Sending drones thousands of miles away without proper intelligence isn’t good enough: Rep. Waltz
Rep. Mike Waltz and former national security adviser to VP Pence Gen. Keith Kellogg react to the mistaken drone strike killing innocent civilians.
"Sunday Night in America" host Trey Gowdy discussed the recent reveal that the drone strike in Kabul touted by the Biden administration struck down civilians including seven children.
Lt. Gen. Keith Kellogg and Congressman Michael Waltz, R-Fl. appeared to discuss what they felt was a "rush-to-judgment" action by the Biden administration after a suicide bomb killed 13 U.S. service members
"When you’re looking at a drone strike, those drones could basically read a license plate on a car, that’s how good their optics are," Kellogg said. "My concerns are that just a couple of days after the ISIS-K strike that killed 13 great Americans and wounded 20, I think there was a big push to try to get these planners. Remember, we were told these were ISIS-K planners when they weren’t. They were tracking a white van for approximately 8 hours, then they said it was a righteous kill. And they were dead wrong about it."
He added "I am sure they had good intelligence in the sense of who was actually in that. They had to know that it was a probably wrong target going forward."
Kellogg also explained that the process of a drone strike would usually require "everyone" to know what was happening, suggesting this decision was likely a rash one.
"I just think, and I hate to say this, it’s a rush to judgment. They fired it because they wanted to have some type of kill to show after the 13 Americans were killed. They made a bad mistake," Kellogg said.
Gowdy then asked Waltz if there’s a chance American citizens will ever find out the details behind the strike with Democrats in charge of Congress and the White House. Waltz responded that while there are hearings to investigate the matter, there are still plenty of unanswered questions.
"General McKenzie, the general overall command of the strikes, said that they were rushed and they were on an impossible time frame as a justification for the strike. I want to know if they were being pressured by the Pentagon or by the White House to take this strike because they had to take action because of the suicide bombing," Waltz said.
He also criticized the method of drone strikes used by the Biden administration, remarking that all of the proper intelligence had been pulled out of Afghanistan.
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"You might as well call it over the rainbow counterterrorism. It’s a talking point. You have to have multiple forms of intelligence to pinpoint the bad guys and be sure that’s who’s in your crosshair before you take a strike. You have to have people on the ground. You have to have sensors. You have to have signal intelligence, all to double-check your work. And we don’t have any of that anymore. None of it. It has all been pulled out," Waltz said.
"This cancer’s going to spread and it’s going to follow us home, and sending drones from thousands of miles away will not be good enough," Waltz concluded.
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