general james cartwright recently retired from the number-two job in the u.s. military said so just the other day during a panel discussion. >> deep enough underground that there really aren't weapons to go down to penetrate that kind of activity. >> reporter: but that does not mean fordow is safe from attack. it entrances could be sealed off and that large rectangular building provides ventilation inside the mountain. but admiral william fallon, retired head of the u.s. central command which would conduct a strike says it's much more complicated. >> there are a lot of targets. this is not a one-time shot. it will take a fair amount of work. >> reporter: israel is capable of a one-time strike. but only the u.s. has the air power to go back and hit targets again and again. still, not even the u.s. could wipe out iran's nuclear program. >> even if you could, again, you're not going to kill the intellectual capital to just rebuild the centrifuges someplace else and continue on. >> reporter: iran has plans to build ten more enrichment plants which is why israel, wi

so when i see general james cartwright in front of the senate saying that if he -- he was actually asked by i forget the senator, but he was asked by a member of the committee if there was a crisis between the united states and north korea, what advice would he give the president of the united states about with regard to the ground based missile defense system? and he said, oh, i would tell the president that he could have complete confidence in the system. you could see the eyebrows raise in the senate -- among the senators. now, this guy is the second most senior member of our military. i worry -- i worked on nuclear war plans. i was at the ground zero level. i mean, i had a lot of access when i was in the pentagon and i was helping to integrate trident 1 into the force. so i know what goes on in these plans and it should make your hair stand on end. what these statements of a military leader of that level does is it potentially creates the possibility of a misunderstanding by leadership. when i was in the pentagon, i looked at the moscow abm system. a worthless system. a worthless sys

james cartwright and admiral william fallon took part in an event last week at tcu schaffer school of journalism. cbs news chief washington correspondent bob schieffer moderated the conversation. >> welcome to the center for strategic international study. thank you all for being here. i am the senior vice president for internal relations. we have a traffic program and thank you for coming out on behalf of csis and the chief or school journalism. this week we lost a couple of great great journalist and i wanted to remember them, and particularly had a relationship with csis. anthony's cousin worked here, a young man who just left to go to business school. there is a great great essay at csis.org by our middle east program director john alterman who is a friend of anthony's for 20 years and i urge all of you to watch it. this will be tweeted life tonight. csis underscore or with the hash sign schieffer series and with that i will give it to bob schieffer. 's schieffer. >> thank you very much and her unwelcome behalf on behalf of tcu in the journalism school with csis and boy have we got