Page 38 - August 15th News Today : Breaking News, Live Updates & Top Stories | Vimarsana

Assessment on whether or not we should extend our presence beyond august 31st. as general milley just said, that assessment was made. we tasked him to make that assessment on the 25th and he came back and provided his best military advice. >> secretary, kabul fell on august 15th. it feels clear that we had thousands of americans -- clear to members of this committee through phone calls, thousands of americans in afghanistan behind taliban lines on august 15th and it took ten days to ask these general officers? i suspect the answer might be a little different if you were asking them 16 days out...

August 15th. i do note that. they could have fought aund held parts of kabul had the president stai.d it demoreized those members of combat. they were disorganized by that and led to the taliban pushing in as fast as they wanted to go into the center of the city. >> i do want to point out for the record that to my knowledge and memory, this committee never had a hearing on the decision to withdraw from afghanistan in february of 2020. and it now appears that would have been a beneficial hearing because we could have discussed all of these issues and -- but we were already on the path for withd...

0 retake bagram then? >> thank you, senator. you are right, the tempo had picked up significantly. the taliban continued to make advances. our entire chain of command, myself, the chairman, general mckenzie, routinely engaged in after began leadership to encourage them to solidify their defensive plans, to make sure they were providing the right logistics to their troops and stiffen their defenses to no avail. and to compound that, president ghani continued to make changes in the leadership of the military and this created further problems for the afghan security forces. >> mr. secretary i don...

0 there's no doubt in my mind that our efforts prevented an attack on the homeland from afghanistan which was our core original mission. and everyone who served in that war should be proud. your service mattered. beginning in 2011, we steadily drew down our troop numbers, consolidated and closed bases and retrograded equipment from afghanistan. at the peak in 2011, we had 97,000 u.s. troops alongside 41,000 nato troops in afghanistan. ten years later, when the ambassador signed the doha agreement lton 29 february 2020 the united states had 12,600 troops with 8,000 nato and 10,500 contractors. ...

0 there's no doubt in my mind that our efforts prevented an attack on the homeland from afghanistan, which was our core original mission. and everyone who has served in that war has been proud. your service mattered. beginning in 2011, we steadily drew down our troop numbers, consolidated and closed bases and retrograded equipment from afghanistan. at the peak in 2011, we had 97,000 u.s. troops alongside 41,000 nato troops in afghanistan. ten years later, when ambassador calisade signed the agreement on 29, february, 2020, the united states had 12,600 u.s. troops with 8,000 nato and 10,500 con...