Web Video: The Iraq War Begins

Announcer: This is a WASHINGTON WEEK Special Report: America At War. From Washington, here is Gwen Ifill.

GWEN IFILL, host: The war is under way. Will it be swift or difficult? Will it quell a dire threat or spawn more?

Cruise missiles rained down on Iraq. Ground troops move across the border. The primary target for now, Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein. The US launches its long-promised war, but is the worst yet to come? Tonight, we talk to reporters covering developments abroad and events at home, including at the White House and the Pentagon, on a special edition of WASHINGTON WEEK.

Announcer: Here again is moderator Gwen Ifill.

IFILL: Good evening. We're here tonight with an hourlong wrap-up from around the country and around the world of events of the day. Should there be breaking news within this hour, we'll go away for a bit for live coverage with Jim Lehrer on "The NewsHour."

Interview: Richard Leiby of The Washington Post via telephone from Kuwait on what it's been like being in the middle of the fighting

GWEN IFILL, host: Meanwhile, we start tonight with a report from the front lines. Richard Leiby of The Washington Poist--Post joins us from--by phone from Kuwait City. Richard, welcome.

Mr. RICHARD LEIBY (The Washington Post): Good morning, Gwen. It's morning for me here and it's been a l--a long day for Kuwaitis who are in the war zone. They've seen, I think six now, air raid attack sirens sending them to shelters because of the Scud launches and other missiles launches by the Iraqis.

IFILL: You've been on the ground there, Richard, for some weeks now. How is the mood today different when it's under--when the t--city and the region is under this kind of attack or seeming attack than it was before?

Mr. LEIBY: Well, this time you get the sense that they know it's for real. There have been numerous civil defense drills. There have been chemical and biological weapons sniffing and testing devices deployed by the Czech and Slovak coalition troops here. Today was different in that confusion reigned when the sirens started to sound. Most people here, if not the vast majority, do not have gas masks. The government has, to our knowledge, issued only about 200,000 to important officials, so none of the largely immigrant poor community in Kuwait, which people don't seem to realize Kuwait has a minority Kuwaiti population, that is the Kuwait--Kuwaiti citizens, the vast majority are from other countries and they take low wage jobs here. They can't afford gas masks and they don't have them. So I think they sort of steel themselves just to know that they're under attack and they've--some of them are confused, some are nonchalant and some are definitely fearful because all day long they've been instructed to seek shelter if danger is approaching and then the sirens will wail and then they'll go clear. But you never know when the next one's coming.

IFILL: Now, Richard, when you say danger is approaching, what kind of danger are you talking about? When we think of danger, we think of the front line or we think of being in Baghdad, but you're in Kuwait, which is--Kuwait City, which is about how far from the front line and what kind of danger are you facing?

Mr. LEIBY: Well, from--I'm sorry, from--from the Iraqi border, I'm probably about 70 miles or 80 miles south. When--but when a gas or a--a gas alarm sounds, the presumption is the incoming could be coming anywhere before a Patriot missile intercepts it. As an example, late this evening we were on the--the balcony of a hotel here that we're at that's facing the Gulf of Arabia--or Persian Gulf, as they call it in the United States, and the f--we saw something streak by. We heard a--we saw a flash. We heard an explosion. And my colleague and I put on our gas masks again, assuming we'd just seen a missile. But nobody here would confirm it was a missile. And then an hour later, we got confirmation that the British and the military--Marine--and the Marine sources up at the front believe it was a missile aimed at the Kuwaiti oil infrastructure, which is one mile from this hotel. Now I don't have definite confirmation on that, but the fact is, you don't know what's coming in or where it's going to land. So it--a sense of, to say the least, apprehension is evident...

IFILL: How difficult...

Mr. LEIBY: ...for most people.

IFILL: I'm sorry, Richard. How difficult is it to report in this kind of environment? What kind of reporting are you doing and what are you seeing?

Mr. LEIBY: The reporting I've done on the ground has largely been in Kuwaiti society. It's a very class live-in society as I mentioned. It's not hard to get around. Kuwaitis like Americans a great deal. The--whatever extremism was here has been damped down considerably since the attacks on Americans in January and in the fall. So you feel quite welcome. What's difficult is the fact that there's probably about 1,000 other reporters here right now looking for stories. Most of them focusing on the military. I'm trying to focus on this--the impact of this on this small country of about two million people. And only I think 40 percent of those two million are, in fact, the rich Kuwaitis and the rest are people who have been imported here to do the jobs that Kuwaitis won't do. So I'm trying to take, in my reports, a little bit of a different approach. This is another front in the war and the civilians here are definitely targets.

IFILL: And this is a front in the war that most of us only think about in terms of 1991 when the United States and its coalition got involved in the first Per--Persian Gulf War because Saddam Hussein had invaded Kuwait. Are there any comparisons to be made from then and now?

Mr. LEIBY: One of the things you get a good sense of here is that the Kuwait of--the in--the occupation of Kuwait, it took place at a time when a lot of Kuwaitis were on vacation. It was August of 1990. There was terrific, of course, looting here. There was--there were executions and there were collaborators. W--what happened afterward is that the--I think the population felt a sense of protection and comfort because of the United States liberation then. I think now a lot of them are putting their faith in the Patriot missiles that are set up around Kuwait to intercept any incoming Scuds.

