No, those good-looking servicemen pictured at left are NOT Americans. Those are Taliban fighters adorned in U.S. military uniforms holding U.S. weapons, all of which were left behind in President Biden’s rapid “run” away from Afghanistan. Not pictured are the tens of thousands of other pieces of U.S. military equipment plus numerous helicopters, fixed-wing planes, and hundreds of vehicles. The estimated total amount in U.S. assets left to the Taliban: $85 Billion. By the way, HUNDREDS if not THOUSANDS of Afghan partners to the U.S. and HUNDREDS of U.S. citizens were left behind.
The Afghan interpreter who helped rescue President Biden from a remote Afghan valley in 2008 has been left behind after the last U.S. evacuation flight took off on Monday, according to a report.
Mohammed, going only by his first name for safety reasons, is hiding from the Taliban with his wife and four children after trying for years to get out of Afghanistan to no avail.
Mohammed, while working for the U.S. Army, had a key role in a story often repeated – and embellished — by Biden during his 2008 run for vice president.
As a senator, Biden was on board one of two Blackhawk helicopters that made an emergency landing in a blinding snowstorm, alongside then-Sens. John Kerry (D-MA), and Chuck Hagel (R-NE).
Mohammed is one of the thousands of SIV applicants left behind. There were 88,000 SIV applicants and as of last week, only 6,000 had gotten out.
A private security team with the former firm Blackwater and U.S. Army soldiers stood to watch for Taliban fighters as the crew called Bagram Air Base for help, where Mohammed jumped in a Humvee along with a force from the 82nd Airborne Division and drove hours into the mountains to rescue them.
The three senators were driven back to the base with the convoy.
“Hello Mr. President: Save me and my family,'”Mohammed said, according to the Wall Street Journal. “Don’t forget me here.”
“I can’t leave my house,” he said on Tuesday. “I’m very scared.”
Mohammed’s visa application reportedly stalled when the defense contractor he worked for lost records needed for his visa application. As the Taliban seized control on Aug. 15, Mohammed tried his luck at the Kabul airport gates but was turned away by US forces. They told him he could go but he’d have to leave behind his wife and children.
U.S. soldiers say Mohammed was there alongside them for over 100 firefights.
The area of the rescue was not under Taliban control, but just one day before the three then-senator’s choppers went down, the Taliban had killed nearly two dozen Taliban insurgents just 10 miles away.
The trip was one of many that Biden, then chair of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, took overseas with Kerry and Hagel, who went on to become secretaries of state and defense respectively under President Obama.
In a speech on the campaign trail, Biden said in 2008: “If you want to know where Al Qaeda lives, you want to know where (Usama) bin Laden is, come back to Afghanistan with me. Come back to the area where my helicopter was forced down with a three-star general and three senators at 10,500 feet in the middle of those mountains. I can tell you where they are.”
“It’s in the mountains between Afghanistan and Pakistan,” he said, “Where my helicopter was recently forced down.”
Army veterans have stepped in on Mohammed’s behalf to call for help. “If you can only help one Afghan, choose [Mohammed],” wrote Shawn O’Brien, an Army combat veteran who worked with him in Afghanistan in 2008. “He earned it.”
The U.S. has evacuated over 120,000 from Taliban rule since Aug. 14, including 5,500 Americans, but left behind somewhere between 100 and 200 Americans and thousands of Afghan interpreters who worked with the US military in its hasty exit.
The State Department has promised to use all diplomatic channels to continue evacuations without a troop or embassy presence.
A White House official declined to comment on Mohammed’s case for confidentiality reasons.
The Afghan interpreter who helped rescue President Biden from a remote Afghan valley in 2008 has been left behind after the last U.S. evacuation flight took off on Monday, according to a report.
Mohammed, going only by his first name for safety reasons, is hiding from the Taliban with his wife and four children after trying for years to get out of Afghanistan to no avail.
Mohammed, while working for the U.S. Army, had a key role in a story often repeated — and embellished — by Biden during his 2008 run for vice president.
As a senator, Biden was on board one of two Blackhawk helicopters that made an emergency landing in a blinding snowstorm, alongside then-Sens. John Kerry (D-MA), and Chuck Hagel (R-NE).
Mohammed is one of the thousands of SIV applicants left behind. There were 88,000 SIV applicants and as of last week, only 6,000 had gotten out.
