Government verified them. Moments ago josh earnest defended this Weeks White House terrorism summit as one part of a larger strategy to defeat isis. The summit that weve convene convened over the course of this week is not the summit to discuss our comprehensive strategy to eradicate extremist who pose harm to the United States. We do have a strategy for that. And one component of that strategy is countering violent extremism. Well have reports from the white house and ayman mohyeldin. And moments from now ill talked with retired general wesley clark who led forces in kosovo. And well start with the Kurdish Forces and isis in the town of irbil. Ayme aymen. Reporter this began in Early Morning hours in iraq time and several dozen isis fighters con veshlged on the outskirts of irbil, in the out skirts of the country. Most of the attacks involved small arms fire like rocketpropelled grenades but seems to be a wellcoordinated ambush attack on this town to get a foot hold on irbil which is an important strategic city and in the heart of cuddish control in northern iraq. But within hours of this assault, coalition pounded the positions and the Peshmerga Forces on the ground were able to repel the isis fighters. And there has been reported that 30 or so isis fighters were killed and for now it seems that isis has been pushed back away from the kurdish frontlines and away from the territory that is predominantly held by the Security Forces backed by the u. S. And other Coalition Partners joy. Thanks very much may men mohyeldin. And statements by the president and john kerry in the next few hours are part of a threeday terrorism summit. And they are finding practical ways to counter the isis influence and blunt the expansion. When the violent extremist makes the case that america is at war with islam and muslims, we have to assert that this is not true not just in word but in deed. Kristen welker joins me live with more on the summit at the white house. And what do we expect to hear from the president in a few hours. Reporter joy, we expect the president to make the argument that in order to combat isis and violent extremism, it will need a Broad International effort. He will highlight programs underway in minneapolis, los angeles and boston. Those programs target vulnerable communities, young people who might be inclined to join groups like isis. To give you a broad insight going back to the op ed in l. A. Times, we know from the experience that the best way to protect people specially young people from falling into the grip of violent extremists is the support of their Family Friends and teachers and faith leaders. At this weeks Summit Community ledders Community Leaders from los angeles minneapolis and boston will highlight innovative partnerships in their cities that are helping empower communities. This is a pressing issue that the white house says that more than 3000 westerns have gone to iraq to join the fight with isis and that includes about 150 americans. So a pressing problem here. Joy. Well christen lets get a quick followup on the next director of the secret service. What do we know about that . Joseph clancy is the interim director since october. That is when the former director Julia Stevenson steps down amid controversy, when the man jumped over the white house fence and made it into the executive mansion. Clancy has come on to the job since then. Officials tell me he has done a good job and enhanced surveillance and patrols around the white house and the capitol and brought about Administrative Changes and they believe hes the right person for the job. An independent panel cowled for an called for an outsider but some congressmen are saying he should have gone outside for the pick. Kristin welker outside of the white house. Thank you very much. And stay tuned with nbc and well come with the comments from the white house from the summit live here today at 4 15 p. M. On eastern time. And now a new acceptance of u mass to accept iranian students. After a fire storm eruption over the new policy they cited a 2012 law that excludes iran nationals from studying in the the u. S. If they plan on working in nuclear or energy fields. One professor described the reaction of the policy with ronan farrow moments ago. There was a feeling of universal outrage and surprise. People were taken aback. There was widespread upset. I think the sentiment among my colleagues was pretty much universal shock and a sense of just that this is an appalling decision. Pete williams is following the story. Did the university have any leg to stand on by citing this 2012 law in barring iranian students from studying in those particular fields . It is not the only cool with this school with this kind of policy. We found two or three other universities with similar policy but amherst made theirs public. But they did feel it was overdone. The law does say a visa cannot be given to someone from iran who comes here to study anything that could aid iran in the nuclear or energy program. So nuclear physics, petroleum engineering, all of those things, those students cannot study in a u. S. University. What the state Department