Sen Rand Paul of Kentucky forced Secretary of State Antony Blinken to admit the truth about the Afghan drone strike that allegedly killed an innocent aid worker. What Paul get’s Blinken to admit speaks volumes about the Biden administration’s absolute incompetence.
“The guy the Biden administration droned, was he an aid worker or an ISIS-K operative?” Paul asked, referring to a New York Times report. According to their report, the vehicle struck was driven by U.S. aid group worker Zemari Ahmadi, one of 10 people the Times said died in the attack.
“The administration is of course reviewing that strike and I’m sure that a full assessment will be forthcoming,” Blinken said, leading Paul to press the issue.
“So you don’t know if it was an aid worker or an ISIS-K operative?” the senator asked. When Blinken said he could not speak to that in the setting they were in, Paul asked, “So you don’t know or won’t tell us?”
“I don’t know because we’re reviewing it,” Blinken admitted.
An infuriated Paul slammed the administration for giving the orders to take the shock without knowing for sure who they were targeting.
“You’d think you’d kind of know before you off somebody with a Predator drone whether he’s an aid worker or an ISIS-K,” he said.
“Never in my worst nightmares could I have imagined that an administration would leave and leave $80 billion worth of weaponry to the Taliban,” Paul continued. “Dozens of planes and helicopters, thousands of armored carriers, hundreds of thousands of automatic weapons, and worst of all, 13 of our brave young men and women. Never in my worst nightmares did anyone conceive of such a colossal incompetence.”
A shocked Paul took yet another shot at the administration questioning why they wouldn’t not use the drone to destroy the munitions and warplanes they left behind for the Taliban.
The action, Gen Mark Milley, chair of the US joint chiefs of staff, insisted, was a “righteous strike” against Isis-K members who had been observed at points during the day loading what a surveillance team thought to be explosives into the vehicle and visiting a known safe house of the terrorist group.
But the Times’ reporting, compiled from extensive video analysis, interviews with Ahmadi’s colleagues and family, and visits to the scene, casts considerable and potentially devastating doubt on the administration version of events.
