hundreds if not thousands of taliban fighters in relatively close proximity to each other and a chaotic scene all around t them, there is always the opportunity for things to go very wrong, indeed. and i think that s why you are seeing the u.s. military really try to expedite this effort to the best of their ability, to get americans out as quickly as possible so that they can try to leave as quickly as possible. because it s not safe for the u.s. military either. john kirby, the pentagon spokesman, clarissa, told us the timeline they re operating on is that they have until that end date that president biden set, which is august 31st. that is more than two weeks away. can you imagine a situation where the taliban is okay with the u.s. running operations out of the airport for two more weeks, or do you think this is going to be a much shortened operation?
shanahan has been over there. he s not premise much of a warrior background if you will. he comes from the wing. he spent a career at boeing. i think it made sense, mattis was the warrior if you will and shanahan was the manager especially trying to turn around the complete disaster that is pentagon procurement. as far as running the building he s capable of doing that and we still have our same combatant commanders in the field running operations. eric: big picture with the impact of the departure of secretary mattis at the pentagon and brent mcguirk from his post battling isis? is a chance for the president to do better with personnel. he s been mis- served. i think mcguirk is a perfect example. he s a holdover not just from obama but from bush and he was at the heart of most of the failures in the middle east. he was in the coalition provisional authority in iraq so you had this great military victory followed by your grotesquely incompetent administration and occupation of iraq.
provided antitank missiles. i think we need to do more. it would probably need to enhance our military and our intelligence collaboration with ukraine and make it clear we stand for their integrity but ukraine is under siege right no now. they are fighting against separatists who russia is reporting. russia is a amounting a full four cyber attacks against their media, and electoral grid, running operations. ed: what you just said about those muscles, the ukrainians wanted those and were urging then president obama to send them and he repeatedly refused to do it. if john mccain, lindsey graham, others were urging the obama administration to do it. this president, president trump has stepped up before this crisis. months ago, providing that eight even though it something vladimir putin doesn t like. it doesn t fit the narrative out there that the president is just all about putin. absolutely. in defending ukraine s territorial integrity is so important for us.
conversation. you think? and this morning mike allen is reported michael wolf has tapes to back up quotes in his book. dozens of hours of them. among the sources he reportedly taped are steve bannon and katie walsh. yeah. john, this was an ongoing concern of people inside the white house, especially the first two or three months they had a guy that didn t expect to be president of the united states, who didn t know anything about being president of the united states. who didn t know anything about policy. really was a guy that just watched tv and talked to the tv about policy, and they were supposed to figure out a way to come up with legislative programs, and there was nobody running operations inside of there. it really was a directionless ship. right. take the beginning of the year and the end of the year. the beginning of the year,
with kim jong un in north korea. these are crises that are unfolding as we speak and they will unfold more to test the president-elect and pompeo. so he s got to leave partisan politics behind and focus on the non-partisan business of running operations and being a voice of clarity on non-partisan analytic focus in the oval office and in the situation room. well, and jonathan, to that point, if you want to be old-fashioned, and things are changing, but if you want to be old-fashioned, the position of cia director is one of intelligence and verified information, not one of policy-making. right. he is supposed to be a neutral broker within the vast intelligence community, and to filter out a lot of chaff and give the president the wheat, what he really needs to know