secretary mattis and secretary tillerson talking with china tomorrow, i believe. what kind of pressure do you expect them to exert? well, it s clear the trump administration has a china focus strategy on north korea right now. that is a meeting taking place at the state department with secretary mattis and secretary tillerson, their counterparts and this is an emphasis on the diplomacy side. decided to host that meeting at the pentagon, the optics would have been different. it would have sent a different message. an indication they still very much want to focus on the diplomatic effort because as one of your guests was saying earlier. militarily, there aren t good options on north korea. no one you talked at the pentagon has a set of ready options that are optimal. all of them require and intear significant civilian loss of life. a great deal concern about the 4,000 pieces of artillery that the north koreans have there right along the 38th parallel and cause civilian casualty and tha
rules of engagement, they can do that. we have to figure out what strategies to defeat isis will best set us up for the day after, that is his job. jenna: interesting. you work with general mcmaster in regards to what was happening in iraq and afghanistan, so talk to us a little bit about the experience and same question, what real-life implications what we see from having a person like mcmaster in the role he has in? i worked most closely with him in 2007 as the iraq surge plan was spinning out. he came back to iraq the second time after his success, so essentially he worked as the special advisor for general david petraeus and helped put together the plan, i was part of that. he is very intellectually capable, capable of seeing the big picture and integrating diplomatic means with military means. again, he is more of an expert on the military and is going to need to find people who advise him on the diplomacy side, but again, i have very few concerns
mitchell, the former senate majority leader who served as the u.s. special envoy for middle east peace. he has a new book called a path to peace a briefly history of israeli/palestinian negotiations and a way forward in the middle east. senator, great to see you. thank you for joining us. thank you, andrea, for having me. as you know, the egyptians on the security council sponsored a resolution that was to be voted on this afternoon then overnight netanyahu went into overdrive on the diplomacy side and my understanding is that they pressured president sisi to pull that back, but it was about to create a real confrontation diplomatical. donald trump came out and tweeted in favor of vetoing the resolution. netanyahu demanded that the u.s. veto the resolution. is this a resolution as it is now written that should be vetoed by the white house, by the state department? i ve not had an opportunity to read the resolution yet.
say weary of conflict democrats. and interesting juxtaposition of the three different branches that sometimes work together and sometimes have difficulty. the diplomacy side and the military side. and you know we ve been talking this morning, luke, about the fact that the iraqi forces in that country are having some success stories in fighting isis-controlled parts of the country. yet the iranians are very much involved in supporting the iraqi forces. something which seems odd, but i m sure that that is something that is going to be discussed as well this morning? reporter: yes. certainly expect that to be front and center here. as you mentioned, jose there are shiite-backed militias with a lot of the help of iran making gains against isis and it s kind of these, this weird situation where you have odd bedfellows. right? the u.s. and iran supposedly they re completely opposite, and have a strong dislike of one another, but in this case they re working today, and that definitely doe
diplomacy side and not the defense side but, you know if we don t get a straight story, if we get it sugar coated, you know, jonathan gruber may think we are stupid but we really aren t that stupid. well, that s right. secretary kerry, keep in mind, is a politician and has been one for a very long time. but he but, listen, is he a politician but he is whether you agree with him or not, is he a patriot, he has served our nation in the military and the senate. absolutely. this is i don t get. this it sounds like he is sugar coating something that the rest of us, i mean, see these videos and numbers. that s absolutely what s happening. of course is he a patriot but he also is very sensitive to the fact that his administration, president obama s administration is being perceived as very weak against terror and very weak against russian aggression and very weak in the pacific. actually no things are a lot better. like i said, you look at the wealth in africa, for instance, you