Dana carvey and the snl effect on politics. Im chuck todd. And joining me to provide insight and analysis this morning are nbcs joe scarborough, White House Correspondent april ryan, the washington posts Kathleen Parker and former Senior Adviser to president obama david axelrod. Welcome to sunday. Its meet the press. From nbc news in washington this is meet the press, with chuck todd. Good morning. For the second time this year a European Capital is recovering from an apparent terrorist attack, linked to islamic extremism. This time it is copenhagen, denmark. Police shot dead a gunman they believe was responsible for a pair of attacks that left two people dead. One in a cafe, where a free speech event was taking place. And another at a synagogue. Our chief Foreign CorrespondentRichard Engel has been following the story and joins me now from istanbul. Richard, what can you tell us . Do we know for sure the attacker was doing this on behalf or inspired by al qaeda . Reporter certainly officials in denmark believe that this was a terrorist attack. And they are going to Great Lengths to say that denmark is not at war with islam but is at war with radical islam. They seem to be linking it. And it is almost a mini Charlie Hebdo style attack a mini attack like the one we saw in paris. What happened was yesterday around 3 30 this gunman goes up to a cafe opened fire with an automatic rifle. The gunman was wearing a mask, heavy winter coat. He fires about 40 shots into the cafe window. At the cafe at the time was a free speech event and the keynote speaker at that event was lars, a swedish cartoonist who has been targeted for death by al qaeda who has drawn caricature of the Prophet Muhammad as a dog in the past. Someone that al qaeda wanted to kill. Then the attacker got away. He was on the run for several hours as police were looking for him. Around 1 00 in the morning overnight, he opened fire, not surprisingly at a synagogue. Again, a jewish target, very similar to the Charlie Hebdo attack. He killed a guard at the synagogue and in the early hours overnight around 4 50 in the morning, police confronted the suspect. The suspect opened fire on police. Police returned fire and they killed him. All right, as western europe deals with this, i know you just got back from iraq. And were going to be debating this war resolution about what the president wants to go after isis to get Congressional Authority to do this it means it is going after isis in iraq and syria. What did you see in iraq . Officials here claim theyre making progress against isis in iraq. Reporter i was incredibly depressed frankly. I knew iraq was in bad shape. It was even worse than i thought. Isis is a huge problem in iraq and syria. But unless you confront the much bigger issues the issue of will occurred kurdistan be an independent state. What happens to sunni areas . Will the government in baghdad continue to be run by Shiite Militia militias . What happens with assad . Unless you address the bigger issues, it is still going to be there. I was completely discouraged by what i saw. The iraqi army has been described as pathetic, little more than a coalition of militias. So i got no indication that things are going well. All right. Richard, thank you for your sober account there. Well discuss this attack plus the war against isis with two key senators from the Armed Services committee the first one is the chairman of that committee, senator john mccain of arizona. And the 2008 republican president ial nominee. Then ill speak with the Ranking Member of the Armed Services committee, rhode island democrat jack reed. It has been over a year since we had you on the program. Let me start, based on what you heard Richard Engel report about the state of things in iraq, and as we debate this war resolution first of all, why do we need this resolution . Why does the president need this authorization when we have two authorizations that essentially give him the authority to do what he wants in arguably both of the countrys . Well, probably it is not absolutely necessary but it has been since 2002 as i recall that we had resolution that was aimed particularly at al qaeda, and those that were responsible for the attacks on the United States. So i think it is probably appropriate. It is probably appropriate to have the debate. But the president hasnt come forward yet with a plan or a strategy for us to succeed. And in his proposal, he left out Bashar Al Assad, which is really amazing in that we are training young syrians to go in andight against Bashar Al Assad. Does that mean we wont protect him against the barrel bombing of Bashar Al Assad who already killed well over 200000 syrians . It is really kind of convoluted and i would say maybe call it an uncertain trumpet. Are you going to be one of those proposing for Broader Authority for the president and the resolution as it gets debated . I think we should not restrain the president of the United States. The congress has the power of the purse. If we dont like what the commander in chief is doing, we can cut off his funds for doing so. But to restrain him in our authorization of him taking military action, i think frankly it is unconstitutional and eventually leads to 535 commanders in chief. Let me ask you this larger question. Youre somebody that youve been pushing hard to see a little more military presence in some of these countries, to increase the security. But as richard outlined if you dont have if you dont have the Iraqi Government ready with a political solution, if you dont have a stable syria, dont have a stable libya, it doesnt matter the minute the u. S. Pulls out, if they get involved in the country, they pull out, chaos ensues. If we