Rep. Dan Crenshaw is a retired Navy SEAL who served and was wounded in Afghanistan’s Helmand province during his third deployment, in 2012. He lost his right eye and his left eye was badly damaged in an IED attack. Crenshaw is held in extremely high regard in the veteran and active-duty communities.
Lara Logan is a long-time award-winning journalist now working for Fox News who has spent much of her career covering war zones including Iraq and Afghanistan. Between the two of them, Logan and Crenshaw have spent years in and around Afghanistan. Due to their experience there, both are likely to have credible sources on the ground at the Kabul airport.
Both Logan and Crenshaw are independently reporting that Americans have been turned away from safety at that airport over the past couple of days.
Logan posted this tweet Saturday afternoon.
Most Americans don’t understand what’s happening in Kabul – been on this all night again w no end. US citizens are fighting through enemy lines to get to the airport. When they show their blue passport to 82nd soldiers at the gate, many are turned away & sent back to the Taliban.
— Lara Logan (@laralogan) August 28, 2021
The “82nd soldiers” refers to the 82nd Airborne, which Joe Biden ordered into Kabul to defend the airport and facilitate the mass evacuation as the situation collapsed. Logan added in a subsequent tweet that “All that stands between these Americans & safety/home is the US govt & military.”
On Sunday morning, Rep. Crenshaw posted this on Twitter and Facebook.
The fog of war is undoubtedly thick in Taliban-controlled Kabul. American forces there are under an effective siege, surrounded by Taliban and other terrorist forces numbering in the thousands. The United States military is now depending on the Taliban, a bloodthirsty army of Islamic extremists who have been our battlefield enemy for 20 years, for security. One Green Beret soldier returned from Kabul this week and told Fox that the Taliban and ISIS-K, which the Biden administration is blaming for Thursday’s bombing that killed 13 Americans, are one and the same. The Taliban, he said, have been seen scouting Americans to target them inside the Kabul airport. The Biden administration has been putting a much less menacing face on the Taliban since it took Kabul two weeks ago.
Related: Two Reps, a Dem and a Republican, Went to Kabul Because They Don’t Trust Biden’s Afghanistan Spin
If there is anything to Logan’s and Crenshaw’s posts, the situation in Kabul is far worse and more disturbing than any American could have imagined over the past 24 to 48 hours. Some reports indicate that as many as 350 Americans remain stranded in Kabul. The true number could be far higher. The Biden administration has consistently touted its success in removing thousands of people from Kabul while downplaying the number of Americans who are among the rescued.
So many questions arise from the possibility that Americans are being turned back from the gates at Kabul airport, but the Democrat-controlled Congress was gaveled out of session and is not in Washington to convene any hearings.
Update: Rep. Ronny Jackson (R-Texas) says the State Department is not helping.
I am furious!! My team has been on the phone all day trying to get AMERICAN CITIZENS out. They have been just outside the airport numerous times, but the State Department WILL NOT help them.
— Ronny Jackson (@RonnyJacksonTX) August 29, 2021
The State Department, headed by Secretary of State Antony Blinken, is in charge of the evacuation effort. The Pentagon is subordinate to State in Kabul, and if soldiers are turning Americans away at the airport, it would be under State’s orders.
Join the conversation as a VIP Member