consistent. we don t know exactly what happened inside of the compound. the president described it in some detail. very few people obviously were inside of that compound. the isis leader, and some of his closeassociates and bodyguards and family members. and then the president described a dead end tunnel underneath the building and that abu bakr al baghdadi was inside of the tunnel and then detonated his vest, and we are not able to confirm that, because the location afterwards was destroyed. after the u.s. forces took body parts from the site, it was destroyed from the air, and so that is a very large hole in the ground is all that is left. we know that operation took place, and we have video of it, and the president says no american forces were killed, and we have the same confirmation of that from the villagers, and so
blackie breaking news this hour. this is the latest video from the scene of the raid and the aftermath where isis leader abu bakr al baghdadi met his fate, death at the end of a closed tunnel in northwest syria. good day, from msnbc world headquarters, welcome to weekends with alex witt. beyond the headline, this story could not be written without some lines marking on the approach in both tone and content of this president making the announcement. here s some of what he said and reaction from other lawmakers. last night the united states brought the number one world s terrorist leader to justice abu bakr al baghdadi is dead. he died after running into a dead-end tunnel, whimpering and crying and screaming all the way. it probably makes me a little uncomfortable to hear a president talking that way, but
comes from the long-term threat from isis, this is why having the u.s. troops on the ground with the syrian democratic force forces as troops are pulling back and the sdf has already said they will not be able to continue counter terrorism missions when they are facing violence in that counter attacking area. so to keep the pressure on, is that the syrian government or the russian government and those are all with the potential for isis to resurge as a strong possibility. thank you very much, and much appreciated. and so what should we know
greenlight to proceed as we did yesterday. do you have a sense of the timing here in whether this was a now or never type of decision? not really. i think that what we ought to underscore is that the cia in particular, but backed up by nsa and the other u.s. intelligence agencies maintains continuous persistent surveillance of all of the threat thos ts to the am people, and in particular isis in the al nusra fronts and the other factions in the area, and we also ought to recognize that jsoc which is a joint army, air force, marine operation is that these people have been in combat now for 16 years. they are simply astonishing. their technology is incredible. so they can react extremely quickly, but a lot of it is based on, again, a continuing
isis terrorized kurds, they hunted down kurds because they refused to accept the isis way of life. but it was the kurds here in northern iraq who in many ways made this operation possible because for the last five years they have been chasing after isis with those very same american special operations forces. and today they only got a passing mention by president trump, a passing thank you, while right now their homeland is being destroyed by turkey. they are being displaced. they are being moved on. they re not very thankful about what happened. they say, we ve cooperated with the united states for so long and helped make this moment possible. president trump turned it into a moment to celebrate himself while they are being driven off of their land. that s how it was being seen from here today. point well driven, indeed. thank you so much, richard engel, from northern syria. newsweek broke the story of this raid last night. one of the writers joins me right now, former fbi