interview program. .. >> two-time pulitzer prize-winning journalist gilbert gaul reports on the rise of big money in college football. >> what i worry about a little bit is that the pressure to pay the players even more significant sums of money or possibly even to go to a

competitive marketplace where you're bidding for, say, a great quarterback this many california or a great linebacker in western pennsylvania, and you're bidding up the price they're actually going to pay more that player. i mean, it's not impossible that we will get to that model. >> "after words" airs every saturday at 10 p.m. eastern and sunday at 9 p.m. we can watch all previous "after words" programs on our web site at booktv.org. [inaudible conversations] >> [inaudible] bear with us while we get going. i'm here to introduce michael weiss who is the author of

"isis: inside the army of terror," which is a national best seller, new york times best seller on isis, and to introducl him and moderate a discussion and question and answer session with t you all. jodi was supposed to be here, the author of black flags, another book on isis, and he was not able tohe come because of ao death in the family. so really good to see such a large crowd, and we have a lot ofth time allotted at the back d of the session for questions an answers. on the back end of the discussion for questions and answers. first of all, i will tell you about michael weiss who has reported recovered russia and the middle east extensively as a senior editor at the "daily beast"

and his book came out last february iran and it was a national best seller are in crisis. -- on isis. we can go into my set of questions first to get started. tell us of little how you came to write the books and why. >> guest: i was covering the serious crisis more or less since its inception 2011 and long before there is any isis' presence in syria or the acknowledged of the declared presence and i got to know the opposition which in the beginning was peaceful protesters and activist but then with the rebellion of speed aside regime i was meeting with refuge she's dead rebels

because southern turkey our barracks for the revolution but the summer of 2012 during ramadan with the free syrian army convoy hearing that the squadron was liberated in spent the night about one an hour north of the city. the order of the house was in serious trouble and spent the night there and it was extraordinary because i have seen firsthand to see the images broadcast from thousands of miles away but you have to do see it for yourself to understand the driving force behind the rebellion. because at night they would put down there guns to pick

up a white gloves and a garbage bags to pick up the of rubble from the streets because assad was bombarding civilian never structure targeting of hospitals anybody injured or badly wounded could not be treated. was extraordinary they turn the mosque into a makeshift hospital in treating everybody militiamen even the pro-government fighters equally with the rebels lysol that with my own eyes. about six months later the town was completely taken over that i stated the house that i stated is now controlled by isis the family went into a turkey that i stayed with. so i watched a generation of what started out as a noble and a dignified rebellion

over a totalitarian government and is the my co-author is actually a syrian national. he comes there an eastern province of syria. to put this in context, this is a gateway town between syria and iraq which for the better part of ten years had been a sort of traffic point for al-qaeda in iraq, the jihadist group that is now known as isis. al-qaeda in iraq was their original incarnation. so it sort of has a relationship as being a kind of juarez to el paso. those of you -- we're in texas, so you know the mexican drug cartels. so hasan comes from a syrian tribe, has a very extended family network. his family knows everybody, basically, in this renal. so for the purpose -- in this region. for the purposes of doing this book, we thought we shield to actually -- we need to actually interview guys in isis.

so we got these interviews with a lot of fighters at the lower ranking levels, but even more important than that, their family members. you know, how come a guy, a 16-year-old boy who was studying chemical engineering or electrical engineering wanting to live in the west decides to cast his lot with a bunch of head-lopping barbarians? what is the driving mechanism behind this? so the purpose of writing this book is to try and explain -- by no means justify, but to give an explanation and an account for the rise of this terror army which, i mean, by last geographic call calculus now controls a swath of terrain in the middle east roughly the size of great britain. and the other purpose i should just add is, you know, i did a lot of media in june of 2014 when isis stormed mosul, thus inaugurating this coalition war. and the question i kept getting asked on tv was where did they come from, you know? how did these guys just emerge from nowhere? and it sounded like the most

absurd question i'd ever heard. in the book we say imagine it's 1985, and the viet cong have conquered a third of southeast asia, but everybody's scratching their heads saying where did they come from? who is this enemy? they're unknown to us. isis was al-qaeda in iraq from 2003 to -- 2004, really, up until, well, now. they have been a primary enemy, a primary target of the united d states and its allies in the ream. so they've just changed -- in the region. so they've just changed their branding and their marketing, and their strategy has evolved in a dire and sophisticated manner which makes them all the greater to defeat. a lot of this book is a work of history. we go back to the early origins of the terrorist organization. the founder of the feast, if you like, zarqawi, a jordanian who went into iraq after the coalition campaign in afghanistan. first he spent time in iran and syria, went into iraq and,

