Fox News Network November 15, 2002
FOX ON THE RECORD WITH GRETA VAN SUSTEREN
GRETA VAN SUSTEREN, HOST: I'm Greta van Susteren. This is a Fox News Alert. We go live to Baghdad and to Steve Harrigan -- Steve.
STEVE HARRIGAN, FOX CORRESPONDENT: Greta, U.S. and British warplanes were fired on on a routine patrol in the southern no-fly zone in Iraq. None of those planes were hit. They were fired on about 85 miles southeast of Baghdad. They were fired on with surface-to-air missiles, as well as anti-aircraft artillery. They were responded by bombing what Pentagon officials say was an air defense communication center, also about 85 miles southeast of Baghdad.
Now, the significance of this event, of this attack in response, is that it's the first one that has come since that United Nations resolution, the resolution that allows U.N. weapons inspectors back into Iraq. There have been suggestions from senior U.S. administration officials that should such an attack occur, and we've seen many in the past few weeks -- but should such an attack occur after the latest U.N. resolution, it would mean a material breach of that resolution. At this point, it's not clear where whether the United States intends to press that point in the United Nations. But no planes hit. An attack, a response, and a communications center knocked out. The damage still being assessed 85 miles southeast of Baghdad.
Greta, back to you.
VAN SUSTEREN: Steve, in this part of the world, I know it's being called a material breach. And as you say, it's not clear whether or not the United States will press that and go to the U.N. But are the people in Iraq who are on the street -- are they aware of this event? And are they aware of the fact that the United States may consider this a material breach under the resolution?
HARRIGAN: I would think that they are not aware of it. Especially if they've been watching state television throughout the evening, they're not aware of the event at all. What we've been seeing on state television is an unusual collection of musical clips throughout the evening, local singers singing, interspersed with clips of the Iraqi leader greeting a very joyful public. So a real disconnect between the sort of gloom that you see on the street, the nervous exhaustion of people who've been through a lot and who are afraid that more bad things are to come, and the official optimism that you see when you watch TV. So no reporting here of this latest and most serious event -- Greta.
VAN SUSTEREN: Steve, are you saying that when you walk through the streets of Baghdad that you don't get a sense of what may be a war? Or I mean, are they -- do they seem to be going about their daily life, the people on the street?
HARRIGAN: It's very tricky to get honest answers, especially when you're in the Western media. Many people are afraid here, afraid to talk. Others aren't allowed to talk. But you do get the impression of a people seriously burdened, a people who seem to be exhausted, a people who don't smile much, who seem to be frightened. I think there's a real sense here of hardship and a real sense here of possible impending hardship to come. You don't see any smiles. You see people really worried and fretting about what may be down the road -- Greta.
VAN SUSTEREN: What about the fact that inspectors are soon headed to Iraq? Is there any sense over there that inspectors are coming?
HARRIGAN: There's been a tremendous amount of attention paid to the fact that inspectors are coming back. There's also been warnings in state- controlled newspapers. The official Ba'ath newspaper today talked about those inspectors, saying that they have to be objective and warning them, in the newspaper's words, not to fall pressure to U.S. or Zionist propaganda. So people are aware that the inspectors are coming back.
And let's keep in mind the timetable for that. On Monday, we are going to see Hans Blix, the head of the U.N. weapons inspectors, come back here with a very small team. He's got to get the house in order here. He was joking earlier with reporters about the building they left four years ago -- broken windows, pigeons in the building. They've got to establish basic communications. Then we're going to see weapons inspectors come in a week after that. We could see the first round of weapons inspections as early as November 27 -- Greta.
VAN SUSTEREN: And the media, the foreign media, meaning non-Iraqi media -- is the media beginning to collect in Baghdad?
HARRIGAN: I think the media would desire to be here en masse, in massive force, but it's very tricky to get visas to come in and out, especially for Westerners. So people have been waiting for weeks at a time to get in here. There's a great desire, but you know, the hallway -- as we're leaking at a beautiful dawn here in Baghdad, just bringing up, we're the only camera up right now -- Greta.
VAN SUSTEREN: All right, Steve, thank you, reporting live from Baghdad.
