But he also just kept saying things that made no sense or that were demonstrably untrue.
Biden says he was warning people to get out since March or April. But then he was also saying that he himself couldn’t see the country falling, that “no one” could, so he can’t be blamed for not seeing it. So which is it? In July, of course, he claimed that he hadn’t been told the country might fall. That was a lie, as we found out later, as he was told in June that it was a possibility. We’ve been talking about the possibility since at least May.
He spoke about the Trump May 1 deadline – yelling that the choice was between that and surging far more troops in for more war which no one was talking about. But he himself broke that deadline in April, postponing leaving for four months. So he himself proved that was nonsense. Plus, Trump had a lot of conditions in the deal that the Taliban broke, but Biden didn’t hold them to the deal, which would have kept them in check. //
He says he disagrees with people who say he should have started sooner. Now, leave aside for the moment that his people were telling us in July they were working on getting interpreters out. So they were claiming in July that they were doing what he says now they couldn’t. But he says now – imagine if they brought in thousands of troops to get out people then, in the middle of a civil war? I don’t know Joe, was it better to bring in the thousands after you pulled out all the troops after they took complete control and we were at their mercy because of you?
But the whole point of doing it earlier was so that you didn’t have to do it all at once, so that you could have done it over months, slowly and carefully, fully vetting everyone. So you wouldn’t need “thousands of troops.” Plus, Biden pulled the remaining 2500 troops out, only to have to put 6000 back in. So he himself was “surging” in far more troops than he took out. Everything he claimed he was doing to reduce our involvement, only increased the risk and danger to our people and our Afghan allies. //
It was, to Joe Biden, about proving Joe Biden right about this issue.
There were a lot of sick things in it, but the thing that was sociopathic about it all was using his own dead son’s name/death for emotional blackmail. Some people may not like that I say that, but that’s what it is. He’s done that repeatedly in his rants on Afghanistan. He did it again in Tuesday’s speech, and he did it during his Dover meetings with the families who lost their sons and daughters in Kabul. So, for the record, Joe Biden’s son Beau didn’t die in Afghanistan. He died of cancer. He had previously served in Iraq. The families felt he talked more about his own son than theirs. We see him throw Beau Biden again into this speech. He acts like he was a Gold Star father, and it’s not the same thing. The families know that and they were offended that he made it about himself and not about their loved ones.
But more than that, it’s a cynical use of his son as a defense to being criticized, to make it not about facts, but about his pain, not even about the son. To me, that’s sick and even disrespectful to his own son, to use Beau’s death in that way.
According to NBC News, around 20,000 Afghans who had worked with the US government had applied for SIVs, and that was back in May. No doubt the number skyrocketed as it became clear the Taliban would prevail. When you add in their families, that number jumps to almost 75,000. In the end, we got out around 8,500, a tiny fraction of those we made promises to.
Putting aside whether one agrees with bringing SIVs here or not, the issue here is just how pervasive the misleading claims by Biden and his cohorts have been following the end of operations in Afghanistan. They’ve continually presented a rosy picture that is clearly not true. This airlift not only failed to get all Americans out, it overwhelmingly failed to get Afghan allies out as well. That’s not the reality the administration is admitting to when they trot out Austin to blow smoke up the collective backside of the nation.
What we are seeing right now is an administration that is flailing, desperate to cover up its incompetence. This airlift was not a roaring success. Rather, it was a rushed, ill-planned, chaotic retreat that left tens of thousands of people who deserved to get out to the tender mercies of the Taliban.
That leaves one big question remaining: Who exactly did we evacuate?
The War in Afghanistan has always been a black box, but the Biden administration just made matters worse.
According to an admission obtained from the State Department, Biden officials recently directed federal agencies to scrub their websites of official reports detailing the $82.9 billion in military equipment and training provided to the Afghan security forces since 2001. //
The scrubbed audits and reports included detailed accounting of what the U.S. had provided to Afghan forces, down to the number of night vision devices, hand grenades, Black Hawk helicopters, and armored vehicles.
