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American Morning

Hunt for Saddam: Closing in?

Aired July 28, 2003 - 07:05   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.


SOLEDAD O'BRIEN, CNN ANCHOR: Just how close might the military be to finding Saddam Hussein?
Joining us from Washington, D.C. this morning is CNN analyst, Ken Pollack. He is the director of research at the Saban Center for Middle East Policy at the Brookings Institution.

Good morning. Thanks for joining us, and nice to see you.

KEN POLLACK, CNN ANALYST: Good morning, Soledad.

O'BRIEN: So, is it clear then if Saddam Hussein is on the run and the attacks against U.S. soldiers have not sort of lessened at all over the last couple of days, he is not organizing the attacks then? Is that fair to say?

POLLACK: Yes, I think that is exactly the lesson to take away from this, Soledad. He may be part of whatever command structure exists for at least some of the attacks, but somebody who is moving around every two to four hours is not someone who is going to be able to exercise a great deal of operational control over these kind of units.

In addition, if he is on the run from U.S. forces -- and I have no reason to doubt U.S. Central Command, that seems very obvious -- he also is going to have a great deal of difficulty communicating. He can't use transmitters, because the U.S. will trace that immediately. Chances are, he's being forced to use land lines to the extent they exist, but we know that telephone communication in Iraq is not terrific. And he may be being forced to use runners to the extent that he has any communication at all.

It's very hard to coordinate a nationwide resistance movement if that's how you're being forced to communicate, and it suggests that Saddam Hussein is not coordinating these attacks, at least not on any kind of a real-time basis.

O'BRIEN: Military officials seem to think that this capture is eminent. Do you agree with that? Or do you think that's over- enthusiastic?

POLLACK: Well, honestly, Soledad, I just don't -- sitting here in Washington, I don't have any information either to confirm it or disconfirm it. I think that we have to assume that U.S. Central Command knows what it's talking about. They've been doing a pretty good job so far. Saddam seems to be keeping to his old pattern, which is trying to keep one step ahead of the United States. And I think that there is reason to believe that the U.S. military is hot on his heels. What we don't know is: Are they hot enough that they'll be able to catch him? And if not, will they be able to stay on his heels, or will he kind of slip the noose and be able to put some more distance between U.S. forces and himself?

O'BRIEN: Last week, the Saddam Hussein security detail, part of it at least, was nabbed. Yesterday, the chief of security, they believe, they just missed him by a little bit. Give me a sense then of who is protecting Saddam Hussein. Is he traveling alone, with one other person? Is the sense that's how it's going? Or are there more than that?

POLLACK: Yes, as best we can tell, it does look like Saddam is traveling with a very small group of people, probably just a handful of bodyguards, probably old members of a group that was called the Murakikeen (ph), his companions, the bodyguards who were closest to him. Saddam knows that if he travels with a large group of people, the U.S. is going to find out about it. A large group of people is the kind of thing that other people will notice, and the more people you travel with, the more noticeable it will be either to other people on the ground who may report it to the United States, or by U.S. technical systems.

And he knows full well that the U.S. has a tremendous panoply, from everything from satellites to drones that are constantly hovering over that part of Iraq looking for large groups of people. So, he's probably on the run with a very small number.

O'BRIEN: Ken, I want to ask you a quick question about a report out of "Newsweek" about some of the things that were found in Uday's briefcase, talking about Saddam Hussein's sons. The contents include painkillers, bottles of cologne, Viagra, men's underwear, dress shirts, a silk tie and a condom. "Newsweek" also says that the brothers had a huge stash of cash and two ladies' purses. What do you make of the contents of this briefcase?

POLLACK: Well, honestly, Soledad, you know, it's a bizarre set of contents which actually makes it perfectly in keeping with certainly Uday's lifestyle. You know, if there were some cattle prods and other implements of torture in there, that would have probably filled out his normal mode of travel. You know, these two were awful. They were horrible people. This is kind of how they lived their lives, and I think it also gets to just how out of touch they were.

You know, I thought that Mr. Flournoy's comment in the last session about, you know, what did they think? They were going to get to do a little dating? It kind of gets right to the point.

I don't think these guys could quite come to grips with the fact that they were completely out of power. And, in fact, you heard that in a number of the reports that were coming out that they were deeply distressed, they were very angry, because they didn't expect to ever be put in this kind of a situation. Again, it goes to kind of the mindset of Saddam and the people around him and the surprise by which this war took them. O'BRIEN: Ken Pollack from the Brookings Institution, nice to see you, as always. Thanks so much.

