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tv   Andrea Mitchell Reports  MSNBC  August 20, 2021 9:00am-10:00am PDT

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good day. this is "andrea mitchell reports" in washington, where president biden will be delivering his first speech on the chaotic afghanistan evacuation since monday when he defended the u.s. withdrawal and blamed the afghan army and government for the taliban's rapid takeover. this morning mr. biden has been meeting with his national security cabinet amidst tough questions about the state department's role after a cable revealed u.s. diplomats in kabul had warned in july about the taliban's rapid advance. the state department issuing a warning about the dangers of getting to the kabul airport and still has no way to get them there. despite assurances from the national security adviser to lester holt on "nightly news". >> i just want to be clear. are you saying that any american in afghanistan right now who wants to leave, that their government will not leave them behind? >> we will get any american who wants to get to the airport and who we get in contact with who
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says i want to get out and get on a plane, we will make that happen. >> nato allies holding an emergency session today about the rapidly deteriorating situation for allied troops and diplomats on the ground. >> we discussed our approach to those in power in kabul. the eyes of the world are on afghanistan. we expect the taliban to uphold their commitments and assure that afghans -- that afghanistan does not again become a safe haven for international terrorism. >> and today my interview with the parents of a brave young foreign service officer killed by a taliban ied just outside the afghan capital in 2018 while working to give afghan children a chance for a better future. >> i think a lot about all of the different work that ann was doing especially with afghan women. >> she was reading books to the children when this terrible thing happened. >> she knew that that was the
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key, to educate the children of afghanistan. >> joining me now nbc national security correspondent courtney kube and kelly o'donnell and associated press former nato supreme allied commander and i want to begin with nbc chief foreign correspondent richard engel's reporting on the anguish of the evacuees leaving their homeland for refuge abroad. >> inside the base, afghans are processed to departur and that's where we met gina abawa an afghan-american from virginia. she moved back to teach six years ago when it was much safer. >> it was a dream come true for me. i had a house by the mountains and i just cannot imagine leaving, but unfortunately, it's time to go. so you left obviously the house. >> everything. everything. everything.
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a small little suitcase with my laptop and that's it. >> she's bringing 25 members of her extended family. she doesn't want to leave. >> you were just looking up at the afghan flag. >> i don't know how much longer it's going to be there, but this is really sad. i don't know if i'll be back. i'm hoping, but i don't know that i'll ever be back. >> eventually the c-17 arrives and taxis into position for boarding. for gina, it sinks in. this is it. these are moments that change the trajectories of families for generations. >> extraordinary. courtney, let's talk about the rescue operation for afghan partners. it's been a debacle. we've been reporting that, you've been reporting that. are they doing any better getting people to the airport and you've been reporting that there's been a holdup at the airport itself on flights. >> yeah. that's right. so there have not been any evacuation flights in hour,
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andrea, and what we've been talking about all week are the various places where there's been bottlenecks that have stopped the evacuation effort. so for much of the week there have been issues where there's checkpoints outside the airport. the taliban are stopping people, american, afghans from getting through the checkpoints. they worked through those issues and they have an agreement with the taliban to let the americans through and that's a hit or miss issue still getting them through the checkpoints and then they had a bottleneck when they got to the airport trying to get them through the gates and the u.s. opened two additional gates yesterday. more afghans and americans have been able to get through and the next bottleneck was getting them processed and manifested on to flights. that issue has also been worked out in the last 24 hours and now we're on to the next problem and that is they have the airlift to get people out of kabul, out of the airport there, but the issue is where are they going to take them. so thousands of people,
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americans, afghans and other country and nato allies and third-country nationals have been taken from kabul airport in the last couple of days and many of them have gone to qatar, to do that, and they can only accept so many people there before it frankly is full. so now the u.s. is scrambling to find new locations to send them according to some u.s. officials those include places obviously outside qatar and they're looking at locations in europe and they're looking at other locations there in the u.s. central command region. this is just the next in a string of logistical hurdles. when you're talking about a non-combatant evacuation like they're looking at here with tens of thousands of people potentially taken out of kabul in a very short period of time, they are meeting logistical hurdle after hurdle. so this is the latest one. right now it's not getting the people there, but it's finding a place to take them on these aircraft, andrea. >> courtney, you and i are
