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ISIS Within Miles of Baghdad Airport; ISIS Justifies Sexual Slavery; Ebola Deaths Grow; Tightening Ebola Protocol

Aired October 13, 2014 - 13:00   ET

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


WOLF BLITZER, CNN ANCHOR: Right now, explosions rock the Syrian city of Kobani as residents try to flee and ISIS forces barrel their way closer to Baghdad forcing some Iraqi military from their positions.

Ebola's global death toll now reaching 4,000. There's another case of Ebola in Dallas. Health workers in Africa are threatening to walk off the job.

Let's start with the fight against ISIS right now on the Turkish- Syrian border. There are major developments going on right. Right now, a battle for the city of Kobani is intensifying. A huge explosion believed to be from a coalition air strike rocked the city this morning. It comes as ISIS continues its swift and bloody march into this key town just a couple of miles from the border with Turkey.

Over in Iraq, ISIS militants forced the Iraqi military to abandon a strategic base outside the city of Heet. A retreat from -- a retreat that gives the extremists even more control over the Anbar Province, the doorstep to Baghdad.

Our Senior International Correspondent Ben Wedeman is joining us from Baghdad right now. Ben, is the concern that ISIS could eventually actually take Baghdad or is the immediate concern that they could surround the city, it's a huge city of millions, and take the areas around it, including the international airport?

BEN WEDEMAN, CNN SENIOR INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Yes. Anbar Province is massive. It's the size of North Dakota. At this point, ISIS controls 80 percent of it. The worry isn't necessarily the city of Baghdad because, keep in mind, the majority here is Shia. Tens and thousands of Shia militiamen have been mobilized to supplement the Iraqi army. Some of the Iraqi army's best units are in Baghdad. The worry is the western side and, to a certain extent, the south as well.

On the west, you have Baghdad international airport which abuts the Anbar Province. And we were at a position of the Iraqi army which overlooked an area controlled by ISIS and that was about eight miles from the airport. So, the worry is that ISIS will somehow try to either take over the airport or disable it, make it so it's simply too dangerous to take off from Baghdad and that would be a huge, symbolic achievement for them to cut that airport off from the rest of the world.

But keep in mind, of course, Wolf, that the United States has soldiers at the airport. It has apache helicopters there. There are American advisers working with the Iraqi army along the western perimeter of this city. So, there's no immediate danger from the outside but the inside is where you see an immediate threat.

This evening, we've had three bombings in Baghdad, at least 17 people dead. And this is something we see almost every night between eerily between the hours of 6:00 and 8:00 p.m. And it happens almost every night. So, this is what really concerns the security forces here in Baghdad is not necessarily the possibility, the vague possibility, of an attack, a frontal attack by ISIS. But this constant sort of drum of bombs going off in the city just trying to disrupt people and undermine confidence in the Iraqi government -- Wolf.

BLITZER: Speaking of the Iraqi government, are they increasing their pressure to try to get U.S. military troops on the ground to fight ISIS in these areas around Baghdad?

WEDEMAN: They are sending mixed messages. We heard, over the weekend, from the head of the Anbar regional council, Provincial Council, that they desperately want U.S. troops on the ground. And, of course, it was Anbar Province where the Americans had some of their bloodiest battles during their presence here. But the government in Baghdad says they haven't received that request. We heard that directly from the spokesman for the prime minister. And many Iraqi politicians have said they refuse the idea of boots on the ground. But -- so, you're getting these mixed messages. But certainly the feeling among those out in Anbar who are fighting the ISIS, they certainly desperately would like to see those American boots on the ground -- Wolf.

BLITZER: The Iraqi military, Ben, has several hundred thousand troops, the so-called Iraqi security forces. Why aren't they not going into Anbar and trying to defend their own country?

WEDEMAN: Well, we've already heard that American officials estimate that only about half of that number are actually combat ready. And then, you have all sorts of other problems, absenteeism. We've heard the anecdotal stories that many soldiers pay their commanding officers to avoid going to the front line. So, oftentimes, when units are deployed, it's found that half of the men aren't even there.

So, you have problems of corruption, absenteeism, incompetence. And then, there's a problem of sort of the ethnic divisions. There are, as I mentioned before, 10s of thousands of Shia militiamen who have been trained and armed to fight ISIS, but the Sunni tribes in Anbar don't want to see them there. So, they have all these complications preventing an effective defense against this slow but steady push by ISIS in that province -- Wolf.

