Taliban winning in Afghanistan
POSTED BY: Magonsdaughter
UPDATED: Sunday, August 30, 2026 23:18
VIEWED: 20241
PAGE 2 of 3
Quote:
Originally posted by second:Quote:Nuking Japan, followed by Republican Senators publicly saying Russia should be nuked next, caused a multi-trillion dollar nuclear arms race, which that dimwitted President Harry Truman couldn't see coming when he allowed the nukes to drop. Nuking Mecca would be an even stupider move, and eventually more expensive, than nuking Japan.
Originally posted by 6IXSTRINGJACK:
After 9/11, we should have just turned Mecca to glass and the entire world would be a much better place right now.
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two
It wouldn't have been more expensive than the last 20 years were with nothing to show for it.
We had the world on our side back then. We would have been justified.
P.S. Despite the lack of squiggly lines under it in your browser, "Stupider" is not a word.
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Quote:I don't think you understand the nature of what will probably happen between the Chinese and the Taliban. They've been learning diplomacy from the Russians, and with the Russians it's not an "all or nothing" reaction.
Originally posted by 6IXSTRINGJACK:
I wouldn't worry about the Taliban and China teaming up.
One suicide bombing will end that relationship very quick.
The Taliban is what Antifa would be if they were feral and took 2000 year old fantasy books as the literal truth of the universe.
Very good at details: expectations, red lines, rewards, and consequences. For example, Russia has been tolerant (until now) of Israeli bombing of Iranian positions in Syria bc THEIR positions weren't targeted. Even when Turkey shot down a Russian jet (this, after Russia saved Erdogan's bacon by warning him of the coup) the Russians reacted harshly but kept on building their Turk Stream pipeline.
So if the Chinese are listening to the Russians on diplomacy, I don't expect to see the Chinese getting miffed over a single event and overturning everything.
*****
BTW, I don't think the American intervention was all for naught. It definitely raised expectations for the status of women, and made it LESS likely that the Taliban will revert to their view of women as subhuman.
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Pity would be no more,
If we did not MAKE men poor - William Blake
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Quote:6ix, I doubt you will read because you are you, but Which Is Correct: “Stupider” Or “Stupidest”? Stupider or more Stupid?
Originally posted by 6IXSTRINGJACK:
P.S. Despite the lack of squiggly lines under it in your browser, "Stupider" is not a word.
Is stupider a word?
It turns out stupider is an actual word. The word stupid is an adjective that refers to someone or something that’s foolish or senseless.
This adjective, however, only gets you so far. When you want to compare two nouns, you’ll need what’s called a comparative adjective. For example, in the sentence “Sam is bigger than Selena,” the adjective bigger is comparative. It tells you that Sam is larger in size than Selena.
If you want to compare two things that are stupid, you would use the comparative form of the adjective stupid to describe which has a greater level of stupidity. In most cases, comparative and superlative adjectives follow a simple pattern. You add the suffix –er to the original adjective when you want to form the comparative. Stupider is one acceptable form of the comparative form.
But there is another.
Stupider or more stupid
More stupid is also accepted as a comparative form of the adjective stupid. Stupider and more stupid are used interchangeably. In the English language, stupid is one of just a few adjectives that have two grammatically correct options for their comparative form.
Why is that? Well, some two-syllable adjectives (in particular, adjectives ending with –y, –er, –le, and –ow) follow the –er rule above. This includes dirty (which becomes dirtier and dirtiest), little (littler and littlest), and narrow (narrower and narrowest).
In most other cases, adjectives with two syllables use the words more and most to create their comparative and superlative forms. For example, important and public are both adjectives with multiple syllables. Their comparative forms are more important and more public. Their superlative forms are most important and most public.
Stupid is a two-syllable adjective. Based on the rule above, it should use the words more and most to form its comparative and superlative forms, and it does. However, it also breaks this rule by using –er and –est as alternative forms.
A few other adjectives use –er and –est as well as more and most, such as clever, likely, and pleasant. This means both of these sentences are grammatically correct: “Betty is more likely to win the election than Bobby” and “Betty is likelier to win than Bobby.”
Much more at https://www.thesaurus.com/e/grammar/stupider-vs-more-stupid/
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two
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Quote:
Originally posted by SIGNYM:Quote:I don't think you understand the nature of what will probably happen between the Chinese and the Taliban. They've been learning diplomacy from the Russians, and with the Russians it's not an "all or nothing" reaction.
Originally posted by 6IXSTRINGJACK:
I wouldn't worry about the Taliban and China teaming up.
One suicide bombing will end that relationship very quick.
The Taliban is what Antifa would be if they were feral and took 2000 year old fantasy books as the literal truth of the universe.
Very good at details: expectations, red lines, rewards, and consequences. For example, Russia has been tolerant (until now) of Israeli bombing of Iranian positions in Syria bc THEIR positions weren't targeted. Even when Turkey shot down a Russian jet (this, after Russia saved Erdogan's bacon by warning him of the coup) the Russians reacted harshly but kept on building their Turk Stream pipeline.
So if the Chinese are listening to the Russians on diplomacy, I don't expect to see the Chinese getting miffed over a single event and overturning everything.
Putin isn't just going to let all that happen the way you explain it in his backyard.
Quote:
BTW, I don't think the American intervention was all for naught. It definitely raised expectations for the status of women, and made it LESS likely that the Taliban will revert to their view of women as subhuman.
That's what their religion tells them is true.
Best case scenario they start making sure that they don't beat their women in the face and keep it in areas that are going to be covered while they're out in public.
Or they could just revert to the old standby and say they don't know where their wife disappeared to.
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GOP removes page praising Donald Trump’s ‘historic’ peace deal with Taliban.
I wonder why.
https://web.archive.org/web/diff/20201010184542/20210815231342/https:/
/gop.com/president-trump-is-bringing-peace-to-the-middle-east-rsr/
PRESIDENT TRUMP HAS CONTINUED TO TAKE THE LEAD IN PEACE TALKS AS HE SIGNED A HISTORIC PEACE AGREEMENT WITH THE TALIBAN IN AFGHANISTAN, WHICH WOULD END AMERICA'S LONGEST WAR
On February 2, 2020 , the Trump Administration signed a preliminary peace agreement with the Taliban that sets the stage to end America's longest war.
Under the agreement , the U.S. will withdraw nearly 5,000 troops from the country in 135 days in exchange for a Taliban agreement to not allow Afghanistan to be used for transnational terrorism.
Time Magazine reported that other components of the agreement included an agreement that U.S. counterterrorism forces stay in the country, permissions for the CIA to operate in Taliban-held areas, and details of how the Taliban's promises to reduce violence will be monitored and verified.
The deal has been called the " best chance to end this conflict ," a " decisive move " towards peace, and " the best path " for the United States.
The war in Afghanistan is the longest in U.S. history, a conflict that has killed more than 3,500 U.S. and NATO troops and cost U.S. taxpayers nearly 900 billion dollars.
As part of the peace agreement, the Taliban and the Afghan government recently began historic peace, talks which would end decades of war that Afghanistan has consumed.
The negotiations will cover the terms of a " permanent ceasefire, the rights of women and minorities, and the disarmament of the country's many militia groups ."
PRESIDENT TRUMP HAS DELIVERED ON HIS PROMISE TO END ENDLESS WARS BY BRINGING OUR TROOPS BACK HOME
Due to President Trump's leadership, the United States will pull out thousands of troops from Iraq and Afghanistan by November.
President Trump has been pushing for a reduction since 2016 and has fulfilled his promise by taking action to ensure the Iraqi Security Forces to have the ability to operate independently .
The reduction in Iraq troops from 5,200 to about 3,000 " reflects the Trump Administration's confidence in the ability of U.S. trained Iraqi security forces to handle the militant threat from the Islamic State group ."
Iraq, Marine Gen. Frank McKenzie, the Commander of U.S. Central Command, said that with the reduction, the U.S. will still be able to accomplish core tasks, and " we've shown more than ample goodwill and our willingness to demonstrate that we don't want to be an occupying force in this country ."
" The U.S. Decision is a clear demonstration of our continued commitment to the ultimate goal, which is an Iraqi security force that is capable of preventing an ISIS resurgence and of securing Iraq's sovereignty without external assistance ."
Iraqi forces have improved their ability to fight ISIS and that " the fact we're getting smaller is actually a sign of campaign progress."
Starting in March, U.S. forces began pulling back from bases across Iraq, turning them over to Iraqi security partners .
The reduction is part of a long-planned consolidation which reflects the " success of the anti-ISIS fight ."
WHILE PRESIDENT TRUMP HAS CHAMPIONED PEACE, JOE BIDEN HAS TAKEN THE LEAD IN PUSHING FOR ENDLESS WARS, INCLUDING THE DECADES LONG WAR IN IRAQ
While President Trump has continued to push for peace in the Middle East successfully, Joe Biden has had a history of pushing for endless wars, and failed leadership:
In 2001, then-Senator Joe Biden supported an invasion of Iraq and said that the U.S. should move forward regardless if there were no support of others .
In 2002, Biden affirmed his previous statement and voted for the use of force in Iraq ; the decision led
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Quote:
Originally posted by second:
GOP removes page praising Donald Trump’s ‘historic’ peace deal with Taliban.
I wonder why.
I don't wonder why. It's a great thing, so of course the Legacy Media is against it, and they're going to try spinning the blame for whatever fallout there is over there on Trump and the GOP.
The only thing that baffles me is why Biden* actually went through with it.
All of your shit-show Lefty trash online sites are not behind Uncle Joey's decision to do so.
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Quote:You would be wrong. Everybody who knows what they are doing knows that Afghanistan War was scheduled to end 3 months ago. But that goddamn General David Petraeus wants the War to continue because ending it makes him look bad. The CIA wants the War to continue because they were having so much fun. Even Trump wants the War to continue because he is not President, so he is even more uncaring than in 2020. He actually believed he would get a Nobel Prize for ending the War in 2020. What a fat idiot.
Originally posted by 6IXSTRINGJACK:Quote:
Originally posted by second:
GOP removes page praising Donald Trump’s ‘historic’ peace deal with Taliban.
I wonder why.
I don't wonder why. It's a great thing, so of course the Legacy Media is against it, and they're going to try spinning the blame for whatever fallout there is over there on Trump and the GOP.
The only thing that baffles me is why Biden* actually went through with it.
All of your shit-show Lefty trash online sites are not behind Uncle Joey's decision to do so.
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two
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What We Need to Learn: Lessons From Twenty Years of Afghanistan Reconstruction
https://www.sigar.mil/pdf/lessonslearned/SIGAR-21-46-LL.pdf
The mission was doomed to fail, regardless of how much longer U.S. troops were kept there.
https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2021/08/sigar-report-afghanistan-d
ebacle.html
Want more detail?
Quote:The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two
The U.S. failed in every aspect of its strategy, and often for reasons that are endemic to the way that its bureaucracy functions or to the limits — social, political, and economic — of Afghanistan. The failures were so broad and deep that they raise “questions about the ability of U.S. government agencies to devise, implement, and evaluate reconstruction strategies” in any foreign country.
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The Propaganda Multiplier
A Study by Swiss Propaganda Research
Translated by Terje Maloy
2016 / 2019
“Therefore, you always have to ask yourself: Why do I get this specific information, in this specific form, at this specific moment? Ultimately, these are always questions about power.” (*)
Dr. Konrad Hummler, Swiss banking and media executive
It is one of the most important aspects of our media system, and yet hardly known to the public: most of the international news coverage in Western media is provided by only three global news agencies based in New York, London and Paris.
The key role played by these agencies means Western media often report on the same topics, even using the same wording. In addition, governments, military and intelligence services use these global news agencies as multipliers to spread their messages around the world.
A study of the Syria war coverage by nine leading European newspapers clearly illustrates these issues: 78% of all articles were based in whole or in part on agency reports, yet 0% on investigative research. Moreover, 82% of all opinion pieces and interviews were in favor of a US and NATO intervention, while propaganda was attributed exclusively to the opposite side.
“How does the newspaper know what it knows?” The answer to this question is likely to surprise some newspaper readers: “The main source of information is stories from news agencies. The almost anonymously operating news agencies are in a way the key to world events. So what are the names of these agencies, how do they work and who finances them? To judge how well one is informed about events in East and West, one should know the answers to these questions.” (Höhne 1977, p. 11)
A Swiss media researcher points out: “The news agencies are the most important suppliers of material to mass media. No daily media outlet can manage without them. () So the news agencies influence our image of the world; above all, we get to know what they have selected.” (Blum 1995, p. 9)
Even the head of a news agency noted: “There is something strange about news agencies. They are little known to the public. Unlike a newspaper, their activity is not so much in the spotlight, yet they can always be found at the source of the story.” (Segbers 2007, p. 9)
In view of their essential importance, it is all the more astonishing that these agencies are hardly known to the public: “A large part of society is unaware that news agencies exist at all … In fact, they play an enormously important role in the media market. But despite this great importance, little attention has been paid to them in the past.” (Schulten-Jaspers 2013, p. 13)
So what are the names of these agencies that are “always at the source of the story”? There are now only three global news agencies left:
The American Associated Press (AP) with over 4000 employees worldwide. The AP belongs to US media companies and has its main editorial office in New York. AP news is used by around 12,000 international media outlets, reaching more than half of the world’s population every day.
The quasi-governmental French Agence France-Presse (AFP) based in Paris and with around 4000 employees. The AFP sends over 3000 stories and photos every day to media all over the world.
The British agency Reuters in London, which is privately owned and employs just over 3000 people. Reuters was acquired in 2008 by Canadian media entrepreneur Thomson – one of the 25 richest people in the world – and merged into Thomson Reuters, headquartered in New York.
In addition, many countries run
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Most of the journalists who work for the 3 news agencies report the same things in the same ways (stay ensconced at the same hotels, tap the same sources, focus on the same topics).
In addition, they don't pick the news that they'll be covering. That's done by the chief editor.
And news is done as cheaply as possible, which means transcribing government reports, press releases, and press conferences.
Finally, while the talking heads and more local reporters may. or may not. be liberal, they don't determine what gets disseminated. The Editor in Chief (or station chief) does that.
The 'liberal' media is anything but. It's a highly truncated narrative created by an extreme focus, and packaged into a narrative that fits into the business 'infotainment' model. Any apparent bias in either direction is merely part of the Punch-and-Judy show that does everything but tell people what they need to know.
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Opinion: After spending trillions of dollars on wars in Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria and Libya, the U.S. has nothing to show for its efforts but blood in the sand
U.S. military and CIA interventions have been disasters, but the foreign-policy establishment and the media still can’t face the extent of American foolishness and failure
https://www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/afghanistan-latest-debacl
e-of-us-foreign-policy-by-jeffrey-d-sachs-2021-08
https://web.archive.org/web/20210818060836/https://www.project-syndica
te.org/commentary/afghanistan-latest-debacle-of-us-foreign-policy-by-jeffrey-d-sachs-2021-08
Even a cursory look at America’s spending in Afghanistan reveals the stupidity of its policy there. According to a recent report by the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction, the US invested roughly $946 billion between 2001 and 2021. Yet almost $1 trillion in outlays won the US few hearts and minds.
