this is idiotic :huh:

just about everything they’ve said on this thread is idiotic.

you have to be a dedicated kool aid drinker to be unable to concede that we made a mess at the end of this.

armed with nothing else, ed so called us racists. that’s relevant here.

he didn’t care that biden ( on camera) referred to a black congressman as “boy” this week, that’s not any kind of racist red flag for him.
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Biden could have known?

Here is what Ajmal Ahmady, DAB Governor || Economic Advisor to the President of Afghanistan || TAPI Board Member || Former Minister of Industry & Commerce || Harvard MBA and MPA/ID http://www.afghaneconomics.com/ourteam.html
had to say on August 16th:

The collapse of the Government in Afghanistan this past week was so swift and complete - it was disorienting and difficult to comprehend.

This is how the events seemed to proceed from my perspective as Central Bank Governor.
Although much of the rural areas fell to the Taliban over the past few months, the first provincial capital to fall was just 1 week and two days ago!

On Friday August 6th, Ziranj fell. Over the next 6 days, a number of other provinces fell - particularly in the north.
There were multiple rumors that directions to not fight were somehow coming from above.

This has been repeated by Atta Noor and Ismael Khan.

Seems difficult to believe, but there remains a suspicion as to why ANSF left posts so quickly. There is something left unexplained

Currency volatility and other indicators had worsened, but DAB were able to stabilize the macroeconomic environment relatively well during the last week - given the deteriorating security environment.

Then came last Thursday
I attended my normal meetings. Ghazni fell in the morning.

I left work, and by the time I went home - Herat, Kandahar, and Baghdis also fell. Helmand was also under serious attack

Friday - we received a call that given the deteriorating environment, we wouldn’t get any more dollar shipments.

People spread rumors that I had fled on Friday.

On Saturday, DAB had to supply less currency to the markets on Saturday, which further increased panic.

Currency spiked from a stable 81 to almost 100 then back to 86. I held meetings on Saturday to reassure banks and money exchangers to calm them down. I can’t believe that was one day before Kabul fell

On Saturday night, my family called to say that most government had already left. I was dumbfounded.

A security assessment accurately forecast Taliban arrival to Kabul within 36 hours and its fall within 56 hours

I got worried & purchased tickets for Monday as a precaution

On Sunday I began work. Reports throughout morning were increasingly worrisome. I left the bank and left deputies in charge. Felt terrible about leaving staff.

But arrived at airport & saw that Mohaqeq, Rahmani, Massoud, etc were already there! Head of parliament seems content

Saw VP Danish leaving - reportedly for Qatar. By then it was rumored that VP Saleh had left.

Ministers + others were waiting for a Fly Dubai & Emirates flights. Both were cancelled

I secured a Kam Air flight Sunday 7pm. Then the floor fell: the President had already left

I knew right then my flight would be cancelled and there would be chaos.

As expected employees & military left posts. Everyone ran through gates to on Kam Air flight. 300+ passengers boarded for a 100-seat plane.

The plane had no fuel or pilot. We all hoped it would depart

However, I decided to disembark and spotted another military plane. It was surrounded by people trying to board, while the guard forces held people back and boarded their embassy staff.

There was a rush. Some shots were fired. Somehow, my close colleagues pushed me on board.

It did not have to end this way. I am disgusted by the lack of any planning by Afghan leadership. Saw at airport them leave without informing others.

I asked the palace if there was an evacuation plan/charter flights. After 7 years of service, I was met with silence

During last days, I feared not only risks related to Taliban, but fear of transition period once there is no chain of command.

Once president’s departure was announced, I knew within minutes chaos would follow. I cannot forgive him for creating that without a transition plan

I did not criticize them until now, but key figures Fazly & Mohib were too inexperienced in their roles, & was President’s failure that he never recognized such weaknesses.

He himself had great ideas but poor execution. If I contributed to that, I take my share of the blame.

And it seems it’s only gotten worse today at HKIA.

