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American Morning
Interview with Former Defense Secretary William Cohen
Aired November 05, 2003 - 07:17 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: Turkey will not be sending peacekeepers to Iraq. The Turkish president announcing today that his country would not comply with a U.S. request for military help.
Last night's attack on coalition headquarters inside the Green Zone in Baghdad complicating the security situation in Iraq. Four coalition personnel were injured when explosives were fired into heavily-fortified compounds -- the second straight day for that.
President Bush still insists the attacks will not sidetrack the current U.S. mission.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
GEORGE W. BUSH, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: These people being the terrorists and those who would kill innocent life want us to retreat. They want to us leave, because they know that a free and peaceful Iraq in their midst will damage their cause. And we will stay the course. We will do our job.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
HEMMER: The president from yesterday.
U.S. officials say they want to get more Iraqis involved in the country's defense. But are American reinforcements needed now to finish the job in Iraq that the president talks about?
Former Defense Secretary William Cohen, now chairman and CEO of the Cohen Group, is back with us here on AMERICAN MORNING live in D.C.
Nice to see you, Mr. Secretary. Good morning.
WILLIAM COHEN, FORMER DEFENSE SECRETARY: Good morning, Bill.
HEMMER: I'm going to take you back to July of 2003, on CNN on "LATE EDITION" you said the following thing, and I'll read it for our viewers: "I would far prefer to see us put a larger force in now sooner, rather than waiting over a period of time. I would not want to see a situation where it goes on through a war of attrition, one or two killed a day, five or six a week."
That was four months ago. That statement is true, sir.
COHEN: Well, it was the statement that more is better. If you can have more troops on the ground, it gives you more flexibility. There's also an intimidation factor. But the kinds of forces are really what are critical here -- military intelligence individuals and forces, military police. And there is truth to the observation that we need more Iraqis in support of this.
We are caught, it seems to me, in a classic catch-22 situation. We cannot win this war without the support of the Iraqi people. On the other hand, we can't get the support of the Iraqi people unless they see us as winning the war.
And so, right now you're seeing Jerry Bremer, who is heading up our effort there and the civilian head of the operation there, calling for the creation of a paramilitary force. He's also saying make haste slowly. Let's not decide that we're going to simply take in individuals who haven't been properly vetted and screened to make sure they're not simply part of Saddam's old force and put them in charge wearing either police outfits or put them in a paramilitary operation. But we've got to get the Iraqi people into this operation in a much more significant way.
HEMMER: You've raised a number of interesting points there. I hope we can pick through them quickly here in the next couple of minutes. But back to this issue about putting more troops on the ground there. Does that not just present more targets for the insurgents to go after?
COHEN: Well, I've always looked at the opposite argument. If you say more troops present more targets, then half the number of troops will present half the number of targets. The real issue is: Do we have enough troops on the ground sufficient to carry out the mission?
Now, I would like to defer to General Abizaid, whom I worked with when I was at the Defense Department, in terms of his judgment on this. But I simply look at what's taking place and see the issue of momentum. Momentum in war is very important, as it is in virtually every aspect of our lives. When that starts to shift and the enemy in this particular case becomes much more aggressive, then we've got to take more aggressive countermeasures. And that means getting more people involved.
We'd like to get more military intelligence individuals involved or military police, the right kinds of forces. But we need ultimately more Iraqis, and they have to be people who have been properly vetted. So, more people will be required in my judgment.
HEMMER: You mentioned Jerry Bremer. There's a story today in "The Washington Post" about recruiting this paramilitary force headed up by all Iraqis to allow them to carry out some of the activity we're seeing on the ground. But the screening, the training, this is a process that takes time. How much time?
COHEN: It's going to take a long time. It's going to take months and well into next year. And this is something else that we have to be concerned about. If the issue becomes when we leave Iraq rather than how we leave Iraq, then this war will be lost -- something that I think that would be intolerable in terms of its consequences. We have to understand that this is, in Secretary Rumsfeld's words, a long, hard slog. And anyone who had expectations that we'd be in and out in a matter of a few months or a couple of years I think was mistaken.
The second issue I think that we have to address here is that the president has to win the hearts and minds of the American people, and it seems that there has been quite a bit of slippage in that regard. And now a majority of the people who have been polled seem to question the advisability of our commitment to Iraq at this point.
I think what the president has to do is to rebuild that coalition of support on Capitol Hill, meet with Senator Lugar, Senator Biden, Senator Hagel, McCain and others, and build a strong base of support, and call for a joint session of Congress and lay out exactly where we are, what mistakes have been made, miscalculations have been made, where we are and where we have to be, and to build that support. Because if the American people see us divided, then that's going to have a major impact upon the morale of our forces overseas who are fighting, in this case unfortunately they're dying on our behalf.
So, building that support at home is going to be critical to winning the hearts and minds not only of the American people, but the hearts and minds of the Iraqi people, which will be critical to our success.
HEMMER: William Cohen. Thanks, Mr. Secretary. Come back anytime.
