No word from Cruz on calling for investigation into 'over-the-horizon' strike that killed Afghan civilians

Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) had no comment when reached by the Houston Daily and asked if he had called on the Biden Administration to investigate the circumstances surrounding the recent U.S. drone strike in Kabul which killed multiple civilians.

Gen. Mark Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs, had initially declared the Aug. 29 drone strike a “righteous strike” against an “imminent threat,” however, the Pentagon recently admitted that bombing, in the wake of frenzied withdraw from Afghanistan, was a “horrible mistake” that killed 10 innocent Afghans, including several children.

President Joe Biden’s secretary of defense released a statement that said they were under the impression that the target of the strike was a dangerous threat to U.S. service members and others at Hamad Karzai airport, “we now know that there was no connection between Mr. Ahmadi and ISIS-Khorasan.”

According to the Pentagon and several other sources, Zemari Ahmadi, the driver of the vehicle targeted, was an employee of an American-established aid organization Nutrition and Education International and had no menace to U.S. forces.

The U.S. Central Command (CENTCOM) issued a pair of statements on the day of the strike which declared that the U.S. had executed a “self-defense unmanned over-the-horizon airstrike” against an automobile in Kabul which posed an "imminent ISIS-K threat."

Once information circulated that the drone strike had taken the lives of several civilians, CENTCOM told the public they were “aware of reports of civilian casualties” and were “still assessing the results of this strike, which we know disrupted an imminent ISIS-K threat to the airport.”

Three days after the strike, Milley stood his ground on the reasons behind the attack.

“We know from a variety of other means that at least one of those people that were killed was an ISIS facilitator,” he said. “At this point, we think that the procedures were correctly followed and it was a righteous strike.”

On Aug. 31, Biden signified that the strike was a chief illustration of his “over-the-horizon” counter terrorism strategy. In his statements on withdrawing from Afghanistan from the State Dining Room, the president told the American people of “what’s called over-the-horizon capabilities" and that “we’ve shown that capacity just in the last week.” Biden claimed that the U.S. had “struck ISIS-K remotely, days after they murdered 13 of our service members and dozens of innocent Afghans.”

Last week, Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin acknowledged what The New York Times and other media outlets had already reported. The drone stroke killed an Afghan U.S. aid worker and several nearby children and not an ISIS-K affiliate.