This morning, Rep. Gallagher joined Fox and Friends to discuss a newly-released Department of Defense Inspector General Report on the failed withdrawal from Afghanistan, as well as a House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence hearing on UAPs.
Watch the full interview HERE or read highlights of the conversations below.
On the IG report:
“A few things stand out to me in reading the report. One is that we demoralized the Afghan army by repeatedly announcing withdrawal plans for purely political purposes, with timelines that weren’t conditions based. They were politically motivated. The second is our decision to release 5,000 Taliban fighters in the summer of 2020, in the fall of 2020, further demoralized the Afghans. And then finally, over the course of a couple of decades, we built and trained the Afghan army, but we made them entirely dependent on the support of US contractors. In retrospect, that seems like a massive, massive mistake that we didn’t think about from the outset. Okay, what are they going to do? How are they going to fight when we inevitably have to leave? So a lot of just really troubling claims in this report, but our work has only just begun in terms of the oversight and the investigations we need to do here in Congress.”
On Biden’s flawed approach to over the horizon counterterrorism ops:
“Remember the lies that the Biden administration was telling us during the withdrawal- this fiction that Al Qaeda and the Taliban are at war with each other. They’re enemies and these groups compete from time to time, but they’re aligned in their desire to kill Americans and our allies. And you know, your mention of over the horizon counterterrorism. Over the horizon, counterterrorism has enormous flaws, if for no other reason, and I say this as a former human intelligence officer, you need humans on the ground to generate the intelligence in order to guide your targeting and your strikes. So I’m very worried about a resurgent terrorist threat that could impact our own homeland.”
On yesterday’s UAP hearing:
“I’m glad we did it. I appreciate the fact that DOD is taking it seriously. I appreciate the sincere effort to destigmatize the discussion. But I’m afraid we did not get any closer to the truth. I asked some basic questions about certain high profile claims that are out there, and our witnesses couldn’t answer, and basically said to me that they weren’t aware of these claims. That was very troubling to me. It suggests that they haven’t done certain basic homework. So we have a long way to go. And for those that are skeptics of some of the claims that are out there, I just would say anytime you have things that are coming on our training ranges, that our pilots are visually seeing, that presents a safety issue to our pilots. So even if you want to rule out the extraterrestrial hypothesis or some other hypotheses, we still have to figure out what’s going on on our ranges in order to protect the safety of our pilots.”
