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Multiple Rounds Hit Dining Hall Near Mosul, Killing at Least 22
Aired December 21, 2004 - 10:30 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.
DARYN KAGAN, CNN ANCHOR: Welcome back to CNN LIVE TODAY. Along with Tony Harris, sitting in for Rick Sanchez. I'm Daryn Kagan.
Want to get back to our developing story, and this coming out of Mosul, Iraq. An attack, multiple rounds hitting a dining hall, a U.S. military base near Mosul, 22 dead, as we know right now, many as 51 people wounded in this incident.
Let's go to the Pentagon. Our Elaine Quijano standing by with more -- Elaine.
ELAINE QUIJANO, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Hello to you, Daryn.
Well, just recapping what you just said, again, 4:00 a.m. Eastern Time is what Pentagon officials are saying was the time of this attack. Again, 22 people dead, 51 wounded, when an unknown number of rounds, explosive rounds, hit a dining hall. This happening at the forward-operating base Merez, this near Mosul.
Now we also want to update or correct some numbers given to us by Army officials. Army officials giving us corrected numbers now, talking about Task Force Olympia, saying that 8,500 U.S. troops are within Task Force Olympia. Also that Striker Brigade that we mentioned, 3,500 troops, we are told, from Fort Lewis, Washington.
But again, Pentagon officials saying they're obviously continuing to gather information, but again, the latest numbers they have, 22 people dead, 51 wounded -- Daryn.
KAGAN: Among those dead and wounded, not only U.S. military personnel, but Iraqi national guard and civilians, as well?
QUIJANO: That's right. U.S. troops, Iraqi civilians, as you mentioned, and Iraqi national guard. And we should mention, of course, Iraqi national guard, Iraqi forces have been, in fact, working in that particular area, but we haven't been able to pin down exactly what the size of that force is. We should also say that Mosul had been an area that had been relatively calm. At one point after the initial invasion, the 101st was in charge there, helping to get projects under way. But ever since the Falluja offensive, there has been an uptick of violence in that area. And again, we see now more violence today -- Daryn.
KAGAN: Elaine Quijano at the Pentagon. Thank you.
Of course, even before the war last year, we've had a number of our CNN personnel, our journalists, our photographers, embedded with the U.S. military. That includes one of our photographers actually been in the dining hall that was attacked today. He's in Baghdad now, and he's with our Karl Penhaul -- Karl.
KARL PENHAUL, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Hi there, Daryn. I wanted to bring in straightaway Gabe Ramirez. Now Gabe, a CNN cameraman, was up in Mosul about three weeks ago. That was when the coalition forces were staging an offensive on insurgents there. That was going on more or less simultaneously to operations in Falluja, because there was a fear that the insurgents in Mosul were staging rear guard attacks there to try to divert some of the coalition firepower away from Falluja. Gabe had been at Camp Merez. Tell us a little bit about that dining facility, Gabe. What do you remember?
GABE RAMIREZ, CNN PHOTOGRAPHER: I remember I had to spend the night on transit to meet Nic Robertson there, and I remember eating dinner and breakfast there, and both times the dining facility was quite full. It was large, maybe the size of a football field, I would almost compare it to, and with 400 or 500 soldiers at any given time eating a meal there.
PENHAUL: What kind of a construction was it and how many people would be in there typically?
RAMIREZ: It was a large soft-skin structure, big convention type tent thing that you would see maybe at the side of a Super Bowl party, something like that. It was definitely temporary, nothing permanent about it. It was quite comfortable. When you were in there, you felt like you were back at the states eating a meal at a cafeteria with a bunch of U.S. soldiers, maybe 400 or 500 eating there at any given time.
PENHAUL: What kind of people would be in there? Because we heard the victims of today's attack were probably a mixture of U.S. military, Iraqi national guard and possibly even some contractors.
RAMIREZ: Definitely. Definitely. Mostly U.S. soldiers, at least when I was there, U.S. soldiers, a mixture of Iraqi national guards also there, quite a few U.S. civilian contractors. It struck me that there were so many Western -- or Western civilian contractors there, some of whom looked like they could be the parents of the soldiers that were eating there. It was quite an unusual experience.
PENHAUL: So this was a large soft-skin building where soldiers would gather en masse at certain times of day on a base that came under regular harassing fire from the insurgents? Did any of the soldiers seem to think they were at risk?
