on the ground there. we know, the defense department confirms there are armed drones flying over, although no authorization for strikes right now. i want to ask you both, and i ll start with you, senator casey, at what point do you think the president needs to come to congress to authorize any further level of involvement in iraq? well, shannon, i don t think we re at that point yet. i hope that the president will continue to on the path he s been on, which is to assess the situation, make sure our national interests are served. but an interesting development in the last couple of days where the president, i think appropriately, asked congress for support for the syrian opposition, the well-vetted syrian opposition to make sure that we can change have an impact, i should say, changing the dynamic on the battlefield in syria. as we know, the moderate opposition in syria is fighting in a sense a two-front war. fighting assad and the barrel bombs and brutality he s put forth as well a
about iraq which people have gone over and will continue to go over. at the end of the day when this president took over, iraq was stable. you saw our ambassador crocker there talking about the extent to which al qaeda had really been defeated. so for the president to then decide he s going to walk away and to have this be the aftermath, i think people are very worried about it and worried about what s happening in afghanistan and the fact he may well be he says he s going to go down essentially the same path there. i certainly hope he will turn things around. i think that turning around the poll numbers would be a sign he actually was exercising some leadership and moving in a direction that was going to keep us safe, but i m not optimistic. and we have the request now in from the administration for the $500 million to help in syria, where isis has taken many strongholds as well. there are questions about whether it s going to make a difference at this point. is it too late? wel
man who was in custody. when he left, he said, i ll see you in new york. obviously been very successful across syria and iraq. how concerned are you? very concerned. concerned for the safety and security of the american people. obviously he feels emboldened by what this islamic state has been able to accomplish. he must feel safe in that large area they ve taken control of, which shows you that when the united states leaves a vacuum, others will go in, others will fill it, back actors will show up. we re seeing that right now. and my greatest concern is for what he intends to do, and i think they have the capability and intent to attack the united states. by the way, iraqi officials say they re working to confirm this is, indeed, al baghdadi. he purports to be. we ll see if it is. i want to play something ryan crocker, former u.s. ambassador to iraq, had to say on wednesday about the situation. the iraqis are not
worried these american passport-holding jihadists can come in legally. by the way, they have the ability now to produce bombs that can get through our security measures. so we re on the case trying to look for ways to stop those kinds of bombs to get on airplanes. this whole rise of isis, which is now by the way calling itself the islamic state, has become a national security threat. it was a long time ago, but it s a clear and present danger right now to the united states. yeah, how does the administration balance that against the president being very clear he wants us out of iraq? that was all part of his campaign. he s carried that out. now we have interests that are involved there with the rise of isis, the islamic state. how does the administration thread that needle? he s already sent up to 750 american military personnel. the problem is that the new vision that the president laid out at west point was about helping partners around the world.
i don t think so. look, iran is a country that s half the size of europe. an inspection regime relies on unfettered access. that s a big country to search. the second thing, it relies on good intelligence. our intelligence agencies and your intelligence agencies did not catch many things that iran was doing right away. for instance, where they built an enrichment facility in the side of a mountain, it was four years before our intelligence agencies knew about it. so the last thing we want to do is leave iran parked as a threshold nuclear power a few months away from getting the material necessary for a bomb and to rely on inspectors to do the job. the only thing between radical ayatollah getting nuclear weapons is u.n. nuclear inspectors, that s a huge problem for the entire world. and quickly, how concerned are you about iran s role, what it s doing in iraq and with the advent of isis there? iran is the foremost sponsor of terrorism around the world. in the last four years, they