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CNN Saturday Morning News
Many U.S. Soldiers in Afghanistan Are Seeing Combat for First Time
Aired March 16, 2002 - 07:34 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.
KYRA PHILLIPS, CNN ANCHOR: Let's turn now to our military analyst, retired Air Force Major General Don Shepperd. He's in our Washington bureau this morning -- good to see you, General.
MAJ. GEN. DON SHEPPERD (RET.), CNN MILITARY ANALYST: Good morning, Kyra.
PHILLIPS: Well, talking about -- Marty touched on a couple of things, but up front, 600 additional U.S. troops from the 101st Airborne Division shipping out to Afghanistan. You look at this Purple Heart ceremony. Air assaults are dangerous, and there is a lot of concern about additional troops going forward. What's your reaction?
SHEPPERD: Big-time air assaults are dangerous, and if you read Martin Savidge's great pieces on CNN.com Web page, you'll get an idea of what combat is like, especially from those inexperienced in it, such as Savidge.
Also, you must realize that these are the first time most of these people have been in combat. Their leaders may have been in the Gulf War, but most of these are young kids that have been in combat for the first time. And they are receiving the medal you most don't want to get, which is the Purple Heart, for being wounded. So it's a way of recognizing our troops, of course, and thanking them for their sacrifices, and it's a tough business out there, Kyra.
PHILLIPS: And no doubt. Targeting Iraq, Saudi prince, Crown Prince Abdullah, not supporting this. It could have a domino effect, yes?
SHEPPERD: It could. In fact, none of the Gulf States so far have lent any kind of support to any kind of rapid invasion of Iraq or us going against Iraq militarily.
Now, these are early stages of setting the diplomacy necessary, if we have to go into Iraq. I suspect that our government is making, through Vice President Cheney, it clear to all the Gulf States that we will not sit by and allow Saddam Hussein or anyone else to develop weapons of mass destruction to be used later against our country and take, you know, an attack against this country.
But this is the early stages. This is the rhetoric that goes with it. You have to build a case. You have to build the legalities, see if we ever go in militarily, Kyra.
PHILLIPS: Another issue surrounding Iraq, let's talk about Scott Speicher, the Navy pilot shot down 11 years ago in Iraq. And the story just keeps surfacing, and now it is coming to light again that he may be alive, that he is in an Iraqi prison. It seems hard to believe. What's your take on this story?
SHEPPERD: It does seem hard to believe, and the harsh reality is after every war, we are left with people that we simply do not know what happened to them. I worked on many SARs of search and rescues in Vietnam. There is a process.
If you launch a search-and-rescue operation if it's appropriate, if there is reason to believe that the person is alive on the ground, you can recover them. If you can't launch a SARs, or if a SARs is not successful, then you normally declare the person MIA, missing in action.
In the case of Scott Speicher, that was done. And then in May, about six months -- May of 1991, about six months after the war, his status was changed to KIA, or killed in action, BNR, body not recovered, which is the normal process. In other words, we didn't find his body. We can't confirm, and so we assume that he is dead, and that's the process we have always followed.
Now again in January of 2001, his status was again changed to MIA for reasons we don't understand. All of this is surfacing now. It doesn't make any sense to me that Iraq would keep a pilot. They displayed all of the others; 21 personnel were returned after the Gulf War. The others were accounted for with the exception of Speicher. We couldn't recover his body.
So the harsh fact is we simply don't know if he is dead or alive. It stretches the imagination to think that they do have him. I suppose it's always a possibility.
PHILLIPS: General Don Shepperd, thank you so much -- we'll see you again next hour.
SHEPPERD: Pleasure.
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