Biten Isis News Today

Information. >> but the white house says carters comments were based on solid intelligence. >> secretary carter said is consistent with the analysis hes received from those who are on the ground. >> on monday vice president biden made a call to al abadie reassuring him on u.s. support and said he recognized the enormous sacrifice and bravery of iraqi forces over the past 18 months in ramadi and elsewhere. today, as iraq released this video of coalition forces distributing weapons to iraqi troops...

That it can be held when they do go to make the final push into ramadi the terrorist organization will not be able to regroup afterwards. >> we saw the sandstorm. how is it complicating the fight? >> well it most certainly was making visibility very very difficult. we actually drove through it at one point. you could not see more than a few dozen feet in front of you. there were concerns that isis would capitalize on this and try to launch some sort of counterattack, especially in the areas arou...

Shes "outfront" tonight in baghdad. arwa we heard iraqs prime minister saying over the weekend that ramadi will be retaken in days. is he right? >> well that might be a bit optimistic especially if we look at how long it took for battles past when the iraqis were trying to win back cities such as tikrit for example. now, the area that we went to is located between anbar province where ramadi is and just to the northeast. this operation is focused on ramadi yises but also integral to all of it is...

Isis controls the areas that support isis what does it tell you about the u.s. strategy and how it may need to be adjusted? >> the u.s. strategy in place now for a year simply isnt pushing isis back. isis is consolidating control over the areas it holds, and to successfully defeat them were going to need competent allies on the ground. this can be iraqi army forces but they will take months if not years to retrain and get competent commanders in place. really what we need are the sunni militia f...

Troop surge in iraq in 2007. you heard the secretary of defense, ash carter saying iraqi forces just showed no will to fight. you worked with these soldiers. what did you make of his comments? do you agree? >> you know iraqi troops are brave when well led. and i think this is an issue of leadership not of will. those iraqi forces in ramadi would have stayed and fought to the det if they had commanders they believed in and if the commanders wanted to hold the ground that they were ordered to hold...

Message over the course of years that will resonate with the population. that said in the interim, over the next weeks, months years, you have to look at one fact. insurgents that are motivated by religion not by money, not by ethnicity ethnicity, but a belief theyre going to win are going to conduct suicide bombings. they will not leave the battlefield until theyre dead. if you want to look side by side at an army that is motivated by nationalism, by a paycheck versus an insurgency that is isis...

This is something we do every month or so to measure that progress. this is today, may 2015 yellow areas, isis support zones. red areas under isis control. lets look to three months ago, february virtually unchanged. there are some areas where isis lost some ground around the turkish border gained some here. coalition forces took back tikrit from isis but you have ramadi falling just a few weeks later. again, lets look at the map again. today, three months ago, really almost difficult, almost im...