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Interview With Retired Colonel James Carafano on the Formation of Iraqi Military

Aired June 27, 2003 - 13:32   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 there are plans for protecting U.S. troops and Iraqi people. The U.S. lead central authority has given new responsibility to police and announced the recruitment of a new Iraqi army. Will this be enough to stem the violence though? Let's ask our guest, retired army Colonel James J. Carafano. He's with the heritage foundation now in Washington. Dr. Carafano, thanks for being with us.
DR. JAMES CARAFANO, HERITAGE FOUNDATION: It's good to be with you.

PHILLIPS: Well let's talk about this process of taking ex Saddam soldiers and making them a part of this new Iraqi army. How does it work? How do you begin? How do you make sure they're not loyalists to Saddam Hussein?

CARAFANO: Well, it's a very difficult, but very, very necessary step. I mean, it's an essential piece for a government to have its own security forces. And for the -- to have future stability in the country. So it's something you absolutely have to do. It's never a quick process. As you said, you have to make sure they're appropriately trained. That they understand what they're doing. That they are not working against the government. It's the right kind of people. That there aren't any Ba'athists. So it's time-consuming. It takes a couple year, even under the best circumstances.

PHILLIPS: How do you do it, though? Do you give lie detector tests? Do you do psychological testing?

CARAFANO: Well, it depends. We're actually getting pretty good at this. We've done it in Bosnia, we've done it in Kosovo, we're doing it in Afghanistan. We contract a lot of this out. So we're getting pretty sophisticated at it. It's a combination of things, a lot of it goes into training, a lot of it goes into observing people during training.

You can also give tests, questionnaires that kind of thing. A lot of it goes into classes, teaching people the proper way to act. And then going through training exercises to report that. And it's never a perfect process. It's just like every police department in the country. You're going find a cop that goes bad. You're going to have the same thing in the military. It's never going to be a perfect system, but it can be pretty good.

PHILLIPS: Is this the answer to better security? Is getting this Iraqi army up and going, to prevent the killings that have been taking place on U.S. soldiers and also Iraqi civilians?

CARAFANO: Well, first of all, it's important to realize that getting the Iraqi security up and running is absolutely vital for the long-term success of that country. In the short term, it's really too early to tell. If, as the evidence suggests, these are remnants of the Ba'athist regime, then I think this is a fairly manageable problem that can be taken care of.

Much as we had, where else, the German 5th column this morning running around after World War II, I mean, you can find these people. You can find the insurrection. You can take it down.

Now, if it turns into a popular uprising and these people have brought support within the country and, more importantly, if they have sanctuaries across the boarder in Syria or Iran where they can go and hide, then you have a long-term protractive conflict that's a very much more difficult problem. And it's unlikely that an Iraqi security force -- nation security force -- that's developed over one or two years will be able to deal with something like that.

PHILLIPS: Just thinking about Saddam's military force, I mean you're talking about 400,000 soldiers. Take me inside the classroom. Take me inside the testing process and just tell me how do you attempt taking on this challenge of just desensitizing these soldiers to years of training on how to deal with things militarily, and reforming them to being a fair Force? I mean, being nonpolitical. I mean, being military effective?

CARAFANO: Well, as I said, it's not -- first of all, it's not a cookbook process. It is culturally sensitive. As you pointed out, these people had long-term indoctrination. But if we go back in history, for example, we did this in Austria. We did this in Germany. We did it in Trieste in Italy.

We took ex-soldiers. We screened out the ones that weren't the leadership. We screened out the ones that weren't the ideologues. Good people who were just interested in serving their country which is, in most countries in the world, a lot of reasons why people join the military. We found those people. We built those -- and you know those militaries, and police forces -- were fairly functional within a few years.

PHILLIPS: All right, retired army Colonel James J. Carafano, thank you so much for your time. We'll continue, of course, to follow up with you on the formation of this new Iraqi army.

