NB: THIS TRANSCRIPT WAS TYPED FROM A TRANSCRIPTION UNIT RECORDING AND NOT COPIED FROM AN ORIGINAL SCRIPT: BECAUSE OF THE POSSIBILITY OF MIS- HEARING AND THE DIFFICULTY, IN SOME CASES OF IDENTIFYING INDIVIDUAL SPEAKERS, THE BBC CANNOT VOUCH FOR ITS ACCURACY. ........................................................................ PANORAMA THE RACE TO BAGHDAD RECORDED FROM TRANSMISSION: BBC-1 DATE: 6:04:03 ........................................................................ JOHN WARE: Every night on television we are witness to a huge gamble, what some American insiders say are just the opening shots of a Fourth World War, a series of perpetual wars against states that threaten our security. President Bush and Tony Blair have promised the Iraq War will make the world safer. But what we see from within the Arab world is incomprehension and seething hatred. This is the story of the enormous risks we and the Americans are taking, and how now that the war has started, the time taken to finish it is critical. Gulf War 1991 In the First Gulf War we saw the American doctrine of overwhelming force drive Saddam Hussein's invading army from Kuwait. First the battle field was 'prepared', as the military men say, with five weeks of aerial bombardment. Then half a million ground troops, led by the Americans, went in. Saddam Hussein's army was decimated as it retreated back across the border which is where the Americans stopped. Maj Gen PATRICK CORDINGLEY Commander, Desert Rats 1991 Gulf War Last time round we used a hell of a lot of shock. I mean we killed 20, 30, 40 thousand Iraqi soldiers – I know not how many and I don’t think we'll ever know. WARE: This, the second war in Iraq, is very different. The war objectives are much more ambitious, and yet the Americans and British have set out with half the number of troops. Baghdad was also spared weeks of aerial bombardment before the troops moved in. REPORTER: It was a nerve wracking flight. On board we felt vulnerable to antiaircraft and artillery fire, flying low beneath Iraqi radar made us easy targets for anyone with a decent rifle. The 20 minute journey felt like a lifetime. WARE: This time the soldiers are going all the way to Baghdad to unseat Saddam. This war is like no other. More than ever what matters is not just winning but how the war is won. The new American war plan was inspired by the hawkish Secretary of Defence Donald Rumsfeld. This called for troops to be fast, flexible and light. MOD footage Colonel ROBERT KILLEBREW US Military Planner 1991 Gulf War The Rumsfeld doctrine that has been evolving seems to be based on the Secretary's view that technology and expertise allows us to go with sufficient force provided you've got your assumptions right and that psychological operations and special operations and all those things makes it unnecessary to use overwhelming force or even lots of force to accomplish your objectives. WARE: The American gamble was to race north about 300 miles to Baghdad. In purely military terms this seemed risky. Just 80,000 fighting men and women to take a country the size of France. Is it not a bit of a risk, though, to go with light forces? KILLEBREW: There is a risk and it's exaggerated by the lack of enough force to recover from failure if your assumptions are wrong. So you've got to be pretty sure that your planning assumptions are right before you go into it. WARE: One hawk, close to the Bush administration said this Iraq war would be a cake walk. REPORTER: Then a long line of Abram Shanks and Bradley fighting vehicles began driving for what turned out to be a 12 hour drive. AMERICAN SOLDIER: Never has a mechanised force moved so fast and so far. WARE: But while the Bush administration said the Iraq regime was history, their invasion of a Muslim country rekindled the embers of Arab antipathy. Demonstrations spread like bushfire across the most unstable region in the world. Cairo, Egypt 2003 ARAB: I am from Arab world. I have message for Mr Bush and Mr Tony Blair. You are liars. You are gangs. ARAB: I hate Americans. I hate what's happening in the world. And we will all reject what's happening in the world. COLIN POWELL US Secretary of State There's a lot of anti-Americanism out there but it's fuelled to a large extent by the Iraq situation and the Middle East peace process. When we fix Iraq and when we show progress with the Middle East peace programme, and people can see that this is a nation that is not against any religion, especially not the religion of Islam. Cairo, Egypt 1991 WARE: The First Gulf War saw demonstrations even though most Arab governments had sent troops. This