troops from iraq by the end of 2011. god bless the united states of america. semper fi. >> president obama not only wanted to get america out of iraq -- >> thank you, sir. >> -- he wanted america to learn from the war and rethink its role as a global superpower.

massachusetts served multiple tours of duty in iraq as a u.s. marine. thanks so much for joining us. >> great to be back. >> you served directly under general petraeus when he was commanding various commands in iraq as well. we'll get to that in a moment, but bottom line. how would you assess these eight years president obama's handling of the iraq situation? >> well, look, it's been rather mixed. president obama prevented an attack on the homeland. dealt with an incredibly difficult, complex worldwide situation. especially in the middle east. he did pull the troops out of the middle east, out of iraq, but the problem it -- the problem is he pulled out the troops and had no political plan to ensure the peace. a few year the later had to send the troops back and we're still there now. >> as the president-elect says to the creation or enhancement of isis, did that lead to -- >> it didn't lead to the creation of isis but the problem, left a vacuum in which a terrorist group, turned out to be ace isis, was able to grow. point, next time we pull out of iraq

troops from iraq by the end of 2011. god bless the united states of america. semper fi. >> president obama not only wanted to get america out of iraq -- >> thank you, sir.

the first is to destroy isil's parent tumor in iraq and syria. the sooner we crush but the fact and the idea of an islamic state based on isil's body are barrick ideology, the safer we will be. that is necessary but not sufficient so the second objective is to come back everywhere they emerge everywhere around the world. in afghanistan, libya and elsewhere. in the third objective is to work with the intelligence homeland security and horseman partners to help protect our homeland some people from attack. that's ultimately our most important mission. this strategic approach of our campaign is to leverage all the tools the dod's disposal to enable capable and motivated local forces to apply pressure to deal them out defeat. we recommended this strategic approach because the only way to ensure once defeated isil stays defeated is to enable local forces to seize and hold territory rather than substitute for them. we have been squeezing isil from all sides and across domains through series of deliberate place to continue to build momentum. what are sp

most of iraq. even the northern part of saudi arabia. zarqawi, he named it. so the modern day islamic state that we still will be dealing with years from now, he created. >> the terrorist group known as i si l must be degraded and ultimately destroyed. >> i think zarqawi absolutely laid the foundation for the islamic stale and he convinced people it was achievable. >> it's an ideology, it's a belief system until we change the behavior of this radical form of islam, we're never going to defeat this crowd. ♪ >>> as a former fbi agent and chairman of the house intelligence committee, i had oversight of all 16 of our nation's intelligence agencies. my name is mike rogers. i had access to classified information gathered by our operatives. people who risked everything for the united states and our families. you don't know their faces or their names. you don't know the real stories from the people who lived the fear and the pressure, until now. >>> the taliban regime was ruthless. there wasn't anything that they

bang. -- currently in iraq. had the bush administration limited its efforts to winning the war in afghanistan, and defeating al qaeda and focusing entire effort for its time in office, we would now be discussing the successful application of american power in the post-cold war world. sadly, we are not. bush administration could've husbanded at american power in other ways as well primarily by not creating more enemies than it had to. listing iraq, iran, and north korea in the famous of axis of evil speech, the administration basically put those regimes on notice that their time was numbered and they were in our crosshairs. the problem was the administration only destroyed one of those regimes and the other two, iran and north north korea, immediately made a beeline for nuclear. karen was getting there until iranuclear agreement -- was getting there until the nuclear agreement. in the case of iran, they also advised shiite groups that could attack forces in iraq directly turning iraq partially and this iraqrt of

he supported the iraq war. i course i supported the iraq war. i've written on the subject. some people would probably say endlessly about what the lessons are to be learned from it. i put it on the record. i've never headen my views from anybody and i absolutely don't back way from any of them. >> isn't it interesting that ones who back the iraq war also back going into libya and also back going into syria. they always have the next war they want us to fight. they push the button, another war comes out. they always want a new war and belton is classic. your thoughts? have to stop this guy if he gets in the door. >> this is why learning the historical lessons are important. this isn't the iraq war from 15 years ago or 14 years ago. we are worried about whether or not he learned the lesson from that war. but he didn't. he add vericated for regime change in libya. turned into chaos and isis became strengthened and i think we are more at risk now for terrorist attack for libya than before the war. he also advocated for regime change in syria. as bad a guy as assad is, i don't k

