How Will Recent Action in Iraq Impact the World?
MILES O'BRIEN, CNN ANCHOR: All right, the allied air strikes on Iraq, we would like your e-mails and phone calls for our Reporter's Notebook segment.</s>KYRA PHILLIPS, CNN ANCHOR: Yes, we already have many.</s>O'BRIEN: And that would be happening right now. As a matter of fact, don't bother with any more e-mails, I'm way, way behind the curve this morning.</s>O'BRIEN: Miles is a little stressed out. But two people who are not stressed out, White House correspondent Kelly Wallace, she's in Crawford, Texas, and our guest expert, Michael O'Hanlon from the Brookings Institution. Thanks, you two, for holding on.</s>MICHAEL O'HANLON, BROOKINGS INSTITUTION: Pleasure.</s>KELLY WALLACE, CNN WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: Absolutely.</s>O'BRIEN: All right, let's go right to the e-mail, shall we? This one comes from Chris. "Technically, aren't we still at war with Iraq? There was never any peace treaty signed, just U.N. sanctions." Kelly, want to take that?</s>WALLACE: Well, that is a good point that the writer makes, because there has been, in essence, a low-grade war that has been going on, U.S. and British pilots have been conducting repeated air strikes to enforce the no-fly zones, so often that you often don't hear about them. In fact, apparently in the southern no-fly zone, there had been about four air strikes or days of air strikes since President Bush took the oath of office, obviously getting a lot of attention on Friday because this one happened outside the no-fly zone. So there has been this sort of repeated low-grade war. Saddam Hussein obviously not adhering to commitments made after the Gulf War, no weapons inspectors in the country. So this situation has been going on for quite some time.</s>PHILLIPS: All right. Michael, let's go to you for this one, Brian Dudley actually makes a statement. Let's see if you agree or not. "The problems we are having with Iraq are because of the Gulf War. We need to finish off the war and remove the current government."</s>O'HANLON: Well, it would be an easier way, although it would be hard to figure out if Iraq would be better under a different kind of regime. We'd take a long time to really get rid of the legacy of Saddam. But marching on Baghdad, first of all, we're not going to have much international support, and secondly, you'd have to assume that several thousand Americans at least could be killed in what would be a much bloodier war than Desert Storm. So it may be an option we have to consider if, for example, we think that Saddam is close to a nuclear weapons capability. But for the moment, I don't think it's a prudent option.</s>PHILLIPS: All right, Miles?</s>O'BRIEN: All right, let's go back to the e-mail, shall we? Thinblueline@aol.com has this. "I think the president made a very good choice. We need a little leadership after eight years without any. And this is a good way for President Bush to restore some pride in the U.S. military." Now, Kelly, that isn't the publicly stated motivation here. Is that at work, do you think?</s>WALLACE: Well, right, as you said, not the publicly stated motivation. White House officials saying and Pentagon officials saying politics played no role here. It was simply again a routine enforcement of the no-fly zone. But again, during the presidential campaign, George W. Bush did say that he would take a tough stand against the Iraqi leader, Saddam Hussein, that if Saddam Hussein would go ahead and try and reconstitute weapons of mass destruction that he, as the U.S. leader, would take some steps. So you do get the sense just about four weeks into the administration, the Bush administration sending a message to the Iraqi leader. But again, we should point out that the Clinton administration did do a lot of the same things, and the Clinton administration was not able to resolve the Iraqi leader, Saddam Hussein, factor during the eight years in the White House.</s>PHILLIPS: All right, Jill writes, "Was the Iraqi bombing to serve as a media diversion from the growing questions about the civilians taking political payback cruises on Navy vessels such as the `Greeneville'? `Wag the Dog.'" Michael, you want to comment on that?</s>O'BRIEN: That's from our grassy knoll department, Michael.</s>O'HANLON: Yes, I'm afraid I can't go along with that way of looking at this. I think this was a way to keep our pilots safe for carrying out an operation that's been going on now for about 10 years. And Iraq was figuring out some new ways to use its radars. This was a response to those Iraqi tactics. I think it's a fairly limited response, and it shows more continuity with 10 years of Bush and then Clinton policy than anything else.</s>O'BRIEN: All right, we have a phone call. Our operators have been busy fielding them all. Kelly is in Fresno, California. It's way too early in Fresno, Kelly, but we're glad to hear your voice.</s>CALLER: It's always too early to hear about bombing. We're obviously just -- the people making these decisions aren't particularly concerned about the safety of the American people, whether they're overseas or here. The terrorist response is going to be unstoppable. I lost my closest relative to, oh, let's call them Saudi Arabian nationalists who planted a truck bomb right on the perimeter of the Kobar (ph) Towers base in Saudi Arabia. If you can't -- I'm sure you have no idea what it's like to have your family destroyed by a bomb on the other side of the world, and we can all count on, whether it's anthrax or e-terrorism, anything like that, just a simple response, and there's nothing they can do to stop it. And we're insane to follow a leader who has stolen an election into the brink of World War III. I was going to give him 10 months to do this. It's going to take him 10 weeks.</s>O'BRIEN: I'm not sure there's a question there. If you guys want to amplify that, otherwise we can move on to the next one. Kelly, go ahead.</s>WALLACE: Well, I can just say, you know, obviously we can't even understand, you know, what that caller and his family have gone through. But obviously it brings up a concern, of course, that any action that the U.S. and the British could take could result in some type of reaction by the Iraqi leader. But I think it's important to point out that this did come from a request from the military commanders themselves, who said that U.S. and British pilots were facing an increased risk from Iraqi air defense systems, and there was also a feeling, you get the sense that the Iraqi leader, Saddam Hussein, may have been trying to test the new Bush administration. And so both to protect the pilot -- mainly to protect the pilots, this White House felt it was the right thing, and a justified thing to do to keep those pilots safe.</s>PHILLIPS: This question, "I would like to know why, if President Bush says this is just routine, why it seems to be getting so much media attention." I think too we've also reported that, you know, this was a self-defense measure also. Kelly, you want to respond to this?</s>WALLACE: Well, as we said also, you know, again, it is a routine mission, and there have been other enforcements of the no-fly zone that happened over the past couple of weeks. The reason this one's getting the most attention, it appears, is because it happened, the sites that were hit were not in the no-fly zone, and so this is something that has not happened over the past several weeks. We haven't seen something of this size since back in December of 1998. So I believe that is why it's getting more attention than these repeated air strikes that have been happening over the past several years.</s>O'BRIEN: All right, another e-mail. This one comes from Patricia Saad, Alexandria, Virginia, the dateline. This one for Mr. O'Hanlon. "This is the continuation of a woefully inadequate policy against Iraq which does absolutely no harm to Saddam Hussein but ensures the suffering of the people of Iraq. It plainly shows the anti-Arab sentiment of the U.S." Taking that last sentence aside here, there is some -- a few valid points in there, right, Mr. O'Hanlon?</s>O'HANLON: Well, there is a lot of concern. But, you know, what are you going to do about this? We are trying to help the Iraqi people by allowing Iraq to sell a lot of oil, and then to provide humanitarian relief to its own people. If Saddam Hussein doesn't want to do that, however, and we don't control his country, we can't really make him do that. So it is true, at the end of the day, Saddam lives very well, and his people do suffer. But I don't see an easy alternative, short of marching on Baghdad to overthrow Saddam, and I think that's still a little too risky of an option for where we are right now.</s>O'BRIEN: Michael O'Hanlon at the Brookings Institution in our Washington bureau, Kelly Wallace near Crawford, Texas, at the ranch, we appreciate you both fielding some questions from our viewers, and to our viewers, thanks for the good questions, we appreciate it.