General's Desk: The Baghdad Endgame

Recently retired U.S. Army general Buck Kernan, now a CBS News analyst, was interviewed by CBS News Correspondent Dan Raviv for the CBS Weekend Roundup. The interview opens with Kernan's assessment of how the Iraq operation is going.

The enemy always has a vote here. I think the plan is unfolding, the deployment of the forces and the employment of the forces is going precisely as Gen. Franks envisioned it, with the exception, of course, that we didn't get the opportunity to open the northern front with the 4th Infantry Division coming out of Turkey.

Raviv: There were two disappointments; didn't get Saddam that first night.

Kernan: That was national intelligence that gave us an indication that the Iraqi leadership was in one central location, and the opportunity presented itself for us to target them and hopefully bring about the capitulation of the Iraqi military. So they made a decision to launch on what they believed was hard intelligence and target that facility in the hopes of destroying the Iraqi leadership.

Raviv: It may have been more effective than we think, but even if Saddam is dead, he still has loyal ministers carrying on. Are you surprised in any way that the government there seems almost unaffected?

Kernan: Not surprised. I think that we weren't sure exactly what was going to happen given what the results of the Desert Storm were, when things got basically after a 38-day air campaign and 100 hours, the ground force had won. We also recognize that we have declared that this regime is coming down; we are going to replace it. It is a criminal regime. There's an awful lot of subordinate people to Saddam Hussein and his two sons who have nothing to lose. So we had to anticipate that these people are going to fight, in the hopes of staving off our operations and maybe seeking some kind of peace that allows them to remain in power.

Raviv: But DID the U.S. military anticipate it? What about all those irregulars?

Kernan: Yes, but we've experienced this time and again. We've routinely had rear operations that have been affected by paramilitary and small group operations throughout recent combat. We expected some of this.

We may see some increased activity in the south, because ... we didn't have the northern front, and consequently, many of the troops that he was going to employ in his defenses above Baghdad up in the Takreer area, and even forces in Baghdad itself, that are securing him, could flood down to the south, knowing that there was a single avenue of attack coming out of Kuwait. That enabled him to thicken his operation down there.

Raviv: Will the U.S. and British forces come at Baghdad from several directions at once:

Kernan: Yes, they will. You're going to see us as we reduce the threat of his larger formations, his special Republican Guards that are trying to blunt the attack as it moves toward Baghdad, you're going to see our forces encircle Baghdad. We will cut off Baghdad from enemy reinforcements and we will also prevent the withdrawal of any forces outside of Baghdad. I believe it will be a very concerted effort and a very precise effort to go after the leadership there to get this surrender.

Raviv: Are we going to see something like Somalia again?

Kernan: Possibly. Combat in cities is the most complex and ugliest form of combat that we can experience. It can get very, very destructive. Of course, we saw that in World War II. We have the combat power to basically level whole blocks to remove any resistance that we may encounter, but in the process of doing that, of course we defeat the end game, and that is to give a stable Iraq back to the free Iraqi people. So we want to try to minimize collateral damage.

But yeah, we may see ourselves getting into urban combat, hand-to-hand combat. I caution you, though. Somalia was a little bit different. Somalia we went in there basically with some very restrictive rules of engagement. Our people resisted initially responding with lethal fire because of women and children that were being used willingly as human shields. So we incurred some casualties in the initial onslaught of that operation that maybe could have been avoided.

Raviv: And this time in Iraq?

Kernan: I think that's one of the reasons we're going to try to be as disciplined as we can, isolate his forces, use our information operations to try to get the people who are noncombatants, these innocent civilians, out of the area. Maybe even given the Iraqi regime an ultimatum: That you have 96 hours to remove innocent people from this and then we're going to very selectively come after you. But will there be innocent people hurt? Unfortunately, yes.