this autumn. christine, thank you so much. gary seymour is now with me. he was the white house coordinator for arms control and also worked for republican administrations. president trump used this phrase locked and loaded when he addressed iran s possible role in the attack. when you read that, do you read that just as hyperbole, or should we be watching for a possible military response here? of course, it s always difficult to tell with president trump, but if the u.s. has compelling evidence that the drones or the cruise missiles were fired from iranian territory as opposed to iranian technology that was provided to the houthis and launched from there or launched from yemen, i think there is a very high likelihood that the u.s. will be looking at some kind of military retaliation. but before the u.s. does that, i think it s very important to
now more businesses, in more places, can afford to dream gig. comcast, building america s largest gig-speed network. today president trump is expected to be handed a letter from kim jong-un and delivering that letter to the white house is the former north korean spy chief kim jong yong chol. last week, president trump canceled his june 12th summit with kim in a letter, is it back on, though? seems like that may be the case and we re looking for signs about what the answer to that question is. joining me now is gary see moym. so we re reading all the tea leaves here. the secretary of state, gary, saying there has been real progress in the last 72 hours. pompeo also said there remains a great deal of work to do. how are you reading this as to whether the summit june 12th will be on?
and sooner or later, they will come up with compromises and the summit language that make it possible for them to go ahead with the meeting. they do both seem very invested in this. gary seymour, thank you, appreciate your insight here. thank you. happy to do it. minutes ago, a new report from the pentagon, officials there saying that at least 499 civilians were killed during u.s. military operations in president trump s first year. cnn s ryan brown is at the pentagon to put this in context for us. ryan? this new report being sent to congress this week detailing what the pentagon believes to be the number of civilian casualties caused by its military operations in places like iraq, syria, afghanistan and yemen. they say the number is about 499 assessed civilians killed during these military operations over the course of 2017. they do say that 450 additional reports need to be assessed. but these numbers are the first of its kind.
not as u.s. administration officials have been portraying them, desperate because of sanctions and coming to the table begging. all right. gary, let s talk about venezuela and the release of this prisoner. how much credit should president trump get for both this prisoner release and also those three hostages that were released recently by north korea? well, i can speak to the north korean situation. i mean, two of these were people that were snatched by the north koreans after president trump took office. and it s typical behavior for the north koreans to grab some americans which they can later use in a gesture or give away in order to improve relations at the right time. so i think it was a very cynical and calculating move on the part of the north koreans in order to set the stage for what they hope will be the summit coming up. so let s talk about the summit, then, gary. i mean, who do you think is winning in the back and forth here between the white house and