Aug. 28, 2021 - Bannon's War Room
48:37
Participants
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unidentified
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You've put out a statement not too long before we came out here that had some pretty sober language in it about the latest briefing the President has gotten from his national security advisors, namely that the attack is likely. | |
| I know you're limited, but is there any more specificity you can offer on what that threat is? | ||
| And secondly, what does it mean for the evacuation? | ||
| Does the intel in any way also and changes that need to be made limit or restrict the ability to continue or get as much done with the mission through August 31st? | ||
| Sure. | ||
| Well, I think many of you may have seen the statement I put out this morning, but just to highlight the reference I believe Amr was making, what I conveyed in the statement was that the national security team the President met with this morning advised the President and Vice President that another terror attack in Kabul is likely. | ||
| And they are taking maximum force protection measures at the Kabul airport and in surrounding areas with our forces. | ||
|
unidentified
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Impossible task we've given them to literally sift through a sea of humanity. | |
| Thousands and thousands of Afghans to try to pluck out our allies, our friends, and their families, their husbands, their wives, their little girls and boys, and put their kids on their back and hold their hands and literally, literally pull them to freedom. | ||
| So I expected to see a gate with Marines on one side and Afghans on the other, but that's not the way this can work. | ||
| Because we waited so long to start this evacuation, we have to go out in the crowd. | ||
| So these Marines were out there, feet from the Taliban with their horse whips, at tremendous risk. | ||
| Literally saving lives. | ||
| But these Marines who grew up knowing that the Taliban harbored the people who attacked us on 9-11, now has to work with these terrorists. | ||
| But we have to to save lives. | ||
| And one of the most important things we learned by being there on the ground is that that crazy relationship with the Taliban is actually going to be really important going forward. | ||
| Politico is shedding light on that, quote, crazy relationship with the Taliban, reporting this, quote, U.S. | ||
| officials in Kabul gave the Taliban a list of names of American citizens, green card holders, and Afghan allies to grant entry into the militant-controlled outer perimeter of the city's airport, a choice that's prompted outrage behind the scenes from lawmakers and military officials. | ||
| My name is Lieutenant Colonel Stu Scheller, United States Marine Corps. | ||
| I'm the current battalion commander for Advanced Infantry Training Battalion. | ||
| I've been in the Marine Infantry for 17 years. | ||
| Started my tour with Victor 1-8. | ||
| It's the current unit that's doing perimeter security, dealing with the mess that's going on there. | ||
| You can see open source reporting that there was an explosion and some people were killed. | ||
| I know through my inside channels that one of those people that were killed was someone that I have a personal relationship with. | ||
| Won't go into more details because the families are still being notified. | ||
| Not making this video because it's potentially an emotional time, making it because I have a growing discontent and contempt for my perceived ineptitude at the foreign policy level and I want to specifically ask some questions to some of my senior leaders. | ||
| And I'll say as a person that's not at 20 years, I feel like I have a lot to lose. | ||
| If you play chess, you can only see two to three moves out because there's too many variables. | ||
| I thought through if I post this video, what might happen to me, especially if the video picks up traction, if I have the courage to post it. | ||
| But I think what you believe in can only be defined by what you're willing to risk. | ||
| So if I'm willing to risk my current battalion commander seat, my retirement, my family's stability to say some of the things that I want to say, I think it gives me some moral high ground to demand the same honesty, integrity, accountability from my senior leaders. | ||
| And so I want to start with, we'll just use the Marine Corps, we'll just stick with the Marine Corps. | ||
| So in the current fallout of Afghanistan, a lot of Marines were posting on social media, and in response to that, the Commandant published a letter, which is the Service Chief of the Marine Corps, and I want to read from it. | ||
| You know, I get it. | ||
| August, so only a week ago, the commandant, sir, you wrote, some of you may be struggling with a simple question, was it all worth it? | ||
| We want you to know that your service is meaningful, powerful, and important. | ||
| You fought for the Marine to your left and the Marine to your right. | ||
| You never let them down. | ||
| Then you go on to say that, you know, if we're struggling, we should seek counseling, which, you know, I get it. | ||
| People have killed people. | ||
| I've killed people and I seek counseling and that's fine. | ||
| There's a time and place for that. | ||
| But the reason people are so upset on social media right now is not because the Marine on the battlefield let someone down. | ||
| That service member has always rose to the occasion and done extraordinary things. | ||
| People are upset because their senior leaders let them down and none of them are raising their hands and accepting accountability or saying, we messed this up. | ||
| If an O5 battalion commander has the simplest live fire incident EO complaint, boom, fired. | ||
| But we have a Secretary of Defense that testified to Congress in May that the Afghan National Security Force could withstand the Taliban advance. | ||
| We have chairmen of Joint Chiefs, who the Commandant is a member of that. | ||
| We're supposed to advise on military policy. | ||
| We have a Marine combatant commander. | ||
| All of these people are supposed to advise. | ||
| And I'm not saying we've got to be in Afghanistan forever, but I am saying Did any of you throw your rank on the table and say, hey, it's a bad idea to evacuate Bagram Airfield, the strategic air barriers, before we evacuate everyone? | ||
| Did anyone do that? | ||
| And when you didn't think to do that, did anyone raise their hand and say, we completely messed this up? | ||
| I've got battalion commander friends right now that are posting similar things, and they're saying, you know, wondering if all the lives were lost and if it was in vain, all those people that we've lost over the last, I don't know, 20 years. | ||
