House GOP releases scathing report on Biden's withdrawal from Afghanistan
600-page report calls out State Dept for failing to have evacuation plan despite clear warning signs
By Morgan Phillips Fox News
7 min read| Published September 8, 2024 6:44pm EDT
Texas Rep. Mike McCaul, the Republican chair of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, released a scathing report that took a fine-toothed comb to the military's botched 2021 Afghanistan withdrawal and highlighted areas of serious mismanagement.
The Republican-led report opens by harkening back to President Joe Biden’s urgency to withdraw from the Vietnam War as a senator in the 1970s. That, along with the Afghanistan withdrawal, demonstrates a "pattern of callous foreign policy positions and readiness to abandon strategic partners," according to the report.
The report also disputed Biden's assertion that his hands were tied to the Doha agreement former President Trump had made with the Taliban establishing a deadline for U.S. withdrawal for the summer of 2021, and it revealed how state officials had no plan for getting Americans and allies out while there were still troops there to protect them.
Here's a roundup of the findings of the 600-page report, comprised of tens of thousands of pages of documents and interviews with high-level officials that spanned much of the last two years:
Biden was not bound by deadlines in Trump's Doha agreement with TalibanThe report found that Biden and Vice President Harris were advised by top leaders that the Taliban were already in violation of the conditions of the Doha agreement and, therefore, the U.S. was not obligated to leave.
The committee also found NATO allies had expressed their vehement opposition to the U.S. decision to withdraw. The British Chief of the Defense staff warned that "withdrawal under these circumstances would be perceived as a strategic victory for the Taliban."
Biden kept on Zalmay Khalilzad, a Trump appointee who negotiated the agreement, as special representative to Afghanistan – a signal that the new administration endorsed the deal.
At the Taliban’s demand, Khalilzad had shut out the Afghan government from the talks – a major blow to President Ashraf Ghani’s government.
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https://www.foxnews.com/politics/house-foreign-affairs-afghanistan-report