Return to Transcripts main page

Live From...

Rocket Blasts, Chaos in Baghdad; Impact of WMD Report

Aired October 07, 2004 - 14:00   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.


(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
BRENT SADLER, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Come on, roll it. Get these lights off and roll it.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

KYRA PHILLIPS, CNN ANCHOR: Suspected insurgent attack, rockets and tracer fire flies through the night sky in Baghdad as CNN's camera is rolling. We're live on the developing story.

MILES O'BRIEN, CNN ANCHOR: The politics of weapons of mass destruction. Moments ago, President Bush talking about a new report. Senator Kerry expected to do the same, live this hour.

PHILLIPS: I'm Kyra Phillips.

O'BRIEN: And I'm Miles O'Brien. This hour of CNN's LIVE FROM begins right now.

PHILLIPS: The hour's top story: rocket blasts, machinegun fire, chaos and commotion in Baghdad. You heard it right, that's not Fallujah, not Samarra, but the Baghdad Sheraton, home base for many western journalists and contractors, today the apparent target of well-armed insurgents.

And Karl Vick with "The Washington Post" is outside the Sheraton hotel right now. He was there when it all went down.

Karl, what can you tell us?

KARL VICK, "THE WASHINGTON POST": Well, I was on the first floor where we have our offices in the Sheraton, standing in the -- it's sort of a balcony. It's sort of - the first six floors of the hotel are built around an atrium. Loud, you know, sudden explosion, obviously fairly close.

I was talking with some of our local Iraqi staff. We all hit the deck together, and it was sort of -- they all piled on me. I feel like (UNINTELLIGIBLE).

And down on the ground, within minutes, a second blast. That one hit the fourth floor. The first one hit room -- room 128 of our -- of the Sheraton, the first and fourth floor. No injuries in either case; everyone's fine.

But the one on the first floor did ignite a fire inside the room which the hotel staff is still sort of struggling to put out. I think it's contained but not extinguished.

PHILLIPS: So Karl, as a journalist, obviously your first instinct is, I've got to cover this, I've got to find out what's going on, I've got to report back. But also, at the same time, it's such a bizarre situation right now in that you've got to also think about your security and figure out what to do and get to a safe place.

How did you find a balance? How did you do both?

VICK: Well, I mean, you're sort of in the story, so there is not too much concern about it getting away from you. You know, the real concern is everyone's safety. And we have, you know, local people working for us and Iraq staff. And they -- and they work for us at great risk in this country.

So -- and, of course, they're all trying to look out for me. I was the only expatriate -- the only foreigner in our officers today. So we sort of got ourselves together, and a couple of the guards went down to help fight the fire. American soldiers were here fairly quickly.

As a journalist, what's interesting about it is that the rocket apparently was a rocket hit a precise room, the only room that I know of on that floor where the U.S. soldiers use. I didn't even know they use it, actually. So one came up and said, "That's our room." So it appears to -- it appears to have had some intelligence and some pretty good aim, unless it was just a really lucky shot.

PHILLIPS: Well, it's definitely a reality check of what you have to live through right now covering that story out of Baghdad. Karl Vick with "The Washington Post." Thanks for checking in with us -- Miles.

O'BRIEN: The whole thing happened right in front of one of CNN's live cameras. Brent Sadler, who is in the midst of doing his job, is there. He joins us now with more on things.

Obviously, things are safer now, Brent. The light's on, you're standing in your familiar spot. Why don't you take us back and walk us through the past few hours.

SADLER: Miles, yes, I was in this location when the attack happened. I turned around, heard a whoosh of a rocket engine. I've been in enough wars to know what a rocket sounds like.

Turned around, saw the tail go behind me and slam into the lower level of the Sheraton hotel. And I can tell you that mayhem broke out pretty soon after that because it was followed up by a second rocket.

I saw that come in, a low projectile approach. Line of site attack, I would certainly say, on the hotel. You could pretty much see where the firing point was.

And then U.S. troops that are in this area began opening fire on what I assume was the firing point. A lot of tracer rounds, red bullets flying past our location. By that time, like Karl Vick, we were lying on the floor.

Pretty exposed here, because I was at the same level as the blast, and they shook me to one side. And then the firefighter broke out, or at least one side of it did from the U.S., pinpointing that mortar position, and then we saw the pictures inside the Sheraton hotel. Obviously no reports of serious casualties.

A fire, and people looking pretty shocked and bewildered. One of the picture showing a wedding dress being carried. The Sheraton not only a place where western journalists and western contractors live, but also a place where people sometimes get married -- Miles.

O'BRIEN: Brent, if the goal here was to send a message to the people of Iraq and, for that matter, the people of the world, the insurgents did a pretty good job in picking the Sheraton as a target, did they not?

