In their first remarks since Afghanistan fell to the Taliban, Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin and Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Mark Milley spoke to reporters about the mass evacuation of Americans and at-risk Afghans and addressed questions about the whether the U.S. was taken by surprise by the speed of the country’s collapse. “We’re not close to where we want to be in terms of getting the numbers through,” Austin said. Milley, asked whether he had “seen this coming,” that Afghan forces would not be prepared for the fight with the Taliban. “No, I did not,” he said. “Nor did anyone else see a collapse of an army that size in 11 days.”
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Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Mark Milley said Wednesday there “there was nothing that I or anyone else saw that indicated a collapse” of the Afghan government and army in 11 days, in a pointed response to reports that the intelligence community had sounded warnings about the increasing […]
