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American Morning

Push Toward Baghdad

Aired March 21, 2003 - 07:06   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: We're going to try one more time to get to Walt Rodgers, who is embedded with the 7th Calvary plus the 3rd Infantry.
Walt -- can you hear us now?

WALTER RODGERS, CNN SENIOR INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Yes, Paula. The 7th Calvary -- 3rd Squadron, 7th Calvary United States Army continues to roll inexorably in the direction of Baghdad. You can see the tank in front of us. That tank has a fuel -- a full fuel tank, as does every other armored vehicle out here. They were refueled several hours ago, and now the push to Baghdad is resuming full pace, full throttle, full speed.

One interesting thing, when you look at that tank you see one tank and perhaps another dust cloud ahead up there somewhere, but what you are not seeing is 8 to 10 miles to the left and right of that tank are more tanks stretching across an entire plain, and behind us even more tanks from the 3rd Infantry Division, a heavy mechanized infantry division with many, many more tanks.

It is truly a steel wave rolling across the southern Iraqi plain, and that steel wave seems to grow in momentum and power with every hour as more forces coalesce and move towards Iraq.

It has been over 10 hours now since the 7th Calvary has had any hostile contact with any Iraqi forces. In point of fact, many of these soldiers believed they were coming to Kuwait to liberate the Iraqis, but in this section of Iraq there are nothing but nomads and very few of those. They look dumfounded through the early hours of the morning here, as they saw these huge armored vehicles rolling past the Bedouin tents.

Having said that, the objective has not changed, and the key phrase in this entire military exercise is "regime change in Baghdad." That's what these tanks are pointing for. What they're hoping for, of course, is that the regime of Saddam Hussein implodes. Perhaps there would be a coup, perhaps the army would no longer support him, and then perhaps there would not have to be a major pitch battle at the gates of Baghdad. But in the meantime all of this pressure, all of this steel -- the tanks, the fighting vehicles, the helicopters which are being brought to bear -- moving in the direction of Baghdad are directed at bringing a regime change in Iraq -- Paula.

ZAHN: Walter, I don't want you to tell us anything you're not supposed to be telling us, but at the rate you're going, are you able to give us any indication of how long it would take to get to Baghdad? RODGERS: Well, we're not really going as fast as it would appear on television, because much of the time you see us moving quickly, and that is indeed the case. But there are periods when we'll go down for two hours when we have to go to a major refueling, what the Army calls a "ROM," refueling on the move. A hot refueling when what the Army does is bring up the tanker trucks and then the tanks all line up and fuel, and with their engines running, the soldiers manning the guns there in case they were ambushed while refueling, that's a point of great vulnerability for tanks in an operation like this.

But once those tanks refuel, it's an eight-hour roll again, and that is indeed what you're seeing now. The tanks are on the roll and the charge and the point of the spear is again headed towards Baghdad -- Paula.

ZAHN: Walt, you said it has been 10 hours since you have had any hostile contact. What happened before?

RODGERS: Well, the first hostile contact with Iraqi forces occurred before the 7th Calvary even crossed the border. They were sitting at a berm, a big sand berm, which demarked the border between Kuwait and Iraq. And at one point last night there was a large explosion off to the left. We were -- we captured that on video, very loud, and my initial reaction, of course, was that it was probably artillery. And we, of course, feared that it might even have a chemical or biological warfare -- warhead.

What happened, however, was quite the contrary. What occurred was the Iraqis fired a tactical ballistic missile in the direction of the 3rd Squadron, 7th Calvary's armored column as it was stacked up at the border. And one tank commander said he saw the missile fly directly over his head before it slammed into the desert two kilometers off to the left, the south. And that's only about a mile- and-a-half away. It was a very loud explosion.

Then there was a second hostile contact with the Iraqi forces about two hours into southern Iraq. At that point as this same Apache troop of the 7th Calvary was moving forward through the desert just at about dawn, I heard some shooting off to the right while we were actually on the air with Larry King and we were narrating this. We couldn't see the source of the shooting, but we could see some explosions fairly close to the armored column about a half-a-mile away.

And the commander of the troop here dispatched tanks and armored vehicles to rush out into the desert and dispose of what they later discovered was a small anti-aircraft unit, which turned its fire on the Americans. That being the case -- that being the case, the tank commanders and the Bradleys quickly put the anti-aircraft unit out of existence. There was no further contact.

All right -- Paula.

ZAHN: Walt Rodgers, we’re going to leave it there and check back with you in the next 20 minutes or so. Thank you for that live update. 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 21, 2003 - 07:06   ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
PAULA ZAHN, CNN ANCHOR: We're going to try one more time to get to Walt Rodgers, who is embedded with the 7th Calvary plus the 3rd Infantry.
Walt -- can you hear us now?