essentially, set up this organization which didn't start as an al-qaeda franchise but became one after a series of spectacular terror attacks targeting the united nations, the jordanian embassy. so we wanted to sort of give the average reader, people who are interested in the subject matter because, let's face it, we all have targets on our backs. these guys would bomb this book festival, they would do everything they possibly can to try and bleed and humiliate and abase the united states. and, frankly, every civilized country in the world and some not-so-civilized cups. so this is sort -- countries. so this is sort of a broad history, but it culminates with very in-depp canth reporting and -- depth reporting and what they want, which is maybe even more important. >> could you go into what you describe as the social media and the internet campaign that draws

so many recruits. to just finish that thought, you know, keeping in mind, you know, what i was trying to get at here is the question of whether or not the extent to which isis is able to recruit is simply a function of the scope of its social media and internet campaign or whether -- and to what extent it is isis' actual message. >> so, you know, everybody has seen or read or heard about the so-called foreign fighter phenomenon. 14-year-old boys in tunisia, you know, addicted to video games go off and join isis. kids in kentucky get married for the purposes of traveling to turkey, because they want to join the army of the caliphate. but the real story of how isis has done what it's been able to do is the people who are joining are already in the terrain that isis controls, right? they operate like a mafia. they operate like a totalitarian political organization. one of the things that i think

is important to understand, it does not do to look at this through the lens of terrorism or counterterrorism studies. it really doesn't. 20th century, you know, blood brutal movements, naziism and stalinism in particular, that is the lens through which you have to understand these guys, and it's actually not a coincidence, by the way. people in the upper echelons of the organization, not al-baghdadi, the self-declared call live, but the people right behind him by and large come from where? the former regime of saddam hussein. the baathist regime that the united states toppled. what does that tell us? well, these guys, the iraqi government had been trained by who? the soviet kgb, the east german stasi. there is a great report in "der spiegel" obtaining documents from a guy called -- well, the guy's dead, but he got these documents that belong today a

former security official in saddam's regime who essentially established the isis network in aleppo in particular. and christophe, who is german, said it was like reading something from the gdr in the 1970s, what stasis used to do to the dissidents, spying on inform plants, cultivating informants. we think that isis is somehow this military juggernaut. you've all seen the videos of them driving u.s. humvees or armored personnel carriers stolen from iraq. populations, towns, villages and cities give themselves over to isis in advance of the military invasion. so what do i mean by that? they send in sleeper cells. they send in spies. the spies go around to the local population, and they say who's controlling this area? is it the free syrian army? well, you know, they're corrupt. they've devolved into rape, murder, extrajudicial killings and, by the way, the trash is piled, you know, half a mile

high. we'll come in and we'll make the trains run on time. all you have to do is pledge allegiance to us. you don't, we'll come in and kill you because you're a traitor, an enemy. so entire villages go to isis before isis even gets there. this is the reason they've been able to take all this terrain. as far as the social media and propaganda is concerned, yes, they're very good at using twitter and facebook. actually, they even have platforms most people here haven't herald of. there's one that's an application you can put on a mobile device that allows you anywhere in the world to listen realtime to what clerics are promulgating from the caliphate. so isis clerics giving their friday sermons and prayers, you can listen to that on your cell phone. this is a process that goes back years. zarqawi, again, the founder of what we now call isis, his cell, his network really masterminded the use of process

thelytyization, what we used to call agitationing of propaganda. we didn't have the term viral back in 2004 or '5, whenever it was, but that video essentially went viral. and in the west it's very difficult to understand. we watch these things and we're horrified by them. but a lot of people in the islamic world watch these things, and they think this is the just desserts. america had led an illegal, you know, holy war-style occupation in iraq. that is the propaganda. they came in, they knocked out -- and this is important too because isis has a political project. it's not just, you know, an

apocalyptic death call. they really do have motivations in their action and thinking. america came in 2003, they knocked out saddam. saddam was a sunni minority government ruling over a shia majority in the keystone state of the middle east. if you were sunni under saddam. you lived high on the hog. you had your wife, your six mistresses, your 12 kids, your palaces, your illegal black market trade, you know? it was also a crime, a mafia state under saddam. when we went in, we did two very stupid things. we diswanded the iraqi army -- disbanded the iraqi army, we did the debaathification. the first three levels of the baath party, you were rendered unemployed. worse than that, humiliated. they lost their sense of dignity, their sense of self-worth. the insurgency, as it started in 2003, was not led by foreign fighters. again, i want to emphasize this.