| And he goes on to say that we're all part of a chain, while every link may not be tested, the strength of the chain is only as strong as each link, and you gotta be a good link, something like that. | ||
| And what I'll say is, from my position, potentially all those people did die in vain if we don't have senior leaders that own up and raise their hand and say, we did not do this well in the end. | ||
| Without that, we just keep repeating the same mistakes. | ||
| This amalgamation of the economic slash corporate slash political slash higher military ranks are not holding up their end of the bargain. | ||
| I want to say this very strongly. | ||
| I have been fighting for 17 years. | ||
| I am willing to throw it all away to say to my senior leaders, I demand accountability. | ||
| I am prepared to throw it all away to tell my senior leaders I demand accountability. | ||
| That is Colonel Stuart Scheller. | ||
| He was relieved for this. | ||
| We played it on the war room this morning. | ||
| He was relieved for cause. | ||
| Shortly thereafter, he has been fired as no longer a battalion commander because he demands for the Marines' accountability. | ||
| This is where we are. | ||
| You're in the War Room. | ||
| It's Friday, 27 August, Year of Our Lord 2021. | ||
| Over 80 million downloads in the podcast. | ||
| Of course, we're live everywhere. | ||
| I want to thank Real America's Voice. | ||
| We've got a two-hour special today, Extraction Under Fire, and we're going to be taking, we're going to go through every aspect of this. | ||
| From the politics of it, the geopolitics of it, the refugees coming here, and particularly though, our framing is exactly what's happening on the ground in Kabul Airport, and what is an extraction under fire, and to follow our troops for the next, what, 100 hours approximately, to midnight on Tuesday, midnight in the U.S. | ||
| We've got Patrick K. O'Donnell, best combat historian of his generation, He was with the Marines in Fallujah. | ||
| We're going to talk about that, about Marines going door-to-door, what kind of bond they have. | ||
| He's also, it's the 245th anniversary commemoration of the American Thermopylae that took place in Brooklyn 245 years ago today. | ||
| A brave regiment from Maryland actually held back the British Expeditionary Force and gave General Washington time to basically get to Brooklyn Heights and therefore have the first extraction under fire in the history of the Army of the United States. | ||
| We'll talk about all of that. | ||
| Also, Captain Maureen Bannon, who was in Iraq and did the rollout there back in, I think, 2011 under General Austin. | ||
| Powerful show this morning. | ||
| We had General Flynn on, we had Eric Prince. | ||
| Just an incredible General Flynn going through and talking about all these guys he's worked with and he is shocked and stunned about the lack of accountability. | ||
| We started this segment off, Jen Psaki, you're saying, hey, we expect another massive terrorist attack. | ||
| Now there's a lot of confusion on Twitter and other things about what's exactly going on in Kabul right now, particularly at the airport. | ||
| And you have to remember at this airport that you're not talking about LAX. | ||
| You're not talking about JFK. | ||
| This is not Chicago or Harrah. | ||
| This is an airport that's the size of a small regional airport. | ||
| One runway, right? | ||
| One runway in a very small airport. | ||
| Wanted to also have the part of Seth Moulton. | ||
| Seth Moulton is a very progressive Democrat. | ||
| However, he's a combat Marine. | ||
| He's one of the heroes of the Battle of Najaf. | ||
| He fought for weeks and weeks and weeks. | ||
| Remember, Patrick, to surround to get to that mosque that they were going to take with an AC-130 gunship up above him for protection. | ||
| A real combat hero. | ||
| He's the one on the floor over there and he was shocked because what people don't understand is the Marines were out in the crowd. | ||
| And I think this all, all of, we have to go through all this. | ||
| The investigation of this has got to be terrible. | ||
| Captain Bannon later is going to talk to us about, about the individuals that died. | ||
| We've got some information on some. | ||
| Maureen, can you real quickly read before we bring in Michael Yan and Jason Jones about updates with their sources on the ground? | ||
| Could you read Captain, Colonel Schellers? | ||
| He just put up on social media his farewell. | ||
| Can you just read that? | ||
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unidentified
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I can. | |
| To all my friends across the social networks, I've been relieved for cause based on a lack of trust and confidence as of 1430 today. | ||
|
unidentified
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My chain of command is doing exactly what I would do if I were in their shoes. | |
| I appreciate the opportunities AITB command provided to all the news agencies asking for interviews. | ||
| I will not be making any statements other than what's on my social platforms until I exit the Marine Corps. | ||
| America has many issues, but it's my home. | ||
| It's where my three sons will become men. | ||
| America is still the Light shining in a fog of chaos. | ||
| When my Marine Corps career comes to an end, I look forward to a new beginning. | ||
| My life's purpose is to make America the most lethal and effective foreign diplomacy instrument. | ||
| While my days of hand-to-hand violence may be ending, I see a new light on the horizon. | ||
| I gotta tell you, we can't let him leave the Corps. | ||
| It's impossible. | ||
| These are exactly the guys we need. | ||
| I mean, this is exactly the, these are the type of leaders we need to step up right now. | ||
| That's a voice of reason. | ||
| We're gonna get into all that in the days to come, but under no circumstances can we have Colonel Scheller leave the Corps, okay? | ||
| This is just like in Colonel Lohmeyer, we're gonna make everybody in that chain of command famous, because this is just not acceptable. | ||
| He spoke truth to power. | ||
| Let's go to Jason Jones. | ||
| We're going to get Michael Yan in a second. | ||
| Jason, give us your update of what you're hearing on the ground. | ||
| I want to tee this up. | ||
| There's a lot of fog of war now, controversy about what's actually right. | ||
| You've got Twitter blowing up. | ||