Here’s why. Of that $946 billion, fully $816 billion, or 86%, went to military outlays for US troops. And the Afghan people saw little of the remaining $130 billion, with $83 billion going to the Afghan Security Forces. Another $10 billion or so was spent on drug interdiction operations, while $15 billion was for US agencies operating in Afghanistan. That left a meager $21 billion in “economic support” funding. Yet even much of this spending left little if any development on the ground, because the programs actually “support counterterrorism; bolster national economies; and assist in the development of effective, accessible, and independent legal systems.”
In short, less than 2% of the US spending on Afghanistan, and probably far less than 2%, reached the Afghan people in the form of basic infrastructure or poverty-reducing services. The US could have invested in clean water and sanitation, school buildings, clinics, digital connectivity, agricultural equipment and extension, nutrition programs, and many other programs to lift the country from economic deprivation. Instead, it leaves behind a country with a life expectancy of 63 years, a maternal mortality rate of 638 per 100,000 births, and a child stunting rate of 38%.
The US could and should have fostered a more stable and prosperous Afghanistan by investing in maternal health, schools, safe water, nutrition, and the like. Such humane investments – especially financed together with other countries through institutions such as the Asian Development Bank – would have helped to end the bloodshed in Afghanistan, and in other impoverished regions, forestalling future wars.
Yet American leaders go out of their way to emphasize to the American public that we won’t waste money on such trivialities. The sad truth is that the American political class and mass media hold the people of poorer nations in contempt, even as they intervene relentlessly and recklessly in those countries. Of course, much of America’s elite holds America’s own poor in similar contempt.
In the aftermath of the fall of Kabul, the US mass media is, predictably, blaming the US failure on Afghanistan’s incorrigible corruption. The lack of American self-awareness is startling. It’s no surprise that after trillions of dollars spent on wars in Iraq, Syria, Libya, and beyond, the US has nothing to show for its efforts but blood in the sand.
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two
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Propaganda multiplier deserves its own thread. Posted separately.
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Pity would be no more,
If we did not MAKE men poor - William Blake
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Quote:
Originally posted by second:Quote:You would be wrong.
Originally posted by 6IXSTRINGJACK:Quote:
Originally posted by second:
GOP removes page praising Donald Trump’s ‘historic’ peace deal with Taliban.
I wonder why.
I don't wonder why. It's a great thing, so of course the Legacy Media is against it, and they're going to try spinning the blame for whatever fallout there is over there on Trump and the GOP.
The only thing that baffles me is why Biden* actually went through with it.
All of your shit-show Lefty trash online sites are not behind Uncle Joey's decision to do so.
No. I'm right.
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Why Biden was so set on withdrawing from Afghanistan?
Even in 2009, he didn’t believe the military had a strategy for victory. (In 2021, the military clowns can't even run a airlift without accidentally killing Afghans on the runways)
To understand President Joe Biden’s decision to withdraw troops from Afghanistan against the advice of the US military establishment, you need to go back to a debate that played out more than a decade ago, during the early years of Barack Obama’s presidency.
Then-Vice President Biden was consistently one of the biggest skeptics of the military’s recommendations. Throughout months of debate, he repeatedly raised the inconvenient point that the generals’ preferred strategy seemed extremely unlikely to lead to actual victory. “We have not thought through our strategic goals!” he shouted during the Obama administration’s first meeting on the war in Afghanistan.
All this was documented at the time in Bob Woodward’s deeply reported 2010 book Obama’s Wars. Biden did not actually support withdrawal at the time — he pushed for a more limited mission focused on counterterrorism, accompanied by a smaller troop surge than the military wanted.
But his dark view of the long-term picture was clearly vindicated in the decade since. Now that Biden is president and has actually withdrawn from the war — leading to a Taliban takeover of Afghanistan — it’s worth revisiting that past debate, as outlined in Woodward’s book, to understand why his mind was so firmly made up.
More at https://www.vox.com/2021/8/18/22629135/biden-afghanistan-withdrawal-re
asons
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two
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I'm surprised he went through with it.
It's going to be the one thing he can hang his hat on after his failed presidency.
I'll shit talk Uncle Joey all day long on just about everything else under the sun, but the man actually did it.
And the fallout from that is watching the hypocrisy on both sides of the pro-war Legacy Media beating the shit out of him for it.
Wake up sheep. They lie to you every day about everything.
If more than just a handful of you could remember what happened more than two weeks ago you wouldn't need somebody to try to convince you of that.
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Quote:The sheep were told the truth, but sheep don't read:
Originally posted by 6IXSTRINGJACK:
Wake up sheep. They lie to you every day about everything.
If more than just a handful of you could remember what happened more than two weeks ago you wouldn't need somebody to try to convince you of that.
For nearly a decade, the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction (SIGAR) warned in report after report that fraud, waste and abuse had wormed its way into the $145 billion U.S. taxpayers spent to rebuild Afghanistan. The squandering included $43 million on a useless gas station and $28 million on uniforms for Afghan soldiers with camouflage suited to a tiny fraction of the country.
"It was a little bit of hubris here that we thought it was easy to turn Afghanistan into, you know, Iowa," Sopko said. "Turn it into a sparkling city on a hill, like Boston. It was always going to be tough. But it could have turned out better." John Sopko is special inspector general for Afghanistan reconstruction. Pay attention, sheep. TL;DR
https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2021/08/18/afghanistan-in
spector-general-john-sopko-reflects-waste-abuse/8180105002/
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two
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Are you behind Biden's* actions regarding this issue Second?
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Second,
pretending that people who disagree don't pay attention isn't an argument, it's a rhetorical trick. They paid attention, they just didn't obey.
That said, the disaster that is military spending got an excellent breakdown by Pirate News here a few years back. It's mostly lost in the corruption of the subcontracting
Also, I feel like, just on a personal level, we took the wrong approach in afghanistan. Our position was that the Taliban were evil. That didn't resonate. The locals don't really hate the Taliban. They don't really hate the Northern Alliance, they don't really hate Al Qaeda or the Mujahideen. These are their political parties in a way. These groups do not bomb their weddings, torture their children, and set up concentration camps. We do that. They probably hate us. And the Russians
It was a completely lost cause
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Quote:
How Russia-China Are Stage-Managing the Taliban
Pepe Escobar • August 18, 2021
The first Taliban press conference after this weekend’s Saigon moment geopolitical earthquake, conducted by spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid, was in itself a game-changer.
The contrast could not be starker with those rambling pressers at the Taliban embassy in Islamabad after 9/11 and before the start of the American bombing – proving this is an entirely new political animal.
Yet some things never change. English translations remain atrocious.
Here is a good summary of the key Taliban statements, and here (in Russian) is a very detailed roundup.
These are the key takeaways.
No problem for women to get education all the way to college, and to continue to work. They just need to wear the hijab (like in Qatar or Iran). No need to wear a burqa. The Taliban insist, “all women’s rights will be guaranteed within the limits of Islamic law.”
The Islamic Emirate “does not threaten anyone” and will not treat anyone as enemies. Crucially, revenge – an essential plank of the Pashtunwali code – will be abandoned, and that’s unprecedented. There will be a general amnesty – including people who worked for the former NATO-aligned system. Translators, for instance, won’t be harassed, and don’t need to leave the country.
Security of foreign embassies and international organizations “is a priority.” Taliban special security forces will protect both those leaving Afghanistan and those who remain.
A strong inclusive Islamic government will be formed. “Inclusive” is code for the participation of women and Shi’ites.
Foreign media will continue to work undisturbed. The Taliban government will allow public criticism and debate. But “freedom of speech in Afghanistan must be in line with Islamic values.”
The Islamic Emirate of Taliban wants recognition from the “international community” – code for NATO. The overwhelming majority of Eurasia and the Global South will recognize it anyway. It’s essential to note, for example, the closer integration of the expanding SCO – Iran is about to become a full member, Afghanistan is an observer – with ASEAN: the absolute majority of Asia will not shun the Taliban.
For the record, they also stated that the Taliban took all of Afghanistan in only 11 days: that’s pretty accurate. They stressed “very good relations with Pakistan, Russia and China.” Yet the Taliban don’t have formal allies and are not part of any military-political bloc. They definitely “won’t allow Afghanistan to become a safe haven for international terrorists”. That’s code for ISIS/Daesh.
On the key issue of opium/heroin: the Taliban will ban their production. So, for all practical purposes, the CIA heroin rat line is dead.
As eyebrow raising as these statements may be, the Taliban did not even get into detail on economic/infrastructure development deals – as they will need a lot of new industries, new jobs and improved Eurasian-wide trade relations. That will be announced later.
The go-to Russian guy
Sharp US observers are remarking, half in jest, that the Taliban in only one sitting answered more real questions from US media than POTUS since January.
What this first press conference reveals is how the Taliban are fast absorbing essential P.R. and media lessons from Moscow and Beijing, emphasizing ethnic harmony, the role of women, the role of diplomacy, and deftly defusing in a single move all the hysteria raging across NATOstan.
The next bombshell step in the P.R. wars will be to cut off the lethal, evidence-free Taliban-9/11 connection; afterwards the “terrorist organization” label will disappear, and the Taliban as a political movement will be fully legitimized.
Moscow and Beijing are meticulously stage-managing the Taliban reinsertion in regional and global geopolitics. This means that ultimately the SCO is stage-managing the whole process, applying a consensus reached after a series of ministerial and leaders meetings, l
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Discussion would not be complete without a conspiracy theory ...
Quote:I wonder if the contractors make up the bulk of Americans stuck in Afghanistan. The press has allowed us to imagine hapless American citizens ... do-gooders and tourists... caught out in the hinterlands, but I suspect that most Americans still in Afghanistan knew exactly what they signed up for when they went there.
The Afghanistan Exit Debacle: Incompetence, Distraction, Or Something More Sinister?
Thursday, Aug 19, 2021 - 11:40 PM
Authored by Brandon Smith via Alt-Market.us,
My first instinct has been to ignore the circus surrounding Biden’s apparent bungle of the troop exit from Afghanistan, primarily because I think it distracts from the much bigger danger of despotic covid mandates and vaccine passports that Biden and his handlers are trying to push forward right now on our home soil. That said, I have received numerous requests from readers to discuss the situation and I’ve found certain aspects of the pull-out rather suspicious.
The basic assumption here is that Biden is senile and his handling of the exit is tainted by his stupidity, but maybe there is more to this than meets the eye…
First, I think it’s important to dispel a propaganda narrative being circulated by the media that conservatives are somehow calling for troops to stay in Afghanistan by criticizing Biden’s exit strategy. This is typical leftist gaslighting. One can be in favor of a troop draw-down and still be critical of Biden’s handling of it....
The real shock has been the speed of Biden’s exit agenda after Trump had already removed the bulk of US troops. This rapid draw-down has included cutting almost all US troops and cutting private contractor numbers by at least 60%, and all of this has been undertaken in the span of a few months.
Quote:Another part of the conspiracy theory, not mentioned here, is the irrationality of abadoning Bagram AFB and all of its equipment and supplies in the middle of the night, without ever telling the Afghan govt. WHEN you are withdrawing, you hang on to your airfields until the last moment. The way Bagram was abandoned smells of panic, or treason, or coverup.
This has allowed the Taliban to overrun the last secure provinces surrounding the capital of Kabul and then overrun Kabul itself.
Quote:
... It has been the common practice of multiple US administrations to pay lip service to public concerns over the endless war in Afghanistan, telling people an exit is imminent, then shrugging their shoulders when they are caught lying. ...
Biden apologists would make the argument that the gibbering commander-in-chief has given us exactly what we wanted, so we should be applauding him. However, the chaotic manner in which Biden is executing the troop draw-down is increasingly suspect.
It feels more like a desperate retreat in the face of an overwhelming attack, rather than a controlled exit with a defensive plan in the face of a limited insurgency...
An exit strategy should have taken at least another year to complete, with a secure zone surrounding Kabul and the provinces bordering Pakistan...
And that brings us to current day, in which Afghans are piling onto the landing gear of planes leaving Air Force bases outside Kubul as the capital is overtaken by Taliban fighters in scenes reminiscent of the end of US involvement in the Vietnam War..
I’m not buying the “Biden is incompetent” story because it is too simplistic and it doesn’t take the bigger picture into account. Biden is a muppet, a mascot, a front-man for the public to love or hate, and that’s all he is. Yes, he can barely read from a teleprompter, but it’s his puppeteers that make the big decisions, not Biden. They are evil people, but not incompetent.
So we have to ask some important questions:
Why now? And, who benefits? After decades of presidents lying to us about “mission accomplished” and impending troop exits, why is Biden suddenly committing to an exit strategy in the most hysterical way possible?
Why did the Biden A
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Quote:
Originally posted by 6IXSTRINGJACK:
Are you behind Biden's* actions regarding this issue Second?
Simple Yes/No question.
Not surprised it wasn't answered.
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Vaccinated People: "You need to get muh vaccination shots that don't work because I got muh vaccination shots that don't work and I'm afraid of people that didn't get muh vaccination shots that don't work because muh vaccination shots that don't work don't work."
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Interesting history:
https://www.history.navy.mil/content/history/nhhc/research/library/onl
ine-reading-room/title-list-alphabetically/a/afghan-wars-1839-42-and-1878-80.html
A cursed land.
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DUZ XaT SEM RiT TQ YQ? - Jubal Early
The real pandemic solution: http://uvpk.net/
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Link does not work.
Too busy, the message says.
"Graveyard of empires."
Mountainous lands are often filled with fractious groups who war with each other and successfully resist invasion.
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Pity would be no more,
If we did not MAKE men poor - William Blake
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Quote:Yes.
Originally posted by 6IXSTRINGJACK:Quote:
Originally posted by 6IXSTRINGJACK:
Are you behind Biden's* actions regarding this issue Second?
Simple Yes/No question.
Not surprised it wasn't answered.
Congressman Seeking to Relaunch Afghan War Made Millions in Defense Contracting
Florida Republican Michael Waltz made up to $25 million from the sale of Metis Solutions, a defense contractor with a spotty record training Afghan security forces.
August 20 2021, 9:19 a.m.
Few lawmakers are as outspoken about the end of the war in Afghanistan as Michael Waltz, a Republican from Florida’s 6th Congressional District.
In recent weeks, Waltz has called on President Joe Biden to “reverse course,” relaunch military operations in the region, and “crush the Taliban offensive by committing American air power” supported by “special forces.” The Florida congressman has warned darkly of an “Al-Qaeda 3.0” and stated that no negotiations should take place with the Taliban “until the situation is stabilized militarily.”
Leading this push, in the pages of newspapers, over talk radio, and on cable television, Waltz couches his advocacy in his identity and experience. Not only is he a sitting member of Congress, but he is a former Green Beret, a former aide to Dick Cheney, and “a father … sickened by what’s to come for the Afghan women and girls that are being mercilessly abused by the Taliban and sold into sex slavery,” as he wrote in opinion column published last week in Fox News.
There’s one crucial part of Waltz’s experience he tends to leave out: Before his successful run for Congress in 2018, he managed a lucrative defense contracting firm with offices in Afghanistan. The company was recently sold to Pacific Architects and Engineers, or PAE, one of the largest war contractors the U.S. has hired to train and mentor Afghan security forces. The deal personally enriched Waltz by up to $26 million, a figure made public by a filing disclosed this month.