Reports further quantified 208 aircraft and helicopters; 75,000 war vehicles – including 22 Humvees, 50,000 tactical vehicles and nearly 1,000 mine resistant vehicles; and 600,000 weapons – including 350,000 M4 and M16 rifles, 60,000 machine guns, and 25,000 grenade launchers. The//
Again, to reiterate, these reports do not include recipient information, and the Taliban already likely controls the war chest in question.
This directive doesn’t seem to be designed to protect our Afghan allies—or, if it is, it’s been poorly executed. One U.S. entity that we will not name has failed to remove a report detailing the Afghan forces by rank. That report, one could argue, could be used as a tally sheet for retribution, but it’s still publicly available. //
Again, to reiterate, these reports do not include recipient information, and the Taliban already likely controls the war chest in question.
My issue here isn’t the pragmatism on display. Of course, Biden is not going to be impeached by a Democrat House or Senate. McConnell doesn’t need to bother pointing that out. Rather, the question is if Republicans are willing to show any kind of killer instinct and to hold the left to their own standards.
For example, every criticism McConnell otherwise lodges at Biden isn’t going to result in his removal from office. Yet, that criticism is still valuable, correct? That’s especially true when talking about shaping perceptions for the next elections. An impeachment push isn’t about actually removing Biden from office. Rather, it’s about consistency and showing voters that the president deserves to be held to the same standard Trump was held to. The messaging is the point.
Yes, the ballot box will be the ultimate test, but what happens at the ballot box is influenced by how Republicans choose to fight back at this moment. GOP voters are watching, and they aren’t going to respond well to more Washington knee-bending. It is not lost on them that many Republicans went harder at Trump than they now go at Biden. //
In short, the question for McConnell isn’t whether Biden will be impeached. Rather, it’s if McConnell thinks he should be. If he doesn’t, he should say that instead of hiding behind obfuscations about what is or isn’t possible. Stand up, stiffen your spine, and take a position.
As reported by Just the News, a series of desperate text messages between U.S. military commanders and private citizens mounting last-minute rescues tell a far different story than that presented by the Biden administration. “We are f*cking abandoning American citizens,” wrote an Army colonel, detailing how frantic, pleading Americans —waving U.S. passports — were rejected at the Kabul airport, as three empty rescue flights waited nearby, hours before the last American troops left Afghanistan.
six in ten people said the country has “seriously gone off on the wrong track.” That’s a horrible indicator for Biden.
On top of that, the latest Rasmussen numbers found that 52% want Biden to resign over the disaster of the Afghanistan withdrawal, while 39% disagree. But that wasn’t all.
An even bigger number agreed with Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) that Biden deserved to be impeached. 60% agreed with Graham’s statement that Biden should be impeached, with 37% saying no, according to Newsmax. //
Ldeer1960
3 hours ago
"...there’s been a lot of honest reporting and a lot of truth..." for certain values of "a lot", "honest", and "truth". If the actual truth were told accurately and across all media there would be a lynch mob around the White House, Congress and the Pentagon.
it surely sounded a lot like he said they would get money if people — Americans and Afghan allies — who were still trapped in Afghanistan were allowed to leave. Sounds like a slow-moving hostage deal and did we just hear the bribe?
So, let’s see. We left our folks there and allies who needed to get out. We left the Taliban billions of dollars’ worth of equipment through the Afghan army, which they can now use for terrorism or to oppress the people. But now the Biden folks potentially want to funnel even more money to these characters that would keep them in power? The Taliban can hold them up for it, too, saying they have Americans. //
Joe Biden has put us in a box once again where we’re likely to see “pallets of cash” and negotiations with terrorists for hostages. Heck, Sullivan is saying they get money depending on whether they let people out — he’s literally saying it. Meanwhile, the Taliban are holding mock funerals for us in the country, parading around with a coffins draped in American flags. //
Rep. Mike Waltz
@michaelgwaltz
Trading economic assistance for safe passage home for Americans is de facto paying a ransom to terrorists.