| We had Admiral Kirby deny some of the stuff that's going to come up, but I have to tell you, yesterday morning on our show, which was the first extraction under fire, at 10.30 in the morning, Jason Jones, we had a couple other people on here, Jason with the sources, and a couple of the CIA guys with their sources said, hey, this explosion has killed, there's a number of KIAs, in fact at that time there were four Marines, we went with it, mainstream media, the Wall Street Journal didn't come out until 1 o'clock, The Pentagon did not come out and actually say it until like three o'clock, right? | ||
| I think they actually kind of kicked it down the can before, until Biden just went on. | ||
| So, Jason, what are you hearing right now? | ||
| There's all kind of stuff on Twitter. | ||
| What's going on in the airport in Kabul? | ||
| You know, Steve, I wish I was wrong. | ||
| I wish our sources were wrong. | ||
| Yesterday, 54 hours to go on your show, and I said the next 72 hours are going to be very dark, dark days. | ||
| I wish I was wrong then. | ||
| And I hope I'm wrong now, but we're being told that the Taliban has complete control of the airport, that all the civilian flights that are there are the last flights and they will be processed. | ||
| We had a family that I had been working with for a week, and what they had to suffer over the past week is really unimaginable. | ||
| When they finally got onto the airport today, we were high-fiving here and we were very excited, and then within a half hour, they were told that there was a danger and they had to leave the airport and they were ushered out and said to come back tomorrow. | ||
| When I heard that I knew that for them that airport would not be their way out and there would probably be no tomorrow. | ||
| So that's what we're being told. | ||
| We're being told that the airport is completely in control by the Taliban and there will be no more commercial flights. | ||
| So when you say commercial, your understanding, and you've been working to get Christians and other folks out, your understanding is that there's not going to be any more flights leaving for people that are either American citizens and or potential refugees, people who work with us. | ||
| All the flights going forward, from your knowledge, they've been pretty good sources, will only be extracting military personnel. | ||
| Yeah, that's it. | ||
| There's flights there. | ||
| They may have some civilians on them. | ||
| I mean, they may have some refugees on them, the flights that are already there. | ||
| And those flights will be processed and out. | ||
| And my guess would be by sunrise Monday, there won't be an American left. | ||
| And it's going to be a very scary Sunday. | ||
| I don't know how you get those last 250 out. | ||
| I mean, it's really horrifying. | ||
| Jason, hang on one second. | ||
| We'll take a short commercial break and return with Jan and Jason Jones in a moment. | ||
| Okay, welcome back to War Room. | ||
| Extraction under fire. | ||
| It's our special. | ||
| I want to thank you. | ||
| We're here for two hours tonight. | ||
| We're going to be also tomorrow morning. | ||
| We'll also be giving you breaking news. | ||
| The Federal Reserve met in Wyoming. | ||
| The courts overruled Biden's attempt to not have folks pay rent. | ||
| A lot going on. | ||
| The huge news on the COVID side. | ||
| We're going to get to all of that. | ||
| I want to go back to Jason Jones. | ||
| So Jason, your sources are telling you, hey, so those pictures, a lot of photographs up, some from pretty responsible journalists over there saying, hey, these are guys coming into the military side and it looks like there's some sort of changeover going on. | ||
| You're saying the last civilian flights kind of going out, people that you knew were sent out, and the rest of them will be extraction of the military. | ||
| You also, I think you and I talked, by the way, he's got a great article, let's get it in the live chat, about The heroism of the contractors. | ||
| People forget, and they only count the... 2,200 men and women died in uniform, but it was another 4,000 contractors, and most of these contractors were pipe hitters, right? | ||
| There were a ton of former military that were there that acted as our, you know, kind of the... to augment, let's say, augment our fighting forces there that died also. | ||
| So, Jason, did you... I think you were concerned that you had actually given over some data That people to the State Department and now that data is part of the data that got out to to the Taliban? | ||
| Yeah, Steve, it's quite horrifying. | ||
| I have been following the news for the past week. | ||
| My nose has been in databases and and working with pastors from Pakistan to get their missionaries out and, you know, marine colonels to get their interpreters out. | ||
| And so we've been working very hard at that. | ||
| And then all of a sudden my phone starts ringing. | ||
| Look at this story. | ||
| I am afraid and I think it's it seems like it's a fact. | ||
| That I put names of mothers, infants, who I looked at their passport photos, little children, their brothers and sisters, I put their names, their addresses, their dates of birth, in some cases, the coordinates to their house, and I've uploaded their documents into a State Department Excel file, and I forwarded it to the United States government, exactly as I was asked, day in and day out, not sleeping, because you're afraid to go to sleep. | ||
| You're afraid to go to sleep because if you close your eyes for 10 minutes, you might miss a call or an email that can save a family's life. | ||
| Well, now that I found out, now that I'm finding out that all of us who've been doing this have been acting as the Stasi for the Taliban. | ||
| If this is true, I don't even want to begin to say what should happen if this is true. | ||
| If people who are supposed to represent us and work for us in the Department of Defense and the State Department handed over Excel files Would that I, on this computer that I'm talking to you through, put in the names of countless families, pastors, missionaries, nuns, not just from the United States. | ||
| I put the names of citizens from all over the world into a State Department database, and I gave it to them. | ||
| So they not only handed over Afghans, American permanent resident citizens, I just yesterday, there were Dutch contractors that had been abandoned. | ||
| They somehow got a hold of me. | ||
| I put those Dutch contractors into an Excel file, and I sent it to the State Department. | ||
| And so countries around the world should start asking questions. | ||
| Did the United States hand over the names of our citizens to the Taliban? | ||
| It's really, Steve, the question I would ask, someone asked President Biden, Could you have done a worse job? | ||