A few weeks ago, nobody was even talking about the possibility of an attack here. Then on--early in the week I went to the French Embassy and it turns out the French had issued their 500 citizens here gas masks. And when I went to the home of a French gentleman who was trying on his gas mask for the first time, I thought, `Well, it's kind of starting to sinking in that this is a real threat.' And I visited civil defense establishments throughout the city to gauge how effectively they were training their--the population. What I--what c--I came away with is that they have sheltering places. They sell duct tape and plastic sheeting, but they don't have enough gas masks. So...

IFILL: All right.

Mr. LEIBY: ...I would think that would be a bigger story.

IFILL: OK. Well, Richard, we will be following your reporting and you stay safe. Thank you for joining us.

Mr. LEIBY: Thanks so much for having me, Gwen.

Interview: Tom Gjelten of NPR on the latest developments in the war with Iraq

Today in the first of what we expect to be a series of military briefings, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld set out to make two points: That this war would be of a force and scope and scale unlike any we've seen. And he also had a message for the Arab world.

Secretary DONALD RUMSFELD (Defense Department): This is not a war against a people. It is not a war against a country. It is s--most certainly not a war against a religion. It is a war against a regime.

IFILL: Now for a military update, we turn to Pentagon reporter Tom Gjelten of National Public Radio, who has been on the job since very late last night and very early this morning. Thanks for joining us, Tom.

Mr. TOM GJELTEN (National Public Radio): It's OK to be here, Gwen.

IFILL: What was Don Rumsfeld talking about--Secretary Rumsfeld talking about when he was speaking to the Iraqi people? Why?

Mr. GJELTEN: Well, Gwen, the US military really does not want to have to fight this war. They would like nothing better than for this regime to collapse under its own weight. If the US military really has to fight this war, take the battle all the way to Baghdad, it could be long, it could be costly, it could be bloody and there could be repercussions, political repercussions that would really complicate the position of the United States. So, Donald Rumsfeld and the--and the rest of the military are doing everything they can to reach out to the Iraqi army, to reach out to Iraqi politicians, leaders, to the Iraqi people and try to get them to turn before the fighting really gets heavy. So you had this extraordinary--as you say, this extraordinary moment where Rumsfeld is spending half the briefing talking to the Iraqi people, telling them to listen to their radios for further instructions. We had...

IFILL: To lay down their arms.

Mr. GJELTEN: Well--and we had--and yesterday we dropped two million leaflets o--over southern Iraq telling Iraqi soldiers how to park their vehicles in order to give the signal that they are ready to capitulate. Don't even--don't even have to surrender their--their weap--all their weapons. So the clear hope here is that somehow this regime will just collapse. Maybe the war won't even be entirely necessary.

IFILL: What we expected to hear from the Pentagon today was what we ex--heard in the last Gulf War which was a daily accounting of the military campaign. We didn't get a lot of that. Can you bring us up to date?

Mr. GJELTEN: Well, you know, it's a strange thing, Gwen. The Pentagon is not even saying that this war has begun. We have--we ha--we are bombing the capital of another country. The Marines have crossed the border into Iraqi territory and what we're hearing at the Pentagon is it really hasn't quite begun yet. This is all preparation of the battlefield. It has been a--kind of a confusing story to cover so far because we have been led to believe that the first 48 hours of this war were going to be, to quote Rumsfeld, "like something we'd never seen before."

IFILL: `Shock and awe'...

Mr. GJELTEN: `Shock and awe.'

IFILL: ...is the term they kept using.

Mr. GJELTEN: And yet we haven't seen anything that's all that awesome in the way of firepower yet. We had a--a--a strike on a leadership--senior leadership compound in Baghdad. Evidently an attempt to get Saddam Hussein himself and some of his top senior leaders. That strike may have been, to some degree, successful. But that was all that happened last night. Some more bombing tonight Baghdad time and the beginnings of a ground war, but it is starting--it is starting a little bit slowly.

IFILL: So what do we expect--I guess I'm not going to ask you to look into your crystal ball at this point, but based on what we've heard coming from the generals at the Pentagon who, for all of their penchant for secrecy, have been talking quite a bit about the war plans, what do we expect to happen? Are we going to--expecting this big overwhelming blast to happen in the next 24 hours?

Mr. GJELTEN: Well, I think we have to be prepared for a couple of things. One, it's already clear that this war is not proceeding according to the plan that was devised. Now it--either the plan has either been slightly modified or who knows? Maybe there was some psychological aspect to the whole sort of scary talk that was put out there. Maybe--maybe it was never--it was never considered to be a sure thing. Maybe we just wanted to psyche the Iraqis out. Maybe this is going to happen tomorrow night. Maybe tomorrow we're going to see everything that we've been promised. It's a little bit confusing right now exactly what is going on.

IFILL: Well, one thing that clearly happened today was Turkey finally gave the US overflight rights, not to base troops in Turkey, but to fly through on their way to other places. Was--is that significant at this point anymore?

