committed in order to get a paycheck and leaders who took pay from them and didn t provide logistics and at the top politicians who lined their own pockets. corruption from top to bottom. and no real support from the cit citizenry of the government and no loyalty up and down the chain of command. once the momentum started, it unraveled pretty quickly. a lot of observers noticed this over the years and yet we lived with this illusion that we were doing something really profound there and trying to shape up these forces. now we see that it wasn t strong enough. the morale, the cohesion, starting at the top with the leadership of the president and his commanders, it wasn t strong enough to withstand the surge. and there was no reason to believe that had we stayed there for another year or two and kept another 5,000, that anything would have changed. and one country that hasn t been
what was interesting is fox news didn t show up to the event, which was noted throughout the conference. you know, many trump supporters say they no longer like fox news. but it is a reminder that there is a huge ecosystem of outlets like oan, like the bannon shop, that are willing to continue to promote the big lie. all of those networks, all of those right-wing outlets that are online, they were all pushing promotion codes for pillows. fascinating. you can t make this stuff up. donie o sullivan although they make up a lot of stuff. thanks so much for that illuminating report. we appreciate it as always. breaking news. a heartbreaking update on the situation in haiti. the death toll from the earthquake in haiti is now at at least 227 people. that number has risen dramatically in just the last hour. just an indication how things are developing there in haiti.
dump lots of rain the beginning of this week. that will just complicate the search and rescue efforts, or the efforts to get people out of this rubble to come up with an accurate number of dead. in this area, jim, it was also devastated by hurricane matthew in 2016. so certainly no strangers to tragedy and the worst may be yet to come as they deal with these aftershocks and as this tropical storm approaches the same area today that was completely devastated by this very, very strong earthquake. just an awful situation there, and they are going to need a lot of help in haiti in the days to come. patrick oppmann, thank you so much for that. turning to the covid crisis in the united states. for weeks we ve seen the graphs surpassing the scariest peaks. we ve seen the maps, a sea of red fueled by the delta variant. but the info graphics don t give the full scope of the desperation on the ground. the hardest-hit states, alabama, texas, georgia, florida and
higher. we re getting video from the ground. look at this street filled with rubble and dust in the air. the man in the video you re seeing right now saying there are a lot of wounded people on the street. more images show destruction as a building was shaken off kilter. it must be all too familiar for so many haitians. they re still feeling the impact of a major earthquake in 2010 that killed at least 220,000 people. remember, this country is in the midst of another crisis. haiti s president was brutally assassinated in his bedroom last month in front of his wife. today s unfolding disaster could be compounded by this. tropical storm grace is expected to hit the area as soon as monday. it just doesn t stop for the people in haiti. cnn correspondent patrick oppmann joins me from havana, cuba. patrick, this is just another devastating blow to haiti. what are you learning about the extent of the damage right now? reporter: well, there are whole areas of this part of haiti where the ear
and now the fact of pakistani leadership and support for two decades of the taliban is coming home to roost in terms of the humanitarian tragedy that the people of afghanistan are facing. general clark, president biden held a briefing with his national security team on afghanistan today. if kabul falls, what happens? what does that mean for the afghan people? and do the last 20 years of trying to build up this country, does that just all go to waste? well, first of all, there are a lot of individual afghans who have benefitted not just financially but culturally, educationally and so forth for 20 years. many of them are all over the world and many will be great citizens of whatever countries they have landed in. but for the institutions of afghanistan that we put in place there, yes, those institutions are going to disappear. but some of the trained civil servants, they re going to have to stay. the taliban is going to have to