30 years ago, he would have been shot. today, president trump slammed bergdahl s sentence, tweeting the decision on sergeant bergdahl is a complete and total disgrace to our country and our military. bergdahl tearfully apologized monday to the soldiers who searched for him, saying my words can t take away for what people have been through. i m admitting i made a horrible mistake. a mistake he ll have to live with for the rest of his life. the conditions of his sentence will be effective immediately with the exsengs of tception of dishonorable discharge. the attorney for bergdahl says he will remain in the army until the appeals process is exhausted. also, the convening authority, the man who convened the court marshall on bergdahl, he has a chance to look at this sentence and he also has the authority to lessen the charges against bergdahl if he sees fit. kate. thanks so much. outfront with me now, retired army major general, james spider
nesz necessary to lend his voice on this, at least not yet, kate. the one voice that s speaking, though, loudly and clearly via twitter, at least, is the president of the united states. that s one i guess everyone needs to listen to at moment. official, great to see you. outfront, gordon chang, author of nuclear takedown: north korea takes on the world. mr. woolsy. also with us, retired major general james spider marx. gent gentlemen, thank you for coming in. i appreciate it. it looks like things keep getter worse rather than better as we were discussing. gordon, nikki haley said today north korea is begging for war. no. are they? no. like every aggressor, they don t want to fight. their want their victims to submit meekly. that s the way kim jong-un is. what i m concerned about, though, is that kim jong-un starts a chain of events that leads to war. so, for instance, when he s confident in his arsenal, he could use it to blackmail the united states, to break our mutual def
and will they now be forced to leave military service? all hugely important questions that you lay out right there, barbara, with no clarity yet coming from the commander in chief. thank you so much. more to come from barbara on all of this. let me continue the discussion right now with cnn military analyst retired major general james spider marx and sarah mcbride, the national press secretary for the human rights campaign. spider, this has been a discussion in the military for quite some time. what s your reaction to the announcement? i think this is as barbara indicated, this is a very small population within the military. it s not this grand issuance of policy that s going to significantly affect the military. the number one requirement for the military is readiness. everything else just pales, goes to the side, becomes noise. you want your military to be ready to fight tonight across
this really plays into the hands of the conservative hard liners. both in tehran and in riyadh. becky anderson, thank you for helping. for analyblnalysis let s bring james spider marx. u.s. ally washington is now working to renew or start anew its relationship with iran. talk about the high wire that u.s. officials have to walk. we can point out that the statement that came out was not from the president. it wasn t from secretary kerry. it was from a spoking person john kirby for the state department. victor, first of all, wasn t becky s reporting spot on? she laid it out in all the color and all the details that really described this complex kind of mosaic that we re dealing with. it s very difficult to get your arms around it. to your question, yeah, it s an
coordinate recovery efforts but also crucially to better channel information to hostages families. all right. thank you very much from washington. and now phil former cia counter terrorism official and retired general james spider marx. he has flown drones. the winstein family they paid ransom and then they changed the terms and said thank you for the money, now we want a prisoner exchange. it was unclear if they were ever even dealing with the right people. we are putting families in terrible positions. when the policy was established, engagement was eped soic. now we re seeing that somebody is taken from a family and there s a threatened beheading. i think you will start to see the u.s. government say we can t have families get involved. they don t have the capability to do that. where this buck stops is if you start talking about money you