JUST IN: Kevin McCarthy Assails Biden Over Afghanistan, Says August 31st Deadline Impossible To Meet

wow good afternoon with me today i have a ranking member mr boss mr mccall and mr rogers also with me are veterans who served in afghanistan mr banks mr waltz mr mast mr greene and our newest member to congress jay kelsey um we have all just left the briefing it is a classified briefing cannot talk about what was said inside but i'll tell you this i'm less confident after leaving that briefing there's no possible way that we can get every american that's still in afghanistan out in the next seven days we are just three weeks away from the 20th anniversary of 9 11. at no time should america ever bend or allow the taliban to tell us when we have to stop bringing americans out we should stay until every single american is able to get out of afghanistan we should use every recourse possible to make that happen and we should not negotiate it we should explain that this is what is going to happen and anybody in our way to stop us from bringing an american out will be in danger i have a number of members that are here unfortunately much like our other briefings it was cut off short there were members still in line and veterans who wished to ask questions the democrats felt that we could only have the 90 minutes no other time as i watch other countries and our allies across this world bring their bodies back together of government to work on how to bring their citizens home the democrats bring us back to spend trillions of dollars they fight because they can't being a rule up they spend their time on phones trying to twist arms to get people to vote whereas they should drop that and our entire focus republican democrat independent alike should be nothing else than bringing our americans home we shouldn't work on other items especially spending of trillions of dollars that should be our only focus we shouldn't cut off our briefing with the administration because they have to get back to vote on their rule this is what we should be voting on if i look to the uk they brought their parliament back to work on bringing their citizens home we should be doing exact same i know the effects that it's having on those who are there those who are back home and those who are served for every single individual from every gold star family from every veteran i want to thank you for your service and your sacrifice you did exactly what was asked upon you with that i'd like to call up a ranking member of veterans mr boss thank you leader you know more than 2 000 american heroes have given their life in afghanistan since 2001. we must never forget their sacrifice and the sacrifice that their families made as well one of the scariest days of my life was the day that i watched my son leave this united states and move into a war zone i'll never stop being grateful that he made it home safely and that so many of his fellow servicemen made it home as well including those who did deploy into afghanistan but after two decades they made they did make the world safer and they are still trying to make the world safer and they're trying to take care of their each one of them are reaching out to our offices to try to identify afghans uh people that worked with them to try to get them back home so they're not stopping sacrificing today they're still trying to serve unfortunately the biden administration has let them down they'd watching the country that they had to fight in and the people that they fought alongside be left in chaos my plea to you at this today is check with the veterans you know to make sure they're doing okay talk to them the concern that they're feeling and the uptick that we're seeing in the calls to the hotlines for those veterans and what they're feeling has increased tremendously make sure that you check on them and if you're a veteran a service member who served in afghanistan and you're feeling this reach out to this veteran crisis hotline which is available and i want to give you that hotline number right now it's a confidential call it's 1-800-273-8255 [Music] or you can text 838-255 once again it's called 1-800-273-8255 or text 838-255 now know this to each the veterans that are listening out there you're not alone you didn't fight in vain you did a great service for this nation and we know you continue to serve in your communities and with that i yield back and i want to uh introduce ranking member mccall you know thank you ranking member boston um i agree it today's the day say thank you to our veterans they're hurting they're in a bad place they wonder was it worth it and as they see the taliban take over it raises a lot of questions we just got out of a classified briefing with the secretary of state defense chairman of joint chiefs the dni so all the the key components and as the leader said we left with more questions than we do with answers my understanding is the president just announced a firm withdrawal date of august 31st i can tell you there's no way we can humanly get our all of our american citizens and afghan partners out of country by that time i've called this consistently an unm mitigated disaster of epic proportions it will be a stain on this presidency and particularly after the decision made today and what we heard today he will have blood on his hands people are going to die and they're going to be left behind the biggest credo in the military is no man left behind no one left behind and that's precisely what we were doing we were violating the trust and moral obligation that we gave them and not only that but how is this impacting our status in the global community you know when our brits the prime minister and secretary of defense are calling upon us to extend the deadline uh the germans because they want to get their people out of there as well but instead we have a president who's intimidated and is begging to negotiate with the taliban to put ourselves in that place where we're begging the taliban to give us more time to evacuate and then we give