While Biden's panicked evacuation from Afghanistan was going on, it had failed so badly that staffers from his own wife’s office were contacting private rescue groups to get people out.
This is one of the many damning revelations in the report by Rep. McCaul for the Republican minority on the House Foreign Affairs Committee. The interim report, "A Strategic Failure" was conducted despite every possible effort by the White House and House Democrats to stop it, including blocking information requests and keeping briefings unnecessarily classified.
With the revelations that the State Department is actively refusing to cooperate with the Special Inspector General on Afghanistan Reconstruction, this report is more urgent than ever.
Forced to rely on personal interviews and public non-classified testimony, the report reveals that Biden had made it a "priority" to maintain an embassy in Kabul even after he had withdrawn the troops and the country was on the verge of falling to the advancing Taliban terror forces.
“POTUS was publicly making it clear that this was a priority. Ambassador Wilson began stating that ‘I am maniacal about the Embassy remaining in Kabul,’” a military officer described.
Secretary of State Blinken and other State Department officials in D.C. and in Kabul refused to consider the possibility of a Taliban takeover. Only Blinken and his department could order an evacuation, and they refused to seriously plan for one until a week before the fall of Kabul.
Military officials were prevented from even discussing an evacuation, being told, “don’t say NEO” and “This is not a NEO for Afghanistan.” NEO stands for Non-Combatant Evacuation.
Biden’s refusal to listen to advisers who told him to maintain a minimal military force on the ground almost led to an even worse disaster as the only remaining airport was overrun.
With American forces under fire, Air Force pilots and maintenance personnel were handed guns and told to stand guard. Had the Taliban wanted to overrun the airport, they could have done so.
