authorized. as soon as we came into office, we reached out, along with other members of congress to say let s get through this backlog. once the withdrawal decision was made, we knew one of the possible outcomes was a collapse of the afghan government and there was an important of speeding up the process. it really wasn t until july that the administration started to work through this backlog. i think the process is burdensome, if they had suggestions on unburdening the process, they should have come to us. on the pullout itself, you laid this out a about i in your first answer. when we hear the administration, they often defend a decision to leave, not necessarily how it was done. but your own chairman meeks the other day talked about the
pullout, he said, was it perfect? absolutely not, but if you talk about it in its entirety and the results, it was successful. do you agree with the chairman, and to some extent, to the administration that that was a successful operation? yeah, an airlift of that magnitude over a period of two weeks, to get 120,000-plus individuals out fairly quickly, fairly safely, i think was a monumental logistical success. that said, we shouldn t have found ourselves in that situation. again, did we just totally miscalculate the after gan government s ability to hold on to territory, to defend itself, to take a stance? obviously we saw the end result. i would like to know, why did we have such bad information? or if the administration knew this collapse was coming, we should have been doing this
for 100,000 troops anywhere. what we do want to do is to be able to have intelligence on the ground to be able to stop the sort of threats. the general just brought up iran. one of the questions that should be asked of secretary blinken today is the fact that iran still harbors al qaeda senior leadership. are they, is iran going to allow al qaeda senior leadership to go back into afghanistan? that would be a huge threat. are we going to give iran billions of dollars in sanctions release? there s a lot of tough questions not only about afghanistan but also about the diplomacy so to speak that secretary blinken and his team are trying to have with the largest terrorist state in the world, the islamic republic of iran. john: we are looking at chairman meeks from the state of new york. looks like he s just about set to gavel in the hearing. not sure what they are waiting for elicits to make sure that the secretary of state s signal is good and strong. he looked like he was ready to
personally for her gumpion, the way she s fought and hollered and fought so hard for all the people in this alley. i really mean it, thank you, thank you, thank you. but that goes for everybody here. and look, folks, you know, i want to thank the governor and leader schumer and kirsten i should say senator gillibrand and congresswoman ming and maloney and meeks and mayor de blasio for being here. you know, it s not how can i say this. sometimes some very bad things happen that have a tendency to bring out the best in a people and a country. and i think what people are seeing across this country from
your congresswoman that mike is this your congresswoman that mike is this youra your congresswoman that mike is this your a district? 0h, your congresswoman that mike is this youra district? oh, it s your congresswoman that mike is this your a district? oh, it s grace s district. i want to thank her gumption, the way she s fought and hollered and fought so hard for all the people in this alley. i really mean it. thank you, thank you, thank you. but that goes for everybody here. look folks, i want to thank the governor and leader schumer and senator gillibrand and congresswoman ming and maloney and meeks and mayor de blasio for being here. . how can i say this? sometime soon very bad things happen that have a tendency to bring out the best in a people