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Coalition Making POW Camp, Air Base

Aired March 27, 2003 - 13:04   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.


WOLF BLITZER, CNN ANCHOR: Good afternoon, good to have you with me today and every day.
Meanwhile, the U.S. and British troops are taking thousands of prisoners, as they move through Iraq. And now a POW camp is being set up to try to process and take care of these captured Iraqis.

Our Bob Franken is right in the middle of all these things. He's in central Iraq, he's one of the embedded journalists. He's on the phone with us now -- Bob.

BOB FRANKEN, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Well, Wolf, I'm at Camp Gluco (ph), which is going to be one of the main repositories for the POWs. They're very early in the process of trying to set it up.

They have a berm in which the prisoners will be deposited on the other side. And in this way, the prisoners would not be able to see the activities of the camp, they could be controlled. They insist that they're going to follow all the provisions of the Geneva Convention. Of course, that was an issue that camp up with the Guantanamo Bay detainees last year, who are still there, as a matter of fact.

Now, one problem is that the Geneva Convention calls for prisoner of war camps to be set up out of danger, in effect. And the fighting is still close enough that they are going to consider, at least discuss, whether they have to move it further away.

We are here because we were coming from our air base on the other side of the border, trying to move up to a new forward base. It's a captured Iraqi air base that the United States wants to turn into another field of operations to move many of its A-10 anti-tank planes, for instance, and it search and rescue operations and the like up there, giving it a huge advantage -- giving the U.S. a huge advantage in the war.

According to this wing commander, it's a few hundred miles on any mission, 150 miles each way. If he was able to fly from that forward base, because this was 150 miles into Iraq from where he's located now.

The problem is getting it set up. And there have been repeated efforts to try and get to the base. Those efforts have been thwarted by a variety of things, logistics. But mainly, the fact that there's an awful lot of combat still going on in this area, enough to stop the different efforts to get up there and stop the necessary supplies from getting to the base so it can be put into operation.

One of the other factors, and Judy mentioned humanitarian relief a moment ago. This is going to be a base which will be a staging point for humanitarian relief. And it's clearly badly needed.

As we were moving through southern Iraq, we saw hundreds of civilians, many of them children, literally crying out for water and food as we drove past them. Obviously, we were not able to help them but it was a wrenching sight and clear -- made it very clear that the humanitarian relief is needed, humanitarian relief that, to some degree, would come from that new base -- Wolf.

BLITZER: Bob, what's the extent of the resistance, the Iraqi military forces, you're facing? Are they Republican Guard, are they regular army troops? Are they the so-called paramilitary Fedayeen Saddam? Do you have a good sense of who's fighting the U.S. military where you are right now?

FRANKEN: Well, actually, it's not just one place. There are a variety of places on this route where there's fighting going on. They refer on the United States side to the reds as their enemy, and the blue as the forces that are with the United States, the coalition forces.

And they say that the red forces are receding. But every time they say that new -- gunfire breaks out, there are new skirmishes and the like. It's not that there's a huge amount of fighting going on in a particular region, it's just a lot of scattered fights.

BLITZER: That scattered fighting, though, can cause a lot of damage. Bob Franken, be careful where you are. We'll check back with you soon.

Bob Franken, he's one of our embedded journalists right in the middle of things in central Iraq, where the U.S. is trying to establish a POW camp to deal with the hundreds, if not thousands, of POWs, by last count, maybe 4,000 or 5,000. That number, presumably, is going up.

BLITZER: Judy, before I throw it back to you, I want to show viewers a scene now. Baghdad, once again, familiar to all of us, all of our viewers right now. And within the past few hours, there have been sirens that have gone off. They clearly must anticipate more bombing strikes against various targets in and around the Iraqi capital.

By everything I'm hearing, from U.S. military planners, there's no let up this those targets. They have targets on their list; they'll be going after them not only in Baghdad, but elsewhere around this huge country that's called Iraq. We'll watch the situation in Baghdad.

In the meantime, back to Judy Woodruff in Washington.

JUDY WOODRUFF, CNN ANCHOR: Wolf, I keep thinking of what Bob Franken just described, a wrenching sight of those children running along behind U.S. troops but the troops not being able to stop and give them food and water and so forth. It just must be heartbreaking for them.