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 November 5, 2003 - 07:17 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
BILL HEMMER, CNN ANCHOR: Turkey will not be sending peacekeepers to Iraq. The Turkish president announcing today that his country would not comply with a U.S. request for military help.
Last night's attack on coalition headquarters inside the Green Zone in Baghdad complicating the security situation in Iraq. Four coalition personnel were injured when explosives were fired into heavily-fortified compounds -- the second straight day for that.
President Bush still insists the attacks will not sidetrack the current U.S. mission.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
GEORGE W. BUSH, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: These people being the terrorists and those who would kill innocent life want us to retreat. They want to us leave, because they know that a free and peaceful Iraq in their midst will damage their cause. And we will stay the course. We will do our job.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
HEMMER: The president from yesterday.
U.S. officials say they want to get more Iraqis involved in the country's defense. But are American reinforcements needed now to finish the job in Iraq that the president talks about?
Former Defense Secretary William Cohen, now chairman and CEO of the Cohen Group, is back with us here on AMERICAN MORNING live in D.C.
Nice to see you, Mr. Secretary. Good morning.
WILLIAM COHEN, FORMER DEFENSE SECRETARY: Good morning, Bill.
HEMMER: I'm going to take you back to July of 2003, on CNN on "LATE EDITION" you said the following thing, and I'll read it for our viewers: "I would far prefer to see us put a larger force in now sooner, rather than waiting over a period of time. I would not want to see a situation where it goes on through a war of attrition, one or two killed a day, five or six a week."
That was four months ago. That statement is true, sir.
COHEN: Well, it was the statement that more is better. If you can have more troops on the ground, it gives you more flexibility. There's also an intimidation factor. But the kinds of forces are really what are critical here -- military intelligence individuals and forces, military police. And there is truth to the observation that we need more Iraqis in support of this.
We are caught, it seems to me, in a classic catch-22 situation. We cannot win this war without the support of the Iraqi people. On the other hand, we can't get the support of the Iraqi people unless they see us as winning the war.
And so, right now you're seeing Jerry Bremer, who is heading up our effort there and the civilian head of the operation there, calling for the creation of a paramilitary force. He's also saying make haste slowly. Let's not decide that we're going to simply take in individuals who haven't been properly vetted and screened to make sure they're not simply part of Saddam's old force and put them in charge wearing either police outfits or put them in a paramilitary operation. But we've got to get the Iraqi people into this operation in a much more significant way.
HEMMER: You've raised a number of interesting points there. I hope we can pick through them quickly here in the next couple of minutes. But back to this issue about putting more troops on the ground there. Does that not just present more targets for the insurgents to go after?
COHEN: Well, I've always looked at the opposite argument. If you say more troops present more targets, then half the number of troops will present half the number of targets. The real issue is: Do we have enough troops on the ground sufficient to carry out the mission?
Now, I would like to defer to General Abizaid, whom I worked with when I was at the Defense Department, in terms of his judgment on this. But I simply look at what's taking place and see the issue of momentum. Momentum in war is very important, as it is in virtually every aspect of our lives. When that starts to shift and the enemy in this particular case becomes much more aggressive, then we've got to take more aggressive countermeasures. And that means getting more people involved.
We'd like to get more military intelligence individuals involved or military police, the right kinds of forces. But we need ultimately more Iraqis, and they have to be people who have been properly vetted. So, more people will be required in my judgment.
HEMMER: You mentioned Jerry Bremer. There's a story today in "The Washington Post" about recruiting this paramilitary force headed up by all Iraqis to allow them to carry out some of the activity we're seeing on the ground. But the screening, the training, this is a process that takes time. How much time?
COHEN: It's going to take a long time. It's going to take months and well into next year. And this is something else that we have to be concerned about. If the issue becomes when we leave Iraq rather than how we leave Iraq, then this war will be lost -- something that I think that would be intolerable in terms of its consequences. We have to understand that this is, in Secretary Rumsfeld's words, a long, hard slog. And anyone who had expectations that we'd be in and out in a matter of a few months or a couple of years I think was mistaken.
The second issue I think that we have to address here is that the president has to win the hearts and minds of the American people, and it seems that there has been quite a bit of slippage in that regard. And now a majority of the people who have been polled seem to question the advisability of our commitment to Iraq at this point.
I think what the president has to do is to rebuild that coalition of support on Capitol Hill, meet with Senator Lugar, Senator Biden, Senator Hagel, McCain and others, and build a strong base of support, and call for a joint session of Congress and lay out exactly where we are, what mistakes have been made, miscalculations have been made, where we are and where we have to be, and to build that support. Because if the American people see us divided, then that's going to have a major impact upon the morale of our forces overseas who are fighting, in this case unfortunately they're dying on our behalf.
So, building that support at home is going to be critical to winning the hearts and minds not only of the American people, but the hearts and minds of the Iraqi people, which will be critical to our success.
HEMMER: William Cohen. Thanks, Mr. Secretary. Come back anytime.
TO ORDER A VIDEO OF THIS TRANSCRIPT, PLEASE CALL 800-CNN-NEWS OR USE OUR SECURE ONLINE ORDER FORM LOCATED AT www.fdch.com.
