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Analysis With Ken Pollack

Aired June 16, 2003 - 14:16   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.


KYRA PHILLIPS, CNN ANCHOR: Well, with a tunnel explosion in Baghdad and a grenade attack aimed as a U.S. military convoy, you have to wonder if there's some organized resistance behind all these attacks in Iraq.
CNN's analyst, Ken Pollack, joins us now live from Washington with some insight into this. Ken, good to see you.

KENNETH POLLACK, CNN ANALYST: good to see you, Kyra. Thanks for having me.

PHILLIPS: Well it's nice to have you. From an intelligence perspective, when analyzing attacks like this, Ken, you know, how do you begin laying out -- where is this coming from? Is it natural banditry, is it remnants of the regime. Is it inner ethnic problems that are causing these attacks? Where do you begin in sort of laying this all out?

POLLACK: Well, Kyra, let me start by saying, look, I sit in a place called the Sabon (ph) Center in Brooklyn. I don't have the kind of the access of the information that U.S. intelligence sources have. So we really don't know exactly what they were seeing. If I were back at CIA though, what I would start to look for is patterns.

Do we see patterns of engagements? Do we see evidence Iraqis are collecting intelligence at one point in time, planning attacks in another? Are we seeing evidence that they are collecting evidence intelligence and operational patterns in one part of the country, and if those are being transferred - translated into other parts of the country? All those kind of things would be indicative of a larger pattern of organized behavior that would go beyond the locality, the immediate neighborhood, the local tribe or even the local village.

PHILLIPS: Well, these attacks have been pretty much spread out from roadside attacks to inside Baghdad to some of the various outskirts of small areas. I mean, do you see a pattern or does this look like pretty much random violence to you?

POLLACK: Well, again, it's hard to know because we're only seeing pieces of the entire intelligence picture. I would say that, for the moment and at least for the last couple of months, I think that most the violence we have seen has been uncoordinated. It has been local groups of one kind or another who want to continue to fight the U.S. occupation.

Certainly some of those are Saddam loyalists. In other cases it may simply be local Sunni tribes who don't care for the United States presence who are acting on their own behalf. That said, I think that we have to assume that there is some elements of the former regime out there. And we continue to hear stories that Saddam Hussein is alive and well and still living somewhere inside of Iraq, and that those elements of the former regime, whether they are led by Saddam or not, are trying to reach out to all of these different groups and bring them into some kind of a greater coordinated effort. And we may be seeing the beginning of a larger more nationwide guerrilla campaign.

PHILLIPS: And of course - well, that's interesting. We'll have to go further on that point. But you mentioned Saddam. There's so much talk, OK? Is he alive? Is he dead? If, indeed, he were alive, there's been so much talk about all the money that still exists, and the talk about, hey, if you are able to shoot a U.S. military soldier you'll get a certain amount of money. What's your reaction to that?

POLLACK: Well, I don't think any of us knows whether or not Saddam is alive or not. And if there are bounties being placed on the head of American soldiers, again, it may or may not be true. I certainly do believe that there are Iraqis out there who do expect that the United States will not stay in Iraq forever, that our efforts to build a new Iraqi regime will fail and at some point in time Saddam Hussein or some other regime based on Saddam's former regime will come back to power.

And I think it's that expectation of what the future is going to be like that is the most important factor in determining who resists the United States and who doesn't. The people who are resisting the United States seem to be those people who really benefited from Saddam's regime, the very small number of people, most of them Sunnis, most of them from a small group of tribes in western Iraq.

Those are the people who benefited. They are the ones fighting, because truth to tell, they will be worse off in a future democratic Iraq than they were under Saddam. And they would benefit enormously if somehow they could stop this experiment and get Saddam back into power.

PHILLIPS: Explain to me this mentality, I mean, even take me back to when you were in the CIA. I mean, it is obvious Iraq has fallen and the U.S. military is serious about what is taking place now, looking back at what happened in the last Gulf War. You know, what is in it for these individuals that are carrying out these attacks? I mean, do they really think they can succeed in their thinking?

POLLACK: Well, I think that they could believe they can succeed because many of them believe the United States is a very, very low threshold for casualties. The evidence of the last four or five months notwithstanding. They think that if they can just cause enough casualties to the United States, and they don't think that will be a very high number, that they can get the U.S. to completely pull out of the country.

And again, their expectation is that they will be much better off if they can bring Saddam or someone from his regime back to power than they would be if true democracy is built in Iraq. I think it's important to remember that this is, as best we can tell, a very small group of people who are actively opposing the United States, who are actively trying to kill Americans.

The vast majority of Iraqis are in a very different category. Some of them are happy about the U.S. being there, others are not. All of them, at this point in time, I think, are much more fearful that the effort to build a new Iraqi government will fail and that Saddam Hussein will come back than any other emotion.

PHILLIPS: I can imagine that fear. Ken Pollack, always a pleasure. Thank you very much.

