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Obama Without Plan, Weighing Options on ISIS in Syria; Putin Invokes Nazi History to Sell War; Women Also Fighting for ISIS; 2 Americans Fight, Die for Terrorists

Aired August 29, 2014 - 13:30   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.


(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BRIANNA KEILAR, CNN ANCHOR: Welcome back. I'm Brianna Keilar, reporting from Washington. Wolf Blitzer is on assignment.

Britain's prime minister's response to the danger from ISIS by raising the country's threat level. In the U.S., President Obama is weighing options for dealing with ISIS in Syria. He's dealing with the fallout from his comment that, quote, "We don't have a strategy yet."

Joining me to talk about the president's response to ISIS and other foreign policy challenges is Democratic Congressman Adam Schiff, from California. He's on the House Intelligence Committee.

Thanks so much for being with us, Congressman.

REP. ADAM SCHIFF (D), CALIFORNIA: Nice to be here.

KEILAR: Needless to say, critics are blasting the president over this comment that he made, there's no strategy yet.

Here's what Congressman Mike Rogers said on "The Situation Room."

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

REP. MIKE ROGERS, (R), MICHIGAN: This is not like this happened last week or a few days ago. They went across that berm if full force around June of this year. We knew it was a problem before June. Even the president said he was talking about this to Iraqi officials other a year ago. This is so frustrating that with all of this going on, with certainly all the intelligence showing us the problems that are there, the president says I want a strategy, how to deal with this by the end of the week. It just tells you apparently we're not taking this seriously for some length of time.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

KEILAR: Congressman, can you respond to that? I mean, is that fair criticism of President Obama?

SCHIFF: I don't think so, but you can tell people are going to pounce on that comment and they did. But the reality is, the administration has a broad strategy for dealing with is that involves closing the Turkish border, drying up funding, military strikes in Iraq, changing the government in Baghdad. There are pieces that need to be filled in. The Syria piece still needs to be filled in because it's such a mess in Syria. I think it's unfair to go after him for something that admittedly was inartfully said.

KEILAR: His objective in what he was saying, and the White House has made this clear, he was trying to tap the brakes, to slow down speculation about how imminent it may be the U.S. is going into Syria with airstrikes. Do you think he should have been trying to do that?

SCHIFF: Yes, I think it was very important for him to slow those expectations. You know, once he asked the military planners, some of whom are trying to make the case for strikes, what would we achieve, tell me what would we even strike, some will take that and say, OK, he's asking for a target list and that means he's going forward. It was clearly I think his desire, really, to see if they could make the case. I don't think the case has been made. We don't have the same capabilities on the ground in Syria like we do in Iraq. And if we were to strike from the air in Syria, we have to ask ourselves, if we displace ISIS from some part of Syria, like we did around the Mosul Dam, who takes over that ground? Al Nusra? Is that what we want? The official al Qaeda affiliate? Is it Assad's forces? Is it Hezbollah? Unless you can answer those questions, and didn't think the military yet has good answers, I'm glad the president hit the pause button.

KEILAR: But American, they want leadership. They want a sense that for what is obviously a very complicated situation that many people don't even understand the nuances of. They want to know that someone else does. That there is a plan. How important is that? And how much damage does the president do by saying that there is no strategy in his effort to try to say, don't worry, we're not going there yet?

SCHIFF: I think it's important for the country to have the sense there's a vision for how this ends and how it ends well. That's been a real struggle in Syria. It's easy to see in Iraq, although it's difficult to accomplish, how a different government in Baghdad that brings the Sunnis in, peels them away from is, could succeed in Iraq. What do you do about this toxic brew in Syria? I think the solution in Syria mate look like it's shaping up in Iraq, and that is, there's increasing dissatisfaction with the Assad government, even by Assad's allies, even by the Alawites and there may be the same opportunity for the regional coalition to usher him out and bring about some coalition of the Alawites, Sunnis, Christians, Kurds and others in Syria that can be a substitute for displacing is.

KEILAR: You think that's going to happen in any kind of expedient way? This is going on for years now.

SCHIFF: I think in the near term we need to send a message to those surrounding al Assad that we need to find an alternative to him. And that means, you know, Iran can play an important role, Saudi Arabia and Jordan and Qatar and Turkey. Much in the say way as we were on the same page as Iran in pushing Maliki out, we can find allies to usher in a different regime.

KEILAR: These are strange bedfellows, no? SCHIFF: They're remarkably strange bedfellows. But I think the

president, although people like decisive action in military force, it's pretty unequivocal, it's smart to say, let's make sure we think this out before we act.

KEILAR: I want to ask you about Congress' role in all of this. You say it's important for the president to get approval if he is going to pursue airstrikes or something like that in Syria. Is he likely to get that approval?

