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Biden didn’t only prove himself to be a fool on the matter just a few weeks later but reiterated during his speech that he had “no regrets” on his withdrawal plan. This is perhaps the most egregious thing said by Biden during the whole presser. //

Biden’s speech was everything you could have expected from Biden: The speech was filled with various finger-pointing at Trump, at the military, at the Afghan people, despite it ending ironically with a Truman-Esque “the buck stops here.” But yet, the symbolism that truly showed through at that presser was when Biden had to then turn his back on the cameras and walk away. Worse than that, he then walked outside to Marine One to head back on vacation.

He didn’t take any questions. He didn’t act like a person who is in charge. He acted like he was checking a box. “Well, I addressed the country. Can I go back on vacation now?” In fact, Biden created more questions than answered them. Remember, just a few weeks ago, Biden said Afghanistan was not going to become a new Vietnam, and any withdrawal would not lead to Taliban control on the country. //

We already know what they plan to do to the country that we have spent 20 years, 2 trillion dollars, and thousands of American lives to create and Joe Biden was willing to throw all that out. Worse yet, even with the benefit of hindsight, he has no regret.

Yet, despite these huge errors in judgment, Mr. “The Buck Stops Here” didn’t stick around after his presser to accept questions. //

He turned his back on the military. He turned his back on the Embassy officials still on the ground. He turned his back on our allies who are still in the country. He turned his back on the Afghan people. He turned his back on the Gold Star Families, wounded veterans, and others who were lucky enough to return home. He turned his back on the local interpreters who saved countless American lives. It isn’t like the President doesn’t see the same images we see or isn’t terrified by the same video we are seeing. In fact, he probably has access to even more footage and data. Not so much as a plan, a promise, or a guarantee. Despite all these horrible results of his failure to plan, he has no regrets. //

DarthCY
7 hours ago
Why do people assume Biden has a conscience? He knew this would happen and just didn't care. Quit trying to measure him by standards of decent human beings. Nothing in his history shows he has morals or decency.

Breaking911
@Breaking911
New Zealand is on nationwide lockdown due to 1 single case of COVID-19

“Don’t talk to your neighbors. Please, keep to your bubbles,” Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern tells the public.

That was pretty horrible to read — that indeed he was looking at Vietnam actions as a model of what he could get away with.

But that isn’t all. He blamed Richard Nixon and Henry Kissinger. But that wasn’t who was responsible. Guess who was involved in 1975, too? You guessed it — Joseph R. Biden and the Congressional Democrats.

Jack Posobiec 🇺🇸
@JackPosobiec
During the 1975 Fall of Saigon, Joe Biden had already been a Senator for 2 years
8:04 AM · Aug 15, 2021 //

In the spring of 1975, as North Vietnamese divisions approached Saigon, hundreds of thousands of South Vietnamese with connections to the U.S.—soldiers, officials, spies, interpreters, drivers, bar girls, cooks—begged their American friends and colleagues to help them find a way out. But the embassy in Saigon and the Ford administration in Washington were slow to face the gravity of the situation and reluctant to prepare an evacuation for fear of panicking the population into chaos. In mid-April, President Gerald Ford finally realized that the government of South Vietnam might fall, and he asked Congress for $300 million in emergency aid, including money to evacuate the remaining 2,500 Americans and their dependents along with up to 175,000 South Vietnamese.

But Congress, led by Senate Democrats, had no interest in throwing away more money on a lost war that Americans wanted to forget. The prospect of sending U.S. troops to help evacuate Vietnamese along with Americans was a nonstarter. Some of the most strenuous objections came from the 32-year-old first-term senator from Delaware, Joseph R. Biden.

“I feel put upon in being presented an all-or-nothing number,” Biden said at a rare White House meeting between the president and the Senate Foreign Relations Committee on April 14. “I will vote for any amount for getting the Americans out. I don’t want it mixed with getting the Vietnamese out.”

Ford countered: “We opened our door to the Hungarians. I am not saying the situation is identical, but our tradition is to welcome the oppressed. I don’t think these people should be treated any differently from any other people—the Hungarians, Cubans, Jews from the Soviet Union.”