weaver talking about guys from the -- we're talking about guys from the united states or great britain going over, that's a problem, but you have to look at the native populations first. guys who were dis enfranchised from the saddam regime became insurgents fighting americans. osama bin laden issued a very important statement. this was around 2002. he said that for the first time ever the mujahideen, the holy warriors from around the world, should make common cause with, quote, the socialist infidels. meaning the baath party and saddam agents. knowing that the toppling of this regime was going to create this lump and class of people who would want to get justice, who would want revenge against the americans. zarqawi was a foreign fighter. but he expanded his base. al-qaeda in iraqing became the insurgency, the tip of the spear was he had behind him -- [inaudible] so this is the most important

thing to understand, why isis wants to reign, why they conquer areas. they convert people to the cause. they need sunni arabs to fight and die on their behalf because they present themselves as the can custodian and the safeguards of sunni islam. the political project is one of restorationism. they want to reclaim baghdad for sunni islam. the shia, according to zarqawi, are less than dirt. you're better off being a christian or a jew than a shia. he wanted to kill all the shia in iraq, but he knew he was outnumbered by them, so what was the grim, machiavellian plan? if we go up, behead the shia, blow up their mosques, they will radicalize, and they will come after the sunnis. backed by iran, they will come after the sunnis and kill us and torture us and we head us and do all these horrible things that we all remember from the iraq war, and that will drive the entire population of iraq and also the sunni from around the world into our arms. that was his plan for al-qaeda

in iraq. isis has adopted that plan and expanded on it in a grim and almost brilliant fashion. because now they're essentially, the reason they've been so successful apart from their military strategy and their sort of on-the-ground sociology for lack of a better term, look at the geopolitics. 2003, 2004 the united states essentially dose in and hands iraq -- goes in and hands iraq to iran, right? i mean, this country, we call it iraq as though it's this cohesive or, you know, unified state. it has devolved into separate, you know, stands. you've got sunni, shia and kurdistan now. shiastan belongs to iran in terms of the government ministries. the sunnis said why is the u.s. doing this? we are the majority, we are the majority sect of islam. this is just a strategically stupid thing for you to do. so we thought we went in and blundered and accidentally

handed the country to iran. today what do they say? they say the united states didn't accidentally do anything. this is all part of a global conspiracy. the crusaders, the jews and the shia, okay? the united states is in belled with bashar al assad in syria, that's why they didn't intervene and topple his government, because he's an allah white, and they're working towards -- it's not that we have any favor toward iran, but effectively, who are the people flying planes and dropping bombs? it's the united states, it's iran, it's now russia, and they're going against the extreme-most wing of sunni islamism which is isis. and even if you're not ideologically sympathetic to isis, you see this, and it maddens you like -- it actually creates a level of sympathy and a level of political empathy for the isis project. so you have to understand these things in the way that this part

of the world works. one of the tragedies of the last decade apart from stupid foreign policy decisions the united states has made is we actually learned a lot of this stuff. one sort of saving grace of iraq, if it can be be called that, was we learned how to cultivate sunnis to turn against sunni jihaddism. and now we've forgotten all that, but isis has not learned from its mistakes. it has absorbed them. it has corrected for them. and right now it is succeeding, and we are losing the war because of that very dire dichotomy in strategies. >> when you say, for example, we're losing the war, could you talk a little bit about what it is just to, you know, what it is that we are doing and whether or not there has been anything that you could qualify as progress and then a little bit about -- and we don't have a lot of time -- a little bit about what the current russian campaign, how that is affecting our