SCHIFF: Well, I think at this point it would be tough because still there are a lot of unanswered questions about what would we accomplish are airstrikings in Syria. If we have a compelling case that can be made about what we could succeed with. In other words --

(CROSSTALK)

KEILAR: But let me ask you this, a year ago, it feels -- a year ago, this is all deja vu. I witnessed covering the White House at the time a press on Congress unlike anything I had seen during this administration, trying to push Congress to go along with taking action against Syria, and it completely failed. It was a full open door that the White House was giving to Democrats, to Republicans. And it was not a midterm election year.

SCHIFF: Well, I think the problem there was that it's not all about making the case to Congress. It's also about making the case to the American people. And in that case, the case had not been made to the American people. Here, I think the public may be receptive, as it has been to the strikes in Iraq. If that case can be made, if the administration can say, here's what we could accomplish, here's what the midgame and end game looks like. Here are the partners that we have. But I think we're a long ways away from that.

KEILAR: Congressman, thank you so much.

SCHIFF: Thank you.

KEILAR: Really appreciate you visiting with us.

Up next, Vladimir Putin invoking Nazi history as he hammers the government in Ukraine. Will that help sell the war back home?

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

KEILAR: President Obama heading to the NATO summit in Wales next week with the recent Russian aggression in Ukraine on the front burner.

Joining me, from "Political," is Susan Glasser. She was the co-chief of "The Washington Post" Moscow bureau, so tremendous expertise on this issue.

Susan, thank you for being with us.

SUSAN GLASSER, EDITOR, POLITICO: Thank you. KEILAR: Tell us, the U.S. is taking the lead when it comes to these sanctions. Is that the right move? Is there a rule for Europe here? Is there any willingness?

GLASSER: It's an important point I think. What the White House would tell you is they sort of had to pull Europe kicking and screaming every step of the way even towards the sanctions they have managed to bring. So I think there is a view that without Washington leadership, it would be very hard to get Europe to do much more. In fact, I think there's a question about even with heightened Russian military presence in Ukraine, how much more the U.S. and its partners in Western Europe are willing to do.

KEILAR: And the heightened presence there in Ukraine, this is something we've heard that is fascinating, almost dumb founding, if you will. The foreign minister saying that a picture showing some of those troop movements, it was actually taken from a video game. We've heard some things on Twitter in Russia, but this is the top official from the Russian government saying this. What do you make of that?

GLASSER: I think we see this as implausible deniability. I don't think there's a serious debate about the fact that regular Russian military are operating inside Ukraine, actively participating in this war inside the country. As the foreign minister of Sweden just tweeted, "If it looks like a war and acts like a war and kills like a what, it's a war."

So the debate isn't really that. The question is much more revolving around what, if anything, is the United States and its partners in Europe really prepared to do. And President Obama yesterday made a very strong point of saying we're not going to be engaging in any military action in Ukraine, period.

KEILAR: Yeah, that Ukraine, in a sense, was on its own, was sort of the message taken away from that. Talking a little more about -- I guess you could even call it -- I don't know if you would call it propaganda. You tell me? Putin likening Ukrainian troops to the Nazis who stormed Leningrad in World War II. Why is he doing this? Who is he playing to? Does this work?

GLASSER: Well, he's certainly not making a very persuasive case to anyone in Ukraine or Europe. It's definitely aimed at a Russian domestic audience. After so many years of turmoil, basically, victory in World War II over the Nazis is pretty much the major thing that Russians have to turn to when they're looking to whip up support at home. So that's a key element in almost any kind of nationalist campaign in Russia. I think that, you know, it's wearing pretty thin. I don't know it's particularly convincing to anybody. It's not surprising that Putin would resort to this tried and true tactic from the Russian playbook.

KEILAR: Lastly, before I let you go, I think you can almost kind of lump in there the fact he's talked about making a plea to -- he called it the Nova Russian Militia, the new Russian militia. This language matters, right? This is significant? GLASSER: Absolutely, it is significant. The fact they gave a name to this and that it's Nova Russia is not -- that's New Russian itself as opposed to the breakaway People's Republic of Donetsk or something like that. So it suggests how connected this is to the aims of the Russian government itself. So that makes it pretty threatening.

And, again, they've decided to double down on this war, rather than to accept the Ukrainian military's potential victory. Putin has decided to escalate the war in ways that are pretty risky and that we've seen pretty clearly this week.

KEILAR: Susan Glasser, thank you.

GLASSER: Thank you.

KEILAR: Appreciate you being with us.

And still ahead, women jihadists. You may not have heard much about them, but they play important roles behind the scenes. And we have a live report next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

KEILAR: Most ISIS fighters on the front lines are men. But there are plenty of women behind the scenes, including possibly an entire brigade of them in the ISIS stronghold in Syria.

Brian Todd has been looking into this.

What have you found? If these women aren't fighting, what are they doing?

