courtney cuby, national security reporter. courtney, start with you. you heard the ambassador, she s saying no direct talks. counter example of that is north korea, something we re also very familiar with, begs the question how is the strategy being discussed in your space about how the u.s. will engage syria? the u.s. military strategy in syria remains the same that it has been for several years, and that is to go after and defeat isis. that mission is actually fairly far along, they ve taken back 95% of land isis once held in iraq and syria. there s still a significant isis presence. in syria, there s also a presence. the u.s. military is not actively going after them at this point. so the military piece has stayed the same. what has evolved over the years from president obama s time to
has the chemical weapons program been degraded. the dust settled on barza, tension between the u.s. has gone down, being reduced just a little. but the question hangs in the air, what did the air strikes achieve. military commanders have been pouring over satellite photographs of the three sites. remember, 105 missiles, 76 fell on that site. they ll be trying to work out, you know, did we achieve our objectives, has this deterred president bashar al assad. president trump has certainly answered one of the questions in his own mind this morning, in yet another of the tweets we have been hearing about. he said this morning the syria raid was so perfectly carried out with such precision, and he backs his own use yesterday of the phrase mission accomplished. certainly tactically in terms of the three sites, mission was accomplished, but the whole
republican from new york, member of the foreign affairs committee. thanks for being with us on a sunday. the president as you know has taken criticism for his tweets, saying mission accomplished. the assad regime was back dropping bombs on his people today, if you re watching the news. and having meetings with russian politicians on this day. are you clear on what the mission should be or is in syria? yes, with regards to mission accomplished, the mission of what we saw with the strikes early saturday in syria were a coalition of at least three nations. within minutes, three different targets, a tactical mission to degrade syria s chemical weapons capabilities, as far as that goes, the mission that we had for early saturday morning was accomplished. if we choose to define mission broader, you could go broad and
obviously the more broad you choose to go, you can t say mission accomplished. as far as what happened early saturday morning, that tactical mission was accomplished precisely, accurately, proportionally. is the u.n. resolution and agreements of that like, are they effective and should that be the realm within the administration should define syria strategy or is it fine that it may appear to be transactional? well, the u.n. security council with a veto of russia, i don t expect it to be taking bold action. what we are seeing at the security council is a debate where russia puts out narrative and effort on the part of the united states and other countries to counter the narrative, but assad did accede to the chemical weapons convention, they did report to the opcw some of their chemical weapons program a few years ago.