The New York Times published video on Wednesday of Biden's botched drone strike that took place during his disastrous withdrawal from Afghanistan after obtaining the footage through a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit.
The August 29th strike, called "righteous" at the time by Biden administration officials, turned out to be a deadly mistake. Rather than taking out ISIS-K terrorists about to attack the U.S. airlift at Kabul's Hamid Karzai International Airport, the strike killed 10 innocent civilians, including seven children.
As The Times reports, "The disclosure of the videos is the first time any footage from the strike has been seen publicly" and "encompass about 25 minutes of silent video from two drones — a military official said both were MQ-9 Reapers — showing the minutes before, during and after the strike."
The videos captured by the two drones circling above Kabul show two different vantage points, one showing heat signatures from individuals — and, most notably, the engine under the hood of the targeted vehicle — while the other provides a closer, high-resolution view of target area.
Despite their initial claims and victory lap for the strike, the Biden administration would eventually admit that "the interpretation or the correlation of the intelligence to what was being perceived at the time, in real time, was inaccurate" and "In fact, the vehicle, its occupant and contents did not pose any risk to U.S. forces."
As Townhall covered previously, the Pentagon's initial supposed "proof" of a good shoot turned out to have been the result of confirmation bias in the midst of Biden's chaotic airlift:
Rather than taking out an ISIS-K suicide bomber or a car laden with explosives, CENTCOM concluded that the drone strike killed an innocent aid worker along with seven children and two other members of his family. The secondary explosion — supposedly proof that the strike stopped an impending attack on American service members and fleeing Afghans at Hamid Karzai International Airport — is believed to have been a propane tank near the car.
In the wake of the Pentagon's confirmation that the U.S. had droned an innocent family and several children, the White House — as usual — refused to face accountability. When asked in September whether there would be repercussions for those responsible for the deadly case of mistaken identity, Psaki wouldn't say whether there would be any firings or other penalties for those responsible in the chain of command.
Subsequently, the Pentagon would say that their review of the botched strike "found no violation of law, including the law of war," while admitting "execution errors, confirmed by confirmation — or combined with confirmation — bias and communication breakdowns that regrettably led to civilian casualties."
Following the White House's lead, the Pentagon also said that there would not be any specific discipline for the botched strike. "What we saw here was a breakdown in process and execution in procedural events, not the result of negligence, not the result of misconduct, not the result of poor leadership," explained Pentagon Press Secretary John Kirby, who instead just pledged that the Pentagon would "do better."
Pentagon and White House spin from the administration aside, the botched strike was, in fact, the result of poor leadership from President Biden, who despite claiming the "buck" stops with him has avoided taking responsibility for any aspect of his Afghanistan disaster.