Biden is so anxious to point the finger of blame at anyone but himself that he’s making stuff up about our allies. Remember, the official White House line is that they did a bang up job and should be congratulated for fixing Trump’s mess. (Obviously Branco feels differently!^^^^^)
Leaked Pentagon notes obtained by POLITICO claimed that despite intelligence warnings of a potential terror attack, the American military decided to keep the Abbey Gate entrance to the Kabul airport open to allow British forces to continue evacuation efforts.
Biden has accused the Brits, including the inordinately brave 2 Para who went into Kabul to pull out Brits and their Afghan translators, of leaving Abbey Gate open at HKIA which allowed the suicide bomber to access the airport and the soft American targets.
Boris’s Foreign Secretary, Dominic Raab has lashed back at US claims blaming Britain for making the Kabul terror attack death toll worse as Anglo-American relations nosedive according to the UK’s Sun newspaper.
The furious foreign secretary said leaks from the Pentagon stating that an airport gate was left open at the UK’s requests were “just not true”.
Thirteen US military personnel were killed in the blast when a suicide bomber struck at the site, along with two Brits and at least 170 Afghans.
Government sources were left jaw struck by the American claims and suggested under-fire Joe Biden was trying to shift the blame.
The spectacular public row will put further strain on the so-called Special Relationship which has been rocked by the Afghanistan crisis.
According to classified US notes, obtained by Politico, US chiefs had begged to be allowed to close the Abbey Gate at Hamid Karzai airport.
But their commander in Kabul, Rear Admiral Peter Vasely, said Britain wanted it to stay open as they had “accelerated their drawdown”.
The leaked transcripts said American officials predicted a “mass casualty” attack and warned the gate was the “highest risk” location.
‘Not true’
But asked about the claims, Mr Raab fumed: “It’s just not true to suggest, other than securing our civilian staff inside the airport, that we were pushing to leave the gate open.
“In fact we were issuing changes of travel advice before the bomb attack took place and saying to people in the crowd that certainly UK nationals and anyone else should leave because of the risk.
“Just as a point of fact we did everything we could once we were alerted to the threat, and before the explosion took place, to mitigate the risk.”
Former Tory leader Sir Iain Duncan Smith said that the Biden administration’s attempts to blame Britain for the Islamist suicide bombing at the Kabul airport are “reprehensible” and that the true blame lies with the embattled American president.
“President Biden was responsible for those decisions which, I believe, were critical in the course of the events that we’ve seen unfolding,” Iain Duncan Smith, a Conservative MP, told LBC.
“I do think now to attempt to try and brief against the UK on the suicide bombing is reprehensible really, because, you know, if the American government or the American military were very serious about shutting the gates, they would have shut the gates,” he continued.
LBC noted that another Tory MP, Tobias Ellwood, called the dispute “an unhelpful blame game” that has resulted from the U.S.-U.K. effort reaching a “low ebb.”