It was a huge mistake, one of the biggest mistakes in our nation’s military history. But it was Joe Biden, who made that decision. I know for a fact that the military advised him not to leave Bagram.
He said we’re going to downsize to 600 Marines. And the leadership told him we can’t hold Bagram with 600 Marines. He said, I don’t care go to 600. He arbitrarily picked a number out of the sky. And they couldn’t hold that base with 600. So they collapsed to Kabul.
This is Joe Biden, and his incompetence that made that decision. And that decision is what cost those lives today. The perimeter around that base is a street wide. That’s it. But out of Bagram, you had kilometers of range that you can see the enemy coming. But not when it’s just a street in the middle of an urban area.
It’s a horrible decision. It’s 100 percent Joe Biden’s and that’s not the first lie this guy has told or I should say he’s totally disconnected from the truth, many, many other lies, and it just he needs to step down. He needs to resign or the cabinet needs to do something. //
WALTZ: –on that Bagram point because we were just briefed by the military yesterday on the Armed Services Committee, that when we went back in to evacuate the embassy, they were once again presented Joe Biden with the option of taking Bagram. And he once again didn’t choose to do so.
So, on the one hand, he didn’t listen about shutting it down too fast. By the way, 5000, hardened ISIS, Al Qaeda and Taliban prisoners are now on the loose, and then he didn’t listen when they had to go back in to evacuate our Embassy after the after the collapse of Kabul.
And now he’s tying the hands of our special forces who are chomping at the bit to go out into the city and outside of the city to get our Americans that are stranded. He won’t let them do that either. Their hands are being tied. So this is just incompetence. And it’s just outrageous. //
What they are saying they were told by Defense in briefings is that the military wanted to use Bagram. That would entail deploying additional troops from the US to Afghanistan to secure a much larger perimeter. Biden vetoed the recommendation and imposed an artificial limit of 600 troops. Six hundred may sound like a lot, but 600 men can barely defend themselves, much less secure checkpoints and process refugees when you are deep inside of enemy territory.
David Harsanyi
@davidharsanyi
This is like celebrating the Titanic's sinking as the most successful lifeboat rescue mission in history.
Caitlin Doornbos
@CaitlinDoornbos
Replying to @CaitlinDoornbos
Kirby just called the evacuation "the largest airlift that the U.S. military has conducted [and] got 122,000 people to safety.
"The numbers speak for themselves -- 122,000+, that is significant, and a lot of lives were saved and a lot of lives are now in a better place." //
Tea Party Patriots
@TPPatriots
"Instead of keeping his promise to the American people, President Biden kept his promise to the Taliban..." - @itsSpencerBrown //
Simply put, Joe Biden personifies the worst of partisan politics; the belief that self-aggrandizement and “winning” — at any cost — always justify any means to a non-negotiable end. Integrity, honor, and, in this case, “a few” American lives, be damned. Or, put more tactfully, “are expendable.” //
What I am talking about is Biden’s ill-conceived withdrawal, based solely on political expediency — haphazardly executed and prosecuted in a manner opposed by multiple high-ranking military leaders and former leaders, as well others. (See: “Bagram,” “American citizens first, military last.”) //
Baseball1969
an hour ago
Just in- 51 military service dogs were left behind..they were at the airport but after 3 days the DOD decided to release them on the tarmac …
The American people are not to blame for this mess. Joe Biden and those who supported him are. Never Trumpers don’t get to run from that now that things have collapsed.
Schmitz said initially he wasn’t going to meet with Biden, but then said he thought he owed it to his son to share what he thought with Biden. “It didn’t go well,” he sighed. He said Biden spoke more about his own son than about Jared and “that didn’t sit well with me.”
