STUNNING Testimony - 13 Service Men & Women Murdered in Afghanistan COULD HAVE BEEN SAVED & Biden Admin Refused to Act

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Welcome at his verdict was Senator Ted Cruz ben Ferguson
with you as well, and Senator you and I have
been preparing for this show today. It is, in my opinion,
maybe one of the most important podcasts that we've done together.
And it is under the premise of a headline that
the military could have stopped Afghanistan bomber who killed thirteen

(00:22):
American service members, but they, the military men on the ground,
the women on the ground, could not get authorization to
take out this bomber because the Biden administration basically turned
this into a massive quagmire. That is some shocking testimony
that came out from a man that is lucky to

(00:44):
still be alive who told his story to Congress this week. Well,
that's right. Sergeant Tyler Vargas Andrews testified on Wednesday this
week before the House Foreign Affairs Committee, and I got
to say his testimony was incredibly power It is moving,
it is personal. This man as an American hero, and

(01:07):
what he testified about that the failure of the chain
of command above him, that these thirteen servicemen and women
who were murdered could have been saved, is enormously consequential,
and I gotta tell you right now then, I am
pissed off that after this testimony, there's been virtually zero

(01:29):
coverage of this in the corporate media. They've just completely
ignored it. What you're going to hear right now, you
haven't heard on the six o'clock news, you haven't heard
on cable news. And this testimony is important. One of
the things about this podcast. We cover issues of foreign

(01:49):
policy and national security that much of the corporate media ignores.
And this matters because people's lives were lost because of
the incompetence of the Biden administration. There's no doubt about it.
And this is also emotional testimony. We're going to play
large chunks of this. I will say this on the
front end. Please make sure that you share this podcast

(02:12):
because every American needs to hear this testimony so that
you understand what happened in Afghanistan at that airport when
we were pulling out of Afghanistan, and the lack of
command and leadership from the Biden administration. Now, before we
get into this, I want to clear the deck quickly

(02:32):
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Metals dot com. Senator, this man, as you mentioned a
moment ago as a hero, and you're gonna hear him
talk fast at some points to try to get through

(03:36):
information and then have very long pauses. There were many
times in his testimony that he was crying. If you
hear those long pauses, I just wanted you to know
in context what was going on, and I want you
to hear him tell his story about what it was
like to be at that airport. As they were trying
to find Americans and American allies who had helped us
in that war against terrorists, tens of thousands of people

(03:59):
to send it upon Abbygate. We were looking for anyone
with a blue passport first and foremost people were suffering
from extreme malnutrition, dehydration, heat, casualties and infants were dying.
Afghans were brutalized and tortured by the Taliban, flocked to
us pleading for help. Some Afghans turned away from h
KaiA tried to kill themselves on the razor wire in
front of us that we used as a deterrent. They

(04:22):
thought this was merciful compared to the Taliban torture that
they faced with only shipping. They thought. Countless Afghans were
murdered by the Taliban one hundred and fifty five yards
in front of our position day and night, with only
shipping containers between us. The Taliban would routinely murder people
on our observation at their checkpoint. We communicated the atrocities

(04:44):
to our chain of command and intel assets, but nothing
came of it. The troops on the ground had to
tirelessly work to control the crowds day and night. Department
of State staff and each Kai would completely shut down
processing Afghans every evening and into the morning, leaving ground
forces with a nightmare. They did not work in reasonable
rotations and very much presented an unwillingness to work in
other situations as well. No matter our health or condition,

(05:04):
the marine stood watch and engaged in disorderly, endangerous crowds.
State was not prepared to be in h KaiA. In fact,
State would not want to deal with the Afghans unable
to be processed, weakening the security of the perimeter. State
would take us away from our mission to walk Afghans
out to meet the fate of the Taliban, condemning them
to death. The Taliban grew in numbers and strengthen their
position around ash Kai with gun trucks, while having occasional

(05:25):
visits by Taliban leadership. On August twenty second, an improvised
explosive device IED probe took place down in the canal
running along the perimeter of ah KaiA. This was ISIS
or the Taliban performing an id test run. We reported
this to our chain of command. Days later, we received
word to be on the lookout for two vehicle born
IDs described as a gold or white Corolla and a

(05:46):
green Mazda convertible. Around two am in August twenty sixth,
Intel guys confirmed the suicide bomber in the vicinity of
and nearing Abbey Gate, described as clean shaven, brown dressed,
black vest and traveling with an older companion. I asked
Intel guys why he wasn't apprehended sooner, since we had
a full description. I was told the asset could not
be compromised throughout the entirety of the day. On August twenty,