Joining us here in Washington, John Pike, director of Globalsecurity.org and a Fox News analyst, and Andrea Catherwood, international correspondent for ITV News. Welcome to both of you.
Andrea, first to you. The fact that American and British planes have been fired upon -- what's the reaction in Britain to this?
ANDREA CATHERWOOD, ITV NEWS CORRESPONDENT: I think people in Britain aren't necessarily as aware and perhaps people in the States aren't as aware, either, that this does, as Steve said in his report, happen quite often. These incidents happen all the time. It's obviously extremely heightened at the moments. There were surface-to-air missiles used there, which I think is quite significant. Those, I think, are longer-range surface-to-air missiles that haven't been -- correct me if I'm wrong, but I don't think they've been used in the past.
So I think that that's something that people are going to be aware of. It will heighten the tension in Britain. People are suddenly really -- it's really coming home to people in the U.K. that this may be a war that they will be fighting quite soon.
VAN SUSTEREN: John, I guess the significance is that it's post- resolution, the magic words being "material breach," and the White House at least acknowledging that it could be a material breach. How do you read this?
JOHN PIKE, GLOBALSECURITY.ORG: Well, there have been some people in the administration who've been talking about this as a possible material breach of the United Nations resolutions. I think, though, that in the negotiations leading up to the latest resolution, they clearly indicated that there weren't going to be any so-called hidden triggers in this. And I think that this is exactly what they were talking about.
VAN SUSTEREN: But that means -- a "hidden trigger" meaning going directly from having it occur to bombing Baghdad.
PIKE: That this would not be...
VAN SUSTEREN: But this means going back to the U.N.
PIKE: Well, that this...
VAN SUSTEREN: Or could be.
PIKE: Well, that this would -- might be regarded as a material breach by the United States because the United States is of the view, and Britain is of the view, that these no-fly zones are being enforced pursuant to United Nations resolutions. This is not, however, a widely shared view at the United Nations, and there's no explicit authorization or mandate for these under the U.N. resolution. So there's no specific resolution that this would be a breach of, which is why I don't think you're going to see the White House pursuing this.
VAN SUSTEREN: Andrea, you've been to rough spots around the world during rough times. You heard Steve Harrigan's report. What are your thoughts when you hear his description of the people in Baghdad as they go about their life?
CATHERWOOD: I think it's actually very interesting to hear him speak, and I know exactly what he means. It's very hard often to get answers. I spent quite a lot of time in Afghanistan, and there people -- people are afraid. You are so different, particularly being a woman, obviously, it's very difficult for people to relate to you.
And they may tell you what they think that you want to hear, or they may tell you what they think they ought to say. And it's quite difficult to know whether they're really telling the truth. And sometimes you do get to know people quite well, particularly if you've got a young translator who actually -- you gain their trust, and you get more of an insight into what's really going on there.
But I mean, I can see what he's talking about. I think people on the streets there are probably very scared. They haven't seen a lot of Western press. It's very hard, as Steve said, to get visas. There isn't a huge amount of Western media there. There will be more trickling in. But they're probably looking at all those cameras coming in and thinking, What happens next? Where do we go from here? We know that they're here for a big reason. They're not seeing it on their state TV, but they're probably seeing it when they see those satellite trucks go up over Baghdad. They know something big's going to happen.
VAN SUSTEREN: And of course, the satellite trucks may get kicked out of there, once something does happen.
John, Andrea, stand by. We're going to have much more after this.
And up next: the warnings, they're real. The chatter is deafening. The last time they heard it, it was 9/10. Is the next 9/11 lurking?
And later: The mother of killer kids Alex and Derek King breaks her silence. The exclusive interview on ON THE RECORD.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
VAN SUSTEREN: We're back with John Pike, director of Globalsecurity.org and Fox News analyst, and Andrea Catherwood, international correspondent for ITV News.
To you, John. The inspectors -- what's their biggest problem? I guess no cooperation, but beyond that.
