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CNN Live Today
Discussion with Mike Turner
Aired March 20, 2003 - 11:25 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.
PAULA ZAHN, CNN ANCHOR: Joining us right now is Mike Turner, Colonel Mike Turner who once played a very important role in briefing General Norman Schwarzkopf. He's been monitoring this news conference as well. What do you think is the most important thing you learned?
COL. MIKE TURNER, U.S. AIR FORCE (RET.): Well, Paula, I think what's critical is what Secretary Rumsfeld alluded to as essentially the difference between this war and any previous war. Now he was speaking entirely in military dimension and that's certainly true. We were a conventional army fighting a conventional army deployed in the field.
But I would expand it beyond that to the larger strategic objectives of the two sides. Our objectives here are principally military, and in as much as he is the head of the Iraqi military, it's a purely military objective to remove him from power. On the other hand, I have to believe faced with the awesome might of what he's facing that Saddam's objective is almost entirely political. For that reason, he seeks to achieve a political victory and inflict a foreign policy and a political defeat on the United States, which takes on a different dimension. It moves to the top of his objective list destroying his oil fields, inflicting casualties on his own civilian population, certainly striking Israel if he has the capacity to do that and destroying his own infrastructure. If he is going to somehow think that he is going to survive an exile, then a political victory against the United States would position him to have some hope of survival.
ZAHN: Let's talk a little bit about what the secretary of defense didn't say about what happened last night. He said the damage estimate is pending on that small complex where it is believed that the Iraqi military leadership and perhaps political leadership were meeting. What did you read between the lines about Saddam Hussein's fate? He said there is a debate whether the tape we saw last night was the real thing or not.
TURNER: Well, I think Secretary Rumsfeld and the chairman are very careful about expectations, about predictions and about departing from known facts. As in a fast-breaking crisis, and I remember quite clearly during Desert Storm, we would hear the raw data come into the desks and we would present that to the senior leadership and then we would watch how it was reported on television. And very often it was accurate, though limited. Sometimes it was off the mark. And because they are in the process of trying to execute a very complex military operation, it is simply disadvantageous to the senior military leadership to try and project what might or might not have happened. And he's sticking to the facts. And I think that's a very safe and prudent thing to do when troops are about to go in harm's way.
ZAHN: The team that was asked a very pointed question about saying all along that Saddam Hussein wasn't the target of the war. And General Myers said. look, the regime command and control is a legitimate target in a war. If Saddam Hussein isn't captured or killed, do you think the public perception would be that this war had been a failure?
TURNER: I don't -- I don't know that that's the case. We really need to be careful about predictions in this kind of a fluid and dynamic environment. So, however, we choose to define him leaving and being removed from power, would be essentially a total success for the United States.
Legitimately, I don't know how Saddam Hussein can, at this point, honestly believe that he would not have to leave one way or another at some time in the very near future. He is very unpredictable. It's very difficult to try and attribute any sort of rational logic process to Saddam Hussein, which of course is why he's so dangerous. But I think he needs to leave, as the president has clearly stated, and that needs to be the outcome for us to be able to clear a victory.
ZAHN: Colonel Turner, having worked alongside General Schwarzkopf during Desert Storm, I'd love for you to put this into perspective. It's something that senator -- excuse me, that Secretary Rumsfeld mentioned this morning, that there are 35 nations united in this effort, in addition to some nations that are working on this privately, and he said the coalition is much bigger than the coalition formed in 1991.
TURNER: Yeah, that gave me pause. We had a viable, solid Arab coalition. We had Arab units on the ground. It was a clear case of Arab aggression against a fellow Arab state, and it's difficult to, you know, it comes down to quality versus quantity. The Arab populations around the world understood what we were doing, agreed with what we were doing in 1991. This is -- I would have to say is a profoundly different political mix. Perhaps the numbers count is higher. But you really need to look at the substantive support from the Arab community and Arab street in this operation as compared to Desert Storm. And it's a profoundly different political mix. I think.
ZAHN: Which brings me to a final thought that I'd like you to react to. When Secretary Rumsfeld said and claimed this is not a war against a people, a country or religion, it is a war against a regime. Who needs to hear that message?
TURNER: I think Arab populations worldwide need to do that. We need to be very careful in this operation that we do not somehow empower al Qaeda and Arab -- the Arab terrorist movement around the world. It is essential that we make it very clear to the Arab populations around the world that this is a very precisely targeted military operation against a rogue regime and in no way allow it to spill over into the larger dimension of politics in the region and globally and the war on terrorism.
There is a reason Saddam Hussein specifically referred to zionism and to the Palestinians last night in his speech. It is to his political advantage to somehow create a political link between our operations here and the Arab-Israeli conflict, which is the core issue in the war against terrorism. And that can be lost in the shuffle here of this campaign.
ZAHN: Colonel Mike Turner, thank you very much for your insights this morning. We really appreciate your joining us.