| How, using your imagination, could this have gone worse? | ||
| I can't imagine how, Steve. | ||
| Jason, how do people follow you on social media? | ||
| How do they get to your website? | ||
| Well, my website is thegreatcampaign.org, The Vulnerable People Project. | ||
| You can stand shoulder-to-shoulder with us as we stand with the people of Afghanistan. | ||
| And my podcast, Steve, thanks to you, is blowing up. | ||
| It's The Jason Jones Show. | ||
| Well, I gotta tell you, there's a lot of vulnerable people in Afghanistan. | ||
| There's gonna be a lot more when the wheels go up on the last serviceman and woman that leaves here. | ||
| So thank you very much, Jason. | ||
| Appreciate it. | ||
| Look forward to having you back on tomorrow. | ||
| Let's go to Michael Yan. | ||
| Michael Yan spent almost two decades in Afghanistan as the top combat correspondent. | ||
| Michael, what are you hearing from your sources? | ||
| That the airport is, the military side has not taken over yet. | ||
| Uh, definitely military flights are still landing. | ||
| That's clear. | ||
| I believe at least one civilian flights still scheduled for tomorrow that I know of, unless they've changed that in the last 20 minutes. | ||
| Now, on the spreadsheets, you may remember, actually, before this broke yesterday, I sent a private message to you, Steve, that the Taliban actually did have this information and were vetting Afghans before they went into the airport. | ||
| I sent that a private message. | ||
| I did not put that public, I think, until later. | ||
| And so right now, some of the people that are doing these civilian rescues actually are trying to consolidate their information all on one spreadsheet so that they can deconflict what they're doing. | ||
| But we should caution here. | ||
| You know, we're going up against more than just the Taliban. | ||
| We're also going up against China. | ||
| They can hack anybody, right? | ||
| So, I mean, if you're Putting things on the computer and you're on the web, there's a high chance, I mean, because we are being targeted by the Russians, of course, and the Chinese, and anybody that they can see that's involved in rescue attempts, you know, they're subject to being hacked and that information being turned over. | ||
| Now, an Army officer that I know called up a couple of hours ago and he said he thinks a phishing attempt just happened on him. | ||
| For instance, he got a call from Afghanistan. | ||
| Apparently what he thinks is possibly somebody got a phone number from somebody he used to work with there. | ||
| And so in other words, Taliban may be capturing people's log books and their private notes and that sort of thing and calling people either doing scams or doing traps for people that doing rescues and that sort of thing. | ||
| So be very careful with operational security right now. | ||
| OPSEC is vital for everything going on. | ||
| Remember, we've got more people fighting us than just the Taliban. | ||
| Michael, what are you hearing about the efforts? | ||
| It's still a lot of confusion of how many American citizens. | ||
| I mean, we're going to get to this with the Center for American Renewal, Renewing America, in a moment. | ||
| The Pentagon gave this huge briefing today and all the Afghan refugees coming over here to the United States, out of theater. | ||
| And the question is, how are we prioritizing that when there's, I don't know, 1,000, 1,500, 500? | ||
| Nobody knows American citizens. | ||
| What are you hearing about the efforts of what Joe Biden kind of promised yesterday? | ||
| We're going to get all the American citizens out. | ||
| What are your sources telling you about the effort to get the remaining Americans at least out of Kabul? | ||
| It's very difficult. | ||
| I mean, especially if they're Americans that look Afghan, because the Taliban are not letting them through, according to my sources. | ||
| And so that's it. | ||
| They're going to need to go to ground. | ||
| It's time to do ground evacuation. | ||
| You need to go to ground or get to a safe area, maybe Panjshir, some other part of Afghanistan, and let the first wave of killing wash over you, because these things will generally happen like that as they take over, as the Taliban take over, and they're focused Leave the airport as we eventually leave, then they're going to focus on the Afghans that are left behind. | ||
| And that's going to be, uh, certainly they're going to do mass murders. | ||
| That's what they do. | ||
| That's how they operate. | ||
| We're dealing with terrorists here. | ||
| Do you understand, they're trying to make a big deal about us working with the Taliban, this new and improved Taliban. | ||
| You know these guys, Al-Qaeda, ISIS, the Haqqani Network, the Taliban, every different aspect, because there's 30 different versions of those guys over there. | ||
| In your mind, is there a new and improved Taliban? | ||
| They would not answer the question of the State Department today, does the United States support the Taliban getting a seat at the UN as the official government of Afghanistan? | ||
| And it had a feel, There's no new and improved Taliban. | ||
| They are what they were. | ||
| feel like there might be some side deals already cut because it wasn't a hard no, not now, not ever. | ||
| What is your understanding of this new and improved Taliban? | ||
| What can you tell our audience? | ||
| There's no new and improved Taliban. | ||
| They are what they were. | ||
| This is the jungle. | ||
| Of course, they are business people as well. | ||
| The leaders, if we're paying them a lot of money, of course they're going to behave for a while. | ||
| But I would just about guarantee, remember hours before yesterday's attack, I said get away from the airport. | ||
| I published this. | ||
| Just hours before the attack. | ||
| Just like I did hours before the January 6th attack where I was there. | ||
| I watch these things. | ||
| I watch for conditions. | ||
| I know how they fight. | ||
| The Pashtun are going to, I just about guarantee you, they're going to attack us again before we get out because that's their way with Jaga. | ||
| We've talked about that before. | ||
| They swarm, they pursue or they siege, and then they humiliate. | ||
| They're not going to let us get out without another attack. | ||
| That's my assessment. | ||
| And when this is over, they're going to do a genocide. | ||
| They might try to hide it. | ||
| Of course, they'll try to hide it. | ||
| But it'll leak out because there's so many disparate parts of the Taliban, whatever you want to call the Taliban. | ||
| That's a very nebulous term to begin with. | ||
| But there is no central command. | ||
