 4th Infantry Division, whether any more forces really are due to arrive.
And if we've seen one pattern, it is the pattern that, when you apply this enormous military machine to a military task, resistance crumbles at a surprising rate. That was the pattern in Afghanistan when the Taliban suddenly folded and we were left with the problem of Osama bin Laden. And that's the problem here, when we're left with, fortunately, a less difficult problem. But it's the problem of maintaining order.
BROWN: Well, let me just go one step farther. We're still seeing in Afghanistan that, while the organized Taliban crumbled, a lot of Taliban guys were sent home, and seen now in pockets here and in pockets there of causing problems. Is that what we're going to see in Iraq, do you expect?
CLARK: It really depends, I think, Aaron, on whether there is anyone out there who has a will to make mischief or whether the American power has been so intimidating that no one will try to challenge the United States, even asymmetrically. That is to say, there will be no Iranian grab for control of the Shia community, no al Qaeda recruiting efforts, no furtive effort by Syria to put fighters back in, to do a little bit of sniping and a little bit of bombing.
And if there is no challenge, then the Iraqis themselves, with very little assistance in maintaining order as this process goes through, should be able to re-establish a semblance of a state and move toward some kind of self government. But if there is mischief making that comes in from the outside, it's going to be a much differential challenge both for the Iraqis and for the American force that's there.
BROWN: General, we'll get back to you before very long. We'll take a break here. When we come back, more on the chemical labs, if that's in fact what they are. We'll talk with David Albright, the former U.N. weapons inspector, about what they may be and what they may not be. But we'll take a break first. Our coverage continues in a moment.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
BROWN: We've said before that whenever the phrase "chemical weapons" comes up, there is a certain amount of hyperventilating that seems to go along with it. So we want to take a deep breath when we talk about the discovery of what are said to be mobile and chemical and biological labs near Karbala.
We're joined in Washington tonight by former weapons inspector David Albright. David, good to have you with us tonight.
DAVID ALBRIGHT, FMR. WEAPONS INSPECTOR: Good to be here.
BROWN: Could it be anything other than a chemical lab, a mobile chemical lab?
ALBRIGHT: Well, most certainly. I mean, it looks very suspicious in this case that it could be related to chemical or biological weapons production. But Iraq imported a lot of things that it wasn't allowed to import, and it may be chemical equipment related to conventional weaponry manufacturing. So we just have to look at it.
It's good that the documentation is found in these containers, and that may shed some further light on what the true purpose of this equipment was. If it's truly dual-use equipment, it may not be a smoking gun. It may -- you know, we may end up feeling very suspicious that it's for chemical weapons production, but it may be new equipment that's never been used. And we'll just be wondering in the end.
BROWN: Part of the problem here is -- it's more of a political problem than anything else -- is that absent a clear smoking gun, those who want to believe one thing will believe it, those predisposed to believe something else will likely believe that. And you're left in a kind of in-between world depending upon your view of the politics of it.
ALBRIGHT: Well, I hope not. I mean, certainly by having some of the senior WMD officials turn themselves in over the weekend, I mean you would hope that the people in the program will start providing insight into what was there.
Now, one of them, Al-Saadi, said nothing was there. But that may just be his starting position and negotiation. What I would call the father of the Iraqi nuclear weapons program was picked or turned himself in, according to the "L.A. TIMES." And so between the two of them, they know pretty much where all the bodies are on the WMD programs.
BROWN: This is (UNINTELLIGIBLE)?
ALBRIGHT: This is -- yes, (UNINTELLIGIBLE).
BROWN: Yes. Would it surprise you if nothing were found? Is it just inconceivable to you that the American government had it absolutely wrong?
ALBRIGHT: It would surprise me if there was nothing found just because why would Iraq not have cooperated with the inspectors? I mean was it just an attitude problem? I mean they knew the regime could be overthrown.
So I would think that at least what will be found are production capabilities, reconstitution capabilities. The U.S. may have had it wrong about these large stocks of chemical and biological weapons that they argued were there. In fact, argued that they were in deliverable form. And so our intelligence may have failed on that.
But there may -- I would expect some kind of capability there to make chemical and biological weapons.
BROWN: And one other question quickly, not on Iraq, but on Syria. Is it clear that Syria does have a chemical weapons program?
ALBRIGHT: Well, my understanding for well over a decade is that Syria has chemical weapons. I don't have evidence of it. And I probably shouldn't go too far out on a limb, given what's going on in Iraq in chemical weapons.
But it's always been the view in people who work in arms control in the Middle East that Syria's chemical weapons are like a poor-man's atomic bomb, in essence a reaction to Israel's nuclear weapons. And Syria is not violating any international law if it does have chemical weapons. So I think we should be very careful about going too far down a path of threatening Syria.
Certainly, Syrian chemical weapons are a threat, but I think we've been living with them for a long time. And I think if you start accusing Syria of something, many Arab countries are going to start making the same argument about Israel's nuclear arsenal.
BROWN: David, it's good to have you with us. I expect, the next time a find is found, we'll talk again. Thank you, David Albright, former weapons inspector.
ALBRIGHT: OK. Thank you. Good to be here.
BROWN: We'll take a break, update the day's headlines. And our coverage continues in just a moment.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
BROWN: More now on the fate of Saddam Hussein.
Some have argued that finding him is irrelevant now that the regime is finished. But many Iraqis have said it's vital for them to know what happened, so they can feel free to move on. We remember an interview last Friday night, I believe it was, an Iraqi oil engineer, who certainly was not prepared, despite everything in front of him, everything he knew, everything he'd seen, was not prepared to believe that Saddam was gone.
We're joined tonight by Con Coughlin. He's the author of the book "Saddam: King of Terror" and executive editor of "The London Sunday Telegraph."
Nice to have you with us.
CON COUGHLIN, AUTHOR, "SADDAM: KING OF TERROR": Pleasure.
BROWN: Is he dead or alive? Is he in Syria? What do you hear?
COUGHLIN: I hear that he's alive, that he escaped the most recent bombing on the restaurant and he's still in Iraq. And he could even be in Baghdad lying low.
BROWN: Lying low for what?
COUGHLIN: Good question.
The thing that's governed Saddam's whole political career is his survival. That's really what Saddam is about, survival. And at this point in his career, survival is clearly very important. Does Saddam think he can come out of this and take over Iraq again? Well, being Saddam, he probably does, if he's alive.
BROWN: So, he's not necessarily laying low -- sort of based on your knowledge of him, the work you've done researching him, he's not necessarily laying low just so he can get to Syria or get out of Dodge, get somewhere safely and live the life of an exiled dictator?
COUGHLIN: No.
In my view, Saddam was never in it for the money. He was in it for the power. And Iraq has always been his power base. And I can't see Saddam going into exile. I've never believed Saddam would do that. Saddam, of course, has always had one eye on the history books. He wants to go down in history as a great Arab leader.
(CROSSTALK)
BROWN: Well, part of the problem is, he's not going to write the history anymore.
COUGHLIN: No. Well, but he's still thinks there are people in the Arab people that will think favorably of him if he still survives this.
We have to remember that a lot of Saddam's behavior in this conflict is predicated by the behavior of the allies in the last conflict. He believes that, at some point, the Americans will pack up their tanks and go home. Well, we're already seeing the deescalation of the military presence. In time, people are going to go home and Iraq will be there for the taking.
