‘When lives are at stake, it’s not about rules and regulations’: Hero airmen reveal they flew 823 Afghans out of Kabul including 183 kids
By: Personal Work
Tags: Afghanistan, Deserter, Blogs And Blogging, Médium, Afghan Children

‘When lives are at stake, it’s not about rules and regulations’: Hero airmen reveal they flew 823 Afghans out of Kabul including 183 kids Personal Work Aug 20·4 min read

The crew flew 823 people, 183 kids and 640 adults — out of Kabul airport on Sunday night

Lt. Colonel Eric Kut authorized the flight to take off without any paperwork for those on board

‘When you have women and children and people’s lives at stake, it’s not about capacity or rules or regulations

Other C-17s have left Kabul this week with just 100 people on board because troops and consular officers at the airport are insisting on people having paperwork to get a seat

The US has removed 9,000 people since Sunday but only around 1,000 of those are US citizens

The State Department doesn’t know how many Americans are still in the country

President Biden is refusing to take responsibility for the fiasco and says he made the right decision to withdraw troops suddenly, despite intelligence warning this would happen

The government was also asking people to be prepared to pay $2,000 each for a seat on a rescue flight

Troops remain on the ground in Afghanistan and are at the airport facilitating the ongoing evacuation

The heroic US Airmen who ignored red tape restrictions to save 823 Afghans from Kabul on Sunday by cramming them into a C-17 cargo jet spoke out on Friday about the mission, revealing they saved 183 more than previously reported.

At first, it had been reported that the crew took 640 Afghans out of Kabul but the true number was 823 and includes 183 kids whose presence on board wasn’t previously accounted for.

The flight breaks the record for the number of people to have ever been flown on a C-17 jet and disgraces the other C-17 jets that have left Kabul with only 100 people on board this week, while thousands wait at the airport gates desperate to be saved.

They are not being allowed to board planes because they don’t have the right paperwork and thousands of Westerners and others in the city remain unable to even get to the airport because they’re being stopped by the Taliban.

On Friday, Lt. Colonel Eric Kut, who made the decision to leave the airport with as many Afghans on board, said he was more interested in saving lives than checking paperwork and abiding by red tape rules.

‘First and foremost, a lot of people talk about rules and capacity. We were trained to handle that to max perform that aircraft.

‘When you have women and children and people’s lives at stake, it’s not about capacity or rules or regulations. It’s about the training to make sure we could handle we could that many people out.

‘We were there to do what we were trained to do. We were there to deliver hope and freedom,’ he told CNN’s New Day on Friday from Joint Base McGuire-Dix-Lakehurst in New Jersey.

At first, it had been reported that they took 640 Afghans out of Kabul. They revealed the true number was 823 and that 183 children weren’t counted in the first reports

‘The ability to operate at night is a real game-changer,’ one congressional aide told Reuters.

‘Everything that hasn’t been destroyed is the Taliban’s now,’ one U.S. official, speaking on the condition of anonymity, told Reuters.

The officials said launching airstrikes against the larger equipment, such as helicopters, has not been ruled out, but there is concern that would antagonize the Taliban at a time the United States’ main goal is evacuating people.

The Taliban now controls 2,000 armored vehicles, including US Humvees, 40 aircraft which could include UH-60 Black Hawks,.

‘We have already seen Taliban fighters armed with U.S.-made weapons they seized from the Afghan forces.

‘This poses a significant threat to the United States and our allies,’ Representative Michael McCaul, the top Republican on the U.S. House of Representatives Foreign Affairs Committee, told Reuters in an email.

US is considering BLOWING UP its own equipment to stop the Taliban from using it

About a month ago, Afghanistan’s ministry of defense posted on social media photographs of seven brand new helicopters arriving in Kabul delivered by the United States.

‘They’ll continue to see a steady drumbeat of that kind of support, going forward,’ U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin told reporters a few days later at the Pentagon.

In a matter of weeks, however, the Taliban had seized most of the country, as well as any weapons and equipment left behind by fleeing Afghan forces.

‘Everything that hasn’t been destroyed is the Taliban’s now,’ one U.S. official, speaking on the condition of anonymity, told Reuters.