and graham allison, for science and international affairs at harvard university. ambassador, take us inside the room. when the president has to hash out a strategy like this one. does he get people who disagree with each other to bring their best arguments or do we start with the goal and start the argument about how to get there? >> now, when the president starts off a process like this, he wants the people around him to start a conversation about what it is that we're trying to do, and how it is that we're tying to do it. it will will be key leaders of the cabinet agencies, the secretary of state, the secretary of defense, the key intelligent heads of the c.i.a. and intelligence community often supported by some of the aids sitting around the table, and having an intense discussion. this does not take place in a matter of minutes or even hours or even in just one meeting. you have a series of meetings that try to find out what the situation is like. what the goals are that we should be thinking about, and what the options are for dealing with it so the president

on "inside story" last week, graham allison summed it up like this. >> it's a mine field full of minesbecause the fishers among the parties who will be part of this coalition of the weird, that is parties that hate each other almost more than isil, but isil is the enemy of everybody. the enemy of iran, assad, saudi, bagdad, the enemy of civilization. >> iran's foreign minister was not invited to paris. iran's support for bashar al-assad makes iran's presence inappropriate. iran's supreme leader said monday kerry sought iran's cooperation privately earlier. but iran refused. >> their american hands are dirty. how can we cooperate with thoses who hands are dirty. they will come across the same problems they face in iraq in the last ten years. >> white house chief of staff continued to rally for u.s. >> this is obviously a complicated effort, and that's why the president is going about this in a painstaking and prudent fashion. we will take the fight to our enemies without putting ground troops into the effort. we need ground troops, that's why we want this program to train the opposition

i was on television with graham allison other day and phrase i wish i come up with but did not, it iswe should expect to see in iraq a coalition of the weird. which i think is going to be exactly right. we've seen in these earlier operation which administration probably rightfully sees as proof of principle operations. sinjar mountain, what we saw in mosul dan and the breaking of the siege at amajerli, unusual menagerie of allies putting this together. as best i piece together information from north of iraq, like in syria, information is hard to get and it is contradictory but as best we can tell, the operation at sinjar mountain seems to have done almost exclusively by the pkk. the turkish-based kurdish terrorist group which is on our state department foreign terrorist organization list. they are a known terrorist group and, you know, for a long time we have helped the turks deal with that terrorist group. on the other hand, they're the ones that largely in conjunction with us air power, broke the siege at sinjar mountain and let the yazidis escape. that is something to note. at amer