Michael Ware
IRAQ: THE HIDDEN WARS
Because
of the length of this special, I have uploaded it both as a
single clip
and as six individual clips. Links and times are below,
with the transcript separated by segment.
FULL PROGRAM
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Length: 42:15
BY
SEGMENT:
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Length: 7:21
ANDERSON COOPER, CNN ANCHOR: More
headaches for President Bush even as members of the 82nd
Airborne make their way into Iraq. New questions about his
plan to send them there.
At Senate confirmation hearings today, the man Mr. Bush named
to run Central Command and oversee the war withheld judgment
on more troops. "I don't know," were Admiral Fallon's exact
words. And from GOP Senator Arlen Specter, a warning for the
president.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
SEN. ARLEN SPECTER (R), PENNSYLVANIA: The president
repeatedly makes reference to the fact that he is the
decider. I would suggest and suggest respectfully to the
president that he is not the sole decider, that the decider
is a shared and joint responsibility.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
COOPER: Well, meantime in Baghdad and all across Iraq today,
another surge of sectarian violence, most of it aimed at
Iraqi Shias, marking Ashura, the holiest period on the Shia
calendar. At least 50 people were killed.
That is the backdrop -- bloody, confusing, potentially a
no-win situation.
CNN's Michael Ware has spent years in Iraq watching things
get to this point that he described as four separate wars
unfolding at once.
Recently, he spent a rare few days here in New York and sat
down with me for a remarkable conversation.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
COOPER: So, where is the war right now?
MICHAEL WARE, CNN BAGHDAD CORRESPONDENT: Well, it's in -- as
the American commanders call it, a dire, but not yet hopeless
state. However, it's hard to see how the war is not in an
intractable position.
I mean, there's a lot of activity, but there's no progress,
either politically, economically or militarily. We're now
entering the fifth year of this war. We've seen more than
3,000 American combat deaths and non-hostile deaths. And
we've seen more than 20,000 American wounded. Yet what's been
achieved?
I mean, is there a true democratic state either in existence
or even emerging?
COOPER: Supporters of the war -- Vice President Cheney says
that there are successes and they point to the democratic
elections that have been held.
WARE: Right. On the surface, yes, they are successes. There's
one of the most progressive constitutions in the Arab world
in place in Iraq.
But what's the reality? What's the effect? What's it like for
the ordinary Iraqi on the street? And their common retort is,
"if this is democracy, then we'd rather have the old ways. I
mean, this is your freedom?" I mean, look at their lives. I
mean, look at how their daily life is wracked with violence.
People are being ethnically cleansed from their
neighborhoods. You can't send your children to school for
fear of crossing ethnic lines. Bodies are showing up in the
streets every day. Death squads are roaming the streets at
night.
And for Sunnis, these death squads come in the dead of night
in legitimate police or army uniforms showing legitimate
identification saying, "you must come with us."
COOPER: So the focus is on Baghdad. Is there a cost that will
be paid because of that?
WARE: Absolutely. This focus on Baghdad that we've seen
evolve in American strategy over the last 12 to 18 months
does not come without a price.
While you're pouring all your attentions, all the thrust of
your attentions militarily, politically and economically into
the capital, the question is what's happening beyond the
city?
So while you focus on Baghdad, part of the cost of that is
that over here in Anbar Province, that's suffering for want
of troops and a real thrust of effort, al Qaeda, which the
Marines themselves say more or less politically owns this
part of the country, is becoming stronger. Focusing on
Baghdad has given al Qaeda the oxygen it has needed to grow.
COOPER: They are planning on sending several thousand more
troops to...
WARE: Four thousand more troops to al-Anbar. But like the
country overall, again, that's just a drop in the bucket.
Part of the other price to be paid for the focus on Baghdad
is that here in the south, you have entrenched Iranian
influence, as we see through the control of the Iraqi
militias. By and large, the militias own the south. And what
that means is that Iran's influence is greatest there. Now,
whilst it is a much more stable place in the south and
American commanders are quick to point that the levels of
violence there are minimal, the reality is, as Sunnis often
charge, is that that veneer of stability has been achieved
through an accommodation with the militias and essentially
with Iran.
You let them control it, you give power to them. And on the
surface, it will look good.
