by any stretch of the imagination. as we ve seen in iraq, often a foreign military force is a lightning rod for insurgent activity and focuses minds against the outsiders. there are no good military strategies here. it looks like a focus now of different nations trying to use air power. perhaps getting turkey to seal that border more effectively. frankly, without crossing that porous border, isis are in a much tighter spot. that can begin to turn things around. while it s ridiculous, frankly, to say isis is contained, there s untruth that the territory around syria and iraq has gotten smaller. we were in sinjar has peshmerga take that down. they re in afghanistan, increasingly in libya. they re not a global phenomenon shrinking. you saw firsthand in iraq as you saw them retake sinjar. colonel, i want to get your take on what you heard from the two world leaders.
but the president, obviously he was asked about the criticism that the u.s. has the krong strategy and not leading in this fight. he said very firmly that putting in a large amount of u.s. ground troops would be a mistake. i and i agree with him. i don t think we need a large number of forces, american forces on the ground, but we do need ground forces. they could be the kurds. they could be iraqi troops once they re better trained. but there has to be a ground component to this. we can t do this alone from the air. and what the french did last night in raqqa, what we re doing every day and every night in syria and iraq is trying to contain isis, but it doesn t degrade or destroy pem. so, we ve got to move beyond where we are. where we are right now, isn t working. there needs to be a morrow bust presence. also, the air attacks are anemic, at best. 20 bombs? that s not i know the french
explosions, a number of targets hit. mostly in the suburbs around raqqa but two key buildings in the middle, basically headquarters and jails for isis. a total of 30, 24 explosions, depending on who you re listening to and the coalition, too, evidence in the air over raqqa last night, hitting targets far from it and also close to it as well. so, a lot of air power being used and the french president francois hollande saying, more will come. you heard president obama justify strongly that air strike policy. they re not dealing with a conventional state. they re dealing with an insurgent group. they may seek to try to take out specific targets, weaken their infrastructure. frankly, at the end of the day, no matter how long you listen to the same justifications for what people say is a nonpolicy out of the white house, there is an undenial truth to the fact that a large ground force of foreigners isn t going to fix the problem in syria. there are a number of different groups in there who
so they believe he s using different language than president obama. he says, this is not an army. these are insurgents. hollande is saying, this is an army. the raids overnight, in syria with the bombing raids overnight. christiane amanpour, thank you so much. coming up for us, france making good on its vow to destroy anyone plotting to harm its people. they dropped bombs, as we said, 20 bombs on targets in syria. but were the terrorists prepared for that? did they have time to get away? and then what s next in the war against isis in france, in syria, in iraq, in europe and, frankly, in the united states as well? this is cnn special live coverage. al. just real roasted turkey. carved thick. that s the right way to make a good turkey sandwich. the right way to eat it? is however you eat it. panera. food as it should be.
law enforcement in france to deal with a person like that. he showed up for the first time in 2012. authorities noticed him because he tried to travel to yemen. authorities stopped him. in 2013 they put him on a watch list for surveillance. he didn t do what they wanted him to do so they issued an arrest warrant and he escaped to syria. his parents tried to get him out of syria. his father traveled to syria to try to get him back. his mother notified authorities and asked them for help. a couple days ago, obviously, they were informed that their son was one of the attackers in the paris attacks that happened on friday. so, this is certainly an individual where the writing seemed to be on the wall. where authorities were informed. at some point it as as they lost track of him. i was in his house, fairly nonscript area. police are searching through that area, seeing if they can find any clues as to the wider network behind this. really startling, fred. thanks so much. this one attacker