Representative Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., said that questions remain about what influenced President Joe Biden to close Bagram Airbase in Afghanistan and release prisoners there.
In a recent interview, House Minority Leader McCarthy said that questions remain about what influenced the president to decide to close Bagram. In an interview, McCarthy said that the reasons for the closure “are the questions we’re going to have to get answered as we go forward.”
“I’ve had and directed our Republican leaders in the three different committees to send a letter to the White House to secure those documents,” said McCarthy.
“We want to know the answers. Because, one, why would you close it down; two, why would you close it ahead before all the Americans are out.”
McCarthy continued, “Why would you, in that place, harm not just our Americans still sitting there with the terrors, but future America and everywhere else?
“And strategically, when you’re looking towards the future, the growth of China, the movement of Russia, Pakistan, and others, why wouldn’t we want to be able to have a situational awareness that we could be able to move planes out and others…from that strategic point.”
Demanding answers
McCarthy is asking members of Congress to be called back for a classified briefing on Afghanistan over American weaponry left behind for the Taliban to take.
“We know from the State Department that there are thousands of ISIS-K people, terrorists that have now left the prison in Bagram. We are less safe today than we were in the places if you look before 9/11 because now they have our weaponry.
“Taliban now has more Black Hawk helicopters than Australia.”
McCarthy vows that Biden will face a “reckoning” for handling the U.S. exit from Afghanistan.
“To allow the Taliban to dictate our foreign policy, to allow the State Department to run this instead of the military, these are mistakes, but these are answers that we’re going to hold people accountable for later because people have lost their lives.”
A suicide bomber, thought initially to be two explosions, killed 13 U.S. service members and dozens of Afghans, according to Afghanistan’s Ministry of Public Health and the Pentagon.
