President Barack Obama discussed his plan to send additional Special Forces into Syria, in an interview with CHARLIE ROSE today, Monday, April 25 in Hanover, Germany. Parts of the interview will be broadcast tonight on the CBS EVENING NEWS WITH SCOTT PELLEY (6:30-7:00 PM, ET) and tomorrow on CBS THIS MORNING (7:00-9:00 AM, ET), on the CBS Television Network. The full interview will air tomorrow on "Charlie Rose" on PBS stations at 11:00 PM, ET (Check local listings).
Click here to watch an excerpt. A transcript is below.
ROSE: Let me start, if I may, about the announcement that you're sending 250 Special Forces to Syria. What does that represent?
OBAMA: It represents what I've said from the start, which is that us dismantling ISIL is a priority and although we are not going to send ground troops in to fight, we are going to try to find out what works and then double down. And one of the things that has worked so far is us putting Special Forces in for training and advising local forces, but also intelligence gathering. One of the challenges of mounting the fight against a group like ISIL that embeds itself with civilian forces, they're not isolated. They're not out in remote areas where we can just hit them on their own. So, having people who develop relationships with local tribes, people who may be going in and out of places like Raqqa, us being able to distinguish between those who we can work with and those we can't - all of that - is really important.
ROSE: Will they be engaged in any search and kill missions?
OBAMA: You know, I'm not going to go into details of all the mission sets that they're involved with. As a general rule, their role is not to engage directly with the enemy but rather to work with local forces that is consistent with our overall policy throughout.
Steve Capus is the Executive Producer of the
CBS EVENING NEWS WITH SCOTT PELLEY and Executive Editor of
CBS News.
Ryan Kadro is the Executive Producer of
CBS THIS MORNING.
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