WASHINGTON — Secretary of State Antony Blinken has lastly agreed to testify earlier than the Home committee investigating the Biden administration’s lethally chaotic withdrawal from Afghanistan in a listening to subsequent week, Home International Affairs Committee Chairman Michael McCaul introduced Tuesday.
“After months of excellent religion efforts that have been too typically met with stonewalling from the State Division, I’m proud to have secured Secretary Blinken’s look earlier than my committee,” stated McCaul (R-Texas). “I belief his testimony will present some long-overdue accountability and transparency for the American folks, our Afghan allies, and our Gold Star households.”
The listening to, scheduled for Dec. 11, will come roughly three months after Blinken skipped an identical listening to earlier than the committee, violating a congressional subpoena to seem “regardless of repeated warnings and lodging,” based on the committee.
The International Affairs panel then moved to carry Blinken in contempt of Congress for his snub, which McCaul stated Tuesday appeared to have pushed the highest US diplomat to lastly acquiesce.
“It’s unlucky the secretary agreed to seem solely after my committee superior contempt proceedings towards him,” McCaul stated.
“Whereas I want he had not delayed this significant look till the tip of his tenure as head of the State Division, I look ahead to listening to his testimony and asking poignant questions to assist Home Republicans and the following administration guarantee nothing like this ever occurs once more.”
Kabul in the end fell to the Taliban on Aug. 15, 2021 — roughly two weeks earlier than the final US troops left Afghanistan. Following the Afghan authorities’s collapse, President Biden ordered a non-combatant evacuation mission that was marred by the deaths of 13 US service members and a whole bunch of Afghans in an Aug. 26, 2021, ISIS-Okay suicide bomb assault.
The committee is predicted to press Blinken at the very least partly for extra details about inside State Division warnings urging towards Biden’s plan to completely withdraw the US from its 20-year conflict in Afghanistan with out leaving at the very least a small contingent of troops in place.
The Home panel has been in pursuit of such info since its investigation started in 2022. That’s when it started pursuing a dissent cable during which 23 diplomats reportedly warned of the Taliban’s speedy advance forward of the withdrawal.
After months of back-and-forth with the State Division, the committee lastly acquired a model of the report back to evaluation in 2023.
The committee in September launched its personal report on the disastrous pullout, which discovered partly that Biden was so hellbent on getting out of Afghanistan that he rebuked any Pentagon or State Division recommendation on the contrary, ignored the pleas of the Afghan authorities and disregarded objections from US allies.
“Regardless of President Biden’s public assertions on the contrary, our investigation has revealed the secretary of protection, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs, the commander of US Central Command, the secretary of state, the Workplace of the Director of Nationwide Intelligence, and the commander of NATO’s Resolute Assist Mission and United States Forces-Afghanistan all suggested towards withdrawing all US troops from the nation — each throughout and after the interagency evaluation,” the 350-page report stated.
It additionally discovered that the Biden administration constantly lied to and misled the American public to help the president’s consequences-be-damned view that the US ought to swiftly finish its 20-year conflict in Afghanistan.
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