POLLACK: Thank you, Soledad.

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 July 28, 2003 - 07:05   ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
SOLEDAD O'BRIEN, CNN ANCHOR: Just how close might the military be to finding Saddam Hussein?
Joining us from Washington, D.C. this morning is CNN analyst, Ken Pollack. He is the director of research at the Saban Center for Middle East Policy at the Brookings Institution.

Good morning. Thanks for joining us, and nice to see you.

KEN POLLACK, CNN ANALYST: Good morning, Soledad.

O'BRIEN: So, is it clear then if Saddam Hussein is on the run and the attacks against U.S. soldiers have not sort of lessened at all over the last couple of days, he is not organizing the attacks then? Is that fair to say?

POLLACK: Yes, I think that is exactly the lesson to take away from this, Soledad. He may be part of whatever command structure exists for at least some of the attacks, but somebody who is moving around every two to four hours is not someone who is going to be able to exercise a great deal of operational control over these kind of units.

In addition, if he is on the run from U.S. forces -- and I have no reason to doubt U.S. Central Command, that seems very obvious -- he also is going to have a great deal of difficulty communicating. He can't use transmitters, because the U.S. will trace that immediately. Chances are, he's being forced to use land lines to the extent they exist, but we know that telephone communication in Iraq is not terrific. And he may be being forced to use runners to the extent that he has any communication at all.

It's very hard to coordinate a nationwide resistance movement if that's how you're being forced to communicate, and it suggests that Saddam Hussein is not coordinating these attacks, at least not on any kind of a real-time basis.

O'BRIEN: Military officials seem to think that this capture is eminent. Do you agree with that? Or do you think that's over- enthusiastic?

POLLACK: Well, honestly, Soledad, I just don't -- sitting here in Washington, I don't have any information either to confirm it or disconfirm it. I think that we have to assume that U.S. Central Command knows what it's talking about. They've been doing a pretty good job so far. Saddam seems to be keeping to his old pattern, which is trying to keep one step ahead of the United States. And I think that there is reason to believe that the U.S. military is hot on his heels. What we don't know is: Are they hot enough that they'll be able to catch him? And if not, will they be able to stay on his heels, or will he kind of slip the noose and be able to put some more distance between U.S. forces and himself?

O'BRIEN: Last week, the Saddam Hussein security detail, part of it at least, was nabbed. Yesterday, the chief of security, they believe, they just missed him by a little bit. Give me a sense then of who is protecting Saddam Hussein. Is he traveling alone, with one other person? Is the sense that's how it's going? Or are there more than that?

POLLACK: Yes, as best we can tell, it does look like Saddam is traveling with a very small group of people, probably just a handful of bodyguards, probably old members of a group that was called the Murakikeen (ph), his companions, the bodyguards who were closest to him. Saddam knows that if he travels with a large group of people, the U.S. is going to find out about it. A large group of people is the kind of thing that other people will notice, and the more people you travel with, the more noticeable it will be either to other people on the ground who may report it to the United States, or by U.S. technical systems.

And he knows full well that the U.S. has a tremendous panoply, from everything from satellites to drones that are constantly hovering over that part of Iraq looking for large groups of people. So, he's probably on the run with a very small number.

O'BRIEN: Ken, I want to ask you a quick question about a report out of "Newsweek" about some of the things that were found in Uday's briefcase, talking about Saddam Hussein's sons. The contents include painkillers, bottles of cologne, Viagra, men's underwear, dress shirts, a silk tie and a condom. "Newsweek" also says that the brothers had a huge stash of cash and two ladies' purses. What do you make of the contents of this briefcase?

POLLACK: Well, honestly, Soledad, you know, it's a bizarre set of contents which actually makes it perfectly in keeping with certainly Uday's lifestyle. You know, if there were some cattle prods and other implements of torture in there, that would have probably filled out his normal mode of travel. You know, these two were awful. They were horrible people. This is kind of how they lived their lives, and I think it also gets to just how out of touch they were.

You know, I thought that Mr. Flournoy's comment in the last session about, you know, what did they think? They were going to get to do a little dating? It kind of gets right to the point.

I don't think these guys could quite come to grips with the fact that they were completely out of power. And, in fact, you heard that in a number of the reports that were coming out that they were deeply distressed, they were very angry, because they didn't expect to ever be put in this kind of a situation. Again, it goes to kind of the mindset of Saddam and the people around him and the surprise by which this war took them. O'BRIEN: Ken Pollack from the Brookings Institution, nice to see you, as always. Thanks so much.

POLLACK: Thank you, Soledad.

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