I'm John Batchel with Jerry Dunlevy and James Hassan, the author of Anew book Cabell,

The Untold Story of Biden's Fiasco.

James, I come to you because you've spoken of Maghram, and my understanding is that it was

perfectly designed to do what you said, to hold the

country together. It's either 40 kilometers or 40 miles outside of Baghdad, outside of

Kabul, which would have been perfect for the operation of evacuation. It also had all of the

facilities to hold itself with troops. And airbase also was a listening

post on China. It was magnificently well placed. All of that is true. In doubts raised about leaving

Baumgren behind, the president and his counselors, Mr. Blinken, Mr. Sullivan, the National Security,

we're always mentioning 300,000 troops. You and Jerry make 300,000 a little song that they sing for several

chapters. What were they talking about, Steve, James? Yeah, it's a great question. I'm really glad that

you asked it, because I think this is an underrated aspect of the Biden administration's decision to withdraw, how they withdrew, and also how they sold it to the American people.

As you mentioned, they repeatedly throughout the spring of 2021 and even throughout the summer,

after President Biden announced that we were going to withdraw all troops. They repeatedly claimed that the Afghan military was 300,000 strong.

And President Biden at one point said, and I believe this was in his April 2021 speech announcing

the withdrawal from Afghanistan, claimed that they were therefore almost as strong as

as any, you know, first world country military.

And they used this talking point to sell the idea that they could leave and the Afghan military

could simply, you know, carry on.

And that that 300,000 figure is just simply false for several reasons.

First, the number that their calculation included local police, border police, and all kinds of other,

you know, semi-paramilitary units, which is absurd because if you think about it, I mean,

...