BLITZER: Yes, it's a real disgrace after 10 years of the U.S. spending billions and billions of dollar building up that Iraqi military. They simply disappear once they get this threat from ISIS. That is a disgrace and it's causing a lot of anguish here in Washington, certainly among the veterans who served in Iraq for that period of time.

All right, Ben, thank you very much. In the city of Kobani, Kurdish forces are fighting furiously to keep ISIS from taking their town. Our own Nic Paton Walsh is on the Syrian-Turkish border right now. ISIS appears to be tightening its grip on the city.

NIC PATON WALSH, CNN INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: An intense day in the city of Kobani. From where we've stood on this vantage point, four or five of what must have been air strikes accompanied with the sound of jets overhead, targeting a key area close to the border crossing in the city center. And sadly, I think for the Kurds defending that city, (INAUDIBLE) given the positions of the airstrikes moving during the day. Clearly, they are targeting ISIS positions. Those positions were further east during the day and then moved slightly to the west.

As I say, very hard to work out what's happening inside that city. But as each day goes by, the Kurds clearly have less ammunition, less supplies. We saw one strange instance at the end of our long distance lens, about 50 men seemingly unarmed moving from the west where the Kurds are said to have more control to the east where ISIS is more dominant, walking in a single file.

Not quite clear what their motivation or moves were but it's hard to define quite where the front lines are down in that city. But the amounts of explosions we've seen today, the sound of gunfire compared to the eerie, quiet of Sunday suggesting that the conflict is moving fast and many think it's a matter of days until the Kurds find some more decisive moments ahead of them despite today the increased involvement of coalition air power. Nick Paton Walsh, CNN.

BLITZER: As the U.S. and its allies target ISIS strongholds in Iraq and Syria, there are new concerns closer to home. Homeland security officials and the FBI, they're issuing new warnings about a threat of right here in the United States. They're concerned about homegrown terrorists, so-called lone wolfs, inspired by ISIS. The intelligence comes from online chatter, recent crackdowns on alleged ISIS members in the U.S. -- the U.K., I should say, and Australia. The potential targets, according to U.S. law enforcement authorities, even the news media, in addition to law enforcement officials. They say the warning is precautionary, not based on specific threats. We'll continue to watch that story for our viewers.

More on the terror group, just ahead. ISIS has a new post online justifying its violent campaign, especially the kidnapping of women. We'll speak with an expert.

And we're also learning more about how a nurse in Dallas, Texas contracted Ebola. We'll have a live report.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BLITZER: Once again, we want to welcome our viewers in the United States and around the world. I'm a Wolf Blitzer reporting from Washington.

We've been hearing a lot about the brutality of ISIS as its fighters rampage across Syria and Iraq. Now, in a new addition of the terror group's online magazine, ISIS is justifying its kidnapping of women as sex slaves. The article says, and I'm quoting now, "One should remember that enslaving the families of the infidels and taking their women as concubines is a firmly established aspect of Sharia or Islamic law. This interpretation, by the way, is rejected by the Muslim world as a total perversion of Islam.

Let's bring in Tara Maller. She's with the National Securities' program at the New America Foundation, a former CIA military analyst. Tara, thanks very much for joining us. Tell us about this new interpretation of the justification of sex slaves, as you will, saying this is part of Shariah law.

TARA MALLER, FORMER MILITARY ANALYST, CIA: Well, I think it's really interesting. Obviously, the 1.6 billion Muslims in the world would disagree with this perversion of the words of the Koran. And what's actually interesting to me about this is this is one of the first times we've seen them give a public justification for the behavior which they've been getting criticism of in the past few weeks. So, it shows me that they have found the need to come on the defensive, which I think is interesting because maybe they are feeling like there are people questioning some of their brutal tactics that we've been seeing and that we've been seeing people in the media focus on over the last month or two.

BLITZER: And so, they are saying flatly that if you're a woman and an infidel, meaning a non-Muslim, --

MALLER: Yes.

BLITZER: -- that you're allowed to be taken and made into a sex slave?

