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New Iraq: Not Exactly War, not Exactly Peace
Aired June 19, 2003 - 13:03 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.
MILES O'BRIEN, CNN ANCHOR: Before the war in Iraq, we all heard the rosy predictions that the people of Iraq would greet U.S. forces with warm embraces, broad smiles and toss flowers, but it hasn't turned out that way, has it? And we could talk all day about the netherworld between war and peace that is Iraq today and still not explain the situation any better than this picture does. It's an image that's all over the planet today. You might have seen it on the front page of "The New York Times." It shows former Iraqi soldiers squared off against American troops brandishing bayonets.
Let's talk for a moment about the U.S. force in Baghdad and what it's up against right now.
Joining me now in Atlanta is Tim Crockett. He is a former member of British Special Forces. And out of Washington, Kelly McCann, security analyst and a former U.S. Marine -- I guess you're never a former U.S. Marine -- a U.S. Marine who happens to not be in the Marines at the moment on active duty.
KELLY MCCANN, CNN SECURITY ANALYST: Absolutely.
O'BRIEN: Kelly McCann, I want to give folks a reminder of the lay of the land. Secretary Rumsfeld was talking about this 5.5 million-person city of Baghdad. Show us some satellite imagery. And I want you to just talk about the challenges of this sprawled-out city and being in a mission that is peace-keeping, whatever you want to call it.
MCCANN: Well, here's the problem, Miles. When you go to support and stability operations, you've got to conduct checkpoints, you've got to have defensive positions that are fixed in place. It's not like ongoing combat operations where there's a momentum and there's movement and there's forward motion. Suddenly, you're held back, and you're basically posted up and a very vulnerable target.
And also what is vulnerable, of course, is the logistic efforts. As you look at this photo, you can imagine the people having to drive the trucks that water the troops, that bring food to them, that rotate the troops on checkpoints, that move people to different checkpoints every day when they start up business, et cetera, just moving the logistics around in those very predictable patterns, that becomes a very exploitive kind of thing, open for exploitation. So, it's a different kind of operation where suddenly you go from being the hunter to being not necessarily hunted, but certainly not on the offense and not in movement.
O'BRIEN: Tim Crockett, let's assume for a moment there are U.S. forces are right there on the ground in those X's, the tricky part is that the front line can come at you from just about any direction, correct?
TIM CROCKETT, CNN SECURITY CONSULTANT: That is correct. Sort of gone is the traditional linear sort of battlefield. What you have now is a very three-dimensional sort of picture, where an enemy force can engage you from just about anywhere, even an area that's been declared secure.
O'BRIEN: All right, do we have time? We have an animation. I'd like to show it quickly if we could. Let's show the animation if we could, and we'll just sort of walk you through a scenario here.
This shows sort of a typical combat patrol inside an urban environment. What we're depicting here -- I'm not going to stop it here -- is snipers going up, capturing kind of the high ground. Is that typically doctrine, Kelly, if you will, to station snipers all over a city like this?
MCCANN: Well, certainly you want over-watch, and if you look at some of the video footage taken certainly in Basra and again when the U.S. coalition forces were moving into Baghdad, you will see that the snipers are positioned for commanding over-watch positions, where they can engage with surgical precision certain nodes that might be adversarial to the movement of troops. So, it is doctrine to gain and maintain those high ground positions.
O'BRIEN: All right, Tim Crockett, now we're going to show an armored column coming down a street here. In point of fact, this is probably more heavily armored than they are right now. But typically, these patrols would be in things like Bradley Fighting Vehicles and Humvees. In this case, we're depicting an RPG, a rocket-propelled grenade, going after the armor. And the force then -- let's freeze it right here for a moment. The force is faced with a decision. The first thing they do is fire right back at it. What are the rules of engagement typically in a situation like this?
CROCKETT: Again, as Kelly has already sort of mentioned, they've gone from a sort of war fighting operations to a sort of security and stability sort of patrolling as such, I want to say. If (UNINTELLIGIBLE) sort of fire, the rules of engagement are now, we can see, would be self-defense, obviously matching fire with fire in order to prevent any further sort of casualties of their own troops.
O'BRIEN: Kelly McCann, let's talk just briefly here. There is a fine line here between protecting your forces, going after aggressive action, and alienating the population. Do you have the sense that the U.S. forces are being perhaps too ham-handed right now in Baghdad?
MCCANN: No, I think that the anomalies that were Mogadishu and were Beirut are not going to be allowed to occur again, and the adversary here, who are behind all of these, knows that. They know that the more that they kind of irritate and annoy and harass and have attacks, that we're going to have no choice other than to maintain big buffers and become aloof.
O'BRIEN: Tim, final word on that point?
CROCKETT: Yes, I agree in some places, that they are very much sort of fighting a very mobile, almost ghost-like enemy, where they can get attacked from -- or sort of corners of the city, but the rules of engagement are sort of the things that they're conducting. They've got their hands tied. They are going to be very frustrated, confused. Again, a difficult situation.
O'BRIEN: All right, gentlemen, thanks very much. We'll leave it at that point. Kelly McCann, Tim Crockett.
