damascus, aleppo, also hitting the isis strongholds of rocka, but the russians have been accused of going after anti-regime fighters, nonisis fighters. at times isis has been able to take advantage of the strikes against anti-regime fighters and gain ground. the united states saying that it has they have helped but the russians have a clear objective. their man on the ground is the regime leader of bashar al assad. they want to see that he remains in power. so some of their strikes have been against anti-regime fighters that have posed a real threat to the regime and while they say their main target is going after isis, the united states has disputed that. saying that really their goal is to prop up that regime. it is a complicated situation there. cnn s ian lee covering it for us in cairo, egypt. ian, thank you so much for your
from the united states and around the world. i m wolf blitzer, you are in the situation room. tonight, dangerous new losses to isis. a new congressional add min station says the u.s. is failing to stop isis from recruiting u.s. fighters. 250 u.s. citizens have traveled to syria and iraq the past several years to join ul with islamist terrorists. dozens are back in the united states and may be plotting to launch acts of terror. afghan troops battling to retake a key city that s fallen to taliban fighters. the warfare and turmoil may be helping isis gain ground in afghanistan where many americans spilled blood to come pat
still under the control of isis where the group is very well entrenched there and they have not been fought in these strongholds as of yet. and we ve also seen while the group has lost some territory in some areas like parts of raqqa province we saw these mostly kurdish fighters backed by air strikes able to push back isis in some of these areas. we ve also seen the group gain ground for example, in major cities, the provencial capital fell to isis and there s been no real significant movements on the ground to try and push back the group. so it s going to take much more than military action as we have seen to defeat isis. and actually to fight the ideology in this case. experts would tell you that you need to fight the narrative here could counter isis.
the same thing from democratic circles, whencome home from memorial weekend they are going to get an earful. bob: i have and they will and the are upset about it. there has been some conversations. nancy pelosi came out there has been conversations, steny hoyer, let s get this done. democrats are running scared and rightfully so. tough position in senate, election is next year and house not going gain ground. dana: so the irs, because of the sequester they had to have furloughs. irs offices were closed today. actually think i it was probably a good thing for america in the long run but not the employees that tonight get paid. she does something wrong. she continues to get paid and that doesn t sit well with a lot of people. eric: the reason for it.
inroad, if it ticks upward, it s an inroad for the president to lose ground. absolutely. or to gain ground. i ve been saying for almost a year, for all the story lines it will come down to how you feel going into the voting booth. do you feel richer? do you feel poorer? do you feel confident about the state of the economy? so, if we get a good unemployment number, a good jobs report on the friday before that tuesday, i think that s a huge boon to the president, and conversely if that number s bad, i think romney probably has this sewn up. i really think that is the number that matters. if you were an obama strategist, what would you say about the jobs report that comes out on friday? i wish we agreed with that, but if we look over the course of the campaign, we ve had good jobs numbers and bad jobs numbers and it hasn t really seemed to move the needle. i think most people have a sense of how they feel about the economy and the unless of right track, wrong track have been moving