each of the united states military is combatant has an area of responsibility from centcom, which oversees our mission in the middle east, to our most recent cyber com which we established last year to protect americans from the most advanced cyber threats, and also to create very, very severe and powerful offensive threats, should we need them. the dangers to our country constantly evolve, and so must we. now, those who wish to harm the united states to seek to challenge us, in the ultimate high ground of space, it is going to be a whole different ballgame. our adversaries are weaponizing earth's orbit's with new technology targeting american satelliteshat are critical to both battlefield operations and our way of life at home. our freedom to operate in space is also essential to detecting and destroying any missile launched against the united states. so just as we have recognized land, air, sea, and cyber as a war fighting domains, we will now treat space as an independent region overseen by a new unified geographic combatant command. the establishment of the 11th combatant command is a

to provide precise numbers the specific details are going to be confirmed after consultations with centcom so mike hanna joins us now he's been following this very closely and why it's very interesting that we were hearing. i think just saying towards the end of the briefing that the saudis are very much leading the way in terms of investigating what took place at these oil facilities but at the same time he seemed to say that there were both drones and cruise missiles involved in this attack. yes it wasn't particularly clear what the secretary of defense was referring to the we know that there is a u.s. forensic team on the ground working together with saudi investigators to determine the exact cause or the exact source of the weaponry that was used in those strikes on the saudi oil facilities what was interesting though was it's very clear that that investigation has not completed it is still ongoing and yet to the secretary of defense they're making absolutely clear that there's no doubt in his mind that is iran is responsible for that attack now another very significant thing is the fa

obviously barack obama relieved you of your duties as commander of centcom. thought that was a very similar rationale for you leaving your post with donald trump. concerns that both men were taking troops away at a time that you didn't think was necessary. president obama in iraq and president trump in syria. that was a common theme. >> right. neil, as you know, you serve as the pleasure of the president, whether you're a cabinet, secretary or general. the words have to mean something to you when it's displeasure. when it's not to their satisfaction. i bear no ranker to president obama our trump. >> neil: who told you you're relieved? >> in the case of president obama, what happened is the pentagon announced my replacement early, that i was leaving the job early. >> neil: did you know that? that they would announce that? >> i did not. but it's not personal. even from my side, with us a strategic disagreement. it was not a political assessment. the u.s. military ranks the top year in and year out in public confidence of our institutions because we're not polit

you are only guy at centcom that took the job. you had a personal relationship, not a fan of his in general though. if he were to become president, would you feel safe, would this country be in good hands? >> i am not going to make a political assessment. neil: i thought if i asked it that way you would. >> that was cunning. neil: i thought maybe they worn you down. >> i would say what happened by that point, would i come back from centcom from being supreme allied commander in europe the decision was made basically to pull out. there may have been discussions. they were more the appearance of consultation than anything else. they were going to go. so i enter the discussion very late at that point. neil: got it. >> i was, i was very convinced that by backing maliki, who had not won the majority of votes, by pulling our troops out, you would set us up as intelligence community accurately predicted we would have to come back in. neil: the president when he praises vladmir putin, even now, do you see vladmir putin as enemy of the uni

you are centcom commander overseeing the wars in iraq and afghanistan. vice president joe biden came to see you in baghdad, to talk to you about this over dinner, what happened? >> well, the challenge is that political leaders run on ideas of positive things, aspirations for everybody. and the military, that protects the country, has to deal with pretty grim realities. we bring those grim realities and human aspiration together and there is tension there. in this case you are speaking to iraq, i think it's actually in 2010 is when this happens but it all plays out over the years you indicated. there was an inclination by that administration to get out of the war. and we may want to end wars. wars are horrible things. you may declare it over, but the enemy gets a vote, unfortunately. and the intelligence community said if we pull out fast, we're going to have to come back in. and so we anticipated that the enemy could rise again if we pulled out and the military recommended along with the intelligence community that what we do is we bring the troop number