options politically and militarily. >> look, i really don't think that the united states has developed a coherent strategy for defeating, containing, raping on the raid whatever you want to call -- raining on the parade, whatever you want to call it, of isis. a strictly counterterrorism operation, drop a lot of bombs from the sky, lean on very noncredible and ideologically motivated and downright nasty war criminal elements on the ground to do our spade work for us to boot these guys out of territory in iraq. in iraq the people who are fighting isis the most are these shia militia groups who, by the way, spent the better part of a decade going after american soldiers. so our former enemies we have now partnered with, giving them close air support, and they come in and kick isis out, and the sunnis say, hey, we've been ethnically cleansed by the government of iraq. so we're doing the same things

over again. but the reason that isis is still on the advance, you'll remember the al anbar awakening, right? you remember the surge. we injected 35,000 new troops into iraq. the idea was to solidify political gains that had been made at the grassroots, local level. i'm talking village by village, city by city, much less province by province. the awakening was what? sunni tribes in western-central iraq lorded over by al-qaeda in iraq which had outstayed its welcome. eventually, the jihadists were seen as another form of foreign occupation of iraq. they stole the money, they impinged on the black and gray market economies, they assassinated the tribal leadership, they raped the women. so the tribes said we had enough. we don't like the americans, but at least the americans when dayy come in and expel the terrorists, they don't kick us out of our own homes. so they partnered with us in a

very pragmatic fashion, and it worked up until the point that it didn't work, and that was when the u.s -- forget about a military withdrawal from iraq -- politically disengaged, handed the country to nouri al-maliki who was, essentially, you know, a puppet of iran, and who just went in and did exactly the things that cannot be done in iraq if you want to keep the most be extremist sunni jihaddism out of the country or at least keep it strategically defeated. we turned this -- we allowed this to become another sec tear war. and so -- sectarian war. so the united states is walking into another trap, you know? we are partnering with people that are seen by well-meaning suablenies who could be -- sunnis who could be our allies again, who want to be our allies again are seen by them as no better than isis. in fact, worse because they're from a different sect. and with respect to russia, look, i wrote the first article in the western press september 1. i said russia's going to intervene in syria. people looked at me like i had

three heads. i said they're not going to be going after isis. russia's goal is no different from iran ands assad's goal. that is, destroy any credible alternative to bashar al assad, especially those that are backed by the united states. the free syrian army, i mean, this is a catch-all category. it doesn't mean anything because you've got hundreds if not thousands of armed militias on the ground in syria from the national secularist stripe to, indeed, the jihadist instripe. but there are guys the u.s. government, the cia in particular, have been partnering with and arming, and they've been holding ground against the assad regime. putin's goal is to destroy them. if you look at, what, the first three weeks now of this intervention, according to the u.s. government, more than 90% of the air force sorties have been targeting non-isis targets. according to the u.k. governor governor -- government, it's 85%. take your pick. it's to eliminate the free syrian army, demoralize all

these rebels, force them to go off and join one of two major terrorist organizations in syria, al-nusra which is the al-qaeda franchise. they split from isis in 2014. that's a whole other story. either them or isis. and then it's damascus comes to the united states and says, yeah, look, you know, we know we're war criminals, we unleashed chemical weapons, we've tortured, raped and murdered hundreds of thousands, but it's either us or the guys who want to fly planes into your buildings. take your pick. so the united states has acquiesced to a very smart, machiavellian plan that has been cooked up in the capitals of damascus, moscow and tehran. we're allowing this to take place. >> so what is it that if you were able to advise the government, what is it -- our government -- what is it that the u.s., what would you say? what is it that we should be doing? >> well, look, let me by way of answering that question, let me

explain the dynamics in aleppo in the last two weeks. isis has taken territory in aleppo because russia has been bombing everybody but isis. territory that they have not been able to take in two years. so if your objective, the u.s. government's objective is we need to contain or destroy isis, you cannot partner with rush shower, and you cannot -- sure shah, and you can't cannot partner with iran. they have no desire to do that. at least not until they kill everybody else that could possibly work with the united states. if you want to negotiate bashar al assad out of power, you need people, you need an opposition. you can't allow them to be devoured. at the very least, and we are doing this to some degree, there's an antitank missile system that the u.s. has been providing to the rebels, and these missiles are very effective. they've turned the syrian tanks into charred, you know, hunks of metal at a very high rate. i think dozens have been destroyed in the last few weeks because we've been allowing more of this stuff to pour into the