COOPER: So we talked about this new strategy. You say,
though, there's really not that much new about it.
WARE: Now, what we're seeing is the old becoming new again. I
mean, in many ways, this is again staying the course. There's
no radical shift in strategy.
I mean, let's, for example, look at the troop numbers. We're
seeing what they're calling a surge. Now, that doesn't
suggest in any way a complete overhaul of strategy. It's
talking about an enhancement.
So 21,500 troops, given the state of the problem, the size of
the country and the population, by and large is nothing.
That's still a drop in the bucket. And what we're seeing in
terms of the actual tactics to be now employed in the capital
Baghdad -- sprinkling U.S. troops throughout neighborhoods
throughout the city -- again is not new. It may be a
development for the capital, but we've seen this particular
strategy evolve in Iraq with American forces.
We first saw it in the northern border town of Tal Afar, an
al Qaeda gateway. We've since seen it adopted and enhanced in
the western city of Ramadi, the true al Qaeda national
headquarters. And we're now seeing it being supplanted in
Baghdad.
So in many ways, this is something that we've seen coming to
life again and being described as a new strategy, as
President Bush called it in the State of the Union address.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
COOPER: We'll have more from Michael Ware coming up on each
of the four wars that he says are now being fought in Iraq.
Plus, Michael Ware's brush with death.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
COOPER (voice-over): Covering the story is dangerous enough,
without nearly becoming the story.
WARE: These men intercepted my vehicle, and with grenades
with the pins pulled so that they were live, hauled me from
the car. And with my own video camera, they were preparing to
film my execution.
(END VIDEO CLIP) COOPER: The story Michael Ware lived to
tell. His insider's view of the war, when this special
edition of 360, "Iraq: The Hidden Wars," continues.
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Length: 8:51
COOPER: CNN's Michael Ware
describes the war in Iraq as four wars happening at once: one
with the Sunni insurgency, one with al Qaeda, one a civil
war, and the last one the unstated war, the covert war, with
Iran. Tonight, a look at all four. First, the Sunni war.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
COOPER (on camera): When you talk about the war in Iraq,
you're actually talking about many different wars.
The first war, the war of the Sunni insurgents, how did that
start?
WARE: What we saw almost from the beginning is that elements
from the military and from the Baath party and from within
the Sunni community begin the insurgency.
What started as small, ad hoc, without coordination,
eventually emerged as a structured and extremely effective
guerrilla fight.
Now, these are the people who originally administration
figures were calling dead-enders and criminal elements. But
we've now seen that that's not the case. The Sunni insurgency
is by and large the war that America went there to fight.
COOPER: But the U.S. really hadn't expected there to be an
insurgency at all?
WARE: By and large, no. They expected a much warmer
reception. But with the disbandment of the military, with the
lack of economic opportunity and with what was perceived to
be a heavy focus on the Shia, all these former generals and
colonels and officers and foot soldiers felt that they were
left with no other choice.
Plus, one thing that's been significantly underestimated from
the beginning is the Iraqi sense of nationalism, particularly
among the Sunnis. Or their sense of honor.
These men were just sent home in what they felt was dishonor.
They were no longer required and they were disempowered.
Now, the way it began is that essentially small groups would
just pick up arms and take potshots at passing American
convoys. But eventually one group started talking to another
group. Then they'd start to coordinate, sharing weapons,
sharing intelligence. Then command and control structures
began to emerge.
COOPER: Did they want Saddam back in power?
WARE: These soldiers, these generals, were not fighting for a
return of Saddam at all.
Indeed, the day Saddam was captured, in December 2003, and
word leaked the next morning, I was with Sunni insurgents.
Every one of them to a man said, "this in no way affects what
we're doing. We're not fighting for Saddam.
"Whilst this may be a symbolic body blow, this did not strike
at the heart of the insurgency."
That's what they said the day he was captured. And in the
years since, we've seen that borne out.
COOPER: So these are men who at least initially supported al
Qaeda, who were...
WARE: Absolutely not. In fact, in many ways they were opposed
to if not al Qaeda, at least the idea of al Qaeda. And we
certainly saw through the early years of the war and, to a
degree, continuing now, great friction between these elements
of America's enemies.
