taking over is army lieutenant general steven townsend who served in iraq as a colonel 10 years ago. >> when steve townsend was here, he fought mosul so he's the perfect choice to lead the coalition as they support the most decisive fight of the campaign in iraq. he will bring about the beginning of the end for daish. >> his first operation is likely to be the battle of this year. >> mosul is a key priority. one of the great problems is how bad will this be. you never know how well the defender will defend. we've seen in other areas they dug in, they booby trapped, they fought straight by straight. you might say a relatively quick victory. no one can predict whether this is going to be a long battle, a short one, how difficult it will be. >> townsend arrived in baghdad at a time when isis is losing ground. >> well, i think he's inheriting a better situation than general mcfarland did because we have taken, you know, back fallujah. we're getting ready to move toward mosul. he iraqi army is getting better. isis has been weakened. we killed 45,000 of them. >> but during mcfarland's fina

now the head of the coalition, attorney general steven townsend, he was very blunt. itself if the syrians come back. breanna? >> barbara starr, thank you. >>> the wildfires out west are spreading. blazes in washington state are forcing hundreds of mandatory evacuations. let's go to cnn meteorologist jennifer gray. this is a dangerous situation near spokane, washington. >> we think of washington as being a very rainy state. in fact, they are very, very dry right now. both of these fires combined, spokane complex fire, deep north fire just popped up last night, 600 acres burned. we are seeing tens of thousands of acres burned in this one area. they did have a cold front move through. it didn't bring any rainfall, which would have been helpful. what it did do was lower the humidity down, lower the temperatures down. the other interesting thing is it also changed the wind direction. and that can easily prompt more fires and spread them even faster. southern california, we've been dealing with this as well. blue cut fire almost 90% contained, great news. however some of t