tv Campbell Brown CNN August 8, 2009 8:00pm-9:00pm EDT
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bad things happen at this timing. >> john lucich, a commercial pilot who flies the area all the time we appreciate your expertise as we lead up to this national transportation safe by board press conference. i'm don lemon live to you in atlanta. we'll send you to cnn presents "witness to war." don't go away. we'll bring it to you live. [ speaking foreign language ]
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afghanistan is a place bypassed by the industrial revolution. it's been bypassed by most major modern developments and by modern, we can go back, you know, a century and a half. afghanistan doesn't have a railway network. it doesn't have a national grid for electricity that reaches across the country. it's very hard for people's lives to improve. as the rest of the world races ahead in the computer age and
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advance medical techniques around the world, afghanistan is very much stuck in the dark age s. >> there's the afghan/pakistan border, the tribal region, it's a primitive lifestyle. we've been to some of these local villages, the homes are made out of mud. it's very hot. it's one of the most mountainous and rugged regions in the world. and these are people that were born to fight. you know, for ages their way of life is fighting. >> reporter: 30 year of war, generation raised in war, children left orphaned, women left widowed an economy flattened. people sickened by this endless
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conflict. they are fed up. everyone you speak to says, when will this end? >> upon landing in afghanistan, it was my first visit there what struck me was how primitive and backwards that country was. there was no electricity. there was no running water. there were no paved roads. quite simply, some of the worst roads i've ever been on. and as you explored that area, bouncing around on these awful roads, riding through river beds even, you get from place to place, another thing that struck me was the leftovers of nearly 25 years of conflict were
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littered across the afghan countryside. old soviet tanks and armored personnel carriers just sitting on the side of the roads, ruined. pieces of tank shells, of cannon shells. and it made me realize that this country was accustomed to living with conflict for a quarter century. >> how did it start? look at this. i'm sitting on a shell of a soviet tank on a hill overlooking kabul. here. this is where so much of it began. this battle with the soviets and the mujahadin, control of afghanistan. the local warlords rising up, backed by pakistan, backed with
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money from the united states, from saudi arabia. fighting the soviets to drive the soviets out. the soviets leaving as a vacuum. warlords turn on each other. who enters the fray? the taliban. it's easy to argue that that's when 9/11 and a lot of other problems in the region were born. when america simply walked away once the votes withdraw. don't forget, there was a war under way in afghanistan at the time of 9/11. they were front lined active at that moment as the taliban were fighting other afghans.
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9/11 obviously changed everything. the reason why the west is there is to answer a security threat being paved by the al qaeda organization in exporting terrorist attacks from its planning and strategic bases in afghanistan and in the tribal areas of pakistan. >> afghanistan has always been a country where it's a battleground of ideologies and unfortunately it's the after fan people who have to live through that battle. >> one narrative that i hear again and again, not only from afghans but also from pakistanis is, the abandonment they experienced after the withdrawal of the soviets and the withdrawal of u.s. aid to that region. after pumping in so much money and so many weapons, both of these super powers agreed to just stop, leaving huge numbers of armed militants, leaving a
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experience we had. we were driving on the outskirts of kabul and we saw in the distance this collection of tents and mud huts and we pulled over. it was a refugee camp. these are refugees from the fighting in the worst parts of the country, the people who are really caught in the middle of the battle between the taliban and allied forces.
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and the immediate impression, when ewalked in there was just depression and hopelessness. children with bare feet, ragged clothes, open sores on their faces, sores that are going to become infected and ultimately can kill them if they don't get medical treatment that they urgently require. >> the first time we walk need refugee camp in afghanistan, it was a refugee camp in kabul, it was our first few days into the country, i was shocked. i mean, there were acres and acres of makeshift tents, homes and it was just astonishing to think that thousands of people still live in that kind of environment in the capital of
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afghanistan. >> the fear among eight organizations now, that if the drought continues, so will the displacement of people on a scale much greater than before. conditions in these camps are horrific, i've seen camps in afghanistan where, you know, there's been hard for people to find any wood to cook their meals on. hard for them to find any water. where the tents have been what looked like just rags tied together, rags and, you know, a few humble possessions. there's a resilience. there's an utter desperation. because when you see food coming in, when that food is in limited supply, unless there are people there sometimes quite physically beating people back in the crowds, that food will be torn from the weakest people's hands. so there's -- there's a survival of the fittest.
