The State Department accused House Republicans of cherry-picking the facts and withholding information in a lengthy report on the withdrawal of U.S. troops in Afghanistan in August 2021.
The State Department's response to the report issued by the House Foreign Affairs Committee on September 9 also highlighted the deeply partisan nature of the report in the midst of the U.S. presidential campaign.
The Republicans on the committee and other Republicans in the House of Representatives, where the party holds the majority, "issued partisan statements, cherry-picked facts, withheld testimonies from the American people, and obfuscated the truth behind conjecture," the State Department said.
The report specifically points to the Biden-Harris administration and their "failure to plan for all contingencies."
The House Republicans blamed the disastrous end of the United States' longest war on the Biden administration and Vice President Kamala Harris, the Democrats' current presidential nominee. The role of former President Donald Trump, who had signed the withdrawal deal with the Taliban, was minimized.
Representative Michael McCaul (Republican-Texas), chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, said the review revealed that the Biden administration "had the information and opportunity to take necessary steps to plan for the inevitable collapse of the Afghan government."
But instead of taking steps toward a safe evacuatation "the administration picked optics over security," McCaul said in a statement.
The review lays out the final months of military and civilian failures, following Trump's February 2020 withdrawal deal, that allowed the fundamentalist Taliban to sweep through and conquer all of the country even before the last U.S. officials flew out on August 30, 2021.
The chaotic exit left behind many U.S. citizens, Afghan battlefield allies, women activists, and others at risk from the Taliban.
The State Department said Biden "acted in the best interests of the American people when he decided to bring our troops home and end America's longest war."
The department's response also drew similarities to a 2022 report prepared by Republican lawmakers, which it said "did a deep disservice to the American people by further politicizing U.S. policy towards Afghanistan instead of focusing on bipartisan solutions."