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Cease-fire Ends, Rockets Fly; U.S. Conducts Air Strikes in Iraq

Aired August 08, 2014 - 10:30   ET

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

NICHOLAS BURNS, FORMER U.S. AMBASSADOR TO NATO: No, not at all. Hamas is very nervous about being marginalized in these peace talks because in fact Egypt and Israel are in one mind in most issues and Israel prefers to deal with the Palestinian authority. In some respects what Hamas and its allies are, the Islamic jihad are doing is reminding everyone that they are there. The second thing Hamas doesn't completely exercise control even within its own ranks. The military wing of -- within Gaza is sometimes operating on its own.

CAROL COSTELLO, CNN ANCHOR: Ok. With that said, Nicholas, a part of me just doesn't understand why Hamas would fire rockets into Israel. Parts of Gaza wiped out, more than 1,000 people are dead -- at this point who cares who started it? Why doesn't Hamas just stop? It can't win.

BURNS: Well, Carol, it does appear from the press reports that it was Islamic jihad that fired those rockets this morning. But nonetheless, Hamas bears responsibility because it is the controlling authority on the ground in Gaza.

And you're right to suggest that it's hard to imagine why they would do this. Maybe as Ambassador Kurtzer said it's an attempt to reinforce their negotiating position in the Cairo talks but they have very few friends left in the world, throughout the Arab world. There's been a lot of criticism of Hamas for the fact that it has not abided by these cease-fires. They clearly -- the Islamic jihad clearly violated the cease-fire this morning. You can't blame the Israelis for defending themselves against those attacks.

So I think, you know, you'll see more efforts by the United States and other countries to try to reinforce those talks in Cairo, but right now those talks have been suspended.

COSTELLO: So Daniel, the top Palestinian negotiator still says Hamas is part of their official delegation in Egypt, but they are, quote, one group in Cairo but at this point should Hamas be kicked out of these talks?

DANIEL KURTZER, FORMER U.S. AMBASSADOR TO ISRAEL & EGYPT: Well, I don't think the Palestinian authority wants Hamas to be divorced from the talks because that would reinforce the separation that they have tried to overcome through political means in the past few months.

That said, Hamas' demands, which they want to be rewarded for what they started militarily are simply untenable and the Palestinian Authority which is trying to negotiate in a sense between Hamas and Egypt and then, of course, with Israel, is finding itself in a very challenged position. So, no, I don't think the Palestinian Authority wants Hamas out of the talks but Hamas is unlikely to see any of its demands met through this negotiating process.

COSTELLO: Ok, last question to you Nicholas. Where do things go from here?

BURNS: Well, I think you'll see continued rocket fire from both sides this morning. There will be attempts to impose another cease-fire. Meanwhile, the United States, as you've been reporting all morning, Carol, has to pay attention, I think, to a more urgent situation and that's the situation in Iraq where the ISIS advance and the American air strikes this morning.

COSTELLO: All right. Nicholas Burns and Daniel Kurtzer -- thanks to you both. We'll be right back with more of our breaking news on those U.S. air strikes in Iraq after this.

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WOLF BLITZER, CNN HOST: ISIS forces are on the move right now in northern Iraq and hundreds of thousands of Iraqis, Iraqi Christians, Iraqi Shiites, other Iraqis including Kurds, including Yazidis -- they feel endangered right now. The U.S. fears genocide especially of the Yazidis and perhaps the Christians. And the U.S. is now moving last night.

The President of the United States authorized not only airlifts of humanitarian supplies but also air strikes and within the past few hours, the U.S. has launched the first air strikes against ISIS targets in Iraq.

I'm Wolf Blitzer reporting from Washington. Once again, we want to welcome our viewers in the United States and around the world.

Let's get some perspective, some analysis on what's going on. Joining us now, Charlie Cooper, he's an expert on Islamic militanism (ph). He's joining us from London. Also Lt. General Mark Hertling, U.S. Army, retired; Matt Hoh, former Marine Corps captain in Iraq.

Charlie, you've studied ISIS, you've studied this whole phenomena. Do they really believe they can create an Islamic state, a caliphate spreading from Lebanon through Syria, into Iraq and maybe including Jordan? Is that their goal?

CHARLIE COOPER, EXPERT ON ISLAMIC MILITANCY: Yes, I believe it is. The goal of the Islamic State as it has come to be known is very maximalist. It wants to consolidate over the territory that it's taken control of. It can do this quite well because it controls a huge amount of oil. It's recently taken control of Mosul Dam and it has a huge stock of military hardware which is very, very important.