(06:09):
twenty twenty one, we disseminated the suicide bomber information to
ground Forces Abbeygate. He was spotted somewhere from noon to
one pm by myself, then Sergeant Charles Schilling, and another
the anomaly in the crowd, who was clean shaven and
fit the description exactly, traveling with an older gentleman. The
individuals consistently and nervously looking up at our position through

(06:30):
the crowd. The older of the two wore a black,
silky hit job that was covering his face most of
the time. They both had obvious mannerisms that go along
with who we believed him to be. They handed out
small cards to the crowd periodically, and the older man
sat calmly and seemingly coached the bomber. Over the communication network.
We passed that there was a potential threat and an
idea attack imminent. This was as serious as it could get.

(06:52):
I requested engagement authority. While my team leader was ready
on the M one ten semi automatic sniper system. The
response leadership did not have the engage him an authority
for us do not engage. I requested for the battalion commander,
Lieutenant Colonel Brad Wided to come to the tower to
see what we did. While we waited for him, psychological
operations individuals came to our tower immediately and confirmed the

(07:13):
suspect met the suicide bomber description. He eventually arrived and
we showed him our evidence, the photos we had of
the two men. We reassured him of the ease of
fire on the suicide bomber. Pointedly, we asked him for
engagement authority and permission. We asked him if we could
shoot our battalion commander said, and I quote, I don't
know end quote. Myself and my team later asked, very harshly,
well who does, because this is your responsibility, sir. He

(07:36):
again replied he did not know, but would find out.
We received no update and never got our answer. Eventually,
the individual disappeared. To this day, we believe he was
a suicide bomber. We made everyone on the ground of
where operations had briefly halted but then started again. Plain
and simple, we were ignored. Plain and simple, we were ignored. Senator,

(07:57):
you're an initial reaction to what you just heard. There
are so much about that that is infuriating. Let's start
with the fact that every bit of that was unnecessary.
One of the very first things the Biden administration did
that was utterly incompetent is they abandoned Bagram Airfield. Bagram

(08:20):
Airfield was a secure military base with two world class
runways that had a secure perimeter that was safe that
you could fly people out, that you could do the
vetting with. They abandoned it. They just handed it over
to the Taliban, and so instead they performed the evacuation

(08:40):
through h Kaya. Now, what is h Kai h kayas
is the Hamid Karzai International Airport. It's a commercial airport.
It's it's an ordinary airport right in the middle of Kabul,
right in the middle of a big populated city, surrounded,
not secure, not a military base. The decision to conduct

(09:03):
the evacuation from an unsecure commercial airport rather than a
secure military base was colossally incompetent. It was unjustifiable. The
reason that happened is because the Biden White House put
politics above everyone else and everything else, and so they

(09:26):
ordered the troop draw down before the evacuation was complete.
And so the military told the White House, well, at
the level of troop draw down, you're ordering us to
hit we can't keep Bogram airfield. And the White House
essentially said, we don't care. We picked a number out
of our rear end and we're sticking to that number.

(09:49):
It doesn't matter if that's sufficient manpower to do the
job or not. We got a political endeavor. So you've
got a bunch of incompetent political operatives in the w
White House setting arbitrary political tasks. The result. Look at
the beginning of his testimony, he talks about how as
they were turning away Afghans, and many of these Afghans

(10:10):
may have been interpreters, they may have been people who
gave assistance to our soldiers. And he was talking about
that the Afghans would throw themselves on the razor wire
and try to kill themselves on the razor wire rather
than face torture and murder from the Taliban. That's the

(10:31):
consequence of the utter incomplete incompetence. But then you go forward. Look,
they had the intel that a suicide bomber was coming in.
They had the intel about what the suicide bomber looked like,
They had the intel about what he was wearing, They
had the intel about what his companion was, and they
spotted him. They said, there he is. He's right there.