>> yeah, in iraq. father tom, please >> as far as being a family tradition, when i told my 90 year old grandmother was becoming a priest, she told me in greek that's a strange thing, i go why, she said nobody from our village ever became a priest. i grew up in the greek orthodox church. my parents both came from greece and i was nurtured in that faith and went away to college and studied theology at a presbyterian college in indiana and one of my professors said you should study what your faith is about. i ended up at our seminary and here i am in oakland, california serving. greek orthodox tracing its roots back to the apostles. i heard about st. paul preaching in corinth. we have the name of every bishop that was in corinth starting with the one he established up to the current bishop so we have have that long, long tradition and we take pride in that connection because it gives us deep roots. the church was really founded and nurtured in that area of the eastern mediterranean. what we called asia mi

syria, iraq, afghanistan. to build these communities up in hopes it is less likely they will be overrun by terrorist organizations and we will see their return here to the united states. i'm wondering about what your thoughts are. guest: an interesting point. what we learned about this itnomenon of radicalization, tends to happen in places there are not stable and do not have a strong government and do not have the law that will keep them under cap's locally. -- tabs locally. look at afghanistan in the 1990's, the civil war. them, including some of them emerge and al qaeda emerged. it looks like what is going on in syria today. if you have a muslim majority company poor that is subtly destabilized, -- subtly destabilized, these groups will vacuum of power. they seem to be in the most organized groups and that civil war or conflict ill link society area and saw it in somalia and nigeria will bow boko haram and in maili. thatow the conditions create fertile grounds. unfortunately, after the arab spring revolutio

isis used to be al qaeda in iraq. yes. but we're talking about going in and using the same one for yemen, for syria. et cetera. so it's interesting the way he uses we and then he puts all the blame on congress. yes, congress has failed to do its job but it has been the president's decision to use that. >> all right, guys, thank you very much. i apologize for the truncated time here given all the latest developments. i want to bridge nigel farage in. the brexit leader who by the way is on the short list for "time" magazine's person of the year. only about a dozen people on that list. but nigel, always good to have you. i wanted to get your take on that comment about refugees. we have to help refugees who've escaped the horrors of war. what did you think of that? >> well, it's funny, isn't it? the one thing we didn't get from obama is any contrition, any apology, any acknowledgment of the fact that actually the unnecessary interference in places like libya is directly what has led to the growth of isis and has led to this fl

>> the joint task forces that were in iraq and afghanistan included coalition partners. so matter of fact mike flynn was investigated from the inspector general's office because he was sharing intelligence with british commanders who had american units in there, which is ridiculous. had american units underneath them in regions of afghanistan. so to that extent i covered that cooperation. in terms of going deep into our intelligence sharing between our intelligence appearings and european or other ones, there's the five is, new zealand, australia, britain, ourselves, there's very close cooperation but falls off quickly after that. we saw that with the whole -- how the germans were surprised by what went on with snowden. i'm sorry. your served question -- oh, trump. mike flynn is trump's national security alter ego and i interviewed him many times and know him pretty well. he views this as a connected fight. his words to in me was we can talk about decimating the core of al qaeda. to me the core is ideology. think he is on to something. people talk about the competition b

secretary carter was in iraq. he visited the west base. and our centcom commander was in the same area just yesterday and gave a very detail to the president this morning. and all of us witnessed this unprecedented cooperation between the iraqi security forces and kurdish peshmerga which has been essential to this campaign. our coalition since the beginning of this campaign about two years ago, we trained about 65,000 iraqi personnel who are now fighting professionally and fighting heroically. they're trapped in mosul, unable to resupply or replenish their dwindling ranks. throughout this campaign we've conducted over 500 air strikes, destroyed about 100 car bombs, 100 tunnels, 300 bunkers. this is ongoing every single day. we're often asked how long is this going to take, and the answer is, in mosul, it will take as long as it takes. it's useful to remember other campaigns against isil, cobauny, raqqah, significant campaigns. each of them took about six months. some have gone faster. fallujah went faster than anticipated. and the key thin