Biden and other Democrats were unmoved. In a Senate speech on April 23, Biden argued that the president lacked the authority to rescue any Vietnamese. “I do not believe the United States has an obligation, moral or otherwise, to evacuate foreign nationals” other than diplomats of third countries, Biden said. “The United States has no obligation to evacuate one, or 100,001, South Vietnamese.” The U.S. should leave the task of protecting them to “the organizations that are available” and “diplomatic channels,” he added. A week later, North Vietnamese tanks entered the grounds of the presidential palace in Saigon just hours after the last helicopter carried the last Americans out of Vietnam. //

Here he is at the funeral of Sen. George McGovern in 2012, saying that he was right about Vietnam.

https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2021/03/we-cant-abandon-afghans-who-helped-us/618416/

....

Here he is at the funeral of Sen. George McGovern in 2012, saying that he was right about Vietnam.

Howard Mortman
@HowardMortman
.@AnnieLinskey : "2 weeks before Saigon fell in April 1975, Joe Biden was among senators summoned to WH for top-secret briefing on crisis Vietnam" https://washingtonpost.com/politics/biden-vietnam-afghanistan/2021/08/15/fd155518-fdd5-11eb-ba7e-2cf966e88e93_story.html
Biden told that story 10/25/2012 McGovern funeral:
"5 weeks later helicopters taking off roof...I was right"

7:00 AM · Aug 16, 2021

So, not only was Joe Biden involved in this debacle in Afghanistan, he was involved in the Saigon debacle as well. He didn’t have any moral compass then and he doesn’t have any moral compass on it now. All those folks who helped us are just to be tossed aside. All he had taken away from it by 2012 was that “he was right” when he was so manifestly wrong.

ABC News
@ABC
“When push came to shove, they decided not to step up and fight for their country.”

White House national security adviser Jake Sullivan places blame for the speed of the Taliban takeover on the Afghan national security forces. https://abcn.ws/3jW8jvH

Marco Rubio
@marcorubio
What a bunch of crap

This administration was specifically told Afghan forces would surrender faster than our ability to exit.

They decided to ignore these warnings & smugly tell everyone how smart & brilliant they are. //

One intelligence official told ABC News that “no one listened” when they told the administration “it would take no time at all for the Taliban to take everything.”

Tom Cotton
@SenTomCotton
If you’re an American stranded in Afghanistan, or know one who is, please contact my office immediately:

(501) 223-9081 or
evac@cotton.senate.gov

The situation is dire, but we’ll do everything in our power to help keep you informed and to help get you out.
4:06 PM · Aug 15, 2021

Angelo Carusone
@GoAngelo
Imagine being trapped in Afghanistan in this moment..and thinking best person to call is Tom Cotton of all people.

Honestly, if someone’s in that situation where Tom Cotton is the only number they can call, they’d be better off just calling NYC’s 311. I mean really. Tom Cotton.

Maggie Haberman
@maggieNYT
Cotton spokesman says that their office has heard from multiple US citizens in Kabul trapped behind Taliban checkpoints, who can’t safely reach the US perimeter and have no clear option for what to do. https://twitter.com/SenTomCotton/s //

Nick Pappas
@NickAPappas
Have you considered the possibility this was so botched that they didn’t have anything besides a phone number on Tom Cotton’s Twitter account?
9:33 PM · Aug 15, 2021

Christina Pushaw
@ChristinaPushaw
Yeah, why would you call a Senator who served in Afghanistan when you could have called Biden?

Oh wait, Biden was on the phone to the Broward superintendent praising the forced masking of kindergarteners. Then he went on vacation.
8:02 AM · Aug 16, 2021

Glenn Greenwald
@ggreenwald
Scummiest tweet of the week comes, unsurprisingly, from the head of Media Matters: condemning a US Senator for using his office to try to help Americans get out of Afghanistan safely rather than just tweeting empty, performative "demands" -- all because he's a Republican.

The Afghan government started disintegrating a month or more ago. The intelligence community has been forecasting that the Taliban would emerge victorious within 90 days. And yet, nothing has been done to evacuate Americans or process eligible Afghans for refugee visas.

