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CNN Saturday Morning News

Reporter's Notebook

Aired April 27, 2002 - 09:33   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: Saddam Hussein turns 65 tomorrow, and there are no signs that he's losing his grip on power. Joining us to talk about Saddam Hussein and Iraq's future, we have got Richard Roth, our U.N. correspondent out of New York.

MILES O'BRIEN, CNN ANCHOR: And we have Charles Duelfer, former Unscom deputy chairman, Michael Hirsh from "Newsweek" magazine in Washington.

PHILLIPS: And CNN's Jane Arraf. She's in Baghdad.

We're also taking your calls. Go ahead and call us now. 404- 221-1855. And your e-mails, wam@cnn.com. We've gotten a number of e- mails, though, haven't we?

O'BRIEN: Yeah. Let me try to get them ready for air. Haven't had a chance to do that. If you give me one second, we'll do just that.

PHILLIPS: You got it. We'll have Michael start off. We have a phone call. Chris from where? Oregon. All right, Chris, go ahead. What's your question?

CHRIS: My question is: Why haven't we thrown Saddam Hussein in jail or eliminated him?

PHILLIPS: Go ahead, Jane.

JANE ARRAF, CNN CORRESPONDENT: That's a really interesting question. Most people in this part of the world would say, well, it's because he's the leader of a country. They probably don't see it so black and white here. He may be a terrible leader. We can't say that he is, but he may be a terrible leader. He may be a threat to his neighbors, although Iraq would deny that he's not a threat, but people here, governments here, Arab governments, Muslim governments, a lot of governments outside the United States would say it's not up to the United States to overthrow leaders. He's not elected. And it's a question how popular he really is. But when it comes to overthrowing him, that's a whole different ball game.

Just briefly, the second part of that is, because it's not so easy. If it had been easy to overthrow him, it probably would have been done a long time ago. But this is a man who's reaching his 65th birthday. He's been in power 23 years, and he's still lasting despite everything. It's just not going to be that easy.

RICHARD ROTH, CNN U.N. AFFAIRS CORRESPONDENT: Kyra, the U.S. is putting together a war crimes file on Saddam Hussein. If the caller wants to put him in jail, first there might have to be a trial, though that's still a long shot -- Miles.

PHILLIPS: Michael -- I was going to say -- Michael has covered Iraq for 10 years. And your predictions are that his days are numbered.

MICHAEL HIRSH, "NEWSWEEK": Well, yeah. His days are numbered partly because the statistics of mortality, but also because it does seem that Bush is intent on taking him out before his term is over. You listen to his comments at the news conference a couple of weeks ago with Tony Blair of Britain, he said quite plainly, his policy is to remove Saddam. So it's just a question of how that plays out over the next year or so.

O'BRIEN: All right. Let's go to an e-mail, shall we? This comes from Tom O'Brien -- no relation to yours truly -- "If we insist that Saddam abide with U.N. resolutions, why is Israel exempt?" Let's start with Richard Roth, who covers the U.N. Is there a double standard there, Richard?

ROTH: Well, Israel would say there's a double standard against that country, because most of the resolutions of the Security Council deal with Israel. Many of the resolutions of the council do not get implemented. There's no political will to go out and have countries commit forces to go against either Israel for not implementing, or Iraq, or any of these countries, even Congo, things like that. It's hard to get people to rally around military force. The U.N. will always choose diplomacy.

If one particular country, especially a power such as the U.S., on the Security Council wants to take the lead, wants to go alone, as the U.S. is always willing to do on Iraq, it's just going to happen that way, even if there are dissenting voices in the council.

O'BRIEN: All right. Charles Duelfer, you want to weigh in on that one, too?

CHARLES DUELFER, FORMER DEPUTY CHAIRMAN, UNSCOM: Well, yeah, I mean, Iraq distinguished itself when it invaded and wholly occupied Kuwait. So I think it has committed some things which are quite substantially different than what other countries have done. And the council passed some very stiff resolutions and it's implementing those to a certain extent, but as time has passed the will to do it has diminished to a certain extent.

PHILLIPS: Jane Arraf, I know our time limit is short with you. I want you to take kind of a different side track here for a moment. Talk about this play that debuted, Saddam Hussein's play. Can you tell us about that? You went to go see it.

