Marine Sgt. Tyler Vargas-Andrews, whose testimony before the House Foreign Affairs Committee detailed the horrors he experienced at Kabul's airport during the withdrawal from Afghanistan in 2021, was one of the people who was left at the "the tip of the spear" without the ability to determine when they could shoot anyone, including the suicide bomber whose attack killed 13 U.S. servicemen and nearly 200 Afghans, Rep. Brian Mast said on Newsmax on Thursday.
"He was a sniper," the Florida Republican said on Newsmax's "National Report." "He was on the tower on the Abbey Gate where that explosion took place that killed 13 Americans. He was on that tower for roughly 10 days with his sniper team, and they believe they had intel as to what the bomber would look like, what the bomber would be wearing, who the bomber would be traveling with."
Vargas-Andrews said he believes he found the bomber "for a long period of time" through the scope of his rifle, Mast added, and requested permission to shoot, but "nobody in his chain of command could give him the engagement authority or even knew where to find the authority to engage with who intel sent them was potentially the bomber."
The Marines at Abbey Gate, Mast added, were left there after Secretary of State Antony Blinken made the "idiotic decision" to "just leave the diplomats there," and the mission became "non-combatant recovery."
"That's why people had to go back there, to recover the non-combatants," said Mast. "I don't know what idiot thought that they could leave those people without guns with the Taliban. That was an idiotic decision, so the Marines were sent back in to do that."
Mast added that the small group of Marines had "thousands, if not tens of thousands of Afghans in front of their small group trying to get out of Afghanistan … Sgt. Vargas-Andrews witnessed probably at least 30 to 50 people being executed by the Taliban in front of him."
But the Taliban weren't letting people through, he said, and "he couldn't be told how he could defend himself or what he wasn't going to get burned for, you know, back here in the United States if he did have to take a shot."
"He could have prevented the killing of 13 American heroes," Mast concluded.
Vargas-Andrews, now 25, lost an arm and leg in the suicide bomber's attack.
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Sandy Fitzgerald ✉
Sandy Fitzgerald has more than three decades in journalism and serves as a general assignment writer for Newsmax covering news, media, and politics.
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