ground. the bulk of the deaths occurring in syria, for example, have come about not because of regime bombing but because of on the ground casualties. the president say there is s no point in having a no-fly zone. you say? well, first of all, what he just said is flatly not true. apparently he is has forgotten that the syrian regime, bashar al assad inflicted incredible damage on the civilian population from the air. the purpose of the no-fly zone, of course, is to contain the syrian regime, something that obama said several weeks ago he still cared about. he perhaps has forgotten that the russians are in syria and that while they said they were going in to defeat isis clearly they re in syria at the request of iran and they are propping up bashar al assad at the request of iran. by the way, our allies in the
no-fly zone or safe zone of some sort. and this is an example of the kind of issue where i will sit down with our top military and intelligence advisors and we will painstakingly go through what does something like that look like. and typically after we ve gone through a lot of planning and a lot of discussion and really working it through, it is determined that it would be counterproductive to take those steps, in part because isil does not have planes. so the attacks are on the ground. a true safe zone requires us to set up ground operations. and the bulk of the deaths that have occurred in syria, for example, have come about not because of regime bombing but because of on the ground
groups in syria. now the assad regime and russia deny they re using these type of tactics, targeting civilians and things like that in syria but syria is basically saying to the united states to stay out of the internal affairs of syria and to stay out of this conflict. now it appears also that the rebels are getting new equipment. there are reports of new aks and anti-tank missiles that they re using on the syrian military. part of the reason why the syrian military is starting to rely more and more on helicopters is to reduce ground casualties for the syrian military. all of this comes as the united nations is declaring that syria is in a civil war. that is a term both the rebels and the assad regime both really do not like. the assad regime think it cheapens what they re doing. they argue they are essentially trying to secure the country and that they re fighting terrorists. the rebels don t like the word civil war because they think it pits two equal