country, you know, in response to the russian intervention. but it's not enough. i mean, right now you've got thousands of iranian ground soldiers, okay? iranian ground soldiers have deployed to aleppo backed by russian air power, and they're hitting targets that isis is hitting at the same time. if you're a syrian rebel who is, you know, in any way interested in working with the west, your getting it from -- you're getting it from all sides. i challenge anyone in this room to take up a gun and fight four different conventional militaries all at once and stand any chance of success. the battle for, against isis, i think, belongs and must be focused in syria rather than iraq. demographically, it's easier to do. in terms of a symbolic defeat, isis says the end of days is coming, and the end of days will begin where? in a town in the province of aleppo. so exactly where this multi-national war is taking

place is where isis wants to conquer because, for them, this will usher in armageddon, and this will also be a powerful narrative to sell to the sunni mass if they come anywhere near these areas. so if you don't want to engage the russian air force which i don't think anyone in this room wants to see the united states shoot down russian aircraft. we don't want to begin world war iii. russia and iran's coalition that putin has cobbled together, putin, the ayatollah, the supreme leader in iran but really headed by sulemani, the commander of iran's expeditionary wing, the quds force, delivering a humiliating defeat in aleppo and then selling it the russians have no problems dropping bombs from the sky as your brave shia resistance fighters are being bled to death while, by the way, your people are starving because there is still a sanctions

regime until, i don't know, up until next year. we have a tool kit here. we have a strategic tool kit, we're just not using any of these, you know, means at our disposal. and i think a lot of it is, look, and here's where i am a little bit sympathetic to the administration. america's electorate is war weary, we're tired. we think let's just get the hell out of the middle east. and even if you don't believe in liberal interventionism or, you know, going in search of mobsters abroad -- monsterred abroad which is fine, the problem with this idea is you may not be interested in the middle east, but the middle east is interested in you. and you cannot b absent yourself from this part of the world because the current reigning theory is if we step down, we'll create equilibrium because regional actors will step up. yeah. iran has stepped up. saudi arabia, turkey, qatar have stepped up, and they're backing a group of rebels that includes al-qaeda, okay? this is not the kind of equilibrium i think anyone in

this room wants to emerge in the levant, much less mess so to tame ya. -- mesopotamia. you start at a small level, you know? at least get a coherent strategy. what do you want to do? do you want to beat isis? fine. you have to understand the political and sociological come by significants that come along with that strategy, and we have failed to understand this, spectacularly. >> thank you very much. i'd like to turn it over to questions now, because we have about -- [applause] .. much we will turn over to questions. [applause] , to the microphone behind me.

>> they give for that illuminating presentation and. my question maybe so basic is there a difference between the term isis and isil and if not why does the administration continued to use the term isil? [applause] >> guest: roughly speaking, no. historically speaking efp idea that ice is covers more

terrain but the fact that we have debates what to call them is the level of stability. [laughter] [applause] when the president of the united states says we must not call them the islamic state to set you call them the islamic state. it doesn't matter. just kill them. get a strategy in place. what is the counter narrative? should be tweet 10 times the day? it is of pressing in the wind. they think this is peak america that also a defeat propaganda unfortunately. >> what is the near term and long term effect of the mass exodus of the european

community? that is a very good question is not be a saudi regime -- assad regime and those proxy's with ethnic cleansing any atrocity you can show me i says has perpetrated talking burning people alive we had set houses on fire to let women and children cooked a gang rape boys and girls imprisons asia of rats into the vagina as of women. is out terrific but did mention that for a reason because you have to a trustee and rice's derives the political capital. the refugees, everybody is worried that they will come over but no. they want people to come into syria and iraq the people they dispatched into

europe actually goes to come over in in droves from the refugee crisis aren't the shia militia the iranian-backed mercenaries many that are war criminals. my soul shall media is awash with rifle stolen from the iraqi security forces or the u.s. army to that talk to us to stand in front of a mcdonald's and brussels their the ones coming over i have no credible impotent -- evidence although i am sure the you wake up one day to say that isis' sleeper to offer as part of a convoy but it is very deleterious

to cover the transatlantic relationship will get hungry. there prime minister off though wave of the enthusiasm so will affect in nato i was in paris three weeks ago the entire muslim sentiment is of the rise because there is terrorist attacks all the time. this is another reason why the middle east never stays in the middle east. i hope that the answers your question. >> comment on details of non hysterical information conveyed through media with the ongoing middle eastern crisis.