RAMIREZ: Well, after I left Merez, not too far, maybe 15 or 20 minutes away from Merez, Camp Freedom, or FOB (ph) Freedom, a soldier there remarked to me, as we were eating lunch, motors (sic) fell outside the dining facility. And as he remarked to me just after that, that at he thought that it was just a matter of time before something hit inside the facility. So yes, I think that they were -- this is probably not a surprise to the soldiers there on the ground. PENHAUL: That was Gabe Ramirez, Daryn. He was up in Mosul at the particular dining facility that was hit today by an explosion. Gabe was up there about three weeks ago now during a coalition offensive against insurgents there.
KAGAN: And, Karl, a good reminder that people see our faces on the screen, though we have a lot of people that we work with out in the field, and I know that you know that, too, photographers, and producers and technical staff that are risking their lives in the field as well. So thank you to Gabe. Pass that along. And we'll be back to you -- Tony.
TONY HARRIS, CNN ANCHOR: OK, Daryn, we're just getting word as we bring in retired Major General Don Sheppard of the Air Force National Guard -- and, general, we're just getting word just a reminder from the Pentagon that this attack occurred at noon in Iraq, and this attack occurred at a time when that facility would have been filled with people, just packed with people. It almost sounds like a bit of a heads-up that the casualty count might rise as the day proceeds there.
Give us your sense of this attack, how coordinated it sounds to you. Or was it kind of a hit or miss that in this case tragically was a hit?
MAJ. GEN. DON SHEPPERD, (RET.) U.S. AIR FORCE: Tony, I think the latter is probably the case. It doesn't take a lot of coordination to lob mortar or rocket rounds into an area such as a base camp or a camp such as we have over there. Just like you're seeing in the cameraman that was just on, I've been in those mess halls over there. They're soft-skin facilities. At meal time, there's a lot of people gathered in there. And these rounds, whether they're rockets or mortars, they're notoriously inaccurate, but they can do a lot of damage when they hit in the middle of a soldier. So probably a lucky hit. But lobbed in at mealtime doesn't take a lot of coordination or common sense to say if you hit something, you're going to kill a lot of people.
HARRIS: General, at this point we're 21 months into this war in Iraq. And the insurgency shows no sign of waning. Give us your thoughts on the critical question, how do we get control of this situation? How do we get control over this insurgency in that country?
SHEPPERD: Tony, we don't. The key is that the Iraqis are going to have to take responsibility for their own security. Having the United States rush more troops over to provide security across this country, a large country of 25 million people, is simply not the answer.
What we're trying to do is train Iraqis rapidly and have them take over responsibility. And so far, we have not seen a lot of encouraging things happen. In the case of Mosul up there, the troops basically cut and run when they came under attack. About 5,000 people involved in security from the Iraqi side across that city. So again, the idea of us staying a long time and providing security across the nation is simply not in the cards. They're going to have to do it, and we don't see the tipping point that's happening yet. It's a little discouraging.
HARRIS: And yet we've got to help them. We've got to train them. We've got to prepare them to be able to do the job that you described. So the question of how long we will be there is really open-ended, isn't it?
SHEPPERD: It really is. And the American public, that's the other tipping point we have to watch for. How long will the American public stick with this when our kids are getting killed every day? And it does not look like there's light at the end of the tunnel. We have to not only train these troops, but we have to equip them, and then they have to work together long enough that they see some success, and that does take a lot of time, and it takes a lot of American troops to do that. Right now the American troops, of course, are going to be involved in making sure that the polling places are secure, because it's very clear this election is going to take place. And the other thing we have to watch, of course, is that the Sunnis vote. If the Sunnis boycott this election and stay away, it becomes a meaningless vote.
HARRIS: Let me stay on the tactical side for just a moment. You're a general; you know about strategy and tactics here. What are you looking for? What do you want to see that will indicate to you that we've turned a corner here, and that the Iraqi forces over there are starting to get this?
SHEPPERD: Yes, I want to see the number of attacks nationwide go down, and that can happen as the Iraqis take over and become responsible for their own security. We saw a diminution in the number of attacks across the country after Falluja for a short period of time. And now they're picking up again. So what I'm really watching is the number of attacks out there. And also, they're not usually attacking U.S. forces. This is an aberration. They're attacking Iraqi civilians, which are easy targets. Every time they attack us they're getting hammered.
HARRIS: You got a sense that they're trying to foment just some sense of a civil war, Sunnis against Shia? is that your sense? Or do you feel something else is going on here that we may be missing?
