Silver State Times

It's unknown whether Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto (D-NV) is joining the list of legislators calling for an investigation in the Aug. 29 airstrike in Kubal that killed 10 innocent civilians, including seven children. Calls to Masto's office were not returned.

Representatives from both political parties have called for an investigation into the events surrounding the strike.

“I will demand a full accounting of how this strike went so horribly wrong. ... President Biden bears ultimate responsibility," ranking member of the Armed Services Committee, Sen. Jim Inhofe (R-OK), said in a Sept. 17 statement. “His precipitous withdrawal of U.S. troops from Afghanistan has left our military with an impossible mission of countering terrorists without any personnel or partners on the ground. The August 29 strike shows how difficult and complex counterterrorism operations can be, and unfortunately, it highlights that an 'over-the-horizon' strategy will only increase the complexity and difficulty.”

Sen. Chris Murphy (D-CT) also demanded on Twitter there be consequences. 

“There must be accountability," he wrote. "If there are no consequences for a strike this disastrous, it signals to the entire drone program chain of command that killing kids and civilians will be tolerated.”

The airstrike continues to be problematic for the administration of President Joe Biden. Almost two and half weeks after the incident Gen. Mark Milley, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs, called the Aug. 29 attack “a righteous strike” and an “imminent threat," Secretary of Defense Lloyd J. Austin III called it a mistake. He added, "We now know that there was no connection between Mr. Ahamdi and ISIS-Khorasan," according to a Sept. 1 Department of Defense statement.

Ahmani was an employee of an American-based aid organization Nutrition and Education International and posed no threat to U.S. forces, according to the Pentagon and several other reports.

The Sept. 17 statement contradicted statements issued on the day of the strike by the U.S. Central Command that said the U.S. executed a "self-defense unmanned over-the-horizon airstrike" against a vehicle in Kabul which posed an imminent threat from the Islamic State group's Afghanistan affiliate. 

Three days later, Milley praised the airstrike saying at least one of the people killed was a facilitator from the Islamic State group and that "procedures were correctly followed."

Two days after the strike Biden endorsed the airstrike calling it an example of hist "over-the-horizon" counter-terrorism strategy. He called the attack retribution for the 13 servicemen and dozens of innocent Afghans killed in attack at the airport, according to release from the White House. 

The tragedy has counterterrorism experts questioning Biden's "over-the-horizon" strategy with one member calling it the "over-the-rainbow" strategy, Axios reported.