CBS reporter rips Biden administration's Afghanistan report as a 'whitewash' of the botched withdrawal | Fox News
By: Joe Silverstein (Fox News)
S E E D E D C O N T E N T
CBS report Ed O'Keefe slammed the Biden admin report as attempting to "whitewash" its role in the 2021 botched Afghanistan withdrawal.
CBS Senior White House and political correspondent Ed O'Keefe blasted the Biden administration's attempt to "whitewash" any wrongdoing with regard to its handling of the Afghanistan withdrawal Thursday.
O'Keefe was referring to a twelve-page report published by the Biden White House's National Security Council that gave its assessment of the causes of the botched 2021 Afghanistan withdrawal. The report largely blamed Biden's predecessor, former President Trump, for what went wrong.
After being asked, "Did they take any responsibility or acknowledge any mistakes made by the Biden Administration?" O'Keefe replied, "The word 'mistake' appears once in this 12 page report."
He noted it came when the document referred to 10 civilians in Kabul being "mistakenly killed" in a drone strike. "That is the one time we see the word 'mistake' on an incident in all of this," he reiterated.
Afghan people climb atop a plane as they wait at the Kabul airport in Kabul on August 16, 2021, after a stunningly swift end to Afghanistan's 20-year war, as thousands of people mobbed the city's airport trying to flee the group's feared hardline brand of Islamist rule. ((Photo by Wakil Kohsar / AFP) (Photo by WAKIL KOHSAR/AFP via Getty Images))
Instead, the CBS reporter said the goal of the report seemed to be to pin the blame on the Trump administration.
"But it spends three and a half pages laying it out and saying it's the Trump administration's fault for negotiating with the Taliban, for inviting them to Camp David, for withdrawing U.S. forces to such a level that you would've had to have sent more in rather than keep it at those numbers, and for not allowing the Biden administration to see those plans during that boxed transition you'll recall in late 2020 when the Biden transition teams were trying to get information from agencies and the Trump administration was blocking them from doing so," he continued.
"National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan said they were going to do a 'hot wash', which is a fancy bureaucratic term for a deep dive into what went wrong. This 12 page document is a whitewash," O'Keefe declared.
O'Keefe went on to further slam the shoddiness of the document.
"It is narrative. It is light on specifics. It's devoid of citations. And it is, in essence, their version of events," he said.
The Biden administration drew criticism from former Trump administration officials and the broader public upon the document's release. Former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo slammed the report Thursday.
"This was entirely predictable. We (the Trump administration) didn't constrain them at all. The Biden administration has demonstrated their willingness to break up good plans that the Trump administration had," Pompeo said.
Various Republican legislators also slammed the Biden administration's report.
The war in Afghanistan spanned over two decades and four U.S. presidents. When it was first initiated by President Bush in the aftermath of the September 11th terrorist attacks, few Americans imagined it would lead to a decades-long attempt to establish democracy using military force. By the conclusion of the war, over 2,000 U.S. service members had been killed and the country fell to the Taliban, the Islamic group that controlled the country before America's invasion.
Joe Silverstein is a production assistant for Fox News Digital.
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"SEEMED to"?????
It was a total whitewash job by the incompetent Biden Administration.
When even a CBS reporter can recognize it, you know it must be obvious!
Blame whoever you want. People had 2 previous deadlines to get out of Dodge. SARC!
The present Administration will do nicely, as it was in charge and made final decisions.
Kind of silly to blame someone not in office for what the current Administration did.
I'll remember this the next time I see gridlock on I 95, I 45 and I 4 north out of Florida.
not sure what that has to do with it, but okay??
If only they had an administration that warned them!
Instead of one that denied facts on the ground- even as the Afghan army and government was crumbling in the months before the complete troop withdrawal.
Brandon fucked up. He withdrew troops before getting all US citizens out of Afghanistan. State Department people sending each other internal memos; standing on their desks screaming "You have to get out! Why aren't you leaving!?"; and better still trusting the Afghan government to spread the information (the same government and president Brandon was telling to put on a happy face; and change perceptions both in Afghanistan and the rest of the world".
Brandon undid everything else the Trump administration had in place- why did it leave this agreement with the Taliban? Because Brandon wanted out; and he didn't give a damn how he got out. They were going to blame Trump regardless.
This is a good point. Remember that whole "on Day 1" stuff where he was going to reverse Trump on border policy, travel to certain countries, the Paris Climate Accords, Covid response, the US leaving the WHO, Dreamers, Keystone XL pipeline, and so on and on and on.
But on Afghanistan? "There's nothing we can do. Trump has tied our hands." Utter bullshit.
I get sick of presidents blaming their problems on the previous administration. There may be plenty to criticize in the Trump administration’s choices in Afghanistan - and we can certainly have that conversation, as a country - but the bottom line is Biden was president, and had been for several months when this was going on. As Commander in Chief, he has the ultimate authority and responsibility regarding literally anything our military does. If he wants things done differently, all he has to do is say the word.
But the truth (IMO) is that he didn’t give a shit. He was happy to get us out as fast as possible so he could claim credit for it. I doubt he spent 10 seconds thinking about how it could go wrong, or how conditions might change. Importantly, the negotiated deal allowed for us to adjust our plans if conditions changed, so this idea that his hands were tied is total bullshit.
Biden knew he could delay the final pullout because he had already done so. We were initially supposed to be gone in April, I think. There was nothing other than his own sense of politics that required we leave by September.
All of which makes the report all the more troubling.
Border problems? Trump's fault.
Pandemic? Trump's fault.
SCOTUS decisions? Trump's fault.
Bank failures? Trump's fault.
High inflation? Trump's fault.
Out of Joe's favorite ice cream? Trump's fault.
Why would the withdrawal be any different?
No matter how you cut it, bottom line is that debacal of a withdrawal happened on Biden's watch so he still own it no matter what and he can't pass blame for it.