directly originally 50 special operations forces and onow another 250 based in iraq, and they are going to be going into syria and try to hunt down the isis commanders, and is that okay with you? yes. what we have today is 3500 u.s. trauners and other mill trainers and other military in t the region assisting the kurds and others who are resisting along with the free syria a army that are carrying out the activities, and it certainly makes sense for me for the deployed special ops personnel to do things like call in the air strikes when they see the isis target or do things like help stand up these brigades, and after all, they are working with the female battalions of kurdish soldiers to make sure they can withstand the attacks of isis and working with the yazidis and the christians and other local forces, and so this is a continuation of the policy,
can. and if they capture somebody in syria, and even abu backer baghdadi and what will they odo with him? whether will they hold him and interrogate and question him? they have the job, but they don t have the decision about the details on how to carry it out. in fact, the pentagon officials are telling us that the day after the big announcement from carter, it could be weeks before these troops are actually on the ground, wolf. all right. barba barbara, thank you very much. barbara starr at the pentagon, and let s get some perspective with what is going on with the nato supreme admiral retired, wesley clark, joining us from new york, and give us the reaction of the latest eight-minute isis video beheading somebody they say is a russian spy, and how is putin likely to respond to this? well, first of all, i m sure that russia has spies many there and this is going to the confirm that there are at least one and probably more, because the russians have been working very hard to get
expeditionary forces into iraq and syria to hunt down and kill isis commanders there. well, wolf, today, we are learning a lot of details and not yet decided or sorted out. secretary ash carter announced all of this yesterday, and as you say, u.s. troops going in to hunt down, capture and kill isis leaders to gain the intelligence, but there is almost no firm detail about how this is going to work. we do know that these are doing be members of the joint special operations command, jsoc, and that is the command that does it, and delta force, and s.e.a.l. team 6, and they will be working there with iraq, but one of the goals is to capture the top isis leaders if they
they say putin the dog. one more example of the brutality of isis taken in conjunction with the at a tack in paris against the civilian population, and reminder of their war against apostates, and what vladimir putin should think on for a minute is the fact that moscow, itself, is a target, and attack on metro liner from russia over egypt clearly is another message from isis. and so, at this point, what we would like to see is a recalibration on the part of the russian military, so that instead of attacking the free syrian army and the most secular syrian forces, they begin to attack isis. so far, we have not seen, that and as a matter of fact, in theatre, their operations have been against the syrian middle-class basically that are carrying on a separate struggle against assad s regime. yes, the russians and putin
incendiary character in the world, they have gotten a lot of attention, and understandably o so. and i can t wait. you do such great work. thank you, lisa. i look forward to it. appreciate it. thank you, ashleigh. this is life with lisa ling tonight at 9:00 p.m. eastern. i am done and wolf starts right i am done and wolf starts right now. captions by vitac www.vitac.com hello, i m wolf blitzer. wherever you are watching from around the world, thanks very much for joining us. the breaking news coming into cnn right now, isis has released an eight minute video showing the execution of what isis says is a russian spy. they show a confession of the vi victim admitting that he was working for the russian intelligence service. before killing the man, the