A defiant President Joe Biden stood by his decision to withdraw troops from Afghanistan and shrugged off a damning State Department report condemning his administration's failure to prepare for the country's rapid collapse.
He was responding to the Supreme Court's decision to block his $400 billion student loan forgiveness plan
'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 before walking away.
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.
Before the mayhem unfolded, Biden promised a safe withdrawal and said it was 'highly unlikely' the Taliban would take over Afghanistan.
The Biden administration publicly released only half of the 87-page report laying out the disastrous end of 20 years of U.S. involvement on the Friday before the July 4 holiday.
It will likely lead to fury from Republicans and veterans who have long accused the Biden administration of trying to shrug off its actions in the build-up to August 2021.
The conclusion confirmed what critics have long thought, that there was a litany of strategic failures as the Taliban overran cities and 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.'
In April, National Security spokesman John Kirby blamed the Trump administration for the failures and said 'all this talk of chaos, I just don't see it'.
The review repeatedly blames the administrations of both former President Donald Trump Joe Biden
It had released a National Security Council review of the withdrawal on the day before Good Friday and the Easter weekend but declined to issue internal Pentagon and State Department assessments.
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.
Before the mayhem unfolded, Biden promised a safe withdrawal and said it was 'highly unlikely' the Taliban would take over Afghanistan.
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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
The Biden administration publicly released only half of the 87-page report laying out the disastrous end of 20 years of U.S. involvement on the Friday before the July 4 holiday.
It will likely lead to fury from Republicans and veterans who have long accused the Biden administration of trying to shrug off its actions in the build-up to August 2021.
The conclusion confirmed what critics have long thought, that there was a litany of strategic failures as the Taliban overran cities and 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.'
In April, National Security spokesman John Kirby blamed the Trump administration for the failures and said 'all this talk of chaos, I just don't see it'.
The review repeatedly blames the administrations of both former President Donald Trump Joe Biden
It had released a National Security Council review of the withdrawal on the day before Good Friday and the Easter weekend but declined to issue internal Pentagon and State Department assessmen
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.
A State Department task force helped bring out nearly 2,000 Afghan citizens in July and early August 2021, weeks before the August 31, 2021, deadline the U.S. set for withdrawal.
They were eligible for processing under a special U.S. visa program for Afghans.
But State 'failed to establish a broader task force as the situation in Afghanistan deteriorated,' the report says.
And as the military planned for an evacuation of American civilians and Afghan allies, 'it was unclear who in the Department had the lead,' it says.
'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.'
As the Taliban took key cities far faster than most U.S. officials expected and the fate of Kabul became unclear, the report says, State Department personnel began receiving an 'overwhelming volume of incoming calls and messages' from lawmakers, other government agencies, and the public pleading for help saving people trapped in the country.
House Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Michael McCaul, R-Texas, responded to the bombshell report in a statement Friday.
'On April 25, I called upon the State Department to declassify its After-Action Review on Afghanistan within 60 days. The department failed to fulfill that request, instead choosing to release only a small portion of that document – 24 of 87 pages that were already unclassified – and completely omitted the narrative which forms the bulk of the report,' said McCaul in a statement to DailyMail.com.
'There is no reason not to produce a declassified version of the full report, as much of it is marked 'Sensitive but Unclassified' or 'Unclassified.' This is another blatant attempt to hide the Biden administration's culpability in the chaotic and deadly evacuation from Afghanistan.'
McCaul's committee separately has been investigating the disastrous withdrawal, and has threatened to hold Secretary of State Antony Blinken in contempt of Congress if he doesn't publicize the Afghanistan 'dissenting cable' that he says shows the Biden administration was aware of a rapidly deteriorating security situation as U.S. troops pulled out.
Thirteen American service members died when the suicide bomber detonated explosives packed with ball bearings amid the chaos at the city's airport
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 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 US service members and hundreds of Afghan civilians
Staff working to facilitate the evacuation also faced confusing guidance that wasn't attuned to real-world conditions at the time, according to the report.
State has taken lessons from the failures of Afghanistan into account when evacuating people before and during the subsequent war in Ukraine and as a crisis developed in Sudan, according to a senior State Department official who briefed reporters Friday.
The official spoke on condition of anonymity under ground rules set by the department.
Officials declined to say why they had released the report just before a holiday weekend.
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