Said about amherst, once we give them a visa they are good to go. But the University Said they get into the country and the students are admitted and if they travel, i. C. E. Wont let them back in. And the University Said we will taylor this. Tailer this. And this student was studying cosmology. Thank you very much. And jeb bush is laying out his own Foreign Policy agenda. He just wrapped up his big Foreign Policy in chicago and he blasts president obama saying the policy is inconsistent and indecisive but he tried to change his views from his fathers, george bush number one and two. I love my father and my bloerj bloerj and my brother and i love my mother if that is okay. But im any own man and my views are shaped my my own by my own thinking and my own decisions. And joining me jeff kornacki and you just wrote a good article called jeb bush and the ghost of w. And first i want to ask you, steve, to listen to a piece of sound from jeb bush talking about a policy in your article that will haunt him Going Forward in his campaign iraq. Lets take a listen. My brothers administration through the surge, which was one of the heroic acts politically that any president has done because there was no support for this and it was hugely successful and it created a stability that when the new president came in he could have built on it to create fragile but more stable situations that would have not allowed for the void to be filled. So steve, this represents i think one of the toughest thicks that things that jeb bush will have to do is to disentangle himself from the republicans with this and you say he needs the shock and awe but it will be hard for him, there are two separate issues. We talk about iraq and Foreign Policy and we talk about george w. Bush and how unpopular he became because of that. If he get to the general election that is the main thing people will talk about. Is this another bush that will get us into iraq. But the more immediate problem is how to get to the general election and the problem there is hes dealing with the Republican Party today that is different from the Republican Party that nominated his brother and the reason it is different is because of his brother. His brothers presidency went off the rails and ended with a low Approval Rating and ended with barack obama getting approved at such a landslide and conservatives concluded that george w. Bush we sold our souls to go with george w. Bush and he sold out conservatism and gave it a bad name and people turned on the Republican Party and moved to barack obama. And it is bad against barack obama on one part and a battle to keep them from nominating a candidate like bush again. And you write that george w. Bush when he ran and it is interesting, you say he was a candidate of the gop base and that status was success impressive to his electoral base. But he was trying to be more compassionate to respond to the clinton moment and to the far right and he was cultivating both. And the far right was willing to go along with it. Back then the Republican Party thought that bill clinton had beaten them. He cleaned their clocks in the 90s and they said they cleaned their clocks and that is why compassion at conservatism was exciting to them. And he beat them in 2008 and 2012 but they say we beat them in 2010 and 2014. And they think it is voter fraud. Cant be real when barack obama wins. And check out steve every weekend on msnbc. Thank you for being here. And that is weekend mornings 8 00 a. M. Eastern times. Get up with up with steve. We have a quick reid alort for you. And it is secretary of state kate brown became Governor Brown and sworn in the spot and questioning surrounding her story. Brown [ technical difficulties ] his fiancee used his role for her business. If you think going to mars is cookie crazy, some takes a step for human kind. And is president s obamas strategy to defeat and degrade isis working . Well ask retired four star general wesley clark when we come back. Here i am. Rock you like a hurricane. Fiber one now makes cookies. Find them in the cookie aisle. Know your Financial Plan wont keep you up at night. Know you have insights from Top Investment strategists to help set your mind at ease. Know that planning for retirement can be the least of your worries. With the guidance of a pnc investments financial advisor, know you can get help staying on track for the future youve always wanted. Next. Expected wait time 55 minutes. Your call is important to us. Thank you for your patience. Waiter vo in the nation, we know how it feels when you arent treated like a priority. We do things differently. Well take care of it. Vo we put members first. Join the nation. Thank you. Nationwide is on your side al qaeda is your grandfathers terrorist organization. Isis is terrorism 2. 0, or 3. 