from 50 cent. hate a liar more than i hate a thief. a thieves only after my salary, a liar is after my reality. that s the last word. thanks for watching our special. see you tomorrow night at 6:00 p.m. eastern on the beat. this program includes violent and disturbing content. viewer discretion is advised. where is an agreement that said we have to stay in the middle east for the rest of humanity? for the rest ofsivization? never said that. we never agreed to protect the kurds. we ve worked with them for 3 1/2, 4 years. we never agreed to protect the kurds for the rest of their lives.
along the iran/iraq border were destroyed. reporter: the united states condemned the atrocities but continued to help saddam even as the massacres continued. the kurds had been betrayed. but they gave america another chance. in 1991, president george herbert walker bush invaded iraq. saddam hussein started this cruel war. tonight the battle has been joined. reporter: but president bush did not want to send american troops all the way to baghdad, fearing they would get stuck there. instead, he called on saddam s people to bring down the dictator. after the gulf war in 1991, president george h.w. bush called on the kurds to rise up against the dictator, saddam hussein. they rose up. when saddam counterattacked with helicopter gunships, we left them to be slaughtered.
speaks for itself here in terms of that. it certainly didn t seem to be an effective approach. reporter: even president trump s most vocal supporters were now shouting betrayal. wipe out the kurds? are you kidding me? again we re abandoning our most loyal allies on do all our fighting, all we disarm them and they did all the work, now we say good luck, good luck surviving. reporter: the kurds were not surviving. they were dying in the hundreds. while american troops were nearby, but on strict orders to stand down, not to intervene, not to help their allies. the reason the kurds chose the americans time and time again was because they trusted us. it makes it very difficult for those who have served here to watch this occur. it doesn t seem very honorable to me to step away from your partners and then to allow some of this to happen.
and our ability to do that has been dmiminished. so, too, has america s reputation. they stayed, but the self-run kurdish enclave she hoped to build is gone. and so is is trust among the kurds. the american allies now left living with the consequences of an american betrayal. i m just wondering what is america doing. they left us to the death. we are dying here. but nobody cares. if you were us, what would you do? my people is getting slaughtered. the children are getting killed. i don t know what to say.
but it all came apart with one phone call between presidents erdogan and trump. it s dead, it s gone. the experiment in self-government was destroyed when turkey started bombing and invading. the u.s. has few friends in the world. the syrian kurds are our allies and our friends. we recruited them to fight against isis. you don t recruit a people, get them to fight your battle, then throw them under the bus. it was truly obscene, what trump did to them. the kurds, who are our friends, and turkey s our friend. sometimes you have to let them fight. like two kids in a lot, you got to let them fight, then you pull them apart. people feel stabbed in the back, basically. because the turkish state has been given green light to attack the region, to occupy it, to possibly ethnically cleanse it, and to commit atrocities. reporter: if you think the fate of the kurds is just their problem, think again.