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





Formation of Iraqi Military>


Aired June 27, 2003 - 13:32   ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
KYRA PHILLIPS, CNN ANCHOR: Well there are plans for protecting U.S. troops and Iraqi people. The U.S. lead central authority has given new responsibility to police and announced the recruitment of a new Iraqi army. Will this be enough to stem the violence though? Let's ask our guest, retired army Colonel James J. Carafano. He's with the heritage foundation now in Washington. Dr. Carafano, thanks for being with us.
DR. JAMES CARAFANO, HERITAGE FOUNDATION: It's good to be with you.

PHILLIPS: Well let's talk about this process of taking ex Saddam soldiers and making them a part of this new Iraqi army. How does it work? How do you begin? How do you make sure they're not loyalists to Saddam Hussein?

CARAFANO: Well, it's a very difficult, but very, very necessary step. I mean, it's an essential piece for a government to have its own security forces. And for the -- to have future stability in the country. So it's something you absolutely have to do. It's never a quick process. As you said, you have to make sure they're appropriately trained. That they understand what they're doing. That they are not working against the government. It's the right kind of people. That there aren't any Ba'athists. So it's time-consuming. It takes a couple year, even under the best circumstances.

PHILLIPS: How do you do it, though? Do you give lie detector tests? Do you do psychological testing?

CARAFANO: Well, it depends. We're actually getting pretty good at this. We've done it in Bosnia, we've done it in Kosovo, we're doing it in Afghanistan. We contract a lot of this out. So we're getting pretty sophisticated at it. It's a combination of things, a lot of it goes into training, a lot of it goes into observing people during training.

You can also give tests, questionnaires that kind of thing. A lot of it goes into classes, teaching people the proper way to act. And then going through training exercises to report that. And it's never a perfect process. It's just like every police department in the country. You're going find a cop that goes bad. You're going to have the same thing in the military. It's never going to be a perfect system, but it can be pretty good.

PHILLIPS: Is this the answer to better security? Is getting this Iraqi army up and going, to prevent the killings that have been taking place on U.S. soldiers and also Iraqi civilians?

CARAFANO: Well, first of all, it's important to realize that getting the Iraqi security up and running is absolutely vital for the long-term success of that country. In the short term, it's really too early to tell. If, as the evidence suggests, these are remnants of the Ba'athist regime, then I think this is a fairly manageable problem that can be taken care of.

Much as we had, where else, the German 5th column this morning running around after World War II, I mean, you can find these people. You can find the insurrection. You can take it down.

Now, if it turns into a popular uprising and these people have brought support within the country and, more importantly, if they have sanctuaries across the boarder in Syria or Iran where they can go and hide, then you have a long-term protractive conflict that's a very much more difficult problem. And it's unlikely that an Iraqi security force -- nation security force -- that's developed over one or two years will be able to deal with something like that.

PHILLIPS: Just thinking about Saddam's military force, I mean you're talking about 400,000 soldiers. Take me inside the classroom. Take me inside the testing process and just tell me how do you attempt taking on this challenge of just desensitizing these soldiers to years of training on how to deal with things militarily, and reforming them to being a fair Force? I mean, being nonpolitical. I mean, being military effective?

CARAFANO: Well, as I said, it's not -- first of all, it's not a cookbook process. It is culturally sensitive. As you pointed out, these people had long-term indoctrination. But if we go back in history, for example, we did this in Austria. We did this in Germany. We did it in Trieste in Italy.

We took ex-soldiers. We screened out the ones that weren't the leadership. We screened out the ones that weren't the ideologues. Good people who were just interested in serving their country which is, in most countries in the world, a lot of reasons why people join the military. We found those people. We built those -- and you know those militaries, and police forces -- were fairly functional within a few years.

PHILLIPS: All right, retired army Colonel James J. Carafano, thank you so much for your time. We'll continue, of course, to follow up with you on the formation of this new Iraqi army.

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





Formation of Iraqi Military>