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Airstrikes in Iraq; U.S. Acts to Protecting American Assets

Aired August 08, 2014 - 09:30   ET

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

JIM ACOSTA, CNN SENIOR WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: They do not want those people on that mountain slaughtered and so the president has also authorized air strikes to make sure that that does not take place. And what Ben Rhodes just told us a few moments ago is that those air strikes could still be coming, targeting ISIS positions around that mountain to make sure that those people are not slaughtered, Carol.

CAROL COSTELLO, CNN ANCHOR: All right, Jim Acosta, many thanks. I know you're going to gather more information for us and we do appreciate it. We'll get back to you.

I want to bring in General Spider Marks, our military analyst right now, another of our military analyst, and talk about mission creep.

General, are you there?

MAJ. GEN. JAMES "SPIDER" MARKS, CNN MILITARY ANALYST (via telephone): I am, Carol. Can you hear me OK?

COSTELLO: I can hear you just fine. You know, many Americans are really afraid of a sustained effort in Iraq. They don't want to go back to war with Iraq. The president doesn't either. It was just three years ago that he said we're going to pull all American troops out of Iraq, and now here we are again. What's the probability that this thing might be going on for a long time?

MARKS: Well, Carol, what you do see is the very first steps of mission creep, if you want to call it that. Clearly the challenge that we have is that we really didn't have a clear strategy to parting Iraq. We departed Iraq because we could not meet our own policy goals, which was to establish a long-term relationship with Iraq. We couldn't get a bilateral security agreement signed, so we had to depart. We failed in our objective to try to establish that strategy.

So fast forward three years, we now see what the results of that lack of strategy and real focus looks like. So what you see today, Carol, is preservation. There are multiple ways to view this tragedy that's taken place in Iraq. I mean, Ivan's reporting in northern Iraq is heart-rendering, it's horrible to see these scenes. And you're saying to yourself, my God, how did we allow this to happen?

And then you look at the -

COSTELLO: Exactly (ph). MARKS: Clearly ISIS is a radical, radical form of Islam, and clearly they are supported -- it's a Sunni-based form of Islam, and they're supported by Sunnis only because they have no choice. If they don't, they die. So what we see right now is what I would call simply preservation of what is. It's not what we anticipated. It's not what we want, but Maliki and his government is the horse that we've ridden and we have got to make sure we cannot change horses in the middle of this race.

It's very sad. It's unfortunate. But the reality is, we're not going to fix the Iraqi military now. We are going to have to stand by Iraq or there won't be an Iraq as we know it. It will be - it will be thrown into maybe three different countries. We'll have additional, you know, ungoverned space. It will be a horrible, horrible outcome if we don't to something now.

COSTELLO: I want to bring Colonel Francona in once again and talk about ISIS and just what it's managed to accomplish in a short period of time. It's taken over major cities. And one of the most frightening things, it's taken over this dam north of Mosul. Now if it breaks the dam, and the waters come rushing down into Mosul, a half million people could die.

LT. COL. RICK FRANCONA (RET.), CNN MILITARY ANALYST: I think that's a remote possibility, because if you look at what ISIS has done from the time they started doing this, they want to set up a state. They want it to be a viable state. And now they've got provinces that they've named all the way from a piece of Lebanon all the way over to the gates of Irbil. And as you watched what they did and we saw it on the map there how they came down the Euphrates Valley, they came down the Tigris Valley and they're going up the -- a smaller valley to the east there, reach that little red arrow, those are the locations of all of the power plants and dams, the hydroelectric power. So they want this power so they can actually control the power in what they want to be their caliphate, their state. So I don't think they're going to want to damage what they've just taken.

So -- but whoever is running ISIS knows what they're doing. This is -- if you look at any military planner and show him that map, that's exactly what that person would do.

COSTELLO: OK. So, General Marks, how can airstrikes help Iraq with that?

