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Hey, everybody.

As I record this, it's Friday, August 27th, 2021.

Today's podcast is a conversation with Ben Rhodes, who is Deputy National Security Advisor

for President Obama, and we talk about Afghanistan, of course, our 20-year war on terror,

where we took our eye off the ball in our foreign policy and ignored things like climate

and China and democracy, all to our and to the world's detriment.

Then yesterday, the terrorist attack at the Kabul Airport, leaving a lot of people dead,

including 13 American servicemen.

As I say, this podcast is like the daily, without the resources of the New York Times, and

that's a joke.

It's just me and Peter, and we have the very talented Roselia Engineering in New York with

us today here.

We recorded with Ben Rhodes on Wednesday before the attack.

Ben Warren's about the possibility of that attack in our conversation.

This is just another very sad day in this war, a very tragic exit.

Ben and I discuss the various miscalculations and intelligence failures that led to the

chaos we've seen in Kabul.

I, of course, was a US Senator from 2009 to 2018 and 2009, as we were ramping up the surge

in Afghanistan.

I went with Michigan Senator Carl Levin, Carl, who was a great senator.

...