killed, apparently, by u.s. air strikes? well, i think we have to temper this a little bit. several of these individuals, when we say six weeks, there was a report in late july that one of these individuals was actually killed. so the other one, the amir of mosul, or isis commander, he was (s÷ @&h(lc% sources. so some of these individuals seem to be fairly high ranking. certainly, if he s the commander of mosul for isis, that s a senior commander. but this is not that recent. this is it s kind of odd they re making this announcement right our. because, you know, some of these guys have been dead for a while now. and, you know, just to be put this in context, in conversations i ve had with folks in u.s. intelligence, the reaction that i ve gotten has been u.s. air strikes really are not that effective in the sense that they have stopped isis campaign temporarily. but they re not achieving that many big hits in terms of senior isis leadership or in terms of
we re continuing to follow breaking developments in the fight against isis. senior defense officials confirmed u.s. led air strikes have killed three mid to high-level isis leaders in iraq. for more, we re joined by foreign correspondent. how important is this or as bob windrem said earlier, are we looking at leaders who will quickly be replaced? well, two perspectives. the short-term and the
combination of terrifying tactics before they come in and actually being competent in militarily. how important is it that the top military commander, isis isn t known to have more strategic thinkers beyond this person? well, what we ve seen in the past with isis is it tends to operate on two levels. one is a kind of macro level, which is certainly an important role that was held by, and that s going to emerge in the coming days following this strike, which is as an organization, the acquisition of, for example, military hardware and weapons that isis took over from the iraqi army and elsewhere, those tend to go into the big picture elements of isis. to be able to disperse those equipments and those weapons on a large scale. and that s probably the role he played. how to use those weapons, what to attack, what strategic areas to go after. but there s also another element of isis, which is the kind of low level fear factor that isis thrives off of. and in areas where they control, it
in the infrastructure. the top military commander for isis, those are the two top leaders that were taken out. and then, the largest iraqi city currently held under control of isis. now, according to u.s. officials, this is a serious but probably only temporary setback to the isis ability, command and control leadership vacancies, vacuums. but they cautious that those positions will probably be filled in very short order. because there s plenty of isis wannabes, potential isis leaders willing to step in and take their place. nevertheless, score one for the good guys. according to people here in the building. and it s really the first indication that the u.s. has had the ability to track and then take out some of the very important isis leadership, joy. big news.
what happened this summer. from a perspective of this past summer when isis really emerged on the world scene, it was after they managed to overrun the second largest city in iraq, which is the city of mosul. and that s when we started hearing his name. that s when he became this very prominent figure. now, keep in mind before this summer, isis was really concentrating on fighting inside syria, but then they kind of shock and awed their way into iraq by overrunning mosul. symbolically has a tremendous impact on the morale of the group, on the morale of the leadership. and there s also a kind of difficult point here. and that is many of these leaders seek what they call martyrdom. to die fighting an enemy like the united states. so in some sense, what tends to happen is after the elimination of this type of leadership, we see this being used as a rallying cry to recruit more followers, to recruit more leadership in the organization and to raise these people to