CSNbbs

Why, looky here. A report on how botched the Biden administration's Afghanistan withdrawl was. Of course, the report was heavily redacted.

Quote:President Joe Biden’s State Department, which previously hesitated to criticize the White House’s Afghanistan withdrawal, released a damning report on Friday afternoon detailing the Democrat’s failure to properly terminate decades of U.S. presence in the Middle Eastern country.

For two years now, Biden repeatedly tried to dodge responsibility for the hasty and harrowing troop removal that led to the deaths of 13 U.S. service members and stranded thousands of Americans, U.S. allies, and their families.

The State Department’s unclassified review, which is less than two dozen pages long due to redactions, sheepishly confirms that President Joe Biden’s ultimate execution of the withdrawal “posed significant challenges for the Department.” The confession, publicly released more than a year after completion, comes mere hours before the July 4 holiday weekend begins.

Among those obstacles were ongoing stringent Covid policies, which “meant that some new embassy employees had not met others in their offices until the embassy evacuated to the Kabul airport,” a “Lack of Senate-Confirmed Officials in the Department and Embassies,” and ill-timed diplomatic turnover.

To put it simply, Biden’s rushing “compounded the difficulties the Department faced in mitigating the loss of the military’s key enablers,” and his lack of planning “had serious consequences for the viability of the Afghan government and its security.”

https://12ft.io/proxy?q=https%3A%2F%2Fth...hdrawal%2F

Why Biden* decided on not firing Blinken over this is beyond common sense.

(07-01-2023 03:32 PM)UofMstateU Wrote: [ -> ]Why Biden* decided on not firing Blinken over this is beyond common sense.

Biden makes zero decisions. He's nothing more than a hologram.

(07-01-2023 04:00 PM)Kyle Mack Wrote: [ -> ]

(07-01-2023 03:32 PM)UofMstateU Wrote: [ -> ]Why Biden* decided on not firing Blinken over this is beyond common sense.

Biden makes zero decisions. He's nothing more than a hologram.

This^

No surprise here....most of this rightly called Biden* out for that disastrous exit from Afghanistan. I'll never forget Brandon* checking his watch while the dead soliders were being carried off the aircraft at Dover Air Base.

For those who MIGHT have a memory lapse:
https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/biden-check-watch-13/

(07-01-2023 04:00 PM)Kyle Mack Wrote: [ -> ]

(07-01-2023 03:32 PM)UofMstateU Wrote: [ -> ]Why Biden* decided on not firing Blinken over this is beyond common sense.

Biden makes zero decisions. He's nothing more than a hologram.

Said this back in whatever 19-20?

The Max Headroom candidate. Or weekend at Bernies* 3. Take your pick

Good call, hologram is much more 2023

Hard to tell whether Biden is more crooked than stupid or more stupid than crooked.

(07-01-2023 07:10 PM)Owl 69/70/75 Wrote: [ -> ]Hard to tell whether Biden is more crooked than stupid or more stupid than crooked.

Name the last president who wasn’t crooked… This is stupidity plus.

(07-01-2023 09:40 PM)Todor Wrote: [ -> ]

(07-01-2023 07:10 PM)Owl 69/70/75 Wrote: [ -> ]Hard to tell whether Biden is more crooked than stupid or more stupid than crooked.

Name the last president who wasn’t crooked… This is stupidity plus.

honestly, I'd toss Jimmy C. into that arena ... now, what does that tell, ya?!

(07-01-2023 07:10 PM)Owl 69/70/75 Wrote: [ -> ]Hard to tell whether Biden is more crooked than stupid or more stupid than crooked.

As long as we agree he is both.

Damning New Report on Afghanistan Withdrawal Rips Biden* Admin

Quote:There’s a new report out Friday from the State Department’s after-action review of the horrible withdrawal from Afghanistan in 2021.

The report excoriates the way the withdrawal was handled, noting that the Biden team did not sufficiently plan or prepare for “worst case scenarios.”

Incredibly, it said it was “unclear” who was in charge at the State Department. They also made the bad mistake of giving up the Bagram airfield to the Afghans, which would have been much easier to defend to get people out, so they were forced to use the Hamid Karzai Airport.

