stepping up the fight against isis. the idea would be instead of having to g all the way to the oval office to get approval for sensitive raids in places like somalia or yemen, that for a certain target set like isis fighters who have already been identified that secretary defense mattis or the three-star general who runs the joint operations command would be able to say, we see the person we ve been hunting, he s popped up in a different location in a place we don t have combat operations but we can go after him and let the white house know we re doing this because this has all been preapproved. colonel, and kimberly explains this well in her piece, if you re talking about places like afghanistan, there is some autonomy because the u.s. is involved in a campaign there. like you said, somalia, yemen, it s a different story and there has been a case made by generals who have been frustrated by
lucy kavanaugh. lucy, what more are your hearing about that offensive? reporter: hey, ali, windy day here in erbil, but iraqi soldiers are continuing their push into mosul. the city is surrounded to the north, south, and east. shiite officials now focusing on the west to try to cut off the road from mosul to tal afar, that s been a critical supply route for the islamic state fighters. as for the battle itself, we ve been talking about how it s been slowing down because of those civilians trapped within the city. nbc news this morning spoke to the joint operations command spokesman who confirmed these civilians are making it really tough for iraqi soldiers to push through any faster. if they use their tanks, their armored cars, they can get stuck in the streets and any sort of operations that they do, they have to consider the fact there are people flooding out and also isis has been launching attacks from within civilian homes, making it very hard for them to
fire brand theme. is that what you are saying, too? mike flynn is a bit of a character and mystery, and he rose up through the ranks with worked for stanley mcchrystal for the joint operations command and wrote an interesting paper in afghanistan about how military intelligence was failing, and he was removed from the post a year early because he was accused of having a chaotic management style and that set him on a course of growing bitter and critical of president obama. by the time he was on the campaign trail with donald trump, he was making extreme statements that raised eyebrows within the intelligence community and he was leading chants of lock her up, and he was suggesting that, you know, tarring muslims with a brush of
when you read, alison, some of the messages coming from iraq s joint operations command, you really realize how close the fight has become. they are describing neighborhood upon neighborhood and how the forces are literally moving through neighborhoods of ramadi and what they are encountering. what sounds like dozens of ieds and hundreds of ieds which take a long time to dismantle and car bombs and suicide bombs. they have managed to kill a number of isis militants. it sounds like around 30 given the communication we have received. it does seem like it will be a fight to the death for the isis militants. 200 to 300 have entrenched themselves and they are willing to fight to the death. that is disturbing. is there any discussion at this point about the strategy? if and when iraqi forces do take hold of ramadi?
cases. they are having a very hard time getting a handling on this. what do you make of this this latest threat. this is where the joint terrorism task force really shines. we have been able to develop task forces all over the country in major cities. you have a standing joint terrorism task force that has representatives from all the federal agencies and the the local and state agencies. wherever this is going to be located, they are probably standing up a joint operations command and you re going to have representatives from all the law enforcement entities there. what that does is it allows them to coordinate things so much faster than they were ever able to. you think they come out publically without a lot of details just to make the public more vigilant? i have said this a thousand times and on this show before. eyeballs are the greatest tools we have in securing this country. for them just to come out and release this it just tells everybody that hey, look around and see if