The inevitable end result of our last 56 years

[Douglas Caddy]

 

 

First paragraph of the front page article in the Weekend Edition of The Wall Street Journal: “Twenty years ago, the U.S. invaded Afghanistan to get rid of the Taliban. Today, American forces, battered by one of the bloodiest attacks of the war, are relying for their own security on the same group, whose members they were trying to kill just week earlier.”

[Douglas Caddy]

Opinion article from today’s New York Times titled: It Shouldn’t Fall to Veterans to Clean Up Biden’s Mess

 

 

From the article: As a Marine, I fought in Iraq and Afghanistan and participated in Hurricane Katrina relief efforts. As a journalist, I covered the war in Syria. Never have I witnessed a greater, swifter collapse of competence than what I have seen with the U.S. evacuation of Afghanistan.

Central to President Biden’s campaign was a promise that the candidate understood, deeply and personally, two essential things: empathy and service. Events in Afghanistan this week indicate this promise was, at worst, false and, at best, limited. Events in Afghanistan illustrate what happens when there is a breakdown in empathy. Events at the airport — desperation, death — indicate the extreme chaos that ensues when the commander in chief doesn’t actually understand the value of service.

 

[W. Niederhut]

[Douglas Caddy]

BIDEN'S GIFT TO THE TALIBAN

Thanks to the Government Accountability Office, we now have a clear picture of just how much U.S. military equipment has fallen into the hands of the Taliban, thanks to Joe Biden's bungled withdrawal from Afghanistan. Let's have a look... ✈️ Aircraft: The Taliban now ranks #26 in the world in total military aircraft thanks to us leaving behind 208 planes and helicopters: 110 helicopters 60 transport/cargo planes 20 light attack planes 18 intelligence/surveillance planes 🛻 Vehicles: You've probably seen the footage of the Taliban riding around in our humvees. We left a total of 75,898 vehicles: 42,604 tactical vehicles 22,174 humvees 8,998 medium tactical vehicles 1,005 recovery vehicles 928 mine-resistant vehicles 189 armored tanks 🔫 Weapons: Get ready for this.. 599,690 weapons are now in the hands of the Taliban: 358,530 rifles 126,295 pistols 64,363 machine guns 25,327 grenade launchers 12,692 shotguns 9,877 RPGs 2,606 howitzers And you can throw a couple thousand night-vision goggles, surveillance drones, and communication devices on that list as well. Price tag: In total, it adds up to nearly $84 billion dollars in tax-payer-funded U.S. military equipment. Joe Biden just funded an army of terrorists in Afghanistan. [Source: GAO analysis of Department of Defense data]

[W. Niederhut]

Fact check: Biden didn't 'gift' weapons to Taliban

https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/factcheck/2021/08/25/fact-check-biden-didnt-gift-taliban-weapons/8197978002/

[Douglas Caddy]

All in or All Out? Biden Saw No Middle Ground in Afghanistan.

President Biden’s reductionist formula has prompted a debate over whether the mayhem in Kabul was inevitable or the result of a failure to consider other options.

The New York Times

August 29, 2021

 From the article: Mark T. Esper, a defense secretary under Mr. Trump, agreed that the deal was flawed and in fact argued against drawing down further in the final months of the last administration before being fired in November. In recent days, he said, “there were more options available to President Biden” than simply continuing Mr. Trump’s withdrawal.

“He could have tried to go back to the table with the Taliban and renegotiate,” Mr. Esper said on CNN. “He could have demanded, as I argued, that they agree to the conditions they established or they agreed to in the agreement and that we use military power to compel them to do that.”

At this point, the die is cast. Mr. Biden made his choice. He wanted to be the president to end America’s longest war. Right or wrong, he has done so and on that, there is no middle ground.

 

 

[W. Niederhut]

Doug,

    One of the problems that I ha

16 hours ago, Douglas Caddy said:

All in or All Out? Biden Saw No Middle Ground in Afghanistan.

President Biden’s reductionist formula has prompted a debate over whether the mayhem in Kabul was inevitable or the result of a failure to consider other options.

The New York Times

August 29, 2021

 From the article: Mark T. Esper, a defense secretary under Mr. Trump, agreed that the deal was flawed and in fact argued against drawing down further in the final months of the last administration before being fired in November. In recent days, he said, “there were more options available to President Biden” than simply continuing Mr. Trump’s withdrawal.

