to put down his people. the civil war began in 2011 in syria but quite frankly right now what we have is the iranians and russians have successfully propped up the regime particularly with russian military intervention and huge commitment on the part of the iranians. syria is now a client state of iran. as horrible as that is, that s a fact. they are trying to drive the united states out of syria and out of the middle east. add to that that the turks have opened up a front in northwestern syria to take territory away from the syrian kurds who but they believe are threatening the sovereignty of turkey, add to that of the iranians are encroaching on israel from syria where they want to establish bases for rockets and missiles to be able to fire into syria into israel, they are not going to permit it to happen.
to put down his people. the civil war began in 2011 in syria but quite frankly right now what we have is the iranians and russians have successfully propped up the regime particularly with russian military intervention and huge commitment on the part of the iranians. syria is now a client state of iran. as horrible as that is, that s a fact. they are trying to drive the united states out of syria and out of the middle east. add to that that the turks have opened up a front in northwestern syria to take territory away from the syrian kurds who but they believe are threatening the sovereignty of turkey, add to that of the iranians are encroaching on israel from syria where they want to establish bases for rockets and missiles to be able to fire into syria into israel, they are not going to permit it to happen.
2014. joining us is david cones, as secretary of treasury, you were involved in the ukraine sanctions. you were in charge, in fact. why should treasury now give a waiver to exxonmobile to start doing business. they shouldn t, the sanctions were put in place because of the russian military intervention. the very idea, like all of our sanctions program, is to change the behavior of the target of the sanctions. we should provide sanctions relief and make no mistake, giving this waiver to exxonmobile, we should crank that sanctions relief only when
given the major setbacks we ve had. the ramadi fell. the pentagon training program failed in syriand at russian military intervention. trying to show that we re doing something about a situation where we re really not making much progress. would you seem to be giving it more of a benefit of a doubt than some others, lindsey graham was dismissing it out of hand. well i share the same frustration as senator graham shares. is that what is the material change that s going to askt outcome, which is to defeat ice snis the changes that we re making include an increase in aircraft, will not be decisive in and of themselves, for the simple reason, there s no ground force in syria there s not an effective ground force in iraq that can defeat isis. that s the problem we have, it is the elephant in the room. i got you, general, thank you, as always. good talking to you, neil. we were showing you the cme protesters, the ones blocking entrances to the cme entrances
effect on monday, we re told. illinois congressman mike quigley part of a delegation that just returned from ukraine. congressman, what was your impression of the situation there? you were on the ground. you presumably saw a lot more than we ve seen. what can you tell us? well, it s a real set of conflicts. it s a country full of turmoil, certainly a lot working against them. before this happened, they had an economy that needed a bailout. an extraordinary corruption. their president left, fled the country. and they re facing military aggression from russia. at the same time, i saw optimism. i think what they see is this is their doorway to the future, an opportunity to get past all this and to throw off, finally, the yoke of russian military intervention. but how do they go about doing that? you and i both know if there s an armed conflict right now,