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that he is right for this job. tonight the country knows what i'm talking about. that's "hardball" for now, thanks for being with us more politics ahead with cenk uygur. >> i'm cenk uygur, live from los angeles. today we're learning a lot more about the amazing details how the secret u.s. force hunted down and kip osama bin laden. it's an operation that apparently months in the making and unfolded yesterday in an unbelievable 40 minutes of action. we're going to talk a lot more about that and give you some clarity. joining me now nbc terrorism analyst roger cresse, and philip mudd, the fbi's first-ever deputy director for national security, and then senior intelligence adviser. already. philip, let me start with you. first, on the intelligence issue, where do we get this
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intelligence and how did it lead to this dramatic raid? >> this is very difficult intelligence to collect. you're talking about somebody who doesn't communicate and who rarely has contacts with his subordinates. as the president said, the information was collected begins last summer. you have somebody presumably who was a courier between the main al qaeda organization and its leadership. you have to take bits of pieces of sand, how does he communicate, what kind of threat would you face if you enter that compound. put these bits of sand together and determine whether it's useful to take a stab at the compound remarkable intelligence success. >> are there any updates on how we might have acquired it? was it from gitmo or otherwise? >> i've heard comments about get monday. it's hard to someone like gitmo who was captured 8 years ago
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would have current information, but this kind of thing, it sounds interesting, looks like a headline, a big story, but it really behind the scenes, one individual, two individuals, technical information, combined with things like satellite imagery, photographs from space, slowly but surely in contrast to the kind of headlines you see in the "the washington post" and "new york times," it's bits and pieces from different individuals, maybe from satellite photographs that show a security footprint on the ground. bits and piece that is slowly lead you to say maybe what one individual said eight months ago is true, and sufficient for the president to say we're going to go. >> all right. that's really interesting. i hear a lot of talk about gitmo, and i love what you said, it makes perfect sense, we couldn't possibly have gotten it from some guy that we've been keeping for six years or however long we've been keeping some of those detainees. roger, let's talk about this idea of either killing or capturing osama, what does it
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mean it was not really a capture operation, that it was an operation to kill someone, do you say if you've got him, kill him anyway? >> cenk s. i think some of the reporting has been off. john brennan said today pretty explicitly there was a capture option here. the force that went in did have pretty explicit instructions, capture if possible. if that was not on the table, to neutralize the subject. you're trusting them to make a decision in the hostile environment. they performed brilliantly. >> roger, let me ask you about this special force that came in from jsoc. we're going to talk about it. we have something who was part of that operation, that was part of jsoc before, tell everybody about what that is. do we have a better capability
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to swoop in with helicopters that we didn't have before, for example, when you worked at the clinton administration? >> no, it's tough to compare the two. joint special operations command is some of our most experienced and trained fighters, but what's important to understand is what phil said, you put together a mosaic of information to paint an intelligence picture. then when you have as high degree as possible in the accuracy of that information, you then task the military operators to come up with a operational plan to go in there. . the ecpart of it is we've had years of experience in operating in the afghan theater and then the adjacent pakistan theater. they did the degree of comfort we now have in that region is the highest it's ever been. that helps as well. the third thing is you have a group of military leaders now
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with so much on the ground experience, the civilian leadership and the national command authority trust them explicitly when it comes to planning this kind of operation. all that said, there's enormous risk associated, and the fact of the matter is they pulled it off brilliantly. we're going to bring in general barry mccaffery now, an analyst here, but i want you to listen to a clip from john brennan, talking about how courageous this was. let's watch it first. >> we thought that the best way to ensure that his body was given appropriate -- and appropriate islamic burial -- was to take those actions that would allow us to do that burial at sea. >> all right. that was actually the burial 59 sea video clip. let me ask you about that as well. general mccaffery, realistically here, they didn't want there to be a grave, right, where people can come and it could be a shrine of some sort.