And this. I will be trying to support any requests for assistance, but worry that given my personal experience at airport that any support for friends and colleagues be limited

Did I have a reason to worry? This is the text someone sent me:

“Taliban come to <area> and were looking for you. They were asking about Ajmal Ahmady DAB Governor.”

Whatever their personal views, I also had many personal enemies. Or maybe they just wanted to greet me

that funny coming from the guy who doesnt pay attention to what the right is saying

again Jim your logic is rather simple .. if you dont think their would be a crush of people at any location ...

you have no idea about IEDs that much is certain just from you think driving in Afghanistan is like driving in America LOL PS still waiting on that answer How many are acceptable

Biden knew really that the afghans wouldn't fight 1 day is that your suggestion? ? did all the other Governments and Aid groups did they also Know their on the ground ? that the afghan army wasn't going to last a Day ?

So why didn't everyone evacuate early ? seems they thought as we did the Afghans would at least put up a fight.. and they also needed to fly back in and get people out..

but lets get back to the Air lift how many people should have gotten out? seeing your racist party is all ready spewing crap about Afghans

Republican politicians and Fox News personalities are stoking fears about the U.S. taking in Afghans trying to flee the Taliban.
Rep. Matt Rosendale saying that there is no “excuse to flood our country with refugees from Afghanistan.

“Is the mass migration of Afghan men to America really a good idea? Good for your wife, your daughter?” said the Trump campaign adviser turned host.


Stephen Miller
@StephenM
·
Aug 15
It is becoming increasingly clear that Biden & his radical deputies will use their catastrophic debacle in Afghanistan as a pretext for doing to America what Angela Merkel did to Germany & Europe.


Jim someone needs to pay attention to the big picture. if I recall you had the same issue with Trump

No chit

It would be a steady stream of "unfit for office" this, and "25th Amendment" that. IMPEACH, IMPEACH, IMPEACH!!!

He took out one Evil Iranian General and we had 3 non-stop weeks of "World War 3"
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my suggestion is that, according to the transcript of the call, Biden knew in July that things weren’t going well. yet he told america that all
was swell, and obviously he had no plan to deal with things deteriorating.

And got stripers said multiple
times, that any idiot could have foreseen that it would have turned into a mess. so if any idiot should have foreseen it, maybe biden could have thought about that scenario.

you’re saying there was no way to predict the mess. got stripers said any idiot should have seen it coming. if GS is right, Biden failed to plan for what he should have seen coming.

Again, i’m not speculating, i’m going by the transcript. i’m sorry if the physical evidence supports that biden knew 5 weeks ago that it wasn’t good, i’m sorry if that upsets you. But whether you happen to like it or not, Biden said in july it wasn’t going well.

Your moronic speculation that republicans don’t actually care about people
left behind, tells us how indefensible you know your position is.

Who are the private groups trying to get those people out right now? Lots of evangelical christians like glen beck, who i think is kooky, but he’s over there trying to get people
out. I doubt george soros is doing the same. so who really cares, and who doesn’t?
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Mark Hertling, retired General, Hertling served in Armor, Cavalry, planning, operations and training positions, and commanded every organization from Platoon to Field Army. He commanded the 1st Armored Division and Task Force Iron/Multinational Division-North in Iraq during the troop surge of 2007 to 2008.

A terrific thread by Elizabeth Shackleford, former consular officer in South Sudan, the embassy view of the exact same story I’ve been telling from the military perspective. For any commenting this was “botched,” or should have started earlier, or could have been better planned…try it sometime. Hardest mission ever.

