and well when it was a personal dimension he wanted to be you know he wanted to be the columns of space he wanted to be for. the chances seemed especially favorable during what was known as the international geophysical year. but from brown still needed an ok from president eisenhower after all there were other people in the u.s. vying for funding washington decided against the ambitious german american. the us navy ended up getting the green light for the prestige project front brown was out of the race. and they wanted to have a military change to time been brought on with work and on the redstone that s all and i think the. general feeling was that the redstone as a weapon for the army was for. this.
who knows? i hate to be flip about it, jean. b but the reality is if past is prologue, this tends to be punditry by the president. him reacting to events. making exaggerations, saying things that are sort of wish it were true. hopes. or because he s not a pundit, he s the president of the united states, it s to your paint, maybe it is a military change. maybe we have made strikes against isis we don t yet know about. this is the fundamental peril of a president who thinks and acts like a pundit. we don t know if he s just popping off or if he s acting and there s policy behind it. that uncertainty by its very nature is dangerous. look, we don t always know about all of the attacks the military is making on isis. but does it sound like there s a new front or change in policy?
is managed and managed by force that s are close by. richard engel, please stay with me. twi i want to go back to the white house. why now the timing thinnbehind announcement today, ron? the russians have been very, very active militarily in the conflict over there. and they re not helping the united states achieve its objectives. the russian effort seems aimed at propping up the syrian president. and the united states position is that assad must go if there s to be a peaceful settleme in. t to the conflict over. there tlos day, you have secretary of state john kerry in vienna attending talks that include for the first time the iranians aimed at trying to solve the syrian problem diplomatically. and the officials that we have been talking to and it s our sense that this military change in tactic or change in strategy, whatever you want to call it, is
of course, we also have to worry about islamists who are doing pretty well in places like libya well, really, everywhere. the problem with china, and the new air defense identification zone that they ve declared, this is only the latest steps in provocations. they re really pushing the peripheries, and not getting a lot of pushback. they asked the u.s. commander, or top admiral in the pacific, what s the biggest threat in your region. he didn t say china, he didn t say north korea, he said climate change. what should it be in that case, christian? i think we should make the pivot real. first of all, it s a bit misleading to make the pivot to asia centered just around the military. our relationships in asia are much more commercial. make the military change real. we don t need troops, frankly, in europe anymore.
it s one of those kids will be studying 20 years from now. mitt romney gave a great comparison to the current military versus 100 years ago. barack obama was prepared. let s listen. i think governor romney hasn t spent time looking at how our military works. you mentioned the navy. there are fewer ships than we did in 1916. we have fewer horses and bay onetts because nature of the military change. we have aircraft carriers and ships that go underwater, nuclear submarines the question is not a game of battleship we re counting ships. it s what are our capabilities? i think mitt romney s comparisons were unfair, technology has advanced and we can do more with less. as long as we re focused and going in the right direction that is what matters. right. and in 1d 18 my grandfather