SADLER: The Sheraton's been hit several times before, sometimes possibly accidental because rockets have been aimed towards the Green Zone and have clipped the top of the hotel. But no doubt in my mind that these two rocket -- and we understand they could well have been part of a load of more rockets that didn't fire -- was definitely aimed at the Sheraton hotel, which is right next door to our hotel, the Palestine, and very close, Karl was saying.

Karl Vick from "The Washington Post" saying the first floor and the fourth floor pretty accurate rocket fire for a fairly inaccurate weapon, which may well have been detonated by a timing device. That's what we've seen in the past.

But certainly a real wake-up call. And if you liken it to the publicity it gets, you know, a spectacular, because it's right in the center of the city. It involves westerners, it involves U.S. troops -- Miles.

O'BRIEN: And any time the insurgency is able to strike even close to that Green Zone and, of course, amplified by the fact that the media is involved, they've succeeded on a certain level. Just give viewers a sense, if you would, Brent, as to the level of security you're enveloped by, without getting too specific, obviously, and how limited you are right now, and all the other reporters are right now, in your ability to really extend beyond this area.

SADLER: I'm not going to go into numbers of U.S. troops and equipment in this zone. That would be foolhardy. But I can tell you this is one of the relatively safe -- safest areas outside the heavily-fortified Green Zone.

Now, the Green Zone gets hit quite often by rockets and mortars. It only happens in this area from time to time.

In terms of our ability to get out, sure, yes, we can get in our armored vehicles and we can drive to wherever we want. The chances of getting there in one piece, getting back in one piece, well, that's a game Russian roulette, if you like. When you get out there, you never know what you're going to come across. I come and do, you know, dozens of live shots from this location on a day-to-day basis. I've seen nothing of this magnitude so close. Yet it comes out of nowhere, and this is what all Iraqis are living with.

Yes, it's difficult for us to do our jobs. It is unsafe for us to go to the places we would like to go to. But on the broader perspective, it's the unknown, it's the uncertainty of leaving home, going to work and not knowing what you're going to come across. This is part and parcel of the everyday landscape of Iraqi life here in the capital and many other parts of the country.

O'BRIEN: CNN's Brent Sadler in Baghdad, a very dangerous place indeed.

Let's get some more details and insights now from CNN's Barbara Starr. She's watching things unfold from the Pentagon -- Barbara.

BARBARA STARR, CNN PENTAGON CORRESPONDENT: Well, Miles, people watching their TV screens very closely over the last few hours here, seeing how all of this unfolds. And what appears to be unfolding tonight on the streets of Baghdad earlier was the unseen face of the insurgency, but the very public face of the results that they get.

Now, as we all understand it, this hotel being hit by rocket fire, and then relatively quick return machinegun fire by U.S. troops. Seeing it on tape here.

Very interesting to decipher all of this, because these rockets and the return machinegun fire all short-range, close-combat weapons. That is the trademark of the insurgents' capability to draw the U.S. coalition forces into this urban warfare, close-combat scenario, fighting on the streets of Baghdad.

U.S. troops moving quickly to find out where that fire came from, but the insurgents often using that shoot-and-scoot method, disappearing back into the night. And that's really one of the problems now confronting U.S. and coalition forces as they struggle to deal with the insurgency.

You know, we've been showing on our -- on our air for days now the broader counter-insurgency effort to go after them in these cities. Tonight, demonstrating very difficult. They often melt away into the darkness, and very difficult for Iraqi security forces to really maintain firm control in these difficult areas -- Miles.

O'BRIEN: CNN's Barbara Starr in the Pentagon. Thank you very much -- Kyra.

PHILLIPS: Well, our military intelligence analyst, Ken Robinson, has been watching events from our D.C. bureau. He joins us again with some thoughts about what's changing among the insurgency.

When we were talking earlier, Ken, you were focusing on this unified command. A lot of these insurgents, once separated into individual groups, now coming together and working as a bigger force. KEN ROBINSON, CNN MILITARY INTELLIGENCE ANALYST: Yes, Pentagon correspondent Barbara Starr in the last hour had brought up the issue of -- of these Ba'athist insurgent remnants and the numbers of them potentially growing, the number of jihadist foreign fighters who have been coming across the border, who are also there and are very deadly. And this phenomenon of them coming together and unifying, that some coalition senior people are speak of is a two-edged sword. And one of that is, is that if they unify, they can then geographically isolate an area and potentially have more impact.

You know, right now, through this entire conflict over the last year, the barrels per day being produced out of Iraq has not been impacted that much. They've still been pretty successful in getting over two million barrels a day out the door. But if these jihadists come together, or if these former regime loyalists come together, and actually in a unified way can isolate a whole geographic area where some of that pipeline or some infrastructure is impacted, they may present a larger problem.