PAE’s stock is now down nearly 20 percent since last year, with the greatest drop in value occurring over the last month. The company has been reported as among the most harmed by the decision to draw down forces in Afghanistan.
Waltz has said America’s 20-yearlong engagement in Afghanistan is only the beginning.
“We are in a multi-decade war and we are only 15-years in,” said Waltz, speaking to the Scout Warrior and the National Interest for a story published in January 2017. The future congressman and defense contractor said he expected a 100 year war.
More at https://theintercept.com/2021/08/20/mike-waltz-afghanistan/
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two
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Quote:
VP Harris Refused To Face America, Said ‘You Will Not Pin This Shit On Me’ Despite Key Role In Afghanistan Withdrawal Planning – Report
https://nationalfile.com/vp-harris-refused-to-face-america-said-you-wi
ll-not-pin-this-shit-on-me-despite-key-role-in-afghanistan-withdrawal-planning/
Looks like Kamala Harris is doing the same fine job with this as she did at our southern border.
Poor Joe Biden*. Everyone is running away from this shitpile as fast as they can, leaving him to go it alone.
Nobody wants to step up and take charge.
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Pity would be no more,
If we did not MAKE men poor - William Blake
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Quote:
WTH? Canadian PM Spoke With HILLARY CLINTON About Afghanistan Because Biden And Harris Were AWOL
https://summit.news/2021/08/20/wth-canadian-pm-spoke-with-hillary-clin
ton-about-afghanistan-because-biden-and-harris-were-awol/
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Pity would be no more,
If we did not MAKE men poor - William Blake
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Pompeo Is Lying About Afghanistan
He laid the groundwork for the Taliban takeover. Now he’s blaming Biden.
Under the deal, signed on Feb. 29, 2020, the U.S. government pledged “to withdraw from Afghanistan all military forces of the United States, its allies, and Coalition partners … within fourteen (14) months.” (That is before May 1, 2021.)
American forces immediately began to vacate bases and pull out. But the Taliban, contrary to its commitments, escalated its attacks. Pompeo responded by making excuses. “We have seen the senior Taliban leadership working diligently to reduce violence from previous levels,” he asserted on March 5, 2020. “We still have confidence that the Taliban leadership is working to deliver on its commitments.” He argued that critics were making too much of the latest attacks, since violence in Afghanistan was “common.”
As the United States closed its air bases and stripped its troop presence to a minimum, the Taliban advanced, seizing provincial capitals. In November, Defense Secretary Mark Esper warned that the American retreat was undercutting the Afghan government. Trump responded by firing Esper. The Afghan government asked Pompeo to slow the U.S. withdrawal and press the Taliban for a cease-fire. Pompeo, in reply, offered only to “sit on the side and help where we can.” He argued that because terrorist networks were global, the United States didn’t need troops in Afghanistan.
Pompeo maintained this position after leaving office. Last month, when he was asked about warnings from U.S. military officials “that Kabul could fall within a few months,” he scoffed that “President Trump had the same kind of resistance from the military … to reducing our footprint in Afghanistan.”
More at https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2021/08/pompeo-lies-afghanistan-ta
liban-biden.html
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two
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Quote:The Taliban did not attack American troops during the drawdown, and it was not IMHO our business to prop up a corrupt client state.
Originally posted by second:
Pompeo Is Lying About Afghanistan
He laid the groundwork for the Taliban takeover. Now he’s blaming Biden.
Under the deal, signed on Feb. 29, 2020, the U.S. government pledged “to withdraw from Afghanistan all military forces of the United States, its allies, and Coalition partners … within fourteen (14) months.” (That is before May 1, 2021.)
American forces immediately began to vacate bases and pull out. But the Taliban, contrary to its commitments, escalated its attacks. Pompeo responded by making excuses. “We have seen the senior Taliban leadership working diligently to reduce violence from previous levels,” he asserted on March 5, 2020. “We still have confidence that the Taliban leadership is working to deliver on its commitments.” He argued that critics were making too much of the latest attacks, since violence in Afghanistan was “common.”
As the United States closed its air bases and stripped its troop presence to a minimum, the Taliban advanced, seizing provincial capitals. In November, Defense Secretary Mark Esper warned that the American retreat was undercutting the Afghan government. Trump responded by firing Esper. The Afghan government asked Pompeo to slow the U.S. withdrawal and press the Taliban for a cease-fire. Pompeo, in reply, offered only to “sit on the side and help where we can.” He argued that because terrorist networks were global, the United States didn’t need troops in Afghanistan.
Pompeo maintained this position after leaving office. Last month, when he was asked about warnings from U.S. military officials “that Kabul could fall within a few months,” he scoffed that “President Trump had the same kind of resistance from the military … to reducing our footprint in Afghanistan.”
More at https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2021/08/pompeo-lies-afghanistan-ta
liban-biden.html
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two
Quote:
US goes one year without a combat death in Afghanistan as Taliban warn against reneging on peace deal
https://www.stripes.com/theaters/middle_east/us-goes-one-year-without-
a-combat-death-in-afghanistan-as-taliban-warn-against-reneging-on-peace-deal-1.661464
In your eagerness to criticize the GOP, you wound up supporting the kind of war you said we shouldn't wage.
Please check your anti-GOP hatred against logic, reality, and consistency with previously-posted opinion b4 posting.
-----------
Pity would be no more,
If we did not MAKE men poor - William Blake
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And now for something completely different
Quote:
Britain Wants A Rerun Of The War On Afghanistan
Immediately after the Taliban victory an enormous dis-information campaign was launched to again badmouth them.
There are now suddenly all kinds of allegations that the Taliban are doing this or that bad. These are mostly based on hearsay and no or very little evidence is presented. Don't believe them without direct confirmation from original sources.
The launch of Amrullah Saleh and Ahmed Massoud as leaders of a new resistance against the Taliban must have been long prepared. One does not get op-ed space in the Washington Post and several big European papers just some three days after Kabul falls without some lead time and without serious 'western' backing.
While Saleh is an old CIA spy Ahmed Massoud has been prepared by the Brits:
After finishing his secondary school education in Iran, Massoud spent a year on a military course at the Royal Military Academy Sandhurst.In 2012, he commenced an undergraduate degree in War Studies at King's College London where he obtained his bachelor's degree in 2015. He obtained his master's degree in International Politics from City, University of London in 2016.
The type of disinformation campaign combined with the well prepared launch of the 'resistance campaign', allegedly with SAS trained Afghan soldiers, and the regional op-ed placements let me conclude that he is run by the Brits. They are quite excellent in their 'strategic communication' disinformation business.
The conservatives speaking in their special parliament session were also the most angry about the outcome of their imperial war on Afghanistan and about their own inability to stop its end while claiming to be a 'Global Britain'.
As Richard Murphey remarks on Withering Britain:
This then is a massive moment for the role of the US in the world. It does not create a vacuum, but the risk that one might follow – which China will all too willingly seek to fill – seems very real at present.
And where does Britain fit into this? In a sense it does not. The US did not consults us, and is still not apparently telling us what it is doing in Kabul. We were not a player. There was no special, relationship. Our opinion was not worth having. It did not matter to the US. The pretence is over.
With that the vestige of British power, built on the coat-tails of the 1940s and the mutually advantageous myths formed since then, has gone. We are now just a rather remote, small, and fairly insignificant state who is just one amongst many. The delusion that we are otherwise has to go.
But will the delusion disappear? Will we, with its demise, stop building aircraft carriers that were strategically useless decades before they were designed? Will we stop thinking ourselves exceptional? And will an England thwarted become ever more aggressive towards its last vestiges of empire – those states it subjects to its rule within the supposed United Kingdom, which increasingly feels anything but that?
These are big questions. Only time can provide the answers. But I have a feeling that everything has changed. The image of British power has withered away. If all involved now deal with the reality for the these islands and their future that might be for the better. If at the same time we stop hectoring and abusing the world and actually learn to live with and work alongside it, so much the better too. But will we do that? That’s anyone’s guess. The wise will hope that we do.
That hope is, see above, in vain.
Stories about alleged Taliban acts 'against Afghan women' will now again get special features. Women have been used to sell the long war on Afghanistan since its very beginning. But how many women were actually killed by Soviet, British and U.S. bombs during the war?
On the abuse of feminism to promote the never ending war on Afghanistan, the badmouthing of the Taliban please read the excellent piece Afghanistan: The End of th
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I have not had a chance to read all of this article, but I hope you find it as interesting s I did, so far.
Quote:
Nancy Lindisfarne and Jonathan Neale write: A lot of nonsense about Afghanistan is being written in Britain and the United States. Most of this nonsense hides a number of important truths.
First, the Taliban have defeated the United States.
Second, the Taliban have won because they have more popular support.
Third, this is not because most Afghans love the Taliban. It is because the American occupation has been unbearably cruel and corrupt.
Fourth, the War on Terror has also been politically defeated in the United States. The majority of Americans are now in favor of withdrawal from Afghanistan and against any more foreign wars.
Fifth, this is a turning point in world history. The greatest military power in the world has been defeated by the people of a small, desperately poor country. This will weaken the power of the American empire all over the world.
Sixth, the rhetoric of saving Afghan women has been widely used to justify the occupation, and many feminists in Afghanistan have chosen the side of the occupation. The result is a tragedy for feminism.
This article explains these points. Because this a short piece, we assert more than we prove. But we have written a great deal about gender, politics and war in Afghanistan since we did fieldwork there as anthropologists almost fifty years ago. We give links to much of this work at the end of this article, so you can explore our arguments in more detail.[1]
A military victory
This is a military and political victory for the Taliban. It is a military victory because the Taliban have won the war. For at least two years the Afghan government forces – the national army and the police – have been losing more people dead and wounded each month than they are recruiting. So those forces are shrinking.
Over the last ten years the Taliban have been taking control of more and more villages and some towns. In the last twelve days they have taken all the cities.
This was not a lightning advance through the cities and then on to Kabul. The people who took each city had long been in the vicinity, in the villages, waiting for the moment. Crucially, across the north the Taliban had been steadily recruiting Tajiks, Uzbeks and Arabs.
This is also a political victory for the Taliban. No guerilla insurgency on earth can win such victories without popular support.
But perhaps support is not the right word. It is more that Afghans have had to choose sides. And more of the Afghan people have chosen to side with the Taliban than have chosen the American occupiers. Not all of them, just more of them.
More Afghans have also chosen to side with the Taliban than with the Afghan government of President Ashraf Ghani. Again, not all of them, but more than support Ghani. And more Afghans have chosen to side with the Taliban than with the old warlords. The defeat of Dostum in Sheberghan and Ismail Khan in Herat is stunning evidence of that.
The Taliban of 2001 were overwhelmingly Pushtuns, and their politics was Pushtun chauvinist. In 2021 Taliban fighters of many ethnicities have taken power in Uzbek and Tajik dominated areas.
The important exception is the Hazara dominated areas in the central mountains. We come back to this exception.
Of course, not all Afghans have chosen to side with the Taliban. This is a war against foreign invaders, but it is also a civil war. Many have fought for the Americans, the government or the warlords. Many more have made compromises with both sides to survive. And many others were not sure which side to take and are waiting with different mixtures of fear and hope to see what will happen.
Because this is a military defeat for American power, calls for Biden to do this or that are simply silly. If American troops had remained in Afghanistan, they would have had to surrender or die. This would be a even worse humiliation for American power than the current debacle. Biden, like Trump before him, was out of
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US troops left the Kabul Airport grounds and rescued 169 Americans
Biden was correct to pull back, to finally end that war
its the way he pulled Troops out that is the problem, the news and propaganda tv reports will look bad and it wll leave a crazy toxic terroristic mess behind
Lots and Lots of Americans are stuck inside enemy land, 'Thousands Trapped'.
America might have done good and bad things in the past and with war but they tried to also build sopmething in Afghanistan
The Afghans already seem to be ready to destroy anything positive left behind
An evil enemy will burn his own nation to the ground to rule over the ashes. –Sun Tzu (from The Art of War)
Oliver North: Taliban Now Has Names, Addresses and Phone Number of Every Afghan Who Worked for US
https://rumble.com/vlfh2x-oliver-north-taliban-now-has-names-addresses
-and-phone-number-of-every-afgh.html
Taliban Quash Afghanistan Protests, Tightening Grip on Country
https://www.democraticunderground.com/10142788299
White House Sends Junior Official to Explain ‘Mission Was Accomplished’ at Kabul Airport
https://freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/3986768/posts#comment
Afghan central bank chief flees Kabul
http://www.ronpaulforums.com/showthread.php?555329-Bad-news-out-of-Afg
hanistan
Rush To FLEE KABUL >>> not a mail link if it doesnt open copy the entire url address
https://odysee.com/@PaulyFrog64:2/rush-to-flee-kabul-warning!-graphic:4
This is TruNews' it can be a bit conspiracy-ish so take it with a pinch of salt but the report is worth listening to
https://tv.gab.com/channel/trunews/view/trunews-headlines-with-kerry-k
insey-82021-611ffdbedaad396401c3944a
Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau revealed earlier this week that after the Taliban took Kabul, he spoke not with Joe Biden or even Kamala Harris, but with Hillary Clinton instead.
https://www.minds.com/newsfeed/1275388749785600005
Afghan president a 'political crook' for fleeing during recapture of Kabul
https://www.bitchute.com/video/0xHdJ20YbtE/
In Vietnam Helicopters were pushed into the sea to save more for the trip home and not allow US technology to fall into another foreign powers hands
Many times in Iraq the USA would blow up their own stuff when pulling back if they did not trust nearby Iraqi, basically made burn pules in iraq and burned everything besides the buildings when the United States left the Syrian border
The USA would take equipment out but also bomb its own helicopter rather than allow it to fall into an enmy hand
dig a whole but all caputured guns and bombs, put all equipment and cover it in dirt, set an explosive and boom!
So now Afghanistan and despite the USA beating the Taliban's ass, it did not 100% control Afghanistan, terrain landscape afghanistan is difficult, Geography of Afghanistan is hard unforgiving and unique valleys moutains caves etc they these Taliban terrorists still faded into the population and hid inside caves and they would come back every season. It seems security was bad for a while, clothes were switched Taliban would even dress in NATO US uniforms and they had ways to stab Americans in the back... green-on-blue attack they called it...it would be a bad idea to give these terroristic connected type peoples your High-Technologies
One thing happening many many times was people getting shot in the back, so then the USA set up this digital biological camera surveillance, every person, every blood, every DNA, all phones, coin payments from banks, streets at villages, every eyeball iris, digital payment into banks, every body shape, every finger print on the hands, it was all tracked so bad guys would not get on the inside, nobody would get ever get near a helicopter or nobody at a base that wasn't supposed to be there...a Big Brother Surveillance State like East Germany, like the British like the USSR like the modern Chinese, they did their best to track every Afghan good and bad, even the shape-shifting ones.
Now this Biometric Data may have fallen into Enem
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Can 100,000 people be evacuated from Afghanistan by the end of August?
During its first week, the Kabul evacuation averaged about 4,000 people a day, reaching a total of just over 20,000 by Friday.
