Ric Grenell, President Trump’s former acting Director of National Intelligence, on Tuesday said General Mark Milley, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, has not been truthful about who made the disastrous decision to shut down Bagram Air Force Base before evacuating American citizens and Afghan allies from the war-torn country.
During an interview on Fox News, Grenell took aim at Milley, accusing the four-star general of falsely claiming that the commander in charge of Bagram Air Force Base, General Scott Miller, advised the Biden White House to shut the base down.
“I can tell you that that’s not true. I know that from very first hand information. General Miller did not want to close Bagram but General Milley said that he did,” Grenell told Fox News host Bill Hemmer.
During a press conference on August 18, Milley claimed that CENTCOM commander General Kenneth McKenzie, and General Miller had made the decision to close Bagram Air Force Base.
“Our task given to us at that time, our task was protect the embassy in order for the embassy personnel to continue to function with their consular service and all that. If we were to keep both Bagram and the embassy going, that would be a significant number of military forces that would have exceeded what we had or stayed the same or exceeded what we had,” Milley told reporters.
“So we had to collapse one or the other, and a decision was made. The proposal was made form CENTCOM commander and the commander on the grounds, Scott Miller, to go ahead and collapse Bagram,” Milley continued. “That was all briefed and approved, and we estimated that the risk of going out of HKIA or the risk of going out of Bagram about the same, so going out of HKIA — was estimated to be the better tactical solution in accordance with the mission set we were given and in accordance with getting the troops down to about 600, 700 number.”
Grenell disputed Milley’s version of events, telling Hemmer that Miller had actually warned the White House not to close the base.
“I know that General Miller made those stark warnings to [National Security Advisor] Jake Sullivan and said ‘do not close Bagram,’ and Bagram was closed,” the former diplomat said. “Our troops were removed, and we left ten percent of Americans behind. The Biden Doctrine for the rest of history will be ’90 percent is good enough,'” he added.
During Senate testimony on June 23, Milley himself recommended that Bagram be shut down because “it’s not necessary tactically for the operation we’re going to do here with...
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I have a friend that was a contractor at Bagram. He was left behind. The military pulled out without telling or making concessions for the contractors. Last I heard he made it to Mazar-i-Sharif. That was over a week ago.
ReplyDeleteT praying for your friend. Keep us posted.
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