Joe Biden says U.S. troops will be out of Afghanistan by the August 31 deadline demanded by the Taliban. However, at the rate that evacuations are going (and there are several questions about the veracity of the numbers we’re hearing), it is unlikely all American citizens will get evacuated in time.
According to a U.S. official who spoke with the Daily Caller, it seems “doubtful we are going to bring” home the estimated 8,000 Americans remaining in Afghanistan by that deadline.
According to the report, “The number provided by the official jives with estimates recently given out by Republican Texas Rep. Kevin Brady. After attending the classified briefing Tuesday, he told reporters around 4,000 Americans have been evacuated from Afghanistan.”
The official also indicated that while there’s been no directive given not to report the numbers, “it’s become a quiet rule among officials to avoid giving out a more precise number, in part because it’s ’embarrassingly low.'”
The Biden administration has been reluctant to give specifics as to the number of Americans who have been evacuated. Still, according to a leaked State Department cable from earlier this week, Americans represent less than 17 percent of the people they’ve evacuated.
On August 23, roughly 350 Americans were evacuated from Afghanistan. If it’s assumed that 350 American citizens are successfully evacuated daily, over 5,000 Americans will be left stranded in Afghanistan by the end of the August 31 deadline.
But it is likely to be even higher as evacuations are likely to slow down since the military has already started to reduce its presence in Afghanistan.
Related: Kabul Airport: ‘Total, Complete Chaos, Unsanitary Conditions and Rapidly Declining,’ Rubio Warns
How will Biden and everyone else in his administration be able to look themselves in the eye in the morning if they abandon thousands of Americans in Taliban-controlled Afghanistan? If we leave that many Americans behind, it will create a historic hostage crisis
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