Disgraceful

[Ibanez]

Nothing from Biden about getting the evacuation done right. Plenty of red herrings about avoiding future troop buildups and nation-building. Of course, he took no questions.

It was exactly as I expected. CNN stated it perfectly - "inept."

[Winterborn]

Over/under on somebody asking a tough question and getting called a dog faced pony soldier?

Or blames the IC? (That would be very dumb because the IC has the receipts)

Who am I kidding? He’ll probably just make a statement and not take questions. At this point, if he does anything other than that his chief of staff should be sacked


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Watching Biden blame the Afghans and dodge accountability. “The buck stops with me.”

[SDHornet]

You know it's bad when the same press that covered for Biden* hiding during the campaign is now calling him out. Wonder if the press will stick to the pre-planned questions in the presser later.

Over/under on somebody asking a tough question and getting called a dog faced pony soldier?

Or blames the IC? (That would be very dumb because the IC has the receipts)

Who am I kidding? He’ll probably just make a statement and not take questions. At this point, if he does anything other than that his chief of staff should be sacked


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

No questions taken, and unsurprisingly blames Orange Man...and the Afghan Army for not fighting. Glorious.

Twitter thread of his speech:

[BDKJMU]

Biggest foreign policy disaster going on 50 years, amd right in the middle of it, Biden went on vacation. Surreal

[SDHornet]

Watching Biden blame the Afghans and dodge accountability. “The buck stops with me.”

Right? Joe - the problem isn't the US leaving. We're fine with that. We aren't ok with the botched exit which has endangered thousands of people. If the deal to get out by May 1 wasn't going to be achieved...then renegotiate that deal.

Exactly.

[SDHornet]

Biggest foreign policy disaster going on 50 years, amd right in the middle of it, Biden went on vacation. Surreal

I hope Biden* makes it to the mid-terms, It'll be a total boon for conks.

[BDKJMU]

C17 has a capacity for 640 people.
https://www.defenseone.com/policy/2021/ ... an/184563/

Edit: Nevermind. Apparently 670 people..

[AZGrizFan]

Biggest foreign policy disaster going on 50 years, amd right in the middle of it, Biden went on vacation. Surreal

I hope Biden* makes it to the mid-terms, It'll be a total boon for conks.

Never have I wanted a moron to survive more than now.

[SeattleGriz]

Chucky Schumer said Grandpa Bad Finger had a "careful, thought out plan".

https://www.democrats.senate.gov/newsro ... the-senate

John Berman: Joining me now is Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer. Senator, thank you so much for being with us. You were critical last year of President Trump's decision to reduce the troop levels in Afghanistan because you said it was an incoherent policy. How do you feel now about President Biden's decision?

Schumer: I think President Biden has come up with a careful and thought-out plan. Look, John, the president doesn't want endless wars. I don't want endless wars. And neither do the American people. And it's refreshing to have a thought-out plan with a set timetable instead of the president waking up one morning, getting out of bed and saying what just pops into his head and then the generals having walked it back. So I think this is a careful, thought-out plan. Now, there are questions that remain. I am happy to let you know that the administration has agreed to a classified briefing for all Senators, which we'll have shortly so questions can be answered. But I think the president's plan is a very good one. You want to make sure the September 11th date is stuck, is a date that sticks. That it's not kicking the can down the road. I've spoken to administration people and they believe just that as well.

[AZGrizFan]

Chucky Schumer said Grandpa Bad Finger had a "careful, thought out plan".

https://www.democrats.senate.gov/newsro ... the-senate

John Berman: Joining me now is Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer. Senator, thank you so much for being with us. You were critical last year of President Trump's decision to reduce the troop levels in Afghanistan because you said it was an incoherent policy. How do you feel now about President Biden's decision?

Schumer: I think President Biden has come up with a careful and thought-out plan. Look, John, the president doesn't want endless wars. I don't want endless wars. And neither do the American people. And it's refreshing to have a thought-out plan with a set timetable instead of the president waking up one morning, getting out of bed and saying what just pops into his head and then the generals having walked it back. So I think this is a careful, thought-out plan. Now, there are questions that remain. I am happy to let you know that the administration has agreed to a classified briefing for all Senators, which we'll have shortly so questions can be answered. But I think the president's plan is a very good one. You want to make sure the September 11th date is stuck, is a date that sticks. That it's not kicking the can down the road. I've spoken to administration people and they believe just that as well.

Man, if this is a “careful thought out plan”, I’d hate to see what their version of a clusterfuck looks like.

[Winterborn]

Just beating a dead horse here but Greenwald laid out much the same points that have already been discussed here.

When asked about the Taliban being stronger than ever after twenty years of U.S. warfare there, Biden claimed: “Relative to the training and capacity of the [Afghan National Security Forces} and the training of the federal police, they’re not even close in terms of their capacity.” On July 21 — just three weeks ago — Gen. Mark Milley, Biden’s Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, conceded that “there’s a possibility of a complete Taliban takeover, or the possibility of any number of other scenario,” yet insisted: “the Afghan Security Forces have the capacity to sufficiently fight and defend their country.”