COOPER: So when did this first war, these Sunni insurgents
start to become more radicalized?
WARE: As we saw strains put on the insurgents' flow of
finances and funding, we saw a growth in the power and
influence of al Qaeda and other Islamists.
And also, don't forget, what we now see as a civil war has
pushed people on both sides to the extremes. So we're now
seeing nationalists being herded towards al Qaeda.
More and more we started seeing foreign fighters appearing in
Haifa Street, to the point where by the end, Zarqawi's
organization, which later became officially al Qaeda, was
able to display its banners along the length of Haifa Street,
to take ownership of it over the Iraqi nationalists.
COOPER: Al Qaeda in Iraq could actually put its banners on a
street in Baghdad, in central Baghdad?
WARE: Yes, they did. And this was a symbolic passing of power
here in the center of the capital.
Now, I personally experienced this. Just days after a blazing
battle with U.S. forces that left a Bradley armored fighting
vehicle in flames, Zarqawi supporters were on top of it
waving his flags.
What happened is al Qaeda said, "well, we now own this." So I
went in there to document this, to see if it was true and to
try and show this.
COOPER: Are you nuts?
WARE: Well...
COOPER: Do you ever ask yourself that?
WARE: Yes, often, actually. But this is -- this is...
COOPER: I mean, that's a dangerous thing to do.
WARE: It is an extremely difficult thing to do. But, I mean,
this is a part of the nature of this, like every war. The fog
of war. What's true and what's not. There's so much that
we're told by all sides. I mean, this is one of the universal
features of this war as in all others, is that everybody
lies.
But I went in there and sure enough, I found the banners.
Sure enough, lining the streets were Zarqawi's fighters,
these men who soon became fully fledged al Qaeda.
Now, what happened is that in the end, these men intercepted
my vehicle and with grenades with the pins pulled so that
they were live, hauled me from the car, and with my own video
camera, they were preparing to film my execution.
So as far as we're aware, after that day on Haifa Street, I'm
the only Westerner that we know of who's been in the control
of Zarqawi's organization, al Qaeda, and to have lived to
tell the tale.
COOPER: How did you get out of there?
WARE: I was in a vehicle with a mid-ranking Iraqi insurgent
commander who'd told me of Zarqawi's takeover, essentially
complained about it. And I said, well, I need to see this. So
he took me in there to show me, "that these radicals, these
foreign Islamists, have taken our territory."
When the foreign radical Islamists, essentially who became al
Qaeda, dragged me from the car, this man was left to
negotiate for my life. And this is where we see the
difference come into play.
The Zarqawi fighters wanted to execute the Westerner. As they
said, "you bring a Westerner in here and you expect us to let
him leave alive? Well, no, it doesn't work like that."
So even those these Islamists, at that time, had the upper
hand in Haifa Street, they couldn't discount the local
fighters. And essentially, it came down to the local Iraqi
insurgent saying, "OK, you can kill this foreigner, but know
that that means we go to war, because he has come here at our
invitation. And for you to kill him is essentially an insult
to us."
And as much as these foreign fighters wanted to kill me, at
the end of the day, they knew that practically they couldn't,
because they could not afford to have this local fight. And
it was through gritted teeth that they essentially gave me
back to the Iraqi insurgents, who then took me out.
COOPER: What was that feeling like when you realized you were
going to live?
WARE: Whew. It took a long time before it actually dawned on
me. I spent many of the following days in my room. I found it
very difficult to leave the safety and comfort of my bedroom.
It took some time for me to regather myself and to return to
the streets. But, in fact, just days later, I did return to
this very place.
COOPER: You went back to Haifa Street?
WARE: I went back to Haifa Street. Not to precisely the same
area, but yes, I did go probing back into this area during
some fighting.
COOPER: That is when the second war in Iraq begins. And we'll
talk about that, the rise of al Qaeda and the man who changed
it all, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi. We'll be right back.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
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COOPER: Before the break, CNN's
Michael Ware was describing his near-execution by al Qaeda
insurgents in Iraq. By the time Michael crossed paths with
those insurgents, al Qaeda in Iraq -- a Sunni group -- had a
firm foothold in the majority Shia country. The man
responsible for that, as Michael touched on, is this man, Abu
Musab al-Zarqawi.
