and he says -- this is eric holder, the attorney general, we retain the option of adding additional charges in the coming days as we work to identify, as well, and arrest any of his co-conspirators. officials say it happened on the weekend on sunday in libya, an effort by u.s. special forces aided by the fbi to arrest this man we've known of for so long, ahmed abu khattala, accused of being one of the co-conspirators, ringleaders, master mind if you will on the u.s. consulate in benghazi. he had actually been designated a terrorist in january by the state department which called him a senior leader of the benghazi branch of ansar al shariah, the terror group the government blamed for the attack. the criminal charges were actually filed last year in july of 2013 and were just unsealed by the federal judge who's responsible for the case here in washington and that cheens that he will undoubtedly the u.s. will try to bring him here to face charges. being questioned now and we don't know when he'll be brought here but that's the plan. >> good news there. pete williams, thank you so much. >> you bet. now to today's other big news. american troops going back to baghdad. up to 275 u.s. military personnel could be deploying to iraq with isis fighters moving closer to the capital. the troops mission to secure the u.s. embassy n. a letter to congress, president obama said, quote, this force will be in iraq until the situation situation is such that it's no longer needed. the sunni insurgents hold a large chunk of ter toy across northern iraq. you can see on the map the cities they're now in control of and the insurgent forces are making a play for baqubah. it's a city that's key to any isis effort to potentially take the capital city of baghdad. let's get the latest on the ground in iraq from foreign i do not amman mohyeldin. >> reporter: it is northeast of the capital baghdad and sits on the same highway that links the two cities together. if they're able to overrun baqubah and bring it under its control, it's symbolically important because it's the capital of the diyala province and a short drive into the capital baghdad. they can then use baqubah as a staging ground for trying to launch the type of attacks they would need to if they wanted to create havoc in the capital or perms some point try to overrun the city or parts of the city. but for the time being, the iraqi army says they have been capable of repelling any isis attempts to overtake baqubah but that's the scene of intense fighting and an incident at police station that left 44 detainees killed and been trade of accusations of both sides who's responsible for this. >> nbc's ayman, thank you so much for that report. one day after secretary of state john kerry opened the door with responsible engagement with iran, some members of congress are pushing back. here with bob menendez earlier. >> we have to both think about whether or not there's targeted and limited in duration strikes that may be able to change the tide and also i hope the administration is not thinking about engaging iran. it was iran that trained shia militia and many of the wounded warriors bare the scars of. >> could political engagement with iran be a necessary evil to end the crisis in iraq? joining me from the council of foreign relations is richard haas author of "war of necessary, war of choice." thank you for joining us today. >> good to be here. >> first i want to ask you about the breaking news we just covered at the top of the hour, an arrest of a suspected ringleader in the benghazi attack. >> look, it's always satisfying when you bring people to justice and good to take dangerous people off the streets so he can't commit further acts of terrorism. the problem is, though, libya is essentially a failed state in large part and his former colleagues and lots more like him are able to use libya to mount terrorist attacks against other countries in the region or conceivably globally. so again, as good as this news is, we shouldn't kid ourselves. libya remains a very dangerous place. >> richard, obviously the president and the president's administration has been criticized a lot over benghazi and criticized more broadly recently for the approach to foreign affairs. is this a win for the administration? >> well, again, crystal, it's always good with osama bin laden, it was satisfying. didn't undo the tragedy of 9/11. doesn't erase the terrorist threat you face. but it's -- it's, if you will, it's good to win a battle in this much larger war. >> absolutely. all right. switching gears to iraq, paul wolfowitz, former defense secretary and infamously an architects of the iraq war said this earlier to nbc's chuck todd. >> doesn't matter that much if iraq ends up in different pieces. frankly, i think the most likely result is much greater autonomy an one of malaki's big mistakes is trying to dominate the sunni areas and not giving them autono autonomy. >> he sees partition of iraq as a real responsibility and with another ten years under saddam hussein, iraq would be an even more broken country. do you think that's right? >> well, to stay with the first part, even more than partition, i think you are going to see the break-up or dismantlement of iraq. partition sounds too clean and neat for what we'll see. we will have the south and baghdad under the control essentially of iran. mr. malaki is serving iranian interest. the shia plurality or majority in iraq will live in that area. the kurds in the north are