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hearing from source at the state about kuwait and other countries, the stans and nothing seems to have materialized in those countries. >> it's been months. >> you well know that it's been months that they've been negotiating to find a place to take -- it started out as locations to take the siv candidates as they were going through the processing. now we're talking a much bigger pool. it's the special immigrant visa candidates. it's people eligible for the new p-2 visas and people who are just in trouble, afghans who are in trouble in the last 24, 48 hours we've heard this new urgency from people, president biden, general milley the chairman of the joint chiefs and secretary to get the people out who may be in danger. president biden spoke about women and kids. not all of these people may be eligible for the siv candidate and now it's an even bigger problem and an even bigger
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logistical hurdle that they need thousands of people. fort mccoy and fort bliss, two u.s. military bases that may be able to accommodate up to 22,000 people, but at this point, no one has been brought here. it underscores what an enormous logistical undertaking this has been in a very short period of time, andrea. >> and that's one of the questions the short happens of the times since there were plenty of warnings, apparently as we now know the state department was warned a month ago before they started accelerating, they said these siv visas, and the people in the p-2 program, courtney and to the rest of you, those people have to wait as long as 14 months, 14 months for approval to get in to the u.s. so they have to be refugees somewhere. admiral stavridis, what's your
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analysis as you see the nato meeting just today? >> my sources, andrea, are saying the europeans are going to step up and take in tens of thousands of refugees. i was on a call earlier with a canadian. i think canada will take 20,000+, and i think we will see a sense of obligation given the deep involvement of nato for 20 years, and i think back on the four years i commanded the mission as supreme allied commander. really, there is a deep and abiding sense of obligation among these nations, and so this is where the u.s. can play a powerful role by reaching out to our allies. they are a little short with us right now because we did not consult very effectively and going into this crisis, but now is the time to get an all hands on deck effort to try and deal
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with this humanitarian crisis that's unfolding in front of our eyes. >> in fact, the allies and the nato allies from my observation and my reporting have been really stand up on all of this, as you know very well. it was the one and only article 5 where they came to our rescue the day after 9/11 they immediately voted to come and go to afghanistan whenever they did deploy and they did very quickly and have been there throughout and were not happy at how quickly bagram was shout down. how quickly this announcement was made without real consultation and this mirrored, ironically, mirrored exactly how unhappy they were with donald trump after the withdrawal from syria with general mattis. >> indeed. we have work to do coming out of this in a number of different dimensions. first, we have to get through the tactical problem that
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courtney described very well. the problem is not getting people out of the airport. the problem is getting people into the airport. we've got to negotiate that with the taliban as distasteful as that may be to us. that's the tactical problem. next, operationally, we have to figure out how to reset intelligence gathering in afghanistan when all of our troops are gone. how are we going to know whether or not taliban 2.0 is rejoining al qaeda and thirdly, andrea, to your point, strategically, we have got to rebuild some bridges with the allies that aren't broken, but they're certainly feeling the stress and the strain right now. we'll be stronger together dealing with all of these problems. >> kelly, you know, the president in brussels was declaring america is back and reassuring them that this was different than the trump administration, but in this operation it has not been that different. and he's been very defensive. i don't know whether we'll hear
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a different tone from him today. >> there are enormous challenges for this president. this is a crisis largely of his own making by virtue of being the commander in chief and the decision making power and it comes at a time when the covid crisis is still dominant for his still young administration and they're still trying to deal with the domestic agenda of trying to pass significant legislation. all of that happening at the same time, and this is where the power of the presidency comes with all of the burdens. today we expect to hear from the president. the schedule says that will be at 1:00. he will not be going to wilmington as had been planned. the president will remain at the white house. so that is a notable change. we were not given a reason for why that change is taking place, but obviously one assumption could be that he will remain focused on these critical decisions and issues that need to be dealt with now. in talking with white house officials about some of the things the general just referred to about those other locations
