billion with a b. so that s a really small risk. what are the costs that we re going to pay to prevent this really small risk? alienating our allies, we are giving isis a recruitment tool. we make it harder to cooperate with the very countries we need to depend on to defeat extremism. most victims in the world, extremism, religious extremism, are muslims and we need their governments and we need their citizens to cooperate with us if we re going to be successful in stopping it. i know you wrote an op-ed for usa today. is it based on facts, will it make us safer and is it consistent with long-held american values? now do you think it s consistent and in the best interest of the american people, considering that president obama also put a six-month suspension on those that were coming from iraq in 2011, based on intelligence from
well, it is still floatin around there somewhere and it is going to arrive someday. what is the idea? well, the idea would be that a letter would come from himb and he would say, you know, how much he loved me and how beautiful i was, and that i was going to to grow up to be the most extraordinary person. and that even though he was not there, he wanted me to know that he loved me a lot. was there ever a letter? well, a letter did arrive. sweetheart, i am kidding. there sis a saying from mary gordon that you quote a lot. yeah. father leless girl thinks all things possible, and nothing safe. that is absolutely true.
of donald trump s first choices. and that, i m told, general mattis, one of his conditions for taking the job was that he would have a direct line to donald trump. and he will. and as phillip said, this is going to change after january 20th. look. general mat sis a hugely respected figure. the difference is proximity to power. the national security advisor is in the white house. every day with the president. and if you have a president who s liable to make statements or decisions based on who he last spoke to. the national security advisor is far and away the first among equals. general flynn is a hugely accomplished counterterrorism lead general. if he butted heads with other intelligence agencies in that effort.
leaders poland all talking about illiberal democracy. when we talked about the end of history, who would have thought that the new challenge to rule democracy would be a kind of populist, quasi the winner in all this is not putin. british is a, it s china. the great thing about china that made china so different about the soviet union is that its alter tearyism that works. p provenshal airports in china make jtk. who are very distrustful of liberal institutions and think it s messy and decisions don t get made and so on. so, the chinese model of strong man who can make things happen is dangerously attractive and
peter, can you tell us how many u.s. troops are involved? approximately 5,000 u.s. forces in iraq right now. they re doing a variety of different things. a substantial amount have been providing the training to the 12 iraqi brigades that we ve trained over the last few months. all part of this operation. we also have logistical folks. we have engineers. we have force protection for our own people. they re all doing a variety of things but the main thing, alisyn, they re providing capabilities and enabling capabilities for the iraqis to carry out this fight. critics of the obama administration say why telegraph this information for weeks before the battle started to isis? i mean, basically what they suggest is that the administration somehow gave isis a running start. let me play for you what donald trump has said. so, we have announcements coming out of washington and coming out of iraq. we will be attacking mosul in three weeks or four weeks.