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Crisis in Iraq; Military Jet Downed in Ukraine

Aired August 07, 2014 - 15:00   ET

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

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

ANNOUNCER: This is CNN breaking news.

BROOKE BALDWIN, CNN ANCHOR: It is an incredibly busy Thursday here. You're joining me and we're watching CNN. I'm Brooke Baldwin.

Top of the hour right now. Let's home in on Iraq, because right now Iraqi civilians are dying. And a new and deadly onslaught happening by jihadist ISIS militants has the U.S. now considering emergency airdrops and even airstrikes in Iraq.

Fewer than three years after President Barack Obama declared Iraq stable, the U.S. is weighing its military options. Want you to take a listen to the White House response to CNN's questioning about what these military options may be.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

JOSH EARNEST, WHITE HOUSE PRESS SECRETARY: Well, I'm not in a position to provide you a tactical assessment of the situation on the ground. What I can do is, I can give you some insight into the president's thinking in general about the kinds of principles that would apply to contemplated military action.

That would include no combat boots being put on the ground in Iraq. The president has been clear about that, and that principle continues to hold. The president has also been clear that any sort of military action that would be taken in Iraq would be very limited in scope and very specific to addressing a core American objective.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BALDWIN: That was the White House just a little while ago.

But as you look at these pictures, here's the context of this whole story today. Religious minorities, look at this, women, children, they are on the run in Northern Iraq, because ISIS is moving from town to town, to village, delivering an ultimatum, convert or be murdered.

Iraq's largest Christian town has now been overrun by Islamist fighters. Tens of thousands of Christians who live there have been forced to flee into the mountains.

So joining me now, Mark Hertling, CNN military analyst and former U.S. Army commander of the Iraqi city of Najaf, and also Elise Labott, global affairs correspondent.

Elise, let me just begin with you because you're talking to your sources here as we're learning a little bit from what's happening in Washington. Talk to me about the timeline for these emergency, these humanitarian airdrops and possible airstrikes.

ELISE LABOTT, CNN FOREIGN AFFAIRS CORRESPONDENT: Well, Brooke, the president has been meeting with his national security team all morning and into the afternoon, trying to decide exactly how the U.S. could help these some 40,000 Yazidis, these minority Christian sect in the north, basically escape from a mountaintop.

They are out of food, they're out of water. They need shelter. A lot of people have died from the heat. And the discussion now is how can the U.S. best help them. So we're told that they are a range of options the president is considering from airdropping supplies, food, water, medicine, shelter, to perhaps providing some kind of humanitarian corridor to get them out.

And that would have to entail some kind of American air support or airstrike. We're not really sure. U.S. officials quick to point out, no decision has been made. They're considering it. But obviously, Brooke, time is not on their side. And they do need to act very quickly, for two reasons. First of all, these people are in dire straits. And secondly, clearly, they don't want to give ISIS any heads up about what they're doing. They want to strike quick, they want to strike swiftly and they want to get the job done.

BALDWIN: General, I know you have been to this desert, this part of Iraq multiple times. I do want to ask you about that, Sinjar Mountain. But, first, you know, as far as these potential airstrikes go, to Elise's point, quick, effective, how effective would airstrikes be against ii?

LT. GEN. MARK HERTLING (RET.), CNN MILITARY ANALYST: Well, what I would say, Brooke, is first you have got to consider the geography of this area. If you consider anyone Nineveh province as a flat tabletop of desert, that's where we are.

Sinjar Mountain is called a mountain, but it's just a very rocky hill, so it's out in the middle of a desert and it's the central point of where ISIS controls. The state of Nineveh, they have complete control over.

So trying to reach a point that is completely surrounded by ISIS fighters with any kind of relief efforts is going to be very challenging. It is not going to be very easy to bomb here. It is going to be very difficult to drop humanitarian supplies there, because this hill is -- you can walk on it. So any time you might drop something there, ISIS forces could go up and get it, unless you pinpoint it right at the very top of the mountain. I have been on Sinjar Mountain several times.

BALDWIN: What's that like?

HERTLING: We used to have a communication site there. It's challenging.

And as we talk about what the various options are for the president, I'm sure General Dempsey and the national security team are providing him all sorts of options right now, to include how the Kurdish fighters might reinforce this area, how you might get some resupply into this force.

But this is by no means a simple operation. And anyone that says it is has never been in combat before.

BALDWIN: I mean, it's interesting to hear you talk about the lay of the land and this is just a big, rocky hill, because we know tens of thousands of men, women and children are on top of this rocky hill.

HERTLING: Right.

