to help with our questions, we are joined by niall stanage, associate editor of the hill newspaper, andyan lucas, intelligence reporter with cq roll call. ryan lucas has the first question. >> congressman schiff, thank you for talking to us today. i wanted to start off with the announcement from the white house that it was essentially scrapping the train and equip program for syrian rebels. instead of training and equipping them, they are going to essentially provide information to vetted insurgent leaders and then small packages of equipment to then send back with them. so that they can kind of be force enhancers in syria. is this plan the way that the white house has outlined it -- is this something that you think would be more effective than the original program that the white house came up with? >> yes. it would be hard to imagine how it could be less effective given the small number of people who were successfully trained and equipped under that dod effort. so i do think it will be more successful. i think it will be far more efficient and effective to work with forces already on t

host: we will continue with our roundtable with niall stanage of "the hill" newspaper, ryan lucas with "cq roll call." ryan lucas, i want to begin with this revamped effort in syria. some have called it an admission of failure of the original strategy. what did you hear from congressman adam schiff about how hard this new effort is going to be? ryan: i think that he acknowledged it is going to be an uphill battle. but the main accomplishment is that they have realized that the train and equip program, which congressman schiff said and that many outside of congress have said, didn't really have a chance to succeed. it was never a good idea. building a force from scratch was not going to work. scaling that down and using smaller groups with the right sort of support may be effective. it is basically building off of a model that they used with syrian kurds. u.s. air power helped deal the islamic state one of the worst defeats in the past year. host: tens of millions of dollars spent already on that training and recruiting effort. there is an expectation that the administration wants to sh

to help with our questions, we are joined by niall stanage, associate editor of the hill newspaper, and ryan lucas, intelligence reporter with cq roll call. ryan lucas has the first question. ryan: congressman schiff, thank you for talking to us today. i wanted to start off with the announcement from the white house that it was essentially scrapping the train and equip program for syrian rebels. instead of training and equipping them, they are going to essentially provide information to vetted insurgent leaders and then small packages of equipment to then send back with them. so that they can kind of be force enhancers in syria. is this plan the way that the white house has outlined it -- is this something that you think would be more effective than the original program that the white house came up with? rep. schiff: yes. it would be hard to imagine how it could be less effective given the small number of people who were successfully trained and equipped under that dod effort. so i do think it will be more successful. i think it will be far more efficient and effective to work with forc