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Saturday Morning News

Did Bush Send Hussein a Message by Bombing Iraq Friday?

Aired February 17, 2001 - 9:07 a.m. ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

MILES O'BRIEN, CNN ANCHOR: Due to events in Iraq, Mr. Bush's weekend at his Texas ranch may include a little more than rest and relaxation. CNN White House correspondent Kelly Wallace will also be not doing much resting or relaxing while she spends her time in Crawford, Texas.

Good morning, Kelly.

KELLY WALLACE, CNN WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: Well, Miles, good morning.

That is exactly right. And President Bush and his aides repeatedly used the word "routine" Friday to describe those air strikes against Iraq. The White House saying it was a routine enforcement of the no-fly zones to protect U.S. and British pilots who had been facing increased risks from Iraqi air defense systems, according to Pentagon officials.

So the Bush administration is saying there has been no change in its policy when it comes to Iraq, no escalation in that policy. Still, Mr. Bush did send a message to the Iraqi leader, who has been a problem for U.S. presidents and who was a thorn in his father's side during Mr. Bush's father's administration more than 10 years ago.

Now, President Bush issued his first authorization of military action as commander in chief, and that action took place while he stepped -- made his first stepping onto the world stage. He was in Mexico meeting with Mexican President Vicente Fox.

That summit meeting, though, somewhat overshadowed by the attack against Iraq, although Mr. Bush did tell reporters that he believes this, again, was a routine enforcement of the no-fly zones, the president also saying he will hold the Iraqi leader, Saddam Hussein, to the commitments he made following the Persian Gulf War.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

GEORGE W. BUSH, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: Saddam Hussein has got to understand that we expect him to conform to the agreement that he signed after Desert Storm. We will enforce the no-fly zone, both south and north. Our intention is to make sure that the world is as peaceful as possible, and we're going to watch very carefully as to whether or not he develops weapons of mass destruction. And if we catch him doing so, we'll take the appropriate action. (END VIDEO CLIP)

WALLACE: And President Bush likely to monitor reaction to those Friday air strikes from his ranch, which is not too far from here. So far, Russia and China have been critical. Those countries, though, have also been critical of the continued United Nations sanctions against Iraq -- Miles.

O'BRIEN: Thank you very much, CNN's Kelly Wallace, Crawford, Texas -- Kyra.

KYRA PHILLIPS, CNN ANCHOR: Saddam Hussein's government says U.S. and British planes bombed civilian targets around Baghdad and was near the no-fly zones that allied planes patrol in Iraq. Baghdad is demanding the United Nations condemn the attack.

CNN's Jane Arraf is in Baghdad with the latest. Jane?

JANE ARRAF, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Iraq is organizing more demonstrations in the wake of yesterday's bombing. This Saturday afternoon, several thousand people out in the streets, demonstrating their support for Iraqi President Saddam Hussein and against the U.S., Britain, and Israel. The Iraqi government is telling its citizens to expect more trouble.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

(voice-over): The Iraqi capital on edge again after the first U.S.-British attack here in more than two years. Iraqis woke to newspapers telling them their government would not let this strike go unpunished.

Iraq says two civilians were killed and at least 11 wounded in the bombings on the outskirts of Baghdad.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: We got used to it, you know. It's been two years that every single day there's new bombing in Mosel (ph), in Basra, in Amara, and one of the cities. But in Baghdad, it's the first in two years. And we expect more.

ARRAF: The Iraqi leadership called the strike part of a plot by the United States and Israel in Iraq and in the Palestinian territories. Palestinians and Iraqis in an organized demonstration condemned the strike on Baghdad, which took place on the Muslim holy day, Friday. They said it was a strike against all Arabs.

NASRA AL SADDOON, EDITOR, "BAGHDAD OBSERVER": We say to them, Iraqi people is an Arab people, and the Iraqi people is with the uprising of the Palestinian people in Palestine.

ARRAF: In prayers, some prayed for peace, others for a holy war to defeat the United States.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

And Iraqi official tell CNN that Iraq is demanding that U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan condemn the strikes. They say, though, they won't reiterate that demand in talks that they will attend in New York coming up to try to break an impasse with the U.N. that has helped lead to issues like this bombing. Iraq hopes that the bombing itself will lead to yet more divisions in the Security Council that will help it -- Kyra.