POLLACK: Thank you.

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 June 16, 2003 - 14:16   ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
KYRA PHILLIPS, CNN ANCHOR: Well, with a tunnel explosion in Baghdad and a grenade attack aimed as a U.S. military convoy, you have to wonder if there's some organized resistance behind all these attacks in Iraq.
CNN's analyst, Ken Pollack, joins us now live from Washington with some insight into this. Ken, good to see you.

KENNETH POLLACK, CNN ANALYST: good to see you, Kyra. Thanks for having me.

PHILLIPS: Well it's nice to have you. From an intelligence perspective, when analyzing attacks like this, Ken, you know, how do you begin laying out -- where is this coming from? Is it natural banditry, is it remnants of the regime. Is it inner ethnic problems that are causing these attacks? Where do you begin in sort of laying this all out?

POLLACK: Well, Kyra, let me start by saying, look, I sit in a place called the Sabon (ph) Center in Brooklyn. I don't have the kind of the access of the information that U.S. intelligence sources have. So we really don't know exactly what they were seeing. If I were back at CIA though, what I would start to look for is patterns.

Do we see patterns of engagements? Do we see evidence Iraqis are collecting intelligence at one point in time, planning attacks in another? Are we seeing evidence that they are collecting evidence intelligence and operational patterns in one part of the country, and if those are being transferred - translated into other parts of the country? All those kind of things would be indicative of a larger pattern of organized behavior that would go beyond the locality, the immediate neighborhood, the local tribe or even the local village.

PHILLIPS: Well, these attacks have been pretty much spread out from roadside attacks to inside Baghdad to some of the various outskirts of small areas. I mean, do you see a pattern or does this look like pretty much random violence to you?

POLLACK: Well, again, it's hard to know because we're only seeing pieces of the entire intelligence picture. I would say that, for the moment and at least for the last couple of months, I think that most the violence we have seen has been uncoordinated. It has been local groups of one kind or another who want to continue to fight the U.S. occupation.

Certainly some of those are Saddam loyalists. In other cases it may simply be local Sunni tribes who don't care for the United States presence who are acting on their own behalf. That said, I think that we have to assume that there is some elements of the former regime out there. And we continue to hear stories that Saddam Hussein is alive and well and still living somewhere inside of Iraq, and that those elements of the former regime, whether they are led by Saddam or not, are trying to reach out to all of these different groups and bring them into some kind of a greater coordinated effort. And we may be seeing the beginning of a larger more nationwide guerrilla campaign.

PHILLIPS: And of course - well, that's interesting. We'll have to go further on that point. But you mentioned Saddam. There's so much talk, OK? Is he alive? Is he dead? If, indeed, he were alive, there's been so much talk about all the money that still exists, and the talk about, hey, if you are able to shoot a U.S. military soldier you'll get a certain amount of money. What's your reaction to that?

POLLACK: Well, I don't think any of us knows whether or not Saddam is alive or not. And if there are bounties being placed on the head of American soldiers, again, it may or may not be true. I certainly do believe that there are Iraqis out there who do expect that the United States will not stay in Iraq forever, that our efforts to build a new Iraqi regime will fail and at some point in time Saddam Hussein or some other regime based on Saddam's former regime will come back to power.

And I think it's that expectation of what the future is going to be like that is the most important factor in determining who resists the United States and who doesn't. The people who are resisting the United States seem to be those people who really benefited from Saddam's regime, the very small number of people, most of them Sunnis, most of them from a small group of tribes in western Iraq.

Those are the people who benefited. They are the ones fighting, because truth to tell, they will be worse off in a future democratic Iraq than they were under Saddam. And they would benefit enormously if somehow they could stop this experiment and get Saddam back into power.

PHILLIPS: Explain to me this mentality, I mean, even take me back to when you were in the CIA. I mean, it is obvious Iraq has fallen and the U.S. military is serious about what is taking place now, looking back at what happened in the last Gulf War. You know, what is in it for these individuals that are carrying out these attacks? I mean, do they really think they can succeed in their thinking?

POLLACK: Well, I think that they could believe they can succeed because many of them believe the United States is a very, very low threshold for casualties. The evidence of the last four or five months notwithstanding. They think that if they can just cause enough casualties to the United States, and they don't think that will be a very high number, that they can get the U.S. to completely pull out of the country.

And again, their expectation is that they will be much better off if they can bring Saddam or someone from his regime back to power than they would be if true democracy is built in Iraq. I think it's important to remember that this is, as best we can tell, a very small group of people who are actively opposing the United States, who are actively trying to kill Americans.

The vast majority of Iraqis are in a very different category. Some of them are happy about the U.S. being there, others are not. All of them, at this point in time, I think, are much more fearful that the effort to build a new Iraqi government will fail and that Saddam Hussein will come back than any other emotion.

PHILLIPS: I can imagine that fear. Ken Pollack, always a pleasure. Thank you very much.

POLLACK: Thank you.

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