i think the iraq war and then obviously connecting it to what is going on today. i think michael ward even is working on another volume, he's been very good. that is the contemporary -- that will stand the test of time, his cobra and end game books and this next volume. what other conflicts need to be written more about? gosh, you know, i think there is always you know, as my adviser at university of north carolina said, he said, don't think that there is too much written on a particular topic, right. so because there is always another good book or different approach you can take or access to new materials. i mean, heck, look at what rick atkinson did in world war ii, so what he did is he took historian's approach of doing multiresearch but also uncovering through his journalism background, of papers in attics and got all kinds of new materials. look at rick murray's book on the civil war. that book is brilliant in terms of not new materials but a different an lat tick framework to understand the course of the war and the war's outcome. so i would say, just do wha

he remains a champion of the iraq war. donald trump campaigned saying that was one of the biggest mistakes this country ever made. how much will this secretary of state pick tell us about donald trump and the direction he'll go when it comes to national security as president? >> i wouldn't read too much into who the person is that he picks, because this is going to be donald trump's vision, donald trump's strategy. others will be implementing that strategy, and taking their marching orders from president-elect trump, so i wouldn't read as much into who the person is, as you might think, because donald trump's going to be calling the shots. certainly not micro managing, but as there have been some other cabinet selections that people wondered about, you know, it is donald trump that's going to call the shots. the secretary of state is going to take the lead from that. so i'm not really too concerned about someone that may have said something a year ago, five years ago, or had a position. the position today is the position o

in mosul, iraq. wherever you're watching from around the world, thanks very much for joining us. >> announcer: this is cnn breaking news. >>> we're following two major stories this hour. breaking news out of syria first. artillery shells are raining down on aleppo as regime forces are on the brink of taking the city. buses are waiting outside the evacuation point to carry civilians, men, women and children, to safety, but the cease-fire to allow them to be eva eevacuated collapsed. an estimated 50,000 people are believed trapped in one of the last rebel-held areas, according to the united nations, regime forces are executing men, women and children. the white house weighing in as well on the worst in a situation, the humanitarian crisis. listen to what the white house press secretary said just moments ago. >> the idea that you would target a playground and bomb kids hoping that you would then convince people to give up, because you would kill their kids? what kind of a sick mind comes up with a strat

the united states has been occupied iraq and afghanistan almost 15 to 16 years. it now, i was born in india and we know how we thought the british in that occupied the country for almost 100 years. we had people doing the same thing what al qaeda is doing and isis is doing. and we have people trying to work with the enemy hand in hand to paralyze them and working with them trying to stop them wherever we can so that you could throw them out. so those afghans and those iraqis consider american presidents for all this. as a foreign intervention. foreigners must leave. let us fight among ourselves whether al qaeda has other citizen or that prime minister. who is the winner? so given that if the russians are occupying this country for 15 years and dividing each other, fighting each other, we could do the same thing. so what's wrong with that? we've got to figure out a way to get out. the ideology of the change. >> i take your point. and sponsor a foreign occupying force in a muslim land. even a nationalist outbreak against us for that. point well taken. however, i wo

a classic case would be in iraq in 2003. after we took down saddam hussein, we looked for ideas for rebuilding the country. we focused heavily on nazi germany. argue and in hindsight we probably should have looked at some other cases like japan in 1945 or the reconstruction in the american south after the civil war. we could have learned a lot from there. history will not necessarily fall into your lap. it requires a lot of serious thought. i would add that we cannot ignore, at times we had tried to do foreign policy without any ledory at all -- that has to disaster because it is based on unfounded assumptions. the question is how do we use history effectively? history gives us familiarization. context. a counter confronting narcotics situation for example, it would be useful if you spent time studying five or 10 historical cases. when you go to the next one, you at least know what questions you will ask and you will have an idea of what solutions might actually work. doing events, a variety of events to try to bring histori

