President Biden’s spokesman denounced the House Republican investigation of the chaotic 2021 withdrawal as partisan and one-sided.
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John F. Kirby, a national security spokesman for President Biden, noted that the report was not the only one issued by Republicans.
The White House dismissed on Monday a new House Republican investigative report castigating President Biden’s administration for the chaotic 2021 withdrawal from Afghanistan, saying that it offers “little or nothing new” and ignores critical facts.
John F. Kirby, a national security spokesman for the president, took the lectern at the White House to issue a lengthy rebuttal to the report that was released earlier in the day. It came more than three years after the event and less than two months before the November election.
Mr. Kirby derided what he called the “one-sided partisan nature of this report” and noted that it was not the only one issued by Republicans. “This comes, of course, two years after their first report, and this one says little or nothing new,” he said.
He pointed out that in pulling U.S. troops out of Afghanistan, Mr. Biden was following a withdrawal agreement negotiated with the Taliban by President Donald J. Trump before leaving office.
“Ending wars is more difficult than starting them,” Mr. Kirby said. “President Biden knew that. He acknowledged that. But it doesn’t mean that the decision to end this one was wrong or that the withdrawal wasn’t conducted as professionally and as bravely as it was humanly possible given the circumstances. It doesn’t mean we don’t grieve and mourn with the families of those whose lives were tragically taken during the withdrawal, especially at Abbey Gate on the 26th of August of that year.”
The report, prepared by Republicans on the House Foreign Affairs Committee, accused the Biden team of ignoring security warnings, failing to adequately plan an evacuation and lying to the public about the risks and the missteps that led to the bombing that killed 13 U.S. service members at Abbey Gate outside the airport in Kabul, the Afghan capital. The attack, which also killed as many as 170 civilians, punctuated a hasty and chaotic evacuation as the Taliban advanced, but Pentagon reviews have concluded that U.S. troops could not have prevented the violence.
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Source: nytimes.com