“He could have tried to go back to the table with the Taliban and renegotiate,” Mr. Esper said on CNN. “He could have demanded, as I argued, that they agree to the conditions they established or they agreed to in the agreement and that we use military power to compel them to do that.”

At this point, the die is cast. Mr. Biden made his choice. He wanted to be the president to end America’s longest war. Right or wrong, he has done so and on that, there is no middle ground.

Doug,

      One of the problems that I have with Esper's argument here is that, from what I have read, the surrender of Afghan Army units to the Taliban started in some areas of the country in early 2020, after the Trump-Taliban treaty was signed (in February.)  By the time of Biden's inauguration, U.S. troop levels had been reduced to a mere 2,500, and Biden was still in the process of getting a Cabinet appointed and getting up to speed on the Pentagon intel that Trump and Chris Miller had refused to share with Biden's transition team in December and January.

      Trump, himself, publicly bragged as recently as June of this year that Biden "couldn't stop" his (Trump's) Afghanistan withdrawal process.  It would, certainly, have required a major reversal of the Trump-Esper withdrawal process.

      And now, today, we have Lara Trump asking on Fox News how we ever became allied with the Taliban!  Hello.

      It reminds me a bit of Eisenhower's Bay of Pigs op being fobbed off on JFK in '61.

Lara Trump tells Fox News she can't figure out how the US became allied with the Taliban

https://www.rawstory.com/lara-trump-afghanistan-taliban-terrprism/

     

     

Edited August 30, 2021 by W. Niederhut

[Ron Bulman]

Trump's lies will lead us to the truth (Opinion) (msn.com)

 

Jim Jordan Admits to Multiple Calls With Trump on 1/6, Spurring Renewed Calls for Subpoenas (msn.com)

Edited August 30, 2021 by Ron Bulman

[Kirk Gallaway]

That's true Ron, but what's so completely pathetic is what a squirming l-ar he was in these interviews when asked if he conversed with Trump on Jan.6th.

First, obviously feeling he was on home ground with Fox's Bret Baier, he was completely taken sideways by the Baier asking him. Watch how he hems and haws and obfuscates.

But if that isn't pathetic enough, you'd think he would have been better prepared the second time when further questioned by another guy. Look at the first 2:08 of this for the clips. It wasn't at all significant to Jordan if he talked to Trump before, during, or after the riots. You'd think maybe the content of the conversation with Trump might jog his memory, but he can  hardly remember.

I love how Jordan positions himself in the second interview with an American flag and a football behind him. You'd think after the allegations of him being quiet about the  pedophile coach in the locker room in his past, he's be careful about evoking his locker room past.

And to think Kevin Mc Carthy actually wanted to include him on the Jan.6th hearings, before Pelosi nixed it.

He's accomplished almost nothing in Congress other than, of course being a a legendary Republican hero against the National Security State to Benjamin

heh heh

 

Edited August 30, 2021 by Kirk Gallaway

[Steve Thomas]

Stay away from rock concerts.

Boardmasters festival: New Delta strain believed to have emerged among 53,000 revellers at Cornwall event

https://inews.co.uk/news/health/boardmasters-festival-new-delta-strain-cornwall-event-1172393

“Almost 5,000 infections have been linked to the Boardmasters festival in Cornwall, and with half a million music lovers at even larger events over the Bank Holiday, officials fear revellers are being hit by a new strain of the Delta variant.”

“While it is being referred to among hospital staff in Devon and Cornwall as the “festival variant”, it is believed to be a new strain of Delta rather than an entirely new variant. Delta already has around a dozen different strains.

“It’s still the Delta variant but they can say it came from the festival, hence why it is being called the ‘festival variant’,” added the official.

The South-west peninsula now home to eight of the top ten areas in England with the highest rates of infection. The figures also show that around half of all infections in England are among those under 30, with the highest rate of infection now in the 10 to 19-year-old age bracket.”

Kid Rock cancels shows after 'over half' of his band catches COVID-19 in wake of Sturgis performance

Bt Matthew Chapman August 30, 2021

https://www.rawstory.com/kid-rock-covid/

Steve Thomas

[Dennis Berube]

On 8/23/2021 at 11:05 AM, Steve Thomas said:

“I see soon-to-be-dead people.”