On the other side, if they all come together in a unified way, many people in the targeting community feel like, well, that's great, because now we are in the NFL, because it is football season. Only this national front for the liberation of Iraq, calling itself an NFL may find itself in a pretty tough fight because it will be easier to target.

PHILLIPS: Ken, looking at this sort of unified command of all these different insurgents coming together, looking at what happened today, striking the Sheraton, the second time in, I guess, about six months or so -- I think that's when the last -- the last hit took place on the Sheraton -- is this so much -- is this more strategy of what we saw today, or was this just a lucky shot?

ROBINSON: Well, you know, we don't know what type of weapon it was. A direct fire weapon is a rifle, where you can point and where the round lands is where you aimed it. An indirect fire weapon is like an artillery piece or a rocket. It's not that precision- oriented.

And so there's no -- there's no way to tell until the forensics tells us what type of weapon it actually was that exploded. The more important issue is the information operations component of this. And that's what they're achieving, is insurgents are saying, we're here, we're on the map, we're in your home town and we're still fighting.

PHILLIPS: Our military intelligence analyst, Ken Robinson, live from Washington. Thanks, Ken.

ROBINSON: Thank you.

PHILLIPS: Miles.

O'BRIEN: We've heard from President Bush on the final report on weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. Coming up in a few moments, we expect to hear from Senator John Kerry on that same report. We'll bring that to you live as it happens. Later on the program, modern images of America's West using 18th century photography. Maybe we should get them a digital camera and save them a lot of trouble.

PHILLIPS: It doesn't look as good.

O'BRIEN: One man's quest -- oh, with Photoshop you can do anything. One man's quest to revive the tin type (ph). Yes, the tin type (ph) is ahead on LIVE FROM.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

PHILLIPS: Now the fallout over those MIA WMD in Iraq. A day after the CIA's chief Iraq weapon sleuth told Congress Saddam Hussein had no contraband weapons and no process for producing any, President Bush says the war was, nonetheless, warranted.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

GEORGE W. BUSH, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: Saddam Hussein was a unique threat, a sworn enemy of our country, a state sponsor of terror operating in the world's most volatile region. In the world after September the 11th, he was a threat we had to confront, and America and the world are safer for our actions.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

PHILLIPS: Well, former top weapons inspector who came to the same conclusions as the author of the new report, Charles Duelfer, agrees that Saddam's Iraq posed a threat to the outside world.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DAVID KAY, FMR. CHIEF U.N. WEAPONS INSPECTOR: In the environment of corruption and decay that was Iraq during the last five years, there was a real danger not so much that Saddam would pass along the secrets of weapons of mass destruction, but scientists and engineers in their desperate desire to better themselves, to keep their families alive, might well have sold those secrets.

Quite frankly, I think the most meaningful conclusion of the Duelfer report is the failure of our intelligence services and the intelligence services of other western countries. We need to take that lesson to heart so a next president does not have to go through the same trauma that this one has, when you turn out your reasons for going to war to be so different than the actual facts.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

PHILLIPS: And deep inside the 1,500-page Duelfer report are some details that didn't make the headlines. They come from confiscated documents and hours of interviews with Saddam Hussein.

For example, Saddam supposedly never gave up hoping for better relations with Washington despite inspections, sanctions and regular run-ins over no-fly zones. Saddam loves American movies and books, especially Hemingway's "The Old Man and the Sea." And he was chronically afraid of a U.S. attack, which is why he'd use a telephone only twice since 1990. He was also afraid of turncoats in his own ranks, which is why he had a special laboratory built just to test his food.

O'BRIEN: Like many of us, experts on weapons of mass destruction and nonproliferation issues are combing through that Duelfer report, seeing what jives with the facts as they know them and what may be a little bit more than spin.

Here to help us put that report in a centrifuge, if you will, and see what is factual and what is not, David Albright, president of the Institute for Science and International Security in Washington.

Mr. Albright, good to have you back with us.

DAVID ALBRIGHT, PRESIDENT, INSTITUTE FOR SCIENCE & INTERNATIONAL SECURITY: Good to be here.

O'BRIEN: Let's talk about the facts for just a moment, do the "Dragnet" stuff, "Just the facts, sir." As you look at that report and look at the real facts on the absence of weapons of mass destruction, and what the program, the state of the program, whatever it may be, does it jive with what you think is real?

ALBRIGHT: Yes, I do. I think it's a very good report that describes a lot of what happened in Iraq. And its -- and you won't find that kind of information anywhere else. So I think it's a very valuable contribution to the public's understanding, and I would encourage everyone to get it and read it.

