the u.s. war to oust hussein intensified dramatically today, as the air campaign began on baghdad and elsewhere. the rest of the world saw this as a war of aggression. my fellow citizens, at this hour, american and coalition forces are in the early stages of military operations to disarm iraq, to free its people, and to defend the world from grave danger. it s getting much, much closer. all the air defenses are opening up around me at the moment. massive shock below, coming through our windows. i am going to have to take cover. the invasion and the toppling of saddam was quite easy. the entire campaign did not take more than a month. we see the coalition forces advanced from southern iraq near the kuwaiti border. and now into baghdad, it s taken
top story, and the iraqi military is saying that it has retaken ramadi 70 miles from the city of baghdad and recapturing a key compound there in the center of the city. and you may recall that ramadi fell to isis earlier in the year in what is a major setback and embarrassment as well to the maintain the terror group. i want to talk it over with military analyst and retired general james spider marks and also bob baer. and so, this is ramadi is a major route moving supplies and how important in terms of strategic value towards, i guess a victory or the pushing isis back farther, bob? well, i think that it is important. i mean, ra ramadi is a base that isis could launch attacks on baghdad, and last year, there was a concern that they might
the world, and we would win if we put ground troops, and what would we get. we did win in iraq a couple of times, but what do you do about baghdad and as general marks was saying, the governance is the key important issue here, because if baghdad does maintain and holdramadi, they have to treat the sunnis in a way that they cannot revert back to the sectarian ways of repressing these people, otherwise the conflict will go on for the next 30 years, and we have limited influence on baghdad. american americans feel in. they simply dot no trust the political solutions that we have come up with, and trust the m l military, but not the political solutions. all right. we will see bob baer and general mark, and thank you, both, for this next story that we are
fight. they were moving they took tikrit, just north of baghdad. they were moving in on baghdad in iraq. they were on an offensive and looked unstoppable. the iraqi army was collapsing. they had already taken a lot of land in syria, and they were expanding and expanding. that s part of their motto, is to remain and expand, right? well, they re not expanding anymore. they re shrinking, thanks to the american bombing, thanks to m martialing the kurds in one area, the shia in the other. it s precisely because they re no longer able to maintain and expand on that land, they need to lash out. unfortunately, they re very good at that. they ve hit the russians, they ve hit hezbollah in lebanon, and now they ve hit the french. and if they can hit the united states, they ll do that, too. they are very good at international terror, which is something that people were saying even six months ago they weren t interested in doing. and one of the complicating factors of this and one of the things
a lot of influence on baghdad and seems to be growing. when i left in 09, may of 09 and the situation was relatively stable. we defeated the opposition. it was just maintaining things at this point. when i left, i thought to myself if we leave this, if we pull all the troops out, it will fall imagined, you know, where i was laying my head eventually would be occupied by assad. where was that? balad base. this is where strong i mean, the russian economy is basically the size of italy and said they are going to re-engage as a great power in the world. this should have huge implications for us because the russians are not doing this for humanitarian reasons but to rewrite the global rules. i m sure you never thought iran or russia would have significant influence and isis would be in control and big city of mosul, second largest