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Update on Chief U.N. Weapons Inspector Hans Blix; What Will Be Different for Inspectors This Time Around

Aired November 16, 2002 - 08:02   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.


MILES O'BRIEN, CNN CORRESPONDENT: More now on our top story, what Hans Blix is calling a new chapter of weapons inspections in Iraq. The chief U.N. weapons inspector and his advance team gathering in Cypress tomorrow. It's the final stop on their journey to Baghdad to begin the high stakes hunt for weapons of mass destruction.
CNN's Richard Roth joins us from Paris. He's traveling with that group -- Richard, what were your thoughts on that news conference?

RICHARD ROTH, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Well, a lot of what Mr. Blix said here to journalists in Paris he said in New York on Friday. He appears very confident, very determined, still a soft-spoken Swedish diplomat at heart. He knows what he has to do. He has the, he says, the money. He's got a new staff. But he needs people to help him out in Iraq and he needs countries to hand over intelligence information.

I flew on the plane with him from New York and it was interesting, one of his aides was selected for a random frisking and searching due to the terrorism alerts while Mr. Blix had to look on kind of smiling. I don't think the people who were searching his aide had any idea that what Mr. Blix and the aide will be searching for in a few days, or will be directing.

Otherwise, Mr. Blix explained to the journalists what his next stops will be.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

HANS BLIX, CHIEF U.N. WEAPONS INSPECTOR: I'm going on tomorrow to Cypress and from there, together with my colleague, the director general of the International Atomic Energy Agency, Mr. Al-Baradei (ph), to Baghdad for a couple of days talk at the political level to initiate the new chapter of inspections. And, of course, we hope and expect to have full Iraqi cooperation.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

ROTH: Hans Blix will go to Vienna, an overnight personal stop. Then he'll link up with the IAEA director general and they'll go into Cypress. It's going to be an advanced staging party, Miles, this team just setting up the communications, the computers, the technology. It's a process that just has to play out. Everybody will be watching, though, for how Iraq will cooperate with these inspectors, because they have big, firm, new backing by that resolution that passed unanimously, unimpeded, unrestricted access, even the presidential sites, even mosques, as Mr. Blix said Friday. He said there are no sanctuaries. That may be difficult for the Iraqi bureaucracy and the machinery there and the political structure to handle.

O'BRIEN: Let's talk a little bit about the timetable, Richard. Mr. Blix says his team will be ready to begin its work on the 27th of November. There is a December 8 deadline in that resolution and, from which, at which time the Iraqis have to come clean to some degree.

Just walk us through the timetable here. This is likely to go on for months, is it not?

ROTH: Right. I might be a little jet lagged, but I think you said December 27, maybe it's November 27 that he now says the inspections will have begun. And that date is a little earlier in terms of Blix setting that as the date for the clock to start ticking. Thus, 60 days from that day, November 27, meaning January 27, he will report his first report to the Security Council. A lot of people had thought it was going to be in mid-February. Now it's been moved up. Some could say well, Blix is going to be reporting to the Council now out of that February good weather for war window, thus setting the stage even further.

He has felt he may not need all the time and he wants to get started. Iraq has wanted him to get started. Russia wants an earlier time line. So everyone will get a faster idea just where we're going with this situation, whether Iraq is truly on the road to getting sanctions suspended or whether there will be so many interferences and transgressions and violations that it's just a matter of time before someone uses military force.

O'BRIEN: All right, we have a matter of time here. We don't have much time left. But I want to ask you to quickly give me a response on this, if you could. If you could tell me whether, well, now I've just lost the question.

You know what? We'll leave it at that, Richard Roth. I've lost my question for you...

ROTH: Well, there's another, I can tell you the last, the next -- all right, I can tell you the next time line is December 8 for Iraq to turn over its full weapons of mass destruction portfolio, if it has any. It denies it so far.

O'BRIEN: All right, I guess I'm the one with jet lag this morning.