going to have what will amount to be their own state within iraqi borders and then you will have this area where sunnis will live, groups like isis will operate and that will be something of the no man's land. that will be an area where you will not have clear state authority. but that is the future of iraq. would this have happened had saddam hussein remained in power? i think not because saddam hussein essentially maintained order in iraq through extreme forms of repression. you know? he would have, however, at some point met a natural or unnatural death and what would have happened in the aftermath and sunni strong man would have taken over or whether you would have had an evolutionary situation, your guess is as good as mine. we'll never know. >> richard, there's obviously uncomfortable dynamics at play here for the u.s. the possibility of negotiating with iran and we don't have the best relationship with. there's also the sectarian dynamics, obviously, malaki is representative of the shias. he's been very exclusionary of the sunni minority, a large chunk of iraqi society. if we were going to go forward with limited air strikes, would that be viewed regionally as us coming in on behalf of the shias versus the sunnis? >> a lot depends on the scale and the purpose of the strikes were. if we simply do strikes against terrorists, we do that probably more in more than a dozen countries and to me would not have the sort of regional political repercussions. if we looked as though we were looking to shore up a dominated government in the rest of the country, that causes heartburn in significant parts of the middle east. >> all right. richard, thank you so much for your insight. >> thank you. beyond combat, what could a greater military involvement in iraq look like? joining me is retired control knell peter monsoor who served in "operation iraqi freedom." thank you for joining us. there's reports that the president is considering special forces sent to help in iraq but beyond combat which the white house is ruling out, what purpose could those forces serve? >> well, they could serve as advisers and trainers to the iraqi security forces in areas away from the front line and help them hone their combat skills. although the numbers the president's talking about at least i have seen, 100 or fewer really wouldn't be enough to do a lot of good. more smoke than fire. >> it is a little bit symbolic, that move? >> exactly. an it shows that we would be in support of the iraqi government, which i think might be a mistake at this point, actually. >> so colonel, if we did go forward with air strikes beyond the force that is are -- the couple hundred forces sent there now, if we went forward with air strikes, what would happen next? what would be sort of -- what would unfold after we did that? >> air strikes could potentially blunt any offensive towards baghdad which would put the situation in iraq into a status where isil is in charge of the third of the country in the north and west and kurds in the north and iraqi government has the rest. at that point, there will be a lot of combat in mixed areas like baqubah and samarrah and other places where the front lines meet, and this is a recipe for a very lengthy and bloody civil war and why i think we should do everything we can to avoid that future. >> yeah, absolutely. we have also been talking about the arrest of one of the suspected ringleaders of the benghazi attack. how significant do you think that is for the u.s.? >> you know, it shows that the united states is going to take whatever time it takes and put whatever resources are necessary into finding the people that kill our citizens. and it shows credibility on the part of the united states that we will hunt you down and we'll kill or capture you and bring you to justice. i think it's a positive development. >> all right. retired colonel peter monsoor, thank you so much. >> thank you. up next, a double tornado slams into a tiny nebraska town and as you can imagine, the aftermath is just heart breaking. we are live with the latest on that after the break. ♪ ♪ [ girl ] my mom, she makes underwater fans that are powered by the moon. ♪ [ birds squawking ] my mom makes airplane engines that can talk. 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[ all ] we love chex! now to developing news. total devastation. those are words being used to describe the damage in a small town in nebraska, damage done by the almost impossible-to believe sight. twin tornadoes in pilger simultaneously baffling even seasoned storm chasers. >> there's the other -- >> man. >> the other tornado. oh gosh. >> the result, one person dead, 75% of the town just gone. 100% of its businesses destroyed. the same storm that spawned those tornadoes brought record rain fall to south dakota turning the busiest highway into a river. shutting it down overnight. we want to begin with that rare weather event in nebraska and those two tornadoes, the weather channel's mike seidel is live in pilger. have you ever seen anything like this before? >> reporter: i've never seen it videotaped or photographed that well. we had this situation back in the palm sunday 1965 outbreak but to see it that close on -- high definition, just awe inspiring and basically jaw dropping. we were watching this live at the weather channel. just amazing. unfortunately, what is not amazing is the power of a twister did. we're on the southwest side of the town of pilger -- i'm sorry. i've been up