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>> we walked into a refugee camp in western pakistan in spring of 2009 and there were hundreds of pakistani men, refugees, milling around, waiting for food distribution and increasingly agitated. [ speaking foreign language ] >> and they wanted to tell their story. they wanted us hear what they had to say and they were furious that the camp administrators, whom they accused of stealing the very aid, food aid, that they were supposed to be distributing, were charging money for it. those were allegations that i could never really confirm. it was a dangerous atmosphere. and you can see how it can leave these people living in these conditions for longer periods, they will become breeding
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grounds for all sorts of problems, from crime to insurgencies. they could become recruiting grounds. >> because of the terrible chn conditions here the children are developing conditions that are difficult to treatment. >> some kind of allergic skin reaction that's gone chronic, it's been there a month. >> i've never seen anything like the scenes i've witnessed in refugee camps and sometimes it was so overwhelming, it didn't seem real. tent after tent after tent families, husbands, wives, children, and it didn't seem real to me that so many families, so many millions of people had been displaced, lost everything, lost their homes, their livelihood and they were now living in tents looking forward to one meal a day with an uncertain future. there were so many types i asked them what now? what do you do now? it was a shrug of the shoulder, we don't know. that was heartbreaking.
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you see, seeing the children. obviously in distress. they were so excited, you know, to see us whenever we came with cameras, whenever we came with our crew. there was not a time when we didn't get a rush of people coming to us telling their stories. and to me, that was a desperate cry for help saying, we are here, help us, somebody do something. because nobody else appeared to be doing anything. and you know, i think the refugees are key because you are not going to beat the militancy pakistan if you don't have consensus if you don't have support of the people. and if the people aren't being taken care of by the government, the people are living in tents without food and water, with uncertainty, how are you going to get them to support your cause? (pouring rain)
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italian taliban had been routed. 2001, after 9/11, and the pushing to afghanistan by u.s. forces. the way that the u.s. and others were able to tap into the existing militias here, forced the soviet stods ried rise up a out the afghanistan. but the u.s. left. the bush administration shifted the focus of the counterterrorism operations, its anti-al qaeda operations, its so-called war on terror to iraq. iraq! we now know that there was no causes for that. al qaeda wasn't here. saddam wasn't projecting a terrorist threat beyond its immediate borders certainly not
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the urz. the regime of saddam hussein didn't possess weapons of mass destruction. the u.n. kept saying that. so like it did, after the soviet withdrawal, invasion of iraq took america's eye off afghanistan. and america's still paying aprice for that to this day. >> the decision to go to iraq diverted attention and resources from the fight in afghanistan. opened the window for the taliban to come back. it slowed the rate of reconstruction and progress and development in afghanistan. it made people feel here as if they had been deserted, and deserted again. >> the shift from afghanistan to iraq was pulpable. we in the media did it as well. i closed national public bureau in kabul because we all knew a war was coming in iraq.
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>> when there's media attention on the country, the country improves. when the media attention goes away, the country falls apart. >> now you have nato fighting against taliban insurgents, you have a very unpopular afghan government, and afghan population who no longer trusts the international community, no longer has great hope for the international community for the afghan government the way they did in 2001 and there was an incredible wib dough of opportunity there. and a fear that that window has closed and now the country's mired in yet another chapter of its endless civil war. five years after the overthrow of the taliban, i met with a taliban fighter who had been in the front lines in the trenches, facing off against the northern alliance during the u.s. bombing campaign of the taliban. he described to me the retreat
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of the taliban from that area. basically how taliban fighters, they got the order to run and just picked up and left and went back to their villages. and he went on to say that many of these fighters were back in the movement again. they were back involved again. and wanting to fight against the u.s. and the nato forces in afghanistan. >> for a year after 9/11, i lived in kandahar, pretty much with the taliban. they changed uniforms. they might have been the chiefs of police in districts and local administrators, but they were still the taliban. >> all they did was shave their beard and blend into the crowd and live normal lives just so they wouldn't get caught, they wouldn't get in trouble. the taliban have been around, and will still be around, and