so the focus of a lot of our efforts was in centcom. there are some challenges out there. i would highlight a few things to you. as we got involved in our defeat isis activities, i think we had a struggle. i think we had a struggle and i think we've addressed it but we will continue to struggle with the challenge of open source information and how we leverage that to make it truly useful for war fighters so they can understand it. i can recall the early days here of trying to understand foreign fighter movement and how much we relied on trying to understand social media and the important roles that that was playing. i think that's important. we don't do anything by ourselves. we have partners with us. so i think we continue to some extent be challenged by sharing authorities with our partners and with the systems to share information and intelligence with them. and these are areas that we have to continue to push in. exploitation at the speed of a campaign is an important aspect. i'm sure during the conference this week, you'll talk about the challenge of big data out here

murid partaw is the former afghan national representative to us centcom, now at the school of globalt the university of south florida. well, the cancelled camp david talks appear to have been an effort by president trump to bring the taliban leadership and the afghan president together, since the taliban has been not accepting to talk with the elected government of afghanistan. this so this was a pretty momentous occasion, had that occurred, without any doubt, because that would have brought the taliban negotiators, as i mentioned, with the afghan president, or perhaps afghan chief executive, the political leadership of the unity government, and that would have paved the road for an intra—afghan dialogue in the future. yes, you say it would have been a momentous occasion. it would have obviously brought a lot of hope to people in afghanistan, who have obviously been enduring bombings on an almost daily basis from the taliban. what does this decision mean now for afghanistan? unfortunately this decision now means that the election is going to be happening, as it is scheduled, on 28 se

for enhanced offensive capability so we will do now is take the president's decision i'll talk to centcom over the weekend we'll talk with our saudi partners and we'll work the details of that point we'll be able to share that with you next week so it's been no decision on specific no we haven't so i don't specific units broadly keep as the secretary said to be capability so enhance their missile defense it's not my job to come back with a shock to the secretary with the details of what we believe would meet the saudis requirements and is sustainable really i just think this is a follow up and it would be were exactly my thousands of troops struggling hundreds of troops and also just the secretary. do you think this is going to be enough or why do you think this would be you know terrans and further attacks we think given the state of play now and then based on whatever assessments we get from central command what the joint staff and the chairman do and other discussions we're having with partners we have to continually sess at we think for now that would be sufficient but that doesn't me

. >> i will talk to centcom over the weekend, we'll talk with our saudi partners and we'll work on theails of deployment. >> there has been no decision on a specific number? >> we have no decision on specific units, the capabilities will enhance their air and missile defense. >> and troop numbers? >> i would say a moderate deployment. more details for you next week, but not ready to share the details. >> not thousands, thousands would be not moderate. >> that's fair to say, not thousands. >> not thousands. but an unspecified number of american troop that's will be going to saudi arabia and the uae. tonight's news about troop deployment follows other news from the department of defense about the money that the trump administration cut. it was from the pentagon budget, the trump administration raided $3.6 billion from the 2019 construction budget to pay for a wall. you know, the one that mexico was supposed to pay for. a full half of the $3.6 billion in pentagon money, it is being diverted for military projects ranging from upgrading military training facilities. the pentagon has warned

dunford: a look at that almost every day, and i certainly talk to the commander of centcom. if i don't talk to him every day, i talked to him twice a day. we are constantly reviewing and you're never complacent about your posture. what i would say today is that we have sufficient forces in the region to deter an iranian attack against a united states or american people. we have sufficient forces to deter a proxy attack attributable to iran. we clearly don't have deterrence against attacks on our partners in the region. , the kingdom of saudi arabia and uae have routinely been recently attacked. have a maritime security initiative now in conjunction with australia, the united kingdom, the rain and other nations in the region -- bahrain and other nations in the region which is separate from the campaign in iran, but designed to ensure freedom of navigation in the region. we are operational in doing that, and we believe we have sufficient resources to provide the warning, the intelligence and capability to ensure freedom of navigation, but we look at that every day. operating e

we don't know that in all we have is a tweet from pompeo but this is something you hear from the centcomommander from the director of national intelligence or something like that and i don't think pompeo really knows he's very quick to blame iran all the time and i would like to see the evidence he has. i guess is this. iran has been helping the houthis with drones for years and in some ways it's a natural part of the cycle of escalation but houthis use to shoot ballistic missiles and the saudi's got help with missile defense systems to start to shoot them down. back and forth, back and forth and guess what after years of working on drones the houthis may have gotten pretty good at it and by the way the story is much larger and imagine me saying that even larger than yemen or saudi versus iran. the drone world has arrived and we worried about it and talked about it and try to imagine what that would be like and yesterday it came and knocked on the door. that is to say drones are proliferating or increasing capability and this is the pardon, this is the opening shot in the new world were