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that was certainly part of the decision? >> yeah, i think so. we've had a tremendous continuing problem with saddam hussein's burial site in tikrit as a focal point. so the thought was dispose of it, cover yourself by saying we did it in accordance with islamic rules, but get rid of the body where it can't remains as a continuing problem. it was a smart move, one of many in this operation. >> let me go back to the brennan video on the courageous operation. let's watch that real quick. >> there was nothing that confirmed that bin laden was at the compound, therefore when president obama was faced with the opportunity to act upon this, the president had to evaluate the strength of the information, and then made what i believe was one of the most gutsiest calls of any president in recent memory. >> so, general mccaffery, let's
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talk about that decision to go in with that jsoc team instead of bombing from the air. do you think that was the correct way to go? >> i think it was extremely courageous on the part of the president. there's a ton of things that can go wrong. you can end up with a busted operation with your special ops people killed or missing, with downed aircraft. the easier way is to back off and hit it with a 2,000-pound gps-guided bomb from 40,000 feet with deniability, but then we wouldn't know ever possibly whether we had killed him and there would have been a huge risk of collateral damage so called of killing innocent civilians. i think it was a remarkable decision, beautifully executed by extremely courageous people, which as roger cresse notes, some of these guys have done 200 or 300 raid operations.
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they are incredibly professional at what they do. >> right. i read a report about when they were given the mission they erupted this cheers, because they were so excited to do it, which is great. it's great to hear that we've got guys like that who are willing to go into any situation to go get the bad guys. philip, let's talk about pakistan a bit. i want to bring you back in. apparently we did not tell pakistan, though there were initial reports that their secret intelancy was working with us. what did we tell them? and if we didn't tell them anything, was that the right decision? >> i think it was the right decision. frankly a lot of commentary is misguided today. we have a security stuffs in government that's under a lot of pressure from its own people, from its parliament. they've been engaged in a civil war now for nine years, a war against their own people in the tribal areas next to afghanistan. they have lost a lot of people, but at the same time they have a lot of sympathizers at lower
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levels in the security service or in the military. on the one hand to criticize pakistan for leaking, it's been happening since day one, we ought to accept it. on the other hand, they've been a good partner, they've lost a lot 6 good people, so it's not surprising to me that we didn't tell them because we were afraid of a leak. at the same time we ought not to be sitting here saying we have a terrible pattern. this is a sovereign country, a country we're going to need to chase ayman al zawahiri and others, so let's relax and keep going. >> roger, the decision to go in with a small force, was that driven more by the need for certainty that we absolutely got bin laden? was it driven more by keeping civilian casuals down because there were apparently many children and women? is that, you know, a very important thing to consider going forward that perhaps, hey, you know what? we should use these forces more if we want to limit those kinds
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of casualties? >> all those considerations factored in, but we can't take 2 and 2 and cup up with 2,000 on this. jsoc did a very impressive mission, highly focused, highly targeted, really good actionable intelligence. you can't draw the conclusion we need to be dropping a s.e.a.l. team 6 and other special forces into pakistan on a regular basis. it has to be intelligence-driven. we operate until a policy of actionable intelligence. when we see targets of opportunity we can corroborate that it is what we think it is, we go after it. we've been successful from the air with predator and now successful with a boots on the ground mission. but each scenario is different. one other point, i think phil is absolutely right, pakistan is a sovereign country. they have their own national security interests. sometimes those interests are going to diverge from ours. that's what countries do. our job is to find common areas
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of understanding, and we work together. we need to understand that. and i think this administration, and even the last administration understood that. there's a fundamental schizophrenia in some parts of pakistan's national security apparatus, we accept it and work with it to achieve the objectives we want. what we don't do is turn our back on somebody and do something stupid like sanctions, because we'll end up screwing ourselves in the process. >> there's no question it's a balance. there's no black-and-white answer that pakistan is good or bad, though you can draw some conclusions about where the compound was, which does not play well since it was so close to their military schools and et cetera. i want to talk about afghanistan. what does this mean for our mission in afghanistan? >> one thing to add to the earlier commentary, the importance of pakistan is hard to overstate. not just because they're a giant country with nuclear weapons,
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but in addition, were it not for our can't to take our logistics thus the port of karachi, on a 1,000-mile run through the khyber pass we could not for 90 days support 150,000 nato troops 800 miles from the sea. so pakistan is absolutely primary to our ability to continue this struggle. i think looking forward in afghanistan, there may well be an impact on al qaeda's ability to recruit and retain. i'm not sure. i don't believe it's going to have a significant role on what's going on inside afghanistan to the extent that this is a tribal war of the pasch tuns against the rest of them. i think the war will continue,
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but that doesn't detract from this as a major shot in the arm to the u.s. armed forces. 48,000 killed and wounded fighting the war on terror. this is a good day for the u.s. armed forces. >> all right. we will talk more about whether we should continue in afghanistan a little later in the program. in a minute we're going to talk more about the pakistani relationship and the fact of where the compound was was, i think, devastating, at least in terms of what some of the pakistanis knew. we'll get into more details. for now, thank you all, we really appreciate your time tonight. >> thank you. >> thank you. >> good to be with us. with bin laden dead, is the war on terror over? the questions about pakistan are mounting, as i told you. what did they know and when did they know it? richard engel on all of that, next. [ cricket chirping ] [ male announcer ] for the outdoorsman who goes to extremes,
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all right. when we come back, we have lot of news for you. can we really trust pakistan after what we've gotten here?