Where I think there is spin is, is in Charles Duelfer's interpretation and his recommendation or his assessment or -- in fact, his opinion that somehow Saddam was determined and intended to get the WMD, and that the international community was not going to keep sanctions and inspections in place, and would then, in a sense, survive to the day where those things for some reason disappear completely, and then restart all his WMD programs.

O'BRIEN: It seems as if there's a fair amount of speculation, kind of speculation on top of speculation, in some cases, when you get into the mind of Saddam Hussein.

ALBRIGHT: No, that's right. I mean, and some of his top former nuclear weapons experts, like Madi Obeidi (ph), actually in a news report said Saddam Hussein was a lunatic, divorced from reality.

I mean, is this the kind of guy that could outsmart the international community and build nuclear weapons, for example? And it also, very importantly, ignores another central fact which is clearly in this report: Iraq's industrial infrastructure decayed. And if you're looking at nuclear weapons, it could very well have been a decade for Saddam Hussein to get a nuclear weapon, even if he decided to do so. And, in fact, he may not have lived long enough to see a nuclear weapon in Iraq. O'BRIEN: Let's talk about the Oil-For-Food imbroglio, which seems to just get larger by the day. If, in fact, some of these allegation are true, and there's this huge back-channel shady dealings under way which allowed Saddam Hussein to circumvent the strict sanction restrictions on essentially Oil-For-Food -- that's what it was, it's fairly straightforward -- it didn't come out that way -- could that have allowed Saddam Hussein to develop something more sinister?

ALBRIGHT: Well, that was the worry, once the inspectors left in 1998. That that's -- in fact, that was the start of a lot of these bad assessments about WMD, was -- is that there was enough money, because it was well known during 2000, 2001, 2002, that he was getting money through these illegal sales of oil.

And, in fact, and some of them were tolerated by governments such as the United States, because they were going through Jordan, Turkey, vital allies in keeping the sanctions in place and in helping the United States kind of contain Iraq. And so there was knowledge this was happening, there were estimates he was getting a half a billion, a billion dollars a year in illegal oil sales.

Certainly seen as enough to launch a WMD program. But, in fact, he didn't, which I think is quite significant and important finding in this report, was that, despite the opportunity, he didn't do it. And it speaks to the power of the sanctions. And I think when you add in inspections, which started at the end of 2002, you had a regime that was effectively contained.

O'BRIEN: All right. So final thought there, how clear, how present was the danger?

ALBRIGHT: Well, I think it was not a very big danger, and I think David Kay mentioned a point about terrorists getting WMD materials or equipment or information from scientists in Iraq looking for jobs. I think that that was a risk.

Unfortunately, it's still a risk in that we haven't managed to deal with that problem much better now than it could have been dealt with under Saddam. And so I think -- but in terms of Saddam passing these things to terrorists, there weren't any WMD to pass. And I also think that he had no interest in passing secrets about WMD to terrorists because he feared the consequences of if he was caught doing that, that his primary goal, as this report states, was to outlast the sanctions and then try to do something at that point. But I think if he had tried to do that, he would have been caught, and I think the international community would have responded quite vigorously to those kinds of activities.

O'BRIEN: David Albright, we appreciate your perspectives. Thank you very much.

ALBRIGHT: Thank you.

O'BRIEN: Kyra. PHILLIPS: Straight ahead, pretty soon she's going to have a little less free time. The latest on Martha Stewart's last day on the outside.

RHONDA SCHAFFLER, CNN CORRESPONDENT: I'm Rhonda Schaffler, live from the New York Stock Exchange. A new tax bill is making its way through Congress, and guess who's winning big? I'll break it down for you right after the break.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

PHILLIPS: Miles, I've got to tell you, if we were ever to go to prison, look at that, "We love you, Martha." I don't think I've ever heard of a prisoner being welcomed to jail.

O'BRIEN: It's unusual, it is. That's why you see all those satellite trucks there. It's unusual. It would be news.

PHILLIPS: Less than 24 hours from now, one of the most successful media moguls in America enters the oldest women's prison in America with a tremendous welcome sign. Martha Stewart begins her five-month prison sentence tomorrow in West Virginia. She has to report to the Alderson facility before 2:00 p.m., and join the approximately 1,000 inmates already there. Stewart was convicted, as you know, about lying about a stock sale.

O'BRIEN: All right. Inspirational hills of West Virginia for her to ponder there in that gracious, seems like, Georgian stile, with the granite stone.

PHILLIPS: Lots of potential for decorating.

O'BRIEN: Excellent patina. No, actually, decorating is out. I read the rules.

PHILLIPS: Really?

O'BRIEN: You cannot decorate your cell there. Think of that.

Corporate America may soon be getting a big break in the form of some new tax cuts.

PHILLIPS: Rhonda Schaffler joining us live from the New York Stock Exchange with that story.