MARKS: Well, airstrikes are protecting forces that are trying to resist ISIS at this point. Airstrikes are simply a mechanism, a capability, a single capability that will hopefully provide a little bit of time, what we call time and space. Rick is absolutely spot-on. You look at this in a military sense, and a good planner would say, my goodness, it's unfolding in front of us, we've got to stop their momentum, get ISIS to change what it is they are doing. And so airstrikes, hopefully in some degree, will give them a little bit of pause. And it's also, let's bear in mind, it is to ensure that no American soldiers are put at risk during this period, and they might be based on where they are in Irbil and what the current conditions are. COSTELLO: You know, I'm just stepping back and looking at the big

picture and what's going on in the world, right? There are many conflicts going on right now in the Middle East. You know, also, as part of that, Iraq. Where does the United States concentrate its efforts? Is it Iraq? Is it Israel and Hamas? I mean what is it?

FRANCONA: Well -

COSTELLO: Where do we concentrate our efforts?

FRANCONA: For me -

COSTELLO: Yes.

FRANCONA: Well, if we are a superpower, then we've got to be able to do multiple taskings and address all of these issues at the same time. Unfortunately, there's this convergence of crises that we're having to face all at once. But since we're not talking about, you know, application of a lot of force in one place, this should be doable. We can work on the political front with Gaza and do this limited military actions in Iraq.

And, you know, just to reiterate what the general said, the time and space issue is very critical. And so when we were talking earlier, what do we do to get the Iraqi Army back on its feet? If we can blunt the ISIS advance, if we can blunt the ISIS advance into Kurdistan, if we could -- or the Kurdish area, not obviously Kurdistan, and down toward the airport, we might be able to get the Iraqis back up on their feet. But as it stands right now, the -- ISIS is moving so fast, they're inside the decision cycle of the Iraqi military. This is a very dangerous situation and I think the president was wise to order these strikes and give the flexibility to central command to do this.

COSTELLO: Got you.

Let's head out to Elise Labott.

Elise, are you in Washington? You are. She's our global affairs correspondent.

You know, John Kerry was just in Afghanistan because there's a crisis there, too.

ELISE LABOTT, CNN GLOBAL AFFAIRS CORRESPONDENT: Carol, when you look around the world, you have Afghanistan and this recent killing of this general -- major general, and you have Ukraine, what's going on with Vladimir Putin, you have Syria, you have Iraq, you have Iran. Secretary Kerry is really, at this point, drinking from a fire hose, if you will, careening from crisis to crisis. Even when he was in the middle of his trip to Afghanistan, this ISIS and all this happened with the Yazidis. He's been all around the globe and then there -- he was trying to get a cease-fire in Gaza. It's really just crisis to crisis.

And the problem is, Carol, that this doesn't allow for any kind of, you know, strategic vision, if you will, for the president or this administration. When you see what happened over the last 24 hours with the president, this is the kind of quick (ph), swift, decisive action that's really not a hallmark of this administration. And I think as the president has said and as Secretary Kerry has said, it was a very limited action to protect, a, U.S. personnel there, and also to prevent this genocide of the Yazidis on that mountaintop.

But at the same time, when the president looks at some of these other areas, Syria, for instance, Iraq, some of its critics are saying, and certainly a lot of Republicans on Capitol Hill are saying, well, if the president would have acted early on, maybe he wouldn't have to be taking these emergency actions. There needs to be more of a long-term vision for the region and for the crises this country is dealing with.

COSTELLO: All right, Elise Labott reporting live for us from Washington. All of you, stick around. I've got to take another break. We'll be back with much more in the NEWSROOM.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

ANNOUNCER: This is CNN breaking news.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

JOHN KERRY, SECRETARY OF STATE: The fate for Iraq's future could also not be more clear. And today's crisis underscores them significantly. ISIL's campaign of terror against the innocent, including the Yazidi and Christian minorities, and its grotesque targeted acts of violence show all the warning signs of genocide. For anyone who needed a wake- up call, this is it.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

COSTELLO: All right, U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry speaking this morning on the actions of this brutal terrorist group ISIS, who is attacking and killing anyone who is non-Muslim, especially Christians. Ivan Watson in northern Iraq showed us moving pictures of 200,000 Iraqi Christians who are displaced, tens of thousands of them staying at a church, trying to find safety where they can. It's very, very hot in Iraq right now. The temperatures above 100 degrees.

Right now, these particular people have water and food, but it's very limited. Of course, there are 40,000 people trapped on a mountainside in northern Iraq. Those people are having difficulty getting any food or water at all. The United States did conduct one humanitarian air drop and they provided enough food and water for about 8,000 people, but that certainly is not enough.

