Article by Jeff Poor in Breitbart
Oliver North: ‘No Americans Left Behind’ in Afghanistan Is a ‘Blatant Lie’
On this week’s broadcast of FNC’s “Sunday Morning Futures,” retired Lt. Col. Oliver North slammed the Biden administration’s unfulfilled pledge on the U.S. military withdrawal from Afghanistan.
He called the pledge to evacuate all Americans from the Central Asian nation a “blatant lie.”
Partial transcript as follows:
BARTIROMO: Joining me right now is Lieutenant Colonel Oliver North. He is a decorated military veteran who was embedded with 66 different units over 17 years.
It is an honor to have you here this morning, sir. Thanks very much for being here, Colonel North.
LT. COL. OLIVER NORTH (RET.), U.S. MARINE CORPS: Maria, good to be with you.
BARTIROMO: So, I guess…
NORTH: Wonderful interview you just did with two very important people.
BARTIROMO: Thank you, sir. Thank you so much.
You are in touch with the National Resistance Front in Afghanistan. I want to ask you your thoughts on what’s going on now. What can you tell us in terms of new information? U.S. citizens, allies, are they being held hostage?
Because I know, sir, we didn’t just leave Americans on the ground in Afghanistan. We left Brits, Canadians, Ukrainians, Europeans, and other allies that have helped us along the way for 20 years.
NORTH: I spent yesterday, Maria, as you and I talked, with veterans of this war, Gold Star families, those who had been there when this whole incredibly aborted operation took place.
And everybody wants one thing. And that’s accountability. Hopefully, there’s going to be accountability as to why they gave away Bagram, one of the best military bases in the world. In fact, I know the engineer who built it. The Russians started it. We finished it. It was one of the finest military operations — installations in the world.
There was intelligence collection. There was a main base, easily defended, all the kinds of surveillance you would need to protect it with a relatively modest number of troops.
Why did they give it away? It wasn’t taken by the Taliban. It was given to the Taliban. And you showed some of the footage of the cash that was left there, the $84 billion worth of weapons, most of which was stored at Bagram, all of that left behind, none of it destroyed, when you look at that cache that we gave to the Taliban.
And it’s not just the Taliban. It’s ISIS. It’s Al Qaeda. It’s the Haqqani organization. They are all one. And right at this very minute, Maria, they are sitting in the presidential palace in downtown Kabul going through information that the GRU from Russia and the communist Chinese intelligence service is helping to collect on targeting those who are our allies.
BARTIROMO: Unbelievable.
NORTH: And, as you pointed out, we still have NATO allies with people left behind.
The promise was at the very beginning of this no Americans left behind. It was a blatant lie. And there’s so much anger out there. Today’s Sunday. In the lord’s prayer, it says, forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us.
Well, I’m not there yet. And neither are they. And they want accountability. And when Blinken goes up to the Capitol tomorrow, the building right behind me, when he comes up to the Capitol tomorrow, I hope that Congressman McCaul and people like Mike Waltz — let me just very quickly describe.
I’m on the phone with Mike Waltz. I’m on the other phone with a U.S. army lieutenant colonel inside the wall at Hamid Karzai International Airport. And we’re trying to get a group of about 160 American citizens, green card holders, and SIVs, people who hold a Special Immigrant Visa. They have worked with us over the 20 years.
And it’s right outside. The lieutenant colonel says: “If I could reach through this gate, I could touch the bus that they’re on.”
And Mike and I were on the phone. And he called the White House. And Mike got the White House general counsel, who said: “I have talked to the president. It’s going to be open.”
And five minutes later, there’s one of these phony calls that there’s going to be an imminent attack. Everybody, spread out, get away from the gates.
BARTIROMO: Wow.
NORTH: That kind of thing happened dozens of time. And it wasn’t a real attack.
In fact, the real attack that killed the last 13 Americans killed in this long war, it had no warning coming for. That’s the kind of thing that happened repeatedly throughout this.
BARTIROMO: And…
NORTH: And they want accountability. The families, the Gold Star families, all of them deserve accountability.
BARTIROMO: Of course. Absolutely. They should do. And they are in our prayers every day.
What about these flights going out of Afghanistan? I mean, it was — it was so disgusting to see Antony Blinken in that press conference recently tell us that the Taliban is stopping the flights from leaving because they don’t have the right documentation. Are you kidding me?
And now he says the two flights have gone. But you and I spoke this weekend about who’s on those flights going back into Afghanistan. Are these wannabe terrorists?
NORTH: Well, remember, we’re being told by the State Department and by Blinken himself that there’s Americans being rescued coming out on those flights and flying to Doha, Qatar. And, in fact, you can see the airplanes flying off the airfield.
By the way, we don’t have any American correspondents left on the ground. There’s nobody of ours, for example, from FOX News, like we spent — I spent 17 years coming and going in and out of this place.
If those flights had Americans on them, who were they and what are their names? We have yet to hear from anybody who was one of those flights. Many of us suspect that what we’re going to get is, at some point, the so-called businesslike Taliban are going to give us the names of people who they have sent out that who are going to be, let’s call it, the Stockholm syndrome.
They’re going to say nice things about the Taliban, nice things about how the State Department got them out. There are over hundreds, hundreds of Americans left on the ground inside Afghanistan. We don’t know all their names. We don’t know all of them.
They keep saying, if they wanted to get out, they could have gotten out. That’s just not true.
