This is John Batchel, speaking with General Blaine Holt, U.S. Air Force retired, about Syria, about HTS, about Turkey sponsoring HTS, about working with Turkey during NATO.

Turkey is NATO, and Blaine has experience as a commander in NATO, especially ranging back to the early

part of this century.

Is Blaine hold on Turkey, on HDS, and in the expectation that these are reformed jihadists?

More of this tonight.

There is no question that there is an absence of dialogue publicly about

questioning where Turkey is at right now in terms of its relationship to the alliance. Erdogan had

all but threatened Israel with war during Israel's the main thrust of their campaign against Hezbollah and Hamas. And Erdogan,

we have known for years and years. I was in Ankara planning the northern invasion of Iraq in 2003

when his parliament shut us down. And that's when we went to work on studying this man and what his ambitions

were. And to your point, John, it's regional hegemon. He is seeing a weakening Ayatollah in Iran.

He's seeing that sunset. Syria's weak. We saw the Syrian army just throw down their weapons in a pile

with uniforms, probably with some compensation behind the scenes, because it's only the Assad family

that moved out of Syria. Everybody else stayed there. But their relationship to HTS, or Hayat,

Tahir al-Shaham, which means greater Syria,

which also is defined as Jordan, Egypt, Israel, Saudi Arabia, that's the ambition.

And now that government is in place.

And for anyone who thinks, this includes the Oval Office, that this is a group of reformed terrorists who now believe in Jeffersonian democracy, they started executing people almost instantly once they took over.