WALTER RODGERS, CNN SENIOR INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Yes, Paula. The 7th Calvary -- 3rd Squadron, 7th Calvary United States Army continues to roll inexorably in the direction of Baghdad. You can see the tank in front of us. That tank has a fuel -- a full fuel tank, as does every other armored vehicle out here. They were refueled several hours ago, and now the push to Baghdad is resuming full pace, full throttle, full speed.

One interesting thing, when you look at that tank you see one tank and perhaps another dust cloud ahead up there somewhere, but what you are not seeing is 8 to 10 miles to the left and right of that tank are more tanks stretching across an entire plain, and behind us even more tanks from the 3rd Infantry Division, a heavy mechanized infantry division with many, many more tanks.

It is truly a steel wave rolling across the southern Iraqi plain, and that steel wave seems to grow in momentum and power with every hour as more forces coalesce and move towards Iraq.

It has been over 10 hours now since the 7th Calvary has had any hostile contact with any Iraqi forces. In point of fact, many of these soldiers believed they were coming to Kuwait to liberate the Iraqis, but in this section of Iraq there are nothing but nomads and very few of those. They look dumfounded through the early hours of the morning here, as they saw these huge armored vehicles rolling past the Bedouin tents.

Having said that, the objective has not changed, and the key phrase in this entire military exercise is "regime change in Baghdad." That's what these tanks are pointing for. What they're hoping for, of course, is that the regime of Saddam Hussein implodes. Perhaps there would be a coup, perhaps the army would no longer support him, and then perhaps there would not have to be a major pitch battle at the gates of Baghdad. But in the meantime all of this pressure, all of this steel -- the tanks, the fighting vehicles, the helicopters which are being brought to bear -- moving in the direction of Baghdad are directed at bringing a regime change in Iraq -- Paula.

ZAHN: Walter, I don't want you to tell us anything you're not supposed to be telling us, but at the rate you're going, are you able to give us any indication of how long it would take to get to Baghdad? RODGERS: Well, we're not really going as fast as it would appear on television, because much of the time you see us moving quickly, and that is indeed the case. But there are periods when we'll go down for two hours when we have to go to a major refueling, what the Army calls a "ROM," refueling on the move. A hot refueling when what the Army does is bring up the tanker trucks and then the tanks all line up and fuel, and with their engines running, the soldiers manning the guns there in case they were ambushed while refueling, that's a point of great vulnerability for tanks in an operation like this.

But once those tanks refuel, it's an eight-hour roll again, and that is indeed what you're seeing now. The tanks are on the roll and the charge and the point of the spear is again headed towards Baghdad -- Paula.

ZAHN: Walt, you said it has been 10 hours since you have had any hostile contact. What happened before?

RODGERS: Well, the first hostile contact with Iraqi forces occurred before the 7th Calvary even crossed the border. They were sitting at a berm, a big sand berm, which demarked the border between Kuwait and Iraq. And at one point last night there was a large explosion off to the left. We were -- we captured that on video, very loud, and my initial reaction, of course, was that it was probably artillery. And we, of course, feared that it might even have a chemical or biological warfare -- warhead.

What happened, however, was quite the contrary. What occurred was the Iraqis fired a tactical ballistic missile in the direction of the 3rd Squadron, 7th Calvary's armored column as it was stacked up at the border. And one tank commander said he saw the missile fly directly over his head before it slammed into the desert two kilometers off to the left, the south. And that's only about a mile- and-a-half away. It was a very loud explosion.

Then there was a second hostile contact with the Iraqi forces about two hours into southern Iraq. At that point as this same Apache troop of the 7th Calvary was moving forward through the desert just at about dawn, I heard some shooting off to the right while we were actually on the air with Larry King and we were narrating this. We couldn't see the source of the shooting, but we could see some explosions fairly close to the armored column about a half-a-mile away.

And the commander of the troop here dispatched tanks and armored vehicles to rush out into the desert and dispose of what they later discovered was a small anti-aircraft unit, which turned its fire on the Americans. That being the case -- that being the case, the tank commanders and the Bradleys quickly put the anti-aircraft unit out of existence. There was no further contact.

All right -- Paula.

ZAHN: Walt Rodgers, we’re going to leave it there and check back with you in the next 20 minutes or so. Thank you for that live update. TO ORDER A VIDEO OF THIS TRANSCRIPT, PLEASE CALL 800-CNN-NEWS OR USE OUR SECURE ONLINE ORDER FORM LOCATED AT www.fdch.com.