JOSHUA HAMMER, "NEWSWEEK" BUREAU CHIEF: Dramatically, I think at the very beginning the American administration wasn't even really calling this a guerrilla war. Then you began to have a series of attacks, two, three soldiers killed a week.
You saw a steady escalation from that number to about six or seven. Then, of course, the proliferation of these attacks throughout the region, not just the Sunni Triangle but also up in Mosul, down in the south occasionally as well, and now of course you're seeing the next level of these attacks which is the use of shoulder-fired missiles, the bringing down of an aircraft and a large number of dead.
I think all along the guerrillas have wanted to move from these attacks that kill one, two or three soldiers to a big number that would deliver some psychological blow to the American administration, to the U.S. occupation forces here, and they've definitely succeeded.
BROWN: What are the American options here and what are the downsides of each?
HAMMER: The Americans keep saying that they have to get more intelligence that they don't know who the attackers are that they have some idea. Some people are coming forward but that they're really in the dark about this.
The problems is, as I witnessed myself last week when I was out with the 82nd Airborne Division in Fallujah on one of these night raids, is that the tactics that they're employing to ascertain who is trying to kill them are only serving to alienate the people further.
It's a classic vicious cycle that you've seen in Vietnam, that you've seen in Algeria, that you've seen in virtually any grassroots guerrilla war, which is that a beleaguered occupation force turns against the population in an attempt to gain information alienates it further and therefore feeds the insurgency. So this is the kind of difficulty that the Americans are facing as they try to figure out who is trying to kill them.
BROWN: The Americans, the American government speaks often, every day these days about once we get more Iraqis involved in Iraqi security a lot of these problems will melt away. Is that credible from where you sit?
HAMMER: This attempt to -- this version of Vietnamization that we're seeing is moving extremely slowly. I think the American military has succeeded in getting about 1,000 members of the former Iraqi military trained. That's 1,000. That's one battalion. That's nothing.
They're also attempting to turn security over to a certain extent to a police force but if you talk to people in Baghdad and if you talk to police in the hinterlands there's no money. There are no weapons. There is no communications gear. There's no equipment. There are no cars.
This appears to be sort of trapped in a bureaucratic morass and nothing is really happening on that front. So, it's a very, very slow cumbersome process and as this process drags on you're going to see many more Americans killed, so the American government is really in a race against time here and I think they're losing.
BROWN: Just one more. Is it your feeling that this anti- American feeling that we saw in the celebrations of yesterday's shooting down of the helicopter that that's genuine or are people more fearful of the insurgents than they are of the Americans in a sense?
HAMMER: Aaron, I spent a bit of time in the Sunni Triangle over the past few months and I don't -- the Americans will tell you that there's a tremendous fear of reprisal here that anyone who dares to collaborate, who gives them information risks death but when you go out there and you talk to these people you can sense it.
I mean you sense this exuberance. I was down at the site of this helicopter crash a couple of days ago and there was rejoicing, clear rejoicing at the deaths of all of these Americans from kids on up to adults and, you know, that doesn't come from being at the end of a gun. That comes from a growing hatred of the Americans I'm afraid.
BROWN: Joshua thanks for your time this morning for you. Thank you very much.
HAMMER: You're welcome.
BROWN: Joshua Hammer of "Newsweek" magazine in Baghdad. http://www.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0311/03/asb.00.html