Apparently, Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Mark Milley had successfully sold President Trump on keeping a residual force in Kabul and believed he could sweet-talk Biden into doing the same. But, at the same time, the Pentagon did nothing to plan or prepare for the withdrawal to try to forestall the event. //

Eric Brakey
@SenatorBrakey
I am hearing the U.S. was unprepared in Afghanistan because the Pentagon slow-walked Trump’s withdrawal order—hoping they could pressure @JoeBiden to cancel the peace deal completely.
9:55 PM · Aug 15, 2021 //

Having worked directly for one of the three-stars on the Army Staff, I can tell you this resonates with me. The standard Pentagon response, at least on the Army side, to any task you don’t want to do is to nod vigorously while doing absolutely nothing. //

To me, this all sounds like the military leadership (can we start putting Lloyd Austin’s face on milk cartons yet, because he hasn’t been seen for a week) convinced itself that it had persuaded Biden to slow down the withdrawal and adhere to their recommendations. They might have convinced themselves that they had convinced Biden to cancel the Afghan withdrawal completely just as he had with most of President Trump’s initiatives. Then, unexpectedly, Biden decided that he was plowing ahead, and yes, his callous disregard for human life played into that decision and pulled the trigger on the withdrawal. The military and State were left flat-footed because they’d refused to take any preliminary steps needed to evacuate noncombatants and friendly Afghans.

Hackaday Prize 2021 Finalist ThunderScope is doing exactly that. [Aleska] is building a modular open source PC-connected oscilloscope aiming at four channels and a cool 100 MHz bandwidth with a low budget. The detailed project logs, showing how he is learning about ‘scope technology on-the-fly is a fascinating look into the mind of an engineer as he navigates the ups and downs of a reasonably complicated build.

We like how [Aleska] has realised early on, that keeping the project private and only releasing it when “I’m done” actually impedes progress, when you could open source from the beginning, log progress and get great feedback right from the start. All those obvious mistakes and poor design choices get caught and fixed before committing to hardware. Just think of all the time saved. Now this is an attitude to cultivate!

https://hackaday.io/project/180090-thunderscope

Elander’s Voice
@Elanders_Voice
AUSTRALIA- 24,000 children will be vaccinated in a stadium next week. No parents will be allowed access.

Er… //

The police? Somehow it doesn’t seem any more comforting that a law enforcement agent will be the one “escorting” your child to a forced medical procedure.

Imagine for one second the American military knocking on your door and escorting your children out to receive a treatment you may not feel confident about and they may not want at all.

It blows the mind that such a proud people like the Australians would so willingly submit to outright totalitarianism. To say it is disappointing is an understatement.

It makes one wonder if the current state of the American spirit is prepared to withstand any similar incursions from our own government. //

Liberty Lockdown w/ Clint Russell
@LibertyLockPod
Australia began as a penal colony
And ended as one

This is already a disaster in Afghanistan. But may get even worse.

There are thousands of Americans still trapped in Afghanistan. According to the Biden team, 5,000-10,000 are still trapped near Kabul, but John Kirby said they didn’t have a real count, showing more ignorance. //

Sara Cook
@saraecook
Replying to @saraecook
The below note went out this afternoon to American citizens requesting to be evacuated from Afghanistan, @alanacbs reports. It instructs people to come to Hamid Karzai Intl Airport in Kabul, but says the US govt cannot guarantee their safety as they make the trip. @CBSNews //

Richard Grenell
@RichardGrenell
American citizens are told they are on their own in Afghanistan.

Joe Biden has failed us.

One of the iconic social media images of President (so-called) Biden, other than him doing a faceplant on the stairs of Air Force One, is him with an ice cream cone. //

It seems as though the Taliban have seen the images.

Abdulhaq Omeri
@AbdulhaqOmeri
#Taliban eat ice-cream #Kabul #Afghanistan .

It is hard to credit the idea that you could get four hardened fighters to pose with ice cream cones in Afghanistan today unless they were trying to send a message: that Joe Biden is a joke, and they are laughing at him.

But someone apparently decided enough was enough — that he wanted to make his feelings known about Joe Biden on a Wilmington digital billboard. He clearly had a sense of humor, as well, as he trolled Biden.

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