Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD)

DATE=03/28/2003

TYPE=ON THE LINE

NUMBER=1-01300

TITLE=THE WAR FOR IRAQ

INTERNET=Yes

EDITOR=OFFICE OF POLICY 619-0038

CONTENT=

THEME: UP, HOLD UNDER AND FADE

Host: The War for Iraq. Next, On the Line.

[music]

Host: A coalition led by the United States, Great Britian and Spain is fighting a war to liberate Iraq and rid it of weapons of mass destruction. A precision bombing campaign in and around Baghdad has targeted strongholds of Saddam Hussein's regime. U-S and British troops have raced across the desert to challenge the Iraqi Republican Guards. In Southern Iraq, coalition forces have been fighting irregular forces loyal to Saddam Hussein. Saddam's Fedayeen, as the militia is called, have pretended to be civilians to lure coalition forces into ambushes. They've used non-combatants as human shields and have turned a hospital into an arsenal. British troops have been clearing out the Fedayeen to make way for shipments of humanitarian aid. How is the war in Iraq being fought? I'll ask my guests: Entifadh Qanbar, official representative of the Iraqi National Congress to the United States; Michael Waller of the Center for Security Policy and joining us by phone from New York, Mansoor Ijaz, a Fox News analyst and chairman of the Crescent Partnerships. Welcome. Thanks for joining us today. Entifadh Qanbar, is this a war of liberation?

Qanbar: Absolutely. This is the worst regime and the Iraqi people have been suffering for the past thirty-five years. We are here. We're witnessing -- and the American people are tasting -- a little bit of their atrocities. We just saw the execution of those P.O.W.s and the bad treatment of them. And that shows you what kind of a regime that is. I mean, to get rid of such a regime is definitely a war for liberation and the Iraqi people are looking forward to going to the next step and having a democratic country.

Host: Michael Waller, is this a war of liberation?

Waller: It certainly is. Iraq is a country where there was no opposition tolerated at all and people are essentially occupied by a Soviet-installed dictator. So, it's certainly a war of liberation for these folks.

Host: Mansoor Ijaz, are you there by phone?

Ijaz: Yes, I am, thank you.

Host: Mansoor, is the way this war's being fought consistent with it being a war of liberation?

Ijaz: I don't think there can be any question about that. If there had been any other intent, we have the firepower and the capacity to level Baghdad within a matter of a few hours, not a matter of days or weeks. And I think what we have tried to do in terms of the precision-guided air-bombing campaign and combining it with a ground campaign from the very start was designed to bring hope to the people as we progressively took control of larger and larger parts of Iraq. The idea was to leave behind a good taste in the mouths of the people who are being oppressed by Saddam's regime. I mean, it's unfathomable to me that he has allowed his own military people to turn around and shoot Iraqi civilians in the back essentially. I mean, this is something that is unprecedented in the history of mankind in terms of the kind of atrocities that are committed against innocent civilians.

Host: Let me play for you all a bit from a speech that George Bush gave. Let's run this tape.

[Bush Speech, March 26, 2003]

"Iraqis are a good and gifted people. They deserve better than a life spent bowing before a dictator. The people of Iraq deserve better than a life spent bowing before a dictator. The people of Iraq deserve to stand on their feet as free men and women, the citizens of a free country."

Host: Entifadh Qanbar, is that message getting through to people in Iraq?

Qanbar: It is getting through, but it's not getting through as much as we'd like it to. Radio information has been jammed in Baghdad. And I think, as I mentioned to you before the program, militarily, the United States is handling the situation in a great way and there's no doubt the way the military operation is going is superb. I think the interaction with the Iraqi people has not been at the level of the military situation and I think this message has to go to the Iraqis. Iraqis told me -- and I'm talking to Baghdad numerous times a day -- that they're really seeking to listen to President Bush, believe it or not. And every speech to them is like instructions: What is the next step? And unfortunately, as I said, the message has not been going out. The Iraqi opposition did not have a radio or television [broadcast capability] until today. And this has to be resolved as soon as possible.

Host: What kind of radio and t-v has the Iraqi opposition started up?

