[Erin Burnett, Cnn:] More Americans arriving in Iraq today. Is this mission creep? Plus a father finds out his missing son is alive on live television from our own Nancy Grace.
[Nancy Grace, Hln Host, "nancy Grace":] We are getting reports that your son has been found alive in your basement.
[Unidentified Male:] What?
[Burnett:] Nancy is OUTFRONT with this bizarre story. Team USA advances in the World Cup. Let's go OUTFRONT. Good evening, everyone. I'm Erin Burnett. OUTFRONT tonight, more Americans in Iraq. Another wave of American military personnel landed today. The actual number of U.S. personnel in Iraq right now is higher than previously thought. We're going to have a full report from the Pentagon in just a full moment. And on the ground in Iraq today, the deadly battle for control of the country is raging. A bomb blast killing 19 and wounding 41 more. A new video of a suicide attack in a market south of Baghdad in which 13 people were killed yesterday. Then a car bomb explosion in northern Kirkuk, which killed six and wounded 21 other. Barbara Starr is at the Pentagon with the details on what the United States is doing right now.
[Barbara Starr, Cnn Pentagon Correspondent:] In Baghdad, nearly 500 U.S. troops are now on the ground including 180 military advisers of the 300 President Obama authorized plus security teams and intelligence analysts already there. Priority one, determine whether the capital is in danger of falling to the ISIS militants. The current assessment? The Iraqi military will keep control and ISIS won't risk all-out war. But there is growing worry about the strength of Iraqi forces across the country.
[Marie Harf, Deputy State Department Spokeswoman:] What we really need to see is the army get back on its feet we have folks there trying to help these elite forces do that and retake territory, but the situation on the ground is very serious.
[Starr:] Iraq's massive Haditha Dam, 170 miles northwest of Baghdad may be the most critical target to protect. ISIS and Iraqi units are battling for control of the largest hydroelectric plant in Western Iraq. The local police chief told CNN government forces are so far holding on to control, but U.S. intelligence is watching closely. If ISIS seizes the dam, water and power for millions of Iraqis is in jeopardy and there's risk of flooding millions of acres. Prime Minister Nuri Al-Maliki tells the BBC he's happy to have Syrian air strikes against
[Isis. Nuri Al-maliki, Iraqi Prime Minister:] There was no coordination involved, but we welcome this action.
[Starr:] The U.S. does not welcome what it says were Syrian air strikes that reached inside Iraq. CNN has learned U.S. aircraft flying reconnaissance missions over Iraq to collect intelligence are keeping an eye out for both Syrian war planes and Iranian drones. And keeping an eye on threats against U.S. military advisers. This video message reportedly from a Sunni cleric calls for attacks against U.S. Embassies worldwide if the U.S. conducts air strikes in Iraq. Now, the Pentagon has sent a two-star general to Baghdad to lead the military advisory mission and earmarked another general to go to Northern Iraq if that part of the mission actually happens. It's a lot of intellectual muscle power for whatever may come next Erin.
[Burnett:] Barbara Starr, thank you. Joining me now are CNN military analyst, Retired Colonel Peter Mansoor, who was the executive officer for General David Petraeus during the Iraqi surge, and a CNN counterterrorism analyst and a former CIA official, Phil Mudd. OK, great to have both of you with us. I want to start first though with this issue of how many American troops are now on the ground. We're now being told it's about 500, nearly double what we were told days ago was going to be the upper limit. So first of all, is this enough to make a difference?
[Philip Mudd, Cnn Counterterrorism Analyst:] I think it's enough to make a modest difference, but there's not a game changer. There are a few in this story. That's the Iraqi military, that's ISIS and that's villagers. If we think in a civil war 300 or 500 that a couple hundred difference is going to change a civil war, I don't buy it. It's an interesting change. We could talk about why we've made that change. It's not a game changer though.
[Burnett:] Phil uses the word "an interesting change." My question is more of what does it mean that the United States is changing the number by double in just days and not really talking about it? Is this already mission creep? COLONEL PETER MANSOOR
[Cnn Military Analyst:] No, it will be mission creep or change of mission when the president decides it's in the national interests of the United States to back the Iraqi military with air strikes or other military force. What those troops on the ground now are doing is setting up joint operation centers. They're fanning out across the Iraqi army to assess the state of readiness of brigades and divisions. This is more of an assessment mission at this point than it is an actual combat mission or helping the Iraqi army defeat
[Isis. Burnett:] Phil, on this issue of mission, my question still remains making the case to the American people as to why the United States would need to do something right now. You hear the prime minister of Iraq saying thank you, Syria, we're so glad you helped us with those air strikes. But of course, those air strikes came from Bashar Al-Assad so the U.S. says we don't like the air strikes. This is an incredible situation where the enemy of your enemy is your friend and how would you get involved in this and actually know who you're helping and who you're hurting?
[Mudd:] There's going to be a simple question and this won't be clear for a week or six months. When you look at the insurgency we're seeing in Iraq, they're inspired by an al Qaedist ideology. That doesn't mean we'll see that manifest itself today or tomorrow. But overtime, what I've seen in places like Yemen or Somalia is organizations like this will have a sliver of their leadership start to say, our immediate goal is Baghdad. But long term, let's train some of these foreign fighters to go into European cities or Boston, New York or Chicago. We have to worry about if that happens not going in that day and trying to build an intelligence picture immediately. We have to say if we see foreign fighters directly to the United States, what do we do about it?
[Burnett:] Colonel Mansoor, is there going to be an answer to that question? Does the U.S. have really any intelligence? Because clearly they didn't have any intelligence or good intelligence on how severe of a risk ISIS was when ISIS was really just in Syria.
[Mansoor:] It will take time to develop and require boots on the ground to develop it. These ISIS fighters are very skillful. They don't use cell phones that much. You need people on the ground in contact with the Iraqi military that's opposing them in order to gain the kind of intelligence from the locals who would know what ISIS is up to. But this is going to require the Iraqi tribes to come on board because they're the ones that really could put a dent in the ISIS juggernaut right now.
[Burnett:] And do you believe, Phil, that the United States has any sense of what ISIS is really about or what they're going to do? We heard Barbara reporting on the current assessment from the U.S. intelligence. ISIS isn't going to risk an all-out war, but then you see car bomb after car bomb after car bomb in market after market after market.
[Mudd:] I think we have a sense of what they're about, but in the intelligence business, you have to differentiate two fundamental points. First is capability, how many of them are there, where are they, what kind of weapons do they have, how are they moving? So if we choose to use drones against them, can we put lead on the target? That's a fundamentally different question, though, assessing the capability of the adversary from assessing intent. That's what's going on inside an insurgent's head. One message on that because I've talked to terrorists, I've listened to what they said on the radio and listened to what they said when we detained them at CIA, we do not think like they think. They believe they are ordained by God to take territory and to oppose a sense of law that returns that country to the 7th Century. When you have those kinds of beliefs, to think that they're operating rationally, that they're not going to go into Baghdad because they're afraid of being killed is not the way to look at this. They're motivated by a different way of thinking and let's not pretend that we understand it.
[Burnett:] All right, thanks very much to both of you. OUTFRONT next, goals being scored in the World Cup. Is the ball the reason? We have a special investigation. Major new developments in the search for Malaysia Airlines Flight 370. I mean, major, this is it, in a sense, the Holy Grail. Were the pilots unconscious when the plane disappeared? And it's the television moment everyone is talking about, a man finds out that his missing son is alive on television live.
[Grace:] We are getting reports that your son has been found alive in your basement.
[Unidentified Male:] What?