Rep. Banks blasts Pentagon's 'astonishingly idiotic' claim about American weapons in hands of Taliban
Banks says US troops will have to return to fight terrorists armed with American weapons
{{#rendered}} {{/rendered}}Rep. Jim Banks joined "America’s Newsroom" Tuesday to share his concerns on an ISIS uprising after America reached its Afghanistan withdrawal deadline, predicting U.S. troops will have to return to fight terrorists. Banks, R-Ind., slammed the Biden administration, singling out Pentagon spokesman John Kirby for downplaying concerns about American military equipment left in the hands of the Taliban.
REP. JIM BANKS: We are now watching right before our eyes the rise of ISIS a second time. By the way, Lloyd Austin was the general who oversaw the rise of ISIS when they pulled out of Iraq. Now he's the secretary of defense overseeing the rise of ISIS again in Afghanistan. And this isn't a threat that we didn't know about. I mean, as a member of the Armed Services Committee and going back to Afghanistan as a member of Congress, we've been briefed many times on the ISIS-K threat in Afghanistan. This administration knew this was going to happen.
{{#rendered}} {{/rendered}}They knew that if you gave control back to the Taliban, it would allow for a safe haven and an environment where ISIS-K would rise up and pose a direct threat to the homeland, to the United States of America. The generals told us that ISIS isn't interested in necessarily just in terrorist attacks in Afghanistan. They want to attack the United States of America. That's their plan. And the Biden administration is giving them safe haven, the ability to rise up and pose that threat once again. And that's why what Admiral Kirby said was so astonishingly idiotic when he talked about how these weapons aren't lethal weapons that we've left behind. We left behind guns and ammunition, thousands of military vehicles, night vision goggles, all of those weapons are going to be used against Americans when we're forced to go back and eradicate the threat of ISIS once again.
WATCH THE FULL INTERVIEW HERE: