it seems to mirror president barack obama s. walking to the podium in the middle of the night to inform the nation that the master mind hiepd the 9/11 attack was dead. stark difference to sunday morning announcement and extended news conference and shows the white house may have an uphill climb as the president tries to convince the american public that this moment is, in fact, bigger than bin laden. joining me now from stanford, brett mcguirk, presidential envoy for the global coalition to defeat isis in an nbc news senior foreign affairs analyst. i want to start with you giving us context here. how important was al baghdadi to isis overall operations? thanks for having me. bottom line, it s a landmark day for so many that made this happen. and i ve worked very closely and put on a lot of hours and days and weeks out in iraq and syria,
the president of iraq. we saw a clip of it last hour for an interview that aired on axios hbo. he told you he was concerned about what s happening in syria. five years of blood, treasure, effort. a lot of human misery went into defeating isis. this was not easy. and for anyone to become complacent about it is terrible. it s dangerous, tragic. it sounds like you re worried about what president trump has done in northern syria. the entire neighborhood is concerned about the implications of this policy. that s a striking statement from an important u.s. partner. to understand this, sala, president of iraq, is a very careful statesman. he chooses his words very carefully. he is one of the most pro-american leaders in the
day, that this isis leader died by a raid of special u.s. forces? you know, i just returned from afghanistan, jordan and qatar last week. i talked to a lot of our intelligence officials, some of our military people. they re doing a good job but it has to be a steady job. you can t health lter skelter, what we re doing in that region of the world. i m concerned because we have a lot of lives at risk. more importantly, there s still a threat to the homeland because of what s occurring in that part of the world. as chair of the committee, i want to be informed just like any chair would. for some reason, this sprays decides to cut democrats out of the information loop. we support our men and women in uniform. we don t talk about our intelligence gathering entities.
know, i heard the president and senior officials say we want to make sure that a reconstituted isis cannot take control of these oil facilities. that doesn t really make sense. the mission should be and was we want to make sure that isis cannot reconstitute. not that once they do they can t retake control of oil facilities. i think they re trying to hold a tow hold in syria. it s remote. not reliable in the coming months and over longer term. i think they re making this up as we go along. we ve already given up territory that would be territory in which our special forces with the syrian kurds would be following up and information gleaned from the raid last night on the baghdadi compound and we re not going to be able to do that. that s unfortunate. brett mcguirk, thank you for joining us. appreciate it. democratic congressman bennie thompson of mississippi, chairman of the committee on homeland security. i want to get you to react to
situation in syria is far from stable because of donald trump s actions. most recently, he has not listened to the same people that he listened to, apparently, on the raid. instead he created chaos in syria. if we are to succeed against isis, we have to have a coordinated, strategic plan that includes our global allies and that listens to our intel and american community, something that donald trump has apparently refused to do in multiple situations. so, this is a serious problem for us going forward as well. let s talk impeachment. house republicans, as you well know, claim they were being left out of the closed door impeachment testimonies and they continue to attack the process. this morning, though, former republican congressman trey gowdy of the benghazi committee. if you re going to have