>> well, in iraq specifically, we still expect the war in iraq to mostly be wrapped up by the time inauguration. perhaps, the fight in mosul will drag into february or march, but for the most part, we expect the iraq battle to be finished against isil. now, of course, there's politics to follow in iraq and still a military fight in syria. but in iraq, we should have most of the military piece wrapped up. >> douglas, senior national security fellow at new america foundation. nice to have you with us. thanks so much. >> thank you, kate. >>> up next, an exclusive interview with the creator of one of the most widely shared fake news stories this election season. it was a made-up story about a murder/suicide involving an fbi agent and the clinton e-mail leaks. stay with us for that. world ugly and messy. they are the natural born enemy of the way things are. yes, ideas are scary, and messy and fragile. but under the proper care, they become something beautiful. everyone talks about what happens when you turn sixty-five. but, really, it's what you do before that counts. see, medicare doesn't cover ev

in iraq, we've got the iraqi army. the iraqi army. a well developed special operations capability in the form of iraqi counter-terrorism services. you've got federal police and a variety of other things there that look similar to what we have. in syria we're working with much more of an indigenous force that picks up partners on the go and requires a different way of working with them. so these are not equal forces here. they each have their advantages and disadvantages each way. what we're trying to do is make sure our coalition capability is matched to that of our partners and continuing to focus on this idea of momentum and pressure, momentum and pressure in the islamic state in as many different as we can. >> one specific follow-up before we ask broader strategic question about those countries. it sounds like, if i heard you right, you would not want us to think in terms of a predicted date by which the mosul operation will have been concluded. you might want to encourage us to stay open minded it might be all winter, 71 days time

at that time isis was marauding across northern iraq. it seemed to me as look ends that was odd that the cost of the vietnam war and the outcome of the vietnam war 50 years after the gulf of tonkin incident, which as you know, president johnson went on national television that day in 1964 to ask congress to approve his ability to accelerate our intervention in vietnam. it was a claim that north vietnamese patrol boats attacked the uss maddox. based on that, we escalated the war in vietnam. years later, secretary mcnamara and many others admitted the attack never happened. similarly in going to iraq, there were supposed to be weapons of mass destruction. there was supposed to be an imminent threat from iraq. we know what the outcome was there. i was curious again not whether we should or should not have a strong military or grow to war, -- or go to war but what are the , actual outcomes. living in this country, you get a certain narrative and a certain spectrum of ideas. i thought it would be interesting to strap on the backpack and go ar

not a lot of airbnb in iraq. andn there read my profile saw i was having a hard time finding a place to stay. he said here is what is going to happen, i am going to pick you up at the airport and take you around to guest houses in negotiate with you. i'm going to get you would ever interview you want and i speak arabic and kurdish and i will be your translator. he was a doctor, he wanted no money. he simply wanted the kurdish story told. washought what i was doing worthy of support so he took me to some extraordinary places. thet of all, the citadel is oldest continually habited place on the planet. so he took me to the citadel and the bazaar there. he took me to collage l, which was the site of the of the chemical bombardment of the kurds by saddam hussein. that was a powerful and sad experience. beautiful mountain area, long drive. and one day we were sitting in the marriott hotel interviewing peshmerga fighter. said, the interview, he you know, my brother is a commander on the front lines between here and mosu

it is central to our plans in places like afghanistan and iraq. let's make sure that this wisdom is reflected in our budgets as well. and finally, in this fight, we have to a the civil liberties that define us. the civil uphold liberties that define us. terrorists want us to turn on one another. and while defeating them requires us to draw upon the enormous capabilities of all our governments, we have to make sure that changes in how we address terrorists are not abused. this is why, for example, we have made extensive reforms on how we gather intelligence around the world, increasing oversight, placing the new restrictions on the government's ability to maintain a new surge of communications so that people trust us, and that way they cooperate and work with us. we don't use our power to indiscriminately read emails or listen to phone calls targeted at folks who might be trying to do us harm. we use it to save lives. by doing so, by maintaining the civil liberties, we sustain the confidence of the american people and we get the cooperation of our

