anderson cooper with a brief look at just how brutal these attackers are. and immediate i say more than they are so bad, that next door iran may be willing to join forces in some way with the americans in terms of battling those very poolgts. we ll have a lot more in a moment and what that means for all of this. and there will be three people joining us who know more about iraq komg bicombined than i dar anyone. arwa damon has spent a decade covering that water, michael holmes, and chris heven, a navy s.e.a. s.e.a.l., he trained his guns against the men now fighting. all three will weigh in.
communication in that situation is key, very key. and he also made the comment that no one turned their backs. that s key too. you always want to keep your eye on your enemy. as a soldier, unlike politicians, we look at our enemies in the face. interesting. and they do ultimately as they back up, we re watching it live with you, well, live on the tape, live with you. they back up and ultimately turn to get on the chopper. chris, i want you to stick around. barbara starr, thank you for your reporting. not only did they tap their hearts and wave, and that s raising a lot of questions. some very good answers as to why that may have happened. certainly those of us who have been in afghanistan, spent some time with some of these folks, we know all too well what the cultural issues are and that matters in this kind of thing. we have been glued to every single frame of this video since its release. we ve been figuring out exactly what they re saying on the tape. in these moments right bef
we re also joined by former u.s. navy s.e.a.l. chris heven. first barbara for the direct reporting, this is unprecedented video, to be able to see these guys in action. they are some of the most secretive, dare say, in the world. what have we learned about their operation from what we can see in this video? well, here s a big clue, ashleigh. the pentagon won t say who they are, but will say they were special operations forces. in pentagon-speak, that means s.e.a.l. team 6, army delta force, one of these most elite special forces units. they do not like to be seen on camera, that s for sure. they do not like their faces to be shown. all of them of course somewhat disguised. ball caps, beards, scarves over their faces, sunglasses. they knew, clearly, this might, one, be videotaped. they certainly didn t want their faces shown to the taliban. they move very quickly. they know what they re going to do. this choreography has been worked out in advance. i think it s very interesting.
orbiting around the potential target area. it was a very overt message to the humujahadin guys, these taliban guys, look, if one thing happens we don t like, none of you guys are going to live this hillside alive. very planned. to that end, barbara, do we know anything more? is the pentagon saying boo about the backup and the force that might have been there just in case? there s one blackhawk helicopter on the screen right now. as chris just mentioned, there were those two ac-130 gunships who had done a precursor flyby. what else was there to protect those men in their mission to get that guy? well, people are not going into detail, but administration officials have said that there were several dozen troops involved in it. what you see is that one helicopter, the air crew, the commandos, that got off. i want to follow up on something chris pointed out, which is in a
you see several of them backing up. backing towards the helicopter. they do not turn their backs to the taliban. we also know that there was plenty of backup firepower out of sight but nearby. if things had gone wrong, there were other forces prepared to come in. speaking of that, chris, look, you re s.e.a.l. team 6, you know this intimately. is there anything you can see? first of all, can you tell who these men were? barbara has mentioned s.e.a.l. team 6, possibly army delta, suggestion maybe cia paramilitary. what can you read into what you witnessed on that tape? all three of those options would be fairly accurate. most of the cia operatives are made up of former delta force guys, s.e.a.l. team 6 guys as well. so it can be either one of those three groups. certainly, very, very correct. this was choreographed. they knew what they were doing. they got in, they got out. minimum time on the ground. there was two ac-130 gunships