0 and a heroic ending that you don't want to miss. >> the 2013 cnn hero of the year -- >> reporter: a night to gather together to celebrate the human spirit. >> watch it all this sunday at 8:00 p.m. i'm ashleigh banfield. have a great weekend. "the lead" starts right now. what's a few missing teeth if you can get an ipad mini for under $200? i'm jim acosta. this is "the lead." the world lead. tensions racheting up between china and japan. china seizing a bigger air space and japan making it clear that it won't respect that. u.s. forced to pick a side. the politics lead. brand new polls giving us a snapshot of 2016. you may not be shocked to learn who's in the lead but the runners-up is where it gets interesting. and the buried lead. it's been nearly 50 years since j.d. salinger last published anything but now the stories he kept locked away are suddenly out there for all to read. welcome to "the lead." i'm jim acosta filling in for jake tapper. we begin with the world lead. it's a turf war high above the east china sea. china has just sent its first patrol of fighter jets over an air defense zone the country is claiming above a disputed set of islands, islands that japan say belongs to it. the friction has tempers flaring around the globe. i want to bring in barbara starr at the pentagon. the u.s. is not sitting on the sidelines in this standoff. they have already sent two unarmed b-52 bombers through this disputed air zone. what does this latest power grab, if you want to call it that, by china mean for american security? >> reporter: well, the u.s. is taking sides in this, now sent a second group of airplanes through that zone. u.s. official confirming that american planes, reconnaissance planes, went through there and also several japanese planes. the chinese say they tracked two american planes and ten japanese planes. this is now the u.s. siding with japan, korea, the allies out in that region. they want to make sure that china doesn't get too aggressive, too assertive in this situation but they also don't want to spark any kind of confrontation. u.s. officials are saying this is routine. u.s. planes, reconnaissance flights go through this region all the time. it's international air space. they won't obey the new chinese rules. they will fly through there, but that nobody should consider it anything unusual. this is what the u.s. military does all the time. be that as it may, it remains to be seen how beijing takes all of this over the long run. >> vice president biden will be in the region next week and senior administration officials say this issue will be a topic of conversation between the vice president and chinese leaders. what can he hope to achieve out there? >> reporter: well, what biden wants to know, we are told by senior administration officials, is he wants to know what are the chinese intentions. what are they really planning to do here. one of the very interesting questions now is how the chinese overplayed their hand. they don't really have the military capability to keep up constant patrols over the ocean like the united states does, so if the u.s. and japan keep sending planes into this region, will china be able to keep up these patrols to keep watch on them, or if they can't, are the chinese going to get so upset, so agitated that something else might happen. that's what nobody wants to see. nobody's talking about any kind of military confrontation. the concern is with all these planes in this same air space, could there be some sort of miscalculation, some sort of accident waiting to happen. >> barbara, we have seen things get touchy between the u.s. and chinese. it happened in the early george w. bush administration. but as we know, it didn't really get that serious in the long run. it was walked back. how do they walk back the tensions in this episode? >> reporter: i think that's really the challenge right now. i will tell you that military officials at the pentagon, even on this holiday weekend, are very aggressively saying let's not have things get out of control. we want everybody to know, very routine u.s. reconnaissance flights, unarmed, nothing unusual, status quo. we're not trying to poke china in the eye. that's the message from the pentagon. but biden's message, make no mistake, will be to the chinese okay, what are you really up to here, what are you trying to achieve, let's not have this get out of control, let's not have a confrontation over the east china sea. >> barbara starr at the pentagon, thank you. in other world news, the u.s. military doesn't always admit when it carries out drone attacks, especially when civilians become part of the collateral damage, but this time, it's different. the military not only admits to accidentally killing civilians yesterday in a drone strike in afghanistan, it's also apologizing. but the mea culpa comes after hamid karzai laid down a stern ultimatum to the u.s. i want to bring in our pentagon correspondent, chris lawrence. busy day over at the pentagon. chris, this apology comes from high up in the chain of command. tell us about it. >> reporter: yeah, jim. this is coming from the commander of all nato forces in afghanistan, general joseph dunford. officials are telling us that basically this four-star general quickly called president hamid karzai to apologize for this drone strike and potential civilian casualties and promised a very quick investigation into what took place. but hamid karzai is driving a very hard line on this, and it's a hard line that could affect thousands of american troops for years to come. a young afghan child is dead, two women wounded after u.s. officials admit a drone strike in helmut province missed its target. the second air strike did take out a taliban commander. >> show respect to the afghan people. >> reporter: but that did nothing to pacify afghan president hamid karzai, who lashed out at u.s. officials and said for as long as such arbitrary acts and oppression of foreign forces continue, the security agreement with the united states will not be signed. >> he sees this as something we want, which is true, but he should want it even more. >> reporter: analyst michael o'hanlon says karzai's refusal to sign the deal is a bad call but not a complete surprise. >> my belief all along has been that he would draw this out for the fundamental reason that he wants leverage. >> reporter: the deal allows u.s. troops to stay in afghanistan another ten years to help afghan forces and target suspected terrorists. >> the negotiation is done, but now the question is whether the president is prepared to sign. >> reporter: national security advisor susan rice issued that ultimatum to karzai face-to-face. u.s. officials insist this deal get done by the end of december. >> approved and signed by the end of this year so that preparations can start being made to plan for the post-2014 presence that the united states may have in afghanistan. >> reporter: but some say that's just a mix of posturing and pressure. >> we can wait if we need to. there's no doubt that it makes