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September 8, 2024

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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 Taliban

The 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. 

When Trump left office, some 2,500 U.S. troops remained in Afghanistan. Biden himself was determined to draw that number to zero no matter what, according to Col. Seth Krummrich, chief of staff for Special Operations Command, who told the committee, ‘The president decided we’re going to leave, and he’s not listening to anybody.’

Then-State Dept. spokesperson Ned Price admitted in testimony the Doha agreement was ‘immaterial’ to Biden’s decision to withdraw. 

The withdrawal: State Department built up personnel, failed to hatch escape plan as it became clear Kabul would fall

The report also details numerous warning signs the State Department received to draw down its embassy footprint as it became clear Afghanistan would quickly fall to the Taliban. It refused to do so. At the time of the withdrawal, it was one of the largest embassies in the world. 

In the end, Americans and U.S. allies were left stranded as the military was ordered to withdraw before the embassy had shuttered.

In one meeting, Deputy Secretary of State for Management and Resources Brian McKeon rejected military officials’ warnings, saying ‘we at the State Department have a much higher risk tolerance than you guys.’

Gen. Austin Miler, the longest-serving commander in Afghanistan, confirmed McKeon’s comments and explained that the State Department did not have a higher risk tolerance but instead exhibited ‘a lack of understanding of the risk’ in Afghanistan.

Asked why McKeon would make such statements, the officer explained, ‘The State Department and the president were saying it. Consequently, [Wilson] and others start saying it, thinking that they will make it work.’ 

The report lays blame on former Afghanistan Ambassador Ross Wilson, who instead of shrinking, grew the embassy’s presence as the security situation deteriorated.

Revealing little sense of urgency, Wilson was on a two-week vacation on the last week of July and the first week of August 2021. 

An NEO, a noncombatant evacuation operation to get personnel out, was not ordered until Aug. 15 as the Taliban marched into Kabul. 

There weren’t enough troops present to begin the NEO until Aug. 19, and the first public message from the embassy in Kabul urging Americans to evacuate wasn’t sent until Aug. 7. 

And while there weren’t enough military planes to handle the evacuations, it took the Transportation Department until Aug. 20 to allow foreign planes to assist. 

Wilson fled the embassy ahead of his entire embassy staff, the report found. He reportedly had COVID-19 at the time but got a foreign service officer to take his test for him so that he could flee the country. 

Acting Under Secretary Carol Perez told the committee the embassy’s evacuation plan was ‘still in the works’ when the Taliban took over, despite months of warning.

Those left behind: Americans and allies turned away while unvetted Afghans got on flights

Wilson testified that he was ‘comfortable’ with holding off on the NEO until Aug. 15, while Gen. Frank McKenzie described it as the ‘fatal flaw that created what happened in August.’

As the Taliban surrounded Kabul on Aug. 14, notes obtained by the committee from a National Security Counsel (NSC) meeting reveal the U.S. government still had not determined who would be eligible for evacuation nor had they identified third countries to serve as transit points for an evacuation.

Fewer cases for special immigrant visas (SIVs) to evacuate Afghan U.S. military allies like interpreters were processed in June, July and August – the lead-up to the takeover – than the four months prior. 

When the last U.S. military flight departed Kabul, around 1,000 Americans were left on the ground, as were more than 90% of SIV-eligible Afghans.

The report found that local embassy employees had been de-prioritized for evacuation, with many turned away from the embassy and airport in tears. On the day of the Taliban takeover, the U.S.’ only guidance for those who might be eligible for evacuation was to ‘not travel to the airport until you have been informed by email that departure options exist.’

And since the NSC did not send over guidelines for who was eligible for evacuation and who to prioritize because they were ‘at risk,’ the State Department processed thousands of evacuees with no documentation. 

The U.S. government had ‘no idea if people being evacuated were threats,’ one State Department employee told the committee.

After the final troops left Afghanistan, volunteer groups helped at least 314 American citizens and 266 lawful permanent residents evacuate the country.