MALLER: Yes. If you look at the magazine article itself, it actually distinguishes between a Muslim woman and a non-Muslim woman. If you're a non-Muslim woman, it says you either have to be forced to convert or killed. And if you're a Muslim woman, they're saying that the justification is that this is OK and this falls within -- there's a religious justification for it. So, this is in their latest issue of a magazine that's published in, you know, multiple languages including English. So, you know, they're finding the need to use this as propaganda to show why they're using certain types of tactics.

BLITZER: Is it -- because we know ISIS is Sunni and they go against the Shiites. Are they saying Shiites are infidels as well?

MALLER: Well, they were focused specifically on the Yazidis in Sinjar as part of the article itself. And I believe and what also is interesting about this is you don't see this sort of justification. You haven't seen it traditionally by other groups affiliated with Al Qaeda. You haven't seen this -- I don't recall seeing this type of justification for the treatment of women when I worked on Iraq. So, this type of propaganda, to justify it, to me, was a fairly new development.

BLITZER: So Yazidis. What about Christians? MALLER: I mean -- Christians, they said -- you know, would be not

falling within this category which you would face either death or trying to force to convert. But, to be perfectly honest, I don't see that they would say, no, we're not going to mistreat, you know, a non- Muslim women. They're probably going to adopt these tactics, and they have been adopting these tactics, across a wide, you know, range of religions and ages.

BLITZER: Tara, thank you very much for coming in. A pretty awful situation over there.

MALLER: Yes.

BLITZER: Thanks very much. Tara Maller joining us.

Still ahead, worry ramping up over the spread of Ebola. The Centers for Disease Control here in the United States is re-evaluating its safety procedures in hospitals, following the first known transmission of the virus in the United States.

And in West Africa, the number of Ebola deaths keeps growing. In Liberia, caring for thousands of people with the deadly virus is taking a huge toll on its healthcare workers. We'll go there live for a report.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BLITZER: Welcome back.

Fears of the Ebola epidemic are rising in the United States and indeed around the world. In less than two hours, President Obama will receive an update on the Ebola case in Dallas, Texas, in the broader effort to insure the preparedness of the country's health infrastructure. We learned today that the Texas nurse who contracted the virus is in critically stable condition. Originally the head of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta said the infection spread because of a breach in protocol, but just a short while ago he revised that statement.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DR. TOM FRIEDEN, DIRECTOR, CENTERS FOR DISEASE CONTROL AND PREVENTION: I want to clarify something I said yesterday. I spoke about a breach in protocol and that's what we speak about in public health when we're talking about what needs to happen. And our focus is to say, would this protocol have prevented the infection? And we believe it would have. But some interpreted that as finding fault with the hospital or the health care worker. And I'm sorry if that was the impression given. That was certainly not my intention. People on the front lines are really protecting all of us.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BLITZER: We have a team of reporters covering this crisis. Our Elizabeth Cohen is in Dallas, where the first U.S. case of Ebola was diagnosed, Nic Robertson is in Spain, where a nurse there is being treated for Ebola, and Nima Elbagir is in Liberia, where health workers are now threatening to go on strike.

Let's go to Dallas, Texas. First, Elizabeth, and official with direct knowledge of the nurse's case there where you are said there were inconsistencies. What more can you tell us about that?

ELIZABETH COHEN, CNN SENIOR MEDICAL CORRESPONDENT: You know, this official said, look, there might not be one ah-ha moment. Ah, here's what happened. Here's the breach. It might be more sort of general than that. So he said, for example, there might have been a problem, an inconsistency with how the gear was put on, how her protective gear was put on, or with how it was taken off, or there might have been inconsistencies with what type of gear she wore. Perhaps she wasn't always wearing the right kind. And so they said that they're going to try to figure that out but that they know they may never get to the bottom of precisely what happened.

BLITZER: What's the mood there? Are people scared, Elizabeth? I assume they are.

COHEN: You know, I don't get the feeling that people are -- in Dallas are particularly scared. I think there might be some concerns about coming to Presbyterian for care. For example, yesterday they diverted ambulances away from the hospital and there's certainly no medical reason to do that. They certainly took in ambulances when they were treating Thomas Eric Duncan last week. But, you know, there -- it may be that they were just concerned about sort of the optics of it, that maybe patients would be anxious about coming to a hospital where there's an Ebola patient. So I think there are concerns maybe about this hospital, but I don't get the perception that people in Dallas are worried in sort of a general sense.