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right now they're in disguises that you won't ever guess. lately we had a suicide bombing, it was a suicide attack within kabul and infiltration where eight taliban suicide bombers went to various ministries and how they got in, they were wearing a suit and tie, perfectly shaven, gelled hair, had men pretending to be their bodyguards, and they got into the ministries. >> the afghan talibans a complex base with many, many faces and many, many application. one thing for sure is that it has prompt its capability to endure. what we now also see, however, is the emergence in recent years of pakistani taliban. these are two entirely different organizations, yet in many ways they share similar philosophy and ideology and a war-fighting capability. in essence, the concept of the taliban is flourishing and
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growing across the border. >> the natural place they ran to was pakistan because that's where many of them had come from, that's where they got their train, that was a way to escape u.s. and coalition forces that were arriving inside afghanistan after september 11th. so they brought with them the same values they had in afghanistan, sort of extreme religious views, et cetera, et cetera, and slowly imviewed that into the communities along the border of afghanistan and pakist pakistan. >> the pakistan military made several attempts to dislodge the taliban that created a lot of refugees, did a lot of damage, killed civilians and ultimately failed. and then the taliban would just come back again. >> even in the established settled areas, like swat, this is not the tribal reege. look at what's happening in swat. that place is supposed to have
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governance, but it's not. a region where there was conflict and what security forces do? they ran away. what did the government officials do? they ran away. that's youy you had the taliban come in and take over. when you have the people of pakistan see this, a group of militants easily, just like that, are able to wipe away the government, the security forces from a region like swat, which was a jewel of pakistan, how are you supposed to have confidence in your government? >> i remember meeting one woman who refused to show her face, she was still in fear of the taliban recognizing her. she left the swat valley after the taliban rule of terror there. >> i have three kids for gods sake. the whole point, what is going to spill all over? it's going to spill all over in pakistan and the west doesn't
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there and the reporters and producers preparing, waiting for the ntsb personnel to come out and brief us. nine people have apparently died in that collision of a tourist helicopter and a small plane over the hudson river. here what happens we know now, three bodies recovered so far, two adults and a child. adults were believed to be aboard the helicopter, and the child believed to be on the plane. parts of the helicopter have apparently been located at about 30 feet of water. the plane has not been found. recovery efforts are halted for the night. we're expecting, again, a news briefing from the ntsb at any moment now. cnn will bring it to you live when that happens. >> solemnly swear. >> under the constitution and laws of the united states. >> under the constitution and laws the u.s. >> so help me god. >> so help me god. >> congratulations. >> associate justice sonia sotomayor. history made the united states supreme court. first hispanic and third woman took the oath from the chief justice. the court is set to hear
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argument september 9th in a campaign finance case. justice sonia sotomayor now. i'm don lemon. i'll see you back here at 10:00 p.m. herein and here for the ntsb news briefing at any moment happening in hoboken, new jersey. don't go away. cnn presents "witness to war" continues right now. an interesting thing that i experienced this spring in pakistan was there were a number of people i talked to, pakistanis who liked the taliban, who think they're good muslims, who believe that the taliban is fighting for something honest and noble. >> it sounds like the taliban
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are heroes to you. [ speaking foreign language ] >> translator: we love the taliban, this man says. poor people only like those who care for the poor. the taliban come in and they say, we will defend you, you are our fellow muslim we going to protect you against this corrupt system of government, against these corrupt policemen and judges and ministers, and that resonates with ordinary pakistanis. >> the one that really stands out for me was a taliban member i found i met along the pakistan/afghanistan border. he had been captured by the pakistan army. and this was a striking image, here was a man, bound in chains. what struck me about him was that this was a gentle man. this was a man who was
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incredibly soft-spoken. it was disarming to see him there. he was defeated. he was hollow. we asked him why did you do what you did? he said, i was misguided. >> i am sorry. i'm very much sorry. i'm ashamed of my action. and i will not fight again. >> it wasn't the taliban that we associate with bravado, it wasn't the taliban with the gun raised in the air. it was the black turbine and the dark glasses. this was a man who had been on the front line and was defeated. it was a very unnerving moment when i met him. and it will stay with me mother ever. >> afghans are probably the
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toughest people i've ever met. these people have lived with conflict for a quarter century and they have a sense of hume that i've never really seen anywhere else in the world. and they put up with more hardship than i think most any society has ever seen. >> you know, one of the strongest images that i remember was this old man in a burned out building, a mud building, and it was a windy day, and there were dark clouds over the sky, and i remember he was digging through the ruble of this building and he was pulling out from this burned rubble of a mud house this torn-apart, battered, twisted metal frame of a bed, that is who the afghans are.