He was killed last June in a coalition air strike near
Baqubah. U.S. officials say he was behind dozens of terrorist
attacks in Iraq, including the beheadings of several
Americans and other foreign hostages. He died a hero among
Muslim extremists.
And as Michael explained to me, the civil war that's engulfed
Iraq, may be his biggest legacy.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
COOPER: The second war in Iraq, the rise of al Qaeda, the
growth of the importance of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi.
May 1st, 2003, President Bush stands on that aircraft
carrier, mission accomplished. What's actually happening on
the ground?
WARE: Okay, this is the story of al Qaeda in Iraq. If you
remember, before the invasion, there was what the
administration says, "the presence of an al Qaeda element in
the country." Now, that had nothing to do with Saddam. What
they were talking about was this group called Ansar al-Islam,
that was holed up here in the north, in the Kurdish region.
So what we saw even then during the invasion was two wars,
the war against Saddam's regime and a much, much smaller
attack against an al Qaeda element in the north.
Now, I was there in the north. I was in the battle with U.S.
Green Berets and Kurdish Peshmerga fighters, essentially the
Kurdish militia that the Green Berets used to go into this
mountain stronghold of this al Qaeda-linked group and drive
them out.
I was there with the Green Berets as we all watched these
fighters walk over the mountains into the safety of Iran. I
was even there as a Green Beret was reporting back on his
radio, "they're exfilling, they're retreating, they're
escaping to Iran."
So while the administration is saying, "here's al Qaeda and
it's been wiped out," no, the body of this group had been
preserved. And we've since seen them and many others
reemerge.
COOPER: And was Abu Musab al-Zarqawi there?
WARE: According to the administration, and much has emerged
since, Zarqawi was involved with this group.
Now, what you need to remember is, after the success of the
invasion of Afghanistan and al Qaeda was driven out of its
sanctuary, its base from which it launched September 11
attacks and many other things, we saw now an organization put
under great stress. It had to retreat into the mountains of
Waziristan and Pakistan and it had to disperse.
So what we saw for Zarqawi and what we've now seen for al
Qaeda more broadly, is that the invasion of Iraq gave them
the next platform that they'd been looking for.
So in many ways, the invasion played directly into the hands
of al Qaeda.
COOPER: It gave them a focus, it gave them a place to go to,
it gave them a battle to join.
WARE: It gave them a battle. It brought the enemy -- America
-- to them.
The American war in Iraq made Zarqawi. It turned him from a
relative nobody into one of the superstars of global jihad,
of global Islamic extremism.
COOPER: He did that through these propaganda tapes, through
these tapes of executions of kidnap victims...
WARE: Through a whole range of things. That was just one
dimension of Zarqawi's vision, Zarqawi's strategy.
COOPER: What did he want? What was his plan?
WARE: Zarqawi's plan -- as we know from a letter he wrote to
Osama bin Laden that was intercepted and since released by
U.S. forces -- what he wanted to do was use Iraq as the new
platform to fight this global war. He wanted to use Iraq,
much as we saw Afghanistan in the 1980s during the Soviet
occupation, to create a whole new generation of al Qaeda and
radical Islamic fighters. And that's precisely what he did.
At the core of it, apart from the fight against the
Americans, what Zarqawi wanted to do was to strike up a war
between the Sunni sect of Islam and the Shia sect of Islam.
He believed it was through this that his and al Qaeda's Sunni
branch of Islam would awake from its slumber and rise up to
defend itself and eventually conquer all before it. And it
was through Iraq that he saw that they would do that.
COOPER: It's interesting because we in the West often view
the battle as a battle between the United States or the West
and this radical sect of Islam.
In fact, this radical sect of Islam, they want it to be
viewed as that because they want to be seen as the champions
of Muslims around the world, when in fact the people they are
really fighting against ultimately are other Muslims. The
people who they oppose are people who they believe are not
Islamic enough.
WARE: From the Zarqawi school of thought, there's many
battles to be fought. And it's this fight against this other
branch of Islam that is one of the vehicles that will elevate
Islam.
What al Qaeda in Iraq has now done is declared this western
part of the country an Islamic state. Within this Islamic
state, they intend to rule by Sharia law, pure Islamic law.
