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CNN Sunday Morning

Will Bombing Help U.S. Capture bin Laden?

Aired December 09, 2001 - 09:13   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.
JEANNE MESERVE, CNN ANCHOR: The White Mountains near Tora Bora are white with smoke this morning, as allied bombers continue their aerial assault on the caves and fortifications of Osama bin Laden and his al Qaeda fighters.

We're going to get some inside perspective on those attacks now and their possible impact on bin Laden and his guerrilla warriors. CNN military analyst retired General Wesley Clark joins us this morning from Little Rock.

General, if the object is to get Osama bin Laden, is bombing the most effective way to do it?

GEN. WESLEY CLARK (RET.), CNN MILITARY ANALYST: Well, it's part of the strategy because what's being done is that these cave complexes are being surrounded by troops on the ground, our Afghan allies from the Northern Alliance, and other friendly groups. And, as they move in to close in on what they believe to be the mouths of the caves, they receive resistance.

When they receive that resistance, then they report back in and tell us where it is and then we strike it. Of course, we've also got overhead imagery of that coming in all the time, but it's a large area, and it's very difficult to see it clearly from the air.

And so, it's going to be -- it's fighting, picking your way forward, waiting for resistance, then using firepower to reduce that resistance, and hoping that you've got enough troops around the area, and you've covered everything you know about with sufficient depth that he can't slip out in the meantime.

MESERVE: Isn't intelligence absolutely key, and are we going to get the intelligence we need from our Afghan allies? Is there some divergence of interest here?

CLARK: Well, we think that our Afghan allies really do want to eliminate al Qaeda, and that's what they're telling us, I'm sure. And to the best of their ability, they're going to bring their forces into the area.

But, no one is going to be particularly anxious to run human wave assaults against these cave mouths. And so, the tendency is going to be to find the resistance, back off and wait for American air power to strike. And as we've found from the instance the last couple of days, you got to be a long way away. You may have to come back a mile or more to give the room for the bombers to strike those cave mouths.

And so, there is opportunity for slippage here and there's an opportunity for some tough fighting. We just don't know how much our Afghan allies really know about this area. Are there secret tunnel mouths? Are there other areas that aren't covered?

And what about in Pakistan, are the troops in Pakistan that have been brought up and reinforce the border really covering the most likely avenues of escape and how thorough is their coverage? Could they be penetrated? Could someone slip through? Could there be a deal cut?

It wouldn't surprise me that some of Osama bin Laden's family is already out, but I think that he will want to stay long enough to try to show that he can successfully attack and kill a group of fighters. He would like to be able to get at the Americans. He hasn't been successful in that so far.

MESERVE: There are reports that he is commanding troops. How effective is he in that role? What do we know about his military experience?

CLARK: Well on his military experience, he's never been an effective commander. He wasn't a commander. He was more of a logistician and a strategist and an organizer. His big claim was that he had money and he had prestige representing Saudi Arabia, and he could encourage recruitment and he could then promote training and then ship people off into battles.

So when he gets right down into the commanding of the fighting, he's got other people who are far more experienced in the tactics of that than he is himself. However, he's probably still there, based on what we know of his personality.

The Taliban have collapsed so quickly. They've so discredited their calls to martyrdom, that if Osama bin Laden is going to stand for anything, he's going to have to put up some greater fight than the Taliban has. So my guess would be that he still wants to stay there.

But I would also guess that he doesn't want to be a martyr at this stage. He's going, at some point, to try to slip out and elude the grasp of the United States and our allies in Afghanistan.

MESERVE: Now, we talk about Osama bin Laden, but the Washington Post did some calculations this morning, and estimates that two-thirds of the top al Qaeda leadership is still unaccounted for, still presumably operating. Isn't this a significant problem for the United States?

CLARK: I think it is a problem. I think that we would want to take out all of the top leadership here. As long as these people are on the loose and still have connections to networks in other countries, there's still a substantial risk for Americans at home and abroad, and for our other governments around the world and the people that are working with us. And so, it's going to be a matter of patience and diligence over time to track down these individuals and work against these networks.

What we've seen thus far in this campaign has worked extremely well. It is, you put American, small numbers of American troops on the ground and use our real advantage which is air power and you bring overwhelming fire power to bear from the air against any localized, stationary defending forces. That worked. That broke apart the Taliban.

But now, we're in a different phase. Now we're in the phase where we've got to have specific human intelligence. We've got to penetrate into networks. We've got to be able to anticipate the locations of some of these leaders and we've got to then capture them.

And this is a matter, not only for the military, but for law enforcement, police around the world. Intelligence agencies from various governments all have to cooperate in an unprecedented fashion to be able to really nab this network.

Some of these top lieutenants are probably no longer in Afghanistan, so we don't know where they are. At least we don't know publicly where they are. The government probably does, and we're going to have to mobilize our friends and allies around the world to help us detain them.

MESERVE: And we have to leave it there. Retired General Wesley Clark, thanks so much for joining us from Little Rock this morning.

CLARK: Thank you, Jeanne.

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