was highly criticized in a bipartisan fashion. pentagon correspondent, barbara starr joins me now. how does the acting secretary of defense, frame this deployment. >> well, boris, what we now know is that the u.s. behind the scenes, the u.s. military is taking a number of steps as you talked about in syria to try and protect the u.s. forces there. they have positioned a number of u.s. forces nearby, not just for iran, but close to the syrian border in a separate issue from today's deployment. close to the syrian border to be ready to evacuate u.s. troops from syria, if the fighting gets too close to them. it is not that they expect the turks to attack u.s. forces directly but as the turks advance into syria in the coming days, there is a good deal of concern u.s. troops there, about 1,000 could get caught in the cross fire, so you have this emergency evacuation plan now in place as u.s. troops are