But the bigger news this morning is the U.S. did begin its airstrikes in Iraq, its targeted airstrike. The president gave the OK last night that Americans could go ahead and conduct airstrikes if Americans on the ground in Iraq were put in any danger.

Well, there is violence around the city of Irbil. That's where the U.S. consulate is located. And that's where those targeted airstrikes took place this morning. Two F-18s dropped 500-pound bombs on ISIS targets. We're going to talk a lot about that this morning. I have a panel of experts with us to help us understand this and to parse this out. Matthew Hoh is a former Marine captain. He served in Iraq. Also Paul Cruickshank is a CNN terror analyst.

I want to start with you, Captain Hoh, because you served in Iraq. You fought in Iraq. That this is going on, how does it make you feel?

MATTHEW HOH, FORMER MARINE CORPS CAPTAIN IN IRAQ: Well, you know, it's -- I have Iraqi friends, not as many as I used to have, sadly, but, you know, as we're talking about earlier, to me this is a terrible mistake.

If American bombs are the solution, Iraq would not -- the situation in Iraq would have been resolved in 2003. The same goes for Afghanistan, the same goes for Libya, the same goes for Yemen, et cetera, et cetera.

I think we need to realize, as the White House and the president said yesterday, this requires a political solution. By bombing the Sunnis, and what we have here is a Sunni population against the Shia and against the Kurds. Unfortunately the Sunni have aligned themselves with this horrible group ISIS, because they have no other option.

The answer is to somehow bring the Sunnis back into the government. By bombing the Sunnis you're only going to push them closer to ISIS. You're only going to make political reconciliation much more difficult and you won't find a solution.

We found that solution, I was there in Anbar in 2006-2007 when the violence dropped, when the Sunnis abandoned al Qaeda, and it was because of political action that was taken. We brought the Sunnis back into the government. We brought the Sunnis into the Iraqi army.

I hear a lot about how we have to help the Iraqi army. Well, the Iraqi army, as it is, is only a Shia army right now. That is only going to fight the Sunnis, if you really want to have a real Iraqi army you have to bring the Sunnis back into the Iraqi army. Otherwise I think we have to go back to what Vice President Biden said, and he was wildly lampooned and lambasted for this a number of years ago the real possibility of seeing Iraq split into separate regions based upon ethnicity.

COSTELLO: Well, I hear what you're saying. The U.S. military is trying to do that, it has advisers on the ground. I mean, high- ranking Americans have gone to Iraq to try to convince the Iraqi president to, like, you know, welcome in the Sunnis into the -- that he actually kicked out, you're right. He did. And that's why the army is so inept at this point.

But we've reached this crisis point, Paul. This ISIS group is brutal and it's intent on toppling the government of Iraq and it's doing that through fear and terror and brutal methods. So how can -- how can you stop that now? You have to do it with force, don't you?

PAUL CRUICKSHANK, CNN TERRORISM ANALYST: Well, it's going to be very, very difficult, Carol, and clearly the Iraqi military is going to have to step up, the Kurdish Peshmerga are going to be part of this, perhaps the United States strikes can degrade this group to some degree, but this is a very powerful group entrenched on both sides of the Syria/Iraq border. It's got tens of millions of dollars. It's got significant amount of weapons.

It's got almost around 10,000 fighters and as you're saying, yes, it does rule through fear, through terrorizing people over that. The hope has got to be that at some point there's going to be a backlash against this group because of its brutality. But we're not yet really seeing that happen yet -- Carol.

COSTELLO: And Matthew, since you've served in Iraq and you know Iraqis, why hasn't that happened?

HOH: Well, I don't think they've -- what we have again is similar to what happened in '03 when we invaded the country, and as horrible as it is with what's happened with the Christians now, I think Fareed Zakaria made an excellent point earlier this morning on CNN that this has been gun on for years and Iraqi population of about 20 million, over the last 10, 11 years, we've seen three million to five million people displaced, three million to five million refugees in a population of 20 million, so you have had this huge upheaval that, of course, affects the political order.

