few people question oil is playing a central role in funding isis campaign of terror across the middle east and may explain why u.s. commandos staged a risky raid into syria last week to take out the group s finance leader. in iraq, peshmerga fighters are trying to hold off isis and they say they are drastically outgunned.
and we are waiting to see what will be the fate of the artifacts in palmyra. there s also the funding element for isis. artifacts that they cannot move or are well known. i was told are usually destroyed. anything else is sold to the black market. really it is like robbing a bank for isis. they can get millions of dollars for these antiquities. we have seen into other areas where they have taken a hold of it they dig in the area looking for artifacts. many artifacts can go for a range of $1 million. that can buy a lot of weaponry. 12,000 roughly ak-47s according to the antiquities coalition. 2.5 million rounds for those. if you want to go with rocket propelled grenades. they can get about 1,200 of them. this is what they use to rearm
suspect believed to have killed a d.c. family in their home before setting the home on fire. that manhunt is now over. a dramatic takedown overnight. biker gangs in texas heavily armed. the new threat coming up. new victories for isis across the middle east. terrorists gaining critical ground. they are expanding rapidly this morning and casting new doubt on president obama s war plan. live team coverage breaking it down ahead. welcome back to early start. i m christine romans. great to see you. i m john berman. the manhunt is over. daron wint the prime suspect in the quadruple murderer taken into custody. he killed his former employer
richard haass, it s a grim grim picture in the middle east. you have usa today isil takes ancient city in syria. the new york times has a frantic message from syrian resistance. we re finished. this comes this comes on the backdrop of barack obama actually telling jeffrey goldberg that we re not losing our battle against isis when ramadi falls, ancient cities in syria fall. it seems that isis is streaking across the middle east. i will tell you last night when i was watching the news and i rarely watch the news at night, but i was so concerned about this i sat there and said the bitter irony is this is what the president said. i don t think we re losing against isis, we re eight months into what we always anticipated to be a multiyear campaign. i sat there last night and i said oh my god, iraq was not a
national security threat to our vital interests in 2003 but it s rapidly turning into one in 2015. yeah since saddam hussein. if. because for me at least the new test is do they want to blow up buildings in new york and washington? the taliban doesn t, saddam hussein didn t. isis does. also they want to control most of the middle east. when they call themselves the caliphate, that s not just verbiage that s real. look, we have not had a strategy in syria, and that s hard to come up with for various reasons, but the administration thought we had a strategy in iraq and i think what we re seeing increasingly exposed is that we don t. the partner upon whom that strategy is premised the iraqi government, isn t a partner. so either you have to believe that one day sooner rather than later it will become a partner or the administration needs to go to plan b. but this is not working. isis now controls, what half of