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More in africom. can you do that without sending more equipment, isr over there? >> tom, fair question. i think i would distinguish between what does the commander of africom need to do the full range of missions that he believes need to be done and what missions are being done with the equipment available? i will tell you, the general may need more capability to do more missions or more expansive missions, the responsibility of the commander is to employ the force within the resources they have available. so we shouldn't confuse the need for more capability to expand the mission with what cap...

The second, every time something like this happens, we doon internal look at ourselves and find out what is it that we did? what could we do better? and then make changes based on what i would consider an after-action review. so that's fair. >> the other issue there are some in african command and some here in the pentagon that think the special forces are taking too many risks over there. >> yeah, tom, i think that would be speculation. here's what i'm very clear on. i'm very clear on the frahmwork within which this operation took place. what do their orders say? i don't have any indication r...

Do an internal look at ourselves and find out what is it that we did, what could we do better and then make changes based on what i would consider an after action review. so i think that's fair. >> the other issue is there are some in african command and some here in the pentagon who think the special forces are taking too many risks over there. >> yeah, tom, i think that would be speculation. in other words, here's what i'm very clear on, i'm very clear on the framework within which this operation took place. in other words, what did their orders say? i don't have any indication right now to ...

Going to happen? >> yeah, i don't have the details of that. you know, i don't know whether it was intended that they would -- how long it was going to take if they had plans to stay overnight. just to be clear, i think the probably more accurate description than stayed overnight was caught a couple of hours of sleep after the third and before they completed their mission on the fourth. >> is there an investigation beyond the troop deaths and what's the investigation of the fbi? >> an investigation being conducted by the general officer at the united states africa command into the incident itse...

Via africom issued a long statement explaining why it is that the u.s. is in niger. i would point out general dunford said why it is that u.s. forces are there. he talked about how with a relatively small footprint the u.s. forces could enable local forces to do a lot more. you'll hear more about that and how america first might not really work. >> neil: that was the goal at the time dating back to 2013 when these u.s. troops first arrived to help the french military running an operation and the early elements of al-quaida. now people are aware how far and widespread this sort of tactical stra...