House members call on US to leave Afghanistan after whistleblower report

By Pete Kasperowicz - 02/08/12 11:44 AM ET

Two House members on Wednesday morning called on the United States to leave Afghanistan for good after reports surfaced that cast new doubts on official statements that the military is making progress training Afghanistan to police itself against Taliban threats once the United States leaves.

In a report published in the Armed Forces Journal, Army Lt. Col. Danny Davis said attacks by the Taliban often go unanswered, Afghan troops are not well trained and they will likely be overrun once the United States leaves.

“What I saw bore no resemblance to rosy official statements by U.S. military leaders about conditions on the ground,” Davis wrote in an unclassified review of his tour of the country.

Rep. John Garamendi (D-Calif.), who met with Davis along with other House members, said this report shows the United States needs to leave Afghanistan as soon as possible. The Obama administration said last week that U.S. troops should be out sometime in 2013, but Garamendi said the sooner, the better.

“Col. Davis’s candid testimony reinforced my own conviction that there is no military solution to the conflict in Afghanistan, only the prospect of continued shedding of American blood in a war that is not ours to fight,” he said.

Rep. Walter Jones (R-N.C.), a longtime opponent of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, said Davis’s report shows that the official reports of progress from the Defense Department are not valid.

“Stop listening to those who keep telling you that training the Afghan soldiers and the Afghans to be policemen is going well,” he said. “I’m on the Armed Services Committee, and I’ve been hearing that for 10 years. You can teach a monkey to ride a bicycle sooner than 10 years.”

Rep. Jim McGovern (D-Mass.) took a more moderate view, and said Davis’s classified report on conditions in Afghanistan should be made public, so the United States has a better view on how to ensure Afghanistan’s security once U.S. troops are gone.

“No one likes to hear bad news … but we do need to hear the unvarnished truth,” he said. “We need accurate information in order to get a genuine understanding of what the situation is like on the ground in Afghanistan.”

McGovern added that to ensure the administration’s 2013 timeline for leaving is met, the United States must make a “clear-eyed, hard-eyed assessment of what’s going on in Afghanistan.”

Some members, including Rep. Barbara Lee (D-Calif.), also called on the Obama administration to de-classify the National Intelligence Estimate report on Afghanistan to better inform Congress about the ongoing problems in that country.