our operational authorities in rules of engagement. reporter: that order and acknowledgement that something went wrong. and the secretary of defense minced no words saying in a statement, when we make mistakes, we own up to them. that s exactly what we are doing now rules of engagement spell out when and how the u.s. military can conduct air strikes like the ac-130 gun ship that hit the hospital. doctors without borders says the u.s. knew it was a hospital. they were under attack for 30 minutes. he could not have been a mistake. until we are told otherwise and see an independent investigation, we presume this was a war crime. reporter: did this violate u.s. military rules? even though the afghan s requested support it has to go through a rigorous u.s. procedure to enable fires to go on the ground. there was no american air controllers on the ground. we had a special operations
initial statement. the bottom line is they say the afghan forces called in, said they were under fire from the taliban and the u.s. made the decision to go ahead and send in an ac-130 gun ship to attack this area, that it was a u.s. decision. but, and i think this is a huge but, one of the most interesting things general campbell said this morning is he has now order retraining for u.s. forces on the rules of engagement, when they can go in, what the rules are that allow them to engage in deadly force. this may be a big hint of where this is headed. if general campbell feels he needs to retrain his forces on rules of engagement, is this a suggestion they violated or made a mistake on the rules of engagement going after this area? did they know it was a hospital? did they believe the taliban were there? because the taliban were still there, they believed they could
they will start to investigate and ask the fundamental questions about why this ship sank. the coast guard all right said the ship purported to its owner they have lost propulsion. and then it s getting pummelled from both sides. they have to figure why it lost propulsion and why it was sent out given the forecast. thank you very much. and still to come a dip in the polls might cause some candidates to abandoned their dreams of being president but not donald trump. why he s pushing back on reports that he might quit the race.
emmett lifeboaempty lifeboat, d life rings and two survival suits they found the body of one on board but they are still looking for the 32 others trying to find any sign someone could be out there and alive. at the same time you have all of these families who have wait forward days for word and some of them are starting to ask very tough questions about why this ship was ever in the path of this storm. i don t think that they should have shipped them out when they knew that that was going on. that makes no sense to me at all. like, if they knew that the hurricane was coming they should have kept them there and waited and to ship them back out. that makes no sense at all. i don t agree with that. a lot of emotions here and obviously the primary focus is on finding survivors. as time tix on there are more concerns about finding people alive. we know the ntsb has deployed their team to jacksonville.
this is a huge challenge that there is a large debris field. so the investigators will be, we hope, you know, finding as much materials as possible. but it is a big challenge when there is such a large area of water and sat such depths. there are a lot of aspects of the investigation. the marine logs, any data, all of the interviews with people who are involved that will help us determine what exactly happened. and obviously we hope for the best and we hope that the ship will be recovered. cnn s alexander field is here now with the latest on the search effort. they are finding quite a few things. not what they are hoping which is people. and deploying a lot of resources. the first search planes were sent back out at daylight. but also the vessels in the water working around the clock. coast guard and commercial vessels all trying to find the survivors. what they have found so far, an