>> it is hysterical because there is cause for hysteria when they controlled three capitals in the middle east to have a problem. i agree. i try as best i can to give an accurate portrayal ito wanted to a way to go home to think they will spring of the sioux were and they are under my bed it is not that bad be have been very lucky in this country we have a very good enforcement sector with fbi in the local police and counterterrorism but look at the statistics there was a piece we have averaged about one event per month of one aborted terror plot. somebodies are keystone kops a 15 year-old girl in brooklyn trying to

experiment with propane gas bombs that could be dangerous but 9/11 type of stuff. the one per month is a lot and that is worse the of the post and 11 period and it is because we're at a state right now and now is this the period we live in? liberal democracy in the credit crisis i remember a the rise of these french parties and isis is part of this they sell themselves as a vanguard political ideology it is very powerful. in that i mentioned i pepper

this contemporary subject as a great estate to say how was it the most civilized industrialized nation in europe gave themselves over so don't think it can happen again with the religious fundamentalists they always said i will return and has done a lot during the first goal for to push back. he turned his agents into islamists that we deal with today. does not slow down and it does not and. i have a five month old daughter by the time she is ready for college we will still talk about isis it may not be called that the people still talk about it.

>> what is your best guess of how it will play out? >> i honestly don't know. i can tell you what is now working which i did. to give between mild to moderate recommendations but i really don't know. you hear cheerleading masquerading as analysis. we broke the story of a few weeks ago at the pentagon 15 different analyst have blown the whistle on the pentagon because their cookies the intelligence just like the iraq war basically a rosier picture alidade disrupt the oil that work they don't even rely on oil as the primary source of it come anymore they bombed the refinery is that they have makeshift ones that we did not know about.

they are very adaptable and clever. we have to be honest. even if not politically fashionable that goes against the tide of the electorate you still have to tell the truth if you don't understand your enemies have no business to try to fight it much less defeat it. >> i will make a statement and ask for your resolution. we went for war in iraq because rogue guys flew into the world trade center. i personally think we never should have got there. however you want, but might have been a better solution to what happened? a better solution. >> i've asked all the time but we have vice is if we didn't go to iraq?

>> if we wouldn't have the crisis but don't rule out the contingency of group of non al qaeda could have been merged to have done as much damage. a historian is ever on his honor but pretended is still running baghdad who is the primary patron behind the armed insurgency of syria? saddam hussein the three syrian army would not need united states or kuwait why? because even those of don and assad hated each other even though part of the same party it goes back centuries of damascus and baghdad of who rules of middle east so that may not have then the present state of affairs.

i'm in shed earlier we think his regime as being secular but after 1991 or before he started the islamic faith campaign the attempt to marry that ideology because it is my the greatest threat would come from within to be overthrown said he tried to create a frankenstein monster that heard in to the insurgents created from a u.s. invasion of what had gone through the face campaign it was already made and by the way they also had to access those mechanisms the way that weapons used to pour into iraq in the

advance of the pending catastrophe that was all manner of -- manna so we don't know. so the cities are a the majority but what are they doing or what could they be doing? they say it is bad but then they bombed the kurds? >> the turks have played a very dangerous game i reported from turkey fiver six times across the border into syria because the army did not care with a correspondent friend of mine because he has a route -- brown skin and he got a

refugee card coming out of syria typically he is assyrian refugees have turn a blind eye because that was the primary objective actually was secondary the primary was to forestall or prevent syria and is as old is then filtered through the prism with then and without so they have a good relationship with the iraqi kurds then by given them their own statement did not want to be seen as the democratic union of kurdistan backed by u.s. weaponry with u.s. forces on the ground the problem is

that is the syrian branch of the pkk that is the kurdish workers party we consider that to be a terrorist organization the turks consider it as bad as i says just you understand the "alice in wonderland" nature the first largest army in nato gives support to a group that is the sister of a terrorist organization according to the second largest army meanwhile it is bombing the terrorist organization at the same time that does not exclude the russians and iranians that is how complicated this state of affairs is the the ide