battlefield inside syria is simple. there s the regime, the legitimate government of the people of syria, opposed to him are all of these terrorist groups and so for them, they re not making that distinction between isis territory and rebel-held or opposition-held territory. what this does is complicate the ability of the u.s. to respond. here s what we know. the united states has defended the opposition rebel groups in the past. they have targeted isis rebel fighters moving towards those opposition fighters. the question now is going to be will the coalition, will the united states and the arab allies pursue the same strategy of trying to protect some of those opposition rebels from air strikes? will they try to neutralize the air force and will they try to discourage the russians from going after them? i think those are questions that the secretary of defense and certainly a lot of the arab allies are faced with in the coming days as this situation continues to unfold, brian. ayman
ayman, back to you now. you covering the region, what is the capability of isis at this point at least if they did want to try to find a way to directly attack the united states? reporter: well, i think as colonel jacobs just said, there s definitely a real threat. there are two components, the u.s. homeland and the u.s. interests. the u.s. interest umbrella is much larger. and it could be struck at oil installatio installations, no shortage of targets that can be of interest to al qaeda-linked militants. the other components of this is we ve already seen some european fighters as well as american fighters appear on the battlefield inside syria. there s been already one american citizen who is confirmed involved in a suicide bombing in syria. the concern for u.s. intelligence officials are who is joining the fight, what kind