0 i thank you very much for the way that you have kept us engaged and informed as decisions have been made. as you pointed out, the biden administration was dealt a very difficult hand on the withdrawal from afghanistan. we all recognize we needed to withdrawal and the options were extremely limited. the mistakes made by previous administrations, we talked about it, but i think we need to understand that many of us did not support the 2002 campaign to go into iraq. one of those reasons was we wanted to complete the mission in afghanistan when we had a chance to do it when the taliban was diminished after our military came in after the attack on our country, but instead we went into iraq which was not engaged in the 9/11 activities, and we never fin finished afghanistan. a mistake by the bush administration. it doesn t negate the information that was made available to you about the strength of the afghan security forces and the ghani administration s will to stick with it in afghanistan
0 so i thank you very much for the way that you have kept us engaged and informed as decisions have been made. as as you pointed out, the biden administration was dealt a very difficult hand on the withdrawal from afghanistan. we all recognized we needed to withdrawal the options were extremely limited. the mistakes made by previous administrations, we ve talked about it, but i think we need to understand that many of us did not support the 2002 campaign to go into iraq. and one of those reasons was that we wanted to complete the mission in afghanistan when we had the chance to do it when the taliban was diminished after our military came in after the attack on our country. but instead we went into iraq, which was not engaged in the 9/11 activities and we never finished afghanistan. a mistake made by the bush administration. and we ve already talked about the trump administration and setting a deadline and releasing prisoners and moving forward with the reduction of troops. when there
immigrant visas for afghans who had worked for us and by our side these past 20 years. when we took office, we inherited a program with a 14-step process based on a statutory framework enacted by congress and involving multiple government agencies. and a backlog of more than 17,000 siv applicants. there had not been a single interview in the siv program in kabul for nine months, going back to march of 2020. the program was basically in a stall. within two weeks of taking office, we restarted the siv interview process in kabul. on february 4th, one of the very first executive orders issued by president biden directed us to immediately review the siv program to identify causes of undue delay and to find ways to process siv applications more quickly. this spring, i directed significant additional resources to the program, expanding the team in washington of people processing applications from 10
depart. we also used this time to significantly speed up the processing of the special immigrant visas for afghans who had worked for us and by our side these past 20 years. when we took office, we inherited a program with a 14 step process based on a statutory framework enacted by congress and involving multiple government agencies and a backlog of more than 17,000 applicants. they had not been a single interview in the siv program in kabul for nine months going back to march of 2020. the program was basically stalled. within two weeks of taking office, we restarted the interview process in kabul. on february 4th, 1 of the very first executive orders issued by president biden directed us to immediately review the siv program, identify delays and find ways to process applications more quickly. this spring i directed significant additional resources
through september 11th, and then backed it up to july. they also will be blaming it not only around trump administration, but also to congress around that siv program to give thousands of interprets and those who worked for the government to give them some protected access to the united states, and over 17,000 backlogged applications when the trump administration left office, and also pointing to the militar apparatus. and it also said that within six months of the withdrawal of the troops the afghan government could fall. that is a grave assessment, and it happened within days that the civilian government collapsed. so he is going to be facing a number of questions about that. and so what he is also going to be saying is looking forward.