RUSH EXCERPT:
KEANE: "Oh, yes. When you think about it from a strategy perspective, we are in a new era here. It’s a restart is of great power competition and we’ve been there before obviously during the Cold War. Russia, when it looks at the United States, they see us as their number one adversary and why is that? Because we have kept at the international order in place for seven decades and it has largely kept the world stable. No world wars, no major, major wars that killed hundreds of thousands and millions of people. The Russians believe that is no longer in their interest and look at how aggressive they have been. They’ve moved into Georgia, they’ve annexed crimea, there in eastern Ukraine, they’ve conducted their first military intervention in 35 years into Syria, they’re trying to replace the United States as the most influential out of region country in the Middle East and their coupled with the Iranians. We don’t really have a very good strategy to deal with it."
CHILDERS: "That being said, explained to me this decision that apparently has come about regarding the CIA, covert CIA’s program to arm the anti-rebels in Syria. It would seem that would benefit the Russians and Iran."
KEANE: "It certainly does. I’m mystified by the decision. The group that we’ve been eating with missiles is the only group in Syria that wants democracy in that country and they’ve been fighting for that and giving up their lives and their families in the pursuit. The reality is is when we pull back from them, their morale is going to go down, they’ll lose influence and power among the opposition forces, some of them joined the radical groups, and clearly, they’re going to be less effective in dealing with the regime and the Iranians. It doesn’t make any sense why we would do something like that and it was because the Russians wanted it."