Interview With Colonel John Warden
CAROL LIN, CNN ANCHOR: Armed Iraqi soldiers surrendered fairly quickly during Desert Storm, but the objectives for this campaign are much different. The man who devised the Desert Storm air campaign has written a book about it. And we wanted to get John Warden's perspectives. The retired U.S. Air Force Colonel John Warden joins us now from Montgomery, Alabama to talk about what is different 10 years later. Good evening, colonel.</s>COL JOHN WARDEN, USAF (RET.): Carol, good evening to you.</s>LIN: All right, so what sort of a ground campaign, air campaign do you visualize at this stage?</s>WARDEN: The type of campaign is really is largely a function of how you want to end this whole thing up. If you make it a decision in advance that you really want to occupy Iraq, and try to rule it, democratize it, or whatever, then you are probably forced into a pretty substantial ground operation. If on the other hand, that what your primary objective is, is to put Iraq in a position where it no longer has the weapons of mass destruction, and the other things the president has been emphasizing, then you probably think more about an air operation. And you depend extensively on the Iraqi military to create a new government. And the specifics of that new government are not -- is important to you, as the fact that they're no longer supporting the terrorists and the other things the president has said -- talked about.</s>LIN: I mean, you're talking about a huge commitment of hundreds of thousands of troops, perhaps for several years?</s>WARDEN: I believe that if you make the decision that you want to occupy Iraq, and you want to democratize it or something that's reasonably close to that, certainly our experience over the last 50 or 75 years is that that would probably take a fairly long period of time. And we would almost certainly, I think, run into the problem that even though the majority of the Iraqis would be pretty happy with that, or possibly so, that any time you occupy somebody else's territory, why there are a lot of people that don't like it. And it would -- I don't think it would be a terribly pleasant experience.</s>LIN: Right. And there could be implications throughout the Arab world, outside of Iraq. Let's talk about present day troop movements. The troops that you're aware of, in Qatar, in Saudi Arabia, in Kuwait, the troop build up there, is that sufficient to wage this type of campaign? Or how much and how much longer a build up are we likely to see?</s>WARDEN: Well, again, this becomes very much of a function of how you are going to conduct the campaign, and what your overall objectives are. If you are going to depend largely on air operations, which then would support the Iraqi military to overthrow the Saddam regime, then the build up time and the number of people that you need is fairly reasonable. If on the other hand that you think that you may need to besiege and conquer Baghdad and then occupy the country, you're talking about a pretty substantial number of people and the build up time, obviously gets pretty extended.</s>LIN: Colonel, let's be really specific here. I mean, we saw 600,000 troops dedicated to the Gulf War mission. And so compare that to a campaign that would call for regime change, ousting Saddam Hussein?</s>WARDEN: Well, one way to think about that is strictly from a territorial standpoint that the only territory that we were interested in, insofar as our ground forces, was the very, very small area of Kuwait. And when you compare that to Iraq, although Iraq is not densely populated in all parts of it, it nevertheless, is a pretty darn good sized country. So...</s>LIN: So you're talking about more. Double? Double the number? Triple the number?</s>WARDEN: Well, I mean, we don't have that many. So I don't think it could be -- I don't think it could be any more than the 500,000. And that might be more than adequate, but it's not a small force.</s>LIN: It's not a small force. All right. Do you foresee an attack soon?</s>WARDEN: I believe that what the president has done with the United Nations is to start the ball moving rather nicely. And it's -- there's always a possibility that one of two things are going to happen. Number one, there's an outside possibility that in fact that Saddam will make the decision he would rather live in exile than die in some forgotten place in Iraq. The other possibility is that the inspectors go in under the sport of a new U.N. resolution, and that that inspection regime actually starts to be effective. If that happens, well then I think that the primary cause for war is probably -- has disappeared. If it doesn't, it probably -- we probably find that out fairly soon. So I would be thinking in terms of say a minimum of probably six weeks or so, and a maximum before the springtime.</s>LIN: All right, weather being a big factor there. Thank you very much, Colonel John Warden for your time.</s>WARDEN: Carol, pleasure. TO ORDER A VIDEO OF THIS TRANSCRIPT, PLEASE CALL 800-CNN-NEWS OR USE OUR SECURE ONLINE ORDER FORM LOCATED AT www.fdch.com