for more, we are joined now from washington by douglas ollivant.s a military planner in iraq and served on the national security council under both president obama and, before that, president bush. he is now a senior national security fellow at the new america foundation and a partner at mantid international who was recently in iraq. so, what are the plans to try to tackle isis in mosul? >> well, according to this briefing, which we can back to in a minute evidently a number of reporters got on background the plan is to seven six or seven iraqi brigrades forward, along with some tribal forces and have the kurds essentially isolated, keep anyone from either fleeing the city or reinforcing it from the north, according to this briefing or the report from this briefing. they believe there are only 1,000 to 2000 islamic state fighters in the industry and therefore, this force of about 10000 to 20,000, depending on how you count, should have a really chance of pushing them out. and they're talking about perhaps doing this as article as late spring, april

for more about this, we are joined from washington by douglas ollivant. he is a senior national security fellow at the new america foundation and a partner at mantid international. so, douglas, what does this tell you? there was almost a moment of-- a window of opportunity there where there was a conversation going on with isis. there was some potential and some possibility. that seems over. >> it does-- it is obviously over, lamentably, for both of these japanese hostages. and, of course, our sthez are with these families but this does seem to be increasingly common place. once the negotiations become public, once someone appears in one of these videos, that seems to mean the negotiations have broken down. we know there have been other00s who have paid ransom and have been evacuated from the country, but it seems like once you come to this level of being in a video, we've not seen very many happy endings. >> sreenivasan: so, doug, what happens next after this beheading or other beheadings like this? >> lamentably for the near future, there's not very much