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American Morning

Operation Iron Hammer

Aired November 13, 2003 - 09:07   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: A U.S. military spokesman in Iraq says the intense operation we are seeing there is an effort to go out and find the terrorists in their lairs.
Ben Wedeman is live for us in Baghdad this morning.

Ben, good morning.

BEN WEDEMAN, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Yes, good morning, Soledad. Yes, it's part of really the coalition's changing tactics to respond to what has been a wave of attacks against the coalition inflicting unprecedented coalition casualties. Now, we did see last night that the coalition has launched this Operation Iron Hammer, a fairly high profile operation, intended to crack down on those who are behind the attacks.

Now, according to a coalition official who briefed us just a little while ago, they are seeing evidence of links and coordination between the various attacks going on in Iraq. They say that terrorists, in their words, shared a philosophy or affiliation with al Qaeda. They say they are changing their tactics. They are not waiting for the enemy to attack them, rather they are going to attack the enemy first. They also say that the operation last night and similar operations are based upon more and better local intelligence.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

COL. GEORGE KRIVO, U.S. ARMY: What are we doing? Actionable intelligence. We are bringing in more and more intelligence assets. We are also getting increased cooperation from Iraqis, and others that provide us intelligence which we act upon to go out and find, capture, and kill these terrorists before they conduct these operations.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

WEDEMAN: And of course we also heard that from the coalition that they will be closing the July 14th Bridge. That is a bridge that about a month ago was opened because we were told the security situation was improving. Now, security situation becoming rather precarious. That bridge is closed once again -- Soledad.

O'BRIEN: Ben Wedeman for us this morning. Ben, thanks.

Let's get more on this military escalation from military analyst Colonel Sam Gardner. He joins us from Washington this morning.

Nice to see you, colonel. Let's first begin with this front-page story from "The Washington Post," in that they suggest that this wave of violence is actually part of a bigger picture plan by Saddam Hussein. In fact, since he couldn't sort of mount a conventional response to the U.S. attack, this was going to be his response all along. Some people have said he's not that organized. It's not possible. Where do you stand on this?

COL. SAM GARDNER, (RET.) ANALYST: Well, Soledad, this is not the first time that that story has come up. Actually back, I think it was in June, special operations forces in Iraq found a document which sort of suggested that Saddam Hussein had a plan that would unfold not unlike this.

I must say, however, the evidence from then until now just doesn't support that argument. A couple of things. First of all, the evidence that he had even prepared -- we were told early in the war that he prepared to blow all the oil wells. Well, it now turns out that a very small fraction of those were prepared to blow. So the idea that he had prepared from that perspective doesn't hold up.

The other perspective, Soledad, is this CIA report that was released this week, which essentially says that we have an insurgency here. People keep saying this terrorist word, but we're only going to get to a good policy if we can cut through that stuff, and define it for what it is. And I think we have an insurgency on our hands. It's not terrorism. It's an insurgency.

O'BRIEN: You have said that that particular report is significant not only because of the content of things are bad and they expect it's going to get worse, there's an insurgency, but also by virtue of the fact that it was leaked. Why do you think that's significant in and of itself?

GARDNER: Well, interesting, Soledad, what I see beginning to appear in Washington is a division, a tension, at least, between the politicians and the professionals. A couple of things happened this week. One of them on a smaller level, and the commanders in Iraq said they can't find al Qaeda types, whereas we keep hearing from the White House, al Qaeda types. That's the tension.

The CIA report says things are bad, and are going to get worse, and they may number as many as 150,000 insurgents. Now this is at a time when the White House had been saying before that the only problem was people weren't telling the positive story. The fact that this top secret report which hit Washington on Monday, was in the press by Tuesday, means that the professionals, I think, don't want to be caught the way they were with the WMD and blamed on bad intelligence. They want it to get out, so that it is in the public when the decisions are made.

O'BRIEN: Do you think that the U.S. strategy of attacking the insurgents is going to be successful? you have talked about a, I think you called it a strategic spiral, meaning that you don't think it's necessarily the right way to go. GARDNER: No. See, once we can define it as insurgency, you've got to be able to think about strategy in a different way. Insurgents do things to get a reaction. It is the reaction they're after, not the act. The reaction tends to make the people feel more suppressed. They're not after the will of the American people, they're after the will of the Iraqi people, and that it is every time the United States kicks down another door, puts a sack over another Iraqi head, bombs with a C-130 gunship or an F-16, that support for the insurgent goes up, not down. It's sort of a reverse logic in insurgency. And that is it's possible, as it was in Vietnam, for us to win every battle, but to lose the war, because it's the hearts and minds thing that we've got to do.

O'BRIEN: Retired Colonel Sam Gardner, joining us this morning. Nice to have you, sir, thanks for joining us.

GARDNER: Certainly.