| There's no one stop shopping with Taliban leadership and that sort of thing. | ||
| It's going to be a mess. | ||
| They're not going to be good citizens. | ||
| Of course, China wants to work with them. | ||
| I just got off the phone with somebody from China in regard to this. | ||
| Of course, China wants the lithium. | ||
| They're interested in their BRI, their Belt and Road Initiative. | ||
| I know Pahluk people and Pashtun people contact me often. | ||
| They hate CCP. | ||
| They want to fight CCP. | ||
| There's Pashtun people already reaching out to the United States to help us help them fight China. | ||
| So you're going to have some people, some Pashtuns are going to obviously help CCP or Russians, and then you've got others that will fight. | ||
| And, you know, who knows? | ||
| It could be a couple of months from now, we might be funding the Taliban to Fight CCP, nobody knows. | ||
| Yeah, they should definitely go to locals because I'm often putting things up that is very important and in advance. | ||
| looking forward to have you back on the mark. Can you give people your coordinates? How do people get to you? Particularly all the news you break all the time. | ||
| Yeah, they should definitely go to locals because I'm often putting things up that is very important. Uh, and in advance, for instance, the casualties yesterday, I did put those up many hours in advance that and this is important to put up because people need to know that attacks are happening at the gate. You should not hold this information back at a time like this. | ||
| The information needs to flow fast, but use your mind before sending information out. Taliban are watching to as are Chinese and Russians and others who will facilitate, uh, Taliban to attack friendly people. | ||
|
unidentified
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Okay. | |
| Okay, Michael, fantastic. | ||
| Look forward to having you back on. | ||
| Michael Yan, a combat correspondent from, spent decades in Afghanistan. | ||
| Okay, short commercial break. | ||
| You know him from the voter fraud, but he was a career Army infantry officer. | ||
| Colonel Doug Mastriano will join us after the break. | ||
| Captain Bennett's going to be talking about the heroes that died at Abbey Gate. | ||
| We're also going to have someone talking about the refugee situation, one of Russ Vought's guys. | ||
| A former Marine Sergeant. | ||
| All of it coming back when we return to Extraction Under Fire. | ||
| War Room Special here on Rural America's Voice. | ||
| We'll be back in a moment. | ||
| Hi, welcome back. | ||
| Extraction Under Fire, War Room special here on Real America's Voice, John Fredericks Radio Network, of course, in Mandarin through GNews, GTV, and Japanese. | ||
| Colonel Doug Mastriano, 30-year veteran of the United States Army. | ||
| Sir, we played today something off a LinkedIn site. | ||
| From a Colonel Stuart Scheller, Lieutenant Colonel Stuart Scheller of the United States Marine Corps. | ||
| He was relieved for cause at 2.30. | ||
| We played it at 10. | ||
| He's relieved for cause for 2.30. | ||
| Given this current situation in our country and with our military and with this administration, can you give us your observations on that? | ||
| It's interesting, because H.R. | ||
| McMaster wrote a book about our experience in Vietnam called The Dereliction of Duty, where senior officers and senior leaders in the military failed to speak out against failed strategies. | ||
| And the only ones that spoke up back then, apparently, were junior officers or mid-grade officers. | ||
| And we're seeing a glimpse of this repeat here. | ||
| Steve, the watch in my lifetime was happening twice. | ||
| I was old enough to remember what happened in Saigon in 1975. | ||
| I was a young person then. | ||
| I'm going to see this happening here. | ||
| This is completely Joe Biden's doing. | ||
| Any junior officer, junior NCO, in any of the armed services would know this would be a terrible idea. | ||
| So one of the most difficult missions we have, of course, is to go in cold. | ||
| And that's exactly what happened since Joe Biden pulled all our forces out and took away any capability and capacity. | ||
| And this has put us at the mercy of the Taliban, that we're working with the Taliban in this capacity. | ||
| An organization that hates us, that's been at war with us for 20 years, is just ridiculous. | ||
| Can you tell us, our audience, given your 30 years experience, how difficult is this evolution, this extraction under fire or under a hostile condition? | ||
| How tough is this and what are you looking for as you view this from the United States and what will happen over the next couple of days? | ||
| Yeah, as we're speaking off air, this is one of the most impossible missions to do because we're relying upon the good graces Of an opposing force, the Taliban and now ISIS. | ||
| And what's interesting, of course, Joe Biden declared victory in this mission had to end because the capability of terrorist organizations was basically non-existent, according to him. | ||
| And we're seeing with this attack by ISIS that was beaten to submission by Donald Trump. | ||
| Obama, Biden's JV team, by the way, that took over a chunk of Syria and Iraq, they're back. | ||
| And so that means this withdrawal here was premature. | ||
| Now, as far as withdrawing under fire, this is just asking for trouble, and my hearts go out to the 13 families that lost a loved one here. | ||
| This should never happen. | ||
| Bagram Air Base should not have been closed up, which is about an hour north of Kabul, until this mission was complete and everyone that needed to get out of there was taken out. | ||
| But this just shows you a keystone-top approach that Joe Biden would have. | ||
| Yesterday, when asked to take responsibility, he said he would, but then he blamed Donald Trump This was not Donald Trump's doing. | ||
| Joe Biden ripped our troops out of there, cut and run, and then suddenly plopped 6,000 back in under almost impossible conditions to get anything done. | ||
| Michael Yan, who was a combat correspondent over there for many years, has walked us through this concept, which we like to get people to constructs in a nomenclature called Chagra, where the way they fight, they swarm, they pursue, and then they humiliate. | ||
| And he says this is the structure they've got for this, and the key is that they're going to humiliate before going out. | ||
| Everyone we've talked to, from General Bolduc to General Flynn, to every expert we've had on here for the last couple days saying, hey, in order to do that, you cannot have given up the perimeter. | ||
| It is insanity. | ||
