The answer is yes. the americans are sticking with them. what s the capability of the government to have the training and equipment to bring the fight to the enemy, are the battle lines hardening, how capable is the enemy of using an ideology to effectively recruit people. i would say isiss has not graduated there. we re focusing on what happened in the last day or two or week. the average insurgency is a decade or more. if you want to assess this in-depth look at a bunch of characteristics not just ramadi. part of the issue seems to be colonel reese, is that the iraqi military they re just, you know, not doing what they re supposed to be doing and there are lots of reasons for that i guess, but the bottom line is isis now controls ramadi and fallujah to the east now fighting iraqi forces to connect the road between the two cities if isis does end up controlling that whole corridor and you see it on the map, does it set up a possible advance on baghdad which is just less than 50 miles
Culture of groups like isis. what do victories like ramadi do for isis with regard to recruitment? it s great for recruitment. you will see videos coming out of parades in the open square in full daylight individuals very happy about it people are tweeting about it and you ll start to see the video clips embedded into some of their propaganda pieces that will come out. phil we were talking earlier, you think there s too much of a it focus on ramadi and other specific cities that fall or battles and we re not focusing enough on the broader war. that s right. look i spent 25 years as an analyst at cia and the fbi. any time analyzing a complex problem you have to look at least a handful of characteristics. want to buy a car it s not just price, there s a bunch of other things. you want to assess an insurgency it s not just space, not just towns. it s things like does the government maintain the will to fight. the answer so far is mixed. does the government have foreign support in a counterinsurgency
S a case by case analysis. amazing the statements that came out that said i did it and i m sorry. not saying what i did, but i made some mistakes. remarkable story. thank you. happy memorial day. have a good weekend. thank you all as well. it s been nice to have you with me. dana bash sitting in for wolf and she starts right now. lelhello, i m dana bash in for wolf blitzer, 1:00 p.m. in washington 6:00 p.m. in dublin and 8:00 p.m. in baghdad. thanks for joining us. we start with new important advances by isis one in iraq and one in syria. first in syria where isis militants have taken control of a keyboarder crossing. it was the last one held by syrian government troops. iraqi troops still hold their side of the border and in iraq isis has captured a key city between ramadi and baghdad. those isis fighters are moving closer to habania a major
Even though isis took control of ramadi last sunday you see that in other parts of the country over the last five to six months isis has been firmly contained. it has been pushed back. it has been rolled back. and it decided as a result of all of these setbacks to shift its effort to ramadi and anbar. therefore, i do not see the shift to anbar as a sign of strength by isis. it is in fact a sign of desperation. that s what i say in my op-ed. that part really stood out to me. you write, the attack on ramadi was an attack of desperation, not strength. i wonder why you come to that assessment. because of the situation in ramadi, we do have to keep in mind that isis did not blitz into ramadi. the city did not fall under isis control in three days. it has been contested by isis since january 2014 which is
Terrorism analyst and counterterrorism official and also mu bean sheikh, a former jihadist and former counterterrorism operative. colonel reese, does the united states share the blame for ramadi? well i don t know if we have to shares the blame. we re always going to be blamed because when you re the big guy on the block everyone will look to that person the person everyone looks to around the world and we ve said this, people expect the u.s. to inspire everyone around them. right now we re not inspiring and, you know, i m not sure if i believe that we told the prime minister to hold up the militia but in tikrit the u.s. leadership over there was not happy about the shia militia being up in tikrit, very instrumental in the fight over there. it breaks my heart to watch in this humanitarian crisis is going to get worse as we go on. it seems that way. mu bean you understand the
Military base for iraqi security forces and iran nan backed shiite militants. thousands of civilians have fled isis advance in ramadi but many are trapped at a key bridge unable to make the trek towards baghdad. our senior correspondent arwa damon is live in baghdad right now. why are those refugees unable to get to baghdad? well simply put, because today the government decided for reasons that have not been fully disclosed to us even though we have been asking about it to close the bridge. this bridge was open yesterday for refugees but only those who have a sponsor in baghdad province. this is a bridge that connects baghdad province to anbar province. the hundreds we saw there earlier today, really trying to get by in what can be described as unbearable conditions. not just because of the violence that they witnessed that forced them to flee but because of this sandstorm that was taking
Go after what he would call the far enemy. in the past years, you see this in the letters, the groups that have grown up particularly isis are saying we don t believe the bin laden message. our goals is to stage a revolution at home and most of the fighting you see now isn t attacks against new york it s attacks against mosul and ramadi. more colonel reese, how much he hated the united states and hated the west. i ll put up another excerpt. iens would be exaggerating he writes if i declare what i m about to write is maybe the most important thing i have written in my life. these pig eating invaders and loyal dogs are too scared to death to fight us face to face. you have a chance to stop the savageness and arrogance of america and its allies. yes, you. what do you make of that? well wolf you know it s we ve been tracking that. people have been studying bin laden an the al qaeda piece. that is his rhetoric from day one.
That this can be restored they can arm some of the sunni groups if you will in anbar and eventually retake ramadi. your analysis if? i think they can. let s look at isis first. there s a setback for themselves as they take more territory and that is at some point in time this year next year they re going to have to govern this territory. they keep taking territory without the ability to maintain control over the population provide schools, for example so the military is lost in the short term. will isis be able to govern in the long term? i think not. on the flip side, though i think the government has a huge vulnerability here. they re talking about working with sunni tribes. what s the story we have out of ramadi? the government military doesn t have the ability to fight so they bring in shia mill shah. if you re a sunni tribesman in ra plaidedy watching a shia militia coming in what are you saying? you re saying the government is still not a solution for a unified iraq. that s a problem for baghdad. u.s. officials are saying
Satellite capability the ambassador in iraq i see a document like this and i say to myself these guys are in trouble that the president has to convene an emergency meeting like this in his white house situation room to discuss what s going on with isil and iraq after the fall of ramadi? i tell you, as having been on the inside here s the problem as i see it. we re talking about whether the white house strategy works. people on different sides of the aisle have different perspectives. if you step back and take a 30,000 foot view we have decided we are not going to put major forces back on the ground to fight on the front lines. beyond that step everythings else is on the fringes. want to change strategies provide more weapons, forward deploy spotters for the iraqi military provide weapons to the cureds the problem if you re in the decision making position is simple the egg is broken. there is one group that can put the egg back together. that s the iraqi government. counterinsurgency theory if the
Colonel reese, that these isis forces that took ra plaidedy also wound upp capturing lots of u.s. equipment, some sophisticated and lethal and know how to use it because a lot of isis forces are former baathist iraqi military officers who worked for saddam hussein. how big of a problem is this? wolf it is a problem, but i do not see it like some others we re talking with see it that way. i m spending a lot of time on the ground. it is a setback. yes, the weapons they they re able to grab can be used back against them. here s what s not being told. when that assault on the city on ramadi took out, isis also went after seven other targets around that area. six of those seven targets were defended by the iraqi security forces. they did a real good job of doing that. but we concentrate on the one piece here. the other piece i m very