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 19, 2003 - 13:03 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
MILES O'BRIEN, CNN ANCHOR: Before the war in Iraq, we all heard the rosy predictions that the people of Iraq would greet U.S. forces with warm embraces, broad smiles and toss flowers, but it hasn't turned out that way, has it? And we could talk all day about the netherworld between war and peace that is Iraq today and still not explain the situation any better than this picture does. It's an image that's all over the planet today. You might have seen it on the front page of "The New York Times." It shows former Iraqi soldiers squared off against American troops brandishing bayonets.
Let's talk for a moment about the U.S. force in Baghdad and what it's up against right now.
Joining me now in Atlanta is Tim Crockett. He is a former member of British Special Forces. And out of Washington, Kelly McCann, security analyst and a former U.S. Marine -- I guess you're never a former U.S. Marine -- a U.S. Marine who happens to not be in the Marines at the moment on active duty.
KELLY MCCANN, CNN SECURITY ANALYST: Absolutely.
O'BRIEN: Kelly McCann, I want to give folks a reminder of the lay of the land. Secretary Rumsfeld was talking about this 5.5 million-person city of Baghdad. Show us some satellite imagery. And I want you to just talk about the challenges of this sprawled-out city and being in a mission that is peace-keeping, whatever you want to call it.
MCCANN: Well, here's the problem, Miles. When you go to support and stability operations, you've got to conduct checkpoints, you've got to have defensive positions that are fixed in place. It's not like ongoing combat operations where there's a momentum and there's movement and there's forward motion. Suddenly, you're held back, and you're basically posted up and a very vulnerable target.
And also what is vulnerable, of course, is the logistic efforts. As you look at this photo, you can imagine the people having to drive the trucks that water the troops, that bring food to them, that rotate the troops on checkpoints, that move people to different checkpoints every day when they start up business, et cetera, just moving the logistics around in those very predictable patterns, that becomes a very exploitive kind of thing, open for exploitation. So, it's a different kind of operation where suddenly you go from being the hunter to being not necessarily hunted, but certainly not on the offense and not in movement.
O'BRIEN: Tim Crockett, let's assume for a moment there are U.S. forces are right there on the ground in those X's, the tricky part is that the front line can come at you from just about any direction, correct?
TIM CROCKETT, CNN SECURITY CONSULTANT: That is correct. Sort of gone is the traditional linear sort of battlefield. What you have now is a very three-dimensional sort of picture, where an enemy force can engage you from just about anywhere, even an area that's been declared secure.
O'BRIEN: All right, do we have time? We have an animation. I'd like to show it quickly if we could. Let's show the animation if we could, and we'll just sort of walk you through a scenario here.
This shows sort of a typical combat patrol inside an urban environment. What we're depicting here -- I'm not going to stop it here -- is snipers going up, capturing kind of the high ground. Is that typically doctrine, Kelly, if you will, to station snipers all over a city like this?
MCCANN: Well, certainly you want over-watch, and if you look at some of the video footage taken certainly in Basra and again when the U.S. coalition forces were moving into Baghdad, you will see that the snipers are positioned for commanding over-watch positions, where they can engage with surgical precision certain nodes that might be adversarial to the movement of troops. So, it is doctrine to gain and maintain those high ground positions.
O'BRIEN: All right, Tim Crockett, now we're going to show an armored column coming down a street here. In point of fact, this is probably more heavily armored than they are right now. But typically, these patrols would be in things like Bradley Fighting Vehicles and Humvees. In this case, we're depicting an RPG, a rocket-propelled grenade, going after the armor. And the force then -- let's freeze it right here for a moment. The force is faced with a decision. The first thing they do is fire right back at it. What are the rules of engagement typically in a situation like this?
CROCKETT: Again, as Kelly has already sort of mentioned, they've gone from a sort of war fighting operations to a sort of security and stability sort of patrolling as such, I want to say. If (UNINTELLIGIBLE) sort of fire, the rules of engagement are now, we can see, would be self-defense, obviously matching fire with fire in order to prevent any further sort of casualties of their own troops.
O'BRIEN: Kelly McCann, let's talk just briefly here. There is a fine line here between protecting your forces, going after aggressive action, and alienating the population. Do you have the sense that the U.S. forces are being perhaps too ham-handed right now in Baghdad?
MCCANN: No, I think that the anomalies that were Mogadishu and were Beirut are not going to be allowed to occur again, and the adversary here, who are behind all of these, knows that. They know that the more that they kind of irritate and annoy and harass and have attacks, that we're going to have no choice other than to maintain big buffers and become aloof.
O'BRIEN: Tim, final word on that point?
CROCKETT: Yes, I agree in some places, that they are very much sort of fighting a very mobile, almost ghost-like enemy, where they can get attacked from -- or sort of corners of the city, but the rules of engagement are sort of the things that they're conducting. They've got their hands tied. They are going to be very frustrated, confused. Again, a difficult situation.
O'BRIEN: All right, gentlemen, thanks very much. We'll leave it at that point. Kelly McCann, Tim Crockett.
TO ORDER A VIDEO OF THIS TRANSCRIPT, PLEASE CALL 800-CNN-NEWS OR USE OUR SECURE ONLINE ORDER FORM LOCATED AT www.fdch.com.
