McCaul Pushes for State Department’s Afghanistan Docs

Plus: A researcher calls for Congress to sanction Xi Jinping.

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Rep. Michael McCaul speaks with Secretary of State Antony Blinken during a House Foreign Affairs Committee hearing Thursday. (Bill Clark/CQ-Roll Call, Inc via Getty Images)

House Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Mike McCaul is threatening Secretary of State Antony Blinken with a subpoena early next week if Blinken does not provide key documents related to the Biden administration’s disastrous 2021 Afghanistan withdrawal.

During a committee hearing Thursday, McCaul set a close-of-business Monday deadline for Blinken to turn over an internal dissent cable more than 20 State Department officials sent in July 2021 warning of the potential collapse of Kabul if the withdrawal proceeded. It’s the firmest threat he’s made yet to use House Republicans’ oversight powers after months of staff-level discussions with the State Department.

“This committee and the American people, after what happened—for God’s sake after what happened in that dreadful August—need to see this cable,” McCaul told Blinken on Thursday.

Blinken resisted the idea of delivering the full cable to lawmakers: He argued the State Department’s dissent channel allows anyone in the department to “speak truth to power,” and personnel have assurances such communications will remain confidential.

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  1. Avatar photo
    Ben Connelly

    Good for McCaul.

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    Lorenclayroberts

    Why don’t we list Trump as a terrorist? He caused the January 6 insurrection and is trying to do it again. This time will be much worse.

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    Jerrymasters7vwp

    "[Blinken] argued the State Department’s dissent channel allows anyone in the department to 'speak truth to power,' and personnel have assurances such communications will remain confidential.'

    Isn't the State Department's assurances of confidentiality an obviously unconstitutional provocation vis-a-vis the balance of power principle embedded in congressional oversight of the executive branch? How the heck did that sort of thing get traction sometime in the past?

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    DougAz

    Haley, I respectfully and strongly disagree with this editorially incorrect characterization of the Afghanistan withdrawal.

    "Biden administration’s disastrous 2021 Afghanistan withdrawal."

    A. A vast majority of Ameicans wanted out of Afghanistan after President Obama's team killed the real 911 terrorist, bin Laden.
    B. Far far more useful would be a detailed investigation under oath with subpoenas for documents of George Bush, Dick Cheney, Colin Powell, Don Rumsfeld, all CIA and DoD documents to determine who knew that Iraq had absolutely no WMD of concern to the US.
    C. Fair warning was given to all in Afghanistan that we were leaving
    D. Given the incredible job preserving (Union like) efforts of Contractors, Lying CIA and DOD, the US stayed in Afghanistan based on false status and situational reports.
    E. The US military had incompetent strategies in Iraq, building on their incompetent Iraq post Invasion. The US made the small amount of of Afghanistan military that cared to fight, dependent on the US. That was a deliberate tactic by the DoD and CIA to prolong American presence.

    F. Finally. America has zero interest in fighting the Taliban when the cowardly men of Afghanistan failed to fight the Taliban. By large majorities, they were more aligned with the Taliban control of women and culture. We never ever were going to make a democracy in Afghanistan.

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    1. Avatar photo
      Retired Prosecutor

      You conflate the decision to withdraw from Afghanistan with the disastrous execution of that decision. The public is not misled and the debacle marked the end of Biden’s positive approval ratings. A dozen of so dead GI’s in the chaos at the airport, huge stores of munitions abandoned and left in hostile hands, and hundreds of our Afghan allies betrayed and left to the tender mercies of the Taliban.

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        DougAz

        By conflate do you mean to amalagmate? Or confuse.

        I am not confused about the decision which was superb and overdue.

        It is not a debacle for sons and daughters and husbands and wives home from an obviously losing effort. As I detailed.

        Futher you misdirected your response from my legitimate point that the Afghanistan men were predominantly cowards who would take the fight to the Talkban

        They are such cowards as evidenced by the courage of the Ukrainian men and women fighting Russia.

        We betrayed no Afghan. Americans were betrayed by the false illusion and lies of the CIA and DoD and Afghans themselves that they would fight and win against the Taliban.

        As I said, everyone in Afghanistan had lead time to plan and to leave.

        Obviously the Taliban planned better.

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      Jamesf

      Pitiful rebuttal of an appropriately characterized disastrous withdrawal.

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        DougAz

        Can you be specific about what you find "pitiful" in my comment please ?

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          Jamesf

          You ignore the chaos, disorganization, poor planning, and deaths to craft a "rebuttal" which fails to acknowledge any of those. Hence, pitiful. I'm not going to get into a back-and-forth with you (your usual pattern). If you can't appreciate the inadequcies of the Biden debacle, you are beyond help.

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            DougAz

            You did not read what I said. You did not refute anything specific. And you have the unusual rebutal of just ignoring my points, and then lambasting me personally. But that defines you sir, not me.

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    3. Avatar photo
      John N.

      All of those are fair enough points but none of them, really, have much to do with what any reasonable person would categorize as a chaotic, disorganized withdrawal.

      Big problem I have with all these phony "conservative" MAGA types like McCaul is that they're not doing these "investigations" to try to glean actual meaningful information that will lead to legislation.

      They're just looking for "gotcha" talking points that they can pump into the right wing echo chamber so it gets repeated as nauseum on Faux News, Newsmax, OAN etc.

      They want to try to gin up hatred by claiming that the deaths of those 13 service members are Biden's fault, not the fault of the actual terrorist who carried in and detonated the bomb.

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      1. Avatar photo
        DougAz

        I do agree with you it was chaotic. I think that is normal for such withdrawals from an active military zone.

        As to disorganized, I agree in part, as there is a spectrum from Well Organized, to No Organization. My 2 cents are it could have been better. My business side says, Better is the Enemy of Good Enough. There was, and is, no great retreat formulas. It's the tail end, and at that point by numbers, the departing folks are in an incredible minority relative to the hostiles.

        If America had desired to bring 250,000 Afghans here, with a probable 25 suicidal latent terroists (remember our "friends" and "allies" of Afghans who blew up and killed Americans there), well we obviously didn't have that as a priority either.

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      2. Avatar photo
        John N.

        The same thing is true for all the republicans in Congress, it seems. Like Gym Jordan, Comer, Marjorie Traitor Qreene and the whole of McQuarthy's conference.

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  5. Avatar photo
    Faraday

    Wow, over a year out and the AAR is not finished.

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      Faraday

      Should’ve said published, not finished.

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