In the nation's capital, Congress is back in session and House Republicans are blaming the Biden-Harris administration for the chaotic and deadly 2021 U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan.
The House Foreign Affairs Committee released a report Monday over its investigation into the withdrawal, accusing the White House of ignoring security warnings that might have prevented the suicide attack at the Kabul airport that killed 13 U.S. servicemembers.
In the report — titled "Willful Blindness" — Chairman Michael McCaul asserts that President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris "picked optics over security."
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“As a result of the Biden-Harris administration’s failure to plan for all contingencies, the U.S. government conducted an emergency evacuation without the necessary personnel, supplies, and equipment," McCaul said in a statement. "The administration’s dereliction of duty placed U.S. servicemembers and U.S. State Department personnel in mortal danger, where the Taliban – our sworn enemy – became the first line of defense.
"As a direct result of the failure to plan for all contingencies, 13 U.S. servicemembers and 170 Afghans were murdered in a terrorist attack at Abbey Gate on August 26, 2021, and 45 U.S. servicemembers and countless Afghans were injured," McCaul added."This was preventable."
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House Democrats released a -report, placing the blame on former President Trump for negotiating the withdrawal and accusing Republicans of playing politics by releasing their report several years after the fact.
"Republicans’ partisan attempts to garner headlines rather than acknowledge the full facts and substance of their investigation have only increased with the heat of an election season, and after recent public criticisms about the investigation from former majority staff," wrote House Foreign Affairs Committee ranking member Gregory Meeks. "With the ascendance of Vice President Kamala Harris to the top of the Democratic presidential ticket, the GOP performance has reached a crescendo—Republicans now claim she was the architect of the U.S. withdrawal though she is referenced only three times in 3,288 pages of the Committee’s interview transcripts."
