Interview With Montana Congressman Ryan Zinke; Suicide Bombings in Beirut.
JAKE TAPPER, CNN ANCHOR: A bomb in the air and now bombs on the ground. THE LEAD starts right now. Breaking news: ISIS claiming responsibility for killing dozens in twin suicide bombings in Beirut, Lebanon. Is there a time or a place ISIS cannot attack? Plus, surveillance video showing police Tasing a man at the door of a hospital and pulling him away. He later died in custody, but what really killed him? And more than 100 women now telling a drug company, hey, you're paying to raise my kid after you made a mistake with our birth control pills. Welcome to THE LEAD. I'm Jake Tapper. We have some breaking news in our world lead today, sirens blaring in Beirut as two suicide bombers blow themselves up within minutes of one another. Now ISIS says it is behind the twin attacks that killed at least 41 people and wounded more than 200 others. CNN chief national security correspondent Jim Sciutto has the latest. Jim, if ISIS did in fact kill all these people, how significant a development is that?</s>JIM SCIUTTO, CNN CHIEF NATIONAL SECURITY CORRESPONDENT: It's big. It shows them expanding their reach again beyond Iraq and Syria, this the deadliest attack in Lebanon by any group in two years, and could have been much worse, reports that a third suicide bomber's explosive belt only partially detonated. It is a harsh defeat as well for Hezbollah's security. It had stepped up that security after attacks in recent months, and clearly failed here.</s>SCIUTTO (voice-over): The blast struck during the height of rush hour, coordinated, powerful and deadly, rocking an open area market just south of Beirut. The Lebanese news agency reports two suicide bombers blew themselves up within a few hundred feet of each other. This man said he was praying when the blast blew a door right over his head. The victims carried by bystanders over rubble from damaged buildings and rushed to nearby hospitals.</s>TAMARA QIBLAWI, REPORTER: The twin suicide bombing went off. The area is mostly empty. It's been cordoned off by the army. Otherwise, there's a lot of shattered glass on the street, a lot of blood. And it's really just a scene of chaos and carnage.</s>SCIUTTO: Within hours, ISIS claimed responsibility. This neighborhood is a stronghold of Hezbollah, the Lebanese militia fighting alongside Bashar al-Assad's regime in Syria, ISIS' sworn enemy there.</s>MICHAEL O'HANLON, BROOKINGS INSTITUTION: ISIL doesn't think of itself as having borders. Let's remember, while you say ISIS, I say ISIL, they say I.S., the Islamic State. And they see themselves as trying to establish as a caliphate, which means an Islamic government covering all the areas where Muslims live today in the world. And so Lebanon is just going to be seen as another battlefield.</s>SCIUTTO: We know that ISIS has sympathizers inside Lebanon and has attempted other operations there before, including kidnappings across the border from Syria. These attacks today come on the same day of a renewed offensive against ISIS in Iraq, that involving Kurdish Peshmerga, but also with U.S. support.</s>TAPPER: Jim, should we view this as is expanding into another country outside of Iraq and Syria, as we just heard in the piece?</s>SCIUTTO: You should certainly, and kind of in a different way because it's almost an expansion of the war inside Syria, because you have Hezbollah on one side that's been supporting Bashar al-Assad, Hezbollah of course based in Lebanon, and ISIS fighting Assad in Syria, and now ISIS in effect taking a shot at Hezbollah across the border there, but also again showing its ability to project terror attacks outside of its home base in Iraq and Syria. Got the Metrojet crash, looking like that was an ISIS attack, and then you have these suicide bombings today.</s>TAPPER: All right, Jim Sciutto, thanks. And joining me is Republican Congressman Ryan Zinke, who serves on the House Armed Services Committee. He was also a Navy SEAL commander in Iraq at SEAL Team Six, completing more than 370 missions. Congressman, thanks so much for joining us.</s>REP. RYAN ZINKE (R), MONTANA: Always a pleasure to be with you.</s>TAPPER: ISIS is claiming responsibility for these bombings in Beirut that killed at least 40 people, hundreds injured. What is the significance of this?</s>ZINKE: Well, ISIS is not down and out. ISIS is flexing its muscle. If it's true that ISIS brought down the Russian plane, and if it's true that ISIS conducted suicide bombings in Lebanon, you know, they're reaching out to Hezbollah, attacking Hezbollah, Russia and remain in the game. And ISIS remains incredibly dangerous. And I think, for our position, we should revoke passports for U.S. citizens there. We should secure our southern border. I think that's important. There's a lot of things we can do, arm the Kurds unilaterally, you know, in concert with Turkey. But there's a lot we can do and should do.</s>TAPPER: We should also point out, of course, that ISIS has been conducting horrific terrorist acts in Syria and Iraq for years. But striking a major tourism spot such as Sharm el-Sheikh, which you just alluded to, bringing down the plane potentially, and now perhaps this -- horrific suicide bombings, two of them, in an international city like Beirut, this is putting innocent people in harm's way, innocent people from outside the war zone. I mean, this could really involve other countries in the fight, theoretically.