Taylor Hoover was set to return home on September 15, retire and marry his fiancé. “It’s the absolute worst feeling in the world,” his father said. “Every one of them is a hero, there’s no doubt…They died with their brothers and their sisters right next to them, doing exactly what they all wanted to do, and that is defending this country.” In regard to Biden, Hoover said his family didn’t want him anywhere near them. Hoover said that Biden checked his watch on “every single one of them that came out of that airplane.” “They would release the salute,” he said and then he would look down at his watch, “on every last one.” “Seeing that, and the disrespect. Hearing from his, uh, former leaders. One of his master sergeants said exactly what you just said…that this was avoidable, that they left them over there, they had them over there and let them down.” Hoover said, “This can’t happen, ever again.”
Curtis Houck
@CurtisHouck
.@RichardEngel: "This was a humbling day for the United States, a day of humility for a world superpower. Afghanistan has been called the graveyard of empires...The [U.S.] fought [there] for 20 yrs and is now...withdrawing...in defeat. This is a difficult moment for the military"
.@RichardEngel: "The world's greatest military couldn't hold on and ultimately, handed the country back to the same extremists that they had toppled just a few weeks after 9/11...The next Osama bin Laden might be watching what is happening right now[.]" //
“But if you’d step back and look at what is going on, this is the United States, after 20 years. This war used to be called Operation Enduring Freedom, and it’s turned out not to be enduring and they’re not leaving a society that is free,” he said in the below clip. “It is only free according to what the Taliban says will be free, the Taliban promises that it will be free.”
“You could also look at this as a tremendously humiliating – moment of American humiliation leaving, forced to leave on the Taliban’s clock and with the Taliban’s good graces,” Engel continued. “So tactically, it makes sense, but I’m not sure how history – I think history will judge this moment as a very dark period for the United States.” //
As Engel noted in his reports, we toppled the Taliban in a matter of weeks after 9/11. And now, after 20 years, in a matter of weeks, the Taliban has control again and it’s because of the way the exit was done.
Psaki was asked Friday about members of the Marine Corps criticizing top generals on social media.
Al Jazeera English correspondent Kimberly Halkett asked, “Does [the president] believe he was given bad advice? And will he ask for any resignations of his generals given the high cost of American and Afghan lives?”
“No to both of those questions,” Psaki responded.
So that means he’s endorsing all the actions, refusing to cashier anyone. He’s explicitly endorsed the decisions. It’s all on him now //
As I pointed out previously, this mess of this withdrawal was intentional by Biden. He always intended to just pull everything out and absorb whatever the consequences were, because he didn’t think there would be a lot of consequences. “F**k that,” he said about obligations to allies, others “got away with it” when it came to Vietnam. Indeed, he’s so old, he was one of the people responsible for the Saigon failure, as well. He had no moral compass then either.
That’s been the whole problem here. The “empathetic” old “unifier” is and always has been a mean old guy who doesn’t really care about anyone other than himself.
Bill Hemmer asked what the former S.O.S. thought of how Biden laid out the deal he inherited from the Trump team. Pompeo laid it out in clear terms…
Bill, as for the deal we were very clear from the beginning with the Taliban we were negotiating with the Afghan government also we had to deal with them too, we weren’t just talking to the Taliban. We were clear with the Taliban, we had this understanding that you’re going to live up to it and we had a conditions-based withdrawal plan and we executed that. We whittled down from 15,000 to a little over 2500 troops and the last 13 months of our administration and we didn’t have a single American attack or an American killed and it wasn’t because of a piece of paper that was a set of understandings but it was because the Taliban understood that if they acted against Americans and took actions that were inconsistent with what they promised when they pushed on us in the Trump administration we responded with American power and American might. We made clear to the Taliban that deterrence was going to be maintained and the difference is with the Biden administration is that when the Taliban pushed they withdrew and showed weakness.
So how many Americans was that again? And she never answered if there was a plan past August 31. Assuming the numbers she’s saying today are correct, that means of the 105,000 people they claim to have evacuated, only 5400 were Americans, a little over five percent of the evacuees.
After numbers ranging from over 10,000 to up to 40,000 estimated Americans, the Biden team seemed to settle on the number of 6,000 Americans, claiming that’s the number they need to get out. That way they can claim they were actually successful. Except there will still be thousands stuck in Afghanistan. All their prior suggestions indicated that there were far more people.