time the stakes are much, much higher. Most Arab governments are against this war and the street demonstrations are much bigger. How long in your view does this war have to go on for before you lose the peace, as it were. You may win militarily but you lose the peace? General Sir MICHAEL ROSE Commander, UN Protection Force Bosnia-Herzegovina, 1994-95 We all thought that we needed a quick decisive victory, and that's obviously what the strategists planned for. If we're still fighting in Baghdad, Basra, Kabala and Nasiriyah after six weeks, I think we're in serious danger of rising a tide of opposition not only within Iraq but also in the neighbouring Arab states, and indeed in the 1.4 billion Muslims around the world which would then start to question the way… the original strategy. WARE: The Americans expected to be able to sweep past towns on the way to Baghdad, and that the Iraqi army would stay in its barracks. Many Iraqi units didn't engage them but equally many did. On the road to Baghdad the Americans met stiff resistance. For one division almost every mile to the capital was contested. AMERICAN SOLDIER: There is a little bit more resistance than we've expected, and there are also some fanatics who will remove their uniforms and become… masquerade as civilians and still shoot at us. WARE: Above the din of battle can also be heard the clash of cultures. Incomprehension from American soldiers about why a Middle Eastern nation should resist their offer of freedom. AMERICAN SOLDIER: Most of them are either running or lying to us, trying to deceive us when we're just here to help them. Colonel ROBERT KILLEBREW US Military Planner 1991 Gulf War I'm reminded of a saying by Winston Churchill that when making war plans, you sometimes have to take the enemy into account. I think we focused a lot on our own theories and we didn't give Saddam Hussein the credit for adapting his style of warfare to our style of warfare over the past ten years or so. WARE: Again and again the message coming back from correspondents in the field was of commanders saying the level of resistance was not what they'd been led to expect. AMERICAN SOLDIER: [over walkie-talkie] We've got a critical case that needs to get out of here. REPORTER: They are encountering these pockets of resistance where Iraqis are fighting fiercely, far more fiercely than they imagined. WARE: Coalition soldiers have suffered some of their worst casualties away from the TV cameras. Lance Corporal JOSHUA MENARD We were told when we were going through Nasiriyah that we should see little to no resistance. And then when we got in, it was a whole different ball game. We received a lot of resistance and we were more prepared for what happened in the Gulf War where they turned over and surrendered most of the time. We saw a lot of surrendering but they weren't rolling over like we thought they would. WARE: Some of the fiercest resistance has come from a bloodthirsty group of Saddam loyalists. They are called the Fedayeen, martyrs for Saddam. Iraqi TV portrays them as patriotic and noble savages, ready to fight and die for their president. In fact many are criminals freed from gaol. Dr HUSSEIN AL-SHAHRISTANI Chief Scientific Adviser, 1970-79 Iraqi Atomic energy Commission These are people who really owe everything they have to the regime, and have committed so many atrocities against the Iraqi people where they cannot go back even to their own families. I mean members of the Fedayeen have been known in the community to go and arrest their own mothers and sisters and hand them to the security to rape them. WARE: According to the Iraqi opposition Saddam had been preparing the Fedayeen for guerrilla warfare for many months. They've often mounted their hit and run raids from converted farm trucks. That this was to be Saddam's war strategy appears to have been an open secret. Dr SALAH SHAIKHLY Opposition Spokesman Iraqi National Accord Recently he had imported 1,400 trucks from South East Asia. This was on the oil for food programme, and the idea was that he is importing these for farm use. As soon as these trucks arrived in Iraq, he armoured them and he mounted machine guns and now they are with their thousands of them being used for the Fedayeen. WARE: Does that level of resistance from the so-called Fedayeen and Ba'athist militia, that didn't surprise you? GEOFF HOON MP Secretary of State for Defence It didn't surprise us. What shocked us were the lengths to which they were prepared to go in threatening both regular members of the armed forces, and obviously the civilian population in the way that we know they have