There are still about 80,000 people left to go, and the Air Force has a goal of increasing its capacity to 9,000 people per day. If they meet that goal, the airlift will be finished in about nine days, or August 29. We'll soon see.
https://jabberwocking.com/can-we-evacuate-100000-people-by-the-end-of-
august/
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two
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I guess the question is ... WHO should be evacuated?
Americans, definitely. Foreigners who want to leave, for sure.
Native translators? Security staff? Former government officials? Ethnic sub-groups like the Hazaras (Persian-speaking subgroup in central Afghan highlands) who've resisted the Taliban up until now? Native professionals and business people?
*****
So far, there have been no reports of mass reprisals, and (at this point) only two summary executions. One was reportedly ISIS-linked, the other was a former Afghan military member-turned-police Chief who was enabling drug production/smuggling. Supposedly.
The Chinese are extremely optimisticabout this "new, reformed" Taliban. The Russians, not so much. I've heard (hard to find the lin now in the welter of news) that in their estimation, about 1/3 of the Taliban are working with them, 1/3 are sitting on the sidelines waiting to see how things work out (which is OK with the Russians) but 1/3 are real hardline Haqqani who want to re-create the oldstyle Taliban, which the Russians are woried about.
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Pity would be no more,
If we did not MAKE men poor - William Blake
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Quote:
Originally posted by SIGNYM:
I guess the question is ... WHO should be evacuated?
Americans, definitely. Foreigners who want to leave, for sure.
They're not welcome here.
--------------------------------------------------
Vaccinated People: "You need to get muh vaccination shots that don't work because I got muh vaccination shots that don't work and I'm afraid of people that didn't get muh vaccination shots that don't work because muh vaccination shots that don't work don't work."
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US warns against going to Kabul airport as Taliban tighten grip
https://www.afr.com/world/middle-east/us-warns-against-going-to-kabul-
airport-as-taliban-tighten-grip-20210822-p58ktf
Whether the Taliban’s Afghanistan takeover could bring new life to Al-Qaeda and ISIS
https://www.kcrw.com/news/shows/press-play-with-madeleine-brand/afghan
istan-lausd-california-desert-ady-barkan/taliban-terrorism-al-qaeda-isis
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Quote:Oh, what I meant was Germans go back to Germany, and Brits go back to the UK, and Belgians go back to Belgium, for example.
Originally posted by 6IXSTRINGJACK:Quote:
Originally posted by SIGNYM:
I guess the question is ... WHO should be evacuated?
Americans, definitely. Foreigners who want to leave, for sure.
They're not welcome here.
--------------------------------------------------
Vaccinated People: "You need to get muh vaccination shots that don't work because I got muh vaccination shots that don't work and I'm afraid of people that didn't get muh vaccination shots that don't work because muh vaccination shots that don't work don't work."
Sorry for the lack of clarity.
-----------
Pity would be no more,
If we did not MAKE men poor - William Blake
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In 1999, when George W. Bush decided he was going to run for president in the 2000 election, his family hired Mickey Herskowitz to write the first draft of Bush's autobiography, A Charge To Keep.
Although Bush had gone AWOL for about a year during the Vietnam war and was thus apparently no fan of combat, he'd concluded (from watching his father's "little 3-day war" with Iraq) that being a "wartime president" was the most consistently surefire way to get reelected and have a two-term presidency.
"I'll tell you, he was thinking about invading Iraq in 1999," Herskowitz told reporter Russ Baker in 2004.
"One of the things [Bush] said to me," Herskowitz said, "is: 'One of the keys to being seen as a great leader is to be seen as a commander-in-chief. My father had all this political capital built up when he drove the Iraqis out of (Kuwait) and he wasted it.
"[Bush] said, 'If I have a chance to invade Iraq, if I had that much capital, I'm not going to waste it. I'm going to get everything passed I want to get passed and I'm going to have a successful presidency.'"
The attack on 9/11 gave Bush his first chance to "be seen as a commander-in-chief" when our guy Osama Bin Laden, who the Reagan/Bush administration had spent $3 billion building up in Afghanistan, engineered an attack on New York and DC.
The crime was planned in Germany and Florida and on 9/11 Bin Laden was, according to CBS News, not even in Afghanistan: "CBS Evening News has been told that the night before the Sept. 11 terrorists attack, Osama bin Laden was in Pakistan. He was getting medical treatment with the support of the very military that days later pledged its backing for the U.S. war on terror in Afghanistan." When the Obama administration finally caught and killed Bin Laden, he was again in Pakistan, the home base for the Taliban.
Attacking our ally Pakistan in 2001 would have been impossible for Bush, and, besides, nearby Afghanistan was an easier target, being at that time the second-poorest country in the world with an average annual per-capita income of $700 a year. Bin Laden had run terrorist training camps there, unrelated to 9/11, but they made a fine excuse for Bush's first chance to "be seen as a commander-in-chief" and get some leadership cred.
More at https://www.commondreams.org/views/2021/08/17/when-will-we-stop-lettin
g-our-presidents-lie-america-wars
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two
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Taliban threatens "consequences" if America doesn't pull out by August 31st deadline.
I'm 100% behind the pullout.
That being said, here's my counter threat to those sub-human sandworms...
I double fucking dog dare you to pull some shit.
See what happens to you when Trump's president again in 2025.
Tick Tock
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Vaccinated People: "You need to get muh vaccination shots that don't work because I got muh vaccination shots that don't work and I'm afraid of people that didn't get muh vaccination shots that don't work because muh vaccination shots that don't work don't work."
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Quote:
Originally posted by SIGNYM:Quote:Oh, what I meant was Germans go back to Germany, and Brits go back to the UK, and Belgians go back to Belgium, for example.
Originally posted by 6IXSTRINGJACK:Quote:
Originally posted by SIGNYM:
I guess the question is ... WHO should be evacuated?
Americans, definitely. Foreigners who want to leave, for sure.
They're not welcome here.
Sorry for the lack of clarity.
No worries.
Thanks for clearing it up.
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Mike Gwin @MGwin46
NEW: Between 3:00am and 3:00pm ET today, a total of approximately 10,900 people were evacuated from Kabul.
In total, the U.S.-led mission has facilitated the evacuation of 48,000 people since August 14.
4:57 PM · Aug 23, 2021·Twitter Web App
https://twitter.com/MGwin46/status/1429925858928627714
That is more than 6 times the number US got out of Saigon.
Operation Frequent Wind: 7,000 people
During the last days of the Vietnam War more than 7,000 people were evacuated by helicopter from various points in Saigon. The airlift resulted in a number of enduring images.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Frequent_Wind
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two
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The mohammedan jihad islamist Taliban spokesman says Afghans will be blocked from entering Kabul airport from now on. The terorist Taliban says only certain special foreigners allowed to leave. The terroristic Taliban have acquired an 'overwhelming amount of potential weaponry,' global security expert says. Taliban terrorist Afghan group that rules the country now warns there will be 'consequences' if US and allies do not meet August 31 deadline
The CI-Gay drug lord director who knew about the pedophile Epstein and bacha bazi now arrives with bags of cash and secretly met Taliban leader in Kabul amid frantic evacuation efforts?
Collapse in Afghanistan
https://www.worldaffairsboard.com/forum/international-defense-geopolit
ics-discussion/central-and-south-asia/operation-enduring-freedom-and-af-pak/1575222-collapse-in-afghanistan/page12
' Biden is getting punked. With thousands of people trapped and potential hostages the Taliban feels able to make demands of the US.
Hijack? Ukrainian foreign ministry claimed the plane they sent for evacuation was "stolen" and used to transport unknown people to Iran. Then changed the report and they refuted their own statement.
https://www.india.com/news/world/ukrainian-evacuation-plane-hijack-liv
e-updates-ukraine-flight-hijacked-from-afghanistan-hijacked-and-diverted-to-iran-reports-amid-taliban-promises-kabul-takeover-4909327/
Taliban warn of 'consequences'
US Surgeon General goes full Commie Sharia Law says there’s “not nearly enough” social media censorship
https://www.city-data.com/forum/politics-other-controversies/3297077-u
s-surgeon-general-says-there-s.html
So the taliban is making the rules now
https://www.usmessageboard.com/threads/so-the-taliban-is-making-the-ru
les-now.915476/
,
Taliban says it won't allow Afghans to reach Kabul airport as UN warns of 'credible' reports of executions
https://www.businessinsider.com/taliban-says-it-wont-allow-afghans-to-
reach-kabul-airport-2021-8
,
U.S. evacuates 48,000 from Afghanistan as Taliban calls Aug. 31 withdrawal deadline ‘red line'
https://www.cnbc.com/2021/08/23/us-evacuates-37000-from-afghanistan-as
-taliban-calls-august-31-withdrawal-deadline-red-line.html
Canadian special forces operate outside walls of Kabul airport to rescue Afghan allies
https://www.ctvnews.ca/canada/canadian-special-forces-operate-outside-
walls-of-kabul-airport-to-rescue-afghan-allies-1.5557825
Taliban Expected To Hit Kabul Airbase Hard
https://rumble.com/vlmdz0-taliban-expected-to-hit-kabul-airbase-hard.h
tml
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I served in Afghanistan as a US Marine, twice. Here’s the truth in two sentences
By Lucas Kunce, Special to The Star Updated August 23, 2021 03:43 PM
https://amp.kansascity.com/opinion/readers-opinion/guest-commentary/ar
ticle253641358.html
What we are seeing in Afghanistan right now shouldn’t shock you. It only seems that way because our institutions are steeped in systematic dishonesty. It doesn’t require a dissertation to explain what you’re seeing. Just two sentences.
One: For 20 years, politicians, elites and D.C. military leaders lied to us about Afghanistan.
Two: What happened last week was inevitable, and anyone saying differently is still lying to you.
I know because I was there. Twice. On special operations task forces. I learned Pashto as a U.S. Marine captain and spoke to everyone I could there: everyday people, elites, allies and yes, even the Taliban.
The truth is that the Afghan National Security Forces was a jobs program for Afghans, propped up by U.S. taxpayer dollars — a military jobs program populated by nonmilitary people or “paper” forces (that didn’t really exist) and a bevy of elites grabbing what they could when they could.
You probably didn’t know that. That’s the point.
And it wasn’t just in Afghanistan. They also lied about Iraq.
I led a team of Marines training Iraqi security forces to defend their country. When I arrived I received a “stoplight” chart on their supposed capabilities in dozens of missions and responsibilities. Green meant they were good. Yellow was needed improvement; red said they couldn’t do it at all.
I was delighted to see how far along they were on paper — until I actually began working with them. I attempted to adjust the charts to reflect reality and was quickly shut down. The ratings could not go down. That was the deal. It was the kind of lie that kept the war going.
So when people ask me if we made the right call getting out of Afghanistan in 2021, I answer truthfully: Absolutely not. The right call was getting out in 2002. 2003. Every year we didn’t get out was another year the Taliban used to refine their skills and tactics against us — the best fighting force in the world. After two decades, $2 trillion and nearly 2,500 American lives lost, 2021 was way too late to make the right call.
You’d think when it all came crumbling down around them, they’d accept the truth. Think again.
War-hungry hawks are suggesting our soldiers weren’t in harm’s way. Well, when I was there, two incredible Marines in my unit were killed.
Elitist hacks are even blaming the American people for what happened last week. The same American people that they spent years lying to about Afghanistan. Are you kidding me?
We deserve better. Instead of politicians spending $6.4 trillion to “nation build” in the Middle East, we should start nation building right here at home.
I can’t believe that would be a controversial proposal, but already in Washington, we see some of the same architects of these Middle Eastern disasters balking at the idea of investing a fraction of that amount to build up our own country.
The lies about Afghanistan matter not just because of the money spent or the lives lost, but because they are representative of a systematic dishonesty that is destroying our country from the inside out.
Remember when they told us the economy was back? Another lie.
Our state of Missouri was home to the worst economic recovery from the Great Recession in this part of the country. I see the boarded-up stores and the vacant lots — one of which used to be my family’s home. When our country’s elites were preaching about how they had solved the financial crisis and the housing market was booming, I watched the house I joined the Marine Corps out of sit on the market for two years. My dad finally got $43,000 for it. He owed $78,000.
The only way out is to level with the American people. I’ll start. With the two-sentence truth about what we are seeing in Afghanistan right now:
For 20 years, politicians, elites and D.C. military lea
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Why the Afghan Army didn't fight:
The Pentagon's Shocking Cover-Up Of The Afghan National Military Hospital Scandal
While Afghan patients at the U.S. military's "crown jewel" medical facility in Kabul lived in horrific conditions, American and Afghan commanders pushed a relentless public relations campaign to make it look like a success. Warning: Extremely graphic photos of wounds.
https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/mhastings/exclusive-the-pentagons
-shocking-cover-up-of-the
Horror at Kabul's military hospital
"If this government can't fulfill its responsibilities, someone else needs to take over. People have had enough of this situation."
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-39309469
The original Wall Street Journal article found that patients at Dawood Hospital routinely died from malnourishment and routine infections resulting from intentional neglect by hospital staff. In some instances, the staff refused to treat patients who were not from their own tribe or whose families could not pay gratuities in exchange for their care even though the staffs salaries are fully funded by the U.S. taxpayer. The congressional investigation later revealed that U.S. Army Lt. Gen. William Caldwell knew about the inhumane conditions of patients at the hospital but actively tried to prevent an investigation for personal political reasons.
https://issuu.com/khalilnouira9766/docs/combinepdf
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two
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Quote:
Originally posted by second:
I served in Afghanistan as a US Marine, twice. Here’s the truth in two sentences
Followed by 20 paragraphs that nobody here read.
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So hubby and I were noodling on the Taliban victory in Aghanistan, and what it means for other nations/movements besides the USA, Afghanistan, China, Russia, Pakistan and Iran.
I read two articles recently, one a speech by Hezbollah's Secretary General Nasrallah, a Lebanese Shia movement. You may not recall, but Hezbollah shocked Israel by successfully defending against (yet another) Israeli invasion into Lebanon (2006). Lebanon is in the midst of a current financial, political and economic implosion. Nasrallah used the Taliban's victory as an oppty to rally the troops in Lebanon. There was a similar article written by I forget who, but he is an anti-establishment, anti-political-correctness agitator who ALSO used the Taliban's victory as an oppty to encourage the secession movement in the USA.
OTOH, Taiwan, Ukraine, and other marginal client states of the USA would see this as aa warning.
More interestingly, the Brits did their level-best to agitate the USA to stay in Afghaninstan and are going to engage in some political theater at the G7 to get the EU to scold Biden for not "staying the course".
Different nations have different interests to do this. There is a huge opium trade from Afghanistan thru various pathways to Europe, and much money-laundering by London (and possible German) banks. And since this was so very, very lucrative, nobody wants to see the party end, especially since Uncle Sam is paying for it. Biden* is taking a shellacking from our erstwhile allies about this,.
Yanno, I was alwaya under the assumption that Biden* was a tool of the CIA/drugsmuggling/banking/MIC/security (deep) state. But hearing the howls of outrage from neocons, "liberal" interventionists, and foreign militaries, I'm beginning to wonder whether this is true.
