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American Morning

Hussein Supposedly Readying for Urban Combat

Aired August 09, 2002 - 08:08   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

BILL HEMMER, CNN ANCHOR: We want to get to the escalating war of words with Iraq now. The opposition leaders from Iraq in Washington talking about ways to remove President Saddam Hussein. The White House dismissing Hussein's warnings that any attack would be met with heavy U.S. casualties. Hussein said to be getting ready for urban combat in the streets of Baghdad. That story broke yesterday in the "L.A. Times."
Meanwhile, possible scenarios for a U.S.-led strike still remain the subject of great debate.

What would a war in Iraq look like today, 11 years after the Persian Gulf War?

From Chicago, our military analyst General David Grange is with us.

Good to see you again. Good morning to you.

GEN. DAVID GRANGE, CNN MILITARY ANALYST: Good morning.

HEMMER: Take a moment here and listen to one of the Iraqi opposition leaders and how he is right now parsing the possibility of an Iraqi defense. Here's from yesterday.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

SHARIF ALI BIN AL HUSSEIN, SPOKESMAN, IRAQI NATIONAL CONGRESS: Internally, he is positioning himself so that there would be no significant battles in the field. He is preparing for hand, street fighting, and to take on any Allied troops inside Iraq.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

HEMMER: General, it's urban combat. That's the description we're getting. Iraq thinks it could have much more success at this. Can it?

GRANGE: Well, yes. Any fight that takes place in an urban area is going to be much tougher for our forces or any forces to take on. You know, Saddam learned from the last war and he knows to take the fight to the cities is going to be a much more of a difficult task for us.

It would be the same thing in Afghanistan if the Taliban would have held up in Kabul. It would have been a different outcome. It wouldn't have been this fast. HEMMER: If that's the case, then, let's put up a map of Baghdad. It's not too specific but at least it'll give us a better idea of what's happening on the ground there. Where are your targets and where does the Iraqi opposition align itself if, indeed, a strategy were to carry out there on the ground in the streets of Baghdad?

GRANGE: Well, first of all, you have some critical targets that you're showing on this map. Any time you do a fight, you want to take down the enemy's command and control and communications and transportation hubs, which is depicted here.

But also, he's going to have his soldiers would blend in with the population all throughout the city, which would produce civilian casualties, which we'd want to avoid. So he would use civilians to camouflage his soldiers' positions.

HEMMER: Urban combat, we have some videotape here. The U.S. military practices this quite often now. In fact, Fort Knox, Kentucky is one location where this videotape comes from. When you look at urban combat, the other element in this is the possibility for some sort of chemical attack on the streets of Iraq. If that's the case, you're going to have U.S. troops wearing these heavy, possibly even bulky uniforms to prevent any sort of infection on their own bodies as they move through.

What type of challenge would that provide U.S. troops, special ops forces trying to move through an urban landscape?

GRANGE: Yes, this type of fighting is the hardest. First of all, we are very good at night. Our military has practiced over the last decade to do, to own the night. So they're very proficient at night fighting. But when you add a chemical environment, then again you slow down the soldiers' movements. The situational awareness is impaired. And it's very tough to do it, to do just all normal body functions. And so it makes it much tougher.

But then again it's tougher on the enemy, as well.

HEMMER: Yes, I think a lot of people when they think about urban warfare, they think about Mogadishu back in 1993 in Somalia. How different is Somalia from Baghdad in a case like that?

GRANGE: Well, when you're fighting in a city, it depends on what type of target or what type of operation you're conducting. In Somalia, with the Black Hawk down scenario, you were going in for a point target, a specific location within a city, plus you were clearing a corridor to bring in a relief column and then to extract from the site. Different than, let's say, if you were clearing Aucken, Germany in WWII with the First Infantry Division where you're clearing house by house every city block.

So it really depends on what your targets are and what you're trying to do.

HEMMER: Yes, quickly here, General, your gauge, is this going to happen? GRANGE: You mean taking down Iraq? I think we have to. I think we are going to end up in some type of fighting in urban areas, though we will avoid that to the best of our ability. But I think it has to be done because this is an unpredictable tyrant who really means harm to us and our allies.

HEMMER: Thank you, General.

David Grange in Chicago. We'll talk again.

GRANGE: Thank you.

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