Scenes at Abbey Gate: Terror threat warnings unheeded before bombing

And as the Taliban whipped groups of desperate Afghans at the airport, burned young women and executed civilians, U.S. troops were forbidden from intervening. 

Consul General Jim DeHart described the scene as ‘apocalyptic.’ 

U.S. intelligence, meanwhile, was tracking multiple threat streams, including ‘a potential VBIED or suicide vest IED as part of a complex attack,’ by Aug. 23.  By Aug. 26, the threat was specifically narrowed down to Abbey Gate. It was so serious that diplomatic security pulled back state employees from the gate.

Brig. Gen. Farrell Sullivan ultimately decided to keep the gate open in the face of the threats due to requests made by the Brits.

And on Aug. 26, two bombs planted by terror group ISIS-K exploded at the airport, killing 13 U.S. service members and more than 150 Afghans. CENTCOM records revealed the same ISIS-K terror cell that conducted the Abbey Gate attack ‘established a base of operations located six kilometers to the west’ of the airport in a neighborhood previously used by them as a staging area for an attack on the airport in December 2020. But the U.S. did not strike this cell before the bombing. 

Two weeks later, an airstrike intending to kill those behind the ISIS-K instead killed 10 civilians. The administration initially touted the strike as a success of over-the-horizon capabilities before acknowledging a family of civilians had been killed. 

The U.S. has not struck ISIS-K in Afghanistan since – in stark contrast to the 313 operations carried out by CENTCOM against ISIS in Iraq and Syria in 2022.

The long-term consequences 

In addition to the $7 billion in abandoned U.S. weapons, the Taliban likely gained access to up to $57 million in U.S. funds that were initially given to the Afghan government. 

The Taliban’s interior minister, Sirajuddin Haqqani, proclaimed in February 2024 that relations with the rest of the world, especially the U.S., are ‘irrelevant’ to its policymaking.

A NATO report written by the Defence Education Enhancement Programme found the Taliban was using U.S. military biometric devices and databases to hunt down U.S. Afghan allies.

And in the first six months of Taliban power, ‘nearly 500 former government officials and members of the Afghan security forces were killed or forcibly disappeared,’ according to the report. 

Some 118 girls have been sold as child brides since the takeover and 116 families are waiting for a buyer. Women are now banned from speaking or showing their faces in public. 

In June 2024, the Department of Homeland Security identified more than 400 persons of interest from Central Asia who had illegally crossed the U.S. southern border with the help of an ISIS-related smuggling network. The U.S. has since arrested more than 150 of these individuals. On June 11, 2024, the FBI arrested eight people with ties to ISIS-K who had crossed through the southern border.

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Nikki Haley broke with former President Trump’s stance regarding IVF treatment, but still said she was ‘on standby’ to campaign for the Republican nominee. 

Haley, who was the last Republican presidential candidate to drop from the GOP race before Trump became the nominee, said during an appearance on CBS’s ‘Face the Nation’ on Sunday that she had spoken with Trump in June and that ‘he’s aware that I’m ready if he ever needs me’ to campaign for him. 

With this election, Haley said, ‘there’s a lot at stake’ with two administrations asking to be re-elected. Her main concerns, she says, are her children, with the cost of living and housing so high, the cost of goods up 20%, immigration and safety ‘with foreign entities coming in and the threats we could face,’ and energy.

‘And so there’s just a lot going on,’ Haley told CBS host Margaret Brennan. ‘To me, the stark contrast between a Trump and Harris administration are what led me to say, yes, I need to, you know, I’m going to be voting with Trump, and I’m going to speak at the convention. And so that’s what I did.’ 

Haley noted that Trump’s team has not asked her to campaign, and that she has not been advising him for debate prep.

‘He can, you know, whatever he decides to do with his campaign, he can do that. But when I called him back in June, I told him I was supportive. I think the teams have talked to each other a little bit, but there hasn’t been an ask as of yet. But you know, should he ask, I’m happy to be helpful.’

While voicing her overall support for Trump, Haley said she disagreed with his recent pledge to mandate that either the government or insurance companies pay for in vitro fertilization, or IVF treatment, for women. 

