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Nearly 10,000 U.S. Troops To Remain In Afghanistan Throughout This Year; Germanwings Flight 9525 Crash In The French Alps. Aired 3:30-4p ET
Aired March 24, 2015 - 15:30 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
[15:30:00] PETER BERGEN, CNN NATIONAL SECURITY ANALYST: And President Obama was, you know, very, very warm and friendly. They talked about their mutual time at Columbia, the fact that President Obama's wife -- mother was an anthropologist, that president Ghani is an anthropologist. And really the whole tone of this was very different than what we've seen for the last several years with the previous president Karzai.
WOLF BLITZER, CNN ANCHOR: Stand by for a moment also, Peter. I want to go to Barbara Starr, our Pentagon correspondent.
So Barbara, nearly 10,000 U.S. troops will remain in Afghanistan throughout this year. It was supposed to be reduced by about half. But the president decided in the face of what's going on over there to keep those troops there. Next year it's up for grabs. What's going to happen in terms of a drawdown, although the president says all U.S. troops will be out at least by early 2017, if not the end of 2016. Is this what the U.S. military defense planners over there really want?
BARBARA STARR, CNN PENTAGON CORRESPONDENT: Well, it's certainly the plan that they've been working on for months now. Basically this had been the accord that everybody agreed to. I think there is a new wrinkle.
General Campbell, the top U.S. commander there, will tell you there are the beginning signs, if you will, of an ISIS movement developing in Afghanistan like we've seen in so many other places, which is that disaffected Taliban are essentially rebranding themselves as is, trying to recruit additional fighters, get money, get attention. That could be very destabilizing in certain parts of Afghanistan.
So certainly the Afghan forces are going to have their work cut out for them in the coming couple of years. But President Obama making the case again that at some point U.S. and coalition forces are going to go home. They have been there coming up on 14 years now. And that Afghanistan has to be able to provide its own security, stand on its own two feet.
I think what you are seeing here is the lesson of the U.S. withdrawal from Iraq. Iraq collapsing, obviously, not able to stand on its own two feet in so many security areas and now struggling to regain its security footing. The president not wanting that to happen in Afghanistan. One big difference here, and I want to underscore what Peter just
said, this new Afghan president, Ashraf Ghani, really making a point of thanking U.S. military troops, U.S. military families and the U.S. taxpayers for, you know, their sacrifice in supporting Afghanistan. That's something that Karzai never did. President Karzai, the previous president, often criticizing U.S. troops and their mission there. It led to some obviously very sour feelings. Ashraf Ghani knows that is not what he wants for the next couple years. He wants as much help as he can get from the Pentagon -- Wolf?
BLITZER: Barbara Starr at the Pentagon.
I want to bring in retired lieutenant colonel Rick Francona to get his analysis. A lot of military analysts I've spoken to, Colonel, say you know what, when all is said and done, it doesn't make any difference if the U.S. pulls out this year, next year, or early 2017. Afghanistan's going to be a disaster for the time being given the Taliban there, Al-Qaeda there, now ISIS moving in, the historic tensions that have been going on for decades, maybe for centuries. If the U.S. completely pulls out at some point, Afghanistan is going to wind up like Iraq is right now, your analysis?
LT. COL. RICK FRANCONA (RET.), FORMER U.S. MILITARY: That could be the case. However, I think it's important that the U.S. troops stay there as long as they need to. And I'm very disturbed by this date certain that the president seems to have put on this. He wants everybody out of there by the end of 2016.
We had this problem before. We did it in Iraq. We did it in Afghanistan. We tell the bad guys when we're leaving. And that just emboldens them or makes them sit down, hunker down, wait until the withdrawal of troops, and then they do what they want.
If we use the Iraq model, as Barbara says, it was the period of time right after American troops left that the place fell apart. As long as you had a small residual force, 10,000 is a good number, to keep track of what's going on, what your military is doing, what the host military is doing, what your trainers are doing, they can keep an eye on where the equipment is going, if it's being used properly, and it stems the corruption that is inherent in these Middle Eastern societies.
So I think it's important that we not put an end date on this and to stop that. It's going to go back to the where it was. It doesn't have to, but it is going to require a commitment beyond a date on a calendar.
BLITZER: All right. Colonel Francona, thanks very much to you.
We're going to have extensive coverage. Now we're getting new video coming in to CNN of that awful plane crash in southern France today, the German airliner that went down in the French Alps. Our special coverage of that tragic accident, 150 people presumably lost on board, we will continue our special coverage right after a quick break.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK) [15:39:16] BROOKE BALDWIN, CNN HOST: All right. We're back with our breaking news. I'm Brooke Baldwin. Thank you for being with us here.
Breaking news. More details this afternoon on this horrific plane crash in the German Alps -- French Alps. It was a German airliner said to be, quote, "completely obliterated, reduced to pieces." And you'll start to see some of these pieces here skewed among the mountainous terrain. We were told by one expert, not a single piece of this debris is actually larger than a small car.
Some perspective for you and you are seeing some of these members of rescue teams, really, recovery teams here combing through, beginning this mapping process of identification and hopefully a location of some of these boxes.
