Originally, the Biden administration claimed there were 100-200 American citizens left behind in Afghanistan. We were assured that they were working on getting them all out, but as the weeks passed, the number of American citizens the Biden administration acknowledges is trapped in the Taliban-controlled country has gone up, not down.
And now the Pentagon is admitting that immediate family members of U.S. service members are among them. According to a report from NBC News, Undersecretary of Defense for Policy Colin Kahl issued a memo asking “any U.S. military personnel and DOD civilians with immediate family members who need help leaving Afghanistan to email his office.”
For our VIPs: Don’t Trust the Biden Admin to Be Honest About the Number of Americans Still in Afghanistan
The memo, which was obtained by NBC News, “instructs service members and Defense Department civilians to email a specific address with the subject ‘immediate family member.'”
“There are still several dozen immediate family members of U.S. service members in Afghanistan,” NBC News reports. “Those include children, sisters and brothers, and parents. There are well over 100 extended family members still in Afghanistan.” However, defense officials say it’s not clear how many of them want to leave the country.
That any American was left behind is tragic, but the Biden administration somehow manages to keep making it worse. First by lying about it, and now by admitting that even the family members of U.S. troops were abandoned.
Join the conversation as a VIP Member