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President trump announcing precision strikes tonight on syria's chemical weapons capabilities. back with me now major general james spider marks and colonel lateen. . the chairman of the joint chiefs of staff said they identified target to mitigate the risk of russian forces being involved. how difficult would it have been to avoid hitting any russian on iranian personnel. >> well it would be very difficult. the russians insin eighted themselves into every military installation in syria. they are closely allied and aligned with the syrians. you find advisers down to the battalion level in most...

And if you look at the short-term, it's just not encouraging. they got stronger. they actually reconquered land they had lost previously in the last 12 months. >> yeah, and that had to do, i think, with the change in strategy. you had american forces fighting the taliban as combat units. now we've pulled back to this advise and assist mission. and that's obviously not working. we've seen the taliban resurge and take back territory they lost. now the united states is implementing another tactic. they're going to create another advisory. these are not real specialists in training and advising. n...

Corruption, desertion. on paper it looks good. in reality it's awful. so here we are going into our 17th year of operations and we're no better off than we were right after 2000. >> so, the other key component of the trump strategy to let military leaders on the ground in afghanistan have more autonomy in their decision-making. might that work? >> well, it depends. what we're talking about right now is changing the strategy and pushing combat advisers down the battalion level. right now they are staying at the higher headquarters. we're going to move them out to the field, get them out with th...

Is already almost 9,000 u.s. troops in 26,000 contractors. i'm not advocating any more than contractors at all but rather a real rationalization, embedding contractors at the battalion level, which is kind of the smallest unit of maneuver there in afghanistan, providing them long-term training and support that live with, train with, and patrol with, attaching to the afghan army, and some air support and some governance support. it takes away the irritant that the afghans see of the foreign force, an invading force in their country. contractors that can go back to the same unit long-term, attac...

Secretary tillerson, i know you don't want to talk about the military, but you were just using some military terms, and battalion level and that. i i know and understand why the administration does not want to talk about tactical moves. but strategy, don't the american people deserve to know approximately how many more of their sons and daughters will be going back to afc ghanistan in war that's lasted 16 years. >> i don't want to speak for secretary mattis, but i think the intent is there will be visibility to troop levels once the decision has been made. i think what the president has convey...