Richard Roth in Paris, happy journeys.

Back to you, Arthel.

ARTHEL NEVILLE, CNN CORRESPONDENT: OK.

In the meantime, some people say the U.N. mission to Iraq will be a game of they say hide and we seek. How effective will the weapons inspectors be is the big question. Joining us with some insight into that is former chief U.N. weapons inspector Richard Butler in Sydney, Australia.

Good day, sir.

RICHARD BUTLER, FORMER CHIEF U.N. WEAPONS INSPECTOR: Good day.

NEVILLE: What is going to be different this time around? Will inspectors be better equipped?

BUTLER: What is crucially different is the powers that they're been given. I certainly wish I had had those powers four years ago. The resolution adopted by the Security Council a week and a bit ago gives them every power they need from inspections to interviewing of persons and the seizure of documents, and including the possibility of interviewing scientists outside Iraq, where they would be free from interference or oppression by their own government.

But the crucial issue is will the Iraqis let them exercise those powers. And I must say, as the days have passed, I've started to become a little bit pessimistic that that will be the case. Hans Blix wrote to the Iraqis in October seeking assurances on a whole number of mundane but necessary work conditions in Baghdad, those that they are wanting to set up now and that they will need. Iraq hasn't even answered that letter.

So I'm not sure that this is going to play well. But certainly the inspectors have all the powers they need.

NEVILLE: Now, just a short time ago Saddam Hussein addressed his people via a memo read on Iraqi television. He is saying that he needed to have the inspectors come back in, they needed to prove that, in fact, Iraq doesn't have any weapons of mass destruction. Of course, that could be all propaganda.

Does Saddam Hussein's reaction today give you any more encouragement, I would ask, in terms of what will happen once the U.N. inspectors get to Iraq?

BUTLER: No, because, you see it's completely, you know, not new to hear the Iraqis make a claim such as they made recently that they had no weapons of mass destruction -- which, by the way, is simply not true. But we'll see in the future, you know, how that's proven or otherwise. It's not new to have Iraq make a claim and then only to completely reverse it days later without any reference to this sort of contradiction.

Now, the crucial point in the immediate future is the need for the Iraq to submit to the inspector, to the U.N. by the 8th of December a declaration of all of its weapons of mass destruction and the means to make them. Up till today, they've been saying they have none of those. And that would suggest by the 8th of December, they'll submit a blank piece of paper.

If they do that, there will be very serious trouble because that would simply not be credible. What I suspect they'll do is they'll submit a piece of paper that will say we had some of those weapons in the past, we don't have any more now and your inspectors should be able to demonstrate this truth quite quickly. And I think that's what Saddam is getting at, his belief that if the inspections can be put on fairly quickly they will be able to verify the truth of Iraq's declaration.

Now, we will see. I want to say that if that declaration says that they don't have any such weapons then I'm afraid there will be very, very serious trouble because this wouldn't simply be, it simply would not be true.

NEVILLE: Sir, let's talk about the safety of the weapons inspectors once they get there. God forbid anything goes wrong, but if that were to happen, how will they be protected?

BUTLER: Well, we had that problem in the past in my period as head of the organization. I had to withdraw all inspectors on three occasions. That was nail biting stuff. My fundamental concern always was that we lose no one. And I'm pleased and proud to say we didn't. We didn't have armed guards protecting us. We relied on political pressure and I guess on Iraq's calculation that it wouldn't serve their position well if they actually harmed inspectors.

I suppose that those continue to be the circumstances. There is the principle of shooting the messenger and inspectors always could face that if Iraq decides that it doesn't like the message that they're bringing. If they look like showing that Iraq has been deceptive, that there are weapons in a given building or a given place, it will be tempting to the Iraqis to try to get the inspectors out of there. And they did put us at gunpoint at some times in the past.