‘It’s not a policy I support any more than it’s a policy of Kamala Harris to remove private health insurance, or Medicare for All,’ Haley said. 

Brennan interjected saying that Trump is head of the Republican Party, but Haley shot back that ‘you also have to talk about the head of the Democrat Party.’

‘When you talk about Medicare for All, when you talk about removing private health insurance, you might as well be Canada. You might as well look at socialist health care,’ Haley said. ‘We never want to get to that point, because you’re not going to get IVF or anything else, cancer drugs or anything else when it comes to that.’ 

Haley said both of her children are results of fertility treatment. 

‘We want that option to be available to everyone. But the way you do it is, you don’t mandate coverage. Instead, you go and you make sure that coverage is accessible, and you make sure that you’re doing everything you can to make it affordable. That comes with regulations,’ Haley added. ‘Kamala has put down – her and Biden put down a lot of regulations on a lot of things. Trump has relieved those regulations so that we need to have more of an important policy conversation than sound bites. And I do think this election has become about sound bites, and I think we have to get to the substance of it.’

Brennan cited CBS polling as indicating that support among female voters has grown to a double-digit lead for Vice President Harris over Trump since Biden stepped out of the race, clearing her to become the Democratic presidential nominee. She asked Haley whether Trump’s vice presidential running mate, Sen. JD Vance, R-Ohio, is contributing to the divide after remarks resurfaced last week of him highlighting how the head of the most powerful teachers’ union in the country does not have a child of her own. 

Vance’s criticism was directed at Randi Weingarten, president of the American Federation of Teachers, during a forum held by the Center for Christian Virtue in October 2021 when he was running for Senate. In the resurfaced clip, Vance stated that ‘if she wants to brainwash and destroy the minds of children, she should have some of her own and leave ours the hell alone.’

‘He continues to say things that certainly are highlighted as being offensive to women,’ Brennan offered to Haley on Sunday. ‘That is going to hurt, won’t it, with female voters?’ 

‘It’s not helpful. It’s not helpful,’ Haley responded. ‘Look, you can either look at style, or you can look at substance. I choose as a voter to look at substance,’ she added. 

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More voters report that Vice President Kamala Harris is ‘too liberal or progressive’ on key policy issues than they considered former President Donald Trump as ‘too conservative,’ according to a New York Times poll. 

The New York Times/Sienna College poll published Sunday found Trump with a narrow lead over Harris, at 48% to Harris’ 47%, signaling her political boost from the DNC after replacing President Biden on the ticket might be dwindling as the election comes down to its final stages.

Among the data compiled in the poll, it found that nearly the majority of voters reported Trump is ‘not too far’ to the left or right on key issues, while only around one-third of voters said he’s ‘too conservative,’ the New York Times poll found. 

On the other hand, nearly half of voters surveyed, at 44%, reported that Harris is ‘too liberal and progressive,’ and 42% found that she’s ‘not too far either way.’

The New York Times reported that Trump’s lead over Harris as a more centrist candidate is one of his ‘overlooked advantages.’ 

‘Yes, he’s outside of the political mainstream in many respects — he denied the result of the 2020 election. And yes, he does have conservative views on many issues, like immigration. But he’s also taken many positions that would have been likelier to be held by a Democrat than a Republican a decade ago, like opposition to cutting entitlements, support for a cooperative relationship with Russia or opposition to free trade. It’s a reputation he’s careful to protect, from saying he doesn’t support Project 2025 to his cagey position on additional measures to restrict abortion,’ the Times reported. 

The poll also found that 11% of voters believe Trump is ‘not conservative enough,’ compared to 9% of voters who reported Harris is ‘not liberal or progressive enough.’

The poll follows one released in late July, when Biden dropped out of the race amid mounting concern over his mental acuity, which also found Trump in a 48-47 lead. 

The poll Sunday also found that 28% of voters feel like they need to know more about Harris to throw their support behind her, compared to 9% who said the same about Trump.