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 March 27, 2003 - 13:04   ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
WOLF BLITZER, CNN ANCHOR: Good afternoon, good to have you with me today and every day.
Meanwhile, the U.S. and British troops are taking thousands of prisoners, as they move through Iraq. And now a POW camp is being set up to try to process and take care of these captured Iraqis.

Our Bob Franken is right in the middle of all these things. He's in central Iraq, he's one of the embedded journalists. He's on the phone with us now -- Bob.

BOB FRANKEN, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Well, Wolf, I'm at Camp Gluco (ph), which is going to be one of the main repositories for the POWs. They're very early in the process of trying to set it up.

They have a berm in which the prisoners will be deposited on the other side. And in this way, the prisoners would not be able to see the activities of the camp, they could be controlled. They insist that they're going to follow all the provisions of the Geneva Convention. Of course, that was an issue that camp up with the Guantanamo Bay detainees last year, who are still there, as a matter of fact.

Now, one problem is that the Geneva Convention calls for prisoner of war camps to be set up out of danger, in effect. And the fighting is still close enough that they are going to consider, at least discuss, whether they have to move it further away.

We are here because we were coming from our air base on the other side of the border, trying to move up to a new forward base. It's a captured Iraqi air base that the United States wants to turn into another field of operations to move many of its A-10 anti-tank planes, for instance, and it search and rescue operations and the like up there, giving it a huge advantage -- giving the U.S. a huge advantage in the war.

According to this wing commander, it's a few hundred miles on any mission, 150 miles each way. If he was able to fly from that forward base, because this was 150 miles into Iraq from where he's located now.

The problem is getting it set up. And there have been repeated efforts to try and get to the base. Those efforts have been thwarted by a variety of things, logistics. But mainly, the fact that there's an awful lot of combat still going on in this area, enough to stop the different efforts to get up there and stop the necessary supplies from getting to the base so it can be put into operation.

One of the other factors, and Judy mentioned humanitarian relief a moment ago. This is going to be a base which will be a staging point for humanitarian relief. And it's clearly badly needed.

As we were moving through southern Iraq, we saw hundreds of civilians, many of them children, literally crying out for water and food as we drove past them. Obviously, we were not able to help them but it was a wrenching sight and clear -- made it very clear that the humanitarian relief is needed, humanitarian relief that, to some degree, would come from that new base -- Wolf.

BLITZER: Bob, what's the extent of the resistance, the Iraqi military forces, you're facing? Are they Republican Guard, are they regular army troops? Are they the so-called paramilitary Fedayeen Saddam? Do you have a good sense of who's fighting the U.S. military where you are right now?

FRANKEN: Well, actually, it's not just one place. There are a variety of places on this route where there's fighting going on. They refer on the United States side to the reds as their enemy, and the blue as the forces that are with the United States, the coalition forces.

And they say that the red forces are receding. But every time they say that new -- gunfire breaks out, there are new skirmishes and the like. It's not that there's a huge amount of fighting going on in a particular region, it's just a lot of scattered fights.

BLITZER: That scattered fighting, though, can cause a lot of damage. Bob Franken, be careful where you are. We'll check back with you soon.

Bob Franken, he's one of our embedded journalists right in the middle of things in central Iraq, where the U.S. is trying to establish a POW camp to deal with the hundreds, if not thousands, of POWs, by last count, maybe 4,000 or 5,000. That number, presumably, is going up.

BLITZER: Judy, before I throw it back to you, I want to show viewers a scene now. Baghdad, once again, familiar to all of us, all of our viewers right now. And within the past few hours, there have been sirens that have gone off. They clearly must anticipate more bombing strikes against various targets in and around the Iraqi capital.

By everything I'm hearing, from U.S. military planners, there's no let up this those targets. They have targets on their list; they'll be going after them not only in Baghdad, but elsewhere around this huge country that's called Iraq. We'll watch the situation in Baghdad.

In the meantime, back to Judy Woodruff in Washington.

JUDY WOODRUFF, CNN ANCHOR: Wolf, I keep thinking of what Bob Franken just described, a wrenching sight of those children running along behind U.S. troops but the troops not being able to stop and give them food and water and so forth. It just must be heartbreaking for them.

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