he is blaming the military of afghanistan, which i think is disingenerous. the people of the white house. secretary austin, something you said surprised me. you said you were ready and you exceeded expectations. you said credibility is solid and the president followed your advice. do you still believe the most effective withdrawals vofl extracting the military, abandon l our military instilllations and reducing the force before getting our military out? thanks, senator. first the decision was to end military options and draw down all of our forces and retro grade all of our equipment and
0 why wasn t action taken to secure the kabul airport or retake bagram then? thank you, senator. you re right, the tempo had picked up significantly, yet the taliban continued to make advances. our entire chain of command, myself, the chairman, general mckenzie routinely engaged the afghan leadership to encourage them to solidify their defensive plans, to make sure they were providing the right logistics to their troops 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. i don t mean to interrupt you, but my time is lapsing. this gets to the overestimation, i think the overly optimistic assessment, because even as late as july you re still encouraging the afghan special forces, you re expecting the ghani government to remain. in december of 2019, the washington post reported that the u.s. military commanders privately express