In 2014, I reported along with Laura Poitras and another journalist that the NSA had developed the capacity, under the codenamed SOMALGET, that empowered them to be “secretly intercepting, recording, and archiving the audio of virtually every cell phone conversation” in at least five countries. At any time, they could listen to the stored conversations of any calls conducted by cell phone throughout the entire country. Though we published the names of four countries in which the program had been implemented, we withheld, after extensive internal debate at The Intercept, the identity of the fifth — Afghanistan — because the NSA had convinced some editors that publishing it would enable the Taliban to know where the program was located and it could endanger the lives of the military and private-sector employees working on it (in general, at Snowden’s request, we withheld publication of documents about NSA activities in active war zones unless they revealed illegality or other deceit). But WikiLeaks subsequently revealed, accurately, that the one country whose identity we withheld where this program was implemented was Afghanistan.

There was virtually nothing that could happen in Afghanistan without the U.S. intelligence community’s knowledge. There is simply no way that they got everything so completely wrong while innocently and sincerely trying to tell Americans the truth about what was happening there.

In sum, U.S. political and military leaders have been lying to the American public for two decades about the prospects for success in Afghanistan generally, and the strength and capacity of the Afghan security forces in particular — up through five weeks ago when Biden angrily dismissed the notion that U.S. withdrawal would result in a quick and complete Taliban takeover. Numerous documents, largely ignored by the public, proved that U.S. officials knew what they were saying was false — just as happened so many times in prior wars — and even deliberately doctored information to enable their lies.

https://greenwald.substack.com/p/the-us ... wo-decades

[UNI88]

KABUL HAS FALLEN – BUT DON’T BLAME BIDEN

Political control in Afghanistan has returned to the people who fought against those they viewed as occupiers and for what they viewed as their homeland. That is the real lesson, but don’t expect it to be understood in Washington. War is too profitable and political leaders are too cowardly to go against the tide. But the lesson is clear for anyone wishing to see it: the US global military empire is a grave threat to the United States and its future.

[Ibanez]

Biggest foreign policy disaster going on 50 years, amd right in the middle of it, Biden went on vacation. Surreal

Worse than the fall of Saigon? I’d say close to par on that


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[AZGrizFan]

Biggest foreign policy disaster going on 50 years, amd right in the middle of it, Biden went on vacation. Surreal

Worse than the fall of Saigon? I’d say close to par on that


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I’d say worse SINCE that. Given the # of lives lost in SVN, that debacle was worse. With about the same ending.

[Ibanez]

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[Ibanez]

Worse than the fall of Saigon? I’d say close to par on that


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I’d say worse SINCE that. Given the # of lives lost in SVN, that debacle was worse. With about the same ending.

True true


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[JohnStOnge]

OK, John, let me get this straight. Are you arguing, based on your “moral imperative” trope, that we should still be in Vietnam? If we get out of SoKor or NATO, does that offend your “libertarian” sensibilities? If the Russians roll into Estonia tomorrow, should we invoke NATO Article 5 and rally our allies, most of whom aren’t meeting the 2% financial minimum? I suppose the only way out of your moral dilemma is to use nukes, early and often.

Vietnam is a difficult question for me. I was 17 when the Vietnam war ended. If it had lasted longer I would have had to worry about being drafted to go and, no, I was not going to volunteer.

At the same time, we were there. The South Vietnamese were our allies. The North Vietnamese and the Viet Cong were not capable of beating us militarily. But they beat us because of our "limited time frame" mentality. Not just that with Vietnam. But that was part of it.

The Tet Offensive ended in a crushing defeat for the North Vietnamese military. They failed to achieve a single objective and lost tens of thousands of their best troops. I once read a thing by a North Vietnamese general where he said they were thinking about quitting after they got kicked so bad. But then they saw the reaction of people in the United States and realized they could win psychologically without winning militarily.

The bottom line is that the fact that we quit in Vietnam without having been defeated militarily set a precedent. I can remember reading about Osama Bin Laden referring to it. The fact that we will quit when the enemy has no hope of beating us militarily causes a lot of problems for us. It causes people to persist when they otherwise would not.

[BDKJMU]

Biggest foreign policy disaster going on 50 years, amd right in the middle of it, Biden went on vacation. Surreal

Worse than the fall of Saigon? I’d say close to par on that


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Worst at least since the fall of Saigon. The fall of Saigon was going on 50 years- 46.93 years..

Nam worse than Afghanistan. But just comparinf the 2 falls, Kabul worse than Saigon. Saigon you didn’t have the Baghdad Biden comments of ‘not inevitable’, ‘zero chance will turn out like Saigon/helicopter on Embassy roof’, and ZERO plan to deal with the people amd mass of equipment left behind, etc..

