What advice did Biden hear from senior military officers -- and when did he hear it?
“I know president to be and honest and forthright man.” That was Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin in testimony to the Senate Armed Services Committee on Tuesday. Trouble was, the questioner, Sen. Tom Cotton, did not ask Austin for his opinion of Joe Biden.
The Arkansas Republican, who served in Iraq with the 101st Airborne, wanted to know if it was true that, as Joe Biden said last month in an interview with George Stephanopoulos, no senior military officer advised him to leave troops behind in Afghanistan.
“Their input was received by the president and considered by the president for sure,” Austin testified but the senior military officers weren’t going to speak of “what they personally recommended in confidence.”
As U.S. Central Command Gen. Kenneth McKenzie testified, the officers recommended the United States maintain a presence of at least 2,500 U.S. service members in Afghanistan. Gen. McKenzie told the committee he made a similar recommendation in the fall of 2020 under the Trump administration. The general believed “the withdrawal of those forces would lead inevitably to the collapse of the Afghan military forces and eventually the Afghan government.” --->READ MORE HERE
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| Sarahbeth Maney/The New York Times via AP, Pool |
Milley, McKenzie say they opposed full U.S. pullout by deadline
Top military leaders on Tuesday confirmed that they advised the White House to keep at least 2,500 troops in Afghanistan and to reject an arbitrary timeline for withdrawal, seemingly contradicting President Biden, who said the Pentagon brass was on board with his Aug. 31 exit date regardless of conditions on the ground and warning signs of a likely Taliban takeover.
The acknowledgments from Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Gen. Mark A. Milley and Gen. Kenneth F. McKenzie Jr., the head of U.S. Central Command, were among the most significant revelations from a heated hearing before the Senate Armed Services Committee. It was the first such hearing with Defense Department leadership since Afghanistan fell to the Taliban on Aug. 15. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin also appeared before the panel.
It was an uncomfortable six hours of testimony for all three witnesses. They faced questions about decision-making that led to the hasty pullout, the chaotic and violent finals days of the U.S. combat mission, and the problems of fighting terrorism without a U.S. military presence inside Taliban-ruled Afghanistan. --->READ MORE HEREFollow links below to related stories:
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