done, threatening. WARE: Why should that have shocked you? They were loyal to a tyrant. It's entirely predictable that they should have done that. HOON: They were loyal to a tyrant but equally they have gone to lengths.. extremes that… WARE: That's what tyrants do. That's what tyrants do. It was all entirely predictable, surely. HOON: Well, as I say, we anticipated that they would resist, that they would fight, that has happened, they have very largely been defeated. MOD footage Brig General VINCENT BROOKS US Military Spokesman I don’t think that we have necessarily underestimated, and I am certain that we accounted for enemy action. The specifics of the action, no one can ever predict exactly how a battle will unfold. WARE: After the first week of fighting cheerful optimism had given way to some glummer faces. One American general conceded: "The enemy we're fighting is a bit different than the one we war-gamed against. This had been no cakewalk as some advocates of the war had so breezily predicted. In fact it was beginning to look as if it might become a quagmire. Back in Washington a discreet blame game opened up between the Bush administration and the generals in the Pentagon, especially those directing the war out in the Gulf. The overall commander there is General Tommy Franks. His hawkish boss, the Secretary of Defence Donald Rumsfeld. Colonel ROBERT KILLEBREW US Military Planner 1991 Gulf War It's unusual in our system for a Secretary of Defence though, to get personally involved in battle plans and impose his own philosophy of war. The last time that happened was Secretary of Defence McNamara during the Vietnam era. So part of the friction on this is a Secretary imposing a different style of warfare over one that existed when he came in and took office. DONALD RUMSFELD US Defence Secretary The war plan is Tom Frank's war plan. It was carefully prepared over many months. It was washed through the tank with the chiefs on at least four or five occasions. KILLEBREW: There's certainly an atmosphere in the Pentagon of strain between Secretary Rumsfeld and his top military planners. WARE: And Rumsfeld is a tough guy. KILLEBREW: He's a very tough guy. WARE: The gamble in the Rumsfeld doctrine of 21st century warfare being fast, flexible and light, became apparent as long snaking supply lines were exposed to attack. AMERICAN SOLDIER: They hopped out and began to open fire with AK47s and they fired one RPG also at our convoy. WARE: Saddam was making good his promise to hit 'the snake' as he described the armoured columns now strung out so thinly. AMERICAN SOLDIER: Food, we're now one meal a day until supply comes.. re-supply. WARE: And how long is that going to be? AMERICAN SOLDIER: Well we don’t know. Hopefully soon. General Sir MICHAEL ROSE Commander, UN Protection Force Bosnia-Herzegovina, 1994-95 Modern technology in the battlefield consumes a vast amount of power, a vast amount of fuel, vast amount of ammunition and even a vast amount of battery power. They've got a very vulnerable and extended line of communication. Conventional military terms they should have had at least a cavalry regiment - or in our terms, probably a brigade - looking after that line of communication. WARE: You don’t think you took a gamble with ground troops being on the light side, because that's what a lot of American generals have complained about. GEOFF HOON MP Secretary of State for Defence Well there is obviously a debate in free societies about how governments go about what they do, and that includes the debate about the use of military force. But I repeat, this is a remarkably successful military campaign that has achieved its objectives much more quickly than anyone could have anticipated. WARE: Another key assumption of the American war light strategy was that ordinary Iraqis would welcome them and the British and then rise up against Saddam. The Vice President emphasised this just four days before the war started. US Vice-President DICK CHENEY The read we get on the people of Iraq is there's no question but what they want to get rid of Saddam Hussein and they will welcome as liberators the United States when we come to do that. WARE: A senior member of the Bush administration predicted an explosion of joy would eventually greet the soldiers. First though there would have to be what the Americans called "shock and awe" from thousands of precision guided munitions. So far the prevailing sound from the Iraqi people has been grief and pain. Iraqis put the civilian death toll at over 1,250. More independent reports put the figure lower but still in the hundreds. Just as a