ABC News correspondent Martha Raddatz said Sunday that it was a “massive intelligence failure” that the United States was surprised by the speed at which the Taliban has been taking over Afghanistan.
Raddatz, who was in Afghanistan just weeks ago, spoke with colleague Jon Karl on This Week as the Taliban continued to advance on Kabul and amid the U.S.’ continued efforts to evacuate embassy personnel and allies.
Karl said, “President Biden’s top military advisers advised against a total withdrawal here.”
“They did not want all U.S. forces out of there,” Raddatz said. “They wanted to keep a force of about 3500 to 4000 U.S. personnel in Afghanistan just to provide intelligence, to provide some security, and to keep the Afghan forces on track.”
She went on to talk about the serious “failures” after all these years:
The training mission of those Afghan forces — 83 billion dollars worth — clearly failed. The negotiations with the Taliban clearly failed. And you also had a really massive intelligence failure here that the U.S. did not realize how quickly the Taliban could take over. And we have been there for 20 years, we know the Taliban. We have people on the ground, and yet the U.S. was caught unaware and completely off-guard.
You can watch above, via ABC.