The Biden Administration continues to be hammered over the botched drone strike in Afghanistan.
The strike, which intended to target ISIS-K terrorists, instead killed 10 civilians. The unprecedented backlash from the usually Biden-supportive news media included CNN anchor Jake Tapper, who called it a “massive and deadly mistake.”
Initially, the Pentagon touted that “two high-profile” ISIS-K fighters who were labeled “planners and facilitators of the Aug. 26 suicide bombing that killed 13 U.S. service members were killed in the drone strike.”
However, an explosive New York Times report alleged that 10 civilians, including seven children, were killed in the strike. A week later the Pentagon was forced to admit that civilians were killed, not terrorists.
CNN’s Tapper described the admission saying, “This is a total about-face from the Pentagon’s initial denial they got anything wrong days after the attack.”
Other media personalities also slammed the Pentagon’s admitted “mistake.”
Liberal media condemns strike
Criticism of the deadly drone strike continued to pile up after the Pentagon’s admission.
Garrett Haake, an NBC News correspondent, reacted, saying, “A ‘mistake’ is when you forget to take out the trash or sleep through your alarm. This is absolutely horrifying.”
CNN anchor and Tapper’s colleague Jim Sciutto tweeted, “This is a horrible and sobering indictment of the admin’s reliance on ‘over the horizon’ ops for counter-terror going forward.”
“It is deeply tragic and fitting that the final American military action before withdrawing from Afghanistan was basically a signature strike — a drone attack based on pattern of behavior, not against a fully IDed target,” wrote Hayes Brown, MSNBC editor.
Jonathan Swan, a reporter for Axios, tweeted, “Seven kids, who ran out excitedly to meet their dad/uncle when he got home from work,” after news of the botched strike came to light.
Swan was responding to a tweet in which a defense official admitted that an investigation had determined the Aug. 29 strike killed an innocent aid worker as well as nine members of his family, including the seven children.
Others called out a previous statement by Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Mark Milley, in which he called the drone attack a “righteous strike.”
Washington Post reporter Josh Dawsey tweeted, “After they called it ‘righteous,’ now they say a lot of innocent people died.” New York Times correspondent echoed Dawsey, writing, “Mark Milley was the one who called this a ‘righteous strike.’ It was a massacre.”
In addition to the disastrous drone strike, the mainstream media has been uncharacteristically critical of President Joe Biden and his administration’s planning and implementation of the chaotic withdrawal of U.S. military forces from Afghanistan.
Criticism of the president has been growing for failing to keep his promise to rescue and evacuate all Afghan allies and Americans trapped in Afghanistan before pulling out all troops from the country.
Despite Biden’s assurances to the contrary, Afghanistan is now controlled by the Taliban.