SOMEbody had to make the decision to cut and run, and it wasn't all of those interested parties making beaucoup bucks in Afghanistan, but someone with an eye on reality and the USA's interests at heart. I still think Biden* is a useful dupe: whoever is writing his script is going to throw him under the bus when they need to. And, unlike Trump, he is far far easier to get rid of; on health reasons if nothing else. It's elder abuse, right ut in the open.
But there is, I think, a previously unknown coalition pulling Biden's strings. I wonder who that is.
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Pity would be no more,
If we did not MAKE men poor - William Blake
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My speculation is that the withdrawal was contrary to the MIC/ spook agency arms of the Deep State. There was some criticism of Biden*, that he failed to coordinate with the military, which was how it all turned into such a cluster. But it occurred to me that Trump DID coordinate with the military when it came to getting out of Syria, and look what they did to him. Trump's statement 'it's all about the oil' was, I believe, some butt-covering maneuver-after-the-fact of the military's/ covert ops' failure to actually withdraw from Syria.
Anyway, I'm curious to see how this all plays out. As I think could apply from the past, Katrina and Fukushima were big, highly visible events. And it would have been really obvious if the media failed to give them their due. (What was striking to me however, was how thoroughly coverage was turned off after a few weeks, even though the crises were still on going.) So is the fall of Pakistan, even though it was, I believe, in the cards from day 1. So the media pretty much HAS to cover it. And it HAS to acknowledge what a mess things are. That's a given. What I think will be instructive is if/ when the media cuts Afghanistan coverage off.
If the media keeps harping on the w/drawal the way it endlessly harped(s) about RUSSIA!!! RUSSIA!!! RUSSIA!!! then I'll think the Deep State is in control on that issue.
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Not so wise Eisenhower was ready to drop A-bombs on the Middle East just because he had bombs
While President Biden defended his decision to withdraw from Afghanistan by noting that “nation building” was never on the U.S. agenda for the region, the genesis of U.S. military invasions in the Middle East demonstrates that empire building was part of U.S. campaigns from the very beginning.
These campaigns did not begin with Afghanistan, Iraq or Kuwait. Instead, the era launched on July 14, 1958, when 2,000 U.S. Marines landed in coastal Lebanon. Authorized by President Dwight D. Eisenhower, Operation Blue Bat brought 14,000 U.S. forces to Lebanon to support pro-Western President Camille Chamoun amid civil unrest that imperiled his reelection (a reelection unconstitutional under Lebanese law). While the CIA had long interfered in regional politics and the United States held several air bases in the Middle East, the invasion marked the first time that U.S. forces were openly deployed for combat there. As historian Bruce Riedel suggests, this mission set out a pattern for interventionism that the United States would repeat again and again in the decades to come.
In 1957, Eisenhower had laid out a new Cold War doctrine, which aimed to keep communism out of the strategically crucial Middle East. The president noted that if the region’s oil supply fell into Soviet hands, this would “strangulate” the economies of Europe and Asia. Moreover, the “national integrity of other free nations” was “directly related to our own security.” These imperatives justified U.S. intervention should nations in the Middle East request American assistance. The president also secured $200 million per fiscal year for discretionary use in the region.
Eisenhower sent James Richards, special envoy to the Middle East, to sell his doctrine around the region, but Richards had little success. By October 1957, the London Times noted that Lebanon was now “the only Arab country to support” the Eisenhower Doctrine — and even that was a stretch. Only Chamoun’s unpopular pro-American government was on board, with Pan-Arabists and Muslim groups backed by Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser vehemently opposed.
Eisenhower instructed the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Nathan Twining, to be prepared to employ “whatever means necessary” to ensure a favorable outcome to the crisis — and according to Riedel, that included preparing nuclear weapons for deployment.
The United States’ adversaries read the situation correctly: Chinese newspaper PLA cautioned that “the U.S. openly threatened to carry out atomic warfare in Lebanon,” while Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev declined a call for aid from anti-government factions because the Soviet Union was “not ready for World War III.”
More at https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/opinions-afghanistan-s-collapse-e
xposes-the-truth-about-u-s-military-invasions-in-the-region/ar-AANJ55P
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two
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Quote:That's an interesting thought, that the media is under the control of one part of the deep state but not another part.
Originally posted by 1KIKI:
My speculation is that the withdrawal was contrary to the MIC/ spook agency arms of the Deep State. There was some criticism of Biden*, that he failed to coordinate with the military, which was how it all turned into such a cluster. But it occurred to me that Trump DID coordinate with the military when it came to getting out of Syria, and look what they did to him. Trump's statement 'it's all about the oil' was, I believe, some butt-covering maneuver-after-the-fact of the military's/ covert ops' failure to actually withdraw from Syria.
Anyway, I'm curious to see how this all plays out. As I think could apply from the past, Katrina and Fukushima were big, highly visible events. And it would have been really obvious if the media failed to give them their due. (What was striking to me however, was how thoroughly coverage was turned off after a few weeks, even though the crises were still on going.) So is the fall of Pakistan, even though it was, I believe, in the cards from day 1. So the media pretty much HAS to cover it. And it HAS to acknowledge what a mess things are. That's a given. What I think will be instructive is if/ when the media cuts Afghanistan coverage off.
If the media keeps harping on the w/drawal the way it endlessly harped(s) about RUSSIA!!! RUSSIA!!! RUSSIA!!! then I'll think the Deep State is in control on that issue.
FWIW I've still been trying to make sense of the panicked abadonment of Bagram, and I can only tie it to the CIA's drug trade: the Taliban were closing in, the CIA had bales of opium and/or purification equipment at Bagram and needed to scramble out ASAP. They needed the military for a big airlift and the military said "nuh-uh, not without our troops. we're not going to leave them holding your bag" so everyone jammed onboard post-haste and it was a rout. No time to get a consensus from "allies and partners" who were prolly informed while planes were in air.
Keep in mind that Afghaninstan was producing somewhere in the realm of 80-95% of world opium: not an insignificant amount!
So if anyone is pissed about anything, it's the sudden collapse of their revenue stream without forewarning from the spooks, who are supposed to keep them informed of such upcoming events.
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Pity would be no more,
If we did not MAKE men poor - William Blake
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Oh, and further speculating tha the CIA may have already had a chance to find alternate funding ... in that four trillion dollar spending plan, it would be so easy to siphon money off to black ops. But other nations with their own spook agencies (looking at YOU, MI6!) and illicit money-laundering activities (for which British banks are so famous)
What I find interesting is that if you attempt to "follow the money" - as I did- associated with Afghaninstan's prodigious opium production, you get *crickets*. Drug money from MEXICO? Yep! HSBC got nailed with it! Asset stripping from former Soviet states? Yep! Danske Bank got nailed with that, too! Cayman Islands, Deutschbank, the Channel banks ... even UBS and Wachovia have been implicated in dodgy business from everywhere around the world EXCEPT Afghanistan.
Curious. All that money just ... disappears.
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Pity would be no more,
If we did not MAKE men poor - William Blake
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Ivo Daalder© @lvoHDaalder tweeted:
There's a big fallacy behind the criticism of Biden's decision to withdraw from Afghanistan—which is that the alternative to withdrawal was the status quo (as McConnell and other critics maintain). That's simply wrong.
Before Biden’s “reckless decision to leave,” McConnell said, “we only had 2,500 troops there. We hadn’t lost a single American person, military personnel in a year. The Taliban, the barbarians, were not in charge of the country. We were keeping the lid on. And al-Qaida was not there.”
The situation McConnell describes, of a stable Afghanistan maintained by 2,500 troops and no US casualties in a year, was about to change as a result of the February 2020 agreement between Trump and the Taliban.
Under that agreement, the Taliban agreed not to attack US forces so long as those troops (and all civilian contractors) left by May 1. In the intervening months, the Taliban had strengthened its position (in part because Trump had forced the Afghans to release 5,000 Taliban.
So when Biden came to office, the Taliban was at its strongest since its defeat in 2001 and US and NATO forces were slated to leave Afghanistan in 3 months. The Taliban had been degrading Afghan forces and preparing a major offensive after foreign troops had been withdrawn.
If Biden had reneged on the Trump deal, the Taliban would've resumed attacking US forces from a position of strength. To continue to support the Afghan government and security forces, the US would therefore have had to increase its military presence significantly.
So the choice facing Biden wasn't between withdrawal or an ideal status quo of keeping a few thousand troops who had suffered no casualties, as the critics maintain. It was between withdrawal or a major surge of troops to fight a strengthened Taliban.
Given that Biden had opposed the Obama surge in 2009 because he didn't think sending more troops would bring stability, let alone transform Afghanistan into a viable democracies, no one should have been surprised that he opted for withdrawal.
While Biden owns the consequence of his decision, which are now playing out, his critics should own up to the fact that the real alternative would have been a major escalation of a war that most Americans had long come to oppose.
To govern is to choose, as they say. Let's not pretend that the choice Biden and the government faced in Afghanistan was an easy one.
5:28 PM · Aug 24, 2021·Twitter Web App
https://twitter.com/IvoHDaalder/status/1430296057083318273
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two
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Quote:When I think about it, the MIC/ spook agency arm of the Deep State is running the US military, covert ops, and foreign policy. Neither the President nor the Congress is in control of those. But that Deep State arm isn't running the US economy (not directly, even though the collective bloated budget does swing the US economy indirectly).
That's an interesting thought, that the media is under the control of one part of the deep state but not another part.
How much the 'think tank' arm of the Deep State is running the MIC/ spook agency arm I have no guess. But clearly the MIC/ spook agency arm has a self-serving (self-funded) agenda of its own, which it pursues, no matter what the President might order (as, say, commander-in-chief) or the Congress might say (per the budget).
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Quote:So, what is (are) the OTHER part(s) of the deep state?
SIGNY: That's an interesting thought, that the media is under the control of one part of the deep state but not another part.
KIKI: When I think about it, the MIC/ spook agency arm of the Deep State is running the US military, covert ops, and foreign policy. Neither the President nor the Congress is in control of those. But that Deep State arm isn't running the US economy (not directly, even though the collective bloated budget does swing the US economy indirectly).
How much the 'think tank' arm of the Deep State is running the MIC/ spook agency arm I have no guess. But clearly the MIC/ spook agency arm has a self-serving (self-funded) agenda of its own, which it pursues, no matter what the President might order (as, say, commander-in-chief) or the Congress might say (per the budget).
Just noodling about which parts I've observed working together and which partwork separately or (potentially) at cross-puposes...
The two agencies that I think work together most closely are the CIA and State Department. Embassies in foreign countries are natural covers for gathering foreign intelligence. No need to set up fake companies and fake identities (journalists, import/export, telecom etc) I have been told - and it makes sense- that many embassy staff are dual employees of both State and CIA. So the driver is CIA and the secretary is CIA etc. AFA the ambassadors themselves, most of them are appointed as political favors and have no clue about what's going on around them. But in sensitive embassies ... such as Ukraine, Libya, Iran, Georgia etc ... the ambassadors are fully "read into" CIA ops, whether it's gun running or regime change or what-have-you, and actively participate. The CIA gets some of its harebrained ideas from abroad (PNAC, written largely by Israel; Iraq/WMD and Trump/Russia from MI6) which overlaps with "thinktankistan".
Another cooperative arrangement is between the CIA and FBI/DOJ. We could see that in the flow of "Trump/Russia" from Hillary to the UK operatives back to the CIA, FBI/DOJ which launched a politically-motivated persecution of Trump. So while the CIA does "ops" abroad, the FBI does "ops" here. And the "leaks" (fabricated allegation) came mstly thru State Dept and FBI employees.
A less-comfortable fit is the formal military v the CIA. At the beginning of our regime change effort in Syria, Obama put the military and CIA into something of a horse race: The military was to train "moderate rebels" in Jordan while the CIA (and Saudi Arabia) were to fund jihadists covertly. The training mission was a dbacle (much like Afghanistan but on a smaller scale); the trainees took their training and weaponry over to the jihadist side, leaving a tiny group of USA loyalists. It was widely criticized in the paper: four million dollars to train one soldier! (or words to that effect) and quietly shelved.
But in Afghanistan, the CIA needed the military to protect its blacksites and convert Afghanistan into a narco-state. The only way I can imagine that happening is direct payoffs to the involved ranking military. Also, the CIA eventually shared its secret drone program with the Pentagon, altho the Pentagon was also committed to secrecy. Also, the DIA has its own mission: to collect intelligence for the successful prosecution of a war. So altho the military has been jammed together with the CIA for some operation, I think the fit isn't a comfortable one.
The NSA does sigint. In the RUSSIADIDIT! statement about the "hacking"of the DNC server, the NSA demurred, allowing only "moderate" confidence.
ANOTHER tail that wags the dog are large financial interests. Since the USA does't have much of a production economy, what we have is financialists and financialism. Our financial system is based on the petrodollar, which banks are anxious to protect in direct relation to how many petrodllars/treasuries
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I heard last week a report that Justin Trudeau was satisfied by talking with Hilliary in regards to strategy in Afghanistan.
Why on earth is Hilliary speaking for America about foreign affairs and war? Sounds like Joe is not answering the phone.
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Maybe Hillary finally got tired of having to wash her arm past the elbow when she pulled it out of Joe*'s ass at the end of every day they bring him out in public.
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Vaccinated People: "You need to get muh vaccination shots that don't work because I got muh vaccination shots that don't work and I'm afraid of people that didn't get muh vaccination shots that don't work because muh vaccination shots that don't work don't work."
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There are an estimated 150 American citizens left in Afghanistan whom the United States need to get to the airport, according to a source familiar with the situation.
The source said the estimate is the number known to need assistance to reach the airport as of 8 a.m. local time on Thursday morning.
They added that since midnight local time, 200 had been evacuated to the base and flown out. This brings the total US citizens evacuated since August 14 to 4,700, the source added.
https://www.cnn.com/world/live-news/afghanistan-news-taliban-refugees-
08-26-21-intl/h_ff5624d84cb5b1bca8f6e75e2cbc9600
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two
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Quote:Signym, you sound exactly like someone raised on Marxism, always predicting the impending collapse of America. Are you sure you are not a Russian troll? By the way, about the "production" economy:
Originally posted by SIGNYM:
Since the USA does't have much of a production economy, what we have is financialists and financialism. Our financial system is based on the petrodollar, which banks are anxious to protect in direct relation to how many petrodllars/treasuries they old in reserve. The banks of course want their share of the drug money too.
So overall I think the BIGGEST split is actually between the CIA and Pentagon.
I'll give it some more thought.
https://fred.stlouisfed.org/graph/?g=Gma1
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two
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Quote:
SEONDRATE*: Signym, you sound exactly like someone raised on Marxism, always predicting the impending collapse of America. Are you sure you are not a Russian troll?
*If you can stoop AGAIN to libelling me as a Russian troll, I can once again call you SECONDRATE
And if USA manufacturing is so hot, then why is our trade deficit with China (a manufacturing nation) so high?
-----------
Pity would be no more,
If we did not MAKE men poor - William Blake
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Pompeo met with the Taliban in February 2020 at the signing of a withdrawal agreement with the U.S. in Doha. A picture of him from that moment, standing alongside Taliban co-founder Abdul Ghani Baradar, has circulated widely online in the last week. It’s the type of image that could dot and complicate future election bids, should he choose to make one.
