collapsed so quickly? with that i ll yield back, mr. chairman. thank you very much, senator kaine. thank you, mr. chair. gentlemen, thank you very much for being here today. unfortunately, this morning s hearing is required due to the haphazard withdrawal of u.s. forces, american citizens, and many of our afghan partners. however, we want to thank the men and women in uniform that assisted the evacuation of those that were able to make it out and of course to those that have given their service and sacrifice over the past two decades of the global war on te terror. the loss of service members and abandonment of americans and afghan allies last month was an unforced, disgraceful humiliation that didn t have to happen. the president put a cheap political victory, a withdrawal time line, timed to the 20th anniversary of nine lech, on his
0 thank you, senator. you re right, the tempo upped significantly, the taliban continued to make advances. our entire chain of command, myself, the chairman, general mckenzie, routinely engage the afghan leadership to encourage them to solidify their defensive plans, to make sure they were providing the right logistics to their troop, and further stiffen their defenses. to no avail. to compound that, president ghani continued to make changes in the leadership of the military, and this created further problems for the afghan security forces. mr. secretary, i don t mean to interrupt you but my time is elapsing. so this gets to the overestimation that i think the overly optimistic assessment. even as late as july you re still encouraging the afghan special forces. you re expecting the ghani government to remain, but that was not the case. in december of 2019 the washington post reported that the u.s. military commanders privately expressed a lack of confidence that the afghan army a
us feel at different times in our life from government for whatever reason, personal or political. and in fact, it does seem like there are still some popular conspiracy theories believed by a lot more people than you might expect. take a look at this. there is of course the birther theory and 25% still believe former president obama was born outside the u.s. 19% dispute the official account of nine lech. 40% believe the fda is withholding natural curious for cancer. as somebody who has studied conspiracy theories extensively, how do they originate exactly and why do they stick? well, it s often some sort of weird or traumatic event, so september 11th one would have anticipated could spawn all kinds of conspiracy theories. these days means that you can if you don t yourself have one yourself you can find one almost immediately after any event. well, thank you so much for