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See store for details on available financing and benefit options. STAUNTON 540-609-2362 HARRISONBURG 540-609-2393 CHARLOTTESVILLE 434-443-4027 WASHINGTON Two retired senior military told Congress Tuesday that poor planning and an unreliable al- ly contributed to the chaotic, deadly re- treat from Afghanistan that Republi- cans have sought to pin on the Biden administration. fundamental mistake, the fun- damental was the timing of the State said retired Gen. Mark Milley, former chair of the Joint Chiefs of was too slow and too Milley and former Gen. Kenneth McKenzie, who led U.S.
Central Com- mand, had oversight of the days of the two-decade U.S. presence in war- torn Afghanistan. An attack during the frenzied rush to the country and its hardline Taliban rulers killed 13 U.S. troops and at least 170 Afghan civilians. Rep.
Michael McCaul, R-Texas, chair of the House Foreign Commit- tee, said the retreat had shredded credibility and reputation. damage will last for genera- McCaul said. In September 2021, Milley told the Senate that Pentagon had rec- ommended maintaining a force of 2,500 U.S. troops in Afghanistan and that they had predicted the Afghan government would collapse if Ameri- can forces were withdrawn. Milley termed the evacuation from Afghanistan, in which more than 120,000 Afghans were out, a gistical success but a strategic On Tuesday, he acknowledged the presence at the hearing of families who had lost troops in Afghanistan and reit- erated that the withdrawal was a stra- tegic failure, but he praised the perfor- mance of troops who evacuated U.S.
and Afghan civilians. McKenzie said policy decisions, not the performance of troops on the ground, resulted in the the loss of 13 troops during the evacuation. Milley and McKenzie said the failure of the State Department to order the evacuation sooner and to plan for it contributed to the chaos in Kabul in Au- gust 2021. In July, the State Department issued a report that faulted both the Biden and Trump administrations for failing to plan for sce- before the withdrawal. Penta- gon planning for an evacuation opera- tion had progressed for but the State ability to participate was by the fact that it was unclear who in the Depart- ment had the the report found.
Milley said the that broke the came in mid-August 2021 when Afghan President Ashraf Ghani the country as Taliban forces ad- vanced on the capital. Milley said Af- ghan forces started shedding their uni- forms after departure, and un- favorably compared him with Ukrai- nian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, who chose to stay and oppose invasion the following year. Rep. Gregory Meeks, the ranking member, said the Trump administration deal with the Taliban, known as the Doha Agree- ment, undercut U.S. leverage in Af- ghanistan.
Milley told Meeks that the frame- work for the withdrawal was set by the Doha Agreement. Afghanistan evacuation was slow and too Tom Vanden Brook and Dan Morrison USA TODAY Former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Mark Milley, left, and former U.S. Central Command head Gen. Kenneth McKenzie said Tuesday the withdrawal from Afghanistan was a disaster due to the timing of the State Department.
JACK TODAY Abortions, particularly medication abortion, have increased in the United States in recent years despite bans pro- hibiting the procedure in more than a dozen states, according to a report pub- lished Tuesday. More than 1 million abortions oc- curred in the formal U.S. healthcare system in 2023, the year after the Su- preme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, according to a monthly report from the Guttmacher Institute, a research and policy organization that supports abor- tion rights. That is the highest number in more than a decade and a increase since 2020, the report said.
And the numbers are likely an undercount because they include self-managed abortions that happen outside the health care system. But experts said the increase does not mean gotten easier to access abortion care. Rather, they said the in- crease in people traveling out of state indicates that and logistical burdens have grown for many patients and clinics that have to work harder to meet increased demand. abortion illegal does not make it less common. I think ex- actly what said Jennifer Kerns, a professor in the department of obstetrics, gynecology and reproduc- tive science at the University of Califor- nia, San Francisco.
it does is it places incredible burdens on people who are going to access it and who need to access The number of abortions in the Unit- ed States peaked in 1990 at 1.6 million and had been falling for several dec- ades until the trend began to reverse in 2019. Almost every state without an abortion ban saw an increase in the number of abortions in 2023. In most states, the majority of the increase was driven by residents having more abor- tions, according to Isaac Maddow-Zi- met, a data scientist at Guttmacher. But an increasing amount of pa- tients are traveling across state lines to have abortions as well, and states that shared a border with those that have enacted abortion bans including Illi- nois, New Mexico, Virginia and North Carolina saw particularly sharp in- creases, according to the report. More than 160,000 people traveled out of state to have an abortion in 2023, more than double the number found in 2020, Maddow-Zimet said.
Medication abortion has been in- creasing steadily for years, and that trend continued in 2023, Maddow-Zi- met said. Approximately 642,700 med- ication abortions took place last year, an increase from of all abortions in 2020 to in 2023, according to the report. Recent changes that have made mi- fepristone, one of the two drugs used in medication abortion in the United States, more accessible may be driving this increase, Kerns said. The Food and Drug Administration has allowed the medication to be prescribed during te- lehealth appointments and delivered by mail since 2021. And earlier this year, CVS and Walgreens, two of the largest pharmacy chains, an- nounced they will soon carry mifepris- tone in their stores.
The Supreme Court is expected to hear oral arguments next week in a case that could increase restrictions on mifepristone. Abortions up in 2023 despite bans, report Yancey-Bragg USA TODAY Approximately 642,700 medication abortions took place in the U.S. last year, according to a report published Tuesday. STEVE COD TIMES FILE.