So how many of the 105,000 people were SIV holders — the people who were also supposed to be getting high priority? The State Department can’t even say.
"I have been fighting for 17 years. I am willing to throw it all away to say to my senior leaders, I demand accountability."
A reckoning will come for this catastrophe; military and political. For those of us who fought, it’s too much. //
Unfortunately, my colleague Streiff’s prediction came true — they just fired LTC. Scheller for what he said, and he likely knew he was risking his career to make that statement.
Scheller posted on Facebook, “I have been relieved for cause based on a lack of trust and confidence.”
Glenn Beck Tells Tucker Biden Officials Are Blocking His Effort to Save Afghan Christians – RedState
Beck also spoke with Sen. Tom Cotten (R-AR) who indicated that he’d heard similar unbelievable reports of the State Department trying to stop flights, even a British flight with Brits trying to get out their Afghan allies.
Glenn Beck
@glennbeck
I've heard reports that OUR State Department told Macedonia to stop taking Afghan refugees. @SenTomCotton tells me he's heard similar reports. If our govt won't save these people, WE WILL. But the State Dept. must stop standing in the way. //
I previously reported about how the State Department booted 500 Afghan interpreters and other Special Immigrant Visa holders after they had made it into the airport. This, even as some planes were going out with largely empty seats. It’s not clear if any of those people got out.
So this isn’t just a problem of Joe Biden being derelict in his duty here and not doing enough, there is actual active blocking of people trying to save people here. There needs to be answers as to why they would do such a horrible thing immediately because the time is running out and every action like this costs lives.
Joe Biden has presided over one of the bloodiest days of our war in Afghanistan. That day was made possible solely by his incompetence and, sad to say, the spinelessness and/or incompetence of the chain of command of the US military. Young men were put needlessly at risk to do a hazardous mission that did not need to have been done. We didn’t need to operate from a single airfield. We didn’t need to let the Taliban occupy half of that airfield. We didn’t need to put our security in the hands of the Taliban. We didn’t need to evacuate US and allied nationals and our Afghan allies under these circumstances. This situation didn’t just develop organically. These were all of these choices made by the Biden White House and its commissars in the Defense and State Departments.
It didn’t have to be this way, but it is, and Joe Biden owns all of this.
RNC Research
@RNCResearch
Nancy Pelosi jokes around for 6 minutes while completely ignoring the 12 U.S. service members killed by terrorists in Afghanistan. Unacceptable
Independent Women's Voice
@IWV
How can @SpeakerPelosi give this self- righteous speech about women’s rights while supporting the man who just abandoned Afghan women to the Taliban?
Donald Trump did a deal with the Taliban last year when they were only wannabe rulers in which all U.S. troops would be out of Afghanistan by May 1, before the annual Afghan fighting season got underway in that godforsaken land.
In exchange, the Taliban agreed to reduce violent attacks, mainly on Americans, forbid terrorists to set up shop there again, and to negotiate in good faith with the elected central government in Kabul.
The withdrawal commitment was political cover for the United States, so the exit wasn’t an ignominious admission of defeat, like the Soviets in 1989 and every other attempted occupier for the last 33 centuries.
No one except perhaps some kindergarteners in Arkansas expected the Taliban to live up to much of that agreement. And only those toddlers were disappointed.
For some inexplicable reason, Biden delayed the withdrawal first to the anniversary of 9/11 that started this whole mess and then to Aug. 31, which is the prime-time combat season in a land that has no NFL to follow. Taliban forces were well on the move by then.
Taking the flag down at Bagram weeks early with no contingency plan for adversity was the signal for insurgents to step on the gas. So, they did. //
During the Taliban’s swift march to victory in the Afghan mountains, Biden was AWOL on vacation in the Maryland mountains.
No one heard anything and when we finally did, Biden was not confident and decisive. He was confused, defensive, looked lost. A healthy president, asked a challenging media question, would not turn and stride away.