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American Morning

Interview With Nic Robertson

Aired May 19, 2003 - 09:23   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.


BILL HEMMER, CNN ANCHOR: Welcome back on a Monday morning here on AMERICAN MORNING. We are honored to have Nic Robertson, senior international correspondent, with us today. Work in Iraq, prior to that in Afghanistan. Nic is here in New York to receive the very prestigious Peabody Award, which in the world of journalism is about as high as it goes.
NIC ROBERTSON, CNN SENIOR INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: On behalf of a great team from CNN, I must add.

HEMMER: A good team, yes, but you have done your share as well. Listen, we have solicited e-mail questions from our viewers today. AM@CNN.COM is our address here. Questions to Nic about what's happening in Baghdad today.

Back at it with Zach on line. He says, "What is your assessment," Nic, "is the lack of security in Iraq due to very poor post-action planning by the U.S., or is it simply the magnitude of the task?"

ROBERTSON: It's both. The magnitude is huge, but the post-war planning had to allow for that magnitude, and it didn't appear to. The troops that are on the ground are doing a great job, but they are stretched thin. They need more of them. They need to beef up the numbers just in Baghdad alone to give the same footprint that the 20,000 police force used to give there for the five million population, but the same around the rest of the country, the outlying areas. They don't see that number of troops providing the security in the places they need it, and that is the key thing on that issue.

SOPHIA CHOI, CNN ANCHOR: And we have got a terrific question here from Mark, Montreal, Canada. "I was wondering if Nic can talk a bit about being kicked out of Baghdad, how did he feel personally? Will this be something that he will always look back on and say that he could have done more to stay?"

ROBERTSON: We did everything we could, and you -- don't ever look back in this business, do the best you can. We did the best we could, when we got this information, we went to the ministry of information, to try and challenge it, to try and see the minister, to try and do everything.

So, no, I won't ever look back on it thinking I could have done more. We did our absolute best at the time. It was disappointing after the war to go back in and to be kind of faced with that reality, with all the journalists that I knew who had stayed to cover it, and we were fresh going back, that was kind of disappointing, but at the time I thought we'd done a really good job. We had done the best we could to be there. I believe that we had done the best reporting that we could have done, and therefore I had to be happy with that.

HEMMER: Do you think the world understood how brutal that regime was?

ROBERTSON: No, I don't think they did. I think people had an idea that it was a bad regime, and I think we are only now beginning to get to grips with it, the numbers of mass graves, the numbers of people whose lives were completely disrupted, and even now, people are still afraid to come forward and say everything that they feel about the regime because nobody has found Saddam. Nobody has found his sons. People still have that fear that somehow he is out there. He was so powerful, so omnipresent, that they don't think he's completely gone.

HEMMER: I don't know -- do we have time for one more? Jeanne in New York City -- is that a yes or a no? All right. I'll hold it for -- OK, we do. All right.

"We heard so much about Saddam's multi-million dollar mega-bunker built by a German before the war. Did anyone ever come across the bunker, or is it still sitting out there unexplored?"

ROBERTSON: As far as I know, nobody has discovered this huge bunker system. Now, of course, many, many targets were hit, many targets hit by huge weapons, so possibly it was destroyed, but it certainly doesn't seem to have been discovered.

What we've seen of these presidential palaces that were opulent, that were huge -- huge constructions, and many of them well-appointed. One of them, interestingly, Saddam or somebody had gone through, taken out everything from the building. The door frames were numbered as if somebody was going to bring the doors back and reattach them, like they were planning just to take it away and bring it back, and that's the building where the U.S. administration is now set up.

CHOI: That is a bit frightening of a scenario, he plans on coming back then.

HEMMER: Listen, congratulations again on the Peabody today for winning the "Terror on Tape," essentially, which is what the al Qaeda tapes brought forth, the information there in Iraq when they were found in that country. Check that. Afghanistan. I kept Iraq and I apologize for that.

ROBERTSON: Thank you to the team.

HEMMER: Yes, good team. Thanks, Nic.