The negotiations Pompeo helped conduct as secretary of State resulted in a four-part withdrawal deal with the Taliban that committed the U.S. to a phased, conditions-based removal of all troops in a 14-month period (ending May 1, 2021). The U.S. called on the Taliban to cut ties with the terrorist organization al-Qaeda and refrain from any threats to the U.S. or allies, but it also made concessions, like the release of 5,000 combat and political Taliban prisoners and a review of sanctions against the organization. The Afghan government was not involved in the negotiations, a move that critics say undermined the country’s leadership and legitimacy.
"Our secretary of State signed a surrender agreement with the Taliban," Trump national security adviser H.R. McMaster said of Pompeo on a podcast with Bari Weiss. "This collapse goes back to the capitulation agreement of 2020. The Taliban didn't defeat us. We defeated ourselves."
Those close to Pompeo say he recognized early on that a withdrawal deal could be a political quagmire but that he followed President Donald Trump’s order to get American troops out of Afghanistan immediately.
“He alluded to the fact that he understood he could potentially pay a political price in the future for doing this but in his mind, this is what the president ordered him to do, so he had to get the best deal possible and have the most caveats to keep people there if we need to,” said a former Trump State Department official.
https://www.politico.com/news/2021/08/26/mike-pompeo-afghanistan-colla
pse-506927
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two
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Quote:By the way, you never stopped calling me that.
Originally posted by SIGNYM:
https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/VAPGDPMA
*If you can stoop AGAIN to libelling me as a Russian troll, I can once again call you SECONDRATE
Same graph, but looking at the Trump years. Unless America wants to be covered in junk cars, old tires and household waste, production will have to level off. If production keeps rising, the piles of trash, air and water pollution keep rising.
https://fred.stlouisfed.org/graph/?g=Gmep
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two
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Signy - just a comment. Do you see where Obama made things better for US manufacturing?
Yeah, neither do I.
/snicker
Quote:
Originally posted by SIGNYM:
now back to the regularly scheduled programming
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Quote:Snicker all you want, but laughing shows you never will understand that there has never been a factory built anywhere in the world to create employment, no more than there has ever been a factory built to create water and air pollution. Employment and pollution and fuel and material and all other costs have always and everywhere been things to be minimized or even eliminated. Yes, you and politicians can talk about "employment opportunities" at factories as much as you please, but that is not what a factory is for, because if it was then every factory-owner would be striving to make work more labor intensive rather than less. You will never see (in the real world) that intention to make more man-hours of work by making the factory less efficient.
Originally posted by 1KIKI:
Signy - just a comment. Do you see where Obama made things better for US manufacturing?
Yeah, neither do I.
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two
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Quote:Well, actually not true.
KIKI: Signy - just a comment. Do you see where Obama made things better for US manufacturing? Yeah, neither do I.
SECONDRATE: Snicker all you want, but laughing shows you never will understand that there has never been a factory built anywhere in the world to create employment,
I know, from someone who went to China every few years, that when an American company built a factory in China, the Chinese government would ask the manager "How many people will it take to tun this factory?" and if the answer was "100" the Chinese government would say "Then you will hire 300".
And if you look at how the Chinese repair a road, it isn't with five people, an asphalt truck but a bunch of people with wheelbarrows and a steamroller.
The Chinese government - unlike the USA government - knows that people without meaningful jobs are a security threat to the nation.
ANY nation. Including ours.
OH BTW I DID stop calling you SECONDRATE for a month or so, but since you continued with the Russian troll name-calling, I feel free to return the favor. And, I know that YOU know that I'm not Russian, or a troll, so you're just lying maliciously.
-----------
Pity would be no more,
If we did not MAKE men poor - William Blake
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Quote:Your "someone" didn't know that China was trying to move people out of agriculture and into better jobs. But now China doesn't overload factories with superfluous employees because China is short of workers:
Originally posted by SIGNYM:Quote:Well, actually not true.
KIKI: Signy - just a comment. Do you see where Obama made things better for US manufacturing? Yeah, neither do I.
SECONDRATE: Snicker all you want, but laughing shows you never will understand that there has never been a factory built anywhere in the world to create employment,
I know, from someone who went to China every few years, that when an American company built a factory in China, the Chinese government would ask the manager "How many people will it take to tun this factory?" and if the answer was "100" the Chinese government would say "Then you will hire 300". . . .
China’s factories automate as worker shortage looms
https://www.cnbc.com/2021/04/09/chinas-factories-automate-as-worker-sh
ortage-looms.html
China reports a growing shortage of factory workers
https://www.cnbc.com/2021/01/27/china-reports-a-growing-shortage-of-fa
ctory-workers.html
Look at America, rather than China, then ask yourself 'How can farm employment be going down when Americans are too fat?'
https://fred.stlouisfed.org/graph/?g=Gmm4
Much the same as manufacturing, farm employment in the Western World has been crashing toward zero for centuries because more farmers doesn't mean more food. More food comes from more land and better weather, two thing we will be running short of if climate change continues.
https://ourworldindata.org/employment-in-agriculture
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two
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So, SECOND, it sounds like you're conceding both of your points
a) That USA manufacturing is robust and
b) That the ONLY driver of manufacturing policy is cutting costs by reducing labor
Anyway, this is far off-topic.
Back to our regularly scheduled discussion.
-----------
Pity would be no more,
If we did not MAKE men poor - William Blake
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Quote:Except in countries confused by Marxism, the ONLY driver of factory owners is money; cutting costs is about money and labor is just one of many costs to be cut. Government and unions get involved in costs when they make demands about minimum wages and maximum hours and staff levels, but neither are making significant demands on factory owners in America.
Originally posted by SIGNYM:
So, SECOND, it sounds like you're conceding both of your points
a) That USA manufacturing is robust and
b) That the ONLY driver of manufacturing policy is cutting costs by reducing labor
Anyway, this is far off-topic.
Back to our regularly scheduled discussion.
Government can get factory owners to jump high and do what government wants in a very straight forward fashion if government pays money directly to the factory owners. How often does that happen? Not often, except during war. Most of the time, government doesn't want to pay directly, so it does indirect and silly things like stop taxing factory owners to get them to build a factory in a particular state or government will impose tariffs on US citizens (all while falsely saying the Chinese are paying the tariffs) in order to persuade factory owners to build a factory. If there was no China, factory employment, following the same path as farm employment, would still be decreasing. China is just another of many ways for American factory owners to make more money by lower costs.
What does this have to do with Afghanistan? Everything to do because it is about how Americans have enormous mental confusion about nearly every subject that involves math, be it money, time, schedules, quantities, prices, you name it, it can be completely misunderstood if there are numbers involved. It is NOT off topic at all because it is about the fact that most Americans can't understand the simplest arithmetic. Oh! For sure they think they can, but their results prove they can't. What's even funnier, they can't improve their understanding of subject matter that they are absolutely certain they already completely understand. And Afghanistan involves a great deal of arithmetic that Americans will never actually sit down and shut up and learn the numbers. For example:
Quote:https://jabberwocking.com/how-many-afghans-are-left-to-be-evacuated-fr
the NY Times, using numbers from the Association of Wartime Allies, claims that there were more than 300,000 Afghans who assisted us during our 20-year war and deserve our help in being evacuated. Of these, about 250,000 remain and still need to be airlifted out.
Maybe so, but I'd take this with a grain of salt. The AWA has been pushing this number for months, but as near as I can tell they're the only ones. As you can imagine, it's a very difficult number to estimate, which means that it's easy to produce nearly any figure you want. The AWA may be right, but other estimates I've seen seem to hover around 80-100,000, of which we've already evacuated about 60,000 or so. If that estimate is correct, it means we have 20-40,000 Afghans left to evacuate.
Obviously I don't have any independent way to estimate these numbers myself. I just want to point out that the AWA has been alone in its estimate for months, and the fact that the Times has finally decided to write a story about them doesn't make their estimate any more (or less) credible than it's ever been.
om-kabul/
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two
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Quote:I think different parts of the Deep State plug their propaganda through m$m at different times, depending on the topic.
Originally posted by SIGNYM:
That's an interesting thought, that the media is under the control of one part of the deep state but not another part.
Quote:I definitely think that the CIA/ State Dept are meshed together as well. They're virtually the same thing with State being installed by willing presidents - like Obama - to carry out foreign policy not in the interests of the US. And that goes back to even before Kennedy.
So, what is (are) the OTHER part(s) of the deep state?
Just noodling about which parts I've observed working together and which parts work separately or (potentially) at cross-purposes...
The two agencies that I think work together most closely are the CIA and State Department. Embassies in foreign countries are natural covers for gathering foreign intelligence. No need to set up fake companies and fake identities (journalists, import/export, telecom etc) I have been told -and it makes sense- that many embassy staff are dual employees of both State and CIA. So the driver is CIA and the secretary is CIA etc. AFA the ambassadors themselves, most of them are appointed as political favors and have no clue about what's going on around them. But in sensitive embassies ... such as Ukraine, Libya, Iran, Georgia etc ... the ambassadors are fully "read into" CIA ops, whether it's gun running or regime change or what-have-you, and actively participate.
Quote:Who knows where the CIA got some of its harebrained ideas from in its long and sordid history of creating and/or aiding coups in countries around the globe:
The CIA gets some of its harebrained ideas from abroad (PNAC, written largely by Israel; Iraq/WMD and Trump/Russia from MI6) which overlaps with "thinktankistan".
Syria 1949 Shukri al-Quwatli
Iran 1953 Mohammad Mossadegh
Guatemala 1954 Arbenz (that idea apparently came from Eisenhower)
Indonesia 1958 Sukarno
Cuba (Bay of Pigs) 1961 (not successful)
Dominican Republic 1961 Trujillo
Vietnam https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cable_243, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1963_South_Vietnamese_coup, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arrest_and_assassination_of_Ngo_Dinh_Die
m
Chile 1973 Allende (on orders from Nixon)
...
Philippines Marcos 1986
Haiti Aristide 1991
...
Obviously at some point the US started doing the substantial bidding of the British/ Israeli arm of the Deep State, especially when it came to the Middle East and Russia.
Quote:
Another cooperative arrangement is between the CIA and FBI/DOJ. We could see that in the flow of "Trump/Russia" from Hillary to the UK operatives back to the CIA, FBI/DOJ which launched a politically-motivated persecution of Trump. So while the CIA does "ops" abroad, the FBI does "ops" here. And the "leaks" (fabricated allegation) came mostly thru State Dept and FBI employees.
Quote:And yet, when you look at the US military around the globe, wherever it's found - whether Somalia or Syria or elsewhere - you find the CIA.
A less-comfortable fit is the formal military v the CIA. At the beginning of our regime change effort in Syria, Obama put the military and CIA into something of a horse race: The military was to train "moderate rebels" in Jordan while the CIA (and Saudi Arabia) were to fund jihadists covertly. The training mission was a debacle (much like Afghanistan but on a smaller scale); the trainees took their training and weaponry over to the jihadist side, leaving a tiny group of USA loyalists. It was widely criticized in the paper: four million dollars to train one soldier! (or words to that effect) and quietly shelved.
Quote:
But in Afghanistan, the CIA needed the military to protect its blacksites and convert Afghanistan into a narco-state. The only way I can imagine that happening is direct payoffs to the involved ranking military. Also, the CIA eventually shared its secret drone program wi
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Quote:
Originally posted by 1KIKI:
Signy - just a comment. Do you see where Obama made things better for US manufacturing?
Yeah, neither do I.
Quote:
Originally posted by second:
Snicker all you want, but laughing shows you never will understand that there has never been a factory built anywhere in the world to create employment, no more than there has ever been a factory built to create water and air pollution. Employment and pollution and fuel and material and all other costs have always and everywhere been things to be minimized or even eliminated. Yes, you and politicians can talk about "employment opportunities" at factories as much as you please, but that is not what a factory is for, because if it was then every factory-owner would be striving to make work more labor intensive rather than less. You will never see (in the real world) that intention to make more man-hours of work by making the factory less efficient.
Well, then you agree with me ...
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... If democrats* don't do any different, how are they any better ?
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Old News from April 13, 2021:
President Biden will withdraw all American troops from Afghanistan over the coming months, U.S. officials said, completing the military exit by the 20th anniversary of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks that drew the United States into its longest war.
The decision, which Biden is expected to announce Wednesday, will keep thousands of U.S. forces in the country beyond the May 1 exit deadline that the Trump administration negotiated last year with the Taliban, according to a senior administration official who briefed reporters Tuesday under rules of anonymity set by the White House.
While the Taliban has promised to renew attacks on U.S. and NATO personnel if foreign troops are not out by the deadline — and said in a statement it would not continue to participate in “any conference” about Afghanistan’s future until all “foreign forces” have departed — it is not clear whether the militants will follow through with the earlier threats given Biden’s plan for a phased withdrawal between now and September. The Taliban has conducted sputtering talks with the Afghan government, begun under the Trump deal, since last fall. It was also invited to
an additional high-level inter-Afghan discussion in Turkey later this month.
Officially, there are 2,500 U.S. troops in Afghanistan, although the number fluctuates and is currently about 1,000 more than that. There are also up to an additional 7,000 foreign forces in the coalition there, the majority of them NATO troops.
Biden’s decision comes after an administration review of U.S. options in Afghanistan, where U.S.-midwifed peace talks have failed to advance as hoped and the Taliban remains a potent force despite two decades of effort by the United States to defeat the militants and establish stable, democratic governance. The war has cost trillions of dollars in addition to the lives of more than 2,000 U.S. service members. At least 100,000 Afghan civilians have been injured or killed.
“This is the immediate, practical reality that our policy review discovered,” said one person familiar with the closed-door deliberations who, like others, spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss policy planning. “If we break the May 1st deadline (which Biden did break) negotiated by the previous administration with no clear plan to exit, we will be back at war with the Taliban, and that was not something President Biden believed was in the national interest.” (The deadline was NOT for a plan by May 1st, but to have already left by May 1st.)
The goal is to move to “zero” troops by September, the senior administration official said. “This is not conditions-based. The president has judged that a conditions-based approach .?.?. is a recipe for staying in Afghanistan forever. He has reached the conclusion that the United States will complete its drawdown and will remove its forces from Afghanistan before September 11th.”
https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/biden-us-troop-withdr
awal-afghanistan/2021/04/13/918c3cae-9beb-11eb-8a83-3bc1fa69c2e8_story.html
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two
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Quote:I have NO IDEA what is going on inside your head that you bizarrely think I agree with. What the hell is happening in your ape brain? Are you thinking of bananas? Are you bananas? But I find the same with every person I know who approves of Trump (EXCEPT for rich Trump voters who voted for Trump to reduce their taxes and to hamstring the IRS, preventing it from collecting what taxes are owed. The rich Trump voters make sense. They knew Trump was a tax cheater, which is why they voted for him and is the main reason they are rich. They are not bananas. And they are the same people who build factories either in China or America based on how much money will be made, not on how many Americans or Chinese the factories will employ. )
Originally posted by 1KIKI:
Well, then you agree with me ...
