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Minimize the u.s. role in the u.n.-brokered peace talks, minimize the possibility of any success there. look, russia wants bashar assad to stay in power, because assad owes his regime to them. he will give the russians the run of the area. there was already an announcement on russian media that they're establishing permanent military bases in syria, which is something they'd always wanted to keep that footprint in the middle east. so they want the u.s. out of the way. the other thing they would like to do is close tompf, because tompf is located in one of these areas that are near a lot of wha...

Conversations with them and disrupt these rat lines, these lines for terrorists all throughout west africa. here's the biggest two points of confusion right now. number one, what was the med evacuation like? initial reports from everyone here at the pentagon, it was two french super puma helicopters. now they're saying wait a second, it may have been private u.s. military contractors from a group called berry aviation. there are a lot of contractors that work in this part of the world. we still don't know how those wounded and dead were extracted from the battlefield. and then crucially, initi...

Something bad happens, they throw that back at us and say, look, we were there constantly. you know, six months ago i was with secretary mattis, we were in jabuti, they have a big task force in somalia, all through africa, in the chad basin they have about 1,000 u.s. troops. a lot of those forces at least in niger are building a drone base. what do you need the drones for? you need for surveillance, you need to follow folks all the way from central africa up to the northern coast where they could potentially go into europe and cause even bigger problems. so the term they use for that is watchi...

Working with that partner. they didn't know how dangerous it was. and because this group was ambushed, outgunned, outmatched, they're now reasassessing a lot of the issues. i'm sure this will be several investigations. right now the initial assessm t assessment, it was isis behind this attack, not al qaeda, isis is the final assessment. >> pentagon pretty confident in this assessment, it sounds like. >> yes, they are. >> for folks that have not been following this story as closely, hans, what exactly are we doing in that part of africa? why is this part of the world so vital? >> in niger that'...

So, they have the intent, numbers and access to weapons. you can buy an ak-47 in europe f and an open society makes these attacks that much more lethal when they happen. >> and if i may add to that. >> of course. >> having served my last tour before retiring, there was a continual watch of the movement of all kinds of people and not just terrorists, but human trafficking, there's a lot of ak-47s, a lot of rpgs in that area. and for a long time, the u.s.-military forces were tracking those so-called rat lines across europe, from syria,