CNN correspondent Clarissa Ward said Tuesday that whatever candor U.S. military leaders have on the Afghanistan withdrawal is of little comfort to people in the country.

Ward, reporting live from Kabul, appeared on CNN before the Senate Armed Services Committee hearing with General Mark Milley, Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin, and General Kenneth McKenzie Tuesday morning.

CNN anchor Jim Sciutto remarked that “no one can describe” the chaotic withdrawal “as a success.”

He asked Ward what the “hardest question” those leaders must face.

“I think that the question that many Afghan people very much want to ask, Jim, because there is still a huge amount of bitterness and a lot of heartache and a lot of anger, how did this happen? Were the appropriate preparations made?” Ward said. “Was the U.S. military caught completely off-guard?”

She reviewed the chaos in the last days of the withdrawal and said, “I think the question everybody wants to know is how can we call this an extraordinary success, as the Biden administration has done.”

“Obviously the understanding is that a huge amount of people, the largest airlift evacuation in history, were rescued safely and that is certainly something to tout as an achievement, but that does not detract from the horrors that we saw on the ground as this withdrawal is happening, and I think a lot of people want to know how on Earth could this have happened.”

Hours later, as the hearing continued, Ward appeared again on CNN, and she was asked by Alisyn Camerota if what Milley, Austin, and Mackenzie said actually answered those questions.

“I think we’ve heard a lot of real candor in the hearings today so far and there have been some revelations,” Ward said.

However, she added, “I don’t think any of that, honestly, at this stage, is going to provide Afghan people with any sense of resolution about this, and honestly, I think that most people, particularly in the city of Kabul, are just trying to survive at this stage and get on with their lives.”

As far as they’re concerned, they feel that the rug was whipped out from under them, fairly or unfairly, and they do feel that things could have been handled better, and I think you heard that today with that admission. It was a logistical success but a strategic failure. And there was some small details in there as well… okay, you have the intelligence issue, but beyond that, there was this talk about our advisors were no longer embedded with the Afghan army for the last three years and what that meant was you knew how many guns they were getting, how many weapons they had, what their strategical logistical situation was, but you didn’t know any longer what was going on in the hearts and the minds of the Afghan forces and that kind of human intelligence, being together on the ground, day in and day out, that is hugely crucial, in making a determination when you’re carrying out a withdrawal.

You can watch both clips above, via CNN.

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