Herlt Ling News Today : Breaking News, Live Updates & Top Stories | Vimarsana

Reporting now, there were aircraft in the air. there were support aircraft in the air and strike aircraft in the air. we don't know -- at least what i've read at this point, what the configuration of those forces was. but at some point someone said to the president, this is too much, and he said, hold on, let's pull it back. but, again, i think these are hard things to spin up. it takes a long time to spin up a strike package like this, and it's a very serious question as to what he was going to do with it, and now what the iranians know about it. >> okay. rick, i want you to stand by because ...

Then it says, officials said that the president initially approved attacks on a handful of iranian targets like radar and missile batteries. the operation was under way in its early stages when it was called off. planes were in the air, ships were in position but no missiles had been fired when word came to stand down, the official said. how significant is that, that this is all going on while we have changes at the top of the defense department, general? >> yeah, it's significant. i can't explain how confusing this might be to the military forces on the ground that are spinning these things u...

Wants to accomplish. and just a unilateral strike, even though it might be a proportional response to a shoot-down of a drone, where does it lead? and i think some of the military commanders were forcing that issue of saying, when you're about to use force and you don't know where it's going to take you, if it spins out of the control and you don't have an end state in mind, it's going to escalate very quickly. the quote from the guns of august, about what occurred in the first world war, was when a german general was asked, how did they get there? how did they stumble in the war? the general ...

This case president trump, is critically important. and as rick just said, he's not interested in intelligence. he sometimes isn't interested in the expert opinion, and that will cause problems when you have these kinds of very difficult strategic decisions to make. as you said, in this case, it appeared that someone got through to him and made him realize that the risk would probably be much greater than the rewards in what iran might do, which no one really knows. >> i've got togo. general, thank you very much. i appreciate that. listen, as you know, this is a big topic on the campaign trail...