hillary clinton getting a rock star reception. a crowd of a thousand went wild as she arrived at a barnes & noble in manhattan for a book signing for hard choices. lu]xd some of her fans slept on the sidewalk to be among the first to meet her. in chicago today. now to a major setback for the iraqi government. militants in control of the city of mosul after a stunning swift takeover. iraqi soldiers provided almost no resistance. here s abc s martha raddatz. reporter: the sound of all-out war. explosions. gunfire, al qaeda flags flying. militants linked to the terror group moving freely throughout this city. mosul was once a focal point of america s tight to bring peace
qaeda operatives assemble in the open, flags flying, the u.s. unaware. it s an unanswerable question, as you say, the u.s. has had a very aggressive drone program in pack can. about 100 drone and missile strikes under president obama. those strikes have killed something like at least 30 of al qaeda s top leaders. to see this shows that these guys think that somehow, wherever they are, they re not being surveyed by american drones or satellites. when you look at the video, you can see some of the faces are blurred. some of them are wide open in plain view, but some of the faces are blurred leading many to say, wow, these are fighters who may be out there attacking americans? they re certainly trying to disguise their identities.
country that had a government that was aligned against our enemy iran, and had no presence of al qaeda. go into iraq today, it has a government that s aligned with iran and there are al qaeda flags flying over two cities. our traditional military there as opposed to the covert forces that go in more surgically and take care of terrorists and groups and that sort of thing. i actually saw it as more problematic when it s covert, because then the american people have no idea what s going on. you get into larger conflicts this way. a lot of times people don t even recognize the blowback when it appears. i read the piece. and i have to say, i m on the other side of this. i really don t blame the pentagon for not being as transparent as you say they should be. i believe that we should trust our leaders enough to know that they re giving enough thought to where they re deploying our men and women.
and hillary clinton said i had to compete with you in the iowa caucuses, and therefore i had to say i was against the iraq surge, purely critical how does that make you feel? that those that went out and fought for the country i was outrageous, and i was an advocate for the surge, believing we could change the tide. because it matter, we re there, do we end it properly and finish it. or do we see what we see in fallujah, the black flags flying, in afghanistan, we re going to see the same conclusions in 2014, because this president, we saw it in gate s words in the book, because the president was interested in ending it, not finishing it. that is the biggest indictment you can have with a commander-in-chief. you and i can talk about oh, i support the troops but not the
helen, you ve watched him a long time. what do you think? i think he is going out of office with all flags flying. certainly his policy, and he s had some big successes. but on the other hand, he ll come back tonight and on monday we re going to ask him about the special prosecutor. happy new year, helen. tough all the way through. by the time i was in the white house covering president bush, she became a columnist, more opiniona opinionated, courted controversy as well. in a statement yesterday, president obama said, in part, that it wasn t just helen s long tenure as a journalist that made her the dean of the white house press corps but rather her, quote, fierce belief that our democracy works best when we ask tough questions and hold our leaders to account. amen. helen thomas was 92 years old. and that is all for today. we ll be