</s>ZINKE: Well, and you look at what ISIS probably has in their arsenal. They have used mustard gas. I believe those reports have been true. In Mosul, the university, it's likely they had their hands on radioactive material. That could be a dirty bomb. So ISIS has the capability of inflicting grave harm. And, as you say, they're not afraid to use it, in Lebanon, going -- Hezbollah. You have the different groups in a backdrop of Shia vs. Sunni, ISIS vs. al Qaeda, you know, you have competing terrorist organizations. Unfortunately, I don't think we have heard the last from ISIS. They continue to push the envelope and go further and further.</s>TAPPER: Well, do you think ISIS has eclipsed al Qaeda at this point? Is ISIS the biggest terror threat in the world?</s>ZINKE: Well, certainly two rivalries, both of them are evil. I think ISIS probably has done more recruiting recently. You see they're very active in social media. You see that they're likely response will be for beheadings in Afghanistan. And their global reach I think is expanding. Obviously, our air operations alone has not been successful in stemming the tide of ISIS. And the unfortunate part is, I think we will see a continuing expansion of ISIS, although I think it's positive that the Kurds along with U.S. air operations is going into Sinjar. So there are some things that we are doing correct, but I think that at the end of the day, we haven't done enough to assure our allies that we're in the fight.</s>TAPPER: Congressman Ryan Zinke, thank you so much. And a day after Veterans Day, thank you for your service, sir.</s>ZINKE: Thank you. And God bless.</s>TAPPER: From Lebanon to Iraq now, where a major offensive is under way to retake a key northern city from the bloody hands of ISIS. U.S. forces now providing critical air support for the more than 7,000 Kurdish troops taking the fight to the terrorist group. The city of Sinjar, a strategic stronghold, was captured last year and serves as a vital ISIS supply route between Iraq and Syria. Residents there have been forced to flee. CNN cameras, of course, capturing heart-wrenching moments of desperation from last year, as dozens, dozens of innocent civilians battled to board a military chopper as they fled. They were escaping near certain death. Right now, Kurdish Peshmerga forces in control of a number of villages in the area, as well as a major stretch of highway, but the intense fighting in Sinjar itself has only just begun. CNN senior international correspondent Nick Paton Walsh is embedded with Kurdish forces on the front lines near Sinjar. Nick, what exactly are U.S. troops doing to assist in this fight? Is it limited to airstrikes?</s>NICK PATON WALSH, CNN SENIOR INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: We are told that they are not down on the ground in the front line. And that pretty much tallies what we saw ourselves. Looked pretty hard, didn't see mysterious U.S. presence within the normal Peshmerga troops we saw. They seem to be up in the hills actually directing the airstrikes, as far as we can tell. Today, at about 9:00 -- sorry, yesterday night at about 9:00 now local time, we saw the first moves in. It lit up the sky, frankly, coalition airstrikes, one after another, and then a large trail of Peshmerga. We followed their moving around to the west of that city. They were trying to move in, in very large numbers, strike their way into the city center, but above all, as you mentioned, Jake, take that vital Route 47 that runs straight through the heart of Sinjar. Yes, it's symbolically important that it's reclaimed from ISIS to kind of set back the damage done to that ethnic group, the Yazidis, who they captured and many of them enslaved last year when they swept into that town. But it's strategic. It's vital. It runs between Mosul and Iraq, one ISIS stronghold and the capital of their self-declared caliphate, Raqqa, in Syria. Today, we saw them move in, take that road. A lot of heavy resistance from ISIS further out west, that was met by very powerful coalition airstrikes. But then they managed to gather the numbers, the Peshmerga, and move towards the city center, digging huge trenches across that highway, putting very large earth berms, making it pretty much unusable. But ISIS, they're still in the city center. We just don't know how much fight they have left in them, Jake.</s>TAPPER: Nick, describe for us, if you can, what the conditions are like on the ground there.</s>WALSH: It's extraordinarily cold. Very open spaces. A lot of airpower being used. I think that kind of visibility we have seen with the clear skies today has really helped the coalition pinpoint the strikes we saw. I mean, there were times when, frankly, you would hear a thud every few minutes or so. The city center itself of Sinjar, there seem to have been some very thick fires lit by ISIS, perhaps to obscure their movements. There were four huge plumes of smoke that covered, blackened much of the city and the sky itself during today. And then another remarkable thing too, sort of mushroom clouds you hear that are not airstrikes. They come from car bombs that ISIS is trying to use. They used to be extraordinarily successful when we saw them being used in Kobani, but the Peshmerga have a new tactic. They seem to have missiles, many call them MILAN missiles, perhaps given to them by Western governments. That lets them take out these suicide bombers as they drive towards them at a safe distance. That's a change. That's given them an advantage on the ground and it seems to translate into real success on the highway. Whether they can take the dense urban center of Sinjar in the days ahead, that's a different question, Jake.</s>TAPPER: Nick Paton Walsh embedded with Kurdish fighters, thank you, my friend. And stay safe. In our money lead, more than 100 women saying they unexpectedly got pregnant after a birth control mixup, and now some want the contraceptive maker to pay for the costs of raising their children -- that story coming up.