Secretary of State Antony Blinken directly contradicted statements made by President Joe Biden just two days earlier in a \u201cFox News Sunday\u201d interview with Chris Wallace.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Wallace pressed Blinken on false statements made by Biden regarding the ongoing operation to evacuate Americans from Afghanistan following the Taliban\u2019s takeover of the country. Blinken said that there is an\u00a0al-Qaida<\/a>\u00a0presence remaining in the country, contrary to what Biden said Friday.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cThe President on Friday said a few other things that were flat wrong,\u201d Wallace began, before playing a clip in which Biden said Friday al-Qaida is \u201cgone\u201d from Afghanistan. \u201cA UN report this summer says that al-Qaida is present in fifteen of the 34 provinces of Afghanistan, and General Milley said this summer that if the Taliban took over Kabul, that he was going to have to upgrade the terror threat from al-Qaida. What the president said just wasn\u2019t true.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cChris, step back for one second. First, as we all know, we went to Afghanistan 20 years ago with one mission and one purpose in mind, and that was to deal with the folks who attacked us on 9\/11, to bring bin Laden to justice which we did a decade ago, and to diminish the capacity of al-Qaida to do the same thing again: to attack us from Afghanistan,\u201d Blinken began. \u201cAnd that, to the president\u2019s point has been successful. We got bin Laden a decade ago\u2014\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cBut Mr. Secretary, sir, the president said al-Qaida is gone,\u201d Wallace interrupted. \u201cSimple question: is al-Qaida gone from Afghanistan?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cAl-Qaida\u2019s capacity to do what it did on 9\/11, to attack us, to attack our partners or allies from Afghanistan, is vastly, vastly diminished,\u201d Blinken answered.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cIs it gone?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cAre there al-Qaida members and remnants in Afghanistan? Yes,\u201d Blinken said. \u201cBut what the president was referring to was its capacity to do what it did on 9\/11, and that capacity has been very successfully diminished.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Other experts and military leaders<\/a> have agreed with Milley\u2019s assessment that the terror threat from al-Qaida and other Islamic militant groups will rise under Taliban control of Afghanistan. Al-Qaida was able to plan and execute the 9\/11 attacks from a base of operations in Afghanistan during the previous period of Taliban control in the country.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Wallace went on to further press Blinken on the question of U.S. allies<\/a> criticizing the Biden administration\u2019s handling of Afghanistan. Biden said last week he had seen no cases of American allies criticizing the U.S. Wallace highlighted multiple examples<\/a> proving that\u2019s not the case.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cDoes the president not know what\u2019s going on?\u201d Wallace asked.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Secretary of State Antony Blinken directly contradicted statements made by President Joe Biden just two days earlier in a \u201cFox News Sunday\u201d interview with Chris Wallace. Wallace pressed Blinken on false statements made by Biden regarding the ongoing operation to evacuate Americans from Afghanistan following the Taliban\u2019s takeover of the country. Blinken said that there […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":754,"featured_media":32999,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false}}},"categories":[306],"tags":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/cww7news.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/08\/bw.png?fit=700%2C390&ssl=1","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cww7news.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32998"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cww7news.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cww7news.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cww7news.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/754"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cww7news.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=32998"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/cww7news.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32998\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":33000,"href":"https:\/\/cww7news.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32998\/revisions\/33000"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cww7news.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/32999"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cww7news.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=32998"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cww7news.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=32998"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cww7news.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=32998"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}