Qanbar: Well, we didn't start it up because of some bureaucratic problems we had with the State Department which always stopped us from doing so. And some bureaucrats in the State Department still do not understand. American young men and women's lives are at stake and the same thing for the Iraqi people. And we're trying to resolve this problem and we're still facing some difficulties. The Iraqi opposition now is in Northern Iraq. It is no longer in exile. Dr. Ahmed Chalabi and other leadership is in Northern Iraq, they are forming a joint coalition. We have liaison officers with the Pentagon, working with the Pentagon every day and we are about to move down southward to liberate Kirkuk and Mosul, and we still don't have essential needs that we need to wage this war. The Pentagon has been great, the White House has been great to us but, I have to be honest with you, not the State Department.

Host: Michael Waller, let's talk a little bit about the precision bombing campaign in Baghdad. Has it been as precise as the military had hoped for it to be?

Waller: It's been extremely precise. Obviously you have errors if somebody tries to shoot down a guided missile. It's so precise that we can hit certain parts of certain buildings. We've calibrated, targeted in advance seven-thousand individual targets and calibrated the type of munitions to be used, the strength of the explosion and so forth, so that a blast won't collapse on a residential complex or hit a hospital. The Pentagon even had a team in from National Geographic, archeologists, to advise them on where to hit Saddam's military sites that are poised next to Iraq's cultural and archeological sites, so that the U-S wouldn't damage those. It's been a fantastically accurate planning and execution of this bombing campaign.

Host: Mansoor Ijaz, has the accuracy of that campaign made it too easy, though, for Saddam's regime to make it seem as though they are still in power, and life goes on as normal in Baghdad?

Ijaz: Well, that's an unfortunate byproduct of trying to do what is right. I mean, Saddam has no compunction about doing the most maniacal and mendacious things that are possible in all of mankind. And so, as a result of that, we have to suffer the consequence of those who want to spin the fact that we have not leveled Baghdad yet. You know, the headlines in foreign newspapers in the last several days have been things like, "The U-S is getting ready to up the tempo." It's getting ready to demonstrate that we can do more and that is part of a calibrated effort. There are three things that happened in this war that people need to remember so far. The first is that we wanted to see if we could take out the leadership. We had the intelligence. It's clear that we've gotten Saddam incapacitated in some significant way. And in doing so, the idea was, can we end all of this before we have to get started in earnest? When that wasn't possible, we then took it to the next level. We gave them still an opportunity to talk on T-V and frankly it was good intelligence for us to know exactly who was doing what and how they were getting their messages out and what exactly they were saying. It was all propaganda of course, but it was still an important intelligence factor in terms of how we then were able to ratchet up to the next level, which is what we're doing. And it is precisely this calibration that people do not give the Bush administration enough credit for, whether it's in the war against the terrorists in Afghanistan or here in the United States, or it's against Saddam Hussein, or whichever regime comes next that doesn't want to cooperate in reducing its inappropriate activities. This calibration is something that people do not give, in my judgement, the Bush administration enough credit for. And they're demonstrating exactly what our capacities are from A to Z, from ground troops all the way up to the B-2 bombers.

Host: Entifadh Qanbar, but has this allowed though, the normalcy in Baghdad to some extent, the T-V from Iraqi government still being on, has that allowed the regime to keep the impression that it's still able to enforce loyalty within Baghdad?

Qanbar: It does, actually, on the ground people try to demonstrate in a very poor district in Baghdad, called Al-Thawra city, which is basically one of the most oppressed areas in Baghdad. There are two million Shia who live there, very poor, and they [the demonstrators] were killed on the spot. I mean, I just spoke to a guy there before coming here and he told me that there are still, at every corner there are Baathits [members of the Baath party] and Fedayeen of Saddam stopping people, telling them to go back home. This is a very, very vicious regime and without removing this regime completely from the picture, things will not change for the Iraqi people. But at the same time, I think the propoganda, the pro-Iraqi people propaganda has not been conveyed well to the Iraqis so far. And I'm not saying that because I'm judging it. I'm hearing from what the Iraqis are telling me inside Baghdad. I mean, the atmosphere is still pro-Saddam. Of course, Saddam lies through his teeth every day on T-V, but remember those people don't get the news as much as we get it here. They get it here and there, pieces from B-B-C world service and so forth, but not as much as there should be. And I think there is a better way to get this information to the people and empower them because they are allies to the United States and they could help to sideline or stop those thugs from killing Americans and Iraqis.

