House GOP Release Report on Biden      09/09 06:16

   House Republicans on Sunday issued a scathing report on their investigation 
into the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan, blaming the disastrous end of 
America's longest war on President Joe Biden's administration and minimizing 
the role of former President Donald Trump, who had signed the withdrawal deal 
with the Taliban.

   WASHINGTON (AP) -- House Republicans on Sunday issued a scathing report on 
their investigation into the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan, blaming the 
disastrous end of America's longest war on President Joe Biden's administration 
and minimizing the role of former President Donald Trump, who had signed the 
withdrawal deal with the Taliban.

   The partisan review lays out the final months of military and civilian 
failures, following Trump's February 2020 withdrawal deal, that allowed 
America's fundamentalist Taliban enemy to sweep through and conquer all of the 
country even before the last U.S. officials flew out on Aug. 30, 2021. The 
chaotic exit left behind many American citizens, Afghan battlefield allies, 
women activists and others at risk from the Taliban.

   But House Republicans' report breaks little new ground as the withdrawal has 
been exhaustively litigated through several independent reviews. Previous 
investigations and analyses have pointed to a systemic failure spanning the 
last four presidential administrations and concluded that Biden and Trump share 
the heaviest blame.

   Texas Republican Rep. Michael McCaul, who led the investigation as chairman 
of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, said the GOP review reveals that the 
Biden administration "had the information and opportunity to take necessary 
steps to plan for the inevitable collapse of the Afghan government, so we could 
safely evacuate U.S. personnel, American citizens, green card holders, and our 
brave Afghan allies."

   "At each step of the way, however, the administration picked optics over 
security," he said in a statement.

   McCaul earlier in the day denied that the timing of the report's release 
ahead of the presidential election was political, or that Republicans ignored 
Trump's mistakes in the U.S. withdrawal.

   A White House spokesperson, Sharon Yang, said the Republican report was 
based on "cherry-picked facts, inaccurate characterizations, and preexisting 
biases."

   "Because of the bad deal former President Trump cut with the Taliban to get 
out of Afghanistan by May of 2021, President Biden inherited an untenable 
position," either ramp up the U.S. war against a strengthened Taliban, or end 
it, Yang said in a statement.

   House Democrats in a statement said the report by their Republican 
colleagues ignored facts about Trump's role.

   The more than 18-month investigation by Republicans on the House Foreign 
Affairs Committee zeroed in on the months leading up to the removal of U.S. 
troops, saying that Biden and his administration undermined high-ranking 
officials and ignored warnings as the Taliban seized key cities far faster than 
most U.S. officials had expected or prepared for.

   "I called their advance 'the Red Blob,''' retired Col. Seth Krummrich said 
of the Taliban, telling the committee that at the special operations' central 
command where he was chief of staff, "we tracked the Taliban advance daily, 
looking like a red blob gobbling up terrain."

   "I don't think we ever thought -- you know, nobody ever talked about, 'Well, 
what's going to happen when the Taliban come over the wall?''' Carol Perez, the 
State Department's acting undersecretary for management at the time of the 
withdrawal, said of what House Republicans said was minimal State Department 
planning before abandoning the embassy in mid-August 2021 when the Taliban 
swept into Kabul, Afghanistan's capital.

   The withdrawal ended a nearly two-decade occupation by U.S. and allied 
forces begun to rout out the al-Qaida militants responsible for the Sept. 11, 
2001, attacks on the United States. The Taliban had allowed al-Qaida's leader, 
Osama bin Laden, to shelter in Afghanistan. Committee staffers noted reports 
since the U.S. withdrawal of the group rebuilding in Afghanistan, such as a 
U.N. report of up to eight al-Qaida training camps there.

   The Taliban overthrew an Afghan government and military that the U.S. had 
spent nearly 20 years and trillions of dollars building in hopes of keeping the 
country from again becoming a base for anti-Western extremists.

   A 2023 report by the U.S. government watchdog for the U.S. in Afghanistan 
singles out Trump's February 2020 deal with the Taliban agreeing to withdraw 
all American forces and military contractors by the spring of the next year, 
and both Trump's and Biden's determination to keep pulling out U.S. forces 
despite the Taliban breaking key commitments in the withdrawal deal.

   House Republicans' more than 350-page document is the product of hours of 
testimony -- including with former Joint Chiefs Chairman Gen. Mark Milley, U.S. 
Central Command retired Gen. Frank McKenzie and others who were senior 
officials at the time -- seven public hearings and round-tables as well as more 
than 20,000 pages of State Department documents reviewed by the committees.

   With Biden no longer running for reelection, Trump and his GOP allies have 
tried to elevate the withdrawal as a campaign issue against Vice President 
Kamala Harris, who is now Trump's Democratic opponent in the presidential race.

   The report by House Republican cites Harris' overall responsibility as an 
adviser to Biden, but doesn't point to specific counsel or action by Harris 
that contributed to the many failures.

   Some highlights of the report:

   Decision to withdraw

   Republicans point to testimony and records that claim the Biden 
administration's reliance on input from military and civilian leaders on the 
ground in Afghanistan in the months before the withdrawal was "severely 
limited," with most of the decision-making taking place by National Security 
Adviser Jake Sullivan without consultation with key stakeholders.

   Yang, the White House spokesperson, denied that, saying the administration 
had sought input from officials in Kabul and others across the U.S. government.

   The report says Biden proceeded with the withdrawal even though the Taliban 
was failing to keep some of its agreements under the deal, including breaking 
its promise to enter talks with the then-U.S.- backed Afghan government.

   Former State Department spokesperson Ned Price testified to the committee 
that adherence to the Doha Agreement was "immaterial" to Biden's decision to 
withdraw, according to the report.

   Earlier reviews have said Trump also carried out his early steps of the 
withdrawal deal, cutting the U.S. troop presence from about 13,000 to an 
eventual 2,500 despite early Taliban noncompliance with some parts of the deal, 
and despite the Taliban escalating attacks on Afghan forces.

   The House report faults a longtime U.S. diplomat for Afghanistan, former 
Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad, not Trump, for Trump administration actions in its 
negotiations with the Taliban. The new report says that Trump was following 
recommendations of American military leaders in making sharp cuts in U.S. troop 
numbers in Afghanistan after the signing.

   'We were still in planning' when Kabul fell

   The report also goes into the vulnerability of U.S. embassy staff in Kabul 
as the Biden administration planned its exit. Republicans claim there was a 
"dogmatic insistence" by the Biden administration to maintain a large 
diplomatic footprint despite concerns about the lack of security afforded to 
personnel once U.S. forces left.

   McKenzie, who was one of the two U.S. generals who oversaw the evacuation, 
told lawmakers that the administration's insistence at keeping the embassy open 
and fully operational was the "fatal flaw that created what happened in 
August," according to the report.

   The committee report claims that State Department officials went as far as 
watering down or "even completely rewriting reports" from heads of diplomatic 
security and the Department of Defense that had warned of the threats to U.S. 
personnel as the withdrawal date got closer.

   "We were still in planning" when Kabul fell, Perez, the senior U.S. 
diplomat, testified to the committee.