Democratic Rep. Seth Moulton, a Marine who served four tours in Iraq, called the Biden administration’s efforts to evacuate U.S. citizens and Afghan allies out of the country “absurd,” and said the State Department should drop “bureaucracy” and sort out visa issues later.
The Massachusetts lawmaker said the department urgently needs to send more consular officers to the Kabul airport to help.
The State Department has said that it'll double the number of officers at the airport by Friday.
Moulton said he was told by the agency that the number would rise to 40 from 20, which he said was “absurd.”
“This is the greatest foreign policy disaster that we’ve seen in a very long time and they’re sending 40 people to deal with it?,” Moulton said.
“I mean, that’s absurd. We’ve got 6,000 troops on the ground, we need a little bit more effort than 40 consular officers from the United States State Department.”
Meanwhile, other countries continued their own evacuation efforts. German defense minister Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer said in a briefing that German planes have so far flown 901 people out of Afghanistan. She was joined from Kabul airport by General Jens Arlt.
Shots could be heard in the background as Arlt spoke. He said Taliban fighters on the outer ring of the facility were trying to keep control of a huge crowd, and that co-workers with papers attempting to flee the country aren’t able to get past the large numbers of people.
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