BLITZER: Elizabeth, stand by. I want to go to Spain where a nurse was infected with the Ebola virus there as well. What can you tell us, Nic, about her condition?

NIC ROBERTSON, CNN SENIOR INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Critical but stable. She is having trouble breathing. Her lungs are affected. Hospital officials say she is conscious and talking. They say that the level of virus in her body, they believe, has gone down a little, which they say is giving them a little bit of hope. But government -- the government appointed special committee here to look into Ebola gave a press conference today, really trying to tamp down fears in the country at the moment. One of the things they spoke about for Teresa Romero is that every hour in the coming days is critical. This is what they said.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

FERNANDO RODRIGUEZ ARTALEJO (ph), AUTOMOMA (ph) UNIVERSITY PUBLIC HEALTH EXPERT (through translator): First of all, the next 24 hours, the following 48 hours, every hour in which the patient is in serious condition are all critical because she's still in serious condition. The information I have is that there are approximately 50 people dedicated to the care of this patient.

(END VIDEO CLIP) ROBERTSON: But officials here have also said that the hospital itself is really not up to standard for treating Ebola. That the areas where the staff take on and put on the protective equipment is too small and that certainly is raising a concern for the unions here who are raising this issue in a number of ways, their health care unions, Wolf.

BLITZER: I just want to be precise on that. There's concern the hospital there that's treating this nurse is not prepared to deal with this crisis? Is that what you're saying?

ROBERTSON: What we've been told by the European Center for Disease Control is that the hospital does not meet all the standards for treating Ebola. They say that the staff are being given adequately prepared for it. And what we have heard from the special committee here, set up in Spain to look at Ebola, is that the space they have available inside the hospital where the health care workers -- and there are some 50 of them, we're told, who are treating the nursing assistant, is too small. The area where they take on and put off this protective equipment is too small. So, yes, we have both the government and the European Centers for Disease Control saying that the hospital here, its standards for treating Ebola don't measure up to where they would want them to be. That said, the special committee today did say again, reassuring the public in Spain, that they can and are able to do everything that's necessary to prevent the disease spreading.

Wolf.

BLITZER: Nic Robertson, I want you to stand by as well. I want to go to Liberia right now where the number of Ebola deaths in West Africa as a whole just keeps on climbing. More than 4,000 now.

So, Nima Elbagir, you're there in Monrovia. How are health workers there coping?

NIMA ELBAGIR, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Well, it really seems, Wolf, like they really can't handle the pressure for much longer. They were promised hazard pay. Some of them aren't even getting the actual base pay. On top of that, they say the equipment they're proved - they've been provided with is still inadequate. So health workers -- many of the health workers at the city's largest Ebola treatment center, the largest government treatment center, Island (ph) Clinic, has started to go slow. The consequences of that, the fears of the consequences, you can imagine, are huge.

And we've already starting to feel it, Wolf. Three ambulances were turned away on Saturday and now they are currently not admitting patients. It's just a difficult situation on both sides. Of course, the impact of this is scary, but at the same time you can understand that these health workers have been going for months now. It feels like they can't take anymore.

Wolf.

BLITZER: U.S. military personnel, they're doing the best they can. A lot of people here in the United States, Nima, are deeply concerned about what eventually will be 4,000 Americans, U.S. military personnel who are going over there. What are you hearing about their safety?

ELBAGIR: Well, the U.S. military personnel will not be in direct contact with Ebola patients, but the public health services people, the other government departments, will be and that will be through this Ebola treatment center that's specifically for health care workers. So while, of course, that does up the risk for them, it also means that for Liberian health care worker, for international aid workers who are critical to ramping up this response and trying to convince them to come here in significant numbers is a big part of the response, this will provide them with a much-needed lifeline and much- needed just moral support. The sense that for the Liberian health workers that others fighting this virus here that they're not alone and that the U.S. is willing to take some of these risks with them, Wolf.

BLITZER: All right, be careful over there. Nima Elbagir is in Liberia. Elizabeth Cohen, in Dallas. Nic Robertson in Spain, watching what's going on.

We're going to have much more on this Ebola crisis coming up.

Also, politics. Romney, Clinton, Bush, they're all on the campaign trail. We'll take a closer look at some of the big names stumping here in the United States with the big midterm races coming up in three weeks.

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