our ambassador there who used to be the centcom commander is one of the smartest guys i've run across in a long time. that's somebody that should be in the highest counsels of this decision-making. i think that's really important. and finally, the thing about the summit, i was thinking about a summit yesterday. a summit is the top of a mountain, but underneath it is a whole mountain of preparation. and this administration gets it backwards. they have the summit first and then try to back fill the information and the diplomacy. they should start with a quiet discussion, the long hours of negotiations and then end with the two leaders hopefully being able to reach some kind of conclusion. they are doing it backwards. it didn't work in north korea. i don't be it's going to work in iran. today the iranians said they don't want any discussions. so this is a very, very dangerous situation. and i think one of the points i make it let's take a deep breath, not react immediately because a war with iran would be catastrophic. >> you said it's a dangerous situation given what the president has w

enhanced defensive capabilities, so what we will do now is take the president's decision, i'll talk to centcomthe week, talk with our saudi partners and work the details of deployment and be able to share that you next week. >> so there have been no decision on specific numbers? >> we haven't decided on specific units. as the secretary said, capabilities to enhance their air, military, defense. it's now my job to come back to the secretary with details on what we believe would meet the saudis' requirements and is sustainable. >> just a follow up. we're not talking about thousands of troops, we're talking about hundreds of troops? and also just to the secretary, do you think this is going to be enough or why do you think this would be enough to deter iran from further attacks? >> we think given the state of play now and based on whatever assessments we get from central command, what the joint staff and the chairman do and other discussions we're having with partners, we have to continually assess that. we think for now, that would be sufficient, but that doesn't mean there could be additional d

jeff spent 10 years at centcom says he got to see one of the great powers carry out its strategy. i'm going to ask jeff to help us characterize the challenges he's on the front end as assistant command specifically as china walks through its strategy. i'll give you an extra 30 seconds. >> let me add my thanks to everybody joining us today. a great conversation. i think i would preference my conversation with china as my time at pacom with two quick stories. in 2014 in 2015 i happen to be running a --for general breedlove at you, and working through what was up similar problem set. russia was going through an evolution that a handful of operations had to be done under certain amount of cover and a question for you is how do you eliminate that and how do you convince the rest of your allies and partners or your own department of defense in this case russia presented. the second piece is way back when if you go back 10 years when i was a student at the national war college we have is very some old piece of china. it was two columns by two rows in china continuing to rise and china un

how would you describe their morale is high post president trump street and also john mckenzie to centcom commander was here. previously it was a little down because of india so i thought that they're being compromised down but since a prison trumps and also the secretary general of nato secretary general stoltenberg . the statements in mckinsey's statement presently ernie's the statements the morale has gone awry and the attacks have sabine stepped up and increased i mean i see your point the soldiers would say we don't want to do that these are the taliban we've been fighting for all these years how can we sign a peace deal but there must be other soldiers saying thinking just when will this end and seemingly if no deal is signed then there is no end in sight to the fighting it's not only the soldiers just the fast majority of the afghan people who are tired of this war and they want an end but what kind of an end and dignified one a sustainable that's what the desire of all afghans are time and thank you very much indeed for joining us well as we continue in preparing for these electio

was the same reason why he butted heads with president barack obama who essentially fired him as centcomecause he was concerned that the president was withdrawing forces or getting out of iraq and it would come back to bite us. what do you make of that view? because the president, this president has since kept some, promised to keep some troops in syria. he's said, that is president trump, there's a limit to being a police force or an entity that can be target practice for bad guys, but we can't extract ourselves from there. >> i think what you're looking at, neil, unfortunately, you have a series of presidents, president bush after the 9/11 attacks said we've got this, keep the economy going and stay calm. president obama did not be realistic in what he was telling the american people and the iranians killed over 600 americans between iraq and afghanistan, and they kept that information classified. and even president trump today when you look at the dangers that are going on in negotiating an agreement with the taliban. when you look at the root problem in that area, it's pakistan. paki