Return to Transcripts main page
American Morning
America's New War: Look at Difficulties of Possible War in Afghanistan
Aired September 19, 2001 - 11:11 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
MILES O'BRIEN, CNN ANCHOR: Let's look at map of the region real quickly and get you a quick orientation. We will bring in a military expert to talk about it. All right, we well look at that map, Too. That's a map showing -- there we go. That's the map I was hoping to get.
Basically, the Northern Alliance controls that territory, a hunk of this section, and a little piece down there based on some late information we just got from the Northern Alliance a little while ago. But this area, all around here controlled by the Taliban. That is about 90 percent of the country. The Northern Alliance obviously interested in more or less aligning itself with U.S. goals as this fight against terrorism unfolds.
Now as we get closer in, let's bring in general -- Major General Shepperd, who is with us from Washington.
General Shepperd -- Donald Shepperd, by the way. Good to have you with us. Thanks for joining us.
MAJ. GEN. DONALD SHEPPERD, RET. U.S. AIR FORCE: My pleasure, Miles.
O'BRIEN: All right, I don't know if you can see the map where we are, but as we are talking about Afghanistan in this region, we're talking about an area which poses formidable challenges for any military planner. Can you give us a few insights?
SHEPPERD: Well, it's a land-locked country, about a little bit smaller than the size of Texas. If you had to pick a place you didn't want to fight in the world, this would be near the top of the list. Tremendous mountains, poor infrastructure, lots of places to hide, very bad road systems. This is tough place to fight. We are a tough military, but it's going to be tough for anybody who goes in there.
O'BRIEN: All right, obviously a good military needs good intelligence in order to select those targets before they begin any sort of a fight. How good is our intelligence capability in that world? And it seems to me this is not the kind of thing that would lend itself well to, for example, satellite surveillance. Human intelligence, as it is called, would be key?
SHEPPERD: Well, human intelligence is always key. Now satellites are always useful, and we will continue to use those. You just heard the report from Steve Harrigan about our contacts with the Northern Alliance. We get intelligence from all sources. Our human intelligence is badly degraded over the last few years, and it's going to take a long time to rebuild.
No matter what we do, it's going to be tough, but we've got a tough military, and we're going to will do it.
O'BRIEN: All right, major -- excuse me, General Shepperd, as long as I still have you with us, I want to shift gears just a little bit and talk a about protecting the home front, if you will. We just been hearing today additional information from NORAD about the ability of fighter jets to scramble in the wake of this attack last Tuesday. And they were in the air fairly quickly. But this attack unfolded so very quickly. And that just sort of underscores a point here. That it's difficult to defend against this sort of threat.
What is the appropriate way for the U.S. to be protecting against further threats here on our soil?
SHEPPERD: Well, Miles, it's never easy. Clearly, America was surprised. It wasn't just the intelligence community or the military. We were looking outward from our borders for a threat. We are a totally open society. This had never happened before. None of us. None of us thought there would be coordinated attack by four hijacked airplanes. We were not prepared for that. We were able to scramble airplanes very quickly, and right now, we have airborne aircraft over Washington, New York, and alerts at 26 other sites around the United States. We're well covered, you can feel secure. On the other hand, it doesn't mean that something bad can't happen. The key to our security is not airplanes, airborne, intercept hijacked airplanes. It's keeping hijackers off the airliners, tightening down our airport security, our cockpit security, and tightening down our society. Unfortunately, we are going to have to do that.
It doesn't mean we have to give up our civil liberties, but it means we are going to have to be more aware, and for a while, we are going to be living like many other countries have lived for decades, unfortunately.
O'BRIEN: Unfortunately, what you are talking about, is heading at least in the direction of some degree of a police state. I know, for example, 90 percent of general aviation remains grounded. So called digital flight rules flights, and there have been some unwitting Cessna pilots who have taken off, not knowing the rules fully, not reading the regulations, and have been intercepted by F- 16s. This is obviously something that Americans couldn't have conjured up a little more than a week ago.
SHEPPERD: Most unusual. We have processes to deal with that. Now the air defense of our United States is under control of NORAD, North American Aerospace Defense Command, headed by General Ed Eberhard in Colorado Springs. The operational control is under Major General Larry Arnold from first air force down in Florida. If you had to pick two people in America to defend your wife and kids, I would pick those two. There's no two finer people in uniform. So you can feel secure with your military that we're on alert, but all of America has to be on alert. It's not just the military; it's Entire population now.
O'BRIEN: All right, Major General Donald Sheppard, thank you very much for joining us and giving us your insights on the military situation here in the U.S. and overseas.
SHEPPERD: My pleasure, Miles.
TO ORDER A VIDEO OF THIS TRANSCRIPT, PLEASE CALL 800-CNN-NEWS OR USE OUR SECURE ONLINE ORDER FORM LOCATED AT www.fdch.com