SHEPPERD: Well, I think two things, probably three. The Sunnis, that are mainly responsible for this insurgency, and the former Baathists are out there and they're trying to make sure that they take over power again or at least they have a major voice in this new government. That's one of the things they're trying to do. If it takes civil war, they'll do it. They also want us gone, so they can go back to their old ways.
So I think they have multiple aims in doing this type of thing, and it's going to be a race to see if they're successful, whether we stick it out or whether they're able to go back to their old ways. HARRIS: Are our soldiers equipped for this kind of battle that we're seeing now? This guerrilla war, this hit-and-miss insurgency? They're having to be highly trained, highly disciplined fighting forces, and then they're having to be basically the police in a number of these cities.
SHEPPERD: Yes. And the reconstruction efforts, as well, thrown on top of that. It's a very difficult situation. A guerrilla war is the most difficult. We are very good at the large-force tactics in a major war. such as we saw, taking Baghdad, coming in from the south. But this insurgency lasts many years, and it's very easy to plan an explosive or lob a rocket or mortar in. There seems to be no end to that type of thing. Our soldiers are well equipped, they're well trained. They know how to do this. And their equipment, despite all the things we've seen recently on the up-arming of their vehicles, their equipment is very, very good, but when you hit people in the right place at the right time, such as a dining hall in a soft facility at lunch, it's going to be tough, they're going to be casualties.
HARRIS: General Sheppard, stay with us as we continue to follow this story this morning. We appreciate it -- Daryn.
SHEPPERD: You bet.
KAGAN: Want to put today's attack in some perspective, other events taking in place. And for that, we welcome back Ken Pollack, analyst with the Brookings Institution, knows the area and has been there many times.
Ken, welcome back.
KEN POLLACK, BROOKINGS INSTITUTION: Thank you, Daryn. Good to be here.
KAGAN: Let's talk about these elections that are set and it looks like Iraqi officials determined to have five weeks from now.
POLLACK: Yes, at this point in time, it looks like there's no point stopping the elections, and obviously there's good and bad. It would be hard, honestly, to stop the elections at this point in time. And in particular, you do va lot of Iraqis, in particular some very important Shia, like Ayatollah Sistani, who have made clear they want to see these elections happen, because they've just been very skeptical of the course of political reconstruction, and they want to see their people in charge. They believe the elections will do that.
But by the same token, you've heard people all morning long voicing real concerns about these elections. I share those concerns, and I actually have some we haven't even talked about, like whether the political system that the Iraqis are thinking about putting in place is going to be the right one for Iraq. I think there's a very strong argument to be made that the political system the Iraqis are thinking of using could be the worst one for them. It could reinforce the fragmentation and the polarization of their society. But at this point in time, the elections are going to go ahead, and I think we just have to cross our fingers and hope that they're going to turn out well.
KAGAN: So are you saying that the very efforts that are being to try to include groups, try to include the Shia, the Sunnis, the Kurds to give everybody a voice is actually just going to fragment this society and make it impossible for it to work together?
POLLACK: Potentially. I think you have a first-order problem, which is I don't think that you're going to get a large segment of the Sunni tribal population to participate. I think they've made it very clear they regard the entire government as illegitimate. They want nothing to do with this political process.
KAGAN: OK, so they don't show up at the end of the month, Ken, then what happens? And frankly, is this the time to be having this conversation that this isn't the best political system? This is what they have. This is going forward. You have to make do with what you have.
POLLACK: To some extent that's probably true. I'll be honest with you, Daryn. I think that if the United States wanted to do something different, we probably could work out a deal with the Iraqis to delay the elections, but we'd have to come through with a whole bunch of other stuff that so far the administration doesn't seem willing to do.
KAGAN: Like what?
POLLACK: Like for example creating a political process that would begin at the grassroots, build up, educate the Iraqi population, and allow them to develop a very different kind of system of government.
KAGAN: Is there a problem with that? Does that takes time?
POLLACK: Absolutely, and that's the issue, is there is a political cost to be paid for that kind of an effort, which is that it will take a long time to do.
But my experience, my reading of other post-conflict reconstructions that we've done around the world is that you have to put the emphasis on the long-term good, not just what works for you in the short term.
All right Ken Pollack, thank you for your insight on what is taking place. We'll continue to follow the story out of Mosul, Iraq, as well as developing stories from right here in the U.S., including an update on the 9-year-old autistic boy who's been missing since this weekend. That's all ahead. Right now, a break.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
KAGAN: And our next developing story comes from South Williamsport, Pennsylvania. A young boy's body has been found, and it's been found near a search area where officials have been looking for a 9-year-old boy since last weekend. The I.D. has not been positively made as Logan Mitcheltree. However, he is a 9-year-old boy, with severe mental disabilities, including being autistic and not being able to speak. Authorities have been looking for him since he disappeared on Saturday. Authorities have found a young boy's body near that area where the search was taking place. An official identification has not taken place, and yet it probably is news that the boy's family was not looking to hear as they held out hope and prayers that their young son would show up.