Ijaz: Could I add one point to that and that is that that is part of the problem that we've had here in the United States, that the Bush administration from the very beginning, whether it was at the United Nations or any other part of the process that we went through has not, in fact, been great at marketing their point of view or what it was that they were doing. That's partly for two reasons. One is that they're extremely secretive as a government in terms of how they allow information to get out and what they want people to know, because they're worried first and foremost about getting the job done. The second thing is, we know our military power is so overwhelming that in the end it really won't matter what spin anyone wants to put on it. The results will in fact speak for themselves. And so, as a result of that, this poor marketing campaign to win the hearts and minds, to keep the demonstrations to a minimum in the Arab world, or wherever it might be, that has complicated the life of the briefers, but it hasn't changed very much, in my judgement at least, on the ground. We've made extraordinary progress in every phase of the military campaign that we were supposed to so far.

Host: Well, let me show another little bit of video for you here, if we can get this going. This is in Southern Iraq and they are U-S troops. We have here a picture of a U-S soldier tearing down a poster of Saddam and the face of Saddam is still there on the poster and a local young man comes up and hits the picture of Saddam. Michael Waller, there have been fewer of those images than the White House would have liked to have seen, and why is that?

Waller: Well, for that young to do that on camera took a great amount of courage because most of the Iraqis don't have a great degree of confidence in us. Because, they came out in 1991 thinking that we were going to oust Saddam and they came out and they demonstrated and protested and they were all slaughtered while the rest of the world just watched and did nothing. And a lot of the people aren't coming out -- now they're apprehensive -- because they're afraid that if we're not going to stay behind, that leaves the secret police, the Fedayeen Saddam, and the Baathist party enforcers to have their way with them after all the cameras are gone. So they're going to be quite apprehensive before coming out. I think you'll see in some places, especially with the children who don't have that sense of fear yet instilled into them, they come and they're happy and they're happy to be around the troops and you see there's pure joy that you can't orchestrate. And the adults are a little more cautious when approaching us, but in the initial moves the women came out and they were hugging the feet of the British and the American troops and then one man pulled a woman back and made this motion [a finger drawn across the throat] as if to say, "Hey, watch it cause once these guys are gone, we're all going to get it."

Host: Well, Entifadh, the U-S and Britain had a strategy of trying to avoid going into urban areas to minimize the casualties of civilians. But has that left a sense among those populations that they're still at the mercy of the Fedayeen Saddam that are in those cities?

Qanbar: I think this is a great strategy and -- I'm the liaison also in the Pentagon for the Iraqi National Congress. I cannot tell you how much they went in lengthy discussion amongst them in how to reduce and minimize civilian casualties. It's very unfair for some people call them war-mongers. They're basically the most peaceful, [peace-] loving people I ever met and I think the strategy of not going to Iraqi cities is absolutely the right one. There is no reason for an American soldier or British soldier to go and be in face to face or house to house fighting while, if you cut the head of the snake off in Baghdad, all those loyalists, they're not really loyalists to Saddam, they basically are under the gun of the special security organization which we call the Fedayeen. And, beside that, their hands are dirty with Iraqi people's blood and they know once they lose Saddam, once Saddam is gone, they will be either killed or severely punished. So they're fighting. They have very little hope in this fighting, but they have not much of a choice. But I think at the same time, there could have been much better empowerment of the Iraqi people inside these cities. We could have helped much more than that and we could have basically cornered those Fedayeen Saddam, for example. We know who they are. We know how to deal with them. And I think there is still time, we may do it in the coming few days, to clean these cities. Because even when Saddam's going to go, you still have to go after those guys and arrest them and find them and have them receive the punishment which they deserve. Unlike their victims who never had a chance to defend themselves, they probably have time to defend themselves in a court of law or something like that. But, my point is this strategy was absolutely the right one and the message has to come clear and its been coming clear. The Iraqis are realizing after a harsh experience in 1991, which left three-hundred-thousand Shia in the south executed, by the Iraqi intelligence, they're coming to the realization that Americans are meaning to [stay]. Believe it or not, the best messenger to the Iraqi people is President Bush himself. In his speeches, he was sincere enough to make it clear to them that the United States is meaning well and meaning right and this is before the war. That's what made President Bush a great president in my opinion. He basically proved to the Iraq people, he is a leader of freedom, he is not only a leader of the United States.