| Let's leave Bagram aside, because that was a strategic decision that is obviously ridiculous and gonna be reviewed. | ||
| But now that you're here, now that you're at Denvenfu, to understand that they actually agreed to allow the Taliban to control the perimeter, Not one expert we've had on here says you can actually do this safely without having some surge and to back that off. | ||
| Can you give us any insights, given your military intelligence background, of exactly where are we just hung out to dry here? | ||
| Are those kids, those brigades of Marines and 82nd Airborne, are they just totally at the tender mercies now of the Taliban? | ||
| They really are, and I I'd like to look at this through Mal's stages of insurgency. | ||
| I've watched the Taliban come and go when that was my area of expertise and when I was running the Joint Intel Center with NATO in Afghanistan. | ||
| This sort of approach, they are opportunists. | ||
| If they're being paid off behind the scenes, they might stay the hand. | ||
| They want the Western forces out. | ||
| So the only thing that might help us is that, yeah, get your people out of here and then we're going to unleash hell on the rest of Afghanistan once they're gone. | ||
| But obviously there's opportunist attacks, and I have trouble believing that the Taliban didn't wink and nod, that the Taliban, loose coalition of fighters, didn't let this ISIS group through, even though they're supposedly their mortal enemies. | ||
| They do have a common enemy, the United States of America. | ||
| This has put our Marines, our soldiers, our airmen, our sailors, at great risk, and it's just time that we just kind of wrap this up here, because they're caught behind a rock in a hard place right now. | ||
| Do you think, the implication, a lot of people are talking about this, do you think side deals, because remember, from the beginning, founding of the Republic, the first guys we took on, people forget this, was in North Africa, was the Barbary Pirates, and the saying there was quite simple, and it's been the touchstone of our country since then. | ||
| Basically, it was who don't negotiate with terrorists. | ||
| Remember, everybody else had paid off the Barbary pirates. | ||
| The English paid them off. | ||
| The French paid them off. | ||
| Every country paid them off. | ||
| United States stood up and said, we'll spend in those days millions for defense, but not one cent for tribute. | ||
| And that rolled through all the way to today, which is we don't negotiate with terrorists. | ||
| Do you believe that we've actually cut side deals and we may actually have be given money to the Taliban to have them kind of let Biden crawl out of here? | ||
| I do believe we have, and that the idea that the Taliban are receiving records of Americans, as your previous person just spoke about here, tells me that they are being paid off. | ||
| That's the only reason why this hasn't been a catastrophe so far. | ||
| And the idea that, going back to 1802, as you rightly said here, that America never negotiated these sorts of people, that we've broken, you know, over two centuries of successful policies. | ||
| This is begging for trouble. | ||
| We remember how Ronald Reagan dealt with it in Lebanon and elsewhere. | ||
| Peace through strength and no negotiations with them. | ||
| And that's the only message. | ||
| Now they have a list of 1,500, 1,000. | ||
| We don't even know Americans and other internationals. | ||
| This is just begging for more trouble, more extortion, and a hostage situation. | ||
| And the worst is yet to come. | ||
| Colonel Mastriano, how do people follow you on social media? | ||
| How do they track you during the day? | ||
| Yeah, good. | ||
| I'm Senator Doug Mastriano on Facebook and Twitter and Instagram. | ||
| I'm there. | ||
| Thank you very much, Colonel. | ||
| Appreciate it. | ||
| Before I turn to Captain Ben, who's going to go through some of the honored dead, you're here, the books, The Immortals, Washington Immortals, and the, what's the other one? | ||
| The Indispensables. | ||
| Two powerful books. | ||
| Today's the 245th anniversary of the American Thermopylae, which we're going to get to in a second, which took place in Brooklyn, New York. | ||
| And then in the next couple of days, we had the first extraction. | ||
| General Washington had to get his troops from Brooklyn Heights in a retreat. | ||
| The first extraction under fire to get to Manhattan to be able to save the Continental Army. | ||
| So it's in our DNA. | ||
| It's just, it's ironic. | ||
| It would happen at the same time. | ||
| That's why we've asked Patrick to come in. | ||
| But you actually wrote a book from your experience in 2004 in Fallujah, We Are One. | ||
| You were in an embed with a Marine rifle platoon. | ||
| You saw these young kids, these Marines, go door-to-door then. | ||
| I went house-to-house with them. | ||
| And how they bond together. | ||
|
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It was incredible. | |
| It was the most powerful experience of my life, Steve. | ||
| I went house-to-house with these guys. | ||
| I fought with them and I experienced Al-Qaeda firsthand. | ||
| My most vivid memory is on November 17th when I faced Chechen fighters. | ||
| The Marine right in front of me was shot in the head with AK fire and I pulled him out as we were in a massive firefight. | ||
| These guys were on liquid adrenaline in many cases. | ||
| They were willing to fight to the death. | ||
| It was a Star Wars bar of international jihadists. | ||
| These are the Chechens and the Al Qaeda guys. | ||
|
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Chechens. | |
| It was 18 different countries from around the world. | ||
| That rally point in Fallujah in 2004 is very much what's going to happen in Afghanistan. | ||
|
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It was a siren call of international jihad. | |
| And you had the Star Wars bar of international terrorists. | ||
| And now, you know, what we've got now is an emboldened Al Qaeda slash Taliban, ISIS, you know, they're all merged together. | ||
| Haqqani Network? | ||
|
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The Haqqani Network, trained ISIS-K, I mean, and they work together in some cases, are also enemies. | |
| It's like a square dance. | ||
| These people, you know, change sides, they fight each other, and then they fight a common enemy. | ||
| And they're very, very dangerous. | ||
| This happy talk you've heard on the mainstream media the last couple of days, New York Times, it's a Taliban 2.0, somebody said the day in the morning show we had a clip that said this is Build Back Better, they want to follow the party of Davos, do you buy any of that? | ||