HARRIS: Absolutely. As we bring in Jacqui Jeras, one of the reasons the authorities were in such a hurry, so frantic to find this little boy is because it's been so cold in that part of the country.
(WEATHER REPORT)
KAGAN: We're going to update the situation in Mosul, also the story of an American soldier fighting a war overseas, and how he changed the lives of children for generations. Coming up next, a modern day Christmas story.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
KAGAN: Welcome back. This is the season that recalls magic and miracles that can transcend boundaries of religion nationalities and of age.
HARRIS: And it is with that spirit that we accompany a former American G.I. who's returning to what may be his most lasting victory of World War II. For at least a moment, he restored the innocence of childhood.
CNN's Tom Foreman explains.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
TOM FOREMAN, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): In the little country of Luxembourg on Germany's western border, a big parade rolls along. Candy for the good children, switches for the bad parents, and a miracle in the middle. For 60 years, American Dick Brookins has been St. Nicholas here.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: It's really great.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: My grandparents saw him in the plaza. Now I'm here to see Santa Claus again.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: That is the America we love so much.
FOREMAN: It all started in December 1944, as allied soldiers pushed the German army toward Berlin in the end of World War II. Dick Brookins' unit liberated the tiny town of Wiltz, Luxembourg.
DICK BROOKINS (RET.), U.S. ARMY: People here were delighted and happy to be free, but they were very unhappy because St. Nicholas Day was coming and the children, they had nothing for the children. One of us said, "Why don't we have a Christmas party for these kids?" So, gee, that sounded like a good idea.
FOREMAN: The soldiers collected all the candy, gum and cookies sent from home. Dick Brookins went to a local church, where nuns dressed him in the bishops' robes to play St. Nick and this film from so long ago shows what happened next.
BROOKINS: I was driven to a public school, and they brought the children out into the outdoor yard, and then they lined the kids up and gave them some of this candy and cookies. There was no ability to converse because there was no English understood, but somehow we've managed to get the feel for what was going on.
And those kids didn't know this was an American soldier that is St. Nicholas, OK, the youngest kids. Some of those children had not even had a St. Nicholas Day because they were, like, 3, 4 years old, and it hadn't occurred for almost five years.
FOREMAN: That joy did not last. Within days the soldiers were swept into the Battle of the Bulge, the last major German offensive of the war. The Americans suffered 80,000 casualties.
In the gunfire, Christmas was forgotten.
But not in Wiltz. Thirty years after the war, Dick Brookins received a call at his home in the states. Was he the man who played St. Nick? Could he come do it again?
BROOKINS: I have just as many butterflies now as the first time.
FOREMAN: Because in Wiltz, every year since the war's end, the town had marked the day and remembered the long lost American St. Nick.
BROOKINS: Hearing about this after 30 years, I was just dumb founded.
FOREMAN: Brookins did go back and has returned again and again to lead the parade, to hand out the candy.
BROOKINS: Well, as it has turned out, this was one of -- one of the greatest things that have ever happened to them. It represented their freedom, their liberation, the restoration of their life.
FOREMAN: As it was in the war, the celebration is colored with sadness. Some of the soldiers who brought Christmas back to Wiltz are here forever. Dick Brookins comes to the American cemetery every time...
BROOKINS: I think it's the next one.
FOREMAN: ... to the grave of his best friend, Eddie Stein.
BROOKINS: I come here out of respect and care, and it gets me every time. I'm still alive and he's gone. These are the heroes, 5,000, some, in the cemetery.
FOREMAN: But mostly his trips here are happy affairs, time for awards from a grateful town.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: And I hope we will put this fire in the hearts of our children and so, these festivities and St. Nick will come to Wiltz for years and years and years.
FOREMAN: Time to meet the children of long ago. Grandparents now.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Congratulations.
FOREMAN: And time to greet the children of today.
BROOKINS: What's this one's name?
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: That's Johann, Johann (ph).
BROOKINS: And it seems there is always time enough. Dick Brookins is in his 80s, but St. Nick is timeless and forever loved in the streets of Wiltz.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
KAGAN: And that was our Tom Foreman reporting.