he supported the iraq war. of course i supported the iraq war. i've written on the subject, some people would probably say endlessly, about what the lessons are to be learned from it. i've put it out on the record. i've never hidden my views from anybody and i absolutely don't back away from them. >> senator paul, isn't it interesting the ones who backed the iraq war, also backed going into libya and syria. and they always have a little pez dispenser. they always have the next war they want us to fight. there's always one -- they push the button and another war comes out. they always want a new war and bolton's classic. your thoughts. will you be able to stop this guy if gets in the door? >> this is why learning the historical lessons are important. this isn't the iraq war from 15 years ago or 14 years ago that we're concerned about. we're concerned about whether or not he learned the lesson from that war. he didn't. he advocated for regime change in libya. turned into chaos and isis actually became strengthened. and i think we're more at risk no

i think the iraq war and then obviously connecting it to what is going on today. i think michael ward even is working on another volume, he's been very good. that is the contemporary -- that will stand the test of time, his cobra and end game books and this next volume. what other conflicts need to be written more about? gosh, you know, i think there is always you know, as my adviser at university of north carolina said, he said, don't think that there is too much written on a particular topic, right. so because there is always another good book or different approach you can take or access to new materials. i mean, heck, look at what rick atkinson did in world war ii, so what he did is he took historian's approach of doing multiresearch but also uncovering through his journalism background, of papers in attics and got all kinds of new materials. look at rick murray's book on the civil war. that book is brilliant in terms of not new materials but a different an lat tick framework to understand the course of the war and the war's outcome. so i would say, just do wha

leaving iraq with just a handful of troops. his generals had wanted thousands more. >> i don't know whether 10,000 troops would have given us the leverage. i suspect it might not have. but i would have liked to have tested the proposition. >> but there was a problem. his predecessor, president bush, had signed an agreement with the iraqis promising that all troops would be gone by the end of 2011. >> the only way in which we're going to keep troops there was at the invitation of that government, and we couldn't get that done. >> we spent a considerable amount of time talking about syria. >> that government was run by this man, prime minister nuri al maliki. he didn't get a new agreement approved by his parliament. worried he would lose his political support, perhaps most crucial, maliki, a hard-line shiite, had mounted a crackdown against sunni muslims throughout the country. as a result, many of them had turned in desperation and defiance to isis which is hard-line sunni and deeply anti-shiite. meanwhile, another crucial decis

in iraq, the main focus is on mozilla. l.e iraqi security -- on mosu iraqi security forces are working very closely and executing with the support of the coalition. it is not a perfect plan. it is their plan. we have figured out ways to bring our coalition give abilities to move them forward. they are on track with where they need to be. mostll be a long fight in -- mosul. at the town in syria, it took us 71 days with indigenous forces to take that area. is a huge, urban area. the islamic state has had years to build up their defenses there. it will not be a cakewalk, but when you are seeing is a pretty good plan treated by iraqi security forces. adjustments to it. we are making adjustments as well with our security resources. that is what we want to try and keep the focus on right now. generally, we are on track. a hard fight will follow in mosul. begun, as youave have seen, isolation in the town -- in the town there. our partners in syria may not be as sick when i, but the coalition is try to do some of that. it is impor

at this hour american and coalition forces are in the early stages of military operations to disarm iraq, to free its people and to defend the world from grave danger. >> every politician wants us to go crush an army. they give us their flag, and we can all go home and everybody is wonderful, like a world war ii victory. that shit ain't going to happen. ♪ >> in the battle of iraq the united states and our allies have prevailed. [ cheers and applause ] >> the united states and allies invaded iraq in the spring of 2003 and there was a set of assumptions that proved to be wrong. one, that we would be accepted as liberators, and two, that there would be the ability to turn the keys over to a follow-on government after saddam hussein was thrown out of office. >> we got him. [ cheers and applause ] >> saddam being captured, all of a sudden you had all this like sense of relief. okay. maybe you've got these top ten guys the army's going to capitulate, they're going to give you their banners and we can all go home. forget it. >> that strategy was a failed strategy, and we didn't know it. >> af