(STOCK MARKET REPORT)

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

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 October 7, 2004 - 14:00   ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
BRENT SADLER, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Come on, roll it. Get these lights off and roll it.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

KYRA PHILLIPS, CNN ANCHOR: Suspected insurgent attack, rockets and tracer fire flies through the night sky in Baghdad as CNN's camera is rolling. We're live on the developing story.

MILES O'BRIEN, CNN ANCHOR: The politics of weapons of mass destruction. Moments ago, President Bush talking about a new report. Senator Kerry expected to do the same, live this hour.

PHILLIPS: I'm Kyra Phillips.

O'BRIEN: And I'm Miles O'Brien. This hour of CNN's LIVE FROM begins right now.

PHILLIPS: The hour's top story: rocket blasts, machinegun fire, chaos and commotion in Baghdad. You heard it right, that's not Fallujah, not Samarra, but the Baghdad Sheraton, home base for many western journalists and contractors, today the apparent target of well-armed insurgents.

And Karl Vick with "The Washington Post" is outside the Sheraton hotel right now. He was there when it all went down.

Karl, what can you tell us?

KARL VICK, "THE WASHINGTON POST": Well, I was on the first floor where we have our offices in the Sheraton, standing in the -- it's sort of a balcony. It's sort of - the first six floors of the hotel are built around an atrium. Loud, you know, sudden explosion, obviously fairly close.

I was talking with some of our local Iraqi staff. We all hit the deck together, and it was sort of -- they all piled on me. I feel like (UNINTELLIGIBLE).

And down on the ground, within minutes, a second blast. That one hit the fourth floor. The first one hit room -- room 128 of our -- of the Sheraton, the first and fourth floor. No injuries in either case; everyone's fine.

But the one on the first floor did ignite a fire inside the room which the hotel staff is still sort of struggling to put out. I think it's contained but not extinguished.

PHILLIPS: So Karl, as a journalist, obviously your first instinct is, I've got to cover this, I've got to find out what's going on, I've got to report back. But also, at the same time, it's such a bizarre situation right now in that you've got to also think about your security and figure out what to do and get to a safe place.

How did you find a balance? How did you do both?

VICK: Well, I mean, you're sort of in the story, so there is not too much concern about it getting away from you. You know, the real concern is everyone's safety. And we have, you know, local people working for us and Iraq staff. And they -- and they work for us at great risk in this country.

So -- and, of course, they're all trying to look out for me. I was the only expatriate -- the only foreigner in our officers today. So we sort of got ourselves together, and a couple of the guards went down to help fight the fire. American soldiers were here fairly quickly.

As a journalist, what's interesting about it is that the rocket apparently was a rocket hit a precise room, the only room that I know of on that floor where the U.S. soldiers use. I didn't even know they use it, actually. So one came up and said, "That's our room." So it appears to -- it appears to have had some intelligence and some pretty good aim, unless it was just a really lucky shot.

PHILLIPS: Well, it's definitely a reality check of what you have to live through right now covering that story out of Baghdad. Karl Vick with "The Washington Post." Thanks for checking in with us -- Miles.

O'BRIEN: The whole thing happened right in front of one of CNN's live cameras. Brent Sadler, who is in the midst of doing his job, is there. He joins us now with more on things.

Obviously, things are safer now, Brent. The light's on, you're standing in your familiar spot. Why don't you take us back and walk us through the past few hours.

SADLER: Miles, yes, I was in this location when the attack happened. I turned around, heard a whoosh of a rocket engine. I've been in enough wars to know what a rocket sounds like.

Turned around, saw the tail go behind me and slam into the lower level of the Sheraton hotel. And I can tell you that mayhem broke out pretty soon after that because it was followed up by a second rocket.

I saw that come in, a low projectile approach. Line of site attack, I would certainly say, on the hotel. You could pretty much see where the firing point was.

And then U.S. troops that are in this area began opening fire on what I assume was the firing point. A lot of tracer rounds, red bullets flying past our location. By that time, like Karl Vick, we were lying on the floor.

Pretty exposed here, because I was at the same level as the blast, and they shook me to one side. And then the firefighter broke out, or at least one side of it did from the U.S., pinpointing that mortar position, and then we saw the pictures inside the Sheraton hotel. Obviously no reports of serious casualties.

A fire, and people looking pretty shocked and bewildered. One of the picture showing a wedding dress being carried. The Sheraton not only a place where western journalists and western contractors live, but also a place where people sometimes get married -- Miles.

O'BRIEN: Brent, if the goal here was to send a message to the people of Iraq and, for that matter, the people of the world, the insurgents did a pretty good job in picking the Sheraton as a target, did they not?

