s.e.a.l. team 6, to just this week s successful extraction of ahmed abu khattala from libya, who allegedly helped lead that deadly attack on the u.s. consulate in benghazi. military units like s.e.a.l. team 6 and delta force have been overwhelmingly successful in their missions. because of this, there s a temptation to view american special forces as a solution to just about all military problems without really calling on military action. joining me now, spencer ackerman, u.s. national security editor for the guardian and someone who used to be in the special forces, former navy s.e.a.l. brandon webb. he s now editor of sofrep.com. the special operations forces situation report. features news and analysis from military and special ops vets. brandon, let me start with you. if you re dropped into iraq under these conditions, i mean, what possible influence can you imagine having given the scale of the chaos there? well, we have to remember, you know, this is a mission that the green
from is dis? i have no reason to doubt it. i don t have any independent evidence of what these guys are up to. there s no question they don t like the united states. they are a group of people who have wanted to hurt the united states and given the amount of free space they are now going to have, i think we should expect they will at some point come after us. i think we also have to recognize, it s not like we should be expecting isis terrorists to be blowing up the mall of america tomorrow. while there are very serious problems in iraq, military problems that need to be dealt with, this is not henny penny the sky is falling moment for the united states. one piece of the president s speech i liked is his point we need to think this through and deal with the political aspect as well as the military. thank you so much. ken pollact.
answering a pretty pointed question on meet the press. isn t it interesting are the president say we don t want to look at this as a cold war, but doesn t he look at this sphere of influence the cold war context? if he does, but does not reflect where they are coming from. deputy assistant victory of defense in the reagan administration. susan rice says the people are not in a cold war mentality anymore. he sees this as a zero sum game, an essential element to rebuild in the greater russia. he should finish the olympics. showing russia is back for 20 years of being a power that had economics and political military problems. they are back as a world power. he wants to re-create the russian empire.
spectrum to like local boys who were given $5 to shoot off a magazine of 8k at the american outpost, those kids had no idea what they were doing and they got killed in great numbers because of that. so it really was the whole spectrum, but the top guys, my god. they were incredible. is the population center strategy working? they just began working this. they pulled out of the korengal last april. now general petraeus is saying i think we re going to have to we can answer those questions probably in the fall, we will start to see maybe some shift. i mean, and, again, the important thing i mean, the military problems, i think, can always be addressed if you really wanted to. like d-day, we did d-day, right? you can do it if you want to. the real problem is corruption. that is the real fight in afghanistan. all right. sebastian, thank you so much for being with us. david gregory and savannah guthrie, thank you as well. the book is war.
china has the u.s. in a stranglehold. yes, they do. for china they figure if we outsource our unemployment problem to america, they ll just have political problems. if we leave our unemployment problem in china, we may have military problems. a lot of unemployed young men in china scares the government. i think they re happy to make it somebody else s problem. you have something to share, log on now and tweet us your thoughts. log on now. up next here, though, emotions at a boiling point once again over the controversial mosque going up near ground zero. in today s daily rant, we ll hear from our man torre, who says to all the critics, you re not allowed to say not in my backyard if it s not in your backyard. his turn after this. [ water crashing ]