Role Isis News Today

Theres the concern of a power vacuum if assad is taken out of power and then what role isis plays in the control. >> and thats an ideal solution. thats the one i favor, but frankly the zwreometry of the battlefield has changed. anderson, after the russian intervention the amount of energy that would be required on our part to take on both assad and isis is beyond what any president could now reasonably demand of this country. and thats a great satdness, and its going to be a festering sore for a...

Sorry, regarding syria, we have used the military against isis. we have attempted in the obama administration to use massive amount of diplomacy with the russians and the syrians. and those are only two of the powers, and theyre not synchronsed. if you bring diplomacy, economy, information, were starting to see some informational tools being used against the russians because they have been the ones supporting isis. as long as assad is there, isis will continue to grow. it was just like isis in i...

And i think general hayden is right that in the long run our strategy has to be an isis-first strategy because isis is the main target. isis is the main enemy. and in that context theres only so much we can do to weaken assad. because lets say we were going to keep going on this path, the weaker assad gets, the stronger isis gets. overall the two strongest military forces in syria are isis and assad. we are now in the next few weeks going to return, i assume, to what the trump administrations pr...

Thats the complexity, and we have to keep in mind certainly the first priority is the defeat of isis. weve actually gotten very close. because theyre real priority is to get back to that fight against isis. >> matt, you said mentor mccain was on the in the last hour and was talking about hed like to see the elimination against more attacks against the syrian air force, eliminate their capabilities and creating safe joans. all of that seems unlikely, if its ever going to happen, until the battle ...

Respects and gives him advice that has moved him in this direction. third of all, he is a human being. he was obviously deeply moved by those pictures as all of us were deeply moved. >> and finally, to those in the united states who are concerned about getting deeply involved in syria, committing to an ongoing -- you know, whether it would be a military fight, however that would look, what do you say to them in terms of what the end game would be, who would replace assad. there are a lot of folk...

Battlefield. >> yeah, exactly. and again, i would have been right where senator mccain was earlier in your show, three years ago, four years ago where everything was more malleable. and look, anderson, forget about the russians being there to fight isis as candidate trump said. theyre there to buck up their clients state. and now we need them to keep their client on-side while we go do some other stuff. and thats probably the topic for secretary tillerson in moskow. >> do you think theres also a...

>> well, its clear to me with what weve been saying for the last 24 hours after the attack its going to take a serious provocation for us to repeat what we did last night. look, as sad as this is, anderson, we want to park the assad problem over here, just let it sit, while we solve what we think is the more high priority problem, which is isis. so the strike yesterday is in essence our telling assad, settle down. were not going anywhere, and were going to turn our attention back to problem numb...

And i do think that for better or for worse or whatever inintention behind it, these u.s. strikes have certainly forced everyone at the negotiating table, whether its the russians, whether its those at hezbollah, whether its those supporting the opposition to take stock for a moment, that the u.s. does have some leverage and is potentially going to involve itself, maybe having more of an impact, more of a voice, and more of a say. >> general hayden was on in the last hour and saying essentially ...

Grufitty. and from the ginning hes been cracking down on his own people and labeling them terrorists. and ultimately isis grew and released extremists from syrian prisons and kind of created the enemy he was originally calling the peaceful protester. >> president assad best understands the language of force. i dont think hes worried about his credible when he tells falsehoods, tells lies. to him its all about the balance of power. thats how he operates, how the syrian government operates. >> is ...

>> the problem is this, consider the situation here, which is if we were to achieve the objective we seek on the assad front, if we were able to oust the regime of assad tomorrow, what would happen? theres a large part of syria that is ruled by the assad regime, that is ruled by a lut of the minorities, the christians. they would all be in threat. it would be chaos. most likely those areas would be penetrated by jihadies at that point. it certainly would strengthen the forces of isis and al qaed...