Jerry Dunleavy: The Truth About the US Withdrawal From Afghanistan and the Formation of a CCP–Taliban Partnership
American Thought Leaders
The Epoch Times
4.9 • 1.2K Ratings
🗓️ 5 October 2023
⏱️ 55 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
“Bagram Air Base had prisons there that were filled with thousands of ISIS-K fighters, as well as dozens of members of al-Qaeda, and thousands of Taliban fighters as well. And the United States abandoned Bagram on July 21.”
In April 2021, President Joe Biden announced that in five months, on the 20th anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks, U.S. troops would completely withdraw from Afghanistan. By the end of August, the Taliban was back in charge.
“What happened in Afghanistan did not stay in Afghanistan, and the world became a more dangerous place,” says investigative journalist Jerry Dunleavy. He is co-author of the new book “Kabul: The Untold Story of Biden’s Fiasco and the American Warriors Who Fought to the End.”
“You heard President Biden and many people around him continually saying throughout 2021 that the Afghan military was 300,000 strong, and that they could obviously therefore fight off a smaller Taliban force,” says Mr. Dunleavy. “This 300,000 figure was a complete fiction and was well known to be a fiction at the time.
Mr. Dunleavy and I discuss President Biden’s decision-making process with regard to the Afghanistan withdrawal, the other players involved, and why the media has, for the most part, lost interest in the story.
“The Biden administration is not going to hold themselves accountable, obviously. Most of the mainstream media has no interest in holding Biden accountable. And so, the book is an effort at doing that—at holding Biden accountable for this disaster,” says Mr. Dunleavy.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Bagram Air Base had prisons there that were filled with thousands of ISIS-K fighters as |
| 0:06.6 | well as dozens of members of al-Qaeda and thousands of Taliban fighters as well, and the |
| 0:11.3 | United States abandoned Bagram on July 21. |
| 0:14.9 | In April of 2021, President Biden announced that in five months on the 20th anniversary |
| 0:20.7 | of the September 11th attacks, U.S. troops would completely withdraw from Afghanistan. |
| 0:26.8 | What happened in Afghanistan did not stay in Afghanistan, and the world became a more dangerous place. |
| 0:32.4 | Investigative journalist Jerry Dunlivi is the co-author of the new book, Kabul, the untold |
| 0:37.8 | story of Biden's fiasco and the American warriors who fought to the end. |
| 0:42.1 | You heard President Biden and many people around him continually saying that the Afghan military |
| 0:46.6 | was 300,000 strong, just 300,000 figure was a complete fiction. |
| 0:51.8 | This is American Thought Leaders, and I'm Janie Kellek. |
| 0:57.0 | Jerry Dunlivi, such a pleasure to have you on American Thought Leaders. |
| 1:00.4 | Thank you for having me, appreciate it. |
| 1:02.4 | Well, you know, I'm familiar with you, of course, from years ago, I can't even remember what |
| 1:08.2 | year it was, but sometime around, you know, 2016, 2017, there were very, very few people |
| 1:14.4 | reporting on what's now known as Rushagate, some of us called it Spygate back in the day, |
| 1:20.0 | and you were one of them. |
| 1:21.0 | So I just want to, you know, tip my hat to someone who, you know, saw some very strange |
| 1:27.5 | things going on and wasn't credulous to the so-called mainstream narrative at the time |
| 1:32.3 | around Trump-Russia collusion. |
| 1:34.5 | Yeah, I mean, you know, I spent a few years there as a reporter at the Washington Examiner |
| 1:40.5 | where I was writing about this ridiculous and now obviously completely discredited steel |
... |
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