And Iraq is not an easy country to govern. And the one person who knows how to try and hold it together, OK, by a very brutal means, is one Saddam Hussein.
BROWN: Some of his family members have started to peel off. They've been taken into custody. Are they close enough to the inner circle to provide valuable information at this point?
COUGHLIN: Well, the half-brother that was arrested, Watban, he basically has not been in power since 1995, when he got in a fight with Uday, Saddam's oldest son. Uday actually shot him and Watban lost a leg. And since then, he's basically been on the outer fringes of the circle. He would have some information about how the regime operates. But he's been out of the inner loop since 1995. So how hot his information is going to be is open to question.
BROWN: Just back to him, there are some things that we can't know, but you're in a better position than most to guess at this point.
He was rolling the dice. The guy was rolling the dice that the Americans weren't coming in, right?
COUGHLIN: Yes.
BROWN: Because he had to know -- I mean, if I was smart enough to figure it out, he had to be smart enough to figure out that, if the Americans were coming in, he was done.
COUGHLIN: But he didn't -- no, he went into this conflict believing that he would survive it, right? I mean, first of all, you have to remember that, from Saddam's point of view -- just look at it from Saddam's mind-set -- Saddam won the diplomatic contest. He left the United...
BROWN: Absolutely.
COUGHLIN: He had a very bad hand.
And when this conflict started, Saddam had left the international community deeply divided. This was an unpopular war. And There were lots of things that Saddam hoped he could draw on going into this conflict. Firstly, if there had been heavy Iraqi casualties, then Washington and London would have been under pressure to stop the fighting. If Saddam had been successful in inflicting heavy casualties on the coalition forces, how would the American public have reacted to that? Would President Bush have been under pressure?
These are the kinds of things that Saddam Hussein wants to exploit. OK, they didn't happen. And Saddam has had to rethink his strategy in a hurry. But, three weeks ago, it was a different ball game for Saddam. And, OK, he's a gambler. He took a gamble. But he went into it, as I say, believing that he would come out of it, that he would survive it.
And if he is still alive -- and, of course, it is an if. Nobody knows for sure. But going on what I'm told, I think he is still alive, he's still lying low, and he will have one eye on the future. And I know it's hard to believe. And we think we're going to sort Iraq out. But it's a troubled road that lies ahead in rebuilding Iraq. It's not going to be easy.
BROWN: No. We've already seen, in the most cursory of ways, how complicated it's been. There has been an assassination. There has been trouble in Basra over the selected military -- or a city mayor, essentially the mayor or the governor of the area. It's a complicated place.
COUGHLIN: And the Kurds are kicking up with the Arabs in the north.
BROWN: Already.
COUGHLIN: Yes. There has been ethnic cleansing of the Arabs in the north. These are all really, really important issues. And it's going to be very difficult for foreigners, for the Kurdish enforcers, to sort this out for the Iraqis.
BROWN: Nice to meet you. Thanks for coming in tonight.
COUGHLIN: A pleasure.
BROWN: It's a fascinating subject to actually -- in the absence of the war, to sit around and try and speculate upon, sort of what his motives were and where he is and what he may try and do next, if he's alive. Nice to meet you.
COUGHLIN: Never underestimate Saddam.
BROWN: We should have learned that before, too. Thank you very much.
(LAUGHTER)
BROWN: We'll take a break. Our coverage continues.
When we come back, the POWs, their story -- but a break first.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
BROWN: Baghdad on an early Tuesday morning now. Monday was a calmer day, but not yet calm. Calm seems a ways away yet for the Iraqi capital. But that's how it looks on an early Tuesday morning.
There are places around the United States today where a strange thing happened. The weekend didn't end. The parties kept going. They kept going in places like El Paso, Texas, and Lithia Springs, Georgia, Valley Center, Kansas. That's because those towns and a few more will soon welcome home seven of their own, seven rescued American prisoners of war.
Here is CNN's Ed Lavandera.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We were right in the middle of their crossfire."
ED LAVANDERA, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): After spending three weeks as prisoners of war, these soldiers enjoyed the one-way ticket out of Iraq; 23-year-old Joseph Hudson flashes the thumbs-up.
JOSEPH HUDSON, RESCUED POW: I love you all Marines! I love you all Marines!
LAVANDERA: Edgar Hernandez sends a message home.
EDGAR HERNANDEZ, RESCUED POW: I'm happy that I'm going home to see my family.
LAVANDERA: When Shoshana Johnson walked off the plane, her father says he could tell she was in pain. She suffered gunshot wounds in each leg. But her sister says that pain is nothing, considering that nine of her fellow soldiers didn't make it out of the March 23 ambush alive.
NIKKI JOHNSON, SISTER OF RESCUED POW: Some people who were right there with her don't have what she says. They don't have what we have. And I hope that the others -- those that are missing, that their families can get what we have now, to think about this time constructively, like what they're going to do when this person gets back. And I just want to tell them to hold on, hold on, because we got ours back. You can get yours back, too. LAVANDERA: The mother of Apache helicopter pilot Ronald young is celebrating a birthday on this day. Kaye Young didn't need any candles on her cake. Her wish came true the day before, watching the images of her son being rescued, then hearing his voice on the phone.
KAYE YOUNG, MOTHER OF RESCUED POW: The best day of my life, yesterday. It was hard to believe yesterday that -- I mean, that he could just run out and just be running and we would see him in good health. He may have lost a few pounds, but he was laughing. When he called on the phone, he was joking with us. He was happy.
He was -- couldn't wait to get home and see everybody. He said, tell everybody he loved them. He just sounded like his normal self.
LAVANDERA: For Michelle Williams, the last three weeks have seemed like a movie. Her husband was riding with Ronald Young in the Apache helicopter that crashed behind Iraqi lines. As they celebrate their own good news, they can't help but think of the families who still have loved ones still missing in action.
MICHELLE WILLIAMS, WIFE OF RESCUED POW: Continue to pray. If you don't hear from them, no news is good news. And before this happened, I hadn't heard from him in a couple of weeks. But you just have to continue to pray.
LAVANDERA: The families of the former POWs say they're still waiting to hear word as to when and where they'll be able to see their loved ones. In the meantime, most of these families say they'll start preparing the homecoming party.
Ed Lavandera, CNN, Fort Bliss, Texas.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
BROWN: We'll take a break.
When we come back, we'll talk with General Clark about the POWs and about Saddam, too, a long way to go yet on a Monday night.
We'll take a break now and be right back.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
BROWN: Back again with General Wesley Clark in Washington.
Let's talk about two things, first, the POWs. Are you surprised at all that they were -- at least they're reporting -- at least, as Peter Baker of "The Washington Post" reported, they were treated reasonably well and they were found safe?
CLARK: No, I wasn't surprised, because this would have been in the character of that regime to try to hold on to these folks as bargaining leverage. And so they didn't -- they didn't know how they might need them, but they were valuable as soon as they were taken.
BROWN: Once their pictures were shown to the world -- we talked about this that Sunday night when the first five of them were taken -- their lives became at that moment safer, didn't they?
CLARK: I think that's exactly right, Aaron. I think this is an example of the media really being able to help in a situation like this, because I think that made it much more difficult for the Iraqi government to just let go of the issue and let events take a more brutal course.