matter of fact, do you have an approximate figure for the number of civilian casualties to date? HOON: No we don’t. WARE: Do you have any idea at all? You've not been keeping a tally? HOON: It's impossible for us to keep an accurate assessment. WARE: Sure, but some kind of assessment? HOON: No. Our assessment is that we have been very successful in minimising the number of civilian casualties. WARE: Well then you must have a figure, roughly, in your head. That's why I asked you how many roughly – roughly. Is it in the hundreds, has it gone past the thousand mark? If that is your pre-eminent aim and concern you must have an idea of what the collateral damage is to date. HOON: Well I don’t have a figure in my head because, as I've indicated, it can only be speculation. But what I do know is that careful efforts that have been to target regime targets in Baghdad have been successful. The careful aim to minimise civilian casualties has been successful. WARE: The Americans have called this war "Operation Iraqi Freedom" though no one asked the Iraqi people if bombing was the price they were prepared to pay for liberation from Saddam. It's hard to know exactly what the Iraqi people are thinking. But so far as one can tell, the prevailing mood looks to be more muted than joyful. New York, 1991 WARE: One thing is certain, the Iraqis have a deep mistrust of what motivated the bombing of their country. The American led victory from the last Gulf war provides one important explanation. Then the objective was just to push Saddam back from Kuwait, not to topple him. However, George Bush senior, the then President, did encourage the Iraqis to take matters into their own hands. He said they should rise up against Saddam. 1st March 1991 GEORGE BUSH SENIOR: Iraqi people should put him aside and that would facilitate the resolution of all these problems that exist, and certainly would facilitate the acceptance of Iraq back into the family of peace loving nations. WARE: And so most Iraqis answered the President's call - 14 out of 18 provinces rose up. They expected the Americans to come across the Kuwaiti border to help them – but they didn't. "The Gulf War" BBC1, 1996 ROBERT GATES US National Security Adviser 1991 Gulf War That was the quagmire, therein laid Vietnam as far as we were concerned, because we would still be there. WARE: Having encouraged the Iraqis to rise up, the Americans went home. "The Gulf War" BBC1, 1996 JAMES WOOLSEY Director, CIA, 1993-95 I think the decision not to support that was one of the worst American decisions of the 20th century frankly. I think they had a bit of a blind spot on not wanting bad states to break up because they didn't know exactly what was going to follow. WARE: When Saddam realised he would have a clear run, he sent in his helicopter gun ships and laid waste even to sacred Shia shrines at Najaf and Kabala. Dr HUSSEIN AL-SHAHRISTANI Chief Scientific Adviser, 1970-79 Iraqi Atomic Energy Commission More than 300,000 Iraqis in the south in particular and some central cities were massacred. The Iraqis have not been able to overcome, as I've said, the bitterness of that betrayal. It strengthened our conviction that the Americans are not there to help the Iraqi people. They are not there for liberty and freedoms for other people, and that conviction, I think is carried by the majority of Iraqis even today. 27th March 2003 TONY BLAIR: They've been let down before, when they thought coalition forces were going to remove Saddam. And my message to them today is that this time we will not let you down. Iraqi TV IRAQI OFFICER: [addressing troops] Slit their throats and divide their hearts in two. WARE: But, if the Americans underestimated their legacy of mistrust from the First Gulf War, Saddam had certainly learned some lessons of his own. These pictures on state run Iraqi TV after the uprising were designed to send a clear message to Iraqis contemplating a second one. Directing operations here is one of Saddam's key henchmen, Ali Hassan al Majid. Otherwise known as 'Chemical Ali' for arranging the poison gassing of 5,000 Kurds in Halabja. According to British forces in this Gulf war, Chemical Ali and his extensive network of thugs in the Fedayeen and the ruling Ba'athist party have been directing the fighting in most of Southern Iraq. Fear of the regime's grip may help explain why the people of Basra, Iraq's second largest city, have yet to greet British troops as liberators. BRITISH SOLDIER: Tango two one bravo, we are receiving harassing occasional fire from the north west. WARE: According to the British, some of the gunmen who fired at them