The News with Brian Williams (7:00 PM ET) - CNBC - September 12, 2002 Thursday

HEADLINE: Preparing for war

ANCHORS: BRIAN WILLIAMS REPORTERS: JIM MIKLASZEWSKI

BRIAN WILLIAMS, anchor:
Tonight, the US openly talking of the chance of war with Iraq. What about the cost? What still has to be done before the order can be given to launch a major US offensive overseas? Is America ready for a two-front war?

Announcer: THE NEWS on CNBC continues. Here again is Brian Williams.

WILLIAMS: And good evening once again and welcome back. And a very simple question starts off the back half of our broadcast tonight. What if they gave a war without the pieces and people in place? After all, it's the notion of going to war against Iraq that gave president Bush's UN speech today its threat and its moral force. Could the US launch a war against Iraq right now? The answer, according to most experts, is 'probably not.' How long would it take to get in place? How to pay for one when it happens? Those are the kinds of questions we will take on here tonight beginning with the view from the Pentagon and here with that NBC's Jim Miklaszewski.

JIM MIKLASZEWSKI reporting:
Today the US military has 55,000 troops within striking distance of Iraq, not enough to go to war, but it's a start. In addition, the US has prepositioned large amounts of ammunition and supplies in places like Qatar, Oman and Kuwait. CENTCOM Commander Tommy Franks would likely run the war from a new command center nearing completion now in Qatar. Whatever the final plan for attack, it would begin with air strikes. With a 21st century arsenal of precision-guided bombs. First, to take out Iraq's air defenses, second, to put the Iraqi military on the run. Bush administration officials are convinced once the shooting starts, regular Iraqi forces will quickly surrender as they did in Desert Storm.

Mr. WILLIAM COHEN (Former Defense Secretary): It's unlikely that Saddam Hussein is going to want to fight in the desert again.

MIKLASZEWSKI: So it is likely Saddam will take the fight to the streets of Baghdad, urban warfare, fought street to street, door to door by US Special Forces, an extremely high-risk operation.

Mr. KEN ALLARD (MSNBC Military Analyst): Fighting in an urban environment allows the Iraqis to draw us in close and when you draw the United States in close, as we saw in Mogadishu, you also increase the potential for American casualties.

MIKLASZEWSKI: And what happens if or when Saddam is defeated? US combat troops could stay in Baghdad for years to provide post-war stability.

Mr. COHEN: If the United States decides to go to war with Iraq, we should plan on a very long stay.

MIKLASZEWSKI: No final battle plans have been drawn, no final decisions made. When it comes, US troops could be at war within weeks. Jim Miklaszewski, NBC News, the Pentagon.

WILLIAMS: It all brings up some interesting questions, and for some insight into the cost of war with Iraq, we are joined now by retired four-star General Barry McCaffrey, a decorated Vietnam veteran and a veteran of the Gulf War. He is now an NBC News military analyst. He is with us tonight from St. Louis having just landed there. We're also joined by Phyllis Bennis, a writer and fellow at the Institute for Policy Studies where she focuses on the Middle East. By the way, she led the first US Congressional staff delegation to Iraq to look at sanctions. She is with us from Washington. And by Harlan Ullman, senior associate at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, CSIS, and the author of "Unfinished Business: Afghanistan, the Middle East and Beyond; Diffusing the dangers that threaten America's Security" which is after all what we're talking about here. He also is with us from Washington.
Welcome to you all.General, we'll begin with you, I know you're still receiving at least informal briefings on all of this. In a two-part question: How much is enough to go to war? Been led to believe we don't have enough people and materials there yet. What kind of costs are we talking about?

General BARRY McCAFFREY (Retired, US Army): Well, Brian, when you undertake military action, you never know quite how it's going to come out. The--when we were in the '91 campaign, I personally thought we would probably have several thousand casualties, but we would win in 10 days to four weeks. I think this time around, the first strike against Iraqi armed forces is going to be psychological operations. We're going to try and unwind these people, tell them the Iraqi army will be left alone, we're after the republican guards, the special guards. We're going to try to unravel the minority support that keeps Saddam in power which is these brutal despotic secret services as well as his elite republican guards. I think the real crucial task will come in the opening weeks of political and psychological warfare against the Iraqis, and that's under way now.

