Source: United States Senator for Oklahoma James Inhofe
U.S. Sen. Jim Inhofe (R-Okla.), ranking member of the Senate Armed Services Committee (SASC), today made the following remarks at a press conference following a SASC briefing with General Scott Austin Miller, former commander of U.S. Forces-Afghanistan:
“I’ll let you know we had quite an event with General Miller, and he did say… that he opposed the effort that took place and he did not tell the president that because the president wasn’t there, but he did talk to Austin, McKenzie, and Milley and told them that he had been opposed to the total withdrawal.
“OK, first of all, what we’ve seen in Afghanistan has been nothing short of a disaster. You’ve heard everybody say it over and over again. We have a hard time finding words properly to describe how wrong that was, and we want to know why — we still want to know why President Biden left hundreds of Americans behind. That’s something we don’t do in America, we haven’t done before. We need to figure out how things went so wrong, who to hold accountable and where to go from here. The SASC had our first in-depth briefing with General Miller. It was classified, and I think we’re going to be setting something up, we’re going to have one that’s not classified. This would be very rewarding to everything.
“But we heard enough to know that there are inconsistencies between what the administration has said and the truth. Clearly President Biden didn’t listen to all the military advice. I’m even more eager now to hear from Secretary Austin, General Milley and General McKenzie in two weeks — that’s going to be on the 28th. That will not be classified. I want to hear from General Miller in an open hearing also, which we’ll do. It could very likely end up being the same one but probably not. This is just the start of an open, exhaustive, transparent process. We have a lot more questions, and we hope that they have some more answers. I’m worried that if the administration is so incompetent in Afghanistan, how we can expect a coherent China strategy?”