positive. american public hears about high-priority targets eliminated but rarely the civilian casualties, the way the drone strikes undermined american credibility overseas. >> the unanswered question about scope actually goes to the case the white house makes about this. when you say this is a smarter way of waging war, you can compare it to policy under bush administration september 11th attacks where we engaged in two full scale ground wars in iraq and afghanistan putting 100,000 american troops on the ground and probably leading to hundreds of thousands of deaths in iraq due to ensuing chaos and civil war. this is a strategy that has a much smaller footprint that i have to assume involves fewer civilian deaths. >> boots on the ground. >> we're not in the hundreds of thousands like iraq. that's true. >> so the question is if military interventions of this sort really are necessary, i think that's an open question, isn't this a smarter and less -- >> that's a very big question,