While you were watching the president of the United States in that news conference, we did get some new video, some more videos showing more of these searchers, you know, teetering on these steep mountains, down into the foothills, scouring this strewn wreckage of the Germanwings flight 9525 in this. And I can't, you know, underscore this enough, incredibly remote area of the French Alps.
We are told this will likely be a recovery mission, not a search for survivors. On board this particular aircraft, there were 150 people. Among them, two babies and we have now confirmed there was a group of high school students, a group of German high school students who were on this foreign exchange program in Spain.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
[15:40:36] THOMAS WINKELMANN, CEO, GERMANWINGS (through translator): Unfortunately, I have to confirm to you and this saddens me very much, there is also a school group from highland, 16 students, among all the victims, including two teachers.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
BALDWIN: The airline, Germanwings, it's a budget carrier of Lufthansa, now says it was an airbus 320. It was at a cruising altitude a mere one minute before it began falling. Flight 9525 wasn't even midway through its route from Barcelona down in Spain, if you can follow the red line, up toward that intended final destination of Dusseldorf, Germany, when it started this catastrophic eight-minute descent some 44 minutes into this flight.
Why that happened, that is still too early to determine. But one of the black boxes, specifically the flight data recorder, has been found. That is now en route to investigators. And at least preliminary answers could be just hours away.
I have a David Soucie with me and I also have Les Abend. Les Abend is a CNN aviation analyst Boeing 777 captain and contributing editor of "Fly" magazine. David Soucie, CNN's safety analyst, former FAA safety inspector and author of "Malaysia airlines flight 370."
So gentlemen, let's just - David Soucie, let me go to you first this time. As you are assessing and looking at this video where you see some of these searchers beginning this process of mapping out, and who knows how massive a debris field this could be. But can you just begin to explain how this process works, how they find and identify these husbands, wives, sons, and daughters.
DAVID SOUCIE, CNN SAFETY ANALYST: I'll tell you, this is a really truly gruesome task. I've had to do it in this terrain a couple times before. And it's really something that's just beyond words to describe.
The first thing to remember, though, is to keep your composure as an inspector on site, to take care of your own personal health first, make sure that you wear proper protective gear, which it looks like they are. And be very careful because at this time of year as well, it's extremely difficult there. The snow is melting. There's more snow on the way. So that makes this transitional solid ice area into mud. So now you're dealing with mud. It's really easy to fall. So the first thing to do is just carefully navigate through the site and do as much documentation as you can as to what is there.
There may not -- from the description and from what I'm seeing there, there may not be a lot of identifiable human remains there at this point. It could be very difficult to try to find enough of the human remains to make positive identification.
So it's going to be gruesome. It's going to take weeks and possibly months to actually retract and get all the information that they need to determine what happened here. But it's just tragic, and it's bringing back horrible memories for me of being at these sites and the families and what they're going through is unbearable right now, I'm sure.
BALDWIN: Right. We know that they have set up these crisis centers at both the airports or in the cities of Barcelona and Dusseldorf. So just try to imagine what that is like for these loved ones as they are walking into these airports to try to learn what happened.
On that note, Les Abend, I mean, that really is obviously the million- dollar question. We may not know for weeks, months. But two boxes, and we've talked about plane crashes before, we've talked about the flight data recorder and the cockpit voice recorder. Apparently they have the flight data recorder. What kinds of answers would that give investigators?
LES ABEND, CNN AVIATION ANALYST: Well, the cockpit voice recorder is going to record everything that the pilots are saying within the cockpit, even communication from the cabin to the cockpit and vice versa and air traffic control. And that's something that I think would be very interesting to know about. Air traffic control is going to have their own record educating and tapes to know what kind of communication took up - took place up until the last transmission that they made, what's going on? What's the tone of the voice?
BALDWIN: What happened in those eight minutes? Because there were 44 minutes into this flight, but there were eight minutes. [15:44:58] ABEND: And apparently there's eight minutes worth of
silence from the crew, at least that we know of at this time. That information may not be released to us at this point. But what I'm saying is what kind of communication occurred at departure time, right to the cruise level. What was going on? What was the tone of the pilot's voice and the very last time that they did transmit to air traffic control?
That's important to know. That's the cockpit voice recorder. The data recorder is going to record all the parameters of the airplane to determine how exactly - how quickly it did descend, at what air speed, how high it was above the terrain. That's also part of that. Various other parameters are a part of that.
BALDWIN: The word being used to describe this plane, obliterated. Obliterated by I believe it was the president of this region in France.
As we're getting more information, Les Abend, David Soucie, stay with me. We're also getting more information about the 150 souls on board. As I mentioned a moment ago, there was a group of high school students, German high school students, on this plane. We will take you live to Germany, the city where that flight was supposed to land, next.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
[15:50:13] BALDWIN: Back out live to our breaking coverage. I have Fredrik Pleitgen is standing by in Dusseldorf, Germany, where this plane was initially supposed to land. Sadly, we now know it is scattered, the debris is scattered somewhere in the French Alps.
