join us. that is the message from the young english-speaking jihadist. the fighters identify themselves as british and australian and say they are soon going to iraq to fight. terrorism experts warn members of isis from western countries pose perhaps the greatest threat to the u.s. homeland. joining me now is a journalist who has spent an extensive amount of time in iraq, author of the classic series the world s most dangerous places. among several other books. i m glad to speak with you. know you ve met militant groups from around the world. what s your assessment of isis and its capabilities? well, i think isis is very good at projecting an asymmetrical threat. numerically, there are not that many. about 2,000, to 3,000, depending on which sources you read. they re essentially being welcomed in by tribes in the anbar region, the same sunni people we paid off to create you remember the surge and the awakening.
terrorism around the world, the key republican said he think business that s a drop in the budget when you consider the president working with congress has now cut defense spending by a trillion dollars. i don t think he said we will attack you? if you do this, we will attack you or said something less ambivalent than that? he said there would be enormous consequences if that red line were crossed. john mccain and others may have interpreted that as attacking them and the president considered it but ended up not doing that. i remember that part. i want the record to reflect we didn t say that. john mccain said that. let s bring in a filmmaker, author of the world s most dangerous places. spent a lot of time over there. one more time, it sounds like the enemy of our enemy is our friend because history says it has worked brilliantly. shep, what you re seeing is a
so let s talk about how exactly this would work. joining me is the author of the book entitled the world s most dangerous places. he s war correspondent robert pelton. so robert, welcome. i have a lot of questions for you. beginning with, from everything i have read about this, in terms of the task at hand, i understand there are only several hundred people in the world with this kind of expertise to go in a country, to find these things and presumably destroy them. who are they? first of all, the u.s. army has an entire group set up just for chemical weapons handling and destruction. but realistically, once you find these caches, you have to destroy them in place, which means you have to physically build a destruction factory that either incinerates these at high heat or uses some of the newer methods. that takes year, not something that s going to happen overnight. secondly, these kax caches are
and journalist robert pelton, author of the world s most dangerous places. robert, welcome back to you. and fareed, we have john kerry and he s saying, hey, listen, the threat we made. it s actually the thing that forced syria to agree to these talks to begin with. and then you have the russians saying, get the threat off the table right now. my question to you is, are these negotiating tactics or is this a disagreement that could end the talks really before they even get started? it s unlikely to end the talks before they get started. but i think that it reflects the very different way in which both sides are viewing this. i think the united states is viewing this as an opportunity to actually achieve what even missile strikes or air strikes would not have achieved, which is the destruction of some part of assad s chemical weapons arsenal. remember, air strikes would not actually destroy the chemical
decision has not been made. it s still under consideration. i have made my recommendation? which is? that recommendation is for 13,600 u.s. forces. reporter: i asked jay carney about that specific number and he would not commit whether the president is going to back general mattis recommendation in moving after these unfortunate comments. will the u.s. commit to that kind of force or pull out together as we saw in iraq. there are critics of the administration if we don t leave some forces behind, any security gains that have been made will be completely lost. shep: you wonder how many people will be lost and left behind. robert pelton returned from a five week trip with united states special forces unit. robert knows karzai s bodyguards and author of a book the