Jean-Pierre: This has been one of the worst weeks of 2023 so far in terms of anti-LGBTQ becoming laws in states across America.
Kirby [White House press conference]: It is undeniable that decisions made, and the lack of planning done by the previous administration, significantly limited options available to [Biden/Afghanistan]
No wonder Kirby is at the White House briefing right now, trying to defend their failure in Afghanistan.
Reporter: There's four pages of blame [report on Afghanistan withdrawal] on the previous administration…nowhere in here does there appear to be any expression of accountability or mistake by [Biden] himself or others. Is there any?
Kirby: The very fact that we voluntarily decided to conduct after-action reviews; nobody told them to do that…they did that on their own.
[Kirby is incredibly defensive about their failure]
Kirby: When President Trump took office, there was more than ten thousand American troops in Afghanistan, he took it down to twenty-fiver hundred. He negotiated the release of five thousand Taliban prisoners…he negotiated the Doha Agreement with the Taliban without the Ghani government in the room, and he all but froze the special immigrant visa program, which had been providing opportunities for some of our Afghan allies to get out of the country…a general sense of degradation and neglect that [Biden] inherited.
Kirby: I have yet to see an intelligence assessment that was 110% certain about something. They get paid to do the best they can..do they always get it right? They will be the first ones to tell you they don't always get it right. And clearly we didn't get things right in Afghanistan.
Kirby: Whatever plans that might have been done by the previous administration [Afghanistan], we didn't see. And it's not apparent that there was a lot of planning done.
Reporter: Whose gonna get fired over this [Afghanistan]?
Kirby: The purpose of the document is to collate the chief reviews and findings of the agencies that did after-action reviews…the purpose is not accountability.
Kirby is coming unglued trying the defend their Afghanistan failure.
Reporrter: Is there anything in the review that addresses the problem of who was in charge at that time. I think there was a lot of analysis that questions whether it should of been the military whose in charge of the evacuation versus the State Department, and that is partly the problem of confusion.
Kirby: I don't accept the premise of your question that there was some sort of confusion over who runs it
Reporter: Do we know why the intelligence communities got it wrong?
Kirby: The intelligence community also conducted after-action reviews, and I'd let them speak to that. I'm not going to do that from here.
Kirby: These documents are sensitive and classified. We are taking an extraordinary step here to share them with members of congress, the relevant committees and members. Usually with after-actions, there is no requirement to do that…[Biden] has taken that extraordinary step to share these classified AARs [after-actioins reviews] with members of congress.
Kirby: It's difficult to say that we would have been able to do all that we did over the last year or so [Ukraine], if we were still dragged down, on the ground in Afghanistan.
Reporter: Does the lask of plans in place indicate that they [Trump administration] deliberatley sabotaged the incoming administration by not continuing to plan, dropping plans that were in place?
KIrby: I can't speak for leaders in the previous adminstration, and I certainly can't speak for whatever plans they did or did not draw up.
Reporter: [the report] doesn't seem to address the seven billion dollars in military hardware and technology that was left in Afghanistan for the Taliban. [Biden] took office in January, the withdrawal happened in August [Kirby laughs], does [Biden] take responsibility for leaving all or some of that?
Kirby: You know who is responsible for that equipment? The Afghans….there was very little US-owned, or US-operated equipment that we left when we left Afghanistan…forklifts at the airport, ladder vehicles, firetrucks that we were using at the airport…the helicopters, all disabled…ground vehicles…all disabled.