This means that it is almost too much for the Peshmerga, the Kurdish defense forces and it is necessary that the Peshmerga and Iraqi armed forces have assistance from the West. But I think that should be indirect military advice and not bombs dropping on to Sunnis into Iraq because this will just be fed into the jihadist ideology.

And already people who support ISIS across the world are getting very excited on social media. Some are saying you're either with the crusaders, i.e. the U.S. who is attacking ISIS positions; or the caliphate. So it's really dividing people across the Muslim world. And this is a very dangerous thing.

BLITZER: Well, that's a very interesting thing, Matt Hoh. You served in Iraq, you were a Marine Corps captain. What do you make that of fear that the U.S. now bombing ISIS -- Sunni targets if you will, in and around Kirkuk -- in Irbil I should say? That's simply going to reinforce this notion that the infidels, the United States, that they are on their way, that people should rally around ISIS. This could embolden them and strengthen them?

MATTHEW HOH, FORMER MARINE CORPS CAPTAIN: Good morning Wolf. Yes, I couldn't agree more with Charlie. He's absolutely right. By entering into this conflict, we are perpetuating this propaganda, this notion of as Charlie aptly said, you are either with the crusaders or against them. What we see in Iraq as we've seen for many years now are these sectarian divides. And frightens me the most about ISIS is they have oil, they have money, they have military equipment, but most importantly they have man power and that man power is coming from a Sunni population that sees ISIS as their only choice in a basically existential fight against the Shia and against the Kurds.

As President Obama aptly said yesterday, there's no American military solution to Iraq's political problems. The answer lies in reconciliation. And my fear is that by joining this conflict militarily, by bombing the Sunnis, we are going to make the conflict worse, we're going to push them closer to ISIS.

And of course, I think as everyone who is watching, Wolf, will say look if bombing worked, this issue in Iraq would have been resolved in 2003, the issues in Libya would have been resolved three years ago, the issues in Afghanistan would have been resolved five years ago when we escalated the war in Afghanistan. There's not a military solution here. It's political reconciliation and we have to be very careful of not making the conflict worse by entering on one side or the other.

BLITZER: All right. Let me let General Mark Hertling who served in Iraq weigh in. General, what do you say to that point?

LT. GEN. MARK HERTLING, U.S. ARMY (RET.) (via telephone): Well, Wolf thank you for asking. I partly agree but wholeheartedly disagree. There's no other choice right now. This is a crisis situation, we're dealing with terrorists who are attempting to destroy a society, in this case, it's both Iraq and the Kurdish region.

While I agree there has to be a diplomatic and an economic solution to this and this is what we fought so hard for when we were in northern Iraq and when all of us were in Iraq together, we now see a crisis situation. These are extremists who are looking to murder, kill, rape, and destroy societies. Yes, I certainly would love to say hey let's sit down and talk with them, and not have an exacerbation of the distinction between crusaders and Islamists. But in this case, they are attempting to control parts of Iraq -- the

Kurdish region. The Kurdish government who are our friends have asked us for help. We're also helping Iraq by doing this. We are not becoming the air force of the Iraq. We are actually becoming a protectorate of the Kurds to allow them to get on their feet and defend themselves against this barbaric and nefarious group.

BLITZER: I'm going to ask all three of you to stand by. We're going to continue this conversation -- important conversation indeed. And a key question I'm going to ask you guys to weigh in, why did the Iraqi military, hundreds of thousands of Iraqi troops, including in Mosul and other areas in the north, simply abandon their bases, run away as these ISIS forces were coming in. Why didn't they stand up and fight for their country?

We'll be right back.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

JOHN KERRY, U.S. SECRETARY OF STATE: The stakes for Iraq's future could also not be more clear and today's crisis underscores them significantly. ISIL's campaign of terror against the innocents, including the Yazidis 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)

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BLITZER: -- launched air strike against ISIS targets in and around the area of Irbil in northern Iraq. This is the first time that the U.S. has actually dropped 500-pound laser-guided so-called precision bombs in this area and more anticipated in the hours and days to come. We'll see what happens.

