Pentagon: Level of Violence in Iraq a 'Setback'; On the Hunt for al Qaeda; Update on Hurricane John
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: OK, shots.</s>COLLEEN MCEDWARDS, CNN INTERNATIONAL ANCHOR: The battle is joined in Ramadi, but the only casualty is a tragic mistake.</s>JONATHAN MANN, CNN INTERNATIONAL ANCHOR: Resorts have turned into refugee shelters, and residents of Mexico's Baja Peninsula look to hold on as Hurricane John churns menacingly toward land.</s>MCEDWARDS: It was supposed to be the happiest day of their lives. They had to settle for the happiest that it could be under the circumstances. Bittersweet celebration at a wedding delayed by war.</s>MANN: And he's announced his retirement, but since he's already made the trip to the U.S. Open, Andre Agassi is trying to play a while.</s>MCEDWARDS: Hello, and welcome to our report broadcast around the globe. I'm Colleen McEdwards.</s>MANN: And I'm Jonathan Mann. From Ramadi to Beirut, Baja, California, to New York, wherever you're watching, this is YOUR WORLD TODAY. Thanks for joining us. The Pentagon has just released new statistics on Iraq that shows civilians have paid a very heavy price for a violent summer.</s>MCEDWARDS: We're going to get into that report in just a moment. But first, more brutal evidence of just how dangerous Baghdad has become. Rescuers are finding more bodies today in apartments that were crushed by bombs and rockets. This is in mostly Shia neighborhoods. At least 62 people were killed, 237 wounded in a wave of coordinated attacks that happened all within just a half an hour.</s>MANN: Iraqi officials say they plan to expand a security crackdown in Baghdad to those eastern neighborhoods as early as next week.</s>MCEDWARDS: Well, the Pentagon's new report calls the level of violence in Iraq a "setback." It also addresses the subject of endless debate: is Iraq in a civil war or not? We're joined now by our senior Pentagon correspondent, Jamie McIntyre, with more on this report. You know, Jamie, the language may suggest otherwise, words like "setback," but what's in here really seems to point to a huge escalation.</s>JAMIE MCINTYRE, CNN SR. PENTAGON CORRESPONDENT: Well, you know, this is the quarterly progress report to Congress. Critics might say it's a lack of progress report. It does cite some positive trends in Iraq, but it's hard to get away from those sobering statistics about what a difficult and deadly summer it has been. The report covers June, July and August, and it notes that there is a 15 percent jump in attacks in Iraq and a 51 percent increase in Iraqi casualties. It calls the level of violence, "a setback affecting all measures of stability, reconstruction and transition in Iraq." The report goes on to say, "Sectarian tensions increased over the past quarter, manifested in an increasing number of execution-style killing, kidnapping and attacks on civilians." And it says those conditions, conditions that could lead to a civil war, exist in Iraq. "Nevertheless," it concludes, "the current violence is not a civil war," and it says the "movement toward a civil war can be prevented." Well, what do U.S. commanders on the ground who have that deadly job, what do they think? We heard from one today, the commander of the 4th Army Brigade Combat team, who insisted that his troops and Iraqi troops are making problem is what has been dubbed the Battle of Baghdad.</s>COL. TOM VAIL, COMMANDER, U.S. ARMY: I've got an optimistic view that civil war would not occur, but I can't predict the future. My optimism comes from the amount of forces and the amount of capability available in Baghdad right now as we intervene and we protect the people. So, right now, we see that there is actually a decline in violence in Baghdad in certain areas specifically that we're applying more combat power to.</s>MCINTYRE: Now, U.S. commanders insist that where U.S. and Iraqi troops have been mounting that offensive which they call Together Forward that they are making progress. But, again, you look at the statistics in this report, it's just been an awful summer for Iraqi- on-Iraqi violence, no matter what you call it. The report cites 1,600 bodies in June brought to the Baghdad city morgue, 1,800 in July. They say the average there is up by more than a thousand a month since the spring quarter, and 90 percent of those deaths, they say, were execution-style killings. So, whether you call it a civil war or sectarian violence or death squads, there is no question that Iraq has become a more deadly and more dangerous place in the last three months -- Colleen.</s>MCEDWARDS: OK, Jamie. So why -- why doesn't the Pentagon call this a civil war? Wouldn't it be using that word anywhere else in the world?</s>MCINTYRE: Well, Colleen, one of the reasons is the strategy for dealing with a civil war is different from the strategy for putting down insurgency. If they're dealing with insurgency, and death squads, then the strategy they're pursuing, which is to build up Iraqi forces so they can battle the insurgents, is probably the correct one. But military thinkers say if what's really going on is a struggle within the country between two groups, then what they need to do is a different strategy. Don't arm one side. You need to come to a power- sharing agreement and then have some sort of neutral third party enforce it. It's a completely different strategy. And so one of the reasons they've been reluctant to say they're in a civil war is because that would be an admission, in effect, that they might be pursuing the wrong strategy.</s>MCEDWARDS: Yes, understood. Jamie McIntyre, thank you so much. Appreciate it.</s>MANN: U.S. troops trying to root out insurgents in Iraq are using new tactics, though, in all of this to try to gain the element of surprise.</s>MCEDWARDS: Michael Ware went along with an elite army unit in Ramadi as it operated along what it calls the al Qaeda front line.</s>MANN: But as he tells us, this particular mission was marked by a tragic mistake.