But we're seeing them create a ministry of information.
They're putting together essentially a shadow government that
will have a cabinet and different ministries to administer
the people who fall within this state.
But what we see right now is that al Qaeda feels that coming
into our fifth year of this war, that it is in a position,
that it is doing so well that it can dare declare a part of
American-occupied Iraq an al Qaeda Islamic state, a country
within the American occupation.
COOPER: When we come back, we'll talk about the third war in
Iraq, the civil war. That's when we return.
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Length: 7:00
COOPER: This third war you talk
about, this civil war in Iraq really is a victory for Abu
Musab al-Zarqawi. It's what he wanted all along.
WARE: Absolutely. As he spelled out from the very, very
beginning, what he believed was that if we attack the Shia,
they will be forced to respond. Then this sleeping giant, the
Sunni sect of Islam, will be forced to rise up. He believed
that was the key to the way forward.
So essentially, he created the civil war that not only now
exists in Iraq, but is dominating the political and military
landscape. This is Zarqawi's legacy.
COOPER: And nowhere do we see that more than in Baghdad
itself, the sectarian violence?
WARE: Baghdad is the central battleground for the civil war.
Now, we see U.S. military commanders herald the fact that by
and large, the sectarian violence is only limited to the
capital and 30 miles around it. Well, that's all it would
ever be. That in itself is no success and that is no
indication of the nature or size or implication of the civil
war.
Why? Because in the rest of the country, the sects
essentially live alone. It's only in the melting pot of
Baghdad that we see, in a very concentrated way, the sects
coming together.
So Baghdad was always going to be the fault line in any such
war.
COOPER: In Baghdad, there is now the situation of different
groups controlling different territory. You have Muqtada
al-Sadr in Sadr City with his own army, essentially. What is
the sectarian civil war look like?
WARE: Well, there's no clear front line because everything is
so mixed. But we are starting to see divisions occur.
Essentially, the capital of Iraq is divided by a river. And
as a rough, very rough rule of thumb, what we're seeing
emerge is that one side is dominated by the Shia and the
other side is increasingly becoming dominated by the opposing
Sunni. This civil war, this sectarian bloodletting of
neighbor against neighbor is happening everywhere -- in the
streets, in the neighborhoods.
I mean, we're seeing at least 30, 40, 50 bodies showing up on
the streets of this city every morning.
COOPER: And it's not just bodies that have been shot. I mean,
these are people who have drills -- holes drilled into their
head with power tools.
WARE: For no reason. It's not to extract information. It's
simply to make their death as brutal and as horrific as
possible.
COOPER: And these death squads, are some of them controlled
by members of the Iraqi government?
WARE: Absolutely. Absolutely. Many of these death squads, if
not coming from within the ranks of the government or the
ranks of its police, are certainly associated with them or
attached with them, are facilitated by elements of the
government. Simply, they could not exist without the active
or at least tacit support of this government.
COOPER: When you're stopped at a roadblock by Iraqi police
officers, do you open your doors? Do you roll down your
windows?
WARE: Like ordinary Iraqis, when you turn a corner on a
street in the capital of Baghdad and suddenly you're
confronted by a police or army checkpoint, you have no idea
who these men really are. They may be in legitimate police
uniforms, legitimate police vehicles, legitimate police
identification. But they could quite simply be a death squad.
So everyone who moves in this city is rolling the dice every
time they set foot outside of their home. And, indeed, for
many people, even sitting in their homes is not safe because
police-run death squads or Sunni extremist death squads can
enter homes and drag people out. Nowhere is safe. And you
don't know who anyone is.
COOPER: I've been to Iraq for all the elections. The
administration keeps pointing to these elections as a sign of
success. Have the elections had any impact to lessen the
violence? Or have they...
WARE: Not in the slightest. Not in the slightest. In fact,
one can argue, as the Sunnis do, is that it's the democratic
process that has helped fuel this sectarian conflict.
The Shia population of Iraq is in the majority. So, clearly,
in the democratic elections, it's they who dominated. It's
they who won most of the seats in the parliament. So it's
they who are able to have the whip hand in forming the
government.
Essentially, this is a Shia-led government. To the Sunnis,
they see this as America entrenching the power of the Shia,
and clearly, its main supporter, Iran.