But on balance I suspect they will calculate that it will not be in their interests to do that to inspectors and inspectors in that sense may be spared, you know, physical aggression against them.

NEVILLE: Mr. Richard Butler, thank you so much for joining us here on WEEKEND AMERICAN MORNING.

BUTLER: My pleasure.

O'BRIEN: All right, it's time for us to take a break. Coming up in the next hour, we invite you to participate with us if you'd like. Wake up, turn on your computer, send us an e-mail. Many of you have already answered the call. We've already got some great questions. We'll try to get as many as we can on the air. Richard Roth, Rym Brahimi and General David Grange.

Mr. Roth is in Paris, Ms. Brahimi in Baghdad, General Grange is in Chicago, where he is often, to field your questions.

WAM, Wam@cnn.com, is the e-mail address. We'll have a phone number for you a little bit later.

Also still to come, what's the next move for the military in Iraq. We'll ask General Grange about that, give you a little taste of our reporter's notebook.

COMMERCIAL

O'BRIEN: Hans Blix and his team on their way to Baghdad. Mr. Blix saying he is going to initiate a new chapter in inspections inside Iraq. Perhaps that is wishful thinking, perhaps it is not.

Joining us to talk a little bit about it is Gen. David Grange.

General Grange, good to have you back with us.

Is it really a new chapter or is it just a retread of some old chapters?

BRIG. GEN. DAVID GRANGE, U.S. ARMY (RET.): Well, I think they have more powers than the previous inspectors, as was stated just a little while ago of Mr. Butler. So, and they have better technology. But I think it's still going to be the same old Saddam. See, the intent, the character of Saddam doesn't change. And that's the long- term problem, you know?

O'BRIEN: Cat and mouse is putting it lightly, isn't it?

GRANGE: That's right. And so we're still dealing with Saddam, that type of person, expert at evil, at deception, disinformation. So it's going to be still a challenge.

O'BRIEN: Give us a sense of, let's say you were on that team. Let's say you were Mr. Blix. I'm going to let you be the king of inspections for a moment. How would you go about it?

GRANGE: Well, one is you have to saturate, I think, the area almost immediately, and that's going to require quite a lot of people and teams with experts and also people with operational sense and intelligent type people. When I mean intelligence, I mean for information, that type of intelligence, like you would on planning any kind of a military operation.

O'BRIEN: Mr. Blix says money is no object. Does he have the team, though, do you think, to do just what you said?

GRANGE: Well, you know, again, you have this vast area and you have above ground, underground, things dispersed in palaces and mosques, in hospitals and all around, and mobile means. And so it's hard to get everywhere rapidly for an overwhelming inspection force so people can't shift things on you. And that's what you're dealing with. So I think it's a tall order to do what we've asked them to do and report back accurately. And that's the challenge.

And that's why I just think it's almost a no win proposition to come back with accurate reporting on him complying with the resolution.

O'BRIEN: All right, well, I guess the big concern from many people's perspective would be the semblance of an accurate report when, in fact, it is not. GRANGE: Yes, I mean a lot of it's going to be interpretation that, yes, he has declared accurately. I mean how do you really know? And it's not just within the borders of Iraq. He may shift things to adjacent countries. I mean you don't know.

O'BRIEN: All right, let's talk for just a moment about what happens if. And we're talking about many months here probably, now that the inspection phase has begun. But in the meantime, military planners will be thinking a lot about how to go about using force to bring down the regime and disarm Saddam Hussein. We asked some people in the poll about this and 66 percent of those asked believe a war in Iraq could last four to six months to perhaps longer than a year. Thirty-four percent of our people in our poll disagree with that statement.

What's your best sense of a time frame given the goals, given the force that is being considered?

GRANGE: Once the attack starts, it will not last four or five months. It'll take a month, maybe two at the most, if that. I think around a month. But what will take time is the consolidation phase, the reconstruction, the transition to a new government, to an open market, to rule of law. Those kind of things are going to take quite a while.

