know, deterrence to the whole operation by making fun of this guy. a coward, whimpering. it s possible, i suppose, the three children who were with him may have been crying and whimpering as they were in a giant gunfight with a trained attack dog after them but, you know, baghdadi, no way. these are violent, desperate, men fighting for their lives who are the cruelest people on the face of the earth. that never happened, in my judgment. what do you make of the analysis that we could not have done this without the kurds and yet at the same time, this issue was carried out despite the president s action vis-a-vis the kurds? well, that was a remarkably impulsive piece of bad judgment by the president of the united states to unilaterally essentially tell the turks, yes,
information that allowed us to figure out where he was. richard engel was on air a little bit earlier talking about one person in particular who actually was able to pass on dna information from baghdadi to the americans so they d be able to confirm it was him once they went into that raid. at the same time, i mean, these are alliances that the president has demeaned. partnerships that he s diminished. he s pulling out of syria. he s abandoning the kurds. i mean, there are national security experts who have said to reporters that this raid happened successfully not because of the president but in spite of him. and that s not wrong. the intervening hours since this raid have demonstrated how crucial our partnership with the kurds was and remains. and how they continue to work on our behalf even as the president says, you re going to have to abandon your homeland and be functionally, ethnically
oil. one, is that appropriate, given that syria is a sovereign nation? two, is it realistic? the oil that exists there, there s not much of it and it s fairly low quality. give us a reality check of that happening. i think what happened here is president trump said basically get out of syria. you had a very rapid unraveling. and our forces are trying to decree act to a cascading set of circumstances, abandoning bases, russians taking them over. the president was convinced to leave some forces in syria, which is probably a good thing. the problem is, and you re exactly right, these regions are kind of in the middle of nowhere in the southeast corner of the whole third of syria we used to have influence over. we ve already given up the main kurdish areas in the north of the zone. to say we re going to protect the oil and support the kurds with revenue doesn t really make much sense. and the presence itself you
being pulled out and then bringing in special forces for this operation? yeah, i don t know for sure, fred. i wouldn t be surprised if we find out that the president s abrupt decision to withdraw forces from syria might have thrown into some disarray or confusion the planning that went into getting al baghdadi. this was likely a months-long process from working on intelligence and monitoring his movements through various means of surveillance and reconnaisance, so i think it took a long time to get here. i ll suspect we ll find out that his abrupt decision may have thrown that process a little bit off dead center here. that said, i think operationally clearly this was a success, but i do think it s important to remember that in some parts it was a success driven by the partnership that we have with the kurds and the kind of intelligence on the ground that they have been able to give us. that partnership now is very much in jeopardy because of a strategic decision that the
there is no question that the demise of baghdadi is a very important milestone in terms of our fight against isis, and all credit goes to our special forces, to our intelligence community. this is a real blow against isis and a positive step in the fight against terrorism, and credit should go to all who were involved, and i think it s an example of what our special operations and intelligence capable are capable of throughout the world. it s important to note that that attack was carried out by information from the kurds. as you know, the president has turned his back on the kurds, something i think that will have a negative impact not only in that region of the world but in terms of our relationship with allies from one end of this planet to another. more of our breaking news in a moment. coming up next, there is