something which has been circulating but isn t verified yet. the fact that they fled is undeniable. that is something which happened before. the fight against isis. and if you do it to low morale among the troops. and what isis does. they capture soldiers. from dehebeheadings and burn th alive if they take captive. the pentagon is saying late sunday. ramadi is a fluid situation. the u.s. is preparred to back up iraqi fors if they decide to retake the town again. at 60 miles from baghdad. iraqi forces will have to retake the town from isis, correct? certainly. it is going to be at the very top of the places that iraqi forces are going to try to retake. isis has control of the, the majority of anbar province. virtually all anbar province at this time. which is a terrible situation for coalition fors to be in.
helmond province? reporter: well, we have sat in some of the briefings, not the level, of course that the president gets, but they do provide these battlefield updates to media trafing in afghanistan, and do you get a very comprehensive look. typically is tarts with laying out for the president, reminding him, perhaps, of what troops are there. marines, army, coalition fors. what the insurgent laydown looks like. what kind of activity there has been. ied attacks, sniper attacks, what they re really dealing with, but one of the things i think that president obama is going to want to see is the civilian side of it, if you will. what is the afghan governance look like? how there is the government functions down there? what kind of economic development has there been? and a lot of questions about afghan security forces. how many trained and equipped
his or her own words. thanks very much. the senior congressional correspondent. grim tidings from the war zone. we have the cafferty file. welcome back. more than years into the war in afghanistan and there is not a lot of good news to report. from every conceivable angle, things are a mess beginning with the country s attempts at democracy. what a joke. officials postponed the results of last month s parliamentary elections because of widespread fraud. they are expected to throw out anywhere from 10 to 25% of the votes. that could be as many as one million votes. the fraud included everything from stuffing the ballot box to citizens being forced to cast their votes at gunpoint. to election officials and security forces working in cahoots with corrupt candidates. on the security front, insurgent attacks on coalition fors are
on top of it all, thank you very much. thank you. and a sad day in afghanistan. nine americans dying today in a helicopter crash in southern afghan mountains. the deadliest chopper crash in four years. nbc s john yang is live in kabul. john, do we know yet whether we re talking about an accident or whether this was actually, as the taliban claiming responsibility, which you know better than i they do all the time, for something that happened where there might have been a shoot-down? what do we think happened? reporter: well, the military, andrea, is saying there was no shoot-down. they say there was no evidence of any hostile fire before this helicopter went down. it went down about 4:00 this morning local time, late monday night walk time in zabul province in the southeastern part of afghanistan. this is a taliban stronghold, the taliban control s much of te territory on the ground, also where coalition fors have been ral ping up their efforts to try