But the fight itself won't take that long.

O'BRIEN: Do you think the U.S. has to contemplate something that's tantamount to kind of a Marshal Plan approach to Iraq?

GRANGE: Well, something has to happen. Just like in Afghanistan, you can't go in and dislodge the Taliban and chase out the al Qaeda and say we've declared victory. I mean we have to transition the country. We have a commitment to make sure it's something better than it was before, and that's the same commitment we're going to have in Iraq.

O'BRIEN: All right, let's get this other poll question up. Sixty percent of those asked predicted a U.S. victory, the U.S. will win a war with Iraq, I should state. Thirty-three percent say they feel it'll lead to a stalemate, essentially, I think. I'm not exactly sure what estimate means in that. The point is, 60 percent are convinced of victory here.

Are you in that category of people?

GRANGE: Absolutely. We have no choice. I mean if America is going to commit itself to war, we'd better do it to win. And if we don't, then shame on us. Again, though, the hard thing is going to be what does victory look like, you know, what's the measures of success, just that Saddam's gone, the regime is toppled, we've blown up this or that? What does it look like at the end? And that's, again, a better life for Iraqis with a free market economy, rule of law and some type of democratic governance, whatever that may look like.

O'BRIEN: All right, let's leave it at that point. General Grange, we're not done with you yet. We appreciate your insights. We're going to have you back in a little more than an hour's time for our reporter's notebook.

GRANGE: OK.

O'BRIEN: Stay with us for that.

Arthel?

NEVILLE: OK, and stay with CNN for more on the weapons hunt. Tomorrow CNN will bring you a special report on Iraq. That's Sunday at 10:00 am Eastern, 7:00 Pacific.

Also tomorrow, "CNN Presents: Showdown Iraq, Five Questions." Our Wolf Blitzer explores the key questions in the ongoing struggle with Iraq. That premiers tomorrow night at 8:00 p.m. Eastern and 5:00 p.m. Pacific.

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





Will Be Different for Inspectors This Time Around>


Aired November 16, 2002 - 08:02   ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
MILES O'BRIEN, CNN CORRESPONDENT: More now on our top story, what Hans Blix is calling a new chapter of weapons inspections in Iraq. The chief U.N. weapons inspector and his advance team gathering in Cypress tomorrow. It's the final stop on their journey to Baghdad to begin the high stakes hunt for weapons of mass destruction.
CNN's Richard Roth joins us from Paris. He's traveling with that group -- Richard, what were your thoughts on that news conference?

RICHARD ROTH, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Well, a lot of what Mr. Blix said here to journalists in Paris he said in New York on Friday. He appears very confident, very determined, still a soft-spoken Swedish diplomat at heart. He knows what he has to do. He has the, he says, the money. He's got a new staff. But he needs people to help him out in Iraq and he needs countries to hand over intelligence information.

I flew on the plane with him from New York and it was interesting, one of his aides was selected for a random frisking and searching due to the terrorism alerts while Mr. Blix had to look on kind of smiling. I don't think the people who were searching his aide had any idea that what Mr. Blix and the aide will be searching for in a few days, or will be directing.

Otherwise, Mr. Blix explained to the journalists what his next stops will be.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

HANS BLIX, CHIEF U.N. WEAPONS INSPECTOR: I'm going on tomorrow to Cypress and from there, together with my colleague, the director general of the International Atomic Energy Agency, Mr. Al-Baradei (ph), to Baghdad for a couple of days talk at the political level to initiate the new chapter of inspections. And, of course, we hope and expect to have full Iraqi cooperation.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

ROTH: Hans Blix will go to Vienna, an overnight personal stop. Then he'll link up with the IAEA director general and they'll go into Cypress. It's going to be an advanced staging party, Miles, this team just setting up the communications, the computers, the technology. It's a process that just has to play out. Everybody will be watching, though, for how Iraq will cooperate with these inspectors, because they have big, firm, new backing by that resolution that passed unanimously, unimpeded, unrestricted access, even the presidential sites, even mosques, as Mr. Blix said Friday. He said there are no sanctuaries. That may be difficult for the Iraqi bureaucracy and the machinery there and the political structure to handle.

