On Friday’s broadcast of CNN’s “The Lead,” Rep. John Garamendi (D-CA) argued that the attack on the Kabul airport couldn’t have been prevented and a more organized exit from Afghanistan “wasn’t going to happen.”
Host Jake Tapper asked, “Do you really think there wasn’t a better, more organized way to exit?”
Garamendi responded, “There probably was, but it wasn’t going to happen. Nobody anticipated the complete collapse, disappearance of the Afghan government. It just simply was gone, and then all of the plans that had been made were not going to be executable. And a shift was put in place in which we are now working through one of the most extraordinary evacuation airlifts ever in the history of America or the military. … 105,000 in the last ten days from beginning to this moment. So, sure, if the Afghan government had not collapsed, we would not be in this mess. But we are where we are, and the loss of those thirteen Marines and soldiers is a terrible tragedy. Could it have been prevented? Not given the situation in which we were faced with. We had to find a way to get those men and women and families into the airport, and that required personal interaction of our military with a very, very unruly crowd. And unfortunately, in that crowd, there was a suicide bomber.”
Follow Ian Hanchett on Twitter @IanHanchett
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