BROWN: Now, I was talking to Mr. Coughlin and I could almost hear you breathing, wanting to get in on the conversation, where is Saddam, what if he is alive, what is he thinking, all of that. Where do you want to go with it, General?
CLARK: Well, first of all, I think one of the things that really struck me when Mr. Coughlin talked was how little we really know about what's going on in Iraq.
There are things happening out there neighborhood by neighborhood, city by city. We saw the assassination in Najaf. We had no indication that was coming. At least, we didn't have it in the media. It wasn't presented to the American public. We know that things have sort of calmed down in Basra, but we're not sure what's going on in Najaf right now. We don't know really what's happening in Karbala and even in neighborhoods in Baghdad.
And so we're always going to be on the reactive side of this mission as it moves along. And I think, when you talk to the experts -- I mean, you come out with either the glass is half full or half empty. It's half full if you think, well, the Iraqi people will settle this and, basically, they want a democracy, half empty if you realize, boy, this is a really tough mission.
BROWN: See, there are two kinds of things here, it seems to me, we don't know. We don't know how much danger there is left, how big these pockets of resistance are. But the other part of it is, to my thinking, the more complicated part. We don't know how deep the grudges are, how wide the divisions between ethnic groups are. We've got this scene in the north with the Kurds and Iraqi Arabs going on. There are a lot of troubling signs out there.
CLARK: And all of these were predicted in one way or another beforehand, Aaron. But the mission wasn't premised on the success of the aftermath. It was premised -- I mean, it was pointed to take down the regime.
And then -- I know, when I went through the Pentagon early in the autumn, before I testified on the Hill and I talked to some officers over there, and I said: What is the plan for afterwards? Well, we're just getting started on that, sir. We've been working the last year on the war plan, but there really isn't a plan for afterwards.
And I think, to that extent, this phase of the operation has always been somewhat in doubt and it's always been held hostage to the forces and the nature of the war fight themselves.
BROWN: The fact is, we're only -- we're a week into the aftermath. It's not like we're very far down the road there. And some of what we're seeing is utterly predictable: the civil -- the chaos, if you will. It's hard to imagine it would have happened otherwise. It happens this way all the time. It happens after basketball championships, for goodness' sakes.
But it is the political things that I would think would worry the planners both in the White House, the State Department, and the Pentagon, the assassination in Najaf, other things like that that would have them concerned.
CLARK: I think that's right, Aaron.
After the Kosovo campaign, when we put 40,000 NATO troops into Kosovo in an area that was about 4 percent the size of Iraq and had only two million inhabitants, we still had problems. We had revenge killings and assassinations. And it went on for some time. When that happens, it's more than just the individual brutality.
It does cast a -- it has a larger political significance. And you can be sure that what's happening in the north will. And when you add to that the political problems of the assassination and so forth, you have a feel for sort of dicey mission. This is like walking across lily pads. And if the administration has a grand vision for the Middle East, I think you'll see a real urgency to start and keep moving and take advantage of the momentum and not get bogged down here in the peacekeeping effort.
And I think that accounts, to some extent, for the rhetoric that is coming against Syria. As we heard earlier, someone in the administration has said that this is Syria's last chance. And when I heard that, I wanted to say, last chance before, before? And so there's a real urgency to events right now.
BROWN: General, thank you. We'll get to you again before our night is done.
We'll take a break. When we come back: the photographs of David Turnley -- a break first.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
BROWN: If you watch NEWSNIGHT regularly, you know that we have great affection for the work of still photographers. And tonight is someone we like especially, David Turnley, who shot one of the most powerful pictures of the first Gulf War, that of a soldier finding out his best friend had been killed.
This time, he's been traveling through Iraq for CNN. And his latest work comes from the tempest that is Baghdad.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
DAVID TURNLEY, PHOTOGRAPHER: I'm David Turnley.
I've been in Baghdad now for several days. The people here constantly say they are so pleased with the fact that Saddam Hussein has been removed from power. They say that they want to be clear that they are appreciative of the Americans as liberators, but they don't want Americans to be occupiers.
There are several constants while you're here in Baghdad. One is that there is constantly billowing smoke on the skyline from some building that is burning. Another constant is that there is constant looting wherever you look. It seems that one of the first manifestations, in fact, of a new kind of freedom for these people is their exercise in the opportunity to loot.
And one morning, as I was driving across the Tigris on a bridge, suddenly I saw coming toward me what looked like an exodus of people pushing every imaginable kind of belonging, anything people could have taken, looted from one of the many government institutions here in Baghdad. I saw one young boy on a couch that was being pushed along on a cart.
And then, thirdly, people here are just having a very hard time on a day-to-day basis finding food to eat, water to drink. Their homes mostly don't have electricity.
Since I've been in Baghdad, I don't have the sense that people had a clear idea of what they wanted. You hear people say that they want democracy. But that, quite honestly, right now seems almost secondary to their first concern, which is that they need food to eat. They need electricity. They're very concerned about a complete lack of law and order.
Whatever may come in the next chapter or in the ensuing future of this country, that the Iraqis are feeling that, regardless of how they felt about Saddam Hussein, that they're not quite sure whether their pride as Iraqis is still intact and what's going to happen to their sense of themselves as Iraqis.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
BROWN: David Turnley, shooting for us for CNN.
We'll take a break, update the day's headlines. And our coverage continues in just a moment.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
TO ORDER A VIDEO OF THIS TRANSCRIPT, PLEASE CALL 800-CNN-NEWS OR USE OUR SECURE ONLINE ORDER FORM LOCATED AT www.fdch.com
Aired April 14, 2003 - 22:00 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
AARON BROWN, CNN ANCHOR: Good evening again. We are back in New York.
The war, in terms of the big battles at least, is over. At least according to the Pentagon. The smaller fights and the larger issues of the future for Iraq, though, are still very much in play. We start things off tonight with the events in Iraq clearly shifting to a new phase. And we begin our overview with the final big battle that in many ways never really happened.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
BROWN (voice-over): American Marines moved into the Iraqi stronghold of Tikrit; their light armored vehicles setting up checkpoints and rumbling past a presidential palace. Overhead, Cobra helicopters patrolled the skies. And by day's end, the fighting was largely over. Every major city in the country now is under coalition control.
The Pentagon says major ground combat in Iraq is at an end. But there continues to be pressure by the administration on Syria. Two senior cabinet officials sounding unusually blunt today. The secretary of defense even saying Syria was suspected of testing chemical weapons.
DONALD RUMSFELD, SECRETARY OF DEFENSE: We have seen a chemical weapons test in Syria over the past 12, 15 months. And second, that we have intelligence that shows that Syria has allowed Syrians and others to come across the border into Iraq. People armed and people carrying leaflets, indicating that they will be rewarded if they kill Americans and members of the coalition.
COLIN POWELL, SECRETARY OF STATE: We believe in light of this new environment, they should review their actions and their behavior. Not only with respect to who gets haven in Syria and weapons of mass destruction, but especially the support of terrorist activity.
BROWN: In Damascus, the Syrians strongly deny the assertions. And the British say there is no plan to attack Syria next.
South of Baghdad, where elements of the 101st Airborne last week found what they said were suspicious chemicals, chemicals that turned out to be pesticides, another find. A collection of mobile laboratories buried underground. The military calls them ConExes.