classic case would be iraq in 2003. after we took down shugh sane, e focused heavily on nazi germ knee. and i would argue in hindsight we actually probably should have looked at other cases, why not look at japan in 1945 or say the reconstruction, the american south after the civil war. we actually could have learned a lot from there. history does not -- is not going to necessarily fall into your lap. it requires a lot of serious thought. i would add we can't just ignore it even though it's difficult because the times we've tried to do foreign policy without any history at all has led to disaster because it's based on unfounded assumptions. we do need to be aware that history is going to be used and so the question is how do we use it effectively. history i think is also important because it gives us familiarization, it gives us context so that if you are confronting a counternarcotic situation, it would be useful if you had spent time studying five or ten actual historical cases, when you go to the next one, you will a

there also need to be continue political support for an inclusive iraq. in her region with secretariats and the threat of isil has brought people together for now against the common and. that's really true in iraq thanks to the unity and leadership of prime minister a body cooperation between the iraqi security forces in the kurdish fishmarket in the battle to retake most has racial level that would've been unthinkable a year ago. we are taken steps to help promote and maintain the unity. we know that's the only way to keep isil defeated. as i said earlier, success in in iraq and syria is necessary but not efficient to deal a lasting defeat and that's why were focused on two other critical objectives of our campaign. combating them around the world and helping protect her homeland. when it comes to combating the metastases, we've taken strong actions in support of capable and local forces in libya and afghanistan and elsewhere. libya u.s. military has provided air support and forced to isolate and clap their control. as a result isil is being ejected. in

the iraq war is a good example of that. iere was a certain vision -- mean, as you know, i was opposed to the iraq war before it. i covered it. there was a vision about reordering the middle east that was thought to be an answer to the political roots of terrorism, jihad is him. if we can reorder the middle east, produce representative government, it destroys old thisracies, we can end broader threat. for everything you can say about it was aas against it, catastrophe for american policy, among other things -- but for everything you can say about it, it did attempt to cool front the political -- confront the political roots of jihadist them. jihadism. iet -- tried to get my students to understand it. i wanted them to understand why certain american policies have come to be. we had a discussion about the carter doctrine, which is really the beginning of american military policy in the middle east in 1980. they had not heard of the central command and where this all came from, so i generally find when you get into these issues

so this was a complication in iraq. the military viewed this kind of outside of the chain of command and they were not quite sure how to deal with us. we still thought of ourselves within the chain of command coming in we knew where we fit. whether it was a sergeant or specialist even though we were out of uniform, all of us still found ourselves acting the way we had before. listening to the staff sergeants so it was a bizarre kind of interaction between the two and i'm not sure anyone to this day knowtheyknows how it was suppos. >> host: so you are a contractor specialist and arrive in baghdad and make your way to the prison. tell us about abu and the signs that things were not the way they should be. >> guest: i'm asked this question a lot about the first impressions, and i try to think about -- i remember the image of pulling into the prison in who i was with and what i was wearing. but it was such a large complex more than i thought and a lot of us had the impression of an vast number of prisoners most of whom were

troops from iraq by the end of 2011. god bless the united states of america. semper fi. >> president obama not only wanted to get america out of iraq -- >> thank you, sir. >> -- he wanted america to learn from the war and rethink its role as a global superpower. >> thank you, guys. we are the most powerful country in the world, but even a country this powerful has some limits and some constraints and we have to be judicious in the ways that we use that power. this isn't an abstract proposition. we send 23-year-olds and they lose limbs and some don't come back. >> told you -- >> obama also wanted to apply that logic in afghanistan. >> hey, i'm about to find this -- i'm going to kill him. >> fire. >> fire. >> his generals wanted a large new surge of troops. but he insisted on something smaller. >> cover. cover. >> he took on this idea tt the commander in chief is not the commander in chief. that somehow the commander on the ground should be the person who gets everything he needs. as determined by him. >> do it. do it. do it. >> and he demanded a deadline for wh

i hear you saying by the president's decision to leave iraq, pull out of iraq, because no, you know, agreement could be reached for a unity for u.s. troops with the then iraqi government, by pulling out, not having a plan in place, a vacuum was created and isis exploited and became what it is today? >> here's the problem. trump talked about how we have to have more military action against terrorists. actually, the obama administration has been effective militarily against isis. they only occupy one city now in iraq. they've been dramatically reduced in their holds in syria. the problem is we need to have a political plan to ensure peace. trump gets it exactly wrong. the mistake obama made not so much pupping out the troops. after the surge we'd gotten military progress. the mistake, not have be diplomatic support to support of iraqi government. we built the largest u.s. embassy in the world in iraq, we knew they needed continued support and left it half full. >> would you say only one city, happens to be mosul. second largest city in iraq. a city that used t have more than a million

