I ve had the privilege of seeing victims and survivors in so many parts of the world. and i don t have a lead table of course. but what we see in parts of ukraine have been seen by different people of different cultures and different languages. i was also leading the team investigating crimes by daesh in mosul. the balkans, i was a junior prosecutor decades ago at the rw rwandan tribunal and yugoslav be tribunal as well as cambodia. you know very well about the banality of evil. you also know very well about the kind of crimes that have afflicted humanity from time immemorial but also since the holocaust. and unfortunately, despite the promises of never again and despite the publicity, the understanding that the law is out there, there is this still
Heather: we appreciate it. this is what the fbi directer christopher wray had to say, terrorist groups could export experiences to use weponized unmanned outside of conflict zones, what i really we wanted to get to which we didn t have there he said that they would be using the given retail availability, their lack of verified identification requirements to procure and their general ease of use, so you expect that he s correct in all of this, that that is the reason these will be used more frequently? yeah, i mean, first, we have been detecting terrorist use of drones in iraq, for example, in ramadi, in mosul originally they were for surveillance purposes, they could take video of suicide bomb attacks and post them and
Wasn t as intense or didn t exist at all. they could get their visit in for a day or two, meet their constituents, go home, speak on sunday morning talk shows, say how they had been to iraq. but not mccain. i tried to persuade my bosses at the time not to let him come to the north because we were in pretty tough combat in mosul, and i guess that word got back to him. first thing he said as he got off the c-130 as he landed at mosul airport, they said he is coming, you have to take him for a couple of days. first thing he said to me, i hadn t met him or seen him since 2004, probably didn t know who the hell i was either, he said so general, i understand you didn t want me to come to mosul. it puts you on your heels a bit. i am stumbling, saying no, sir, it is not that, i think i said it is a little sporty out there, an expression we used in the military. let me interrupt you a moment. the late senator s wife walking
Story he chewed you out because you tried not to let him visit mosul because of the danger there. senator mccain was not shall we say skiddish in situations like that. he wasn t, jim. and that was sort of a serendipitous meeting between the two of us. we had met once before in baghdad in 2004 when i was an assistant division commander, then he had come to the northern part, i commanded the northern part of iraq from baghdad up to the syrian border, and we had all sorts of fights going on in different locations. the one that was most harrowing was what was going on in mosul. this was during the surge. there were politicians wanting to come over, i am out of the military, they were the bain of our existence when the congressmen and senators came in. we tried to push them off on the public affairs guys, and we could do that with most of them. they could go to some lesser known areas where fighting
Are. in each and every one of these instances we re long past the point where we need a national debate on a new authorization for the use of military force so the american people can understand our mission overseas. give me a sense of how you grasp this new president s position on foreign policy. he ran as a dove saying we re involved in too many stupid wars as he put it and thought we shouldn t be getting involved in libya, trying to go after the assad government in syria. he said basically don t be a neocon. i m not going to be one of those people. and yet he s out there trying to break apart the iranian deal. and he doesn t seem like he s a dove anymore. how do you need him? he seemts more like a neocon with the people around him. what do you make of him? ultimately what he s doing is he s reflecting upon what president obama did in raqqah, in mosul, in niger, in other countries and he s come to a deeper understanding of what
The major spent very little time interrogating prisoners. he had bigger things to worry about. his men were still exchanging fire with the isis fighters in the mosque. so he deployed the most powerful weapon he has, the radio. he called in an air strike. a few miles away in a control center, american and iraqi officers were watching the live feed from an overhead drone. they checked the coordinates the strike is southeast. deconflicted the airspace, and approved the attack. an aircraft delivered the payload on the mosque just 50 yards from our position. the major and his men moved a few steps forward. on the battlefield as mosul, that counted as a good day. are they going to be able to point to the debris of mosul and say, look what the americans and the shia government did to this sunni city and use it as a
Some of the most harrowing cases he s seen involve children. the mom stepped on an ied, and she was killed, and the kid was split open. a 2-year-old. the kid was this big. that s one of the cases that will stick with you. that s one of the ones that will stick with me. we first met reed in november just after the mosul offensive began. he and a friend came to aq to fight as volunteers, but the ended up doing first aid. i still have some fight left in me. i can myedical for good. how many front-line medical posts like this are there in mosul right now? you re standing in it. but working on the front line comes with certain risks, and reed has had some close calls. take cover. take cover. they re running. it s a full retreat. it s a full retreat. like the time he was chased by an isis car bomb. despite the dangers, eight months later he s still here. his clinic moving forward with the iraqi advance. it s now in an abandoned butcher shop in the heart of the old city. his team has grown to around 20
Richard? it sounds like a mission without an end. exactly. suddenly we have an enduring presence in iraq while everyone s been focused on the russian scandal, we ve been committed to a forever war. thanks, andrea. you don t run into too many americans working anywhere near the front lines in mosul, especially wearing civilian clothes. so when we came across one, we had to find out what he was doing there. take cover. take cover. pete reed has had some very close calls in mosul, and he s not here on orders. he just showed up and started treating injured iraqis on the front lines. why? because no one else was doing it. how many patients have you treated? between 7,000 and 10,000. a former marine from new jersey saving lives in the middle of a war zone. that story is coming up next. stay with us. having moderate to severe plaque psoriasis is not always easy. it s a long-distce run. anyou have the determination to keep going.
Isis was driven out of mosul. that in itself is an enormous achievement. isis image as an invincible force was buried in this city. equally important was the way the american military worked hand in glove with an iraqi army that just a few years ago collapsed in disgrace. as we ve shone you, that victory came at a heavy price. there is no such thing as a free war. iraq s second largest city lies in ruins. its residents have suffered another round of unimaginable violence, and they will never forget. the children you saw today coming out of the wrecks of their homes, injured, hungry, thirsty. these children will never forget. neither will their parents. we have seen that insurgencies survive the moments. that the resentment that fuels the insurgency continues to simmer under the rubble only to erupt later. and that s what s happened here time and time again, including
i don t want to take a stab at american foreign policy. what i will say is we re fighting a common enemy here. we can t do it without them. they certainly can t do it without us. isis lost mosul but where is its leader? the simple answer is we don t know. there have been repeated rumors he s been killed. some say the russians killed him in syria. others that a u.s. air strike in mosul got him. at this point we can t confirm any of these rumors. most likely they re a combination of wishful thinking and a crude attempt to get him to step out of the shadows. u.s. officials don t think he s in mosul, but one source told me there are teams on stand by watching closely just in case. next up, andrea mitchell looks back at the way american presidents, three so far, managed the war in iraq and asks some of the key architects of the american strategy when and if the mission will ever truly be accomplished. plus treating the injured in mosul. an american medic and an iraqi doctor. their extraordinary work to save lives. noo