to house fighting, but the iraqi security forces combined with the kurdish peshmerga are doing remarkably well backed by the coalition. we will succeed in taking mosul. >> when? >> i think this is a matter of certainly weeks and perhaps months. i don't want to put a time limit on it. again, as you get to the heart of the city it gets tougher and tougher. >> in the past when the iraqi army has liberated towns from isis it is has run into a problem which is that the soldiers are often shiite on kurdish, the locals are sunnis and after the liberation there is a round of bloodletting or the locals feel that they have been liberated from one occupier into another and it produces all the same dissatisfactions and tensions that led to the rise of isis in the first place which is to say sunni dissatisfaction with shiite or kurdish overlords.