BRIAN TODD, CNN CORRESPONDENT: They're used mostly in a policing role. We're told this from U.N. officials. Also various news reports say that ISIS women who are recruited into their ranks are used for policing. They're used to patrol the streets of towns which they occupy and make sure other women are wearing the proper garb, whether covered properly. If they're not, they bring them in for arrest or exact punishment on them somehow.

They're also used at check points. We are told that in some areas where ISIS has check points, rival militia come through dressed as women knowing they can't touch women.

(CROSSTALK)

TODD: To avoid detection, some men from rival groups dress as women. And with them not able to touch women, they use women fighters to pat down everybody dressed as a woman. That's what you have as far as policing.

We are told that ISIS, they have at least one brigade. And they also take women with them in house raids.

We talked to one man, the former spokesman from Free Syrian Army. His name is Louay Al Mokdad. Here is what he had to say about the raids in the Houses.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

LOUAY AL MOKDAD, FORMER FREE SYRIAN ARMY SPOKESMAN: Especially the biggest brigade in ISIS, when they join ISIS forces to attack houses or civilian place or something, they need these women to search inside the women's clothes, inside the bedrooms and they even do body checks for the women.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

TODD: I do have to say that that gentleman has a stake in the fight against ISIS. He is a spokesman for the Free Syrian Army, he was. They're a rival group. We have to say he has a stake in highlighting atrocities. He is not an objective observer, but he doesn't what's happening on the ground.

KEILAR: Good to know.

Brian Todd, thank you.

Still ahead, they were close high school friends growing up in Minnesota. How did they end up embracing terror in a distant land? One mother tries to come to terms with her son's frightening transformation. We have her story when we return.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

KEILAR: On "This Day in History," August 29, 2005, Hurricane Katrina hit the gulf coast. Record storm surge, record winds overwhelmed levees in New Orleans. 80 percent of the city was underwater. 1 million people displaced, more than 1800 others in the southeast lost their lives.

Two American teenagers growing up in a Minneapolis suburb both ended up fighting for extremist groups far from home. Douglas McCain, on the right, was killed in Syria fighting for ISIS. Troy Kastigar died in 2009 in Somalia while fighting al Shabaab.

Our Jason Carroll sat down with Kastigar's mother.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

JASON CARROLL, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): For years, Troy Kastigar and Doug McCain were the picture of the average teenage American boys. They grew up in Minneapolis. Both loved playing basketball and were, in some ways, inseparable.

JULIE BOADA, MOTHER OF TROY KASTIGAR: Troy had -- there's quite a few people would say they were best friends and Doug was one of those really close friends. He spent a lot of time at our house, went to family gatherings with us. They played basketball together.

CARROLL: How did two respectful young men go from this image to this?

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP) TROY KASTIGAR, DIED FIGHTING FOR TERRORISTS: This is a real Disneyland. You need to come here and join us.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CARROLL: This recruitment video featuring Kastigar was posted by al Shabaab. Both of them ended up fighting for terrorists overseas. McCain killed in Syria days ago, Kastigar killed in 2009 in Somalia. His mother still trying to understand how it all happened.

BOADA: I'll never not have that pain and that bitterness, but by trying to fill my life with joy and recognize the gifts and the beauty of the world, it makes it easier.

CARROLL: His mother says he started to have trouble at 16, began using drugs, was searching for help and spiritual guidance.

(on camera): He found comfort turning to the Koran?

BOADA: Then he became Muslim. I don't know exactly how that happened. He had some friends that were Muslim. Some friends that were Somali who had immigrated here. It was great for him. He was, all of a sudden, I have my boy back. His eyes were bright again.

CARROLL (voice-over): Kastigar said he was going to Kenya to study the Koran, but his destination ended up being Somalia. He spent a year overseas with little communication.

Then in July, 2009 the FBI came to his mother's home.

BOADA: They said he could have been recruited. I had no clue that he was going into a dangerous situation in that way, or to fight. And I think he knew.

CARROLL: Weeks after that visit, her son was dead.

(on camera): Were there any warning signs along the way?

BOADA: With Doug, for sure, there were no warning signs. I just haven't been around him for a long time. The one thing I thought was really strange with Troy is that they -- that someone, they, were willing to pay for him to come to Kenya. And I really questioned that. I think they were manipulated and I don't think they knew what they were fully were a part of.

CARROLL (voice-over): Five years after her son's death, the toughest part for her is having to explain how he died.

BOADA: I don't easily talk about it to people because I don't want to have to also defend him. My family is great and my friends are great, but just in general in the world. And I mean, it is, it is the hardest -- the hardest loss that there is. And I'm really grateful that I had him, and that I knew Doug. And you just kind of try to go on.

CARROLL: Jason Carroll, CNN, Minneapolis. (END VIDEOTAPE)

KEILAR: That's it for me. I'll be back at 5:00 eastern on the "The Situation Room."

NEWSROOM with Brooke Baldwin starts right now.