So, to them, this was a battle line. This is one of the
reasons that they say they've had to take up arms, not just
against the government and the death squads, but also against
the Americans.
So this is what we've seen. Ordinary Sunni Iraqis who have
sat on the fence or who have just sat and waited for the
prosperity and safety that we promised them to be delivered
drift towards al Qaeda and its affiliates. They've got to the
point where they feel they have no other choice.
And the true winners of the war so far -- of the invasion and
the occupation -- at the end of the day, are the Islamic
extremists on both sides represented by al Qaeda on one hand
and ultimately Iran on the other. They're the winners so far.
COOPER: And when we come back, we'll talk about Iran and what
is really -- Michael refers to as the fourth war, the proxy
war, the covert war against Iran. We'll talk about that when
we come back.
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Length: 4:58
COOPER: The fourth war that's
going on in Iraq, the proxy war against Iran, how did Iran
get involved?
WARE: Iran's been involved from the very, very beginning.
Don't forget, you know, Iran and Iraq share a land border.
There's many tribes and families that live on both sides of
this border.
In the '80s, Saddam launched a vicious eight-year war against
Iran. So Iran very much has legitimate national security
interests in terms of Iraq. And we've seen Iran aggressively
pursue those interests. What happened during the invasion, as
U.S. and British forces advanced from Kuwait to the north,
clearing Saddam's forces as they went, we saw essentially an
Iranian-backed invasion at the same time that filled the
vacuum that was left behind. It was extremely well organized
and coordinated.
And, in fact, the irony is we saw Iran use the very same
successful tactic that the American Green Berets used in
Afghanistan to win against the Taliban and al Qaeda against
U.S. interests in Iraq.
COOPER: You mean covert forces?
WARE: Very much.
COOPER: Small numbers.
WARE: During Saddam's regime, hundreds of thousands of Iraqi
Shia fled to Iran. Iran saw many of these people not only as
brethren and refugees to be protected, but as an asset.
Hundreds, thousands, tens of thousands of these Iraqi Shia
who were in Iran were mobilized and used by the Iranians
within its armed forces.
COOPER: What would they do? They went in with money? They
went in with arms?
WARE: With everything. What they did is, in the chaos and the
vacuum of power that was left behind the advancing coalition
forces, they took power. They took the governor's office, the
police chief's office, the Baath party headquarters, and they
never really left.
And, indeed, what the British found, as we learned from the
British army report into the execution killing of six of its
military police in 2003 by Iranian-backed Iraqi militias, is
that when they arrived in one of these major border provinces
here, they found that the militias were already so strong
that the report said the British had a choice, to either
confront them or to accommodate them.
And the report says that for the sake of stability and
security, they felt they had no other choice but to
accommodate these militias. So that entrenched the militias
in power.
COOPER: And they have given the militias of -- like, for
instance, Muqtada al-Sadr, they have given them training,
they have given them arms and money?
WARE: Yeah. What we saw with many of these networks and these
organizations that were in Iran is that they were kept in
place and they moved into Iraq. And with them came what's
essentially Iranian green beret advisers. You had Iranian
form of CIA advisers. All coming with them. To guide, direct,
to channel them.
And even elements within Iraq, like Muqtada al-Sadr, the
rebel anti-American cleric and his Mahdi army militia,
Muqtada and his militia were very different to these others.
They never fled Iraq. They didn't go into Iran. They remained
in Iraq. Now, in the beginning, that was a great rallying cry
for Muqtada. He was able to represent himself as a true
nationalist -- "I stayed while these people left. I suffered
with you." That was very persuasive. That drew a lot of
people to his cause.
But over time, we've seen Iran not only court Muqtada, but
then militarily support him. We've seen a flow of money, a
flow of arms and a flow of training back and forth.
COOPER: When we come back, we're going to take a look at what
the options are now for the United States and the region.
Where do we go from here. We'll be right back.
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Length: 6:47
COOPER: We talked about the four
wars that exist within the war in Iraq. We've talked about
the current U.S. strategy. What are the options?
WARE: Well, from the way things have emerged -- even though
U.S. commanders say the situation is dire, it's not hopeless
-- it's very hard to see any kind of alternative that is
anything but ugly and difficult.
