[Baldwin:] Back to our breaking news here on CNN. I'm Brooke Baldwin. As we await the official intelligence community authentication of this ISIS video, this ISIS video shows a second American, Steven Sotloff, another journalist being beheaded here, let me play you a sound bite as we are not watching this video but we do have some audio from a similar, as we saw in the James Foley beheading video, British accented, black masked terrorist, murderer. Take a listen.
[Unidentified Male:] Because of your insistence and continuing your bombings in Amerli and Mosul dam, despite our serious warnings, you, Obama, have yet again for your actions, we take another American citizen. So just as your missiles continue to strike our people, our knife will continue to strike the necks of your people.
[Baldwin:] Bob Baer, let me bring you in, CNN security analyst, former CIA operative. I mean, there's a lot to get into when we see and hear this. But just off the top, beyond the brutality, what is your read on this?
[Robert Baer, Cnn National Security Analyst:] What ISIS wants to do is portray this as a war of Islam against the West and particularly the United States. ISIS is cutting the heads off of Shia Muslims as well. But it's not putting those atrocities forward because it wants to appear to be an organization for all Muslims and by going to war with the United States, it achieves a major propaganda victory. And you see more and more, even the Taliban in Afghanistan is parts of it are swearing allegiance to ISIS, the Islamic state. And I think that's the real fear of the administration, is this virus is spreading rather than being contained.
[Baldwin:] I mean, you have been part of CIA, covered Middle East for decades. And you know, we have talked ad nauseam, for example, about al Qaeda. And Christiane Amanpour was sitting here with me a little while ago, just sort of comparing ISIS to al Qaeda, saying this is like al Qaeda squared cubed, you know, beyond, right, in terms of these two groups?
[Baer:] I think you're both right. This is something entirely different. You could almost look at al Qaeda as a cult. A few people, they got lucky on 911, a couple more times. But this is much more closer to a Sunni uprising which threatens the whole Islamic world if it really picks up speed and it appears to be picking up speed rather than regressing because I even put at one end the Islamic state, Hamas, which has fought Israel to a standstill. And it's that kind of thinking that's so dangerous and I compare it to a prairie fire. You just don't know when it's going to die out.
[Baldwin:] I mean, just listening, just quickly, to John Kirby, spokesperson at the Pentagon, talking about the airstrikes in Iraq, in Amerli over the weekend and how the Kurds now have the Mosul dam back from ISIS, but you say the Kurds, the Peshmerga, Kurdish military, they're losing?
[Baer:] I think they are losing. I've seen tons of pictures coming in of Kurdish corpses being carried back and yes, they've been set back at the dam but this is a highly mobile military, well-officered and they will give up positions to strike elsewhere but not until, you know, the Iraqi government takes back Mosul and Fallujah and Ramadi where it will really suffer a setback. And then you still have Syria where they have firm control and the Syrian army is not doing well. They just lost an airbase last week.
[Baldwin:] Bob Baer, thank you so much. We know the president let's go to the live pictures at Joint Airbase Andrews. And now the president landing in Marine One and then will head to Air Force One, hop on the plane and head toward Estonia which clearly is symbolic, one of the Baltic states, Estonia neighboring to Russia. Given everything that's happened, the bold moves from Russia in Ukraine. Certainly there is some fear in the Baltic states that what has happened there could happen to them. And then he will head off to that incredibly important NATO summit in Wales on Thursday. Quick break. Back in a moment.