BALDWIN: Surrounded by ISIS at the base, right? They are up there, hanging on for dear life. They have no food, they have no water, and I understand at this time of year, it is hot. It's life or death for them.

HERTLING: It's interesting, Brooke. I think the last time I was on top of Sinjar was July of 2008. And it was 137 degrees there with winds whipping across that mountain and it was really rough.

The other thing that I would point out, too, the Yazidis are not -- this is not the first time this has happened. Right before I arrived in Multinational Division North in 2007, in August of 2007, they were the victims of the largest suicide bombing attack by al Qaeda, lost almost 500 Yazidi in that attack.

This is -- it's not a Christian cult. They are certainly not devil worshipers. I have had meetings with some of their leaders, and they are a very interesting and very different type of religious culture. But it's one of only probably a dozen different religious in that area.

You have Yazidis, Chaldeans, Syrians, Turkmen. So, as ISIS goes after this group, this is just the very beginning. There are a whole lot of other religious cults in that area that they're soon going to go after as well.

BALDWIN: So you have these ISIS militants. And we have been reporting on this for months and months. They have been seizing towns, villages, cities. This is the first time where we're really honing in on this, truly, it's religious persecution.

And hearing from the White House, too, as they have been going on in and basically giving people the choice, either convert or be killed, they're abducting young girls.

HERTLING: Yes.

BALDWIN: What happens to those girls?

HERTLING: Well, and that's interesting, because we also experienced that when I was there, and it continues on with some of these extreme of extremes groups.

They will take young girls, anywhere from the ages of 8 through 15 and make them their wives, multiple ones. And what's interesting about this, we ran into this in 2008 in Diyala province, where a lot of the al Qaeda members were coming in, taking young children for their wives, impregnating them, and then the terrorists, the al Qaeda fighters, would be killed.

The wife then becomes a widow. And in this culture, not only have they now been raped, forced to undergo this kind of sexual treatment, but now when their terrorist husbands are killed, they then become a bane on the community, they are outcasts. These are the people that then eventually may turn into the female suicide vest wearers we saw so many of in Iraq in 2008.

So this is a very nefarious situation. These people are just flat-out evil. And I'm sure the president and his national security team are very challenged right now with what to do. And bombing is probably one option. It's not a good option, because whenever you bomb, you have to reinforce with ground troops.

And having this area which it would be the equivalent of the Battle of the Bulge, with Bastogne being Sinjar, and you could send planes in, but then you have got to reinforce with some type of ground troops. The Peshmerga could do this, but they are also needing ammunition and they have a very great affinity toward the Yazidis and all of the other religious groups in this area.

BALDWIN: Just hearing you, General, I just can't help but shake my head, what do you say, especially hearing about what these young girls, who they're forced to turn into? Let's keep this conversation going. We will be watching how the U.S. reacts. Mark Hertling and Elise Labott, really, I appreciate both of you this afternoon.

I do want to focus, let's hone in a little bit more on one of the religious minorities caught up in all of this. As we were just discussing, this group called the Yazidis, for centuries, the Yazidis have lived in the northern Iraqi town of Sinjar.

And this past weekend, ISIS fighters pushed through their town, forcing so many of these thousands of Yazidis to flee. And they ended up in these makeshift camps in the nearby mountains and it's their plight here that is drawing international attention.

As I pointed out in my conversation, there is no water in the camp, there is little food. And there are reports of these people starving to death. They're dying of dehydration.

CNN's Ivan Watson reports.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

IVAN WATSON, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): This is how the people are fleeing the latest offensive by the Islamic State. They're piling into the back of trucks, piling their families in, in some cases walking. We have heard from families walking five hours on foot overnight and

coming here to the gates of the Kurdish city of Irbil. So these people are for the most part from the Shabak ethnic group, the Turkmen ethnic group. And they have all basically fled the fighting.

They arrived here this morning, and they say nobody has come to help them, and they don't know where else to go. So most of these people, all of these children you see over here are probably going to be sleeping here tonight.

This is an example for you of the crisis that has now struck this part of Northern Iraq. You quite literally have -- and this is just one unfinished building that we have found. There is a string of just kind of abandoned warehouses and partially built buildings, high-rises along the entry route into Irbil that are full of families like that.

They're rolling up in whatever vehicles they can find, packed with a few belongings and, of course, their families as well. And they're just trying to find any shelter possible. The Iraqi Kurdistan region has been enjoying an enormous construction boom, but I don't think anybody predicted these unfinished shells would become temporary housing for basically thousands of displaced people, some of them coming with little children just a few months old, some of them traveling part of the way here on foot.

All of them say they are fleeing this offensive by the group that calls itself the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

BALDWIN: There he was and here he is live, Ivan Watson in Irbil for us.

