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CNN LIVE AT DAYBREAK

Could U.S. Conclude Military Campaign in Iraq in Less Than Two Weeks?

Aired November 26, 2002 - 07:32   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

PAULA ZAHN, CNN ANCHOR: Back to the issue of what's going on in Iraq. Could the U.S. conclude a military campaign in Iraq in less than two weeks? Well, former Defense Colonel W. Patrick Lang thinks so and he's here to tell us how the U.S. could pull off a quick victory.
Colonel Lang, thanks for joining us this morning.

Good to see you.

COL. W. PATRICK LANG, U.S. ARMY (RET.): Good morning. Good morning.

ZAHN: Colonel, just to give our audience out there some perspective on how good you are, you are one of three U.S. intelligence analysts who accurately predicted that Iraq would go into Kuwait. So we needed to point out that track record.

What do you think we're looking at now in terms of Iraq?

LANG: Well, 10 years ago the Iraqi Army was no match whatever for our forces and they've gone downhill since then and we've gone, we've improved considerably. And in a very real way logistically we've been preparing for this war since the last one. In the aftermath of the last war, we left behind and prepositioned whole sets of equipment for ground divisions -- that's 15,000 or 16,000 man units -- all up and down the Gulf and down at Diego Garcia in the Indian Ocean.

And we, in the last several months, we've been continuing to move more and more material and consumables, ammunition, aviation bombs, fuel and that kind of thing into the area. And in the last few days you've seen a great deal of movement of American troops into the area by air to marry up with this equipment.

So I would predict that by the middle of December, we're going to have a force in the area that will so outclass the Iraqis in every way, who are, in fact, a Third World army, that when hostilities start, if they do, as a result of the failure of the inspection regime, that the, in Patton's famous phrase, that the U.S. Army and Marine Corps will go through the Iraqis like a red hot poker through a pat of butter.

And the principle obstacles to successful completion of the campaign are going to be logistic. We have this old saw around that, you know, amateurs talk about operations and professionals talk about logistics. And I would, if I was going to point to anything that's going to be a difficulty in this campaign, it would probably be fuel, because the force, in order to reach Baghdad, which it must do, will probably have to be refueled several times in the desert, which is going to be a big job.

ZAHN: So how long, let's assume the Iraqis don't comply on December 8 -- let's just lay that out as a possibility. Are you saying that within a week of that the U.S. would be prepared to take military action? Or do you think there is enough material prepositioned that that's pretty much a done deal now?

LANG: Well, there's a kind of a misperception I hear in the media a lot which kind of indicates that people think that when the national authorities here decide that we ought to do something that preparations still will need to be completed in order to take action. I don't think that's true. I think that by the time we get to the middle of the month, in December, there'll be enough on the ground so that if the president decides to take action, he'll be in a position to do so immediately. And that's when the clock starts running in terms of how long it takes you to complete the campaign and get rid of Saddam.

ZAHN: How long do you see the campaign taking if military action is called for?

LANG: Well, I don't think the Iraqi forces are a significant obstacle, to tell you the truth. I think they'll just be pushed aside, crushed or will surrender, one or the other. We all hope, of course, that they'll surrender and probably change sides. But in any event I would think that the big obstacles will be just to cover the ground between Kuwait and Turkey and central Iraq and things, there are major obstacles in the way such as bridging the Euphrates River north, or west of Basra, which will have to be done. It'll be a big, big bridging operation.

But I think principally the logistics factors here are the main thing. And then, of course, once the war is over, the really hard part of this starts in that a new government is going to have to be installed in Iraq. You can't go off and leave the place in chaos. I think that'd be the difficult part.

ZAHN: Well, let's talk about the difficult part for a moment, because there are some critics of the administration who don't think the administration has spent enough time explaining to the American public what's going to happen in that period of time if military action is taken. What would you see following in the wake of military action against Iraq?

LANG: Well, you have to understand about Iraq, that this is a post-colonial construct which the British cobbled together in order to fulfill their promises in WWI to an Arabian prince and the country of Iraq has always contained disparate ethnic and religious elements and keeps trying to fall apart. It always has. It's been held together by the rule of various strongmen.

It seems to me quite obvious if you remove this strong man that it's going to start to try to fall apart again and you can't leave a situation of chaos there. There are governmental things that have to be done. There are major actors in the area, like Iran, who would like to take advantage of a situation of disorganization in Iraq, which we probably don't want to have happen.

So I think that it's going to be necessary for there to be a U.S., NATO or a U.N. presence there until a transition government appears. And this may take, in fact, several years.

ZAHN: Several years or 10 years, as some folks out there are suggesting?

LANG: I think 10 years is a bit on the pessimistic side. I mean Iraq is a country that has a sophisticated, well educated population with a highly developed work ethic. What they don't have a lot of experience in is democratic self-government. And it seems to me that if you have some people in there who are prepared to spend some time mentoring the already established leadership of various factions in Iraq, that you ought to be able to put together something that doesn't require you to stay there for a decade.

I don't think this is going to be like Germany or Japan after WWII. Those were rather different situations.

ZAHN: Well, we really appreciate your perspective this morning.

Colonel W. Patrick Lang, thanks for your time.

LANG: My pleasure.

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