Pentagon spokesperson John Kirby defended the Biden administration Tuesday against accusations that its Afghanistan withdrawal was unprepared for the speed of the Taliban’s incursion into Kabul
“In fact, we held a big drill here at the Pentagon, downstairs in the Joint Operations Center with the entire interagency, to walk through what the retrograde was going to look like — the withdrawal — as well as including the possibility for these kinds of evacuation operations,” Kirby told MSNBC in an interview.
Despite that planning, at least seven people died Monday during the storming of the airport in Kabul, including several Afghans who clung to a departing U.S. military jet and fell mid-air as it gained altitude. Additionally, the body of one Afghan was found in the landing gear of an American C-17 transport aircraft hours after it hastily took off from the runway.
Kirby insisted Tuesday that U.S. officials had “planned for almost every contingency” surrounding evacuations. “But as an old military maxim says, no plan survives first contact. So obviously, we had to adjust in the moment,” he said.
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