BRIG. GEN. BENJAMIN FREAKLY, 101ST AIRBORNE: In Karbala, when we were fighting there with the 2nd Brigade, the 2nd Brigade found about 11 buried ConExes. Large metal 20 by probably 20-foot vans buried in the ground. They are dual-use chemical labs, biological and chemical.
About 1,000 pounds of documentation were found in that. And they were close to an artillery ammunition plant.
BROWN: Both the paperwork and the labs themselves are to be examined further.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I love you all, Marines.
BROWN: A few more pictures, these from the government, of the seven freed American prisoners of war. All will head home soon, according to the Pentagon.
In Baghdad, itself, outbreaks of lawlessness continued. This in an Iraqi bank set afire after a round from a rocket-propelled grenade when crashing inside. But the Marines showed up, cordoned off the area, arrested two men.
Another fire as well. This at the main Baghdad library. No telling what was lost.
In Washington, the Bush administration promised it would try to repair and even replace any artifacts lost either at the library or at the Iraqi National Museum, looted and ransacked late last week.
These are Iraqi police cars, and this is a Baghdad traffic cop. Both cars and cops out for the first time, accompanied by American Marines.
Some Iraqi police officials showed up, too, ready for work, they said. Markets opened up in some areas. And in other parts of the city, huge stockpiles of weapons continued to be unearthed.
Pictures as well today from inside a house once owned by Uday Hussein, one of the former president's sons. Bottles of scotch, personalized stationery.
In the Iraqi north, plenty of American troops on the ground in Kirkuk. And visible presence outside the oil fields, too. American officials say every one of the country's oil wells was under coalition control.
And two developments that seem to mark the ending of the war. The Pentagon announcing that Monday was the last day when combat missions would be flown from all five of its aircraft carriers in the region. And homecomings. These are British soldiers. Their war is over.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Do you want to see your daddy?
(END VIDEOTAPE)
BROWN: That's the big picture tonight. We'll begin the small pieces of that picture with Syria. If not a formal member of the president's axis of evil, Syria is increasingly being treated as a prime accessory. And many now wonder if the full-court press is also a prelude to something more serious where Syria is concerned.
CNN's Andrea Koppel joins us tonight from the State Department. Andrea, good evening.
ANDREA KOPPEL, CNN STATE DEPARTMENT CORRESPONDENT: Good evening, Aaron. Well, as you know, the drumbeat against Syria has been sounding off already for days. But today that drumbeat got a little louder.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
KOPPEL (voice-over): Ramping up the rhetoric, Secretary of State Powell delivered the toughest warning shot yet across Syria's bow.
POWELL: Of course we will examine possible measures of a diplomatic, economic or other nature as we move forward. We are in touch with Syrian authorities.
KOPPEL: In fact, Britain's deputy foreign secretary met with Syria's president, Bashar al-Assad, in Damascus Monday. The U.K. playing good cop to the U.S. bad cop. Both Washington and London looking to capitalize on their military success in removing the Iraqi regime to send a powerful signal to Iraq's neighbors.
ARI FLEISCHER, WHITE HOUSE PRESS SECRETARY: Gone is the brutal dictatorship of Saddam Hussein. Next, hopefully, is a re-examination by Syria and perhaps others about how they conduct their affairs.
KOPPEL: At issue, U.S. claims that Syria, a state sponsor of terrorism, may be allowing thousands of Syrian and other Arab fighters to cross into Iraq to fight coalition forces. Continuing its own chemical and biological weapons program, and providing safe haven to senior Iraqi Ba'ath Party officials, war criminals and scientists. A senior Syrian official told CNN his government has asked for but not received hard evidence proving these allegations.
ROSTOM AL-ZOUBI, SYRIAN AMBASSADOR TO THE U.S.: ... that all these accusations are baseless. We deny them. We don't have weapons of mass destruction.
KOPPEL: But the White House said President Bush is convinced and wants Syria's president to get the message.
FLEISCHER: President Bashar al-Assad is a young leader. He is an untested leader. He has a chance to be a leader who makes the right decisions. We hope he does.
KOPPEL: Saber rattling aside, the Bush administration has stopped short of saying Syria could be the next military target.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
KOPPEL: As one senior administration official explained, he said, "This is a chance to read Damascus the Riot Act, a chance to tell them that they have the opportunity to turn a new page." But Aaron, in this official's opinion, he said they are already showing that they are blowing that last chance -- Aaron.
BROWN: So there are no indications, despite a half a million troops on the border of Iraq, and all the words out of Washington, that Syria is in any way getting this message?
KOPPEL: Oh, I think they are getting the message. The question is whether or not they're going to do anything about that. They, of course, have denied any accusations of having either a chemical or a biological weapons program. They have denied that they have given any kind of safe harbor to Iraqi officials or others, or, for that matter, that they're letting Syrians or other Arabs go across the border into Iraq.
Nevertheless, this is an opportunity that the Bush administration wants to seize to really scare the bejesus out of Damascus, to say with those hundreds of thousands of troops on Syria's border, look what we just did next door. You better not become the Algeria of post-World War II and allow Iraqi officials to live in your country.
And really, the other concern, Aaron, is that this is a state sponsor of terrorism. They are known -- Syria is known to support Hezbollah and Hamas. And the last thing that the U.S. or Britain wants to see is any chemical or biological weapons ending up in the hands of those terrorists. As one official told me, he said, "We can have another al Qaeda on our hands."
BROWN: Andrea, thank you. Andrea Koppel at the State Department.
Early on in the war, a commander was asked why the Americans had yet to locate any chemical or biological weapons. His answer was simple and self evident. "They're too busy fighting," he said.
Then came the liberation of the Iraqi cities. And after that, the looting. And with the weapons issue seemingly fading from the headlines.
Well (UNINTELLIGIBLE) back today with word that members of the 101st Airborne had made an intriguing discovery outside Karbala. CNN's Ryan Chilcote has been traveling with the 101st, and Ryan joins us now. Ryan, good morning.
RYAN CHILCOTE, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Good evening, Aaron. The 101st Airborne Division has been inspecting several of these so-called sensitive sites, sites where the U.S. believes -- the U.S. Army believes that the Iraqis may have hidden elements of a chemical or biological weapons program.
We reported extensively on one such site about a week ago. That site turned out to be a false alarm. Today, I spoke with the Brigadier General of the 101st Airborne, Benjamin Freakly. We discussed both that site that turned out to be a false alarm and the new one that has caught their attention. Let's listen to what he had to say. (BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
FREAKLY: We talked before, you and I, about the site there at Objective MURI (ph), where we found the suspected chemicals. Those turned out after further analysis, as you and I had talked about, not being chemicals. They were high grade pesticides.
But in Karbala, when we were fighting there with the 2nd Brigade, the 2nd Brigade found about 11 buried ConExes. Large metal 20 by probably 20-foot vans buried in the ground. They are dual-use chemical labs, biological and chemical. About 1,000 pounds of documentation were found in that. And they were close to an artillery ammunition plant.
So this is consistent with the Iraqi denial, former Iraqi leadership denial of doing anything, any wrongdoing. And yet here's major chemical lab facilities, 11 different large sized ConExes buried in the ground, clearly marked so they could be found again. Dual use, chemical and biological. Close to an artillery factory that has empty shells. So we're exploring that further.