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two
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For Two Decades, Americans Told One Lie After Another About What They Were Doing in Afghanistan
In the immediate aftermath of the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan in late 2001, U.S.-backed Afghan warlord Abdul Rashid Dostum’s forces murdered hundreds, perhaps thousands, of Taliban prisoners by jamming them into metal shipping containers and letting them suffocate. At the time, Dostum was on the CIA’s payroll and had been working with U.S. special forces to oust the Taliban from power.
The Bush administration blocked subsequent efforts to investigate the mass murder, even after the FBI interviewed witnesses among the surviving Afghans who had been moved to the U.S. prison in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, and after human rights officials publicly identified the mass grave site where Dostum’s forces had disposed of bodies. Later, President Barack Obama promised to investigate, and then took no action.
Instead, Hollywood stepped in and turned Dostum into a hero. The 2018 movie, “12 Strong,” a jingoistic account of the partnership between U.S. special forces and Dostum in the 2001 invasion, whitewashed Dostum — even as his crimes continued to pile up in the years after the prisoner massacre.
More at https://theintercept.com/2021/08/26/afghanistan-america-failures/
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two
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Why believe anything you hear about it now?
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Vaccinated People: "You need to get muh vaccination shots that don't work because I got muh vaccination shots that don't work and I'm afraid of people that didn't get muh vaccination shots that don't work because muh vaccination shots that don't work don't work."
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Quote:My grandmother believed the moon landings were fake and professional wrestling was real. She got pretty mixed-up about what to believe and what to disbelieve, but she was from Nebraska and voted for Republicans who confuse the difference between reality and unreality.
Originally posted by 6IXSTRINGJACK:
Why believe anything you hear about it now?
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two
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Quote:
1KIKI: Well, then you agree with me ...
SECOND: I have NO IDEA what is going on inside your head that you bizarrely think I agree with.
I thought it was pretty obvious ...
Quote:
Originally posted by 1KIKI:
Signy - just a comment. Do you see where Obama made things better for US manufacturing? Yeah, neither do I.
SECOND: Snicker all you want, but laughing shows you never will understand that there has never been a factory built anywhere in the world to create employment
So. Since "never" includes Obama's reign, you just agreed with KIKI that Obama didn't make things better for US manufacturing.
-----------
Pity would be no more,
If we did not MAKE men poor - William Blake
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Quote:
SIGNYM:
So, SECOND, it sounds like you're conceding both of your points
a) That USA manufacturing is robust and
b) That the ONLY driver of manufacturing policy is cutting costs by reducing labor
SECOND: Except in countries...
Sounds like you agree with me here, too. First you make a universal statement, and then when you get called on it you start clawing back rather significant exceptions.
-----------
Pity would be no more,
If we did not MAKE men poor - William Blake
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Quote:
Originally posted by second:Quote:My grandmother believed the moon landings were fake and professional wrestling was real. She got pretty mixed-up about what to believe and what to disbelieve, but she was from Nebraska and voted for Republicans who confuse the difference between reality and unreality.
Originally posted by 6IXSTRINGJACK:
Why believe anything you hear about it now?
I disagree that you can compare anything going on in Sandland to either WWF or the moon landing.
You're an idiot.
--------------------------------------------------
Vaccinated People: "You need to get muh vaccination shots that don't work because I got muh vaccination shots that don't work and I'm afraid of people that didn't get muh vaccination shots that don't work because muh vaccination shots that don't work don't work."
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Quote:Here is a Universal Statement: Congress has the power and Presidents don’t have the power to bring back factories from China to America. Congress can increase factory employment as much as is humanly possible. Never did Obama or Trump have that kind of power. FDR looked like he had such power, but that was because 74 Senators were Democrats and they permitted FDR to push around the richest American factory owners during WWII. The history of the Ford Motor Company during WWII is very instructive on how the government can bend the arm of a very rich man who absolutely doesn't want to cooperate with winning a war. There was also plenty of money involved to get the sullen cooperation of American factory owners.
Originally posted by SIGNYM:Quote:
SIGNYM:
So, SECOND, it sounds like you're conceding both of your points
a) That USA manufacturing is robust and
b) That the ONLY driver of manufacturing policy is cutting costs by reducing labor
SECOND: Except in countries...
Sounds like you agree with me here, too. First you make a universal statement, and then when you get called on it you start clawing back rather significant exceptions.
What happened to the super-majority in 1936 of 74 Senators? It steadily decreased year after year until 1946, when Republicans had a majority. This decrease certainly did not occur because things were going from bad to worse. Actual, things were getting better and better, but no Republican would believe it. Ex-President Herbert Hoover was flat out calling FDR a Commie during all those years.
You can trace how Americans can be stupid about letting the economically successful Democratic political party rule and replacing it with the economic ignoramuses of the GOP, who say the Democrats are Commies at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1936_United_States_Senate_elections
The voters believed that baldfaced lie about Democrats being Communists. The dumber voters still do believe it.
Here is another Universal Statement: Riches go to the quick. Troubles with staying in the middle class go to the slow and gullible, especially in America where anything that helps the slow is called Communism and anything that helps the quick is called Capitalism.
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two
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You're so delusional it's impossible to even have a conversation with you.
--------------------------------------------------
Vaccinated People: "You need to get muh vaccination shots that don't work because I got muh vaccination shots that don't work and I'm afraid of people that didn't get muh vaccination shots that don't work because muh vaccination shots that don't work don't work."
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Quote:Like you call ME a commie?
SIGNYM:
So, SECOND, it sounds like you're conceding both of your points
a) That USA manufacturing is robust and
b) That the ONLY driver of manufacturing policy is cutting costs by reducing labor
SECOND: Except in countries...
SIGNY: Sounds like you agree with me here, too. First you make a universal statement, and then when you get called on it you start clawing back rather significant exceptions.
SECOND: Ex-President Herbert Hoover was flat out calling FDR a Commie during all those years.
Quote:And the greedy. That IS the nature of capitalism, is it not?
SECOND: Here is another Universal Statement: Riches go to the quick.
Every man for himself, and God against all?
Devil take the hindmost?
The power to disposses others of their labor and their wealth?
Just OOC, SECOND, do you square your Christian ethics with your rentier capitalism by telling yourself "I pay my taxes"?
-----------
Pity would be no more,
If we did not MAKE men poor - William Blake
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I don't believe that Second has any Christian ethics.
He talks a lot about religion while arguing, but I think that's only because he's using it as a tool to try to win an argument.
It breaks his brain that I'm not a Republican. It's particularly evident when he starts "preaching" religion at me as if trying to catch me in some sort of hypocritical behavior because he assumes that I must be religious, as an extension of him assuming since I'm not a Democrat that I'm Republican.
That doesn't work though when I give it 50/50 that it's all fairy tales.
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Vaccinated People: "You need to get muh vaccination shots that don't work because I got muh vaccination shots that don't work and I'm afraid of people that didn't get muh vaccination shots that don't work because muh vaccination shots that don't work don't work."
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The other thing I find puzzling is his constant refrain about "struggling to remain in the middle class" like some sort of mantra.
Who is that aimed at?
And what is he trying to do?
It doesn't rattle MY cage, and I doubt it rattles yours, or anyone else's here.
-----------
Pity would be no more,
If we did not MAKE men poor - William Blake
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Quote:
Originally posted by SIGNYM:
The other thing I find puzzling is his constant refrain about "struggling to remain in the middle class" like some sort of mantra.
Who is that aimed at?
And what is he trying to do?
It doesn't rattle MY cage, and I doubt it rattles yours, or anyone else's here.
I have no clue who it's aimed at, although he seems to use it mostly when he's replying to me.
I think I've made it quite clear that I have no desire to ever live to the standards of any other person's perception of the status quo. And, unlike a majority of the "Middle Class", particularly those of my age and especially 10 years ago in only my very early 30's, I own my house free and clear without a single cent of debt to anybody, and I've only paid less than $125 of interest in my entire life.
I'm never worried about where my next meal is coming from, and the little free time I have these days leaves me with plenty of free entertainment off of my $20 per month internet connection.
--------------------------------------------------
Vaccinated People: "You need to get muh vaccination shots that don't work because I got muh vaccination shots that don't work and I'm afraid of people that didn't get muh vaccination shots that don't work because muh vaccination shots that don't work don't work."
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Why our generals were more successful in World War II than in Korea, Vietnam or Iraq/Afghanistan
John Dastoli comment:
My first advice from my company commander as a second lieutenant (1997) was that in order to have a successful career you had to avoid separating yourself from the herd. You have be in step with your commander and be well liked in your peer group. They tell you the opposite in OCS, Basic Officer Course, and Infantry Officers Course. But, when you get to the unit its all about not making waves and not standing out. If an officer has all average fitness reports he/she will make it to lieutenant colonel. But, if you are outstanding and have one bad fitness report you are done. It's not about succeeding, it is about not failing. Creativity, the biggest determiner of successful executives is killed in the junior ranks. Maintenance of predetermined procedures is emphasized. This is how you end up with managers and not leaders. You have a senior leadership that knows all the paperwork but cannot understand a problem and how to solve it.
Robert Shockley comment:
As someone who drove generals and colonels around Kuwait in 2005, I can tell you this guy is on the money. The only topics were on equipment and tactics. No discussion of strategy, or how turn the tide and actually win. Everything was geared towards do your time, get as few people killed as possible and go home. Really winning the war wasn't even mentioned.
You only need to read Lt.Col Hackworth’s “About Face” to see exactly where the problem lies.
Download the book from the mirrors at https://libgen.unblockit.ch/search.php?req=Hackworth+About+Face
https://www.amazon.com/About-Face-Odyssey-American-Warrior/dp/19821440
41/
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two
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In other words, the military became just another corrupt bureaucracy.
Quote:
Now, coming back to our topic, in 2021 the US truly inspires nobody. Absolutely nobody. That is a sad, but undeniable fact. And that is the main reason why Kabul fell so fast: the “defenses” of Kabul were like the fists of a man with advanced osteoporosis – they lacked a crucial element: faith. No matter how good, effective or otherwise powerful those “fists” really were, or thought/pretended to be, it made no difference: one crucial element was missing and that decided it all.- The Saker
-----------
Pity would be no more,
If we did not MAKE men poor - William Blake
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Quote:Wrong, again, Signym. You always turn everything into a worthless abstraction that explains nothing. What happens inside the U.S. military is not bloodless and abstract. A typical American with one gun and box of ammo might shot to death a paper target or might even do something useful, such as kill a deer. Typical American Generals are acting just the same as typical Americans: thrill-seeking and stupid, but unlike typical Americans, the U.S. Government gave these patriotically thrill-seeking and revengeful Generals control of vast amounts of ammo, weapons, and soldiers. Unsurprisingly, a great deal of carnage follows, and not all of it as useful as killing a deer. For example, from the Afghanistan and yesterday:
Originally posted by SIGNYM:
In other words, the military became just another corrupt bureaucracy.
Afghanistan drone strike targeted Islamic State ‘planner’ in car, US says
US says there were no known civilian casualties but community elder claims women and children among victims. “Women and children are among the victims,” said Malik Adib, though he did not have information about their identity.
There is no indication that the target of the drone was involved in Thursday’s blast, which killed around 180 people, including 13 US marines.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/aug/28/afghanistan-drone-strike
-targeted-islamic-state-planner-in-car-us-says
Signym, you know Biden is not capable of coming up with such stupid-ass plan as a revenge killing that also murders a bunch of Afghan civilians, but American Generals did this. Those Generals are probably pretty excited and sexually pleased by the carnage. It was stupid for President Biden to allow his Generals to kill civilians for revenge against a suicide bomber who was already dead. But Biden was pleasing typical and stupid Americans who shoot at paper targets and want to kill again the already dead suicide bomber.
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two
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The White House @WhiteHouse tweeted:
Since August 14, the U.S. has evacuated and facilitated the evacuation of approximately 111,900 people. Since the end of July, we have re-located approximately 117,500 people.
9:22 AM · Aug 28, 2021·The White House
https://twitter.com/WhiteHouse/status/1431623172101754884
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two
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Donald Trump called into conservative talk radio host Hugh Hewitt's show on Thursday. Listen to the show:
https://hughhewitt.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/08/08-26hhs-trump.mp3
Hewitt asked Trump to describe his conversation with Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar, a Taliban co-founder and deputy leader, during his 2020 negotiations with the group to remove American troops from Afghanistan.
Hewitt: What did you communicate to Baradar, Mullah Baradar, Abdul Baradar who you talked to when you spoke to him? What did you tell him?
Trump: So I set up a conversation with him, and people said oh, you shouldn't be talking. Well, I set up a conversation with Kim Jong Un of North Korea. We didn't have a nuclear war. Had I not, then Obama would have been right. We would have had a nuclear war. President Obama said to me we're going to have a nuclear war with North Korea. I said have you ever spoken to him. He said no. And I said don't you think that might be a good idea. But anyway, I know he wanted to speak to him, but he never got to speak to him, and I think the other side didn't want to talk to Obama. So what happened is I spoke to the head of the, the known head, because it's...
Hewitt: Yeah, Baradar, right? Baradar.
Trump: Yeah, but I spoke to, and sort of the known head, but nobody was sure, but now I'm sure, and I was sure then when I was speaking to him. And I knew as soon as I spoke to him. And even the introduction, I say hello, and he screamed something very tough. And I then started with him. I said, listen, before we start the longtime conversation and conversations that we're going to have, I have to say one thing, and I'll never have to say it again to you. And here's what I say. If you do anything bad to the United States of America, if you do anything bad to any of our civilians, to any American citizen, or if you do anything out of the normal, you know, they've been fighting for a thousand years, but out of the normal, because you've had your wars, and if you do anything out of the normal, but anything bad to America or any American citizens, I will hit you harder than anybody has ever been hit in world history. You will be hit harder than any country and any person has ever been hit in world history. And we will start with the exact location and the exact town, and it's right here. And I believe I repeated the name of his town. That will be the first place that we start. And I won't be able to speak to you anymore after that, and isn't that a very sad thing? But that is the story. And then he asked me one question, and I'd rather not repeat that question, because it's a very scary question. But he asked me one question, and I gave him the answer yes. And then after it was all done, I said OK, now I've said what I'm going to say. Let's have a conversation. And I said we're going to be leaving after 21 years. And when we leave, you're going to leave us alone, and we're going to leave with great dignity and great honor. And we are going to take care of this situation. We're going to take our time. We had a date of May 1, but they missed a couple of conditions. We had some very strong conditions, Hugh. But they missed a couple of conditions. I wanted to be out by May 1. I had spoken to him quite a bit before May 1, but we had a condition of May 1. But they missed conditions, and so therefore, I bombed and we hit them very hard. And then we said we will agree to those conditions. I said no, you've already agreed to them. Don't play games. We had them so good. They weren't in Kabul. You take a look at when they started taking over Afghanistan. It's when I left. When I left, that's when it started, they started going wild, because they were dealing with another president. And I never realized, and of course I realized the importance and power of the presidency, but I never realized how important the office of the president is until this happened, because when I watched what happened over the l
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Once heralded as the Day that Changed Everything in America, 9/11 proved to be Groundhog Day as far as the war was concerned. After some 2,500 American casualties, at least 240,000 Afghan deaths, and 2 trillion taxpayers’ dollars, the Taliban is back in power just in time for our 20th-anniversary observances. This turn of events may be the most damning refutation yet of the short-lived 9/11 meme that “irony is dead.” Or the second-most damning: Many of the loudest voices in the media and in Washington decrying our inept and catastrophic exit — whether liberal or conservative, Democrat, Republican, or Never-Trump Republican — are the same voices that helped grease the skids for disaster in Afghanistan by promoting a second new war in Iraq on manufactured intelligence in the months after 9/11. They have major-media platforms but no shame or accountability. Those of them still in today’s GOP should in particular spare us the crocodile tears they are shedding for Afghan women and girls: There’s not a chance in hell that evacuated Muslim families will be welcome in MAGA’s backyards.
