paraphrasing him, do whatever is needed. does that mean the military has free rein? no. it does not. it means the president may not have to authorize specifically each mission. he delegates authority. but look, on something this big, i hardly think the pentagon pardon me, i hardly think the white house, the national security council wanted the president to find out about it on cable news. barbara starr, thanks very much. more now on the bomb used, the target hit and the significance of it all. here to talk about it lieutenant general mark heart llg and spidspie heart l hertling. this is a tactical weapon. i can t emphasize that enough. this is not a strategic system. this is something that is used for a specific purpose. i m going to channel my former role. when you these targets you consult or your have your targeteers cult the joint
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
this is a bomb that is so huge, 21,000 plus pounds. it s basically shoved out the back of a cargo plane at a very high altitude. and it detonates over the target. it doesn t penetrate into the ground. people are killed, injured. the targets are destroyed by the concussive air blast of the weapon detonating. and they had never until now found a target they felt they could use it against. anderson? and specifically what do we know about the decision making that led to this and any involvement if there was by the president? well, we know that the commander in afghanistan had had this weapon in the country for some weeks. we know he had authority to use it. we know that he briefed the mission up and down the chain of command. so when president trump was asked today at the white house whether he authorized it, he was very cryptic about that. he said that he has authorized the military to do, pretty much
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. they ve 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. they re going to have to determine there were no civilian casualties. they say they don t think so. still to be determined. they ll have to find fought the bomb worked as planned because they ve never used it in combat.