Fred, you're getting information as far as who was on this plane. We know 150 people, including high school students.
FREDRIK PLEITGEN, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Yes, absolutely. Including at least 16 high school students from a town that's about one-and-a-half hours north of where I am. It is called (INAUDIBLE). It's a very small town. There's been actually been a crisis center that has been put in place in that town as well.
The mayor of Hatlered (ph) went on television here on Germany earlier today, Brooke. And he was obviously, absolutely devastated about what happened there. There were two teachers from that very school who were on that plane as well. And the folks there were saying that, you know, they checked the passenger list to make sure that these people were really on that plane. And of course, it really devastated them extremely when they found out that their love ones most probably have died in that plane crash as this entire country.
Brooke, I have to say. It is very much in the state of sadness, of mourning, and confusion as well. I mean, this is a country that really prides itself on its engineering and on its airline safety as well. So certainly it is something that has really hit Germany to the bone. Angela Merkel will be on her way to the crash site tomorrow. The
airline Lufthansa and Germanwings as well, Lufthansa of course owns Germanwings, have come out with the statement and they said that they are going to do everything they possibly can for the relatives, for the loved ones of those who were killed in this catastrophe. They say they are going to put in place a contact center near the crash site there in the French Alps where people can choose to go to. They are going to obviously will be brought there, free of charge, be put up free of charge, and then they are going to be at least be able to be close to where all of this has happened. So that on the one hand is happening.
And of course, on the other hand, aside from all that there's also this big investigation underway to find out exactly what happened, Brooke.
BALDWIN: We even heard, you know, moments at the top of the news coming to the White House from the president of the United States, President of Afghanistan, speaking to our friend, just looking down at my notes from Obama. Our friends in Spain and Germany, Americans stands with them at this moment of sorrow.
Fred, we'll be looking for more of your reporting through the evening here on CNN. I appreciate you, in Dusseldorf, Germany.
Of course, CNN crew is also headed to the scene of the crash in France. We'll be following every development for you live here on CNN. Much more still to come. Stay with me.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
[15:56:49] BALDWIN: Tonight CNN is taking a deeper look at atheism. It is a movement that is growing, but can be so misunderstood. Kyra Phillips talked with everyone from prominent atheist to a pastor who is secretly an atheist. Take a look.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
KYRA PHILLIPS, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): This is Stan.
STAN, ATHEIST: I function as a teacher, councilor, social worker, chaplain and spiritual guide.
PHILLIPS: We met him hundreds of miles from his home, changed his name, and changed his voice because Stan has a very dark secret. He is an atheist.
STAN: When I'm standing up there, I often cannot look into them in the eyes. Sometimes I feel like my knees are going to buckle, like I can't even hold myself up.
PHILLIPS: And Stan is not alone. We found him through the clergy project started four years ago for ministers like him who need an anonymous way to talk about giving up on God. There are more than 600 religious leaders in the group. STAN: I'm going to come out. I will walk away from the pulpit. I
will do it because these people, many of them, have depended on me and they're vulnerable. And I don't want to hurt them.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
BALDWIN: Can't look at his congregation in his face, Kyra Phillips. So this is a man who is in the religious closet, so to speak.
PHILLIPS: Right. I mean, this is all he knows. He's a biblical scholar. He grew up in a very strong Christian family. And he has contemplated suicide. I mean, he's been struggling with this for years. And now, he has finally entered this program to try and deal with this, you know, tearing of his soul. And he wants to come out. He wants to tell his congregation. He's an atheist. He doesn't believe. But he's just not there yet. But it's so compelling.
And you know, we met a preacher who is out of the closet. And he has hey huge congregation, and he's good with it. He went through the same type of, you know, mental torture, even death threats and any contemplated suicide. But he actually has been able to come to grips with this and has a packed house every Sunday.
BALDWIN: And then we were just talking about this in commercial break. I asked you about the tough thing. And you were saying there is now at, of all places, the most prestigious at Harvard University, you can go, if you feel so compelled -- you hear of divinity school. So this is like divinity school with a twist.
PHILLIPS: Well, the divinity school at Harvard is one of the most prestigious schools to study religion in the world. And they have now embraced a humanist hub there on campus. Students come to the divinity school to study with incredible professors, many of them pastors themselves, and they're studying to be Godless chaplains.
BALDWIN: Godless chaplains.
PHILLIPS: Godless chaplains.
BALDWIN: That's what they are referring to that?
PHILLIPS: That is what they are called.
BLITZER: (INAUDIBLE), I have never.
PHILLIPS: And we answer questions people want to know, how do they pray? What do they read from? Where do they find their inspiration? We answer all that tonight.
BALDWIN: I know this is something that is fascinating as you. So, thank you for the quick preview. Just a quick reminder of all of you, do not miss this, the special report tonight, "ATHESITS: INSIDE THE WORLD OF NON-BELIEVERS," tonight 9:00 Eastern here on CNN. Tune in. Kyra Phillips.
Thank you. Thank you for being with me. I'm Brooke Baldwin here in New York. Let's go to Washington. John Berman in for Jake Tapper. "THE LEAD" starts now.
