Fighting Assad News Today

Im stephen sackur. When the Aljazeera News Network was launched in qatar in 1996, it had a seismic impact on the media landscape in the middle east. Here was an arab broadcaster refusing to play by local rules. It was ambitious, punchy and provocative in its coverage of the region and the world. Two decades on, maybe its time for payback. Saudi arabia and its closest allies recently demanded qatar close the network down. My guest is mostefa souag, director general of aljazeera. Do his channel ha...

Im stephen sackur. When the Aljazeera News Network was launched in qatar in 1996, it had a seismic impact on the media landscape in the middle east. Here was an arab broadcaster refusing to play by local rules. It was ambitious, punchy and provocative in its coverage of the region and the world. Two decades on, maybe its time for payback. Saudi arabia and its closest allies recently demanded qatar close the network down. My guest is mostefa souag, director general of aljazeera. Do his channel ha...

Im stephen sackur. When the Aljazeera News Network was launched in qatar in 1996, it had a seismic impact on the media landscape in the middle east. Here was an arab broadcaster refusing to play by local rules. It was ambitious, punchy and provocative in its coverage of the region and the world. Two decades on, maybe its time for payback. Saudi arabia and its closest allies recently demanded qatar close the network down. My guest is mostefa souag, director general of aljazeera. Do his channel ha...

Fact that its not going to end and our withdrawal is only probably going to prolong the effort by those rebel groups to continue fighting assad. >> brett mcgurk, the u.s. envoy fighting isis also resigned. what have you heard about his departure? >> well, ive known brett mcgurk since we started working together in iraq in 2007. and he is a dedicated public servant. and i can only imagine that this was a very difficult decision for him. but as we talk about syria and the way forward, and admiral ...

>> do you believe the chemical weapons attacks in syria are fake news? >> reporter: of course. first of all, the syrian government long ago destroyed their chemical weapons. secondly, we are aware of the plans of the insurgents to make things look like the syrian army is using chemical weapons. thirdly, all of these are attempts that have repeatedly -- repeatedly taken place in the not-so-distant past. these accusations that were used as a justification to consolidate efforts in fighting assad. ...

Primarily, inviting ices. most of the russian military maneuvers in syria have not been targeting isis. they been targeting the moderate population thats fighting assad. i hope that during this trip in the region, particularly, in saudi arabia, it made clear to donald trump that russia is not on the same page as the united states in syria. julie: im glad we got that out there. thats a lesson that we will be spoken about on this trip. also, i mentioned to president trump first president obama and...

>> lets talk about policy as you wish. lets talk about tillerson, switching from five days ago hands off to were going to get rid of assad. how do you read that, positively or negatively? >> well, its head-spinning -- >> but its different. so what do you make of the difference, of the change? >> so i think donald trump watched tv, and he saw -- >> are you with him on this? are you with him on this switch towards an interventionist mode right now, which is were going to help dump this royal famil...

Assad, who is not a good guy, but were backing people to fight assad. we have no idea. look at hillary clinton, what happened with libya. >> somehow syria and world war iii dont go along great to me. we cant be fighting assad, and when youre fighting assad, youre fighting russia. youre fighting a lot of different groups. but we cant be fighting everybody at one time. >> you cant fight them both. you got to pick your guy. you got to pick your guy. and ill tell you who id pick. >> but shes trigger...

Message about what he thinks about americas latest statement from this administration a few days ago that assad wasnt really a problem we are concerned with and he could stay in power. this is something donald trump had been saying for 18 months or more. when someone like marco rubio would say on a big stage dur prd to get aside. trump would start talking about how we have all these stupid adventures in the middle east and we wasted so much money. we be better off with assad empower them with hi...

They want to leave themselves face if assad decides to react, if he decides to carry out another attack, they need room to escalate, frankly. if they were to have to respond again. they have to leave something on the table. they decided that even though senator john mccain and lindsey graham today had been calling for the trump administration to take out assads air force, to eliminate the air force so they cant barrel bombs his people again, so he cant ever conduct eight chemical weapon strike. ...