PIKE: Well, I think that the immediate question is going to be what sort of cooperation are they going to get. And even though they have 45 days from the passage of the U.N. resolution to start the inspections, I think that what we're hearing is that they're going to try to get some inspectors in there early. They're going to try to get them out to some of these presidential palaces is, the places that they are most likely to encounter non-cooperation with Saddam Hussein's security apparatus -- basically, a very early test to find out whether this time around is going to be any different from the non-cooperation we have had previously.
After that -- a very large country, a lot of places that things could be hidden.
VAN SUSTEREN: Moved? I guess you can move...
PIKE: Well, this...
VAN SUSTEREN: ... make the dual-use sites -- I mean, like the labs can be either something like making vaccines or doing smallpox.
PIKE: Well, this is the big problem that they had in the previous inspections, that the inspectors would be coming in the front door, the material they were looking for would be going out the back door. Road accidents were staged to slow them down until sites had been sanitized. A much larger number of sites are going to be looking at than they were back in the 1990s because of all of these dual-use places that could be both medical research facilities and biological warfare facilities.
And a very large declaration that they're going to be getting from the Iraqi government on December 8. That's going to be another place where the United States might immediately say, Well, this is incomplete, misleading material breach. VAN SUSTEREN: Or a big, fat lie.
PIKE: Right. Exactly.
VAN SUSTEREN: Andrea, the United States and Britain have been pretty good friends, at least Tony Blair or -- and the prime minister has been pretty good friends with the United States. What's the sort of conventional thought in England about Tony Blair's relationship with the United States and even the idea of going to war in Iraq?
CATHERWOOD: Well, I think there are sort of two schools of opinion. There are the people in the U.K. who use the word, say, lapdog. Tony Blair spends too much time, you know, going along with President Bush and doing whatever he says.
VAN SUSTEREN: Well, even -- even, I think, Iraq called him a lackey.
CATHERWOOD: Well, exactly. There you go.
VAN SUSTEREN: I mean...
CATHERWOOD: There you go. I think possibly a more considered opinion would be that people think that maybe he can slightly influence or tame President Bush. Now, whether that's the case or not, we don't know. But there was just before -- you know, around September 11 this year, America might not have been going to the U.N. to get a mandate. Now they have gone to the U.N. And some people in the U.K. think or possibly hope -- maybe it's giving Mr. Blair a little bit too much importance, but they hope that maybe he might be a little voice of reason, and it may broaden the coalition to have him there.
I think most people in the U.K. understand that it might be necessary to use arms against Iraq. What I think they are not so interested in is particularly a regime change. They actually want to make sure that they get rid of weapons of mass destruction. People are concerned. Of course, they are. They're concerned. Standing shoulder to shoulder with the U.S. -- you know, we heard Usama bin Laden's tape. Britain is number one on the list of allies. People are concerned that there's going to be a terrorist attack in the U.K.
VAN SUSTEREN: But you know, it's interesting, I heard you speak earlier today, and you said that Iraq, which is the top of all our newscasts, all our newspapers, isn't number one. There's a strike or a firefighters'...
CATHERWOOD: I know. And it's a very, very strange thing because we sort of pride ourselves on doing lots of foreign news, and really, that's been slipping down the agenda. I think it's going to change massively this weekend. I think that the air attack tonight is going to change things. I think that the weapons inspectors going in is going to change things. And I think we're going to see an awful lot more attention being paid to Iraq. And I think that's very important because it's clearly where it should be right now.
VAN SUSTEREN: John, are you the least bit optimistic that these inspections are going to be successful?
PIKE: Well, I think Saddam Hussein has basically had a decade to do what he said he would do at the end of the Gulf war, disarm. He's been given multiple opportunities to do that. He's...
VAN SUSTEREN: Multiple opportunities to learn how to hide. He's had lots -- he has had four years to learn to hide.
PIKE: And I think that the United States has basically indicated that he's not going to get away with that anymore. And one way or the other, I think that, unless he coughs up all this stuff that he was hiding from the U.N. four years ago, unless he's able to demonstrate that he's disarmed, which I don't think he's going to do, that the United States is going to initiate military action against him either next month, January, February. I think it's just a matter of time.
VAN SUSTEREN: All right, thank you both. I appreciate you joining me.
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