No 10: Hegseth ‘wrong’ to say most non-US Nato soldiers didn’t fight in Afghanistan – UK politics live | Politics– www.theguardian.com

Downing Street has delivered a rare public reprimand to a member of Donald Trump’s administration, saying Pete Hegseth, the US defense secretary, was “wrong” to suggest that most non-American Nato soldiers in Afghanistan did not do any fighting.

Hegsth made the comment in a speech at the University of Tennessee, where he recalled serving in Afghanistan himself. He said:

I was a captain in Afghanistan and we would go to the headquarters in Kabul and there would be 50 flags at the headquarters. It was a beautiful thing to see, 50 different countries contributing to the Nato alliance and the Isaf [International Security Assistance Force] mission there.

Except there were maybe five that contributed. It was actually closer to one or two that by the end were actually involved in kinetic operations. In fact the patch Isaf, we joked it meant ‘I Saw Americans Fighting’.