Media ‘Got It Wrong’ on US Withdrawal From Afghanistan, Pompeo Says

“I wish reporters had been a little more careful in what they had said. They got it wrong,” Pompeo told reporters Tuesday en route to the Indo-Pacific region for a weeklong series of meetings in Thailand, Australia, and the Federated States of Micronesia.
“There’s no deadline for this,” he said of withdrawing from Afghanistan.
In remarks Monday at The Economic Club of Washington, D.C., Pompeo reportedly announced President Donald Trump’s intention to pull all U.S. troops out of Afghanistan by next year—in time for America’s presidential election.
Many U.S. media outlets painted Pompeo’s remarks as a tacit declaration that the 2020 election was driving the withdrawal timeline. 
On Tuesday, however, Pompeo challenged that characterization, as well as the notion that the U.S. was looking for an exit from Afghanistan by any means necessary.
“The president has been very direct about his expectations that we will reduce our operational footprint on the ground in Afghanistan just as quickly as we can get there,” Pompeo told reporters traveling with him.
The secretary of state added that such an effort had to be paired with “an adequate risk-reduction plan” to make sure Afghanistan does not become, once again, a safe harbor for terrorists with designs on global attacks.
“We will have an orderly plan for how we’re going to maintain our counterterrorism posture in the region,” Pompeo said.