So what we've seen here, I think, again, is that we've seen that, again, ISIS is horrible. They're a group that should have -- that should not have popular support, but they are receiving popular support from the Sunnis right now, because the Sunnis have no other choice. And that's what happened in Iraq from 2003 to 2006. We took the side of the Shia against the Sunnis and that's the way the Sunnis saw it.

That's the way -- you know, when you work there, when you worked with the population, I was in the Sunni areas, these people actually represented the insurgency. The same people we're working with represent the insurgency because they felt that they were being usurped.

In this case now many years later, they are back in that situation where they feel they have been disenfranchised, and marginalized and that ISIS as al Qaeda in Iraq was in 2003 to 2006 is their only source of support. In 2006-2007, what we did was we said look, we're going to bring you back into the government. We're going to bring your people back in the army with the sons of Iraq program.

We gave the Sunni areas back to the Sunnis to control. And so I think you saw what happened, as you said, Carol, over the last several years, that dissolved. Maliki kicked the Sunnis out of the army. The police went back to being really just Shia thugs that were taking advantage of the Sunni population and so now when ISIS, as Paul was describing, this horrible awful group, has momentum, has money, and they've got leadership, the Sunnis are now attached to them because again they really have no other choice.

COSTELLO: All right.

HOH: My fear is -- right. COSTELLO: Go ahead.

HOH: My fear of course is that by bombing ISIS, which is in effect bombing the Sunnis, you are pushing the Sunnis closer to ISIS. And again, what has to be is we have to force the Shia leadership, the Maliki leadership, to give into concessions to the Sunnis to bring them back into the government, to answer their grievances. Otherwise the Sunnis are going to continue to align themselves with ISIS.

COSTELLO: Right. Right. And I believe American officials have been trying to do that but Nouri al-Maliki is not budging.

OK. I've got to take a break. We'll be back with much more in the NEWSROOM.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

ANNOUNCER: This is CNN Breaking News.

COSTELLO: American fighter jets have conducted airstrikes over northern Iraq, over Irbil, that's where the U.S. consulate is located. As you know, the president last night gave the OK to conduct airstrikes that American personnel were in danger.

So I wonder about the timeline of this decision and why these airstrikes took place just a few hours ago.

Barbara Starr is at the Pentagon. She has more information for us on that.

Good morning, Barbara.

STARR: Good morning, Carol. Taking everyone behind the scenes, we can now tell you we know that discussions between the White House and the military began in earnest on Wednesday about this mission, both the humanitarian air drops and the potential for airstrikes against ISIS militants. Those discussions began on Wednesday, went all the way through to Thursday around the clock and it was on Thursday that essentially we are told the plan came together to do all of this and to be ready to go.

General Martin Dempsey, chairman of the joints chief of staff, involved around the clock between Wednesday and Thursday in pulling all of this together along with other military leaders and Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel who was traveling overseas.

Where do we stand now? Officials are making it very clear we should potentially expect to see additional U.S. airstrike against ISIS. They have combat air patrol up over Iraq now. Those are U.S. fighter jets with weapons on board. They are patrolling. If they find a threat that meets the threshold of the president's authorization, a threat against U.S. personnel or those protecting U.S. personnel -- that's what we saw today.

If they see the Iraqi minorities who are trapped up in those mountains in imminent threat, as ISIS advances on them. Any of them thresholds, the aircraft in the sky will be ready and we'll be able to drop their weapons, to bomb targets. They're -- as we saw today they are using precision weapons. Expect to see more of that. That is what will minimize civilian casualties. They will not have to come back to the president for further authorization. He has laid out the parameters.

The military has them. Now they are working around the clock conducting those combat air patrols over northern Iraq, keeping an eye on ISIS. What they are hoping, and it is only a hope at this point, ISIS may be getting the message to back off, but a slim hope perhaps -- Carol.

COSTELLO: A slim hope. A question, why isn't the military pulling the Americans out of that consulate in Irbil?

STARR: Well, I think at this point they are fairly satisfied they can be kept safe. That they have this combat air patrol up, they can have keep an eye on what is ISIS doing, but they are prepared to evacuate them if they need to.

COSTELLO: All right. Barbara, great reporting. Thank you so much.

The next hour of NEWSROOM after a break.

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