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Last soldier out: Iconic photo captures the end of America's longest war

31 August 2021
 Dan Ackermann
Photo: U.S. Central Command via AP

How it ended: This image, made through a night-vision scope, shows the final American soldier to depart Afghanistan after America's longest war.

Driving the news: Army Maj. Gen. Chris Donahue, commander of the 82nd Airborne Division, who was coordinating the evacuation, boarded a C-17 cargo plane that lifted off from Kabul at 3:29 p.m. ET on Monday.

Image: George W. Bush Presidential Library

How it started: On Oct. 7, 2001 — 7,267 days earlier, nearly 20 years — President George W. Bush announced the invasion, in the aftermath of 9/11: "We will not waver; we will not tire; we will not falter; and we will not fail. Peace and freedom will prevail."

  • 1 in 4 of today's Americans hadn't been born, AP notes.

The toll: 2,461 U.S. service members killed ... 20,000 injured ... 3,846 U.S. contractors killed ... 66,000 Afghan military and police killed ... 47,245 Afghan civilians killed ... 51,191 Taliban and opposition fighters killed.

  • The tab (Afghanistan and Iraq): $2 trillion.
Photo: Manuel Balce Ceneta/AP

The Pentagon announcement came at 4:30 p.m. ET, with Gen. Frank McKenzie, commander of U.S. Central Command, speaking remotely from Tampa (shown above with Pentagon press secretary John Kirby).

  • "Every single U.S. service member is now out of Afghanistan," McKenzie said in response to a question. "I can say that with 100% certainty."

"It's a mission that brought Osama bin Laden to a just end along with many of his al-Qaeda co-conspirators," the general said.

  • "I'm proud that both my son and I have been a part of it."

McKenzie acknowledged: "We did not get everybody out that we wanted to get out."

Photo: AFP via Getty Images

Above: Celebratory gunfire lit up the night sky in Kabul after the last U.S. plane took off — leaving the Taliban back in power, after all that.

  • ABC's Ian Pannell said in a special report, following the Pentagon briefing: "I was in Kabul the day it was liberated — the day the Taliban fled — and we were there again the day that the Taliban came back. And I think that will leave many Afghans wondering what this was all about. What happened to their hopes, their dreams, the lives that they built?"

President Biden will address the nation Tuesday afternoon at 1:30 p.m. ET.

Transcripts show George Floyd told police "I can't breathe" over 20 times

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Newly released transcripts of bodycam footage from the Minneapolis Police Department show that George Floyd told officers he could not breathe more than 20 times in the moments leading up to his death.

Why it matters: Floyd's killing sparked a national wave of Black Lives Matter protests and an ongoing reckoning over systemic racism in the United States. The transcripts "offer one the most thorough and dramatic accounts" before Floyd's death, The New York Times writes.

The state of play: The transcripts were released as former officer Thomas Lane seeks to have the charges that he aided in Floyd's death thrown out in court, per the Times. He is one of four officers who have been charged.

  • The filings also include a 60-page transcript of an interview with Lane. He said he "felt maybe that something was going on" when asked if he believed that Floyd was having a medical emergency at the time.

What the transcripts say:

  • Floyd told the officers he was claustrophobic as they tried to get him into the squad car.
  • The transcripts also show Floyd saying, "Momma, I love you. Tell my kids I love them. I'm dead."
  • Former officer Derek Chauvin, who had his knee on Floyd's neck for over eight minutes, told Floyd, "Then stop talking, stop yelling, it takes a heck of a lot of oxygen to talk."

Read the transcripts via DocumentCloud.