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we'll give you the details why that might be questionable. where does al qaeda go from here? richard engel will help answer those questions, and inside the town of where osama bin laden was staying. and inside the kill team that got him. a lot of great news coming up. stay right here. ♪ i've seen the sunrise paint the desert. witnessed snowfall on the first day of spring. ♪ but the most beautiful thing i've ever seen was the image on a screen that helped our doctor see my wife's cancer was treatable. [ male announcer ] ge technologies help doctors detect cancer early so they can save more lives. bringing better health to more people. ♪
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last night, because we felt as though we were comfortable enough to go out to the american people and to the world to say we got him. >> the president's reaction at any time? >> we got him. >> that was president obama's top counter-terrorism adviser john brennan, summing it up in three simple words -- we got
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him. top u.s. officials have been making it clear all day long that the threat is far from over. there are big questions today about the role of pakistan's goif in all of this. >> i think it's inconceivable that bin laden did not have a support system in the country that allowed him to remain there for an extended period of time. i am not going to speculate about what type of support he might have had on an official basis inside of pakistan. >> so what did pakistan know and when did they know it? those are important questions. richard engel is nbc's chief foreign correspondent, and he's in benghazi. it seems unlikely apparently to us and john brennan that you could have the compound within 4,000 feet of a top pakistani military school and they wouldn't know it. what is your experience in pakistan inform you about that concept?
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>> reporter: first it was amazing to say that was the same phrase they used when they got saddam hussein. i can't imagine that parallel is a coins den. the pakistani government controls the situation on the ground very tightly. it knows who comes and goes and who lives where, particularly in military communities this goes a community like westpoint, a top training facility. you can imagine if a wanted terrorist were living in the united states and suddenly he were discovered living in westpoint next to a bunch of retired generals, i think the u.s. would be very sheepish in trying to explain how that happened. >> there was a story i think i heard from you you living in pakistan and the government checking on you. can you tell us about that?
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>> reporter: i rented a house in pakistan. when you rent a house, you have to go to the state officials, you register it, you write down every bit of personal details. they photocopy your passport. they send an official to the house to check up on you. it's not an anonymous process. it's a detailed file, particularly in elite military areas like this one. >> i have a conclusion, they definitely knew. the question is who knew. could it be possible some parts of the military knew? but the leadership didn't know? >> reporter: we were told that no senior ranking military officers knew. i don't know what "senior" means exactly, if that means colonels and above, generals and above.
