good to have you back with us here on new day. questions being raised about the stability of the middle east. michael weiss is here, co-author isis: inside the army of terror, of course, a cnn contributor and editor inside the daily beast. pointing to the fact that he believes it s going to take effort from inside syria and iraq to do this. do you agree with his assessment and solutions? yes, i do. the problem is, all the efforts we poured into both those countries seem to be failing or at least not meeting the objectives the president set out a year ago. let s take syria. the pentagon had a program name train and equip. the program is now defunct.
officials speaking today via videoconference for about an hour and a half about what is happening in syria. and frankly, how to best avoid getting in one another s way with airstrikes from both united states and russia. the russian military agressively striking both isis targets and also rebels. some of them rebels that are aligned with the united states against bashar al assad. this week the u.s. announced it was suspending training and equipping those same rebels because there is very little to show after the half a billion-dollar program to do that was launched. joining us now, michael weiss, he is author of isis: inside the army of terror. let s talk first about the fact that ash carter came out this week and said this program hasn t worked, and this is after the head of central command testified in front of congress a few weeks ago that only four or five rebels that were trained by the u.s. are actually still fighting isis. yeah. four or five. the real nail in the coffin w
good to be with you. and coming up in our next half hour, we will speak with the co-author of isis inside the army of terror. we will get his view on whether these russian air strikes could be a game-changer for the region. the palestinian flag is now flying outside the united nations head quarters in new york. typically only the flags of member states are on display, and the palestinian authority has nonmember observer status. palestinians see the move as a symbolic step toward cementing their place in the international community. meanwhile, the group s president addressed the general assembly saying the palestinian authority would no longer honor the peace agreements with israel. israeli prime minister, benjamin netanyahu is expected to respond when he gets his turn on the u.n. stage thursday. he also said he will discuss the iran nuclear deal.
country, vetted, legal refugees. another development from syria. this weekend, word that president bashar al assad is going to hold early elections and that he s willing to share power with some of his opponents. the syrian and russian governments are positioning that decision as one that will create a broader coalition to fight extremist groups like isis. let me get michael weiss, a cnn contributor, writes on global affairs for the daily beast, also the co-author of the book isis, inside the army of terror. michael, the u.s. state department they believe russia that there s no military buildup inside syria. what do you find? well, the evidence has been mounting, especially over the last week or two i was an israeli newspaper that came out with the report about two weeks ago saying that russia plans to send an expeditionary force to damascus which will include actually russian air force pilots who will engage in combat
offshoot. he was apparently hit while driving in a vehicle near the syrian border. amazing, right? joining us to talk about this and more is the co-author of isis inside the army of terror. michael weiss. welcome. thank you for having me. this guy s death a big blow? it is. he was sent to infiltrate syria and be the one plotting external operations so counter terrorism officials said he was looking to create a t-shirt bomb that could dead nate detonate on an airliner. up until 2013 he was in iran. the iranians say under house arrest. whatever that means. so how did he get from iran into northern syria? the other interesting thing is cnn reported at the time when we hear about the group his body guard had been arrested by the