stay in, you keep the stability, but we seem to want stability more than these countries. So why keep doing them . Well i think it is pretty clear, in fact it is absolutely clear that once we had the situation stabilized, thanks to the surge and sacrifice for a lot of american lives, if we left the force behind, the position would have remained stable. To pull everybody out as the president did was a huge mistake. These things dont happen by accident. Just as if he pulls everybody out of afghanistan, without conditions based, youre going to see the same thing happen there. And so many of us predicted, it was predictable and we predicted it. Lindsey graham and i said this would happen because of our many visits there. So you have to have the stabilizing force. Youre going to also have to have american boots on the ground. That does not mean massive numbers as the president sets up that straw man all the time, but it means controllers, special forces and many others. It will be a tough, tough time rebuilding the iraqi military, which is defeated, which means get arms to the peshmerga who are fighting well and can fight but, look, in syria, there is no strategy whatsoever. We may train 3,000 to 5,000 people. We just hear from our defense people that 20,000 people have already come into syria. Let me get you a couple other quick questions. There is this Homeland Security funding debate taking place between Senate Republicans and house republicans. Where do you stand on this . Do you think using Homeland Security funding should be the way you protest the president s actions . On immigration . I think it would be terrible. I think we have to the American People didnt give us majority to have a fight between house and Senate Republicans. They want things done. We cannot cut funding for the department of Homeland Security. We need to sit down and work this thing out and there is ways we can address what president did was unconstitutional. But it is not through cutting shutting down the department of Homeland Security. It is too serious. Senator mccain i have to leave it there i have a lot to get to i appreciate you coming on. Thank you. You got it. Senator reed, welcome back to meet the press. Thank you. Want to pick up on a couple of issues i didnt get to get to with him. Talking about syria. He brought it up. The syria strategy you heard richard reporting in iraq, but everybody agrees nobody quite knows what it is. Are you going to support a resolution giving the president more authority to combat isis in iraq and syria without knowing what the syria strategy is . The resolution is based upon the threat of isil against the United States. Theyre Holding Territory in iraq defense our regionals. It is a national effort. We have the jordanians aligned with us, the uae with us, et cetera. We have concentrated on the most immediate threat, that threat is isil in syria and in iraq. And thats what the authority has requested for. You dont think you have to outline how what can you get rid of isis . Thats fine. Whats going to something will replace it in syria that is probably not going to be friendly to the United States. What were trying to do, this is very challenging, is to develop an alternative to the radical jihadist in syria. That is the free syrian army. We begin to train them. We authorized the training. It is going to take time. Were going to have to build it. Were going to have to introduce it on the ground. Hopefully that will be the nucleus for moderate forces to begin to turn the tide in syria. It is going to take a much longer time. Relatively speaking three year then, you think it should be longer. You think three years is too short . I think three years is not appropriate where we dont want to send a signal to the world that were there for just some years. Unfortunately, this battle will take a long time. It is a battle based upon richard reporting, he said some of the fundamental issues are political. The engagement of sunnis, the allocation of resources within iraq, even when you get into syria, what is this little opposition going to look like . Not so much what kind of Tactical Units do we have on the ground. I think we would be better off having a resolution that did not have a specific time limit. I do think though it makes sense to indicate strongly that our engagement would be limited in terms of American Military personnel. And that i think is in the resolution. Let me ask you a question i get a lot, why is it our fight . At some point there is a feeling, we cant do it. This became our fight in 20022003 when we decided to preempt take out the Iraqi Government. But whether you agree with the iraq war or not, you ble the United States government has a responsibility to put the middle east together. We have the consequences of the decision. That is destabilize country in iraq to a degree, syria. A lot of this is flowing from that decision. We have to do this in our own selfinterest. Were doing this to help countries, but ultimately it is about protecting ourselves. We dont want radicalized well trained individuals coming back from iraq or syria and attacking the United States. We dont want other countries that are allies are being subjected to this pressure. The fight has to be theirs. The fight is as much about the politics of the situation as it is about operational technique and forces them ever out. Both you and senator mccain are allied when it comes to this idea of giving ukraine arms. Arming this opposition. Ukrainian army could never gee feet the defeat the russian army if the russians chose to escalate. If we do this and the ukrainians get slaughtered is it the United States responsible to escalate again on that clause. I believe