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it does sound that lower-level military officers did know who was living in that compound, but we're told not the top levels of the pakistani intelligence agency. >> who is telling us that? richard, who is telling us that? >> u.s. officials. >> but they have to protect relationships with pakistan, which you saw brennan doing as well. what is the state of our relationship with pakistan? >> well, government to government right now, it's probably strained, but they are trying to keep it on good terms. i spoke with a senior counter-terrorism official and said this is the time to build relationship with pakistan. we want that relationship to get better and better, okay, osama bin laden is gone, but number 2, 3, 4, 5 and down the line are still alive. you want to keep the momentum going right now, after you've
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c de-capitated -- i'm sure the american people will be frustrated as this news come out, particularly if they're from military families, families who had maybe injured soldiers or killed -- sheltering this individual, why did my son or daughter have to go out and fight for all these years when pakistan knew exactly where he was? on the pakistan side, there will be a feeling that the united states went in with helicopters, violated their sovereignty, took people from the ground and paid no respect to their national dignity. >> yeah, boo-hoo, that's my pin. so richard, last question for you, on the state of al qaeda as it stands now throughout the world, does this shift power to al qaeda in yemen, in somalia, as more of the central hubs for al qaeda now?
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>> reporter: i don't think it will flow from the top down to the roots. al qaeda was already very broken up. each cell or franchise, as they're generally called is pretty much self-sufficient. the one in the arabian peninsula, yemen, saudi arabia, operates autonomously, it raises its own funds and raises its own recruits, but this will deal a blow to the recruiting drive. osama bin laden's existence, mystique had been a point of prestige for al qaeda around the world. when the most important figure in the organization is killedly the americans and al qaeda can't do anything to do stop it, i think that will deter some young people from going to their computers, and deciding this is what they want to do with their lives. >> at least they know the consequences going forward, so that is a bit of a difference than judd a couple days ago. nbc's chief foreign correspondent richard engel, thank you for joining us
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tonight. >> my pleasure. ahead, inside bin laden's hideout. where exactly what he lives? what surrounded the complex? amazing details. it always happens. i buy plants, i bring them home, and then...i water too little... too much... or i just forget.
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for years we've been hearing that osama bin laden has been hiding in some far-distant cave near the border of afghanistan and pakistan, far from the reach of the outside world. it turns out that was completely false.
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he was actually living in abb t abbottabad, pakistan. kind of sounds like boulder, colorado. mixed in between coffee shops, gas stations, even a web design company, laid his fortified compound. it was roughly eight time larger than any home in the area, had no telephone offer internet connections, those might have been some clues. it was a heavily protected with a ten-foot-high external guard was, and internal guard wall. even an outside area where they had burn trash to keep as low a profile as possible. the mousse unbelievable thing is its location. the most wanted man in the world was living in a million dollar compound only about a mile and a half away from the abbott-abad golf club. must be nice. a mile away from the shell gas
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station -- 3,000 feel from a web design company, and most amazingly, bin laden was only 4,000 feet away from pakistan's military academy. that's basically similar to our westpoint as richard engel pointed out in the last segment. also nearby was a red onion, a squash court and about anything else an international terrorist could want. all it was missing is a chili's and thank allah it's friday. it's infuriating that we hadn't caught him for all those years, nearly ten years now, but at least we had the comfort of knowing he was miserable in a cave somewhere. o. well, i guess not. we do know now he won'tve the comforts which i hear today is a lot less hospitable. with bin laden dead, what is the future of al qaeda? are we safer? two of the top terror experts in
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the country join us next, and a major leader thinks that president obama is heading for, quote, robust reduction of u.s. troops from afghanistan. when will that happen? we're going to talk to robert greenwall on the future of the war in afghanistan. that's also next. ♪ ♪ that's the way, uh-huh, uh-huh ♪ ♪ i like it, uh-huh, uh-huh ♪ that's the way, uh-huh, uh-huh ♪ ♪ i like it [ male announcer ] introducing mio -- a revolutionary liquid water enhancer.
