War there . First, Barbara Starr joins us from 2 pentagon with the latest. What have you learned, barbara . Good evening. We know this mission had been planned by the u. S. Military over the last several weeks. They were looking at a target in eastern afghanistan, remote mountainous area. There was a complex of isis used tunnels and caves. It was so remote they feel that there was no civilians around. Theyve been trying to go after them for some time now. So the mission was planned. It was executed. They will now do the damage assessment. They will fly over the target. Theyre going to have to determine there were no civilian casualties. They say they dont think so. Still to be determined. Theyll have to find fought the bomb worked as planned because theyve never used it in combat. This is a bomb that is so huge, 21,000 plus pounds. Its basically shoved out the back of a cargo plane at a very high altitude. And it detonates over the target. It doesnt penetrate into the ground. People ar
Passenger who recorded the encounter. Lets begin with the military targeting isis in afghanistan with a massive bomb. Wa want to bring in a former Senior Adviser to the Trump Campaign. Major general spider marks and colonel Cedric Leighton and a former department of home land security official. Good evening to all you have. Thank you for coming on. General marks, we start with you. As weve been reporting today, the United States military dropped americas most powerful nonnuclear bomb on isis targets in afghanistan. This was the first time this type of weapon has been used. Heres the president. Did you authorize it, sir . Everybody knows exactly what happened. And what i do is i authorize my military. We have the greatest military in the world. And theyve done a job as usual. So we have given them total authorization. And thats what theyre doing. And frankly, thats why theyve been so successful lately. If you look at what happened over the last eight weeks and compare that to whats happ
emissions manual. it s a book that says if this is what the target looks like, here are the kind of weapon systems you use. the reason we haven t used this bomb since 2003, and there was a predecessor to this, something called the daisy cutter, because this bomb was actually designed in 2003 for an iraq war fight. and then it was eventually used later on in this particular fight because it met all the criteria. open space, tunnels and complexes, exploding devices, the ieds that were used as part of this defensive position. so i think nick mickelson, the commander in afghanistan said boy, i ve got this kind of target. what kind of bomb can i hit it with? he probably said that a few weeks ago. his targeteers said let s use a moab. that s what he did. it took a while to do it. it seemed strategic. a lot of people are calling it that. but it s not. it s something the commander of the scene knows. but he did brief his boss and i m sure folks this the pentagon
compare that to what s happened over the last eight years, you ll see there say tremendous difference, tremendous difference. so we have incredible leaders in the military. and we have incredible military. and we re very proud of them. this was another very, very successful mission. general marks, what zpe mean everybody knows what happened? it sounds to me like he s saying that military authorized that and he gave them permission before. but he s not saying whether he did it. well, that s what we call predesignated delegation authority. i mean did he this all priority. he said secretary of defense, you have the authorization to use this weapon system when he issued that weapon system. to the department of defense. so, yeah, i mean he authorized it because he had done it on priority. the decision to deliver that ordinance was done by the commander on the ground, four star general nick mickelson. it was the right target and the right ordinance to be used