Military base for Iraqi Security forces and iran nan backed shiite militants. Thousands of civilians have fled isis advance in ramadi but many are trapped at a key bridge unable to make the trek towards baghdad. Our Senior Correspondent arwa damon is live in baghdad right now. Why are those refugees unable to get to baghdad . Well simply put, because today the government decided for reasons that have not been fully disclosed to us even though we have been asking about it to close the bridge. This bridge was open yesterday for refugees but only those who have a sponsor in baghdad province. This is a bridge that connects baghdad province to Anbar Province. The hundreds we saw there earlier today, really trying to get by in what can be described as unbearable conditions. Not just because of the violence that they witnessed that forced them to flee but because of this sandstorm that was taking place that lasted for hours. It was the kind of sandstorm that causes the dirt to get stuck in your mouth, stick to the back of your throat. Fill your lungs. And we saw in the middle of all of this babies, the elderly, women and children just trying to shelter themselves because there was little, if any actual shelter they could use to try to protect themselves from this horrific sandstorm that was unfolding. They were so angry because they could not understand how it was that their government could allow them to languish like this. One man was so upset, so aggravated he said if i die i do not want to be buried in iraq because a country that treats us like this i cannot call my own. Absolutely horrible and heartbreaking. As you were talking we were playing the pictures of that sandstorm and just how horrific the conditions are. What about those who actually make it across . Who is taking care of them . Well so to come across the bridge you need to have a sponsor and, in fact tens of thousands of people have fled Anbar Province for baghdad. Many have family relatives and also what we have been seeing for those who dont, kind citizens are coming forward and saying i will sponsor these people. In a number of mosques in the capital they have been turned into makeshift refugee shelters lot of the predominantly sunni neighborhoods are opening up vacated homes, partially built buildings as shelter for the various refugees. There does need to be batter system and a better plan in place as we saw earlier today for those that arent able to get themselves into this baghdad Sponsorship Program system that has been de facto established because they cannot be left in the conditions that we saw them in earlier and also you have these calls from the United Nations for Additional Support when it comes to trying to help shelter these individuals because if the trend is as we have seen it over the next few days isis is slowly making progress in Anbar Province. It did manage to take over another town that is to the east of ramadi and trying to attack yet another area closer to the habbaniya base where the Iraqi Government trying beef up its presence and seems unto this point unable to do so that would prevent isis from advancing. All of those women and children and other refugees are just sitting ducks there. Thank you for that report. I appreciate it. The fall of ramadi is being blamed by some on the United States. Some say the iraqi forces were ill equipped for the fight and others say u. S. Commanders in baghdad made iraqs Prime Minister delay the deployment of iranian backed Shiite Militia fighters. Joining me to discuss this is retired lieutenant kourple james reese, cnn Global Affairs analyst and Delta Force Commander and here in washington phil mudd cnns Counter Terrorism analyst and counterterrorism official and also mu bean sheikh, a former jihadist and former counterterrorism operative. Colonel reese, does the United States share the blame for ramadi . Well i dont know if we have to shares the blame. Were always going to be blamed because when youre the big guy on the block everyone will look to that person the person everyone looks to around the world and weve said this, people expect the u. S. To inspire everyone around them. Right now were not inspiring and, you know, im not sure if i believe that we told the Prime Minister to hold up the militia but in tikrit the u. S. Leadership over there was not happy about the shia militia being up in tikrit, very instrumental in the fight over there. It breaks my heart to watch in this humanitarian crisis is going to get worse as we go on. It seems that way. Mu bean you understand the culture of groups like isis. What do victories like ramadi do for isis with regard to recruitment . Its great for recruitment. You will see videos coming out of parades in the open square in full daylight individuals very happy about it people are tweeting about it and youll start to see the video clips embedded into some of their propaganda pieces that will come out. Phil we were talking earlier, you think theres too much of a it focus on ramadi and other specific cities that fall or battles and were not focusing enough on the broader war. Thats right. Look i spent 25 years as an analyst at cia and the fbi. Any time analyzing a complex problem you have to look at least a handful of characteristics. Want to buy a car its not just price, theres a bunch of other things. You want to assess an insurgency its not just space, not just towns. Its