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they won't be beaten easily. >> one of the things that sticks out in my mind was when we went -- >> back now to "witness to war" in a moment. first we want to take you to hoboken, new jersey a national transportation safety board briefing. >> of the national transportation safety board. good evening. on behalf of the ntsb, i would like to offer our condolences to all of those who lost loved ones in this tragic midair collision that occurred over the hudson approximately noon today. there were two aircraft involved, the first was a helicopter. it's a eurocopter as-350. the number is november 401, lima hotel, carrying one pilot and five passengers registered to liberty helicopters and it had deported the west 30th street. the second aircraft was a piper saratoga, ta 32r that departed
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teeterboro. n number november 71 mike charlie. there was a pilot and two passengers. they collided in midair shortly before noon over the hudson river near stevens point. three victims have been recovered, dive operations have been suspended for the evening and they will resume at 7:00 a.m. tomorrow morning. they have located the helicopter. it has been marked with buoys and the site has been secured with authorities who will there be throughout the evening. using side-scanning sonar to locate the airplane and any other wreckage. once that wreckage is pulled up, they will try to do it tomorrow, depending on the current and the circumstances and the
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conditions, if they can reeverybormove it, it will be pulled up and taken a secure lotion for further examination. our team did talk to a witness to the accident today, it was another liberty helicopter pilot. he was hot fueling his aircraft at the west 30th street heliport. he said he was looking west and the accident helicopter was heading south. he saw a small, single engine aircraft approaching behind the helicopter. he radioed the accident helicopter and told them one lima hotel, you have a fixed wing behind you. there was no response from the pilot. he stated that he saw the right wing of the airplane contact the helicopter. he saw helicopter parts and the right wing fall, and both aircraft descended into the hudson river.
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i arrived here at about 5:45 with a team of seven additional investigators from our washington, d.c., office. we were also accompanied by two transportation disaster assistant specialists here to support the family members of the victim. we joined two local ntsb investigators who have been on scene today. our investigator in charge is mr. bob grits here at the incident command center on the new jersey side here in hoboken. we will were also joined today by our investigator who did the stakedown on the new york side at incident command center at pier 53 in manhattan, mr. luke schiata. our investigators have been working, those who were on scene throughout the day, with local responds conducting witness interviews and gathering additional information. the investigators that came down from d.c. are now at some of them are at teeterboro at the
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control tower, gathering records, radar information, any flight plans, reviewing air traffic control tapes for communication. additional investigators are out gathering information with respect to operations. they have talked to the fixed base operator the teeterboro airport where the saratoga was this evening -- this afternoon-they departed. we were advised that the saratoga did stop over at teeterboro and they brought a passenger on. they did not refuel. and they were there for a half hour. we are going to be continuing our investigative work interviewing witnesses, gathering records, looking at maintenance and other information. there may be parts that will be washing up and some citizens may have information that would be helpful to the investigation,
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such as video or still photos that they can provide and i will let the mayor communicate to you all how to provide that information to us. we've just arrived on scene. we're beginning the factual work. we will have an organizational meeting tomorrow morning at that organizational meeting we will establish the parties to our investigation and we will continue our work. as additional factual information is put together, we will provide factual briefings to you all and we will announce those. i would not expect that we will have another briefing until tomorrow and once we have an opportunity to see what our investigators have found tonight, then we'll put some more information together for you tomorrow. again, our condolences go out to all of those who have lost loved ones. i think the mayor would like to say something, then i'll take questions. >> my maim is dawn zim, i'm the mayor of hoboken. on be-hal of hoboken, again, i'd like to express my condolences
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to the family members and the friends of the victims in this tragedy. again, hoboken is going to do everything that we can, working with the local authorities to help the ntsb with this investigation. and so we, through the police, will be taking calls from members of the public. again, if any debris comes up, please, one, do not touch it. please call 201-420-2100. again, 201-420-2100. and we'll work with our local police and ntsb to recover that debris. so we ask for your cooperation in that matter. thank you. >> have the black box been found? >> the question was, have any black boxes been found? the ntsb does not expect to recover any specific recording devices like cockpit voice recorder or flight data
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recorders because they are not required on aircraft of this size. however it is possible we might find some nonvolatile memory on board the aircraft, if it was not damaged, this could be from some of the displays, gps equipment, things like that. we don't know if they would have been damaged in the collision or if they might have been water damaged, and we will not know whether there's any data that might be usable to us until those aircraft are recovered examined. we do expect to have some information that we could use from air traffic control radar data and other sources, even if we do not recover the black box -- even if we do not recover any recording device or an aircraft does not have a black box, the ntsb can still determine the cause of the accident and that's what we're here to do. >> the helicopter and a small plane, how far is it, what level did they fly through the
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airspace like this? >> the question was, is there any required separation between two aircraft and n. airspace like this? >> one of the things that the ntsb will be looking at is exactly where these aircraft were located at time of the collision. this is a vfr corridor that means visual flight rule prevail. you are supposed to be alert and see and avoid other aircraft in the vicinity. we will need to look at air traffic control information to see what kind of communication and the location and altitude of the aircrafts. >> have you located the plane yet? >> the question was, has the plane been located yet? i mentioned that the helicopter had been located today. they've placed buoys near the location so they can pull it up. hopefully tomorrow, or when circumstances can permit. using the side scanning sonar to locate the airplane.