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 May 19, 2003 - 09:23   ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
BILL HEMMER, CNN ANCHOR: Welcome back on a Monday morning here on AMERICAN MORNING. We are honored to have Nic Robertson, senior international correspondent, with us today. Work in Iraq, prior to that in Afghanistan. Nic is here in New York to receive the very prestigious Peabody Award, which in the world of journalism is about as high as it goes.
NIC ROBERTSON, CNN SENIOR INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: On behalf of a great team from CNN, I must add.

HEMMER: A good team, yes, but you have done your share as well. Listen, we have solicited e-mail questions from our viewers today. AM@CNN.COM is our address here. Questions to Nic about what's happening in Baghdad today.

Back at it with Zach on line. He says, "What is your assessment," Nic, "is the lack of security in Iraq due to very poor post-action planning by the U.S., or is it simply the magnitude of the task?"

ROBERTSON: It's both. The magnitude is huge, but the post-war planning had to allow for that magnitude, and it didn't appear to. The troops that are on the ground are doing a great job, but they are stretched thin. They need more of them. They need to beef up the numbers just in Baghdad alone to give the same footprint that the 20,000 police force used to give there for the five million population, but the same around the rest of the country, the outlying areas. They don't see that number of troops providing the security in the places they need it, and that is the key thing on that issue.

SOPHIA CHOI, CNN ANCHOR: And we have got a terrific question here from Mark, Montreal, Canada. "I was wondering if Nic can talk a bit about being kicked out of Baghdad, how did he feel personally? Will this be something that he will always look back on and say that he could have done more to stay?"

ROBERTSON: We did everything we could, and you -- don't ever look back in this business, do the best you can. We did the best we could, when we got this information, we went to the ministry of information, to try and challenge it, to try and see the minister, to try and do everything.

So, no, I won't ever look back on it thinking I could have done more. We did our absolute best at the time. It was disappointing after the war to go back in and to be kind of faced with that reality, with all the journalists that I knew who had stayed to cover it, and we were fresh going back, that was kind of disappointing, but at the time I thought we'd done a really good job. We had done the best we could to be there. I believe that we had done the best reporting that we could have done, and therefore I had to be happy with that.

HEMMER: Do you think the world understood how brutal that regime was?

ROBERTSON: No, I don't think they did. I think people had an idea that it was a bad regime, and I think we are only now beginning to get to grips with it, the numbers of mass graves, the numbers of people whose lives were completely disrupted, and even now, people are still afraid to come forward and say everything that they feel about the regime because nobody has found Saddam. Nobody has found his sons. People still have that fear that somehow he is out there. He was so powerful, so omnipresent, that they don't think he's completely gone.

HEMMER: I don't know -- do we have time for one more? Jeanne in New York City -- is that a yes or a no? All right. I'll hold it for -- OK, we do. All right.

"We heard so much about Saddam's multi-million dollar mega-bunker built by a German before the war. Did anyone ever come across the bunker, or is it still sitting out there unexplored?"

ROBERTSON: As far as I know, nobody has discovered this huge bunker system. Now, of course, many, many targets were hit, many targets hit by huge weapons, so possibly it was destroyed, but it certainly doesn't seem to have been discovered.

What we've seen of these presidential palaces that were opulent, that were huge -- huge constructions, and many of them well-appointed. One of them, interestingly, Saddam or somebody had gone through, taken out everything from the building. The door frames were numbered as if somebody was going to bring the doors back and reattach them, like they were planning just to take it away and bring it back, and that's the building where the U.S. administration is now set up.

CHOI: That is a bit frightening of a scenario, he plans on coming back then.

HEMMER: Listen, congratulations again on the Peabody today for winning the "Terror on Tape," essentially, which is what the al Qaeda tapes brought forth, the information there in Iraq when they were found in that country. Check that. Afghanistan. I kept Iraq and I apologize for that.

ROBERTSON: Thank you to the team.

HEMMER: Yes, good team. Thanks, Nic.

TO ORDER A VIDEO OF THIS TRANSCRIPT, PLEASE CALL 800-CNN-NEWS OR USE OUR SECURE ONLINE ORDER FORM LOCATED AT www.fdch.com