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the death of osama bin laden showed us an example of what could be the future of fighting terrorism. the last prominent men of al qaeda was wiped out in a similar way. in september 2009, special forces killed the leader of al qaeda in somalia, in a raid similar to the one that took on the bin laden yesterday. helicopters flew deep into insurgent territory, killed the target and got out with no u.s. casualties. what do they under the radar strikes teach us? it could be that all-outwars such as the ones in is iraq and
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afghanistan are maybe not the best way. osama bin laden did need the afghanistan after the u.s. went in and cia apparently got intelligence from captured detainees, but the last two significant blows came from precise strikes by small groups of highly trained special forces. so what does that teach us about the war on terror and where it's going next? well, for more on that, let's bring in evan coleman, nbc news terrorism analyst and steve clemens, senior fellow for the new america foundation. great to have both of you here. let me start with you, evan. these smaller strikes, god, they seem like such better ways to go than gigantic wars to the naked eye. that's certainly what it appears like in our recent experience. am i missing something? >> well, we have to be careful. first of all, regardless of what you think about the u.s. presence in afghanistan, i think you have to be realistic that the only way you put pressure on
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al qaeda and get them to confine themselves in a small area is by occupying the other part of that area. if we weren't in afghanistan right now, bin laden and his entourage would probably by in afghanistan somewhere, maybe in a cave, maybe in a mansion, about you they would have other place toss flee to. we eliminated the number of possible sanctuaries they could take. this operation was successful, a great victory, but these kind of operations carry with them very serious intended risks. let's not forget that one of the helicopters had crashed. had it crashed with u.s. soldiers on boor or sashes, we would have looked add another situation when the u.s. tried rescuing hosages in iran. that was a complete debacle. so i think the safist way is with missile strikes, but even then you do need to have a presence on the ground to gather
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intelligence, figure out where these people are, or you're firing missiles blindly, and that -- >> with the helicopters, we have risks of casualty action, but with giant wars we have far more casualties. yes, you're right, we eliminated that as a possible sanctuary, but the flip side is if he was in afghanistan, why couldn't we do what we did in pakistan? we swoop down, get him, et cetera. under that logic, shouldn't we have invaded pakistan and occupied the whole thing? >> i hate to say it, but given what we know now, it's sounding increasingly like a reasonable prospect, but before 9/11, the white house discusses option using special force toss capture or kill bin laden. each time those options were waved off because of the fact they were either too difficult, too risky, or the possibility of success was so low that, you
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know, even if we hadn't lost a significant amount of personnel, it would have been an embarrassment to the united states military and would have served to warn him that we knew about his couriers, that we knew where he was moving and how. we gave up a large piece of intel right before 9/11, when we let him know we were listening to his satellite phone. we only get thinks options once in a while, but i do think you have to eliminate the sanctuaries. when you leave an entire country open underneath taliban control where al qaeda has free rein, it's very difficult to track an individual down. when they're in a country that's supposed to be hostile to them, where they're on the run, where they're fleeing authorities, they can't show their faces, that's where you get a better chance of picking up intel that will lead to a better special forces raid like what happened here. >> steve, i'm honestly skeptical about that.
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i keep going back to that somalia example. we have two choices, the old model where we invade somalia and hope to tame them later in a spider hole or do a surgical strike and get the hell out. the new model seems so much better, what am i missing? >> i have tremendous respect for evan, but i disagree with the navy of safe havens. i supported that invasion after 9/11. i thought it was just cause. i thought the strikes against the united states justified that, but we took out bases. since then we've developed a technology and capacity to play a definitive role over the horizon. it doesn't need this very large, clunky big-scale military footprint, which engenders and stirs up its own opposition.
