by Rob Crilly at The Daily Mail
American intelligence agencies offered increasingly dire warnings of a Taliban takeover and the collapse of Afghanistan‘s armed forces even as President Biden claimed that would not happen, according to current and former officials.
On July 8, Biden told reporters that the Afghan army could call on 300,000 fighters compared with 75,000 Taliban and that the fall of Kabul was ‘not inevitable.’
Yet a drumbeat of public assessments had questioned their ability to fight and by July classified intelligence reports had grown more pessimistic about whether the government could hold on to the capital, according to the New York Times.
The revelations will intensify questions about why Biden pushed ahead with such a rapid withdrawal, and why his administration was not better prepared to rescue Americans and Afghan staff.
One report in July, as the Taliban advanced, described the growing risk to Kabul and said the government was unprepared for a direct assault.
It mapped out a cascading collapse as the Afghan security forces fell apart – much as happened last week…
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