Washington, D.C. – Today, House Armed Services Committee Ranking Member Adam Smith (D-WA) made the following statement about President Trump’s plan for Lieutenant General Buchanan, the three-star general in charge of the DOD response to Hurricane Maria, to end his command, downgrade the mission, and begin withdrawing assets:

“It is not appropriate for President Trump to simply declare ‘Mission Accomplished’ in Puerto Rico. The emergency may be over, but the crisis is not. More than half the people there still do not have power, and President Trump has given every indication that he is more concerned about reducing our commitment to millions of American citizens than making sure they can recover. 

“Lieutenant General Buchanan, who is departing command of the recovery this week after fewer than 50 days on the job, is absolutely right when he tells the press, ‘As I look at the land component’s involvement, I think that we should have pushed probably for things earlier. … Push the capability there, and if we need it, then we have the capability there and if we don’t then we eat the cost. In retrospect, I should have pushed for more land components early, we just started moving to the area in times of need.’

“The President’s job now is to ensure that we don’t keep making mistakes that compound the devastation. So far he is not off to a promising start.”

Lieutenant General Buchanan’s comments while discussing the plan with CBS News:

“As I look at the land component’s involvement, I think that we should have pushed probably for things earlier. … Push the capability there and if we need it, then we have the capability there and if we don’t then we eat the cost. In retrospect I should have pushed for more land components early, we just started moving to the area in times of need. … Without ports opening or air or seaports open, we could have potentially put more capability on Navy platforms that come in close. And we already had that, that is what the USS Kearsarge was, but we could have asked the Navy to bring in more capabilities and put Army, Navy, or Marine Corps aviation on it or Naval aviation.”

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