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our enemy grew, and our enemy used to be small, fragmented, disjointed, but now the taliban had become a brand name like the mujahedeen. so, you know, he's not a very popular guy in progressive circles, but don rumsfeld was the run who started thinking about much more nimble, high-flex, less manpower kind of operations. i think to some degree joe biden has been on that side. you're on the side of biden and rumsfeld versus some of the others that like large footprint operations. >> thanks a lot, steve, i really appreciate that. [ laughter ] i want to go to you for the last question, evan. as far as the past, i'm with steve. i was in favor of going into afghanistan in the first place, but it's now a much different
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war, nearly ten years later. i'm not sure at this point that it's helping. let's talk about what we do in the future. yemen, a powerful escalade force in yemen, what do we do there? maybe it makes sense if it was a sit -- yemen was where they launched attacks against some of our planes recently. or do we go with the surgical strikes? >> there's no real easy answers. the answer is there's a cost/benefit analysis to both those options. if you try to invade, there's absolutely no doubt, you'll turn a lot of people in that country against the united states. it's a chaotic country. i don't think that's a great option. about you if you look at what we're doing right now, we're bakley doing that, swatting at flies. we're firing missiles, launching special forces raids. we don't seem to be making very much progress, frankly. if you look at al qaeda and yemen, honestly, i think you
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would have to recognize they're doing just as well now if not better than 6 or 12 months ago. in that case, raids don't seem to be a problem. i think this gets back to something that the saudis of all people have been coming up with, which is the idea that in addition to the military and policing roles, there's also a social element, a social problem here. there's a reason why people in yemen are trying to join al qaeda. it's not because of the fact that they have an inherent loathing for the united states. i think we have to try to figure out what some of those other reasons are. is it possible that some of those folks are just frustrated them living under an autocrazy for the last 20, 30 years? i think we have to consider those options, as well as the military policing and occupying options that we have. >> good points all around, and i hear you on yemen, how it's gotten worse, so sometimes surgical strikes, especially with predators or drones are not
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ideal either, so it's a tough situation and everybody knows that. evan kohlmann and steve clemens, we appreciate your expertise tonight. the chairman of the senate armed services committee, carl levin thinks that the death of bin laden reinforces 9 president's intention to move toward a robust reduction of troops this summer. it's about time we've gotten out of the conflict that's resulted in the death of more than 1,500 troops, add that to the numbers of soldiers killed in iraq, and you see that it's cost us more than 6,000 american lives, not to mention that so far the wars in afghanistan and iraq have cost us $1.5 trillion. joining me now is robert greenwad producers of documentaries rethink afghanistan and iraq for sale.
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robert, i know your opinion on this. we got different opinions earlier about what's the more effective way to go, but i want to focus again on the future. what do we do in afghanistan? >> we get the troops out as quickly as possible. it's a military occupation, which is creating enemies, creating people who hate the fact their country is being taken over, and we work for the security of the united states there's lots we can do, cenk. enormous resources, enormous values this country has. we are doing none of that every time we occupy another country and wind up being the enemy. >> some might say, hey, look, we were telling afghanistan all along we're going to rebuild. it's the pottery barn rule -- if you break it, you own it after
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getting bin laden we say, hey, see you, wouldn't want to be you, doesn't that say we just had the objective of getting bin laden? >> we're not rebuilding afghanistan. i was there. when you get off the plane and you look around and see on every block millions and millions of dollars being spent on military solutions, you see people starving, you see people without jobs and without education, it's outrageous to contend that we are there rebuilding. we're not. we're destroying. that's the great pain and that's what's so profoundly wrong about this analysis. you come in and occupant, and then you expect them to think you're friends? the single biggest reason for the increase in the taliban is our occupation they're a nationalist organization. they thrive on having an enemy that comes in and takes over.
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>> i do want to mention one other point. my god, how much did we waste in iraq. when you see that we got bin laden in pakistan, i don't know if there's anybody in the country who can tell us what in the world iraq had to do with getting al qaeda and bin laden? >> in afghanistan there are more contractors than there are military. the amount of money dr the "new york times" had a brilliant article about it recently. the hundreds of millions and ultimately billions, billions of our tax dollars going to private contractors and going to corruption is off the scales, and here we are worrying about, you know, paying firemen and policemen and teachers. it's profoundly wrong, and it's against everything that we believe in. >> robert greenwad of brave new films, clear as always. thank you very much for joining
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us tonight. all right. now, next inside the elite group of secret warriors who took out bin laden. this is an amazing story. let's do this. look who's early! [ female announcer ] prepare to ace your dental check-up. fight plaque and gingivitis and invigorate your way to better check-ups. new crest pro-health invigorating clean rinse. mom! mom!
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[ male announcer ] you know mom. we know diamonds. together we'll make this mother's day one she'll never forget. that's why only zales is the diamond store. i've been looking at the numbers, and i think our campus is spending too much money on printing. i'd like to put you in charge of cutting costs. calm down. i know that it is not your job. what i'm saying... excuse me? alright, fine. no, you don't have to do it. ok? [ male announcer ] notre dame knows it's better for xerox to control its printing costs. so they can focus on winning on and off the field. [ manager ] are you sure i can't talk -- ok, no, i get it. [ male announcer ] with xerox, you're ready for real business. we are just getting this news in. nbc news reporting that president obama is going to go to new york city on this thursday to ground zero to mark the capture and killing of bin laden. of course, we captured and immediately killed him.
