situation. get their objective, capture or kill and get out as fast as they can. it is the type of operation that killed osama bin laden. it is the type of operation that they have quietly done for many many years in places like afghanistan and iraq. in somalia, in yemen, in libya. this is what they do. and their rate of success last night was all of them came home safely. not to put a light note on it one u.s. guy had bloody knuckles from that hand-to-hand combat and other than that everybody came back fine. barbara, please stand by. this is a cnn exclusive. it s a small force. these are the first american boots on the ground in syria. yerl general marks, if i could go back to you momentarily. wouldn t you expect an operation such as this would have been
there is an indicator that this this element of isol and i will proclaim this proudly are on their way down. they are imploding. they can t control the kind of things they got. they are losing their leaders. they are losing intelligence and the fight is being taken to them. now, the key element that remains to be seen is can we build an iraqi security force that will take the fight to them on the ground very quickly and come together under an exclusive government and what will happen in syria. those are the two remaining things left to determine and then you ll see all the other organizations that are joining isis because they seem to be the big kid in town now. start to fall off. this is the beginning of the end, in my view. gentlemen, please stay with me. we ll have much more on this successful raid in syria, but plus the latest developments in the deadly amtrak crash. a former ceo of amtrak will join me.
control portfolio, as well. so this was a significant hit this morning. the white house, of course has said that we would not put boots on the ground in syria, it seems like we just did that. have we established a new precedent? oh, no. these boots were look let s not call them boots. these are special operators that went after a very high-value target eliminated the target and were able to come back safely with abu sayyaf s wife um sayyaf who is the deputy to her former husband. this was a high-risk, high-reward operation executed phenomenally. in other words, you re saying there could be great military significance. intelligence gathered from the wife. absolutely correct. the interrogation that will follow ing this is significant. that s kind of point number one. point number two, as a result of this raid special operators walked away with a lot of documents. a lot of information. hard drives, computers, et
inthat s inthat s not the way they function michael. you have to go after networks. interesting to spider and i when we hear somebody say nobody knew who this guy was. special operation command or in a computer in a fusion cell somewhere not only abu sayyaf who is relatively popular among special operators, this is a good hit and a lot of people knew who he was who are wearing the uniform, but multiple other ones just like him. a target package being basically built on this guy, probably for months. i can t say specifically but i know when you re talking about strategic target there is all kinds of things in this particular target package on abu sayyaf and um sayyaf who will tell you why we want to go after him and put the resources against it. whenever you put american lives on the line there has to be a high payoff, especially when you go into syria. but, boy, a huge payoff from
you may be able to get up to 12 months at no cost. welcome back. braelking news overnight, u.s. special operations forces have killed a senior isis command anywhere syria. killing abu sayaff. i want to bring in retired general mark rertling and james spider marks. u.s. forces captured some communications equipment. that s significant. and we learned earlier this hour from cnn s pentagon correspondent, barbara starr that there s reason to believe that abu sayaff may have been in contact with abu bakr al-baghdadi. general marks, of what significance the killing of this individual? well the killing is important, what i think is really significant is the intelligence we ll be able to