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Frankly, that seems to be the problem.

Welcome to Angry Planet.

Hello.

Hello and

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Hello and welcome'm Matthew Gault. The facts on the ground are

the facts on the ground are undeniable. The US is out, the Taliban is back in. The end was ugly and there were plenty of ugly spots along the way.

So we're all doing what ifs, and here's ours. What would the off-ramp have looked like and did we ever at least

have our turn signal on? Joining us today is a guy who was in the room. Former diplomat Frank Wagero dealt directly with the

Taliban as well as managing US relations with Pakistan and Afghanistan.

And that's between the years 2010 to 2012, Hillary Clinton gave him the State

Department's Distinguished Honor Award Award.

Frank, thank you so much for joining us.

Thank you. Can you just describe your role and the situation while you were doing it?

Sure, I had two roles related to Afghanistan.

The first one was I was the senior US civilian in

southern Afghanistan from the summer of 2009 through the summer of 2010. So that's

when the Obama administration surged military forces into the

South, primarily Helmand and Kandahar provinces, to initiate a counterinsurgency strategy.

I left that job and came back and was Richard Holbrook,

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