{"id":752645,"date":"2021-09-14T18:51:06","date_gmt":"2021-09-14T22:51:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/?p=752645"},"modified":"2021-09-14T18:51:08","modified_gmt":"2021-09-14T22:51:08","slug":"watch-cruz-grills-blinken-over-bidens-disaster-in-afghanistan","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/watch-cruz-grills-blinken-over-bidens-disaster-in-afghanistan\/","title":{"rendered":"WATCH: Cruz Grills Blinken Over Biden\u2019s Disaster In Afghanistan"},"content":{"rendered":"<aside class=\"mashsb-container mashsb-main mashsb-stretched\"><div class=\"mashsb-box\"><div class=\"mashsb-count mash-medium\" style=\"&quot;\"><div class=\"counts mashsbcount\">18<\/div><span class=\"mashsb-sharetext\">SHARES<\/span><\/div><div class=\"mashsb-buttons\"><a class=\"mashicon-facebook mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/sharer.php?u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.conservativenewsdaily.net%2Fbreaking-news%2Fwatch-cruz-grills-blinken-over-bidens-disaster-in-afghanistan%2F\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Facebook<\/span><\/a><a class=\"mashicon-twitter mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/intent\/tweet?text=&amp;url=https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/?p=752645&amp;via=ConservNewsDly\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Twitter<\/span><\/a><a class=\"mashicon-subscribe mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"#\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Subscribe<\/span><\/a><div class=\"onoffswitch2 mash-medium mashsb-noshadow\" style=\"display:none\"><\/div><\/div>\n            <\/div>\n                <div style=\"clear:both\"><\/div><\/aside>\n            <!-- Share buttons by mashshare.net - Version: 4.0.47--><div><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/05\/GettyImages-1228806150-scaled-e1620148061990.jpg?w=1200&amp;h=800&amp;ixlib=react-9.0.3\" class=\"ff-og-image-inserted\" \/><\/div>\n<p>Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) grilled Secretary of State Antony Blinken during a hearing on Tuesday over President Joe Biden\u2019s withdrawal from Afghanistan.<br \/>The withdrawal resulted in the deaths of more than a dozen U.S. soldiers in a suicide attack and dozens of Americans being left behind in the country.<\/p>\n<p>Cruz called the Biden administration\u2019s foreign policy decisions in Afghanistan \u201cthe worst foreign policy catastrophe in a generation,\u201d adding that America\u2019s enemies have been \u201cemboldened\u201d by Biden\u2019s weakness.<\/p>\n<p>Cruz pressed Blinken on whether the administration gave the Taliban a list of Americans or Afghans that wanted out, which Blinken denied. However, just moments later, Cruz got Blinken to admit that the administration gave the Taliban manifests, listing the names of people that were supposed to be getting on flights to leave the country, effectively contradicting Blinken\u2019s previous statement.<\/p>\n<p>Cruz also grilled Blinken on reports that children were and are being abused and forced to marry older Afghan men so they can leave Afghanistan.<\/p>\n<div id>\n<p><em>Sen. Cruz: President Biden and the Biden administration have presided over the worst foreign policy catastrophe in a generation. Americans across the nation are horrified. Our servicemen and women are active duty military are angry. They\u2019re disillusioned, and they\u2019re frustrated. Our enemies across the globe are emboldened, which makes the world more dangerous today for America, and our allies are dispirited. Ever since the disaster began unfolding in Afghanistan, we\u2019ve seen the Biden administration making political excuses. We\u2019ve seen Democrats on this committee explaining at great length, how everything that happened in Afghanistan is Trump\u2019s fault. \u2018It\u2019s all Trump\u2019s fault.\u2019 Mr. Secretary, Joe Biden is the President of the United States, Kamala Harris is the Vice President of the United States. You are the United States Secretary of State. Just like Jimmy Carter owns the disaster of the Iran hostage crisis, you own this. The Biden administration caused this disaster. It was caused by two things. Number one, ideological naivet\u00e9 and extremism. Repeatedly, Mr. Secretary, in this hearing, and also on multiple conference calls over the last month, you keep saying things like, \u2018The steps the Taliban needs to take to be welcomed into the community of civilized nations.\u2019 Mr. Secretary, they don\u2019t want to be welcomed into the community of civilized nations. They are terrorists who want to murder us. This administration doesn\u2019t understand that Joe Biden doesn\u2019t understand that. But sadly, that ideological extremism was combined with manifest incompetence. There were four decisions this administration made that I think were utterly indefensible. Number one, abandoning the Bagram Airfield, giving it to the Taliban. That is a decision that 100 years from now will be studied at war colleges as a colossal strategic mistake. Giving up the secure airfields, necessitating an evacuation from a dense urban environment, a commercial airport, which led tragically, to the suicide bombings and murders that killed 13 American servicemen and women. And had we been evacuating from Bagram with a secure perimeter, the odds are quite high, that attack either wouldn\u2019t have happened or if it had happened, it would have been far less severe in its consequences. Secondly, the Biden administration giving the Taliban a list of Americans and of Afghans we wanted out. Third, the decision to leave Americans behind, hundreds of Americans perhaps more perhaps thousands, thousands of green card holders, tens of thousands of Afghans who assisted the U.S. military, the Biden administration abandon them and left them behind. Forth, leaving billions of dollars of American military equipment that the Taliban will now use to threaten our lives. Earlier in this hearing you said about that equipment, \u2018None of it poses a strategic threat to us or their neighbors.