beirut. sure absolutely. now in paris. the question is then is this the new normal? is this what we as citizens are expecting from our leadership that this is acceptable collateral damage? absolutely not. no. this is not normal. it will not be normal. it will not become normal. it is an aberration. it is a reflection of what foreign fighters have been able to do going to syria and then coming back and being able to spread their vial ideology to other people or even through the social media. but when the president says that isis daesh, better name for them daesh, is contained, he was talking about and we are talking about within iraq and within syria, their territory has been reduced. they are now operating in 25% less territory. we have liberated tikrit 100,000 sunni have returned to
rosemary. that is the big question. really when we look at the battle for ramadi we have to look at past battles where we have seen this kind of force engage isis. we saw that in tikrit. we heard the prime minister say this battle for ramadi will take days. the battle for tikrit they said the same thing. it ended up taking weeks upon weeks. when isis takes ground they know huh how to dig in. they ve know how to reinforce their hold. we have seen improvised explosive devices. bobbytraps, ieds. and slows any advancements. when it cam to tikrit, it took u.s. air strikes to loosen their grip of city for their the iraqi army and militias to finally go in and take control of the city. don t expect this to be an easy fight. it s likely to be very bloody. we have seen recent video released that allegedly shows isis militants inside ramadien
a year. we have more live from baghdad. she joins us now. let s talk about this. it s not over yet, is it? there are small pocket of resistance there. that is the big concern. at what point do they think that some sense of normalcy will be returned? and how many people are we talking about in these pockets of resistance? can the iraqi forces overcome those pockets and move forward? reporter: according to what we heard yesterday from the interior minister during a visit to tikrit, they were saying they hoped to take over these areas, that they hoped to clear and be done with military operations and clearing operations in these pockets as they describe them within hours as we heard yesterday. as we saw from our team that was on the ground in tikrit, arwa
with retired u.s. army lieutenant general mark curtling. thank you for being us. you commanded u.s. task force iron, 2007 to 2009. iraqi security forces lauvlged a itch maer offensive against isis. state media reporting taken to tikrit where you were based but that baghdad is still in jeopardy. if you were there, how would you protect the capital city? well, i think you d have to look first, christi, first of all, good morning to both you and victor. good morning. you d have to look first at was the objectives are of isis. i m not sure taking baghdad is one of their objectives. they are very good. an evil, grotesque organization very good at killing people, not very good at governing. to get intermingled within the 7 million people population of baghdad would be extremely difficult for them. i think they want to capture ground, maintain a safe haven