Republicans are blasting the Biden administration’s cover up of a scathing report on Afghanistan withdrawal failures put out by the State Department ahead of the long July Fourth holiday weekend saying it conveys ‘guilt.’
Late Friday, the State Department quietly released a 87-page report condemning his administration’s failure to prepare for the Afghanistan’s rapid collapse at the hands of the Taliban in 2021. The investigation found serious pitfalls in leadership and questions about who was in charge before and during the mayhem, which resulted in the deaths of 13 U.S. service members and hundreds of Afghan civilians.
‘It’s no coincidence that President Biden’s State Department waited until Friday evening, before a long weekend, to drop its assessment of the United States’ disastrous and embarrassing withdrawal from Afghanistan,’ Rep. Greg Murphy told DailyMail.com.
‘That type of behavior conveys guilt and acceptance that the Biden Administration is culpable,’ Murphy, R-N.C., added.
A defiant President Biden stood by his decision to withdraw troops from Afghanistan just hours after a damning State Department report condemned his administration’s failure to prepare for the country’s rapid collapse
‘Of course, they don’t want you to know that, so they attempted to bury it in plain sight while Americans were gearing up to celebrate Independence Day with family and friends.’
Later on Friday, Biden stood by his decision to withdraw troops from Afghanistan and shrugged off the report.
‘Remember what I said? I said al-Qaeda wouldn’t be there. I said we’d get help from the Taliban. What’s happening now? What’s going on? Read your press. I was right,’ Biden said during a press event responding to the Supreme Court’s decision to block his $400 billion student loan forgiveness plan.
However, House Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Michael McCaul, R-Texas, took issue with Biden’s statement that al-Qaeda is no longer operating in Afghanistan – calling it ‘divorced from reality.’
‘It is completely divorced from reality for President Biden to claim that al Qaeda is no longer operating in Afghanistan or that the Taliban has somehow become our national security partner in the region,’ McCaul said in a statement Thursday.
The chairman noted that Al Zawahiri, the leader of al-Qaeda, was discovered living in the capital city of Kabul in a home owned by a senior Taliban official.
The U.S. took out the leader last year in a drone strike.
He continued to say that al-Qaeda’s capabilities are growing rapidly and are ‘aided by the Taliban’ through funding and ‘security cooperation.’
‘President Biden’s words can only be interpreted as an attempt to whitewash the Taliban and al Qaeda’s longstanding ties, and may even ben an attempt to get America on the path of recognizing the Taliban as the government of Afghanistan,’ warned McCaul.
Murphy added that House Republicans back McCaul and Chairman Mike Rogers, R-Ala., of the House Armed Services Committee’s commitment to stand up to the administration and the Taliban’s growing influence.
‘President Biden and Secretary Blinken can keep running interference, but we will do everything in our power to expose their abject failure in leadership that cost the lives of 13 service members, stranded Americans and Afghans that served alongside us, and left behind $85 billion of U. S. military equipment for the Taliban,’ Murphy told DailyMail.com.
The Biden administration failed to plan properly and didn’t foresee the rapid collapse of Kabul during the chaotic Afghanistan withdrawal, a damning State Department report has concluded.
The US Marine Corps posted a photo to Twitter of the flag-draped caskets of their fallen brethren killed in the suicide bomb attack in Kabul, after the coffins arrived back on home soil on August 29, 2021
The State Department report repeatedly blamed the administrations of both former President Donald Trump and President Joe Biden for their efforts before and after the August 2021 departure of U.S. forces from Kabul.
‘The decisions of both President Trump and President Biden to end the U.S. military mission in Afghanistan had serious consequences for the viability of the Afghan government and its security,’ the report says.
‘Those decisions are beyond the scope of this review, but the (review) team found that during both administrations there was insufficient senior-level consideration of worst-case scenarios and how quickly those might follow.’
It also outlined several strategic failures as the Taliban overran cities – saying there wasn’t enough consideration given to ‘worst-case scenarios.’
As a result, thousands of allies who helped the U.S. in the war were left behind, and there was chaos at Hamid Karzai International Airport as men, women and children tried desperately to flee.
Even though planning for the evacuation of Kabul began ‘some time’ beforehand, the State Department was ‘hindered by the fact that it was unclear who in the Department had the lead.’
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