the taliban exactly what they want empowering them i know when biden met with putin putin said you cannot put your isr intelligence capabilities in in the region and now we're having the president of russia telling this president what to do our global standing has greatly diminished we're projecting weakness not strength and for months we told this administration as the ic briefed us on a grim situation that it was deteriorating rapidly and taliban's going to take over afghans going to fall please get our americans out please get our afghan partners out instead they're stranded there our military's pulling out and they're going to be left behind and from a world stage standpoint i can't think of a weaker posture that we could put ourselves in our allies longer trust us and our enemies no longer fear us and that's russia china and iran and pakistan this will have grave long-term consequences for our national security down the road and with that i'd like to introduce another veteran of afghanistan mr banks i'm sorry mr rogers i apologize uh listen joe biden has not been listening to anybody he's not listening now one fact that was abundantly clear in the briefing we just had is that is not possible to get all the americans out of afghanistan by next tuesday and then you heard the president go on the air within the last hour and say it's still a hard deadline that is reckless and it is going to leave blood on people's hands and everything about this situation that we're in now is joe biden's fault when he told george stephanopoulos a couple of days ago that none of his advisers advised him against leaving afghanistan the way he's doing that's just a lie the fact is joe biden made the announcement in april of unconditional withdrawal in may and june our committee repeatedly was asking the administration for a plan how are you going to responsibly withdraw and they couldn't give us one i wrote a letter to the president in july asking for a plan still hadn't got a response and now in august the taliban takes over he's not listening to his advisors he's not listening to congress and this is the result that we've got when you see isis k and al qaeda in afghanistan about to commit terrorist attacks no joe biden created this seat this place that we've got over there now to be as dangerous it is with his reckless decision making either he's senile or he's in denial but either way it's reckless for our country and this disaster is taking place it's his responsibility and i yield now to jim banks build indiana i thank the uh the ranking member and the leader for putting this together today i served in afghanistan 2014 and 15 just prior to being elected to congress my job there was as a foreign military sales officer so i was on the front lines of acquiring the equipment that the americans provided and turned over to the afghan army and the afghan police i want to read to you what is so painful for me and so many other other afghan veterans who served in that capacity and others who serve as a part of the train advise and assist equip effort in helping the afghans we now know that due to the negligence of this administration the taliban now has access to over 85 billion dollars worth of american military equipment that includes 75 vehicles over 200 airplanes and helicopters over 600 000 small arms and light weapons the taliban now has more blackhawk helicopters than 85 percent of the countries in the world but they don't just have weapons they also have night vision goggles body armor medical supplies and unbelievably unfathomable unfathomable to me and so many others is that the taliban now has biometric devices which have the fingerprints eye scans and the biographical information of the afghans who helped us over the last 20 years and here's what we just learned again and the briefing that we just walked out of is this this administration still has no plan to get this military equipment or these supplies back instead it's all fallen into the hands of the taliban there's still no plan to account for what has happened to these weapons i can tell you uh with ranking member rogers behind me that hask republicans will fight next week when we go through the national defense authorization markup to to fight for a plan if this administration the democrats aren't going to do it we will do it we will demand a plan to account for all of this military equipment but here's not uh here's what i'm concerned about even more than the taliban acquiring these weapons it's that we know that al qaeda and isis k still exist and are growing in afghanistan and eventually they acquire these weapons and as i said before if any american is harmed or killed and not safely evacuated or if any of this military equipment or weapons are used to harm or kill an american the blood is directly on joe biden's hands what's also painfully clear from the briefing that we just walked out of is that behind closed doors the biden team tells us one thing they they admit mistakes they know this is a dangerous situation going on in afghanistan and president biden tells us something different he tells us that everything's okay that it's under control so either joe biden is lying to us or he's not in touch with the team that just briefed us in the room and that's a shame as well so with that i yield to representative waltz from florida a fellow afghanistan veteran mike waltz from florida i've served multiple tours in afghanistan as a green beret uh on the ground and uh this is deeply personal to so many of us i personally have helped afghan my afghan interpreters get back to the united states they're thriving now as american citizens but their families are being hunted down as we speak i've also had one one that fought with us his name was little spartacus he was such a fighter he was intercepted at a taliban checkpoint with the very american documentation that he needed to get out of here they didn't just kill him they took him home to his village and beheaded his brothers and cousins in front of them before then