House Republicans and Democrats to issue dueling documents casting blame for mistakes made in US withdrawal from Afghanistan

The senior Republican and Democrat on the House Foreign Affairs Committee will release dueling documents on the deadly August 2021 US withdrawal from Afghanistan on Monday, as former President Donald Trump’s campaign seeks to make the decisions surrounding the exit a key issue in the final weeks of the presidential election campaign.

Republicans and Democrats will release dueling documents on the deadly August 2021 US withdrawal from Afghanistan on Monday, as former President Donald Trump’s campaign seeks to make the decisions surrounding the exit a key issue in the final weeks before the presidential election. The release — after years of investigation by the Republicans on the House Foreign Affairs Committee — of the report by Republican Chairman Rep Michael McCaul and a minority memorandum by Democratic Ranking Member Rep. Gregory Meeks underscore how partisan the debate over the frenzied US exit from Afghanistan has become. The reports also thrust the evacuation back into the spotlight during the lead-up to the election as the GOP has used the evacuation to attack Vice President Kamala Harris. The documents are the latest in a series of examinations of the withdrawal, which saw the deaths of 13 US service members and left behind thousands of Afghans who had worked with the United States. Accusations of culpability have fallen largely along party lines, with Republicans pointing fingers at the Biden administration for hastily pulling the US out of the country and Democrats, including the White House, casting blame on the Trump administration for striking a deal with the Taliban that set the US withdrawal into motion. The conclusions of both documents, obtained by CNN ahead of their release Monday, continue that pattern. Although there were some new details revealed, the overarching findings largely align with what was already known. The Republican report is highly critical of the Biden administration and pins the blame for the chaotic exit exclusively on its decisions. It also aims to implicate Harris, now the Democratic nominee for president, in its accusations by referring to the current government as “the Biden-Harris administration.”