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American Morning
Are the Afghan Detainees Programmed to Kill?
Aired January 22, 2002 - 07:24 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.
JACK CAFFERTY, CNN CORRESPONDENT: The big question this hour, are the Afghan detainees programmed to kill? We've seen them hooded, shackled and living in cells eight feet by eight feet in a makeshift U.S. prison in Cuba. But the attorney general says these war criminals remain uniquely dangerous.
So just what sort of a threat do the Afghan detainees pose, particularly to their captors?
Joining us now here in New York in our studio is Retired U.S. Army Colonel David Hackworth, a nationally syndicated columnist on defense affairs, well known author and good source of information on these people down at Guantanamo.
How dangerous...
COL. DAVID HACKWORTH, U.S. ARMY (RET.): Reporting for duty.
CAFFERTY: Yes. How dangerous are they?
HACKWORTH: They're bad son of a guns. Anybody that would chop off somebody's head and play soccer ball with it or skin prisoners alive, they have a track record of atrocity following atrocity. The main thing is they're now soldiers. Soldiers don't kill civilians. They're terrorists.
I visited Timothy McVeigh when he was in prison down in Oklahoma.
CAFFERTY: Right.
HACKWORTH: I was the first reporter to get in there to his cell. He was in an orange suit. He was all covered up in shackles and he was held in a little small detention cell in maximum security.
CAFFERTY: Well, was...
HACKWORTH: He was not a soldier, he was a terrorist.
CAFFERTY: What was your reaction to the interview that Paula did a minute ago with former U.S. Attorney General Ramsey Clark?
HACKWORTH: I thought Paula was her normally very intelligent, exquisite self.
CAFFERTY: Well, that goes without saying.
HACKWORTH: And I thought that the attorney general was himself. So leave it at that.
I think that what we're doing is making a big mountain out of a mole hill here. These guys are bad. If you had a mad dog, would you pick it up and put it in the, impound it with the little dogs that got lost? These are mad dogs.
CAFFERTY: There's a report in the "Miami Herald" this morning that already there is a leader among these detainees starting to emerge, a one-legged man who apparently during prayers was facing the wrong way away from Mecca and chanting something in Arabic to the effect of "be strong, Allah will save us." They have vowed, some of them, out loud, we will kill an American before we leave this place.
Is there enough security on these people down there?
HACKWORTH: Well, I worry about that. You know, I guarded German prisoners at the end of WWII. I was involved in the Cojido (ph) operation when the Chinese prisoners broke out of our prison camp in the Korean War. I saw lots of prison camps in Vietnam and around the world since. And if we don't have enough security, if American soldiers are killed because of a riot, then the mothers are going to be saying why didn't you do enough?
CAFFERTY: Yes. And, you know, there was a reference made in the previous section about this footage that we all saw. The Taliban-al Qaeda people are a violent race of people. They executed people at soccer games. They cut off people's hands. They're a brutal race of people who are capable of the worst kind of violence.
What sort of special training do our American troops have in handling people like this?
HACKWORTH: Well, first of all, where they are now is not exactly the club Caribbean. However, they're being well treated. The guards that are there that I've seen are exquisitely well trained. They've got their act together. They've done it before and believe me, the world is watching them.
Americans, they are our sons and daughters.
CAFFERTY: Yes.
HACKWORTH: They're not brutal sadists. They're people that are trained to do that job and they will do it well.
CAFFERTY: And, of course, at the back of all of this we have to keep in mind what happened on September the 11th, I suppose.
Colonel, it's a pleasure. I hope we can talk again at some point in the future.
HACKWORTH: Jack, indeed, yes.
CAFFERTY: Thank you very much, sir.
Colonel David Hackworth, a former U.S. Army colonel joining us this morning here in New York.
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