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that could receive some of these evacuees and refugees from afghanistan. the white house is saying it's unable to discuss this at this point. perhaps that is part of what will go into the president's remarks today. we know that he's been working the phones with some of his counterparts in recent days so those relationships are being brought to the bear. the white house is saying part of what the president will talk about is getting americans out. it's important to pin the out that although the president said they will do whatever it taking to get americans out there and there's been no change to the august 31st troop withdrawal deadline. as we understand the pentagon is still operating with that as the timeframe. in talking to officials americans need to move to the airport, and americans would have an end point than the afghan evacuees that courtney was talking about and the difficulty in placing them, but there is an urgency about
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getting it done now and the question is will the president make any changes to the footprint of u.s. forces and that critical date. andrea? >> jonathan lemire, vladimir putin saying that there will be recognition that rushal to prove that they are not going to abuse human rights and return to the tough sharia law, the islamic sharia law of the 1990s. >> yeah. that was one of the real warnings given from washington to kabul saying that if you don't behave we won't give you international recognition and we'll lean on our allies to do the same and that's been undermined by the signals of beijing and moscow and it comes
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on "the washington journal," that putin in geneva and putin made clear he wasn't in favor of it to move american troops out of there. white house officials are still going to defend this decision. there doesn't seem to be, at least according to our reporting much in the way of a change extending the deadline slightly and we have seen a bit of a surge there, and more troops there, 7,000 american troops deployed to the region and help evacuations of afghan allies and biden is not going have a sudden change of heart about the overall policy and it points to his -- his aides point to poland and most americans do want the u.s. presence in afghanistan to end and this so-called endless for and they're ready for it and they come to the conclusion to bring those troops home and officials are hopeful that it is a humanitarian crisis and a political crisis and they hope
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they can weather the storm and they hope it will pass in a few weeks. we'll hear from the president today and we'll hear if his tone is different and expect likely more at least somewhat defense of what he's done and bring to an end this conflict and something he's wanted as you well know, andrea, for more than a decade. >> admiral, despite the assurances that they can do the intelligence with over the horizon, without bagram and without being on the ground, how hard is it going to be to prevent terrorist groups from regrouping and embedding in afghanistan and being harbored there? >> yeah. it's not mission impossible, but it is certainly mission very, very hard. you will be able to do a fair amount, long-range drone surveillance and the overhead satellite and i will bet the cia will figure out a way to keep some a tenuous, human connections there and we'll rely on allies and partners for reporting, those who choose to
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stay. we can construct a rough picture, but it won't remotely have the kind of granularity that we've enjoyed over the last couple of decades, andrea. so danger ahead. >> wow. -- it's just a -- it is just a devastating situation. i hate to five days later be reporting it in the same way for all of us this has been a really very difficult time to watch our friends, our allies being stranded this way and with the state department putting out notices of warnings last night, find your way to the airport, but we don't know how you can do it safely. thanks very much, of course, admiral stavridis, kelly o'donnell and courtney kube. powerless? the slowdown making it so hard for lawmakers to get their constituents and allies out of afghanistan especially the veterans caucus and congressman
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for the thousands of americans and afghans trying to get out of kabul, the red tape is making an already bad situation worse and we know no military flights will be willing to take off for hours according to courtney kube. so why wasn't the biden administration prepared to get
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people out as u.s. forces were withdrawing. on july 14th, diplomats in kabul warned about the possibility of a taliban takeover. they said a dissent cable, a very special form of communication to the secretary of state tony blinken urging the state department to start airlifting people out then. a source familiar to nbc news. jimmy panetta who served in afghanistan as an intelligence officer in the u.s. navy reserve. thanks so much for being with us. this dissent communication, you know how important that is and it goes directly to the secretary has to be read at the highest levels and it is a rare communication with diplomats on the field, very privileged and it's sacred within the state department culture that they have that ability to communicate especially in an emergency, and it's not clear what was done, the state department says they started cutting red tape, but you guys authorized the cutting of red tape with the defense
