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CNN Live At Daybreak

Great Britain Commits 200 Special Forces Troops to Ground War in Afghanistan

Aired October 26, 2001 - 07:20   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.
PAULA ZAHN, CNN ANCHOR: Great Britain this morning committed 200 special forces troops, commandos of the Royal Marines, to the ground war in Afghanistan. Another 400 commandos will be on standby in Britain for possible deployment.

Armed Forces Minister Adam Ingram told parliament the commitment is part of a coalition plan to greatly expand operations in the area.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

ADAM INGRAM: We have therefore decided to create a large and very balanced force in the region. It is a concrete demonstration of our resolve to see the campaign against international terrorism through to the end. We have said we are in this for the long haul and we mean it.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

ZAHN: Ingram also said Britain will commit more ships and planes to the war, among them an aircraft carrier, submarines and a troop assault ship.

Saudi Arabia is critical to the U.S. effort to hold the support of moderate Arab nations in the war against terrorism. But there have been some major questions about the Saudi commitment. Why haven't the Saudis given the U.S. more access to military bases or been more forthcoming in freezing terrorist assets?

Well, the administration downplays those questions. In fact, President Bush called Saudi's Crown Prince Abdullah yesterday to thank him for Riyadh's support in the anti-terrorism coalition.

Last night on CNN, the Saudis' foreign policy adviser talked about U.S.-Saudi relations.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

ADEL JUBEIR, SAUDI FOREIGN POLICY ADVISER: The cooperation between the two countries is very good. It's very strong. I believe that there are over 100 countries that are participating in the effort to combat terrorism. And as far, what I can point out to you is the statements by every American official, from the president to the NSC adviser to the secretary of state to the secretary of defense have been very clear about the extent of Saudi cooperation and how they have no questions on any issue that has come up between the two countries.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

ZAHN: And joining me now is "Time" magazine's senior editor, Joshua Cooper Ramo. Good morning.

JOSHUA COOPER RAMO, "TIME" MAGAZINE: Good morning, Paula.

ZAHN: So are you as charitable as the foreign adviser is about the Saudis' involvement in this coalition?

COOPER RAMO: Well, I think, like a lot of people in the U.S. right now, there's sort of a wait and see attitude about how aggressive the Saudis are going to be in their support of the United States. We've learned a lot of things about Saudi Arabia since September 11 and a couple of them are probably worth pointing out.

ZAHN: Like what?

COOPER RAMO: The first is that inside Saudi Arabia itself there is a lot more pressure by Islamic fundamentalists than we had anticipated, and that is changing the way that the government responds to things that happen outside Saudi Arabia.

ZAHN: How do they exert this pressure on the royal family?

COOPER RAMO: Well, the royal family is a small percentage of the population in Saudi Arabia that controls access to much of the oil wealth there as well as to the outside world. And they exert it in a couple of ways. First, just the large pressure of 80 or 85 percent of the population that at any minute could decide that the royal family is not necessarily the governing system that they want. And secondly, in sort of a more indirect way by forcing the government of Saudi Arabia to aggressively support the Arab world and to really be seen as a leader in the Arab world.

You have to remember that Saudi Arabia is the home of Mecca and Medina, the two holiest sites in Islam.

ZAHN: Sure.

COOPER RAMO: And as a result, Saudi Arabia plays a role not simply as a spiritual leader for the Arab world, but almost by default also as a political leader.

ZAHN: But I'm just wondering what the currency is. Is this 85 percent of the public? Is it just their sheer numbers?

COOPER RAMO: Yes, it is. And this is a really good piece of analysis to look at. Unlike some other countries, say, Pakistan, where there's a large percentage of the population that has access to weapons, that can organize politically, that can cause real violence on the street, in Saudi Arabia that's not an option. The government has done a terrific job of managing that dissent, of making sure that people on the street don't have the ability to come out and take it out on the government.

One way that they've done that is by investing very aggressively in some of these overseas jihad movements, particularly the Taliban and to some extent even Osama bin Laden's group. They've sort of used that as an outlet for the Islamic fundamentalist groups inside their own country and that's something that now is really coming back to haunt them.

ZAHN: If you would, this morning, why don't you introduce us to some of the key players...

COOPER RAMO: Sure. Absolutely.

ZAHN: ... so we can all get more familiar with who these men are.

COOPER RAMO: Who we need to watch. One guy to keep an eye on is Crown Prince Abdullah, who really runs the country. Abdullah is sitting in for the ailing king. He is in charge of really ruling the country on a day to day basis and making sure that their foreign policy decisions are driven by the kinds of things that matter.

One thing to know about him that's super important is he is much more sort of pro-Arab than pro-Western. The traditional Saudi approach of aggressively supporting the United States, of not speaking out in favor of Arab causes, has been abandoned largely by Abdullah. He sees himself as a leader of the Arab world and in that regard feels he needs to support things like the Palestinian cause as well.

ZAHN: And who else should we pay attention to?

COOPER RAMO: The second guy to pay attention to is Prince Bandar (ph). A lot of the conversation we've been having about the issues between the U.S. and Saudi Arabia are reflective of tensions between the two countries. Bandar is the ambassador to United States. He is the highest level person that U.S. government officials deal with on a daily basis and as Saudi Arabia tries to reconstruct their image in the U.S., he's gong to be the guy leading the charge. He's a guy to keep an eye on.

ZAHN: It's interesting to note, this one note says that, he says the royal family has not given money to al Qaeda.

COOPER RAMO: Yes.

ZAHN: Is that true?

