Biden Admin Left 9K Americans in Afghanistan, Originally Claimed 150 A new report released by the Senate Foreign Relations Committee found that as many as 9,000 Americans were left in Afghanistan during the Biden Administration’s disastrous withdrawal. Secretary of State Antony Blinken originally claimed that number was closer to 100-150.
The administration stuck to that story, despite many outlets reporting evidence to the contrary. “The report, signed by Foreign Relations ranking member Jim Risch of Idaho, reveals that State Department officials believed that between 10,000 and 15,000 Americans were in Afghanistan as late as Aug. 17. In the next two weeks, only 6,000 Americans were able to escape the country ahead of the Taliban takeover,” the Daily Caller reports. “We completed one of the biggest airlifts in history. With more than 120,000 people evacuated to safety, that number is more than double what most experts thought was possible,” Biden said last year. “The bottom line: 90% of Americans in Afghanistan who wanted to leave were able to leave,” he added. Senator Jim Risch (R-ID) shared the report on Twitter: “While there’s disagreement over the policy to leave #Afghanistan, Americans share outrage over how the admin. withdrew, & what that failure has done to America’s reputation. This morning I released a report that details what went wrong & why.” A Brief Assessment of the Biden Administration’s Strategic Failures during the Afghanistan Evacuation 65 pages https://www.foreign.senate.gov/imo/media/doc/Risch%20Afghanistan%20Report%202022.pdf