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supplemental appropriation back in july. >> yes. first of all, thanks for having me, andrea. these are definitely going to be questions that we're going to be asking in our capacity in the united states congress especially when it comes to the oversight and the hearings that we've already demanded in the congress and in the senate on the foreign affairs committee and the armed services committee. you hope that these types of cables are read and taken into account and these types of decisions is a balancing act between politics and policy. we're going to find out exactly what outweighed what in our determination coming up here and the type of hearings at this point. what are your concerns and what are you hearing from people who may be translators for you and afghan colleagues in what they're experiencing in trying to get out? >> in my decisions in the group you mentioned and the four-country caucus, a group of veterans who obviously served in
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the military, now serve in congress, equal number of democrats and republicans, our concern is making sure we leave no one behind. obviously, that starts with americans and of course, the people we promised -- made promises to work with us and trusted our lives with them and the interpreters and make sure that we uphold those promises and uphold our obligation to them to get them and family members out of that country. so we'll be sending a letter to the president, to the administration, making sure that we uphold our obligations and leave nobody behind. in regards to those on the ground, obviously, we're hearing from a number of constituents who have family members there, who are sib recipients and the special immigrant visa recipients and family members and we're trying to do everything we can to make sure the administration is accountable to them and us to. it's very difficult when they only give us one email address to go to in order to provide
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them the information about the people on the ground. it's very difficult. it's very frustrating, but at this point we need to make sure that that process is working. unfortunately, as you're hearing there are no flights that are leaving in the last few hours, but on top of that, as the admiral said in your previous segment, how are we getting these people to the airport? where are the plans for this? and these are all questions that need to be answered. >> the secretary of defense said just yesterday, i believe, that we can't do that. we don't have the capacity to get them to the airport from inside kabul and we don't have the capacity to go out in the country to get them to the capital. they can't get past taliban checkpoints and the state department warned them that it was very, very dangerous. last night we told them get to the airport and no longer saying shelter in place. so many mixed messages and we rolled back for just a moment. you said there was one email for you and all your colleagues to try to reach -- >> that's correct. >> one email and one channel for all of these people that were
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trying to get out. >> that's correct. early on we were provided with an email address to the state department saying contact this email. i contacted all levels of seniority and they all received that email. this is all about inadequacy right now and therefore we are continuing to work all angles and i'm glad to say we got one family out of afghanistan within the last few days. they are now in qatar, but that's not good enough. we need to make sure we get all of them out of there and make sure that our state department and this administration, like i said, lives up to that moral responsibility that they have. so we will continue to push the administration to do that. we have to. >> the president in his remarks monday blamed the afghan security forces for caving in and of course, the government for fleeing. what's your feeling about the afghan forces and whether or not
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they're good fighters and switching sides. >> look. it's easy to reduce the last two decades to one week based on the horrifying pictures that we're seeing coming out of afghanistan and we have to be reminded that they were close to 75,000 afghan military members that gave their lives. so there was some fight in them. obviously, we provided them the capacity to do that, and once we left and once they saw other parts of their countries falling that's when they walked away. they disappeared and their government disappeared and these are things we would have loved to have information about and you talked about that intelligence cable and more importantly, we have to know what were the plans in place to deal with this contingency? look, we had a plan to withdraw. speed is safety and they lived up to that, but what were the
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plans in place for when the afghan military and afghan government went away? where were our plans and where was the diplomatic plan and where was our economic plan and where was our humanitarian plan? those are all questions that we will be asking and they need to be answered. >> congressman jimmy panetta from the central valley of california. thank you so very much. >> thank you. >> i really appreciate it. >> the nation's largest labor federation has elected the first woman president. liz shuler will lead the aflcio and she served as treasurer for richard trumka. and a shot in the arm, what is getting more people to get a shot in the state that's seen covid cases and deaths and where vaccine rates have been consistently low. this is "andrea mitchell reports" on msnbc.