</s>MICHAEL WARE, CNN INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT (voice over): To strike at the heart of al Qaeda in Iraq, U.S. forces in Ramadi are punching into areas not successfully penetrated before: the militants' command bases from where their attacks are organized, like the one against this police outpost, sill blackened from a suicide truck bombing in which Iraqi officers died and their American trainers suffered burns. Army officers say there are too few troops to capture the farmlands where the leaders hide, move and meet, which included Abu Musab al-Zarqawi until his death and now the man who replaced him. U.S. troops in the latest covert operation in Ramadi, the true al Qaeda front line. America's 16 Infantry commanders seek new ways to take their enemy counterparts by surprise to thwart the early warning systems that allow top targets to slip by U.S. raids by launching an attack with something they hope al Qaeda won't expect, an amphibious assault. In fast-moving Marine gun boats, Gatling guns in the bow, heavy machine gun in the stern, powering in darkness west along the Euphrates River, a small army reconnaissance team spies its landing with an infrared beam invisible to the naked eye. And Captain Dan Enslan (ph) makes it ashore, warning his men to watch their rear. From the river bank, his platoons silently cross 900 yards of open fields, creeping into places. Other soldiers around them land by helicopter or push in by road, encircling houses used by two key al Qaeda leaders who shift their hideouts each night. The attack goes down. But with no traces of al Qaeda, at least for tonight, in this house or those rated by other teams, a tragedy unfolds.</s>UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Tell the females to stand. The children can stand.</s>UNIDENTIFIED MALE: OK. What it looks like we got here, you've got obviously a family living here, two males with -- of age, basically, that we'll secure and contain with us. And then you saw the one AK. That doesn't necessarily mean anything. It could be a bad guy, could not be a bad guy.</s>WARE: With Iraqi army engineers, they prepare to blow a locked door searching for weapons.</s>UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Chief Soto (ph)?</s>UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Yes, sir?</s>UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Just give me a fire in the hole so I can send it up in that.</s>UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Roger.</s>UNIDENTIFIED MALE: When you guys are ready.</s>UNIDENTIFIED MALE: OK.</s>UNIDENTIFIED MALE: OK, shots. Shots fired. Anybody hurt?</s>WARE: When the soldiers investigate, they find a family in mourning. The scene was a tough one, and the soldiers are moved.</s>UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Gee, that's got to be tough.</s>UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Yes. Well, what he did is he stood up or sat up to chase away the insurgents and vaca. And when he stood up, he saw -- he thought it was Americans</s>WARE (on camera): It's hard on the men, too.</s>UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Yes.</s>WARE: Your men.</s>UNIDENTIFIED MALE: They probably -- second to losing one of our own, that's probably one of the hardest things that happen to us, in reality. It will be a big blow.</s>WARE (voice over): Then it becomes harder still...</s>UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Let's take them in the house.</s>WARE: ... where a medic tends to the baby in its farmer's arms.</s>UNIDENTIFIED MALE: It looks like it's a surface wound. And it looks like -- did they say it was a piece of shrapnel in here?</s>UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Yes. He thought maybe a piece from a bullet.</s>WARE: By morning, of 22 detainees taken in the operation, 20 were released. At least a dozen turning out to be Iraqi police. The al Qaeda leaders, nowhere to be seen. Unless the soldiers' aggressive new strategy pays off, the car bombs will continues. And these will remain the faces of the war in Iraq. Michael Ware, CNN, Ramadi, Iraq.</s>MCEDWARDS: Well, to Iran now, where a passenger plane blew a tire, skidded off the runway and caught fire as it landed in the city of Hashhad. There are conflicting reports on the death toll. State-run television quoting a provincial governor says 45 people have been killed. There were some 150 people on board. Mashhad is a destination for millions of pilgrims who visit the city's Shiite Islamic shrines. Air safety experts say Iran has a poor safety record with a string of crashes in recent years. U.S. sanctions on Iran prevent it from buying any new aircraft or spare parts from the West.</s>MANN: Two big storms are menacing North America right now. On the West Coast, Hurricane John bearing down on Mexico's Baja, California, peninsula. Meanwhile, a weakened Ernesto bringing heavy rain and the threat of floods to the U.S. East Coast. First let's get the latest on John from our Harris Whitbeck in Cabo San Lucas -- Harris.</s>HARRIS WHITBECK, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Hello, John. Hurricane John has increased in strength, and it is expected to be a Category 3 when it approaches the southern part of the Baja, California, peninsula. Measures -- precautionary measures here have been taken. Local officials have asked residents of low-lying areas to seek shelter in several schools that have been taken over by the Mexican army and are being used as temporary shelters. Meanwhile, about 7,000 tourists, many of them from the United States, are hunkered down in their hotel rooms. At this point, there are no flights in or out. The airport has been closed, and it will remain closed at least through the remainder of the day. Again, Hurricane John is expected to make landfall here within hours. One of the big concerns is the amount of rain it might bring. This part of the Baja peninsula is a desert environment, but it's also very mountainous. And the concern is that all this amount of rain could cause mudslides that could reek havoc on the infrastructure in this part of the country -- John.</s>MANN: Harris Whitbeck in Cabo San Lucas. Guillermo Arduino is tracking John form the weather center.</s>MCEDWARDS: All right, John. Well, over on the U.S. East Coast, Ernesto has been downgraded now to a depression after making landfall in North Carolina. But it is bringing heavy rain as it heads north into Virginia and towards the nation's capital as well. Flooding is a major concern in this area. Authorities are handing out sandbags, trying to help people get themselves prepared. The storm has left tens of thousands of people without power.</s>MANN: The Middle East cease-fire and ways to make it work.</s>MCEDWARDS: Coming up next on YOUR WORLD TODAY, the U.N. secretary-general is making the rounds, trying to shore up some support, and is getting some reassurances from Syria.</s>MANN: And later, a new film that portrays the assassination of the current U.S. president. Is it just going too far?