The “Contingency and Crisis Response Bureau” – which was designed to handle medical, diplomatic, and logistical support concerning Americans overseas was paused by Anthony Blinken’s State Department earlier this year. Notification was officially signed just months before the Taliban’s takeover of Afghanistan.
Joe Biden’s State Department moved to cancel a critical State Department program aimed at providing swift and safe evacuations of Americans out of crisis zones just months prior to the fall of Kabul, The National Pulse can exclusively reveal.
The document is dated June 11, 2021, though The National Pulse understands the decision to pause the program may have come as early as February, both undermining the original Trump-era date for the withdrawal of troops from Afghanistan, and certainly giving the Taliban time to threaten American assets and lives on the run up to Joe Biden’s September 11th date of withdrawal.
The subject line reads: “(SBU) Contingency and Crisis Response Bureau,” and the body of the document recommends:
“That you direct the discontinuation of the establishment, and termination of, the Contingency and Crisis Response Bureau (CCR), and direct a further review of certain associated Department requirements and capabilities.”
It goes on:
“That you direct the discontinuation of the establishment, and termination of, CCR, consistent with the applicable legal requirements, necessary stakeholder engagement, and any applicable changes to the Foreign Affairs Manual and other requirements.”
The document reveals the recommendations were approved on June 11th 2021.
Speaking exclusively to The National Pulse, former President Donald J. Trump blasted Biden’s irresponsible move:
“My Administration prioritized keeping Americans safe, Biden leaves them behind. Canceling this successful Trump Administration program before the withdrawal that would have helped tens of thousands Americans reach home is beyond disgraceful. Our withdrawal was conditions-based and perfect, it would have been flawlessly executed and nobody would have even known we left. The Biden execution and withdrawal is perhaps the greatest embarrassment to our Country in History, both as a military and humanitarian operation.”
Paul Plante says
And now, as we are learning from the New York Times article “U.S. Says It Doesn’t Know How Many Americans Are in Afghanistan” by Thomas Kaplan on 22 August 2021, it turns out that the Biden administration, which takes being incompetent to the limits and beyond, and which tells us it is going to get everybody out of Afghanistnam, doesn’t have a clear idea as to how many Americans are even there in the first place, to wit:
At the center of the scramble to airlift American citizens out of Afghanistan after its fall to the Taliban is a simple question: How many Americans are waiting to be evacuated?
It is a question the Biden administration has been unable to answer.
end quotes
Corrrection: it is only one of the many questions the Biden administration has been unable to answer, because it is a very shallow-thinking administration, which takes us back to the sheer incompetence of the Biden adminikstration that is now on display, to wit:
“We cannot give you a precise number,” Jake Sullivan, President Biden’s national security adviser, said on CNN’s “State of the Union” on Sunday.
Mr. Sullivan said the United States had been in touch with a “few thousand Americans” and was working on making arrangements to get them out of the country.
In another interview, on NBC’s “Meet the Press,” he estimated that “roughly a few thousand” Americans were trying to leave Afghanistan.
American officials had estimated on Tuesday that 10,000 to 15,000 U.S. citizens were in Afghanistan.
Complicating matters for the Biden administration is a lack of clarity about how many Americans were in Afghanistan when the Taliban seized control of the country.
When American citizens come to Afghanistan, they are asked to register with the U.S. Embassy, Mr. Sullivan said.
Some register but then leave the country without notifying the embassy.
Others never register to begin with.
“We have been working for the past few days to get fidelity on as precise a count as possible,” Mr. Sullivan said in the NBC interview.
“We have reached out to thousands of Americans by phone, email, text.”
“And we are working on plans to, as we get in touch with people, give them direction for the best and most safe and most effective way for them to get into the airport.”
end quotes
Giving them directions for the best and most safe and most effective way for them to get into the airport?
The Kabul airport?
The same Kabul airport where these is a humanitarian crisis going on right now?
The same Kabul airport where there was a firefight this morning?
He’s kidding, right?
How about if they click their heels together three times and say at the same time, “there’s no place like home,” and by some miracle perhaps they will actually get there.