As U.S. Embassy's sole consular officer in #SouthSudan 2013-2014, I've been at the airport running #evacuations out of a country at war. Risk & scale differed from #Afghanistan, but some challenges on the ground were similar. A thread to share things I learned on the ground.
There is no graceful way to evac vulnerable people from a country at war. There are better ways & worse ways, but none look good from the outside (or inside). Things could have gone much better, but they also could have gone worse, and many challenges were inevitable.
The hardest part of evac'ing from a warzone is reaching the exit – airport in this case. USG didn’t control Kabul so it had few options to help and all put our people at risk. In South Sudan, we had some success moving a few people to the airport from inside Juba.
but opportunities were ltd. Even harder beyond the capital. We aborted an attempted evac from another town when our aircraft came under fire with serious injuries to US service members. Deciding when and how much to put our people at risk is hard.
Next, someone must decide who gets in. These are life and death decisions, made 100s-1000s of times a day. Mil and civ officers do so with vague guidelines from Washington. Who counts as a family member? How do you prove they are?
How do you prioritize among hundreds when no one’s documents are complete? Many don’t grab their passport and other docs when fleeing for their lives on short notice.
Answers are subjective. Doing it at volume is hard, making decisions among 1000s or more. USG could have taken steps earlier to reduce some numbers (see below), but none of that applied once evac began. It was always going to be a crush. Why?
Americans and our allies aren't the only ones trying to leave, and our departures aren't other people's priorities.
Most at the gates probably weren’t USG priorities (Americans, Afghan allies) but USG had no way to control/limit crowding without law enforcement authority. Expanding the perimeter would have just pushed the same problem out further.
If more Americans and allies had left sooner, we would have had fewer to evac. USG had control over one but not the other.
Not much USG could do to get more Americans out sooner b/c many chose not to go. USG has warned Americans for yrs not to travel to Afghanistan and specifically urged Americans to leave since 2020 deal was signed. Thousands stayed b/c they’re usually there for a reason.
For family, business, humanitarian or other conflict-related work. Some work in security. Most want to be on last safe flight out possible. All had good reasons, but you don't know when the last one will be, it won’t likely be safe, and only has so many seats.
I saw it in South Sudan, urging people to leave as soon as they had a chance, but many opted to delay, hoping things wouldn't get worse. But they did.
Where we could and should have done better is Afghan allies. But this required fixing a broken special immigrant visa (SIV) program years ago–not just starting evacs a few weeks earlier. #Trump admin intentionally clogged the system.
But it was already a 14-step process with unnecessary, difficult bureaucratic steps, particularly hard to complete from Afghanistan. Had Congress, Defense, and State fixed it years ago, 10,000s of our #AfghanAllies would be in the US already.
As many criticize the evac process, surely plagued by inefficiencies and interagency contradictions, remember the mil and civ on the ground charged with 1000s of these life and death decisions, in dangerous circumstances, doing the best they could with limited information.
They deserve immense gratitude but will live with the weight of these choices forever, and what their decisions meant for the ones they didn’t choose. I wish them peace of mind, to be proud of the work they did, know they did their best, and that their service saved lives.

I'll find Hertling's also

I did days ago

Ah, George Soros aka the bogeyman for the right, the evangelicals are bringing people to Mexico, wonder why that is?

Here's the story of the relentless Republican effort (led by President Trump) to undermine and destroy the programs that help bring Afghan refugees to the U.S.

Over the last decade, Republicans have pushed to intentionally create a massive backlog in the Special Immigrant Visa (SIV) program - the one we use to bring Afghan partners to America, by putting onerous conditions on the applications.

In 2016, Obama asked to increase the cap for the SIV program. Senate Republicans objected.

Then, the Trump Admin started slowing down SIV processing.

When Biden took over, there were 10,000 unfilled visas, despite 17,000 applications in the pipeline.

This dovetailed with the assault by Trump and Republicans to destroy other refugee programs that bring Afghans to the U.S..

Obama admitted over 2,700 Afghan refugees.

Trump admitted 400, because he had dismantled the refugee system. Biden had to rebuild it.

And today Trumplicans are making it clear they will oppose bringing more Afghan refugees to the U.S..

Steven Miller: "Resettling [Afghans] in America is not about solving a humanitarian crisis; it’s about accomplishing an ideological objective to change America,”

Tucker Carlson says the Biden administration is allowing Afghan refugees to enter the US in order "to change our country. They'll never lose another election. That's the point, as you know."

hmmm....