things like does the government maintain the will to fight. The answer so far is mixed. Does the government have foreign support in a counterinsurgency the answer is yes. The americans are sticking with them. Whats the capability of the government to have the training and equipment to bring the fight to the enemy, are the battle lines hardening, how capable is the enemy of using an ideology to effectively recruit people. I would say isiss has not graduated there. Were focusing on what happened in the last day or two or week. The average insurgency is a decade or more. If you want to assess this indepth look at a bunch of characteristics not just ramadi. Part of the issue seems to be colonel reese, is that the Iraqi Military theyre just, you know, not doing what theyre supposed to be doing and there are lots of reasons for that i guess, but the bottom line is isis now controls ramadi and fallujah to the east now fighting iraqi forces to connect the road between the two cities if isis does end up controlling that whole corridor and you see it on the map, does it set up a possible advance on baghdad which is just less than 50 miles away . No i dont think it does. Phil and i talked about this morning. Phil is right we cant look down a straw and make a determination about iraq. Iraq has had problems in al Anbar Province because i believe isis has shifted their main effort down to anbar where they have a huge sunni backing there and can do some recruiting. Where they try to get up in mosul, mosul surrounded by three areas, theyve lost in baji theyve lost in tikrit so the iraqi forces have done good things in some placesp. Theyre not doing well in anbar but they have to try to get it together. I do not think that isis will make a push to baghdad but i will tell you what in the last week and this is continuing in baghdad, they had 26 ieds and ten vehicle born ieds in baghdad alone last week. Still things happening in baghdad even though they have it locked down well. To get it together as colonel reese was saying, you have to have the will to do so right . You have to have the will to fight the enemy which in this case is isis. Do you believe that there is the will there . I know its kind of hard to tell but knowing what you know about the culture of this . Well i think the will is there to fight. But in certain places theres a greater role than other places. I think the iraqis are going to want to hold the territory they have. The strategy has been to deny isis the socalled caliphate and shrink their land and make the argument that what point is the caliphate you cant hold the land but isis is showing even if it loses land elsewhere it can gain land in other places and thats the strategy. Phil mudd on that issue, weve seen reports of the iraqi soldiers the military not being paid for six months. Yeah. And not having kind of the fire in the belly if you will to do it whether or not its their job or not. That theyre actually getting a paycheck. Thats a problem when youre fighting a group like isis which is all about ideology. Thats right. This is one of the reasons youre seeing shia militia move in. Weve got a shia led government backed by the iranians across the border. Were thousands of miles away and want the iraqis to look at the world through our perspective. Theyre closer to the iranians including the iranian generals sitting in baghdad saying bring it to the sunnis dont trust them and be careful bringing them into the Government People like the sunni tribes. Who will you listen to in baghdad . Listen to the iranianers your backers across the border bring the shia militias into ramadi or the american the take the art of the long view and practice democracy and make friends with your enemies. Tough scene . If theyre getting mixed messages you dont know what to do. Coming up the senate is heading towards what could be a weekend showdown over nsa surveillance of americans. Theyre debateing a bill that would continue but limit broad collection of phone records. One former attorney general says even the current law should be broader. Plus moments ago, the state Department Released hundreds of emails belonging to Hillary Clinton. Cnn is going through them as we speak and were going to bring you the latest next. 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I respect the state department, they have their process that they do for everybody, not just for me. But anything that they might do to expedite that process, i hartley support. That was former secretary of state Hillary Clinton on the campaign trail on tuesday and just a short time ago the state Department Released almost 300 of clintons emails online they span a twoyear period concentrating on events before during and after the benghazi attacks. Cnn investigative correspondent chris freights joins me now, going through the emails. So far, i know we got them within the last hour any bombshells. No bombshells. Democrats are pointing that out. No stand down order here theres no evidence she ever ran any arms through libya or in benghazi. Thus is more evidence that this committee isnt doing its job. Republicans on the other saids the emails raise more questions about the security on the ground. In fact theres one email from august 24th, 2012 bewhere a top aide Jake Sullivan says to Hillary Clinton there are warning signs of decreasing security situation in benghazi republicans want