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CNN Live Saturday

Interview With John Warden

Aired November 16, 2002 - 17:18   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.


CAROL LIN, CNN ANCHOR: On the radio today, President Bush repeated that he's ready to use force if necessary to disarm Iraq. How would the U.S. go about go about leading a war against Iraq? Well, retired U.S. Air Force Colonel John Warden is credited with planning the Desert Storm air campaign. He's the author of "Winning in Fast Time" and he joins us from Montgomery, Alabama. Thank you so much for being here, Colonel.
COL. JOHN WARDEN, USAF (RET): Carol, good afternoon.

LIN: Good afternoon. Essentially, don't you think an air war is essentially going on right now with Iraq? I mean twice since the U.N. resolution, the latest resolution has been signed and agreed upon, Iraqis have fired on U.S. planes patrolling in the no-fly zone.

WARDEN: To some extent, yes, but of course this has been going on now for ten years, so the incident on Friday is not substantially different than what we have seen for a long time. So, I think it's tough to read very much one way or another into this one.

LIN: And yet, the White House does consider it a violation of the resolution. They're saying that they're reserving the option to respond militarily and yet they are not. Are they simply boxed in by the restrictions by the United Nations right now before the inspectors get in?

WARDEN: Well, the explicit reading of the U.N. resolution, I think it's Paragraph 8, says that any interference with any of the participating powers, members of the U.N., et cetera, constitute a breach of the resolution. But, because this has been going on for so long, I think that this would be pretty tough for us, for the White House to make the case that this is the justification now to go to war.

So, I think that what we'll continue to see if just probably the same sort of retaliation, this tactical retaliation that's been going on for a long time. It hasn't accomplished anything obviously but we're going to continue doing it I suspect.

LIN: Right, but its provocation under circumstances now where we have U.N. inspectors going in. They will be arriving in Baghdad. If something should happen, colonel, how quickly can troops be mobilized?

WARDEN: Well, in the event hat something happened, and let's assume that the United Nations could operate fairly quickly to authorize the use of force, or we just decide we're going to do it on our own, you could begin significant air operations within a very short period of time, probably a day, a couple days maximum and you could do less significant operations within hours.

The ground operations become a different sort of a problem. We have a lot of materiel that we have pre-positioned. Obviously there are some troops there but the moving of the troops and getting the troops ready, that's going to take a lot longer than it takes to get the airplanes and the air power things ready.

LIN: And, take a look at some of the obstacles they may encounter. I mean we've been talking a lot about how urban warfare may actually take place if there is a battle to take place. It may actually go to the city centers of Baghdad. We have a virtual reality demonstration here. I think this is part of an exercise that troops are undergoing right now to train for urban warfare, get a sense of what the city of Baghdad is like. How do you see an air campaign combined with a ground campaign, especially if it starts moving into the city centers?

WARDEN: Well, really I would have two thoughts on that, number one that I believe that the preferred strategy is for us to induce the Iraqi military to take care of Saddam Hussein and, therefore, we don't get involved in fighting in Baghdad or much of any place else seriously on the ground.

LIN: How do you induce them to do that?

WARDEN: Well, you need to break down the internal security around Saddam Hussein, which we did pretty well during the Gulf War, and I think we could probably do that again, and then I think that the Iraqi military would be very happy to seize that opportunity to do something that they really have wanted to do for a long time, so it's entirely doable.

LIN: You're talking about these threats to try Iraqi generals, for example, as war criminals once the war is over as incentive to turn against their own leader?

WARDEN: No, no, no. I mean just exactly the opposite, that what I think you get the best results in this sort of a thing is that you give these people positive incentives. Look, you take care of Saddam Hussein and then your life is going to be fairly decent after the war is over. You still have your country intact. You've taken -- you've done what your duty was and we'll be happy to help with rebuilding everything else. All you need to do is you need to live up to this United Nations resolution, and I don't think that that would be a big -- I don't think that would be a difficult demand for the Iraqi military to accept.

LIN: How do you get that message across to them?

WARDEN: A combination of things. I think to a certain extent that you get it across with things like this, with a bunch of people like me and others that are out there talking about that as a possibility and Iraq is not particularly tight. There's a lot of stuff that comes out of it and obviously an awful lot flows in. So, I don't think that's terribly difficult to get those messages to the Iraqi military, and I would hope that that's the way we would primarily proceed because we'll end up creating a heck of a lot fewer casualties on both sides and, most importantly, when the hostilities are over, it means that the Iraqis are in charge of maintaining internal order, not us, because that can become an extraordinarily complex, difficult, expensive, long-term problem that we'd probably just as soon avoid.

LIN: Wouldn't that be something if the rebellion actually came from within, which was obviously the greatest hope after the Persian Gulf War by the administration, the Bush administration then.

WARDEN: Absolutely, yes.

LIN: We'll see what happens, thank you very much, Colonel Warden.

WARDEN: My pleasure.