O'BRIEN: Let's talk a little bit about the timetable, Richard. Mr. Blix says his team will be ready to begin its work on the 27th of November. There is a December 8 deadline in that resolution and, from which, at which time the Iraqis have to come clean to some degree.

Just walk us through the timetable here. This is likely to go on for months, is it not?

ROTH: Right. I might be a little jet lagged, but I think you said December 27, maybe it's November 27 that he now says the inspections will have begun. And that date is a little earlier in terms of Blix setting that as the date for the clock to start ticking. Thus, 60 days from that day, November 27, meaning January 27, he will report his first report to the Security Council. A lot of people had thought it was going to be in mid-February. Now it's been moved up. Some could say well, Blix is going to be reporting to the Council now out of that February good weather for war window, thus setting the stage even further.

He has felt he may not need all the time and he wants to get started. Iraq has wanted him to get started. Russia wants an earlier time line. So everyone will get a faster idea just where we're going with this situation, whether Iraq is truly on the road to getting sanctions suspended or whether there will be so many interferences and transgressions and violations that it's just a matter of time before someone uses military force.

O'BRIEN: All right, we have a matter of time here. We don't have much time left. But I want to ask you to quickly give me a response on this, if you could. If you could tell me whether, well, now I've just lost the question.

You know what? We'll leave it at that, Richard Roth. I've lost my question for you...

ROTH: Well, there's another, I can tell you the last, the next -- all right, I can tell you the next time line is December 8 for Iraq to turn over its full weapons of mass destruction portfolio, if it has any. It denies it so far.

O'BRIEN: All right, I guess I'm the one with jet lag this morning.

Richard Roth in Paris, happy journeys.

Back to you, Arthel.

ARTHEL NEVILLE, CNN CORRESPONDENT: OK.

In the meantime, some people say the U.N. mission to Iraq will be a game of they say hide and we seek. How effective will the weapons inspectors be is the big question. Joining us with some insight into that is former chief U.N. weapons inspector Richard Butler in Sydney, Australia.

Good day, sir.

RICHARD BUTLER, FORMER CHIEF U.N. WEAPONS INSPECTOR: Good day.

NEVILLE: What is going to be different this time around? Will inspectors be better equipped?

BUTLER: What is crucially different is the powers that they're been given. I certainly wish I had had those powers four years ago. The resolution adopted by the Security Council a week and a bit ago gives them every power they need from inspections to interviewing of persons and the seizure of documents, and including the possibility of interviewing scientists outside Iraq, where they would be free from interference or oppression by their own government.

But the crucial issue is will the Iraqis let them exercise those powers. And I must say, as the days have passed, I've started to become a little bit pessimistic that that will be the case. Hans Blix wrote to the Iraqis in October seeking assurances on a whole number of mundane but necessary work conditions in Baghdad, those that they are wanting to set up now and that they will need. Iraq hasn't even answered that letter.

So I'm not sure that this is going to play well. But certainly the inspectors have all the powers they need.

NEVILLE: Now, just a short time ago Saddam Hussein addressed his people via a memo read on Iraqi television. He is saying that he needed to have the inspectors come back in, they needed to prove that, in fact, Iraq doesn't have any weapons of mass destruction. Of course, that could be all propaganda.

Does Saddam Hussein's reaction today give you any more encouragement, I would ask, in terms of what will happen once the U.N. inspectors get to Iraq?

BUTLER: No, because, you see it's completely, you know, not new to hear the Iraqis make a claim such as they made recently that they had no weapons of mass destruction -- which, by the way, is simply not true. But we'll see in the future, you know, how that's proven or otherwise. It's not new to have Iraq make a claim and then only to completely reverse it days later without any reference to this sort of contradiction.