are doing so because their families have themselves been threatened with death by Ba'athist militia unless they fight. When these Iraqis left Basra to collect water, chemical Ali's death squads thought they were fleeing and fired on them. BBC News 30th March 2003 REPORTER: From inside the city the sound of distant gunfire, the final humiliation for a desperate people, attacked by their fellow countrymen. WARE: Here in Basra the British forces are battling for the hearts and minds of ordinary Iraqis. In their attempt to convince them they are here as liberators committed to destroying Saddam's network, the Royal Marines have arrested leading Ba'athists. BRITISH SOLDIER: The aim of this operation was to try and take out the leadership. And so if the brain of the operation has gone, I hope that the other parts of it may crumble. WARE: The Marines have also stormed the palatial home of Chemical Ali. Inside they found a sandpit with toy tanks. If this is how he war-gamed the defence of Basra, it doesn't seem to have been much help. Today real British tanks reached the town centre. A precision guided missile also destroyed this Ba'ath Party building in Basra – 200 Ba'athists were said to be inside. In their quest to be seen as liberators the Americans have dropped leaflets and transmitted freedom messages. Saddam, by contrast, depicts the Americans and the British as conquerors. A message which readily finds its mark in the Arab world with its long memories of Christian crusades. All Saddam needs is a TV station to address the nation and rail against the invaders. In this appeal to Iraqi patriotism the state run TV makes much of the smallest of victories. Small arms fire from Fedayeen guerrillas downed this Apache Long Bow helicopter. Iraqi TV said it was done single-handedly with an old gun fired by this patriotic farmer. To Iraqis, this is David fighting Goliath. The patriotic calls around which many ordinary Iraqis with no love for Saddam seem to have rallied. Do you think it's been a mistake to keep the TV station to keep broadcasting in Iraq? Colonel ROBERT KILLEBREW US Military Planner 1991 Gulf War I think it's a catastrophic mistake. I think that is… early in the war we tried real hard not to draw conclusions about specific things because we know that history has a way of giving us a different view. But I'm willing to say right now our key error in this war so far has been to allow Iraqi television and Iraqi radio to go on. That should have been destroyed the first day, and Saddam Hussein should be right now a voiceless fugitive somewhere in Baghdad. WARE: The Americans have bombed the information ministry. Yet, although its signal has sometimes been shaky, Iraqi TV is still on the air. Do you think it was a mistake not to have taken Iraqi TV off the air straight away? GEOFF HOON MP Secretary of State for Defence What we were trying to achieve in this campaign was both military success but also to leave as much of the infrastructure of the country in place as possible. WARE: But the TV is a central part of the Saddam regime, isn't it. HOON: Certainly it has been used for propaganda reasons. It's been used to support the military resistance. It is part of the regime, and certainly I have consistently complained about the way in which Saddam's propaganda has been rebroadcast not least in the Arab world but even in the western world. Amman, Jordan WARE: But it would be unreal to suppose that in the wider Arab world beyond Iraq's borders those who want to take up arms against the Americans and the British are all dupes of Saddam's propaganda machine. Since the war began there's been a steady stream of Iraqis returning from Jordan saying they want to fight for their country. IRAQI MAN: Why would the coalition want to liberate Iraq? Iraq is not occupied. Iraq should be protected by its own people, it's own men will defend it, and if someone crosses that line, we will stamp on their head. 2ND IRAQI MAN: They're coming here out of greed, for oil, and to occupy the whole of Iraq. We will not accept this. Even if the last one of us is martyred, we will still defend Iraq. ALI MUHSEN HAMID Arab League Ambassador to UK They are resisting because they believe that they have been invaded by outside forces, without any reason, without any mandate by the UN, without any legal reason, without doing anything or harming the British or the Americans. They have done nothing against the British people or the American people. WARE: Do you think the planners have underestimated the extent to which Iraqis, who may well loathe Saddam Hussein, but still feel a powerful loyalty to