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breaking news from the white house announcing 200 million americans have received at least one dose of the covid vaccine. this as hundreds of thousands of covid breakthrough cases have americans on edge and now three vaccinated u.s. senators richard wicker -- john hickenlooper and angus king are revealing they've all tested positive. in florida, infections are
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skyrocketing reaching nearly 3 million in total confirmed cases today. nbc news correspondent sam brock joins us from hollywood, florida. 15,000 new infections in florida thursday. is the governor going to do anything to stop this surge? what governor desantis has done is the efficacy of monoclonal antibody treatment which is great if you catch the disease early enough, but it is not a replacement for the vaccine, and the state right now is in despair. we will cross 3 million cases of covid that will happen any moment. on top of that, the state of florida in terms of average deaths has more deaths than california, texas and new york combined and the 17,000+ covid patients that have been hospitalized in florida with 160% of where we were at last summer's peak, the stress that that has done has created staffing shortages which has
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devastated healthcare systems. three out of the four hospitals in the state, andrea, expect to be within seven days. we talked to the head of emergency medicine here for this particular health care system memorial to find out how physicians are feeling about the vaccinated then going and seeking treatment. >> the people that refuse to get vaccinated clearly create a challenge for us emotionally. it's tough for some of us to take care of the patients that don't want to get vaccinated and they're willing to receive all types of experimental treatment and still unwilling to get vaccinated is extremely vaccinated. >> clark allen was an 84-year-old man from florida. he was vaccinated and survived according to "the washington post" multiple car accidents, and pulmonary disease and he still died from covid and his kids in his obituary pleaded with people to get vaccinated because he chose not to and that
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was the tragic upshot. andrea? >> that is just so awful, sam. thank you very much. the delta variant is spreading like wildfire in mississippi. one of the least vaccinated states in the nation. hospital workers are exhausted, angry and in tears amid a fourth covid wave as the delta variant continues to spread. roger wicker, my apologies -- the senator is one of those. he was vaccinated and he has a breakthrough case. nbc news correspondent ellison barber join us. they changed their minds after getting covid. >> we talked to two local politicians, andrea. one of them a republican and the other a democrat. they really do not have a whole lot in common, politically could want be more opposite and they live in different parts of the state. they do not know each other and when it comes to covid vaccines, they have a few things in common. both decided not to get vaccinated when they were
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eligible and both say it is a decision they regret. both of them made the decision to get vaccinated within the last couple of weeks. listen to what they told us. >> i have friends that are in the hospital right now because of this virus. i have a cousin -- i had a cousin, i have a best friend that died results of it. that ought to be enough. >> one of the antivaxxers for quite a while now, but i'm a numbers guy as well and watching the numbers pour into the department of health and seeing that the cases surge and 98% of them were unvaccinated individuals it was -- it was a common sense thing. >> both of them are hoping others will follow their lead and if they're not vaccinated they will reconsider or at least talk to their doctors about
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these vaccines that are widely available in this state. in mississippi there are 1600 people hospitalized because of this virus. as of yesterday they had less than ten icu bed available and close to 100 people waiting for those beds. the state's top health official has said the only way out of this mess is through vaccinations. andrea? >> thank you so much, ellison. >> joining us now is dr. celine grounder who also served as president biden's covid advisory board member. first of all, 200 million americans have now received at least one dose of the vaccine and half of the country has still to get one shot and you saw it was in mississippi. your reaction to all of this? >> look, we've made great progress on getting americans vaccinated, but we are not nearly as vaccinated as we need to be. if you look at other countries that have even higher