ARRAF: And it was very exciting. I have to say, it was the debut of a play thought to have been taken from a book written by President Saddam Hussein. It's called "Zebibah and the King," and the king is President Saddam Hussein. In it, he falls in love with a beautiful woman from the countryside who's thought to be a metaphor for the Iraqi people, and he confides in her the trials and tribulations of being a leader, whether he should be strict, what will happen to him when he dies.

It's really a very interesting look at the personality of someone who has been quite inscrutable. Now, this was a rather glittering debut, because it is two days before his birthday, so it was just invitees, which were senior government officials, government ministers, a few diplomats and very, very heavy security.

It wasn't your usual theater performance. In fact, the whole city is surrounded by perhaps tighter security than usual for the birthday and festivities that will go on for three days, including massive pro-president demonstrations being organized by the government in the streets.

ROTH: Not far from Broadway. Maybe that will debut here soon.

O'BRIEN: Probably would be easier to get tickets than "The Producers," I would think, Richard.

But Jane, let me ask, you this, you know, as odd as this whole thing that Saddam Hussein penned a novel which became a play, you know, without getting too deep into this, is there some thematic content we can relate to what's going on right now in Iraq?

ARRAF: There certainly is. It's some of the themes that we've seen throughout Saddam Hussein's personal history and professional history, which are the themes of strength and victory and revenge.

In it, the main theme is that the woman he falls in love with is actually beaten and raped by her estranged husband, not so coincidentally on the same day that U.S. troops started their ground war against Iraq to drive it out of Kuwait. Now, the king, of course, vows revenge, and gets revenge.

And that's something that we've seen a lot here, this constant sense that this is a president who does want to go down not just in his country's history but in world history as a savior of Iraq, as a savior of the Arabs, and as a leader in seeking revenge for all the wrongs and all the injustices that he feels and many people here feel have been inflicted on Iraq -- Miles.

O'BRIEN: All right. Let's get an e-mail in. John W. Baker has this for us: "Why should we even talk about Saddam as long as the Arab-Israeli conflict is continuing to boil and threatening to boil over?" Michael Hirsh, you want to take that one?

HIRSH: Well, it's a very pertinent question, as the Bush administration has found out in recent weeks. Dick Cheney, the vice president, went to the region to try to win support for an attack on Iraq, and found that all anyone wanted to talk about was the Mideast. You have the very real potential that the Mideast street, the Arab street, is being inflamed against not only Israel now but the U.S. and the West, and that attacking Iraq at this juncture would be bad.

And of course, the Iraqis are playing this like a harp at the Arab summit in Beirut. They disavowed for the first time the idea that Kuwait is part of Iraq, as part of a diplomatic play to win over Arab support. So it's a very tough problem, doing both at the same time.

O'BRIEN: Charles Duelfer, you want to weigh in on that one, too?

DUELFER: Sure. You know, it's a mystery to me why the United States hasn't cast what they want to do in Iraq as a positive step for the Arab world. You know, as Jane and others who've been in Iraq know, the Iraqi people are very energetic. There's a lot of talent there, and they have obviously a lot of natural resources. For them to achieve the enormous potential they have, they're never going to do it under the current government.

A new government would allow the Iraqi people and will allow the Iraqi resources to really begin to become what could be the engine of development in the Middle East. Unfortunately, there is this political problem, and the Israeli-Palestinian problem is a real mess. And we're not going be able to proceed down the path of regime change until something is done to sort out the other mess.

O'BRIEN: All right. We have one final question for Jane. We're about to lose her satellite window. So let's get this one in from James Reuben: "Is there enough frustration and dissension within the Iraqi military to open the possibility of a coup to bring in perhaps a benevolent strongman?" There's the oxymoron of the morning. "Say, Tariq Aziz, though mentioning their names may in fact be a death sentence."

ARRAF: Well, it's been the question over the last decade, really. There's been quite a lot of agreement in a lot of places that perhaps this isn't the best leadership for Iraq and the region, but the question is -- who do you replace them with? In terms of how solid the military is behind him, clearly not as solid as they were before the Gulf War. But again, if there were significant dissension that he couldn't deal with, we wouldn't be seeing Saddam Hussein still in power.

Now, there have been occasional rebellions, occasional uprisings and reports of quite a lot of executions, as that question points out, to deal with those, and he's still in power. So what we're seeing now is something that seems to be a little bit weaker or perhaps somewhat weaker, but certainly not weak enough to be any sort of threat to him without massive intervention. And that's the intervention that probably would come from the U.S.