HARRIS: The second hour of CNN LIVE TODAY begins right now.
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Aired December 21, 2004 - 10:30 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
DARYN KAGAN, CNN ANCHOR: Welcome back to CNN LIVE TODAY. Along with Tony Harris, sitting in for Rick Sanchez. I'm Daryn Kagan.
Want to get back to our developing story, and this coming out of Mosul, Iraq. An attack, multiple rounds hitting a dining hall, a U.S. military base near Mosul, 22 dead, as we know right now, many as 51 people wounded in this incident.
Let's go to the Pentagon. Our Elaine Quijano standing by with more -- Elaine.
ELAINE QUIJANO, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Hello to you, Daryn.
Well, just recapping what you just said, again, 4:00 a.m. Eastern Time is what Pentagon officials are saying was the time of this attack. Again, 22 people dead, 51 wounded, when an unknown number of rounds, explosive rounds, hit a dining hall. This happening at the forward-operating base Merez, this near Mosul.
Now we also want to update or correct some numbers given to us by Army officials. Army officials giving us corrected numbers now, talking about Task Force Olympia, saying that 8,500 U.S. troops are within Task Force Olympia. Also that Striker Brigade that we mentioned, 3,500 troops, we are told, from Fort Lewis, Washington.
But again, Pentagon officials saying they're obviously continuing to gather information, but again, the latest numbers they have, 22 people dead, 51 wounded -- Daryn.
KAGAN: Among those dead and wounded, not only U.S. military personnel, but Iraqi national guard and civilians, as well?
QUIJANO: That's right. U.S. troops, Iraqi civilians, as you mentioned, and Iraqi national guard. And we should mention, of course, Iraqi national guard, Iraqi forces have been, in fact, working in that particular area, but we haven't been able to pin down exactly what the size of that force is. We should also say that Mosul had been an area that had been relatively calm. At one point after the initial invasion, the 101st was in charge there, helping to get projects under way. But ever since the Falluja offensive, there has been an uptick of violence in that area. And again, we see now more violence today -- Daryn.
KAGAN: Elaine Quijano at the Pentagon. Thank you.
Of course, even before the war last year, we've had a number of our CNN personnel, our journalists, our photographers, embedded with the U.S. military. That includes one of our photographers actually been in the dining hall that was attacked today. He's in Baghdad now, and he's with our Karl Penhaul -- Karl.
KARL PENHAUL, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Hi there, Daryn. I wanted to bring in straightaway Gabe Ramirez. Now Gabe, a CNN cameraman, was up in Mosul about three weeks ago. That was when the coalition forces were staging an offensive on insurgents there. That was going on more or less simultaneously to operations in Falluja, because there was a fear that the insurgents in Mosul were staging rear guard attacks there to try to divert some of the coalition firepower away from Falluja. Gabe had been at Camp Merez. Tell us a little bit about that dining facility, Gabe. What do you remember?
GABE RAMIREZ, CNN PHOTOGRAPHER: I remember I had to spend the night on transit to meet Nic Robertson there, and I remember eating dinner and breakfast there, and both times the dining facility was quite full. It was large, maybe the size of a football field, I would almost compare it to, and with 400 or 500 soldiers at any given time eating a meal there.
PENHAUL: What kind of a construction was it and how many people would be in there typically?
RAMIREZ: It was a large soft-skin structure, big convention type tent thing that you would see maybe at the side of a Super Bowl party, something like that. It was definitely temporary, nothing permanent about it. It was quite comfortable. When you were in there, you felt like you were back at the states eating a meal at a cafeteria with a bunch of U.S. soldiers, maybe 400 or 500 eating there at any given time.
PENHAUL: What kind of people would be in there? Because we heard the victims of today's attack were probably a mixture of U.S. military, Iraqi national guard and possibly even some contractors.
RAMIREZ: Definitely. Definitely. Mostly U.S. soldiers, at least when I was there, U.S. soldiers, a mixture of Iraqi national guards also there, quite a few U.S. civilian contractors. It struck me that there were so many Western -- or Western civilian contractors there, some of whom looked like they could be the parents of the soldiers that were eating there. It was quite an unusual experience.
PENHAUL: So this was a large soft-skin building where soldiers would gather en masse at certain times of day on a base that came under regular harassing fire from the insurgents? Did any of the soldiers seem to think they were at risk?
