i ve heard from anywhere from 2,000 to 5,000 on our site, 3,000 on nato. the number to me is irrelevant. we need the capacity to do with the mission calls for. if you remember under president obama, it was about 9,800 troops, 200 chai of 10,000 because it was four figures of set of five. we need to say whatever is necessary, taking out al qaeda where they exist, strikes against the taliban in ensuring that isis cannot get a stronger foothold in afghanistan while we build a national governments. it s going to take a while. bill: just that whole thought about matta saying the afghan army is able to carry out the fight, that is not been the case before. hasn t and they are getting better. the american strengthens the spine of indigenous forces like that. the afghans are losing 150 shoulders a month in the fight and i think that something we need to remember. bill: thank you for your time.
donald trump won t be particularly much on him, it will be on the braeiefers and commanders in the field who are going to have to give him a very hard reality check. isis cannot be defeated in 100 days. there has never been a war that s gone 100 days without years of preparation and months of battlefield action leading up to that, even includes the first gulf war. it s really incumbent on him to understand these are going to be the professionals at macdill that are going to give him the reality of what the situation on the ground is, what his options are if he decides he wants to get a little jumpy with iran, which we ve seen a lot of rhetoric coming out of the white house this last week, just how difficult that will be and just how hard it is to fight from the other side of the world. you know, it s not just something you can say you want to do and have it actually instantly occur. all right. to your point, these are the professionals that know the region best that, understand it
thanks, chris. back in 2001 when we had 9/11 and you were a senator from new york, there was a different spirit in this country, including the republican party. you had a republican party that went on the air and made it clear time and again, this is not a battle between the west and the east, it s not about muslims, it s about terrorism. and they did it so effectively. and now we have the leading candidate for the republican nomination of president, basically declaring a war on muslims, saying they re not allowed in the country. the whole works, what do you make of this? well, it s deeply distressing to me, because i, as you know, well remember what happened after 9/11. and i have publicly given president bush a lot of credit for the way that he set the tone and his entire administration echoed that. and now, we need to have a sense of unity and purpose in combatting terrorism. i view it as a threat. i believe isis cannot be contained. it has to be defeated. but in order to do t
joining us now is congressman ed royce. chairman good to see you. let s talk about iran and saudi arabia as they relate to one another. do you have concerns about the execution just a couple of days ago, 47 people in saudi arabia? we do have concerns, of course, about the way this was carried out. frankly the effective overthrow of the government in yemen in terms of the forces in yemen. the entire instability there i think is a problem as sunni and shia begin to separate into separate blocks and it makes it much more difficult and this is part of the fallacy in leading from behind. we see a lack of leadership. as a consequence people don t list zwroins. they perceive we tilted towards
the executions and the attacks on the saudi embassy in tehran. let s bring in richard engel live in istanbul for more. richard? reporter: well, this crisis has just torn open the very deep divide between sunnis and shi ites in the middle east and it really reflects why there s no strategy right now against isis. the main beneficiary from this tension between iran and saudi arabia is isis. the obama administration has been pushing for and has been having some success in the past getting iran and saudi arabia to agree to try to find some sort of diplomatic solution to the conflict in syria. all of that would go great ways to working against isis but those diplomatic efforts have now taken a back seat as there s this incredibly incredibly