0. They have left al qaeda in dust. That was former bush era nsa director Michael Hayden this morning spaking on the speaking on the threat posed by isis. Two hours from now the president is expected to speak at the white house. And this is a larger past of an part of an overall strategy to empower our prints against isis. Wesley clark is a retired four star general and the nato commander who headed up allied force and author of the book dont wait for the new war. And general clark, thank you for being here. It is always a pleasure to talk with you. Thank you. Glad to be with us. And lets talk about what we are trying to do. It is interesting with the parallels of what you had to do in corralling the nato forces to fight against the kosovo war. And we are trying to do a version of that in the middle east to get the natural allies in the west and the allies to Work Together without putting a ubiquitous american footprint on it. How is that working . We are working forward. There is no simple formula. There are religious and ideological and gio strategic dimensions and military dimensions. You cant win it with air pow ear loan. Everyone understands that. You have to have the Coalition Forces on the ground. But the Coalition Forces that are fighting are not necessarily our friends. So in iraq that is totally aligned with iran and worked with bashar al assad, they are not our friends and jordan would not be safe if that power alignment succeeded. So what you have is you have to defeat isis but you have to also be sensitive to the gio strategic balance. You have to come to terms with the russian involvement with al assad and what that means. And turkey would like a larger role and be more influential. They will not permit iran to align with iraq and syria and box them out and something turkey would strike against covertly and strike financially and politically to prevent. And there are conflicting forces in the region. We want to empower our allies and cut off the flow of recruits from western europe and the United States and refrikt the funds restrict the funds going into isis and stop the ground forces. And this is something to ask the former commander to nato and to cause us to have major involvement in kosovo but is that training the world to be too reliant on the u. S. And there are Strategic Issues at play. Is the rest of the world to reliant on us to do the heavy lifting militarily . I think it has worked out that, unfortunately, and it shouldnt have happened. We have had a Strong Alliance with saurld put in place by president roosevelt. It said written in not exactly this way, that we would provide protection for saudi arabia for the kingdom and they would assure we always had access to their oil. And so that has been a guiding principle of u. S. Policy. That is why we went to the war in 1990 91 against Saddam Hussein because he threatened saudi arabia oil. And even though saudi arabia has built its armed forces isis professes to believe the exact same kind of islam taught in saudi arabia. Now saudi arabia has resorted to this extraordinary torturing and horrible things that isis has done but it is a fundamentalist islam and it is difficult for saudi arabia, when they look at isis, it is like a knife coming at them. And some of our allies helped organize and provide the initial funding for isis because they wanted to make use of the religious zel outs to zel you thes to fight the shia and iran and it was easier to go after them ran than commit their own armed forces to commit to that. And it is not that they are reliant on the United States and the United States position is that we are powerful and not in the region. And so for that reason we have been called on to be useful. And dont forget al baghdadi was sitting in a u. S. Prison camp during the iraq war. And i want to play you a sound bite from air holder because there is another question bubbling up on the right on whether or not the president needs to start using terminology like radical islam in this fight. Radical islam, islamic streamism, im not sure an awful lot is gained by that. I dont worry a lot about what the appropriate terminology ought to be and i think people need to think about that and think about are we having this conversation about words as opposed to what our actions ought to be. Your thoughts, general clark, on whether we today to get certain terminology right in this fight . I think you have to be careful how you characterize the ebb em enemy. They would like to be characterized as islamic. There is nothing in islam that characterizes their actions. They like that because they would like to work into the Muslim Community. We need the Muslim Community to reject isis and any connection between isis and islam. That is the key to success and the most important thing. If we can discredit this isis group and cut them off with any connection to islam, theyll fade away and die. It is more powerful than the bombing and ground troops. So when we put it altogether and say these are radical islamists, we are giving them power over the islamic extremists and that is what they want us to do. It is not about Political Correctness or about calling a spade a spade, it is about depriving isis the source of recruits and support. All right, indeed. Thank you, general wesley clark. Appreciate you being here. And well be right back. Thank you. Thanks. You total your brand new car. Nobodys hurt,but there will still be pain. 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