Now, the crucial point in the immediate future is the need for the Iraq to submit to the inspector, to the U.N. by the 8th of December a declaration of all of its weapons of mass destruction and the means to make them. Up till today, they've been saying they have none of those. And that would suggest by the 8th of December, they'll submit a blank piece of paper.

If they do that, there will be very serious trouble because that would simply not be credible. What I suspect they'll do is they'll submit a piece of paper that will say we had some of those weapons in the past, we don't have any more now and your inspectors should be able to demonstrate this truth quite quickly. And I think that's what Saddam is getting at, his belief that if the inspections can be put on fairly quickly they will be able to verify the truth of Iraq's declaration.

Now, we will see. I want to say that if that declaration says that they don't have any such weapons then I'm afraid there will be very, very serious trouble because this wouldn't simply be, it simply would not be true.

NEVILLE: Sir, let's talk about the safety of the weapons inspectors once they get there. God forbid anything goes wrong, but if that were to happen, how will they be protected?

BUTLER: Well, we had that problem in the past in my period as head of the organization. I had to withdraw all inspectors on three occasions. That was nail biting stuff. My fundamental concern always was that we lose no one. And I'm pleased and proud to say we didn't. We didn't have armed guards protecting us. We relied on political pressure and I guess on Iraq's calculation that it wouldn't serve their position well if they actually harmed inspectors.

I suppose that those continue to be the circumstances. There is the principle of shooting the messenger and inspectors always could face that if Iraq decides that it doesn't like the message that they're bringing. If they look like showing that Iraq has been deceptive, that there are weapons in a given building or a given place, it will be tempting to the Iraqis to try to get the inspectors out of there. And they did put us at gunpoint at some times in the past.

But on balance I suspect they will calculate that it will not be in their interests to do that to inspectors and inspectors in that sense may be spared, you know, physical aggression against them.

NEVILLE: Mr. Richard Butler, thank you so much for joining us here on WEEKEND AMERICAN MORNING.

BUTLER: My pleasure.

O'BRIEN: All right, it's time for us to take a break. Coming up in the next hour, we invite you to participate with us if you'd like. Wake up, turn on your computer, send us an e-mail. Many of you have already answered the call. We've already got some great questions. We'll try to get as many as we can on the air. Richard Roth, Rym Brahimi and General David Grange.

Mr. Roth is in Paris, Ms. Brahimi in Baghdad, General Grange is in Chicago, where he is often, to field your questions.

WAM, Wam@cnn.com, is the e-mail address. We'll have a phone number for you a little bit later.

Also still to come, what's the next move for the military in Iraq. We'll ask General Grange about that, give you a little taste of our reporter's notebook.

COMMERCIAL

O'BRIEN: Hans Blix and his team on their way to Baghdad. Mr. Blix saying he is going to initiate a new chapter in inspections inside Iraq. Perhaps that is wishful thinking, perhaps it is not.

Joining us to talk a little bit about it is Gen. David Grange.

General Grange, good to have you back with us.

Is it really a new chapter or is it just a retread of some old chapters?

BRIG. GEN. DAVID GRANGE, U.S. ARMY (RET.): Well, I think they have more powers than the previous inspectors, as was stated just a little while ago of Mr. Butler. So, and they have better technology. But I think it's still going to be the same old Saddam. See, the intent, the character of Saddam doesn't change. And that's the long- term problem, you know?

O'BRIEN: Cat and mouse is putting it lightly, isn't it?

GRANGE: That's right. And so we're still dealing with Saddam, that type of person, expert at evil, at deception, disinformation. So it's going to be still a challenge.

O'BRIEN: Give us a sense of, let's say you were on that team. Let's say you were Mr. Blix. I'm going to let you be the king of inspections for a moment. How would you go about it?