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the freedom tower is also getting built and looks pretty good so far. so a lot of things coming together at the right time there. that speech should be very interesting. obviously we'll cover it here. we'll be right back. ♪ ♪ [ male announcer ] doctors have been saying it forever. let's take a look. but they've never actually been able to do it like this. let's take a look. v-scan from ge healthcare. a pocket sized imaging device
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wars with the joins special operation command carry out secret strike operations with surgical precision. they are professionals who do their jobs with virtually no fanfare, except when they take on the osama bin laden. now, for a better look at how they operate, i want to bring in lieutenant commander eric ritens, a navy s.e.a.l. officer who commanded a -- he's also the author of "the heart and the fist" education of a humanitarian, the making of a navy s.e.a.l. great to have you here. >> pleasure to be on.
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>> you're talking about an organization of the elite of the eli elite. the men who are these navy s.e.a.l.s who are part of this strike were actually people who have been training for years. they've gone through the hardest military training in the world in order to prepare for operations like this one. >> is it a collection of intel gens folks and military folks? how do they put them together? who is in charge? >> they try to bring together operatesors so you have a seem will you see operators.
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>> this was obviously a tremendous success for the s.e.a.l. teams, for every member of the united states military, but the thing that's important to remember is successes like this only come about because for the last 9 and a half years, we have had service members who have worked day in and day out in order to develop this intelligence and hit targets, and every single day you have men and women of the united states military who are out hitting targets, hitting al qaeda targets, grabbing intelligence, turning that around quickly, and then trying to hit further targets. they work with human intelligence, all of that in order to keep that constant
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pressure on the al qaeda network. >> well, in this case abc news as obtained video of what it looked like inside. just have us walk through a bit -- i'm amazed they set something up. did they rebuild it somewhere else? how did that training inform their mission? >> anytime you have the opportunity to practice an operation, it makes you better, it makes you stronger, and sometimes when we're practices operations, we'll build the best possibility mock compounds that we can. i wouldn't be surprised if the organization that did this operation practiced dozens of times, went through multiple contingencies, multiple scenarios, the principals, though, are always the same -- speed, surprise, and violence of action focused on your specific target.
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>> we we see more of these? >> one thing we have to so is maintain this investment in the special operations community. i think one of the things we have to recognize is operations like this are taking place all the time. we just don't always hear about them. >> eric greitens, thank you for your time time. >> my pleasure. there were celebrations across america after bin laden news was announced. we'll show you an interesting collection of those videos, and i'll tell you why i'm celebrating -- usa, usa. all you pantene 2-in-1 lovers,
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as the news broke late last night that osama bin laden had been killed, celebrations began breaking out all across the country. chants of "usa" people singing the star-spangled banner could be heard well into the early
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hours of the morning. >> the president has just announced that we have caught and compromised to an end osama bin laden. [ chanting ] >> it was a good feeling. a lot of people lost their lives because of this guy. i'm happy they got him. [ singing ] and there were dozens of reports of other celebrations across the country as well. on huge news days like this, people always remember where they were when they heard the news. for me it was an anticlimactic. i heard about it four hours after everyone else. why? i was on a plane. i woke up, got online and couldn't believe no one woke me
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up, so i woke up the guy next to me and said, hey, i wanted the pilot to make an announcement. when we were by luggage pickup, i wanted people to start chanting. they didn't. but people ranging from elders at the vatican to mike huckabee have said what we're feeling -- you shouldn't celebration anyone's death, but in this case, you have to understand it's personal for a lot of us. one of my best friends lived in the third tallest building in the area. he saw the second plane go into the second tower, scared for his life. another friend got covered with all the dust. everyone has the stories. i hated the message in iraq that we're going to attack you whether you hit us our not, about you i think we can be strong or smart and i love the message yestday. if you come for us, some day in the middle of the night when you least expect it, we will come for you, and then we'll chant

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