either Arab nationalism or their country? Maj Gen PATRICK CORDINGLEY Commander, Desert Rats 1991 Gulf War I think undoubtedly that's so. You see, don’t you, the fact that Americans are not seen as liberators. I don’t think they ever would have been seen as liberators. A much – I use the word 'hated' because I think that's probably the right word - a much hated nation in that region, despite the fact that they're trying to be helpful. That's not how the Arabs actually see them, and I think that is a powerful factor in this. Al-Manar TV WARE: On this fire of Arab hatred for America, TV pictures like these, beamed across the Middle East, are the equivalent of high-octane fuel. This is how Islamic fundamentalists are exploiting the Iraq War. RUMSFELD: [message subtitled] The weapons that are being used today have a degree of precision that no one ever dreamt of. WARE: The message is that America and Britain are deliberately targeting Iraqi civilians. RUMSFELD: [voice echoing over scenes of civilian casualties] Weapons that are being used today have a degree of precision that no one ever dreamt of. WARE: It's what many Arabs believe anyway, without this satellite channel associated with Hezbollah. RUMSFELD: … have a degree of precision that no one… Rabatt, Morocco WARE: This virulent anti-Americanism is being echoed ever more loudly in the Arab street, even in moderate countries like Morocco. According to the commentator the crowd is chanting: "We are all Iraqis now". ROBERT BAER CIA Agent, Middle East, 1976-97 I've never seen anti-Americanism for instance in the Middle East this strong, ever. What they're saying is you're American and a private citizen. We don't have anything against you but your President.. President Bush is a fascist. He's crazy or he's on a religious crusade or whatever and they said we don’t understand. WARE: Now the Iraqi regime has welcomed what it calls a "non-conventional" weapon. Not that those wielding it need much encouragement. EGYPTIAN MAN: Thank God today I have come as a holy warrior, leaving behind in Egypt four daughters, my son and a mother, protected by God and his prophet. I pledge myself to the service of God, his prophet and President Saddam. I don’t intend to go home, and by God's will I will die here as a martyr. WARE: Perhaps this is another stunt from Iraqi TV - perhaps. But there are credible reports of hundreds of Palestinians, Yemenis, Tunisians and Saudi's assembling at a camp outside Baghdad. Britain and America say this war will stop Iraq's weapons of mass destruction from getting to Al-Qaeda. None has yet been found though there is evidence they do exist. Cairo, Egypt WARE: What's less clear is whether Iraq had an active link to Al-Qaeda in the first place. If this didn't exist before the war, it will soon warn Arab leaders. HOSNI MUBARAK President of Egypt There will be more terrorism and the terrorist groups will deny it and instead of one Bin Laden, we will have a hundred Bin Laden. WARE: The President of Egypt is the head of an Arab state and presumably if he thinks this is going to create the very thing that you're trying to remove or destroy then you have to take him seriously, don’t you? GEOFF HOON MP Secretary of State for Defence Of course we take him seriously. I've had the privilege of meeting him on a number of occasions. He is a very impressive observer of the Arab world and one who, from experience, needs to be taken seriously. WARE: But you think he's wrong when he says this will precipitate an even greater global terrorist problem. You think he's just flat wrong, even though he's head of an Arab state. HOON: I recognise that there is a concern, as I've indicated already. It's something that we will have to have regard to, but it doesn't mean that taking action to remove a dreadful, appalling regime in Iraq is any less legitimate. WARE: In the last week what appears to be two suicide bombings have killed seven soldiers. In one case the bomber posed as a taxi driver. AMERICAN SOLDIER: They stopped the vehicle at the road block that has clearly marked in Arabic that it's a road block. The driver beckoned them a little bit closer and as the soldiers approached, the driver detonated a bomb killing himself and the four soldiers. WARE: Soldiers are understandably now much more nervous. Away from the cameras twice last week American soldiers shot first and asked questions later. At least 14 Iraqis, including 7 members of one family have been shot at checkpoints. 