Again, a little too early to tell, but clearly new equipment. A lot of money in the 2000 to the 2003 time period been spent in that camp. Probably over $1 million worth of chemical capability found in these 11 ConExes. And we continue to develop that with better expertise.
CHILCOTE: And you found it a while ago, but what was new? Yesterday you had people looking at it or...
FREAKLY: No. I think -- you know when it was found in Karbala, the 2nd Brigade was fighting there. And as the 2nd Brigade stabilized Karbala, then it was determined that these ConExes were found. They've had to have been dug up. And now the sense of sight teams that the military is using are using their expertise to pore through this.
And initial reports indicate that this is clearly a case of denial and deception on the part of the Iraqi government, and that these chemical labs are present. And now we just have to determine what, in fact, they were really being used for.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
CHILCOTE: Well Aaron, obviously, a very intriguing find. But it doesn't mean that they've found a smoking gun yet. As he said in that interview, they do have experts there checking out that site.
Those experts are from the U.S. Army's 5th Corps. They are the highest level of experts that the Army has in country here. This inspection at that site has gone all the way up, or all the way up the Army's hierarchy from the low level, from the company level, all the way now to the corps level. And undoubtedly, there will be a lot more inspection.
There's no one, obviously, that wants to find a chemical agent or elements of a chemical and biological program more than the U.S. Army in Iraq. So they're obviously going to be very careful. But very hard working in finding and trying to exploit that site -- Aaron.
BROWN: Let me throw a couple of things. Is it absolutely clear, without any question at all, that whatever it is that they found had to be a chemical or biological lab of some sort? Is that beyond dispute?
CHILCOTE: I don't think so, because he did not give -- although he does describe it as that, he did not give a definitive answer. And I think, like I said, there is no one that would like to give -- to sort of find the smoking gun more than the U.S. Army. So I don't think he's given a completely definitive answer that these are indeed underground labs.
You'll notice that he didn't mention that they found any chemical agent in that interview. I think that's also significant. What he is saying is -- what he is describing is a lab -- a dual-use lab. That could mean that it was also used for civilian purposes, although why would they bury it? Particularly in close proximity to an artillery factory, artillery shell factory?
But I think it's really important there that he describes what is a dual-use chemical laboratory, mobile chemical laboratory. But he never says that they found any chemical agent there or any weaponized chemical weapons or...
BROWN: Well we lost Ryan there briefly. We'll see if we get him back later, and we'll get more reporting on that.
In the meantime, we'll go to Baghdad, which today saw a semblance of order returning, along with some cops on the beat. CNN's Christiane Amanpour has the duty tonight, and she joins us from Baghdad -- Christiane.
CHRISTIANE AMANPOUR, CNN CHIEF INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Well, Aaron, they tried to get cops back on the beat. There was a large recruiting process going on. But it didn't quite turn out just as the Marines had wanted. They wanted to start putting some foot patrols on the street, but that's going to have to wait until late they are week because of a slightly chaotic situation at the recruiting process at the police academy in the morning.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
AMANPOUR (voice-over): These are the policemen and the officers who were supposed to be restoring order. It was, for a morning, almost as chaotic inside the police academy as on the streets. Saluting him last week, stomping on him today, it seemed the police were trying to purge themselves of Saddam Hussein's brutality that they had helped and perhaps were forced to enforce.
Staff Sergeant Jeremy Stafford, and the Marines who had come to get the first police patrol out on the beat, were overwhelmed.
STAFF SGT. JEREMY STAFFORD, U.S. MARINE CORPS: So I figured I'd let them have it. The only other way I could have stopped it was to start using force. And I'm not going to start using force on these people. I think they've had enough of that.
AMANPOUR: Indeed, just last week, they had discarded their uniforms for fear of being shot by Americans entering Baghdad. Now a few put them on again. All rushed to sign up for their old jobs. And feelings that had been bottled up for years poured forth.
"The regime used to have a sword at our neck," says Sergeant Fizal Mosen (ph). "If we didn't cooperate, we were fired or sent to prison on trumped up charges."
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I have refused to work with Saddam.
AMANPOUR: Hamid Mustafar (ph) was head of the traffic police back in 1983.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: And now I want to come back and work, and to save my people.
AMANPOUR: But not everyone here is reporting for duty, nor do they trust those who are. Hussein Jarala (ph) has come looking for the security forces who imprisoned and tortured him back in 1999.
"I was hung by my arms from the ceiling," he said. "Electrocuted and beaten with sticks." He came with a list of names. He didn't find them. But one army officer offered a mea culpa.
"Regrettably, as the army, we were a tool of repression of the Iraqi people," says Lieutenant Colonel Adnan Rashid (ph). "When we joined up, we thought we'd secure our future and our children's future, but it didn't turn out like that. God willing, we'll make up for the past and correct our relationship with our people."
And just to make sure they are recruiting good cops, Marines had called for only a couple of hundred to come today.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Unfortunately, somehow the word got out there was a breach in the security some place. The word got out. So we had a couple of thousand of them show up, versus a couple of hundred.
AMANPOUR (on camera): But that's good. You want lots of people.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Well, we do. Unfortunately, you know, these things have to be done in baby steps.
AMANPOUR (voice-over): A baby step like this: one Iraqi police car with a two-vehicle armed Marine escort. Desperate city residents immediately clamor for a stop to the looting.
Meantime, back at the academy, an exhausted officer tells everyone to go home and report back Thursday morning. Restoring order to the city will have to wait a while longer.
(END VIDEOTAPE) AMANPOUR: And just to illustrate the fact that things aren't as stable as everybody would like them to be quite yet, we just heard what we think is tank fire from the Marines outside in response to a threat that we can't tell right now, since we're up here. There have also been helicopters hovering over the mosque behind me. We understand that that is perhaps because they're looking to see whether there is any threat, any looting or any firing coming from behind there.
And certainly, after that show at the police academy yesterday, there was a brazen attack on the central bank in Iraq, in which robbers burst in, set fire to part of the building and stole a lot of money before the Marines came and tried to break that up. So it's still pretty unstable in many parts of this town -- Aaron.
BROWN: All right. Go back to the police for a second. How are they being vetted? How are they deciding whether someone is legitimate? I assume some Ba'athist Party members are not being disqualified.
AMANPOUR: Well, yes. I mean, basically, what we were talking with the commanders -- the Marine commanders there, is precisely -- you know, they were talking about baby steps? You can't have all these people flooding in at the same time, because they actually need to screen them. And they had all these people who they were talking to.
I guess a couple of commanders that have come on side over the last week or so are helping them go through names. But, you know, there were 40,000 police officers in Baghdad before the war. And it's going to be quite a challenge to go through all of those and to pick out who is who and what's what.
And they need very desperately, the Marines admit, to get these people back out on to the streets. And right now, everybody seems willing to do that. So it is going to be a bit of a challenge, and perhaps some people will slip under the radar, and even without the proper credentials and vetting go back on the streets. But the Marines are trying to do what they can to make sure that doesn't happen.
BROWN: Christiane, thank you. Christiane Amanpour, who is in Baghdad tonight.
We're joined, as always the last month, with retired General Wesley Clark. General Clark joins us tonight from Washington. It's good to see you, General. The battle for Tikrit never really happened.
