that would have been a red line. every diplomat in washington wanted to know at that point what the new trump administration would do. they tell them some things, they don t tell them other things. paul: right. now looking historically, who do you think was the best national security adviser to a modern president? well, the most prominent was henry kissinger, but in terms of running the process, in my own experience, i would say brent scowcroft under bush 41. paul awl why? because during the preeminent crises of the bush 41 administration, the iraqi invasion of kuwait and the collapse of the soviet union [laughter] paul: just a few things happened this that four years. there was a lot going on, and what scowcroft did, i thought superbly, was manage a complex interagency process for a president who knew these issues intimately but wanted to know what the facts were, what the arguments were, what his options were. and i sat on the end of tv screens, i sat in meetings for
isis. we have an urgent need to try to get on the same page. that requires both sides to be more engaged with each other in confronting both the iranian ambitions and the challenge in isis. what do you think? i agree with that. that statement of the problem. i would put it differently. once the united states started talking to iran it changed the whole strategy of the region. for 40 years it was a very close alliance between saudi arabia and iran. saudi arabia and the united states to contain iran. now there s a breach in that alliance. the united states has decided it s not as committed to containing iran has saudi arabia would have expected. but the problem is not containing iran. there are too many shias in the region. they basically have to accept to live under a political order that existed before 2003 iraqi
what s a mistake to go to war in iraq? the war was a better place because saddam hussein doesn t run iraq will you, if you knew that have been in favor of iraqi invasion? not only would i not have been in favor of it but president bush would not have been in favor of it and he said so. senator, isn t that a flip? six weeks ago it made sense to invade iraq in 2003 now you say it was a mistake. two different questions, it was not a mistake, the president this is the way the real world works she was saying based on information, what we know now. based on what we now, i wouldn t have thought manny pacquiao was going to win in the fight you were asked the same question and said it made sense. it was not the same question. the question was whether it was a mistake and i still say it was not a mistake. the president was prentdsented with intelligence that said iraq had
claimed the lives of almost 400 americans fighting to protect kuwait from an iraqi invasion led by saddam hussein. so why is a bill that would create a national monument honoring those sacrifices made during desert storm right now stalled in the u.s. senate? our next guest proposed legislation and is a gulf war number one veteran himself, scott stump, retired, joins us now. good morning to you. good morning. so i vividly remember this particular war cause we saw it all on television. for people who don t remember the specifics, how many americans were involved? we had over 600,000 americans that were involved and deployed in theater. ultimately the number is about shy of 300 casualty. u.s. casualty, yes, sir. 400 in the coalition. okay. clearly this is something that needs to be commemorated and memorialized in the u.s.
they rely on the best information possible but are invariably incomplete and the one wild card speaking to a number of officials, woman, tlf vladimir putin. some are saying it was a snap judgment by him so difficult to predict. the chairman of the house intelligence committee wants a full-scale investigation to learn lessons to see if there were intelligence failures. no question. we were talking about that last week. we heard this consistently from u.s. officials. it was their assessment last week up until really the final days and hours that russia was not going to go in, go across that boarder in numbers. reminds me of the intelligence failure leading up to the iraqi invasion of kuwait back in 1990 when the intelligence estimate was the iraqis threatened the border but wouldn t move into a fellow arab country. of course we know operation desert shield and operation desert storm resulted as a result of what the iraqis did then. there was an intelligence failure. we ll see what