And, Ivan, few people have ever heard of this religious minority group, the Yazidis. Tell me more about them.

WATSON: They are a small sect, an example of really how mixed ethnically and religiously this part of Iraq is, though That mixture has been dwindling ever since the U.S. invasion of Iraq and it set loose all of this conflict.

I have been to the mecca, if you could call it, of the Yazidi faith, which is in the Kurdish region. The Yazidis have long been persecuted. They say they have suffered genocidal policies some 72 times. And this latest offensive is another example of that. They're often considered Satan worshipers by the Muslim majorities here.

But the Yazidis aren't the only people who are under pressure, Brooke. The people in the report you just aired, those people were Shiite Muslims fleeing ISIS. And we know that the patriarch of the Chaldean Christians of Iraq, he has written an open letter, an urgent SOS, calling for help for 100,000 Christians who are fleeing now in conditions like the ones you just saw right there.

So, basically, anybody who is not a Sunni Muslim right now and doesn't adhere to the strict version, interception of Islam of ISIS, is in fear right now, and is terrified and is on the run as these militants move into towns and villages that had been protected by the Kurdish Peshmerga militia, which has been pushed back on a number of fronts within the last 36 hours -- Brooke.

BALDWIN: White House calling this a humanitarian catastrophe, nearing a humanitarian catastrophe, considering airstrikes on Iraq. Ivan Watson, thank you so much for that, for that report.

We will have much more on the story coming up a little later this hour.

Also, we're following this other breaking story, and we're hearing those pro-Russian rebels shot down a military plane in Eastern Ukraine. And we are told they used that same Russian-made missile system. This is the same weapon investigators believe brought down Malaysian Air Flight 17. So what message are the rebels sending to Kiev, to the rest of the world? A live report next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BALDWIN: You're watching CNN. We're following breaking news in several parts of the world.

Let's focus on Eastern Ukraine right now, because a Ukrainian government counterterrorism official says the pro-Russian rebels have shot down another Ukrainian fighter jet. According to preliminary reports, this was downed using a Russian-made surface-to-air missile system.

Let's get to Eastern Ukraine to our CNN senior international correspondent, Nick Paton Walsh, in Donetsk.

What more can you tell me, Nick?

NICK PATON WALSH, CNN SENIOR INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Brooke, the reason why there's so much tension on this is that the Ukrainian authorities are claiming a similar missile system, the BUK, has been used to down this MiG-29 slightly to the north of the crash site of MH17. Similar to that which took down MH17.

All the parallels there, the Ukrainian authorities very keen to continue to remind people about their contention separatists took that plane down, agreed by the United States and the other world powers as well. But this comes too -- become impossible for the investigators to continue their work at the crash site of MH17, because of the violence swirling around there.

I have to say, Brooke, where we were are, it's been a very volatile day, dawn, intense shelling to the south of this city, small-arms fire occasionally around the city center where I sit here, and an interesting political development too, in that the separatist leader, a man called Alexander Borodai, their self-declared prime minister, gave a rare press conference.

He's not been in public for a while and suddenly resigned, handing his powers over to someone we don't really heard of before, a militant leader called Aleksandr Zakharchenko. So a lot moving here. The Ukrainian army advancing very quickly indeed.

This jet being downed, and sad to say, yes, the investigation to MH17, that's halted for days, possibly weeks, because of the violence around the crash site -- Brooke.

BALDWIN: Because of all of that, Nick, have the investigators left?

WALSH: As far as we're aware, the Dutch have pulled back, certainly to their base on the Ukrainian side, potentially further back as well.

The monitors who were assisting their access, they seem to be reconfiguring their presence, downsizing too. Nobody anticipates a continued presence at that crash site in the days ahead, possibly weeks. It is, as I was told by one official close to the investigation yesterday, simply sandwiched between the Ukrainian and rebel front lines right now.

On the map, you see the debris, Ukrainians on one side, the rebels on the other. The front lines constantly shifting. The small-arms fire came near the investigation team yesterday. That's why they're leaving. They have taken what they can from there, sad to say the human remains. Some personal belongings.

But the broader task of taking the wreckage away, piecing it back together, doing the forensic-style investigation they want, that's going to have to wait potentially until this conflict dies down and no sign of that right now where I'm sitting, Brooke.

BALDWIN: Nick, thank you so much, Nick Paton Walsh in Eastern Ukraine for us.

Let's take you back to what we're learning from Washington as far as the situation in Iraq goes. The White House is considering military options, specially considering airstrikes there. This was the scene outside of the White House just a little while ago. These protesters, they are demanding President Obama step in, help these religious ethnic minorities in Iraq.