(10:52):
It exactly fit the intel. And this testimony says that
the Marines said, we can take him out right now.
This is a sniper who is sitting there saying we
can take him out. We know that a suicide bomber
is coming, we know what he looks like. He is
behaving exactly like a suicide bomber. And the utter incompetence

(11:15):
of the Biden administration is that as as you just heard,
we were ignored. They didn't do anything, and and it's
difficult to overstate how much that makes my blood boil.
One of the things that he said was he said
it was the ease of fire. Yes, this was not

(11:37):
a hard shot. They were saying, this is easy. It
is as safe as it can get. It's as clear
of a shot as we can get. If you talk
to people in the military. We're describing it that way.
They were saying, this was a no brainer scenario, and
they just couldn't get somebody to tell them to go
ahead and shoot based on the intel agents, not based

(12:00):
on a hunt hunch this individual. And that I got
to ask you sooner. Going back in his testimony to
another point he made, he said that the Taliban had
done a dry runner. Ices had done a dry run, right.
He also mentioned that they were killing people and they
were doing it almost like they for sport, seeing if

(12:21):
the Americans would respond in or right right in front
of them, right in front of him, and they knew
I think clearly they were trying to figure out how
weak America was at that moment, and they're like, all right, well,
if we kill this guy right here in front of him,
they don't do anything. We really are in control of
this airfield. We really are in control of this other
roadways to this airfield because the Americans are not given

(12:42):
the power to engage. That's exactly right. And look, I
want to convey a story to illustrate because there is
a reason why this happened. And early on in the
Trump administration, I bumped into General Mark Milly. General Milly

(13:05):
now the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. I've
known General Milly since he was a three star general
when he was the commanding general general at Fort Hood
in Texas. And I was talking with General Milly, and
it was the very beginning of the Trump administration, and
he told me, he said, I was asking about the

(13:28):
Islamic State, and the Islamic State, you recall, had seized
land their self declared caliphate, about the size of the
state of Indiana that they had control over. And you'll
recall under Obama we'd been fighting there for a long
time and fighting there and making very little progress, and

(13:49):
fighting there and making little, very little progress. And I
asked General Milly at the beginning of the Trump administration
how things looked, what his assessment was of our prospects
for success for taking out the Islamic State, and his
answer shocked me. He said, we will retake every square inch,

(14:14):
or virtually every square inch of the Islamic State caliphate
in just a few months. And I asked him, I said,
what why? What changed? And he said one thing, And
I wondered. He said one thing. He said, they've delegated

(14:40):
decisions down to the battlefield of when and how to engage.
During the Obama administration, the White House made tactical battlefield decisions.
Susan Rice, who was the National Security Advisor. Soldiers in
the field would joke and they'd call her General Rice

(15:01):
because they were literally determining, you can engage here, you
can engage here, you can engage in this instance, you
can engage in that instance. And it was run out
of the White House by the political operatives in the
White House. What Trump did at the outset as he said,
what does it take to defeat these guys? All right,
you have the authority on the battlefield to engage and

(15:25):
take out the enemy. And simply giving that operational control
down to the battlefield transformed the battlefield. And it turned
out what General Militoby was right that within just a
couple of months from then, every single square inch or
virtually every square inch that the Islamic State had taken
had fallen and they were utterly defeated. And this testimony

(15:50):
shows the consequences. What does it tell us. It tells
us that Biden came in with these same knitwits who
were running the Obama disastrous National Security Council and they
did the same thing. So in this instance, the sergeant testifies,
they say, we've got the suicide bomber. He's in front

(16:10):
of us, he's in our rifle sights. We can take
him out. And his commander says, I don't even know
who'd ask. It's got to be up in the chain.
I don't know if that had to go all the
way to the National Security Council or not. What I
do know is the result was it had gone back
to the same utterly ineffective ability for the war fighters

(16:36):
to engage with the enemy. And in this instance the
consequences were devastating. Not only were they devastating, but you
also mentioned it earlier. This was all decisions made on politics,
and I want to remind people this was about having
a victory lap for the Biden administration. They wanted to

(16:57):
say we got out of nine to eleven, a war
that started because of nine to eleven before the date,
on the anniversary of nine to eleven, that was why
they rushed everybody out of Afghanistan as they wanted a
victory Lapp saying on this anniversary nine eleven, we are
out of America as long as war. And that was
the obsession with that date and not caring about American

(17:20):
carnage or anybody else that helped Americans or innocent and
people in Afghanistan, because that was ultimately the goal they
wanted that press conference. Look, that's exactly right. And and
we've seen if you go back to the Vietnam War,
when when you have war fighting dictated by political operatives
and politicians in Washington, when their mate, when they're micro

(17:43):
managing the engagement with the enemy, the result is that
that servicemen and women die, young men and young women,
young Americans die, And on that tragic day that that
that that's exactly what happened. It's truly sad. I want
to play this second part. It's very emotional and I'll

(18:06):
say it again everybody, this should have been covered by
the media. It is not. Make sure you share this
with everybody you know. Share the podcast on your social media,
whether whether you're on Facebook or Instagram. Share it so
other people hear this. Because this testimony deserves to be heard.
I would argue by all Americans. Before I play the

(18:27):
second part, I do need to tell you a better
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(19:35):
The second part that we're gonna play and you're gonna
hear some pauses, you're gonna hear some tears. This is
a man that is telling his story to the world
for the first time of what happened at that airport
as we were rushing to pull out of Afghanistan, all
because we're trying to hit an arbitrary date for political gain.
Here's the second part of this story. Our expertise was disregarded.

