the initial reporting in all these sorts of cases is always very incomplete. there is a lot that we dope know. for instance one of the questions i was most fascinated by because i was talking to military officials yesterday when they said that these guys were using women and children as human shields. and they had freed a slave. how did she differentiate herself from the women and children they were using as shields was she tied up? did she go running to them? there is so much we reason is found out. i think it s still a ferry significant operation because let s face it war a lot of wars about the war of public opinion and propaganda and it looks good for the united states to be able to say that we send in highly trained delta force commandos in there, they snatched one of these guys, killed him, took his wife, she could the laptop that they seized could yield a lot of
the initial reporting in all these sorts of cases is always very incomplete. there is a lot that we dope know. for instance one of the questions i was most fascinated by because i was talking to military officials yesterday when they said that these guys were using women and children as human shields. and they had freed a slave. how did she differentiate herself from the women and children they were using as shields was she tied up? did she go running to them? there is so much we reason is found out. i think it s still a ferry significant operation because let s face it war a lot of wars about the war of public opinion and propaganda and it looks good for the united states to be able to say that we send in highly trained delta force commandos in there, they snatched one of these guys, killed him, took his wife, she could the laptop that they seized could yield a lot of
leader. he was ultimately killed. but just imagine what would have happened had the mission gone wrong. isis has gotten used to fighting u.s. troops when they attack from the air. for months washington has led an air war against isis in iraq and syria. but there was very different. a bold raid into syria into an isis strong hold with u.s. boots on the ground. u.s. officials say american delta force commandos took off from northern iraq in black hawk helicopters and osprey plain helicopter hybrids like these and flew deep into isis territory in eastern syria. no allies on the ground if u.s. forces were captured they risked unthinkable horrors. a jordanian pilot captured by isis was burned alive in a cage. u.s. officials say the americans it target abu sayyaf was a top
ops forces raid that took out abu sayyaf. delta force commandos conducted the raid in an intensifier fight that killed sayyaf and about 12 other isis fighters. the mission was only the second known ground operation ever to take place in syria. this was senator dianne feinstein s assessment of the raid s results. this was i think a picture perfect raid. everything went according to plan. but the demise of the principal obviously took place when the aim was to capture. joining me now msnbc military analyst he colonel jack jacobs. with a welcome to you as always. explain why this mission is being hailed as a success despite the fact that sayyaf was killed. we wanted to get him to be sure, but we mostly wanted to get his information. his computers, all the information about the oil flows,
able to pinpoint our delta force into the exact location and timing where these people were killed and captured. so now they re wondering there s probably a lot of people in isis leadership scratching their head going who are the leaks? where are these sources of intelligence and they ll start changing their operations which makes them vulnerable for more exploitation of additional intelligence. how rattled do you think a group like this actually gets? i mean, because they ve seemed resilient in the past. they seemed resilient. this is an area i believe they felt safe. they were deep into the heart of their own territory. and this was a highly risky raid but it was carried out with such precision and no loss of life on our side. they have to be wondering now what s happening next. certainly they re going to try to figure out what went wrong and change some of their procedures some of their methods of operation giving us an advantage to figure out the next