COOPER RAMO: Well, it's hard to know. What does seem reasonable to say is that the royal family has not explicitly given money to al Qaeda. However, inside Saudi Arabia there are a number of so-called charitable organizations which may or may not have been funneling money to al Qaeda, sort of in the way that if you walked into a bar in Boston in the 1970s and there was kind of a tank at the end and you could put $5 or $6 on it somehow and...

ZAHN: And you knew exactly where that was going. COOPER RAMO: Yes. Sent it up to the IRA. I think that's a similar situation here. There's real deniability for most of the royal family, but there's no question that some of them agreed with the aims of al Qaeda.

ZAHN: So as we hear the administration saying everything basically is peachy with the Saudis, what is it we're supposed to be looking for?

COOPER RAMO: Well, I think the most important thing to look at is what's going on inside Saudi Arabia itself. It's a chance to continue to judge the degree to which they have control over their population there, which will largely determine what their outside policy looks like. And then secondly, a couple of sort of key metrics you can look at for the weeks going forward are they coming out aggressively in support of the U.S. bombing campaign? Are they turning over the evidence that will allow us to shut al Qaeda down? And finally, are they going to speak out in favor of the moderate Arab states that the U.S. wants to support in the region?

ZAHN: What do you think?

COOPER RAMO: I think you'll start to see on some of those things, the easy ones, like support of moderate Arab states, some more aggressive rhetoric. The Saudis recognize they have a P.R. problem. On the harder ones like support of U.S. bombing, I think you'll continue to see waffling.

ZAHN: All right, Joshua, thanks so much. See you a little bit later, I think in about an hour and a half from now when we address the issues going on in the Middle East.

COOPER RAMO: Yes.

ZAHN: We appreciate your perspective, as always.

In other news this morning, a small celebration for families of sailors returning from the Middle East. Four ships from the battle group supporting the aircraft carrier USS Enterprise returned yesterday to Norfolk, Virginia. The Enterprise is taking part in strikes against Afghanistan, although the Navy says the returning ships were not. The 15,000 sailors and marines were on a routine six month deployment to the Mediterranean and Persian Gulf during last month's attacks.

It is a place of deafening noise, airplanes roaring, engines and dangerous work. We're talking about the deck of an aircraft carrier.

And Miles O'Brien joins us now from the CNN Center in Atlanta to highlight the role some of the sailors of the Fifth Fleet, the role they are playing in the war on terrorism. Good morning, Miles. How are you doing this morning?

MILES O'BRIEN, CNN CORRESPONDENT: I'm doing well, Paula. Hope you're doing well. And this is probably one of the most dangerous places in the world to work. It's the four and a half acre sized deck of a U.S. aircraft carrier.

Let's take a look at some of the video. We've been seeing an awful lot of it ever since this whole situation began, the air war over Afghanistan. There you see it. And on the ground, if you look very closely, there are people with all sorts of different colored shirts. Notice these guys are wearing red. This gentleman over here wearing green. The question is what are they all doing, what is their role?

I think you can probably guess the red are in charge of some of the weaponry.

Let's take a look at a graphic we put together and let's walk you through the different roles that each of these individuals has on the deck of an aircraft carrier, a very dangerous place, as we said.

Blue shirts, they're the first ones to bring things to the deck. They are in charge of moving aircraft from the below deck hangar to -- up the elevators and into position to get cued up for launch. They are the plane handlers, the elevator operators and the tractor drivers.

Now, moving across the deck, let's take a look at what these guys are doing in purple. They're also called grapes. They fuel the aircraft once they're up on the deck. Moving a little bit to the other direction, this is the serious business, as we just alluded to, of putting, in this case, a missile on board an aircraft or bombs to get them ready for their attack missions or their missions protecting the aircraft carrier fleet. Fourteen vessels in all in a battle group.

They load the weapons on the plane. They're also in charge of crash salvage. They also take care of the ordinance disposal on the return end of a mission.

Now, moving to the other end of the deck, brown shirts. These are the guys who are in charge of making sure an individual aircraft is ready for flight, going through the checklists, doing the walk around, sort of signing off on the aircraft for the pilot to let him know that that aircraft is fit to fly.

And finally as we move along over here and things get closer to the actual launching of an aircraft, the yellow shirts get in charge. They're the aircraft handling officers. They are in charge of the catapult and arresting gear and they are the plane directors. Now, they move the aircraft into position and working in close concert with the gentlemen in the green shirts, catapult and arresting gear officers, as well. They are the cargo handling personnel and they're the hook runners. They actually hook the plane up to that giant hook which is able to launch that aircraft and get it going at about 150 miles an hour in all of two seconds.

So here's what happens. The yellow shirted plane handler or person in charge there gets the plane into position. The green shirted guy hooks it on. And then there's a final salute from the pilot inside the aircraft. He touches the deck and off goes the aircraft.

And it happens about once every 30 seconds. As you can imagine, that's a very busy place. Everybody needs to pay close attention to what they're doing and part of the reason they're all color coded is to ensure that everybody knows where everybody should be and where everybody is.

If you want to find out more, we invite you to check out, as always, cnn.com. We have all kinds of information about aircraft carriers, aircraft and a little bit of information from one of our military analysts, Major General John Shepperd, who you will hear from a little later this morning as soon as he gets in, to join us -- back to Paula in New York.

ZAHN: And you're not going to quiz me this morning on that AOL keyword.

O'BRIEN: Oh, my gosh, I forgot.

ZAHN: CNN. That's critical to getting that information this morning.

O'BRIEN: The AOL keyword is...

ZAHN: CNN.

O'BRIEN: Very good.

ZAHN: Thanks, Miles. See you a little bit later.

O'BRIEN: All right, see you.

ZAHN: Still to come, trying to find the anthrax trail. Our own David Ensor on the Iraq connection. We'll be right back.

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