{"database": "press", "table": "releases", "rows": [["https://www.thune.senate.gov/public/index.cfm/press-releases?ID=620B9A68-75FB-4F9D-9E6C-99433741BD2A", "Thune: Biden Ignored Top Military Commanders and Endangered Americans, Created Catastrophic Withdrawal From Afghanistan", "2021-09-29", "2021", "2021-09", "Republican", "Senate", "SD", "John Thune", "T000250", "www.thune.senate.gov", "thune", "https://www.thune.senate.gov/public/index.cfm/press-releases", "scraper", "U.S. Sen. John Thune (R-S.D.) today spoke on the Senate floor in response to yesterday\u2019s Senate Armed Services Committee hearing on President Biden\u2019s botched withdrawal from Afghanistan. Thune discussed the revelation that President Biden\u2019s decision to remove troops from Afghanistan on an arbitrary deadline went directly against the advice he received from his top military commanders, and he highlighted the urgent need for members of the administration to be held accountable.\n\nThune\u2019s remarks (as prepared for delivery):\n\n\u201cMr. President, yesterday\u2019s Senate Armed Services Committee hearing gave us disturbing new information on the president\u2019s Afghanistan debacle.\n\n\u201cThanks to yesterday\u2019s hearing, we now know that President Biden pulled troops from Afghanistan against the advice of his military commanders \u2026 and was less than truthful after the fact when asked about their recommendations.\n\n\u201cGeneral Milley and General McKenzie\u2019s testimony made clear that they had both recommended that the United States leave a small contingent of U.S. troops in the country \u2013 advice the president ignored.\n\n\u201cMr. President, thanks to President Biden\u2019s ill-considered withdrawal from Afghanistan, here\u2019s the situation we find ourselves in:\n\n\u201cThe Taliban is once again in control of Afghanistan.\n\n\u201cAnd just in case anyone thinks this is a kinder and gentler Taliban, let\u2019s look at the facts.\n\n\u201cThe Taliban has stocked its government with terrorists, including former inmates of Guantanamo Bay and members of the Haqqani network \u2013 a U.S.-designated foreign terrorist organization with a number of members on the U.N. Security Council\u2019s sanctions list.\n\n\u201cMany of the members of the new Taliban Cabinet are on the U.N. Security Council\u2019s sanctions list.\n\n\u201cAnd the government is well-stocked with pre-9/11 Taliban leaders \u2013 the same leaders who allowed Afghanistan to serve as a refuge for al-Qaeda.\n\n\u201cSo that\u2019s the new Taliban government.\n\n\u201cWhat is it doing?\n\n\u201cWell, in mid-September the Taliban announced that secondary schools would reopen \u2026 for boys.\n\n\u201cThere was no mention of girls.\n\n\u201cA Taliban official announced that women would not be allowed to play any sport that might show their bodies.\n\n\u201cWomen are being excluded from the workplace.\n\n\u201cIn Helmand province, barbers have been barred from shaving or trimming beards.\n\n\u201cIn one city, the body of an alleged criminal was hung from a crane in the city square, while in Kabul Taliban members brutally flogged a man accused of stealing a phone.\n\n\u201cAnd a senior Taliban leader announced the return of executions and the cutting off of hands as punishment.\n\n\u201cA kinder, gentler Taliban this is not.\n\n\u201cAnd this formerly somewhat ragtag group is now the possessor of a significant amount of U.S. military equipment \u2013 including weapons, combat vehicles, aircraft, and surveillance equipment \u2013 much of it acquired from the Afghan National Security Forces.\n\n\u201cAnd while the president might like to blame the Afghan forces for disbanding, the truth is he bears part of the responsibility for their collapse.\n\n\u201cFor years, the U.S. trained and equipped Afghan troops to fight the way we do \u2013 including a reliance on close air support and a sophisticated intelligence-gathering operation.\n\n\u201cAnd the limited number of U.S. troops still in the country were playing an essential role in providing the intelligence, logistics, and air support the Afghan military needed.\n\n\u201cThen the president pulled all remaining U.S. support almost overnight.\n\n\u201cIt\u2019s no surprise that in the wake of that the Afghan military quickly collapsed.\n\n\u201cThere\u2019s no question that there were preexisting problems in the Afghan forces, including fraud and corruption.\n\n\u201cBut the Afghan military was playing a key role in combating the Taliban and terrorist activity in Afghanistan.\n\n\u201cAnd it was the abrupt withdrawal of U.S. support that precipitated its collapse.\n\n\u201cMr. President, thanks to the president\u2019s withdrawal, our ability to combat terrorist activity in Afghanistan and the region has been significantly degraded, as General Milley\u2019s testimony yesterday made clear.\n\n\u201cAs the Washington Post reported, and I quote, \u201cAl-Qaeda remnants are in Afghanistan and interested in growing, Milley said, but the United States no longer has military or intelligence assets on the ground to keep tabs on the militants. \u2026 The withdrawal \u2018makes it much more difficult for us to conduct intelligence, surveillance, reconnaissance,\u2019 Milley said, including missions to locate militants.