[BDKJMU]

Why did Biden say are adding troops to Afghanistan to protext & evacuate Americans and Afghan allies? Would have made a lot more sense to leave troops there, evacuate your peoples and gear (or destroy it), and then leave..
https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/news ... fghanistan

[SeattleGriz]

Chucky Schumer said Grandpa Bad Finger had a "careful, thought out plan".

https://www.democrats.senate.gov/newsro ... the-senate

Man, if this is a “careful thought out plan”, I’d hate to see what their version of a clusterfuck looks like.

Just goes to show how full of shit Schumer and the majority of our elected officials are. They have no clue on the large majority of the shit they espouse.

[houndawg]

Good job Biden. It was just about a month ago that him and his admin told us this wouldn't happen. Whoops.

While the rest of the US Government squanders trillions, the United States Marine Corps keeps the CH-46 going for a seventh decade.

Whenever I hopped a flight on one, you always wanted to feel the hydraulic fluid drip on you, so you at least knew that there was some left in the aircraft.

Also, BDK is slipping. I need a clip of Blinken saying that Afghanistan won't fall from a Friday to a Monday. You just can't make up the soundbites that Biden and Blinken dropped in the weeks leading up to this unmitigated Biden disaster.

Any crew chief worth his salt had an extra 55 gallon drum inside. My unit pulled several mountain climbers off of Denali with shithooks back in the day- a Huey tops out about 10,000 ft, about halfway up. Once they took a researcher from Stanford who lost both arms in a bear attack - the guy with her beat the bear with his backpack until it eventually left the scene

[AZGrizFan]

OK, John, let me get this straight. Are you arguing, based on your “moral imperative” trope, that we should still be in Vietnam? If we get out of SoKor or NATO, does that offend your “libertarian” sensibilities? If the Russians roll into Estonia tomorrow, should we invoke NATO Article 5 and rally our allies, most of whom aren’t meeting the 2% financial minimum? I suppose the only way out of your moral dilemma is to use nukes, early and often.

Vietnam is a difficult question for me. I was 17 when the Vietnam war ended. If it had lasted longer I would have had to worry about being drafted to go and, no, I was not going to volunteer.

At the same time, we were there. The South Vietnamese were our allies. The North Vietnamese and the Viet Cong were not capable of beating us militarily. But they beat us because of our "limited time frame" mentality. Not just that with Vietnam. But that was part of it.

The Tet Offensive ended in a crushing defeat for the North Vietnamese military. They failed to achieve a single objective and lost tens of thousands of their best troops. I once read a thing by a North Vietnamese general where he said they were thinking about quitting after they got kicked so bad. But then they saw the reaction of people in the United States and realized they could win psychologically without winning militarily.

The bottom line is that the fact that we quit in Vietnam without having been defeated militarily set a precedent. I can remember reading about Osama Bin Laden referring to it. The fact that we will quit when the enemy has no hope of beating us militarily causes a lot of problems for us. It causes people to persist when they otherwise would not.

Much like Afghanistan and the Korean War, Viet Nam was REALLY the US vs China. But it really WAS just about our “limited time frame”. Trying to fight a ‘limited war’ just doesn’t work. The combatants just fade into the background and wait you out. It’s why we’re O-fer since the Korean War. The American populace doesn’t have the stomach for a protracted, all-out war. And they know it.

[AZGrizFan]

Worse than the fall of Saigon? I’d say close to par on that


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Worst at least since the fall of Saigon. The fall of Saigon was going on 50 years- 46.93 years..

Nam worse than Afghanistan. But just comparinf the 2 falls, Kabul worse than Saigon. Saigon you didn’t have the Baghdad Biden comments of ‘not inevitable’, ‘zero chance will turn out like Saigon/helicopter on Embassy roof’, and ZERO plan to deal with the people amd mass of equipment left behind, etc..

Oh, you probably did, but there wasn’t 24/7 multiple news channels and social media technology reporting every single thing that’s said ad nauseum.

[houndawg]

Over/under on somebody asking a tough question and getting called a dog faced pony soldier?

Or blames the IC? (That would be very dumb because the IC has the receipts)

Who am I kidding? He’ll probably just make a statement and not take questions. At this point, if he does anything other than that his chief of staff should be sacked


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

No questions taken, and unsurprisingly blames Orange Man...and the Afghan Army for not fighting. Glorious.

Twitter thread of his speech:

...both true, but that doesn't absolve him. I talked to a troop years ago, like 8-9 years ago who said back then that the Afghan Army was mostly guys who would take their weapon and defect at the first opportunity. These people acting surprised that they collapsed so fast....

[BDKJMU]

What is the plan to get these folks out? From the embassy- fill out a form, wait for an e-mail..
https://redstate.com/nick-arama/2021/08 ... ns-n427484