beheading him i've seen school principals run out of town and murdered after they were hunted down their crime teaching girls and then the girls school was burnt down the taliban have not changed and what is clear from the briefings what has been clear from the from the months of briefings that our committee have received on the armed services committee is that a taliban takeover equals al qaeda 3.0 and one thing that joe biden either won't admit or doesn't understand is that what happens in afghanistan doesn't stay in afghanistan it spreads like a cancer it will follow us home and many of us have been very clear about that danger across multiple administrations this isn't about politics this is about the fact that america now is less safe here's why we're in even a worse position than we were in 2001 because now we have no bases in the region one thing that's clear from the briefings and we've been asking for months is not a single country surrounding afghanistan not one has agreed to allow us forces to base there to allow our intelligence our drones and other things we need to understand what's going on to base there much less to allow lethal strikes to keep a lid on al qaeda and isis and others the intelligence community has been very clear they have the will and the intent to hit us again so as we head into the 20th anniversary the 20th anniversary of 9 11 we now face a prospect soldiers having to go back in now they have the taliban is much heavier much more heavily armed our local allies have been hunted down there is no uh northern alliance there are very small elements left still willing to resist and i can tell you we're going to lead that effort from congress because the administration won't lead to continue the fight and to continue to keep america safe this is a disaster on historic proportions and there needs to be accountability and that accountability sadly is going to come from right here with that i yield and i hand off to my fellow veteran brother-in-arms brian mast thank you brother absolutely brian mast was injured in afghanistan september 19 2010 had countless friends killed in action to my left and right recovered alongside hundreds more had the honor of serving alongside hundreds of thousands that put on the uniform i have two brief things to say one of them is a message to our veterans and one of them is a request for you the media and and all americans really this is not a walk and chew gum situation where we go out there and with with half of our effort work to get americans home and with the other half work on things that are peripheral to that or have nothing to do with that you as the media can pressure this place when something's going on here like working on a bill that has to do with altering voting or infrastructure you need to ask the question what the hell are you doing get our americans home when somebody starts working on something other than getting our americans home here say what the hell are you doing work on the rules of engagement for those marines and rangers on the ground to make sure that they have everything that they need in place to get the job done and to get home when somebody's asking some other question here working on something else in the rules committee or something else say what the hell are you doing did every american get home yet did you get all of those sivs taken care of when somebody's working on something i'll say what the hell are you doing 435 of you need to be helping the state department with every asset within your staff to help them process those sivs get every american to pressure the people in washington dc here to get every american and every person that helped americans back here safe out of the the hostage hands of the taliban that's an active role that you can play the administration will listen to you they'll probably listen to you more than anybody else if we know one thing it's their most concerned with optics and that's probably what's putting more people in danger than anything else the optics of why they wanted to get out so soon the optics of why they're not calling this a combat mission you can help to to create the pressure to get people back home my message for veterans is this and i spoke about it with my friend jim baird earlier who lost an arm in vietnam it wasn't jim baird's fault that they lost vietnam it was the fault of those in pennsylvania avenue it wasn't the fault of those that trudged over the mountains in afghanistan that were in the fire fights that were kicking in doors that were going through those fields of improvised explosive devices that afghanistan is lost it is the fault of those at pennsylvania avenue i yield to mr green mark greene tennessee seven it's also very personal to me as well um i served in the 160th special operations aviation regiment early during the war i was there when pat tillman was killed i vividly remember his flag-draped coffin being brought out to the airfield through a cordon of our nation's tier one i mean these are the hardest guys in the united states military toughest most elite this flag draped coffin goes through and there's not a dry eye i can see it like it was yesterday going into the back of that c-17 the doors closing the sun was rising at bagram it is imprinted in my brain forever like so many other faces and names just like pat's i happen to serve the area that surrounds fort campbell about 85 percent of the people who live at fort campbell are in my district when i go to the public's i have to look into the eyes of children who are gold star children this is deeply personal for me i want to tell those veterans this has been echoed here before your service was in it was completely and incredibly valuable to this country for 20 years you protected our nation from a terrorist attack that has value and the friends that we lost their sacrifice has value if you're struggling reboot recovery.com we've talked to many of you but if you are having a hard time reboot recovery.com i i just want to make a point about this disconnect