to know what was done about that. There are examples where republicans are saying this opens up more questions for us to pursue then say its a dead end and move on. Theres color. Interesting emails. Here is one, a few days before christmas, in 2012 where hillary writes to her top aides who are going to testify on capitol hill and she says im sorry i cant be up there with you today. Ill be nursing my [ inaudible ] and cheering you on as you remain calm and carry on. So, you know you get a sense of her personality. That she is in touch with her aides and were also seeing some color here. A little peek behind the curtain for how she ran her state department. In front of the curtain, were looking at live pictures of Hillary Clinton on the campaign trail at the smutty nosed brewery in New Hampshire and i just wanted to say that because i wanted to say smutty nosed brewery on television but youre talking about emails released. There is skepticism the emails that were released were the emails they are okay with the public seeing and not necessarily all of the emails. Thats right. I think its important to remember that Hillary Clinton kept all of these emails on her own private server and last year she turned over about 30,000 of these emails that she said were the official record and turned those over to the state department. The state department has been going through those. Hillary clinton has asked for those to be released. What were getting is the first 300 of those emails today. A very small portion of the total 30,000 and these only have to do with benghazi and libya. The reason were getting them first is because the committee thats investigating benghazi on the hill already had these emails. They had already kind of been vetted and were getting our first looks here. Lots more emails to come. Very briefly you mentioned the investigation, the committee on capitol hill what does this say about that investigation. I think republicans say we have more questions. Democrats say this puts an end to crazy conspiracy theories republicans have. These emails were not put an end to this debate. In fact republicans just today said, these are the selfselected emails of Hillary Clinton and so we have to take them with a grain of salt. Nothing she does or says will put anything to an end for republicans now that she is running for president. Appreciate it. The state is preparing a possible showdown over Surveillance Programs that try to track potential terror suspects. The details next. Two years after Edward Snowden blew the lid off the nast secret Surveillance Programs congress is tied in knots over whether and how to keeps the programs going. The senate i expected to vote as early as today on a bill approved the house which extends authority for the nsa to collect massive amounts of phone data but with important changes, changes some in the stateenate say go too far. These programs expire on june 1st. And the house theyve left town. Theyre already on a holiday recess until that very day, june 1st. U. S. Attorney general Loretta Lynch pleading with congress for an extension. With the expiration of not just that part but our ability to track the Electronic Communications of terrorists as well as to obtain the records of terrorists is that we will lose important eyes on people who have made it clear that their mission is to harm American People here and abroad. Should these charges make it through the senate intact . I want to bring in michael, nominated to be attorney general in 2007 by president george w. Bush after almost 20 years as a District Court judge for new york. Thank you for joining me. I appreciate it. Start with what you heard from Loretta Lynch and talking about the fact that she in the Administration Want the house bill with the reforms to pass you i know disagree. Where you believe the problem is that the nastsa Surveillance Program is too narrow not too expansive, why . The nsa Surveillance Program is not just properly speaking not a Surveillance Program its a data Gathering Program is what were talking about. It gathers the metadata the calling number the called number the date and the length of the call thats all. Not any content. Thats done so that we can if we get a suspicious number we can run it against that data base to find out whether a foreign terrorist has either called or been called by a number in the United States. Theres no content of any kind involved. The trouble is they dont get cell phone records. All they get is land lines. It ought to be extended so cell phones and stay in place. The house go ahead. Thats what i was going to ask you about the house bill. Why do you think what they passed is just to be specific so our viewers know this is obviously kind of in the weeds, but its important, what they have done is pass the bill that says that no longer should the government hold on to these records. It would actually be the companies that do so. But apparently theres not even a requirement for them. That is that the issue you have. Thats one issue. Theres no requirement they keep the records and i think its in the companys interest and their competitive interest to get rid of them as fast as possible. They dont want this. So were really at the mercy of the companies. Also even under the best of sirc stapss if they do keep the records, then the Justice Department has to go running around to each or the nsa has to go