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due to the kircurrents and the challenging conditions on the river today they did not mark the location of the plane, but i think that they are coming back with some promising returns and they will continue to look tomorrow. >> which area did the bodies come from? the three bodies were recovered from the plane or the helicopter, do you know? the three bodies that were recovered, which aircraft did they come from? i do not know the answer to that question yet. we will have to look for positive i.d. for those victims and then that will be determined. >> do you have any estimate ache how high the planes were when they collide with each other. >> do we have an estimate on the altitude of the two aircrafts when they collided? at this point in time, i do not have that information. we will need to verify that information with air traffic control radar returns and other sources of information. i expect that we can provide that information to you tomorrow once our team completes some of
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the work that here to doing this evening. >> where did the plane take off from originally? >> the question was, where did the plane take off from originally? the aircraft, i believe, was registered in pennsylvania, but we will have to look and see if we have flight plans, both for the aircraft originated and what the final destination was. again, that is information we believe we can provide to you tomorrow. >> do you have any information about any distress calls being made? >> the question, do we have any information about distress calls being made. we have a team right now at teeterboro tower reviewing air traffic control communications and tapes. i'll take one more question. >> will the divers be back in the water tomorrow? what happens at 7:00 a.m.? >> will divers back in tomorrow? i was sitting in on a briefing this evening. then plan to get back into the water tomorrow. i think they will be looking closely at some expert
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information on the currents and the tides and the best time potentially raise the equipment that the wreckage that's in the water, the divers will be getting in, i've been advised conditions were very difficult. the visibility was no more than two or three feet today. they will continue to work expeditiously both on the recovery operations which is the first priority and removal of the wreckage. thank you all very much. we will provide additional factual briefings when we have more information. good evening. >> thank you. >> ntsb chairman debbie hersman heading the press conference, briefing in hoboken, new jersey. there was an off-duty pilot at 34th street heliport who happened to look up, 30th street, i should say, 30th street heliport and saw the plane approaching. i want to bring in john wily, an aviation expert, a pilot here. she said that the pilot radioed
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the off-duty pilot on the ground refuel, radioed the helicopter and said you've got a fixed wing coming up on you. what does that say to you? >> well the thing that surprised me is that they said that the right wing struck the helicopter first. so if you've got the helicopter here, this airplane is coming up, i originally thought it was going to be the left wing. but with the airplane coming up in this position here, striking the right wing, separating the right wing, taking the rotor off of the helicopter, the guy in the fixed wing probably never saw the helicopter, he's coming up from behind the helicopter. his friend tried to radio and call him. the guy in the helicopter didn't see him either. see and avoid, you can't avoid what you don't see. >> boy, oh boy. also, just from the press conference, they're saying that the aircraft, the airplane, is registered in pennsylvania, that they believe teeterboro was just a stopover to pick someone up, they didn't refuel, went back up to teeterboro and went south down the hudson river from --
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down the hudson river and once they got to the 40th -- down to the pier, 40th street pier -- what is that 40th street pier, yeah -- that's when the collision happened. but then the helicopter took off, they said from 30th street and then went over the city and went south down the river as well. possibly when all of this is happening, as you said they didn't see each other. they did find in this briefing the helicopter and they said they put some buoys around it but they won't bring it up tonight because of visibility. >> no, they've called off the search. they've called off all efforts they'll resume at 7:00 a.m. it's difficult. it's the hudson that had currents that we saw created problems in the recob of 1549. think is not going to be easy. >> i hate to say it's unusual. usually accidents are oddities. looking at windshield through a plane, for him it would have to just be all be circumstances --
