You're listening to software, radio, special operations, military news, and straight talk with the guys in the community.

Hello again, everyone. Welcome back to software, radio. I'm your host, this afternoon, Steve Ballastrier. He's software, radio on time on target. We have a very special guest with us this afternoon. Chris Wallace, everyone knows him from Fox News Sunday show.

He's written a new book, Countdown Bin Laden, the untold story of the 247 day hunt to bring the mastermind of 911 to justice. Chris, welcome to the podcast. We really appreciate you taking the time today.

Well, I'm really delighted to be with you and having written this book, Countdown Bin Laden, and obviously seal team six plays a big role in it.

I am and I spend a lot of time talking to Admiral McRaven and to a couple of the members of the team that rated the compound in a bout about Will Chesney and especially Rob O'Neill.

I'm delighted to be talking to you and to your audience.

Well, we really appreciate it. You know, it's funny because I know that, you know, you had written the book to be released on the, you know, around the 20th anniversary of 911.

You know, and then with all the fiasco would happen the last few weeks and how everything kind of fell apart with our withdrawal from there.

You know, the thing that stands out about this book is now this shows how things are supposed to be done.

How when everyone works together and, you know, all the pieces have put together, this is how it should be.

I couldn't agree more, you know, I absolutely wrote the book and telling it to come out of the 20th anniversary of 911.

It never occurred to me that the thugs, the killers that were in charge of Afghanistan on 9 11 2001 are back in charge of Afghanistan on 9 11 2021.

And, you know, it made me think about this book, which is a celebration and an account of what happened and how we took down Ben Laden.

It made me think about how does that fit into the war, particularly with the end. And I think I came away with two thoughts.

First of all, that, you know, for all the feelings that I'm sure a lot of your, your listeners are, you know, are mad or frustrated about how it's all ended.

The fact is that, that we did accomplish our prime mission in Afghanistan didn't do everything.

But, you know, why did we go in in the first place? We went in there to get Ben Laden to to capitate al-Qaeda and to protect the homeland from another terror attack on Afghanistan.

And we accomplished all of those things and protected the homeland from terror in Afghanistan for 20 years.

And then the second point, which is exactly what you're saying, if the last month has been a case study of just everything being miss handled both from a political side, an intel side and a military side, not necessarily the performance of the military.

But the position they were put in and what they had to do, the Ben Laden mission is exactly the opposite.

It's a case study of the intel community being absolutely, you know, just so persistent.

So, just sticking to the mission and going through one dead end after another until I found this compound at a bottom, the political community, I think doing really an excellent job of considering all the options, all the risks and coming to a really thoughtful and considered and meticulous conclusion.

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