(19:59):
No one was held to count for our safety. About
seventeen thirty, staff Sergeant Darren Hoover, friend and mentor, came
to get me from the tower to go help find
an Afghan interpreter. In the crowd y. We found the

(20:42):
interpreter and his brother born with American passports. They told
us five told us of five family members still in
the canal. I stayed there waiting for the family members,
standing against a two foot canal wall. Ten minutes passed,
then a flash in a massive wave of pressure, I'm

(21:02):
throwing twelve feet onto the ground, but instantly knew what
had happened. I opened my eyes to marines dead or
unconscious lying around me. A crowd of hundreds immediately vanished

(21:36):
in front of me, and my body was catastrophically wounded,
with a one hundred, two hundred and fifty ball bearings
now in it. Almost immediately we started taking fire from
the neighborhood, and I saw how injured I was, with
my right arm completely shredded and unusable. I saw my
lower abdomen soaked in blood. I crawled backwards roughly seven

(22:03):
feet because I thought I was still in harm's away.
My body was overwhelmed from the trauma of the blast.
My abdomen had been ripped open. Every inch of my
exposed body except from my face to ball banks and strapnel.
I tried to get up but could not. Laying there
for a few minutes, I started to lose consciousness when

(22:24):
I heard Chaz, my team leader, screaming my name. As
he ran to me. His voice, his voice calling to
me kept me awake. Thank you. When he got to me,

(22:57):
he dragged me to safety and immediately started triaging me,
tying turnikis on my limbs and doing anything he couldn't
stop the bleeding and start plucking wounds with the help
of the other Marines. I was awake through most of it, screaming,
moaning and cursing. Please ask I ask you to please
ask me about getting shot at the tower and Abby Gate,
and how no one wanted my report post blast, even
NCIS and the FBI failed to interview me. Asked me

(23:19):
to elaborate on my ordeal post blast, and asked me
about the one little girl and her family that I reunited.
Our military members and veterans deserve our best because that
is what we give to America. The withdrawal. The withdrawal
was a catastrophe in my opinion, and there was an
inexcusable lack of accountability and negligence. The eleven Marines, one

(23:43):
sailor and one soldier that were murdered that day have
not been answered for. Thank you for giving me this
opportunity to speak. Sinner. My heart goes out to him
because you can hear the pain, the suffering in the
fact that he says no one wanted to hear my story.

(24:05):
Let me say this, thank you to Sergeant Vargas Andrews. Tyler.
Vargus Andrews is an American hero, and he is a
marine who was horribly failed by his commander in chief.

(24:32):
He's a marine who was horribly failed by the command
shain above him that was ordered to follow political dictates
and to elevate political priorities above protecting the Marines and

(24:55):
the soldiers and sailors and airmen who were there on
the ground risking their I listened to that testimony, you know,
and I got to ask, if you're a producer at
ABC News or NBC News or CBS or CNN or MSNBC,

(25:24):
why didn't you air that testimony? What possibly was happening
on Wednesday that was more important than what Sergeant Vargus
Andrews had to say, What was more important than his
testimony That they knew about the suicide bomber, that they

(25:47):
had him in his sight, that they could have taken
him out, that they could have saved the lives of
those thirteen servicemen and women, and their commanding officers wouldn't
let him do it. I can't imagine a news story

(26:10):
more important than that. And this young man, this American hero,
a hundred to one hundred and fifty ball bearings in
his body, and it all could have been prevented. Number one,
if they'd stayed in Bogram Airfield and dune the evacuation

(26:33):
from a secure military base, it could have been prevented there.
Or number two if they simply allowed warfighters to defend
themselves and to take out the enemy when they're engaging
with him, if they didn't play like they're engaging in
a game of risk, a board game by a bunch

(26:57):
of political neo fights who never put on a uniform
in their lives, but are more than happy to say, well, look,
the headline is what we care about, not how do
you prevent these young men and young women from being

