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Interview With Joe Galloway
Aired March 28, 2003 - 15:27 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.
JUDY WOODRUFF, CNN ANCHOR: With me now in Washington is a distinguished journalist, longtime war correspondent Joe Galloway, with me now to talk a little bit more about these new deployments and what is going on in Iraq. He is now working as a military correspondent for Knight-Ridder. Mr. Galloway, you were in Vietnam, you were in Indonesia and India and Moscow. You've been just about everywhere. You are reporting now for the Knight-Ridder newspapers. You are talking to a lot of people in the military establishment. Give us a big picture, if you will. What are they saying about how the war is going?
JOE GALLOWAY, KNIGHT-RIDDER: Well, not as well as it should. We are looking at the troops, frontline troops deployed now, the Marines, the 3rd Division, up about 50 miles from Baghdad and almost in a holding pattern. We understand that General Franks says we're not going to go after Baghdad until the air power has degraded those front line Republican Guard divisions to at least 50 percent of strength, so that when it comes time to punch through them, you have a better shot at that.
The overall situation -- you've got long, long supply lines, two or three of them, that stretch 300 miles to the rear, and these are under a great deal of pressure from some people we didn't expect to be there.
WOODRUFF: Meaning the Fedayeen Saddam...
GALLOWAY: The Fedayeen, the irregulars, crazies, whatever you want to call them, are putting a lot of heat, and the Marines have had to virtually fight their way through Nasiriya with every supply column.
WOODRUFF: But you're saying this is not what the Pentagon necessarily -- and the military commanders -- necessarily expected.
GALLOWAY: I don't think they expected it at all. The plan did not have the necessary elements in it to deal with this. There was a thought, an expectation, a hope, if you will, that this thing was going to be quick and easy and bloodless and we were going to be welcomed with rose petals on our tanks, and this has not come to pass.
WOODRUFF: Who -- who had those expectations, because we're now hearing at the White House and at the Pentagon and over at Central Command, they're saying, No, we didn't have unrealistic expectations. We expected them to put up some fight.
GALLOWAY: Well, they may say that, and I would expect them to, but it doesn't necessarily make it so. I heard the secretary say this war plan is General Franks' war plan, not mine. Well, if it's not his, how come his fingerprints are all over it?
WOODRUFF: What do you mean by that?
GALLOWAY: I mean that this plan was crafted over months and months of almost bitter fighting.
WOODRUFF: Inside the Pentagon?
GALLOWAY: Inside the Pentagon, in the war councils. The secretary and his civilians started off with an idea they could do this with 50 or 60,000 troops, that the nature of war has been so changed by air power and precision munitions and precision strike that they could do it like we did Afghanistan, and that didn't take into account a lot of the reality in present-day Iraq.
WOODRUFF: Just quickly, the 100,000 additional going in next month -- expected? Planned?
GALLOWAY: Well, they -- those were divisions that had been given a deployment alert, but had almost been left sitting because the Pentagon folks thought that they wouldn't really be needed except to sort of secure post-war Iraq. And so you have a situation where your immediate reinforcements, the 4th Division, should be there in a couple of weeks, but the follow-on after that, the 1st Armored Division out of Germany, the 1st Cavalry Division out of Fort Hood are five, six, seven weeks away.
WOODRUFF: OK. Joseph Galloway raising some very interesting questions. One of the preeminent war correspondents, spent four decades covering wars overseas, starting with Vietnam. Right now special correspondent for Knight-Ridder.
Thank you very much for coming in to talk with us.
GALLOWAY: Thank you, Judy.
WOODRUFF: Joe Galloway, we appreciate it.
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 28, 2003 - 15:27 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
JUDY WOODRUFF, CNN ANCHOR: With me now in Washington is a distinguished journalist, longtime war correspondent Joe Galloway, with me now to talk a little bit more about these new deployments and what is going on in Iraq. He is now working as a military correspondent for Knight-Ridder. Mr. Galloway, you were in Vietnam, you were in Indonesia and India and Moscow. You've been just about everywhere. You are reporting now for the Knight-Ridder newspapers. You are talking to a lot of people in the military establishment. Give us a big picture, if you will. What are they saying about how the war is going?
JOE GALLOWAY, KNIGHT-RIDDER: Well, not as well as it should. We are looking at the troops, frontline troops deployed now, the Marines, the 3rd Division, up about 50 miles from Baghdad and almost in a holding pattern. We understand that General Franks says we're not going to go after Baghdad until the air power has degraded those front line Republican Guard divisions to at least 50 percent of strength, so that when it comes time to punch through them, you have a better shot at that.
The overall situation -- you've got long, long supply lines, two or three of them, that stretch 300 miles to the rear, and these are under a great deal of pressure from some people we didn't expect to be there.
WOODRUFF: Meaning the Fedayeen Saddam...
GALLOWAY: The Fedayeen, the irregulars, crazies, whatever you want to call them, are putting a lot of heat, and the Marines have had to virtually fight their way through Nasiriya with every supply column.
WOODRUFF: But you're saying this is not what the Pentagon necessarily -- and the military commanders -- necessarily expected.
GALLOWAY: I don't think they expected it at all. The plan did not have the necessary elements in it to deal with this. There was a thought, an expectation, a hope, if you will, that this thing was going to be quick and easy and bloodless and we were going to be welcomed with rose petals on our tanks, and this has not come to pass.
WOODRUFF: Who -- who had those expectations, because we're now hearing at the White House and at the Pentagon and over at Central Command, they're saying, No, we didn't have unrealistic expectations. We expected them to put up some fight.
GALLOWAY: Well, they may say that, and I would expect them to, but it doesn't necessarily make it so. I heard the secretary say this war plan is General Franks' war plan, not mine. Well, if it's not his, how come his fingerprints are all over it?
WOODRUFF: What do you mean by that?
GALLOWAY: I mean that this plan was crafted over months and months of almost bitter fighting.
WOODRUFF: Inside the Pentagon?
GALLOWAY: Inside the Pentagon, in the war councils. The secretary and his civilians started off with an idea they could do this with 50 or 60,000 troops, that the nature of war has been so changed by air power and precision munitions and precision strike that they could do it like we did Afghanistan, and that didn't take into account a lot of the reality in present-day Iraq.
WOODRUFF: Just quickly, the 100,000 additional going in next month -- expected? Planned?
GALLOWAY: Well, they -- those were divisions that had been given a deployment alert, but had almost been left sitting because the Pentagon folks thought that they wouldn't really be needed except to sort of secure post-war Iraq. And so you have a situation where your immediate reinforcements, the 4th Division, should be there in a couple of weeks, but the follow-on after that, the 1st Armored Division out of Germany, the 1st Cavalry Division out of Fort Hood are five, six, seven weeks away.
WOODRUFF: OK. Joseph Galloway raising some very interesting questions. One of the preeminent war correspondents, spent four decades covering wars overseas, starting with Vietnam. Right now special correspondent for Knight-Ridder.
Thank you very much for coming in to talk with us.
GALLOWAY: Thank you, Judy.
WOODRUFF: Joe Galloway, we appreciate it.
TO ORDER A VIDEO OF THIS TRANSCRIPT, PLEASE CALL 800-CNN-NEWS OR USE OUR SECURE ONLINE ORDER FORM LOCATED AT www.fdch.com
