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being on. let s reset at the top of the hour now. i m anderson cooper. thank you for joining us. we re following two major breaking stories that the hour. the downing of malaysian airlines flight 17 that killed 298 people in ukraine. and i m wolf blitzer reporting from jerusalem. the other major story, the breaking story we were following, the crisis in gaza, where israel launched a major ground offensive and it continues. a lot to get you up to date on in this hour. president obama today laying out the priorities and the aftermath of the airline crash in the ukraine. the priorities, learning the truth first, he say then acting. there has to be a credible international investigation into what happened. the u.n. security council has endorsed this investigation and we will hold all its members, including russia, to their word. in order to facilitate that investigation. russia, pro-russian separatists and ukraine must adhere to an immediate cease-fire. evidence must not be ....
happened. it seems dubious that the russian military, in other words, would want to take down a major passenger plane. certainly with not the intent of taking it down. again, we simply don t know who brought this down. i m also here with lieu dtenant colonel rick francona. just in terms of kants, we have not seen separatists heretofor, they have brought down at least one transport plane, but they were not flying at 33,000 feet. yeah, this would require, as we were talking about, a more sophisticated system. talking about, you know, hitting it inadvertently, it would be very difficult for that to happen. generally once you re locked onto the target, it goes to that target. and if it veers off that target and is no longer being guided, they self-destruct. but when you re targeting a plane at that altitude, are you clear on exactly what kind of a plane it is? no, it s a return on your radar. right. it will be a certain size, you can estimate the size of the aircraft. ....
you re reporting a lot of inconsistencies, but overall did this rape even occur? she could be grossly wrong about the facts or making it up or something in between. have you been able to ascertain from your reporting whether she was assaulted? that s difficult to tell, of course. her friends believe something happened to her and they believe something awful and traumatic and horrific. and those based on the evidence that they have seen, that s what they believe. i ve spoken to two people who saw her in the immediate aftermath of the incident and both of them say they absolutely believe something happened, just maybe not exactly what was reported in rolling stone. looking at the facts, one of the things is whether an assault occurred of some sort and the whole idea of putting it in the public domain and how well you do your fact checking. the rolling stone is getting barbecued by everybody about its reporting. tell me, what did you determine to be when doing your report ....
barking dog and that appears to be what alerted the hostage s captors to what was going on. during the firefight that then followed, u.s. forpdss saw a militant go into the shack where the hostages were being held. it is believed that is when he shot both of the hostages, both of them died as a result of those injuries, as u.s. forces were transporting them away. u.s. intelligence did not know the identity of the other hostage being held with somers. he has since been identified as south african teacher pierre korkie. a char that worked with korkie says he was due to be released today. to discuss this and many of the other top stories for the week, joined by our panel, bring in democratic strategist basil smythe, jr., political consultant and former adviser to mitt romney, cater packer gauge and msnbc correspondent, casey packer hunt. obviously on this hostage story, we are learning the details, obviousiously a heartbreaking story, another report i know in the new york times this ....
that we seize it. my presidency is entering the fourth quarter. interesting stuff happens in the fourth quarter. and i m looking forward to it. going into the fourth quarter, you usually get a time-out. i m now looking forward to a quiet time-out. christmas with my family. i want to wish everybody a measure wrimerry christmas, a happy hanukkah, a happy new year. i hope that all of you get time to spend with your families as well because one thing that we share is that we re away too much from them. and now, josh has given me the who s been naughty and who s been nice list and i m going to take some questions. reporter: thank you, mr. president. starting with north korea since that seems to be the biggest topic today, what does a proportional response look like to the sony hack? and did sony make the right decision in pulling the movie or does that set a dangerous precedent? let me address the second question first. sony is a corporation. it suffered significant damage. the ....