WILLIAMS: But at some point, General, when the rubber meets the road, don't you have to have the hardware a few miles away on flatbed trucks and C-5s ready to do the hard work?

Gen. McCAFFREY: Well, I think we'll probably see a surge of US military power into the region probably October, November, December, January. We will try every other option to get out of fighting. At some point you will see a reinforced Army core in there, a Marine division afloat, a huge surge of naval carrier battle groups into the region. And then I think when the actual campaign starts, Brian, my own judgment is these people are going to come apart in 21 days or less.

WILLIAMS: Interesting prediction. And, Phyllis Bennis, is it at all dangerous to go into something even with a prediction like that in the back of your mind? We--the United States would be anticipating a lot of surrenders early on.

Ms. PHYLLIS BENNIS (Institute for Policy Studies): I think they're anticipating that. I don't think there's really any basis to know that. I think what we're forgetting here because all of the military scenarios that have played out begin, as General McCaffrey said again, with a massive bombardment of air defenses. Now we've been told that Baghdad is studded with air defenses and that all of these scenarios would begin with a massive bombardment of Baghdad. What that doesn't take into account is that whatever anti-aircraft batteries may be there, however insufficiently they work, Baghdad is a city of five million Iraqis; grandmothers, kindergarten classes, babies. That's who is going to be destroyed in the first wave. I think that an awful lot of people are going to be killed in Iraq and I'm not sure that one of them is going to be named Saddam Hussein, very much like Afghanistan where of all the several thousand of civilians that have been killed so far in the US war, not one has been named Osama bin Laden, not one has been named Mullah Mohammed Omar.

So we're--we have to be very clear about who is going to pay the price in Iraq. I'm afraid that what is being called for here is not very realistic. I don't think that the notion of bringing back Saddam's head on a plate, which is really the essence of what victory is going to mean for the Bush administration, is possible through massive air bombardment and the introduction of ground troops. What that does is lead to the deaths of a lot of other people.

WILLIAMS: Harlan Ullman, we have two scenarios here. The chilling part, Ms. Bennis' scenario is what is unsaid and that is of course that Saddam Hussein is very adept at using human shields and then escorting news crews in to see the damage later. On which side to you come down here?

Mr. HARLAN ULLMAN (Center for Strategic and International Studies): Well, I don't have an answer, and I think that there are some very, very real risks. I think Barry McCaffrey is right that there's a possibility that the Iraqis will crumble. But if the special republican guard and republican guard do not, if it becomes street-to-street fighting in Baghdad, in 50 kilometers on either side, if Saddam is able to unleash humanitarian disasters against the Shi'ah in the south, then we have to deal with 2 million, 3 million refugees.
Heaven knows about weapons of mass destruction. There are all sorts of uncertainties, and my concern is on the one hand, we hope that the operation, if there is one, moves very quickly with minimum casualties. But we better plan for a long war. In 1914, the French had planned 21 and the Germans had the Schlieffen plan which called for immediate defeat of the other side. And the problem that I see, the largest problem is if we get in and get bogged down, it's going to be very difficult to extricate ourselves. I'm not suggesting that's happening or likely to happen, but it's a real risk. We have seen street-to-street fighting in Panama, in Somalia and certainly in the Tet Offensive in Vietnam in January, February of 1968. We taking away was a very difficult circumstance. And one of the things that we have to do if we do attack, is to make sure that the offensive goes very quickly with minimum casualties to civilians. And if we don't plan for a worst case, I think we would be making a big mistake.

WILLIAMS: That's exactly the point. We will continue our conversation on--I have to squeeze a break in here--and we will be right back with our guests with more, right after this.

