bobby, the administration has done a lot of drones. when it comes to finding aqap, it s been a drone war, pure and simple. some intelligence on the ground, some working with the yemen government but it s mostly been a drone war. a question, has it been successful? i look at the statistics. aqap deaths as it s been reported in operatives aqap, 169, 81 in 2011. you ve got to ask yourself if the drone war has been targeting these people and they seem as operational as ever. is this a success or not. the administration s response would be if it hadn t been for these attacks, things would be a lot worse. it s impossible to measure that. it s clear that it s having quite an impact on the yemeni scene both politically and socially. the last time i was in yemen, about this time last year as it happens, it was part of every
places. what is the status and stability of the yemeni government today as it was a year ago when you were there? i would argue it s more stable than it was a year ago. the trouble is, it is a government that has many, many huge problems on its shoulders. it is a very, very poor country with tremendous economic problems, greater even than places like egypt. they are fighting two different civil wars, not including the one with al qaeda, one in the north against shiite militants in the south, against separatists. this is a poor country with a lot of problems. the u.s. would like the yemeni government to pay attention to the one problem that affects the rest of us. that may not be the highest priority for the yemeni government, even with their best intendings. they have got really too much on their plate for such a small and impoverished country. richard engel, bob windrem, bobby ghosh, know a lot about this region. thank you all.
do it. thank you, david corn and bobby ghosh. coming up, she hasn t been nominated. she hasn t won a primary. she hasn t announced. the republican right is trying to take hillary down. also for the first time ever, an active player in a major american sport has come out as gay. it s jason collins. whether his announcement is met with a shrug or shunning will tell us how far sports and the public have come in accepting gays. also you probably heard president obama is getting great reviews for his performance at saturday s white house correspondents dinner. some people don t think i spent enough time with congress. why don t you get a drink with mitch mcconnell, they ask. really? why don t you get a drink with mitch mcconnell? i think that was my favorite. behind the jokes, that one, there s a lot of truth behind what he was saying. as always, the punch line carries the message. let me finish tonight with the hawks. two-step dance to sell american
courts, staffed by lawyers and clerics and by fighting brigades led by extremists. whose formation hoped would sideline radical groups are stocked with commanders who want to infuse islamic law into a future syrian government. nowhere in syria is there a secular fighting force to speak of. bobby, i want your thoughts. is there some group over there we could be helping that would eventually perhaps help dominate the new government, the po post-assad government, or end up like lebanon, with assad creating a logger, if you will, where they create a part of the country loyal to them they can hold on to indefinitely and therefore we d be arming one of the various groups fighting with each other? that is now the greatest risk. you have a lebanon situation where you have different ethnic and religious groups that are constantly fighting with each other for power and any kind of political solution is an unstable one.
options for its u.s. intelligence report released last week concluding damascus likely used chemical weapons on the battlefield. bobby, couple questions for you. what do you know about the anti-aircraft capability over there? can we use the israeli approach of shooting diagonally through missiles you go ten miles away from your target and target the missiles to your target? the other larger question is, is this war going to go on and on and on if we stay out of it? it is going to g on and on and on. i don t think sending manned aircraft into we know that look, i don t know the capabilities. i m not a military expert. i don t know the capabilities of people who are actually on the controls of those systems. but there s no question that those systems are very, very advanced and spent a lot of money on it. every expert i know of respects the hardware if not the people running the hardware. sending manned missions over to syria is completely out of the question. and, you know, we re