troops in afghanistan. we have to protect our embassy, we have a counterterrorism platform that's useful in pakistan. et cetera. so obama didn't go down that road. and, in fact, trump is -- you know, if the reports are correct, we're going down to 7,000, that's not a particularly large force, obviously, but enough to protect the embassy. enough to carry out some kind of terrorism operations. and it is his purgative as commander in chief to do this. >> you're a former intelligence official, operative, whatever you want to call it. it's probably fair to say that even if u.s. troops will not be in syria, we will still have a quiet presence. we will know what's happening on the ground in syria. but is that enough? >> no. you can't collect intelligence from iraq. you need people on the ground. you need to work with the kurds. they are the ones doing most of the collection. you need laser targeting for the ground from the air force or the drones and the rest of it. it can't be done.