AFGHANISTAN PROVIDES KABUL A DEFENSE IN DEPTH FOR THE GUNFIGHT: 1/8: Kabul: The Untold Story of Biden’s Fiasco and the American Warriors Who Fought to the End Hardcover – by Jerry Dunleavy (Author), James Hasson (Author)
The John Batchelor Show
John Batchelor
4.6 • 2.7K Ratings
🗓️ 11 May 2025
⏱️ 10 minutes
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Summary
1867 KHYBER PASS
https://www.amazon.com/Kabul-Untold-Bidens-American-Warriors/dp/1546005307/ref=tmm_hrd_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=1701296521&sr=1-1
America’s chaotic retreat from Afghanistan in 2021 was nothing short of a horror show. Women and children were trampled to death outside the gates of the Kabul airfield. Desperate Afghans fell from the landing gear of departing planes. Taliban fighters mercilessly whipped and humiliated U.S. civilians trying to access the few square miles still controlled by American forces. Countless Afghan interpreters were abandoned to the mercy of the Taliban after risking their lives alongside American troops for years. And thirteen U.S. service members—eleven of whom were still in preschool on 9/11—were murdered in an ISIS suicide bombing that could easily have been prevented.
Still, the full story is worse than anyone imagined. Drawing from hundreds of hours of first-person interviews, investigative reporter Jerry Dunleavy and former Army Captain and Afghanistan veteran James Hasson provide an exclusive, no-holds-barred account of the disastrous events of August 2021. Kabul is packed with shocking and infuriating exclusive details about fatal politics and bureaucracy that contributed to the catastrophe. The authors also tell, for the first time, inspiring stories of the bravery and sacrifices exhibited by countless Americans on the ground.
Kabul's original reporting includes eyewitness accounts from servicemembers of all ranks who participated the rescue effort, inside information from senior intelligence officials, interviews with high-ranking members of allied governments, harrowing stories from Americans and Afghan allies willfully abandoned by craven officials in Washington, and exclusive details about veteran-led rescue missions that continue to this day. Chapter after chapter, Kabul depicts American government at its worst and “ordinary” Americans at their best.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | I'm John Baxter with Jared Dunleavy and James Hassan, whose new book I highly recommend. |
| 0:09.8 | It's a tough read, however. |
| 0:12.4 | When you see what could have been done, the untold story of Biden's fiasco, it's August 15, 2021. |
| 0:19.9 | Ghani, the president of the country, a man who has been kept in power by the U.S. and NATO for some time with full understanding of his responsibilities, |
| 0:31.1 | flees the country in a helicopter, and he now is in the Middle East, my understanding, and living out his life |
| 0:38.9 | explaining himself. That event, however, means that there is no leadership in Kabul, the police |
| 0:45.8 | chief, the generals, they all flee, grabbing helicopters from Hakea, the airport at the center |
| 0:51.9 | of the city, and fleeing. So, Jerry, I come to you at this point. |
| 0:56.5 | We begin a crisis at Hakea. |
| 0:59.9 | We need to describe that airfield. |
| 1:01.6 | Where was it? |
| 1:02.6 | And why was it a catastrophe to choose Hakea for an evacuation, Jerry? |
| 1:08.3 | Yeah. |
| 1:08.5 | So the acronym H-K-I-A, H-K-I-A, Hamid Karzai International Airport, often called H-K-K-A. This is an airport in the middle of Kabul, |
| 1:25.2 | and this is the place that the Biden administration had chosen to do its evacuation |
| 1:31.3 | from. |
| 1:32.1 | So we should have chosen Bogram, and the State Department, in fact, was warned even by the |
| 1:40.2 | command sergeant major at Bogram that to do a neo, an evacuation through Kabul airport, would be a |
| 1:49.0 | disaster that it should be done through Bogram. But because of President Biden's decisions, |
| 1:54.1 | we shudder Bogram. We have to do the evacuation through Kabul airport. Well, now when Ghani flees, the Afghan government collapses and the Taliban |
| 2:04.4 | walks into Kabul, now we have to do an evacuation through Kabul airport, but we have to do it |
| 2:10.4 | with the Taliban in charge and with reliance on the Taliban right outside the gates of H. Kaya. And so this we so and keep in mind |
... |
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