GEN. WESLEY CLARK (RET.), CNN MILITARY ANALYST: It really didn't. We had the Marines go up. They pushed on it a little bit and it fell apart. Demoralization set in after apparently a lot of air power was applied.
BROWN: Air power that went on for quite some time. But in the end, it seems like once the regime cracked last week, then any real resistance cracked with it.
CLARK: That's exactly the way I read it, Aaron. Before that, despite what we'd heard about no effective command and control in the Iraqi forces, there was something there at least that kept people fighting. It could have and should have cracked earlier had there been no command and control. But after the strike on the restaurant, whether Saddam was killed in that or not, everything changed.
BROWN: And that, as I remember it, was Monday. So it's basically been...
CLARK: Right.
BROWN: ... a week of this. How -- if you're the military commander, what has gone really well in the last week? That's the easy part. And what concerns you at this point?
CLARK: Well, you're getting guidance from the political leadership in Washington if you're the military commander. And that's going to really drive your concerns. Obviously, the move into Baghdad, the maneuvering of the troops moving up to Tikrit, collecting the surrender of the Iraqis in the northern area, all that's gone very well.
You would be worried about looting. It depends really on the political sensitivities of the command to this. I will say this, Aaron, that this force is lighter in proportion to the tasks than other peacekeeping forces who've had similar responsibilities in the past. But that's the function of political guidance and the direction that they've been given.
The commander's primary concern is to execute that guidance and also to protect his troops. And so one of the things that all the military leaders of every level have to be concerned about is the next sniping incident, the next suicide bomber, and how to do this task of restoring order without needlessly exposing the troops to the holdouts that may still be there.
BROWN: The plan, as best we knew it, always required more soldiers on the ground after the war than it did during the war itself. And they are coming in, aren't they?
CLARK: Well, they are. Of course, we've never seen the plan. We really don't know what it is. But it seemed to have talked about a staged buildup to a larger force.
What we don't know is how large that force will eventually be. Or, other than the 4th Infantry Division, whether any more forces really are due to arrive.
And if we've seen one pattern, it is the pattern that, when you apply this enormous military machine to a military task, resistance crumbles at a surprising rate. That was the pattern in Afghanistan when the Taliban suddenly folded and we were left with the problem of Osama bin Laden. And that's the problem here, when we're left with, fortunately, a less difficult problem. But it's the problem of maintaining order.
BROWN: Well, let me just go one step farther. We're still seeing in Afghanistan that, while the organized Taliban crumbled, a lot of Taliban guys were sent home, and seen now in pockets here and in pockets there of causing problems. Is that what we're going to see in Iraq, do you expect?
CLARK: It really depends, I think, Aaron, on whether there is anyone out there who has a will to make mischief or whether the American power has been so intimidating that no one will try to challenge the United States, even asymmetrically. That is to say, there will be no Iranian grab for control of the Shia community, no al Qaeda recruiting efforts, no furtive effort by Syria to put fighters back in, to do a little bit of sniping and a little bit of bombing.
And if there is no challenge, then the Iraqis themselves, with very little assistance in maintaining order as this process goes through, should be able to re-establish a semblance of a state and move toward some kind of self government. But if there is mischief making that comes in from the outside, it's going to be a much differential challenge both for the Iraqis and for the American force that's there.
BROWN: General, we'll get back to you before very long. We'll take a break here. When we come back, more on the chemical labs, if that's in fact what they are. We'll talk with David Albright, the former U.N. weapons inspector, about what they may be and what they may not be. But we'll take a break first. Our coverage continues in a moment.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
BROWN: We've said before that whenever the phrase "chemical weapons" comes up, there is a certain amount of hyperventilating that seems to go along with it. So we want to take a deep breath when we talk about the discovery of what are said to be mobile and chemical and biological labs near Karbala.
We're joined in Washington tonight by former weapons inspector David Albright. David, good to have you with us tonight.
DAVID ALBRIGHT, FMR. WEAPONS INSPECTOR: Good to be here.
BROWN: Could it be anything other than a chemical lab, a mobile chemical lab?
ALBRIGHT: Well, most certainly. I mean, it looks very suspicious in this case that it could be related to chemical or biological weapons production. But Iraq imported a lot of things that it wasn't allowed to import, and it may be chemical equipment related to conventional weaponry manufacturing. So we just have to look at it.
It's good that the documentation is found in these containers, and that may shed some further light on what the true purpose of this equipment was. If it's truly dual-use equipment, it may not be a smoking gun. It may -- you know, we may end up feeling very suspicious that it's for chemical weapons production, but it may be new equipment that's never been used. And we'll just be wondering in the end.
BROWN: Part of the problem here is -- it's more of a political problem than anything else -- is that absent a clear smoking gun, those who want to believe one thing will believe it, those predisposed to believe something else will likely believe that. And you're left in a kind of in-between world depending upon your view of the politics of it.
ALBRIGHT: Well, I hope not. I mean, certainly by having some of the senior WMD officials turn themselves in over the weekend, I mean you would hope that the people in the program will start providing insight into what was there.
Now, one of them, Al-Saadi, said nothing was there. But that may just be his starting position and negotiation. What I would call the father of the Iraqi nuclear weapons program was picked or turned himself in, according to the "L.A. TIMES." And so between the two of them, they know pretty much where all the bodies are on the WMD programs.
BROWN: This is (UNINTELLIGIBLE)?
ALBRIGHT: This is -- yes, (UNINTELLIGIBLE).
BROWN: Yes. Would it surprise you if nothing were found? Is it just inconceivable to you that the American government had it absolutely wrong?
ALBRIGHT: It would surprise me if there was nothing found just because why would Iraq not have cooperated with the inspectors? I mean was it just an attitude problem? I mean they knew the regime could be overthrown.
So I would think that at least what will be found are production capabilities, reconstitution capabilities. The U.S. may have had it wrong about these large stocks of chemical and biological weapons that they argued were there. In fact, argued that they were in deliverable form. And so our intelligence may have failed on that.
But there may -- I would expect some kind of capability there to make chemical and biological weapons.
BROWN: And one other question quickly, not on Iraq, but on Syria. Is it clear that Syria does have a chemical weapons program?
ALBRIGHT: Well, my understanding for well over a decade is that Syria has chemical weapons. I don't have evidence of it. And I probably shouldn't go too far out on a limb, given what's going on in Iraq in chemical weapons.
But it's always been the view in people who work in arms control in the Middle East that Syria's chemical weapons are like a poor-man's atomic bomb, in essence a reaction to Israel's nuclear weapons. And Syria is not violating any international law if it does have chemical weapons. So I think we should be very careful about going too far down a path of threatening Syria.
Certainly, Syrian chemical weapons are a threat, but I think we've been living with them for a long time. And I think if you start accusing Syria of something, many Arab countries are going to start making the same argument about Israel's nuclear arsenal.
BROWN: David, it's good to have you with us. I expect, the next time a find is found, we'll talk again. Thank you, David Albright, former weapons inspector.
ALBRIGHT: OK. Thank you. Good to be here.
BROWN: We'll take a break, update the day's headlines. And our coverage continues in just a moment.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
BROWN: More now on the fate of Saddam Hussein.