iraq is broken. we can ameliorate. when isis took over mosul in 2014, he reacted at that point, but generally he has kept a hands-off policy on the middle east and it shows. and the fact we were not invited to this meeting in moscow between iran, turkey and russia, it tells us we are fairly irrelevant in syria. turkey for one is completely fed up because of the fall of aleppo and all the refugees have been kriv en driven into turkey and the fact we've been arming the kurds. they consider that an existential problem. so losing turkey in this whole thing has not been helpful. >> karen, we heard just a couple weeks ago president obama in his press conference, his final press conference of the year lay out in a pretty detailed way about why it is the u.s. did not go full force boots on the ground in syria. that that was not something he thought was worth it. what do you make of that? what do you make of his philosophy here? he seemed quite pained by that scenario. >> yeah, i think one thing can be said that it's possible t

so this fight but as the national priority involving the combat operations in iraq will likely continue for the long foreseeable future even after the complete liberation which i'm confident will occur. there is 100 days of operations, as i began by honoring scottmern dayton then a total 28 servicere members lost their lives supporting the operation inal harwich resolve. there's more than 300 special forces now fighting a very complex battle where turkish, see her young, russian, iranian, lebanese, hezbollah and kurdish forces are operating as recent developments in the growing ca humanitarian. they can see congress is behind the mission. they are risking and losing their lives far from home. something i've raised on the agreement to avoid this in one plactheone place about to be den the hallsal of congress. war the president maintains he can conduct without the new authorization in congress that was passed on september 14, eary 2001. when they are sworn in in january, i think 80%. it's never had a meaningful debate or this war against isis. i've been critical of this president. i'm a f

>> no, i think robin is right about what's happening in the home of the caliphate in sishia and iraq and that part of the world. but isis operates in some 30, 40 countries in one way or another. and one has to deal with them on lots of home turfs .not just on one big home turf. i think it is important to fracture iran's support for any of its proxies in the middle east. i think iran is our main problem in that part of the world. and i think that it's going to be for some time because it's a theecratic toe talnarian set of revolutionaries and i'd say imperialists. they want to build an empire. >> they've been the ones fighting isis allied with assad and against isis. the president-elect seems to like that just fine. >> these are tactical decisions. we had a tikhonoval decision in '41 whether to sign on with stalin against hitler and we did. it was good we did. sometimes you have to ally temporarily with a bad guy in order to defeat another bad guy. it's happened throughout american arn world history.

manus: iraq and iran, what do you want to see with iraq? khalaf: the current administration gifted iraq to iran. iranian people -- we want iran and iraq to come back to the arabs. manus: i don't know if that is 100% representation. some people say obama changed policy, no more bits on the ground, he brought troops home. let's talk more about you, your business, and markets. you move a lot of money into cash for this election. did you take any preparation for the risks the market was assuming on a trump victory? are you surprised by how the markets have reacted? myself, i am thinking, positively thinking, i have three months to think and make this steady or look into a new project. i will see what he promises. then i can salute him. manus: if he does what he promises, you salute him. let's talk about the dollar. theing behind me, we have city behind him. but you see the old hotels in the region, one is a w just beside the hotel. the cranes at work are pretty much going to this man. let's talk about the dollar and the impact on the region. ha

in iraq. and then you have a rotational -- to korea. one to europe now. because of russian aggression. so one is capacity in the army. the second is -- the second thing is that in previous period of draw downs that the army -- the army had recently been modernized. well, we did a lot of really important things to strengthen our forces for iraq and afghanistan. but those were really niche capabilities for those particular fights that are not not the modernization priorities need to deter conflict and respond to crises in the future. especially against capable nation states. so that -- there's that bow wave of deferred modernization and compounded by the significant reduction in the modernization budget. so what do you do? well, hey, in a democracy you get the army that the american people are willing to pay for. it's our job to the best we can we what we've got, so you have the means -- the money you have to determine what you do instead of having the objectives to drive it. so the tendency has been okay as the budget gets cut cut cut, you spread less and