\u2019 That does not pass the laugh test when you\u2019re looking at the Taliban potentially having 64,000 machine guns, 33 Blackhawk helicopters, 16,000 night vision goggles \u2013 we will see American blood spilled because of these colossal mistakes. Now, abandoning Bagram wasn\u2019t your call, it was the Pentagon\u2019s and the White House\u2019s ultimately. But I want to ask you flat out, did the State Department give the Taliban a list or multiple list of Americans and or Afghans that we wanted out?<\/em><\/p>\n<p><em>Secretary Blinken: Those reports and the idea that we would do anything to endanger our citizens or anyone else at a time when we were trying to save their lives is flat out wrong. Let me-<\/em><\/p>\n<p><em>Sen. Cruz: So I\u2019d just like a yes or no. Did you give them the list?<\/em><\/p>\n<p><em>Secretary Blinken: Senator, if I may, please. Thank you. In limited instances, where we were seeking to get a bus, or a group of people through a checkpoint, we gave a manifest to the people at the checkpoint to demonstrate that those people were expected.<\/em><\/p>\n<p><em>Sen. Cruz: Roughly how many names were on the list you gave them?<\/em><\/p>\n<p><em>Secretary Blinken: Doesn\u2019t matter, because they all-<\/em><\/p>\n<p><em>Sen. Cruz: Dozens, hundreds, thousands \u2013 give us some order of magnitude.<\/em><\/p>\n<p><em>Secretary Blinken: This happened in a handful of situations where to get through-<\/em><\/p>\n<p><em>Sen. Cruz: Dozens? So is it your testimony it wasn\u2019t hundreds? I want to understand, did you give them thousands of names?<\/em><\/p>\n<p><em>Secretary Blinken: No, we did not.<\/em><\/p>\n<p><em>Sen. Cruz: Okay. Hundreds?<\/em><\/p>\n<p><em>Secretary Blinken: Not going to put a number on it, but it was, again-<\/em><\/p>\n<p><em>Sen. Cruz: Why not? This is a hearing to discover how many names and how many of those individuals you gave the Taliban the name to had been targeted for torture or murder.<\/em><\/p>\n<p><em>Secretary Blinken: Senator by definition, these were in limited instances with a bus or a group of people to get them through a checkpoint. They got through the checkpoint.<\/em><\/p>\n<p><em>Sen. Cruz: So not only did you fail to evacuate Americans and green card holders who were there, but you also brought in tens of thousands of Afghans who had wholly inadequate vetting, bringing many of them to the United States. And one of the things that has done is that has brought in a humanitarian crisis to America. Child marriage and domestic abuse tragically are widespread in Afghanistan. According to the World Health Organization, more than half of the women in Afghanistan are married as child brides, and 90 percent of women are subject to domestic abuse \u2013 90 percent. On August 27, according to public reports, you distributed internal documentation, highlighting numerous instances and intake centers of sexual abuse, in which much older grown Afghan males appeared with children, young children, claimed they were their brides, claimed they were their wives. And the documents said the State Department urgently requested guidance. That was your word, \u2018urgently.\u2019 Subsequently, the Department of Homeland Security said that it showed the desperation of families, that they were willing to give little girls to grown men to be subject to sexual abuse and child wives. My question is as follows: Did you receive that urgent guidance? How many children have been subject to sexual abuse? What have you done to rescue young children from illegal and abusive relationships after being brought to America by the State Department?<\/em><\/p>\n<p><em>Secretary Blinken: Across the entire government, everyone involved in the evacuation effort whether it\u2019s at a transit point, in one of the countries that we negotiated with, whether it\u2019s here in the United States at Dulles, or Philadelphia, or the military bases, we have all of our officers at extreme vigilance to look for and to deal with any cases or concerns that arise.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n<p><em>Sen. Cruz: Did you receive the urgent guidance and how many child brides have you seen?<\/em><\/p>\n<p><em>Secretary Blinken: I don\u2019t know the specific guidance you\u2019re referring to. I\u2019m happy to look at it.<\/em><\/p>\n<p><em>Sen. Cruz: So is there not urgency to discover if children are being abused?<\/em><\/p>\n<p><em>Secretary Blinken: Absolutely, absolutely. We could we could detect and deal with any cases. And there have been, to my knowledge, a limited number of cases where we have separated people because we were concerned that they were-<\/em><\/p>\n<p><em>Sen. Cruz: How many?<\/em><\/p>\n<p><em>Secretary Blinken: The cases I\u2019m aware of? A handful.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p><i>The Daily Wire is one of America\u2019s fastest-growing conservative media companies and counter-cultural outlets for news, opinion, and entertainment. Get inside access to The Daily Wire by becoming a <\/i><a href=\"https:\/\/www.dailywire.com\/subscribe\"><i>member<\/i><\/a><i>.<\/i><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) grilled Secretary of State Antony Blinken during a hearing on Tuesday over President Joe Biden\u2019s withdrawal from Afghanistan.The withdrawal resulted in the deaths of more than &#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":2315279,"comment_status":"close","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mo_disable_npp":"","fifu_image_url":"","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-752645","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/752645","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=752645"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/752645\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2315279"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=752645"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=752645"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=752645"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}