(Announcements)

WILLIAMS: We're back with our discussion and panel, retired four-star General Barry McCaffrey, Phyllis Bennis of the Institute for Policy Studies and Harlan Ullman of the Center for Strategic and International Studies.

Mr. Ullman, I want to continue with you. How does having what is a defacto occupation force at least for a couple of months being instant, overnight parents to a couple of million Shi'ah, how does all of that differ from defacto nation building.

Mr. ULLMAN: It doesn't, and one of the problems you point out quite rightly, Brian, if we go into Iraq, I think we're going to be there for decades and decades. We went into Japan and Germany in 1945, and we're still there. We went into Korea in 1950 in force and we're still there. And I think if there is a war against Iraq, one of the things that is going to happen is that there's going to be a long-term American forces and international forces. And if that were to happen, I think that the president's speech before the UN today was very important because we cannot do it on ourselves, we cannot do it only with the British. We're going to need international support because whether the war goes easily or not, the aftermath is going to be really the telling time and the most difficult time. We have got to deal with the peace which is in many ways going to be far more difficult, in my judgment, than fighting the war.

WILLIAMS: And, Phyllis Bennis, the differences between this and the last campaign are obvious. We left the leaders standing and alive last time. This time it is the stated purpose, apparently, of going in when the United States goes, there's going to come--come a moment of truth, of pulling the trigger, of getting him out, of perhaps killing him, perhaps with larger ordinance and not direct assassination. How will that change the dynamic?

Ms. BENNIS: Well, for one thing, Brian, we have to look at this in the context of international law. There simply is no precedent for saying that one country, no matter how powerful, has the right to go into another country and say, 'We're here to overturn a regime, assassinate its leader and reinstall a regime of our choice.' The UN resolution that authorized the Gulf War of 1990, '91, called for removal of Iraqi troops from Kuwait. That happened through that war by March of 1991. What we're talking about now is not the US going to the United Nations for collaboration and for joint work as we have been hearing, but rather using the United Nations in a thoroughly instrumentalist way.
It reminds me very much of something Madeleine Albright said in 1995, when she said, 'The United Nations is a tool of American foreign policy.' It seems to me that that's a very dangerous approach for the United States. It's the approach of empires. If we are to be a leader in the world, and not a domineering bully, we have to work in the United Nations the way we demand other countries work in the United Nations; respecting international law, collaborating with other countries, not coming to the UN and saying, 'If the Security Council doesn't decide what we want it to decide, we will then vote that it is irrelevant at best and perhaps collaborating with terrorism at worst.' This is the U--the UN version of what President Bush had said earlier about you're either with us or you're with the terrorists. You have to accept our analysis of how to respond to a crisis in the world.

WILLIAMS: And, General McCaffrey, we keep getting reminded, Tom Ridge said it two days ago, 'We're at war.' It doesn't feel like war, especially to older Americans, but this would mean a two-front war. Any problem with that with your knowledge of what the military can pull off?

Gen. McCAFFREY: Well, 1.4 million men and women in the active armed forces. We've got 30,000 around Afghanistan, 7,000 in the country. We can clearly pull this off with coalition support. I would agree with the other two panelists, force should be a last resort. At the end of the day, we cannot allow weapons of mass destruction, particularly tactile nuclear weapons to remain in this guy's hands. Let me also if I may, Brian, offer a narrow, professional judgment. It is laughable to assume that the Iraqi republican guard will fight in Baghdad as the Russians did in Stalingrad. That's not going to happen. That city is 60 percent Shi'ah. Those troops aren't going to be allowed into the city by Saddam, they might kill him. And if they do they will take off their uniforms and take a hike. And the violence we will bring on top of these units that fight will be unimaginable. I do not believe we are talking about a combat in cities as we saw in Berlin in 1945.

WILLIAMS: Messieurs McCaffrey and Ullman, thank you. Ms. Bennis, thank you. Boy, could we keep going for another half hour on this very interesting topic tonight. Perhaps we will revisit both topic and panel in the days to come. Thank you to you all.