“A flash and a massive wave of pressure. I’m thrown 4 feet onto the ground but instantly knew what had happened. I opened my eyes to Marines dead or unconscious lying around me. A crowd of hundreds immediately vanished in front of me. And my body was catastrophically wounded with 100 to 150 ball bearings now in it,” he recalled.
Vargas-Andrews, 25, offered emotional and detailed testimony of the days leading up to the bombing, which took the lives of 13 US service members and more than 100 Afghans, as part of a House Foreign Affairs Committee hearing on the evacuation from Afghanistan.
However, those accusations in Congress about who is responsible for the chaotic final weeks of the United States’ presence in Afghanistan have fallen largely along party lines, with Republican lawmakers pointing fingers at the Biden administration and Democratic lawmakers casting blame on the Trump administration for the deal that set the US withdrawal into motion.
Wednesday’s hearing featured the testimonies of two service members who were on the ground in Afghanistan during those final weeks: Vargas-Andrews and US Army Specialist Aidan Gunderson. In addition, three people involved with groups who worked to evacuate Afghans — Francis Hoang from Allied Airlift 21, retired Lt. Col. David Scott Mann from Task Force Pineapple and Peter Lucier from Team America Relief — and immigration lawyer Camille Mackler, who worked to try to get the administration to begin relocating vulnerable Afghans well before the fall of Kabul, all served as witnesses.
‘Catastrophe’
Vargas-Andrews described the withdrawal as a “catastrophe,” telling lawmakers that “there was an inexcusable lack of accountability and negligence.”…
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