between the president and the truth he's continually saying things that are completely different than what his own people say for example no one thought it was a bad idea to withdraw like this as has already been mentioned when we know that people and his senior staff have said we shouldn't withdraw things like the afghanis the afghan people don't they don't want to leave yet there were tens of thousands of applications already in process and i think the thing that really angers me the most is that the afghan military did not want to fight that is absolutely incorrect i served with those men and women i took care of them when they were wounded on the battlefield afghan special forces in my hands bleeding they are warriors and they have carried the ground fight if you go do your homework for the past several years with over 50 000 casualties they are brave and they want to fight but they felt abandoned by the united states of america when they woke up and went to bagram airfield and we were gone crickets when you withdraw like that you take the heart out of the heart of fight out of them and of course their fear of a ruthless beheading taliban they blended in this is a tragedy that is on job biden but i want to say one more thing before i step down and hand it over to jake your credibility is at stake too remember when president trump made the comment or it was a speech to nato and he left out article five and you guys went crazy oh he doesn't support nato this president has been asked to stay in afghanistan to support our nato allies who came to that country on our behalf because we were attacked and he has said no we're getting out by the 31st regardless of what you think now say something about that in the press for your own credibility i yield to mr ellsley thank you ms greene my name is jake elsie texas six the newest member of this caucus he's a 20-year navy veteran find helicopters and jets off aircraft carriers 2001 we started the war off the uss enterprise flying tomcats night strikes on tora bora before anybody knew what turbor was i toured again in 2009 and 10 as commanding officer of a fighter squadron flying into afghanistan yet again and then again when i retired in 2012 in 2013 and 14 i deployed as a contractor flying isr aircraft out of bagram air base for all of us this is not politics nobody wants to be standing up in front of you talking about this this is a failure we want to be talking about other things but this is personal and it's about americans not politics i'd like to point out that 243 american souls have given their lives for their country and for the betterment of another one since this conflict began nearly 20 years ago since 9 11 30 000 of our brothers and sisters in arms have taken their own lives eternally wounded by that which they witnessed and experienced in afghanistan they will never be forgotten long after this failure will be talked about their memory lives on and it wasn't in vain they did their jobs what we have now is september 10 2001 in afghanistan they completely own the country again only now they're one of the best armed militaries in the world with our equipment that should worry everybody going forward the surrounding countries and our allies but it's a simple fact so the question we have is as we talk about how many people we're going to get out of this country in the next week when we know we don't have 50 of them 50 percent of them gone in the last week how did we get here who made the decision to use hamad karzai international in bagram in in kabul instead of bagram you've got a one runway airport in kabul and a two runway airport 30 miles to the north that's easily protected and always has been protected by american military with at least twice the capacity and heavy lift capability to get our equipment out and our people out who made that decision and who was in charge of it as an analogy it would be much like the military deciding we're going to evacuate washington dc out of reagan instead of andrews does that put that in perspective this is a massive fail that we don't understand and nobody's talking about how that happened but it's just one of many failures that have occurred now the august 31 deadline we're talking about a military mission here nobody can put a date on the accomplishment or the completion of a successful military mission there's no arbitrary date the mission is complete when the mission is complete and if the taliban harms a hair on an american's head all those aircraft and those aircraft carriers those 130s we will rain hellfire down on you until all americans are out and that's what this administration needs to be saying this commission is complete when it's complete and not a day before thank you for your time peter mccarthy i want to thank um all them who have served up here you realize that it's personal but it's personal of thousands of americans out there it's extremely personal the gold star families there's no one in the world outside of joe biden who thinks we can get everybody out by august 31st if there's anything this body of congress should do let's pass a resolution exactly saying that do not pick the date pick the mission that every single american gets out of afghanistan and that can determine the date when it's done and use whatever means possible to make that happen we are america we have a force that can get it done we just need it'll give the authority to make it happen any time wasted in congress on any other topic is exactly that of waste we've only been allotted 90 minutes to have this discussion but we spent an entire night the leadership of the democrats spent their entire day yesterday today trying to twist arms to get people to vote to vote for trillions of dollars not twisting one arm to make sure you get americans out i think they spent a little time listening to this country they'll know what their work should be done but that will open it up yes ma'am you just said there is no way it's possible to complete this withdrawal within seven days why don't