More at https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2021/08/9-11-america-terrorism-existen
tial-threat.html
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two
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It's too generous to say we "wasted" $2.26 trillion on the wars in Afghanistan.
The reality is, military contractors got rich off of those wars. We didn't just waste that money — we funneled it to the same people whose political donations will fund more pro-war candidates.
https://mobile.twitter.com/charlesmblow/status/1427796360393265158
War is an industry. Or, as Major General Smedley Butler said back in the 1930s, a racket.
https://fas.org/man/smedley.htm
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two
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How the US created a disaster in Afghanistan
The US government struggled to answer exactly why the military was there.
In the very beginning, the goal was relatively clear: to capture the perpetrator of the attacks, Osama bin Laden. But almost immediately, the goals became murkier and more complicated.
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two
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Seems like the Afghanistan disaster is being taken off the front page.
No more mention of the billions of dollars-worth of weaponry and equipment in Afghanistan... a post that was published by the Sunday Times of London.
https://fee.org/media/40233/graphic.jpeg
Quote:
The Times of London reports that the US simply abandoned a truly astounding arsenal of military equipment and weapons.
This reportedly includes up to
22,174 Humvee vehicles,
nearly 1,000 armored vehicles,
64,363 machine guns, and
42,000 pick-up trucks and SUVs.
358,530 assault rifles,
126,295 pistols,
nearly 200 artillery units
state-of-the-art military helicopters
warplanes,
other aircraft
...
night vision goggles,
body armor
And state-of-the-art Javelin anti-tank missiles
Quote:
“The Taliban now has more Black Hawk helicopters than 85% of the countries in the world,” Congressman Jim Banks, a veteran, lamented.
https://headlineusa.com/military-equipment-us-left-taliban/
There are a few reasons to leave this all behind:
1) The military was so intent on making things look like a "success" that they didn't want to take toys away from the Potemkin "Afghan Army"
2) Now the USA MIC gets to make MORE money by making replacements! AND
3) Russia won't be making any money selling arms to the Taliban bc, except for muntions, tha Taliban is armed for the foreseeable future!
-----------
Pity would be no more,
If we did not MAKE men poor - William Blake
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Yep, Biden* admin spox, Pentagon, etc are (finally) standing shoulder to shoulder and declaring this a "success" and therefore a "success" this will be.
Another "mission accomplished" moment!
-----------
Pity would be no more,
If we did not MAKE men poor - William Blake
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Quote:
Pepe Escobar posted with permission and first posted at Asia Times
The announcement by Taliban spokesman Zahibullah Mujahid in Kabul of the acting cabinet ministers in the new caretaker government of the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan already produced a big bang: it managed to enrage both woke NATOstan and the US Deep State.
This is an all-male, overwhelmingly Pashtun (there’s one Uzbek and one Tajik) cabinet essentially rewarding the Taliban old guard. All 33 appointees are Taliban members.
Acting PM
Mohammad Hasan Akhund – the head of the Taliban Rehbari Shura, or leadership council, for 20 years – will be the Acting Prime Minister. For all practical purposes, Akhund is branded a terrorist by the UN and the EU, and under sanctions by the UN Security Council. It’s no secret Washington brands some Taliban factions as Foreign Terrorist Organizations, and sanctions the whole of the Taliban as a “Specially Designated Global Terrorist” organization.
SPIRITUAL LEADER
It’s crucial to stress Himatullah Akhundzada, the Taliban Supreme Leader since 2016, is Amir al-Momineen (“Commander of the Faithful”). He can’t be a Prime Minister; his role is that of a supreme spiritual leader, setting the guidelines for the Islamic Emirate and mediating disputes – politics included.
Akhunzada has released a statement, noting that the new government “will work hard towards upholding Islamic rules and sharia law in the country” and will ensure “lasting peace, prosperity and development”. He added, “people should not try to leave the country”.
Spokesman Mujahid took pains to stress this new cabinet is just an “acting” government. This implies one of the next big steps will be to set up a new constitution. The Taliban will “try to take people from other parts of the country” – implying positions for women and Shi’ites may still be open, but not at top level.
DEPUTY PM
Taliban co-founder Abdul Ghani Baradar, who so far had been very busy diplomatically as the head of the political office in Doha, will be deputy Prime Minister. He was a Taliban co-founder in 1994 and close friend of Mullah Omar, who called him “Baradar” (“brother”) in the first place.
ACTING INTERIOR MINISTER
A predictable torrent of hysteria greeted the appointment of Sirajuddin Haqqani as Acting Minister of Interior. After all the son of Haqqani founder Jalaluddin, one of three deputy emirs and the Taliban military commander, with a fierce reputation, has a $5 million FBI bounty on his head. His FBI “wanted” page is not exactly a prodigy of intel: they don’t know when he was born, and where, and that he speaks Pashto and Arabic.
This may be the new government’s top challenge: to prevent Sirajuddin and his wild boys from acting medieval in non-Pashtun areas of Afghanistan, and most of all to make sure the Haqqanis cut off any connections with jihadi outfits. That’s a sine qua non condition established by the China-Russia strategic partnership for political, diplomatic and economic development support.
ACTING FOREIGN MINISTER
Foreign policy will be much more accommodating. Amir Khan Muttaqi, also a member of the political office in Doha, will be the Acting Foreign Minister, and his deputy will be Abas Stanikzai, who’s in favor of cordial relations with Washington and the rights of Afghan religious minorities.
ACTING DEFENSE MINISTER
Mohammad Yaqoob, the son of Mullah Omar, will be the Acting Defense Minister.
OTHER
So far, the only non-Pashtuns are Abdul Salam Hanafi, an Uzbek, appointed as second deputy to the Prime Minister, and Qari Muhammad Hanif, a Tajik, the acting Minister of Economic Affairs, a very important post.
****
The Tao of staying patient
The Taliban Revolution has already hit the Walls of Kabul – who are fast being painted white with Kufic letter inscriptions. One of these reads, “For an Islamic system and independence, you have to go through tests and stay patient.”
That’s quite a Taoist statement: striving for balance towards a real “Islamic system”. It offers a crucial glimpse of what the Taliban le
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Quote:
Pepe Escobar posted with permission and first posted at Asia Times
The announcement by Taliban spokesman Zahibullah Mujahid in Kabul of the acting cabinet ministers in the new caretaker government of the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan already produced a big bang: it managed to enrage both woke NATOstan and the US Deep State.
This is an all-male, overwhelmingly Pashtun (there’s one Uzbek and one Tajik) cabinet essentially rewarding the Taliban old guard. All 33 appointees are Taliban members.
Acting PM
Mohammad Hasan Akhund – the head of the Taliban Rehbari Shura, or leadership council, for 20 years – will be the Acting Prime Minister. For all practical purposes, Akhund is branded a terrorist by the UN and the EU, and under sanctions by the UN Security Council. It’s no secret Washington brands some Taliban factions as Foreign Terrorist Organizations, and sanctions the whole of the Taliban as a “Specially Designated Global Terrorist” organization.
SPIRITUAL LEADER
It’s crucial to stress Himatullah Akhundzada, the Taliban Supreme Leader since 2016, is Amir al-Momineen (“Commander of the Faithful”). He can’t be a Prime Minister; his role is that of a supreme spiritual leader, setting the guidelines for the Islamic Emirate and mediating disputes – politics included.
Akhunzada has released a statement, noting that the new government “will work hard towards upholding Islamic rules and sharia law in the country” and will ensure “lasting peace, prosperity and development”. He added, “people should not try to leave the country”.
Spokesman Mujahid took pains to stress this new cabinet is just an “acting” government. This implies one of the next big steps will be to set up a new constitution. The Taliban will “try to take people from other parts of the country” – implying positions for women and Shi’ites may still be open, but not at top level.
DEPUTY PM
Taliban co-founder Abdul Ghani Baradar, who so far had been very busy diplomatically as the head of the political office in Doha, will be deputy Prime Minister. He was a Taliban co-founder in 1994 and close friend of Mullah Omar, who called him “Baradar” (“brother”) in the first place.
ACTING INTERIOR MINISTER
A predictable torrent of hysteria greeted the appointment of Sirajuddin Haqqani as Acting Minister of Interior. After all the son of Haqqani founder Jalaluddin, one of three deputy emirs and the Taliban military commander, with a fierce reputation, has a $5 million FBI bounty on his head. His FBI “wanted” page is not exactly a prodigy of intel: they don’t know when he was born, and where, and that he speaks Pashto and Arabic.
This may be the new government’s top challenge: to prevent Sirajuddin and his wild boys from acting medieval in non-Pashtun areas of Afghanistan, and most of all to make sure the Haqqanis cut off any connections with jihadi outfits. That’s a sine qua non condition established by the China-Russia strategic partnership for political, diplomatic and economic development support.
ACTING FOREIGN MINISTER
Foreign policy will be much more accommodating. Amir Khan Muttaqi, also a member of the political office in Doha, will be the Acting Foreign Minister, and his deputy will be Abas Stanikzai, who’s in favor of cordial relations with Washington and the rights of Afghan religious minorities.
ACTING DEFENSE MINISTER
Mohammad Yaqoob, the son of Mullah Omar, will be the Acting Defense Minister.
OTHER
So far, the only non-Pashtuns are Abdul Salam Hanafi, an Uzbek, appointed as second deputy to the Prime Minister, and Qari Muhammad Hanif, a Tajik, the acting Minister of Economic Affairs, a very important post.
****
The Tao of staying patient
The Taliban Revolution has already hit the Walls of Kabul – who are fast being painted white with Kufic letter inscriptions. One of these reads, “For an Islamic system and independence, you have to go through tests and stay patient.”
That’s quite a Taoist statement: striving for balance towards a real “Islamic system”. It offers a crucial glimpse of what the Taliban le
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Anyone predict 1/10 maybe one Tenth of this islamist shithole dying off as they go into a Civil War?
maybe put that one into the prediction thread??
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Trump is still banned from most of the mainstream interwebs?
Facebook allowed photos of beheadings and violent hate speech from ISIS and the Taliban to be tagged as 'insightful'
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-10328801/Facebook-fail
ed-crack-extremist-content-report-reveals.html
Al-Qaeda has grown ‘slightly’ inside Afghanistan since Taliban takeover: U.S. commander
https://globalnews.ca/news/8439683/afghanistan-al-qaeda-growth/
While the West focused on Afghanistan, ISIS gained ground in Iraq and beyond
https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/while-the-west-focused-on-afghanistan
-isis-gained-ground-in-iraq-and-beyond/
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How Afghanistan's Militant Groups Are Evolving Under Taliban Rule
https://www.voanews.com/a/how-afghanistan-s-militant-groups-are-evolvi
ng-under-taliban-rule/6492194.html
Quote:
Originally posted by SIGNYM:
oh dear. Putting the Haqqanis in charge of everything interior is like putting the Ukrainian Nazis in charge of everything interior
Ukraine is run by a tv character perhaps a failure of a leader, however Putin is the killer who is invading.
I don't think Ukraine could ever go full islamo retard like the Taliban
but then again Russians seem to be importing islamist Chechen mercs into the region
Quote:
Originally posted by Fremdfirma:
We also made the mistake of trying to prop up yet another puppet, Kharazi
its a demon pedophile terrorist Moongod religion
These people are of shitlamic culture, these who are dumb islamic assholes who chopped each others heads off over a fucking cartoon
...and every time rather than call out islamism...assholes like Faggot Firma when given the chance they defended the demonic religion of islam
Maybe I say demon religion for lack of a better description
Perhaps there is more to this world and it is a demonic enity that crosses time
America could have propped up whatever the fuck corrupted puppet it wanted and still won that shit war
Not all muslims will be bad, terrible people, some as individual might have good human qualities but their religion is terrible, one of the worst that has ever existed.
One day a realization came to me
I think it came not from Chanting or Yoga or Buddhist history or the Bible ...it just arrived to me...but maybe from Bumping the Funny Cartoon sparks Jihad thread, maybe from looking at their shit ugly chicken scratch writing systems compared to their richer history that existed before islam, maybe it came to me after a look at their dumb art where everything looks like am ugly carpet or doormat, maybe it was the sound of islamic, hearing their out-of-tune wails from a mosque or some of their miserable dialects that sound like spittying, coughing, moaning and htorat hacking sounds and maybe it came from anotehr source maybe Eastern fictional writing or West fiction stories, then reading both Western and Asian Fantasy Novels, art books and Scifi books.
I have nothing against the pre-islamic history of Arabia and Afghanistan, before islam these seemed to be great people that had many achivements but then shit called islam comes along.
I'm not really religious
but I believe America propped up not a shit person but a SHIT-LAMIC 1400 yr old demon ghost, the United States of America kicked the Taliban's ass, it had 98% of the country in cotnrol and then suddenly it decided NOT TO WIN
in 2004 shitlamic people got inside the brains of Little Bush, inside the brains fo globalists Leftwing Neo-Liberals typesa and Neo-Cons and made an islamist Anti-American Constitution of Afghanistan
the shitlamic Constitution of Asscrackistan then in 2004 suddenly described this pedophile terroristic shit called Islam as its Most Sacred Law
In 2004 it was decided that all other faith, and political social ideas and religion rituls perform their religious 'rites' within the limits of the Sharia islamist jihadi law.
Ever since America has been sending people into Assckracistan to waste their sweat and treasure and bodies and times to bleed and die for a 1400 yr old pedophile Death Cult
Such wisdom from our leaders in the West ' sarcasm off symbol '
but then again it was Bush and Blair who declared it a 'religion of peace' straight after the 911 attacks
Quote:
Originally posted by second:
U.S. has evacuated and facilitated the evacuation of approximately 111,900 people. Since the end of July, we have re-located approximately 117,500 people.
I must say that evac was very impressive even if optics looked bad like 'Nam
with people falling off planes. It was very impressive how many the USA got out.
Ther
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Taliban bars government employees without beards from work
https://www.reuters.com/world/asia-pacific/taliban-bars-government-emp
loyees-without-beards-work-sources-2022-03-28
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Taliban Stops Issuing Driving Licence To Afghan Women: Reports
https://www.ndtv.com/world-news/taliban-to-stop-issuing-driving-licenc
e-to-women-in-kabul-reports-2947030
1980s
"In Afghanistan, Soviets find replacing Islam with communism isn't easy"
https://www.csmonitor.com/1985/0806/olam.html
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'ISIS trying to regroup in Afghanistan'
https://www.bignewsnetwork.com/news/272541277/isis-trying-to-regroup-i
n-afghanistan
Chair of US Joint Chiefs of Staff General Mark Milley
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