RAMIREZ: Well, after I left Merez, not too far, maybe 15 or 20 minutes away from Merez, Camp Freedom, or FOB (ph) Freedom, a soldier there remarked to me, as we were eating lunch, motors (sic) fell outside the dining facility. And as he remarked to me just after that, that at he thought that it was just a matter of time before something hit inside the facility. So yes, I think that they were -- this is probably not a surprise to the soldiers there on the ground. PENHAUL: That was Gabe Ramirez, Daryn. He was up in Mosul at the particular dining facility that was hit today by an explosion. Gabe was up there about three weeks ago now during a coalition offensive against insurgents there.
KAGAN: And, Karl, a good reminder that people see our faces on the screen, though we have a lot of people that we work with out in the field, and I know that you know that, too, photographers, and producers and technical staff that are risking their lives in the field as well. So thank you to Gabe. Pass that along. And we'll be back to you -- Tony.
TONY HARRIS, CNN ANCHOR: OK, Daryn, we're just getting word as we bring in retired Major General Don Sheppard of the Air Force National Guard -- and, general, we're just getting word just a reminder from the Pentagon that this attack occurred at noon in Iraq, and this attack occurred at a time when that facility would have been filled with people, just packed with people. It almost sounds like a bit of a heads-up that the casualty count might rise as the day proceeds there.
Give us your sense of this attack, how coordinated it sounds to you. Or was it kind of a hit or miss that in this case tragically was a hit?
MAJ. GEN. DON SHEPPERD, (RET.) U.S. AIR FORCE: Tony, I think the latter is probably the case. It doesn't take a lot of coordination to lob mortar or rocket rounds into an area such as a base camp or a camp such as we have over there. Just like you're seeing in the cameraman that was just on, I've been in those mess halls over there. They're soft-skin facilities. At meal time, there's a lot of people gathered in there. And these rounds, whether they're rockets or mortars, they're notoriously inaccurate, but they can do a lot of damage when they hit in the middle of a soldier. So probably a lucky hit. But lobbed in at mealtime doesn't take a lot of coordination or common sense to say if you hit something, you're going to kill a lot of people.
HARRIS: General, at this point we're 21 months into this war in Iraq. And the insurgency shows no sign of waning. Give us your thoughts on the critical question, how do we get control of this situation? How do we get control over this insurgency in that country?
SHEPPERD: Tony, we don't. The key is that the Iraqis are going to have to take responsibility for their own security. Having the United States rush more troops over to provide security across this country, a large country of 25 million people, is simply not the answer.
What we're trying to do is train Iraqis rapidly and have them take over responsibility. And so far, we have not seen a lot of encouraging things happen. In the case of Mosul up there, the troops basically cut and run when they came under attack. About 5,000 people involved in security from the Iraqi side across that city. So again, the idea of us staying a long time and providing security across the nation is simply not in the cards. They're going to have to do it, and we don't see the tipping point that's happening yet. It's a little discouraging.
HARRIS: And yet we've got to help them. We've got to train them. We've got to prepare them to be able to do the job that you described. So the question of how long we will be there is really open-ended, isn't it?
SHEPPERD: It really is. And the American public, that's the other tipping point we have to watch for. How long will the American public stick with this when our kids are getting killed every day? And it does not look like there's light at the end of the tunnel. We have to not only train these troops, but we have to equip them, and then they have to work together long enough that they see some success, and that does take a lot of time, and it takes a lot of American troops to do that. Right now the American troops, of course, are going to be involved in making sure that the polling places are secure, because it's very clear this election is going to take place. And the other thing we have to watch, of course, is that the Sunnis vote. If the Sunnis boycott this election and stay away, it becomes a meaningless vote.
HARRIS: Let me stay on the tactical side for just a moment. You're a general; you know about strategy and tactics here. What are you looking for? What do you want to see that will indicate to you that we've turned a corner here, and that the Iraqi forces over there are starting to get this?
SHEPPERD: Yes, I want to see the number of attacks nationwide go down, and that can happen as the Iraqis take over and become responsible for their own security. We saw a diminution in the number of attacks across the country after Falluja for a short period of time. And now they're picking up again. So what I'm really watching is the number of attacks out there. And also, they're not usually attacking U.S. forces. This is an aberration. They're attacking Iraqi civilians, which are easy targets. Every time they attack us they're getting hammered.
HARRIS: You got a sense that they're trying to foment just some sense of a civil war, Sunnis against Shia? is that your sense? Or do you feel something else is going on here that we may be missing?
SHEPPERD: Well, I think two things, probably three. The Sunnis, that are mainly responsible for this insurgency, and the former Baathists are out there and they're trying to make sure that they take over power again or at least they have a major voice in this new government. That's one of the things they're trying to do. If it takes civil war, they'll do it. They also want us gone, so they can go back to their old ways.
