We started tonight with breaking news from Syria, where the rebels are on the verge of toppling the government of President Musharraf Assad, the rebels are moving south, they say they are now at the gates of Damascus, of course that is the beleaguered capital and there are conflicting reports about where President Assad actually is at the moment. Sources we were talking to say the rebels are essentially searching for us and in the capital. He is not in the places where they expected he would be. It was not a large portion of his forces. Now we see the balance in the northern outskirts of Damascus. We see rebel forces that come from the south as well. Some come from the southern suburbs as well, Damascus is really a very large city, you know you can travel.
It takes an hour to travel to get there. It is really far outside of it. Because the traffic is very heavy. That is what we are seeing. Right now the army is entitled to its posts, the police is entitled to its posts around the capital, the rebels are congregating on it. These rebel elements that are already inside on reconnaissance efforts inside the capital are not looking on our side where they would expect to see, i am not saying they do not know where he is. They say they are looking for him. They do not know if he is still in Damascus, if he is somewhere in the country, and although he is left the country, they do not have concrete information about that. But the fish certainly he is not in the places where they would expect him to be, which really shows the signs here that Assad who recognizes that his grip on power is loosening.
Potentially actually you know he may have fewer days to hold on to the country and the reality is if you find Damascus tomorrow morning that the rebels have moved from the outside into the city center, he has effectively lost control of the capital. We do not know what he will do. I think it is really unbelievable that he is in control at this point. It is to see how quickly all of this happens, President Trump is overseas, in the nineties he is also laying out his position on what he believes the US involvement in Syria should be, what he is saying here is he is being very clear, look saying this is not the United States’ fight, the United States should stay out of it.
This is something like just back off and let them finish, the US has forces in the very northwest of Syria, they are supporting. They are supported by a large Kurdish rebel group, the Syrian damn Kurdish forces it is a critical component of the US, the United States efforts overseas to control and defeat ISIS, i am one of the key things about that rebel group in the northwest of Syria that the United States supports is there are large prisons where there are hundreds or thousands of former ISIS fighters and their families that are being held in those prisons. Essentially because of these Kurdish groups being backed by the United States, President Trump has made it very clear that he sees no role for the United States military in Syria.
We are not talking diplomatically or politically here, this is really about the military. They are really far away in the capital at the moment, but they are tearing it apart, whereas they should be playing no role in the escalation. Now here is John Bolton, the former US ambassador to the United Nations, he was also the national security adviser during Trump’s first term. I want to get your reaction to this astonishing advance made by rebel forces in Syria tonight. It certainly looks like a combination of pressure from the north, but also pressure from the south from the Darragh province.