‘There was never a good time’: was Biden’s Afghanistan speech fair or accurate?

Analysis: US president's TV address blamed others for the Taliban takeover and tried to distance himself from past administrations

In a televised speech on Monday, Joe Biden defended his decision to withdraw US forces from Afghanistan and his handling of a crisis that has seen the Taliban capture the country in a lightning offensive. Blaming Afghan politicians and the country's security forces for the calamitous collapse, he also sought to distance himself from previous administrations. But how much of it was fair or even accurate?

Biden: We went to Afghanistan almost 20 years ago with clear goals: get those who attacked us on September 11, 2001, and make sure al-Qaida could not use Afghanistan as a base from which to attack us again. We did that. We severely degraded al-Qaida in Afghanistan. We never gave up the hunt for Osama bin Laden and we got him.