AARON ON "PAULA ZAHN NOW" (8:04pm ET) - MARCH 19, 2004

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PAULA ZAHN NOW

Bush Defends Invasion of Iraq; FCC Cracks Down on Four-Letter Words

Aired March 19, 2004 - 20:00 ET

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

SOLEDAD O'BRIEN, CNN ANCHOR: Good evening. I'm Soledad O'Brien, in for Paula Zahn. It's Friday, March 19, 2004.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

O'BRIEN (voice-over): One year later, President Bush defends the invasion of Iraq.

GEORGE W. BUSH, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: Each of these attacks on the innocent is a shock and a test of our will.

O'BRIEN: Mission accomplished, or are U.S. troops even more the enemy today than they were then?

How far would you go to get Brad's eyes or J.Lo's thighs, or Pam's best assets? Fans who submit to surgery, silicon, even sex changes to look like their idols are the next step in reality TV.

And the FCC cracks down on one four-letter word. We can't tell you what it is, but should the government outlaw words? And how are poor comedians supposed to make a living?

(END VIDEOTAPE)

O'BRIEN: All that's ahead tonight, but first, here's what you need to know right now. The standoff continues tonight on Pakistan's northwest border. It's been more than 24 hours since reports that Pakistani forces may have trapped Ayman al-Zawahiri, the number two leader in al Qaeda. "NEWSNIGHT" anchor Aaron Brown is in Pakistan's capital, Islamabad -- Aaron.

AARON BROWN, CNN ANCHOR: Well, good evening to you. It's morning here, Saturday morning, and this has been a very tough day for the Pakistani side. Let me try and give you briefly the lay of the land, what's going on, as best we can understand it. The fighting has been ferocious. The Pakistanis have taken significant casualties. We don't want to put a number on that, though by 10:00 Eastern time on "NEWSNIGHT," we'll be talking with the chief military spokesman for the Pakistani army, and we'll get a better sense of that.

In just a pure military sense, what's happened is you've got a very well-trained Pakistani army and well-equipped on one side, you have a very well-trained, less well-armed, but certainly highly committed al Qaeda troops on the other side. The al Qaeda side owns the territory. They own the high ground. And this is a classic battle situation. If you own the high ground, it is easier to pick off the other side from there, and that's basically what's happening. Is it a standoff? Wouldn't go quite that far. The Pakistanis say they have now laid a double circle around these villages, where the al Qaeda people are. There's one perimeter and then a second perimeter to keep them from escaping, but right now, escape or surrender doesn't seem to be the issue. The issue itself seems to be a war, and in some respects it's a war that has been going on up there or a battle that's been going on up there since Tuesday.

O'BRIEN: Aaron, considering the fierceness of the fighting, are there any expectations about how long this battle could last?

BROWN: Well, these things last as long as they last. It is in some respects, a question -- there are a lot of questions in play to give you an answer to that. Will the Pakistanis at some point say we're going to cut our losses and pull away? I think that's unthinkable. Will the al Qaeda guys on their side say at some point, we have taken as many casualties as we can take, what we need to do now is get out of Dodge, that's a possibility that they'll try and escape. There are numerous, numerous escape opportunities. There are tunnels in mountain passages, you're not talking about flat ground or hills, you're talking about very rugged mountain terrain, and we can assume, though we can't know this, we can assume that when they moved into the area, they also figured out how to get out of the area.

So the battle itself could end in a variety of ways, and to put -- to say it will end in 12 hours or two days I think is something that we're not comfortable talking about here.

O'BRIEN: Aaron Brown for us this evening. Aaron, thanks.

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