Let's continue our conversation with General Mark Hertling, Matt Hoh and Charlie Cooper. I was in Mosul Gen. Hertling, back in 2005. I remember it vividly. I was there with Gen. John Abizaid. He was the head -- commander of the U.S. military Central Command. There were a lot of U.S. troops in Mosul at the time. They were training Iraqi troops. The U.S. eventually left 2011-2012, spent hundreds of billions of dollars training the Iraqi military, leaving a force of several hundred thousand.

All of a sudden, some ISIS guys come towards Mosul, they runaway. What happened to the Iraqi military?

HERTLING: Well, I think Wolf you can't just take the short period of time when ISIS came and everyone ran away. What we saw was an evolving situation, as I think both of the individuals on today have mentioned. But there was a lack of government engagement in Iraq.

When we were there and when my successor was there and my predecessor, we were all trying to get the central government in Iraq to understand the plight of the people in the northern provinces. We started something called reverse helicopter governance, where we brought ministers up to northern Iraq to see what was needed in terms of economics, government, military.

And truthfully after we left in 2011, Mr. Maliki's government started to ignore more and more the plight of those in northern Iraq. And I think when you have an army providing security for a nation, that same army has to understand that the nation has their back too. They did not see that in their central government.

So the over 127 tribes that are in northern Iraq all said we're not getting what we need from our government, so when ISIS came in and said we've got another alternative, they joined with them very quickly. Not knowing, I don't think, the type of jihad that they would attempt to form in that part of the world and the attempt to reach the goal of the caliphate.

I think it's a very complex situation, but it just has to do with the fact that the government was not meeting the needs of the people and the military and the police therefore did not provide security. It's as simple as that.

BLITZER: Matt Hoh, a lot of experts in Iraq say this was all totally predictable. You were never really going to have a good relationship between the Kurds in the north, the Shiites, the Sunnis and all the other tribes and ethnic groups there. This is all very predictable.

HOH: Yes, I think the general is completely correct in both my times in Iraq, we're both in Sunni areas. I saw the exact thing the general was talking about, about the Sunnis being excluded in '04 and '05, when I was in Tikrit which is south from Mosul. You saw this and you saw the insurgency get worse and worse. And then in '06, '07 in Anbar, when we brought the Sunnis back into the army and brought them into the police and brought them into government, you saw them distance themselves from al Qaeda in Iraq and you saw violence drop.

The other thing I'd add about it real quick, Wolf -- add about the army and why fell so quick is because the Iraqi army became a money- making operation. About six, seven months ago, a friend of mine wrote me a note and said, hey, do you know how money it costs to now buy a division command in Iraq to become a commanding general of Iraqi army division? It now costs a million dollars.

So if you have a corrupt money-making operation for an army, it's of course not going to fight well if it has to. But I think the point as the General is saying is that you had in northern Iraq was a sectarian army not representative of the population. So when ISIS shows up, the people now latched on to them. So how do you reverse that situation, and again, my point being is that by entering into the conflict on one side, we're going to exacerbate the situation as opposed to making the situation better.

Because my fear is that say we push ISIS and the Sunnis back, do the Kurds then push forth into Sunni territory? Do the Shia then come back up and take over towns that they once held before. By getting involved in this conflict, by trying to get onto one side only, it can make the situation much worse. BLITZER: The potential for much worse is there. Charlie Cooper, you

know, what worries me -- and correct me if I'm wrong -- as much as the tanks and the hardware and the military equipment that the ISIS forces took when they ran over Mosul and the Iraq military fled, all of that is significant, certainly enables them to do what they want to do -- shoulder fired missiles, these U.S. planes dropping supplies there in danger obviously from those surface-to-air missiles.

But also what worries me is the nearly $1 billion they stole from banks in Mosul and elsewhere. This is by far the richest terror organization in the world and with that kind of cash they can do a lot of damage not only in Iraq and Syria but in Europe and even the United States. Is that a legitimate fear?

COOPER: Wolf, the Islamic state does have a financial infrastructure. It is unlike any jihadist group before it. For example, al Qaeda during the 2000s worked off the basis of patronage. They had very wealthy people in the Gulf mainly who would fund its operations.

The Islamic State now controls a huge amount of oil as I mentioned earlier. And that means that it can sell smuggled barrels of oil and make revenue from that. Even though its not revenue from normal oil- selling operation, it's still numbering in the millions. And this is very, very significant.

If I might add just before we finish this, the Islamic State is an incredibly concerning situation right now. If I sounded earlier like I was completely anti-intervention of any kind, that's wrong. Something does need to be done about this, and I commend the international community for turning around and recognizing the terrible situation that's happening to the Yazidis on Mt. Sinjar.

