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Stoked a sectarian war in syria that has been taking place for years. you make it worse. i think this is not an opportunity. i think the russians have been telegraphing this plan overall to us for years. unfortunately, secretary kerry spent most of his time negotiating with lavrov to get -- >> how should he engage with lavrov? >> i think the most important thing is to talk to them about an end state in syria and do they see a viable alternative to assad and getting a transition in the country. and unless you have that conversation, there's no way to square -- when assad only controls 20% of hi...

Alone will not lead to victory. you've got to have that ground component that flushes the enemy out, and you have to have clear concerted objectives that will lead you to some end state that results in some kind of political settlement so you can have peace. and so air strikes alone aren't going to do it and i think that's part of the syrian effort is to get the -- enough troops on the ground there in syria to pressure isis and syria so they can't without any kind of pressure just focus on iraq and so if we can pressure them in syria, that will loosen up the defenses in iraq a little bit and h...

Leadership, and if the united states is going to lead i talked to the region every day, all around the gulf states and so forth, including some of the forces that we don't necessarily want to talk to but at the end of the day everybody tells me they are waiting for the united states to lead and that's what i think this really comes down to is what is the leadership here? many americans don't want to spend anymore money on the war, and certainly when i was there we were spending $12 billion a month, and it's a large ticket and we you know we lost nearly 6,000 men and women, and so nobody wants ...

On keeping that same end date the same, but we're not going to make that said gradual decline. instead we're going to keep 10,000 troops, what we have there now, we're going to keep them there for the rest of the year. that means the decline to that end state will be a much more rapid descent, a much more rapid withdrawal over the course of the final year. it is clear that the afghan president wants more american troops there for longer. the president says we are going to do that but the end game now makes less sense. if you're worried about what happens in afghanistan as the number of foreign...

The support for this operation. i think there are questions not about this aumf which is a vehicle for a strategy but really can the strategy defeat isis as it states as its end state which means you'll have to go into iraq and syria to do that. so there are questions about the strategy. i don't think there are questions about the support from the administration congress or the american people. >> and, joe, i don't mean to throw a light-weight question your way but it's interesting that code pink managed to get into all of these hearings. not just one person but several. >> they are very deter...