Leon Panetta says US troops will need to return to combat in Afghanistan

New York Post – by Lee Brown

Former Defense Secretary Leon Panetta says US troops will need to go back into combat in Afghanistan — as the region remains on high alert for more suicide attacks, with the death toll from Thursday’s atrocity soaring over 180, including 13 US service members.

“We’re going to have to go back in to get ISIS,” Panetta told CNN, calling Thursday’s twin suicide blasts by the reinvigorated terrorist group “Joe Biden’s worst nightmare.” 

“We’re probably going to have to go back in when al Qaeda resurrects itself, as they will, with this Taliban,” he predicted.

“They gave safe haven to al Qaeda before, they’ll probably do it again,” predicted Panetta, who was the director of the CIA and oversaw the US operation that killed the terror group’s leader, Osama bin Laden.

“I understand that we’re trying to get our troops out of there, but the bottom line is, we can leave a battlefield, but we can’t leave the war on terrorism, which still is a threat to our security,” he told CNN.

Panetta, who was defense secretary under President Barack Obama, said President Biden’s sudden withdrawal of troops left a “very dangerous and difficult situation” with “thousands of our troops located in a very limited area in an unfriendly country.”

He insisted that the Taliban — despite claims of peace and a new era of leadership — were “terrorists, and certainly supporters of terrorists, operating checkpoints for terrorists.”

He said the US appeared to have “pretty good intelligence on the leadership of ISIS,” the terrorist group whose Afghanistan-based affiliate, ISIS-K, took responsibility for Thursday’s blasts.

“I think there’s a pretty good chance we can identify who is involved with this attack. And once we are able to locate them, we have to go after them,” he said.

“That’s what the president promised today, and I suspect we will,” he said of Biden’s vow to those involved that the US will “hunt you down and make you pay.”

“This has got to be the worst day in his administration,” he said of the cowardly attack Thursday, which by Friday was confirmed to have killed at least 13 US troops and at least 169 Afghans, including Taliban troops, officials told The Associated Press.

That toll could still rise, officials warn — with many bodies dismembered or not yet identified.

Troops still in Afghanistan helping the evacuation were on alert for more attacks Friday, including possible rockets or car bombs.

“We’re doing everything we can to be prepared,” said Gen. Frank McKenzie, head of US Central Command, with some intelligence being shared with the Taliban, insisting that “some attacks have been thwarted by them.”

British Defense Secretary Ben Wallace said the threat of attacks would increase as Western troops got closer to completing the huge airlift and departure.

“The narrative is always going to be, as we leave, certain groups such as ISIS will want to stake a claim that they have driven out the US or the UK,” Wallace told Sky News.

ISIS said one of its suicide bombers targeted “translators and collaborators with the American army.”

It was not clear if suicide bombers detonated both blasts or if one was a planted bomb. It was also not clear if ISIS gunmen were involved in the attack or if the firing that followed the blasts was Taliban guards firing into the air to control crowds.

https://nypost.com/2021/08/27/leon-panetta-says-us-troops-will-need-to-go-back-to-afghanistan/