But what is imperative is that direct military action does not become the main point of the international community's intervention. I think direct military intervention can be used as propaganda by the Islamic State very, very well and it's important that that recognized. Humanitarian assistance must be the thing that the international community champions; perhaps military assistance in strategic terms or even from a country like Turkey that would be much more appropriate. But from the West, this is a very dangerous game.

BLITZER: Well, I totally agree that the international community needs to do something to save those 40,000 Yazidis who are on top of this mountain top, the U.S. dropping some food supplies, some water, some medicine, trying to help them and certainly the Christians who are in danger; hundreds of thousands of them Iraqi-Christians.

When you say the international community is doing something, so far the only ones who are doing anything I think it's fair to say is the United States. I don't see a lot of international support right now for the Yazidis, except for some rhetoric, if you will. In terms of practical support for the Yazidis, practical support for the Iraqi Christians, I see the United States beginning to take some measures but I don't see any other international partners, at least not yet. Let's see if the U.S. can mobilize some sort of international coalition on behalf of these persecuted people, some of them are in danger of genocide.

Our breaking news coverage continues in a moment.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

COSTELLO: Hello. I'm Carol Costello.

In Gaza a fragile cease-fire is now a thing of the past. The Israeli military announcing the break down via Twitter saying in part, quote, "Terrorists have violated the cease-fire". The action causing the Israeli military to launch air strike against quote, "targeted terrorist sites within the Gaza Strip." In total Israel says some 45 rockets have now been fired since the truce's end.

Hamas denying responsibility for firing any rockets before the pact ended. Two militant groups who have fought alongside Hamas under the banner of the resistance said they carried out the actions. And while Hamas has said it would not agree to extend the truce but it would continue peace talk, Israel has now pulled out of those talks saying it will not negotiate under fire.

Martin Savidge is in Gaza this morning. What's happening from your standpoint?

MARTIN SAVIDGE, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Well, Carol, you know, it was thought that the first 72 hours was going to be easy and that extending that would be pretty easy as well. Turned out they couldn't even come up with a solution to try to make the cease-fire into something longer than 72 hours, 8:00 a.m., you are right.

We knew that it was over by the barrage of outgoing rockets that went from Gaza and then headed toward Israel. Israel actually waited about three hours before retaliating and it hasn't stopped since that time. We're told that there is artillery and tank fire that is being felt along the border on the eastern side of Gaza and also to the north with Israel and that at the same time the Israeli air force has been pretty active in fact.

We had a strike just -- about two miles away from us and just a few minutes before we came to air. It's been like that, usually about every 20 minutes or so. It seems they are using some pretty hefty ordnance. I mean you can hear and feel the explosion. And then, of course, you begin to see the gray cloud that's rising from somewhere in the various communities around us. And presumably that's also happening beyond our site.

So it's been this back and forth. It was the militant group that said look, Israel wouldn't agree to our terms and as a result of that we're going to go back to hostilities. Israel says we're not going to negotiate with you as long as we're getting incoming rocket and mortar fire. So it's this kind of back and forth blame game and stand-off that unfortunately continues to cost lives and to create fear on both sides of border -- Carol.

COSTELLO: And sadly, one of the first lives lost within Gaza was a 10-year-old child. We have pictures of his father just agonizing over his child's body. So the killing continues, the cease-fire ends, the peace talks have come to a close but we don't know if they'll start up again.

Only the Palestinians remain at the table. Israel has pulled out. Hamas has pulled out. So Martin, where do things go from here?

SAVIDGE: Well, we're also dealing with power problems which, of course, you know because we've been talking about that for some time. Where does it go from here is a really good question. I mean think there's a great deal of confusion right now both from those who have been trying to negotiate some kind of end and for those who try to understand exactly is there an end game? In other words, is it just going to continue like this, with rockets going out, several dozen a day, and then Israel responding in some way or is it going to then perhaps lead to maybe another ground incursion on the part of the Israelis?

And how do you negotiate if the Israel isn't at the negotiating table? We don't know. All we do know is that the jets fly over head, the rockets go out and the violence goes on -- Carol.

COSTELLO: All right. Martin Savidge, reporting live for us from Gaza this morning.

Thank you for joining me, I'm Carol Costello and also I'm sure thanks from Wolf Blitzer.

"@THIS HOUR WITH BERMAN AND MICHAELA" after a break.

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