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vaccination rates and countries like canada, the uk and israel, they have seen a surge related to the delta variant and they looked at implementing other measures and they need to double down on getting everybody who has not yet vaccinated vaccinated and in the meantime they need to understand other measures like masking and ventilation, air filtration and socializing outdoors that are highly effective and we need to employ, as well. >> and how do you think that the administration's new plan to roll out booster shots in september will affect the efforts to get people vaccinated with the two shots? >> yeah. this announcement was controversial and there's clear data that people who have highly immunocompromising conditions and people who live in nursing homes and the older elderly so people over 80 that there is reason to give them an additional dose of vaccine sooner than later, but for the general population, we really don't have data demonstrating
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that that's needed right now, and i think many people who have been hesitant to get vaccinated have said something along the lines of i don't see the point of getting vaccinated if i'm going to need a yearly booster shot like i need for the flu. and i think, unfortunately, this announcement may reinforce some of these misperceptions that that's what we're looking at long term. we do not believe that people will need yearly booster shots for covid. >> and we have three vaccinated senators who are among the thousands of americans getting covid despite getting the shots and angus king and roger wicker and i guess it's huckleberry? hickenlooper, excuse me, hickenlooper of colorado. what do you make of that? >> this is to be expected. the vaccines are very, very good.
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they're not perfect. when you look at how they were studied in the krin clal trials they were studied how well they prevented disease, hospitalization and death. if you look at the data that was released by the cdc earlier this week, for example, looking at new york state, we see no reduction in protection against hospitalization. if you have been vaccinated you are still 95% protected against the coronavirus. hospitalization from covid and even with the delta variant. so that's excellent and these are numbers that are really much better than we had thought we would ever achieve with the vaccine for covid and so there's really is to have breakthrough infections and as long as people are not ending up in the hospital this is good news. >> doctor, thank you very much. thanks for all of your help and expertise. was the chaos avoidable? new reporting showing the top leaders were aware of the potential for complete collapse in afghanistan. even as the public was hearing
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something very different. coming up at the top of the hour, president biden is expected to make remarks over the events of the last week in afghanistan and he is not returning to wilmington as previously planned and we'll bring you his remarks live here on msnbc. power, we can harness the energy of the tiny electron. we can create new ways to connect. rethinking how we communicate to be more inclusive than ever. with app, cloud and anywhere workspace solutions, vmware helps companies navigate change. faster. vmware. welcome change. introducing the new citi custom cash℠ card,
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infections that can cause shingles have occurred. don't stop steroids unless told by your doctor. tell your doctor if you have a parasitic infection. may cause headache, injection-site reactions, back pain, and fatigue. ask your doctor about nucala. find your nunormal with nucala. the washington post is reporting that despite the president saying he was surprised at the speed of the taliban take over, u.s. military leaders anticipated that the afghan security force would collapse. joining me now is washington post investigative reporter kraig whit lock. his new book, the afghanistan papers and the secret history of the war is coming out august 31st. so, craig, thank you very much for being with us. i wanted to read an excerpt in advance from the book detailing the problems with the approach taken in afghanistan. you write, in part, senior u.s. officials said the pentagon fell victim to the conceit that it could build from scratch an
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enormous afghan army and police force with 350,000 personnel that was modeled on the centralized command structures and complex bureaucracy of the defense department. the pentagon kept throwing money at the problem and assigning new generals for the solution. at what point did it become evident that there was not a solution. >> they were the afghanistan papers that go back almost 20 years that document the problems trying to stand up this force. there were problems with the literacy with the afghan recruits. there were problems with equipment and trying to get afghans to teach them our weapons systems and there was problems with motivation and dissertion. there were problems for years and years that the afghan security forces would have trouble defending their government with u.s. help. >> we'll be hearing from the president on afghanistan at the top of the hour. let's remind viewers about his comments last month, long before this chaos in kabul.