|
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It's a myth. And it's a myth, you know, I mean just look at who's running the security there, so-called. | |
| It's the Haqqani Network, it's a wanted terrorist who has a five million dollar bounty on his head. | ||
| It was the mentor of Osama Bin Laden, that network. These are extremely dangerous, well-trained individuals. | ||
| the You know, Pakistan ISI has ties to them. | ||
| You know, this is a dangerous group. | ||
| And we are, you know, I mean, that are now emboldened. | ||
| And they're flush with $88 billion worth of American, you know, technology and warfighting capability. | ||
| And they're probably going to get even more money from us, which I think is the most pernicious thing. | ||
| Because you're a historian, you know what I'm talking about with the Barbary Pirates all North Africa, Tunisia, those places. | ||
| Jefferson and these guys could have done it because Europe was doing it. | ||
| And they said, we're not going to do that. | ||
| We're not going to negotiate, and we're not going to pay tribute. | ||
| We could pay tribute and let our boats back and forth. | ||
| It's not going to happen. | ||
| And finally, the first conflict we had was with, outside of the English, was with the Barbary Pirates. | ||
| And we set a touchstone for our country. | ||
| We don't negotiate with terrorists. | ||
| By the way, they asked Jen Psaki this very question today. | ||
| Some report said, hey, the Haqqani Network guy, the senior guy's got a $5 million bounty on his head. | ||
| I thought we didn't work with terrorists and I thought we didn't negotiate with terrorists. | ||
| And aren't you negotiating the passage, everything with the guy that's running? | ||
| How do you? | ||
| And she kind of slipped it and says, hey, we got to do what we got to do. | ||
| This is the position that Biden's put the nation in. | ||
| Patrick O'Donnell. | ||
|
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We should never negotiate with terrorists. | |
| We should never be in this position of weakness and potentially helping build a terror super state that we would potentially legitimize. | ||
| There's a real problem there. | ||
| And then our adversaries are watching, Steve. | ||
| That's another thing. | ||
| In 2004, and people forget this, the Battle of Fallujah was one of the toughest battles the Marine Corps will tell you, and we went and showed the film, we made a film, Michael Pack and I, about the Battle of Fallujah. | ||
| It was called The Last 600 Meters. | ||
| He directed it, I produced it. | ||
| We showed it later to Force Recon Marines from World War II, Peleliu, And they go, wow, these kids are so brave. | ||
| And we said, hey, you're the greatest generation's best of the best. | ||
| They said, Mr. Brandt, when we hit the beach, we just went forward. | ||
| Everything in front of us was clear cut. | ||
| These kids going door to door, having to hit those doors, and you don't know if you have a civilian. | ||
| They said the psychological trauma of doing that for what, a city of 250,000 people with every bad guy in the world, the Chechens, Everybody there is just insane, and this is what... Did you ever think, in 2004, when you're in the Battle of Fallujah, as an embedded correspondent, that 16 years later, that the United States Marine Corps, under this feckless leadership, would be put into a position like Dien Bien Phu, where they have to essentially fight their way out to get out? | ||
|
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No, and my most vivid memory of that experience is after that Marine was killed and after all the casualties that that platoon had taken, 1st Platoon Lima Company, 3-1, they just got back up and they went to the next house. | |
| That is, you know, just incredible courage. | ||
| Like I said, that's a next, that's a great generation as well. | ||
| There's a great generation now. | ||
| This generation, because they weren't drafted, they all volunteered. | ||
| This is an all-volunteer force. | ||
| Okay, we're going to take a short commercial break. | ||
| When we return, Captain Bennett is going to tell us a little bit about some of the honored dead of this generation. | ||
| We've also got Wade Smith is going to join us. | ||
| Wade Mill is going to join us. | ||
| We've got Michael Walsh. | ||
| We've got a lot to go here in our special Extraction Under Fire War Room. | ||
| We'll be back in a moment. | ||
|
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We'll be back in a moment. | |
| And we'll be back in a moment. | ||
| and their immediate families with support of the U.S. | ||
| government the opportunity to relocate to the United States. | ||
| The Department of State subsequently activated the Afghanistan Coordination Task Force and requested the Department of Defense provide temporary support for up to 3,500 Afghan special immigrant applicants. | ||
| On August 15th, the Department of State requested and the Secretary of Defense approved additional support for Afghan Special Immigrant Visa applicants and other vulnerable Afghans. | ||
| In response to this request, the U.S. | ||
| Northern Command, we're providing temporary housing, medical screening, transportation and other services for both Afghan Special Immigrant Visa applicants and at-risk Afghans. | ||
| U.S. | ||
| Northern Command has been tasked to build capacities to support up to 50,000 Afghans. | ||
| To do that, the Department of Defense under U.S. | ||
| Northern Command has established task forces at Fort Lee in Virginia, Fort Bliss in Texas, Fort McCoy in Wisconsin, and Joint Base McGuire-Dix-Lakehurst in New Jersey. | ||
| And on August 25th, the Secretary of Defense authorized three additional military installations to provide support inside the United States for Afghan Special Immigrant Visa applicants Their families and other at-risk individuals. | ||
| I can't hear anymore. | ||
| So Denver, you can take that down. | ||
| That was the big briefing today. | ||
| Not a briefing on what's the status of American citizens in Kabul. | ||
| Not a briefing on the details of how you're getting American citizens out. | ||
| Look, we fully support, fully support assisting our Afghan allies. | ||
| I mean people that were, you know, translators, commandos, all of this. | ||
| But they must stay in the region. | ||
| It's just not acceptable. | ||
| Working with us there was not a ticket to the United States. | ||
| It's not a ticket to the United States. | ||
| It should stay in region because, hey, eventually we want them to go back to Afghanistan and take their country back and free it. | ||
