analyst and former presidential adviser david gergen and former aide to general petraeus, colonel peter mansour. colonel, do you believe that iraqi forceses have surrounded ramadi and are ready to retake it? no. i think we re in the very preliminary stages of gathering forces and it would be astonishing if iraqi forces were ready to retake the city. what they are doing is fighting further east in the twin villages of a hot bed of sunni radicalism and the place where saddam s intelligence services went to ground after 2003. in fact the brigade i commanded in 2003 and four fought a battle in the area. we called it bad karma. there is some progress in anbar
do you agree with that? i do and frankly the someone solution i can see where we can declare victory and i think it would be valid and legitimate is what we want arab iraq to look like, don, is what kurdistan looks like today. i d put a wing up there. i d probably put a battalion up there. i d declare it a protectorate. you ve got $10 billion of turkish investment there. you ve got all the marriott hilton moving in and in 2007 when peter mansoor was there you had 200000 soldiers paranoid kurdistan was going to become a country. now they re best friends. that s a place we can go. maliki has as peter outlined eloquently he s had eight years and he s mistreated the
and last year in april, 2013, it expanded and into the islamic state of iraq and al sham, including an ambition to control syria as well. so people are wondering where did this new group pop up, it s really just al qaeda? this is the same aqi we knew and i believe they we rey generated the strength we re seeing now mostly in iraq and transitioned that force into syria. were they there before we got there for the war? well, the leader, zarqawi, was in iraq before we got there. but the majority of the activity that we saw that made this group so famous was discharged in the direction of the u.s. soldiers. so colonel mansoor, you were on the ground for the commander of the first brigade, the first armored division, the ready first combat team. are you surprised about what is happening there right now? well, i was also there during the surge as executive officer to general david petraeus. you know, after the surge we had significantly tamped down ethnosectarian violence in iraq
when peter mansoor was there you had 2 thour00000 soldiers paran kurdistan was going to become a country. now they re best friends. that s a place we can go. maliki has as peter outlined eloquently he s had eight years and he s mistreated the sunnis. they hated al qaeda and i think they re going hate isis, too. but right now he s managed to bond ba athists sunnis and people who are absolute implacable enemies. you remember during the iraq war when i think it was colonel colin powell who said you break it, you bought it. have we bought iraq? well, no, i don t think so. it s not up to us to save maliki
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