(27:17):
murdered by the terrorists to whom they were in the
process of surrendering too. There's also another question, I say another,
there's quite a few, but the fact that he wasn't
interviewed Senator Yep. The only reason why I can get
get to a process of saying why wouldn't you interview

(27:39):
him because you knew what he was gonna say, and
you didn't want to hear it because you knew how
damning it was. And so therefore he said, no one
interviewed him from the FBI. CI asked, no, No, nobody
interviewed him at all. He was there, he knew who
he knew, He knew who the bomber was. He was
there for the dr run. All of this happens, no

(28:02):
one interviews him. That to me screams cover up. The
administration knew this was a problem, that the Pentagon, the
OJ knew this was a problem, and they said, we
don't want to hear from the people that were there
because we're too afraid of what they're gonna say. Look,
he says, when he asked his superior officer, where do
you get authorization? The answer was, I don't know. What

(28:26):
in the hell are these people doing. If we are
sending marines into combat where they don't even know where
they get authorization to take out a suicide bomber before
that suicide bomber murders them, that's incompetent. But it is

(28:48):
also it's not just that they're bad at it. It's
ideology that is causing that incompetence. You're right, they wanted
to hit the nine to eleven anniversary because you know what,
they're friends in the media. I would say, isn't that great? Look,
Joe Biden had a great political victory, and you know,
from their end, doing it so that people didn't die,

(29:13):
doing it, so that our servicemen and women were protected,
doing it so you didn't have Afghans killing themselves by
throwing themselves on razor wire. None of that rose even
remotely to the level of their political objective of getting
a partisan win. And you know what's also infuriating Ben.

(29:37):
To the best of my knowledge, nobody was fired. There
was no accountability. All of the top brass are still there.
The Secretary of Defense is still there. No one lost
their job. You know. One of the things that that
that that that sergeant, the sergeant testifies too, is that
the State Department wasn't prepared at all handle things at

(30:02):
h Kaya. You know what, the Secretary of State, he
didn't lose his job. Nobody up and down the chain
of command. The only people who paid a price were
the people who were murdered, the people who were horribly injured,
the people who were tortured by the Taliban, They're the
ones that paid the price. But the political operatives all
up and down are still just doing fine and facing

(30:24):
zero accountability. And they know that the corporate media has
no interest in accountability. They have no interest in what
happened that took the lives of those heroic Americans. Final
question for you, Senator, knowing that the Taliban was testing
us in that moment, seeing what they could get away with,

(30:47):
seeing how weak America's foreign policy in real time was becoming,
when they were killing people in essence for sport, just
to basically torture the American soldiers because they realized, wow,
they're really not going to engage age. It wasn't just
a catastrophe that came out of this in Afghanistan. Many
of the world conflicts and problems we're having right now,

(31:08):
I think came out of this man's story because the
rest of the world realized in that moment they can
do whatever the hell they want to do in America
will not stop them. And now that we have this
ball rolling down the hill of a weak America and
others can do what they want, how concerned are you
from a national security standpoint? Enormously concerned. Every enemy of

(31:33):
America saw that disaster. Putin saw it. She saw it,
Iran saw it. North Korea saw it. Venezuela saw it.
Every terrorist cell across the globe, they all saw it,
and all of them came to the same conclusion, which is,
this is a commander in chief, chief who is weak

(31:55):
and incompetent. This is a commander in chief who is
a friend to fight. This is a commander in chief
unwilling to do what it takes even to defend his
own servicemen and women, never mind anyone else. And we're
seeing the consequences of it right now with the war
in Ukraine, the first major land war in Europe since

(32:16):
World War Two. And we're seeing the consequences of it
in the Pacific, with China more and more aggressive and
Taiwan in greater and greater peril. And I'll tell you
I met today with Taiwan's ambassador and I told the ambassador,
I said, look, I think the danger that Taiwan is

(32:38):
in for the next two years of the Biden presidency
is enormous. Because she looked at what happened here and
concluded this president is not strong enough to deter us
from doing anything. Yeah, it is amazing how something like
this can turn into such a big your conflict around

(33:01):
the world. And this is again one of those moments.
I'll say it. I'll ask you make sure people hear
this man's story. He's a hero, and make sure you
share this podcast with your family and friends. Finally, I
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for life, and you can cancel anytime. Choq dot com
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with you. This is one of those shows. As we said,
the beginning so important. I hope people will remember this
man's story and let everybody hear it. We'll see you
back here in a couple of days.