military service members-President Biden promised “We will not forgive. After the attack-which killed 169 Afghan civilians and 13 U.S. troops and our Afghan allies were departing Kabul. On August 26, suicide bombers from Islamic State-Khorosan (IS-K) attacked the airport from which U.S. Will There Be a Real Response to the Terror Attack on the Kabul Airport? On today's podcast, Tim Miller joins host Charlie Sykes to discuss Julie Andrews' birthday, why Dems should be grateful. So when the president said that he could not recall this conversation, was he lying? Did he misspeak? Did he-and this is perhaps the most troubling possibility- forget? Given that Milley is the president’s chief military adviser, it is impossible to imagine that he didn’t make the suggestion directly to Biden that 2,500 troops remain in Afghanistan. While they, with justification, declined to comment on whether they conveyed that suggestion to the president, they repeatedly said that “the military was heard” in policy and strategy settings. The generals, though, confirmed during the hearing that they would have preferred to keep 2,500 troops in Afghanistan. The president responded, “No one said that to me that I can recall.”

In an August 19 interview with George Stephanopoulos, Biden was asked whether he was given a recommendation to keep 2,500 troops in Afghanistan, as Gen. Milley and McKenzie on an important point about the advice President Biden received. Tuesday’s hearing also raised-or left unanswered-several lingering questions. advisers to the Afghan military were among the first personnel to be pulled out, months before the Taliban’s march to Kabul gained steam, and their removal significantly damaged the capability of the intelligence community to assess the strength of the Afghan forces. However, it would be wrong to attribute this failure solely to the intelligence community: As Gen. The hearing confirmed several things we already knew, such as the failure to predict the rapid collapse of the Afghan National Army before the encroaching Taliban forces-despite the Biden administration’s repeated claims of having planned for every scenario.

The hearing started strong on substance before it deteriorated, as congressional hearings tend to do, into something of a clown show.

Frank McKenzie, the commander of CENTCOM-were grilled about the Biden administration’s botched withdrawal from Afghanistan last month. Mark Milley, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and Gen. In a Senate hearing on Tuesday, three senior Pentagon officials-Lloyd Austin, the secretary of defense Gen.

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