Me too.

https://chriswaldburger.substack.com/p/bombshell-uk-data-destroys-entire
 

https://mark-skidmore.com/2021/08/28/new-israeli-study-finds-fully-vaccinated-people-are-at-greater-risk-of-hospitalization-and-13-times-more-likely-to-catch-covid-19-than-those-who-have-recovered-and-have-natural-immun/

https://m.theepochtimes.com/japan-suspends-1-63-million-doses-of-moderna-vaccine-after-reports-of-contamination_3966233.html

 

[Dennis Berube]

On 8/21/2021 at 8:16 PM, Roger Waage said:

So when they say the immunization is 95% effective that means that 5% did not get the usual immune response. 

Roger, would you care to explain absolute vs relative risk in regards to that 95% figure? 
 

Have you seen the Israeli data showing vaccinated people dying at higher rates than non? The UK data showing the same? The MA CDC July study where 80% of hospitalizations and 74% of symptomatic cases were vaccinated? Have you seen the Pfizer bio-distribution paper out of Japan showing spike proteins going everywhere in the body? Have you heard Dr. Malone (co-inventor of mRNA vaccines) talk about the vaccine? Have you seen the Japan health minister stop over 1.6 million doses due to an unknown magnetic “contamination”? Have you seen the natural immunity study proving 13x more effectiveness than vaccines (Israeli study)? 
 

 

[Kirk Gallaway]

On 8/28/2021 at 9:46 AM, Douglas Caddy said:

Opinion article from today’s New York Times titled: It Shouldn’t Fall to Veterans to Clean Up Biden’s Mess

 

 

From the article: As a Marine, I fought in Iraq and Afghanistan and participated in Hurricane Katrina relief efforts. As a journalist, I covered the war in Syria. Never have I witnessed a greater, swifter collapse of competence than what I have seen with the U.S. evacuation of Afghanistan.

Central to President Biden’s campaign was a promise that the candidate understood, deeply and personally, two essential things: empathy and service. Events in Afghanistan this week indicate this promise was, at worst, false and, at best, limited. Events in Afghanistan illustrate what happens when there is a breakdown in empathy. Events at the airport — desperation, death — indicate the extreme chaos that ensues when the commander in chief doesn’t actually understand the value of service.

 

Doug, you keep pounding home the political price Biden will pay for his blunders in Afghanistan.

I've always seen  from the links you post that you have what I have interpreted as old right wing friends that occasionally pop up in your links and newer left wing friends. It seems to me Biden is being punished because the President fled and his army collapsed. To this you would normally blame American Intelligence. Personally I've always thought these agencies are like huge elephants in the room who always ended up shooting themselves in the  foot to mix metaphors. It never impresses me as something that necessarily can carry off anything in detail, much less an all imposing "deep state", but I digress. It's the arms suppliers and the contract people who are the chief  beneficiaries..

 

The neocons hated Trump's rhetoric and then found  the reality of Biden turned out to be worse. If the neocons have no place else to go, that's a good development. But at least we're starting to ask some questions. If this does in fact ruin  Biden's presidency as you predict it is a victory for the neocons.

 

We hear these cries of "who will ever trust the U.S, militarily anymore". If that's a greater barrier to them getting involved with us. I think that's another  good thing, as well that we have should have a lot more reticence about nation building in the future.

 

 The Republicans will always have the luxury of criticizing, while on one side of their mouths they'll try to act like they realize they can't be there forever for the public and the other side, they'll never really propose how they would have pulled out any differently, or pulled out at all.   JMO

 

Edited August 31, 2021 by Kirk Gallaway

[W. Niederhut]

         Well said, Kirk.  The military-industrial-media complex's short-term focus on relentlessly bashing Joe Biden for the epilogue of this 20 year Bush-Cheney fiasco in Afghanistan is misleading at best.

         We wasted $2 trillion dollars on this 20 year war, while bombing Afghanistan back to the Stone Age.

         For what?

         Our puppet government in Kabul was hopelessly corrupt.

         President Ashraf Ghani fled to Dubai with $169 U.S. taxpayer dollars in his bank accounts, and the Afghan Army folded like a house of cards-- beginning after Trump's surrender to the Taliban last year.

Afghanistan collapsed because corruption had hollowed out the state
The Afghan state was held together by theft, extortion, and nepotism at the highest levels
www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/aug/30/afghanistan-us-corruption-taliban

 

       

[Ron Bulman]

No, the Taliban did not seize $83 billion of U.S. weapons (msn.com)