Family of the service members who were killed during the exit from Afghanistan have "every right to be outraged" that the Biden administration hasn't answered their questions, but Wednesday's House Foreign Affairs Committee hearings will be the beginning of a series of proceedings to delve more deeply into what happened, committee member Rep. Michael Waltz said Wednesday on Newsmax.
"[President Joe Biden] ran on being compassionate and competent, and yet this was the most intimate, passionate, coldhearted, and incompetent military debacle that we've had," the Florida Republican said on Newsmax's "Wake Up America." "It was worse than Saigon."
The hearings will not open with Biden or other administration officials, but will include testimony from veterans, including a Marine sniper who had the suicide bomber behind the deaths of 13 U.S. service members in his sights, "and yet wasn't given permission to take the shot," said Waltz.
"You're going to see leaders of these grassroots veterans organizations that sprung up from veterans who are receiving call after call from Americans that were petrified and left behind Taliban lines, and from our allies, that we're willing to stand and fight for the flag and die alongside our soldiers that were also being left behind," said Waltz.
Testimony is also being given by veterans who exhausted their savings accounts to arrange private flights to Afghanistan after the State Department and the Biden administration "callously, wholeheartedly, and incompetently did not do their jobs," said Waltz.
"You're also going to hear from a Marine sniper and an Army medic who were at Abbey Gate," Waltz said, referring to the gates of Kabul International Airport in Kabul, Afghanistan, where the suicide bomber killed the 13 U.S. service members and about 170 Afghan civilians amid the 2021 evacuation from Afghanistan.
"These people, these Afghans, were throwing themselves on barbed wire to commit suicide rather than go back to the Taliban," Waltz said about testimony to be presented. "You're going to hear how the State Department officials on the ground were kind of packing it up at 6 p.m. every day while our soldiers were out there dealing with tens of thousands of desperate people, and also watching the Taliban execute people right in front of them."
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Sandy Fitzgerald ✉
Sandy Fitzgerald has more than three decades in journalism and serves as a general assignment writer for Newsmax covering news, media, and politics.
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