Biden told me son’s Afghanistan death was just like Beau’s: Gold Star mom

WASHINGTON – Families of the 13 US service members who were killed in an ISIS suicide bombing during the Biden administration’s disastrous withdrawal from Afghanistan lined up Monday to slam the White House — with one Gold Star mom accusing the president of callously likening her son’s death to that of his late son Beau.

Cheryl Rex, whose son Marine Lance Cpl. Dylan Merola died in the Aug. 26, 2021, bombing at Hamid Karzai International Airport in Kabul, said she became enraged at Biden’s mawkish sentiment, knowing full well that Beau Biden died of brain cancer on US soil.

“His words to me were, ‘My wife, Jill, and I know how you feel. We lost our son as well and brought him home in a flag-draped coffin,’” Rex recounted during a forum convened in Escondido, Calif. by local Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Calif.). “My heart started beating faster and I started shaking, knowing that their son died from cancer and they were able to be by his side.”

Biden has a history of claiming his son “died in Iraq.”

In fact, Beau passed away in May 2015 at Walter Reed National Military Medical Center in Bethesda, Md., at the age of 46 – six years after he came home from a yearlong deployment to Iraq in September 2009.

The president has said he believes Beau developed the brain cancer that killed him from exposure to toxic burn pits during his deployment.

Through tears, Rex said she wondered “how someone could honestly be so heartless to say he knew how I felt a little over 24 hours” after her son died.

“After this encounter,” she added, “I have never had any personal correspondence, nor has my son been honored or his name spoken by this commander-in-chief or his administration on what I feel is because of their failures and poor planning to exit our troops from Afghanistan.”

The 13 service members, including Merola, who died at the Kabul airport’s Abbey Gate were working to evacuate thousands of Afghan allies and several hundred Americans from the war-torn country following the collapse of the Western-backed government in the face of an offensive by the Taliban.

Many of the family members who appeared at Issa’s event, not far from Marine Corps Base Camp Pendleton, pleaded with Congress to hold a full investigation into the decisions that led to the chaotic and rushed withdrawal.

“In 1792, George Washington impaneled the first Congressional investigation of a failed battle; it is not new for there to be military mistakes,” Issa said during the forum. “It is not new – but it is, in fact, a tradition that investigations don’t end until every question has been answered.

“And even though we spent a little over an hour here today with these families, we could have spent two or three or four hours and not heard all the questions they have,” he added, calling for more information to be made public about the Biden administration’s decisions behind the chaotic mission.

While Biden had been president for eight months by the time the last American troops left Kabul on Aug. 30, 2021, his administration has placed much of the blame on former President Donald Trump for setting the withdrawal agreement with the Taliban in motion before Biden came to office.

Though some reports have been critical of the State and Defense departments’ failure to properly plan for the withdrawal, the White House has been reticent to admit wrongdoing, often heralding the mission as a success because the US military evacuated more than 120,000 people from Afghanistan’s capital city.

Christy Shamblin, mother-in-law of the late Marine Sgt. Nicole Gee, called that characterization “an ultimate disrespect for the very people that deserve every ounce of respect.”

“When our leaders, including the secretary of defense and our commander-in-chief, called this evacuation a success — as if there should be celebration — it is like a knife in the heart for our families, and for the people who came back and for every service member that served over this 20-year war,” said Shamblin, her voice shaking.

“I live every single day knowing that these deaths were preventable. My daughter could be with us today,” she added. “And that wasn’t just one decision, it was many decisions – many times over it could have been stopped.”

Following the families’ statements, Issa vowed they would have more occasions to be heard, leaving open the possibility that they would be invited to come before Congress.

“Their story cannot end today,” the congressman said. “There are many many questions unasked or unspoken today … that we will get to the bottom of.

“So for the families who came so far and said what they said here today, thank you.”