a fierce assault. it s a key city only because terrorists really want it. does this mean the coalition is now losing the war, did the coalition just take out a key isis commander or not really? michael weiss, co-author of isis inside the army of terror. we have retired leiutenant general reese. gentleman, good to be with you this morning. we ll start with you. what do you think, colonel, if they take over ramadi does this mean they are winning in what was supposed tore their pulling back? chris, they have right now taken ramadi as we look at it from a military perspective. like secretary kerry said i believe with air power, the air
there have been a lot of gains and some reversals. we ll talk about you this and with me is michael weis the co-author of isis inside the army of terror and with us live in orlando retired general mark hertling who commanded 28,000 troops as part of the u.s. task force in iraq from 2007 to 2009. so general, let me just start with the win and loss and if you have to put the metric to it, what is happening in this battle against isis? because it doesn t sound like there s a lot of whof winning g on. i like your second terminology when you talked about gains and reverses. i refuse to let my intel folks in northern iraq use the terms wins and losses. in this conflict you re always going to have some gains, some reverses. you re right, the strike against abu sayyaf and umm sayyaf was a big gain. there s going to be a lot of intelligence value out of that. he was a financier, he was the
breaking news of the morning. key isis figure abu sayaff was killed during a u.s. special forces raid in syria. now the operation took place at the president s direction. and sayyaf s wife was capture and is currently in u.s. detention in iraq. mike the weiss is the co-author of isis: inside the army of terror. good to have you with us. wondering about abu sayaff whether that s his real name. do you know his real name? and secondly do you believe that he was indeed the target of this raid? well no abu sayaff is a nom de guerre the isis fighters adopt. his real name is al [ inaudible ] [ inaudible ] covering this conflict have not heard of him. his name has come across some radars twice, but the idea that he s a key figure or has command and control capability this is
for the first time since fighting broke out in ukraine a year ago, the secretary of state, john kerry, is now in russia for talks with russian president vladimir putin. ukraine, the middle east especially syria and iran they re very much on the agenda for these meetings. joining us from new york michael weis our cnn contributor, fellow with the institute of modern russia and co-author of isis inside the army of terror. as you know kerry met with putin in moscow two years ago. putin spoken with president obama in person couple so-called neutral summits outside of russia over the past two years. what does it say about the relationship that kerry, the secretary of state, has now gone to russia michael? well the russian press and russian officials are spinning this as see, america has come yet again, hat in hand capitulating to russian prowess. they want something from us. they realize they can t win in
address of an officer training syrian rebels. isis the she have proclaimed terror group actively recruitings social media. as the news media figure out how to cover isis is isis pursuing a deliberate and destructive media strategy of its own. here to take us inside is the co-author of the book isis, inside the army of terror ction michael weiss. thanks for having me on. let s start. the isis slogan don t hear about us hear from us what does it mean and how is the group using social media to recruit, convince and persuade these folks to fall in line and do these things? well they have a very strategic and savvy propaganda conceit which is that if you go back to the 90s or the 80s when jihadism was still a rather marginal affair, these guys had to rely on how the western press would disseminate their messages. you had journalists like lawrence wright going to