on that. good morning, andrea. thank you, david. the terror groups elusive leader, abu bakr al baghdadi is so confident he and in a mosque in a video. president obama doesn t want to order airstrikes as long as widely disparaged president maliki is still in charge. this weekend maliki said he will not step aside. earlier i talked with the crisis and how it threatens to spread with tony blair, now an iraq envoy. we re seeing insurgents from isis taking more and more territory and holding territory, border with syria virtually erased, onto lebanon, a regional threat. first of all, would this have happened if the united states had armed the moderate rebel forces a year ago or longer and
i m joined with andrea mitchell on that. good morning, andrea. thank you, david. the terror groups elusive leader, abu bakr al baghdadi is so confident he and in a mosque in a video. president obama doesn t want to order airstrikes as long as widely disparaged president maliki is still in charge. this weekend maliki said he will not step aside. earlier i talked with the crisis and how it threatens to spread with tony blair, now an iraq envoy. we re seeing insurgents from isis taking more and more territory and holding territory, border with syria virtually erased, onto lebanon, a regional threat. first of all, would this have happened if the united states had armed the moderate rebel forces a year ago or longer and
we ve already talked about the terrorist threat coming from iraq and syria, the very latest on that now the islamist militant group known as isis attempting to consolidate the borders of the caliphate or islamic state they declared that week. i m joined by andrea mitchell with more on that. welcome, andree na. thank you and good morning, david. so far isis is winning. in fact, the terror group s he will louis sif leader is so confident he appeared this weekend in a mosque in mosul. but president obama does not want to order air strikes against the terror group as long as iraq s widely disparaged president maliki is still in charge, and this weekend maliki said he will not step aside. earlier this week i talked about the iraq crisis and how it now threatens to spread with tony blair, now a middle east envoy.
is collapsing. president maliki was appointed essentially by the u.s. he was chosen by the then-u.s. ambassador who was, himself, a bush appointee. and it s a function of his government the way he s conducted himself that we face this dissasterous situation we see in iraq today. it s a confusing situation. it s not at all clear what is the right thing to do. in terms of the american side of this debate, obviously this is not an american issue. this is an iraq we issue and an international issue. but we have got very difficult and hard to traverse politics around talking about iraq at all in this country because of the disaster of the failed and false case for the war in 2002. you went through a similar situation in britain. as the united states considers its option, i think there is a real as to what the u.s. congress has to decide. president obama has announced that 275 u.s. troops are going to iraq under the war powers resolution on his say-so alone.
so it was not a combatant force that was being contemplated. it was train, advise, assist, so forth. secretary of state john kerry yesterday discussing the decision to withdraw u.s. troops from iraq. joining us now, carne ross, former british diplomat who resigned over the war in iraq. he s head of a non-profit, nonpartisan diplomatic advisory group called independent diplomatic. mr. ross, thank you for being here. thanks for having any. having been there in the middle of the initial international debate over the war in iraq in 2002 and 2003, how do you feel like the international debate is going right now? in terms of the quality of the debate about the very critical security situation in iraq? it s very confused. in a way what we re seeing is the epic playing out of the final neocon project in iraq. in a sense what s happening is post-invasion order established by the u.s. after the invasion is collapsing. president maliki was appointed essentially by the u.s. he was chosen b