Biden’s Inaccurate Claims in Defending Afghanistan Withdrawal

President Biden, in remarks on Friday, vowed to evacuate all Americans out of Afghanistan and defended his administration from criticisms over the withdrawal.

But in doing so, he made several misleading or false claims about the pullout and evacuation, which have been chaotic as Americans and tens of thousands of Afghan allies try to flee through the airport in Kabul.

Here’s a fact-check of the president’s remarks.

What Mr. Biden said

“I have seen no question of our credibility from our allies around the world.”

This is misleading. While leaders of countries allied with the United States have been hesitant to publicly criticize the withdrawal, some members of their governments have not minced words in questioning American leadership and credibility.

In Germany, the chairman of Parliament’s Foreign Relations Committee called the withdrawal “a serious and far-reaching miscalculation by the current administration” and said it did “fundamental damage to the political and moral credibility of the West.” Armin Laschet, the head of Chancellor Angela Merkel’s Conservative Party and a candidate in the election to succeed her, called it the “biggest debacle” that NATO had ever seen. Ms. Merkel also criticized it privately, according to German news media reports.

In Britain, the pullout has raised doubts among some officials about the reliability of the United States as an ally. Tom Tugendhat, a Conservative member of Parliament and the chairman of the Foreign Affairs Committee, characterized it the “biggest foreign policy disaster” since the 1956 Suez crisis, saying that “we need to think again about how we handle friends, who matters and how we defend our interests.”

Latvia’s defense minister, Artis Pabriks, said that the withdrawal caused “chaos” and showed that the West was “weaker globally.”

What Mr. Biden said

“What interest do we have in Afghanistan at this point with Al Qaeda gone? We went to Afghanistan for the express purpose of getting rid of Al Qaeda in Afghanistan as well as, as well as getting Osama bin Laden, and we did.”

False. Al Qaeda’s presence in Afghanistan has certainly been reduced since the United States invaded, but Mr. Biden is wrong to say that the terrorist group is no longer in the country.

A United Nations Security Council report released in June estimated that Al Qaeda still had a presence in at least 15 of Afghanistan’s 34 provinces. The Defense Department’s Office of Inspector General said in a report released on Wednesday that “the Taliban continued to maintain its relationship with Al Qaeda, providing safe haven for the terrorist group in Afghanistan.”

After Mr. Biden spoke, John F. Kirby, a Pentagon spokesman, confirmed in a news conference that Al Qaeda had a presence in Afghanistan.

What Mr. Biden said

“We have no indication that they haven’t been able to get — in Kabul — through the airport. We’ve made an agreement with the, with…