Sen. Richard Blumenthal on Chaotic Afghanistan Withdrawal: No Answers, ‘No Clarity,’ ‘Nobody In Charge’

EXCERPT:

BLUMENTHAL: "There really was no clarity. And with all due respect to the Secretary of Defense, he provided no real responses to my questions because at the moment there aren’t responses. There is nobody in charge. And undeniably, and he knows and so does every member of that panel, there’s a moral imperative here. There are tens of thousands of Afghan allies, the former interpreters, translators, guards, security officials who went into combat with our troops, they protected our diplomats. They put themselves and their families at risk, and now they have targets on their back, they're at risk of murder and torture, they're in hiding and their situations are increasingly desperate. My office turned into a kind of mini evacuation center. My senior staff and I were making phone calls. I called some of the very top officials in the White House, in the State Department. And members of the State Department pointed at the Department of Defense. The Department of Defense pointed at the White House. Nobody in charge, and it’s a continuing challenge that we need to face because lives are at stake, lives of people who put their lives on the line for us."