did she go running to them? there s so much we haven t found out. it s still, i think, a fairly significant a fairly significant operation. face it, wars a lot of wars are about the war of public opinion and propaganda. it looks good for the united states to say we sent in highly trained delta force commandos in there. they snatched one of these guys. they killed him, took his wife. the laptops they seized could yield a lot of intelligence. so, from a public relations angle, i think this is not a bad deal. do you think we could have done this without assad s acquiescence of some sort? oh, yeah. i don t think he has much control there at all. that s the first thing i would say. the second thing i agree with helene, you take down a key financial guy like abu sayyaf. that s good, you rattled them. we have penetrated them. we have real intel. it s a big deal. it ll require them to deploy
forces mission in eastern syria. richard engel has been assessing the significance of this raid into syria. reporter: isis got used to fighting u.s. troops, when they attack from the air. for months, washington led an air war against isis in iraq and syria. but, this was very different. a bold raid into syria into an isis stronghold with u.s. boots on the ground. u.s. officials say americans delta force commandos took off in blackhawk helicopters with helicopter hybrids like these and flew deep into isis territory in eastern syria. it was friday evening. syrian time. no allies on the ground. if u.s. forces were captured, they rising unthinkable horror. a jordanian pilot captured by isis was burned alive in a cage.