brooke, thanks very much. happening now, riveting new details, the rough draft about president obama s jobs speech. what we re learning about the plan he unveiled tomorrow night and whether he has new ideas that will sound either bold or timid. also, rick perry s first test on the presidential debate stage. he got a late ride into this race, but he s moving very quickly right now at the start of his presidential campaign. tonight, he has something, of course, to prove. plus, one of america s biggest malls prepares to be the target potentially of a terror attack. it s a valuable lesson in being ready for the worst ten years after 9/11. and get this, it costs next to nothing. i m wolf blitzer, you re in the situation room. this is cnn breaking news. we ll get to that in a moment. but we re just learning here at cnn that the former united states ambassador to the united nations bill richardson was scheduled to land just a little while ago in havana, cuba on a very
we re hearing it here in briefings, over at the white house where they say they have utter confidence in nato s ability to carry this out. in the same breath, you have the statement coming from secretary clinton, who by the way, is in germany at yet another nato meeting, and she is describing exactly what you were talking about, a horrible as ben was talking about, a horrible situation in misurata. people, she said, deliberate attempt to starve people out. so if the mission is going well, as the administration says, then, again, why are the people in misurata in such terrible situation? ben, general kimmitt made an interesting point about the gadhafi military and the gadhafi forces being a learning enemy, that they are learning they ve adapted their tactics. the same cannot be said for the opposition forces. they do not seem to be a learning force.
gadhafi military and the gadhafi forces being a learning enemy, that they are learning they ve adapted their tactics. the same cannot be said for the opposition forces. they do not seem to be a learning force. reporter: no, no, not at all. in fact, they seem to be learning almost nothing. certainly compared to the gadhafi forces who have changed their tactics completely. initially they were using tanks and heavy weaponry. now they re running around in the desert in pickup trucks, almost indistinguishable from the rebels. the rebels don t seem to be learning anything, and it seems even the level of enthusiasm seems to be draining off a bit because they realized that at least in this part of the country, that they can t move forward. and therefore, you see fewer and fewer men at the front lines. you almost never see a senior
cuts of that dimension would certainly harm security. how so? well, we have an agile learning enemy in al qaeda. let me use terrorism as the prime example here. al qaeda changes. al qaeda adapts. we have to adapt as well. we rely on resources to do that. reducing resources beyond a certain point will make us less able to adapt as our enemy adapts. so i would be cautious about that. let me talk about homegrown terrorism which we ve seen a lot of, it seems like, over the past several months. that s the hardest thing to combat, isn t it? absolutely. absolutely. and how do you? in a democracy, it s incredibly difficult. look, we ve all made our compromises with al qaeda and the al qaeda kinds of attacks against iconic targets, the spectacular like we saw on 9/11 or the kinds they attempted in the summer of 06 with those planned attacks against
ji eesh muhammad, he spent time with shahzad when the times square suspect was in pakistan, although the revelation marks a time a specific group has been linked with this case. sources adding it does not necessarily mean the group engineered the plot. on this network this morning, saying shahzad is a new kind of terrorist. this learning enemy is now adjusting to the fact that if he does something very complicated that takes a long period of time, by in large we ll detect it and disrupt it. so what happened in times square this past weekend, what happened on christmas day is a new model. because al qaeda now nows, if they hug them too close too long we ll find out who they are. so what we have here for the new model are less complicated attacks, frankly attacks that would probably be less severe, attacks that are less skilled and therefore with a lower probability of success, but now here s the very bad part. probably a lot more numerous.