and in -- most in iraq and rocca in syria. from bringing the great weight of our entire range of capabilities to bear in the enabling of capable a motivated -- and motivated local forces. the seizure of these two cities is necessary to ensure the destruction of isil's parent tumor in iraq and syria. the primary objective of the military campaign, and put isil and irreversible path to defeat. reaching this is the result of deliberate actions taken last year. -- a sense last year. going back to last summer i consolidated the work for iraq and syria under a single unified command. streamlining our command-and-control for the fight against isil. last october, president obama approved the first in a series of recommendations that i and joe dunford made to accelerate the campaign against isil introducing every tool of our , military to the fight from airpower to special operation forces, to trained advice and assist capabilities to our intelligence and cyber tools. i should tell you that since then, president obama has approved ever

three tours of duty in iraq. he was nearly killed by improvised explosive device in iraq. we've got an exclusive interview with sergeant anthony cala why trump might be onto something. >>> the dow is set to hit 20,000. the dow industrials straddling the flat line, we are less than an hour from the closing bell. live from the floor of the new york stock exchange. happy to be back with you guys. let's start the "countdown." breaking news that is just hitting the tape over the past 28 minutes. president obama said enough is enough much his administration ejected nearly three dozen russian diplomats, some in the intelligence world but they are all based in the united states. in response, obama says, to what the administration calls russian hacking and influencing the american election process. we have sanctions that are related to thithat wne to tell you about in just a moment. i can tell you that the breaking news is causing chatter and movement on the floor of the new york stock exchange. the dow was making a run for the flat line. three points above. we can show you intra-d

we've made huge progress in iraq and syria. but there are still a lot of places where terrorists can operate and a lot of leader whose think about los angeles and new york and washington. don't put your jammies on yet. this number is a wild ass guess. >> paul whew do you think? >> you need to put the claim of 50,000 isis fighters killed into some context. the current estimate for isis fighting strength in syria iraq is 15,000 fighters. that's just 5,000 fewer than the estimate the cia gave t low range estimate in 2014 when this air campaign started. so what that tells you is that isis have been able to replenish their ranks at tens of thousands of new fighters over the last several years. this is a group that's shown significant resilience. but that resilience is indeed now fraying to some degree. they are finding it more difficult to replenish their ranks. they control less territory and that makes it more difficult for them to muster new fighters. also there's been a sharp reduction in number of foreign fighters over the bord

in the iraq and saudi arabia in suppliers to india in october. we have our oil and gas reporter joining us live from mumbai. why has iran become so important for india? iran has become a very important supplier for india in recent times. iran was the second-largest importer -- exporter to india before the sanctions were imposed. they lost market share when the sanctions were imposed. this year when sanctions are lifted, iran will be pushing oil aggressively. on the other hand, india's oil demand is growing at a significant paste. india wants to secure and abroad and its oil sources. building started petroleum results across the country. oil month it bought iranian , which lifted the iran shipment ago, percent from month reading saudi arabia and iraq. host: how will opec's decision affect iran's position? opec's cruiser alignment is of huge significance for. it shows that they ran is emerging -- that iran is emerging as a key middle east player. edge over the its other saudi arabia and and iraqi players. the other thing is that iran is very approx

the iraq war is a good example of that. that there was a certain vision. as you know, i was opposed to the iraq war before it. and then i covered it. but there was a certain vision about reordering the middle east that was thought to be an answer to the political roots of terrorism. of jihaddist him. that is it we can reorder the middle east and produce representative governments, destroy these old you a talk cents, we -- these old autocracies. so for everything we say about it, i was against it and it was a catastrophe, for what you can say, it did attempt to confront the political roots of jihaddist him. -- jihadism. i try to get my students to understand this. if they come in hating american mill tarism or whatever, i like them to go out never using a term like that in understanding why certain american policies have come to be. we had a discussion the other day about the carter doctrine which is really the beginning of american military policy in the middle east which was instituted in 19830. and you know they hadn't heard of this and hadn't heard of a