our strategy in iraq and syria is not succeeding or not succeeding fast enough. we are playing a more long game when a disruptive strategy is required. basically the argument is maybe this strategy is correct but the speed with which it s being implemented is what s wrong. do you buy that argument? well, i think he makes some very good points. look, if we re going to confront isis, you know, clearly we ve been through acts of war these last few weeks that make it very clear that they are a clear and present danger not only to europe but to this country as well. and we re going to have to take some very specific steps here. one is to unify this effort. as richard engel pointed out, this effort is not coordinated. people are not working together. everybody s kind of doing their own thing on different targets. we need to unify the command. we need to set a joint command center where all of these countries are together on their objective and secondly we need to increase our effort there
we re seeing in syria. we ve gotten a awful lot of people that bear some responsibility there, including the united states. assad is probably the primary villain for what s going on if syria. iran bears some responsibility for injecting themselves into the civil war. hezbollah is there. we ve got a number of opposing forces. a lot of extremists that are part of those opposing forces in syria. the problem with maliki who basically threw the sunnis not only out of the government but out of the military, added fuel to the development of isis and i think the united states by virtue of not getting involved sooner in trying to establish some kind of moderate force there, i think all of those are factors that have contributed to the situation that we re facing now. all right, our panel is also here with me, my colleague tom brokaw of nbc news, kathleen parker of the washington post, helene cooper of the new york times and ron foreigni ieforni
shouldn t pay attention to him because assad is an international criminal and we should not be part of an effort to allow assad to stay in place. but our priority here, our main focus now, ought to be in going after isis and making sure we defeat them. they re the clear and present danger. they re the ones we have to defeat if we re going to be successful at protecting the american people. secretary panetta, former director of the cia, always good to hear your wisdom on this, thanks for joining me this morning. thank you. much more on how we confront isis coming up. the politics of fear. how do we remain safe and still not give in to islamophobia. i want to surveil, i want surveillance of these people that are we give you relief from your cold & flu. you give them a case of the giggles. tylenol® cold helps relieve your worst cold & flu symptoms. you can give them everything you ve got. tylenol®
we need to increase the tempo of our air strikes. we need to organize ground forces, particularly the sunnis and the kurds and arm them so that they can take territory back from isis. and, frankly, we are need to increase special forces and our intelligence advisors not only to guide these forces but to go with them in order to ensure that we are successful in this effort. you know, you were not shy about criticizing the president and the strategy on syria. i m curious. do you think we d be in a different place today if you criticized there was a failure to push the iraqi government to allow a residual force to remain in iraq? the decision not to arm syrian rebels in 2012 and the failure to follow through against assad when the president said he crossed the red line. taken together, if any one thing had changed there, would we be in a different place today, mr. secretary? chuck, that s really hard to say because of the chaos that
commissioner, what extra steps are you taking? well, we re fortunate that over the past year mayor de blasio here in new york has funded us to the extent that we now have about a thousand more officers that will be focused on counterterrorism and crowd management. we have a new response group, 800 officers. we have a new critical response command, over 500 officers. they will be out at that parade. for a change we ll have great weather, low wind, the balloons will be up. we re expecting about three million people to be in new york city for that event. it s going to be a great event and it will be a safe and secure event. secretary johnson, we ve had a heated debate about the syrian refugee issue, but there talking with law enforcement officials, you hear that if congress did anything, you d like them focus on the visa waiver issue. explain. is it easier for an isis operative to get into this country to get a visa than it is for the refugee process?