Media Contact 202-226-8467

Washington, D.C. – House Foreign Affairs Committee Lead Republican is pushing back on the Biden administration’s attacks against his interim report on Afghanistan.

“The devastation caused by President Biden’s unconditional withdrawal and the resulting chaotic and deadly evacuation continues to this day,” McCaul said. “Most of the claims made by the Biden administration since the release of my report are demonstrably false, and are clear attempts to rewrite history in an effort to sweep one of the worst foreign policy failures in American history under the rug. My colleagues and I will not let up until we have a thorough and complete investigation into how this happened and why it went so badly so we can ensure it never happens again. The American people and our service men and women deserve a full accounting of the facts.”

McCaul fires back at White House memo attempting to discount Afghanistan report
By Kelly Laco
August, 15, 2022
https://www.foxnews.com/politics/mccaul-fires-back-white-house-memo-attempting-discount-afghanistan-report-demonstrably-false 

Rep. Michael McCaul, R-Texas, is firing back at the White House for circulating a memo that defends the Biden administration’s disastrous withdrawal from Afghanistan nearly a year ago, calling claims “demonstrably false” and an attempt to sweep the chaotic withdrawal under the rug.
…
The White House’s memo comes after the House Foreign Affairs Committee publicized a report critical of the withdrawal, which killed 13 U.S. service members, accusing the administration of failing to evacuate U.S.-trained Afghan military personnel, leaving at least 800 Americans behind enemy lines, and creating a major national security risk.
…
McCaul took issue with the White House’s argument that the Doha agreement is to blame, because Biden said he would have ordered the unconditional withdrawal even without a deal in place.

During an interview with ABC News’ George Stephanopoulos last August, Biden responded that he would have “tried to figure out how to withdraw those troops, yes” in response to a question if he would have taken out troops even without the deal.

READ THE FULL STORY HERE

BACKGROUND
All of the citations for this are found in the report. 

A recent UN report estimates there are hundreds of al Qaeda terrorists in Afghanistan.

The president told the American people al Qaeda was “gone” in August 2021 – but the leader of al Qaeda, Ayman al Zawahiri, was recently discovered living in downtown Kabul.

The administration told the American people for months there were only “about a hundred” Americans left in Afghanistan after the withdrawal. We now know more than 1,000 have been evacuated since August 31, 2021 – a fact the administration has not refuted.

State Department Spokesperson Ned Price claimed there was an “appropriate level” of consular officers during the evacuation. At the start of the evacuation there were only 15 consular officers at the airport to process people. The most consular officers at the airport throughout the evacuation was 36 people. This very small number of staffers were required to process more than 124,000 people who were evacuated, which is more than 3,440 people per consular officer even at the absolute height. Price went further to claim this small number of consular officers “was not a limiting factor…in the number of individuals we were able to process.” But, as The New York Times reported on August 19th, “overwhelmed consular officials struggled to identify and verify those who had valid claims to be evacuated.” In addition, Brigadier General John Sullivan, the Joint Task Force-Crisis Response Commander in Kabul told Army investigators, “Initially there were not enough consular officers to process everyone and that remained an issue throughout.” And a U.S. CENTCOM After-Action report found, “Consular staff did not have sufficient manning to supervise all processing at the gates which often led to Department of Defense (DoD) personnel at the gates making on the spot calls concerning paperwork.”

The NSC memo only presents the first half of a quote from General Milley referencing the number of troops he believed would have been needed in Afghanistan to keep the Taliban at bay. The full quote is: “I’m sorry, there’s a reasonable prospect we would’ve had to increase the forces past 2,500 given that the Taliban was very likely was going to start attacking us. And there’s a range of forces. We’re really talking 2,500 to 4,500.” (emphasis add) That directly conflicts with statements made by President Biden in February 2022, when he said, “It wasn’t just 2,000, 4,000. We would have had to significantly increase the number of troops, and then you’re back in this war of attrition.” The president and Secretary Blinken have both said previously that tens of thousands of troops would have been needed – a number no military official has ever agreed would be necessary.

The NSC memo’s claim that the withdrawal has strengthened our national security has been refuted by the president’s top military advisors, the Defense Department, and our allies. The Department of Defense, the Defense Intelligence Agency, and the chief of MI-6 have all stated the withdrawal was helpful to America’s adversaries, specifically Iran, China, and Russia. And both FBI Director Wray and General Milley have expressed concerns about al Qaeda and ISIS-K growing stronger and developing the ability to hit the U.S. homeland because of the U.S. military’s withdrawal from Afghanistan. In addition, the Taliban has gotten access to $7.12 billion worth of U.S. supplied military equipment according to the Biden administration’s own estimates. And finally, there is evidence some top Afghan security forces – including special operators and senior officers – fled to Iran with U.S. equipment. While some were reportedly returned to the Afghanistan, it appears some did remain.

In addition to the Doha agreement being conditions based, President Biden specifically said he “would’ve tried to figure out how to withdraw” troops from Afghanistan – whether the agreement existed or not.