alliances in syria, kurdish forces say they ve struck a deal with bashar al assad s army to help fend off the turkish attack. let s bring in john kirby. thank you very joining us at a critical time. i want to get your efforts to clarify what the u.s. strategy is here. you d heard cnn s exclusive reporting that kurds are telling the u.s. diplomats that you ve left us here to be slaughtered. at the same time, the secretary of defense saying we are not abandoning our kurdish partner forces and u.s. troops remain with them in other parts of syria. how can both things be true? well, they re not true, john. both things are not true. we are abandoning the kurds. we are pulling our forces not only back from the border now. buttest p esper came out saying approved of the pull youout. leaving a void assad and russia
the week there would away troop pullout from syria and the secretary of defense seemed to respond to that by saying i have a major philosophical difference with you on this and i m resigning. it s not necessarily that the troop pull youout is in theory a bad idea, but zoit do it without having a plan and without extracting some concessions from, for example, russia who are getting a massive gain from this pullout. who is leading our international strategy, is it going on be something like john bolton and we re going to be at war with iran in the next year? the mattis resignation, i think,