back, and i don t think the american people are of a mind to send troops back. from your experience in the white house, i mean, how does a president get information i mean, biden, you know, a month ago, was saying he doesn t think the country s going to fall so quickly that they are going to take over. clearly, i guess, that was base on information he had been given on the capabilities of the the army from intelligence sources or from the military. how does a president get information that is that s just turns out to be wrong? well, look. i think, first of all, we are going to get the answer to that question because it seems clear that, both, republicans and democrats in congress are eager to find out the answer to that question. and they should, because if the intelligence was really deficient, that s a big concern. you make life-and-death decisions, based on that intelligence. so what went wrong? the other thing, anderson, is the president said today, we re going to continu
david, what do you make of president biden s speech today? did he do enough to take responsibility? how do you think it played? i thought the part of the speech the bulk of the speech, in which he made the case for why we had to leave afghanistan was very powerful and very compelling. and it was familiar to me because i i heard biden make similar arguments 12 years ago when president obama was formulating his policy. but i do think, anderson, he could have done more to take responsibility for what is was manifestly a failure. everyone is watching these horrific images on the screen. and and everyone remembers what what the assurances that he gave the country, back in april. and i think there is nothing wrong with saying we got that wrong, and i own it. you know? john f. kennedy, after the bay of pigs, said victory has a thousand fathers and defeat is an orphan, and i am the
afghanistan s civil war? when afghan troops will not. how many more lives, american lives, is it worth? how many endless rows of headstones at arlington national cemetery? the president, also, spoke to the mess we are seeing now, saying the buck stops with him. he had less to say, though, about precisely how the administration got things so wrong. just six weeks ago, you will recall, president biden called the taliban takeover of the entire country, quote, highly unlikely. we will talk more, shortly, about how in the space of just a few days, unlikely became inevitable. first, cnn s clarissa ward with the latest from kabul. clarissa, where do things stand right now with the evacuation of u.s. and allied personnel? so, basically, what we re hearing is that hundreds of u.s. personnel from the embassy have been moved, via helicopter, to the airport. evacuations have been going on, pretty much, nonstop.
responsible officer of government for you know, so he took full responsibility. actually, benefitted from that. but clearly, things went wrong. and he kind of glossed over that, today, and i think he made a mistake doing that. i think people would have accepted, if he had said, yeah, we got this wrong. we got to find out why but mostly what we have to do, now, is make up time that we lost here. you know, you worked, obviously, in the obama administration. president obama, with iraq, sent troops back in. which was not very popular among certainly, among a lot of the president s supporters, at at the time. joe biden was vice president from there. and do you see any potential for a similar repeat? because i mean, as you said, joe biden was, then, as vice president, i assume, he wasn t for sending troops back in? well, look. the policy had drifted for seven
afghans and their families. who have sacrificed themselves and helped the americans, over these last 20 years. that seems hard to imagine. well, they certainly made clear that they had made mistakes and they weren t prepared. it s interesting to read some of the stories that the taliban um were prepared. they, clearly, were bribing, intimidating, and inducing officials in the central government and in the provincial governments. to take this thing down much faster than we realized. that s an intelligence failure. um, why and how it happened, i don t really know. but um i do get the sense, in from what the president said today, anderson, that they re going to put whatever troops they need in there. i think there is an understanding with the taliban um you lay a finger on anyone at the airport and you will pay a heavy price. i think the taliban don t want to do that. and so, i hope that we ve seen the worst of it. um, again, the worst was not