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Length: 5:44
PAULA ZAHN: I'm going to turn to three journalists
who have covered the war on the ground in Iraq: Pam
Hess, United Press International's Pentagon
correspondent; Rajiv Chandrasekaran, "The Washington
Post" former Baghdad bureau chief; and our own
Michael Ware.
Welcome, all.
Michael, I'm going to start with you tonight.
And I want you to listen in on more of what General
Petraeus had to say in defending the troop surge and
what it might ultimately accomplish.
Let's listen.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
PETRAEUS: There has been progress, and that is in the
reduction in sectarian murders in Baghdad, which is
about one-third now of what it was in January.
That's an important development, because the
sectarian murders can be a cancer in a neighborhood.
It is something on which our commanders and the Iraqi
commander have focused quite a bit.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
ZAHN: So, Michael, do you see any indications that
the surge is working?
MICHAEL WARE, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Well, in Baghdad, in
one particular form, yeah, General Petraeus is
absolutely right. The number of sectarian killings
are down.
But that does not come without cost, Paula. The
number of U.S. deaths in Baghdad has almost doubled.
And what you're seeing is that the sectarian killings
aren't happening in Baghdad, where the surge is.
They're happening outside.
So, what we're seeing since the surge began is that,
basically, American troops are still dying just as
much as they were before the surge, and Iraqis are
dying just as much as they were as well. It's just
that they're all dying in different places now and in
different ways than before.
The surge will work in Baghdad in one form. You
really want to fix Iraq: surge the whole country.
ZAHN: Do you agree with that, Pam?
PAM HESS, PENTAGON CORRESPONDENT, UNITED PRESS
INTERNATIONAL: I think that, from the start, everyone
has been concerned that the surge is too small and it
might be too late.
But I think it does make a difference if Baghdad is
secure. The question is, will there be enough time on
the political calendar to allow that to happen?
I think one of the problems that we have in covering
this is that in Washington and the United States we
like to look at numbers and try to project trends.
But counterinsurgency campaigns don't work that way.
They sort of go along, go along, go along, and then,
all at once, if it's going to work, it will start to
work.
But it's not something that you can stand right here
and look out six months from now, using your current
data, and say, by our indications now, we will be
here in six months. So, it's a really hard thing for
us to cover.
ZAHN: And, Rajiv, what numbers are we talking about,
when Michael suggests, yes, it's working in Baghdad,
but you have to sort of match those numbers across
the country if you're going to make a real dent in
the sectarian violence?
RAJIV CHANDRASEKARAN, "THE WASHINGTON POST": Indeed.
And what we have seen of late is that the sectarian
violence is growing in areas outside of Baghdad,
particularly to the northeast, in Diyala Province,
where nine U.S. paratroopers were killed the other
day in a very bold, audacious suicide bombing on
their outpost.
And this was a less guarded sort of smaller outpost,
which is part of this whole surge strategy. And, so,
it clearly exhibits the vulnerabilities that exist as
the U.S. military is reshaping its force posture
under this surge. But, you know, if you want to flood
the zone in Diyala, if you want to get enough troops
in Al Anbar Province to deal with the sectarian
violence there, I mean, you're talking about tens of
thousands of more soldiers. And the U.S. military
just doesn't have that right now.
ZAHN: And, Michael Ware, you're just back from
Diyala. What did you see there?
WARE: Yes, absolutely. I have...
ZAHN: Are you pretty pessimistic about what you saw?
WARE: The 5,000 American troops there are taking the
fight to the enemy, but that is now the center. That
is the new front line with al Qaeda. And it's the
perfect barometer for what's going on.
You have seen, in Diyala Province, sectarian murders
have dropped by 70 percent. But attacks on Americans
and American casualties have increased by 70 percent.
So, it's a very tough fight out there.
I was at these outposts, one of which was just most
recently blown up. The brigade, the 5,000 troops who
spent a year there last year lost 19 people in a
year. The same brigade, the same size force there
now, has lost 50 in six months.
ZAHN: Pam, quick final question for you. We heard
some of the Democrats coming into this segment
saying, time's up. As they repeat that call, is that
undermining the U.S. troop effort right now in Iraq?
HESS: I heard from a battalion commander who is
getting ready to head over. And he said it does, if
they don't feel like their political leaders are
behind them or that they understand the time that
this takes.
The problem, I think, has been maybe the Pentagon,
certainly the White House, hasn't done a very good
job of explaining the process that has to happen.
It's one thing to get all the U.S. troops' part of
the surge into Baghdad and into Diyala to do the
work, and it's quite another for the work to actually
get done.
The work, it involves mostly confidence-building on
the part of the Iraqi people. You have to win them
over and make them think that the Americans and the
Iraqi forces can secure them. And, until they think
that, they're not going to give you the intelligence
that you need in order to root out the bad guys.
So, they're on this sort of weird, vague, cognitive
battlefield that they're fighting, and there's just
no way you can, from the outside, say we will give
you two weeks, and, if it's not done then, it's
automatically -- it just -- it can't work in that
way.
I don't know that we have the patience left for this,
though.
ZAHN: Well, that's -- a lot of patience is being
sorely tested by this.
Pam Hess, Rajiv Chandrasekaran, Michael Ware, thank
you, all. Welcome back home for a little
bit.