President Biden’s approval rating has cratered to 36 percent among independents after his disastrous handling of the withdrawal from Afghanistan, according to a new NPR/PBS/Marist poll.

how can this happen with the lame stream media constantly reminding the electorate that biden is a fabulous president who only makes good decisions for them ??????

are these independents actually watching Faux news and being brainwashed into thinking like $ucker carlson ?????

we need to send paid volunteers door to door to "speak" to these people and make them understand that their thinkers aren't thinking correctly!!!!!!

:smash:

this is pretty funny....

WASHINGTON Apr 4, 2007 An apparently botched message during a widely discouraged visit by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi to Syria this week has U.S. officials criticizing rogue efforts at diplomacy among U.S. politicians.

State Department officials said Thursday they made it quite clear they did not want Pelosi to visit Syria, a nation that is listed as a state sponsor of terror and is home to terror group Hezbollah, which started a low-grade war with Israel last summer.

Even The Washington Post editorialized in Thursday editions that “Ms. Pelosi's attempt to establish a shadow presidency is not only counterproductive, it is foolish.”



‘Not a good idea’: Pelosi condemns bipartisan Afghanistan trip
August 25, 2021

Pelosi on Wednesday referred to it as a “freelance” trip and said she issued a written statement shortly after to send a message to lawmakers not to follow their actions.

Pelosi said congressional trips to Kabul would distract from the State Department

OMG random poll has his numbers dropping a few points below Trumps highest throughout his term, thanks some earth shattering news.

I guess I need to put things into a bigger picture for conservatives and their Responses to events

trump trying to get dirt on Biden from a foreign Nation Response nothing burger

Trump siding with Putin response nothing burger

trumps love affair with Kim. Response Nobel prize

4 SF a troops killed in tongo tongo abuse. Response. Where’s Niger ?

Trumps dealing with Covid and 40000 deaths on his watch, response operation warp speed a vaccine most Trump supporters won’t take and he’s not responsible no screams of he’s got blood on his hands or he should resign.. nope it was MAGA 2021 all aboard

Trumps constant claims of voter fraud before during and after the election his attamepts to de certify the election with out Republicans and the events of Jan 6th. Response let’s suggest it no different than Antifa and BLM riots

Trump negotiations with the Taliban. Response Great success!!

Republicans as a whole and the rise of the delta , in the unvaccinated ! response politically attack mask wearing again and embrace any treatment other than the vaccines

Fast forward to Biden.

Key stone pipe line. Response OMG he just kill oil independence ( FYI pipe line never built)

Immigration response omg back to invasions and caravans

Ransom ware attacks on private companies omg Biden’s fault or China joe

Afghanistan and 15 marines Kia.120k out of the country and harms way possibly a 100 American left. Response resign Biden has blood on his bla bla bla

The right has ZERO intellectual Honesty left . It’s all about outrage 100 percent of the time


Of course the withdrawal of Afghanistan could have looked more dignified but let’s be honest the rights main focus is that it wasn’t dignified.. they wanted some how to turn a 20 years negative into a positive by trying to sell a better outcome to a solution they wanted no part of on Jan 1st

They do it daily ! they sell imaginary solutions to their base , from election law changes solely because Trump lost
To passing laws that have their enforcement mechanisms is any private citizens in the USA can use civil ligation against anyone they think violated a law ( more like campaign aid)

but everyone else is crazy. Ya ok
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thanks for clearing all of that up :jester:

A blip on the radar for most but popcorn to you

Trump’s average approval rating across his term, 41.1%

And yet Biden's approval rating has fallen to a new low of 43 per cent

I am not to worried about independent voters . I don’t see this pushing them towards Trump supported candidates… their a more pragmatic bunch then the avg Republican voter
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trump was beaten mercilessly, daily by the media & friends....biden gets a tongue bath.....when you consider that....looks like a great approval rating for trump:kewl:...not so good for weekend-at-biden's

you are full of whataboutisms...thought we banned those?