like 30 hours. sometimes it goes -- it came from this side right on through town and before it hit, the main part of town, it took out this house. you can see the foundation, what's left of it. part of a basement. the entire -- the entire home is sitting right there in a big pile of debris. the tornado went southwest to northeast at most twisters do this. this is a small town, one square mile and almost see to the other end and only people there are residents until 5:00 and can't drive in. the heavy equipment comes in tomorrow. first fatality of a tornado in nebraska since 2004. just about ten years ago. pilger is getting the cleanup process under way and under a sunny sky and more storms in the forecast tomorrow and the following day. hopefully, nothing like we have seen here. this is -- this is a bad tornado. we'll get the rating from the national weather service later today. >> the scene looks just devastating. mike seidel, thank you so much. is the tea party about to fall into a trap set by washington's republican establishment? right now, house republicans are getting ready to elect a new majority leader on thursday. the ousting of current majority leader eric cantor in last week's stunning virginia primary supposed to be the tea party's big triumph this year and now the taste of victory may be turning to ashes for the far right because the man most likely to replace cantor is congressman kevin mccarthy and not exactly an anti-establishment type either. so far, the strongest challenge to mccarthy seems to be coming from two-term idaho congressman and tea party darling raul labrador. >> a lot of people are switching their votes and excited about having somebody challenging the establishment right now. just -- it's important for us to show that we need a new direction in the party. >> joining us now to help us understand this leadership battle is congressman jerry conley from virginia and know it is politics of that state an he's a democrat who serves on capitol hill and knows about these leadership races in the house. congressman, thank you so much for joining us. >> great to be with you. >> so it is looking like kevin mccarthy is the likely successor as majority leader to eric cantor and he may well also be the next speaker of the house. do you think that a kevin mccarthy-led house looks substantisu substantively different than the boehner-cantor led snous. >> no. he represents continuity and as you suggested in the intro, in many ways tea party hopes turned to ashes, at least internally in terms of leadership on the republican caucus. >> now, on the other hand, tea party hopes have been effective of blocking progress in washington, so is a change in leadership going to be -- going the lead to any sort of change in what's able to be accomplished there on capitol hill? >> no. not particularly. and especially between now and, say, november, december whether there's the next round of leadership elections for the next congress. i just think that the current leadership is going to have to tread very carefully if it wants to get re-elected after the midterm elections so i don't see much productive happening, frankly, between now and the lame duck session. >> there's been a big debate over why exactly eric cantor lost his primary, basically no one predicted that was going to happen, myself included. and some have mentioned immigration as a possible key. oerls like me say maybe it had to do with cantor's ties to wall street, his opponent attacked him on. as a virginian, someone that knows eric cantor, what do you think was the biggest reason for his defeat? >> yeah. i think the immigration argument is frankly not accurate. certainly an issue that was used against cantor. but the real problem was cantor's -- cantor's weakness as a candidate. he was rusty. he had totally unreliable polling. he didn't have a reliable field organization. he was heavy handed in his media and named his opponent which just helped those who were disgruntled know who to vote for. it was a very ham handed re-election effort by somebody that wasn't used to, you know, ground combat terms of elections and it showed on election day. i think there was a ground swell of discontent that goes far beyond immigration as an issue. >> i think also voters perceived a sense of entitlement to the seat. >> yeah. >> which is never a good thing. but as democrats are analyzing that race, do you think there's any sort of cautionary tales or warning signs there for the democratic party? >> well, you know, you got to stay in touch. you have to make sure that you're back home with the folks as often as you can be. you want to make sure that you're always showing a certain sense of humility about public office as opposed to entitlement as you suggest but i really think the threat's much greater on the republican side of the aisle. that's got to be a wake-up call to entrenched incumbents on the republican side there's a grassroots movement on your side among your base that's really unhappy with incumbency and entrenched politicians. >> yeah. i think there's a streak bubbling on both sides of the aisle, though, frankly. thank you so much. >> great to be with you. just ahead on today's show, angelina jolie called the world's attention to a global shame and now picking up the baton and asking the question, what can the u.s. do about it? our call to action continues with a female lawmaker who's on the front lines. that's next. 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