3rd April 2003 GEORGE BUSH: Having travelled hundreds of miles, we will now go the last 200 yards. WARE: Now that the Americans have reached Baghdad they face their biggest gamble. The city has a population of five million. Yet because the Americans have nothing like the number of troops that would normally be expected to take a city of this size, they seem not to have planned for a big ground battle. Are you suggesting that there wasn't an original plan.. a ground plan for that? Maj Gen PATRICK CORDINGLEY Commander, Desert Rats 1991 Gulf War I think that must be obvious because there are simply not enough soldiers in place for a full-scale assault on Baghdad, and the… WARE: That's a pretty major admission, isn't it, if there is no ground plan? Are you seriously suggesting there might not be ground plan. CORDINGLEY: I'm saying that I genuinely believed that the Americans thought that Baghdad would capitulate once it had been attacked in a surgical way. I genuinely believe that the Americans never thought that it was going to be necessary to put large numbers of ground troops into Baghdad. WARE: On the way to Baghdad, as American troops closed into Saddam airport, 12 miles from the city centre, the posture of the Iraqi regime was, as always, bluster. IRAQI MINISTER OF INFORMATION: They are nowhere. They are nowhere really. Why not to take Saddam Airport? Yes, this is silly. WARE: Twelve hours later Saddam Airport had been renamed Baghdad International Airport, and tonight an American military plane landed there. Lining stretches of the road to Baghdad, and tonight in Basra, were cheering crowds, emboldened perhaps by a growing belief that the tyrant who called himself variously the anointed one, the glorious leader, direct descendent of the prophet and the President of Iraq will soon be toppled. HOON: What we've seen in previous conflicts, perhaps most obviously the Kosovo campaign, a certain point is reached at which even the most fanatical determined regime, with however many supporters, may implode, may collapse from the inside, because that regime recognises in some way that's hard to detect sometimes from the outside, that there is no purpose and no utility in carrying on resistance. We have not yet got to that stage in Baghdad or Iraq. We may not notice it happening until there is a sudden collapse. WARE: This war has never remotely been a fight between equals. Even Saddam's famed Republican Guards didn't offer much resistance. Those who did were pulverised from the ground and air. The gamble is that as the Americans probe further into the city, Saddam's soldiers will simply melt away. But will they? CORDINGLEY: Of course if that gamble is wrong, then you've got a whole series of Republican Guard soldiers joining up with these irregular forces in Baghdad. I think you've got to accept that there are half a million people perhaps who are members of the Ba'ath Party who's jobs are going to be lost and quite a number of those are going to think it's going to be worthwhile putting up some form of resistance just to see if the international community can say that's enough and stop and save Saddam Hussein at the last minute. I mean clearly they've got that judgment wrong and there's no way the Americans aren't going to finish this particular thing, but nevertheless there are definitely going to be some people there who are going to fight for their jobs. WARE: This is just a foretaste of what fighting in a built up area like Baghdad will be like if that's what it comes to. It took British troops a week to finally take control of the southern port of Umm-Qasr, a town of 40,000 people. In comparison to what a lengthy ground war would mean in Baghdad, Umm-Qasr was just a skirmish. REPORTER: It takes a while to pinpoint exactly where the shots are coming from. We're slowly being sucked into a street fight. It seems the gunfire has been coming from the police station down here and there are reports of gunmen positioned on some of the roof tops. This is the kind of urban warfare no Marine wants to fight. WARE: How much experience has the US army of urban warfare? Colonel ROBERT KILLEBREW US Military Planner 1991 Gulf War Not nearly as much as you Brits have from Northern Ireland. Most of our urban warfare training has been theoretical. We have had some experience, of course, in Panama in '89. We did a little bit obviously and famously in Mogadishu, but generally speaking, our troops have been training for urban warfare extensively but it's only been training. WARE: Yesterday there were signs in the centre of Baghdad that special Republican Guard troops were digging in for a fight. They're amongst the most loyal of Saddam's troops. The coming days will tell just how loyal they'll be. If urban guerrilla warfare