Wow, it’s always someone else’s fault, couldn’t be Tweety’s

Democrats have nothing comparable to the CNP, Leadership Institute, TPUSA, ALEC, Federalist Society and College Republicans. They’re all propaganda machines consistently churning out your thoughts for you, cited as truths by right wing media
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If you think independents are practical, then you would be worried if you were smart. Those practical voters will be choosing between a spend-crazy, abortion-crazy, green new deal-crazy,defund-the-police, open borders, "no such thing as biological gender" liberal (no idea who it will be, I don't think Biden runs again, and they can't run Harris who polled at 1% when she ran)...

against Ron Desantis (probably), who kept his state's businesses open, kept his kids in school, and yet has death rates nowhere near what we see in blue states like NY, his state might have the best state economy in the country, people and businesses can't move there fast enough, his state isn't seeing a surbe in violent crime that we see in blue states. And no state income tax. Yes, God forbid we have more of that...

What do you expect a practical voter will base his vote on?

I'm curious to see how the media will align against Desantis. Some are calling him "governor death sentence" (ha ha that's a good one), despite the fact that his death rates are lower than NY, which was led by the guy that EVERYONE in the media said was "the gold standard" of leadership.

do you think Biden runs in 2024?

funny you post trump was beaten mercilessly as your counterpoint then complain about whataboutisms .. ?

I doubt Biden or Trump will run in 2024 and I doubt Harris will get the nomination.. :kewl:

I am inclined to agree. Which means the nominee will be a deep back-bencher, because there isn't anyone else great on the horizon. So they'll dust off Beto Oroarke and Pete Buttigieg and Bloomberg.

You’re watching too much Fox
Florida 3.3 M dead 15324 per 100K
NY 2.3M dead 11749 per 100K
Is the rest of what you get fed as far off as that, responsible voters would look.
Cuomo is gone, the Dems don’t put their sexual predators on a pedestal and worship golden statues of them.
The rest of your spoon fed propaganda is the weak attempt of the far right to paint Biden as other than a centrist.
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Ron Desantis started way to early and it blowing up in his face he has done nothing to pull independants towards him he Has done just the opposite ..



Jim independents dont buy your nonsense of spend-crazy, abortion-crazy, green new deal-crazy,defund-the-police, open borders, "no such thing as biological gender"

Most independents are pragmatic nothing you wrote scares them their not gullible and already knew all this when they Voted for Biden ! and not trump or did you miss that?

"Ron Desantis started way to early "

Covid started when it started, he had to start managing. The fact that TONS of people and businesses are moving there, what does that tell you about how people view the way he is running his state?

"Jim independents dont buy your nonsense of spend-crazy, abortion-crazy, green new deal-crazy,defund-the-police, open borders, "no such thing as biological gender"

Sure they do, because those are all things that todays democrat party advocates for. The only people who deny that, are irrational kool aid drinkers.

"Most independents are pragmatic nothing you wrote scares them"

Again, why are people moving from blue states to red states? Or am I making that up?

The reason why the entire media spends 24 hours a day lying about what whish side believes, is because very few people are on board with the current liberal agenda.

found this interesting seeing the narrative of everyone knew coming from the Right

We've now heard from the UK's Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab, who is in Pakistan as part of efforts to secure safe passage for Britons and others trying to leave Afghanistan.

At a press conference in Islamabad, Raab says there was "common widespread surprise" at the pace of the Taliban's takeover of Afghanistan.

Even the Taliban were "taken by surprise" at the speed, he says. The militants took control of Kabul on 15 August, ahead of the scheduled withdrawal of foreign troops at the end of the month.

Got Stripers said any idiot would have seen it coming. i guess that’s too high of a hurdle for Biden.
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we also saw the transcript of a call between biden and the afghan president, where biden said it wasn’t going well.

you tell me, which is more pertinent in terms of what Biden should have known…what Biden himself said in July, ow what the UK Fireign secretary ( who you never heard of until today) says he knew.

