Last week, the White House released a 12-page report largely blaming the chaos of the August 2021 withdrawal from Afghanistan on the Trump administration.

It was a whitewash in which the Biden administration failed to account for its own serious mistakes. I spoke with several Marines, soldiers, and volunteers about their firsthand experiences during the withdrawal. Some provided remarks on the condition of anonymity because they are still serving on active duty.

A week before Kabul fell, a member of an aviation task force said the State Department was blithely planning for future projects. He was told he was "paranoid" for being concerned about the vague plans for a noncombatant evacuation operation. He said that embassy personnel were not prepared to evacuate until Taliban forces entered Kabul, at which point soldiers and Marines were thrown "into a sh***y situation [without being told] what to expect or how to handle it."

A sergeant from the 2nd Battalion, 501st Parachute Infantry Regiment described standing across from Taliban personnel who taunted his unit. He watched his platoon leader bring a hysterical 7- or 8-year-old child to Taliban forces because his commanders had ordered the child out of the airfield, but his parents could not be located. "I don’t expect Kirby to understand how chaotic that could be," he told me, "because he wasn’t the one standing 10 feet from a Taliban [special forces] unit."

A member of the 82nd Airborne Division told me the White House’s comments "feel like a complete discounting of overwhelming evidence." Between Aug. 15 and Aug. 29, the soldier said he pulled men and women from the crowds who stood "for days in their own filth outside gates praying for even the slightest chance of getting out." He triaged patients in the aftermath of the Abbey Gate bombing on Aug. 26 that killed 13 U.S. service members and 170 Afghans. "If there’s confusion about where the chaos was," he told me, "many others like me are happy to elaborate."

Joey Bennett told me he worked with Rep. Elissa Slotkin (D-MI) to secure evacuation for the wife of an Afghan interpreter living in the U.S. at the time of the withdrawal. Bennett was unable to get the young woman through multiple Taliban checkpoints. She remains in Afghanistan. Bennett was also dismayed that the White House only devoted one sentence to the U.S. airstrike that killed 10 innocent Afghan civilians in the aftermath of the Abbey Gate suicide bombing. "All we hear from the administration is 'oops,'" he lamented.

The impact of the chaos did not end with the withdrawal. A paratrooper with the 1st Battalion, 504th Parachute Infantry Regiment told me the White House’s "lack of accountability makes [him] mad." He said service members have borne the weight of horrifying events they witnessed during the withdrawal, including a fellow paratrooper who attempted suicide in its aftermath.

Army medic Aidan Gunderson testified about the evacuation of Kabul before the House Foreign Affairs Committee on Mar. 8. He told me Kirby’s statement was a "punch to the gut to everybody on the ground that saw and experienced the most unimaginable horrors of their life." Gunderson said he believes the White House "missed the tragedy and torture they put [service members] through" and that the report compounds long-standing feelings among veterans and service members that "our government doesn’t have our back as a community."

Top line: The White House’s report falls far short of the ground truth. For the sake of those who served and the volunteers still working to save hundreds of thousands of allies left behind, a fuller accounting of the withdrawal is in order.

Beth Bailey (@BWBailey85) is a freelance writer from the Detroit area and the co-host of The Afghanistan Project, which takes a deep dive into the tragedy wrought in the wake of the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan.