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Politics : View from the Center and Left -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: koan who wrote (480950)	10/7/2021 1:40:32 PM
From: Wharf Rat	Read Replies (3) \| Respond to of 540685

I gave you a quote from the hearings. Here it is again, along with the actual quote about 4500.. -- On whether to stay past Aug. 31 Milley told Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., that had the U.S. military remained in Afghanistan past the Aug. 31 withdrawal deadline date, Americans would have been exposed to substantial risk. "That is exactly what we assessed," he said, "that if we stayed past the 31st, the risk of force, U.S. military casualties, the risk to the mission, the ability to executive and continue to execute a [noncombatant evacuation], and most importantly the risk to the American citizens that are still there was going to go to ... very high levels." Asked whether it is likely there would have been another attack on American servicemembers had the military stayed, Milley responded: "I would say that that is a near certainty." During her questioning, Warren said Milley had come before the Armed Services Committee for years with a rosier depiction of Afghan forces. "[This] reminds me of all the years that I've sat now in the Senate Armed Services Committee, and how many times the generals have come in front of us, and when you point out every way in which the Afghan government was failing and the Afghan army was failing, the generals respond with, 'but we're turning the corner now.' " Milley responded: "I didn't say we were turning the corner, senator. I said we could sustain them." At another point in his testimony, Milley said that had the U.S. stayed, "on the 1st of September, we were going to go to war again with the Taliban, of that there was no doubt." He said staying past the 31st was militarily feasibly, but would have required approximately 25,000 more U.S. troops and would have resulted in "significant casualties." == "I will give you my honest opinion, and my honest opinion and view shaped my recommendation [to the president]," McKenzie said. "I recommended that we maintain 2,500 troops in Afghanistan, and I also recommended earlier in the fall of 2020 that we maintain 4,500 at that time. I also have a view that the withdrawal of those forces would lead inevitably to the collapse of the Afghan military forces and eventually the Afghan government. npr.org