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 November 16, 2002 - 17:18   ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
CAROL LIN, CNN ANCHOR: On the radio today, President Bush repeated that he's ready to use force if necessary to disarm Iraq. How would the U.S. go about go about leading a war against Iraq? Well, retired U.S. Air Force Colonel John Warden is credited with planning the Desert Storm air campaign. He's the author of "Winning in Fast Time" and he joins us from Montgomery, Alabama. Thank you so much for being here, Colonel.
COL. JOHN WARDEN, USAF (RET): Carol, good afternoon.

LIN: Good afternoon. Essentially, don't you think an air war is essentially going on right now with Iraq? I mean twice since the U.N. resolution, the latest resolution has been signed and agreed upon, Iraqis have fired on U.S. planes patrolling in the no-fly zone.

WARDEN: To some extent, yes, but of course this has been going on now for ten years, so the incident on Friday is not substantially different than what we have seen for a long time. So, I think it's tough to read very much one way or another into this one.

LIN: And yet, the White House does consider it a violation of the resolution. They're saying that they're reserving the option to respond militarily and yet they are not. Are they simply boxed in by the restrictions by the United Nations right now before the inspectors get in?

WARDEN: Well, the explicit reading of the U.N. resolution, I think it's Paragraph 8, says that any interference with any of the participating powers, members of the U.N., et cetera, constitute a breach of the resolution. But, because this has been going on for so long, I think that this would be pretty tough for us, for the White House to make the case that this is the justification now to go to war.

So, I think that what we'll continue to see if just probably the same sort of retaliation, this tactical retaliation that's been going on for a long time. It hasn't accomplished anything obviously but we're going to continue doing it I suspect.

LIN: Right, but its provocation under circumstances now where we have U.N. inspectors going in. They will be arriving in Baghdad. If something should happen, colonel, how quickly can troops be mobilized?

WARDEN: Well, in the event hat something happened, and let's assume that the United Nations could operate fairly quickly to authorize the use of force, or we just decide we're going to do it on our own, you could begin significant air operations within a very short period of time, probably a day, a couple days maximum and you could do less significant operations within hours.

The ground operations become a different sort of a problem. We have a lot of materiel that we have pre-positioned. Obviously there are some troops there but the moving of the troops and getting the troops ready, that's going to take a lot longer than it takes to get the airplanes and the air power things ready.

LIN: And, take a look at some of the obstacles they may encounter. I mean we've been talking a lot about how urban warfare may actually take place if there is a battle to take place. It may actually go to the city centers of Baghdad. We have a virtual reality demonstration here. I think this is part of an exercise that troops are undergoing right now to train for urban warfare, get a sense of what the city of Baghdad is like. How do you see an air campaign combined with a ground campaign, especially if it starts moving into the city centers?

WARDEN: Well, really I would have two thoughts on that, number one that I believe that the preferred strategy is for us to induce the Iraqi military to take care of Saddam Hussein and, therefore, we don't get involved in fighting in Baghdad or much of any place else seriously on the ground.

LIN: How do you induce them to do that?

WARDEN: Well, you need to break down the internal security around Saddam Hussein, which we did pretty well during the Gulf War, and I think we could probably do that again, and then I think that the Iraqi military would be very happy to seize that opportunity to do something that they really have wanted to do for a long time, so it's entirely doable.

LIN: You're talking about these threats to try Iraqi generals, for example, as war criminals once the war is over as incentive to turn against their own leader?

WARDEN: No, no, no. I mean just exactly the opposite, that what I think you get the best results in this sort of a thing is that you give these people positive incentives. Look, you take care of Saddam Hussein and then your life is going to be fairly decent after the war is over. You still have your country intact. You've taken -- you've done what your duty was and we'll be happy to help with rebuilding everything else. All you need to do is you need to live up to this United Nations resolution, and I don't think that that would be a big -- I don't think that would be a difficult demand for the Iraqi military to accept.

LIN: How do you get that message across to them?

WARDEN: A combination of things. I think to a certain extent that you get it across with things like this, with a bunch of people like me and others that are out there talking about that as a possibility and Iraq is not particularly tight. There's a lot of stuff that comes out of it and obviously an awful lot flows in. So, I don't think that's terribly difficult to get those messages to the Iraqi military, and I would hope that that's the way we would primarily proceed because we'll end up creating a heck of a lot fewer casualties on both sides and, most importantly, when the hostilities are over, it means that the Iraqis are in charge of maintaining internal order, not us, because that can become an extraordinarily complex, difficult, expensive, long-term problem that we'd probably just as soon avoid.

LIN: Wouldn't that be something if the rebellion actually came from within, which was obviously the greatest hope after the Persian Gulf War by the administration, the Bush administration then.

WARDEN: Absolutely, yes.

LIN: We'll see what happens, thank you very much, Colonel Warden.

WARDEN: My pleasure.

TO ORDER A VIDEO OF THIS TRANSCRIPT, PLEASE CALL 800-CNN-NEWS OR USE OUR SECURE ONLINE ORDER FORM LOCATED AT www.fdch.com