General Petraeus Continues Iraq War Report Before Congress
PHILLIPS: Hello, everyone. I'm Kyra Phillips, live at the CNN world headquarters in Atlanta.</s>LEMON: And I'm Don Lemon. You are in the</s>CNN NEWSROOM. LEMON: Resistance today on Capitol Hill to the case being made for the surge in Iraq. The senior U.S. commander there, General David Petraeus, is spending the day before a pair of Senate committees, committees that came well prepared to challenge what Petraeus told House members yesterday.</s>SEN. BARBARA BOXER (D), CALIFORNIA: Let's look at the poll both of you tried to discredit yesterday. ABC, BBC, a Japanese station, 42 percent of Iraqis say their children will have a worse life, 25 percent say it will be no better, that; 67 percent say that their kid's life will not be better than their own; 70 percent say the surge is making matters worse. Is that what our troops are dying for? I ask you to take off your rosy glasses. You had them on in '05. I believed you. I thought for sure we were going to see the Iraqis take over their own defense.</s>PHILLIPS: Oh, we have heard from the general, the ambassador, dozens of members of Congress. But none of those people has the ground-level perspective on the war in Iraq that U.S. veterans have. Today, on CNN's "AMERICAN MORNING," our John Roberts talked with four Iraq war vets about the war, the surge, and the prospects for peace.</s>CAPT. ROSE FORREST, VOTEVETS.ORG: The surge is a military solution. I was stationed in Ramadi, capital of al Anbar, just this previous year. And I saw the big improvements that took place in al Anbar. And those were diplomatic changes. Those were changes with the Army and the Marines working with local leaders, building a local police force. It had nothing to do with the surge. So I don't think that the surge had anything to do with the substantial improvements that were made in al Anbar.</s>ROBERTS: So has the surge actually done anything then?</s>UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I doubt it.</s>ROBERTS: That's a long pause before an answer!</s>STAFF SGT. DAVID BELLAVIA, FOUGHT IN THE BATTLE FOR FALLUJAH: I don't mean to jump on what you were saying, but I think it's, without a doubt, that the surge has accomplished something. I mean, the point of the matter is Rumsfeld was all about the DOD having the end all solution to what was wrong with Iraq. And today we're seeing the Department of Labor coming in, Agriculture coming in. People understand that the key to Iraq might not be -- you know, obviously, it's instability, but it's also -- they don't have a central bank. And when a soldier wants to cash a check, he's got to go and hitchhike and go home to Mosul or Kirkuk. And these are all issues. But centrally, when you look at the surge, you're seeing bad guys getting blown up.</s>UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Right.</s>CAPT. VERNICE ARMOUR, MARINE CORPS HELICOPTER PILOT: Well, that's the infrastructure you're talking about.</s>ARMOUR: But if the military power and the policing power isn't there to get the political, it goes back to what you said, the chicken or the Egypt -- where do we start and how do we get there?</s>SGT. KAYLA WILLIAMS, SERVED WITH 101ST AIRBORNE: I thought Ambassador Crocker made really good points, too, about how Saddam completely destroyed of all the institutions, all of the organizations other than the Baath Party and what the military presence hopefully is doing is allowing some of those institutions to take root.</s>PHILLIPS: Well, a side-effect of the so-called surge is a dramatic increase in the number of Iraqi detainees. CNN's Anderson Cooper takes a look.</s>ANDERSON COOPER, CNN ANCHOR (voice-over): They arrive at Baghdad's Camp Cropper disoriented, blindfolded -- Iraqi detainees, mostly Sunnis, rounded up in raids by the U.S. military. Cropper is home to more than 4,000 detainees, the smaller of two such facilities run by American forces. (on camera): Since the so-called surge began, the number of Iraqis detained in U.S. custody has grown dramatically. This is another busload being brought in right now. Every day, about 60 detainees are taken into U.S. custody. And U.S. facilities are almost at capacity. There's more than 24,000 detainees being held right now. (voice-over): Some are al Qaeda operatives, Islamic extremists; others, Iraqi teenagers accused of helping build or plant deadly IEDs. At the request of the military, we agreed not to show their faces or speak with any of them.</s>MAJOR GENERAL DOUGLAS STONE, DETAINEE OPERATIONS: Today, we're on top.</s>COOPER: Major General Douglas Stone is in charge of all detainees in Iraq. He is attempting to wage a counterinsurgency inside the detention centers, which in past years were prime recruiting grounds for extremists.</s>STONE: We're not warehousing. Now we're fighting the battle -- battlefield -- in the battlefield of the brain. We're working to help them -- help the moderates get stronger and isolate and separate the -- the most -- the most extreme.</s>COOPER: The most extreme detainees have recently been moved to a separate unit so they can't influence the moderate ones. Guarding them is one of the toughest jobs at Camp Cropper. (on camera): Detainees are constantly making crude weapons to fight against other detainees or to attack the guards with. Here are some of the ones the guards have recently taken. There's like some crude knives made out of barbed wire. Here's another knife. Someone's watch rigged up with a knife in it. These are also very common. These are slingshots. And they get a piece of rock. They make the slingshot out of plastic and rebar. They can take out a guard's eye with this.</s>STONE: The moderates are, with the programs, taking charge of their compounds, ejecting the extremists, shoving them out -- sometimes physically -- and creating a compound where it is quiet, docile.</s>COOPER: You really see this as a battle of the brain?</s>STONE: This is a battle of the brain. This -- what -- this is where the idea of al Qaeda will be beaten. This is where the idea of extremism will be beaten.</s>COOPER (voice-over): More than 800 of the detainees here are juveniles. Mostly illiterate, unemployed, they're easy recruits for insurgents.</s>STONE: The insurgency starts right here. And if we clip this off, then we can knock the knees off.</s>COOPER: General Stone has started civics classes for them. And a moderate Islamic cleric teaches a class challenging the extremist ideology, pointing out the Koran does not permit suicide attacks or crimes against civilians. All the detainees here will have their cases reviewed. Most will get released in under a year.</s>STONE: When we determine they're no longer a security risk, they go back. So they're not prisoners, they're detainees.</s>COOPER: General Stone hopes that when do return home, they retain the lessons they have learned here. The problem is, there is not much waiting for them outside these walls -- few jobs, little hope, and the persistent pressure to once again take up arms. Anderson Cooper, CNN, Baghdad.</s>PHILLIPS: Our coverage on the Iraq progress report continues from Baghdad with Anderson Cooper live in Iraq, keeping them in honest, tonight, 10:00 p.m..</s>LEMON: And this just into the CNN NEWSROOM. Following General David Petraeus' testimony yesterday announcing that there will be a troop reduction, CNN is just learning this. This is according to the Associated Press. President Bush will tell the nation this week he plans to reduce the American troop presence in Iraq by 30,000 by next summer. But it will be on the condition that those further cuts on continued progress in Iraq. That's -- again, that's according to the Associated Press. Now, here's how it's going to go down, according to the Associated Press, in a prime time television address, which will probably happen on Thursday. The president will endorse the recommendation of his top general and top diplomat in Iraq, followed by their appearance at two days of hearings yesterday and then also today. That is according to an unnamed administration official. But, again, that's according to the Associated Press. We are checking in with our White House folks and the White House unit. They're looking into this and we hope to have more for you within the hour. But, again, this just out. According to the Associated Press, the president this week, according to them, on Thursday, will announce a significant reduction in troops -- 30,000 by next summer. Details to come in the CNN NEWSROOM. We're back in a moment.