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 13, 2003 - 09:07   ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
SOLEDAD O'BRIEN, CNN ANCHOR: A U.S. military spokesman in Iraq says the intense operation we are seeing there is an effort to go out and find the terrorists in their lairs.
Ben Wedeman is live for us in Baghdad this morning.

Ben, good morning.

BEN WEDEMAN, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Yes, good morning, Soledad. Yes, it's part of really the coalition's changing tactics to respond to what has been a wave of attacks against the coalition inflicting unprecedented coalition casualties. Now, we did see last night that the coalition has launched this Operation Iron Hammer, a fairly high profile operation, intended to crack down on those who are behind the attacks.

Now, according to a coalition official who briefed us just a little while ago, they are seeing evidence of links and coordination between the various attacks going on in Iraq. They say that terrorists, in their words, shared a philosophy or affiliation with al Qaeda. They say they are changing their tactics. They are not waiting for the enemy to attack them, rather they are going to attack the enemy first. They also say that the operation last night and similar operations are based upon more and better local intelligence.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

COL. GEORGE KRIVO, U.S. ARMY: What are we doing? Actionable intelligence. We are bringing in more and more intelligence assets. We are also getting increased cooperation from Iraqis, and others that provide us intelligence which we act upon to go out and find, capture, and kill these terrorists before they conduct these operations.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

WEDEMAN: And of course we also heard that from the coalition that they will be closing the July 14th Bridge. That is a bridge that about a month ago was opened because we were told the security situation was improving. Now, security situation becoming rather precarious. That bridge is closed once again -- Soledad.

O'BRIEN: Ben Wedeman for us this morning. Ben, thanks.

Let's get more on this military escalation from military analyst Colonel Sam Gardner. He joins us from Washington this morning.

Nice to see you, colonel. Let's first begin with this front-page story from "The Washington Post," in that they suggest that this wave of violence is actually part of a bigger picture plan by Saddam Hussein. In fact, since he couldn't sort of mount a conventional response to the U.S. attack, this was going to be his response all along. Some people have said he's not that organized. It's not possible. Where do you stand on this?

COL. SAM GARDNER, (RET.) ANALYST: Well, Soledad, this is not the first time that that story has come up. Actually back, I think it was in June, special operations forces in Iraq found a document which sort of suggested that Saddam Hussein had a plan that would unfold not unlike this.

I must say, however, the evidence from then until now just doesn't support that argument. A couple of things. First of all, the evidence that he had even prepared -- we were told early in the war that he prepared to blow all the oil wells. Well, it now turns out that a very small fraction of those were prepared to blow. So the idea that he had prepared from that perspective doesn't hold up.

The other perspective, Soledad, is this CIA report that was released this week, which essentially says that we have an insurgency here. People keep saying this terrorist word, but we're only going to get to a good policy if we can cut through that stuff, and define it for what it is. And I think we have an insurgency on our hands. It's not terrorism. It's an insurgency.

O'BRIEN: You have said that that particular report is significant not only because of the content of things are bad and they expect it's going to get worse, there's an insurgency, but also by virtue of the fact that it was leaked. Why do you think that's significant in and of itself?

GARDNER: Well, interesting, Soledad, what I see beginning to appear in Washington is a division, a tension, at least, between the politicians and the professionals. A couple of things happened this week. One of them on a smaller level, and the commanders in Iraq said they can't find al Qaeda types, whereas we keep hearing from the White House, al Qaeda types. That's the tension.

The CIA report says things are bad, and are going to get worse, and they may number as many as 150,000 insurgents. Now this is at a time when the White House had been saying before that the only problem was people weren't telling the positive story. The fact that this top secret report which hit Washington on Monday, was in the press by Tuesday, means that the professionals, I think, don't want to be caught the way they were with the WMD and blamed on bad intelligence. They want it to get out, so that it is in the public when the decisions are made.

O'BRIEN: Do you think that the U.S. strategy of attacking the insurgents is going to be successful? you have talked about a, I think you called it a strategic spiral, meaning that you don't think it's necessarily the right way to go. GARDNER: No. See, once we can define it as insurgency, you've got to be able to think about strategy in a different way. Insurgents do things to get a reaction. It is the reaction they're after, not the act. The reaction tends to make the people feel more suppressed. They're not after the will of the American people, they're after the will of the Iraqi people, and that it is every time the United States kicks down another door, puts a sack over another Iraqi head, bombs with a C-130 gunship or an F-16, that support for the insurgent goes up, not down. It's sort of a reverse logic in insurgency. And that is it's possible, as it was in Vietnam, for us to win every battle, but to lose the war, because it's the hearts and minds thing that we've got to do.

O'BRIEN: Retired Colonel Sam Gardner, joining us this morning. Nice to have you, sir, thanks for joining us.

GARDNER: Certainly.

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