Some have argued that finding him is irrelevant now that the regime is finished. But many Iraqis have said it's vital for them to know what happened, so they can feel free to move on. We remember an interview last Friday night, I believe it was, an Iraqi oil engineer, who certainly was not prepared, despite everything in front of him, everything he knew, everything he'd seen, was not prepared to believe that Saddam was gone.
We're joined tonight by Con Coughlin. He's the author of the book "Saddam: King of Terror" and executive editor of "The London Sunday Telegraph."
Nice to have you with us.
CON COUGHLIN, AUTHOR, "SADDAM: KING OF TERROR": Pleasure.
BROWN: Is he dead or alive? Is he in Syria? What do you hear?
COUGHLIN: I hear that he's alive, that he escaped the most recent bombing on the restaurant and he's still in Iraq. And he could even be in Baghdad lying low.
BROWN: Lying low for what?
COUGHLIN: Good question.
The thing that's governed Saddam's whole political career is his survival. That's really what Saddam is about, survival. And at this point in his career, survival is clearly very important. Does Saddam think he can come out of this and take over Iraq again? Well, being Saddam, he probably does, if he's alive.
BROWN: So, he's not necessarily laying low -- sort of based on your knowledge of him, the work you've done researching him, he's not necessarily laying low just so he can get to Syria or get out of Dodge, get somewhere safely and live the life of an exiled dictator?
COUGHLIN: No.
In my view, Saddam was never in it for the money. He was in it for the power. And Iraq has always been his power base. And I can't see Saddam going into exile. I've never believed Saddam would do that. Saddam, of course, has always had one eye on the history books. He wants to go down in history as a great Arab leader.
(CROSSTALK)
BROWN: Well, part of the problem is, he's not going to write the history anymore.
COUGHLIN: No. Well, but he's still thinks there are people in the Arab people that will think favorably of him if he still survives this.
We have to remember that a lot of Saddam's behavior in this conflict is predicated by the behavior of the allies in the last conflict. He believes that, at some point, the Americans will pack up their tanks and go home. Well, we're already seeing the deescalation of the military presence. In time, people are going to go home and Iraq will be there for the taking.
And Iraq is not an easy country to govern. And the one person who knows how to try and hold it together, OK, by a very brutal means, is one Saddam Hussein.
BROWN: Some of his family members have started to peel off. They've been taken into custody. Are they close enough to the inner circle to provide valuable information at this point?
COUGHLIN: Well, the half-brother that was arrested, Watban, he basically has not been in power since 1995, when he got in a fight with Uday, Saddam's oldest son. Uday actually shot him and Watban lost a leg. And since then, he's basically been on the outer fringes of the circle. He would have some information about how the regime operates. But he's been out of the inner loop since 1995. So how hot his information is going to be is open to question.
BROWN: Just back to him, there are some things that we can't know, but you're in a better position than most to guess at this point.
He was rolling the dice. The guy was rolling the dice that the Americans weren't coming in, right?
COUGHLIN: Yes.
BROWN: Because he had to know -- I mean, if I was smart enough to figure it out, he had to be smart enough to figure out that, if the Americans were coming in, he was done.
COUGHLIN: But he didn't -- no, he went into this conflict believing that he would survive it, right? I mean, first of all, you have to remember that, from Saddam's point of view -- just look at it from Saddam's mind-set -- Saddam won the diplomatic contest. He left the United...
BROWN: Absolutely.
COUGHLIN: He had a very bad hand.
And when this conflict started, Saddam had left the international community deeply divided. This was an unpopular war. And There were lots of things that Saddam hoped he could draw on going into this conflict. Firstly, if there had been heavy Iraqi casualties, then Washington and London would have been under pressure to stop the fighting. If Saddam had been successful in inflicting heavy casualties on the coalition forces, how would the American public have reacted to that? Would President Bush have been under pressure?
These are the kinds of things that Saddam Hussein wants to exploit. OK, they didn't happen. And Saddam has had to rethink his strategy in a hurry. But, three weeks ago, it was a different ball game for Saddam. And, OK, he's a gambler. He took a gamble. But he went into it, as I say, believing that he would come out of it, that he would survive it.
And if he is still alive -- and, of course, it is an if. Nobody knows for sure. But going on what I'm told, I think he is still alive, he's still lying low, and he will have one eye on the future. And I know it's hard to believe. And we think we're going to sort Iraq out. But it's a troubled road that lies ahead in rebuilding Iraq. It's not going to be easy.
BROWN: No. We've already seen, in the most cursory of ways, how complicated it's been. There has been an assassination. There has been trouble in Basra over the selected military -- or a city mayor, essentially the mayor or the governor of the area. It's a complicated place.
COUGHLIN: And the Kurds are kicking up with the Arabs in the north.
BROWN: Already.
COUGHLIN: Yes. There has been ethnic cleansing of the Arabs in the north. These are all really, really important issues. And it's going to be very difficult for foreigners, for the Kurdish enforcers, to sort this out for the Iraqis.
BROWN: Nice to meet you. Thanks for coming in tonight.
COUGHLIN: A pleasure.
BROWN: It's a fascinating subject to actually -- in the absence of the war, to sit around and try and speculate upon, sort of what his motives were and where he is and what he may try and do next, if he's alive. Nice to meet you.
COUGHLIN: Never underestimate Saddam.
BROWN: We should have learned that before, too. Thank you very much.
(LAUGHTER)
BROWN: We'll take a break. Our coverage continues.
When we come back, the POWs, their story -- but a break first.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
BROWN: Baghdad on an early Tuesday morning now. Monday was a calmer day, but not yet calm. Calm seems a ways away yet for the Iraqi capital. But that's how it looks on an early Tuesday morning.
There are places around the United States today where a strange thing happened. The weekend didn't end. The parties kept going. They kept going in places like El Paso, Texas, and Lithia Springs, Georgia, Valley Center, Kansas. That's because those towns and a few more will soon welcome home seven of their own, seven rescued American prisoners of war.
Here is CNN's Ed Lavandera.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We were right in the middle of their crossfire."
ED LAVANDERA, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): After spending three weeks as prisoners of war, these soldiers enjoyed the one-way ticket out of Iraq; 23-year-old Joseph Hudson flashes the thumbs-up.
JOSEPH HUDSON, RESCUED POW: I love you all Marines! I love you all Marines!
LAVANDERA: Edgar Hernandez sends a message home.
EDGAR HERNANDEZ, RESCUED POW: I'm happy that I'm going home to see my family.
LAVANDERA: When Shoshana Johnson walked off the plane, her father says he could tell she was in pain. She suffered gunshot wounds in each leg. But her sister says that pain is nothing, considering that nine of her fellow soldiers didn't make it out of the March 23 ambush alive.
NIKKI JOHNSON, SISTER OF RESCUED POW: Some people who were right there with her don't have what she says. They don't have what we have. And I hope that the others -- those that are missing, that their families can get what we have now, to think about this time constructively, like what they're going to do when this person gets back. And I just want to tell them to hold on, hold on, because we got ours back. You can get yours back, too. LAVANDERA: The mother of Apache helicopter pilot Ronald young is celebrating a birthday on this day. Kaye Young didn't need any candles on her cake. Her wish came true the day before, watching the images of her son being rescued, then hearing his voice on the phone.