GRANGE: Well, one is you have to saturate, I think, the area almost immediately, and that's going to require quite a lot of people and teams with experts and also people with operational sense and intelligent type people. When I mean intelligence, I mean for information, that type of intelligence, like you would on planning any kind of a military operation.

O'BRIEN: Mr. Blix says money is no object. Does he have the team, though, do you think, to do just what you said?

GRANGE: Well, you know, again, you have this vast area and you have above ground, underground, things dispersed in palaces and mosques, in hospitals and all around, and mobile means. And so it's hard to get everywhere rapidly for an overwhelming inspection force so people can't shift things on you. And that's what you're dealing with. So I think it's a tall order to do what we've asked them to do and report back accurately. And that's the challenge.

And that's why I just think it's almost a no win proposition to come back with accurate reporting on him complying with the resolution.

O'BRIEN: All right, well, I guess the big concern from many people's perspective would be the semblance of an accurate report when, in fact, it is not. GRANGE: Yes, I mean a lot of it's going to be interpretation that, yes, he has declared accurately. I mean how do you really know? And it's not just within the borders of Iraq. He may shift things to adjacent countries. I mean you don't know.

O'BRIEN: All right, let's talk for just a moment about what happens if. And we're talking about many months here probably, now that the inspection phase has begun. But in the meantime, military planners will be thinking a lot about how to go about using force to bring down the regime and disarm Saddam Hussein. We asked some people in the poll about this and 66 percent of those asked believe a war in Iraq could last four to six months to perhaps longer than a year. Thirty-four percent of our people in our poll disagree with that statement.

What's your best sense of a time frame given the goals, given the force that is being considered?

GRANGE: Once the attack starts, it will not last four or five months. It'll take a month, maybe two at the most, if that. I think around a month. But what will take time is the consolidation phase, the reconstruction, the transition to a new government, to an open market, to rule of law. Those kind of things are going to take quite a while.

But the fight itself won't take that long.

O'BRIEN: Do you think the U.S. has to contemplate something that's tantamount to kind of a Marshal Plan approach to Iraq?

GRANGE: Well, something has to happen. Just like in Afghanistan, you can't go in and dislodge the Taliban and chase out the al Qaeda and say we've declared victory. I mean we have to transition the country. We have a commitment to make sure it's something better than it was before, and that's the same commitment we're going to have in Iraq.

O'BRIEN: All right, let's get this other poll question up. Sixty percent of those asked predicted a U.S. victory, the U.S. will win a war with Iraq, I should state. Thirty-three percent say they feel it'll lead to a stalemate, essentially, I think. I'm not exactly sure what estimate means in that. The point is, 60 percent are convinced of victory here.

Are you in that category of people?

GRANGE: Absolutely. We have no choice. I mean if America is going to commit itself to war, we'd better do it to win. And if we don't, then shame on us. Again, though, the hard thing is going to be what does victory look like, you know, what's the measures of success, just that Saddam's gone, the regime is toppled, we've blown up this or that? What does it look like at the end? And that's, again, a better life for Iraqis with a free market economy, rule of law and some type of democratic governance, whatever that may look like.

O'BRIEN: All right, let's leave it at that point. General Grange, we're not done with you yet. We appreciate your insights. We're going to have you back in a little more than an hour's time for our reporter's notebook.

GRANGE: OK.

O'BRIEN: Stay with us for that.

Arthel?

NEVILLE: OK, and stay with CNN for more on the weapons hunt. Tomorrow CNN will bring you a special report on Iraq. That's Sunday at 10:00 am Eastern, 7:00 Pacific.

Also tomorrow, "CNN Presents: Showdown Iraq, Five Questions." Our Wolf Blitzer explores the key questions in the ongoing struggle with Iraq. That premiers tomorrow night at 8:00 p.m. Eastern and 5:00 p.m. Pacific.

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





Will Be Different for Inspectors This Time Around>