| I don't know, it's 50,000 and that's just the start. | ||
| We have to protect our allies. | ||
| But, and I will tell you, in the first year of the Trump administration, the biggest problem we had was blue on green casualties. | ||
| That's Afghan soldiers who are highly vetted, super vetted. | ||
| This is the inside of the inside. | ||
| Commandos. | ||
| Top people. | ||
| Vetted, vetted, vetted, vetted, vetted. | ||
| Boom! | ||
| Shooting guys in the back. | ||
| Boom! | ||
| Blowing people up with a suicide vest. | ||
| Vetted. | ||
| Highly vetted. | ||
| The best of the best shoots you right in the back. | ||
|
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Okay. | |
| We must assist our allies. | ||
| There is no reason to assist these allies in Fort Hood, Texas, up in places in Wisconsin. | ||
| I want to turn now to Wade Miller, Citizens for Renewing America, part of Russ Votes Group, the Center for Renewing America. | ||
| Wade, I know you're a former Marine. | ||
| Walk us through this analysis that you guys have been doing. | ||
|
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Sure. | |
| So, you know, there's obviously a complex and dynamic process that's unfolding before our eyes. | ||
| Hundreds of thousands of people that are in harm's way. | ||
| And so, as you said, it's right, we should take steps to try to protect our allies. | ||
| But our first priority, as you said, needs to be getting Americans out. | ||
| And it's unconscionable that the State Department can't give us any idea of how many people that is still, knowing that they should have an idea and knowing that we're going to retrograde From Afghanistan, they should have been implementing programs to know where are all our people, so that if we need to get them out, we can. | ||
| And one thing that was kind of snuck into this briefing today, which I've not heard a lot of chatter about, is a reference to the retrograde plan put together in April. | ||
| What that tells me is that all of these people that are trying to blame President Trump, this retrograde plan was fully put in place by the Biden admin, according to those who put forward the briefing today, That's an important point. | ||
| But to get on to, you know, and you had Russ vote on a few days ago, and he was talking about the ideological radicalism of those that were facing it, and even the people that go through the SIV program. | ||
| And I think again, what you Really are uncovering and I think it's a really important point is our vetting programs are not actually that good. | ||
| It's vetting a name only. | ||
| It's a very basic surface level viewpoint as to whether you have biometric data that gets flagged or whether or not, for instance, you show up in a database as having been a member of the Taliban at some point. | ||
| It doesn't go a step further and say, you know, do you believe, for instance, That if you commit infidelity, you should be stoned to death as a matter of law. | ||
| Should we be allowing people like that into the United States, whether you're an SIV applicant or just a run-of-the-mill refugee? | ||
| Granted, they're in harm's way, and as you said, we should resettle them regionally. | ||
| That should be the secondary focus. | ||
| Our first focus should be, where are the American citizens? | ||
| You know, we keep hearing from members of Congress that they're getting reports from citizens that they're stuck, they can't get there. | ||
| Why aren't we going to go get them? | ||
| Now, I'll have to assume, or at least I pray, that what's going on are a whole bunch of covert operations to get them out. | ||
| But I don't know that's the case. | ||
| And I have no real reason to trust the Biden admin as being competent to do that and to putting American citizens first in this process. | ||
| Because they may just want to appease the Afghans and they may see that as angering them and they will, of course, want to set up some sort of merry fantasy world future system here where the Taliban are partners in democracy, which is just never going to happen. | ||
| It's just never going to happen. | ||
| And so I don't understand. | ||
| Well, I guess I do understand. | ||
| It's just due to incompetence. | ||
| But the Biden administration keeps putting forward this plan Uh, if you want to call it a plan, which does not prioritize the security of Americans, it does not prioritize the security of American citizens. | ||
| And it's in a rushed process, exposing us to highly radicalized individuals who have not been properly vetted. | ||
| And one other point I'll make, if you look at the SIV program that we ran in Iraq, Over 4,000 cases of fraud in that program alone are currently being investigated, and we're re-reviewing over 100,000 SIV applicant cases. | ||
| And then all of those people that have gone to Europe, you can see the crime rates that have been associated with what's going on with refugee resettlement in Europe. | ||
| The data is there. | ||
| This is not a good idea to bring them here. | ||
| We should resettle them locally and put American interests first. | ||
| By the way, I just want to make sure it was something else. | ||
| You found the buried lead today. | ||
| They've had this plan since April. | ||
| Wade, real quickly, I don't remember, no one's been briefed on this before today, right? | ||
| They haven't briefed it up on Congress. | ||
| I know you guys follow closely. | ||
| It hasn't been in the media. | ||
| This is something they've held back until the very last second, correct? | ||
|
unidentified
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Yeah, and I've talked to several members of Congress who have received classified briefings. | |
| None of this was covered. | ||
| They were not briefed on this, and they left with more questions than they had answers to. | ||
| How do people track you on social media? | ||
| How do they get to your site, sir? | ||
|
unidentified
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Sure, you can go to citizensrenewingamerica.com and we're on Twitter, Gitter, and Facebook as well. | |
| Wade, thank you very much. | ||
| We'll have you back in next week to go through this in more depth of Russ Vought. | ||
| Great job you guys are doing here. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| Okay, short commercial break. | ||
| We've got an explosive second hour, a bonus hour here in the War Room. | ||
| Extraction under fire. | ||
| Stay tuned because we've got, buckle up, the second hour is going to be even hotter than the first, guaranteed. | ||
| Okay, short commercial break. | ||
|
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We'll be back. |
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