so senator shotz being out for covid, there is no proxy system for him to do so. right, the united states has taken no recognition of the pandemic. getting them to work things out, we saw today, is quite difficult. they cannot force all these people into the same room to vote. they re only a large, powerful, collective group of lots of octegenarians. why would they need to take notice of this particular respiratory illness? i think we could go on and on with the oddities of the united states senate. in fact, orenstein is here and that s exactly what we re going
was going to happen. okay. that s an honest mistake. still a huge mistake. people make judgments in the military, they ought to be relieved of their post. leaving bagram air force base will be remembered in history. if you do nothing about it, you leave these people in place, we all agreed. really, it was a terrible mistake. releasing money to the taliban will add insult to injury. it will be terrible for the memory of the 13 soldiers who died in the end who were the final soldiers to die in this war if you end up giving money to the people that have been ruining the middle east and afghanistan for decades. hope you won t release the money. ily it will be a big mistake. thank you. i understand senator shotz is with us virtually. before senator shotz, i ll ask
0 i wish general austin were here. secretary austin could answer many of the questions that were proposed. but this was not a choice between either a dangerous escalation of the war, which has just been laid out, or a precipitous chaotic withdrawal that embarrassed us around the globe. to say that it was not a sign of weakness the way we left. i mean, i don t know who you re talking to. but if you re talking to our allies in nato, they would say it was a sign of weakness. if you re talking honestly to our adversaries, they will certainly say it is a sign of weakness, as will terrorist groups around the world. so i hope the lesson we learned here isn t that this was the right way to leave. hopefully, the lesson we learned here is there was a better way to leave. if the decision was made to pull out, it should not have been a precipitous chaotic and, unfortunately, deadly departure. this afternoon i will be speaking on the floor about max scobiak. he was one of 13 american soldiers, sail