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>> there's going to be no circumstance where you will see people lifted off the roof of an embassy of the united states from afghanistan. the likelihood there's going to be the taliban overrunning everything and owning the whole country is highly unlikely. >> your reporting clearly shows that the collapse was expected. the pentagon certainly anticipated it. >> the pentagon, and the white house did not have much faith that the afghan security forces would hold out without u.s. help and i think this definitely caught by surprise that the afghan security forces surrendered in the space of about a week. i was surprised by the speed of that, but really despite spending $85 billion over 20 years to build an afghan army and police, this enormous institution was frankly rotten
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to the core, hollow to the core and its commanders were corrupt and they would steal salaries from the soldiers and police and we knew this was going on. in recent weeks and months we heard reports of afghan and police without food and without ammunition which was not a good sign, but you have to remember it wasn't that the afghan government didn't have the money to feed their soldiers. the u.s. taxpayers were paying for the ammunition and this was getting pocketed by commanders and corrupt officials in the afghan government. this was not a force that was going to be able to defend their country and u.s. officials have known that for some time. >> and we are getting a lot of pushback after the president's comments on monday from veterans including some in congress. i talked to one just today, jimmy panetta said they were very brave and they lost 71,000 afghan soldiers in fighting this war over the decades. so it's not that the ground
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forces were turning and running and it's not that they were hungry and their command hers abandoned them as well and that we had because once bagram closed we were giving them no cover? that's hard for americans to understand the degree to which the afghan forces really were isolated in their own country. in recent months the afghan government has really lost control of its territory other than urban areas other than kabul, kandahar and herat so the soldiers and police who were in outposts and rural areas were isolated. they weren't able to be re-supplied by road. they were going to get food and ammunition it had to be brought if by helicopter. so it's hard to defend your own country when you're cut off from all these outposts and bases and the territory was shrinking in a pretty rapid rate. in the end as you point out the commanders cut deals with the taliban and they put their
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finger in the wind and they decided they wanted to be with the winning side. they didn't want to fight for a losing cause or a government they didn't have much allegiance to. this explained the speed of the surrender. >> and a lot of money that changed hands, as well. i'll be getting into more of that after a quick break, but thank you very much, craig whit lock. thank you for all your reporting, and it's an extraordinary book. i've just gotten it and started digging through it, "the afghanistan papers." congratulations on that. >> thank you. follow the money. american families of those killed and wounded in afghanistan are suing some of the world's biggest banks as they try to track the funds that fueled the taliban. right now at the white house, the president is moments away, we expect from his remarks from the east room on afghanistan. live coverage. you can see the marine standing there. that means he is still in the west wing. you're watching msnbc.
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thousands of americans in the course of the last few years. now the families are trying to hold the banks accountable. i spoke to one family about how they're turning their grief into action. >> new allegations about how the taliban could have financed their bombing and paefing the way for their march on kabul. according to a lawsuit including gold star families and injured soldiers. seen here in front of john kerry's plane. they are delivering books to school children outside of the capital. this week bringing it all back for her parents.
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>> how do you feel now about seeing the taliban in charge of afghanistan. >> all of these events have been hard to watch. i think a lot about all of the different work that ann was doing, especially with afghan women. >> she was bringing books to the children when this terrible thing happened. >> she knew that was the key. to educate the children of afghanistan. for their future. >> now they joined the lawsuit accusing big banks of violating u.s. anti-terrorism laws by helping the taliban finance their operations. the banks refused to comment. >> if companies are making money by aiding the taliban to kill americans, then yes, they ought to be held accountable for that. >> and this is the plant. >> her parents are comforted by
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a garden and a memorial. >> a post in kabul will require great sacrifice but this is the reason i joined the foreign service. to serve my country in the best way i can. >> they hope her work lives on and the people she affected now challenged more than ever. >> this lawsuit is going to be a hourful test of the reach of a 2016 aide. i thank them for sharing their story with me. that does it for this edition of andrea mitchell reports. we'll have complete coverage on
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