that. it has important symbolic and strategic significance. meanwhile, the country s prime minister, though, is trying to paint this as the fight against terrorism. and he today addressed the nation trying to bring all iraqis united together, not making this about sectarian tensions. but it doesn t seem to be resonating with the local population in the sunni arab areas. nbc s ayman mohyeldin, thanks again. with the white house considering its options in iraq it s hard to find good ones top. to help us walk through what can be done if anything. let s bring in kenneth pollack. director for persian gulf affairs at the national security council under president clinton. now he s a senior fellow at the brookings institution. so ken, given we re not occupying the country anymore, what can and should we be doing about this situation? well, first you guys are absolutely right, that we need to recognize that our options in iraq are limited. and we should think about it this way. iraq went in
i got this. [thinking] is it that time? the son picks up the check? [thinking] i m still working. he s retired. i hope he s saving. i hope he saved enough. who matters most to you says the most about you. at massmutual we re owned by our policyowners, and they matter most to us. whether you re just starting your 401(k) or you are ready for retirement, we ll help you get there. the most frightening and compelling american criminal of the past few decades is probably whitey bulger. he terrorized boston killing many, many people, ruling the underworld, and protecting himself via his tight relationship with the fbi and other law enforcement outfits. marty scorsese based jack nicholson s character in the departed on bulger and next year johnny depp will play
leaders out of office and it s really isolated the sunni committee, driven them away. the problem we ve got is they ve been driven into the arms of isis, of al qaeda, of all of these other tsunami militant groups. but the truth is they don t want to be there. they are very wary of those guys. you can say that on the one hand baghdadi and isis, they seem to have learned that lesson. to your point they seem to be behaving themselves up in mosul and the other cities that they ve captured. but at the end of the day the sunni iraqi tribes really have no love for isis and really don t want to be in bed with them. so the question really becomes can the united states find a way to reach out to the sunni tribes moderate sunnis, empower them and create a solution to this problem that involves isolating isis and the other miltants? but the problem is that s going to require a government innd baghdad that s actually willing to brick the sunnis back in, limit the powers of the prime minister so the
by the mob in retaliation for the mid 80s department of justice takedown of the italian mafia. the film doesn t necessarily say that s the truth. but it explores these very troubling questions that still linger about this case. that s wild. hank, you were his defense attorney. what is he like? i mean, what is he like to deal with? what is it like to be talking to someone who s a murderer as he is? well, when you put past the historical perspective, he s like any other client. and the thing about jim bulger is he had an extraordinary memory. so he was a great guide. he could provide myself and co-counsel with information so that when we looked at things that were given to us by the department of justice we could look at it with a very skeptical eye. he gave us a road map on where he felt the pitfalls and the lies were, and it was an enormous advantage to know really the inside story as opposed to having to rely on the propaganda that s been disseminated for decades through the de
effort combined with a huge diplomatic effort. that s effectively what it would take to do the same thing this time around, and we just don t have those resources there that we did have at that point in time. anything we do is going to have to be a lot more limited and it s going to have to rely on other actors to help us out in a way we didn t have to rely on them back in 2007. and ken, another thing is that s different from when we first invaded iraq is we are now much less dependent on foreign oil. does our increasing trend toward energy independence change some of the strategic calculus in terms of how anxious we are to intervene in the region? that s an important point, crystal. the problem here is it actually works exactly the opposite. it s certainly true that we are importing less oil from overseas. but our actual vulnerability has not changed one bit. the simple fact is the american economy relies on oil. it is a global oil market. a change in the price of oil will affec