I'm John Batsch who with my colleague Bill Rajo, the Foundation for the Defense of Democracy.

He's a senior fellow, keeps the Long War Journal. There's a fresh report of the U.S. continuing

withdrawing from the region, this time from Iraq. Afghanistan was the

earlier withdrawal that

Al Qaeda is comfortable reorganizing itself with training camps and R&R in Afghanistan untouched by the

Taliban in leagues. So we take that model and Bill testified along with a number of

other guests to the US Congress for a recent report three years after the fact about the bad consequences that came from the US leaving with Afghanistan. We're not speculating here, we're looking at

lessons learned. A bill one thing that we often talked about Afghanistan was

Bogram, that by maintaining Bogram the U.S. would have a very secure outpost in the midst of a landscape

that's in the hands of the enemy.

But the enemy, as far as we know know is not strong enough to crack

the gram that would give that would have given us eyes on the the bad

actors in al-Qaeda throughout the Central Asia. Is there a comparable thinking about

staying in Iraq, a base say in Kurdistan? Would that give us eyes on the bad guys?

Staying in Kurdistan would certainly be better than a full withdrawal.

We would be able to work more closely than Kurdish allies as well as have the ability to project strikes.

But the problem that I think we have is I still think we would lose a presence in Syria

because as General Karela had stated the head of U.S. Central Command recently, once you drop below a certain level of troops in Iraq, right now there's 2,500 troops in various bases, several bases across the

rack. Once you get below a certain level, you're not going to be able to

support those bases in Syria and that's probably where the US is more needed

to keep eyes on the terrorist activities and to be able to strike at them.

So without that presence in Syria, sure, having US troops based in Kurdistan, in Northern Iraq

...