six months to plan. and brittney griner is returning to a russian courtroom as she is possibly learning her fate in a russian penal system. welcome to the lead with jake tapper. house speaker nancy pelosi is in taiwan and ignoring weeks of learning from president biden and threats of retaliation from the chinese government, and she says it is america s unwavering commitment to the american democracy which china views as inseparable part of its territory. and president biden said that the u.s. military does not believe it is a good idea for her to visit and it would and could increase tensions between beijing and washington, but president biden stopped short of instructing her not to go. and short of her arrival, there was a sign that flashed welcome to taiwan, speaker nancy pelosi. and china was furious. the foreign minister renewed xi jinping s warning that she was playing with fire in taiwan and added that those who play with fire shall surely perish by it. and ma
sense that here we have the head of al qaeda in downtown kabul. i think that the opposite is true actually, and that we have signaled vividly to those who are leading afghanistan, that we won t tolerate it, and we have exquisite intelligence, and wed have found him where he relocated and we have the capable to kill him. and it is evidence that we will uphold the doha agreement, and they need to or there is going to be consequence, because the president is committed to ensuring that there is not going to be operational planning against the united states emanating from afghanistan again. what are the consequences? there are numerous things that the taliban want. they need international recognition to have financing to get the economy back on its feet, and other sanctions relief, and with the evidence that is broadcast to the world through the strike that we had to take, it is clear that the
zawahiri that was located within the house, and we had to confirm it with confidence and second, the president wanted to understand the details of the operation that had to be developed through multiple iterations and with red teaming it to ensure that all efforts had to be made within the president s direction to minimize civilian casualties, and to ensure with the weapons that were within use of the strike, and to prevent the building from collapsing and precise and target ed striking with him on the balcony, and third, we had to do and you sorry. and to do it with no boots on the ground, and that is going to create an additional challenge that we were capable of meeting, and that fulfills the president s commitment to the american people when he made the decision to withdraw from afghanistan that we would be capable of engaging when we needed to, to signal that it was
not acceptable to allow the terrorists to have safe harbor in afghanistan, and with al zawahiri dead now, it is evidence that al quaeda has no safe harbor or safe home in afghanistan. and so you said exploding the house as to have no casualties, and can you confirm the weapon, because i heard it was a cia weapon with a sword bomb. is that accurate? we won t go into the detail fwshgs u the strike was taken from a drone with two hellfire missiles and fired with great precision and accuracy that led to the death of al zawahiri and led to the building collapsing with the precision. if you don t have dna evidence, how can you be confident that al zawahiri was the man killed in the drone strike. well, we know who was on the
affiliated with the haqqani network who did know, and we have been engaged with the taliban, and i will not preview any actions that we will take to ensure that the taliban is going to live up to the commitments. the taliban has condemned the strike, but the biden administration held it up to say that the terrorists can be targeted inside of afghanistan without boots on the ground. if you a threat to our people, the united states will find you and take you out. now, there is no doubt that this is a sophisticated and well executed strike, but it does remain to see if this over the horizon can be scaled up, and replicated against other terrorists who are in other far more remote areas. and as who will take over for