from a historic visit by the house speaker nancy pelosi prompting threats of fierce retaliation out of beijing. good morning. it is tuesday. dana has the day off today. i m bill hemmer. welcome back, sandra. good morning. glad to be with you. i m sandra smith. this is america s newsroom. those chinese fighter jets buzzing taiwan airspace amid local reporting now the speaker could be arriving there in a matter of hours. bill: she would be the highest ranking u.s. official to be in that island in 25 years. china sees it as a slap in the face saying the u.s. should not support a country that beijing views as a breakaway province. the white house has not confirmed her trip but maintains it will not be intimidated. here is what nfc spokesperson john kirby said just this morning. we gave her advice and counsel and gave her information and we re helping with her transportation. this is her decision and we support and respect that decision. what we have said is there is no
with the taliban saying it shows they broke the do har agreement. this shows up. a shot across the bow to haqqani, the interior minister and has the blood of many americans on his hands and it shows that the u.s. as long reach and long memories. al-zawahiri was not an operational leader of al qaeda. he was, if anything, a very ill man. had been sick for many years. is not respected by isis, for instance. there is a vicious rivalry between al qaeda and the aging leadership and the younger leaders and islamic state types who are still out and about trying to carry out big terrorist attacks, as well as the al qaeda factions in yemen and elsewhere. it is not clear they listen to al-zawahiri. it is a huge intelligence coup in terms of the closure needed from 9/11 for many c.i.a.
terms of what actually was their thoughts as they were going through and the preparation. it will start with getting on the record that the military leadership here to include the secretary of defense were opposed to the withdrawal decision that president biden made and i think they will want to press them to see were there any conditions, contingencies that you were considering that may actually impact a successful execution of the remaining mission? and certainly the stunning collapse of the afghan government and its security forces will be a major question. why did we not anticipate that? we know the afghans took the largest amount of casualties in the last two years. once the do har agreement was signed. we couldn t provide air support while they were being attacked. the taliban rolled up a lot of territory. so there were signs of what could happen. bagram airfield certainly is a question. what to do about the security