COOPER: The new strategy, flooding troops into Baghdad,
several thousand troops into al-Anbar Province, they say
that's basically the final shot that the U.S. has, according
to many Republicans and Democrats.
WARE: It may very well be. And if that's the case, then
things are only about to become worse. There's very few
positive outcomes that one can see emerging from Iraq at this
point.
Iran and its allies and its proxies are so strong and so
entrenched, many people say that once that genie was out of
the bottle, it can't be put back.
Al Qaeda has been developing such a stronghold within Iraq
that it never had under Saddam, that people say that can
never be rooted out, certainly not entirely.
So what we've seen as a direct result of the invasion and the
war is that two of America's greatest enemies have become
emboldened, and indeed, more powerful, stronger than they
were before the war.
And under any scenario, military or political, it's almost
impossible to see how that can be rolled back.
COOPER: Some Democrats are calling for a cap on U.S. troops
-- also some Republicans -- or some sort of phased
withdrawal. What would happen if the U.S. did begin to
withdraw? Is the Iraqi government capable of ruling, of
providing security for its people in Baghdad and the rest of
the country?
WARE: Not at all. It's widely acknowledged by the U.S.
military and the administration and analysts and anyone in
Iraq that if America were to pull out, then there would be a
nightmare almost beyond imagination that would unfold in
Iraq.
COOPER: There are those, though, who support some sort of
phased withdrawal or redeployment, saying this will force the
Iraqi government to stand up, to get their act together
faster.
WARE: It's impossible. It's impossible. The American
administration in Iraq has done everything it can to force
the Iraqi government to stand up. But at the end of the day,
what is the Iraqi government? The Iraqi government is, by and
large, just an alliance or a conglomeration of militia
forces.
The currency of political power in Iraq to this very day,
under this new democracy is still found at the end of the
barrel of a gun. You have no political stake unless you have
a militia.
So that's why we have this Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, a
man who himself does not have a militia, in such a dire
political situation.
COOPER: So if you're saying some sort of withdrawal or phased
redeployment could lead to -- would lead to blood shed, you
say the current strategy, there's nothing really all that new
about it, do you have an answer?
WARE: Well, there's a few things that people suggest, none of
which are terribly attractive to the people of Iraq, nor to
the people of the West. I mean, it just doesn't seem that
there's any road forward that does not involve the spilling
of so much innocent blood or the abandonment of so many of
the principles that we of the West hold dear.
COOPER: Some talk about a kind of a partition, either a very
-- an actual partition or some sort of soft partition.
WARE: Partition of any kind, again, impacts directly on the
interests of all these regional players. And most argue that
should you partition, that again will force these regional
players to increase their negative activities in Iraq.
For example, we would see the Arab states feeling themselves
forced to actively support Sunni insurgencies, and indeed, al
Qaeda. So partitioning in many ways is not seen as a
solution.
COOPER: The new head of the Defense Department has suggested
that by March, the U.S. should have some indication whether
the al-Maliki government is actually living up to its
promises. Lieutenant General Petraeus seems to be talking
about a longer timeline to find out whether this -- what they
are calling a new strategy, is actually going to work. Do you
have a sense of how much time it may take to see whether or
not this will work?
WARE: Do we need more time to know if this strategy will
work? In my view, no, not at all. It's clear and abundant now
that the strategy as it stands is not working and will not
work. It's strengthening America's enemies. The American
military presence in Iraq now, what will become 160,000
troops, is still in many ways not enough to really secure the
country, to make people feel safe, to defeat al Qaeda and to
rebuff Iranian interests. That has not changed.
COOPER: So militarily, if there's not a solution, is there
possibly a political solution if all the actors involved or
the major actors involved had a change of heart, had a change
of mind or suddenly became willing to make some sort of
accommodation?
WARE: It's in no one's interests to change their minds. I
mean, many of the players that the U.S. is either relying
upon or being forced to confront or deal with in the Iraqi
government, their interests are not aligned with American
interests. So no, there's no incentive for them to change.
Why should they?
COOPER: So the wars within the war continue?
WARE: The wars within the war continue.
COOPER: Michael Ware, thanks.
WARE: Thank you.
(END VIDEOTAPE)