SADLER: The Sheraton's been hit several times before, sometimes possibly accidental because rockets have been aimed towards the Green Zone and have clipped the top of the hotel. But no doubt in my mind that these two rocket -- and we understand they could well have been part of a load of more rockets that didn't fire -- was definitely aimed at the Sheraton hotel, which is right next door to our hotel, the Palestine, and very close, Karl was saying.

Karl Vick from "The Washington Post" saying the first floor and the fourth floor pretty accurate rocket fire for a fairly inaccurate weapon, which may well have been detonated by a timing device. That's what we've seen in the past.

But certainly a real wake-up call. And if you liken it to the publicity it gets, you know, a spectacular, because it's right in the center of the city. It involves westerners, it involves U.S. troops -- Miles.

O'BRIEN: And any time the insurgency is able to strike even close to that Green Zone and, of course, amplified by the fact that the media is involved, they've succeeded on a certain level. Just give viewers a sense, if you would, Brent, as to the level of security you're enveloped by, without getting too specific, obviously, and how limited you are right now, and all the other reporters are right now, in your ability to really extend beyond this area.

SADLER: I'm not going to go into numbers of U.S. troops and equipment in this zone. That would be foolhardy. But I can tell you this is one of the relatively safe -- safest areas outside the heavily-fortified Green Zone.

Now, the Green Zone gets hit quite often by rockets and mortars. It only happens in this area from time to time.

In terms of our ability to get out, sure, yes, we can get in our armored vehicles and we can drive to wherever we want. The chances of getting there in one piece, getting back in one piece, well, that's a game Russian roulette, if you like. When you get out there, you never know what you're going to come across. I come and do, you know, dozens of live shots from this location on a day-to-day basis. I've seen nothing of this magnitude so close. Yet it comes out of nowhere, and this is what all Iraqis are living with.

Yes, it's difficult for us to do our jobs. It is unsafe for us to go to the places we would like to go to. But on the broader perspective, it's the unknown, it's the uncertainty of leaving home, going to work and not knowing what you're going to come across. This is part and parcel of the everyday landscape of Iraqi life here in the capital and many other parts of the country.

O'BRIEN: CNN's Brent Sadler in Baghdad, a very dangerous place indeed.

Let's get some more details and insights now from CNN's Barbara Starr. She's watching things unfold from the Pentagon -- Barbara.

BARBARA STARR, CNN PENTAGON CORRESPONDENT: Well, Miles, people watching their TV screens very closely over the last few hours here, seeing how all of this unfolds. And what appears to be unfolding tonight on the streets of Baghdad earlier was the unseen face of the insurgency, but the very public face of the results that they get.

Now, as we all understand it, this hotel being hit by rocket fire, and then relatively quick return machinegun fire by U.S. troops. Seeing it on tape here.

Very interesting to decipher all of this, because these rockets and the return machinegun fire all short-range, close-combat weapons. That is the trademark of the insurgents' capability to draw the U.S. coalition forces into this urban warfare, close-combat scenario, fighting on the streets of Baghdad.

U.S. troops moving quickly to find out where that fire came from, but the insurgents often using that shoot-and-scoot method, disappearing back into the night. And that's really one of the problems now confronting U.S. and coalition forces as they struggle to deal with the insurgency.

You know, we've been showing on our -- on our air for days now the broader counter-insurgency effort to go after them in these cities. Tonight, demonstrating very difficult. They often melt away into the darkness, and very difficult for Iraqi security forces to really maintain firm control in these difficult areas -- Miles.

O'BRIEN: CNN's Barbara Starr in the Pentagon. Thank you very much -- Kyra.

PHILLIPS: Well, our military intelligence analyst, Ken Robinson, has been watching events from our D.C. bureau. He joins us again with some thoughts about what's changing among the insurgency.

When we were talking earlier, Ken, you were focusing on this unified command. A lot of these insurgents, once separated into individual groups, now coming together and working as a bigger force. KEN ROBINSON, CNN MILITARY INTELLIGENCE ANALYST: Yes, Pentagon correspondent Barbara Starr in the last hour had brought up the issue of -- of these Ba'athist insurgent remnants and the numbers of them potentially growing, the number of jihadist foreign fighters who have been coming across the border, who are also there and are very deadly. And this phenomenon of them coming together and unifying, that some coalition senior people are speak of is a two-edged sword. And one of that is, is that if they unify, they can then geographically isolate an area and potentially have more impact.

You know, right now, through this entire conflict over the last year, the barrels per day being produced out of Iraq has not been impacted that much. They've still been pretty successful in getting over two million barrels a day out the door. But if these jihadists come together, or if these former regime loyalists come together, and actually in a unified way can isolate a whole geographic area where some of that pipeline or some infrastructure is impacted, they may present a larger problem.