PHILLIPS: Jane, we've seen the videotape from Iraqi TV about the civilian injuries, but you are there, you're on the scene. How bad were the injuries, civilian injuries?

ARRAF: The Iraqi figures are that 11 people were wounded and two later died of their injuries. The injuries clearly were quite serious from what reporters were shown. Most of them appeared to have been caused by shrapnel. Because we have not been taken to the site itself, and we're not sure what happened in the immediate aftermath, a full picture of the damage and the extent of the casualties isn't known.

But clearly these were civilians, they were women and children, and they did seem to have injuries that had been inflicted by shrapnel -- Kyra.

PHILLIPS: All right, Jane Arraf, live in Baghdad, thank you -- Miles.

O'BRIEN: All right. Joining us now to talk about the attack and U.S.-Iraqi relations is Michael O'Hanlon, a senior fellow of foreign policy studies at the Brookings Institution. Michael, welcome back.

MICHAEL O'HANLON, BROOKINGS INSTITUTION: Thank you, Miles.

O'BRIEN: All right, let's just -- let's do the basics, first of all. Why do you suppose, put us inside the minds of the administration here, why this attack, why now?

O'HANLON: Well, I think they saw Iraq doing some new things tactically, some new mechanisms, some new ideas that Iraq developed for trying to shoot down American and British airplanes and decided to try to preempt that, because, of course, we're flying thousands of sorties over Iraqi airspace, and the last thing we want to do is give Saddam Hussein an American hostage if he shoots down an American pilot.

So the idea here was simply to sustain the ability to conduct the no-fly zone operation in a safe manner.

O'BRIEN: I'm a little confused as to what was different, there was something about the communication and the control of these sites was better. Are you familiar with that, Michael?

O'HANLON: I'm just guessing too, Miles, but from what I see, I think there's a chance that Iraq was tying its radars together better, the idea being that perhaps one radar could first illuminate and find the American or British jet, and then that radar could be turned off before it could be destroyed, and a second radar could get the information on the location of that jet and fire a missile at it and perhaps even shoot it down, and both those radars would perhaps be able to turn themselves off before they would be vulnerable to American or British reprisal.

I think that might have been the sort of thing that was going on, but as you say, we don't really have complete, detailed information on that.

O'BRIEN: Sort of a radar network, if you will, I guess.

O'HANLON: I think that's right.

O'BRIEN: You know, one of the keys is, you look back 10 years ago, one of the keys to the success in the Gulf War was the fact that the Arab world, by and large, did not support Iraq. In this case, where does the U.S. sit with the Arab neighbors there? Is there going to be a lot of support for what the U.S. is doing right now?

O'HANLON: Well, you know, we're sort of in trouble no matter what we do at this point. The bigger problem is not these isolated air strikes but the effects of sanctions on the Iraqi people. And of course yesterday's actions don't change that in any fundamental way. Obviously any casualties from the attacks are regrettable, but they're very few in number. And the real impact on the Iraqi people is from the sanctions.

That's going to be a problem whether we occasionally conduct this sort of military strike or not.

O'BRIEN: How does this fit in, then, to the sanctions discussions that are ongoing?

O'HANLON: Well, it's a good question. I don't think the Bush administration has reached a real new policy on sanctions. Are they going to try to tighten them up by making them more streamlined in the hope that that will convince France and China and Russia to go along? Are they going to insist that Saddam let weapons inspectors back in and threaten military retaliation of a much more severe nature than yesterday's if that doesn't happen?

I think they're considering all these sorts of options, and so far we just don't know where they're going to wind up.

This was -- yesterday's action was the continuation of Clinton policy. The Bush administration has not yet completed its review on where it wants to go with Iraq policy.

O'BRIEN: All right, let's leave it on that note. But we're not going to leave you, we're going to ask you to stand by, and in just a few moments, about 15 minutes' time, you will be joined by Kelly Wallace, and it's your opportunity as a viewer to chime in on all this. We invite you to send your e-mails now to WAM, W-A-M@cnn.com.

And Mr. O'Hanlon, we're sorry we don't have your picture there, but we didn't -- couldn't find one this morning. There's Kelly.

O'HANLON: No, no sweat, that's all right. O'BRIEN: And we will give you a phone number a little bit later if you'd like to call in as well, so stay with us for that.

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

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