literal sense? what kind of networks do they have? that is the real question to have thousands of fighters very serious. they can launch local attacks and do all sorts of things. from the standpoint for the security of the united states, what is their capability to inspire, organize and launch an attack against the united states? do they have communications? does isis leadership have communications with isis adherence, isis loyalists here in the united states, in europe, people that might attack against u.s. interests? that is really one of the really central questions in this assessment. let s take a moment as we look at sort of the broad global threat assessment here to the fbi director christopher wray speaking moments ago about russia. not only do the russians continue to do it in 2018.
now, this is an isis affiliate, if you will. these are people who identify themselves as isis adherence, isis fighters along the pakistan border. as i think general hertling can explain probably better than i, these kind of fighters identify themselves at different times with different loyalties. the fact that they say they re isis, it s still going to be the case that the u.s. doesn t want these type of unsurgents, these typical of terrorists going back and forth. the fokt that they re watching nangahar, that s why they ve had troops there and when a special operations soldier died in a gunfight, it s why you have them up there. it may well be that this remote area, you get to the point where operations on foot just aren t going to make it if the fighters
than there were five years ago, more than there were 10 years ago, exactly the time that we re celebrating a potential success in ramadi, you are seeing, as you point out, the rise of the taliban in afghanistan. at a time when the administration had told us in effect that was basically taking care of. and you are seeing isis and isis adherence, isis. places across the globe that you are seeing this continued rise of the global jihadiist movement. the keeping up of the air base, keeping it open is an admission by the obama administration huge mistake evacuating iraq all at once. we could have stayed behind with an air base or two, and that would have made a decisive difference in the rise of isis. i think obama understands it was a terrible mistake he doesn t want to repeat in afghanistan. that s it for the panel. stay tuned to see two toddlers caught in a sticky situation.