On the other side, if they all come together in a unified way, many people in the targeting community feel like, well, that's great, because now we are in the NFL, because it is football season. Only this national front for the liberation of Iraq, calling itself an NFL may find itself in a pretty tough fight because it will be easier to target.

PHILLIPS: Ken, looking at this sort of unified command of all these different insurgents coming together, looking at what happened today, striking the Sheraton, the second time in, I guess, about six months or so -- I think that's when the last -- the last hit took place on the Sheraton -- is this so much -- is this more strategy of what we saw today, or was this just a lucky shot?

ROBINSON: Well, you know, we don't know what type of weapon it was. A direct fire weapon is a rifle, where you can point and where the round lands is where you aimed it. An indirect fire weapon is like an artillery piece or a rocket. It's not that precision- oriented.

And so there's no -- there's no way to tell until the forensics tells us what type of weapon it actually was that exploded. The more important issue is the information operations component of this. And that's what they're achieving, is insurgents are saying, we're here, we're on the map, we're in your home town and we're still fighting.

PHILLIPS: Our military intelligence analyst, Ken Robinson, live from Washington. Thanks, Ken.

ROBINSON: Thank you.

PHILLIPS: Miles.

O'BRIEN: We've heard from President Bush on the final report on weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. Coming up in a few moments, we expect to hear from Senator John Kerry on that same report. We'll bring that to you live as it happens. Later on the program, modern images of America's West using 18th century photography. Maybe we should get them a digital camera and save them a lot of trouble.

PHILLIPS: It doesn't look as good.

O'BRIEN: One man's quest -- oh, with Photoshop you can do anything. One man's quest to revive the tin type (ph). Yes, the tin type (ph) is ahead on LIVE FROM.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

PHILLIPS: Now the fallout over those MIA WMD in Iraq. A day after the CIA's chief Iraq weapon sleuth told Congress Saddam Hussein had no contraband weapons and no process for producing any, President Bush says the war was, nonetheless, warranted.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

GEORGE W. BUSH, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: Saddam Hussein was a unique threat, a sworn enemy of our country, a state sponsor of terror operating in the world's most volatile region. In the world after September the 11th, he was a threat we had to confront, and America and the world are safer for our actions.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

PHILLIPS: Well, former top weapons inspector who came to the same conclusions as the author of the new report, Charles Duelfer, agrees that Saddam's Iraq posed a threat to the outside world.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DAVID KAY, FMR. CHIEF U.N. WEAPONS INSPECTOR: In the environment of corruption and decay that was Iraq during the last five years, there was a real danger not so much that Saddam would pass along the secrets of weapons of mass destruction, but scientists and engineers in their desperate desire to better themselves, to keep their families alive, might well have sold those secrets.

Quite frankly, I think the most meaningful conclusion of the Duelfer report is the failure of our intelligence services and the intelligence services of other western countries. We need to take that lesson to heart so a next president does not have to go through the same trauma that this one has, when you turn out your reasons for going to war to be so different than the actual facts.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

PHILLIPS: And deep inside the 1,500-page Duelfer report are some details that didn't make the headlines. They come from confiscated documents and hours of interviews with Saddam Hussein.

For example, Saddam supposedly never gave up hoping for better relations with Washington despite inspections, sanctions and regular run-ins over no-fly zones. Saddam loves American movies and books, especially Hemingway's "The Old Man and the Sea." And he was chronically afraid of a U.S. attack, which is why he'd use a telephone only twice since 1990. He was also afraid of turncoats in his own ranks, which is why he had a special laboratory built just to test his food.

O'BRIEN: Like many of us, experts on weapons of mass destruction and nonproliferation issues are combing through that Duelfer report, seeing what jives with the facts as they know them and what may be a little bit more than spin.

Here to help us put that report in a centrifuge, if you will, and see what is factual and what is not, David Albright, president of the Institute for Science and International Security in Washington.

Mr. Albright, good to have you back with us.

DAVID ALBRIGHT, PRESIDENT, INSTITUTE FOR SCIENCE & INTERNATIONAL SECURITY: Good to be here.

O'BRIEN: Let's talk about the facts for just a moment, do the "Dragnet" stuff, "Just the facts, sir." As you look at that report and look at the real facts on the absence of weapons of mass destruction, and what the program, the state of the program, whatever it may be, does it jive with what you think is real?

ALBRIGHT: Yes, I do. I think it's a very good report that describes a lot of what happened in Iraq. And its -- and you won't find that kind of information anywhere else. So I think it's a very valuable contribution to the public's understanding, and I would encourage everyone to get it and read it.