does break out in Baghdad, how bloody is it going to be? CORDINGLEY: I think it could be very bloody. The problem there is that you find yourself trying to cope with an enemy who is hidden in houses, and if that is the case after you've taken some casualties yourself which is sometimes very difficult to avoid, you then have to demolish the house that they're in and then civilian casualties will be involved as well. So it could become a bloody affair. WARE: And the difficulty there of course is that you lose Iraqi hearts and minds which must be feeling pretty fragile anyway after two weeks of very heavy aerial bombardment. ROSE?: You are definitely going to make a significant difference again in the hearts and minds and make it much more difficult afterwards to win back any support that you might have from the local population, a great danger. WARE: Any resistance within Baghdad, like this show of it yesterday, may not subside until the Americans capture him dead or alive. To do that they'll need the help of live informants close to him, and that could be difficult. When you were in the CIA working on Iraq, did the CIA then have a reliable and extensive intelligent network in Baghdad and Iraq? ROBERT BAER CIA Agent, Middle East, 1976-97 No, not at all. There was… there's virtually nobody. It was a closed country. We called it a 'denied' area. It was almost impossible to figure out what was going on. Saddam was a hard nut to crack and no one did very well at it for the last 30 years. WARE: Saddam has many doubles and whether he's dead or alive his days are surely numbered. The manner of his passing though is already oxygen not just to anti-Americanism but also to hostility to Britain too. ALI MUHSEN HAMID Arab League Ambassador to UK Arabs will not forget this war. I heard a British politician some days ago and he said that we have never forgotten our wars with France, which is hundreds of years old. So we will not forget this war at all. BAER: You know, if Bin Laden is alive, I can assure you he's watching his television right now. He's watching BBC, keeping his fingers crossed this war goes on for a long time and is very bloody because he will have a lot of recruits. WARE: These are just the opening shots in the new world order dominated by American supremacy with some help from their closest ally Tony Blair. Whatever this war takes, both leaders are going to finish it because both remain confident that its outcome will bring peace and security to the world. BUSH: These are sacrifices in a high calling - the defence of our nation and the peace of the world. We are applying the power of our country to ensure our security and to serve the cause of justice, and we will prevail. [cheers and applause] WARE: And yet, apparently, to secure that peace, we may now have to engage in war over several decades. After Iraq other states deemed by America to be a threat to its security could be in the firing line. But first the face of the Middle East has to be changed according to a former CIA director close to the hawks in the Bush Administration. JAMES WOOLSEY Director, CIA, 1993-95 This Fourth World War I think will last considerably longer than either World Wars One or Two did for us, hopefully not the full four plus decades of Cold War. WARE: If this apocalyptic vision is right, the stakes for what George Bush and Tony Blair have embarked on could not be higher. In the latest incident of friendly fire an American jet hit a convoy of American forces and Kurdish fighters killing 16. With the convoy was a BBC team including John Simpson and Panorama producer Tom Giles. We regret to say the BBC's translator, Cameron Abdu Raza Mohamed was killed. The rest of the team escaped with minor injuries. _________ www.bbc.co.uk/panorama CREDITS Reporter John Ware Camera Alex Hansen Sound Recordist Tim Day VT Editors Boyd Nagle Rod Hutson Graphic Design Liz Vinson Key Yip Lam Production Co-ordination Karen Sadler Production Assistant Emma Shaw Post Production Co-ordinator Ginny Williams Film Research Kate Redman Stuart Robertson Research Amanda Vaughan-Barratt Matt Cottingham Ahmed Khalifa Web Producer Adam Flinter Production Manager Helen Cooper Unit Manager Laura Govett Film Editors Sally Yeadon Glenn Rainton Bob Hayward David Howell Assistant Producers Richard Grange Jonathan Brunert Eleanor Plowden Calum Walker Joanna Lee Producer Thea Guest Andrew Bell Sam Collyns Editor Mark Robinson 15 _____________________________________________________________________________________________ Transcribed: 1-Stop Express Tel: 020 7724 7953 Fax: 020 7402 8434 E-mail: onestopexpress@hotmail.com