Now, in terms of what comes next and who comes next, that's the other problem. There just really is not anyone here who's emerged who's acceptable or who would be able to pull people together. It's a country of 18 million people. You've got Shias in the south, Kurds in the north, a Sunni minority that's ruling, and it would be someone that would appeal to all those groups. And we haven't seen anyone either here or outside in the opposition so far. PHILLIPS: Jane Arraf, thank you so much. I know we've got to let you go but we're going to continue the discussion minus Jane. Carl is on the line from California. Go ahead, Carl.

CARL: Good morning. I have a question. I guess Jane is off now, but what is the air like, well, say, in Baghdad? All we know is what we see through third party through the course of the news media, and I'm sure by and large it's accurate. But what would it be like if a U.S. citizen just I or another citizen was, for example, to land in Baghdad and walk around town? What would it be like? Would it be like Phoenix?

PHILLIPS: Go ahead, Charles, that's a good question.

DUEFLER: Well, Baghdad is different. And you know, you can't just walk around without the government being aware of where you are. There are minders around. And I was an inspector there. And it was a lot in many ways like being a journalist there. You're trying to find out something, but you're constantly under the watch and control of the government.

It's just a very oppressive feeling, although it's a vibrant city. The people are vibrant. They're trying to make a living. There still is a big control over the truth in the story. For example, if a journalist wanted to investigate corruption by perhaps Saddam's son in terms of business dealings, if a reporter tried to investigate that, I'm sure they'd be thrown out of Baghdad in a heartbeat. So there's a lot of controls over the picture and the story that you see.

O'BRIEN: Let's get an e-mail in, shall we? This one comes from cquintek@aol. "I am 38, and in the National Guard, training to be ready for war. I hope we go to Iraq. That is my personal wish. I think to go in and get Saddam, destroy his empire will cost a lot more American lives than to get al Qaeda. Most Iraqi citizens would welcome liberation."

Richard Roth, do you get the sense that there is any sort of groundswell of support in the U.S. for that kind of sentiment that we're hearing from this particular e-mailer?

ROTH: Well, it's very easy in a poll for people to say, let's go in and get him. And of course, things could change. There was a lot of worry in 1990 before Operation Desert Storm that it would be a disaster, and the casualties were relatively low for U.S. and the allies. One never knows what could face forces there.

The people, as Charles was just talking about, are certainly a very warm people that would probably certainly be willing to live under different administrations, though one would have to see how the tide of battle is going.

You hear all kinds of new plans, that the U.S. might land troops only in Baghdad, try to change things right there in the capital, instead of fighting their way in from the borders. So I'm sure all kinds of contingency plannings are going under way. You will always meet soldiers who certainly are gung ho about going in. One never knows what's left after that. Could Iraq break apart? There's opposition in the north and the south. It doesn't always work out the way one plans it.

O'BRIEN: All right. Let's get another e-mail in. "Saddam Hussein has been a leader in his country for over three decades. We never heard that he started a war on anybody but Iran and then later Kuwait, and this for the reasons the U.S. was aware of. Why is he considered a terrorist while Mr. Sharon, who was involved in massacres in Lebanon in 1980 and now Israel in Palestine is not? Is it a media thing, a propaganda thing, or are there other reasons he should be considered so?" That from Nicole Fidel. And the reason I bring this out, obviously a very strong feeling there about -- a viewpoint, but the perception in the Arab world might actually be in sync with that, Michael Hirsh. And is that something the administration is aware of and cognizant of and dealing with?

HIRSH: Yeah, the administration is trying to make the point, as Charles said before, that Saddam is just as destabilizing and dangerous there as here. But the key point is that, you know, Ariel Sharon, whatever you may think of him, is not targeting Americans. Saddam Hussein has made clear since the Gulf War that he does want to target Americans. There are differing estimates of where he is on developing weapons of mass destruction, but there is a belief that if he's given several more years, he might be able to once again be on the cusp of developing a nuclear weapon.

And so there's a very different consideration for Americans. This is a man who may, to some extent, want to kill more Americans. And Ariel Sharon may be killing Palestinians, but that's a different thing.

PHILLIPS: Michael Hirsh, Charles Duelfer and Richard Roth, thank you so much. Gentlemen, we appreciate you being with us this morning.

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