So I think they have multiple aims in doing this type of thing, and it's going to be a race to see if they're successful, whether we stick it out or whether they're able to go back to their old ways. HARRIS: Are our soldiers equipped for this kind of battle that we're seeing now? This guerrilla war, this hit-and-miss insurgency? They're having to be highly trained, highly disciplined fighting forces, and then they're having to be basically the police in a number of these cities.
SHEPPERD: Yes. And the reconstruction efforts, as well, thrown on top of that. It's a very difficult situation. A guerrilla war is the most difficult. We are very good at the large-force tactics in a major war. such as we saw, taking Baghdad, coming in from the south. But this insurgency lasts many years, and it's very easy to plan an explosive or lob a rocket or mortar in. There seems to be no end to that type of thing. Our soldiers are well equipped, they're well trained. They know how to do this. And their equipment, despite all the things we've seen recently on the up-arming of their vehicles, their equipment is very, very good, but when you hit people in the right place at the right time, such as a dining hall in a soft facility at lunch, it's going to be tough, they're going to be casualties.
HARRIS: General Sheppard, stay with us as we continue to follow this story this morning. We appreciate it -- Daryn.
SHEPPERD: You bet.
KAGAN: Want to put today's attack in some perspective, other events taking in place. And for that, we welcome back Ken Pollack, analyst with the Brookings Institution, knows the area and has been there many times.
Ken, welcome back.
KEN POLLACK, BROOKINGS INSTITUTION: Thank you, Daryn. Good to be here.
KAGAN: Let's talk about these elections that are set and it looks like Iraqi officials determined to have five weeks from now.
POLLACK: Yes, at this point in time, it looks like there's no point stopping the elections, and obviously there's good and bad. It would be hard, honestly, to stop the elections at this point in time. And in particular, you do va lot of Iraqis, in particular some very important Shia, like Ayatollah Sistani, who have made clear they want to see these elections happen, because they've just been very skeptical of the course of political reconstruction, and they want to see their people in charge. They believe the elections will do that.
But by the same token, you've heard people all morning long voicing real concerns about these elections. I share those concerns, and I actually have some we haven't even talked about, like whether the political system that the Iraqis are thinking about putting in place is going to be the right one for Iraq. I think there's a very strong argument to be made that the political system the Iraqis are thinking of using could be the worst one for them. It could reinforce the fragmentation and the polarization of their society. But at this point in time, the elections are going to go ahead, and I think we just have to cross our fingers and hope that they're going to turn out well.
KAGAN: So are you saying that the very efforts that are being to try to include groups, try to include the Shia, the Sunnis, the Kurds to give everybody a voice is actually just going to fragment this society and make it impossible for it to work together?
POLLACK: Potentially. I think you have a first-order problem, which is I don't think that you're going to get a large segment of the Sunni tribal population to participate. I think they've made it very clear they regard the entire government as illegitimate. They want nothing to do with this political process.
KAGAN: OK, so they don't show up at the end of the month, Ken, then what happens? And frankly, is this the time to be having this conversation that this isn't the best political system? This is what they have. This is going forward. You have to make do with what you have.
POLLACK: To some extent that's probably true. I'll be honest with you, Daryn. I think that if the United States wanted to do something different, we probably could work out a deal with the Iraqis to delay the elections, but we'd have to come through with a whole bunch of other stuff that so far the administration doesn't seem willing to do.
KAGAN: Like what?
POLLACK: Like for example creating a political process that would begin at the grassroots, build up, educate the Iraqi population, and allow them to develop a very different kind of system of government.
KAGAN: Is there a problem with that? Does that takes time?
POLLACK: Absolutely, and that's the issue, is there is a political cost to be paid for that kind of an effort, which is that it will take a long time to do.
But my experience, my reading of other post-conflict reconstructions that we've done around the world is that you have to put the emphasis on the long-term good, not just what works for you in the short term.
All right Ken Pollack, thank you for your insight on what is taking place. We'll continue to follow the story out of Mosul, Iraq, as well as developing stories from right here in the U.S., including an update on the 9-year-old autistic boy who's been missing since this weekend. That's all ahead. Right now, a break.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
KAGAN: And our next developing story comes from South Williamsport, Pennsylvania. A young boy's body has been found, and it's been found near a search area where officials have been looking for a 9-year-old boy since last weekend. The I.D. has not been positively made as Logan Mitcheltree. However, he is a 9-year-old boy, with severe mental disabilities, including being autistic and not being able to speak. Authorities have been looking for him since he disappeared on Saturday. Authorities have found a young boy's body near that area where the search was taking place. An official identification has not taken place, and yet it probably is news that the boy's family was not looking to hear as they held out hope and prayers that their young son would show up.