\u201d\n\n\u201cIn short, there is every reason to expect that Afghanistan will once again become a haven for terrorists.\n\n\u201cIn fact, because of the huge number of weapons and equipment we\u2019ve left behind, it\u2019s probably more accurate to say Afghanistan will likely become a terrorist super-state.\n\n\u201cMeanwhile, as I said, our ability to effectively detect and defend against emerging threats in Afghanistan has been significantly diminished.\n\n\u201cThere is no intelligence or counterterrorism strategy that will fully offset the loss of American boots on the ground.\n\n\u201cU.S. military and intelligence personnel still in the country, in coordination with our local partners, were playing a crucial role in providing intelligence on evolving terrorist threats in Afghanistan and throughout the region.\n\n\u201cThat intelligence network is gone now.\n\n\u201cWe no longer have human intelligence on-scene, and we no longer have any bases in-country from which to conduct operations.\n\n\u201cFuture missions will have to be staged from distant bases or seaborne assets \u2013 complicating the mission and significantly increasing our response time.\n\n\u201cThat\u2019s not just an inconvenience, Mr. President.\n\n\u201cBy compromising our ability to respond to terrorist activity, this withdrawal is endangering our country.\n\n\u201cFor 20 years we\u2019ve managed to prevent another major terrorist attack on U.S. soil.\n\n\u201cHow long is that going to last when Afghanistan is once again a haven for terrorists and our intelligence and response capabilities have been permanently weakened?\n\n\u201cMr. President, I haven\u2019t even mentioned the damage that the president\u2019s bungled withdrawal has done to our relationships with our allies.\n\n\u201cThe president who was supposedly set to restore America\u2019s standing in the world has instead presided over a national embarrassment that has left our allies wondering whether or not we will keep our commitments.\n\n\u201cWe\u2019ve damaged our credibility with our allies.\n\n\u201cAnd it\u2019s clear that Russia and China are enjoying our humiliation on the world stage.\n\n\u201cNot to mention the way that our withdrawal has empowered our terrorist enemies.\n\n\u201cCeding Afghanistan to the Taliban and its terrorist allies has not exactly made us look like an intimidating foe.\n\n\u201cIt wouldn\u2019t be surprising if terrorists are thinking that all they have to do in future battles is wait us out until we give up and withdraw.\n\n\u201cMr. President, I\u2019m sure the president would like to put his chaotic Afghanistan withdrawal behind him.\n\n\u201cBut there\u2019s a big problem with that: namely, the fact that his administration still has U.S. citizens left behind in Afghanistan.\n\n\u201cThe administration has been hazy on the details \u2013 either because it\u2019s not sure how many American citizens are left or because administration officials don\u2019t want to give a number \u2013 but it\u2019s clear that there are still a number of Americans stuck in Afghanistan.\n\n\u201cThen there are the tens of thousands of Afghans we abandoned \u2013 Afghans who were affiliated with the U.S. government or worked with the U.S. military and whom we promised to protect.\n\n\u201cThese individuals \u2013 and their families \u2013 are currently in grave danger.\n\n\u201cMy office continues working to evacuate a number of green card holders and at-risk Afghans to safe countries in the region, and several of the individuals we\u2019re working with have received death threats from the Taliban.\n\n\u201cAnd while there are dedicated State Department and Defense Department personnel coordinating with veteran-led groups to evacuate Afghan citizens, the administration is still struggling to develop a clear plan for getting them out of the country.\n\n\u201cMr. President, we still need to learn more about the chaotic U.S. evacuation, which resulted in the deaths of 13 U.S. service members and scores of Afghan civilians.\n\n\u201cBut one thing is very clear.\n\n\u201cPresident Biden made an ill-considered and disastrous decision when he chose to withdraw our troops on an arbitrary timetable.\n\n\u201cAnd the Afghan people are currently suffering the consequences.\n\n\u201cAnd should Afghanistan once again become a terrorist haven \u2013 as seems likely \u2013 our country could also pay a deadly price.\n\n\u201cWe have to make sure it doesn\u2019t come to that.", 1, "2026-03-30T01:40:41Z", "2026-04-06T20:17:01Z"]], "columns": ["url", "title", "date", "year", "month", "party", "chamber", "state", "member_name", "bioguide_id", "domain", "scraper", "source", "date_source", "text", "has_text", "collected_at", "updated_at"], "primary_keys": ["url"], "primary_key_values": ["https://www.thune.senate.gov/public/index.cfm/press-releases?ID=620B9A68-75FB-4F9D-9E6C-99433741BD2A"], "units": {}, "query_ms": 0.8860849775373936, "source": "dwillis/congress-press", 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