Harris held her first sit-down interview with the media late last month, joining CNN’s Dana Bash for a joint interview with her running mate, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, but has otherwise mostly avoided the media. As of Sunday, Harris has gone 49 days as the presumptive, and now, official Democratic nominee for president without holding an official press conference.

The poll released Sunday was conducted between Sept. 3 to 6 and based on telephone surveys with 1,695 registered voters across the country. 

Fox News Digital’s Michael Lee and Brian Flood contributed to this report. 

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Former President Donald Trump is maintaining his lead nationally, seemingly shrugging off a burst of enthusiasm for Democrats after Vice President Kamala Harris entered the race.

Trump garnered the support of 48% of likely voters compared to 47% who indicated support for Harris, according to the latest results of the New York Times/Siena poll released on Sunday.

The results are essentially identical to the last time the New York Times/Siena poll asked voters for their preference in the aftermath of President Biden dropping out of the race in late July, with that poll also showing Trump with a 48-47 lead.

The poll comes after weeks of increased enthusiasm for the Democratic ticket after Harris took over for Biden, though the New York Times argued that it appears Trump’s support is ‘remarkably resilient’ to the stunning changes to the election landscape.

The poll found that Harris has yet to sell voters on her vision for the country, with 28% of respondents indicating that they felt like they needed to know more about her in order for her to earn their support. In contrast, only 9% indicated similar concerns about Trump.

‘I don’t know what Kamala’s plans are,’ said Dawn Conley, a 48-year-old small-business owner in Knoxville, Tenn., who is leaning toward Trump, told the New York Times.

The poll also found that while Harris has made gains with key demographics to the Democratic coalition after Biden’s decision to drop out, she is still falling short of traditional Democratic strength among groups such as women and Latino voters.

Also working against Harris is the voters’ preference for change, with 60% indicating they would like to see a major change from the policies of Biden. Only 25% of respondents said Harris would represent that kind of change, while 53% believe Trump would.

But the poll’s news wasn’t all bad for Harris, who may hold the critical enthusiasm lead over Trump as November quickly approaches. The poll found that 91% of Democrats were enthusiastic about voting, while 85% of Republicans indicated the same.

The New York Times/Siena poll surveyed 1,695 registered voters between September 3 and September 6 and has a margin of sampling error of plus or minus 2.8 percentage points.

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Former President George W. Bush does not plan to reveal whom he will vote for in the upcoming 2024 election.

‘No,’ the former president’s office said when asked by NBC News whether he or former First Lady Laura Bush would endorse a candidate publicly. ‘President Bush retired from presidential politics years ago.’

Bush’s refusal to make a public endorsement comes just a day after his former vice president, Dick Cheney, announced that he would go against his party’s candidate and support Vice President Kamala Harris in November.

‘In our nation’s 248-year history, there has never been an individual who is a greater threat to our republic than Donald Trump,’ Cheney said in a statement. ‘He tried to steal the last election using lies and violence to keep himself in power after the voters had rejected him. He can never be trusted with power again.’

Trump responded to Cheney’s endorsement by calling the former vice president ‘an irrelevant RINO’ in a Truth Social post shortly after Cheney’s announcement.

Speaking to reporters Sunday, Harris said she was ‘honored’ to have Cheney’s endorsement, adding that it ‘really reinforces for them that we love our country, and we have more in common than what separates.’

The Harris campaign did not immediately respond to a Fox News Digital request for comment on Bush’s silence.

While Bush’s office argued the former president ‘retired from presidential politics years ago,’ he has made endorsements of Republican presidential candidates in the past. In 2008, he supported then-Senator John McCain’s bid against former President Barack Obama and also threw his weight behind the 2012 candidacy of Sen. Mitt Romney, R-Utah.

Bush’s stance on presidential politics seemingly changed with the emergence of former President Donald Trump in 2016, whom Bush avoided commenting on. Bush instead focused on supporting Republican senators. In November, his office said that he and the former first lady did not vote for either major party candidate in the 2016 election.

After Trump’s failed bid for re-election in 2020, Bush said that he had written in former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice in that year’s race. 

The Trump campaign did not immediately respond to a Fox News Digital request for comment.

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