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 20, 2003 - 11:25 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
PAULA ZAHN, CNN ANCHOR: Joining us right now is Mike Turner, Colonel Mike Turner who once played a very important role in briefing General Norman Schwarzkopf. He's been monitoring this news conference as well. What do you think is the most important thing you learned?
COL. MIKE TURNER, U.S. AIR FORCE (RET.): Well, Paula, I think what's critical is what Secretary Rumsfeld alluded to as essentially the difference between this war and any previous war. Now he was speaking entirely in military dimension and that's certainly true. We were a conventional army fighting a conventional army deployed in the field.
But I would expand it beyond that to the larger strategic objectives of the two sides. Our objectives here are principally military, and in as much as he is the head of the Iraqi military, it's a purely military objective to remove him from power. On the other hand, I have to believe faced with the awesome might of what he's facing that Saddam's objective is almost entirely political. For that reason, he seeks to achieve a political victory and inflict a foreign policy and a political defeat on the United States, which takes on a different dimension. It moves to the top of his objective list destroying his oil fields, inflicting casualties on his own civilian population, certainly striking Israel if he has the capacity to do that and destroying his own infrastructure. If he is going to somehow think that he is going to survive an exile, then a political victory against the United States would position him to have some hope of survival.
ZAHN: Let's talk a little bit about what the secretary of defense didn't say about what happened last night. He said the damage estimate is pending on that small complex where it is believed that the Iraqi military leadership and perhaps political leadership were meeting. What did you read between the lines about Saddam Hussein's fate? He said there is a debate whether the tape we saw last night was the real thing or not.
TURNER: Well, I think Secretary Rumsfeld and the chairman are very careful about expectations, about predictions and about departing from known facts. As in a fast-breaking crisis, and I remember quite clearly during Desert Storm, we would hear the raw data come into the desks and we would present that to the senior leadership and then we would watch how it was reported on television. And very often it was accurate, though limited. Sometimes it was off the mark. And because they are in the process of trying to execute a very complex military operation, it is simply disadvantageous to the senior military leadership to try and project what might or might not have happened. And he's sticking to the facts. And I think that's a very safe and prudent thing to do when troops are about to go in harm's way.
ZAHN: The team that was asked a very pointed question about saying all along that Saddam Hussein wasn't the target of the war. And General Myers said. look, the regime command and control is a legitimate target in a war. If Saddam Hussein isn't captured or killed, do you think the public perception would be that this war had been a failure?
TURNER: I don't -- I don't know that that's the case. We really need to be careful about predictions in this kind of a fluid and dynamic environment. So, however, we choose to define him leaving and being removed from power, would be essentially a total success for the United States.
Legitimately, I don't know how Saddam Hussein can, at this point, honestly believe that he would not have to leave one way or another at some time in the very near future. He is very unpredictable. It's very difficult to try and attribute any sort of rational logic process to Saddam Hussein, which of course is why he's so dangerous. But I think he needs to leave, as the president has clearly stated, and that needs to be the outcome for us to be able to clear a victory.
ZAHN: Colonel Turner, having worked alongside General Schwarzkopf during Desert Storm, I'd love for you to put this into perspective. It's something that senator -- excuse me, that Secretary Rumsfeld mentioned this morning, that there are 35 nations united in this effort, in addition to some nations that are working on this privately, and he said the coalition is much bigger than the coalition formed in 1991.
TURNER: Yeah, that gave me pause. We had a viable, solid Arab coalition. We had Arab units on the ground. It was a clear case of Arab aggression against a fellow Arab state, and it's difficult to, you know, it comes down to quality versus quantity. The Arab populations around the world understood what we were doing, agreed with what we were doing in 1991. This is -- I would have to say is a profoundly different political mix. Perhaps the numbers count is higher. But you really need to look at the substantive support from the Arab community and Arab street in this operation as compared to Desert Storm. And it's a profoundly different political mix. I think.
ZAHN: Which brings me to a final thought that I'd like you to react to. When Secretary Rumsfeld said and claimed this is not a war against a people, a country or religion, it is a war against a regime. Who needs to hear that message?
TURNER: I think Arab populations worldwide need to do that. We need to be very careful in this operation that we do not somehow empower al Qaeda and Arab -- the Arab terrorist movement around the world. It is essential that we make it very clear to the Arab populations around the world that this is a very precisely targeted military operation against a rogue regime and in no way allow it to spill over into the larger dimension of politics in the region and globally and the war on terrorism.
There is a reason Saddam Hussein specifically referred to zionism and to the Palestinians last night in his speech. It is to his political advantage to somehow create a political link between our operations here and the Arab-Israeli conflict, which is the core issue in the war against terrorism. And that can be lost in the shuffle here of this campaign.
ZAHN: Colonel Mike Turner, thank you very much for your insights this morning. We really appreciate your joining us.
TO ORDER A VIDEO OF THIS TRANSCRIPT, PLEASE CALL 800-CNN-NEWS OR USE OUR SECURE ONLINE ORDER FORM LOCATED AT www.fdch.com
