a strategic flaw in their deployment? well, that s what we re going to find out with this investigation. you know i think it s important to remember, africa command is the newest of our nine combat and commands. it s got it doesn t have the resources as many of the other commands and they re still kind of finding their way in what their mission is and we re giving them a difficult mission over a tremendous geographic area. they re spread very thin. so although the numbers writ large might appear to be sufficient, when you take these individual operations like how many american troops are there in niger, if you look officially it s 100, 200, but you have others in the country, contractors, so it s very difficult, you know, to pin this down right now. i think the investigation is going to give us all those answers. all right. and they are legitimate questions, let s just be clear about that. barbara starr, retired colonel francona, thanks so much. two former u.s. presidents takin
of the u.s. troops or the fire fight per se. what they are looking at is the intelligence about who was operating in that area, what insurgent groups. the belief is the u.s. troops were attacked by 50 sigh isis fighters in this part of west africa. they will look at intelligence they have on this group. what do they know about them, how are they really tied to isis, what are their capabilities, who s their leadership, where are they operating, how did it possibly get missed these guys were out there, that they were in this area. so it s going to be all about the intelligence, all about the counter terrorism effort that needs to help now. and colonel francona, you are with us now and we talked about the open questions, one of them that the family has of sergeant la david johnson, 48 hours, why did it take 48 hours to recover his body. barbara has been reporting from the pentagon wants to make
an individual action, but that it was made that service member part of this larger commitment to serve our nation that all of our service members have. so talking about honoring that service on behalf of all of us is such an important message from our leaders. it is, indeed. joyce, thank you for being here. we appreciate it very, very much. and lieutenant colonel francona, thank you. stay with us. we need you on more of this as we get into the investigation. new this morning cnn has learned the fbi is joining that investigation into the ambush that killed these four u.s. soldiers in niger. a short time ago we learned the fbi investigators are now on the ground. let s go to barbara starr at the pentagon. what is the significance of that? well, poppy, john, it s not unprecedented, not routine, but not unprecedented for the fbi to get involved in these investigations overseas. what we are told is they are not investigating the action per se
you know, although i really am upset with this back and forth between the white house and the congresswoman on this issue, she does raise some interesting questions and those are the questions that we need to answer, what happened out there and that s the investigation that s ongoing right now. we need to let that play out. and that is the question that senator john mccain was asked, is the white house being forthcoming enough, no, we ve had numerous members of congress, democrats, who have said on this program we need more answers. those answers do take time and general mattis voiced his dismay we don t have more yet, but he also said please don t rush to assumptions, especially about the men who were with la david johnson in the battlefield. how do you see all of this? i think i agree with lieutenant colonel francona, now is the time to focus on those families, to do all we can to honor their sacrifice and honor
syrian area on a strike that killed innocent children. displaced 6.3 million more and forced another 5 million to flee. straight to our cnn military analyst lieutenant colonel francona and fred, begin with you. this statement wasn t unusual from the white house saying the assad regime would face a heavy price. is a ostensibly a red line? sounds like a red line. interesting it was issued by the white house and not in conjunction with the pentagon. in fact, we have no information from the pentagon why the white house actually issued this statement or where this information comes from. but if you look more closely at the statement, they do say that preparations have allegedly been detected, that could be similar to the ones ahead of the attack that happened in early april. of course, that was the one we were just seeing the pictures with devastating consequences on those many civilians out there