When the evacuation did occur, “senior administration officials had not made clear decisions” on which Afghan citizens would qualify for evacuation from the country and where they would be taken.

That meant they ended up taking people who weren’t necessarily allies who helped us during the war, and leaving our allies — and hundreds of Americans — behind, while not being straight about the number who were left.

Naturally, because the report was bad, it was dropped on a Friday right before a holiday weekend—so that they can try to avoid more press on the issue. Only about half of it was released, with the other part staying classified. While it called out the administration, it was careful not to blame any particular individual despite Sec. of State Antony Blinken being in charge of that leader-challenged State Department.

After the report was released, National Security Council spokesperson John Kirby tried to defend the administration with the same poor response that they’ve used for two years: that the “decision to end the war was the right one.” No one was talking about the decision to end the war, but about the horrible way in which Joe Biden and his officials tried to carry it out.

Joe Biden’s response was even worse than Kirby’s.

Washington Bureau Chief for GloboNews, Raquel Krähenbühl asked Biden about the damning report:

“Do you admit failure in Afghanistan? There was a report…saying there was failure, mistakes. Do you admit there was mistakes during the withdrawal and before?”

His response was one for the books — even with all the evidence, even with how much he failed, and the release of the new report, he’s still trying to insist he was right in how he did things and refusing all criticism. The level of arrogance was astonishing.

“No, no. All the evidence is coming back together,” Biden claimed. He then leaned in and did that creepy whispering thing again:

Remember what I said about Afghanistan. I said al-Qaeda would not be there. I said we’d get help from the Taliban. What’s happening now? What’s going on? Read your press! I was right.

He hits the podium in emphasis, then turns to leave.

Biden’s remarks were just detached from the facts, as this video shows. Right down the line, he kept showing that he was wrong about everything—from the Taliban takeover to the helicopters off the roof of the embassy, just like Vietnam.

Biden snapped at reporters like they were children, since they don’t just blindly accept everything he says: “Read your press!” But what he was saying simply wasn’t the case, particularly when it comes to al-Qaeda. Not only are they in the country, al-Qaeda-affiliated people are part of the government, according to a recent UN report. Does he not know this or is he trying to gaslight us?

According to the U.N. Analytical Support and Sanctions Monitoring Team in its June report, there are leaders in the Afghan government affiliated with al-Qaeda including “two provincial governors of the Taliban de facto administration,” Qari Ehsanullah Baryal and Hafiz Muhammad Agha Hakeem, “are affiliated with al-Qaeda,” as well as “another Talib associated with al-Qaeda,” Tajmir Jawad, who is the “Deputy Director of the General Directorate of Intelligence.”

The U.N. noted the U.S. military has assessed that Jawad was the former head of the “Kabul Network” — described as “a mixture of al-Qaeda and Taliban that directed suicide assaults against the United States and other coalition targets.”

The FBI also describes Sirajuddin Haqqani, a Taliban deputy prime minister and the leader of the Taliban government’s powerful interior ministry, as “a senior leader of the Haqqani network” who “maintains close ties to the Taliban and al Qaeda.”

The U.N. said that Sirajuddin’s ministry “continued its distribution of Afghan passports and tazkiras (national identity cards) to al-Qaeda members with advisory roles in main Afghan cities.”

The new report indicated “al-Qaeda members have received appointments and advisory roles in the Taliban security and administrative structures” thanks to the Taliban and that “the Taliban provided al-Qaeda with monthly ‘welfare payments,’ with portions of those payments filtered down to fighters of al-Qaeda affiliated groups.”

The report also said that “one training director of the de facto Ministry of Defence was an al-Qaeda member, while training was based on al-Qaeda manuals, which were openly being used at Ministry facilities.” [….]

The U.N. said that “a range of terrorist groups have greater freedom of maneuver under the Taliban” and “the threat of terrorism is rising in both Afghanistan and the region.”

The report said there are 30 to 60 “core members” of al Qaeda in Afghanistan, with 400 “al-Qaeda fighters” there, but with family and supporters that reaches about 2,000 people. There are also training camps and safe houses for al-Qaeda in the country, including a camp specifically to train suicide bombers.

