are we going to have to shoot our way out? afghanistan has been a tragic story of the united states supporting lead horse don t like us in a country that does matter. i think the best thing we can do is say i had your chance, we are not going to stay there forever and come home. bill: that s not a concession i expected to hear from you. you say in december 2001 we should have left them. what was our mission? kill al qaeda. we went into afghanistan and within 3 months we achieved that objective. al qaeda was down to 200 people and they were in the tora bora mountains. they fled into pakistan. we should have hot pursuited and killed them off. we said here, pakistan, you finds died, you deal with
aid workers and teachers and people who work in hospitals. they will not be protected and i am very concerned that we have sitting ducks this we will leave behind and end up having to shoot our way out and i don t think we owe karzi. we have given him ten years and a trillion dollars and not even counting the american blood and treasure. if we took the money and doled out to every man and woman in afghanistan they would have had 25,000 each. that is incredible. what are you suggesting we should stay longer? no, it is it a done deal. we were right to get after the al-qaeda, but we got rid of al-qaeda in december 2001. we should have left then and followed the remaining al-qaeda over the tora boramountains and killed them off. we stuck around in afghanistan to nation build.
they said i would ruin my career. how are you doing now? okay. with my departure, coincidentally my departure of cnn that s the last time december 2001 that s the last time cnn was number one. up next the king of all cable mr. bill o reilly he s boulder and fresher than ever. find out why he has been number one for 14 consecutive years and counting.
and pakistan. you now have these regional groups, some of which are exp expolicely tied to al qaeda. it may be pushed back, but it s not clear whether he s cooperating. late today lawmakers were expecting an update from intelligence briefings. we re now into the 13th year of the u.s. military operation in afghanistan. but you can be forgiven if you did not realize it. jennifer griffin reports from the pentagon. there s been little recent fanfare surrounding an almost forgotten war. reporter: october 7th, 2001, the united states went to war in afghanistan. congress authorized the use of military force to go after al qaeda and those who harbored terrorists. by december 2001 the taliban had fallen. 12 years later, 54,000 u.s.
yeah. this little boy s world had gone away. my son thomas swift. i remember thinking, that is the emblematic mother. that s the mother of all of us. that moment occurred on our watch, on our air, on live television. it s been ten years and i m still affected by it. it s tuesday morning, 11th day of december, 2001. you are looking at the people gathered outside our studio on a sunny tuesday morning. september 11th, 2001 strikes me as being a normal, tipple cal, late summer day in new york except for one thing. al, it is such a pretty morning. perfect fall morning. i remember if you were going to take a picture of the skyline of new york to lure people, tourists to come to the city to experience it that would be the day you want to take the