you think it's possible and what is your message to the president if he sticks with this time the reason why there is no way possible look at the number that we have there they will not even provide the official number the amount that we have been able to get out there and personally to the number of members here mark green just yesterday working getting individuals out reports that they're having to go to another country inside officials inside kabul i raised that to the president as well um even from our own reporting from those who are in charge will tell you they can't get the job done in that short amount of time no one understands our beliefs that they can get out by the 31st and to allow the taliban to dictate to america when we depart and that we have to leave americans there no american should be held hostage and no american should be left and if it's very clear from this conference that we will spend our time on the floor only focused on this until every american's out we should not be working on anything else i want to ask if you believe on the previously negotiated may 1st date for withdrawal uh whether you believe that would have worked out better than what we're seeing today and so why and secondly if i may you intend to whip your caucus to vote against the infrastructure bill well first of all i don't think would infrastructure bill should come up i don't think any other business should come up we should be spending our time on this right here and looking at the past speaking to mr pompeo speaking to the former president i know this would not have taken place to listen to the administration today say that they had planned for every scenario would you have planned for this to watch the president get asked the question was there any mistakes would you do anything different no why would you continue with this plan of failure knowing for myself but by being a gang of eight knowing what the intel was ahead of time you knew that this was an option that it would fall this fast you watch why not after the first city why not after the taliban broke the agreement they had before why didn't you come back with force why would you leave and take the military out and leave the citizens there why would you leave in the middle of the night the base and not tell our allies our allies went there to protect us because of 9 11 because of the respect they have for america our own allies today that have risked their lives and their citizenry are asking us to stay longer i will tell them we hear them and we believe we should we should keep our promise what is happening today won't go away in a week it will be decades the idea where you heard jim banks talk about the weaponry that they have that it is reported that the taliban now has more blackhawk helicopters than australia someone to say oh they can't fly them if they they can learn or they can sell them to iran or china or others if you think afghanistan is far away remember what happened 20 years ago if you think afghanistan is far away understand what's happened to our borders today is publicly reported yes we've caught people on the terrorist watch list and they didn't come from central america the report is from yemen you just had 5 000 prisoners released they know how to come here they have a mission on their hands so not only should we make sure every american is taken out of afghanistan we should secure our borders and we should do it today next election cycle republicans do win will you be examining this will it be investigated what are your steps if you have no problem play politics with this the only thing the republicans are focused on right now is getting every american out and keeping every promise we made we will hold when we're in the minority and when we're in the majority we will hold people accountable for the mistakes that were made the plans that were carried through now why weren't they changed this tarnished the reputation of america for decades to come and people should be held accountable yes sir in terms of what the intelligence was leading up to this decision-making process but the president the state department has said that their intelligence didn't reflect that there would have been such a precipitous takeover by the taliban but yesterday even democrats on the house intelligence committee said that going six months back there were warnings that there was a problem is that what you got from this briefing you had both dni and the state department and white house officials in this meeting today was there a disconnect in the room today when they were talking about this i would leave you simply to president biden's press conference in july what he told the american public and no they'd be able to fight there's no chance of it collapsing i happen to be the member of the gang of eight i've had intel briefings i never believed what he was saying there was the briefings that i was requiring you have the ranking member of armed services mr rogers been briefed in a different manner that he's publicly said either joe biden made a different decision based upon the briefing that he was given and this is another thing of why we need accountability what information has been provided to this president when the president just a few days ago told the american public there was no al qaeda just less than an hour later he was contradicted by his own administration to our conference when he told the american public that he has no report of americans having problems getting to the airport in kabul we had our own reports that that was different in less than an hour we were told no americans shouldn't go they were being beaten so when the president says that the 31st is a deadline i wonder if he's making that same decision process of why he wanted out to try to make a date of a 20th anniversary we want to be very clear with him don't pick the date solve the problem make sure every american is out then that will be the date we depart thank you

2021-08-28 10:31

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