So what role will the United States play? What are all the options on the table? How effective would even airstrikes be? That's next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BALDWIN: Welcome back. I'm Brooke Baldwin.

When President Barack Obama was senator, he opposed the Iraq war. Flash forward to 2008. He ran for president, vowing to push for U.S. troops' withdrawal from Iraq. Six years later, President Obama may be on the verge of some kind of military action in Iraq, including possible airstrikes.

What would it take for President Obama to OK U.S. military action in Iraq? Here's the White House press secretary.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP) EARNEST: Well, I'm not in a position to provide you a tactical assessment of the situation on the ground. What I can do is, I can give you some insight into the president's thinking in general about the kinds of principles that would apply to contemplated military action.

That would include no combat boots being put on the ground in Iraq. The president has been clear about that, and that principle continues to hold. The president has also been clear that any sort of military action that would be taken in Iraq would be very limited in scope and very specific to addressing a core American objective.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BALDWIN: Let me bring in Jim Acosta, our senior White House correspondent who was in that briefing, pushed Josh Earnest a little bit. And now we do have confirmation the White House is considering airstrikes in Iraq.

Jim, what more do we know?

JIM ACOSTA, CNN SENIOR WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: That is really it at this moment, Brooke. And I think part of that is because right now officials inside the administration are really assessing what to do next. We saw some of this before, what happened back in June when the president was considering military strikes against these ii targets outside of Baghdad when they were advancing on the capital city in Iraq.

And the concern at that time was perhaps Baghdad could fall. And the president at that time said they were looking at short-term immediate military options that were on the table. And then in the end, he ended up not taking those options. So I think, you know, a note of caution is perhaps not unreasonable here, Brooke, that we may be seeing a similar situation right now.

Having said that, the president will be meeting with advisers later on this afternoon, and we did see something very interesting. It was caught by one of our White House pool photographers earlier in the day before the president went to assign that VA reform bill. There was an animated discussion that he was having with the chief of staff, Denis McDonough, outside the Oval Office.

It was within the view of the cameras and it was caught on camera. We don't know what that was about. But, you know, if they are having conversations about something of this nature, obviously they would be animated. At the same time, we should point out, you heard at the end of what Josh Earnest said there in response to my question, you know, whether or not a humanitarian crisis might meet the threshold for some kind of military action in Iraq.

You know, that was a very murky subject, and eventually what White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest later said in that briefing was that this is evaluated on a case-by-case basis as to whether or not it might meet the threshold for airstrikes. And so while they were really leaning in that direction and hinting in that direction, we can't say one way or another at this point whether or not that is the action that this president is going to take. It's something that might be on the table. But we don't know how seriously on the table it is at this point. And I think part of it is because they're watching what is really unfolding in Northern Iraq as a very serious humanitarian crisis and whether or not that tips the balance for airstrikes. We just don't know at this point, Brooke.

BALDWIN: Fast-moving story. And then you have tens of thousands of Christians fleeing this terrorist organization, basically giving them choice of convert or die. It's very dire. We will be watching to see what next comes out of the White House. Jim Acosta, we thank you so much for your reporting there.

So what exactly are we talking about when it comes to military options in Iraq? How far can and will the U.S. military go?

Colonel Peter Mansoor is a CNN military analyst who knows firsthand the kinds of discussions that are happening right now.

Colonel, welcome.

COL. PETER MANSOOR (RET.), CNN MILITARY ANALYST: Thank you, Brooke.

BALDWIN: OK. So let me ask you a question I have asked within just this past hour. I would love to hear your response when we talk about possible airstrikes and ISIS has really come in and taken control of a chunk of Iraq. How effective would that be?

MANSOOR: Well, they would be more effective in blunting an ISIS offensive than they would be in retaking ground lost.

The loss of Sinjar, the Yazidi homeland south of Rabia border crossing, not unexpected, since it's removed from the Kurdish homeland and it was really a stretch for the Kurdish Peshmerga to hold on to that city. But as you noted, there is more than 100,000 refugees now out of their homes in Mosul and Sinjar and other places, Yazidis and Christians who are now in dire straits.

And I think what we could see with the Obama administration, we could take Libya as a case study, they acted once there was the threat of a humanitarian disaster in Benghazi. And so this could very well lead to this administration ordering airstrikes to assist the Kurdish Peshmerga forces in maintaining the line against ISIS and its advance in the northwestern portion of Iraq.

BALDWIN: Colonel, I should point out to our viewers, you served in Iraq, you served as an aide to General David Petraeus during that troop surge.