Mr. GJELTEN: Well, of course, it's significant because should we actually move to the shock and awe air power campaign, we're going to need--the US military is going to need all the aircraft it has at its disposal. There were at least 100 combat aircraft on two aircraft carriers in the eastern Mediterranean. They would have had a hard time reaching Iraq were it not for getting permission to fly over Turkey. There's also a US aircraft based in Europe who will become part of the campaign. They needed to be able to fly over Turkey. So that was a very important part of this. And it--you know, maybe it's possible that one reason the thing hasn't really hit with the full force that we've expected is because Turkey was slow giving those overflight rights.

IFILL: And the one other thing which we were at the edge of our seats, you'll remember, w--waiting for in 1991 was to the beginning of the ground war. There were conflicting reports today about whether US troops actually crossed over into the demilitarized zone or didn't? Whether there were surrenders?

Mr. GJELTEN: No, they did. They did.

IFILL: What happened?

Mr. GJELTEN: And the reason I can say they did is because we now have hundreds of reporters who are up there on the front line and--and they all have cell phones and SAT phones and when their units cross over the border, they immediately get on the phone and call back and say, `The Marines have crossed into Iraqi territory.' Or they're being briefed in their command headquarters and as soon as they've been bra--briefed they'll call up to their news editors back home and--and--and give a--an immediate report. When they see cruise missiles flying overhead, they're able to give a firsthand report. So we're getting very reliable information back from the border and there's no question about it, Marines have crossed. They are in Iraqi territory.

IFILL: But no d--damage assess--assessments yet.

Mr. GJELTEN: Well, they're running up against the Ir--one of the weakest units of the Iraqi army. This is not the Republican Guard, certainly not the Special Republican Guard. It's the 51st Mechanized Infantry Division. It was well-known in the first Gulf War as not a real strong fighting force, so they haven't exactly run into an adversary worthy of going up against the US Marines yet.

IFILL: OK. Thanks, Tom.

Interview: Dana Priest of The Washington Post on the intelligence used when the bombing of Iraq actually started

GWEN IFILL, host: The one thing no one expected in this war is that it would begin with a targeted attack on Saddam Hussein. The reason, we are told, intelligence. We're joined now by national security reporter Dana Priest of The Washington Post who, perhaps, cas--can fill us in on the details of that decision.

Welcome, Dana.

Ms. DANA PRIEST (Washington Post): Glad to join you.

IFILL: So why--wh--how did it happen? Give us the little background on how it came to be that this war began with a bang but not the bang we expected.

Ms. PRIEST: Well, it was a major diversion from what we were expecting and, as Tom was saying, it signals that--how unconventional this war is. It already started out like that. What we know is that sometime yesterday George Tenet, the director of the Central Intelligence, had accumulated--his people had accumulated from the field and from other means enough intelligence to believe that they could actually predict where Saddam Hussein would be by several hours later. And they had been working on that, as we know from previous reporting, for over a year, the CIA has been trying to get Saddam Hussein and other parts of our government ha--have wanted to avoid this war altogether. They felt like they had that. Tenet requested a White House meeting. All the White House principals came to that meeting, including President Bush. They talked for several hours and at 6:30, President Bush signed a launch order.

Now the--the amazing thing that happened after that is very quickly, the CIA sent digital targeting data down to the Central Command, which is running the military operation. That data on exactly where the building was and not only that, but what part of the building would be struck, was then sent to eight Navy ships in the Red Sea and Persian Gulf and some F-s--117 stealth aircraft stationed in Al Udeid, Qatar. And they then launched what became known later as a--the very first volley in this war. It was 42 munitions that hit a compound in southern Baghdad that housed Saddam Hussein and other people at that time. They were aiming at a bunker where they believed he would be hours after they got the initial intelligence. So it really was a--an attempt to probably circumvent the entire war and we'll see if it worked or not. There's not a certainty yet on that subject.

IFILL: David Broder, what does this tell us, if anything, about what this president was attempting to accomplish with the--with the advantage of surprise last night?

Mr. DAVID BRODER (The Washington Post): Well, he'd given up much of the element of surprise by setting the deadline and I think the Iraqis have known for a good long time that we were coming after them. So strategic surprise was never available. And as Tom has been saying, tactical surprise is still very much in play because neither the Iraqis nor the people that I've been hanging out with up on Capitol Hill the last couple days have any really clear idea what the battle plan is at this point. There's not a matter of much concern or consternation up at the Capitol. They've been getting briefings from their--from the Pentagon pretty regularly. And they're just quite content to let the enemy, if you will, guess what's coming next. But I don't think overall surprise was ever really supposed to be part of this plan, was it?

Mr. GJELTEN: Well, you know, it's--it depends on what you mean by shock and awe. Dana made the point that going after Saddam Hussein was shocking itself. Now we had been led to believe that the shock was going to be accomplished some w--some other way. But I think what is true is that the plan--the key element of the plan was that it was going to have a heavy psychological element and that we are seeing. We're not seeing it in quite the way we expected to see it, but we are seeing some real sophisticated psychology being played out here.