Kandahar International Airport

The problem here is we have to retake Afghanistan.

You've got to take Kandahar Air Base back, which is to the east of what we're looking at, first.

And that shooting fish in a barrel,

isn't it shooting fish in a barrel to go into that Death Valley?

He's been shopping ground invasion.

Let me finish up my point here where I was talking about why the ground invasion won't work.

And the fact we left Afghanistan, Bagram, Kandahar Air Base, not having these, these are huge things.

And only that, the reason, if you want to launch a ground invasion now, the way we look at it, where are you launching it from? Because all of our bases are destroyed.

The problem here is we have to retake Afghanistan.

You've got to take Kandahar Air Base back, which is to the east of what we're looking at, first.

And that's shooting fish in a barrel.

Isn't it shooting fish in a barrel to go into that Death Valley?

I know that about Jesse.

Let me finish with my point here where I was talking about why the ground invasion won't work.

And the fact we left Afghanistan, Bagram, Kandahar Air Base, not having these, these are huge things.

And only that, the reason, if you want to launch a ground invasion now, the way we look at it, where are you launching it from? Because all of our bases are destroyed.

Um, and so the, the, the NAVCENT part of the role meant that I was administratively responsible at least for all of the Navy medical personnel in theater, uh, boots on ground in theater.

So at that time, the United States Navy was still in charge of the, uh, NATO Role 3, uh, combat trauma hospital in Kandahar, Afghanistan, at Kandahar Airfield, so made many, many visits in and out of there.

Uh, the US Navy still was responsible for an expeditionary medical facility in Kuwait, which was the point of embarkation for c- Everything, traffic, personnel, supplies medical evacuation going in and out of Afghanistan.

And, and then we had dozens, if not hundreds of individual augmentees assigned to Afghan National Army and Afghan National Police units in places like Kabul and, and Herat and Mazar-i-Sharif and so forth.

So among the troops, I believe at that time, they too were trying to understand their own mission.

I remember distinctly events at the Kandahar Airport when the sun went down and they would get ready in these giant stake-body trucks and there'd be 50 soldiers at a time or 50 U.S. Marines at a time standing at attention ready to go into town to take on a mission.

And they would be there for three hours.

And they would disembark off the truck, call it a night, and do the exact same thing the next night.

Yeah.

But seeing a part of this immense military machine, like from the coalface, just watching these rounds and, you know, one of the times I, I always remember is being in Kandahar Airfield, uh, and just seeing the sheer amount of air power.

And it actually-

Yeah