Host: Well, Mansoor Ijaz are the Fedayeen Saddam trying to draw coalition forces into city fighting to try to raise civilian casualties?

Ijaz: Of course. It's to their greatest advantage to try and from my perspective, it's not inconceivable that the end-game in all of this is that the Republican Guard and the Fedayeen flee north once they realize that they can't hold Baghdad anymore and where they've got all of their chemical and biological weapons stored in these mountains in the Northern region. They could create another humanitarian catastrophe with the Kurdish population in the North, essentially thumbing their nose at us on the way out the door, knowing that they're finished and killing the people that they've wanted to kill for such a long period of time. Civilian casualties are the central thesis of Saddam's thinking about how to win this war against us. He thinks that we're so weak-kneed that if there are enough civilian casualties mounted in the process of whatever we do over the next week or ten days, that he can then tell the world, you see, this is what they came here and did, and point the finger at us. And there are enough liberal spinners out there and enough people who are against what they perceive as the war-mongering of the Bush administration to be able to take advantage of that and run with it. And that is precisely what is wrong with media-manipulation of this process. Look at the hard facts on the ground and stop spinning and stop wasting time looking at things that are not relevant any more. That's what people really need to be doing here.

Waller: Exactly.

Host: Michael Waller, do you think that Saddam is going to succeed in ratcheting up the number of civilian casualties?

Waller: Absolutely. He wants to show, first, he wants to make the Iraqi people fearful of surrendering or collaborating with the Americans and the British and the other allies, first and foremost. Second, he wants to keep anybody from turning against him. So he'll use any kind of force and murder to do that. Third, he wants to, he himself is the type of person who would want to go out and take everybody else with him. If it meant he had to go, he doesn't care if he has to slaughter his whole country to do it and that's really a legacy he's going to leave behind.

Host: Entifadh Qanbar, Mansoor Ijaz mentions the Kurds in the north and we really haven't talked about that yet. What's going on in the north of Iraq?

Qanbar: There has been, in February, the Iraqi opposition, actually in December last year, in London, just to be brief about it, the Iraqi opposition elected sixty-five members, like a national assembly, or a nucleus for a national assembly. And the sixty-five members in Northern Iraq, on Iraqi soil elected leadership democratically. This leadership now, which includes the two Kurdish [parties] made a joint force, striking force if you want to call it, liberation force. And they are liaisoning with the Pentagon, obviously and there are plans that they, the liberation of Northern cities such as Mosul and Kirkuk will be with the help of this alliance. And I think this is a very, very positive move. I think this body can become what we call the I-I-A, the Interim Iraqi Authority. This national assembly, or the nucleus for it, could expand and cover all of Iraq, so the sixty-five could become three-hundred people maybe and the majority of course, has to be from inside Iraq, which it will be. And this Interim Authority will have an Iraqi flag, because now we don't know what flag to put on liberated areas. And we'll have an Iraqi flag. And we'll run government issues until we will have a transitional government through which we would like to see open discussion, of course through the media to the public. This can delete from the scene the minister of information in Iraq. And [we will] start elections in the bottom at the municipalities and small towns and open discussion for a constitution. At the end of this transitional period, we'd like to see a referendum for a constitution which will be chosen by the people which will turn Iraq into a democracy.

Host: Well I'm afraid that's going to have to be the last word today. We don't have any more time. I'd like to thank my guests for joining me today: Entifadh Qanbar of the Iraqi National Congress, Michael Waller of the Center for Security Policy, and joining us by telephone from New York, Fox News analyst Mansoor Ijaz. Before we go, I'd like to invite our audience to send us your questions or your comments. You can e-mail them to Ontheline@ibb.gov

For On the line, I'm Eric Felten.