this is on you. it s important to point out that this is a different type of fish and the different weapons that they are working on. it may not fit so neatly into the theory that he writes for afghanistan and syria. that s right. look, it s always been a puzzle because you have nuclear capability of some sort but it s in the country that has a gdp that s reliable seems to put it at a smaller than that of vermont with maybe 500 miles of paved roads. this is a country that is entirely economically dependent on china for its survival and has this closed society, strange dictatorship that has a quasi religious aura around it. it s hard to formulate a policy. let s give the white house a little bit of credit at being thrown off guard perhaps the way other administrations have. very hard to figure out what to do here.
here. we shouldn t engage in any precipitous action. there s a reason no u.s. president in recent history has pulled a trigger on north korea. amanda, is it likely, are we seeing indications that this president will go beyond the tweets and beyond the carl vin vinson and the rhetoric and take action on north korea? i think that s what disturbs so many people about donald trump. his foreign policy has been like his tweets. he launched the air strikes in syria. he dropped this mother of all bombs in afghanistan and a lot of people didn t see this coming. there wasn t a lot of public debate that he was going to do this. and so, you know, these are meant to be provocative. it s meant to be predictable and show that he will take action but it s not necessarily tide to
at this point? it concerns me, because he s not prepared to make foreign policy decisions. being a businessman he has some foreign experience, but he really does need the cia at this point to explain to him crises which are on the horizon. iraq is going from bad to worse. the taliban has 50% to 70% of afghanistan. there s a crisis looming with north korea. and he s got to get up to speed. and the people to do that is the central intelligence agency. it s not just the briefing. he needs the experts to come in. there s a lot of covert action programs, some are working, most aren t. he s got to catch up to speed because in not very long he could be faced, as i said, with a very big crisis. before we get to you, julian, if you would, bob, break it down for hus. what exactly do they go over? is it something he can do on his
own time? bring us into it. well, they could, the briefer could hand-carry it to trump tower or the oval office and say, here it is, read it, and takes it back at the end of the day. or you could bring in specialists, for instance let s go to afghanistan, what s happening on the ground. you need an afghan expert, not just simply a briefer, to explain. and often the president will ask questions and ask for followup briefings. so these things could go on for, you know, ten minutes to a couple of hours. it depends on the interests of the president. i ve seen some presidents actually bring in operatives. george w. bush used to, to talk about iraq. he would bring in four or five of them and they would go on for hours and hours, exchanging questions and detailed answers. let s look at the last three presidents-elect. after his election, obama not only got regular briefings but
forces troops on a mission with afghan forces conducting security operations in southern afghanistan, zabul province, when they encountered militants. a firefight ensued. they called in air strikes to suppress enemy fire. it appears, and it s all under investigation, but it appears that a u.s. air force b-1 bomber responding to the call for help apparently ined an vernt aerntly dropped its weapons on the friendly forces. it looks like it s the latest friendly fire incident in afghanistan at this time. and of course now it comes as president obama is talking about withdrawing all the u.s. forces out of afghanistan in the coming months, winding up the war, but for five american military families of course, deep sorrow striking very hard. has there been an increase recently, taliban attacks on