Biden said in July that it wasn’t going well. But he told americans it was going well.
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Within two presidential election cycles, much of the south will be blue. As former Georgia gubernatorial candidate Stacey Abrams told the New York Times: "The Sun Belt expansion (by Democrats) is what will drive the next thirty years of elections."

Demographers and political pros have been watching and discussing these trends for a decade. Now the data may finally be about to deliver results, starting in the fall. In other words: the Democrats long nightmare in the Sun Belt may be, at last, coming to an end.

These states aren't turning blue because conservatives are suddenly discovering their inner AOC. The shift is driven by demographics—what demographers call "generational replacement," urbanization, and increasingly, the migration of blue state residents to red states. Worryingly for Republicans, these new arrivals have brought their voting habits and blue policies with them. Author Kristin B. Tate calls it the "liberal invasion of red state America." She believes that companies and people are fleeing high tax/low-growth blue states for low tax/high-growth red states. She says, "Harris County (Houston) where I live has absorbed a huge number of people from California. A middle-class family can afford a home here."

Welcome to the Great Migration 2.0, one that may give the Democrats an electoral advantage that could last for generations to come. (See map at end of story.)

To understand what's really going on, we spoke to a dozen experts and dove deep into the data. Working with data provided by William H. Frey, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution and author of Diversity Explosion, we looked at twenty years of migration by state, and compared that to changes in presidential voting patterns using data from the website 270toWin. And finally, we studied migration patterns by age from a database at the University of Wisconsin.

What we found is not great news for the Grand Old Party.

I for one, think the GOP should just disband. I mean if Stacey Abrams says it's over, there can be no other outcome. She's rational and brilliant, not even a little bit nutty.

yup...definitely don't let it ruin your weekend

pretty sure I've never read anything from anyone listed above and I'm not sure what some of those letters are, I'l ask Wayne but you are probably right they probably have more reach than NBC,CBS,CNN,NPR,MSNBC,NYT,WAPO,ALJEZZERA

last time I was in a airport recently...they were running Federalist Society News on all of the tv screens...I was shocked

pretty sure, in that call.... the president told weekend-at-biden's exactly what was going to happen with the taliban and biden responded by checking his watch

we all take our talking points from those outfits. which no one has ever heard of.
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Pete, is MSNBC mainstream? this week, hey said that evangelical christians in the US bear a lot of resemblance to muslim theocracies who impose sharia law.
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Just what is Sharia Law?
In Arabic, the term sharīʿah refers to God's immutable divine law and is contrasted with fiqh, which refers to its human scholarly interpretations.

Do many white evangelical Christians believe the Bible is the ultimate law by which to govern? And that it supersedes any law written by Man.

If there was a conflict between God’s law and Man’s law, a Christian would be advised to keep God’s Law. It would be better to go to jail than to rot in Hell. — Truthinlove.com

God said it. I believe it. That settles it.


In the Moral Majority’s founding treatise, they were very clear in their belief that God’s law trumps Man’s law, a Christian form of Sharia law. To them, it was imperative to highjack every means of forcing Man’s law to mirror God’s law with patience (they have been at this for over forty years), surgical political strategies (Citizens United, gerrymandering), and utter ruthlessness (encouraging conspiracy theories and sedition from the pulpit.)
This is why so many white evangelicals justify voting for Donald Trump. After almost forty years, their goal of making the United States a theocracy ruled by God’s law was within reach. Because of Mitch McConnell’s block of judicial confirmations in the United States Senate, federal judicial benches around the country sat vacant. With a transactionally conservative President, a takeover of the liberal federal judiciary was within reach, not only to overturn Roe v Wade, but to enact a raft of Bible-based nationwide legislation. Trump further validated evangelical Christians by elevating one to vice-president; he never questioned their candidates for federal judicial appointments; and he paid lip service to their importance.

You consistently quote them

What party do the two senators from Georgia belong to?