they said the state department s spokesperson said there were limiting factors like the entryways into the airport, but said those entryways needed to be limited because of the heightened security situation on the ground there. and so the biden administration is really pushing back on this report, citing its inaccuracies, saying that there are concerns about how this was all pulled off, but they still haven t come out with their own reports as to after action and what could have been done better. republicans on the house foreign affairs committee said the biden administration refused to take part in the report, and the democrats on the committee did not participate. how is the administration responding to this report beyond what we just heard from kylie? well, they re saying they did brief congress extensively after the fact. they have been saying they have provided over 250 briefings to lawmakers since the noncombatant evacuation operation, the massive evacuation operation from af
we have serious commitments to who have expressed concerns what they are seeing on the continent, we share those concerns, we will do what we can to bolster their defenses. john: another leaked document, my bailiwick today, august 14th, the day before kabul fell reported suggesting that the biden administration was wholly unprepared to evacuate people from afghanistan. i recall a briefing that you had where you were asked if this was going to be a neo, a noncombatant evacuation operation, you said no, it turned out to be that and more in the end. in the early going here, was the biden administration unprepared to deal with this mass evacuation? without talking to leaked documents and meeting notes, what i can tell you is we were focussed for a while on the possibility that there would have to be a noncombatant evacuation, as far back as early spring here in the pentagon. we are running tabletop
i would hope it s not. i would hope it would happen in fact, it might even be logical to think that if there are displaced persons and they are moving in the direction of western europe to get out of ukraine, i am not sure russians would try to stop them. and if there was a requirement for a noncombatant evacuation operation even though we emptied out our embassy, we still have tons of american citizens in ukraine and if they became identified and we could locate em and the united states has the obligation to go get those folks, i bet you even putin would get out of the way and possibly even facilitate that, so that he would move that problem out of the way. his fight is not with america. his fight is with trying to trying to frack ture nato and h is trying to re-create a buffer zone that he lost when the soviet union collapsed and that s very, very troubling for him. that is the strategic motivation that brought him to this point, brought all of us to this point. just quickly,
in the direction of kyiv. there will be a humanitarian disaster, displaced persons, and of course russian forces may pursue those. the last thing america wants and i would argue the last thing russia wants is for american soldiers and russian soldiers to get into a gun fight. we ve never had one of those, never. never did it against the soviets have not against the russians. is this the time and place where we ll do that? i don t know. i would hope it is not. i would hope it would happen because it might even be logical to think if there are displaced persons and they are moving in the direction of western europe to get out of ukraine i m not certain the russians would try to stop them. and if there was a requirement for a noncombatant evacuation operation even though we ve emptied out our embassy we have tons of american citizens in ukraine and if they became identified and we could locate them and the united states has the obligation to go get those folks, i bet you even putin would
As the crisis continues in Ukraine with a looming threat of a Russian invasion, Sens. Marsha Blackburn and Bill Hagerty, both Republicans from Tennesee, are demanding answers from Secretary of