that defineing defensive weapons should not be played with ultimately sending in any Ground Forces or more overt help. That has to be clear to them. What it will do is it will increase the cost to the russians. And not only the military efforts, but more importantly the economic sanctions. These costs accumulate at some point. The hope is that putin becomes more sensitive to what hes doing and stop this. It sends a strong signal to the ukrainian people fighting very badly but to our allies part of nato and other countries that were not just going to stand completely aside. I have no great optimism but the way you do that is first get the attention. This may be a way to do that. Senator jack reed, thank you very much. Before that senator john mccain. We have new polling. We were discussing this on friday. It was this issue, a majority of americans support what the president is trying to do there is basically mixed feelings about whether there is confidence in the president s strategy. I think it goes to this where i think americans realize they want to get rid of the threat but they assume once we get ritt of it well never get out. Well, they have learned. They watched the news since 2003. They hear republicans blaming democrats for getting out of iraq too early. We heard that today. It the democrat blaming republicans for getting into iraq in the first place. And they sit here and here we are 11, 12 years later were worse off. Youre right chuck. What you heard is what i heard and sure 300, 400 speeches nobody wants us to go back in there. Yes we may have to put boots on the ground. But they dont want America Fighting this battle anymore. Japan has a stake in it. Saudi arabia, the whole world has a stake in it. All i here is enough. This is not americas war. Well help out. But were not leading the parade anymore. Another poll number here. What is the president going to be ending a war or starting a war. Many people said about starting a new war. Thats not the legacy candidate barack obama thought he was going to have and maybe the country thinks el going to have one of the pieces of hope and change is the fact he was going to pull troops out of iraq. You have to i was too surprised at this poll, when it tet something about the president , his legacy starting the war. Is he starting a war or acting. Were seeing advances in iraq by isis and the iraqis are not able to stand up for themselves. We are are dealing with situations we are having to respond to especially with the lone wolf issue that were wondering what is going to happen. David, something in the war resolution and youre a wordsmith. The president s proposed resolution checked every here we have this youre asking for Congressional Authority to military action, should you be rechecking them . It is all about pulling at heart strings . I was surprised the name check. It is a way of saying we have a Real National security interest in being there. We wrote in 2002 ashe senate he said he impotionsed the invasion. Thats what happened. Until we find a little splugsolution, we can create the time and space for them to get together. It feels like it is just like yeah. With. We got to go in because you got to clear and create stability, create the space for them to create their own political stability. They dont do it some other group will raise up. We had 180,000 troops in iraq and afghanistan when he took office and 15,000 there now. History is hard to judge in the moment. Kathleen. Look, president bush never keeps when hes with president and had to go to war under the circumstances we all believed at the time, he put in place a lot of tools. The patriot act and all that. He told me once during an interview, difficult things that were very unpopular. I think president obama is in that situation now where he does see. The ball is in his cord and he feels he has to do something. He would be in a loss, loss situation. If he does something it is the wrong thing. It is a debate we wont end this morning here. Im going to be back in a minute. Well change topics a little bit. The race for the white house. Brant new polling data. A week this sunday well be dealing with a sunday primary. [ male announcer ] ours was the first modern airliner, revolutionary by every standard. And that became our passion. To always build Something Better airplanes that fly cleaner and farther on less fuel. That redefine comfort and connect the world like never before. After all, you cant turn dreams into airplanes unless your passion for innovation is nonstop. I make a lot of purchases for my business. And i get a lot in return with ink plus from chase. Like 60,000 bonus points when i spent 5,000 in the first 3 months after i opened my account. And i earn 5 times the rewards on internet, phone services and at Office Supply stores. With ink plus i can choose how to redeem my points. Travel, gift cards even cash back. And my rewards points wont expire. So you can make owning a business even more rewarding. Ink from chase. So you can. One year from a this sunday well be through iowa and new hampshire. We thought it would be a good time to see where the race starts. We have brandnew nbc news marist polls from those early primary president ial battleground states. Here is the biggest takeaway. A wide open republican field. Let me go through the leaders. In iowa, huckabee, bush walker. Only guys in double digits. New hampshire Bush Walker Hall and christie. South carolina, lindsey graham, bush, walker, huckabee and carson. In all, there were seven different republican candidates who got double digits from the reports we saw there. Interestingly enough if you sort of give their standings and do a points system, here is the four lea