life harder. it makes life harder on military planners. it makes life harder on diplomats. >> reporter: really, for that matter, the afghan people as well because they would have to live with the uncertainty for that amount of time but karzai is out next year and most of the candidates that are running for president to replace him, they support keeping the u.s. troops there. the afghan tribal leaders also support the deal across a wide part of afghanistan, and if you look at previous draw-downs by president obama, it's very likely that they can make a call and say that last 8,000 to 10,000 troops sometime in the fall and still be able to get them out by the end of the year if they had to. >> chris lawrence at the pentagon, thank you very much. we appreciate it. i want to get deeper into this with these two gentlemen. william cohen served as secretary of defense under president clinton and retired general spider marks, our cnn military analyst. secretary, let me start with you. it was striking that the u.s. decided to come out and take the responsibility for this drone attack and apologize for it. what does it say about this, because we were talking about this a little bit during chris' piece, we're at this very fragile point with hamid karzai, this bilateral security agreement that the u.s. wants the afghan president to sign on to that would basically take the u.s. presence in afghanistan for potentially ten years, perhaps, after 2014 when we are going to draw down most of our forces there. what is what happened yesterday doing to that dynamic there? >> the united states has indicated we are through negotiating. no more conditions that can be imposed or should be imposed by president karzai. he has insisted, on the other hand, that these drone strikes have to stop so it puts us in a rather difficult position, having said no negotiations and he's now trying to keep it at least open until he signs out as president. i think nonetheless, the united states will hold tough here. there will be no negotiations, no further conditions agreed to. so i think the apology came forward. it's unusual but we have to remember that any time there's a military operation, whether it's by drone, aircraft, on the ground, innocent civilians are going to die. we try to avoid that. we plan very carefully every strike, it's as good intelligence as we can get, and we carry it out with as much discreetness as we can. nevertheless, innocents die during war. that's the unfortunate part about it. >> general, what is the likelihood the u.s. would stop carrying out drone attacks in afghanistan on these targets? >> there's no likelihood that the united states would take that very capable system that they have and put it away and mo mothball it. they will continue to use it under very strict rules of engagement and collateral damage estimates. there isn't any military operation i was part of and sir, when you were the secretary, had to get approval with the cde, collateral damage estimates, on a particular operation, and it had to be approved at the very highest levels. they had to be within accepted norms. >> you don't want to diminish, obviously the loss of civilian life is tragic and especially in cases such as this where a drone attack was supposed to target a militant or terrorist and it didn't work out that way. but hamid karzai has been driving a pretty hard bargain lately and we saw some of that tension reflected between his conversation with susan rice, the national security advisor, but there's a lot of americans out there saying, you know, hamid karzai, what more do you want from the american -- you should just be glad you'll have a security presence post-2014 if you have one. i mean, what do you -- how does the administration deal with that, this feeling out there in the public that they just want this to be over? >> well, that's incumbent upon the president of the united states to show why we have a long-term interest in security in afghanistan and not to let it go back to what it was after the soviets left or even prior to that time. so we have an obligation to persuade the american people. the american people are pretty fed up, frankly. they tend not to see long-term interests in the region and want to pull out. many of them do, from republican leaders who are emerging as well as democrats who would like to see more invested in the united states. i think he's misreading the american public and so the president's -- that's why this deal should be signed while we can sign it and while the political atmosphere doesn't change next year for us, and that the president has even less authority to make these kinds of agreements. >> let me switch back to these tensions between china and the u.s. and japan. i mean, it sort of came out of nowhere. how serious is this? should the american people, general, be concerned that all of a sudden we're in this state of -- tense atmosphere with china? >> the american public is educated, they understand the level of the tensions that exist there. so there is cause for worry. but this is essentially what we have been doing for years. the fact that the chinese drew this new air defense identification zone, that infringes and completely overlays with the japanese accepted air defense identification zone causes concern. but the japanese, the united states are partners in that region, the south koreans have flown and used this area before. so the procedures are in place. what's new was this unilateral action by the chinese which really doesn't make a lot of sense right now. >> is this going anywhere, secretary, or is this just china flexing its muscles? >> i think this is the shape of things to come, unfortunately. i was in singapore at a security conference this past june. at that time, one of the top officials showed me a map that had been circulating showing that the so-called nine dash line which is over the disputed areas, the sea, which had been dashes on the map. now they're filled in as a solid line and they wanted to know what does this mean. is this first step toward china asserting a much more aggressive posture and they wanted to know what the response of the united states was. we had remained silent at that point so i think this is the shape of things to come. china -- >> we should get used to this. >> i think the president in his final message, we will be a sea power, a regional sea power and maybe beyond. i think china will continue to assert as much aggressiveness as they can and we have to resist it as much as we can, still seeking a diplomatic solution to it. >> okay. former secretary william cohen and general marks, thank you. coming up on "the lead" my next guest was one of the loudest critics of the obama care web rollout but the white house invited him over to discuss ways to fix it anyway. what does he think now? plus, before walmart shoppers could push and shove their way through the stores for black friday deals, they had to get through protesters outside. how is walmart reacting? 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