the vice presidency, which as you know surprised him, he always respected the role of the press. all right. andrea mitchell joining us by phone. andrea, appreciate that. and again, just continuing our coverage here. it is 1:00 in the east. we continue our coverage of the death of former president george herbert walker bush, america s 41st commander in chief. he has died at the age of 94. that word came to us now just over an hour ago, the word being passed from a statement from his son, george w. bush. we are joined by hallie jackson. let me start with you because we have heard from the current i m sorry. that is my mistake.
we will be hearing from her in a minute. we are going to pause here just for a few seconds because we re going to be joined by our network affiliates and pick up the network coverage. this is an nbc news special report. steve kegeorge h.w. bush has away at the age of 94. that word coming to us just over an hour ago. a statement released by his son, the
i mean, the u.s. response has been, you know, continue with the military exercises or perhaps even increase those military exercises with south korea. what are the options that you think the u.s. might be entertaining right now? well, the problem right now is the u.s. is fundamentally it does not want to recognize north korea as a state, president bush didn t want to do that with the first nuclear test, president obama didn t want to do this, and of course we saw that donald trump thought he could negotiate with kim jong-un and somehow solve this problem. at one point he said to me that north korea will be on the way to giving up their weapons within six months of his meeting in singapore. instead, they have added to their arsenal. so what s gone on at this point is north korea is effectively a nuclear power, whether or not we want to admit it or not.
He said, well i don t need to meet with him. who is skgeneral mcneal? the man fighting to stabilize afghanistan while his bosses were fixated on overthrowing a different regime in iraq. the essence of your question is did iraq consume resources that could have been applied in afghanistan. the answer to that is just too obvious. you re saying that you didn t have everything that you needed. that is correct. don t forget us if iraq happens. my colleague jake tapper joins me now. and jake, i think folks could forget, but it was pretty much just a year and a half after 9/11 that the bush administration started another war in iraq. a little more than a year and a half. and you spoke to eight of the 11 commanding generals in afghanistan. did they echo mcneal, that that move really made the difference in sinking, rather, the afghan
Campaign? everyone that we asked said that was a major problem. i mean, you have seven or eight lost years basically where the commanders in afghanistan don t have what they need and that doesn t only include soldiers, it also includes resources, it includes state department employees, it includes attention. and in that memo from rumsfeld, president bush didn t know the name of general mcneal. and i think that when we look at the war in afghanistan and put it in the context of all 20 years, there is a lot of blame to go around. the generals, the presidents, and all sorts of other individuals involved with this. but this is the original sin of why the u.s. did so poorly in afghanistan, did not succeed in the way anybody wanted the u.s. to succeed in afghanistan. president bush was not pay ago
Used by biden administration officials to describe the taliban and its help in ongoing vaccinations of americans from afghanistan. the taliban. let me just tell you a remarkable change in tone after nearly 20 years of war against the taliban and just ahead of the 20th anniversary of foil. jake tapper looks back at last two decades of the nation s longest war in a special report called what went wrong in afghanistan. here is a brief clip. i accept the fact that i was an economy of force and i just look for ways to use what i had to get to where i thought they wanted us to go. the white house was so focused on iraq, that according to a memo from secretary rumsfeld obtained by the national security archive, president bush did not even know who his own commander was. rumsfeld wrote, quote, he said, who is general mcneil? i said he is the general in charge of afghanistan.