need to do to stop the rockets. the other factor is israel s extraordinary technical achievement of creating the iron dome anti-rocket shield, with largely american money, which has been extraordinarily effective. and has enabled israeli, even though they had 130 rockets a day fired at their cities, most israelis are taking it easy. they run to the shelters when the sirens go off. and they come out and carry on with their lives. not only the iron dome. israel has a sophisticated network of bomb shelters all over the country, where people know where they are, hide and can hide in them. one thing the israelis say is, look. hamas has spent a fortune building up their war infrastructure. they haven t spent a penny in defense infrastructure for their people, hence the results we see. you make a great point for the new normal in the iron dome. martin fletcher from tel aviv. ahead, we bring you the latest on malaysian airlines
when we finish this pinpick, i think what they re likely to do is escalate, and if they do, we had better have already taken down a lot of their defense infrastructure. meaning, a lot of their surface-to-air missile sites, radar, command control and air-to-air assets. if we don t do that first, and we just go in and hit them, we ll be right back in the situation that we are now, which is, we re reacting to something they ve done. if we just give them a a limited strike, and then step back, we re going to step back and wait for them to do something and we re going to react again. so if we re going if we re never going to take control of the situation, we re always going to be pulling back, wa waiting for them, they is the initiative, we ve never seized it and better take down the defenses fir, because we re sure going to wish we did that. what about the threats that syria is making in terms of attacks against israel? do you believe that that is a
gitmo what do we so they can practice bicycle kicks? we see how ridiculous spending has gotten and we are wondering what is going on with it. this isn t a democratic issue or republican issue this is an american issue. we can t let soldiers slip through the cracks. is there money, is there places where you can make responsible cuts without affecting your day-to-day lives? sure. i think that there are places in our defense infrastructure where we can cut. with our cutting now, it effects the soldier first, last and hardest. our warriors are suffering now. shawn parnell thank you for being here. outlaw platoon. thank you for your service as well. 27 minutes after the hour. coming up nudging newt out of the race? the calls for newt gingrich to
just into the situation room, brand-new poll numbers confirming a new lineup in the fight for the gop presidential nomination. the cnn/orc survey has just been released and shows a two-man contest at this point. the poll shows 34% of republicans asked say santorum is their choice. 32% say romney. with a sampling error, that means it s a statistic cal tie. ron paul and newt gingrich are far behind at 16 and 15%. first big picture, ron, what do you make of santorum s rise? i think this continues the extraordinary, even unprecedented volatility of this republican race. jessica, if you look back to your cnn/orc polls, rick santorum is the sixth different candidate to be ahead in the national polling, the seventh different candidate. he is up 19 points sin january alone in the survey and it underscores probably the most unformed in deep in the contest since 1940. you re always good with the historical data, ron. this one that takes you to my next question. this number jumped
indefinitely detained. if this new draft gets approved, these men would get lawyers. and a chance periodically to challenge their status. but this belief in the wisdom of indefinitely detaining certain people marks a shift for mr. obama. we are not a nation that locks people up without charging them. there are those that have been evaluated by our intelligence community, by our defense infrastructure that under and we understand as the president does that there are some that will require indefinite detention. some 48 of the 174 inmates still housed at gitmo fit this description, shep. shepard: there was a critical vote on capitol hill this morning that really throws a wrench into the president s plan to shut that place down, doesn t it? yes. the house and the senate both approved the defense authorization bill. that now goes to president obama for his signature. among other things, this new law bans the transfer of any detainee at gitmo to the united states for any reason.