KAYE YOUNG, MOTHER OF RESCUED POW: The best day of my life, yesterday. It was hard to believe yesterday that -- I mean, that he could just run out and just be running and we would see him in good health. He may have lost a few pounds, but he was laughing. When he called on the phone, he was joking with us. He was happy.
He was -- couldn't wait to get home and see everybody. He said, tell everybody he loved them. He just sounded like his normal self.
LAVANDERA: For Michelle Williams, the last three weeks have seemed like a movie. Her husband was riding with Ronald Young in the Apache helicopter that crashed behind Iraqi lines. As they celebrate their own good news, they can't help but think of the families who still have loved ones still missing in action.
MICHELLE WILLIAMS, WIFE OF RESCUED POW: Continue to pray. If you don't hear from them, no news is good news. And before this happened, I hadn't heard from him in a couple of weeks. But you just have to continue to pray.
LAVANDERA: The families of the former POWs say they're still waiting to hear word as to when and where they'll be able to see their loved ones. In the meantime, most of these families say they'll start preparing the homecoming party.
Ed Lavandera, CNN, Fort Bliss, Texas.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
BROWN: We'll take a break.
When we come back, we'll talk with General Clark about the POWs and about Saddam, too, a long way to go yet on a Monday night.
We'll take a break now and be right back.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
BROWN: Back again with General Wesley Clark in Washington.
Let's talk about two things, first, the POWs. Are you surprised at all that they were -- at least they're reporting -- at least, as Peter Baker of "The Washington Post" reported, they were treated reasonably well and they were found safe?
CLARK: No, I wasn't surprised, because this would have been in the character of that regime to try to hold on to these folks as bargaining leverage. And so they didn't -- they didn't know how they might need them, but they were valuable as soon as they were taken.
BROWN: Once their pictures were shown to the world -- we talked about this that Sunday night when the first five of them were taken -- their lives became at that moment safer, didn't they?
CLARK: I think that's exactly right, Aaron. I think this is an example of the media really being able to help in a situation like this, because I think that made it much more difficult for the Iraqi government to just let go of the issue and let events take a more brutal course.
BROWN: Now, I was talking to Mr. Coughlin and I could almost hear you breathing, wanting to get in on the conversation, where is Saddam, what if he is alive, what is he thinking, all of that. Where do you want to go with it, General?
CLARK: Well, first of all, I think one of the things that really struck me when Mr. Coughlin talked was how little we really know about what's going on in Iraq.
There are things happening out there neighborhood by neighborhood, city by city. We saw the assassination in Najaf. We had no indication that was coming. At least, we didn't have it in the media. It wasn't presented to the American public. We know that things have sort of calmed down in Basra, but we're not sure what's going on in Najaf right now. We don't know really what's happening in Karbala and even in neighborhoods in Baghdad.
And so we're always going to be on the reactive side of this mission as it moves along. And I think, when you talk to the experts -- I mean, you come out with either the glass is half full or half empty. It's half full if you think, well, the Iraqi people will settle this and, basically, they want a democracy, half empty if you realize, boy, this is a really tough mission.
BROWN: See, there are two kinds of things here, it seems to me, we don't know. We don't know how much danger there is left, how big these pockets of resistance are. But the other part of it is, to my thinking, the more complicated part. We don't know how deep the grudges are, how wide the divisions between ethnic groups are. We've got this scene in the north with the Kurds and Iraqi Arabs going on. There are a lot of troubling signs out there.
CLARK: And all of these were predicted in one way or another beforehand, Aaron. But the mission wasn't premised on the success of the aftermath. It was premised -- I mean, it was pointed to take down the regime.
And then -- I know, when I went through the Pentagon early in the autumn, before I testified on the Hill and I talked to some officers over there, and I said: What is the plan for afterwards? Well, we're just getting started on that, sir. We've been working the last year on the war plan, but there really isn't a plan for afterwards.
And I think, to that extent, this phase of the operation has always been somewhat in doubt and it's always been held hostage to the forces and the nature of the war fight themselves.
BROWN: The fact is, we're only -- we're a week into the aftermath. It's not like we're very far down the road there. And some of what we're seeing is utterly predictable: the civil -- the chaos, if you will. It's hard to imagine it would have happened otherwise. It happens this way all the time. It happens after basketball championships, for goodness' sakes.
But it is the political things that I would think would worry the planners both in the White House, the State Department, and the Pentagon, the assassination in Najaf, other things like that that would have them concerned.
CLARK: I think that's right, Aaron.
After the Kosovo campaign, when we put 40,000 NATO troops into Kosovo in an area that was about 4 percent the size of Iraq and had only two million inhabitants, we still had problems. We had revenge killings and assassinations. And it went on for some time. When that happens, it's more than just the individual brutality.
It does cast a -- it has a larger political significance. And you can be sure that what's happening in the north will. And when you add to that the political problems of the assassination and so forth, you have a feel for sort of dicey mission. This is like walking across lily pads. And if the administration has a grand vision for the Middle East, I think you'll see a real urgency to start and keep moving and take advantage of the momentum and not get bogged down here in the peacekeeping effort.
And I think that accounts, to some extent, for the rhetoric that is coming against Syria. As we heard earlier, someone in the administration has said that this is Syria's last chance. And when I heard that, I wanted to say, last chance before, before? And so there's a real urgency to events right now.
BROWN: General, thank you. We'll get to you again before our night is done.
We'll take a break. When we come back: the photographs of David Turnley -- a break first.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
BROWN: If you watch NEWSNIGHT regularly, you know that we have great affection for the work of still photographers. And tonight is someone we like especially, David Turnley, who shot one of the most powerful pictures of the first Gulf War, that of a soldier finding out his best friend had been killed.
This time, he's been traveling through Iraq for CNN. And his latest work comes from the tempest that is Baghdad.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
DAVID TURNLEY, PHOTOGRAPHER: I'm David Turnley.
I've been in Baghdad now for several days. The people here constantly say they are so pleased with the fact that Saddam Hussein has been removed from power. They say that they want to be clear that they are appreciative of the Americans as liberators, but they don't want Americans to be occupiers.
There are several constants while you're here in Baghdad. One is that there is constantly billowing smoke on the skyline from some building that is burning. Another constant is that there is constant looting wherever you look. It seems that one of the first manifestations, in fact, of a new kind of freedom for these people is their exercise in the opportunity to loot.
And one morning, as I was driving across the Tigris on a bridge, suddenly I saw coming toward me what looked like an exodus of people pushing every imaginable kind of belonging, anything people could have taken, looted from one of the many government institutions here in Baghdad. I saw one young boy on a couch that was being pushed along on a cart.
And then, thirdly, people here are just having a very hard time on a day-to-day basis finding food to eat, water to drink. Their homes mostly don't have electricity.
Since I've been in Baghdad, I don't have the sense that people had a clear idea of what they wanted. You hear people say that they want democracy. But that, quite honestly, right now seems almost secondary to their first concern, which is that they need food to eat. They need electricity. They're very concerned about a complete lack of law and order.
Whatever may come in the next chapter or in the ensuing future of this country, that the Iraqis are feeling that, regardless of how they felt about Saddam Hussein, that they're not quite sure whether their pride as Iraqis is still intact and what's going to happen to their sense of themselves as Iraqis.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
BROWN: David Turnley, shooting for us for CNN.
We'll take a break, update the day's headlines. And our coverage continues in just a moment.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
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