can't get there from here. >> let me bring steven yates into the conversation.he colonel made the point we backed ourselves into a corner by not having boots on the ground. is that a a mistake in your mind? >> i think it is mistake. i don't know why you take options off the table but the president created problems for himself in the introduction to his strategy where he tried to say that the i in isil he likes to refer to is not islamic. obviously it's a islamic movement. that is the problem, if you can't name enemy and describe the enemy and you can't have strategy to defeat it. he refers to isil, in the levant, the only areas he talked about taking action are iraq and syria. these are minimal actions. cut and pace already in train, none of which changed tracks on the ground. i agree completely, it is not a serious strategy. melissa: sounds like you both believe he doesn't fundamentally understand and grasp the problem. colonel peters, is that it? >> there is even more to it. he refuses now to use the term islamist terrorist. look, islamic state, don't call the

melissa: here to discuss can, steven yates, we also have lieutenant colonel ralph peters, fox news strategicrs, they up -- underestimated what had been taking place in syria. >> i think it's interesting when something dose right with the obama administration it's i, me, something goes wrong, it's they, them. melissa, i come out of the intelligence world. i spent 22 years in it. i have a lot of friends in it. and i can darn guarantee you, this is just flat out, what the president said was flat out untrue. to put it in an unvarnished manner, it was a lie. my friends have been worried about the islamic state for even before it had a formal name. and i can tell you, lieutenant general mike flynn who was removed as the head of the intelligence agency for telling the the truth, was trying to get the white house's attention, again, for almost two years, but the white house wouldn't listen. they didn't -- you can't, you can't understand what you refuse to understand. melissa: and that has been sort of the storyline today, steven, let me ask you, you know, at best it's very cheap to say, well, they d

let's bring in steven yates to talk about all this.ormer deputy assistant for national security affairs for vice president dick cheney. stephen always good to have you. a lot to get to here. it seems like the middle east has always been, well, a dangerous mess. is it worse now? >> i do, harris, believe it is getting somewhat worse. we have the spread of instability and radicalism getting more broad based and the news out of yemen is cautionary i think on two fronts. one it reminds us that our narrow focus on iraq and isis is not sufficient in terms of looking at the threat that we face across the region. the other area is that these measures that have been used against yemen over the years are the building blocks that the president plans to use against iraq and syria. if we ski yemen falling back into political disarray, is that a foreshadowing of where iraq and syria will go even after our intervention. >> talk to me about how yemen fits in in all of this, i mentioned that this government is u.s.-backed and fighting on the other side,