joining me from boston is terrorism analyst max abrams. thanks for speaking to us.s we were hearing, the administration in washington really keen to portray the killing as a success but how much of an advantage does it give the in the fight against isil? >> i mean there is no question that it was an operational success. the united states has been very operationally successful in terms of taking out, you know, the most important islamic state leaders. by some estimates the top 43 islamic state leaders, 19 of them have successfully been taken out. the main leader bagdadi seems to have been sidelined from a drone strike on march 18th and his supposed replacement, his deputy has been killed and so operationally, we have been very very successful however, we are just not seeing results on the ground. islamic state continues to expand and certainly in syria and now even in iraq, it's on the verge of taking over ramadi the capital of anbar. country islamic state controls about 90% of anbar. there are affiliates popping up all over the world from yemen to the sinaii, to lib