Yet, given all that, how can Joe Biden tell us with a straight face that there’s no al-Qaeda there, and expect us to just accept what he says?

State Department Finally Admits In Heavily Redacted Report That Biden Botched The Afghanistan Withdrawal

Quote:President Joe Biden’s State Department, which previously hesitated to criticize the White House’s Afghanistan withdrawal, released a damning report on Friday afternoon detailing the Democrat’s failure to properly terminate decades of U.S. presence in the Middle Eastern country.

For two years now, Biden repeatedly tried to dodge responsibility for the hasty and harrowing troop removal that led to the deaths of 13 U.S. service members and stranded thousands of Americans, U.S. allies, and their families.

The State Department’s unclassified review, which is less than two dozen pages long due to redactions, sheepishly confirms that President Joe Biden’s ultimate execution of the withdrawal “posed significant challenges for the Department.” The confession, publicly released more than a year after completion, comes mere hours before the July 4 holiday weekend begins.

Among those obstacles were ongoing stringent Covid policies, which “meant that some new embassy employees had not met others in their offices until the embassy evacuated to the Kabul airport,” a “Lack of Senate-Confirmed Officials in the Department and Embassies,” and ill-timed diplomatic turnover.

To put it simply, Biden’s rushing “compounded the difficulties the Department faced in mitigating the loss of the military’s key enablers,” and his lack of planning “had serious consequences for the viability of the Afghan government and its security.”

A majority of Americans disapproved of how the Biden administration handled the crisis, but an assessment of the White House’s actions released by the National Security Council earlier this year shifted most of the blame onto former President Donald Trump.

The recent evaluation also attempts to pin some of the disaster on Biden’s predecessor. The former president, however, was not the one who pledged a “safe and orderly” departure, left thousands of Americans behind as the Taliban took over, and abandoned billions of dollars in military equipment for U.S. enemies to use.

It was Biden who did all those things and more, including welcoming hundreds of Afghans on the Pentagon’s watchlist into the U.S. without vetting while his own constituents awaited rescue.

When the crisis came to a head in 2021, the Biden administration did not accept responsibility for the rapid ruination of Afghanistan. The State Department, specifically, repeatedly claimed that “we inherited a deadline” but “did not inherit a plan.”

“More could and should have been done,” Secretary of State Antony Blinken eventually admitted in April.

The review ends with a paragraph of praise by the State Department for the State Department’s handling of a crisis that many Americans say tainted their view of Biden during his first year in office.

“We end this After Action Review where we began, with praise and admiration for our colleagues throughout the Department. We have made a series of recommendations for ways in which we think the Department could better prepare for future complex crises, but in the final analysis, there is no substitute for the smart, hard-working, dedicated professionals that the Department could count upon in this crisis,” the report states. “We should be proud of what they and their partners in uniform accomplished during this evacuation and what they continue to do to help U.S. citizens and at-risk Afghans in the aftermath of the Taliban takeover.”

LOL of course the deep state goons who never wanted to leave in the first place are going to solely throw Biden under the bus. I'm know Biden and company did plenty of things wrong, but if you had to wait until the military, unelected and un-appointed state department members, and the rest of the clowns who have been grifting off this war since day 1 said the conditions were good enough to leave you'd be waiting another 20 years. A hill I'm happy to die on, the best thing Biden ever did was actually go through with the withdrawal and fight against the immense institutional pressure to just punt and stay. Another thing I have no proof of, but a "conspiracy theory" that I'm all in on believing, is that the military and the state department intentionally were slow rolling preparations for exit in hopes to convince Biden it would be a disaster to leave. These deep state clowns convinced Trump multiple times to stay and not leave, and it took till the end for Trump to finally tell the generals and deep staters to fu*k off I'm negotiating with the Taliban and we are leaving. IMO that and his NK negotiations were the best things he did by miles. Leaving 20 year grifts is going to be ugly, those who have been doing the grifting aren't just going to let it happen.

This administration royally ****** that up.

FUBAR level incompetence or malfeasance. That's the list.

No sugarcoating it.