HARRIS: Absolutely. As we bring in Jacqui Jeras, one of the reasons the authorities were in such a hurry, so frantic to find this little boy is because it's been so cold in that part of the country.
(WEATHER REPORT)
KAGAN: We're going to update the situation in Mosul, also the story of an American soldier fighting a war overseas, and how he changed the lives of children for generations. Coming up next, a modern day Christmas story.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
KAGAN: Welcome back. This is the season that recalls magic and miracles that can transcend boundaries of religion nationalities and of age.
HARRIS: And it is with that spirit that we accompany a former American G.I. who's returning to what may be his most lasting victory of World War II. For at least a moment, he restored the innocence of childhood.
CNN's Tom Foreman explains.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
TOM FOREMAN, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): In the little country of Luxembourg on Germany's western border, a big parade rolls along. Candy for the good children, switches for the bad parents, and a miracle in the middle. For 60 years, American Dick Brookins has been St. Nicholas here.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: It's really great.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: My grandparents saw him in the plaza. Now I'm here to see Santa Claus again.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: That is the America we love so much.
FOREMAN: It all started in December 1944, as allied soldiers pushed the German army toward Berlin in the end of World War II. Dick Brookins' unit liberated the tiny town of Wiltz, Luxembourg.
DICK BROOKINS (RET.), U.S. ARMY: People here were delighted and happy to be free, but they were very unhappy because St. Nicholas Day was coming and the children, they had nothing for the children. One of us said, "Why don't we have a Christmas party for these kids?" So, gee, that sounded like a good idea.
FOREMAN: The soldiers collected all the candy, gum and cookies sent from home. Dick Brookins went to a local church, where nuns dressed him in the bishops' robes to play St. Nick and this film from so long ago shows what happened next.
BROOKINS: I was driven to a public school, and they brought the children out into the outdoor yard, and then they lined the kids up and gave them some of this candy and cookies. There was no ability to converse because there was no English understood, but somehow we've managed to get the feel for what was going on.
And those kids didn't know this was an American soldier that is St. Nicholas, OK, the youngest kids. Some of those children had not even had a St. Nicholas Day because they were, like, 3, 4 years old, and it hadn't occurred for almost five years.
FOREMAN: That joy did not last. Within days the soldiers were swept into the Battle of the Bulge, the last major German offensive of the war. The Americans suffered 80,000 casualties.
In the gunfire, Christmas was forgotten.
But not in Wiltz. Thirty years after the war, Dick Brookins received a call at his home in the states. Was he the man who played St. Nick? Could he come do it again?
BROOKINS: I have just as many butterflies now as the first time.
FOREMAN: Because in Wiltz, every year since the war's end, the town had marked the day and remembered the long lost American St. Nick.
BROOKINS: Hearing about this after 30 years, I was just dumb founded.
FOREMAN: Brookins did go back and has returned again and again to lead the parade, to hand out the candy.
BROOKINS: Well, as it has turned out, this was one of -- one of the greatest things that have ever happened to them. It represented their freedom, their liberation, the restoration of their life.
FOREMAN: As it was in the war, the celebration is colored with sadness. Some of the soldiers who brought Christmas back to Wiltz are here forever. Dick Brookins comes to the American cemetery every time...
BROOKINS: I think it's the next one.
FOREMAN: ... to the grave of his best friend, Eddie Stein.
BROOKINS: I come here out of respect and care, and it gets me every time. I'm still alive and he's gone. These are the heroes, 5,000, some, in the cemetery.
FOREMAN: But mostly his trips here are happy affairs, time for awards from a grateful town.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: And I hope we will put this fire in the hearts of our children and so, these festivities and St. Nick will come to Wiltz for years and years and years.
FOREMAN: Time to meet the children of long ago. Grandparents now.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Congratulations.
FOREMAN: And time to greet the children of today.
BROOKINS: What's this one's name?
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: That's Johann, Johann (ph).
BROOKINS: And it seems there is always time enough. Dick Brookins is in his 80s, but St. Nick is timeless and forever loved in the streets of Wiltz.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
KAGAN: And that was our Tom Foreman reporting.
HARRIS: The second hour of CNN LIVE TODAY begins right now.
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