Where I think there is spin is, is in Charles Duelfer's interpretation and his recommendation or his assessment or -- in fact, his opinion that somehow Saddam was determined and intended to get the WMD, and that the international community was not going to keep sanctions and inspections in place, and would then, in a sense, survive to the day where those things for some reason disappear completely, and then restart all his WMD programs.

O'BRIEN: It seems as if there's a fair amount of speculation, kind of speculation on top of speculation, in some cases, when you get into the mind of Saddam Hussein.

ALBRIGHT: No, that's right. I mean, and some of his top former nuclear weapons experts, like Madi Obeidi (ph), actually in a news report said Saddam Hussein was a lunatic, divorced from reality.

I mean, is this the kind of guy that could outsmart the international community and build nuclear weapons, for example? And it also, very importantly, ignores another central fact which is clearly in this report: Iraq's industrial infrastructure decayed. And if you're looking at nuclear weapons, it could very well have been a decade for Saddam Hussein to get a nuclear weapon, even if he decided to do so. And, in fact, he may not have lived long enough to see a nuclear weapon in Iraq. O'BRIEN: Let's talk about the Oil-For-Food imbroglio, which seems to just get larger by the day. If, in fact, some of these allegation are true, and there's this huge back-channel shady dealings under way which allowed Saddam Hussein to circumvent the strict sanction restrictions on essentially Oil-For-Food -- that's what it was, it's fairly straightforward -- it didn't come out that way -- could that have allowed Saddam Hussein to develop something more sinister?

ALBRIGHT: Well, that was the worry, once the inspectors left in 1998. That that's -- in fact, that was the start of a lot of these bad assessments about WMD, was -- is that there was enough money, because it was well known during 2000, 2001, 2002, that he was getting money through these illegal sales of oil.

And, in fact, and some of them were tolerated by governments such as the United States, because they were going through Jordan, Turkey, vital allies in keeping the sanctions in place and in helping the United States kind of contain Iraq. And so there was knowledge this was happening, there were estimates he was getting a half a billion, a billion dollars a year in illegal oil sales.

Certainly seen as enough to launch a WMD program. But, in fact, he didn't, which I think is quite significant and important finding in this report, was that, despite the opportunity, he didn't do it. And it speaks to the power of the sanctions. And I think when you add in inspections, which started at the end of 2002, you had a regime that was effectively contained.

O'BRIEN: All right. So final thought there, how clear, how present was the danger?

ALBRIGHT: Well, I think it was not a very big danger, and I think David Kay mentioned a point about terrorists getting WMD materials or equipment or information from scientists in Iraq looking for jobs. I think that that was a risk.

Unfortunately, it's still a risk in that we haven't managed to deal with that problem much better now than it could have been dealt with under Saddam. And so I think -- but in terms of Saddam passing these things to terrorists, there weren't any WMD to pass. And I also think that he had no interest in passing secrets about WMD to terrorists because he feared the consequences of if he was caught doing that, that his primary goal, as this report states, was to outlast the sanctions and then try to do something at that point. But I think if he had tried to do that, he would have been caught, and I think the international community would have responded quite vigorously to those kinds of activities.

O'BRIEN: David Albright, we appreciate your perspectives. Thank you very much.

ALBRIGHT: Thank you.

O'BRIEN: Kyra. PHILLIPS: Straight ahead, pretty soon she's going to have a little less free time. The latest on Martha Stewart's last day on the outside.

RHONDA SCHAFFLER, CNN CORRESPONDENT: I'm Rhonda Schaffler, live from the New York Stock Exchange. A new tax bill is making its way through Congress, and guess who's winning big? I'll break it down for you right after the break.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

PHILLIPS: Miles, I've got to tell you, if we were ever to go to prison, look at that, "We love you, Martha." I don't think I've ever heard of a prisoner being welcomed to jail.

O'BRIEN: It's unusual, it is. That's why you see all those satellite trucks there. It's unusual. It would be news.

PHILLIPS: Less than 24 hours from now, one of the most successful media moguls in America enters the oldest women's prison in America with a tremendous welcome sign. Martha Stewart begins her five-month prison sentence tomorrow in West Virginia. She has to report to the Alderson facility before 2:00 p.m., and join the approximately 1,000 inmates already there. Stewart was convicted, as you know, about lying about a stock sale.

O'BRIEN: All right. Inspirational hills of West Virginia for her to ponder there in that gracious, seems like, Georgian stile, with the granite stone.

PHILLIPS: Lots of potential for decorating.

O'BRIEN: Excellent patina. No, actually, decorating is out. I read the rules.

PHILLIPS: Really?

O'BRIEN: You cannot decorate your cell there. Think of that.

Corporate America may soon be getting a big break in the form of some new tax cuts.

PHILLIPS: Rhonda Schaffler joining us live from the New York Stock Exchange with that story.

(STOCK MARKET REPORT)

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

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