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>> if you're in that plane and you can see above and you happen to be rising to a certain altitude and you've got this other aircraft coming that's in your blind spot, i mean, it's just, you know, it's amazing. >> it's amazing. >> and we're talking about -- as we mentioned earlier, you take off a minute earlier, you take off a minute later, this accident doesn't occur. it's just an incredibly unique set of variables that come together and produce a tragedy. >> again, i should point out, too, when we said the off-duty pilot was refueling said you've got a fixed wing on your tail, no response. >> no time. no time. i mean, the accident occurs. >> do you think the airplane was going that fast, do you believe, at that point? if he had time to see it, i mean, it would appear that it's not going that fast. >> well, i mean, when you're out driving, all you have to do for just a split second is not see the guy in the lane behind you and then you've got bent metal and broken glass. >> all right. i want to reiterate here that
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this is still very early on in this investigation. what we're hearing from the national transportation safety board is really preliminary things that they have found since arriving there. they're trying to figure out what's going on. they have a huge team on the ground that have descended on the ground there in man hthatta and new jersey. they described exactly what they have found in the water and they did say that it was very promising looking for the airplane. they believe they'll find the airplane soon, but it depends on the condition in the hudson river as to how much further they can go, using that side sonar, how much longer they're going to bow out thee out there. also, the river conditions tomorrow will determine when they bring the helicopter up and when they continue to look for the aircraft. again, three bodies have been found. one of them a child. two of them, adults. very sad story. 10:00 eastern, we'll follow the very latest for you on this breaking news story, including other news on cnn.
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the afghan people are tired. they're exhausted. the perception that the afghan people are used to war, that that's their life, that that's their history, they're normal people. you have to see them as human beings. no one enjoys 30 years of war. no one enjoys watching their kids starve to death. no one enjoys thinking that they could die at any moment. the next turn, there could be a suicide bomber. >> i find afghans are really wise because they've dealt with a quarter century of war and
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they've heard every promise and lie from every different kind of politician possible, spouting every different kind of ideology possible. and they're really clever at figuring out where the truth lies. the afghans, the majority of them may be illiterate, but they're not gullible. >> and right now they'll take salvation where they can find it. if it comes from the u.s., it comes from the u.s. if it comes from within afghanistan, if it comes from movements within islam, peace is what people want. if someone can deliver peace, they'll happily latch on to it. that's the message we get time and time again from people. they just want a break. they've had enough. >> the most afghans absolutely want war finished. they want a peaceful life. they want to get on with their
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lives. and that alone should tell the international community that peace can be achievable. quickly. >> in the time that i've lived in pakistan, the overwhelming majority of people that i've met are kind, generous, peace-loving, moderate people. [ speaking foreign language ] they are not extremists. they are not fundamentists. they don't believe in killing anybody for a cause. they're not suicide bombers. and i think it's important for the world to know that. because that gives a sense of hope. the suicide bombers, the extremeiextree extremi extremists, are a minority. but unfortunately, they are capable of making a lot of noise. suicide ga suicide bombs get attention. they make headlines. >> when people talk about the future here, it's hard for them to look beyond the past.
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the past is what dominates peoples' lives in pakistan and afghanistan. they've lived through war, particularly here in afghanistan, 30 years of war. it's very difficult to imagine a future. the world cannot afford to take its eye off what happens here, and it cannot afford not to work for peace. the international community has to bring stability here. it has to keep an eye on what's happening. >> we need to be very, very concerned that we don't create another generation of hate, another generation of insurgents. this is a fine line we're walking now. >> it's a very, very fine line. there is a strong sense of anti-americanism amongst many people here. the taliban feeds off that. al qaeda feeds off that. >> of course the terror that is hatched here, we can see
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transported. we can see carried out elsewhere. that is a big concern for the rest of the world. and in many ways, it's in the west's national interests to see these issues resolved. and in many ways, it's just the right thing to do. >> and there are efforts under way where people are paying with their lives and millions and millions and billions of dollars to try to stem this growing tide. and they've failed so far. because the taliban insurgents are still there. >> i believe that certain generations are alone. my generation, the generation -- they're lost in afghanistan. they've grown up with a mindset of war, with survival of the fittest. you have to focus on the younger generation.
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